Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,

Is there anything the Biden administration can’t inject its wokester politics into?

The latest news is a disturbing report from an industry-watcher using federal data, pointing out that attacks on America’s power grid are up 71%.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which got a leaked copy of the report:

Physical attacks on the U.S. power grid rose 71% last year compared with 2021 and will likely increase this year, according to a confidential industry analysis viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

A division of the grid oversight body known as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation found that ballistic damage, intrusion and vandalism largely drove the increase. The analysis also determined that physical security incidents involving power outages have increased 20% since 2020, attributed to people frustrated by the onset of the pandemic, social tensions and economic challenges.

The NERC division, known as the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or E-ISAC, recorded the sharp increase in incidents in 2022, driven in part by a series of clustered attacks on infrastructure in the Southeast, Midwest and Pacific Northwest. One of the most significant incidents occurred in early December when attackers targeted several substations in North Carolina with gunfire, leaving roughly 45,000 people in the dark.

CBS, which also got a copy of the leaked report, added this:

The analysis by E-ISAC is the most comprehensive and includes mandatory reporting of incidents to federal agencies or NERC, as well as voluntary disclosures made in confidence. 

And while E-ISAC has determined that “overall physical security incident sharing” has increased by 11% since 2021 and 25% since 2020, analysts assess that the spike in grid-impacting incidents “is due to an actual increase in the electric industry’s risk environment and is not just the result of fluctuations in information-sharing patterns by utilities.” 

Between 2020 and 2022, E-ISAC tracked 4,493 incidents: 502 received through mandatory reporting and 3,991 through voluntary means.

The vast majority — 97% — of the incidents “resulted in no disruption of service.” But the remaining 3% of incidents resulted in “varying levels of grid impacts.” Toplines of this study were first reported by the Wall Street Journal. 

That’s disturbing stuff, signaling that our power grid is a sitting duck for predators, and with Joe Biden in charge, we can expect a response comparable to the one that he’s demonstrated in East Palestine, Ohio.  A blown out power grid could put us into the Stone Age in a matter of seconds.

Anybody doing something about this?  There wasn’t much said about it in the reports.

There was also, where it could be found, an odd focus on “white supremacists” conducting the attacks, and yes, there have apparently been a couple, as if the Russians or Chinese or other malevolent actors, such as Mexico’s cartels, wouldn’t dream of disrupting U.S. power grids for their own purposes.  The reports seen, which were oddly coordinated, all quoted experts who cited white supremacists in one form or another as being at the root of the problem.

There also was no clear explanation as to why it’s happening from either news story, it’s just that attacks are up, and they are expected to get worse.

“It’s important to note that new fencing, cameras, or better lighting isn’t going to prevent attacks. They will continue to happen,” said Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“This is why we must invest in resilience, adding redundancy, and removing single points of failure. Certain attacks on critical infrastructure should be legally treated as domestic terrorism.”

Really, Brian?  Who is this guy?  According to a Google search, Harrell was appointed by President Trump to a couple of jobs within Homeland Security, which is a department famous for its NeverTrumps, and who also served as NERC director for critical infrastructure and then electricity for five years before that, according to his LinkedIn page.  Might he be part of the Washington swamp?

To the Wall Street Journal, whom Harrell also talked to, he brought up the old “chatter” argument:

Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security, said there has lately been a notable increase in conversations among extremists about targeting critical infrastructure.

These groups are talking to each other, and they’re learning from each other,” he said. “It gets a lot of people’s attention when you start turning off the lights, and I think that’s what they’re craving.”

OK, fine.  But it sure as heck wasn’t specific or complete as an answer.

Other characters quoted by CBS were even more focused on white supremacists and neo-Nazis as being at the root of the attacks:

But while regulators have worried about targeting of substations for years, there is mounting concern among industry analysts that racially motivated violent extremists, lone wolves and radical environmentalists present an elevated threat, perhaps linked to more readily available information online about specific tactics, techniques and procedures. 

In January, two people were charged in connection with Christmas-Day attacks on substations in Pierce County, Washington state, impacting thousands of customers.

“We’ve seen attacks against the power grid for a number of years, and some of those attacks are simply people shooting into substations around the country for purely criminal reasons,” Kenneth Wainstein, undersecretary of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, told CBS News last week in an exclusive interview. “But some of these shootings are also being done by domestic violent extremists” who are trying to engineer a societal collapse.

This month, two people — including a known neo-Nazi — were indicted by a federal grand jury after allegedly plotting to attack five power substations in Maryland and Pennsylvania to “lay waste” to the city of Baltimore.

In the final part of the CBS report, they got to the money quote:

“The vision, in short, is that they want to take down the energy grid because if they take down the energy grid, they believe that society will then collapse,” Wainstein said.

“And out of the collapse, [they believe], will arise a white nationalist government to replace the current government. And we’ve seen this narrative online among these white nationalist groups.”

White supremacist plots targeting the grid have “dramatically increased in frequency,” according to a study released in September by The Program on Extremism at George Washington University. From 2016 to 2022, thirteen people linked to white supremacist movements have been charged in federal courts with plotting attacks on electrical infrastructure, including 11 defendants indicted after 2020.

Ah.  The old white supremacists, same as the Biden administration argues, elevating these marginal losers and lowlifes to the highest threat in the land.  Most of these dirtbags they catch are Trump-haters, but the strategy is all about Getting Trump, whom they view as the grand-daddy of white supremacism.

After all, the Bidenites have been obsessed with white supremacists, most recently targeting Catholic Latin Mass–lovers as “white supremacists” premised on Biden’s executive order to hunt them down wherever they may be as the nation’s biggest threat.  Now their allies are saying the attacks on the power grid are the work of white supremacists.  No doubt they will go hunting for them in those parts, and yes, they have turned up a few such losers.

But what’s missing here is that America has enemies.  And some of the most terrifyingly effective power grid attacks, such as the one that hit the Metcalf Station, near San Jose, in 2013, bore all the earmarks of an actual foreign enemy attack.  Mark Wauck has noted that Russia and other U.S. adversaries have plenty of motivation for retaliatory attacks against the U.S., given that many Russian infrastructure installations have gone up in flames in what one apparently credible source claims is the work of the CIA striking deep into Russian territory as part of the U.S. war effort to defend Ukraine.

So now we see an upsurge in attacks on the grid, and it’s weird stuff that only white supremacists are the focus, given the age we are in now.  We know that CBS last year brought up the possibility of Russian attacks on the grid in its February 2022 report.  This year (weird how these grid threat reports seem to happen on an annual basis each February), the possibility of Russians stepping up the attacks is absent from every news report I looked at.

The Russians couldn’t be behind any of this activity?  That would be the same Russians who launched successful grid attacks on Ukraine and Estonia in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine?  The same Russians who have engaged in hundreds of electrical grid attacks in Ukraine since the war started?  They’d never think to take that show on the road?

The Chinese, who collect amazing amounts of data from America’s land mass, including its power stations on the grid, and from America’s individual citizens, and who have been accused of manipulating the grid already, would never dream of taking out an American power grid now?  The same China that threatened to take out India’s power grid?

No, it’s just ragtag white supremacists we need to be on the lookout for to protect the grid, based on the reports out now. 

We all know that the FBI seems to be obsessed with white supremacists — at school board meetings, in the military ranks, and at Latin Masses — while catching remarkably few actual Russian and Chinese spies and saboteurs.  The last one they caught who made headlines, Charles McGonigal, was one of their own.  Might there be just a little slacking off on the core mission as money floods into the ever-expanding agency from Biden?

It’s just strange stuff that the possibility of retaliatory sabotage from nations Biden has effectively declared war on are not named as suspects for the huge upsurge in power grid attacks because those white supremacists are just too powerful.  It sounds like a spin operation, one that might be covering up something pretty serious.

On his fifth time as guest host on the now far-leftist Saturday Night Live, Harrelson entered into a monologue which seemed to catch the New York audience off guard as the joke ended with a scathing indirect indictment of Big Pharma, lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

The progressive media is, not surprisingly, furious, accusing Harrelson of not only spreading a “conspiracy theory” but being high with the Rolling Sone’s Marlow Stern claiming he was “apparently under the influence.”

Yes, Woody Harrelson went full anti-vax conspiracy theorist during his SNL Monologue tonight https://t.co/rmwm6JIsYh

— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) February 26, 2023

The same Rolling Stone, of course, which was caught in that whole Ivermectin fabrication-cum-retraction…

That’s the same reason the hard-core Dem Party media loyalists, led as usual by @Maddow, spread this fake story all over based on what appears to be a fraudulent source without checking. Fake News is 100% acceptable if done with good political motives:https://t.co/lzAXAHKrfN

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 5, 2021

As if given a green light by the Pfizer C-Suite, the leftist pile-up began…

Still, the trend of celebrities and mainstream figures coming out in opposition to the draconian covid restrictions is growing along with skepticism about the vaccines, though, the starved for ratings and pro-establishment SNL is probably the last place we would expect to see such voices given a “platform.” Unless, of course, this was just a marketing ploy to end the viewership bleeding…

Woody Harrelson’s monologue! pic.twitter.com/FAEcBDnIKu

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 26, 2023

And while the old media – a melting ice cube still generously funded by ads from companies such as, oh, Pfizer – is losing its mind, Twitter owner Elon Musk had a clear and sobering reaction to the monologue.

🎯

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2023

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

I knew exactly what would happen when China unveiled their peace plan for the conflict in Ukraine.  The night before, I told my wife that western leaders would immediately dismiss it.  Sadly, that is precisely what happened.  Of course any peace plan proposed by China was not going to be perfect.  But for the good of humanity our leaders should be willing to at least sit down and talk with the Russians.  Because if we stay on the path that we are currently on, eventually somebody will use nuclear weapons.  And once things go nuclear, we could be facing a nightmare scenario in which hundreds of millions of people die.

This is not a game.

At some point, peace talks may become impossible.  So if we have an opportunity to talk now, we should grab it.

But instead, our leaders made it abundantly clear that they aren’t even interested in considering China’s peace plan…

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking on CNN, brushed off the Chinese proposal, saying it should have ended after the first bullet point, which calls for “respecting the sovereignty of all countries.”

“This war could end tomorrow, if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine and withdrew its forces,” he said.

Asked about the proposal, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “China doesn’t have much credibility” in light of its failure to condemn Putin’s war.

And Volodymyr Zelensky is completely rejecting the idea of ever negotiating with Vladimir Putin…

The Ukrainian president has repeatedly rejected the idea of negotiating a peace deal that would see Ukraine lose any of its territory. Speaking on Friday, he said he would not negotiate with Putin – even though he was prepared to speak to him before the war started.

“It is not the same man. There is nobody to talk to there,” he said.

I think that Zelensky would see things quite differently if he was one of the men that was being forced into the meat grinder in eastern Ukraine.

According to a former U.S. Marine that is fighting there, the “average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours”…

The average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours, a former US Marine fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the Donbas told ABC News.

“It’s been pretty bad on the ground. A lot of casualties. The life expectancy is around four hours on the front line,” American Troy Offenbecker said.

It is a really, really horrible war.

But those that are far from the front lines can afford to talk about how glorious the war is…

Just one day before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion, the official Twitter account for the NATO military alliance has come under criticism for a post that said Ukraine is “hosting one of the great epics of this century” and compared the war to Hollywood movies.

The post, which quoted a Ukrainian soldier named Pavlo, said: “We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.”

The idea of comparing the war, which has claimed thousands of lives, seen widespread destruction, and destabalised the world’s food and energy supplies, to fictional characters was quickly deried by many on the social media platform.

I would like to see leaders from both sides be forced to serve on the front lines.

If that ever happened, this war would end really quick.

Sadly, a conflict with Russia is apparently not enough, and so the Biden administration is now relentlessly provoking the Chinese.

This week, a new round of sanctions that were announced by the Biden administration actually included entities located inside China…

The White House has announced yet another package of sweeping sanctions targeting Russia on the one-year anniversary of its brutal invasion of Ukraine – with new efforts to target third countries including China for sanctions evasion.

And it is being reported that the U.S. will soon “quadruple” that number of U.S. troops in Taiwan…

The US is expected to quadruple the number of forces deployed to Taiwan in the coming months as tensions with Beijing continue to simmer.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the Pentagon plans to deploy between 100 and 200 troops to the self-ruled island, up from around 30 a year ago.

Service members from the Marines and the special forces have been sent to Taiwan in the past and the number has fluctuated over the years.

The Chinese consider Taiwan to be their sovereign territory.

This is something that they believe with a passion.

And so the fact that the Biden administration will be sending more U.S. troops to the island has really pissed them off…

A commentator for the Global Times, a media project of the Chinese Communist Party, issued a threat to the United States on Thursday night, intimating that China would not hesitate to engage U.S. forces stationed in Taiwan if the Chinese launched an invasion of the island nation.

Hu Xijin, formerly the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, reacted to a Wall Street Journal report about U.S. troops traveling to Taiwan by calling it “illegal” and suggesting that the Chinese would treat them as enemy combatants.

“It’s illegal for these US soldiers to go to Taiwan and Chinese mainland won’t take any responsibility for their safety,” tweeted Hu. “If we take military action when necessary, they’ll be wiped out together with the resisting Taiwan troops. They can also be eliminated first as the invading army.”

But most Americans don’t understand any of this.

Most Americans have absolutely no idea that we are literally on the verge of a war with China.

Unfortunately, such a conflict is getting a little bit closer with each passing day.  In fact, we just witnessed a very alarming incident over the South China Sea…

A voice, saying it’s coming from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) airport, crackles over the radio of the US Navy P-8 Poseidon as a CNN crew, given rare access aboard the US flight, listens in.

“American aircraft. Chinese airspace is 12 nautical miles. Not approaching any more or you bear all responsibility,” it says.

For some reason, the U.S. Navy aircraft was carrying a CNN crew, and the Chinese fighter jet got so close to them that they “could make out the red star on the tail fins and the missiles it was armed with”…

In a few minutes, a Chinese fighter jet armed with air-to-air missiles intercepts the US plane, nestling in just 500 feet off its port side.

The Chinese fighter jet was so close, the CNN crew could see the pilots turning their heads to look at them – and could make out the red star on the tail fins and the missiles it was armed with.

Why does the Biden administration see the need to endlessly provoke China at a moment like this?

It is madness.

We could easily find ourselves involved in conflicts with both Russia and China at the same time, and I have been precisely warning of such a scenario for a very long time.

Unfortunately, we have a hothead in the White House that is in an advanced stage of mental decline.

And he is surrounded by irrational warmongers such as Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland.

They do not want peace.

So global war is coming, and I would strongly encourage you to get prepared for such an outcome.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Hundreds of newspapers will no longer carry the long-running “Dilbert” office cartoon after creator Scott Adams said white people should “stay the fuck away” from blacks, a demographic he called a “hate group.”  

Those remarks in a recent episode of his “Real Coffee with Scott Adams” podcast came after he shared the unsettling results of a Rasmussen poll. When asked if they agree with the statement “It’s ok to be white,” 26% of blacks disagreed and 21% weren’t sure. 

In addition to the USA Today Network — which includes the Arizona Republic, St. Augustine Record, Courier-Journal (KY), Austin American-Statesman and hundreds more — the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Antonio Express-News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune and Cleveland Plain Dealer were among other individual papers racing to drop Adams like a hot potato. 

“By Monday, I should be mostly canceled,” said Adams on his YouTube channel. “So most of my income will be gone by next week. My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can’t come back from this.”

After my cancelling, find me at https://t.co/lAH9Itp9tv for the good stuff. Might be the only place to find Dilbert soon.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 25, 2023

Adams put forward a seemingly paradoxical attempt to clarify his intended message, saying:

• “Everyone should be treated as an individual”    and
• “You should also avoid any group that doesn’t respect you, even if there are people within the group who are fine” 

As they dropped Dilbert, newspapers issued statements condemning Adams. John Hiner, VP of content for Michigan’s MLive Media, said the group has “zero tolerance for racism. And we certainly will not spend our money supporting purveyors of it.” 

As is typically the case with cancellations, Hiner chose not to provide details of Adams’ remarks, and also told readers not to research them and make their own judgments: “I will not characterize Adams’ racist views or even provide a link to the video….My advice: Save yourself the poison.” 

ZeroHedge is more respectful of its readership, so here are some key excerpts of the segment that triggered a cancellation wave that’s sure to grow exponentially larger in the coming hours and days: 

“Add ’em together: That is 47% of black respondents who were not willing to say it’s ok to be white…

As you know, I’ve been identifying as black for a while — years now — ’cause I like to be on the winning team and I like to help. I always thought, well if you help the black community, that’s sort of the biggest lever. You know, you can find the biggest benefit…So I thought, well, that’s the hardest thing and the biggest benefit, so I’d like to focus a lot of my life resources in helping black Americans — so much so that I started identifying as black to just be to be on the team I was helping.

But it turns out that nearly half of that team doesn’t think I’m ok to be white…I have to say, this is the first political poll that’s ever changed my activities…As of today, I’m going to re-identify as white, because I don’t want to be a member of a hate group. I’ve accidentally joined a hate group. If nearly half of all blacks are not ok with white people — according to this poll, not according to me — that’s a hate group…and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. 

And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away.

There’s no fixing this...I think it makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to help black citizens anymore…I’m gonna back off from being helpful to black America, because it doesn’t seem like it pays off. I’ve been doing it all my life, and the only outcome is I get called a racist…It makes no sense to help black Americans if you’re white. It’s over. Don’t even think it’s worth trying. Totally not trying.

We should be friendly. Like, I’m not saying start a war or do anything bad…I’m just saying get away.”  

Surprisingly, as we write this, the video version (and his channel) are still accessible on YouTube: 

I knew.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 26, 2023

Six months ago Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky suggested to western media outlets that Vladimir Putin “might be dead” or that he was fighting health problems, and that the Russian government was using a body double to fool the public. 

Ironically, it is Zelensky that appears to have been caught using a body double on camera by the Polish media during Joe Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine. 

The footage seems to have been accidental, but it does reinforce the old adage – When the establishment accuses you of doing something, it’s actually a confession of what they are doing. 

Polish media accidently recorded #Zelensky‘s double when they covered #Biden‘s visit to #Kyiv#Awkward pic.twitter.com/F2ufQk76z0

— Arthur Morgan (@ArthurM40330824) February 25, 2023

Now, if only someone can capture evidence that Biden is being controlled remotely by ChatGPT, the “Russian bot” narrative can come full circle…

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Autocrats only understand one word: no, no, no. No you will not take my country, no you will not take my freedom, no you will not take my future… A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free.”

– President Biden

Oh, the hypocrisy.

To hear President Biden talk about the Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, you might imagine that Putin is the only dictator bent on expanding his military empire through the use of occupation, aggression and oppression.

Yet the United States is no better, having spent much of the past half-century policing the globe, occupying other countries, and waging endless wars.

What most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military industrial complex that has its sights set on world domination.

War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

America’s part in the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine has already cost taxpayers more than $112 billion and shows no signs of abating.

Clearly, it’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world.

American troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. In Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

Incredibly, America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

The reach of America’s military empire includes close to 800 bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

After 20 years of propping up Afghanistan to the tune of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost, the U.S. military may have finally been forced out, but those troops represent just a fraction of our military presence worldwide.

In an ongoing effort to police the globe, American military servicepeople continue to be deployed to far-flung places in the Middle East and elsewhere.

This is how the military industrial complex, aided and abetted by the likes of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and others, continues to get rich at taxpayer expense.

Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

War spending is bankrupting America.

Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.

Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

Unfortunately, even if we were to put an end to all of the government’s military meddling and bring all of the troops home today, it would take decades to pay down the price of these wars and get the government’s creditors off our backs.

As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.

That needs to change.

The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

The U.S. military’s ongoing drone strikes will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.

The war hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also blowback.

James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.

At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:

The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

We failed to heed his warning.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, war is the enemy of freedom.

As long as America’s politicians continue to involve us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse, “we the people” will find ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.

Authored by Wendi Strauch Mahoney via UncoverDC.com,

NewsGuard is a self-appointed misinformation watchdog. It seems to be just one more way Americans are not allowed to think for themselves…

Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz claim it is the “librarian for the internet.” Set up specifically to rate online journalistic integrity, Brill states NewsGuard provides services that “explain to people something about the reliability and trustworthiness and background of those who are feeding them the news.” Eric Effron is the organization’s Editorial Director.

Brill is a Yale graduate and lawyer who has authored multiple best-selling books and was, among other things, CEO of Verified Identity Pass, Inc., the first U.S. biometric Voluntary Credentialing Program that went bankrupt in 2009. It was the parent company of CLEAR which went back online in 2010 and then went public in 2021.

According to MintPressNews, “Crovitz held a number of positions at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, eventually becoming executive vice president of the former and the publisher of the latter before both were sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2007. He is also a board member of Business Insider, which has received over $30 million from Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in recent years.”

Crovitz’s alliances might account for the organization’s favorable 100 ratings for WSJ and the Washington Post. He is also a contributor “to books published by the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation,” which are also favorably rated by NewsGuard.

Crovitz and Brill/NewsGuard

Notable NewsGuard Partnerships

NewsGuard has partnered with Microsoft, Pfizer, the Department of Defense with a 2021 $749,387 one-year contract, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the WHO using NewsGuard’s trademark “new Misinformation Fingerprints” analyst and AI cataloging tool. NewsGuard’s other products include NewsGuard, HealthGuard, and BrandGuard—which help marketers concerned about their brand safety.

Leftist “NewsGuard” is Microsoft partner. https://t.co/qfPwJNy69E

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) February 14, 2023

NewsGuard mentions its partnership with the WHO in August 2020 and discusses its Misinformation Fingerprints cataloging tool. The tool is essentially a database with a “unique identifier for each hoax that, when combined with the platforms’ machine learning tools, will allow platforms to identify each hoax across the entirety of their platforms.” NewsGuard describes Misinformation Fingerprints as an “extraction and cataloging” tool. It  provides “data seeds for existing AI/Social Listening tools to trace false claims across the internet and social media or can be used by human analysts to understand mis- and disinformation risks.”

NewsGuard was also a signatory in 2021 to the Code of Practice on Disinformation for the European Commission. Commissioner statements from the May 2021 announcement are below:

European Commission Statements/https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_2585

Microsoft was the first signatory to “provide NewsGuard ratings and labels to its users as a “middleware solution” for empowering consumers.” Microsoft licensed NewsGuard ratings and labels. They are “free of charge” to users of the Edge browser.

Search Coach is a powerful new tool that can help students learn to form effective search queries and make sense of information online. 🔎 🧑‍💻

Read what educators have to say about the impact it’s making in the classroom: https://t.co/kUcoLPgoeb#MicrosoftEDU pic.twitter.com/sV5zMUZ40a

— Microsoft Education (@MicrosoftEDU) February 9, 2023

NewsGuard Wins Contest Run by Pentagon and DoD in 2020

NewsGuard won a 2020 contest run by the “Pentagon and Department of State to offer solutions to hoaxes related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The contest focused specifically on the “pre-bunking” of internet hoaxes. NewsGuard was also “a winner of the Countering Disinformation Challenge, a contest offered jointly by the State Department and the Department of Defense (DoD) as a part of the DoD’s National Security Innovation Network (NSIN).” NSIN is a “government program office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OSD (R&E)) that collaborates with major universities and the venture community to develop solutions that drive national security innovation.”

NewsGuard equips “defense and military personnel” with the tools to fight disinformation from foreign and domestic adversaries “in real-time.”

NewsGuard/DOD/Mil/https://www.newsguardtech.com/industries/security-and-defense/

Per the NewsGuard press release:

“As a winner, NewsGuard will receive $25,000 to conduct a pilot and will work with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center to scope and develop a test in support of the DoD’s Cyber National Mission Force. Two other companies, PeakMetrics, which offers a dashboard for tracking mentions of a topic across multiple media channels, and Omelas, which offers a product for visually mapping online information, were also named winners of the contest.”

Notably, the tech company Omelas focuses on the “actions of overt state and nonstate actors” who exert “malicious influence on the web.” Omelas regularly contributes with speeches and written submissions to influential global organizations and domestic institutions like UChicago’s Data and Democracy initiative and the UChicago Center for Effective Government, attended by the likes of Tiana Epps-Johnson with CTCL.

Teachers’ Union Signs Contract with NewsGuard in 2022

The American Federation of Teachers, with its 1.7 million members, announced its “pathbreaking” partnership with NewsGuard in January 2022 with the rollout of the “free, real-time traffic light news ratings,” a “crucial news literacy tool” for students nationwide. The announcement coincided with National News Literacy Week. They released this video on the dangers of misinformation at the time of the announcement:

Touted as a “game-changer for teachers and families drowning in an ocean of online dishonesty,” a “licensed copy of NewsGuard’s browser extension” would help students “separate fact from fiction, as we help them develop their critical-thinking and analytical skills.” AFT President Randi Weingarten gave NewsGuard glowing reviews:

“NewsGuard is a great tool in this regard. It is a beacon of clarity to expose the dark depths of the internet and uplift those outlets committed to truth and honesty rather than falsehoods and fabrications. This historic deal will not only help us steer clear of increasingly fetid waters—it will provide a valuable lesson in media literacy and a discussion point for teachers in class on what can and can’t be trusted.”

NewsGuard’s 2022 Social Impact Report

NewsGuard issued its first “social impact report” in 2022. The report championed NewsGuard’s provision of tools that would promote “online safety for readers, brands, and democracies.” Its CEOs proudly state a mission to fight false claims of “Nazis running Ukraine’s government and Americans running bioweapons labs in Ukraine,” COVID-19 misinformation, and misinformation surrounding the mid-term elections.

According to the report, “more than 938,200 people were exposed to COVID-19 vaccine myths between Oct. 2021-Feb. 2022 on social media.” The report also reveals NewsGuard’s exposure of “pink slime sites pushing Democratic propaganda in battleground states ahead of the midterm elections.”

NewsGuard 2022

What are NewsGuard’s Stated Standards and Procedures?

The NewsGuard Dashboard “helps clients access NewsGuard’s database of News Reliability Ratings and Misinformation Fingerprints through a powerful, searchable web interface purpose-built for use by businesses seeking to identify and mitigate risks from misinformation and disinformation. Users can browse NewsGuard’s ratings, get alerts about changes in the news and information environment, and stay on top of emerging false narratives and trends.”

The site issues “stoplight red/green journalistic ratings” for news sources. Influence watch describes NewsGuard as a “web browser extension that rates the trustworthiness of online news sites based on nine criteria, providing a trust score between 0 and 100.” Nine basic “apolitical criteria” for journalistic practice are outlined on the NewsGuard website. The criteria are listed in order of importance and weighted accordingly. Satire sites, platforms, and news aggregators “are given separate designations and are not scored using the nine criteria.” The nine criteria and standards for credibility are as follows:

• Does not repeatedly publish false content (22 Points)

• Gathers and presents information responsibly (18 Points)

• Regularly corrects or clarifies errors (12.5 Points)

• Handles the difference between news and opinion responsibly (12.5 Points)

• Avoids deceptive headlines (10 Points)

• Website discloses ownership and financing (7.5 Points)

• Clearly labels advertising (7.5 Points)

• Reveals who’s in charge, including possible conflicts of interest (5 Points)

• The site provides the names of content creators, along with either contact or biographical information (5 Points)

NewsGuard Ratings/0-100

According to the website, NewsGuard substantiates the basis for its ratings with “evidence and examples to back up its assessments, includ[ing] any relevant comments from the publisher, and indicat[ing] the history of the sites’ ratings.” NewsGuard employs “a team of journalists and experienced editors” who make an effort to contact publishers who might “fail” specific criteria before a rating or an updated rating is published, “ensuring a publisher[‘s] ability to reply.” NewsGuard has recently dropped its stoplight rating system and now uses its “nutrition label” exclusively.

Are Conservatives Being Targeted by NewsGuard?

According to a series of email exchanges made public by the Conservative organization PragerU, Newsguard targets conservative organizations unfairly. NewsMax, Dave Rubin, and Harmeet Dhillon also allege having been targeted by NewsGuard. Rubin says the service sums up “so much of what is wrong right now in American culture relative to big tech and government.”

NewsGuard claimed PragerU was spreading “misleading content” on its website. Sites with scores below 60 are labeled “unreliable.”

PragerU/NewsGuard Ratings

PragerU and NewsGuard Exchange Emails

The emails from 2021 between PragerU’s Chief of Staff Adrienne Johnson and the NewsGuard Co-CEOs seem to indicate PragerU was reputationally and financially damaged by a NewsGuard red rating of 57.

Notably, officials from PragerU clarified in its emails that it is not a news website, but a “nonprofit focused on producing and marketing well-researched, issue-driven educational content” featuring healthy debate from experts. As such, PragerU discloses its donations with the required IRS 990 form and does not disclose that information on its website as “required by NewsGuard.” NewsGuard disregarded the disclosure because of its standards, not because the information was unavailable.

Ep. 266 — Exposing NewsGuard with Marissa Streit | PragerU https://t.co/q4F2kN9xx4

— bill jergins (@BillJergins) February 19, 2023

NewsGuard penalized PragerU for never having “corrected one-sided claims related to COVID or hydroxy,” all of which were objectively and verifiably true. Specifically, NewsGuard challenged PragerU’s sharing of videos featuring America’s Frontline Doctors “that promoted false claims about the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine” as a “proven cure for COVID-19.” Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin have been well-known as effective early treatments for COVID-19 since early in the pandemic but were suppressed by the government and its overly helpful legacy media partners. NewsGuard challenged PragerU’s removal of the videos because PragerU failed to publish a correction once the videos were removed.

Sadly, PragerU had removed the videos not because they were incorrect but “due to overall social media censorship on the topic.” One of the emails shows CEO Marissa Streit writing that PragerU “created an ROI analysis on our end, and we removed it rather than face the penalties of censorship.”

NewsGuards also reprimanded PragerU influencer Will Witt who stated in a video that “children aren’t actually dying from the virus.” Witt allegedly cited without attribution a “study with the statistics of children ages 0-18 who had died from COVID-19, “none of whom died.”  Witt’s statement was not far from the mark because CDC data shows that almost no healthy children have died from COVID-19.

It appears that NewsGuard may have held Witt accountable for inexact wording, not for the spirit of the claim. It is not clear from the emails whether NewsGuard upheld its promise to “ensure” Witt or PragerU had a chance to be more exact in its language or supply “feedback” for the “failed” information on its website.

At one point in the exchange, Streit asks for confirmation from NewsGuard to certify that the “removal of certain content” will “remove any negative marks on our ratings and provide us with “Green” status—a stamp of approval that should be unnecessary in America as a prerequisite to the exchange of ideas.

Streit ultimately revealed that NewsGuard held PragerU to account for “less than 0.001% of its overall content.” Even though Streit made specific good-faith efforts to reply directly to the ratings and even removed truthful content to avoid censorship, NewsGuard doubled down and persisted with its bias. Streit wrote:

PragerU Email/NewsGuard/Streit

Directors, Advisors, and Investors

NewsGuard’s directors, advisors, and investors are an interesting cast of characters. One of the investors, Publicis Groupe, is “the third largest communications group in the world.” Publicic allegedly has “shadowy ties to Saudi Arabia.” Pfizer and Bayer/Monsanto are two of its top clients. Ironically, many of the advisors/directors are former U.S. government officials, entertainment moguls, and journalists “associated with agencies known for producing false news.”

Among the advisors is Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA and CIA, who was “the architect of George W. Bush’s secret domestic spying program.” Tom Ridge was the first Office of Homeland Security Director following 9/11. Richard Stengel “is a former senior official in Obama’s state department who once described his role as being that of ‘chief propagandist.‘”

Below are two videos with Stengel discussing his thoughts on free speech and NewsGuard’s role in the information landscape.

He says he used to be a “free-speech absolutist” but has changed his point of view as he has traveled the world. Stengel states that his travels have taught him that “Our notion of free speech is an outlier to people. The First Amendment is no longer working.”

He shares he has become more sympathetic to legislation for hate speech. “There is a design flaw in the First Amendment in the age of social media. We need to start thinking about hate speech laws.”

Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,

I traveled to Hartford, Connecticut last week for a conference. It was the first time since the start of the pandemic that I had the pleasure of being pawed by TSA agents. Alas, since 2020, neither I nor the Transportation Security Administration have become corrigible.

Flying out of Washington National Airport on Thursday, I saw a special entry for the CLEAR program that enables people who pay $189 a year to skip TSA lines. I lambasted this program here back in December. Travelers stand in photo kiosks that compare their face with a federal database of photos from passport applications, drivers’ licenses, and other sources. TSA promises that its new airport regime will respect Americans’ privacy. Fat chance: TSA previously promised no traveler would be delayed more than 10 minutes at TSA checkpoints.

I stood and watched semi-frazzled travelers enter a roped-off expanse to get TSA approval for their visage.

A skinny young woman with a CLEAR t-shirt and a clipboard was standing guard at the entrance of the biometric site. She looked like a cherub with long straight red hair and a welcoming smile. Who could suspect that, as The Washington Post warned, the new system could be “America’s biggest step yet to normalize treating our faces as data that can be stored, tracked and, inevitably, stolen”?

“How soon will they be making the biometric checks mandatory?” I asked her. “I don’t know anything about that,” she replied, as if I’d asked about the surface temperature of the planet Venus.

“Do people ever complain about having to do the biometric checks?

“No, this is voluntary,” she replied with a smile wider than a Kamala Harris grimace.

She was a good Washingtonian: she could never imagine any federal agency flogging hell out of the Constitution. I considered peppering her with another half dozen questions but wanted to keep my sarcasm fresh for dealing with TSA agents. My hunch was that the redheaded cherub was not a regular reader of the Libertarian Institute.

I finished guzzling my morning coffee I fetched from home and tossed the used Gatorade bottle into the giant trash barrel at the entrance to the TSA queue. The previous time I went through a TSA checkpoint at National Airport, TSA agents got riled up because I forgot to take off my belt. That spurred an enhanced patdown, a verbal brawl, and an article I wrote that the Minneapolis Star Tribune headlined, “The World’s Most Incompetent Agency.”

Seeking to avoid another kerfuffle, I sought to comply with the TSA checkpoint regimen. I took off my boots and belt and took all the metal clutter out of my pockets. I passed through and—beep—another alarm. WTF?

A TSA agent pointed to the giant video screen on the controlled side of the checkpoint, revealing a bright yellow splotch that proved that my derriere failed federal inspection.

“That’s my wallet,” I said.

“You aren’t allowed to have that in the scanner. We have to do a patdown.”

So I’m supposed to abandon my wallet to rascals notorious for robbing travelers? More than 500 TSA agents have been fired for stealing laptops, cell phones, and other property at checkpoints and in luggage screening.

Another TSA agent shuffled up to find my terrorist contraband. This dude was in his 20s but he looked weary before his time. He explained that he would perform a supplemental enhanced patdown on my backside.

“Are you going to jam my groin?” I growled.

“No, we’re not going to do that.”

“Yeah, OK, whatever.”

He proceeded to run his hands and his TSA Terrorist Catcher Magic Wand over my thighs and butt. I refrained from muttering that he got further than I usually did on first dates long ago. He then checked the inside of my thighs and signaled I could leave. I kept my profanity in reserve for the return flight.

Coming back through Hartford on Sunday afternoon, I was chagrined to see a long line of docile folks waiting to receive TSA blessings. I entered the queue and a scrawny, 70ish guy with his right arm in a sling came in behind me. He was struggling with his carry-on bag so I guessed his arm injury was recent.

He groused that he had paid for TSA Pre-Check but they hadn’t allowed him to use it that day. TSA Pre-Check customers usually avoid Whole Body Scanners—another reminder that the entire system is a charade.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m going to Washington but I don’t work for the feds.”

“Good,” he replied. He said he was going to Fort Lauderdale and I said that was a helluva friendlier place than D.C.

Over the years, I enjoy drawing out folks to see if they recognize TSA’s “security theater.” This guy got it.

I mentioned that I might have problems today at the checkpoint because TSA hates me.

“Why do they hate you?” he asked.

“Because I have flogged them in print for 20 years. Their scanners fail to catch mock bombs and weapons in 95% of the tests by undercover agents. Their explosive detection tests are so harebrained that they are triggered by hand sanitizer. The TSA chief denounced me for maligning and disparaging TSA employees.”

He smiled.

“But I don’t know why they would ever suspect me because I was a Boy Scout.”

He laughed and said he’d been a Scout as well. “But your hat makes you suspicious,” he added.

It was a bulky brown hat I’d recently picked up in Tennessee. I didn’t realize till afterwards that it was the “Bootlegger” design. I said that if I was flying out of North Carolina, my hat would fit right in. But here in Connecticut, I was screwed.

As we got near the checkpoint, I tugged off my belt and began unlacing my heavy boots. “You can go ahead of me—this will take awhile,” I told the elderly gentleman.

“No, no—you go first,” he insisted. He absolutely, positively did not want to go just before me.

As I stood waiting my cameo in the Whole Body Scanner, I heard him explain to a TSA agent that he had metal knee and hip replacements. They signaled for him to step through a side gate next to the scanner.

I ambled into the screener radiating as much disdain as I could muster on a Sunday afternoon. A TSA agent barked that my feet were in the wrong place; I had to make sure I put my socks in the cut-out drawing. Yeah, yeah…

“Hold your arms up higher,” she ordered.

That woman sounded as dumb as my high school gym teacher.

She signaled me to exit and then another agent came up with a TSA magic wand and signaled that I must halt.

“We have to check you,” a tall, spindly young guy announced.

“What was the problem?” I growled.

“The scanner alerted for something around your shoulders and upper arms.”

I have been working on my bench press lately but I didn’t think the results were that impressive.

He waved the wand and found nothing and signaled I could move along.

“What might have triggered the alert?” I asked.

“I dunno. It could have been the heavy shirt.”

Maybe they thought the wool in my shirt came from sheep that were raised by Al Qaeda in Yemen?

As I tracked down my carry-on bag and boots on the carousel, I saw a TSA agent barking orders to the old guy with the arm in a sling.

“Do you want the supplemental screening to take place here or in a private room?” the TSA agent with a vapid visage badgered him.

I was tempted to shout: don’t go in the private room! But the guy had good instincts and said on his own that he wanted the patdown in public. At least it would be videotaped if the process went to hell in a handbasket.

The agent kept going up and down the old guy with the wand, poking and prodding and repeatedly ordering him to change his posture. The man looked humiliated at being treated like a terrorist suspect in front of so many bystanders. I don’t have that reaction to extra patdowns because I don’t give a damn for the opinions of TSA agents or anyone who happily submits to their boneheaded antics. But I could tell from the expression on the guy’s face that he was shocked.

He was finally released from TSA custody and shuffled with his shoes and belts to a nearby bench. As he was putting himself back together, I came up to offer condolences.

“I think it was the sling—that’s why they targeted me,” he said.

“They could have easily checked if you had a bomb or a gun in the sling without groping you all over but they didn’t do that,” I scoffed.

He put his head down and wished me a good trip.

“As a fellow American, I’m sorry how they treated you.”

My comment seemed to stun him. But more than twenty years after 9/11, TSA has no right to continue treating Americans like convicts waiting to enter a prison shower. TSA has taken menstruating women to private rooms to force them to lower their pants to prove they are bleeding—an abuse that has spurred multiple federal lawsuits. TSA effectively claims that Americans have no constitutional rights because they “voluntarily” submit to searches for permission to fly. That legal hogwash entitles them to endlessly harass hapless citizens. 

Despite squeezing millions of butts and boobs, TSA has never caught a real terrorist. TSA should be abolished and replaced by the type of private security companies that protect European and Canadian fliers without endless BS from officialdom.