Tag Archives: national security

“Russian Disinformation” Is The New “Racism”

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Revolver News [h/t LRC] explains why, with the refusal of the media establishment to admit that it blatantly and concertedly lied about the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop and dismissed it as Russian propaganda,  the “Russian disinformation” label has replaced “racism” or “sexism” as the state-of-the-art term in cancel culture…

Why? Revolver argues it is because national security is a reason that allows the harshest repressive measures.

Well, that has always been true.

Some twenty years ago, political dissidents or even just free-thinkers were labeled “domestic terrorists,” a label which also invoked national security.  Then there was the War on Terror and dissidents got called “Jihadis” or “Islamofascists”.

So  the “Russian disinfo” label is NOT some new line being crossed. It’s the same old tired ploy….and actually not nearly as effective as “public health hazard” which can get you into quarantine camp, have you forcibly injected with poisons, and hospitalized against your will. I’ll take jail over that.

Anyway, Revolver recommends the following:

[with my comments on each recommendation below]

1. Never believe the “disinformation” scam ever again, for any reason. The intelligence services have entirely forfeited any and all public trust on this topic. At this very moment, hundreds of Republican lawmakers, pundits, and D.C. creatures are being herded like cattle into supporting greater censorship of Russia, China, or anyone “supporting” them. This is a grievous blunder. Indeed, lower-level establishment flunkies and stooges will only have themselves to blame when these new powers are turned back against them. Of course, the ability to wield these tools like a weapon over a cowed populace is exactly the real purpose of expanding such powers in the first place.

[Lila: Now, hmmmm.  Whom would that help? Never is too strong. Do you mean to say no other country or power will ever utilize disinformation against us?  What if the WEF or the EU employs disinformation, may we say so? Baby, bathwater, etc.]

2. Take the news out of the press’ hands. In hindsight, it was clearly a mistake for Rudy Giuliani to try and carefully release the laptop’s contents through press outlets. The story trickled out too slowly, and it was too easy for the press and Big Tech to unite in simply shutting out the New York Post entirely. If the laptop’s entire contents had simply been uploaded online for anybody to read, a la Wikileaks, suppressing the story would have been much harder, verging on impossible.

[Lila: And if you do upload it online, who do you suppose allows visibility on the net? The material could lie there and not be read by anyone. Actually,  a couple of videos of Hunter were uploaded online and that’s where I saw them. That doesn’t seem to have made a difference. The point is the general public still assesses the credibility of information based on who puts it out: how credentialed or well-regarded or prestigious, not on the merits. Wikileaks itself was initially promoted via a massive concerted effort of all the major media organs….just search Wikileaks on this blog.]

3. Defund the intelligence state. America’s intelligence agencies have essentially gone rogue. They spied on the Trump campaign in 2016 and sabotaged President Trump internally from 2017 onward. They constantly deliver preposterous lies in the guise of “expertise”, which is then used to justify mass censorship and the stripping of Americans’ rights. Oh, and they’re the same group behind warrantless espionage and the Iraq War and so much else. The intelligence agencies have become one of the chief impediments to American liberty, and they have declared American nationalists, populists, and conservatives a de facto enemy class. Breaking the power of these agencies should be the primary political goal of all decent Americans in the years to come. A good blueprint for a future Republican presidency? Declassify everything, so agencies can no longer conceal their blunders, lies, and outright crimes under the cloak of “national security.”

[Lila: Now, this I can fully endorse. Knowing the past is the best way to handle the future.]

Hitler’s National Security Courts…and Ours..

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Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation notes that when people ask for a national security court in the US, they are unwittingly following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler:

“Hitler established the People’s Court after the terrorist bombing of the German parliament building, the Reichstag. After a trial in a regularly constituted German court, many of the people charged with that terrorist act were acquitted, which, needless to say, outraged Hitler as much as it would have outraged current U.S. proponents of a national security court. After all, Hitler argued, those people who were acquitted were terrorists — otherwise they wouldn’t have been charged and prosecuted — and, therefore, they deserved to be convicted and punished, not acquitted and released.

To ensure that terrorists and other criminals were never again acquitted, Hitler established the People’s Court. Like the national security court that some Americans are now advocating for the United States, the purpose of the court was to create the appearance of justice while ensuring that terrorists and other criminals were convicted and punished.

Proceedings before the People’s Court would easily serve as a model for U.S. advocates of a national security. The trial of Hans and Sophie Scholl was over in less than an hour. Criminal defense lawyers were expected to remain silent during the proceedings, and did so. Defendants were presumed guilty and treated as such. Hearsay was permitted, as was evidence acquired by torture. There was no due process of law. Confessions could be coerced out of defendants. The judges on the tribunal would berate, humiliate, convict, and then swiftly issue sentences, including the death penalty.”

Hornberger points out that Hitler’s regime also included all those kinds of welfare programs that are admired today in America (public schooling, social security, national health care, public-private partnerships, the military industrial complex, the Interstate highway).

Hornberger doesn’t make the point explicitly, but the two things –  popular acceptance of gross violations of law and morality and the rapid expansion of the welfare state – go together. Bluntly, people “sell” their consciences because of the advantages dangled before them.

In “Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State,” respected historian of the Third Reich, Goetz Aly of the Fritz Bauer Institut in Frankfurt, suggests that the Nazis had German popular support all through their “final solution” – not because of wide-spread terror or wide-spread anti-Semitism, but because they’d bribed the population with a generous welfare state and “bennies.”

George Kennan on the Realities Behind US Foreign Policy (Links added)

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I have been meaning to post the surrounding text of the famous passage in which George F. Kennan, a noted Sovietologist, cold warrior, and advocate of realpolitik, expressed his view that US policy in the post-war years should be unsentimental in its attitude toward Asia. As director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff from 1947 to 1950 (under George Marshall and Dean Acheson), Kennan was one of the principal architects of US post-war strategy and the formulator of the policy of long-term “containment” of the Soviet Union. So the piece makes for interesting reading today, especially in light of the following:

*the destruction of Asian savings by the US government-generated debt & dollar tsunami
*the rise in food prices in Asia
* the ongoing rush by Asian governments (along with everyone else) to buy up world farmland
* the potential for global water-wars in the immediate future.

KENNAN:

II. Far East

“We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have the answers to the problems which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples.

Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.

For these reasons, we must observe great restraint in our attitude toward the Far Eastern areas. The peoples of Asia and of the Pacific area are going to go ahead, whatever we do, with the development of their political forms and mutual interrelationships in their own way. This process cannot be a liberal or peaceful one. The greatest of the Asiatic peoples-the Chinese and the Indians-have not yet even made a beginning at the solution of the basic demographic problem involved in the relationship between their food supply and their birth rate. Until they find some solution to this problem, further hunger, distress, and violence are inevitable. …..

…In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to “be liked” or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers’ keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and — for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better……”

— George F. Kennan, Policy Planning Study 23 (PPS23), Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1948

[From Russell Wvong’s website, via
Gilles D’Aymery in a piece on the improper use of this quote by Noam Chomsky and others atSwans Commentary.