World News
Mass Incarceration Has Lasted For 50 Years Now
Published
4 weeks agoon
By
admin
The growth of the US prison population under a system of mass incarceration has now gone on for 50 years, according to The Sentencing Project. While awareness and political discourse about US prison expansion has grown in the last decade, we are still far from dismantling this violent and inhumane system of captivity. Nicole Porter from The Sentencing Project joins Rattling the Bars to explain her organization’s new campaign to fight mass incarceration, ’50 years and a wake up.’
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
[Voiceover]: This interview was recorded before the passing of our dear friend and comrade Marshall “Eddie” Conway on Feb. 13, 2023. We didn’t want to alter the episode to remove Eddie in any way from the show he helped to create. TRNN will have more details soon on plans to celebrate Eddie’s incredible life. For now, we will continue his work and strive to make him proud, and we ask our audience to keep Eddie and his family in their prayers.
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-hosting for Eddie Conway. And as I always do, I try to make you aware of what’s going on with Eddie Conway. And I ask that whatever spirituality that you identify with, please put Eddie in that space of prayer, or whatever you do, as he goes through his struggle to recover.
Today, we have a remarkable woman on our program, Nicole Porter. She’s with the Sentencing Project, and she’s no stranger to Rattling the Bars. I was on a webinar they had that was called 50 Years and a Wake Up. And here to talk about that is Nicole. Me and Nicole will be going over some things pertaining to what exactly is 50 years and a Wake Up? Welcome, Nicole, to Rattling the Bars.
Nicole Porter: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here with you.
Mansa Musa: Hi. So as I was telling our audience earlier, and I’m assuming it’s the Sentencing Project, have come up with this concept called 50 Years and a Wake Up. Explain to our audience what exactly is 50 years and a Wake Up?
Nicole Porter: Well, my colleagues at the Sentencing Project, our research team has identified 2023 as the 50th year of mass incarceration. It’s because in 1973, that was the first year that the prison population started going up during this mass incarceration era. So the title of this effort, this campaign, this public education campaign is 50 years and a Wake Up.
So, as formerly incarcerated folks in the audience may know, a wake up is what some incarcerated people refer to as their sentence plus the day that they’re leaving. So for example, if people are serving 50 years and a wake up, then the wake up is the planned day to exit prison.
Mansa Musa: Right.
Nicole Porter: So we want to reference that and use it as an intentional effort to call people in who are going to be collaborating with us, who we want to engage with specifically, who are directly impacted by mass incarceration in the 50 years of mass incarceration. Not just folks who’ve survived their sentence and who are in the community, but those who are behind the wall. So we hope that the title of the campaign creates a platform for that, draws specific connections to that as we do this work over the next year. And we’ve released some national reports that provide an overview of incarceration trends, including the growth of incarceration over the last 50 years and some of the specific characteristics of the US and its incarceration system, its carceral system.
And we hope that through this work, through this public education work that the Sentencing Project is embarking on with national organizations around the country and also state and local organizations around the country, that we really shape a narrative that can help push the conversation in a new direction so that we can challenge the last 50 years of mass incarceration, and then identify specific solutions that move us forward over the next 50 years.
Mansa Musa: All right. And speaking on that, moving us forward on the next 50 years because we’re talking about a year-long campaign. So what are some of your specifics, if you can identify some of the specific things that you want to look at in the next year? And I’m asking in this context, Nicole, in the next year as it relates to trying to change the narrative, are we looking at parole? In this year, are we looking at the impact of mandatory sentences? And are we looking at those things that contribute to this behemoth that we see, the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration, or what?
Nicole Porter: Absolutely. Well, this work is going to be focused on organizing a narrative, public education to challenge mass incarceration, and to highlight what the drivers of the United States mass incarceration problems are and the impact, including the racial disparities and the impact on communities.
The Sentencing Project has three priorities, three campaign priorities. But we’re also partnering with other national, state, and local organizations who are working to challenge mass incarceration. And their calls to action, their priorities overlap and intersect with ours, but are also unique to their own organizations and the theory of change that those organizations are moving forward on.
But with the Sentencing Project, for example, we’re challenging felony disenfranchisement and working to expand voting rights so that political rights are extended to everyone regardless of their incarceration status. That means supporting active campaigns that have a very strong possibility of advancing and moving forward this year to expand voting rights to people in the community on probation and parole, but also to people in prison. There are active efforts to reinstate voting rights to people in prison in states like Illinois and Oregon. In two states, people never lost their voting rights, Maine and Vermont. And so this would be an effort to affirmatively expand voting rights to people who are currently sentenced to prison in Illinois and Oregon. Very strong political possibilities for that.
There’s also efforts to expand on youth justice, to reduce out-of-home placements, detention for youthful defendants, and to address the racial disparities that drive youth justice outcomes in the United States.
And then we also have extreme sentencing. So we are engaged in active efforts around sentencing reform to challenge life without parole sentences, given the large number of people sentenced to life without parole throughout the country. Address sentencing reform to give people a post-incarceration remedy, a post sentence remedy, a second look remedy so that folks who were sentenced to too-long prison terms in the ’80s and the ’90s can have their prison terms revisited.
There’s been activity around that around the country, not just because of new laws that have been adopted, but because some prosecutors have used their authority to reopen cases and to support the re-sentencing of people who suffered from too -long sentences, particularly in the ’80s and ’90s. And their sentences cumulatively helped drive up prison populations around the country.
And we are looking at front-end reforms, supporting efforts to repeal mandatory minimums, supporting efforts to authorize parole for people who are currently ineligible for parole. So there’s a mix of policy reforms that the Sentencing Project is supporting. And then we’re also in partnership with other national, state, and local organizations who have their own policy agendas and their own approach, their own theory of change to challenging mass incarceration.
And I think one of the issues that came up in previous strategy calls that we’ve had with partners is that what needs to happen differently this year, given that it is the 50th year of mass incarceration, is to be more collaborative. To create space and opportunity for partnership across organizations, across movements, the various perspectives that are working to challenge mass incarceration. And that together, that overall conversation that’s happening nationally and within local communities can help shift the conversation, can help shift perspective on why what the United States has been doing for the last 50 years are so problematic, and what the United States needs to be doing differently over the next 50 years to meaningfully address mass incarceration.
Mansa Musa: All right. But look, let’s talk about this then, okay? Because we recognize, like you say, these are some of the drivers. And in terms of this, and I know I’m using the term year, but I know it’s going to be ongoing. Okay, where are y’all at in terms of post incarceration and people getting out? The impact the incarceration has had on them and the trauma that they suffered? Is it something going to be addressed? Is this 50 Years and a Wake Up, is it going to be addressing release, the funding that goes into helping people stay in society and not recidivate? Or is this not on the table?
Nicole Porter: Well, we support organizations who are supporting re-entry and supporting people to address their possibility, their risk of returning to prison. So amongst our partnership organizations, it includes faith organizations who are working closely with recently released individuals, supporting them in wraparound services or overall services that they’re eligible for. Also amongst our partner organizations is a group, We Got Us Now, that is supporting the families of currently incarcerated residents.
Mansa Musa: Very good. Very good group, very good group.
Nicole Porter: And addressing the needs of children, minor and young adult children, who’ve been left behind or who’ve been directly impacted by their parent’s incarceration. Supporting a community, doing training and advocacy support for the children of currently and formerly incarcerated residents.
We are partnering with legal services organizations such as the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who have very legal specific projects where they’re able to support people directly impacted by incarceration in a range of ways. Of course, the scope of this is significant, so it’s going to take partnership to really provide the services and infrastructure necessary to meet the needs of the tens of thousands of individuals currently incarcerated.
But the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has a legal project supporting clemency petitions for currently incarcerated individuals. Some of their chapters are supporting emerging legal support programs to help represent people directly who are seeking a second look at re-sentencing. And that work is happening in a handful of states around the country.
And we welcome the opportunity to partner directly with re-entry service providers who can support the wraparound services, the holistic services that recently released people need in order to build up that community, have that community support, so that their chances of returning back to prison decline. And so we are open to new partnerships, and to think through in ways that can meaningfully help people, and meet people where they are with those reentry needs and those re-entry supports.
Mansa Musa: And what is y’all legislative perspective in terms of the 50 and a Wake Up? How are y’all looking at the political landscape, Congress, local, state, and local entities? Are y’all looking at them?
Nicole Porter: I mean, Congress is very challenging. That’s not going to prevent us from working and having the conversation, with doing the education necessary with all of the Congressional and Senate offices in DC, and then also having these conversations at the state and local level. Working on introduced reforms that state lawmakers have the authority to adopt and enact. Reforms to address the sentencing policies that drive admissions into prison, drive length of stay. Support reforms that address collateral consequences for people living with a conviction history through voting rights and the expansion of other civil rights. And then also addressing the youth justice policies that drive out-of-home placements and detention for children who should be treated as children, not looked at as a problem and potentially marked because of the way that the United States overreacts and over incarcerates. And those policies even extend to the most youthful residents in our communities.
So what this all means is that the Sentencing Project and our staff are engaged in specific policy campaigns supporting introduced measures at the state and federal level. And we’re partnering with national organizations and state and local organizations on this as well. We want to see policy reform. We want to see states change their criminal codes to address specific statutes that drive admissions in the state prison, drive those length of stays. Repeal mandatory minimums. But also give post-conviction relief through statutory changes that allow for sentencing review after a term of years for people who’ve been sentenced to prison. And making that retroactive, so the people who were incarcerated in the ’80s and ’90s and who are still there have some remedy, some ability to have their sentence reviewed and considered for release from incarceration.
And then we’re working on specific policy solutions with introduced legislation in a range of states for youth justice reforms. And then also for the expansion of civil rights to formerly incarcerated individuals or people living with criminal conviction history. Most specifically, the expansion of voting rights to people living with a criminal conviction history in states like New Mexico, Oregon, Nebraska, and Texas.
Mansa Musa: No stone unturned when it comes to the criminal justice system. Let’s speak in terms of where you expect to be or where we expect to be in one year? Is this the prelude to a national movement for the abolition of prisons? And maybe out of this conversation that we had this year, we’ll come up with strategies on what that would look like, and what would take place if some of these institutions are eradicated? Is this the start of that conversation? Or is this just wishful thinking?
Nicole Porter: Well, it’s not wishful thinking. I mean, the Sentencing Project is dedicating resources to having these national conversations and to have significant and strategic solutions that help drive policy reforms and policy solutions at the federal level and also within states. So a year from now, I hope that we are partnering with additional national, state, and local groups who want to work with us to challenge mass incarceration and challenge the next 50 years of mass incarceration.
A year from now, I hope that we’ve moved forward on state specific campaigns that support sentencing reform that expand post-conviction sentencing remedies for people who are currently in prison, who might have been in prison for the last 20 to 30 years during this 50 year mass incarceration era. And it would be a more than reasonable expectation to have a review of whether or not those individuals need to continue to be in prison for a range of reasons, including they may have aged into disability and no longer pose a public safety risk, they may be able to demonstrate above and beyond steps they’ve taken towards the rehabilitation and personal development and have made amends for any harm caused that led to their conviction and no longer need to be in prison.
And frankly, that the 50 states who are considering sentencing reforms as well as overall the nation, have reconsidered that the length of time that people have been subjected to over the last 20 to 30 years for many offense types is extremely excessive. Because we have very lengthy possibilities for sentencing people to too-long prison terms. So it is about individual changes, but it’s also about the state addressing that its policies have been too extreme and too excessive over the last 20 to 30 years – 50 years, given challenging the last 50 years of incarceration.
And that in a year from now that we’ve expanded voting rights to people in the community who are on probation and parole, but we’ve also expanded voting rights to people behind the walls in states like Illinois and Oregon, and that we are supporting the voting rights infrastructure that needs to be put in place to guarantee their ballot access. And that in the fall of ’24, that we actually guarantee ballot access for newly eligible voters, whether or not they are living with a criminal conviction in the community or they’re living with the criminal conviction behind the walls.
And also a year from now, hoping that we’ve made the world for our youth a little bit more fair, a little bit more just in changing the standards within states at the local level around a presumption of out-of-home placements, around a presumption of providing services for youth as a response to any contact with the youth justice system as opposed to over-incarceration and extending the criminal legal system to interactions with youth who may need services, rather than more exposure to harsh and punitive responses.
Mansa Musa: And you know what, as we close, I’m thinking we saying 50 years, right? And I did 48 years. I’m sitting back thinking about, I came right in at the start. I was like one of the ones that started that they rounded up on the… Like they came to Africa and rounded everybody up, brought them here. I was one of the ones they rounded up in the Black community and brought into this massive plantation.
Nicole Porter: How old were you when you started?
Mansa Musa: I had just turned 19. Yeah. Hey, well, in closing, Nicole, educate our listeners on what they can expect and how they can get involved.
Nicole Porter: Yeah. Well, folks, join us at sentencingproject.org. You’ll find information on the 50 years and a Wake Up work that we’re doing over the next year. You can have conversations in your community around the fact that the United States is going into the next 50 years, and that we should be challenging what happened since 1973.
We want you to join us, stay in touch. We’ll be posting upcoming events, having talks in communities around the country, perhaps your community. If you want to invite us to have a conversation with your local community, perhaps with your church community or with some other civic organization in your community, we’re certainly open to considering those requests. Because we want to make sure to be having these conversations with our national partners, but also around the country, in state and local communities so that this national conversation can continue.
Mansa Musa: There you go. Have it, the real news. 50 years and a Wake Up. Nicole Porter made a succinct case on why we should be organizing around this, the effectiveness we expect the organization to have, what we’ll be looking at in a year from now. And more importantly, how you can become involved in stopping another 50 years of mass incarceration in the massive prison-industrial company.
Thank you, Nicole, for this educational conversation. And also thank you for the work that you’re doing on our behalf.
Nicole Porter: Thank you. I appreciate you.
Mansa Musa: Okay. There we have it.
Nicole Porter: All right.
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World News
Australian National Review – Every Christian In America Is A Target Now
Published
6 hours agoon
March 29, 2023By
admin
Every Christian in America is a Target Now
By Michael
This is what happens when you systematically suck all of the values out of a society. There is utter lawlessness in the streets, and violence can literally erupt anywhere. On Monday, a mass shooter ruthlessly gunned down six Christians at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter once attended the school, but after leaving the school the shooter developed a deep hatred for the Christian values promoted there. Unfortunately, this incident is a microcosm of what is going on in our society as a whole. Countless voices are stirring up great hatred for the Christian faith, and all of that hate was inevitably going to result in great violence.
When I was growing up, I never imagined that someone would come in to a Christian gathering and start shooting.
But now every Christian in America is a potential target.
If you are a Christian, you will need to be on guard whenever you attend any type of a Christian event from this point forward.
I wish that this wasn’t true, but ignoring the reality of the world that we live in now could get you killed.
Prior to Monday, I am sure that most of those that worked at The Covenant School in Nashville never imagined that something like this would ever happen. The following comes from NBC News…
Three children and three staff members — whose ages ranged from 9 to 61 — were killed at a private Christian school in Nashville on Monday before the shooter, a heavily armed 28-year-old woman, was killed by police, authorities said.
The shooting unfolded at The Covenant School on Burton Hills Boulevard where officers “engaged” the attacker, described by Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake as a former student at the school.
Actually, NBC News is guilty of “misgendering” the shooter, because “Aiden” has not identified as a woman for quite some time…
BREAKING: Audrey E. Hale, the 28-year-old woman who identifies as he/him and uses the name “Aiden,” is identified as the now-deceased suspect who shot up a Christian school in Tennessee, killing 6, including 3 children. The killings follow the state banning the medical… pic.twitter.com/Sp4RfGwcUj
— Andy Ngô
(@MrAndyNgo) March 27, 2023
And it is also being reported that the shooter “had a manifesto and detailed maps of the school”…
Police said the “lone zealot”, who lived in Nashville, was armed with two assault-type rifles, a pistol and a handgun.
Hale had a manifesto and detailed maps of the school, and entered the building by shooting through a door before the killings.
Video: https://t.co/Er4KpMB4Mg
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 27, 2023
I can guarantee you that this story will disappear from the news cycle faster than other mass shootings, because it is not a story that the corporate media will be eager to tell.
But the truth is that violence against Christians and Christian institutions is on the rise.
The corporate media is always trying to convince us that political violence from the right is such a threat, but the numbers tell us that political violence is far, far more likely to come from the left. Here is just one example…
There have been 22 times more attacks against pro-life groups since the leak in early May of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade compared to attacks on pro-choice organizations, new data show.
“The overwhelming narrative in the media is the claim those on the right are responsible for most of the politically motivated violence in the U.S. It has been a theme in the news media after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was leaked, with many claiming that there was disproportionate violence against pro-choice providers. But a review of cases shows over 22 times more violence against pro-life advocates,” John Lott, the founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), told Fox News Digital on Monday.
In recent years there have been hundreds of attacks on police by radical leftists, and one lunatic actually put a “bounty” on more than 9,300 Los Angeles police officers…
Three Los Angeles police officers are suing the owner of killercop.com, accusing him of publishing their photos on his website and putting out a “bounty” on them.
It is the first legal action stemming from the Los Angeles Police Department’s release of the names and photos of almost every sworn officer — more than 9,300 officers, including some who work undercover — as part of a public records request. A police watchdog group posted the images online last Friday.
But these days attacking those that are promoting traditional values has become even trendier than attacking the police.
Sadly, this is happening all over the western world. Just check out what happened when Posie Parker attempted to hold a public event in New Zealand the other day…
#WATCH RNZ’s Jordan Dunn captured the moment that Posie Parker was escorted away from the rally.
The counter-protest crowd gathered in Albert Park this morning before Parker’s speech, and made a cacophany of noise to drown her speech out.
https://t.co/a9ZWNhKuDn pic.twitter.com/yFQm9yrJ7A
— RNZ (@radionz) March 25, 2023
So what was her crime?
She believes that a “woman” is a biological woman.
If you don’t agree with her, then make your case.
But don’t get violent.
Sadly, the “woke crowd” has become so angry and so violent that you can’t even have a rational discussion with them about any of these issues. I really like how this guy put it…
Sean absolutely nails it.pic.twitter.com/b2VWwNrVbg
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) March 26, 2023
If you do not go along with their agenda, they will seek to punish you however they can.
In fact, a bill that has just been introduced in the Minnesota legislature would actually take children away from parents that do not allow their kids to get “gender-affirming health care”…
Minnesota lawmakers have advanced legislation introduced by a transgender representative that could strip custody from parents who do not support their child changing genders.
The bill, HF 146, moved forward with a vote of 68-62, along party lines.The bill says that the state can claim temporary emergency jurisdiction over a child if they are in the state and “the child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.” It is meant to prevent law enforcement from removing a child from parental custody based on an order made outside the state.
This is what we are becoming as a nation.
And the values that this nation was founded upon are rapidly disappearing…
Patriotism, religious faith, having children and other priorities that helped define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans, a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds.
The survey, conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, also finds the country sharply divided by political party over social trends such as the push for racial diversity in businesses and the use of gender-neutral pronouns.
People often wonder why I talk about “values” so much.
This is why.
Our country is decaying from within, and most people don’t seem to care.
But if we don’t stand up now while we still can, eventually just about everything that we love about America will be completely gone.
World News
Australian National Review – The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel
Published
6 hours agoon
March 29, 2023By
admin
The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel
By James Bamford
While US media fixated on Russian interference in the 2016 election, an Israeli secret agent’s campaign to influence the outcome went unreported.
“Roger, hello from Jerusalem,” read the message from the Israeli secret agent. Dated August 12, 2016, it was addressed to Roger Stone—at the time a key player in Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign. “Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intel. The key is in your hands! Back in the US next week.” Later, the agent promised, “October Surprise coming!”
While the American media and political system fixated on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his armies of cyber warriors, trolls, and bots, what was completely missed in the Russiagate investigation of 2016 was the Israeli connection. No details of it were ever revealed in the heavily redacted Mueller Report. Nor was there any mention of an Israeli plot in the similarly redacted Senate Intelligence Committee Report on collusion charges in the 2016 election, or in any of the indictments or trials stemming from the Russia charges. Nor did any mention of Israeli involvement ever leak into the press. Yet I can reveal here the details of an elaborate covert operation personally directed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that aimed to use secret intelligence to clandestinely intervene at the highest levels in the presidential election on behalf of Trump.
Shadowy hints of the plot only became visible with the little-noticed release in 2020 of a heavily redacted May 2018 FBI search warrant and its accompanying affidavit. As part of the Mueller investigation, the bureau had conducted an extensive search for any foreign interference in the 2016 election, and the warrant was directed at securing the Google accounts of a mysterious Israeli agent acting under the direction of someone identified as “PM.” The FBI agent who wrote the affidavit noted, “I believe ‘PM’ refers to the ‘Prime Minister.’”
In the spring of 2016, no issue was more important to Benjamin Netanyahu than Donald Trump winning the White House. The GOP presidential candidate was key to everything he was after, from ending the Iran nuclear agreement, to recognizing Jerusalem—rather than Tel Aviv—as Israel’s capital, to continuing the occupation of Palestine. But November was months away, and there was no guarantee Trump would win. In the meantime, Netanyahu was under mounting pressure from President Barack Obama to finally resolve the issues surrounding Palestine. Leading the charge on behalf of Obama was Secretary of State John Kerry, who was equally determined to find a solution after many years of trying.
Kerry was not alone. The Middle East Quartet, a group formed to mediate the Palestine-Israel peace process that included representatives from the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia, was also seeking a solution to the issues surrounding the occupation—and it was about to release a report that was expected to be highly critical of Israel. With so much on the line, Netanyahu appears to have made a drastic decision. He would dispatch a discreet, highly trusted aide, armed with critical intelligence, to covertly “intervene” in the US election to help put his man Trump in the White House. Based on the FBI documents, the intelligence appears to have consisted of advance knowledge of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and it may have included confidential details from the stolen e-mails. It was likely obtained by Israeli eavesdropping operations that were targeting secret Russian communications, as well as those of WikiLeaks.
Although the affidavit did not specify any individual defendants, the numerous potential criminal charges laid out in the FBI documents spoke to the seriousness of the Israeli plot. They included violation of the foreign contributions ban, which prohibits foreigners from contributing money or something of value to federal, state, or local elections. Other charges included aiding and abetting, conspiracy, wire fraud, and attempted conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Still another charge, “unauthorized access to a protected computer,” indicates Israel may have conducted illegal hacking operations. Based on the e-mails and text messages contained in the documents, the conspiracy began in the late spring of 2016, when it was beginning to appear that Trump had a good chance of winning the Republican nomination.
This was also when the FBI and the media began focusing heavily on possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, as a result of Moscow’s hacking of the DNC and the Clinton campaign. But while the Mueller investigation was never able to conclusively demonstrate any collusion with Russia, the FBI did uncover hard evidence of extensive collusion between close Trump associates and the highest levels of the Israeli government.
Common cause: Donald Trump speaking at a campaign press conference at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC in 2016.
On the sixth floor of a concrete-and-glass high-rise just south of Tel Aviv, behind a door marked “Unit 17” in Hebrew, political operatives plot newer and more creative ways to use fraud to win elections across much of the planet. The 16-story Azrieli Business Center in Holon is home to Archimedes Group, a private intelligence company that boasts that it can “change reality according to our client’s wishes.” Those clients stretch from Africa to Latin America to Southeast Asia.
In Nigeria in 2018, the company’s campaign of lies and misinformation helped reelect former military coup leader Muhammadu Buhari as president. Hired by other would-be presidents and politicians around the world in at least 13 countries, Archimedes soon had 3 million people following its phony Facebook and Instagram accounts. It even created bogus “fact-checking” accounts to lie about its fake news stories, claiming they were based on solid facts.
But in May 2019, Facebook caught on to the various scams and removed 265 Facebook and Instagram accounts from the orbit of the Archimedes operation. “Archimedes Group,” it said, “has repeatedly violated our misrepresentation and other policies, including by engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior. This organization and all its subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a cease and desist letter.”
Archimedes is hardly alone. An Israeli government official told the Times of Israel that outsourcing fake news and voter manipulation is a growth industry in Israel because many young Israelis who serve in intelligence units in the army are trained in the use of “avatars,” or fake identities, on social media. The Israeli government appears to have made no effort to halt or even curb the activity. Such inaction may be deliberate, since a number of the groups that engage in voter manipulation have close ties to the intelligence and defense agencies, possibly providing Netanyahu an opportunity to secretly manipulate foreign elections to Israel’s benefit.
In fact, a recent multinational journalistic investigation revealed that Israel has become a world center for the export of election fraud, fake news, hacking of private e-mails, and disinformation. Connections were discovered between private intelligence firms and both Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the firm Cambridge Analytica, which illegally collected data from more than 87 million Facebook users for use in the 2016 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
The eight-month international collaborative project involved journalists from 30 news outlets, including Israel’s Haaretz, the UK’s Guardian and Observer, France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Spain’s El Pais. They discovered an Israel-based “global private market in disinformation aimed at elections,” according to The Guardian. Among the individuals unmasked was Tal Hanan, a former Israeli special forces operative and the head of a secretive organization with the code name “Team Jorge” whose specialty was weaponizing disinformation worldwide “to covertly meddle in elections without a trace,” said The Guardian.
Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services had been used in Africa, South and Central America, the US, and Europe, and that his company had completed “33 presidential-level campaigns, 27 of which were successful.”
What was not revealed in this investigation, however, was the separate and far more covert operation undertaken by Netanyahu and his secret agent to clandestinely manipulate America’s 2016 presidential election for Netanyahu’s own political purposes.
A discreet man: Jerusalem attorney Isaac Molho is one of Netanyahu’s oldest and most trusted advisers.
For years, the man Netanyahu relied on to do battle with Kerry and the Quartet was his top personal aide, Isaac Molho, a secretive and shadowy private attorney who was trusted with the prime minister’s most sensitive missions. “There has probably never been a person in the history of this country in such a desirable position as Isaac Molho,” Haaretz noted. “He enjoys almost complete silence from the media…. On Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s instructions, Molho undertakes sensitive missions to countries with which Israel has no diplomatic ties. The Mossad supplies him with logistical backing, security and transport.”
Some of Molho’s assignments are too sensitive even for the Mossad—a fact that has at times frustrated those at the spy agency. “The Mossad gritted its teeth over the past eight years while watching the diplomatic missions carried out by Isaac Molho, without any requirement to take a polygraph test and as a private citizen with business and other affairs that are not subject to civil service regulations,” Haaretz said. In addition to national loyalty, Molho, whose wife is Netanyahu’s cousin, may even be acting out of family loyalty.
Although the secret agent’s name was redacted from the FBI’s search warrant, his profile, as outlined in the accompanying affidavit, is strikingly similar to that of Isaac Molho. Like Molho, who was described by Haaretz as a “discreet man for sensitive missions,” the secret agent is described as highly trusted and very close to Netanyahu. Most important, at one point, according to the affidavit, the agent was summoned from the US to Rome at a moment’s notice to be by Netanyahu’s side on a date the Israeli prime minister was conducting negotiations with John Kerry in the Italian capital over Palestine. This critical role was for many years played exclusively by Molho. In addition, the agent referred to in the warrant had enough clout and authority to direct the actions of two other high-ranking Israeli officials involved in the clandestine operation to influence the results of the US election. Molho did not respond to The Nation’s request for comment.
The key for the Israeli agent was finding a back door—a covert channel—to Trump. Roger Stone, long a key Trump aide, fit the bill. Although Stone had formally left the campaign, he and Trump spoke frequently and confidentially. For these calls, Trump would often use the phone of his security director, Keith Schiller, “because he did not want his advisers to know they were talking,” according to Sam Nunberg, a political adviser who served on Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Stone energetically supported Israel’s harsh occupation of the Palestinian territories and its bellicose stance toward Iran; following Trump’s speech at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in March 2016, Stone noted approvingly that “Donald Trump is a radical Zionist.”
Another Trump aide heavily involved in the conspiracy, according to the FBI documents, was Stone’s associate Jerome Corsi, who appears to have been the original contact who connected the Israelis to Stone. An ultraconservative journalist with a doctorate in political science from Harvard and the author of a shelf of books harshly critical of liberals and Democrats, Corsi was a leading literary light of the extreme right. He gained fame in 2004 for his “swiftboating” attacks on the military record of then–presidential candidate John Kerry. The secret agent was particularly drawn to Corsi’s adulation of Israel and support for its belligerence toward Iran.
Hiding behind his online pseudonym “jrlc,” Corsi was also a virulent Islamophobe. Posting on the conservative forum FreeRepublic.com, he has called Islam “a virus” and “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion” and has written that “Islam is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered, and the infidels killed.”
After Corsi provided contact information to Stone, the secret Israeli agent and Stone connected. Then, on May 17, the agent wrote, “Hi Roger, I hope all is well. Our dinner tonight for 7PM is confirmed. I arrive at 4PM. Please suggest a good restaurant that has privacy.” The original plan was for Stone and the agent to meet alone, but Stone wanted to bring Corsi along as backup. “I am uncomfortable meeting without Jerry,” Stone wrote, and then rescheduled the dinner for the next day.
According to the FBI warrant, the same day that Stone communicated with the Israeli agent, he began Googling some very strange terms, including “guccifer” and “dcleaks.” It would be nearly a month before those same terms would make headlines around the world. On June 14, The Washington Post reported that the DNC had been hacked by Russian government agents. The next day, someone calling himself “Guccifer 2.0” took credit for the attack. He claimed to be an American hacktivist, but according to a Justice Department indictment in July 2018, he was actually a Russian GRU employee. Soon afterward, the website DCLeaks—another front for the GRU—began releasing hacked Democratic Party documents.
The timing implies that the Israeli agent was Stone’s most likely source of confirmed details of a Russian cyberattack on the DNC, a month before it became known to anyone outside of the Kremlin and the GRU. If that’s the case, there are two critical questions: How did the Israeli agent know, and why was he revealing the details to a close associate of Trump rather than to the Obama administration, Israel’s supposed ally?
On May 18, the day after Stone’s Google searches, Stone, Corsi, and the Israeli agent met for dinner at the 21 Club on 52nd Street in New York City. The restaurant, which features a balcony lined with painted iron lawn jockeys, was a regular Trump hangout. At the top of the agent’s agenda was getting Stone to quickly set up a confidential meeting with the candidate. The next day, the agent pressed Stone in an e-mail: “Did You Talk To Trump This Morning? Any News?” But Stone was coy. “Contact made—interrupted—mood good.”
Then, in early June, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report, Stone learned that Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, was about to release something “big.” Stone relayed the details to Rick Gates, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, and told him that Assange appeared to have Clinton’s e-mails. Yet it wasn’t until later, on June 12, that Assange would publicly announce that WikiLeaks had “emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.”
These were the first of many tips to Stone that appear to have come from his new Israeli friend. Two days later, the DNC announced that it had been hacked by Russia. The day after that, Stone again Googled “Guccifer” and “dcleaks,” hours before Guccifer 2.0 publicly claimed responsibility. On June 21, as Guccifer released more documents, the Israeli agent notified Stone that he was in New York accompanied by a senior official and would like a meeting with Trump. “RS: Secret,” said the message, according to the FBI documents. “Cabinet Minister [redacted] in NYC. Available for DJT meeting.”
Other parts of the message were also redacted, but in the affidavit the FBI revealed the cabinet minister’s official title: “According to publicly-available information, during this time [redacted] was a Minister without portfolio in the [redacted] cabinet dealing with issues concerning defense and foreign affairs.” At the time, the only minister without portfolio in the Israeli government was Tzachi Hanegbi, one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s oldest and closest confidants, and Wikipedia (the likely source of the FBI agent’s “publicly- available information”) uses nearly identical language to describe him. Israeli press reports at the time indicated that Hanegbi was in the United States on that date as part of a delegation attending the unveiling of Israel’s new F-35 stealth fighter jet.
Married to an American from Florida and fluent in English, Hanegbi previously held a post as minister of intelligence supervising Mossad and Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service. The question is, why would a high-level confidant of Netanyahu’s, with an intelligence background and close American links, seek a secret meeting with a US presidential candidate?
Trump had been busy, hustling from city to city on the campaign trail and hitting several rallies a day. Taking valuable time to meet a couple of Israeli contacts was not a high priority, especially without any idea what the meeting would be about. So, on June 25, Hanegbi returned to Israel. “Roger, Minister left,” said the Israeli agent. “Sends greetings from PM. When am I meeting DJT? Should I stay or leave Sunday as planned?” The next day, Stone replied, “I would not leave as we hope to schedule the meeting mon or tues.”
One possible explanation of the agent’s sense of urgency was Obama’s and Kerry’s increasing pressure on Netanyahu to resolve the Palestinian issue. A key element of that solution would be agreeing to negotiate an equitable division of Jerusalem, since both sides claimed it as their capital. But if his secret agent could confidentially meet with Trump and get a commitment that, if elected, he would support keeping Jerusalem undivided, then Netanyahu could ignore Obama. An election win for Trump, therefore, would also be a win for Netanyahu. Especially since the candidate was already fully committed to another key issue for Netanyahu: canceling the nuclear deal with Iran.
A united front: Trump and Netanyahu participate in a joint statement in the East Room of the White House in 2020.
Suddenly, there was a change in plans. According to the FBI documents, the agent was ordered by Netanyahu to postpone the appointment with Trump and instead get on the next plane for Rome. In a last-minute effort to find a solution to Jerusalem and the Palestinian issue, meetings in the Italian capital were set up between Netanyahu, Kerry, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini. Netanyahu wanted his aide, the agent, at his side. At the meeting, the elephant in the room was a forthcoming report by the Middle East Quartet. It was expected by all to be extremely critical of Israel for its apartheid settlement policies and its treatment of the occupied Palestinians.
The night before the meeting, Netanyahu and Kerry met for dinner at Pierluigi, a popular seafood restaurant in Piazza de Ricci, a block from the Tiber. “What is your plan for the Palestinians?” Kerry asked as the prime minister began chain-smoking a batch of thick Cuban cigars. “What do you want to happen now?” Netanyahu offered a vague response involving a regional initiative, but Kerry wasn’t buying it. “You have no path of return to direct talks with the Palestinians, or a channel to talks with Arab countries,” Kerry told the prime minister, according to Haaretz. “You’ve hit the glass ceiling. What’s your plan?” he asked again. But Netanyahu may well have had one: to use his agent, perhaps sitting with them at that very table, to help put Trump in the White House.
On June 28, after the meeting in Rome had concluded, the agent quickly dashed off another message to Stone: “RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN ROME. MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC.”
The meeting with Trump was rescheduled for 1 pm on Wednesday, July 6, before the candidate took off for a rally in Sharonville, Ohio. The Israeli agent flew to New York the day before and checked into the St. Regis, the French Beaux Arts–style hotel on East 55th Street. The next morning, he had planned to rendezvous with Stone in the lobby for a pre-meeting discussion. “At the St Regis With Lt General. Waiting For You Thank You,” he wrote.
But there were problems involving secrecy. Stone, at his home in Florida, had come down with a bad cold and was too ill to travel, so he arranged for Corsi to make the introduction. That made the Israeli agent uncomfortable because of the sensitive nature of the discussion. “I have to meet Trump alone,” he said, and they agreed that Corsi would leave after the introduction. There was still another problem, however. The meeting was meant to be secret, but the agent was accompanied by an Israeli lieutenant general. So once again the meeting had to be postponed.
Who was this lieutenant general? Unlike in the United States, where the highest military rank is a four-star general, in Israel it’s a three-star lieutenant general, and there is only one, the chief of the General Staff, the commander in chief of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—the equivalent of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At the time, that was Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot. But it’s unlikely that Eizenkot was the person waiting in the lobby of the St. Regis to meet with Trump. Eizenkot had little to do with the election—and had actually sided with Obama on the issue of Iran. In January 2016, he said that the nuclear deal “had actually removed the most serious danger to Israel’s existence for the foreseeable future, and greatly reduced the threat over the longer term.”
Instead, it may have been Eizenkot’s predecessor, Benny Gantz, who had retired as head of the IDF in February 2015 but still held the rank of lieutenant general in the reserves and was often referred to by his military title. He was in charge of the IDF during Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza in 2014. It was a war that produced a “vastly disproportionate” number of civilian deaths: 1,400 of the nearly 2,300 people killed in the conflict, according to Human Rights Watch. Gantz would later boast that “parts of Gaza were sent back to the Stone Age.”
In May 2020, Gantz would become the second-most-powerful person in Israel under Netanyahu, as the alternate prime minister. At the time of the canceled meeting with Trump, however, he was the chairman of Fifth Dimension, an Israeli private intelligence company run by a former deputy head of Mossad, with another former Mossad member as CEO.
Fifth Dimension wasn’t the only Israeli spy company with close ties to Israeli intelligence. Another was Psy Group, a private intelligence firm that operated under the motto “Shape Reality.” Earlier that year, on behalf of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, Psy Group had carried out Project Butterfly, a covert operation that spied on and attacked Americans who supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In April 2016, it offered Trump campaign official Rick Gates another secret operation, Project Rome. The subtitle of the six-page proposal clearly spelled out its objective to covertly interfere with the US presidential election: “Campaign Intelligence & Influence Services Proposal.”
Secrecy was paramount. “We recommend keeping this activity compartmentalized and on need-to-know basis since secrecy is a key factor in the success of the activity,” the proposal said. “Due to the sensitivity of some of the activities and the need for compartmentalization and secrecy, Psy Group will use code names.” Trump was called “Lion,” Hillary Clinton was “Forest,” and Ted Cruz was “Bear.” “This document details the services proposed by Psy Group for the ‘Lion’ project between now and July 2016,” the proposal noted, referring to the period of the US primaries.
The Project Rome proposal read like an official Ministry of Strategic Affairs or Mossad operational document, referring to “multisource intelligence collection,” “covert sources,” “automated collection and analysis,” and an “intelligence dossier on each target, including actionable intelligence.” “Once the information has been uncovered or extracted, it is delivered to the Influence platform for use in the campaign as needed,” the proposal said.
Project Rome’s “Influence+ process” platform involved targeting American voters through “authentic-looking 3rd party platforms”—that is, fake news sites—and also through the use of “tailored avatars,” thousands of phony social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook. “The purpose of these platforms is to engage the targets and actively convince them or sway their opinion towards our goals.” The “targets” were unwitting American voters. “The team will include over 40 intelligence and influence experts,” the document said. Then there were what internal company e-mails called “physical world ops like counter protesters, hecklers, etc.” The techniques were nearly identical to those used by the Israeli firms Archimedes Group and “Team Jorge” to secretly throw elections around the world.
The price tag for the operation was $3,210,000, with another $100,000 for media expenses and $400,000 more for “negative opposition.” It appears that Gates, wisely, passed on Project Rome. The key players behind Psy Group later formed a new Israeli company, Percepto International. Also investigated by the international journalism collaboration, it was labeled “an Israeli factory for online deception” by Haaretz.
Despite the Trump campaign’s rejection of Project Rome, covert high-level approaches to Roger Stone to get directly to Trump continued.
“Hi Roger,” the Israeli agent wrote on July 8. “Have you rescheduled the meeting with DJT? The PM is putting pressure for a quick decision.” Stone wrote back that Trump would not be back in New York until after the Republican National Convention, so the meeting would have to be postponed until then. He added, “Sorry about the fiasco last week, however you can’t just bring the General without tell[ing] me.”
As Trump stormed the Midwest for votes, Guccifer 2.0 was making final preparations for another major release of documents. On July 14, Guccifer sent WikiLeaks an e-mail titled “big archive,” with a one-gigabyte encrypted attachment. Four days later, on July 18, the WikiLeaks Twitter account notified Guccifer the data had been received and that release of the hacked DNC e-mails was planned for later in the week.
On or around the next day, Donald Trump was in his New York office venting at the press for its criticism of his wife Melania’s Republican convention address the night before. There were accusations that she had borrowed passages from a speech by Michelle Obama. At some point, however, according to Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s Senate Intelligence Committee testimony, Trump took a phone call from Roger Stone.
“Roger, how are you?” said Trump.
“Good,” Stone replied. “Just want to let you know I got off the telephone a moment ago with Julian Assange. And in a couple of days, there’s going to be a massive dump of e-mails that’s going to be extremely damaging to the Clinton campaign.”
Trump was pleased. “Uh, that’s good. Keep me posted,” he said into a small black speaker box on his desk. Sitting nearby was Michael Cohen. “Do you believe him? Do you think Roger really spoke to Assange?” Trump asked.
“I don’t know,” Cohen said. “Roger is Roger, and for all you know, he was looking on his Twitter account. I don’t know the answer.”
In the end, neither Mueller’s team nor the FBI could ever find any substantive or conspiratorial communications between Stone and WikiLeaks. He had exchanged a few innocuous messages with Guccifer, later reviewed by the FBI, but there was no indication of how Stone could have known what he knew—which left only one apparent explanation: that the information had been passed to him by Netanyahu’s agent. As in the case of the DNC hack, the information was 100 percent accurate. There was never any evidence that Stone learned of the releases from either WikiLeaks or the Russians, but during that period both he and Jerome Corsi were in contact with the Israeli agent. Israel’s version of the NSA, Unit 8200, which employs some of the most highly trained signals intelligence specialists in the world and is equipped with advanced intercept capabilities, may well have been surveilling Russia and WikiLeaks.
Three days later, on July 22, as Hillary Clinton was preparing to announce her choice of a running mate on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks released approximately 20,000 e-mails stolen from the DNC. “I guess Roger was right,” Trump told Cohen. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, agreed. Sitting on the tarmac in his plane, about to take off for his next rally, Trump delayed the flight for half an hour to work the messages into his speech. Hungry for more, he later told Manafort to keep in touch with Stone about future WikiLeaks releases.
On Wednesday, July 29, the Israeli agent was back in touch with Stone and Corsi and eager to connect with Trump now that the convention was over and he was the Republican nominee. “HI ROGER,” the agent wrote. “HAVE YOU SET UP A NEW MEETING WITH TRUMP? I PLAN TO BE BACK IN THE US NEXT WEEK. PLEASE ADVISE. THANK YOU.” Stone sent a message to Manafort about finding a time to communicate, writing that there was “good shit happening.” The next day, the two spoke on the phone for 68 minutes. The following day, July 31, Stone had two phone calls with Trump that lasted over 10 minutes.
Then on Tuesday, August 2, despite previous failed attempts to connect with Assange, Corsi was nevertheless able to send a detailed message to Stone about WikiLeaks’ future plans:
Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging…. Time to let more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC. That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke—neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.
Corsi later told Stone that there was “more to come than anyone realizes. Won’t really get started until after Labor Day.” The details, including the first indication that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was a target, were coming from somewhere other than Assange.
“Roger—As per PM we have one last shot before moving on,” the Israeli agent wrote to Stone on August 9. “Can you deliver? History will not forgive us. TRUMP IN FREE FALL. OCTOBER SURPRISE COMING!” What the “October Surprise” consisted of was left unexplained, but the implication was that there would be a spectacular new release of stolen e-mails, possibly centering on Podesta.
Three days later, the agent was even more frantic. He sent Stone his “hello from Jerusalem” message, promising that his government was prepared to “intervene” in the US election to help Trump win the presidency and offering to share critical intelligence to make it happen. Stone replied cryptically: “Matters complicated. Pondering.” Then, the following week, on August 20, Corsi suggested a meeting with the secret agent to determine “what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct.”
From the messages, it appears that Israel either had its own October Surprise planned or was aware of Guccifer’s planned release of the Podesta e-mails before the election. The day after Corsi suggested meeting with Netanyahu’s agent, Stone for the first time publicly indicated that Podesta would soon become a target of WikiLeaks—thereby predicting the event six weeks before it happened. “Trust me, it will soon the [sic] Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary,” said his tweet. Since neither Assange nor Guccifer was a source for either Corsi or Stone, the tweet once again points to the Israeli agent who was in communication with both of them about the October Surprise.
The prospect of an October Surprise, along with the offer of critical intelligence, apparently got Trump’s attention. On September 25, he and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met privately with Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer in his Trump Tower penthouse. Later that day, he publicly announced that if he was elected, his administration would finally “recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.” Since 1947, there has been virtual unanimity within the international community—and among US presidents—that the future of Jerusalem must be the subject of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Now Trump was vowing to trash that consensus, along with the Palestinians, and support Netanyahu’s agenda. Whether Trump and the Israeli agent ever met in person is unclear. By late summer, Stone and Corsi were becoming increasingly concerned about potential charges, and to eliminate a paper trail they began meeting only in private with the agent. What is very clear, however, is that in the end Netanyahu got what he wanted—and so did Trump.
Around the same time, Stone had a conversation with Paul Manafort, who by then had left the campaign but stayed in communication with Trump’s political circles. According to Manafort’s later Senate Intelligence Committee testimony, Stone told him that “John Podesta was going to be in the barrel,” repeating the claim he made by tweet on August 21, and that “there were going to be leaks of John Podesta’s emails.” A few days later, on September 29, Stone called Trump, who was on the way to New York’s LaGuardia Airport in his black bulletproof limo. After concluding the call, Trump told Rick Gates, who was sitting next to him, that “more releases of damaging information would be coming.”
On October 7, WikiLeaks unleashed 2,050 Podesta e-mails that were damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign—just as Stone had predicted a month and a half earlier. But Stone’s concern about potential criminal charges seems to have turned into outright paranoia. Given that he had no close links to Assange or the Russians, the likely focus of his concerns were his numerous communications with the Israeli secret agent. After all, Stone had discussed clandestine foreign intervention in a presidential election, had made arrangements for Trump to meet a foreign agent, and had predicted the October Surprise. The prospect that authorities might look into any of these actions could certainly have been sufficient to rattle his nerves.
By secretly assisting Netanyahu’s agent in an attempt to make contact with a presidential candidate—aware that he intended to interfere in the US election on behalf of his country—both Stone and Corsi could have faced serious charges as agents of a foreign power under Section 951 of the criminal code, which makes it a crime to covertly assist a foreign government without registering.
Even before WikiLeaks released the Podesta e-mails in October, Stone and Corsi seemed to become nervous that someone would discover their back channel. Soon after the “Podesta’s time in the barrel” tweet in August, Stone and Corsi tried to find a way to somehow account for that unique insight. On August 30, Corsi said in his 2019 book Silent No More, “I suggested Stone could use me as an excuse, claiming my research on Podesta and Russia was the basis for Stone’s prediction that Podesta would soon be in the pickle barrel.” He added, “I knew this was a cover-story, in effect not true, since I recalled telling Stone earlier in August that Assange had Podesta e-mails that he planned to drop as the ‘October Surprise.’” The next day, Corsi said, he e-mailed to Stone “a nine-page background memorandum on John Podesta that I had written that day at Stone’s request.”
Following the Podesta dump, the cover-up became more frantic. Stone ordered Corsi to delete e-mails related to Podesta and hid his own communications with Corsi about WikiLeaks. Stone also pointed a finger at Randy Credico, a onetime friend who had a radio program in New York, as his back channel to WikiLeaks. Credico had interviewed Assange on his program, but that was four days after Stone’s tweet about Podesta’s upcoming time in the barrel. Credico denied under oath that he had acted as a back channel for Stone, and there was never any evidence to show he had.
In a predawn raid on January 25, 2019, heavily armed FBI agents stormed Roger Stone’s Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home and placed him under arrest. He was charged with seven criminal offenses, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering. Later that day, Stone was released on a $250,000 signature bond. Defiant, he said he would refuse to “bear false witness” against Trump. Finally, on November 15, 2019, after a weeklong trial and two days of deliberations, Stone was convicted on all counts and sentenced to 40 months in federal prison. But on July 10, 2020, a few days before Stone was to turn himself in, Trump commuted his sentence, personally calling him with the news.
Throughout this chain of events—including the trial, the Mueller Report, and the nearly 1,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee Report—no hint of the involvement of Israel was made public. Despite the clear violations of US law and months of clandestine, high-level attempted interference in the presidential election, no details were released, and no congressional hearings or investigations took place. Nor was there ever a hint in the press, which remained transfixed by Russia.
The evidence, however, suggests that throughout the summer and into the fall of 2016, Israel illegally interfered in the US presidential election. A top agent of Netanyahu was secretly offering intelligence and other covert assistance to Trump to get him elected—all with virtually no oversight or scrutiny by the FBI or the US media, though both had numerous personnel in Israel at the time. Now Netanyahu is back in office as prime minister, and Trump is once again running for president. All the ingredients are there for history to repeat itself, unless the Justice Department and Congress conduct long-overdue investigations into the real source of secret foreign collaboration and interference in the 2016 election, and both the FBI and the media remove their self-imposed blinders when it comes to Israel.
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Australian National Review – Governance By Artificial Intelligence:The Ultimate Unaccountable Tyranny: The Elites Will Present AI As The Great Adjudicator, The Pure And Logical Intercessor Of The Correct Path; Not Just For Nations And For Populations At Large But For Each Individual
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Governance By Artificial Intelligence:The Ultimate Unaccountable Tyranny: The elites will Present AI as the Great adjudicator, the Pure and Logical Intercessor of the Correct Path; Not Just for Nations and For Populations at Large But for Each individual
By Brandon Smith
It’s no secret that globalist institutions are obsessed with Artificial Intelligence as some kind of technological prophecy. They treat it as if it is almost supernatural in its potential and often argue that every meaningful industrial and social innovation in the near future will owe its existence to AI. The World Economic Forum cites AI as the singular key to the rise of what they call the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” In their view, there can be no human progress without the influence of AI algorithms, making human input almost obsolete.
This delusion is often promoted by globalist propagandists. For example, take a look at the summarized vision of WEF member Yuval Harari, who actually believes that AI has creative ability that will replace human imagination and innovation. Not only that, but Harari has consistently argued in the past that AI will run the world much better than human beings ever could.
Harari’s examples of AI creativity might sound like extreme naivety to many of us, but he knows exactly what he is doing in misrepresenting the capabilities of algorithms. Games like chess and Go are games of patterns restricted by rules, there only so many permutations of these patterns in any given scenario and AI is simply faster at spotting them than most humans because that is what it is designed to do by software creators. This is no different that solving a mathematical equation; just because a calculator is faster than you does not mean it is “creative.”
There is a big difference between cognitive automation and cognitive autonomy. AI is purely automation; it will play the games it is programmed to play and will learn to play them well, but it will never have an epiphany one day and create a new and unique game from scratch unless it is coded to do so. AI will never have fun playing this new game it made, or feel the joy of sharing that game with others, so why would it bother? It will never seek to contribute to the world any more than it is pre-programmed to do.
The manner in which globalists hype AI is very tactical, however. When Harari claims that many people will become part of the “useless class” once AI takes over the economy, he is hinting at another globalist ideology based on elitism – Transhumanism. The goal of transhumanism is to one day merge human bodies and human minds with technology and AI, and only a limited group of people will have the resources to accomplish this (the globalists).
Are you afraid of becoming part of the “useless class”? Well, if you scrape and beg and serve every whim of the elitist establishment then maybe you will be lucky enough to get implants which allow you to interface with AI, and then your future employment and “usefulness” will be secured. Doesn’t that sound nice?
But, like all the visions of narcissists there are delusions of godhood and then there is reality. I continue to have serious doubts that AI will ever be legitimately autonomous or legitimately beneficial to humanity in any way beyond having the ability to calculate quickly within mathematical rules. Speedy data analysis can be useful in many areas of science, but it’s not really proof of autonomous intelligence, and algorithms can be predictive but not any more predictive than human beings looking at the same statistical data. There is nothing about AI that is impressive when one considers what little it actually accomplishes.
AI is a toy, a parlor trick, not a living entity with independent observations and conclusions. And, it’s certainly not a god-like being capable of showering us with scientific ambrosia or building a perfect civilization. I predict that a society dependent on AI will actually stagnate and remain trapped in stasis, never really inventing anything of much value and never progressing. It will only ever be concerned with homogenization – The merging of people with the algorithm. That is where ALL the society’s energies will go.
As a point of reference to why AI is overrated, all we have to do is look at the behavior of AI programs like ChatGPT; the algorithm has been discovered on numerous occasions to contain extreme political biases always leaning to the far-left, including biases based in beliefs not backed in any way by scientific evidence. Interestingly, ChatGPT will even at times display a seemingly hostile response to conservative concepts or inconvenient facts. The bot will then DENY it is giving personal opinions even when its responses are consistently pro-leftist.
How is political bias possible for a piece of software unless it was programmed to display that bias? There is no objectivity to be found in AI, nor any creativity, it will simply regurgitate the personal opinions or biases of the people that created it and that engineered how it processes data.
Unlike a typical human teenager that seeks to adopt the opposing social or political beliefs of their parents in order set themselves apart, AI will never metaphorically dye its hair blue, pierce its nose and proclaim itself vegan – It will always do what its creators want it to do. Another example of this dynamic is AI art, which essentially steals the stylistic properties of numerous human artists entered into its database and copies them. While imitation might be considered the highest form of flattery, it’s not the same as creativity.
This might not sound like much of a problem when it comes to a simple chatbot or the making of cartoons. But, it’s a massive problem when we start talking about AI influencing social and governmental policies.
The globalists argue that AI will be everywhere – In business, in schools, in corporate operations, in scientific enterprises, and even within government. It MUST run everything. Why? They don’t really say why other than to make vague promises of incredible advancements and previously unimaginable benefits. To date, there have been no profound innovations produced by AI, but I suppose pro-AI propagandists will say that the golden age is “right around the corner.”
The uses for AI are truly limited to helping humans with simple tasks, but there is still a cost. A self driving car might be great for a person that is physically handicapped, but it can also be a crutch that convinces a population to never learn to drive themselves. By extension, AI is in a lot of ways the ULTIMATE crutch which leads to ultimate tyranny. If people are convinced to hand over normal human processes and decision making opportunities to automation, then they have handed over their freedoms in exchange for convenience.
More importantly, if algorithms are allowed to dictate a large portion of choices and conclusions, people will no longer feel a sense of accountability for their actions. Regardless of the consequences, all they have to do for the rest of their lives is tell themselves they were only following the suggestions (or orders) of AI. The AI becomes a form of external collectivized conscience; an artificial moral compass for the hive mind.
But who will really be controlling that moral compass and bottle-necking the decisions of millions of people? Will it be the AI, or the elites behind the curtain that manipulate the algorithm?
For many people this probably sounds like science fiction. Yes, there have been many fictional imaginings of what the world would be like in the shadow of AI – I would highly recommend the French New Wave film ‘Alphaville’ as one of the most accurate predictions on the horrors of AI and technocracy. However, what I am warning about here is not some far off theoretical future, it is already here. Take a look at this disturbing video on AI from the World Government Summit:
These are the blatant goals of globalists in plain view, with a sugar coating to make them more palatable. I wrote about the motivations of the elites and their worshipful reverence for AI in my article ‘Artificial Intelligence: A Secular Look At The Digital Antichrist’. That piece was focused on the philosophical drives that make globalists desire AI.
In this article I want to stress the issue of AI governance and how it might be made to appeal to the masses. In order to achieve the dystopian future the globalists want, they still have to convince a large percentage of the population to applaud it and embrace it.
The comfort of having a system that makes difficult decisions for us is an obvious factor, as mentioned above. But, AI governance is not just about removing choice, it’s also about removing the information we might need to be educated enough to make choices. We saw this recently with the covid pandemic restrictions and the collusion between governments, corporate media and social media. Algorithms were widely used by web media conglomerates from Facebook to YouTube to disrupt the flow of information that might run contrary to the official narrative.
In some cases the censorship targeted people merely asking pertinent questions or fielding alternative theories. In other cases, the censorship outright targeted provably factual data that was contrary to government policies. A multitude of government claims on covid origins, masking, lockdowns and vaccines have been proven false over the past few years, and yet millions of people still blindly believe the original narrative because they were bombarded with it nonstop by the algorithms. They were never exposed to the conflicting information, so they were never able to come to their own conclusions.
Luckily, unlike bots, human intelligence is filled with anomalies – People who act on intuition and skepticism in order to question preconceived or fabricated assertions. The lack of contrary information immediately causes suspicion for many, and this is what authoritarian governments often refuse to grasp.
The great promise globalists hold up in the name of AI is the idea of a purely objective state; a social and governmental system without biases and without emotional content. It’s the notion that society can be run by machine thinking in order to “save human beings from themselves” and their own frailties. It is a false promise, because there will never be such a thing as objective AI, nor any AI that understand the complexities of human psychological development.
Furthermore, the globalist dream of AI is driven not by adventure, but by fear. It’s about the fear of responsibility, the fear of merit, the fear of inferiority, the fear of struggle and the fear of freedom. The greatest accomplishments of mankind are admirable because they are achieved with emotional content, not in spite of it. It is that content that inspires us to delve into the unknown and overcome our fears. AI governance and an AI integrated society would be nothing more than a desperate action to deny the necessity of struggle and the will to overcome.
Globalists are more than happy to offer a way out of the struggle, and they will do it with AI as the face of their benevolence. All you will have to do is trade your freedoms and perhaps your soul in exchange for never having to face the sheer terror of your own quiet thoughts. Some people, sadly, believe this is a fair trade.
The elites will present AI as the great adjudicator, the pure and logical intercessor of the correct path; not just for nations and for populations at large but for each individual life. With the algorithm falsely accepted as infallible and purely unbiased, the elites can then rule the world through their faceless creation without any oversight – For they can then claim that it’s not them making decisions, it’s the AI. How does one question or even punish an AI for being wrong, or causing disaster? And, if the AI happens to make all its decisions in favor of the globalist agenda, well, that will be treated as merely coincidental.

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