Then-Democratic presidential candidate, and then-representative for Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard speaks during a campaign event in Lebanon, N.H., on Feb. 6, 2020. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH

Gabbard: Biden Should Denounce His Administration’s Effort to Take Away Civil Liberties

BY GARY DU

 

January 27, 2021 Updated: January 27, 2021

biggersmaller 

Print

Former Democratic presidential candidate and former representative for Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard said in a series of tweets on Tuesday that John Brennans, the Adam Schiffs, and the oligarchs in Big Tech who take away civil liberties “are also domestic enemies and much more powerful.”

She called on President Joe Biden and all members of Congress from both parties to denounce the effort.

“The mob who stormed the capitol to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country,” the former congresswoman said. 

“But let us be clear, the John Brennan’s, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally-protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style ‘surveillance’ are also domestic enemies—and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob which stormed the capitol,” she said.

The Biden administration initiated a federal agency level campaign 2 days after taking the office, to investigate domestic terrorism in the United States. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Jan. 22 connected that investigation to the Jan. 6 protest at the Capitol.

“The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and the tragic deaths and destruction that occurred underscored what we have long known: The rise of domestic violent extremism is a serious and growing national security threat,” Psaki said.

Gabbard called on Biden and all the Congress members to denounce these efforts and said that the United States will be in great danger if people do not stand up to them.

“President Biden, I call upon you and all of Congress from both parties to denounce efforts by Brennan and others to take away our civil liberties endowed to us by our Creator, and guaranteed in our Constitution. If you don’t stand up to them now, then our country will be in great peril,” she said in the video posted to Twitter.

In the video, Gabbard included a segment of an interview by former CIA Director John Brennan by MSNBC on Jan. 20.

“I know looking forward that the members of the Biden team, who have been nominated or have been appointed, are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas,” Brennan said. “Where they germinate in different parts of the country, and they gain strength, and it brings together an unholy alliance, frequently, of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists—even libertarians. ”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/gabbard-biden-should-denounce-his-administrations-effort-to-take-away-civil-liberties_3673141.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-01-27-2

Geert Mak: Why is the EU helping Israel treat its waste in the West Bank?

 

Why is the EU helping Israel treat its waste in the West Bank?

Adri Nieuwhof Rights and Accountability 10 December 2020

The EU is helping fund a waste treatment plant in the Maaleh Adumim settlement bloc in the occupied West Bank.

Mahfouz Abu TurkAPA images

Three European firms are bidding for a role in a new more environmentally friendly waste-to-energy plant in the Israeli settlement of Maaleh Adumim.

The location of the plant – in occupied territory, and therefore illegal under international law – has also not deterred the European Union, which supports the implementation of a 2030 Israeli strategic waste management plan that includes the Maaleh Adumim plant with $1.8 million.

The plant is slated to be built at the “Good Samaritan” recycling park east (and deep into occupied territory) of Maaleh Adumim and only a few hundred meters away from small Palestinian shepherd communities.

Neither the EU, nor European companies, can claim ignorance about this. The tender for the project was issued in October last year, leaving plenty of time for due diligence.

Nevertheless, in November this year, the Israeli newspaper Calaclist revealed that three European companies are willing to assist Israel – the tender stipulates that foreign companies must have a local partner – in building the illegal waste plant.

They are German firm Standardkessel Baumgarte, which is based in Duisburg and which will partner with the Israeli Generation Capital Fund.

Swiss-based Hitachi Zosen Inova is proposing a partnership with Israeli TMM Integrated Recycling Industries which was previously owned by Veolia.

TMM currently operates Tovlan Landfill in the occupied West Bank.

Italian company TM.E. S.P.A. Termomeccanica Ecologia in Milan teams up with Israeli firm Shikun & Binui which has built projects in the settlements of Maaleh Adumim and Har Homa.

In all, eight groups are competing for the tender, with other Israeli companies working in partnership with Chinese and Japanese firms.

All companies who plan to participate in the realization of this illegal Maaleh Adumim waste-to-energy site violate international law and should be held accountable.

European Union support

The European Union supports the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection in the implementation of its 2030 strategic plan to improve Israel’s waste management under its $1.8 million Twinning Project.

The twinning agreement specifies that “all actions financed by the EU is subject to the EU’s policy with defined borders of Israel in line with international law.”

But the ministry’s 2030 strategic plan includes the establishment of the Maaleh Adumim waste-to-energy plant.

The plant will cost up to half a billion dollars and will treat about 1,500 tons of waste per day from the Jerusalem metropolitan area including Maaleh Adumim.

An incinerator is to be built to utilize waste to generate electricity.

Transferring the treatment of Israeli waste to the occupied West Bank is illegal under international law. It does not in any way benefit the indigenous Palestinian population. The EU should immediately revoke its support for the project.

The twinning project claims it wants “to contribute to the protection of human health and environment in Israel.”

Apparently, human health, according to the EU, does not extend to Palestinians.

• European Union 
• illegal settlements 
• waste management 
• Maaleh Adumim 
• BDS

• Adri Nieuwhof's blog

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/adri-nieuwhof/why-eu-helping-israel-treat-its-waste-west-bank

 

Could #WallStreetBets Be The Early Innings Of A Financial Arab Spring?

BY TYLER DURDEN

FRIDAY, JAN 29, 2021 - 17:55

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

WSB’s “Army” plan to target “Silver suppression” next

It’s been mere hours since Charles Hugh Smith, Jesse and I finished off our AxisOfEasy Salon 36: Democratizing Stonk Market Manipulation covering the #WallStreetBets situation and things have already morphed in a direction along one of the lines that we speculated was possible: a generalized revolt against financial repression and asymmetric rulesets (a.k.a “rules are for thee, but not for me”).This is about more than a bunch of weaponized autists (self-described as such) end-running the Wall St. establishment for fun and profit.

Charles called it a “rebellion” at one point. Once it appeared as the the establishment was trying to step into Robinhood and get the hedgies off the hook, as that line in the old classic The Usual Suspects went…

“Then, the whole thing turned political…”

I was busy most of the day yesterday, but I kept getting email alerts that my various silver positions were up 10%, trading up on excessive volume, etc. When I did check the precious metals I noted that gold was down, not by a lot, while silver was making a sizeable move. Not unheard of for this to happen, but it’s not common.

Almost didn’t notice this comment on the Hackernews thread on my WallStreetBets proves the System is Rigged article:

It proves something anyway.I’m a moderator of /r/silverbugs and we’ve been getting slammed all morning with either accounts from wallstreetbets or accounts trying to make them look bad, with dozens of brand spanking new or barely used accounts spamming to buy various silver related stocks/funds.

I’ve banned more accounts this morning than I have in 2 years.

Then a couple hours ago I saw this:

and that’s when I realized that this thing could get real. A “reverse bear raid” on the $SLV could quite possibly upset more than a few apple carts, and here are the WallStreetBets crew laying out exactly what it entails [archived], and how their self-professed  “AoR” could go about it [archived].

Can they do it? Time will tell. Silver up almost 2% on the day and silver stocks are screaming higher.

Coffee Mug source Landmand LIfe

Meanwhile, the battle lines are clearly drawn. Rumours abound that RobinHood slammed the breaks on Gamestop under pressure from their upstream clearing houses or even the SEC. CNBC is trotting out hedgies that even tried to float a “foreign meddling” narrative and the mainstream media hit pieces are starting to drop (TL,DR Trumpism and White Supremacy, what else?)

To be fair, Ali Breland did clarify in a subsequent tweet that he didn’t think /r/WSB were N*zis

Big Tech also showing their true colours as usual, deplatforming and canceling right on cue with Facebook putting the kibosh on a large Robin Hood trader group while Discord shut down WallStreetBets

What makes this interesting is where the battle lines are drawn.

When somebody like @AOC tweets this

and then a @DonaldTrumpJr this:

It indicates that this is not between left vs right, conservative vs liberal thing. This time it’s political along the class line that separates The Cantillionaires from the masses that I’ve been writing about on my mailing list for years.. The underclass, the rabble – the people who were never supposed to win may suddenly have at least a few  billionaires on the run.

It indicates that this is not between left vs right, conservative vs liberal thing. This time it’s political along the class line that separates The Cantillionaires from the masses that I’ve been writing about on my mailing list for years.. The underclass, the rabble – the people who were never supposed to win may suddenly have at least a few  billionaires on the run.

It indicates that this is not between left vs right, conservative vs liberal thing. This time it’s political along the class line that separates The Cantillionaires from the masses that I’ve been writing about on my mailing list for years.. The underclass, the rabble – the people who were never supposed to win may suddenly have at least a few  billionaires on the run.

(When you think about it,  both AOC and mini-Donald are establishment outsiders albeit for very different reasons. They are even alienated from very different establishment factions).

Something about this feels like we could be in the opening rounds of some weird morph between the Occupy Wall Street movement of yore, and the Arab Spring. Only this time played out over smartphones, using exotic options spreads …and memes.

As I sat down to write this, #EatTheRich was trending on Twitter.

If you thought 2020 was off the hook, how do you like 2021 so far?

Here’s that Salon we did on the idea of this being the beginning  of  (as Tom Woods called it) The Gamestop Rebellion, and don’t forget to join my mailing list to get updates as they happen.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/could-wallstreetbets-be-early-innings-financial-arab-spring?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

Who Will Be A Domestic Terrorist in the Land of the Free?

Would You Be Considered A Domestic Terrorist Under This New Bill?

BY TYLER DURDEN

FRIDAY, JAN 29, 2021 - 22:40

Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,

After 9/11, the entire country collectively lost its mind in the throes of fear. During that time, all civil and Constitutional rights were shredded and replaced with the pages of The USA PATRIOT Act. Almost 20 years later, the U.S. has again lost its collective mind, this time in fear of a “virus” and it’s “super mutations” and a “riot” at the capitol. A lot of people called this and to the surprise of very few, much like after 9/11, Americans are watching what remains of their civil liberties be replaced with a new bill. 

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021

The DTPA is essentially the criminalization of speech, expression, and thought. It takes cancel culture a step further and all but outlaws unpopular opinions. This act will empower intelligence, law enforcement, and even military wings of the American ruling class to crack down on individuals adhering to certain belief systems and ideologies.

According to MI Congressman Fred Upton: 

“The attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month was the latest example of domestic terrorism, but the threat of domestic terrorism remains very real. We cannot turn a blind eye to it,” Upton said. “The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act will equip our law enforcement leaders with the tools needed to help keep our homes, families, and communities across the country safe.

Congressman Upton’s website gives the following information on DTPA:

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 would strengthen the federal government’s efforts to prevent, report on, respond to, and investigate acts of domestic terrorism by authorizing offices dedicated to combating this threat; requiring these offices to regularly assess this threat; and providing training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal law enforcement in addressing it.

DTPA would authorize three offices, one each within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to monitor, investigate, and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism. The bill also requires these offices to provide Congress with joint, biannual reports assessing the state of domestic terrorism threats, with a specific focus on white supremacists. Based on the data collected, DTPA requires these offices to focus their resources on the most significant threats.

DTPA also codifies the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, which would coordinate with United States Attorneys and other public safety officials to promote information sharing and ensure an effective, responsive, and organized joint effort to combat domestic terrorism. The legislation requires DOJ, FBI, and DHS to provide training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies in understanding, detecting, deterring, and investigating acts of domestic terrorism and white supremacy. Finally, DTPA directs DHS, DOJ, FBI, and the Department of Defense to establish an interagency task force to combat white supremacist infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement.

Those who read the bill aren’t so gung ho to shred the Constitution

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has some serious reservations. In a recent interview on Fox News Primetime, Gabbard stated that the bill effectively criminalizes half of the country. (Emphasis ours)

“It’s so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said.

She continued: “When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.”

Gabbard, stating her concern about how the government will define what qualities they are searching for in potential threats to the country, went on to ask:

“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this”

Tulsi said the bill would create a dangerous undermining of our civil liberties and freedoms in our Constitution. She also stated the DPTA essentially targets nearly half of the United States. 

“You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally,” Gabbard said.

Tulsi Gabbard is not the only one to criticize the legislation

Even the ACLU, one of the weakest organizations on civil liberties in the United States, has spoken out. While the ACLU was only concerned with how the bill would affect minorities or “brown people,” the organization stated that the legislation, while set forth under the guise of countering white supremacy, would eventually be used against non-white people.

The ACLU’s statement is true.

As with similar bills submitted under the guise of “protecting” Americans against outside threats, this bill will inevitably expand further. The stated goals of the DPTA are far-reaching and frightening enough. It would amount to an official declaration of the end to Free Speech.

Soon there will be no rights left for Americans

In the last twenty years, Americans have lost their 4th Amendment rights, and now they are losing their 1st. All that remains is the 2nd Amendment, and both the ruling class and increasing numbers of the American people know it.

Dark days are ahead.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/would-you-be-considered-domestic-terrorist-under-new-bill?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

Reddit's 'Wall Street Bets'

 

"This Is For You, Dad": Redditor Shares Heartbreaking Reason For Destroying Short-Sellers In WSB Raids

BY TYLER DURDEN

SATURDAY, JAN 30, 2021 - 7:41

As a new class of activist investors harness the power of crowdsourcing to crush short-sellers betting on the demise of ailing companies, a David vs. Goliath narrative quickly emerged (now with sympathetic billionaires joining the cause).

As these retail investors band together over Reddit's 'Wall Street Bets' forum and other platforms to crush hedge funds by triggering short-squeezes - some turning meager savings accounts into six-figure positions - several have shared very personal stories of just why they're doing this. 

One such user, a Redditor who goes by the name Space-Peanut, has a very personal reason for tossing their match onto the pyre.

Read below (emphasis ours):

This is for you, Dad.

I remember when the housing collapse sent a torpedo through my family. My father's concrete company collapsed almost overnight. My father lost his home. My uncle lost his home. I remember my brother helping my father count pocket change on our kitchen table. That was all the money he had left in the world. While this was happening in my home, I saw hedge funders literally drinking champagne as they looked down on the Occupy Wall Street protestors. I will never forget that.

My Father never recovered from that blow. He fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism and exists now as a shell of his former self, waiting for death.

This is all the money I have and I'd rather lose it all than give them what they need to destroy me. Taking money from me won't hurt me, because i don't value it at all. I'll burn it all down just to spite them.

This is for you, Dad.

*  *  *

https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/you-dad-redditor-shares-heartbreaking-reason-destroying-short-sellers-wsb-raids?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

The Fascist Self-Proclaimed Jewish State

 

Israel destroys nature reserve, 

uproots 10,000 trees 

January 28, 2021 at 5:22 pm | Published in: Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine

Palestinian man shows trees after they were destroyed by Israeli forces in Tubas, West Bank, January 27, 2021. [Nedal Eshtayah - Anadolu Agency]

January 28, 2021 at 5:22 pm 

See: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210128-israel-destroys-nature-reserve-uproots-10000-trees/

9.9K SHARES

The Big Lie

 JANUARY 29, 2021

Roaming Charges: Funny Games

BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Burial vaults awaiting the Covid dead. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

“It is difficult to speak the truth, for although there is only one truth, it is alive and therefore has a live and changing face.”

— Franz Kafka

+ The Washington Post ran a sprawling and not especially informative story under the headline “Biden Struggles to Define His ‘Unity’ Pledge to a Divided Nation.” Here’s a definition based on the last forty years of politics in America: Unity is a one-way street ending in a right turn.

+ Fun and Games with Mitch: Mitch McConnell refused to reconvene the Senate before January 19 to allow Trump’s impeachment trial to start while he was still in office. Now McConnell just voted in support of the motion that Trump’s trial is unconstitutional because he’s no long in office.

+ Of course, Biden didn’t want a spectacle of an impeachment trial of Trump before the inauguration and probably doesn’t like the idea of one at all.

+ Most Americans have no idea what a filibuster is and those who presume to know probably believe it is part of the Senate’s constitutional powers, a death chamber where good bills are consigned to die.

+ “Relent”? Mitch won. He got two Democratic senators to defect, publicly humiliate Schumer (not hard), and probably exposed Sinema to a primary challenger (deserved). He had a weak hand, but weaker opponents, setting the tone for the next two years, when GOP will recapture Senate. You need a street fighter like Harry Reid to counter McConnell, not a talking ATM like Schumer…

+ Gloating Mitch is the most insufferable Mitch. The question is: did Schumer get outplayed? Or is this result he wanted all along, while flirting to end the filibuster? Win-win solution for the leadership of both parties, I think. Lose-lose for the rest of us.

+ If the French are “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” what are the Democrats? At least the French drew a (Maginot) line in the sand and dared the Nazis to cross it. It would be nice to know, for historical purposes at least, what the Senate Democrats had actually planned to fight for, before they surrendered the procedural weapons needed to wage the battle before a shot was even fired…

+ The self-induced paralysis of Democratic politicus americanii is nothing new. Indeed, this peculiar behavior was first identified by some of the earliest taxonimists as characteristic of the species and has been a staple of most reliable field guides ever since.

+ To rephrase Voltaire: Si McConnell n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer…

+ Let’s see how Glenn and Tucker have been covering the political machinations on the hill this week. Yes, it’s going as you might have expected…

+ Who will tell them that the corporations have been ensuring “one-party” rule since at least the Eisenhower Administration?

+ In the week since Biden was sworn in, at least 10 people have been killed by police in the US. How long until the next killing sparks nationwide protests and Biden is forced to show his true commitment to the airy rhetoric he preached Tuesday on racial inequities?

+ In the end, there was only one antiwar vote against Blinken, whose fingerprints have been on nearly every US war from Iraq to Yemen, in the Senate. But not by Bernie or Warren or Merkley or Hirono…but Rand Paul. If you’re unwilling to object to the people who instigated wars you claim to have opposed, how can any of us expect you to stand up against wars they will start now that they are enshrined with even more power? Apparently, Bernie has reverted to his default position in the Clinton years, when he endorsed the overthrow of Saddam and the bombing of Serbia.

+ Blinken is not as bombastic like Pompeo Maximus. He’s very smooth, very well-spoken, very collegial, and like Colin Powell, very well equipped to seduce people into wars they might otherwise be inclined to resist.

+ Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s nominee for UN Ambassador, testified that BDS “verges on being  anti-Semitic” and said she will stand “against the unfair targeting of Israel” at the UN if confirmed. Many liberals who express rhetorical sympathy for the Palestinian cause (as they understand it) would have condemned these remarks from Nikki Haley, yet will rationalize them from Thomas-Greenfield…

+ Sell short, jump long…

+ A group of multimillionaires in the US senate, including the wife of the CEO of the NYSE itself, used inside information on COVID and god knows what else to dump and buy stocks, but a group of self-proclaimed “autistic retards” on subReddit are being vilified for gaming short-selling hedge funders, who are now mewling for a bailout. Free market, indeed.

+ If Judith Miller reported on Wall Street, her stories would probably read something like this …

+ Wait until the K-Pop girls start playing in this casino…

+ Still, the thing to remember about casinos is that while some big spenders my lose, the house always wins, even if they had to change the rules mid-game to make it happen.

+ $810,000: amount of money Janet Yellin pocketed in speaking fees from Citadel, owner of Robinhood. The Biden White House says she has no plans to recuse herself from federal action around the GameStop stock frenzy. (Yellin signed an ethics agreement that would, if enforced, bar her from participating in any matters involving Citadel or Robinhood for a year.)

+ CNBC talking heads have been prattling all week about the need to keep COVID life-support checks to a mere $1400 and only for families making less than $75K a year. Now they are eager to bailout hedge funds suckered by angry gamers on Reddit….

+ Remember when the neoliberal budget hawks wanted to replace Social Security with mutual funds and have us all day trade for our retirement.

+ Speaking of selling short, the US economy shrank by 3.5 percent in 2020, the worst contraction since World War II. Even so, since COVID was declared a “national emergency” in March, the net wealth of America’s 614 billionaires grew by a combined $931 billion.

+ At $20,000 per day, you’d have to work seven days a week for 178 years to compile $1.3 billion.

+ In 1965, CEOs made 21 times the average worker’s pay. By 2019, they made 320 times as much as the average worker brought home.

+ The poverty rate increased 2.4 percentage points from June to December 2020 (when it reached 11.8%), nearly double the largest annual increase in poverty since the 1960s. Increases in poverty rate were especially high for Blacks (up 5.4 percentage points, to 23.6%). In all, an additional 8 million Americans are now considered “newly poor”– twice the highest annual increase in poverty in over a half-century.

+ Biden’s offering the economy juice, when clearly it needs meth…

+ How many times can Biden pull a bait-and-switch on his own pledge for $2000 stimulus checks on Day One?

+ Hmmm….

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/29/roaming-charges-funny-games/