LRC Blog

Finally! The Government Did Something Right, Or At Least Planned To, Before It Reverted To Its Usual Standards

Were you as overjoyed as I when you heard last November that a half-dozen men were hoping to kidnap Gretchen “the Witch” Whitmer, Michigan’s horrific tyrant and try her for her crimes against humanity?

Anyway, the FBI interfered with this halcyon scheme.

Except…the FBI not only interfered,

basically the entire plot was cooked up and executed by FBI informants and a few unsuspecting patsies were dragged into the scheme.

My sympathies to those Patriotic patsies. And a word to the FBI: you are even more useless than I previously believed. And I had pegged you a bit below the Usurper’s brain.

Thanks to Bill Martin for this story confirming our loathing of all things federal. Even seemingly good plans.

6:12 pm on July 13, 2021

Met the Enemy, And It Ain’t Us

Among government’s innumerable outrages is its ingratitude: it robs us of our money, then names the highways or structures it (unconstitutionally) builds after politicians instead of us taxpayers.

Mr. Anonymous was having none of it when New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote him in quest of—take a guess—money. Yes! Though the Met already shares in the loot when New York plunders its serfs, it (and all other institutions of “arts”) constantly begs for more. Worse, rather than thanking Mr. A for his generosity, the Met credited one of the thieves victimizing him:

We have many to thank for the[ir] support … , yet we owe a special debt of gratitude to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer. Throughout the pandemic, Senator Schumer has been tireless in his support of arts and culture, at The Met and throughout New York and the nation, and he has delivered for arts organizations in many ways,—

In plain English: “he’s robbed all of you for our benefit, and not just New Yorkers, either, but Americans across the country, many of whom will never set foot in any of our over-hyped and horribly expensive buildings.”

including federal funding from the Shuttered Venues Operators Grant (SVOG) to the federal aid that went to cities (including New York), which enabled the generous support we received from the recently adopted City budget.

What’d I tell you? No matter how much “support” inundates these pigs, they’re never happy.

This past week, The Met received $10 million from the SVOG grant, which is crucial to advancing our mission and connecting with the many communities we serve.

>GAG<

Before that depresses you beyond redemption, peruse Mr. A’s response to the Met’s greed:

Well, I’m glad that at least someone is enjoying the use of my hard-earned money, even if the only person getting thanked for it is Chuck Schumer, and even if it is for you not [to] have done anything at all (or hardly anything).

And, speaking of your Museum doing hardly anything and my money being spent on it without my permission — if you ever want to see any of my money being given to you voluntarily again, I assume you realize that would involve an IMMEDIATE return to NORMAL.  By normal I actually mean normal, and not the BS that’s being peddled as normal by some — no mandatory masks, the usual hours and days, the usual in-person activities, the works.  You would also need to pressure the City to start protecting its citizens again with adequate policing and prosecution around your Museum, as well as on the trains and buses (and everywhere else).

Your unthanked involuntary funder and hopefully a returning voluntary funder, …

Alas, I bet this masterpiece falls on deaf ears—or blind eyes, as the case may be.

5:34 pm on July 13, 2021

As Always, the Media and the TSA Get It Wrong

.One of the TSA’s thugs at Minneapolis-St. Paul Gulag–sorry, Airport has been copping pictures of female passengers on his cell phone:

Court documents allege the 37-year-old had 42 photos of female travelers on his personal phone. The employee allegedly snapping the photos off the airport’s closed circuit camera system over the course of a year.

Charging documents say the photos were all of women wearing shorts, tight pants, tank tops, or wearing shirts where the top portions of their breasts were exposed.

Not to defend anyone debauched enough to “work” for the TSA, but compare this miscreant’s “crime” to those his fellow employees commit at the checkpoints every hour. Had he operated one of the TSA’s porno-scanners, he could have peered beneath those “shorts, tight pants, tank tops,” and revealing shirts to the flesh beneath. Call me unreasonable, but I’d rather a stranger retain a picture of me fully clothed in public than leer at my naked image.

Yet the TSA makes this chump out to be more perverted than Larry Flynt while excusing the groping and sexual assault its hirelings routinely inflict. And it solemnly assures us, as if this will allay our hatred of it, that it’s 

cooperating with the MSP Airport Police Department and the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission regarding their investigation. The subject, who has been criminally charged, is on administrative leave. TSA takes passenger privacy very seriously…

Riiiiiggghhht. That would explain its rifling our bags and its mockery of their contents on Instagram as well as those blue gloves between our legs. 

4:00 pm on July 13, 2021

Fauci Is Back: ‘Vaccine Mandates NOW!’

12:51 pm on July 13, 2021

The USSA’s Continuing Plummet into the Marxist Maelstrom

The Biden administration is casting conservative opponents of its Covid-19 vaccine campaign as dangerous and extreme … The White House has decided to hit back harder on misinformation and scare tactics after Republican lawmakers and conservative activists pledged to fight the administration’s stated plans to go “door-to-door” to increase vaccination rates. The pushback will include directly calling out social media platforms and conservative news shows that promote such tactics.

Patriots bewail this horrific, tyrannical  intrusion into our communications—but the more astute realize it’s nothing new: the Deep State has been manipulating Hollywood, the press, popular music and even our correspondence for well over a century.

The only difference is that now said control has come out into the open. That doesn’t make it worse, but it does make it scarier. Think of the contempt Our Rulers hold for us when they freely confess their abuse: they’re admitting it because they doubt we’ll do anything about it. 

You don’t need me to tell you what happened next. Yep, the unpardonable Dr. Falsi defended “the administration’s stated plans to go ‘door-to-door’”:

The big misinterpretation that Fox News or whomever else is saying is that they are essentially envisioning a bunch of federal workers knocking on your door, telling you you’ve got to do something that you don’t want to do,” Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser [sic for “propagandist”], said … . “That’s absolutely not the case, it’s trusted messengers who are part of the community doing that — not government officials. So that’s where I think the disconnect is.”

Aren’t you glad it isn’t “federal workers” but “trusted messengers” who will be “knocking on your door, telling you you’ve got to do something that you don’t want to do”? I wonder how long these traitors will continue as “trusted messengers” after their invasions of our property.

Notice, too, that Falsi seizes on what he claims is an error to dismiss the entire message. Not governmental goons but the turncoats among us will attempt to indoctrinate us, insists Falsi—but this allegation may be as much a lie as everything else that passes that sociopath’s lips (as of last Wednesday, it was “unclear if federal government employees or contractors from third-party firms will be the ones who will visit people’s homes in the vaccine outreach campaign.” Either way, they’re under the Feds’ purview).

Millions upon millions of confrontations between Vazis and Patriots. Why do I suspect the spark that will ignite the upcoming war may be lit in the next weeks?

11:54 am on July 13, 2021

The Deep State Onslaught Has Commenced Against Oliver Stone and ‘JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass

The vicious piranhas of the woke blogosphere and the establishment mainstream regime media have been unleashed to savagely attack and eviscerate Oliver Stone’s new documentary, ‘JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass’.

This seething spectacle will attempt to demonize Stone and his latest heroic endeavor to speak to power and reveal the deep subterranean truth concerning the seminal event of November 22, 1963 — that the insidious coup d’état by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State was accomplished with the brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy. What happened on that fateful Friday in Dallas fifty-seven years ago led to the single most important series of events affecting the subsequent history of our nation. It lies at the inner most depth, the dark clotted heart, of what observers now describe as the deep state.

9:59 am on July 13, 2021

Northern Lights Extinguished

Perhaps because most of them are sociopaths, politicians are the same the world over: corrupt, cruel, and tyrannical. Even courteous Canada languishes under a regime whose goons manhandle female reporters asking unapproved questions and whose chief ruler callously shrugs off the persecution Christians suffer on his watch (with his encouragement?). 

If you didn’t hate politicians before, you will after watching this video. Thanks to Rocco Piserchia for sending this story my way. And please continue praying for our Canadian brothers and sisters.

9:38 am on July 13, 2021

America’s Untold Stories with Eric Hunley and Mark Groubert – CIA in The News

Eric Hunley and Mark Groubert present America’s Untold Stories where we explore cultural figures and history that is often under-appreciated or overlooked. This episode is the CIA in the News. Following his sophomore and junior years at Yale— a well-known recruiting ground for the CIA— this individual spent his summers interning at the agency’s monolithic headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in a program for students interested in intelligence work. Today the openly gay silver-haired anchorman can be seen every night on CNN. His name is Anderson Cooper.

7:00 pm on July 12, 2021

Tournament of Tyrants

We all know that Our Rulers lust for complete control over us. But sometimes one of them prattles sentiments that punch us in the gut with their naked totalitarianism.

Or sometimes two of them do. 

In a story that David Mueller forwarded to me, the repellent 

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday it was “absolutely the government’s business” to know which Americans haven’t been vaccinated yet against the coronavirus.

And why? Because the sociopaths in office wasted our taxes locking us down and forcing those too timid to defy them to diaper their faces:

…Becerra told CNN the government has had to “spend trillions of dollars to try to keep Americans alive during this pandemic.”

“So it is absolutely the government’s business, it is taxpayers’ business, if we have to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting COVID and helping reopen the economy,” he said.

Prime tactic of the State here: blame the victims for politicians’ harmful decisions. Meanwhile, the Usurper will continue pouring our good money after bad by sending the Vazis to pester us in our homes.

Incredibly, Becerra waxed even more despotic:

Asked … if the administration was considering more aggressive measures to get more people vaccinated, Becerra hedged, saying he wanted people to have “as much freedom and choice as possible.”

“We want to give people the sense that they have the freedom to choose. But we hope they choose to live,” Becerra said. “We hope people make the right choices. We want them to have the right information, but we are America. We try to give people as much freedom and choice as possible…”

We are to have the sense that we’re free to choose rather than the actuality? Observe the veiled threat there, too, that we’d better make the “right choice.” And since when does this noxious politician or any of his cohorts “give us as much freedom and choice as possible,” let alone “try to”? You insufferable nincompoop, the good Lord endowed all of us with inalienable rights when He created us. You had squat to do with it.

Alas, running neck-and-neck with Becerra for the Tyrant Title in this week’s contest is 

former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann – the top deputy in ex-Director Robert S. Mueller III’s special counsel investigation into whether Donald Trump colluded with the Kremlin in 2016.

This swamp rat

claimed … that Carlson is behaving in an “anti-American” manner and is undermining civilians’ trust in the national security state and federal institutions with his claims about the NSA[‘s spying on him–which, since the NSA spies on all electronic communications is fact and not theory]:

“What I’m concerned about here is not that there was incidental collection when I am calling a foreigner … if you try to reach out to Vladimir Putin, you can pretty much be sure that your going to be high risk of being intercepted – [but Carlson] could have said, look, there is a First Amendment issue here and I want to make sure that there are safeguards at the Department of Justice,” Weissmann said Friday.

Yeah, take your time recovering. I laughed until I was sick, too.

But he didn’t take that route. He … wanted to use this really for his own purposes and to sow distrust which is so anti-American instead of raising legitimate issues about safeguards in the system when you are dealing with journalists.”

So announcing that the NSA has been doing what it was established to do in direct violation of the US Constitution “sows distrust.” 

Yo, Weissguy: the distrust was already there, big-time. And anyway, “sowing” it against the dictatorial, criminal regime infesting our country is about as pro-American as it gets.

4:58 pm on July 12, 2021

In Case You’d Like to Prepare An Answering Script

As the Biden administration peddles its plan to send door-knocking missionaries across America to spread ‘vaccine awareness’ (and keep track of who’s vaccinated and who’s not), White House-coordinated FEMA “surge teams” are being assembled to reinforce local efforts on the ground.

In preparation for the coming campaign, Lake County, Illinois has published ‘Helpful Hints’ for volunteers taking part in their “Community Health Ambassador Outreach Door Knocking Project to Increase COVID Vaccine Acceptance.”

Among my favorite “hints”:

♦ Ignore no soliciting signs. You’re not soliciting! You’re offering critical information and resources. 

Ahem. The information and resources aren’t critical to anyone but Marxists. 

♦ What you are doing is not illegal.

Love it that the Usurper’s puppeteers must reassure the busybodies “volunteering” for this assault. Speaking of which, are these true “volunteers”? Or are our taxes paying these buttinskis to harass us?

♦ Report on your work! Be sure to fill out the Doorknocking Spreadsheet with the counts of who still needs a vaccine, who is already vaccinated, who needs more info, etc. This is important information that the Health Department is relying on!

Oh, I’ll bet.

Two can play at this game. Should any of you entertain so despicable an envoy from Our Rulers, kindly describe the interaction in an email to me. Lake County, Illinois likely isn’t the only jurisdiction supplying a “script” to its thugs, and Marxists idolize uniformity, so the others will probably sound a lot like this one. Being forewarned enables us to have fun with our responses!

Thanks to Vinnie Terranova for the warning.

3:40 pm on July 12, 2021

FBI To Americans: ‘Report On Your Families!’

12:45 pm on July 12, 2021

Shorthanded mental hospitals to be staffed by National Guard?

What could possibly go wrong?  Surely not this…, and certainly not that…..

9:34 am on July 12, 2021

Whitney Webb Dissects the Wellcome Leap into Transhumanism

Whitney Webb of UnlimitedHangout.com joins James Corbett once again, this time to discuss her latest article, “A “Leap” toward Humanity’s Destruction.” Even if you’re familiar with the transhumanist agenda, what the ex-DARPA, ex-Silicon Valley old hands at the newly created Wellcome Leap are planning to do in their quest to transform the human species in the coming decade will blow your mind.

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=41884

12:38 am on July 12, 2021

Designing Humans for Fun and Profit

Welcome, Esteemed Globalist Supergopher. Here is your access link to the secret online briefing session of the Committee of United Nazis, Tyrants and Sociopaths. On today’s livestream, your deep state briefer will walk you through what we’re telling the public about our ambition to transform the human species through biodigital technologies . . . and reveal what we’re actually doing to engineer a perfectly compliant, perfectly controlled, cattle-like subspecies.

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/humandesign/

12:32 am on July 12, 2021

Satire sites are no longer necessary

The “real” media has that handled for us.

The common cold, allergies, and day-to-day nasal drips are the new deadly Covid, or perhaps one of Covid’s 2,947 “variants.”

Because fearmongering, gaslighting, and propaganda work.

 

8:06 am on July 11, 2021

Whitmer’s reign to end

In a bit of Michigan news, (Ex) Detroit Police Chief James Craig is lining up his run for Governor against Gretchen Whitless.

But last night in a stump speech in Jackson he took his first political shot at Governor Gretchen Whitmer saying, “American isn’t a monarchy. We’re not ruled by Kings and Queens. We ended that back in 1776.

He’s black and conservative, and even libertarian-ish at times. The media has no idea what to do with this man … none whatsoever. The lying Michigan media machine is already building the hate campaign against him. He’s not afraid to assail the victimology ruse, nor is he afraid to speak up for gun owners (“good citizens should have guns”).

8:00 am on July 11, 2021

Government-coerced violence is ok as long as it is enacted by a “private” company.

Congressman Thomas Massie gets it.

The guy below him is a confused bot espousing libertarian gibberish. This is where libertarianism has become junk science. “Not allowing government-coerced violence violates the NAP.” But it was “private” violence!

7:52 am on July 11, 2021

Yes, genocide is unethical

Quoting Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine advocate and the guy credited with some of the earliest mRNA vaccine platform research. Malone and others like him have not been afraid to speak up on the mountains of lies; tyranny of the medical-pharmaceutical complex; and the breach of ethics that is akin to medical terrorism and/or genocide.

—> Defined as “Experimental research products.” Period. Pardon the long quote, here, but it’s all too good to not call out. Yet the obvious will still continue to be censored, discredited, and “debunked.”

I believe that adult citizens must be allowed free will, the freedom to choose. This is particularly true in the case of clinical research. These mRNA and recombinant adenovirus vaccine products remain experimental at this time. Furthermore, we are supposed to be doing rigorous, fact-based science and medicine. If rigorous and transparent evaluation of vaccine reactogenicity and treatment-emergent post-vaccination adverse events is not done, we (the public health, clinical research and vaccine developer communities) play right into the hands of anti-vaxxer memes and validate many of their arguments. The suppression of information, discussion, and outright censorship concerning these current COVID vaccines which are based on gene therapy technologies cast a bad light on the entire vaccine enterprise. It is my opinion that the adult public can handle information and open discussion. Furthermore, we must fully disclose any and all risks associated with these experimental research products.

In this context, the adult public are basically research subjects that are not being required to sign informed consent due to EUA waiver. But that does not mean that they do not deserve the full disclosure of risks that one would normally require in an informed consent document for a clinical trial. And now some national authorities are calling on the deployment of EUA vaccines to adolescents and the young, which by definition are not able to directly provide informed consent to participate in clinical research – written or otherwise.

The key point here is that what is being done by suppressing open disclosure and debate concerning the profile of adverse events associated with these vaccines violates fundamental bioethical principles for clinical research. This goes back to the Geneva convention and the Helsinki declaration. There must be informed consent for experimentation on human subjects. The human subjects – you, me, and the citizens of these countries – must be informed of risks. As a community, we have already had a discussion and made our decision – we cannot compel prisoners, military recruits, or any other population of humans to participate in a clinical research study. For example, see the Belmont report, which provided the rationale for US federal law Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46 (subpart A), referred to as “The Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects” (also known as the “Common Rule”).

Furthermore, as these vaccines are not yet market authorized (licensed), coercion of human subjects to participate in medical experimentation is specifically forbidden. Therefore, public health policies which meet generally accepted criteria for coercion to participate in clinical research are forbidden.

7:43 am on July 11, 2021

White Like Me

Eddie Murphy put his finger on the problem years ago.

7:21 am on July 11, 2021

Why So Few Black Professional Millionaire Athletes?

Must be because of all that “systemic racism” in the NBA and NFL.  I watched a little of the “Espy Awards” show on TV last night.  It was very different from all past shows that featured short videos of all the best moments in sports for the year — Tom Brady winning another superbowl, Tiger Woods’ big comeback to win the Masters, The U.S. womens’ soccer team winning the world cup, etc.  The portion I watched was mostly black people whining, complaining, and even pretending to tear up over all the “systemic racism,” injustice, and discrimination in professional sports and the need for more quotas and subsidies and special treatment for black athletes.  The one white girl who won an award for playing basketball used her acceptance speech to apologize for being white, saying that just about any black female basketball player would be more deserving.  The audience was severely socially distanced with almost no camera shots of any of the star athletes, and piped-in applause.  They did allow Tom Brady to accept the “male athlete of the year” award, but the white girl basketballer was given at least three times more air time to whine about discrimination and apologize for being white than Brady’s video acceptance speech.

7:01 am on July 11, 2021

“Our White Heritage”

As a college student I was a dedicated monthly reader of the National Lampoon humor magazine, from the very first issue. In these present humorless Woke days of Critical Race Theory, cancel culture, identity politics, political correctness, and cultural Marxism, it is instructive to look back on one particular issue, which could never be published today in 2021.

The September 1972, Volume 1, No 30/Boredom issue contained a hilarious article, “Our White Heritage.”  “Our White Heritage” begins on page 87.

I still have my hard copy in my archives.

3:50 am on July 11, 2021

Resurrected From The Orwellian Memory Hole: The History Of White People In America

In ths “mockumentary,” host Martin Mull discusses the contributions that white people have made to the U.S., visits the Institute of White Studies, and follows a typical white family as they go about their everyday lives.

Four new classic episodes of Martin Mull’s award-winning series on life in white America. Honing in on the all-white suburb of HawkinsI Falls, Ohio (“A Pace To Live”), and the daily lives of Hal Harrison (Fred Willard) and his lovely wife, Joyce (Mary Kay Place), Mull wades into the murky undercurrents of: * White Religion . . . Fifteen-year-old Debby Harrison (Amy Lynne) thinks she’s pregnant and the family turns to their local Methodist pastor (Michael McKean) for guidance.
* White Stress . . . Hal eats some of Joyce’s homemade chili and has a nervous breakdown, not necessarily in that order.
* White Politics … Hal, prodded by his dad (George Gobel), decides to run for public office. Not a good idea. * White Crime . . .Both Martin and Tommy Harrison (Christian Jacobs), the imp of the family, end up in jail for heinous “white” crimes against humanity. Eileen Brennan guest stars.
You’ll laugh until you turn white! Or maybe you’ll laugh until you turn whiter.

12:17 am on July 11, 2021

How America Invented Race | The History of White People in America

Expect the episodes in this series to be mandatory in public schools and universities from coast to coast.

WORLD Channel, in partnership with PBS’ Independent Lens, presents a new animated musical series about America’s reckoning with race and injustice. The History Of White People In America takes the audience on a journey through American history, starting in the 17th century, and in particular looks at how the crafting of the idea of the white race — of whiteness — helped shape the nation’s history, designating other groups for subjugation and having wide-ranging ramifications on social class and life experience that exist to this day.

Episode One, “How America Invented Race,” explores how the white “race” was invented by rich Virginians in 1676 in the aftermath of a populous rebellion of impoverished, indentured, and enslaved Africans and Europeans now known as Bacon’s Rebellion.

Building on more than 30 years of scholarship on the creation and evolution of racial categories and identity in the United States, we explore the combination of ideologies, laws, policies, scientific theories, and even “racial performances” that created what we now understand as “white” and “non-white.” Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, Catholics: until recently in our history, none of these groups were considered white by law, custom, or culture. Whiteness has always been an ever-shifting notion. What does it mean in America to be non-white today? What will need to change in our country for Black and brown people to have the power of “white”?

4:45 pm on July 10, 2021

Rand Paul: I’m Introducing Legislation to Repeal the Airline Mask Mandate (7.9.21)

And yes: “it’s a win-win to leave the public schools if you’re able to.”

12:10 am on July 10, 2021

Michael Shellenberger on “Climate Change” as the Alleged Cause of Everything Bad in the World (7.9.21)

Today’s environmentalists cause many of the problems that they then blame on “climate change.”

10:48 pm on July 9, 2021

Adam Carolla on the Deep State’s Photoshop Diversity as a “Strength” (7.9.21)

When agencies with millions of dollars can’t even promote themselves with anything better than third-rate photoshopped Shutterstock photos.

10:44 pm on July 9, 2021

Illuminati: Fact or Fantasy

Because of the particular nature of some of my articles and blogs at LRC, many readers over the years have inquired concerning my personal views and scholarly assessment of the Bavarian Illuminati and its genuine impact on world history. Did such an organization really exist? Does it exist today? What role did it play in the French Revolution of 1789? The Revolutions of 1848? The Russian Revolutions of 1917? etc. Since its founding on May 1, 1776, the Illuminati has been the subject of more controversy, disinformation and fear-mongering than almost any other topic analyzed by historians. But today, from impeccable archival research compiled over the past several decades, we now have an almost complete true picture of this clandestine organization and its nexus of influence. Here are the seminal primary and secondary documents I recommend which present that historical portrait: Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington; Perfectibilists: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati, by Terry Melanson; The Secret School of Wisdom: The Authentic Ritual and Doctrines of the Illuminati, edited by Josef Wäges, Reinhard Markner and translated to English by Jeva Singh-Anand; Philo’s Reply To Questions Concerning His Association With the Illuminati, by Adolph Freiherr Knigge and translated to English by Jeva Singh-Anand; Illuminati Manifesto of World Revolution (1792): L’Esprit des Religions, by Nicholas Bonneville and translated to English by Marco di Luchetti Esq.; Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism: A Translation from the French of the Abbe Barruel, by Augustin Barruel; The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, by Robert Darnton; The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, by Robert Darnton; Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France, by Robert Darnton; Critique and Crises: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society, by Reinhart Koselleck; and The First Professional Revolutionist: Filippo Michele Buonarroti, 1761-1837, by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein.

(The fictional works of Robert Anton Wilson are in a whole separate category or parallel universe.)

11:55 am on July 9, 2021

Today’s Quote

Were we to hold a contest for “Brassiest Politician,” an astounding number of entries would deluge us. But I wonder whether the stunningly shameless Andrew Guano–sorry, Cuomo of New York wouldn’t win based on this quote alone: regarding his “state‘s skyrocketing gun violence,” he announced, 

We know how to deal with an epidemic … We wanna do with gun violence, what we just did with COVID…”

You guessed it: granny-killing jokes are ricocheting around cyberspace. 

Thanks to Bill Martin for starting our day with a laugh.

10:09 am on July 9, 2021

America’s Drug Wars

America’s Drug Wars, by Alfred McCoy

Between the 1960s and 2021, the United States fought two disastrous drug wars in distant lands and historian Alfred McCoy covered them both. The initial one was, of course, the Vietnam War, which, as he reminds us today, left staggering numbers of American soldiers hooked on heroin. In those years, McCoy quite literally tramped the “heroin trail” in Laos, “meeting gangsters and warlords in isolated places,” while covering the grim role our leading intelligence agency played in drugging American troops, first for Harper’s Magazine and then in his book (which the CIA tried to suppress), The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.

America’s second disastrous drug war was, of course, the Afghan one that the U.S. is now, at least theoretically, leaving in its wake almost 20 years after its 2001 invasion. Meanwhile, the Taliban, which kept itself afloat all those years at least in part on money made from growing, refining, and marketing opium, now threatens to fell the U.S.-supported regime there. And McCoy covered that drug war (even if from a distance) for TomDispatch.  From 2010 on, he’s written vividly and repeatedly about how, as he put it in 2016, “Washington’s single and singular accomplishment in all its years there has been to oversee the country’s transformation into the planet’s number one narco-state.” How grimly true.

And for this, unfortunately, there’s a long history. As he wrote in 2010 in the first of his TomDispatch pieces on the subject, the CIA’s covert Afghan war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s “served as the catalyst that transformed the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands into the world’s largest heroin-producing region.” Oh, the irony of it all!

Today, McCoy, author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and the upcoming To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change, turns to the third drug war this country has been involved in since the Vietnam era. As it happens, this one has been taking place not thousands of miles away in distant war zones, but right here at home and it couldn’t be grimmer.

9:49 am on July 9, 2021

Tokyo Says No Spectators at the Olympics

A COVID emergency, naturally, says the Olympic organizers.

8:01 am on July 9, 2021