The West’s Information-Industrial Hybrid Warfare Complex

It took one minute for President Trump to introduce a virus at the virtual 75th UN General Assembly, blasting “the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world”.

And then it all went downhill.

Even as Trump was essentially delivering a campaign speech and could not care less about the multilateral UN, at least the picture was clear enough for all the socially distant “international community” to see.

Here is President Xi’s full statement. And here is President Putin’s full statement. And here’s the geopolitical chessboard, once again; it’s the “indispensable nation” versus the Russia-China strategic partnership.

As he stressed the importance of the UN, Xi could not be more explicit that no nation has the right to control the destiny of others: “Even less should one be allowed to do whatever it likes and be the hegemon, bully, or boss of the world .”

The US ruling class obviously won’t take this act of defiance lying down. The full spectrum of Hybrid War techniques will continue to be relentlessly turbo-charged against China, coupled with rampant Sinophobia, even as it dawns on many Dr. Strangelove quarters that the only way to really “deter” China would be Hot War.

Alas, the Pentagon is overstretched – Syria, Iran, Venezuela, South China Sea. And every analyst knows about China’s cyber warfare capabilities, integrated aerial defense systems, and carrier-killer Dongfeng missiles.

For perspective, it’s always very instructive to compare military expenditure. Last year, China spent $261 billion while the US spent $732 billion (38% of the global total).

Rhetoric, at least for the moment, prevails. The key talking point, incessantly hammered, is always about China as an existential threat to the “free world”, even as the myriad declinations of what was once Obama’s “pivot to Asia” not so subtly accrue the manufacture of consent for a future war.

This report by the Qiao Collective neatly identifies the process:

“We call it Sinophobia, Inc. – an information industrial complex where Western state funding, billion dollar weapons manufacturers, and right-wing think tanks coalesce and operate in sync to flood the media with messages that China is public enemy number one. Armed with state funding and weapons industry sponsors, this handful of influential think tanks are setting the terms of the New Cold War on China. The same media ecosystem that greased the wheels of perpetual war towards disastrous intervention in the Middle East is now busy manufacturing consent for conflict with China.”

That “US military edge”

The demonization of China, infused with blatant racism and rabid anti-communism, is displayed across a full, multicolored palette: Hong Kong, Xinjiang (“concentration camps), Tibet (“forced labor”), Taiwan, “China virus”; the Belt and Road’s “debt trap”.

The trade war runs in parallel – glaring evidence of how “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is beating Western capitalism at its own high-tech game. Thus the sanctioning of over 150 companies that manufacture chips for Huawei and ZTE, or the attempt to ruin TikTok’s business in the US (“But you can’t rob it and turn it into a US baby”, as Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin tweeted).

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/78091/the-wests-informationindustrial-hybrid-warfare.html

At Least 1,400 Virginia Voters Receive Duplicate Mail-in Ballots

At least 1,400 voters in Virginia have received two mail-in ballots, the state Republican Party said, a number later confirmed by officials.

In Fairfax County, 1,000 voters or more received two absentee mail-in ballots.

“Before the supervisors caught it, the people applying the labels applied them to the entire sheet of labels rather than just pulling out the ones that should have been processed,” Fairfax County Registrar Gary Scott told NBC Washington.

Scott’s office didn’t respond to a request for more information, but he said voters would not be able to vote twice.

“Because every ballot that’s returned, we make an entry into their voter record that they have returned a ballot,” Scott said. “So if something else shows up, the ballot has already been returned. We can’t count that ballot.”

Another 400 duplicates were sent out in central Virginia—300 in Richmond and 100 in Henrico County.

Officials there blamed a printer that didn’t have enough toner, amid an unprecedented surge in requests for mail-in ballots.

Epoch Times Photo

Ballot counting machines scene at the Fairfax Government Center in Fairfax, Va., Oct. 25, 2016. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

“We’ve just never seen this volume before,” Mark Coakley, the Henrico County registrar, told the Washington Post.

Coakley’s office didn’t return an inquiry. Richmond election officials didn’t pick up the phone on Saturday.

The Virginia Republican Party said the double ballots were concerning.

“We knew the Democrats many last-minute changes to our election law would make our elections less secure, but no one could imagine voters receiving two ballots,” Rich Anderson, chairman of the state GOP, said in a statement.

“I insist that the Department of Elections immediately provide guidance to ensure that no additional voters received [sic] two ballots. All it takes is a simple check of the number of voter applications being processed before printing labels; once the envelopes are labelled and ready to go, simply count the envelopes before taking them to the post office and make sure the number is the same.”

The Virginia Democratic Party didn’t respond to a request for comment. The Virginia Department of Elections didn’t respond to an inquiry and has not addressed the matter publicly.

Virginia voters can request mail-in ballots without listing a reason. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, signed a law this month that allocated millions to pay for return postage on all absentee ballots sent to voters. Mail-in ballots started being mailed to Virginia voters on Sept. 18.

The snafus took place nearly two months after tens of thousands of voters in Virginia received sketchy mail-in ballot applications that contained inaccurate and potentially misleading information, leading to confused voters.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/at-least-1400-virginia-voters-receive-duplicate-mail-in-ballots_3515593.html

Two Former Republican Congressmen Endorse Biden Over Trump

Two former GOP members of Congress have announced their endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Former Reps. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii) and Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.) wrote in an op-ed that they don’t support President Donald Trump because of his “childish name-calling, crude behavior, and immature narcissism.”

They also cited an anonymously-sourced report in the Atlantic that claimed Trump disparaged members of the military, despite the reporting being widely challenged by numerous on-the-record sources.

“Our nation’s national security is best built by peace through strength. America is stronger when we stand together with the free democracies of the world against dictatorships. We are proud of our service members and humbled by those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the cause of liberty. That is why we were so troubled by reports that Trump called fallen American military heroes ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,'” Djou and Edwards said.

“It disappoints us that he has threatened to withdraw from the Western alliance of NATO and needlessly picks fights with international democracies. Yet Trump professes kinship with dictators such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and even expressed love for North Korean despot Kim Jong Un.”

Charles Djou

Rep. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii) in Washington in a 2010 file photograph. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“Civility is a trait of inner character and self-confidence. That is why we are so disturbed by Trump’s name-calling and childish taunting, his penchant for conspiracy theories, and his embrace of conspiracy websites, all of which reflect a disturbing paranoia. Donald Trump may pretend to be heir to the great Republican tradition that appealed to us both but he is no Republican,” they added, writing later, “Joe Biden is not a perfect man, but he is a man of humble decency.”

Djou left office in 2011. Edwards left office in 1993.

Other Republicans have endorsed Biden, including Cindy McCain, the widow of late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), and Rick Snyder, the former Michigan governor.

Trump, on the other hand, has earned support from some Democrats, including Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), who left the Democratic Party last year, and Georgia Rep. Vernon Jones.

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement sent to The Epoch Times, “Joe Biden has been a failure in the Washington Swamp for a half century, so no one should be surprised when Swamp creatures gather to protect one of their own.”

“President Trump has unprecedented support—over 95 percent—among real Republican voters and is also making strong inroads in Biden’s core Democrat constituencies, like Black Americans, Latinos, and union members,” he added. “President Trump’s record of success for all Americans will carry him to victory in November.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/two-former-republican-congressmen-endorse-biden-over-trump_3515579.html

'She's a F***ing Nut': Bill Maher Rips Trump’s Likely SCOTUS Pick Barrett

Earlier, reports emerged suggesting that US President Donald Trump would be nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett, of the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, to fill the seat of late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

As the US President Donald Trump is expected to announce his pick to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last Friday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 87, "Real Time" host Bill Maher lambasted the reportedly likely Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

During his opening monologue on Friday night, Mahler warned about the dire consequences that may follow her confirmation.

The American comedian and political commentator, who seemed to be struggling to correctly pronounce the potential SCOTUS candidate’s name, tore into Barrett for her religious beliefs, reported Fox News.

"We'll be saying this name a lot I'm sure because she's a f-ing nut… Religion I was right about that one too. I'm sorry, but Amy [Coney] Barrett, Catholic really Catholic. I mean really, really Catholic like speaking in tongues. Like she doesn't believe in condoms, which is what she has in common with Trump because he doesn't either. I remember that from Stormy Daniels."

‘Power Talks’

Maher reiterated that "power begets power" ahead of the November presidential election, saying:

"When Democrats lose elections, they lose the ability to appoint judges. Trump has appointed a quarter of the entire federal bench and unlike his wives that's for life. … Power is a perpetuating cycle, like when Terminators build more robots."

The host proceeded to ridicule the Democrats for "screaming" about the hypocrisy of Republicans scrambling to fill the vacant SCOTUS seat in an election year. He insisted that they “don’t really care” about the inconsistency, as its "all about power".

Mahler added that "the only rule Republicans play by… is the people who win make the rules. Power talks, losers walk."

The comments came as earlier House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., warned Donald Trump that "we have arrows in our quiver that I'm not about to discuss", referencing her party’s ability to prevent Donald Trump hastily filling the vacant SCOTUS seat.

https://sputniknews.com/us/202009261080580570-shes-a-fing-nut-bill-maher-rips-trumps-likely-scotus-pick-barrett/

Should Billionaires Exist?

A mantra popularized by Bernie Sanders and like-minded progressives declares “billionaires should not exist.”

The statement serves as both a declaration of the "immorality" of wealth inequality as well as a justification for steep confiscatory taxes on wealth favored by the likes of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

While on the campaign trail last year, Sanders said, “I don’t think that billionaires should exist,” adding that his tax proposal “does not eliminate billionaires, but it eliminates a lot of the wealth that billionaires have, and I think that’s exactly what we should be doing.”

The goal, according to Sanders, is to “reduce the outrageous and grotesque and immoral level of income and wealth inequality.”

Reducing inequality starts with the state taxing away wealth from those in possession of an unacceptable amount, followed by redistribution to lower-wealth households. The wealthy will have less, but the rest will have more, goes the theory. Inequality reduced.

But as Ludwig von Mises pointed out in Human Action, confiscatory taxes on the wealthy may indeed cause billionaires to be slightly worse off, but the rest of us will be harmed more severely.

“A law that prohibits any individual from accumulating more than ten millions or from making more than one million a year restricts the activities of precisely those entrepreneurs who are most successful in filling the wants of consumers,” he wrote.

Under such confiscatory taxation, Mises continued, “many who are multimillionaires today would live in more modest circumstances. But all those new branches of industry which supply the masses with articles unheard of before would operate, if at all, on a much smaller scale, and their products would be beyond the reach of the common man.”

Why would this be the case? According to Mises, “The greater part of that portion of the higher incomes which is taxed away would have been used for the accumulation of additional capital.”

Greater productivity is made possible only through a greater investment of capital per capita, so when the accumulation of capital is stunted by confiscatory taxes, the amount of goods and services being brought to the market is smaller than it could otherwise be. As goods become more scarce, they become out of reach for average and lower-income households.

Common household items we take for granted, like air conditioning, internet connection, computers, and smartphones would remain luxury goods accessible only to the already rich.

https://mises.org/wire/should-billionaires-exist

Manufactured Pandemic: Testing People for Any Strain of a Coronavirus, Not Specifically for COVID-19

I work in the healthcare field. Here’s the problem, we are testing people for any strain of a Coronavirus. Not specifically for COVID-19. There are no reliable tests for a specific COVID-19 virus. There are no reliable agencies or media outlets for reporting numbers of actual COVID-19 virus cases. This needs to be addressed first and foremost. Every action and reaction to COVID-19 is based on totally flawed data and we simply can not make accurate assessments.

This is why you’re hearing that most people with COVID-19 are showing nothing more than cold/flu like symptoms. That’s because most Coronavirus strains are nothing more than cold/flu like symptoms. The few actual novel Coronavirus cases do have some worse respiratory responses, but still have a very promising recovery rate, especially for those without prior issues.

The ‘gold standard’ in testing for COVID-19 is laboratory isolated/purified coronavirus particles free from any contaminants and particles that look like viruses but are not, that have been proven to be the cause of the syndrome known as COVID-19 and obtained by using proper viral isolation methods and controls (not the PCR that is currently being used or Serology /antibody tests which do not detect virus as such). PCR basically takes a sample of your cells and amplifies any DNA to look for ‘viral sequences’, i.e. bits of non-human DNA that seem to match parts of a known viral genome.

The problem is the test is known not to work.

It uses ‘amplification’ which means taking a very very tiny amount of DNA and growing it exponentially until it can be analyzed. Obviously any minute contaminations in the sample will also be amplified leading to potentially gross errors of discovery.

Additionally, it’s only looking for partial viral sequences, not whole genomes, so identifying a single pathogen is next to impossible even if you ignore the other issues.

The Mickey Mouse test kits being sent out to hospitals, at best, tell analysts you have some viral DNA in your cells. Which most of us do, most of the time. It may tell you the viral sequence is related to a specific type of virus – say the huge family of coronavirus. But that’s all. The idea these kits can isolate a specific virus like COVID-19 is nonsense.

And that’s not even getting into the other issue – viral load.

If you remember the PCR works by amplifying minute amounts of DNA. It therefore is useless at telling you how much virus you may have. And that’s the only question that really matters when it comes to diagnosing illness. Everyone will have a few virus kicking round in their system at any time, and most will not cause illness because their quantities are too small. For a virus to sicken you you need a lot of it, a massive amount of it. But PCR does not test viral load and therefore can’t determine if it is present in sufficient quantities to sicken you.

If you feel sick and get a PCR test any random virus DNA might be identified even if they aren’t at all involved in your sickness which leads to false diagnosis.

And coronavirus are incredibly common. A large percentage of the world human population will have covi DNA in them in small quantities even if they are perfectly well or sick with some other pathogen.

Do you see where this is going yet? If you want to create a totally false panic about a totally false pandemic – pick a coronavirus.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/manufactured-pandemic-testing-people-any-strain-coronavirus-not-specifically-covid-19/5707781

Australia Ill-Equipped to Face the Challenges of the Emerging New World Order

The American writer Mark Twain once observed that there were three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics. In the 21st century that list might usefully be added to and include lies of omission. The modern mainstream media do not so much write and broadcast actual lies, although it is not difficult to detect actual examples, as lie by omission.

There are multiple examples of this failing, but a few illustrations will suffice to make the point. The first is the charmed life that the State of Israel enjoys in the local media, in all its forms. There are multiple illustrations of this. In 1968 Israel fought a brief war with its neighbours, including Syria, in the course of which Israel seized Syrian territory in the Golan Heights.

They have been there ever since. This is in violation of multiple facets of international law, including the fundamental principle that foreign land seized in the course of conflict may not be retained when that conflict is concluded. In the case of the Syrian Golan Heights not only has that law been violated, but the United Nations has also passed multiple resolutions demanding that Israel return the occupied land to its rightful owners. The Israelis have simply ignored those resolutions.

The particular point of relevance to Australia, however, is that in the multiple United Nations General Assembly resolutions condemning various Israeli transgressions of international law, Australia is one of a literal handful of countries that voted against each and every such resolution. During the term of the last Labor government Australia abstained on those votes, but the return of the Liberal-National coalition saw a return to the small group of those voting “No”.

That is sufficient cause for concern. What compounds the issue, however, is that the Australian media is almost totally silent on this Australian isolation from the overwhelming majority of United Nations members. This silence extends to a similar almost complete absence of mainstream reports on the, again totally illegal, Israeli bombing of Syrian government targets.

The courtesy of silence is not confined to Israel in the Middle East. In January of this year the Iraqi government passed a resolution demanding the removal of all (unwanted) foreign troops. This was explicitly aimed at the United States and its allies, including Australia, who had occupied the country since the initial invasion in 2003. The Iraqi resolution was barely reported; the ignoring of it by the Australians even less reported.

It needs to be recalled that the original invasion was justified in terms of Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” which Saddam Hussein was going to unleash on the world, or more specifically, the United States’ allies in the region. The allegation was a complete lie. The invasion was also based on a further series of lies long since refuted, but the United States and Australia are still there.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/australia-ill-equipped-face-challenges-emerging-new-world-order/5724764

Woman who 'bit into strawberry containing needle' had to go to hospital in second South Australian incident this week

Queensland strawberries are at the centre of an investigation after fruits were allegedly found contaminated with needles in the second of two incidents in South Australia in two days.

Shopper Erin Gelken says she pricked her tongue when she bit into a strawberry bought at Aldi in Port Pirie.

Partner Mitchell Thomas said they were left "shaken up" and his partner was forced to go to hospital for tetanus injections and blood tests.

"(She) bit the first one first one was all good second one and the needle pricked her tongue unfortunately," Mr Thomas told 9News.

"It's absolutely abhorrent, it's not good for the industry, these are industry killers."

The couple reported the find to police, who they say took the berries.

The most recent case of contamination was found inside a Twin View Berries punnet of strawberries, which are grown and packed in Queensland.

But at this stage of the investigation, it's unknown exactly when and where the sabotage happened.

Aldi didn't want to comment.

As reported by 9News, a boy aged 11 also found pins in strawberries near Adelaide this week.

He was chopping up the fruit when he made the discovery, mother Anne Lentakis, said.

She said she "did a double take" and shared her worrying find on social media to warn others.

"We cut four strawberries out of the punnet and three of them had pins in there," she said.

Those berries were bought from Romeo's Foodland in Stirling, near Adelaide, which is working with police, who are investigating.

Two years ago there was a nationwide scare when needles were found in strawberries, which originated from farms across Queensland.

Deliberately contaminating food carries a jail sentence.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/needles-pins-found-in-strawberries-adelaide-sunshine-coast-police/0ac39b41-45ea-431e-9dd5-e8c889c3e35f