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Trump Plans to Bring Back Firing Squads, Group Executions if He Retakes White House

“WHAT DO YOU think of firing squads?”

That’s the question Donald Trump repeatedly asked some close associates in the run-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, three people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone.

It’s not an idle inquiry: The former president, if re-elected, is still committed to expanding the use of the federal death penalty and bringing back banned methods of execution, the sources say. He has even, one of the sources recounts, mused about televising footage of executions, including showing condemned prisoners in the final moments of their lives.

Specifically, Trump has talked about bringing back death by firing squad, by hanging, and, according to two of the sources, possibly even by guillotine. He has also, sources say, discussed group executions. Trump has floated these ideas while discussing planned campaign rhetoric and policy desires, as well as his disdain for President Biden’s approach to crime.

In at least one instance late last year, according to the third source, who has direct knowledge of the matter, Trump privately mused about the possibility of creating a flashy, government-backed video-ad campaign that would accompany a federal revival of these execution methods. In Trump’s vision, these videos would include footage from these new executions, if not from the exact moments of death. “The [former] president believes this would help put the fear of God into violent criminals,” this source says. “He wanted to do some of these [things] when he was in office, but for whatever reasons didn’t have the chance.”

A Trump spokesman denies Trump had mused about a video-ad campaign. “More ridiculous and fake news from idiots who have no idea what they’re talking about,” the spokesman writes in an email. “Either these people are fabricating lies out of thin air, or Rolling Stone is allowing themselves to be duped by these morons.”

Trump’s enthusiasm for grisly video campaigns has been documented before, including in an anecdote from a former aide that had the then-president demanding footage of “people dying in a ditch” and “bodies stacked on top of bodies” so that his administration could “scare kids so much that they will never touch a single drug in their entire life.”

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White House: Downed UFOs Are Not Aliens

The White House spent the afternoon telling reporters that they shouldn’t be worrying about an alien invasion.

Yes, really.

In a truly bizarre turn of events, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressed the downing of three unidentified objects in the past 48 hours by U.S. jets, using the phrase “There is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.”

Jean-Pierre added that she “wanted to make sure the American people knew that, all of you knew that, and it is important to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.”

When a reporter asked “would you tell us?” if it was aliens, she responded “I’m not — I love E.T. the movie, but I’m just going to leave it there. With all seriousness, I know there are a lot of questions about the flying objects.”

The Press Secretary then handed over to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby who said “I don’t think the American people need to worry about aliens, with respect to these crafts. Period. I don’t think anything else needs to be said there.”

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How Spin and Lies Fuel a Bloody War of Attrition in Ukraine

In a recent column, military analyst William Astore wrote, “[Congressman] George Santos is a symptom of a much larger disease: a lack of honor, a lack of shame, in America. Honor, truth, integrity, simply don’t seem to matter, or matter much, in America today… But how do you have a democracy where there is no truth?”

Astore went on to compare America’s political and military leaders to the disgraced Congressman Santos. “U.S. military leaders appeared before Congress to testify the Iraq War was being won,” Astore wrote. “They appeared before Congress to testify the Afghan War was being won. They talked of “progress,” of corners being turned, of Iraqi and Afghan forces being successfully trained and ready to assume their duties as US forces withdrew. As events showed, it was all spin. All lies.”

Now America is at war again, in Ukraine, and the spin continues. This war involves Russia, Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies. No party to this conflict has leveled with its own people to honestly explain what it is fighting for, what it really hopes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it. All sides claim to be fighting for noble causes and insist that it is the other side that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution. They are all manipulating and lying, and compliant media (on all sides) trumpet their lies.

It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. But spinning and lying has real-world impacts in a war in which hundreds of thousands of real people are fighting and dying, while their homes, on both sides of the front lines, are reduced to rubble by hundreds of thousands of howitzer shells.

Yves Smith, the editor of Naked Capitalism, explored this insidious linkage between the information war and the real one in an article titled, “What if Russia won the Ukraine War, but the Western press didn’t notice?” He observed that Ukraine’s total dependence on the supply of weapons and money from its Western allies has given a life of its own to a triumphalist narrative that Ukraine is defeating Russia, and will keep scoring victories as long as the West keeps sending it more money and increasingly powerful and deadly weapons.

But the need to keep recreating the illusion that Ukraine is winning by hyping limited gains on the battlefield has forced Ukraine to keep sacrificing its forces in extremely bloody battles, like its counteroffensive around Kherson and the Russian sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. Lt. Col. Alexander Vershinin, a retired US tank commander, wrote on Harvard’s Russia Matters website, “In some ways, Ukraine has no choice but to launch attacks no matter the human and material cost.”

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The Pat Tillman Story Was Hijacked During the Super Bowl

Advocates of peace, truth, and basic human decency on Sunday excoriated the National Football League’s “whitewashing” of former Arizona Cardinal and Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan by so-called “friendly fire” and the military’s subsequent cover-up – critical details omitted from a glowingly patriotic Super Bowl salute.

As a group of four Pat Tillman Foundation scholars chosen as honorary coin-toss captains at Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona were introduced via a video segment narrated by actor Kevin Costner, viewers were told how Tillman “gave up his NFL career to join the Army Rangers and ultimately lost his life in the line of duty.”

The video did not say how Tillman died, what he thought about the Iraq war, or how the military lied to his family and the nation about his death. This outraged many viewers.

“Obviously the army killing Pat Tillman and covering it up afterwards is the worst thing the U.S. military did to him, but the years they’ve spent rolling out his portrait backed by some inspirational music as a recruiting tool is a surprisingly close second,” tweeted progressive writer Jay Willis.

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A Primer on Medical Gaslighting

One of the classic ways an abuser controls their prey is to manipulate the environment so that the abused individual begins doubting their own observations regardless of what is occurring in front of them.

In the 1944 movie, Gaslight, this was accomplished by the villainous husband (played by Charles Boyer) adjusting the intake to gas-powered lights (causing them to flicker) and simultaneously denying that any change was occurring to his mentally abused wife (played by Ingrid Bergman). The term gaslighting originated from this classic movie.

In modern times, this is accomplished by having medical providers all echo the same message that a patient’s injury has nothing to do with the pharmaceutical (or other medical procedure in question). Most commonly, it instead is argued that the symptoms they are experiencing are due to pre-existing psychiatric issues the patient has (e.g., anxiety), which are treated with medications that often create additional issues.

Before we go any further, I want to emphasize just how miserable this is to go through as an injured patient. Imagine what it would be like if (due to the medical injury) the world you had previously known collapsed around you and every single person you trusted (including your friends and family who defer to the judgment of “experts”) told you that it was all in your head and you just needed psychiatric help. It’s a perfect recipe for going insane.

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Snowden Says UFO Hysteria is “Engineered” Distraction From Nord Stream Pipeline Bombshell

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says the hysteria over UFOs being shot down over America and Canada is a distraction from Seymour Hersh’s story about the U.S. being responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.

Over the past week, there have been at least four instances of U.S. fighter jets destroying unidentified flying objects, in one case over Alaska, an object that had no means of propulsion but was spotted flying at 40,000 feet and pilots said interfered with the sensors of their aircraft.

Yesterday, the White House denied that the objects were extraterrestrial in nature, although the glib dismissal if anything only continued to feed into speculation online that ET had paid a flying visit.

In reality, as most people have pointed out, the shootdowns are likely a show of force to save the Biden administration’s blushes from questions as to why the Chinese spy balloon was allowed to monitor America in the first place.

According to Edward Snowden, the UFO flap is also a misdirection to wipe the infinitely more awkward Seymour Hersh story from the headlines.

Snowden tweeted that the hysteria was an “engineered” bait and switch to prevent the media from covering the pipeline explosion revelations.

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Mystery surrounds objects shot down by US military

The US military is unsure what three flying objects it shot out of the skies over North America were – and how they were able to stay aloft.

President Joe Biden ordered another object – the fourth in total this month – to be downed on Sunday.

As it was travelling at 20,000ft (6,100m), it could have interfered with commercial air traffic, the US said.

A military commander said it could be a “gaseous type of balloon” or “some type of a propulsion system”.

He added he could not rule out that the objects were extra-terrestrials.

The latest object – shot down over Lake Huron in Michigan near the Canadian border – has been described by defence officials as an unmanned “octagonal structure” with strings attached to it.

It was downed by a missile fired from an F-16 fighter jet at 14:42 local time (19:42 GMT).

The incident raises further questions about the spate of high-altitude objects that have been shot down over North America this month.

US Northern Command Commander General Glen VanHerck said that there was no indication of any threat.

“I’m not going to categorise them as balloons. We’re calling them objects for a reason,” he said.

“What we are seeing is very, very small objects that produce a very, very low radar cross-section,” he added.

Speculation as to what the objects may be has intensified in recent days.

“I will let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out,” Gen VanHerck said when asked if it was possible the objects are aliens or extra-terrestrials.

“I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”

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DAMAR HAMLIN FANS THINK ‘NEW HAND TATTOO’ TIES INTO ‘CLONE’ CONSPIRACY THEORY

Damar Hamlin fans think his ‘new hand tattoo’ ties into a ‘clone’ conspiracy. The ridiculous theories first circulated around the time of his cardiac arrest in early January.

The NFL Honors took place on Thursday evening in Phoenix, Arizona. The annual awards ceremony acknowledges standout achievements and accomplishments from the recent NFL season.

A whole host of NFL stars were in attendance at the event, which saw Patrick Mahomes awarded NFL MVP. However, the most memorable moment of the night came when Damar Hamlin accepted the Alan Page Community Award.

The Bills safety suffered an on-field cardiac arrest against the Cincinnati Bengals on 2 January. He was listed in a critical condition for over a week before he thankfully recovered.

One of the more bizarre things to emerge from Hamlin’s incident was the theory that he died on the field and was replaced by a clone or body double.

As reported by The Independent, conspiracy theorists at the time hypothesised that the FBI and NFL quickly dispatched Hamlin’s body to Cincinnati Medical Centre to hide his death, replacing him with someone else.

Needless to say the theory is completely baseless. However, the theories have once again emerged following the appearance of Damar Hamlin’s ‘new hand tattoo’.

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USA Today: “Little by Little” Russia is Winning Key Ground War

USA Today raised some eyebrows when it deviated from the usual narrative by acknowledging “little by little” Russia is winning the ground war in a pivotal area of Ukraine, citing a quote given by a pro-Ukraine spokeswoman.

The admission was in relation to the battle for the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

Russia has been fighting fiercely to take back the city since last summer, and now appears to be pouring more manpower into the region to finish the job.

“They have been trying to take the city since July,” Iryna Rybakova, press officer for Ukraine’s 93rd Brigade, told BBC. “Little by little they are winning now. They have more resources, so if they play the long game they will win. I can’t say how long it will take.”

Moscow has established control of both main roads into the city, with only one back route left open, making it increasingly difficult to get supplies to Ukraine troops.

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