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Paul Pelosi exercises up to $5 million in Google call options ahead of stock ban bill unveiling

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, exercised call options on $1 million to $5 million worth of stock for Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, as legislation was being drafted to ban Capitol Hill lawmakers and immediate family members from purchasing individual stocks, according to House document dated Oct. 14.

The transaction date of the House’s Periodic Transaction Report is Sept. 16. At that time, several different stock ban bills had been proposed in the House. The House Democratic leadership’s version was rolled out about one week after Pelosi, a wealth investor, exercised his call options.

A call option is a financial contract that gives the buyer the option, but not the obligation, to buy a stock, bond, commodity or other asset.

Speaker Pelosi ultimately did not put the stock ban legislation up for a vote before the House recess began. 

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Fighting The “Psyopcracy”

Cathy Vogan, the executive producer of Consortium News‘ webcast CN Live!, recently coined a new term to describe rule by psyops, or psychological operations: psyopcracy.   According to Wikipedia:

“Psychological operations (PSYOP) are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.

The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce behavior perceived to be favorable to U.S. objectives.”

William Casey, C.I.A. director under Ronald Reagan, said: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Thus the American people are continuously subject to a number of psychological operations otherwise known as “the news.”

U.S. intelligence officials feed journalists disinformation to create a false narrative that is intended to mislead the public and cover-up what is actually taking place. The constant reinforcement of these lies becomes entrenched in the public mind and after time comes to be accepted as unquestionable truth.

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A Dem-Linked Dark Money Network Is Quietly Funding The ‘Misinformation’ Research Industry

Several funds managed by Arabella Advisors, a Democrat-linked consultant firm, are quietly bankrolling research by universities and non-profits into how online “misinformation” and “disinformation” spreads, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of the networks’ grants.

Arabella Advisors, run by former Bill Clinton official Eric Kessler, manages certain administrative, legal and philanthropic functions of several non-profits including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, North Fund and New Venture Fund, which donate to a variety of left-leaning groups, causes and Democratic candidates, according to tax filings and statements on the funds’ and Arabella’s websites. Several funds within the network are also sponsoring research into the effects of, and how best to mitigate, misinformation and disinformation, according to a DCNF review of public grants.

Many of the Arabella-funded research projects cite conservatives predominantly as purveyors of misinformation, with several projects recommending solutions to mitigate the spread of misinformation, including censorship.

The New Venture Fund sponsored a project in March called “The True Costs of Misinformation” at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, led by the center’s research director Joan Donovan, that sought to study the impacts of online misinformation, particularly on “vulnerable communities,” according to the project’s description. The project included a workshop featuring several panels on different topics related to the alleged impacts of misinformation.

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Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok’s Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted

Accusations of Chinese tyranny are often based on demands from Beijing that Google and Facebook comply with their censorship orders as a condition for remaining in China. Reports over the years suggested that these firms typically comply: Google was building a censored search engine suited to Chinese demands; The New York Times has claimed Facebook developed a censorship app as its entrance requirement to the Chinese market, and Vox accused Apple of succumbing to Chinese censorship demands by banning an app from its store that had been used by protesters in Hong Kong demanding liberation from control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

But now the tables appeared to be turning when it comes to U.S. censorship demands and TikTok. Threats to ban or severely limit the Chinese-owned-and-controlled platform from the U.S. have been hovering over TikTok’s head through both the Trump and Biden years. The most common justification offered for the threat is that TikTok’s presence in the U.S. empowers China to propagandize Americans, a concern that escalated along with the platform’s massive explosion among Americans. Since early 2021, TikTok has been the most-downloaded app both worldwide and in the U.S. In August, Pew Research conducted a “survey of American teenagers ages 13 to 17” and found that “TikTok has rocketed in popularity since its North American debut several years ago and now is a top social media platform for teens among the platforms covered in this survey.”

Concerns over China’s ability to manipulate U.S. public opinion were based on claims that China was banning content on TikTok that was contrary to Beijing’s interests. Western media outlets were specifically alleging that the Chinese government itself was censoring TikTok to ban any content that the CCP regarded as threatening to its national security and internal order. “TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong,” warned The Guardian in late 2019.

Rather than ban TikTok from the U.S., the U.S. Security State is now doing exactly that which China does to U.S. tech companies: namely, requiring that, as a condition to maintaining access to the American market, TikTok must now censor content that undermines what these agencies view as American national security interests. TikTok, desperate not to lose access to hundreds of millions of Americans, has been making a series of significant concessions to appease the Pentagon, CIA and FBI, the agencies most opposed to deals to allow TikTok to stay in the U.S.

Among those concessions is that TikTok is now outsourcing what the U.S. Government calls “content moderation” — a pleasant-sounding euphemism for political censorship — to groups controlled by the U.S. Government:

TikTok has already unveiled several measures aimed at appeasing the U.S. government, including an agreement for Oracle Corp to store the data of the app’s users in the United States and a United States Data Security (USDS) division to oversee data protection and content moderation decisions. It has spent $1.5 billion on hiring and reorganization costs to build up that unit, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Perhaps one might view as reasonable U.S. concerns that China can weaponize TikTok to propagandize Americans and destabilize the U.S. through its power to censor the platform. Note, however, that this is precisely the same concern that countries like China, Iran and Russia all invoke to justify censorship compliance as a condition for U.S. internet companies to remain active in their country. Those countries fear that American tech companies — whose close partnership with U.S. security agencies has long been well-documented — will be used to propagandize and destabilize their populations and countries exactly the way that the U.S. Security State is apparently concerned that China can do to the U.S. via TikTok.

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Tacoma bible college linked to alleged ‘cult’ loses GI Bill approval after FBI raid

A Tacoma seminary program associated with a chain of churches raided by the FBI earlier this year has lost approval to receive federal Veterans Affairs education funds. Former members have described the chain as a cult that defrauds soldiers.

In late June, the FBI served search warrants at several House of Prayer Christian Church locations near military bases, mostly in the Southeast. A former church minister told The News Tribune the Tacoma location on South 54th Street was constructed in 2004 and targeted soldiers at nearby Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

A JBLM spokesperson told The News Tribune this summer the base was aware of the House of Prayer and referred questions to federal law enforcement. The FBI’s Seattle field office confirmed “court-authorized law enforcement activity” at the church but declined to provide additional details.

A spokesperson for the House of Prayer declined to comment on the investigation.

Current and former members have accused the House of Prayer of draining veterans’ GI Bill funds by perpetually enrolling them in bogus seminary classes and pressuring them to gain 100% VA disability then donate their benefits, according to an August 2020 report sent to the VA by the legal assistance nonprofit Veterans Education Success. In the report, members also accused the church of using their personal information and forging signatures to apply for VA home loans without their knowledge.

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2022 Was a Year of Bad, Botched Death Row Executions

The good news for opponents of the death penalty is that its use in the United States continued to decline in 2022. The bad news is that many of the executions that did take place appear to have been botched by officials who subjected prisoners to cruel torment.

Those are the main takeaways from the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) annual year-end report. It shows that American states are increasingly turning away from executions, but that in those states where capital punishment still happens, there’s been a turn toward cruelty and secrecy in the relevant government agencies.

Six states—Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas, Missouri, Arizona, and Mississippi—executed 18 people in 2022. That’s an increase over the 11 people executed in 2021, but both numbers are low relative to the last decade. For eight consecutive years, states have performed fewer than 30 executions annually and issued fewer than 50 new death penalty sentences annually. Federal executions were halted entirely when President Joe Biden took office.

The downturn may not be permanent. Oklahoma halted executions in 2015 temporarily after a series of problems with the drugs that led to one man groaning and struggling as the drugs took hold in 2014 and a case in 2015 where they received the wrong drug entirely. In 2020, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Oklahoma would restart executions using those very same drugs. In 2021, Oklahoma executed its first two inmates in years. During the first of those executions, John Marion Grant reportedly convulsed and vomited before he died. In 2022, Oklahoma executed five inmates, making the state responsible for nearly a third of all executions.

And if the state gets its way, there will be many more to come in 2023. In June, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor started planning 25 executions over the next few years. According to DPIC, the state has 11 planned for next year and 10 in 2024.

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Could a zombie virus frozen in the remains of a woolly mammoth leak from a Russian lab and spark a new pandemic? Scientists aim to extract cellular material containing the viruses that killed Siberian beasts for testing

The majestic creature had lain silently in the permafrost for more than a million years. But all it took was a curious scientist, tinkering with its long-dead body, to unleash a terrible new pandemic on the world.

No, it’s not the plot of a woolly mammoth sequel to Jurassic Park, nor another theory on the origins of Covid-19 — though the result of this scientific investigation could be horribly similar.

It’s the story of how, right now, Russian researchers are unearthing the bodies of long-dead mammals in an attempt to ‘reawaken’ Stone Age viruses.

Such viruses are thought to have remained dormant for millennia in the frozen remains of mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and other extinct species in northeast Siberia.

Like the virus that caused Covid-19, these prehistoric ‘paleoviruses’ are unfamiliar to the human body and, were they ever to find their way across the species barrier, catastrophe could follow. We would, after all, have no natural defence.

The woolly mammoths that roamed the Siberian steppes — until the last one died some 10,000 years ago — were fearsome creatures. The size of an elephant, they had sharp tusks that could spear a human unwise enough to get near.

For biologists, they seem to hold an enduring fascination. Last year, a project called Colossal was launched, aiming to tweak the genetic code of the mammoth’s closest living relative, the Asian elephant, to create a hybrid animal that could survive in the Arctic Circle.

This latest project — carried out by Russia’s State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector — aims to extract cellular material containing the viruses that killed these frozen beasts, and take it back to the lab for experimentation.

What could possibly go wrong? To conjure up the all-too-real nightmare scenario, you only have to hear the history of Vector.

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NFL Pro Game gets full power as Tennessee residents suffer freezing temps and rolling blackouts

Residents in Tennessee were furious at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on Sunday as the state suffered in a deep freeze and people were left cold on Christmas Day replete with rolling blackouts while the NFL’s Titans game against Houston was granted full power usage.

The temperature in Nashville on Sunday ranged from 16 to 30 degrees. The cold air put a significant strain on the TVA’s power grid and in response, the power authority implemented rolling blackouts in Memphis and Nashville. The Nashville Electric System (NES) also mandated reductions in power consumption just when it was needed most to keep residents warm. Over a million residents were told to limit the power they used to stay warm in freezing temps while millionaires cavorted on a football field for a billion-dollar enterprise.

As if the rolling blackouts and mandated limits weren’t bad enough, there were periods where there was no power at all during the below-freezing winter day.

The NFL allegedly got preferential treatment on power usage and was allowed to fully tap into mega-wattage for the game at Nissan Stadium. While a million residents shivered in their homes, 66,634 attendees luxuriated in buying tickets to a football game.

“I’ve been informed that TVA’s unilateral rolling blackouts will continue,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper said after requesting that the game be postponed. “All non-essential businesses should reduce power usage. I’ve asked the Titans to postpone their noon game in solidarity with our neighbors. TVA needs to invest in infrastructure to withstand extreme temps.”

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America’s ‘neediest’ cities ranked, from poverty to adequate plumbing

Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Los Angeles all rank among the nation’s 10 “neediest” cities, according to an analysis by the personal finance website WalletHub.

The report ranked 182 cities on 28 economic indicators, including child poverty, food insecurity and inadequate kitchens.

Detroit ranked as the neediest metropolis. One Detroit renter in five faced eviction this year, according to a report in The Detroit News.

Brownsville, Texas, ranked second. One-quarter of the city’s population lives in poverty, twice the national average, according to a recent account in 24/7 Wall St. 

Cleveland ranks third. Cleveland’s poverty rate is 29 percent, according to a report from WEWS-TV, making it the nation’s second-poorest large city, behind Detroit.

Ranking fourth through sixth were Gulfport, Miss.; Fresno, Calif.; and Laredo, Texas.

Philadelphia ranked seventh. The City of Brotherly Love has logged 500 homicides in 2022, according to WTXF-TV.

New Orleans ranked eighth. The city may have the nation’s highest murder rate, with more than 250 homicides this year, according to a report in nola.com.

Los Angeles, for all its wealth, came in at ninth on the list of needy cities. More than 40,000 Angelenos live on the streets, according to a recent report in The Nation.

The nation’s least needy city, by WalletHub’s calculus, is the D.C suburb of Columbia, Maryland, a tony bedroom community in Howard County.

Other cities at the desirable bottom end of the list include Bismarck, the North Dakota capital; Overland Park, the Kansas City suburb; Pearl City, part of greater Honolulu; South Burlington, Vt., home to Ben & Jerry’s; and Irvine, Calif., across the Orange Curtain from L.A.

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2022’s Danger Signs: From Totalitarian Paranoia to Authoritarian Madness

The danger signs were everywhere in 2022.

With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, we were reminded that in the eyes of the government and its corporate accomplices, “we the people” possess no rights except for that which the Deep State grants on an as-needed basis.

Totalitarian paranoia spiked. What we have been saddled with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it has conspired to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority. In a Machiavellian attempt to expand its powers, the government unleashed all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace in order to justify its demands for additional powers to protect “we the people” from emerging threats, whether legitimate, manufactured or overblown.

The state of our nation suffered. The nation remained politically polarized, controlled by forces beyond the purview of the average American, and rapidly moving the nation away from its freedom foundation. The combined blowback from a contentious presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in Americans being subjected to egregious civil liberties violations, invasive surveillance, martial law, lockdowns, political correctness, erosions of free speech, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, and the criminalization of lawful activities.

Thought crimes became a target for punishment. For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous. In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly. In 2022, those who criticized the government—whether that criticism manifested itself in word, deed or thought—were flagged as dangerous alongside consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information.”

Speech was muzzled. Those who want to monitor, muzzle, catalogue and censor speech continued to push for social media monitoring, censorship of flagged content that could be construed as dangerous or hateful, and limitations on free speech activities, particularly online. Of course, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act. If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

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