I call it corruption…
Tag: corruption
The Fact That Americans Think Biden Has Changed Things Shows How Narrative Rules Our World
Nothing of significance has changed since Trump left office, apart from the narratives about how much things have changed.
The wars are still going. Washington is still the hub of an oligarchic globe-spanning empire. Americans are still being impoverished and propagandized into political impotence by an unfathomably wealthy plutocracy. Sanctions are still squeezing people to death in Venezuela, Syria, Iran and North Korea. The world’s worst mass atrocity is still continuing in Yemen. The kids are still in cages. Authoritarian creep continues to metastasize. All the old abuses roll on completely uninterrupted, along the same trajectories they were on before.
If you were to take the entire US-centralized power structure and assess its overall behavior as a whole, you would find that the actual behavioral changes amount to the tiniest fraction of a single percentile of the total. If you’d just been analyzing the raw data without looking at the news stories, you’d see that the money, troops, weapons and resources have continued to move in more or less the same ways after January 20th as they were moving before.
What has changed is the narratives, the stories that Americans are being fed by those who are responsible for controlling the way people think, act, organize, and vote. If you are a Democrat, you have been hearing that the country is now a thousand percent better without the Orange Menace in charge. If you are a Republican, you’ve been hearing that it’s a thousand percent worse. In reality, in terms of the overall operation of the empire both domestically and internationally, hardly anything of significance has changed apart from the narrative overlay.
James A. Garfield on banks…
Harvard closes evolution center after finding connections to Jeffrey Epstein
Harvard University’s program for evolutionary dynamics is to close after an inquiry into ties between its director, Martin Nowak, and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
According to the university, the mathematics and biology professor violated several university policies through his contacts with Epstein, including giving the disgraced wealthy financier an office on campus which he visited more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018.
Epstein, 66, was charged with sex trafficking in 2019, shortly before he was found dead in his cell in the Metropolitan correctional center in New York. Epstein had faced an indictment accusing him of running a sex-trafficking ring of underage girls, some as young as 14.
Nowak will be barred from starting new research or advising students for at least two years, according to the university. The sanctions come almost a year after Novak was suspended following a university review that found he had extensive, previously unreported contact with Epstein.
The review of Nowak’s connections to Epstein found that the professor had facilitated Epstein’s efforts to use ties to the prestigious university Harvard as a tool to rehabilitate his image.
The review also found that Nowak devoted a page to Epstein on the center’s website that included links to the financier’s websites. The university received $9.1m in gifts from Epstein, including a donation of $6.5m to the evolutionary dynamics faculty in 2006.
Conflict of interest…
Hugo Boss Vows to Buy Slave Cotton in Chinese After Denying Purchases in English
German fashion house Hugo Boss assured its Chinese buyers on Thursday that it will continue to “purchase and support” Xinjiang cotton, a product of Chinese state-supported slave labor by Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities, extensive reporting has revealed.
“Xinjiang’s long-stapled cotton is one of the best in the world. We believe top-quality raw materials will definitely show its value [sic]. We will continue to purchase and support Xinjiang cotton,” a verified Hugo Boss account wrote in a statement posted to the Chinese social media platform Weibo on March 25.
A Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) reporter reached out to Hugo Boss on Thursday for comment on its Weibo statement supporting Xinjiang cotton and received a contradictory response.
“[I]n an emailed response to HKFP, the brand linked to a statement on its website saying it has never used Xinjiang cotton: ‘So far, HUGO BOSS has not procured any goods originating in the Xinjiang region from direct suppliers,’” the luxury fashion house wrote on its official Western website.
“Hugo Boss did not respond to HKFP’s questions as to whether it is sending different messages to Chinese and Western customers,” the newspaper noted.
Biden’s Press Conference ‘Cheat Sheet’ Contained Names, Photos Of Which Reporters To Call On
Though Biden’s use of cue cards to screen questions and speak about policy is unprecedented for a commander-in-chief, supporters have argued that the move makes sense given Biden’s past history of gaffes, such as confusing his wife for his sister and forgetting the name of his Secretary of Defense, former Raytheon board member Lloyd Austin.
Despite his helpful cue cards, Biden still managed to make numerous gaffes during Thursday’s press conference.
In one instance, Biden promised to “say something outrageous” but then appeared to entirely forget what he was talking about and moved on:
During Joe Biden’s long-awaited first press conference since taking office, the President said “I’m going to say something outrageous,” then promptly forgot what he was going to say, in what could be described as the newest addition to his long list of embarrassing gaffes.
“I’m going to say something outrageous,” said Biden. “I have never been particularly poor at calculating how to get things done in the United States Senate. So, the best way to get something done, if you, if you hold near and dear to you that you uh, um, like to be able to uh, anyway,” muttered Biden.
“We’re going to get a lot done,” said the President.
Biden’s cue cards came in handy when he was asked a question about North Korea, which he responded to byreading a prepared response off of his cheat sheet.
US Military Ordered “Clandestine Burning” of Toxic Chemicals in Poor Neighborhoods
New research conducted by environmental justice scholars at Vermont’s Bennington College reveals that between 2016 and 2020, the U.S. military oversaw the “clandestine burning” of more than 20 million pounds of Aqueous Fire Fighting Foam in low-income communities around the country—even though there is no evidence that incineration destroys the toxic “forever chemicals” that make up the foam and are linked to a range of cancers, developmental disorders, immune dysfunction, and infertility.
“In defiance of common sense and environmental expertise, the Department of Defense (DOD) has enlisted poor communities across the U.S. as unwilling test subjects in its toxic experiment with burning AFFF,” David Bond, associate director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College, said (pdf) in a statement earlier this week.
Noting that scientists, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and even Pentagon officials have warned that “burning AFFF is an unproven method and dangerous mix that threatens the health of millions of Americans,” Bond characterized the decision of the military to dump huge stockpiles of AFFF and AFFF wastewater into “a handful of habitually negligent incinerators” as a “harebrained” operation as well as a manifestation of environmental injustice.
Oh, really?
After Nine Weeks Without Press Conference, Biden Relies On Pre-Selected List Of Reporters At First One
While some presidents made a point to use a preferred press list in the past, Biden only fielded questions from 10 of the 25 reporters located in the White House’s East Room, many of whom injected their own agendas, bias, and narratives into their leading questions about immigration, the filibuster, and foreign policy.
One taxpayer-funded journalist at PBS asked if the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border is because Biden is so “moral” and “decent.”
“You’ve said over and over again, that immigrants shouldn’t come to this country right now, this isn’t the time to come. That message is not being received,” Yamiche Alcindor said. “Instead the perception of you, that got you elected as a moral, decent man, is the reason why a lot of immigrants are coming to this country and trusting you with unaccompanied minors.”
Another reporter asked Biden if former President Barack Obama’s suggestion that the filibuster is “a relic of the Jim Crow era” is accurate, a sentiment that he readily agreed is true.
Even though multiple reporters were granted access to the indoor presser, certain White House correspondents such as Fox News’s Peter Doocy, who has a history of pressing White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to answer his questions instead of giving him the runaround, were overlooked and never called on by the president.
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