Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

I think it will never be peaceful again.

8. What caused the fires in WTC 7?

Debris from the collapse of WTC 1, which was 370 feet to the south, ignited fires on at least 10 floors in the building at its south and west faces. However, only the fires on some of the lower floors—7 through 9 and 11 through 13—burned out of control. These lower-floor fires—which spread and grew because the water supply to the automatic sprinkler system for these floors had failed—were similar to building fires experienced in other tall buildings. The primary and backup water supply to the sprinkler systems for the lower floors relied on the city's water supply, whose lines were damaged by the collapse of WTC 1 and WTC 2. These uncontrolled lower-floor fires eventually spread to the northeast part of WTC 7, where the building's collapse began.

The fact that Northwoods WAS devised, Kennedy was horrified and began making speeches about the evils of our spy networks

...and had his head blown off in public—completely a nothingburger to you?

As the North Tower collapsed, considerable amounts of debris smashed into the south face of WTC 7, effectively scooping out 25% of the building from the ground to the tenth floor, thus massively weakening the building’s structural integrity. Multiple fires also started as a result of the collapse. One, on the fifth floor, raged for seven solid hours. It was only a matter of time before the structural damage caused by the North Tower’s collapse added to steel weakened by hours and hours of fire brought the building down. That the building’s collapse looked suspiciously like a controlled demolition can be explained by the fact that with the middle of the building severely compromised, first the east and then the west sides of the building collapsed in on themselves before pancaking to the ground, thus giving off the impression of a controlled demolition of the type often seen on the news and YouTube. source

“No, I don’t. This is a gut feeling.”

That’s Tom Homan, the man Trump appointed as border czar, admitting to Fox News anchor Sandra Smith that he doesn’t actually know if the Las Vegas cyber truck explosion this week had a "terrorist connection." The incident has, at this point, been ruled a suicide by authorities.

"You said earlier, and you just referenced again, a terrorist connection there in Las Vegas. The police chief said they haven't identified that, but to your point, you said you believed, as this investigation carries out in Las Vegas that … they will find a connection. Do you have any other information, or have you been privy to any other information other than what we just directly heard from the police there in Las Vegas?" Smith asked.

That led to Homan admitting he, in fact, does not have any real information beyond what his gut tells him.

Homan’s just following Trump’s lead. In the wake of another holiday attack in New Orleans, Trump blamed undocumented immigrants for the violence, without evidence, and posted a screed on Truth Social pushing thoroughly debunked claims blaming the "Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy'” for the deadly incident.

Then you won’t miss it.

When mysterious drones began appearing over oil rigs and wind farms off Norway’s coast about three years ago, officials were not certain where they came from.

But “we knew what they were doing,” Stale Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, said in a recent interview. “Some of it was espionage, where they are charting a lot of things. Some of it, I think, was positioning in case of a war or a deep crisis.”

The drones were suspected of being launched from Russian-controlled ships in the North Sea, Mr. Ulriksen said, including some ships that were near underwater energy pipelines. Norway could not do much to stop them, he added, given that they were flying over international waters.

In recent weeks, reports of drone swarms over the United States’ East Coast have brought fears of hybrid warfare to widespread attention. Only 100 out of 5,000 drone sightings there required further examination, U.S. officials said, and so far none are believed to have been foreign surveillance drones. But it is a different story for the drones spotted in late November and early December over military bases in England and Germany where American forces are stationed.

Military analysts have concluded those drones may have been on a state-sponsored surveillance mission, according to one U.S. official familiar with the incidents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation. British and German defense officials declined to discuss details of the sightings.

Experts said the drones’ presence was indicative of a so-called hybrid or “gray zone” attack against the West, where a range of tactics — military, cyber, economic and even psychological — are used to covertly attack or destabilize an enemy.

As Russia, Iran and other hostile states become increasingly brazen in their hybrid attacks on Western countries — such as the hacking of sensitive computer systems and alleged assassination plots — defense officials face a thorny challenge. How to deter such acts without touching off a broader and potentially deadly conflict? And how to assign blame against the attacker when the strikes are designed to evade culpability?

‘It’s not random; it’s part of military operations.’

Hybrid attacks are not new, but they have escalated in recent years.

One of the most visible and potentially deadly incidents came in July, when a series of packages exploded in Europe. Postmarked from Lithuania, the parcels contained electric massage machines with a highly flammable magnesium-based substance inside. Two exploded in DHL cargo facilities in Britain and Germany, and the third in a Polish courier firm.

Western officials and Polish investigators said they believed the packages were a test run by Russia’s military intelligence agency to plant explosives on cargo planes bound for the United States and Canada.

“We are telling our allies that it’s not random; it’s part of military operations,” Kestutis Budrys, Lithuania’s foreign minister, said of the explosions. “We need to neutralize and stop it at the source, and the source is Russia’s military intelligence.” Russia denies being behind acts of sabotage.

Other examples of hybrid tactics include cyberattacks on Albania in the past several years, which an investigation by Microsoft concluded were sponsored by Iran, and Russia’s unsuccessful attempt to sway presidential elections using disinformation in Moldova in October and November, according to Moldovan and European officials. European countries are also investigating whether a number of ships intentionally cut underwater cables in recent months in an attempted attack.

While China, Iran and North Korea have shown a growing appetite for hybrid attacks, officials said that Russia in particular has deployed them as covert sabotage against NATO allies since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Russia has stepped it up across the board, and as a result, it is reaching levels that are of growing concern,” James Appathurai, a NATO deputy assistant secretary general who oversees hybrid warfare strategy, said in an interview. “They are willing to accept more risk to us, to the safety of our citizens’ lives.”

Britain, Germany, the United States and Baltic and Nordic countries close to Russia’s border are among the Western countries most targeted by hybrid threats, in part because of their prominent support for Ukraine, officials said. Last year, according to Western officials, American and NATO intelligence agencies uncovered a Russian plot to kill the chief executive of a German weapons giant, Rheinmetall, which has built millions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition for Ukraine.

The drones spotted in Britain in November — three days after President Biden said Ukraine could launch U.S.-made deep strike missiles into Russia — were larger and more durable to challenging weather than a hobbyist would be expected to own, and were mostly spotted after nightfall. That is partly why military analysts concluded that a hostile state was responsible, the U.S. official said.

Then, in early December, around the time the drone sightings in Britain began to taper off, drones appeared above Ramstein Air Base in Germany, one of the largest American military posts in Europe. Some were also reportedly spotted near facilities owned by Rheinmetall.

Investigators are considering whether the flights in both countries were “out of a Kremlin playbook,” the U.S. official said.

Russia has repeatedly denied launching hybrid attacks against NATO, in many cases ridiculing the accusations, even though NATO officials say Moscow has set up a special directorate focused on carrying them out.

Russian officials also say they are the ones being targeted. “What is going on in Ukraine is that some people call it hybrid war,” Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said in an interview with Tucker Carlson in early December. “I would call it hybrid war as well.”
How to fight a shadow war.

NATO has begun to create a new strategy to confront hybrid attacks to replace a 2015 policy that it says is now out of date. The new approach, Mr. Appathurai said, will provide a base line picture of recent hybrid attacks to help the alliance measure whether risk levels are escalating.

“That will be important for allies to determine just how serious an incident is, and what their response might be,” he said.

The European Union is also stepping up its efforts, imposing sanctions in mid-December for the first time against people specifically accused of engaging in pro-Russian hybrid threats. It also recently tasked four senior commissioners with countering hybrid threats.

Officials and experts agree a wide range of measures are needed to deter and protect against hybrid attacks, including more “naming and shaming” of adversaries and imposing legal penalties; improving intelligence and technical systems to monitor threats; and military exercises and other displays of force to demonstrate that even covert aggressions will not go unpunished.

But that will require unity among NATO members, especially when attacks cross international borders. And because hybrid warfare is by its nature designed to evade clear attribution of responsibility, officials have hesitated to launch powerful responses without having indisputable evidence of an adversary’s identity.

That has emboldened Russia and China to push the limits, according to officials, diplomats and experts.

“As long as NATO and European member states disagree on how to respond more assertively to the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare, Europe will remain vulnerable,” Charlie Edwards, a former British intelligence and security strategist, wrote in November. “Failing to act will mean the Kremlin retains the strategic advantage.”

John F. Kennedy’s New World Order Speech

“The high office of the president has been used to foment a plot to destroy America’s freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizens of this plight.”
– John F. Kennedy November 12, 1963.

Date of Kennedy Assassination : NOV. 22, 1963

Update May 21, 2020: This article has been updated to reflect that disclose.tv has since added information from this check to the discussion thread.

Posts shared widely on Facebook claim that President John F. Kennedy said, “There’s a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot”, one week before he was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. This quote appears to be fabricated. Reuters found no evidence Kennedy ever said this.

Examples of such posts can be found here , here and here . [FaceBook links]

The posts link to a thread on the website Disclose.tv, which describes itself as “an online community and a public discussion platform where like-minded members help each other to gain true insight into what is actually happening as the world becomes increasingly complex”. It also claims to “advocate the freedom of humans for evolutionary self-determination, through liberating oppressed knowledge and disclosing hidden secrets purposely and unlawfully concealed or simply forgotten over time” ( www.disclose.tv/about-us ). The thread describes JFK’s alleged final speech as a “Warning About The Illuminati & New World Order.” Since this fact check was published, the thread now carries an information box summarising the information provided here .

Reuters could not corroborate that President Kennedy ever said these words publicly. The quote is not included in any of the speeches ( here ) or press conferences ( here ) provided by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website. On November 15, 1963, seven days before his death, Kennedy made remarks in New York City at the national convention of the Catholic Youth Organization ( here ) and the fifth constitutional convention of the American Federation of Labor, Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO) ( here ). Neither speech included the quote shared in the Facebook posts.

The JFK Presidential Library confirmed to Reuters via email they are unaware of this quote existing in any of their records.

VERDICT

False. There is no evidence to suggest that seven days prior to his assassination John F. Kennedy warned about a plot to enslave all Americans, which he promised to expose before leaving office.

“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.”

~JFK
April 27, 1961

The Politico story doesn't say ...

Investigators found two letters on a phone inside the remains of the rented Tesla Cybertruck that active-duty Green Beret Master Sergeant Matthew Alan Livelsberger exploded outside the Las Vegas, Nevada, Trump hotel on New Year’s Day. It appears that Livelsberger wrote them to explain why he was performing what he called “a stunt with fireworks and explosives.” Aside from his personal need to forget about the violence of his military career, he wrote, he wanted to “WAKE UP” servicemembers, veterans, and all Americans.

He wrote that the U.S. is “headed toward collapse,” and he listed as reasons Americans’ moral failings and boredom, diversity programs, an economy that has permitted the top 1% to leave everyone else behind, and a weak and corrupt government.

His solution was to “[f]ocus on strength and winning. Masculinity is good and men must be leaders,” he wrote. “Strength is a deterrent and fear is the product.” He called for “[w]eed[ing] out those in our government and military who do not idealize” that masculinity and strength, and urged military personnel, veterans, and militias to “move on DC starting now.”

“Occupy every major road along fed[eral] buildings and the campus of fed[eral] buildings by the hundreds of thousands. Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete. Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dem[ocrat]s out of the fed[eral] government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.”

The vision of the U.S. as a hellscape that can only be fixed by purging the government of Democrats does not reflect reality. As Peter Baker recorded in the New York Times today, the country that President Joe Biden and his Democratic administration will leave behind when they leave office is in the best shape it’s been in since at least 2000.

No U.S. troops are fighting in foreign wars, murders have plummeted, deaths from drug overdoses have dropped sharply, undocumented immigration is below where it was when Trump left office, stocks have just had their best two years since the last century. The economy is growing, real wages are rising, inflation has fallen to close to its normal range, unemployment is at near-historic lows, and energy production is at historic highs. The economy has added more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs among the 16 million total created since 2020.

Baker quoted chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi, who said: “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets.”

Livelsberger’s notes reflect not reality but rather the political rhetoric in which many Americans have marinated since the 1950s: the idea that a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights crushes the individualism on which America depends.

Ronald Reagan made that argument central to American political debate in the 1980s. Joining those who claimed that the modern American state was creeping toward communism, he warned that the federal government was the current problem in the nation. He championed a mythological American cowboy who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone.

That cowboy myth arose after the Civil War, when former Confederates complained that federal protection of Black rights cost white tax dollars. They contrasted the “socialism” in Washington, D.C., with the western cowboys in the cattle industry, portraying the cowboys as hardworking white men who dominated the land and the peoples of the West and enforced the law themselves with principles and guns.

The cowboy image of the post–World War II years served a similar function: to undermine a government that, in the process of regulating business and providing a social safety net, defended the rights of minorities and women. After 1980, Republicans increasingly insisted that regulations, taxation, and a social safety net were socialism, and they attracted white male voters by warning that the real beneficiaries of the government were racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities and women.

In 1972 the Republican platform had called for gun control to restrict the sale of “cheap handguns,” but in 1975, as he geared up to challenge President Gerald R. Ford for the 1976 presidential nomination, Reagan took a stand against gun control. In 1980 the Republican platform opposed the federal registration of firearms, and the National Rifle Association endorsed a presidential candidate—Reagan—for the first time.

As cuts to regulation, taxation, and the social safety net began to hollow out the middle class, Republicans pushed the idea that the country’s problems came from grasping minorities and women who wanted to work outside the home. More and more, they insisted that the federal government was stealing tax dollars and destroying society, and they encouraged individual men to take charge of the country.

What in the 1980s was a rhetorical image of individuals destroying the federal government was turning into action by the 1990s. “Taxes are a joke,” a former Army gunner, Timothy McVeigh, wrote to a newspaper in 1992. “Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that. But it might.” On April 19, 1995, McVeigh set off a bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children younger than six, and wounded more than 800.

When the police captured McVeigh, he was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the words “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” the same words John Wilkes Booth shouted after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. They mean “thus always to tyrants” and are the words attributed to Brutus after he and his supporters murdered Julius Caesar.

As wealth continued to move upward, the idea that individuals and paramilitary groups must “reclaim” America from undeserving Americans who were taking tax dollars became embedded in the Republican Party. By 2014, Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) called Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters “patriots” when they showed up armed to meet officials from the Bureau of Land Management who tried to impound Bundy’s cattle because he owed more than $1 million in grazing fees for running cattle on public land. Democrat Harry Reid, also of Nevada, the Senate Majority Leader at the time, warned, “We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it.”

But the idea of reclaiming the country for white men by destroying the federal government grew stronger. In 2016, Trump insisted that his Democratic opponent belonged in jail and that he alone could save the country from the Washington, D.C., “swamp.” Winning the election through the electoral college, he first attacked the government over the FBI’s investigation of the ties between his campaign and Russian operatives, and then, after his first impeachment, went after any official who tried to hold him accountable to the law. Although many of his critics were Republicans, including his own appointees, he called anyone who crossed him a Democrat.

Republican lawmakers began to pose their families for Christmas cards with everyone holding a semi-automatic weapon. As Joshua Kaplan reported in ProPublica yesterday in a deep dive into the world of a mole who embedded himself in the world of today’s right-wing paramilitaries, leaders in that system now include “doctors, career cops and government attorneys.” “Sometimes they were frightening, sometimes bumbling,” Kaplan wrote, but “always heavily armed. It was a world where a man would propose assassinating politicians, only to spark a debate about logistics.”

But voters kept protesting cuts to the social safety net, and in November 2020 they elected a Democratic president, Joe Biden, by a popular majority of more than 7 million votes and an electoral college win of 306 votes to 232. Trump supporters believed that Democrats could not possibly have won fairly and that if they had won, it simply meant the vote was illegitimate.

Trump told his supporters that “emboldened radical-left Democrats” had stolen the election and that Democratic policies “chipped away our jobs, weakened our military, threw open our borders, and put America last.” Biden would be an “illegitimate president,” “voted on by a bunch of stupid people.” “[Y]ou'll never take back our country with weakness,” Trump told them. “You have to show strength and you have to be strong…. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”

Radicalized individuals fantasized that they were imitating the American Founders, about to start a new nation. Newly elected representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on January 5, 2021: “Remember these next 48 hours. These are some of the most important days in American history.” On January 6 she wrote: “Today is 1776.”

In fact, it was not 1776 but 1861, when insurrectionists tried to overthrow the government in order to establish minority rule. They wanted to take away the right at the center of American democracy—our right to determine our own destiny—in order to make sure the power of elite white men could not be challenged. It was no accident that the rioters carried a Confederate battle flag.

And now voters have reelected Trump, who last night held a party at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate those who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He has called the January 6 rioters “patriots” and promised to pardon those who have been convicted of crimes in relation to the event as soon as he takes office.

But this would be a deeply unpopular move. More than 60% of Americans oppose such pardons.

In the late nineteenth century, former Confederates regained control of their states as Americans across the country accepted the argument that a government that protected civil rights would usher in socialism. Today’s Americans have heard the same argument since at least the 1980s, but rather than a redistribution of wealth downward, between 1981 and 2021 $50 trillion dollars moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. Now the incoming president has openly tied himself to billionaires

Trump continues to vow that he will dismantle the federal government, but the four years from 2021 to 2025 challenged Reagan’s claim that the government is the problem. Those years demonstrated that the federal government could work for all Americans, although not quickly enough to undo damage of the previous forty years and satisfy those left behind, many of whom voted for Trump and some of whom have resorted to violence.