Freedom First Society

Toward a Police State

The escalating nationwide demonstrations and riots during the past several days have a very sinister purpose, which few Americans understand and about which the voices they look to for leadership are silent.

We are talking about the decades-long campaign to discredit, demoralize, and cripple local independent police in order to pave the way for a national police force or even foreign UN troops to restore order. That is not to say that local police forces don’t sometimes have bad apples. Indeed, the presence of bad apples serves the campaign. But a national, unaccountable police force is no cure. It is a gross betrayal of a free nation.

The first thing to realize is that riots and demonstrations in more than 75 cities nationwide are not spontaneous reactions. They are organized by revolutionaries to advance a subversive agenda, using the pretext of opposing police brutality. The ghastly torture-killing of George Floyd has been used for that purpose.

As did much of the controlled-media, The New York Times (5-31-20) attributed the escalating demonstrations to “an outpouring of national anger sparked by the death of a black man in police custody.” But angry individuals don’t just congregate at the same place and time with prepared banners, painted signs, slogans to chant, constant clenched-fist salutes for the cameras, and marching orders.

The foreword to our January 2015 Action Report, below, documented the deceptions and subversive purpose of the demonstrations that followed a 2014 police-killing in Ferguson, Missouri. The demonstrations supply “pressure from below” for government power grabs, but the pressure wouldn’t have much effect if the Conspiracy that supports the revolutionaries and controls the major media didn’t seize the opportunity to apply “pressure from above.”

Understandably, the controlled-media support the revolutionary ruse as to what’s driving the demonstrations by refusing to go beyond the police-killing pretext. In doing so, the media are actually cooperating with the organizers in keeping national attention where the organizers want it. The driving revolutionary organization depends on that cooperation to create the illusion of widespread support.

A useful tactic of revolutionary communist organization has been to create appropriately targeted front groups to attract additional support for the demonstrations and give credibility to their advertised complaints about “police brutality.”

Intermediate successes in the past have included forcing big-city police departments to submit to oversight by revolutionary-controlled “civilian review boards.” And further militarizing our police in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which bars military involvement in domestic law enforcement, unless “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress” would be a major revolutionary success. The Act constitutes an important safeguard against the creation of a police state.

Yet, as reported by The Hill (5-29-20), President Trump was willing to violate that act in response to the violence in Minneapolis: “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control….”

Of course, attributing the violence to “THUGS” is itself a refusal to alert Americans to the revolutionary game plan. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, also refused to acknowledge the root of the violence. According to The Washington Times (5-30-20): “An overwhelmed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Saturday that he had reached out to the Pentagon for help in controlling the growing mobs of out-of-state agitators seeking to “break the back of civil society” in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

The “pressure-from-below, pressure-from-above” game plan is not new. We conclude here with the promised foreword to our January 2015 Action Report, written following protests in the wake of the 2014 police-shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

January (2015) Action Report

“The Rest of the Story”

When protesters burned down a convenience store near where a police officer fatally shot Michael Brown [on August 9], many condemned it. But experts say the ensuing images on national television could become as much of a catalyst for social change as peaceful protests. [Emphasis added.] — “Ferguson violence could be a catalyst for change,” USA Today, August 30

What has transpired in the wake of the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri provides important lessons in media misdirection and concealed subversive organization and agendas.

Media Misdirection
Typically, the major media cooperate with revolutionaries by helping them develop pressure from below for “change” in the form of federal power grabs. The media portray their protests as representative of widespread concerns and driven solely by the advertised complaints. Nowhere do you find a suggestion that the protests might be designed to serve a far different purpose, and often there is no hint they are even organized. Consider this example:

People protesting the Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury decision took to the streets in cities across the U.S. for a second day Tuesday, showing that the racially charged case has inflamed tensions thousands of miles from the predominantly black St. Louis suburb. [Emphasis added.] — “Protests against Ferguson decision grow across US,” AP, 11-25-14

Did the decision ignite the protests and the riot? Or were revolutionaries already looking for a pretext to protest?

Our answer: Organized revolutionaries saw an opportunity and were eager to distort the facts to support their agenda. Reviewing the grand jury decision not to prosecute Darren Wilson, even a reporter for the Establishment’s Time concluded:

Indeed, the preponderance of forensic and eyewitness testimony suggests that Wilson was acting in self-defense against a violent perpetrator…. But there can no longer be a question that the initial accounts of the case were fraudulent. — “Michael Brown was not a gentle giant,” Time.com, “Facts and Ferguson,” 11-26-14

Evidence of Planning
Buried within media reports we can nevertheless find evidence of planning and orchestration. For example, coordinated “signs,” “chants” and “mock trials” require organizational leadership:

Those who made it inside City Hall [in St. Louis] were part of a group of about 300 protesters who marched and held a mock trial of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown during an Aug. 9 confrontation in the St. Louis suburb. [Emphasis added.] — “Protesters force lockdown of St. Louis City Hall,” AP, 11-26-14

And consider this USA Today report pointing to outside involvement:

On Friday night in Ferguson, 16 people were arrested outside the police station who had come from Boycott Black Friday protests at stores in the area, and 15 of them were not from Missouri. [Emphasis added.] — “Ferguson could spark a new civil rights movement”

Investigate the Rioters
Encouraged by the national attention, revolutionaries quickly staged protests in other cities over several “police killings.” And, still the national media focused on charges of “police brutality” and “racism” while ignoring any nationwide organization to the protests. A few AP examples:

Protesters around the country rallied for a third day Friday over a New York grand jury’s decision to not indict a white police officer in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man….

In Colorado, students walked out of class Friday to protest the decisions not to prosecute police in New York and Ferguson. — “Protesters of chokehold death rally for 3rd day,” AP, 12-5-14

About 150 took part in the march through the streets of downtown Phoenix to police headquarters, while also calling for an end to what they say is a nationwide epidemic of police brutality.” [Emphasis added.] — “Phoenix police shooting is latest to ignite outcry,” AP, 12-5-14

The War on Local Police

January 2015 cover photo
Revolutionary influence ignored by major media

Ignored by the major media, Establishment Insiders and their revolutionary kin have labored for decades to undermine a bastion of freedom — independent, local police, who live in the communities they serve — and to gradually replace them with a national police accountable to a central government and eventually to international regulation.

In 1961, the Internal Security Subcommittee of the United States Senate published “A Communist Plot Against the Free World Police,” describing a highly organized campaign “directed primarily toward discrediting the police in the eyes of the people.”

The 32-page Senate report noted: “A campaign against the police of one free country is not planned and directed by the Communist Party of that country; it is planned and directed by the strategists of international communism.”

The report included pages from a Communist document used to train revolutionaries worldwide on how to organize a riot. Illustrations showed how to outflank and attack the police.

At a press conference following the 1965 Watts riot, Michael Laski, a member of the Central Committee of the U.S. Communist Party, boasted that he and his organization had worked for two years to agitate the riot, which he called a “class uprising.”

One of the early initiatives in this campaign was the push for “civilian” review boards as a cure for alleged rampant “police brutality.” The leftist controlled boards were actually established in some cities, before grassroots action forced their demise. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described their effect: “Where there is an outside civilian review board the restraint of the police was so great that effective action against the rioters appeared to be impossible.”

And, of course, if the local police were no longer able to maintain law and order, Big Brother would be eager to step in. Indeed, widespread riots in this country provided the Insiders with the pretext to create the federal “Law Enforcement Assistance Administration” [LEAA] in 1968. The LEAA sought to gain control of state and local law enforcement agencies through federal grants. But LEAA Administrator Charles H. Rogovin hinted at another route. On October 1, 1969 he told a meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police that a federal police force may need to take over “because local law enforcement has failed to do its job.”

The LEAA was abolished in 1982 following concerted grassroots pressure. But the Conspiracy never gives up. Later came the federal civil-rights lawsuits against major city police departments, resulting in consent decrees, amounting to a virtual federal takeover. And still later, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 provided the emotional cover for the consolidation of police powers in the Department of Homeland Security.

New Federal Intervention
The Obama administration is already taking support from the revolutionary pressure from below as an excuse to “investigate law enforcement” rather than the rioters:

President Obama opened a speech in Chicago by talking about Ferguson, saying that he had ordered Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to undertake a major review of policing practices in the United States, including a community-by-community process of identifying and highlighting specific steps to “make sure that law enforcement is fair and is being applied equally to every person in this country.” — “Security in Ferguson Is Tightened After Night of Unrest,” NY Times, 11-25-14

But apparently Holder was on board well before the Ferguson eruptions:

On Thursday [12-4-14], Attorney General Eric Holder said a Justice Department probe had concluded the Cleveland Division of Police has a pattern of using excessive force, both in firing weapons and in using non-deadly techniques. Cleveland officials agreed to an outside monitor to improve training and practices, officials said. [Emphasis added.] — “Police Move to Revamp Tactics,” Wall Street Journal, 12-5-14

The Journal article suggests what is coming: “Police departments around the country are racing to develop new training rules on the use of force, a response that has gained urgency amid scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department and an emerging consensus that law-enforcement practices need to be reviewed and revamped….” [Emphasis added.]

The orchestrators of pressure from below do not go to so much effort unless they have some serious plans to make a major step in their long-term agenda. We will keep our members advised as to where the new focus lies.

The W.H.O. Cover-up

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday [4-15] he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while a review is conducted.

Trump said the review would cover the WHO’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus.” [Emphasis added.] — CNN.com (4-15-20)

President Trump’s announcement unleashed a firestorm of media and partisan controversy. As so often, the controversy mimicked the entertaining hype for a professional wrestling match, an exaggerated conflict between two sides, while covering up the reality that freedom is the loser regardless of the outcome. (A month later, on May 29 (left), he announced a decision to terminate funding unconditionally.)

On the one side, the President’s supporters piled on with the complaints about W.H.O. and how it needed to be reformed. Fox News analyst Gordon C. Chiang argued:

The president’s action is the first step needed to spark meaningful reform of the United Nations organization and the global health architecture. — “Trump right to stop funding World Health Organization over its botched coronavirus response,” foxnews.com, 4-14-20

On the other side, the President’s opponents claimed that the timing in the middle of a pandemic was irresponsible, as the world depended so much on the great work of W.H.O. This criticism by Nicholas Kristof, a member of the world-government promoting Council on Foreign Relations, is hardly surprising:

Trump’s announcement that he is halting American funding for the W.H.O. just as the world is facing a raging pandemic is a dangerous attempt to find a scapegoat for his own failings. It is like taking away a fire department’s trucks in the middle of a blaze. — “Trump’s Deadly Search for a Scapegoat,” New York Times, 4-15-20

But both the pro- and anti-W.H.O. positions serve to keep Americans unaware of the real looming Internationalist threat of which W.H.O. is just one part. Indeed, W.H.O.’s overriding mission, as one of the UN’s system of agencies, is to convince the world that the solution to global problems lies in giving more power to Insider-controlled institutions.

The President’s criticism, however, is the most damaging because he enjoys an undeserved conservative image. His criticism reinforces the deadly deception regarding the positive purpose of these institutions, while ignoring their subversive designs by those with a grip on Washington. It is, therefore, horribly misleading.

Moreover, calls for reform of the World Health Organization serve to cover up its subversive origins and purpose. Indeed, the demand for reforms has long been a useful Internationalist Establishment tactic for deflecting serious opposition. In particular, conservative demands for the U.S. to withdraw from the UN have repeatedly been deflected by Establishment calls for reform — which go nowhere, of course.

W.H.O.’s Subversive Origins and Purpose
So what is being covered up about the origins and purpose of the UN and its agencies?

Let’s start by recalling that the leading figure at the UN’s founding conference was secret Soviet agent Alger Hiss, later convicted of perjury and sentenced to prison. We recorded the media-suppressed background to these organizations in Masters of Deception – The Rise of the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR]:

Alger Hiss (1950)

In April of 1945, the founding conference for the UN began in San Francisco, lasting into June (Japan did not surrender until August). Alger Hiss served as the acting secretary-general of the conference, helping to finalize the UN Charter. Time magazine commented in advance of the conference: “As secretary-general, managing the agenda, [Hiss] will have a lot to say behind the scenes about who gets the breaks.”…

Alger Hiss became a member of the CFR in 1945….

We do not mean to suggest that the CFR leaders were in any way snookered, or even surprised, by the Soviet agents in their midst. The San Francisco conference was almost entirely a CFR show. More than 40 of the American delegates to the San Francisco conference were or would later become CFR members, only a portion of whom would subsequently be identified as Communists. Among the Establishment CFR members present were Isaiah Bowman (founding CFR member); Nelson Rockefeller; future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (founding CFR member); and John J. McCloy (future chairman of the CFR).

The UN purchased land for its headquarters in New York with a $8.5 million gift from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. — pp. 56, 57.

A few years later, in 1952, Senator James O. Eastland, the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, would charge: “[T]here is today in the UN among the American employees there, the greatest concentration of Communists that this Committee has ever encountered.” And, of course the employees from the Communist bloc nations were Communist. So, it shouldn’t have been surprising to find the UN and its agencies working an anti-freedom agenda.

And now, Republican voices, such as Nikki Haley, President Trump’s former ambassador to the UN, are conveniently directing attention away from the continuing role of US Insiders, claiming that we need to curtail Communist China’s influence. And many GOP congressmen have adopted the focus on China as a useful reelection strategy.

However, US Insiders played a key role in betraying our former ally the Republic of China (Taiwan) and bringing Mao Tse Tung to power in China. In consolidating his tyranny, Mao would liquidate millions of Chinese. Trilateralist and David Rockefeller protégé President Jimmy Carter would abrogate our treaty with Taiwan and recognize and support instead Communist China. And US Insiders, such as President Trump’s friend Henry Kissinger, would work to build Red China into a World Power.

So it’s really no surprise that Communist China has had great influence in the W.H.O. Indeed, China’s influence is by design and addressing the resulting problems is a distraction. The real focus should be on the designers — the global tyranny-promoting Internationalists who created the UN and have solidified their grip on our government.

And that is also the focus of this post. But for those readers who would like more of the story of the perfidy surrounding this incredible deception, please read on.

W.H.O.’s Communist-Socialist Beginnings

W.H.O. got underway in 1948. On its 10th anniversary, J.B. Matthews, a former research director for congressional committees investigating communism in America, surveyed W.H.O.’s beginnings in an article for the May 1958 issue of American Opinion magazine:

WHO’s Constitution opens with a statement that nine “principles are basic to the happiness, harmonious relations and security of all peoples.” They are listed as follows:

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

“The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.

“The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent upon the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.

“The achievement of any State in the promotion and protection of health is of value to all.

“Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of disease, especially communicable disease, is a common danger.

“Healthy development of the child is of basic importance; the ability to live harmoniously in a changing total environment is essential to such development.

“The extension to all peoples of the benefits of medical, psychological and related knowledge is essential to the fullest attainment of health.

“Informed opinion and active cooperation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people.

“Governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures.”

Before commenting on the extraordinary nature of this set of basic principles, it will be pertinent to call attention to a booklet of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which praised the World Health Organization. Published on the eve of the formal launching of WHO, this booklet’s preface, written by none other than Mr. Alger Hiss, contained the following statement: “The new specialized agency carries on one of the most successful parts of the work of the League of Nations. The Constitution of the World Health Organization, however, has a far wider basis than that established for the League organization, and embodies in its provisions the broadest principles in public health service to day. Defining health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’, it includes not only the more conventional fields of activity but also mental health, housing, nutrition, economic or working conditions, and administrative and social techniques affecting public health.”

It would be difficult to imagine any area of human thought or activity— private or public, individual or collective—not covered by the definition of health set forth in WHO’s Constitution….

Brock Chisholm (R) — 1st Director-General of W.H.O

Brock Chisholm [the first Director-General of the World Health Organization (1948–1953) and later awarded “Humanist of the Year,” (1959) by the American Humanist Association] … wrote as follows: “History is studded with critical dates —wars, invasions, revolutions, discoveries, peace treaties—that are firmly implanted in our minds…. This document [WHO’s Constitution] may well go down in history as one of the most far-reaching of all international agreements…. The World Health Organization is a positive creative force with broad objectives, reaching forward to embrace nearly all levels of human activity.”

The powers of the World Health Assembly, as set forth in Chapter IV of WHO’s Constitution, were shrewdly defined. In Article 19, we read: “The Health Assembly shall have authority to adopt conventions or agreements with respect to any matter within the competence of the Organization.” As we have seen, there is no matter which is not within the competence of WHO.

In Article 20, we read: “Each Member [State] undertakes that it will, within eighteen months after the adoption by the Health Assembly of a convention or agreement, take action relative to the acceptance of such convention or agreement. Each Member shall notify the Director-General of the action taken, and if it does not accept such convention or agreement within the time limit it will furnish a statement of the reasons for non-acceptance.” The power of enforcement of the Health Assembly’s decisions lies in the stigma of non-compliance on the part of a Member State.

Dr. Brock Chisholm, who had more than anyone else to do with the writing of WHO’s Constitution, has explained that the aforementioned provisions of Chapter IV incorporated a “new principle of international law” by circumventing the usual procedures for the ratification of international conventions or agreements. The Member States, in ratifying WHO’s Constitution at the beginning of their membership in the organization, signed a blank check to be bound by such regulations as should be adopted by the World Health Assembly in the future unless they formally notified the Director-General of non-compliance. “The long, slow, and usually never completed process of ratification by each government of an international convention is thus avoided,” says Dr. Chisholm.

Gro Harlem Brundtland

To conclude review of the development of W.H.O., we take a look at one of W.H.O.’s later director-generals, Gro Harlem Brundtland. Brundtlandt, the former socialist prime minister of Norway, was elected 1st Vice President of the Socialist International in 1992. In 1998, W.H.O.’s governing body elected her as the director-general of W.H.O. for a five-year term. But let’s back up.

In 1983, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar appointed Brundtland to chair the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), the UN’s agency pushing the economically advanced nations to adopt “sustainable development.” WCED subsequently became known as the Brundtland Commission.

Gro Harlem Brundtland has championed expanded UN authority in virtually all areas. At the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, she argued that “the nation state is too small an arena for addressing regional and global challenges related to the environment and development.”

UN socialists, such as Brundtland, work comfortably with CFR leaders (e.g., Brundtland with Jeffrey Sachs (CFR)). CFR leaders, the real architects of the UN, comfortably control their creation, while on the surface the UN pretends to be a democracy of nations. But that is another story.

Liberty vs. Tyranny: A Tale of Two “Surveillance” Approaches

“The key to getting to [something we might call] normal will be to establish systems for discriminating — legally and fairly — between those who can be allowed to move around freely and those who must stay at home.

“Assorted proposals now coming out of bodies such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, describe how this might be done. The basic outlines are all similar….

“Regardless of the methods chosen, the goal is the same: after a couple of months of shutdown, to begin selectively easing restrictions on movement for people who can show they’re not a disease risk.” — Gideon Lichfield, “This is what it will take to get us back outside,” MIT Technology Review, April 12, 2020 [Bold emphasis ours.]

The Insiders pushing our current “pandemic” scare are using many stratagems — involving deceptive use of language — to try to hide that it’s meant to abrogate our fundamental rights. Only thus can they hope to sell us their snake-oil, “new normal,” in which those rights are at best a dim memory.

One obvious example of such stratagems is how the mainstream media will speak of the terrific economic damage “the coronavirus is causing” — glossing over the fact that our state governors are, by arbitrary edict, themselves inflicting all the damage. In this way, the media hope to evade otherwise easy-to-reach conclusions that none of the damage was inevitable — or even to any good purpose.

Not all examples are so obvious, however. Yet, the deceptive use of language (along with correspondingly twisted “logic”) is possibly our enemies’ most destructive weapon. Let us therefore examine one of the less obvious current subterfuges.

Intentional Obscuring of the Fundamental, Radical Social Difference between “Surveillance” Approaches

In just about any discussions of the allegedly technocratic, “big-data” approaches of surveillance that Taiwan, Singapore and other countries have deployed in the fight against the coronavirus, China’s approach is mixed right into the discussion — as if they are all birds of a feather. In this way, the media try to make us think there is no fundamental difference between the latter’s approach and that of freedom-upholding countries such as Taiwan and Singapore.

If they can get us to accept that China’s response to the coronavirus is not essentially different from Taiwan’s, this defuses the danger which Taiwan’s example presents, otherwise, to their whitewashing of China’s government’s response — indeed it enhances the whitewashing, through associating China with Taiwan’s success. And Westerners had better have a big wake-up about this difference — and do it right away: because America, the U.K., and most of Europe are all hurtling towards, not Taiwan’s approach to “surveillance,” but that of Big-Brother, authoritarian China.

This quote from Clair Yang, an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, conveys a glib obscuring of that difference:

[T]he successful experience of some of the countries that had already flattened their curves suggests that digital contact tracing and big data analysis could also prove a useful tool in combating the spread of the virus. Research shows that many countries in the East Asian region, including South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and China, have implemented strict rules on digital contact tracing and used digital travel history of patients to predict risks for the general population. This approach would be highly controversial in the Western world. Contact tracing can be a serious infringement of individual privacy, but one’s travel data if used in the right way could also have positive external value for the general public. At the end of the day, it is a trade-off between public goods and individual rights. — Clair Yang, expert-opinion response, “States with the Fewest Coronavirus Restrictions,” WalletHub, May 5, 2020

The message comes through powerfully — even if subliminally: “You Westerners want to have the success that Taiwan and Singapore have had against the virus? Well, the fundamental difference between your approach and our Asian approach (of which — don’t you see — mainland-China is just another example) is simply that the Asians are not hung up on your Western fetish of ‘individual rights’! After all, which is more important: ‘rights,’ or the public good? Isn’t it time, then, that you came to see, and to do, things in mainland-China’s way?”

Admittedly, there is a single truthful representation in that message: Mainland China is quite disregardful of (“Western”) individual rights. Beyond that, however, it is only a shameful misrepresentation of Taiwan’s approach — which has been infinitely more regardful of individual rights than have statements (and decrees) coming from executive bureaucratic offices in the U.S. or China.

The Real Basic Difference

So, which characteristic makes China’s and Taiwan’s responses to the coronavirus as different as “chalk and cheese”? Basically — to use an ancient Western legal principle, if somewhat outside its usual context — it’s the maintaining, vs. the suspension, of habeas corpus. And the only reason we say this application of the principle is outside of its normal context here is that never in the history of American jurisprudence have the citizenries of whole states been put under virtual house arrest — much less, for an objective reason.

Because this is so unheard of, we don’t naturally and immediately apply to it a principle that’s been normally applied to non-house detention:

Nowadays in Western countries, the thought of government agents whisking off a citizen to a secret prison seems unlikely. So why do we still have habeas corpus? Is it simply an antiquated law we no longer need?

The short answer is unequivocally no. It’s the right of habeas corpus that makes the thought of being illegally imprisoned in a democratic society such a far-off idea. Habeas corpus is a prisoner’s one way to question the legality of his or her imprisonment. — Josh Clark, “Why is habeas corpus important?”

Under this principle, an official who has someone under detention for no publicly-disclosed, legitimate reason is required — when presented a habeas corpus writ — to bring the prisoner to court and “present proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether the custodian has lawful authority to detain the prisoner. If the custodian is acting beyond their authority, then the prisoner must be released.” (Wikipedia)

In contrast with this legal practice — so obviously entailed by “the rule of law” — we have the general practice which, in our initial quotation above, Gideon Lichfield (editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review) recommends “for discriminating — legally and fairly — between those who can be allowed to move around freely and those who must stay at home.” Just to make sure you don’t forget what he said, we’ll quote that part again:

Regardless of the methods chosen, the goal is the same: after a couple of months of shutdown, to begin selectively easing restrictions on movement for people who can show they’re not a disease risk. — Gideon Lichfield, “This is what it will take to get us back outside,” MIT Technology Review, April 12, 2020 [Bold emphasis ours.]

Please note that there is no difference at all between what Mr. Lichfield’s preferred experts (whom he’s citing) recommend for governmental handling of you and me, and what China is doing to all its slaves — er, citizens: They are all free to go wherever they like, engage in what discourse they wish, and so on — just as soon as they have proven to the government that they have complied with all its dictates and whims.

Here, habeas corpus is turned on its head: It’s not the government that must prove, before a court, that its detention of the citizen is a legitimate one; on the contrary, it’s the “citizen” who must prove — to the government that imprisoned him — that he has complied with all its dictates.

In Western countries, traditionally this is known by such terms as “tyranny” and “slavery.” Let’s make sure that we still see it that way — and that we warn our fellow citizens, loudly, of this tyranny — intended as our “new normal”!

Three COVID-19 Counterexamples: Taiwan, Singapore, and Sweden

“Can any governor or county executive simply flick his pen and shut every business even if it doesn’t create crowds? Can they unilaterally restrict every aspect of the Bill of Rights indefinitely without any oversight, due process, benchmarks, or transparency?

“In Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), the Supreme Court … made it clear that there is a point where states can enact [public-safety] policies in ‘such an arbitrary, unreasonable manner, or might go so far beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public’ that they would be outside constitutional bounds.^[1] …

“We’ve simply never done this before in our history. These are not mere quarantine laws that supporters cite to justify what is going on today. Quarantine laws traditionally separate an individual or an entire group of people from the general population. What we are doing now, however, is locking down the entire general population.” — Daniel E. Horowitz, “Is this quarantine or tyranny?,” March 31, 2020

Judging from the transparency — or rather, the lack thereof — they’ve shown on both COVID-19 and “climate change,” the governmental “powers that be” expect us simply to take for granted that they know best about scientific questions — and (of course) that they have our best interests at heart. By contrast, we “little people” should consider ourselves too simple to comprehend scientific matters — much less, to take part in serious discussions of them. We should just trust that the government — and tax-exempt foundations set up by the wealthy — know best!

Specifically, and in the current case, we’re supposed to take it on faith that the near destruction of the whole world-economy, through “social distancing,” is scientifically necessary in order to avoid COVID-19 catastrophe. (Nor have they asked us whether the COVID-19 catastrophe isn’t the preferable option!)

However, if the “powers that be” do know best and have our best interests at heart, then why haven’t we heard much about the sensible, non-draconian approaches of countries that have avoided both the economic and the (warned-of) COVID-19 catastrophe — for example, Taiwan, Singapore, and Sweden? And, why haven’t other Western governments been adopting such approaches — rather than the China-pioneered, general “lockdowns” and “shutdowns”?

Only one plausible answer to that question seems available: Whether “the powers that be” “know best” or not, we may rest assured that our best interests are about the furthest thing from their hearts. Let us, then, look more closely at Taiwan’s, Singapore’s, and Sweden’s successful — yet non-draconian — approaches.

Taiwan’s and Singapore’s Responses to the Coronavirus

The Establishment media have not been able to maintain a total “blackout” on Taiwan’s success in combatting COVID-19. That success is too remarkable and too clear.

However, though the media are now reporting on what Taiwan has overtly done to control the COVID-19 outbreak, for the most part the media have (strenuously, it seems) avoided mentioning what Taiwan has not been doing.^[2] That is likely because Taiwan eschewed the almost universal, dire “social distancing,” “lockdown,” and economic shutdown the rest of us are supposed to endure.

“Quick action” and “aggressive measures” are what helped Taiwan — so they keep telling us. They highlight Taiwan’s advanced databases of its citizens’ travel histories, along with its ability to attach those data to the same citizens’ entries in the country’s National Health Insurance (NHI) database. By limiting the discussion to Taiwan’s actions, mainstream media manage to color Taiwan’s successful virus-containment as a shining example of technocracy — rather than, one of government transparency as well — and much less, one of maintaining constitutional, limited government while quarantining individual dangerous cases.

It is true that Taiwan did take “quick action” — notably with regard to checking people arriving from Wuhan (ultimately banning flights from most of China), and in implementing short-term quarantine for people who had recently traveled from “level 3 alert areas.” In fact, Taiwan’s preparation for a new virus outbreak started in 2004, the year after the SARS epidemic killed 73 people there. Since that experience, “Taiwan has been on constant alert and ready to act on epidemics arising from China,” reports a Mar. 3 JAMA article.

Taiwan has been very careful about making sure (and strictly enforcing with penalties) that the risk cases, who are quarantined, stay there as long as assigned — generally, two weeks. It is also true that Taiwan appended to the end of the Lunar New Year holiday, a further two-week closure of elementary schools and high schools (classes resumed Feb. 25). Moreover, it implemented rules calling for additional two-week closures of any schools where cases of the coronavirus were detected.^[3]

Currently schools’ policy is to take students, teachers, and workers’ temperatures. If fevers are detected, classes in that school are suspended, but massive class suspensions do not occur. At the same time, online teaching is being encouraged, but is not being forced by the government. In many Taiwanese universities, online teaching is being promoted in order to let those who are not able to attend class in person to take courses. Although it is true that online education as a way to avoid infections has already been adopted in other countries, the peculiarity of Taiwan lies in the fact that it has not been imposed by government order…. The government’s transparency of information has also given the Taiwanese enterprises the time they need to voluntarily prepare and adopt teleworking progressively. — Javier Caramés Sanchez and William Hongsong Wang, “Why Taiwan Hasn’t Shut Down Its Economy,” Mises Wire, March 26, 2020

But the pro-active stance and quick action explain more about Taiwan’s extraordinarily low case-numbers, than it does about how they achieved them with only very limited impact on their economic activity (the only industry hit by government restrictions was the airline industry). After all, it’s not as if there was no introduction of the virus into the country: In an article unusually balanced for the Establishment-controlled media, the New York Times stated that “As of Friday [Mar. 13], about 58 percent of all confirmed cases in Taiwan were believed to have resulted from local transmission.”

Broadly speaking, Singapore’s approach has been parallel to Taiwan’s. In regard to schools, in fact, Singapore has shown even more accommodation of private citizens’ needs:

Large gatherings have been suspended. But to minimize social and economic costs, schools and workplaces have remained open. The Singaporean Ministry of Education — on an extensive FAQs web page — calls the closing of schools “a major, major decision” that would “disrupt many lives.” Instead, students and staff are subjected to daily health checks, including temperature screenings. — Benjamin J. Cowling and Wey Wen Lim, “They’ve Contained the Coronavirus. Here’s How,” New York Times, March 13, 2020

A National Post article summarizes correctly that these two countries “seem to have found the sweet spot between a laissez-faire ‘it’s just like the flu’ reaction, and imposition of economically devastating lockdowns. Both nations have concentrated [not on imposing lockdowns and shutdowns, but] on strictly isolating people who have or might have COVID-19, tightly controlling international travel and zealously pursuing those who had contact with the infected.”

Sweden’s Thoughtful, Commonsensical Approach

In its particulars, Sweden’s approach has differed somewhat from Taiwan’s and Singapore’s. But like Singapore and Taiwan, Sweden took the traditional approach to what “quarantine” is — namely, isolating sick people, to keep their disease from being caught by well people. And although, like Britain, they do not claim “herd immunity” is their goal, they do recognize that the latter is the likeliest way for the outbreak to come to a graceful end.

Fredrik Erixon, a Swede who directs the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels, was eloquent on the real difference in Sweden’s approach:

Managing the virus is a long game, and while herd immunity is not the Swedish strategy, it may well be where we all end up. The theory of lockdown, after all, is pretty niche, deeply illiberal — and, until now, untested. It’s not Sweden that’s conducting a mass experiment. It’s everyone else.

The main advice from [Anders] Tegnell [who is Sweden’s “state epidemiologist”] et al is repeated like a mantra ten times a day: be sensible. Stay at home if you feel sick. Oh, and wash your hands. But individuals, companies, schools and others are trusted to figure out on their own what precautions to take.

This Swedish exceptionalism is about principle, not epidemiology. It’s true that we’re perhaps less at risk due to our high rate of single-person households and low number of smokers. Closing the schools would, as well, have a bigger impact in a country where almost all mums are working mums. But frankly, all these explanations miss the point: yes, they make us different to Italy and Spain, but not to Denmark, Finland and Norway. Sweden simply made the call to take measures that don’t destroy the free society. — Fredrik Exton, “No lockdown, please, we’re Swedish,” The Spectator (U.K.), April 4, 2020

Tellingly, even the website of the World Economic Forum — one of the foremost pandemic-fear stokers of recent decades — had a helpful post, basically admitting there is nothing faulty with the science behind Sweden’s approach.

The Take-away from These COVID-19 Experiences — Oh, and Hong Kong’s!

By no means have these three countries been left unscathed by COVID-19 (and/or similar viruses). But the important thing to glean from their experiences is what they tell us about what’s not necessary to fight this “novel coronavirus.” Specifically, it says that quarantining healthy individuals who have no known reason for being susceptible, is unnecessary — and thus, a gross infringement of basic liberty.

Though it seems surprising to be able to cite the New York Times in summing up, the final paragraph of its March 13 article said it well (though having discussed Hong Kong instead of Sweden):

[T]he central point is this: Each in its own way, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong — three places with markedly different socioeconomic and political features — have been able to interrupt the chain of the disease’s transmission. And they have done so without embracing the highly disruptive, drastic measures adopted by China. Their success suggests that other governments can make headway, too. — Benjamin J. Cowling and Wey Wen Lim, “They’ve Contained the Coronavirus. Here’s How,” New York Times, March 13, 2020

1. Corroborating the general legal principle that Horowitz cites is, for example, a 1962 Colorado state court case opinion, which points out that “If a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, morals, safety, or common welfare has no real or substantial relation to these objects, and for that reason is a clear invasion of the constitutional freedom of the people to use, enjoy or dispose of their property without unreasonable governmental interference, the courts will declare it void.” Colo. Anti-Discrimination Comm’n v. Case, 151 Colo. 235, 380 P.2d 34 (1962).

2. Typical is an April 7, 2020 Atlantic Council post “Lessons from Taiwan’s experience with COVID-19”: They discuss 4 lessons, but overlook the vital lesson — that general lockdowns and shutdowns are quite unnecessary. The title of an April 3 Democracy Now! post summarized this theme well: “How Taiwan Contained COVID-19: Early Action, Technology & Millions of Face Masks.”
A couple of rare exceptions to this mainstream tendency were a March 13 New York Times article, “They’ve Contained the Coronavirus. Here’s How.”, and a March 31 National Post article, “How Taiwan and Singapore managed to contain COVID-19, while letting normal life go on”. Outside the mainstream, and more in character, was a balanced, March 26 Mises Institute post.

3. According to a data-supplement to the Mar. 3, JAMA article:
– If 1+ in a class (student or teacher) at the K-9 level diagnosed with COVID-19, class is suspended for 14 days
– If 2+ cases in a school, school is closed for 14 days
– If one-third of schools in a township, city, or district are shut down, all others are closed
– If a student or teacher is diagnosed in a high school, college, or university, all classes they attend or teach is suspended for 14 days
– If 2+ cases of COVID-19 in an institution at any level, it will close for 14 days

The USMCA Scam (Part II)

On March 13, 2020, Canada ratified the USMCA, paving the way for it to go into effect as early as June.

Although one can compare the 2,000+ page USMCA agreement with the NAFTA text and draw conclusions, the most important insight recognizes that both these schemes were conceived by top Internationalists to implement “progressive regionalization.” And therefore we should look at that agenda to see how they intended for NAFTA, and now its successor USMCA, to evolve.

As documented in our earlier post, “The USMCA Scam,” Internationalists have adopted “progressive regionalization” as an effective steppingstone to world tyranny. In that post, we provided several good windows to those plans, tying them to top Internationalists — David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the Internationalists’ Council on Foreign Relation’s (CFR) journal Foreign Affairs.

With this follow-up post, we draw attention to another good window to those plans — a Task Force Report, “Building a North American Community,” sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR published the Report in 2005. (Also see the links at the end of this post.)

Note: The CFR takes pains to portray itself as taking no official foreign policy positions, and so the Task Force is called an Independent Task Force and the Council does not “officially” embrace the Task Force recommendations. But those claims are deceiving. No one really cares whether the Council “officially” endorses a policy developed by CFR members. The CFR’s work and the work of its exclusive membership betray the Council’s aims.

Indeed, the Foreword to the 2005 Report was written by Council of Foreign Relations President Richard Haass. In the Acknowledgments, Haass is given credit for having “proposed this Task Force and supported it throughout.” Also, participating in the Task Force were fellow Internationalists from Mexico and Canada.

In Freedom First Society’s 2012 book, Masters of Deception, we established the significance of the recommendations by the Task Force:

“Among the American members of the Task Force were Robert Pastor (CFR), Carla A. Hills (CFR director and later co-chair of CFR), James R. Jones (CFR), Gary C. Hufbauer (CFR and CFR VP 1997-98), and Jeffery J. Schott. Hufbauer and Schott had authored a 1994 report of the Institute for International Economics (a CFR-aligned think tank) that proposed a Western Hemisphere Free Trade Area (a precursor name to the FTAA) following the pattern of the European Union.

“In May 2005, the CFR’s Independent Task Force issued its report, “Building a North American Community,” which included a proposal for a North American Security Perimeter. On June 9, Task Force co-chair Robert Pastor appeared before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to present the plan.

“Following Pastor’s testimony, CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs and CNN correspondent Christine Romans informed their viewers of the incredible scope of the game plan underway:

Romans: “The idea here is to make North America more like the European Union….”

Dobbs: “Americans must think that our political and academic elites have gone utterly mad at a time when three-and-a-half years, approaching four years after September 11, we still don’t have border security. And this group of elites is talking about not defending our borders, finally, but rather creating new ones. It’s astonishing.”

“A few months earlier, on March 23, 2005, President Bush held a special summit in Waco, Texas with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. At Baylor University, the three heads of state called for a “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.” Cabinet officials for the three nations were given 90 days to form a variety of working groups to come up with concrete proposals for implementing the Partnership.

“The cabinet ministers issued their joint report, which paralleled the CFR proposal, on June 27, 2005. One month later to the day, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger F. Noriega testified before a House subcommittee, revealing what had been transpiring without congressional oversight: ‘Thus far, we have identified over 300 initiatives spread over twenty trilateral [meaning U.S., Canada, and Mexico] working groups on which the three countries will collaborate.’”

More on the Security Scam

The Report’s recommendations, including those ostensibly addressing security, focused heavily on hemispheric integration, which, as we will see, would undermine both our security and our prosperity. For example: “Lay the groundwork for the free flow of people within North America.”

This recommendation conveniently ignored the influence of drug cartels in Mexico. Consider two recent stories: “Relatives of massacred Americans say Mexico needs help,” (AP, 12-3-19), and “Mexican Narcos, More Brazen by the Day, Land Coke Plane on a Highway and Shoot a General,” (msn.com, 1-29-20).

The Report also ignored the work of followers of Fidel Castro in Mexico. For decades, U.S. Internationalists had pushed socialism throughout Latin America, stifling Mexico’s development. But Castro took the revolution a step further. It’s significant that Castro owed his rise to power to the influence of U.S. Insiders.

When Castro took over Cuba, there was a widely repeated caustic quip that he got his job through the New York Times. Indeed, Herbert Matthews of the Times had lionized Castro as a modern day “Lincoln” to Americans, paving the way for the U.S. State Department to pull the rug from under then reigning Fulgencio Batista. Our Ambassador to Cuba at the time, Earl E. T. Smith, reported the State Department actions in his book The Fourth Floor.

In 2005, Castro was widely admired among Mexican officials. Yet Castro’s Cuba had helped the spread of terrorism worldwide. In 1966, Castro hosted the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, to give representatives of 83 groups a global revolutionary strategy. According to former CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline, at one time Castro would turn out about 1,500 Latin American terrorists a year. Alone, that makes the Task Force’s proposal for a North American Security Perimeter ridiculous.

Attack on National Sovereignty

A primary, but hidden, purpose of the agreements masquerading as trade agreements was to build regional governments, starting with regional boards. These boards would carry out the Internationalist agenda of establishing authority above the U.S. Constitution and making nations subservient.

Of course, the Task Force report was not honest about what is really intended. Top Insider Zbigniev Brzezinski, architect with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission, described the strategy candidly at Gorbachev’s 1995 State of the World Forum. (See our earlier post, “The USMCA Scam.”)

We remind our regular readers of some additional evidence showing that top Insiders seek to eliminate independent nations, turning them into mere providences of regional governments, which they will then control. We quote here from Freedom First Society’s Masters of Deception:

“The Wall Street Journal
“The late Robert L. Bartley provides an excellent example of the controlled opposition. Bartley served as the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal for 30 years (from 1972 to 2002). Adopting the image of a conservative free-market Republican, Bartley would use the Journal to promote internationalism (NAFTA, WTO, the IMF and World Bank) to its mostly conservative readership.

“Bartley was invited to join the CFR in 1979. He also showed up on the membership roles of the even more selective Trilateral Commission and attended the internationalist Bilderberg meetings.

“Bartley would cleverly argue the wisdom of sacrificing national sovereignty to the Journal’sreaders. “I think the nation-state is finished,” Bartley once told Peter Brimelow, senior editor for Forbesmagazine and Bartley’s former colleague at the Journal. “I think [Kenichi] Ohmae is right,” Bartley continued.

“In “The Rise of the Region State,” an essay for the Spring 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs, Ohmae had written: “The nation state has become an unnatural, even dysfunctional, unit for organizing human activity and managing economic endeavor in a borderless world.” Apparently Brimelow had not recognized Bartley’s agenda:

“I was thunderstruck. I knew the devoted fans of the Wall Street Journal editorial, overwhelmingly conservative patriots, had no inkling of this. It would make a great Wall Street Journal front page story: Wall Street JournalEditor Revealed As Secret One-Worlder — Consternation Among Faithful — Is Pope Catholic?”

“In later years, Bartley would become even more open in his advocacy of internationalist goals: In an editorial for July 2, 2001, entitled “Open NAFTA Borders? Why Not?” Bartley wrote:

“Reformist Mexican President Vicente Fox raises eyebrows with his suggestion that over a decade or two NAFTA should evolve into something like the European Union, with open borders for not only goods and investment but also people. He can rest assured that there is one voice north of the Rio Grande that supports his vision. To wit, this newspaper….

“Indeed, during the immigration debate of 1984 we suggested an ultimate goal to guide passing policies — a constitutional amendment: ‘There shall be open borders.’”

As we documented in our earlier post, “The USMCA Scam,” Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller both viewed NAFTA as much more than a trade agreement.

Here are several Task Force recommendations, ostensibly concerned with building a North American competitive trade bloc, that task regional boards with authority above national authority or remove congressional authority by regional agreement:

Establish a Seamless North American Market for Trade

Adopt a common external tariff.

Review those sectors of NAFTA that were excluded or those aspects that have not been fully implemented.

Establish a permanent tribunal for North American dispute resolution.

Establish a joint approach to unfair trade practices

Adopt a North American Approach to Regulation

Ensure rapid implementation of the North American regulatory action plan.

Increase Labor Mobility Within North America

Pushing Collectivism and Worse

We conclude our look at the 2005 Report by highlighting one more set of Task Force recommendations:

Support a North American Education Program

Create a major scholarship fund for undergraduates and graduate students to study in the other North American countries and to learn the region’s three languages.

Develop a network of centers for North American studies.

Promote Internet-based learning from North America.

Develop teacher exchange and training programs for elementary and secondary school teachers.

Develop “sister school” and student exchange programs.

Here we see the Task Force further undermining the principles of freedom by selling anti-American collectivist ideology — the concept that government is the source of human progress. Clearly, this concept fuels the real Insider goal of world tyranny.

Unconstitutional federal control of U.S. education already seeks to radicalize our youth and indoctrinate them with revolutionary “political correctness.” Imagine the impact of programs that accommodate Communists and hardened socialists.

Related FFS Posts

We conclude with some convenient links to related FFS posts:

“The USMCA Scam.”
March Freedom First Society Action Report This FFS Report quotes heavily from a BBC broadcast explaining the difficulties Britain has experienced with Brexit — Britain’s attempt to withdraw from the European Union — and how the EU “allows free movement of people, to live and work in whatever country they choose.”
“The ‘New NAFTA’ Power Grab.”
FFS analysis of the House passage of H.R. 5430, United States-Mexico-Canada Implementation Act, 12-19-19.
FFS analysis of the Senate passage of H.R. 5430, United States-Mexico-Canada Implementation Act, 1-16-20.

The USMCA Scam

The USMCA is the largest, fairest, most balanced, and modern trade agreement ever achieved. There’s never been anything like it…. This is a colossal victory for our farmers, ranchers, energy workers, factory workers, and American workers in all 50 states…. [Emphasis added.] — President Trump, 1-29-20, WhiteHouse.gov

Mexico has already ratified the latest version of the pact, which includes changes demanded by House Democrats…. Canada’s parliament is expected to ratify the agreement within weeks, which would allow the agreement to go into force in the next few months. —1-29-20, Wall Street Journal

The USMCA is a massive Internationalist power grab using trade as the cover. It is designed to submit the U.S. to increasing regional government, leading to tyrannical world government. However, in talking about the USMCA, the President and the Establishment media focus all their attention on the agreement’s cover — trade and jobs. But the USMCA is not all about trade and jobs.

The USMCA, and NAFTA before it, were designed by Internationalists as a ploy to lead to regional government, following the deceptions they used to trap the nations of Europe in the EU. Let’s look at some of the evidence, beginning with NAFTA and the EU. Then we’ll look at how the USMCA takes the betrayal even further (see “And Now, the USMCA,” below).

Foreign Affairs magazine
NAFTA was negotiated by the George H.W. Bush administration and signed in 1993. President Bush had been a director of the world-government promoting Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and was undoubtedly working to implement Internationalist goals. Two years earlier, the Fall 1991 issue of the CFR’s magazine Foreign Affairs revealed that Insiders were well aware that NAFTA was intended to follow in the EU’s footsteps:

The creation of trinational dispute-resolution mechanisms and rule-making bodies on border and environmental issues may also be embryonic forms of more comprehensive structures. After all, international organizations and agreements like GATT and NAFTA by definition minimize assertions of sovereignty in favor of a joint rule-making authority….

Top Insider Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and architect with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission, explained the regionalism strategy at Gorbachev’s 1995 State of the World Forum:

We cannot leap into world government in one quick step…. In brief, the precondition for eventual globalization — genuine globalization — is progressive regionalization, because thereby we move toward larger, more stable, more cooperative units.

Of course, these regional governments are naturally “more cooperative units,” because the CFR Insiders set them up as their babies.

The CFR planners — experts in psychology — long ago recognized the advantage of the regionalization approach over persuading all nations to accept a world master authority in one fell swoop. That advantage was the natural tendency to regard nearby nations as family when pitted (particularly economically) against distant nations on other continents.

Even so, nations are reluctant to merge with their neighbors. To accomplish their goal, the Insiders had to move in steps (“progressive regionalization” in Brzezinski’s words), while vehemently denying the destination of those steps. In Europe, they would offer elaborate pretexts to camouflage their intentions — until the nations of Europe were caught in the trap.

CFR Insiders Acknowledge Goal
Both David Rockefeller (former CFR chairman) and CFR heavyweight Henry Kissinger lobbied openly in the nation’s press for NAFTA. But they tipped their hand by announcing that much more was involved than just lowering trade barriers.

In a 1993 column that appeared in the July 18 Los Angeles Times, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared:

[NAFTA] will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere…. [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system.

A few months later, David Rockefeller championed the agreement in the Wall Street Journal: “Everything is in place — after 500 years — to build a true ‘new world’ in the Western Hemisphere,” Rockefeller enthused, adding “I don’t think that ‘criminal’ would be too strong a word to describe … rejecting NAFTA.”

The Marshall Plan
At the end of World War II, Congress approved the European Recovery Program (ERP) — a program of massive aid to Europe, popularly known as the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was actually developed by a CFR study group — headed by Charles M. Spofford with David Rockefeller as secretary.

In general, American Insiders have used foreign aid to saddle recipient nations with socialist policies and governments. The ERP certainly followed that pattern. But in Europe the aid was also used to promote European unification.

The most prominent public figure in this plan was millionaire-socialist Jean Monnet, who would earn the title “Father of Europe” for his “leadership” in the drive to build a united Europe. Monnet would subsequently acknowledge that Marshall funds were “used with the intention of encouraging European unity.” (See Chapter 7 “Progressive Regionalization” in Masters of Deception.)

A glimpse into the EU perfidy came to light in 2000 with the release of documents associated with Britain’s 1970 application to join the Common Market. British journalist Christopher Booker and Dr. Richard North (a former research director for an agency of the European Parliament) summarized the revelations in their excellent 2003 book, The Great Deception: A Secret History of the European Union.

“For 40 years,” says Booker, “British politicians have consistently tried to portray it [the Common Market and EU] to their fellow-citizens as little more than an economic arrangement: a kind of free-trading area primarily concerned with creating jobs and prosperity, which incidentally can help preserve the peace.”

Although the architects of the Common Market denied that political union was the object of economic union, the historical record reveals that from the beginning their intention was to create a European socialist superstate. At the 1948 Congress of Europe, chaired by Winston Churchill, Jean Monnet pushed through a resolution stating: “The creation of a United Europe must be regarded as an essential step towards the creation of a United World.”

NAFTA’s Chapter 11
The implementation bill for NAFTA (H.R. 3450) created a minimum of 33 new international commissions, committees, secretariats and sub-groups to oversee future North American trade. Chapter 11 of the agreement seems to have drawn the most attention. An article for the April 18, 2004 New York Times tells what was later discovered about NAFTA. Here are some excerpts:

“This is the biggest threat to United States judicial independence that no one has heard of and even fewer people understand,” said John D. Echeverria, a law professor at Georgetown University….

The availability of this additional layer of review, above even the United States Supreme Court, is a significant development, legal scholars said.

“It’s basically been under the radar screen,” Peter Spiro, a law professor at Hofstra University, said. “But it points to a fundamental reorientation of our constitutional system. You have an international tribunal essentially reviewing American court judgments.”…

The part of Nafta that created the tribunals, known as Chapter 11, received no consideration when it was passed in 1993.

And Now, the USMCA
Let’s keep in mind that the individual who negotiated the USMCA for President Trump was his chosen U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he was supported by many of the same people who developed NAFTA.

Some of the betrayal and deception is even apparent in a careful reading of Establishment sources. For example, according to the January 29th Wall Street Journal:

Not-So-New Nafta
At its core, USMCA is an amended, rebranded version of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994, along with some newer provisions that the Obama administration had negotiated in a Pacific trade pact that Mr. Trump exited. Both USMCA and Nafta essentially guarantee duty-free trade and economic integration in North America. [Emphasis added.]

However, with respect to the hidden power grab that threatens American independence and freedom, the massive 2,082-page USMCA accomplishes several advances over NAFTA:

• The USMCA establishes a North American Competitiveness Committee (Chapter 26): “With a view to promoting further economic integration among the Parties and enhancing the competitiveness of North American exports, the Parties hereby establish a North American Competitiveness Committee….” [Emphasis added.]

But economic integration is intended as a steppingstone to political union. Establishment historian Carroll Quigley affirmed that intention with respect to the 1957 signing of the treaties that created the European Economic Community (EEC or Common Market): “The EEC Treaty, with 572 articles over almost 400 pages … looked forward to eventual political union in Europe, and sought economic integration as an essential step on the way.” — Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World In Our Time, p. 1285.

• The USMCA creates a new Free Trade Commission (Chapter 30), which supervise 16 committees to manage agriculture, transportation, financial services, telecommunications, intellectual property rights, and more.

Article 30.6 says: “1. The Commission shall establish and oversee a Secretariat comprising national Sections…. Each Party shall: 1 (a) establish and maintain a permanent office of its Section and be responsible for its operation and costs… 4(d) as the Commission may direct: 1(i) support the work of other committees and groups established under this Agreement….” [Emphasis added.]

The Free Trade Commission can make changes to the agreement without the consent of Congress!

• The USMCA has a total of 34 chapters.NAFTA had only 22 chapters. The USMCA added new chapters to address issues such as labor (Chapter 23) and the environment (Chapter 24).

• After negotiating his first USMCA agreement, Lighthizer negotiated further changes to bring liberals and Big Labor on board. During the House and Senate debates, liberals repeatedly boasted that the changes they achieved would help ensure that Mexico obeyed the rules, particularly rules regarding labor and the environment.

But they were careful not to mention, whose rules would be enforced and who would control the enforcers. The rules will be Internationalist rules, such as edicts by the WTO, the Left-wing ILO, and UN conventions, and regional bodies subservient to the Internationalists will enforce the rules.

For example, during the December House debates over ratification, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) boasted:

This USMCA agreement before us is a vast improvement over the first version shown to us by President Trump and his team. We worked together, and it now includes critically important changes offered by Democratic members in order to ensure that its enforcement mechanisms are stronger, that it protects American workers…. I am glad that our House Democratic working group was able to secure new provisions to ensure that America’s trading partners uphold the rights of workers to unionize and bargain collectively. And I am glad that this agreement includes strong, rapid-response enforcement mechanisms that will allow us to block imports produced in facilities where these commitments are violated. [Emphasis added.]

Au contraire, Mr Hoyer. American workers need protection from the socialists in our government and the Establishment elite who are working to steal our freedom and destroy American middle-class opportunity. Low-wage foreign workers do not threaten American prosperity. Instead, middle-class opportunity has been undermined by the U.S. government’s carrots [e.g., the Export-Import bank] and sticks [taxes and regulatory burden] that have caused American capital — heavy industry and manufacturing — to move to socialist and Communist countries.

Representative Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, further amplified Hoyer’s claims:

When we assumed the majority this year, we were asked to consider a renegotiated NAFTA that had structural flaws in a key number of areas: enforcement, labor rights, environment, and access to medicines…. During these past 25 years, we have seen the shortcomings of the original agreement, much of which comes down to a lack of enforcement, in my view. House Democrats, working with Ambassador Lighthizer, fixed many of those issues. The improvements to the USMCA that we negotiated finally make the agreement enforceable by preventing a country from being able to block the formation of a dispute settlement panel….

On the rules, we strengthened certain provisions and addressed obstacles to enforcement in many others. On monitoring, for the first time we have created a proactive monitoring regime for labor obligations in a trade agreement. The implementing bill establishes an Interagency Labor Committee that will actively monitor Mexico’s compliance, and report back to Congress.

On enforcement, we negotiated a historic mechanism never included in a trade agreement before. As a result of Democratic efforts, we will now have a facility-specific, rapid-response mechanism to address violations of key labor obligations.

We have made great improvements to environmental provisions. The USMCA will now include the highest environmental standards of any trade agreement in history and will include a new customs verification agreement to enhance enforcement. [Emphasis added.]

But the USMCA’s environmental standards are not designed to prevent man-made climate catastrophe. Instead, those environmental standards are intended to help government, particularly unaccountable international government, control people.

Consider, for example, the claims of Representative Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon), a member of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Trade Working Group:

The renegotiated USMCA strengthens labor rules so that it will be easier to prove violations. It includes robust monitoring systems and strong enforcement tools, including people on the ground in Mexico to monitor compliance….

This final agreement also makes important advancements to protect our environment. It improves environmental rules, puts them in the text of the agreement, provides a path to reducing hydrofluorocarbon emissions… makes it easier to prove environmental violations….

We did, however, include a clause that creates a path for adding additional environmental and conservation agreements in the future. I will continue to do all I can to pass and implement bold policies to combat climate change. [Emphasis added.]

• The original NAFTA implementation was only narrowly passed by the House of Representatives (234 to 200). And in the following decades NAFTA lost much of its original support. But the USMCA was approved by huge bipartisan majorities (385 to 41 in the House). And this time, the agreement even had the support of Big Labor. With such broad support, the agreement’s architects hope to win American acceptance for the authority of the new bodies created by the USMCA. The few dissenters were primarily Leftist Democrats and socialist Bernie Sanders who wanted even more enforcement in the USMCA.

In Conclusion
The USMCA is not at its root concerned about promoting healthy trade. It is about establishing unaccountable Internationalist government force (intervention) and paving the way to eventual political union. Both the House and Senate overwhelming supported the USMCA scam (see, for example, our analysis of the December 19th House vote, Roll Call 701).

This alone should be evidence that our freedom calls for major changes in Congress. But that won’t happen as long as most opinion molders rely for their news on corrupted media sources embracing the Internationalist agenda. So please, share this wake-up call widely.

Reinforcing the World Government Ruse

In the January/February 2020 Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria, Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) heavyweight and former editor of its Foreign Affairs, argues against a policy of active confrontation with Communist China. His lengthy article concludes with:

China presents a new and large challenge. But if Washington can keep its cool and patiently continue to pursue a policy of engagement plus deterrence, forcing China to adjust while itself adjusting to make space for it, some scholar decades from now might write about the United States’ not-so-secret plan to expand the zone of peace, prosperity, openness, and decent governance across the globe — a marathon strategy that worked. [Emphasis added.]

In support of his conclusion, Zakaria brazenly distorts history — largely through deceptive omission and by relying on Establishment sources pushing the same distortions. As an aside, promoting “decent governance across the globe” has never been a CFR objective!

Since the CFR has achieved dominant influence over our government, it is worth examining what Foreign Affairs covers up in Zakaria’s “The New China Scare — Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger.” Actually, America should panic about the influence of the CFR!

Cover-up #1: How China Fell Under Communism

Zakaria’s analysis cleverly ignores the fact that U.S. policymakers, combined with CFR influence, enabled the Communists to take over China, turning China into an adversary. Why did they do so? Major reasons: The CFR’s drive to establish world government needs conflict as a pretext for change, and a Communist government, already dominating its population, would, at some point, be easier to integrate.

We documented that history in Masters of Deception — The Rise of the Council on Foreign Relations. Here is an excerpt:

[I[n early 1946 the Nationalist forces [under U.S. ally Chiang Kai-shek] had Mao’s Reds on the run. However, Truman had sent General George C. Marshall to China to mediate the fighting, and Marshall forced Chiang to accept a cease-fire (one of several). As recorded by Freda Utley:

“In the interval that followed, General Marshall and President Truman took steps to prevent the Nationalist forces from obtaining arms and ammunition. At the end of July 1946 General Marshall clamped an embargo on the sale of arms and ammunition to China….”

Marshall would boast: “As Chief of Staff I armed 39 anti-Communist divisions, now with a stroke of the pen I disarm them.” Stockpiles of arms on their way to Chiang were actually destroyed in India. The Soviets, meanwhile, equipped Mao with vast stores of U.S. military supplies Truman had provided Stalin for the assault on Japan….

On January 25, 1949, John F. Kennedy, a young second-term congressman from Massachusetts, rose on the floor of the House of Representatives to protest the actions of his party’s president:

“Mr. Speaker, over this weekend we have learned the extent of the disaster that has befallen China and the United States. The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State. The continued insistence that aid would not be forthcoming, unless a coalition government with the Communists were formed, was a crippling blow to the National Government.”

A few days later, he would summarize his protest in words that could be applied to the future handling of Vietnam: “What our young men had saved, our diplomats and our President have frittered away.”

But the policies that betrayed the Chinese people had a much more subversive intent — world tyranny through world government.

In his opening sentence, Zakaria harkens back to 1947 and how President Truman would exaggerate a threat of Communist insurgency in Greece to sell what was to be called the Marshall Plan. And he draws a parallel to stoking exaggerated fears of China today. However, the real deception in the Marshall Plan were its objects — socializing European governments and European unification. As we recorded in Masters of Deception:

At the end of World War II, Congress approved the European Recovery Program (ERP) — a program of massive aid to Europe, popularly known as the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was actually developed by a CFR study group — headed by Charles M. Spofford with David Rockefeller as secretary. Marshall’s name was used to elicit bipartisan support….

Recognizing American political sentiments, however, President Truman cleverly sold the foreign aid as a means to help stop the spread of Communism.

In general, American Insiders have used foreign aid to saddle recipient nations with socialist policies and governments. The ERP certainly followed that pattern. But in Europe the aid was also used to promote European unification. [Regional governments were to be steppingstones to world government, accomplished by masquerading the early steps as mere trade agreements. NAFTA and the USMCA would follow the pattern in this hemisphere. See Chapter 7 Progressive Regionalization.]

Cover-up #2: How Communist China Became a World Power

Zakaria: “Formulating an effective response requires starting with a clear understanding of the United States’ China strategy up to this point. What the new [ostensible, public] consensus misses is that in the almost five decades since U.S. President Richard Nixon’s opening to Beijing, U.S. policy toward China has never been purely one of engagement; it has been a combination of engagement and deterrence.

“In the late 1970s, U.S. policymakers concluded that integrating China into the global economic and political system was better than having it sit outside it, resentful and disruptive. But Washington coupled that effort with consistent support for other Asian powers—including, of course, continued arms sales to Taiwan. That approach, sometimes described as a “hedging strategy,” ensured that as China rose, its power was checked and its neighbors felt secure.”

Obviously, a much stronger check would have been not to have enabled the Communist takeover of China in the first place! But beyond that, Washington, in line with the policy of CFR elites, has enabled Communist China to become an economic powerhouse and a credible military threat.

Here are examples of that assistance, using excerpts from Masters of Deception:

In 1967, presidential candidate Richard Nixon wrote “Asia After Vietnam” for Foreign Affairs, in which he advocated opening diplomatic relations with Communist China. After his election victory the following year, Nixon tapped numerous CFR members to fill key positions in his administration — including Henry Kissinger, who would implement this next step in the continuing Insider betrayal of the Chinese people.
[Winston] Lord had accompanied Kissinger on his secret trip to Beijing in 1971. Lord would join the CFR in 1973 and serve as its president between 1977 and 1985.

Nixon thus began a U.S. policy spanning several administrations of building Red China into a modern world power. Favored U.S. firms were encouraged to invest in China, even relocating operations to China where they could operate more profitably, with their investments protected by the U.S. government.

The Insider-created policy toward China contributed to the de-industrialization of this country, while also providing a “carrot” (reinforced by U.S. regulatory “sticks”) to encourage manufacturing flight. The result has been a significant erosion of the American middle class. Cheaper goods in the stores haven’t offset declining opportunities for quality jobs.

Ever since Nixon opened trade relations with China, the CFR has promoted massive transfers of capital and technology to the Red regime, helping it to become a new “superpower,” while decimating America’s industrial and manufacturing capacity.

On August 30, 1982, President Reagan signed a determination that “it is in the national interest for the Export-Import Bank of the United States to extend a credit and guarantee in the aggregate amount of $68,425,000 to the People’s Republic of China in connection with its purchase of steel making equipment and related services.”

For decades, the U.S. government under a watchful American public had refused Communist demands to recognize Red China as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.

However, the handwriting was on the wall. The ascendancy of Communist power in China had been supported from the beginning by CFR elites. In 1971, the ROC was forced out of the UN, and its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council was given to Communist China.

In December of 1978, President Carter announced on national television that the U.S. would be extending diplomatic recognition to the Communist Peking regime and withdrawing formal diplomatic recognition from our ally on Taiwan. President Carter proceeded unilaterally to cancel our treaties with Taiwan, including the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty.

When President Jimmy Carter severed all diplomatic ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan, Ronald Reagan correctly termed the action an “outright betrayal of a close friend and ally.” However, as president, Reagan made no effort to reverse the Carter betrayal, and U.S. trade with the Red regime continued to increase.

Moreover, in August 1982, Reagan issued a joint communiqué with Peking stating that the U.S. “does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan.” Adding insult to injury, in 1986, the Reagan administration got Congress to approve the sale of $560 million in advanced electronics to Red China, giving its fighters an all-weather capability superior to Taiwan’s.

Cover-up #3: Communist Genocide in China

Zakaria: “Let’s be clear: China is a repressive regime that engages in thoroughly illiberal policies, from banning free speech to interning religious minorities. Over the last five years, it has intensified its political control and economic statism at home. Abroad, it has become a competitor and in some places a rival of the United States. But the essential strategic question for Americans today is, Do these facts make China a vital threat, and to the extent that they do, how should that threat be addressed?”

Let’s really be clear. Let’s not cover up mass murder and genocide with weak phrases such as “illiberal policies” and “intensified its political control and economic statism.” The estimates of the death toll from Communist genocide in China in consolidating Communist control have varied widely. But Professor R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii provided a conservative estimate — more than 35 million deaths — approximately one of every 20 Chinese!

Zakaria: “As far as China’s political development is concerned, the verdict is unambiguous. China has not opened up its politics to the extent that many anticipated; it has in fact moved toward greater repression and control. Beijing’s gruesome treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, a region in northwestern China, has created a human rights crisis. The state has also begun to use new technologies, such as facial recognition software and artificial intelligence, to create an Orwellian system of social control. These realities are a tragedy for the Chinese people and an obstacle to the country’s participation in global leadership. It would be an exaggeration, however, to adduce them as proof of the failure of U.S. policy.”

But China fell under Communist dictatorship precisely because of U.S. policy! Actually, that was not a “failure” of policy as the policy accomplished its subversive purpose.

Cover-up #4: Creation of a Soviet Threat and Cold-War Management

Zakaria: “The consequences of exaggerating the Soviet threat were vast: gross domestic abuses during the McCarthy era; a dangerous nuclear arms race; a long, futile, and unsuccessful war in Vietnam; and countless other military interventions in various so-called Third World countries. The consequences of not getting the Chinese challenge right today will be vaster still. The United States risks squandering the hard-won gains [???] from four decades of engagement with China, encouraging Beijing to adopt confrontational policies of its own, and leading the world’s two largest economies into a treacherous conflict of unknown scale and scope that will inevitably cause decades of instability and insecurity. A cold war with China is likely to be much longer and more costly than the one with the Soviet Union, with an uncertain outcome.”

There are so many false claims in those statements that cry out to be challenged. We will focus on one: “a long, futile, and unsuccessful war in Vietnam.”

In our war with North Vietnam, CFR elites ensured that victory was never the goal. From Masters of Deception: “[McGeorge] Bundy’s older brother, William P. Bundy, also CFR, would serve in the Johnson administration as assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs (1964–1969), playing a major role in “mismanaging” the war in Vietnam. William would later become a director of the CFR and the editor of Foreign Affairs.”

Also from Masters:

Throughout the Vietnam War, [President] Johnson met periodically with an advisory group of 14 he himself called “the Wise Men.” Twelve of the fourteen were CFR members. Dean Acheson was perhaps most influential. John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett, and Averell Harriman were also included.

• No-Win War.  The War in Vietnam was not a project of anti-Communist “hawks,” but of CFR “wise men,” who had helped and would continue to help Communism….

In Vietnam, McNamara and company hobbled our Armed Forces with a defensive strategy that could not win, while preventing a strategy that could.   Americans have been repeatedly told that winning was not feasible. Yet few are aware of counterclaims by America’s top military leaders….

In late 1966, former Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay, fed up with the Administration’s “nibbling around the edges” strategy, which was unnecessarily sacrificing thousands of lives and scores of billions of dollars, published an outspoken article in U.S. News & World Report, offering a blueprint of the Air Force-sea power strategy for victory….

But such an objective was contrary to the firm intentions of the Insiders running the war.   Even worse, the McNamara team invoked an insidious micromanagement of the war from Washington and imposed Rules of Engagement that ensured our forces could not have victory. They would win every major battle, but were not allowed to win the war.

Cover-up #5: The UN is a CFR Creation for World Domination

Zakaria: “In the early 1970s, before Nixon’s opening to China, Beijing was the world’s greatest rogue regime….

“By comparison, today’s China is a remarkably responsible nation on the geopolitical and military front. It has not gone to war since 1979. It has not used lethal military force abroad since 1988. Nor has it funded or supported proxies or armed insurgents anywhere in the world since the early 1980s. That record of nonintervention is unique among the world’s great powers. All the other permanent members of the UN Security Council have used force many times in many places over the last few decades — a list led, of course, by the United States.

“China has also gone from seeking to undermine the international system to spending large sums to bolster it. Beijing is now the second-largest funder of the United Nations and the UN peacekeeping program. It has deployed 2,500 peacekeepers, more than all the other permanent members of the Security Council combined. Between 2000 and 2018, it supported 182 of 190 Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on nations deemed to have violated international rules or norms.” [Emphasis added.]

Here Zakaria esteems the decisions of the CFR’s emerging UN tyranny, a collection of largely despotic governments, as “international rules or norms.”

Zakaria also implies that a regime willing to use lethal force at home (e.g., the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre) may somehow be unwilling to use it abroad. And he conveniently ignores the continued brutal occupation of Tibet.

In his newspaper column, CFR-heavyweight Henry Kissinger described the Tiananmen Square massacre as “inevitable,” insisting that “[n]o government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators….”

Within a few weeks of that massacre, U.S. officials Lawrence Eagleburger (formerly of Kissinger Associates) and Brent Scowcroft (former chairman of the CFR’s membership committee) would travel to China to reassure the Chinese leaders of continued U.S.-Chinese relations.

The fact that Red China has embraced the CFR’s international system and its plan for world subjugation is no joy, as the following excerpts from Masters of Deception illustrate:

The original proposal for a specific United Nations was developed under the leadership of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In January 1943, Hull formed a “secret steering committee,” later known as the Informal Agenda Group, to come up with a specific proposal. In addition to Hull, the steering committee included Leo Pasvolsky, Isaiah Bowman, Sumner Welles, Norman Davis, and Myron Taylor — all but Hull CFR members.

The UN’s trappings of democracy are merely a sham to deceive the public. In reality, the UN is controlled by a hidden oligarchy relying heavily on the CFR.

The hierarchical structure of the UN facilitates that control. The UN and its agencies are structured so that controlling a number of key spots at the top is sufficient to control the entire beast. And the CFR and its Communist children have made sure that their agents occupy key posts in the apparatus.

In summary, Zakaria’s article gives support to liberal sophistry regarding the moral equivalence of governments. More significantly, it helps justify relying on the UN’s handpicked tyrannies to police the world. But his article, with our critique, can also be used by our readers to help others understand the ruthless masters of deception who would steal our freedom.

Crisis-hyping — What’s at Stake!

Humanity is on track to face “untold suffering” if we continue our current climate change trajectory. A new study, signed by more than 11,000 scientists from around the world, marks the first time a large group of scientists has said the Earth is facing a “climate emergency” caused predominantly by human activities. — “More than 11,000 scientists officially declare a ‘climate emergency,’” CBS News, 11-5-19

But before you jump off a cliff, read this Washington Times report a few days later (11-11-19):

There was something goofy about the petition signed by 11,258 “world scientists” from 153 countries declaring a “climate emergency.”

One “scientist” was named “Mouse, Micky” from the “Micky Mouse Institute for the Blind, Nambia.” Another was Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts. And then there was “Araminta Aardvark” from the fictional University of Neasden.

Among the “Alliance of World Scientists” members who were apparently real people, many identified themselves as teachers, students, administrators, statisticians, economists, technicians, therapists, doctors, psychologists — not climate scientists….

The alliance is a project of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, which invited “all scientists” to add their names to the four-page statement, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency,” by clicking on a green “sign the article” button on the college’s website.

One might think that such an apocalyptic warning would deserve some fact-checking before the Establishment mass media gave it headlines. Not so. The very same day the article appeared in the journal BioScience, the Oregon State University authors’ claims were repeated by CBS News above, Newsweek, Business Insider, msn.com, The Washington Post, and undoubtedly more.

Which points to a truly serious threat — a threat to our freedoms from this Establishment-promoted scam. (Please see our previous posts on the climate-change topic, e.g.: “Fool Me Twice,” “Repeat a Lie Often Enough,” and “UN Climate-Change Hysteria.”)

Indeed, the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations has long promoted the crisis. According to CFR.org:

Climate change poses grave risks to humanity in the 21st century; confronting it will require a massive transformation of the world’s energy systems.

The CFR website also heralded a new senior fellow for climate change — Anita C. Hill: “At CFR, Hill is researching and directing a roundtable series on preventing and mitigating the consequences of climate change.” Although the Council claims to take no “official” policy positions, it clearly promotes an agenda. Hill recently co-authored a book — Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption.

The CFR maintains links with the workhorses of the environmental movement, such as the Environmental Defense Fund. (See our website review of Steve Milloy’s Green Hell). And CFR members have huge influence in the media.

More problems with the CBS report
The CBS report not only repeated the claims in the BioScience article, but added its own support for alarm.

At the opening of the CBS report, a graphic points to a “new 2050 projection” suggesting that major cities could be underwater by 2050, including “New York City & Surrounding Areas.”

Dr. Arthur Robinson, publisher and editor of the newsletter “Access to Energy” has researched the climate-change topic extensively. In his July newsletter, Dr. Robinson provides historical graphs of glacier shortening and hydrocarbon use with these comments:

Glacier melting and sea level rise as the Earth emerges from the Little Ice Age are seen to be approximately linear and starting long before significant carbon use. Moreover sea level rise is proceeding at a rate of seven inches per century — hardly a serious threat.

The CBS report also overlayed a photo of polar bears with the text “11 species threatened by climate change” linking to photos of the 11 species. However, the previously alleged impact on polar bears has been credibly debunked by Dr. Susan Crockford, an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, in her 2019 book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened.

Two of six recommended categories of action taken from the BioScience article were: 1) Implement a carbon-free economy and prioritize basic human needs rather than affluence. And 2) stabilize and reduce population growth. Both are prescriptions for more unconstitutional socialist power.

BioScience article conclusions
The conclusions in the BioScience article reveal the authors’ support for orchestrated revolutionary deception:

Mitigating and adapting to climate change while honoring the diversity of humans entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems. We are encouraged by a recent surge of concern. Governmental bodies are making climate emergency declarations. Schoolchildren are striking. Ecocide lawsuits are proceeding in the courts. Grassroots citizen movements are demanding change, and many countries, states and provinces, cities, and businesses are responding.

Among the article’s cited reviewers, we find Dr. Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb. Dr. Ehrlich is well known for predicting crises that never happen.

A financial motive?
A couple of weeks later (11-18-19) Reuters reported that investors were demanding more Internationalist pressure for government action to shift to alternative energies (“Exclusive: Investors step up pressure on global energy watchdog over climate change”):

Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), faced renewed pressure on Monday from investors and scientists concerned about climate change to overhaul the agency’s projections for fossil fuel demand.

Pension funds, insurers and large companies were among 65 signatories of a joint letter to Birol, seen by Reuters, urging him to do more to support the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement to avert catastrophic global warming.

“The year 2020 marks a turning point for the world — the year when we either grasp the challenges and opportunities before us, or continue delaying and obstructing the low-carbon transformation,” the letter said.

The media regularly ignore the fact that alternative energies, such as solar and wind power, simply cannot supply the needs of a modern industrial society, let alone economically. So implementation of alternative energies requires government pressure and subsidy and would eventually lead to rationing. Which makes one wonder whether the investors are really concerned about climate change or merely their speculative investments, i.e., speculating on the success of Establishment-supported environmental activism.

However, the media agenda is clear: Support a revolutionary drive for more government power that would make slaves of us all.

Let’s Learn the Lessons of History!

“Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” — President Donald Trump, Second State of the Union Address, 2-5-19

Unfortunately, uninformed resolve won’t stop the socialist revolution. The Newsweek cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now,” for its February 16, 2009 issue, published during the Obama administration, is once again timely and illuminating. During the subsequent 10 years the socialist revolution has continued to advance through a pattern of subversive deception.

“We Are All Socialists Now” is supported by a second article, “Big Government Is Back — Big Time.” We will comment on both.

In their cover story, the two Newsweek authors properly excoriate posturing “conservatives” for attaching the unpopular “Socialist” tag to Obama administration policies while ignoring the fact that Republican administrations had also supported socialism.

But these GOP “conservatives” are not hypocrites, as Newsweek seems to imply, but “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” For the Establishment weekly also took pains to portray the subversive socialist trend in big-government as a natural modern development (thus covering up the hidden orchestration) and something that should be embraced.

Not surprisingly, both authors of the cover story showed up on the 2008 and 2009 membership lists for the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

We list here a few of the article’s claims, followed by our (FFS) analysis:

Newsweek: “Whether we want to admit it or not — and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not — the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.”

FFS analysis: Newsweek deceptively ignores the fact that America is being pushed into socialism. Neither natural forces nor an informed public will are driving that revolution.

Newsweek continues: “We remain a center-right nation in many ways — particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the [2008 financial] crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism — but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.”

FFS analysis: Here Newsweek again covers up the orchestration behind our nation’s demise, by suggesting that our culture and “our instinct” are what drives Washington rather than merely serving as an obstacle for the Establishment to overcome. But even Newsweek admits that “our instinct” didn’t prevent “a conservative GOP administration” from enacting “the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years.” Nor does the Newsweek story give any attention to the orchestrated attack on our culture through government-controlled education or the push for massive unassimilated immigration, against the public will, from cultures that are far from center-right.

Newsweek: “If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world.”

FFS analysis: Here Newsweek tries once more to reinforce the pure illusion that some kind of “open debate” is actually deciding the direction of government. While the partisan winners and losers may not be “fixed,” the socialist direction of government is. In support of that fix, the Establishment-controlled media obscures political betrayal by entertaining the public with the equivalent of a professional wrestling match. And, of course, Newsweek never even suggests that there are any constitutional restraints on what government can or should do.

Newsweek: “Whether we like it or not … the [government spending] numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction…. But the simple fact of the matter is that the political conversation, which shifts from time to time, has shifted anew, and for the foreseeable future Americans will be more engaged with questions about how to manage a mixed economy than about whether we should have one.” [Emphasis added.]

FFS analysis: Here again, Newsweek seeks to reinforce the illusion that political conversation and a public engaged with questions are what is driving our nation’s subversion.

Newsweek: “During the roughly three decades since Reagan made big government the enemy and “liberal” an epithet, government did not shrink. It grew.”

FFS analysis: President Reagan gave very conservative speeches, but, contrary to Establishment myth, his administration was anything but conservative. Indeed, President Reagan chose several stalwarts from the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations, such as Secretary of State George Pratt Shultz and Vice President George H.W. Bush (a former CFR director) to run his administrations.

Newsweek: “Now comes the reckoning. The answer may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending.” [Emphasis added.]

FFS analysis: Here Newsweek perpetuates the power-grabbing Establishment mantra that government must run a modern economy. But just perhaps, when consumers decide not to spend, they may have a good reason.

Newsweek: “Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can muster.”

FFS analysis: Here Newsweek further supports the same power-grabbing deception that has also been used to justify the Federal Reserve: namely, that only the “best and the brightest” intellectuals can be trusted to prevent a market economy from imploding.

Newsweek’s supporting article
Newsweek’s supporting article, authored this time by Michael Freedman, is titled: “Big Government Is Back — Big Time, U.S. policymakers reconsider the relationship between government and the private sector.”

Right off the bat, we would ask: “When was big government away?” But let’s look at some of what the article is promoting.

This article regularly compares what was happening in the U.S. (in 2008-2009) with what was happening in France under President Nicholas Sarkozy:

Newsweek: “When Obama called Wall Street ‘shameful’ and greedy, he was articulating what the French have always thought, and endorsing Sarkozy’s recent dismissal of the ‘crazy’ idea that markets are always right.”

FFS analysis: While markets may not always be right, they have the right to be wrong. This applies to what consumers spend their money on as well. The clever sophistry that government force should supervise such decisions is merely a pretext for a government power grab.

Newsweek: “At its most basic level, the nearly $1 trillion U.S. stimulus package now being dissected on Capitol Hill is a fight over how great a role the federal government will play in what had been, for decades, private economic life. And while it’s impossible to know just what the day after the crisis will look like, the broad contours of the new economic world are becoming visible.”

FFS analysis: The “new economic world” sounds ominously like “a new economic order.” “Building a new economic order” is a phrase used by Internationalists (e.g., Trilateralists and CFR types) to refer to the process of consolidating global control. And Newsweek is just helping to lay an intellectual smokescreen for a new step in government control of “private economic life.”

Newsweek: “One of the more lasting effects will be a steady drift toward what could be called a European model of governance, regulation and paternalism…. More specifically, in the absence of a robust private sector (or at least public confidence in business) the U.S. government will be forced to fill the gap, firmly directing businesses in all sorts of ways — regulating some industries (particularly banking and the automotive sector) with big-brother vigilance, favoring others like clean energy with grants and loans, and turning still others — health care, pensions — into virtual wards of the state.”

FFS analysis: Who forces government to fill an ostensible gap? Not the public. Instead, opportunistic socialists seek to fill any gap they can claim exists. And constitutional protections against government overreach be damned.

Newsweek: “So aside from expanding the social safety net, the government will have to take a greater role in guiding business toward ends the state deems healthy for the overall economy.” [Emphasis added.]

FFS analysis: This outrageous endorsement of more government power is a blatant rejection of the limited government authorized by our Constitution. America’s founders understood from the historical record that unrestrained government led to tyranny and that “the state” needed supervision, not the other way around. Newsweek doesn’t identify whom it sees as “the state.” But it’s obvious that its state consists of Establishment Insiders who seek to build an unaccountable police state.

Newsweek: “But sentiment is moving toward some form of universal health care and will only grow if unemployment remains high.”

FFS analysis: Whose sentiment?

Newsweek: “Another way government can take a larger role, particularly in easing the burden created by low stock-market returns, is by introducing programs that forgive some or all college-tuition debt in exchange for public service, something Obama promised to do on the campaign trail.

FFS analysis: Newsweek’s endorsement of “public service” seems reminiscent of President Clinton’s inauguration of “national service” via the National and Community Service Trust Act. That Act created the taxpayer-financed Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which would include the AmeriCorps and VISTA. The bureaucracy that must be set up to administer these programs is not only highly expensive, but the “service” is generally of marginal value to the taxpayer. And most ominously, the idea of an expanded volunteer army serving the State harkens comparisons to Mussolini’s programs for service to the Fascist State. One should also consider why college education has become so expensive now that the federal government is placing increasing demands on colleges to create bureaucracy to enforce political correctness.

Newsweek: “This crisis-driven debate on the proper role of government is not confined to America. At the recent World Economic Forum….”

FFS analysis: The notion that there is a high-level debate on the proper role of government is absurd. The only debate is over how government can best gain more power through deception and manufactured crises.

Newsweek: “Bailouts, protectionism, talk of bank nationalization and a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package are not a socialist conspiracy, as some right-wing U.S. pundits and talk-show hosts insist.”

FFS analysis: We think Newsweek doth protest too much, while seeking to demonize even phony opposition as “right-wing”!

Newsweek: “Nonetheless, it is clear that a ‘centrist rebalancing’ is taking place even in America, says Sunder Katwala, head of Britain’s center-left Fabian Society, and that a prolonged period of slow growth will force the United States to become something more like Europe.”

FFS analysis: Center-left? Britain’s Fabian Society is out-and-out socialist. Indeed, one of its leaders, published The Story of Fabian Socialism. From its inception, the Fabian Society embraced a strategy of deception, patient gradualism, and permeation of other organizations. The Fabians would permeate and control the British Labour Party and the Socialist International. They would also establish roots in this country.

U.S. Constitution Under Attack!

It is generally a strategic mistake to get caught up in disputing the pretexts for revolutionary demands. Rather our primary concern always needs to be to expose their disguised objective of unrestrained government power. However, with that caution in mind, sometimes debunking the claims can strengthen our understanding of fundamental principles.

And so it is with the cover story for Harper’s October 2019 issue. The Harper’s story, actually titled “Constitution in Crisis — Has America’s founding document become the nation’s undoing?,” is based on the comments of “five lawmakers and scholars.” We would characterize the group as largely a bunch of anti-Trump, pro-Democrat Leftists seeking to undermine intellectual support for the Constitution. Harper’s invited these five to a forum at New York University’s law school “to consider the constitutional crisis of the twenty-first century.”

Throughout the Harper’s story, we encounter a Leftist plea for shallow political correctness and a disparaging of America’s Founders and the Constitution they created. To kick off its article, Harper’s explains the ostensible purpose of the forum:

America’s Constitution was once celebrated as a radical and successful model for fledgling republics across the world. But decades of political gridlock, electoral corruption, and dysfunction in our system of government have forced scholars, activists, and citizens to question the document’s ability to address the thorniest issues of modern political life.” [Emphasis added.]

Freedom First Society (FFS): Of course, the Harper’s article ignores the impact of a Conspiracy on “modern” political life. Moreover, America’s Founders never suggested that the Constitution by itself would guarantee good government. In his 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington wisely counseled Americans on what other supports they needed to cultivate if they wanted to continue to enjoy the fruits of freedom:

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened….

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them…. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The Left ignores its role in undermining those supports, such as religion as the necessary basis for morality.

Rosa Brooks (moderator): “After [each of my students in my constitutional law classes] has a chance to talk about how great it is that the United States has this very, very old written Constitution, I ask them how they would feel if their neurosurgeon used the world’s oldest neurosurgery guide, or NASA used the world’s oldest astronomical chart to plan space-shuttle flights, and they all get quiet.”

FFS: Here Georgetown Law Professor Brooks introduces clever sophistry. America’s Constitution was based on extensive study of historical experience. It reflected a deep understanding of human nature, which does not change. It’s checks and balances were designed to put roadblocks in the way of dangerous human ambition for accumulating power, evident throughout history. Much of that wisdom was recorded in the Federalist Papers. Also, we received wise counsel in President Washington’s Farewell Address:

The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.

Throughout history and in much of the world today, freedom is the exception, not the rule. Freedom cannot be taken for granted. The moderator and participants ignore that record and principle. The participants also gloss over the fact that the Constitution is often ignored in fedgov’s drive to accumulate more unconstitutional, socialist power.

Louis Michael Seidman: “At the time the Constitution was written there was another binding document, the Articles of Confederation…. When [the Constitution’s authors] met behind closed doors … one of the first things they decided was to disregard their instructions and just ditch the Articles…. It’s a neat trick to get from that to a time when people feel bound to respect the document.”

FFS: We wish it were so that people today (particularly our elected representatives) feel bound to respect the document. Georgetown University Law Center Professor Seidman ignores the higher principle of sovereign assembly. The people’s chosen delegates to a constitutional convention had a well recognized right to change their form of government. Nearly all of the state constitutions and declaration of rights endorsed that principle. (See, for example, “The Sovereign Dynamic.”)

In his Farewell Address, George Washington admonished:

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

David Law: “Thomas Jefferson would be rolling over in his grave. He thought that every generation should rewrite the Constitution. It should be revised every nineteen years.”

FFS: Nonsense! Although the Founders included provision for making amendments and even calling a Constitutional Convention, they feared a second Con-con. Deputy Charles Pinkney of South Carolina insisted: “Conventions are serious things and ought not to be repeated.” In a 1788 letter, “Father of the Constitution” James Madison wrote: “Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention which assembled under every propitious circumstance, I should tremble for the result of a second….”

Mary Anne Franks: “We have not, as a country, fully confronted the fraudulent nature of the Constitution and the founding itself. The revolutionary spirit was always, from the beginning, a limited one. It was a revolution for some people, and this idea that we threw off the yoke of tyranny was immediately constrained by the idea that you didn’t want to throw it off too much. The founders didn’t want to throw it off for slaves, and they didn’t want to throw it off for women…. [E]very word of the Constitution — starting from this premise of ‘we the people’ — is a lie.”

FFS: Fraudulent? A lie? Outrageous! On the other hand, Professor Franks is correct that the American revolutionary spirit was a limited one. The revolution was waged reluctantly, after repeated suffering, for a limited objective — independence from Great Britain. By contrast, revolutions promoted under utopian banners as a complete upheaval of society killed millions in the twentieth-century alone.

Such revolutions were conceived by men of letters who lived in ivory towers divorced from the reality of governing. America’s Founders were men of affairs with real experience. Although, the Founders convened in Philadelphia to address problems in the Articles of Confederation and ended up by proposing a new federal government, they also recognized that slavery was immoral. There was no “tension,” as Franks suggests, “between this idealized view of the Founding Fathers as almost divine figures and at the same time ones who couldn’t possibly have understood that slavery was wrong, or taken a real stance against it, or declared that women were equal human beings to men.”

Yes, George Washington was a slaveholder. But he also stated: “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.” And his last will and testament stated:

Upon the decease of my wife it is my will and desire that all the slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom. — And whereas among those who will receive freedom, there may be some, who from old age or bodily infirmities, and others who on account of their infancy, will be unable to support themselves; it is my will and desire that — they shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs while they live.

Moreover, the Constitution did not deny women rights. The issue of women voting was left to the states, and some states did extend early suffrage to women.

Lawrence Lessig: “So I think one of the really important questions is: Do you expect people to rally around a document that has no connection to the democracy of today, or yesterday, or even forty years ago?

FFS: Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, should learn that America is a republic (a rule of law) and not a democracy. James Madison, “Father of the Constitution,” wrote in Essay 10 of The Federalist Papers that pure “democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

And as long as Establishment forces control the media that informs Americans and our universities, which radicalize our youth, we would expect increasing disillusionment with the Constitution.

Franks: “The position I’ve taken as a preliminary step is to think, ‘Well, is there anything in the Constitution that is meaningful here, in a larger sense?’ And I think the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause is where a lot of our efforts might be focused and energies spent.”

FFS: We’re not surprised. The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, reversed important principles in the Constitution, enforcing federal provisions on the states. And it was further abused by misinterpretation. It became a vehicle for judicial activism on behalf of various constituencies.

One of the continuing benefits of the Constitution is that the elitist Left sees it as still somewhat of a speed bump in their road to socialist revolution.

Seidman: “Maybe the right way to think about the Constitution is not as a legal document at all, not as a lease or will or something like that. Instead, think of it as poetry. As a poem, or symphony. And if you think of it that way it can be treated as a symbol that unites the country…. Now, nobody would say that you have an obligation to obey a poem or a symphony.”

FFS: Now, it’s getting really ridiculous. Or perhaps, revolutionary ambition is being revealed. Utopian revolutionaries do not want any constraints on their power.

Lessig: But the problem is that we have a president who treats it like a poem, or a dirty limerick — he treats it like something he doesn’t have to respect or follow, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Seidman: “The very last way we want to confront Trump is with the Constitution as a legal text. That is a way of turning this argument over to lawyers…. In the end, the problem with Trump is not that he’s violating some technical legal provision in the Constitution; it’s that he’s writing bad poetry.”

FFS: Revolutionaries want unrestrained authority for themselves, but they won’t want anyone else to exercise it.

Law: “I see Americans trapped within a box, unable to transcend the constitutional way of thinking. Countries actually don’t need written constitutions. The United Kingdom doesn’t really have a constitution. New Zealand doesn’t have a constitution. In a functioning democracy, you don’t need one.

FFS: There again, we encounter the scam that purports the U.S. is a democracy — rule by the majority, where everything is up for grabs, rather than a republic, a rule of law, which protects minority rights. Of course, if government has total authority, as in a monarchy, a written constitution may not be necessary. But these radicals ought to ask themselves, how the rare impeachment would be conducted if there were no Constitution.

Lessig: “I think what we have to focus on in a very precise way is: What are the steps that could get us to a place that could make the democracy a responsive democracy? How do you break this deeply unrepresentative system that we have now?”

FFS: The Establishment-supported revolutionaries already have that in motion. Controlling the information and perspective people receive makes them somewhat responsive to the radical agenda. But not entirely. For example, the people want their government to control its southern border. But the government resists, because of Establishment influence. That same Establishment supports revolutionary activism and major universities.

Although the intellectuals participating in this forum did not come up with an agreed plan of action, at the very least they are helping to develop intellectual support for dumping the Constitution when a real crisis occurs. One such crisis would be the further merger of the U.S. into a stronger regional government, following in the footsteps of the EU.