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Where’s the Data, Dr. Fauci?

“President Donald Trump may want to reopen the U.S. economy by Easter — but the novel coronavirus wreaking havoc across the globe may have other plans.

“Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, pointed out Wednesday that the virus is determining ‘the timeline’ for the pandemic.

“‘You’ve gotta be realistic,’ Fauci told CNN’s Chris Cuomo…. ‘You’ve got to understand that you don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline….

“‘You can’t make an arbitrary decision until you see what you’re dealing with. You need the data.’” [Emphasis added.] — HuffPost, 3-26-20

Note:  On March 29, President Trump announced that he was extending the federal social distancing guidelines until April 30th.

Okay, Dr. Fauci, where’s the data?  I mean the data you used in the beginning to justify the unprecedented government decision to shutdown the economy?  Surely, you wouldn’t have accepted the notoriously unreliable Communist Chinese data?  Even the often quoted data from the UN’s World Health Organization can’t be trusted, because WHO has an agenda to reinforce the UN’s global power grab.

Indeed, where’s the data that the coronavirus is more deadly or more communicable than other infectious diseases that the world copes with every year without shutting down?  The American people deserve to know, particularly since the Internationalist Insiders dominating our government regularly use crises as pretexts for government to seize more unconstitutional power (see “Internationalist Treachery,” below).

Dr. Ron Paul

According to Dr. Ron Paul, a former U.S. Representative, Fauci “testified to Congress that the death rate for the coronavirus is ten times that of the seasonal flu, a claim without any scientific basis.”

We hear statistics about number of cases and deaths, but how to those compare with say, the flu, or tuberculosis?  Most Americans can’t readily make the comparison, and many cases of such diseases go unreported.   (The CDC estimated that during the 2018-2019 flu season, the flu killed 34,200 of about 35.5 million people infected.)

Scaring Us
In a March 16th open letter, Dr. Paul further charged: “The chief fearmonger of the Trump Administration is without a doubt Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Fauci is all over the media, serving up outright falsehoods to stir up even more panic.”

And the impact of that panic is everywhere.  Congress just passed a $2.2 trillion rescue package, which The Hill (3-25-20) claimed was “the single largest stimulus package in the nation’s history.”  And that may be only a beginning.

The ostensible justification for the enormous addition to the national debt was to stimulate an economy that is in recession, not because of the coronavirus directly, but because of governments’ (federal, state, & local) response, using the hyped scare as justification for the unprecedented assumption of power.  Only a lesser portion of the rescue package was devoted to defense against the virus itself.

On March 29th, Dr. Fauci ramped up his warning dramatically. According to The Hill:

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fauci said that, based on what he’s seeing, the U.S. could experience between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths from Covid-19.

“We’re going to have millions of cases,” Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, noting that projections are subject to change, given that the disease’s outbreak is “such a moving target.”

Unfortunately, his projections seemed to have been based on computer models, which even Dr. Fauci admitted were no better than the assumptions fed into them.

Internationalist Treachery
In evaluating the crisis claims, we have a right to demand proof, because for decades Internationalists have been employing evolving threats and scares to gain power — leading to global power, accountable only to them.

With the start of the Cold War, the threat was nuclear annihilation.  But that shifted with the break-up of the former Soviet Union.   As replacements, the Internationalists embraced new threats — drugs, terrorism, and environmental catastrophe — as pretexts for increasing the authority of International bodies.

In its November 24, 1997 issue, The New American magazine warned that Internationalists had adopted another alarmist threat — pestilence — to accomplish their aims. The report was entitled “Scaring Us Toward Global Government.”  Remember that the following assessments were written two decades before the world heard of a “coronavirus pandemic:”

In recent years, yet another alarmist refrain has been heard: “World government or pestilence!” This latest crisis requiring global management is the threat presented by supposedly new infectious diseases. Where once we were menaced by megatons, the danger now supposedly comes from microbes — and familiar voices are insisting anew that only world government can save humanity from destruction.

As a tool for manipulating public opinion, the threat of pestilence actually has an advantage over the earlier scare scenarios: Nuclear annihilation of humanity, while a horrifying prospect, is simply too abstract to have a visceral impact. The same is true of environmental collapse. But everybody has been sick and can individualize the horror of succumbing to an incurable disease. Thus, the pestilence scenario may have far more potential as a tool for selling the public on globalist “solutions.”

In November 1993, President Clinton set up, by Executive Order, the National Science and Technology Council, which included a Committee on International Science, Engineering, and Technology Policy (CISETP).

The New American article cited a CISETP report as an example of “the willingness of public policy elites to play off media-generated fears of infectious disease.” According to the report:  “[Th]e past few years have been marked by a recognition of renewed vulnerability to infectious diseases. Bestselling books and Hollywood thrillers have triggered public fascination with ‘new,’ deadly, and unpredictable microorganisms.”  The New American continued:

The report noted that protecting the health of the “global village” demands “a worldwide response,” and “recently, public discussion has been further focused on the global issue of emerging diseases by … popular movies such as ‘Outbreak,’ starring Dustin Hoffman.”…

In the miniseries Pandora’s Clock, an airliner bound for JFK Airport in New York has the misfortune to be carrying a passenger infected with a doomsday virus. The plane is not allowed to land, lest the virus be loosed, and the government plans to shoot the plane down instead — another effective pitch for the idea that crises must be dealt with through extreme measures.

CISETP’s eagerness to cite Outbreak and similar entertainment products typifies a distressing willingness on the part of some public health officials to focus on lurid scenarios at some expense to sound science. The average American is largely at the mercy of domestic and international public health bureaucracies for information about infectious disease. This trust has been abused by public health authorities in recent decades.

For a more recent example of this strategy at work, check out our  11-24-19 post “Crisis-Hyping — What’s At Stake!”

But perhaps, this time, the Internationalists do have a real crisis to drive their power grabs.  Perhaps. However, we also know that with sufficient focus, the Establishment media can make any problem, such as “gun violence,” appear to be a new pandemic.  And there are several reports circulating claiming that the coronavirus statistics are exaggerated.

Data Alone Fallacy
Dr. Fauci’s claim that the virus data alone should drive government policy is a dangerous position.   In particular, his claim supports the Internationalist Establishment’s agenda for totalitarian power.  As several have pointed out, when the threat passes, government doesn’t give us our freedoms back.   It insists that an ongoing threat warrants that government retain the new authority. As an example, consider the “temporary” surveillance authorities granted to government following 9/11 by the Patriot Act, now the U.S.A. Freedom Act.

The coronavirus, even if it deserves major attention, is by no means the only problem the public faces.  Human mortality has not been conquered.  In the meantime, the public deserves the opportunity to try and accomplish life’s goals, protected by government, not burdened by government-imposed “emergency” restrictions.

But most significantly, the arguments in favor of the government measures ignore the much more dangerous threat of a high-level Internationalist Conspiracy that lusts to expand government authority in perpetuity and is greedy for useful pretexts.

So if these Conspiracy Insiders have their way, this scare is not a onetime event.  Indeed, Dr. Fauci has warned:  “We really need to be prepared for another cycle” to hit later this year.  And what about next year?

Multiple Gains
Establishment Internationalists are reaping multiple gains from their “crisis.”   Alexander Hamilton pointed to a principal one:

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates…. [T]he continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free. — The Federalist No. 8

Hamilton’s warning is even more valid today, when there is a major organized Conspiracy for total power at work determined to undo the American revolution.  But in addition to preparing the public to give up its rights and accept government domination, the Conspiracy gains in other ways.

A primary Conspiracy gain is the enormous addition to our national debt from massive government spending — more than 2 trillion dollars the government does not have.  The consequences (inflation) and potential consequences (destruction of the dollar and its replacement with an International currency) are huge topics in themselves.  Bloomberg just reported (4-1-20):

The Federal Reserve is trying to call time on a fire sale of Treasuries by foreign governments and central banks.

Foreign official holders of Treasuries dumped more than $100 billion in the three weeks to March 25, on course for the biggest monthly drop on record, according to weekly Fed custody data that captures much of the pandemic-fueled turmoil.

Another gain by power seekers is the destruction of small businesses, a pillar of a free market economy and of the middle class — a bulwark of freedom.   Many other small businesses are to be put in hoc to the federal government.  In an interview with Yahoo! Finance (published 3-31-20) Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s daughter and senior advisor, made the following observation:

“Small businesses employ close to 50% of the American workforce, and obviously are the most vulnerable from a cash flow situation,” she said.

The $2 trillion fiscal stimulus sets aside over $350 billion in loans for small businesses. “We want to just bridge people until the world reopens,” she said.

And last, and very alarming, the Leftwing Politico reports that the Trump administration has asked Congress to draft legislation that would allow it to suspend parts of the Constitution:

The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as the novel coronavirus spreads throughout the United States.

Documents reviewed by POLITICO detail the department’s requests to lawmakers on a host of topics, including the statute of limitations, asylum and the way court hearings are conducted  — “DOJ seeks new emergency powers amid coronavirus pandemic,” 3-21-20

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

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….

      Zbigniew Brzezinski

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.

“Fool Me Twice …”

Tens of thousands of high school students in cities nationwide plan to skip classes Friday [9-20-19] to attend Global Climate Strike marches calling for immediate action to end climate change. They will be part of a global joint protest aimed directly at the adults who they say are ignoring the destruction of the planet….

Students in more than 800 locations around the United States plan to go on strike from school for the day to attend protests. “It’s going to be a really, really powerful day, the launch of a new era of climate movement. This is just the beginning for us,” said Katie Eder, 19, who is the executive director of the Future Coalition, a youth-led non-profit helping the groups coordinate….

The protests are timed to begin a week of activism at the United Nations, including a Youth Climate Summit on Saturday and a UN Climate Action Summit on Monday. A second strike is planned for Friday, Sept. 27. — USA Today, 9-19-19

Media reports on the youth demonstrations conveniently ignore the revolutionary orchestration guiding the protesting students (e.g., the radical professors and/or outside adult revolutionaries — with subversive aims — motivating and guiding student action.)  By themselves, high school kids clearly don’t have the connections, independent funding, and experience to organize nationwide, let alone global demonstrations.  However, by ignoring the orchestration, the media helps create the illusion that the protesting students represent the genuine concerns of today’s responsible students.

And, of course, the reports completely ignore the subversive aims driving the “climate change” hysteria — unaccountable global power over you and me. That is the most important lesson for Americans to grasp.

More Americans also need to understand how they are being deceived. An old adage states:  “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”  But how about “fool me a hundred times?”  Then we have a real problem.  The recent student demonstrations illustrate a shop-worn but proven revolutionary tactic for pushing totalitarian measures through a national legislature.

Revolutionary Parliamentarianism
In a secret Communist strategy paper, Jan Kozak, official historian for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, provided a thorough explanation of the tactic as it was used in the Communist takeover of Czechovakia following World War II. His original Czech paper was titled: “How Parliament Can Play a Revolutionary Part in the Transition to Socialism and the Role of the Popular Masses.”

The uncovered paper with commentary has since been published several times in English as a book under the title And Not a Shot Is Fired.  In his introduction to the American edition, John Howland Snow explained that the Kozak document is a blueprint for how a “representative government can be made authoritarian, legally, piece by piece. The form remains, an empty shell…. And not a shot is fired.”  (The complete RWU press edition is available online at www.robertwelchuniversity.org)

Freedom First Society published this summary of Kozak’s “revolutionary parliamentarianism” in its booklet The Marxist Attack on the Middle Class, (pp. 36, 37):

Revolutionary Parliamentarianism (a fancy name for the “pincers strategy”). This is a technique for driving change through a national legislature by applying “pressure from above and pressure from below.” Agents of the Conspiracy, using their influence with ostensibly independent grassroots organizations will stage protests and demonstrations demanding that the government take a particular revolutionary action. Other agents in government will introduce a measure claiming it is in response to popular demand. Their measure will be supported at the top by business leaders, think tanks, and scholars. The twin pressures are applied to other legislators making it difficult for them to say no.

The “Climate Change” Pretext
There are many fine books exposing the phony science and claims of the global-warming scaremongers as well as the serious consequences if they should have their way completely. However, most Americans don’t want to take a position on scientific disputes, phony or otherwise.   And the most serious consequence, loss of American freedom, has nothing to do with the science of climate change, anyway.

Nevertheless, it still helps to know that many prominent scientists dispute the man-made global warming scare.  (See, for example, Freedom First Society’s review of Steve Milloy’s 2009 exposé Green Hell, our 2018 post “UN Climate-Change Hysteria,” and our 2019 post “Repeat a Lie Often Enough …”.)

Unfortunately, many responsible Americans are neutralized by media casting the battle as a mere partisan dispute over science.   And so these Americans never get to join the real battle. Yet they are desperately needed to help bypass the Establishment media and share the evidence, such as Masters of Deception, of high-level corruption in support of a subversive campaign that threatens our freedom.  So please share this post widely.

 

Tenth Circuit Rescues the Electoral College

The NPV (National Popular Vote) Compact has just hit a large bump in its road to “bypass the Electoral College.” On August 20, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals rescued that College from two centuries of distortion and misuse.  And by doing so, the court handed us a very big club with which to bludgeon the NPV campaign.

The NPV Compact is, in fact, a fine example of the abuse which this ruling calls on the carpet: By signing onto the NPV compact, a state agrees to coerce its presidential electors to vote a certain way — namely, for the party-ticket that won the national popular vote. Such coercion overthrows the whole purpose of the presidential-election system the Constitution outlines — commonly called the “Electoral College.” (See our earlier post, “Democracy, Tyranny, and the NPV Compact.”) The Constitution created the position of presidential elector in order that presidents (and vice-presidents) would be chosen by the considered, uncoerced discretion of people considered capable of choosing the candidates wisely.

Alexander Hamilton, whose Federalist Paper 68 touts the Electoral College

The problem with the way the Electoral College has been working for two centuries is that most states’ laws have already, by various means, been putting heavy pressure on the state’s presidential “electors” to vote the way the state legislature wants them to — which is usually, to support the party-ticket which won the state’s popular vote. And the Tenth Circuit Court has now called “unconstitutional” the coercion of electors — or, to be specific, states’ punishing or removing the elector, or interfering with the (Constitutional) processing of the votes, when an elector casts any such (so-called) anomalous vote.

Remarkably, this “long train of abuses” has never been treated by the Supreme Court. Apparently that is because no state has ever actually carried out the prosecution of a so-called faithless elector, nor actually removed and replaced him or her, for any of the several historical “anomalous” votes — not until the State of Colorado did it in 2016.  It is ironic that the Colorado legislature signed onto the NPV compact, and yet — by trying to remove a “faithless” elector and to interfere with his vote — Colorado’s Secretary of State had already handed the federal courts a case by which they could address the whole issue.

Plaintiffs v. Colorado Secretary of State
The Tenth Circuit Court did address the issue; and we can give thanks that they handled it masterfully! The court concluded: “Article II and the Twelfth Amendment provide presidential electors the right to cast a vote for President and Vice President with discretion. And the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right.” (pp. 112–13)

But if the court’s conclusion is correct (and indeed, it is), then the whole NPV program, which is dependent on states’ passing laws that coerce the electors to vote a certain way, is — now officially— unconstitutional!  As reported by the Colorado Sun, current Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who seems shocked by the ruling, “said that since the 10th Circuit’s ruling says that Colorado law cannot compel an elector to vote one way or the other, the national popular vote compact’s mandates could be ignored under the decision. She reiterated, however, that she’s optimistic a remedy can be found before that situation would ever arise and her office is still reviewing the long, complex ruling to understand its impact.”

Given the Tenth Circuit’s watertight ruling, the “remedy” Secretary Griswold hopes for seems unlikely to appear, even if the case goes to the Supreme Court. Those battling the NPV have a major weapon now. Even states that have signed onto the NPV should repudiate their acceptance of it, given the Tenth Court’s demolition of their authority to enforce any such law.

Border Enforcement Duplicity

We’ve heard it from every quarter: our immigration system is “broken.” And the current border crisis seems to confirm this. But wherein does its “brokenness” lie?

No one disputes that incentives drive the “flood” of immigrants northward toward the U.S.: Specifically, such incentives comprise “push” factors (motivating the migrants to leave their former country of domicile) and “pull” factors (attractive features of the life they anticipate in the U.S.). And now almost everyone says the basic pull factor — or “magnet” — is the attraction of our government’s continuing practice of “catch and release” — though this term turns out to be imprecise, with no exact legal meaning:

There’s no hard and fast definition, but “catch and release” usually refers to U.S. immigration authorities’ practice of releasing unauthorized immigrants while they await immigration hearings, rather than keeping them in custody.

With some exceptions, only children and asylum-seekers are eligible for this kind of release. They often stay in the United States for months or years while their cases wind through the courts. Many of them do not show up for court dates and end up settling in the country without authorization. — Salvador Rizzo, President Trump’s claim that Democrats created ‘catch and release’ policies, April 4, 2018

There is no reason to deny such analysis regarding incentives. And clearly it implies that “catch and release” is a major cause of our system’s “brokenness.” But it is all the more remarkable, then, that this consensus as to one of our border problem’s major causes has led neither to any solution, nor to cessation of our government’s practice of “catch and release.”  Could it be that some high-level group designed this border problem never to see a solution?

The Government’s Excuse

For its part, the government holds a ready explanation of the reason for its continuing practice of “catch and release.” Media-gurus, political pundits, and officials in the Executive branch have been telling us — for years — that “our immigration laws need fixing!” For that law is — they say — full of “loopholes”!

Former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s standard blame-deflection went like this:

Until these loopholes are closed by Congress, it is not possible, as a matter of law, to detain and remove whole family units who arrive illegally in the United States.

So, according to Nielsen, the immigration law itself is tying the hands of the government.

President Trump has similarly blamed our immigration laws. On April 3, 2018 he complained, “We have immigration laws that are laughed at by everybody…​. We have to change our immigration laws.”

Former Atty. General Jeff Sessions intoned likewise that “as President Trump has warned, the need to fix these loopholes and weaknesses in our immigration system is critical and overdue.”

A recent version of this accusation says, more specifically, that a main “brokenness” in our immigration law is the part which deals with asylum. Media pundits, Executive Branch officials, and White House communications have all been decrying the “asylum loopholes” allegedly crippling our immigration system.

A White House “Fact Sheet” of April 29, 2019 entitled “President Donald J. Trump Is Working to Stop the Abuse of Our Asylum System and Address the Root Causes of the Border Crisis,” explained (red and italics ours):

THE ASYLUM LOOPHOLE: Migrants are flooding to our border to use asylum to gain entry into our country and remain here indefinitely.

  • Our immigration system has reached a breaking point as we continue to see an overwhelming surge of migrants, with more than 100,000 arriving at our border in March alone.
  • As a result of loopholes in United States immigration law, migrants claiming fear are often released into communities across the United States, where they often remain indefinitely.
  • In order to remain in the country, they often fail to show up to court hearings, fail to file an asylum application, or fail to comply with removal orders once their claims have been denied.

Trump echoed the lament on May 30, 2019:

Trump said on Thursday [May 30] that he would not be closing the border as he has threatened numerous times. “The asylum procedures are ridiculous,” he added. “No place in the world has what we have in terms of ridiculous immigration laws.”

Informed Rebuttals of the “Blame Congress and the Immigration Law” Explanation

The standard, “law-loopholes are preventing good border-enforcement” account of our border crisis has its skeptics, however. And most of these skeptics are not amateurs: Rather, they are professionals (including researchers, writers, and Border Patrol agents) who have made it their job to understand our immigration system — and its malfunctions.

For example, Daniel E. Horowitz — who has been explicating the legal and administrative aspects of immigration for years — wrote in a recent post:

How much longer are we going to allow lawless acts of past administrations and lower courts to flip immigration law on its head and act as if the laws themselves are the problems? Our immigration laws aren’t broken, it’s just that carefully selected lower courts violate those laws as well as Supreme Court precedent, plus the executive branch has refused to enforce many laws that haven’t even been tampered with yet by the judges. The American people never voted for the system in place to today. In fact, the people’s representatives voted for the opposite.…​

There is this dangerous perception that somehow our laws declared open borders or at least granted endless rights to avoid deportation until and unless we muster the votes to change the laws. The reality is the opposite.

In a post earlier that month, Horowitz mentioned that this is the view also of Brandon Judd, head of the Border Patrol union (NBPC):

Brandon Judd, head of Border Patrol Union

‘Political pundits, talking heads, scholars and politicians have convinced the American public that only legislation can solve the problem. They say there are too many immigration and asylum loopholes preventing the government from deporting illegal border crossers in a timely manner. They are all wrong.’

Those were not the words of yours truly, but of Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol union, in a Washington Times op-ed. He suggests we [should] actually just enforce the asylum laws [that are currently] in statute and have border agents at the front lines, not bureaucrats in other DHS agencies, take the lead on enforcement.

The talking point about the broken laws, in the media and even from the administration, have [sic] been so incessant and emphatic that most people probably think the laws require open borders unless Congress votes to change them. In fact, our laws are very clear that people who come to our border without proper documentation are all illegal aliens and must be deported. In 1996, Congress further updated those laws to preclude endless lawsuits.

Likewise, researchers and writers from the Center for Immigration Studies have rebutted much of this standard account of our border crisis.

Why It’s Untrue, that “Asylum Loopholes” in the Law Tie the Hands of the Executive Branch

The skeptics are correct — the ostensible loopholes are excuses without merit. In this section we will discuss the “asylum loophole,” which the above-cited White House Fact Sheet alleges. In a companion post, we discuss the other category of immigration-law loophole — those relating to minors and families — which the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) claims hinder the enforcement of our border.

There are at least four reasons why the narrative that “asylum loopholes have forced ‘catch and release’” does not hold water. Either of the first two demolishes the narrative all by itself. Let’s review all four, though — and make our point inescapable.

The President’s Unlimited Authority over Immigration

One thing that the media — who are helping push this false narrative — never tell the American people, is that the president has “plenary” (absolute, unrestricted) authority to exclude any and every alien he wishes — at any time. This is an authority that is subject to neither of the other branches of the federal government.

This plenary authority over immigration turns out to be both “inherent” and “delegated.”  The president’s inherent authority is built into the very structure of our federal government. The president’s delegated authority over immigration is that which the immigration statutes attribute to the president explicitly.

The president’s inherent authority over immigration is a foundational, long-standing principle of U.S. constitutional jurisprudence, recognized and openly acknowledged by the courts for over 200 years. The authority stems primarily from the president’s constitutional authority over foreign relations. (Aliens are, after all, foreigners, not U.S. citizens.[1])

One of the clearest judicial statements of this principle is in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Knauff v. Shaughnessy (1950):

The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty. The right to do so stems not alone from legislative power, but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation.

However, to make sure everyone understands the president’s plenary authority to exclude aliens, our immigration law makes it explicit:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. — INA, §212(f); which is at Title 8 U.S.C. §1182(f)

Therefore, all the other immigration statutes, taken together, couldn’t “tie the president’s hands” if they tried! For this one provision implies that not only those whom the law excludes are to be excluded; but also, any and all whom the president excludes.

The Low Percentage of Arriving Aliens Claiming a “Credible Fear of Persecution”

The impression one tends to get from the media is that the immigration surges of 2018–​19 are, to a large extent, people seeking asylum. According to our same White House Fact Sheet, President Trump has said that “The biggest loophole drawing illegal aliens to our borders is the use of fraudulent or meritless asylum claims to gain entry into our great country.”

But based on reliable reports — including some from the DHS — no more than about 10% at any time have actually been claiming a “credible fear of persecution” — far less a percentage than that of “families” and “UACs” (Un-accompanied children) coming across the southern border. (Issues surrounding “families” and “unaccompanied children,” we discuss in our companion post.)

A DHS release of April 4, 2018 noted: “Before 2013, approximately 1% of arriving aliens claimed credible fear (asylum). Now 1 out of 10 claim credible fear.” And Carl Landrum, Deputy Chief Border Patrol Agent in the Yuma Sector (our third-hardest-hit sector, behind the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso sectors), stated in a Fox News interview on April 22, 2019 that in his area, “Only six percent of the people crossing the border are expressing a credible fear and requesting asylum.”

Daniel Horowitz finds that news disturbing: “This revelation means that our government has essentially vitiated the entire Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and has declared a de facto open border.…​ We are shredding every word of the INA and processing and releasing almost all of these people, even those who don’t express a credible fear, rather than immediately placing [and keeping] them in expedited deportation.”[2]

The Extremely Low Percentage of Arriving Aliens Possibly Qualifying for Asylum

Another pivotal misconception which our media and Executive Branch have fostered is the notion that people fleeing violence or poverty in Central America are legitimate refugees. In fact, virtually none of them are. Rather, what they are is “economic refugees.” But the criterion which our law applies for refugee status (and thus asylum), is whether the alien has a “credible fear of persecution” — as that phrase is defined, very precisely, in our immigration law.

The crucial part of that definition to understand is the term “persecution”: Once you know the technical sense of that, you may understand why practically no one fleeing violence, poverty, disease, or what have you in Central America (or in Mexico) satisfies our law’s criterion for such a “credible fear.”

Here is our law’s criterion for a “refugee” — including what qualifies as “persecution,” in this context (emphasis in highlighted bold ours):

any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

That definition is in Title 8, §1101(a)(42)(A) — which section, and which definition of “refugee,” are then referred to in §1158, “Asylum.”

So, if that’s what a refugee is, what exact level of proof makes it “credible” (in this sense) that a person has a “well-founded fear” of such persecution? Title 8, §1225(b)(1)(B)(v) gives this definition (emphasis in highlighted bold ours):

[T]he term “credible fear of persecution” means that there is a significant possibility, taking into account the credibility of the statements made by the alien in support of the alien’s claim and such other facts as are known to the officer, that the alien could establish eligibility for asylum under section 1158 of this title.

What constitutes a “significant possibility” is undefined in the immigration law, and the standard has not yet been discussed in immigration case law. However, a USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) Basic Training Course for asylum officers has a helpful discussion of what constitutes that “standard of proof.”[3] After reminding readers that the alien is “the party who bears the burden of proof,” and discussing a range of “different standards of proof [which] are relevant in the immigration context,” this training course says that the “significant possibility” standard requires the person bearing the burden of proof to “demonstrate a substantial and realistic possibility of succeeding” in establishing eligibility for asylum under section 1158.  [Emphasis in original.]

Now, Central America countries — and Mexico, for that matter — are each made up of such a homogeneous mass of people, with regard to race, culture, and so forth, that these countries’ likelihood of having “persecution” for any of the above reasons is miniscule or non-existent. It is therefore (to use the USCIS training course’s terms) “a claim that has ‘no possibility of success,’ or only a ‘minimal or mere possibility of success,’ [and thus] would not meet the ‘significant possibility’ standard.”

Daniel Horowitz concurs:

This law was clearly written for a situation where a group is facing religious persecution, such as the Yazidis in Iraq. Nobody can say with a straight face that any of these people coming from the Central American triangle meet any of these five conditions [viz., persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion]. These are some of the most homogeneous countries in the world. There is no religious or ethnic persecution. And it is quite laughable to assume they are being persecuted for political opinions. Those teeming across our border are not a bunch of Madisonians railing against the lack of free markets in Honduras. — Daniel Horowitz, How Trump can protect the border without Congress

Jeff Sessions, former U.S. Atty. General

Thus, it’s clear that the legal standard of proof is being misapplied in credible-fear determinations — with disastrous results. Even Atty. General Jeff Sessions, speaking in October 2017, admitted that the credible-fear adjudication process was being “gamed”:

[T]he adjudication process is broken as well. DHS found a credible fear in 88 percent of claims adjudicated. That means an alien entering the United States illegally has an 88 percent chance to avoid expedited removal simply by claiming a fear of return.

But even more telling, half of those that pass that screening—​the very people who say they came here seeking asylum—​never even file an asylum application once they are in the United States. This suggests they knew their asylum claims lacked merit and that their claim of fear was simply a ruse to enter the country illegally.…​

The system is being gamed. The credible fear process was intended to be a lifeline for persons facing serious persecution. But it has become an easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States.…​

Our asylum laws are meant to protect those who because of characteristics like their race, religion, nationality, or political opinions cannot find protection in their home countries. They were never intended to provide asylum to all those who fear generalized violence, crime, personal vendettas, or a lack of job prospects. Yet, vague, insubstantial, and subjective claims have swamped our system.…​

… As one immigration judge recently told me about the credible fear process, “any adjudicatory system with a grant rate of nearly 90 percent is inherently flawed.” …​ We can elevate the threshold standard of proof in credible fear interviews.[4]

OK; but if they can elevate it — why haven’t they done so? According to Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, there have been “reports from whistleblowers at USCIS who say that [USCIS] asylum officers [currently the ones handling all fear-claim interviews] have been instructed by resistant career supervisors to ignore efforts by the Trump administration to return to deciding these cases according to the letter and intent of the law.”[5]

The Necessity that Arriving Aliens Pass a “Credible Fear” Interview or Review

Yet another misconception which media and Executive Branch officials promote is the idea that any arriving alien can just claim a “credible fear,” and they will be released to await their asylum hearing. That is, the media never make clear that arriving aliens who cannot show valid documentation of legal immigration status are each put, immediately, into “Expedited Removal Proceedings” — and kept there until removal, unless that arriving alien instigates and passes a “credible fear interview,” (or an administrative review of that interview).

In short, as long as the alien is in Expedited Removal, they are held in mandatory detention. Thus, there is no question at all of some alien, having just arrived, being “caught and released” legally.

There is a lawful process which is, sometimes, informally classified as “catch and release” — but more properly called, “parole” — but one must argue that, administratively, in many cases it’s given too eagerly after a determination of “credible fear.”.[6] But neither that legal procedure, nor any “asylum hearing,” is available legally to “arriving aliens” by their simply showing up and claiming a “credible fear” of persecution.

Rather, an “asylum officer” (who is from USCIS, as things are working currently,) conducts an “interview” regarding the alien’s credible-fear claim; and based on this interview, makes a determination regarding this claim. If that determination goes against the alien, and he or she wants to contest it, they can ask for an “administrative review” — which will be before an EOIR “immigration judge.” But all of that happens as part of what’s called “Expedited Removal Proceedings,” into which all “arriving aliens” (and some others) who have no documentation of legal immigrant status are placed automatically.[7] (An important qualification: “Expedited Removal” is not the process which the law stipulates for “unaccompanied alien children,” or “UACs”; we discuss those in a separate, companion post.) And detention is mandatory all through those proceedings, according to the law.[8]

In contrast, an “asylum hearing” does not happen for any such (adult) “arriving alien” unless the alien has been determined (during expedited removal) to have a “credible fear of persecution,” and been therefore removed from “expedited removal” proceedings and placed into “formal removal proceedings,” and allowed to make formal application for asylum. And only once they’ve made such application are they eligible for “parole.” And that is what so-called catch-and-release is, for “arriving aliens” — a “parole,” under Title 8 §1182(d)(5).

Legally, then, they cannot be paroled until they’ve been “determined” to have a “credible fear of persecution.” All of which implies that if they fail in that determination — and virtually all Central Americans would fail, were the determination conducted according to statute — then there’d be no question of our immigration authorities ever paroling them, legally, into our country. Ending the fraudulent determinations that these aliens have a “credible fear” would, therefore, end their “catch and release.”

Locating Our Immigration-System’s Real “Breakage”

Besides those related to asylum, there are other alleged “catch and release loopholes” which need addressing as well, such as those pertaining to “unaccompanied minors” — all of which we discuss in a companion post. Taking also those into account, we could summarize the “immigration loopholes” situation this way:

  • The DHS and DOJ are applying an inexcusably and illegally low standard of legal proof, in their credible-fear determinations. And this is the only reason that the vast majority of adult arriving aliens from Mexico or Central America are allowed out of Expedited Removal — with its mandatory detention — and (then) considered for parole (one kind of “catch and release”).
  • As we discuss in our companion post, the government is granting a thoroughly undeserved deference to the dubious features of Judge Gee’s 2015 ruling(s) on the FSA (Flores Settlement Agreement) — including a pivotal one that the Appeals Court overturned! And this is the only reason the government is saying that it must release minors within 20 days — and that it must release whole alien families that happen to include a minor.

Contrary to representations by the president, DHS administrators, and media, though, none of this is a matter of immigration law, or of the FSA (which has the force of law). Furthermore, even if the law did have an actual “loophole,” the president would not thereby be prevented from using his full, plenary authority to restrict — or even to shut down — immigration!

Thus, the loophole-skeptics are correct: there is no law-problem; there’s only an implementation-of-law problem, a lack-of-enforcement problem.[9] In short, contrary to repeated claims by the Executive Branch and the media, the president has by no means required Congress to close alleged “loopholes,” in order to secure our border.

Of course, there are logistical challenges to stemming the current flood. But historically, the hope of catch-and-release has created most of the “magnet” attracting immigrants. And removing the main “pull” factor — that magnet — would have no less impact on the flow than had the mere anticipation of catch-and-release ending, which anticipation slowed immigration dramatically in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election. The logistical challenges could then be handled, as we have handled them in similar (if smaller) border crises time and time again.

Accounting for This Inversion of the Truth

The story of the immigration law’s culpability for our border crisis is so patently, undeniably false, that there is really only one way to account for its dominance in the media and Executive Branch statements: which is, orchestrated duplicity. More specifically: it is an agreed duplicity on the part of much — we’d estimate, most — of the media, and of many top administration officials, lower court federal judges — and even of many Congress-people, insofar as they remain silent in the face of this dangerous disinformation. But what could be motivating this orchestration of duplicity?

Well, if we recall that the Establishment — which controls most of the institutions spouting this story — wants open borders (as the FFS has often documented), then several plausible motives come to mind:

  1. Laying the blame on Congress and immigration law diverts the public’s attention from, and tends to keep them ignorant of, those places in which the system is indeed broken (namely, poor enforcement of the law) — which diversion is crucial for continuing or growing the crisis.
  2. Also, such misdirection has the potential — very appealing to the Establishment — of convincing the public (finally) that our immigration law needs a major overhaul — which overhaul, given Congress’s increasingly wishy-washy stance for strong borders, might well eviscerate our (heretofore basically sound) immigration law.
    • Even if failing to find consensus for a major overhaul (a.k.a. “comprehensive immigration reform”), those seeking open borders may find enough consensus for one or more “amnesties” — which helps keep the crisis boiling.
  3. Also, this crisis offers the ever-increasing possibility (again, appealing to the Establishment) of getting the public to accept an international “resolution” of the problem — which would make permanent of course, rather than repair, our loss of control of our border — through further bilateral agreements with Mexico and/or Central American countries, for example, or even reviving the development of a North American Union, and/or through inviting U.N. “Peacekeeping” troops in — “to help.” Any of those approaches to a “solution” would seriously sabotage our national sovereignty and independence.

There is, therefore, no reason to doubt that the current border crisis is intentional — created, not by Congress, but by conspiratorial elements controlling our media and Executive Branch (with supporting roles played by a few lower-court judges). And this lie about “immigration loopholes” is the main tactic keeping the public from realizing the true cause of the problem — which is intentionally inadequate enforcement by our government’s law-enforcement branch (the Executive).

What to Do

Clearly, the only way that this non-enforcement will be remedied, is for an informed, activated electorate to apply concerted pressure on the government to remedy it. But an electorate not informed, will certainly neither be activated. So, the widespread exposure of this fraudulent “loopholes” tactic is key. That is the most obvious mission we must undertake, therefore.

Less obvious is that we must also use such educational effort to grow — as rapidly as possible — the reach and level of understanding of the Internationalist, conspiratorial intrigue that is seeking to strangle our national sovereignty, independence, and freedom. Indeed, if we neglect this latter mission, then the public’s demand for border enforcement will continue to be betrayed, as it has been for decades.

Both of these are crucially important tasks. In pursuit of the first, if this article has been found enlightening and helpful, then it is certainly worthwhile to share it with friends and acquaintances.

Notes

1. And as such, they have no standing in courts mentioned in or created under the Constitution (in Article III). That is the basic reason the president is not subject to these courts’ rulings on immigration matters. However, note that the president does have a constitutional obligation to restrict immigration at least as much as the immigration law does — since he is responsible to enforce the laws. On the plenary authority of both “political” branches (i.e., the Legislative and Executive branches) over immigration, see the CRS (Congressional Research Service) Report 44969, “Overview of the Federal Government’s Power to Exclude Aliens”; and, for a much fuller and absorbing treatment, see chapters 4–​8 of Daniel Horowitz’s insightful 2016 book Stolen Sovereignty: How to Stop Unelected Judges from Transforming America, Washington, D.C.: WND Books.
2. It seems disingenuous, therefore, to imply that asylum-claims are “tying the hands of” the Border Patrol. What are actually tying their hands are: the taking care of immigrants who arrive sick or hurt themselves clambering over a barricade (an agent must also stay with the immigrant while he/she receives medical care); and also — believe it or not — the running a courier service, to bring in immigrants who are waiting on the other side of the wall! This astonishing DHS policy forced Mr. Horowitz to ask: “[I]f we actively bring in even the illegal immigrants standing outside the fence and believe it is our duty to do so, then what would change if we had more walls?”
3. The training course is cited, on this matter, by the CRS (Congressional Research Service) “Legal Sidebar” 10150, “An Overview of U.S. Immigration Laws Regulating the Admission and Exclusion of Aliens at the Border.”
4. Andrew Arthur of CIS reported that “Credible fear is found in 75 to 90 percent of all cases reviewed by asylum officers.”
5. The quotation is via Daniel Horowitz. Ms. Vaughan suggests strongly, as a remedy for this perfidy, that Border Patrol agents, who are valid “immigration officers,” be trained therefore also as Asylum Officers — the kind of immigration officer which the law requires to conduct all credible-fear interviews — and then be allowed to handle such interviews, rather than being forced to hand over all credible-fear claimants to USCIS Asylum Officers. Brandon Judd, head of the Border Patrol union (NBPC) is strongly in favor of that as well — as is Daniel Horowitz.
6. The reasons for which the regulations and/or administration allow such a parole have traveled a long way from what the law stipulates: The law’s criterion for parole is that it must be for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” But the federal regulations (at 8 C.F.R. §212.5(b)(5)) make the nonsensical determination that this criterion for parole is satisfied for an alien “whose continued detention is not in the public interest.” (Why would it ever not be “in the public interest,” to detain until their removal aliens who have — according to our immigration law — no legal status or permission to be here?) Then, ICE Directive 11002.1 establishes that criterion as automagically satisfied for aliens found to have a “credible fear.” However, one weighty proviso in the regulations — carried over into the Directive — is also being cynically overlooked: the parole is to be awarded only “provided the aliens present neither a security risk nor a risk of absconding.”
7. A helpful, brief summary of the various proceedings, rules, and laws pertinent to admission or exclusion of aliens is available in the CRS (Congressional Research Service) “Legal Sidebar” 10150 — although it exaggerates the power and significance of the FSA, and especially of Judge Gee’s 2015 ruling (on which, see our companion post). This author found even more useful a pictorial representation of the different legal statuses “arriving aliens” go through, related to “expedited removal proceedings”; and so, has diagrammed the various state-changes — and events causing them — in the form of a UML “state-machine” diagram, which one may download from our server. (For any shortcomings of this state-diagram, the author is of course responsible.)
8. Nor can any lengthy delay precede any “administrative review” of their credible-fear interview’s determination: On the contrary, according to the law, this review “shall be concluded as expeditiously as possible, to the maximum extent practicable within 24 hours, but in no case later than 7 days after the date of the determination.”
9. However, something was put into law, so to speak, which was a sort of “loophole”; but it was not in immigration law, but in a short-term funding bill — and not until this year. That was the horrible stipulation, as to expenditure of the funds, in sec. 224(a) of the budget bill Trump signed on February 15. Thankfully, this toxic provision expires when the funding expires — at the end of September.

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