Vigilant News

Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty.

Ryan Delarme

Even Democrats are Dissatisfied with Biden’s Handling of Southern Border

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Democrats are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border. A new survey finds that nearly three-quarters of Democrats believe the government is managing the crisis “very” or “somewhat” poorly.

A new Pew Research Center survey published last week found that while 80% of U.S. adults believe the government is doing a “very” or “somewhat” poor job of dealing with illegal immigration, 89% of Republicans and 73% of Democrats are critical of the federal response, respectively.

The proportion of Democrats who are critical of the government’s response to the situation at the southern border has risen by 11% since a separate Pew survey was conducted less than eight months ago.

At the time, 62% of Democrats and Democrats leaning toward Democrats believed the government was resolving the border “very” or “somewhat” poorly, while 87% of Republicans held the same opinion.

Both surveys indicate that the proportion of critical Democrats has increased markedly since the start of the Biden administration. Another Pew survey conducted in April 2021 found that 56% of Democrats believed the United States government was performing poorly at the border, while 86% of Republicans held the same opinion.

The most recent Pew survey on the border was conducted with 5,140 U.S. adults from January 16 to 21, 2024; its margin of error is 1.7%.

As Joe Biden seeks re-election in the 2024 presidential election, the border will likely be a significant issue.

OpEd: The Harassment Campaign Against Nancy Pelosi Continues, as it Should
The Former House Speaker has been regularly accosted by pro-Palestine protestors at events and outside her home, refers to them as Russian and Chinese "agents" as the ghost of Joseph McCarthy smiles down on her

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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a career swamp creature and stock trader extraordinaire, has had a rather rough go of it lately. Her high-society lifestyle has been consistently interrupted in recent weeks by peasant protestors who hold a less than favorable opinion of her continued and seemingly unconditional support of Israel.

Last month Pelosi spoke at a fundraiser in Seattle’s Westin Hotel that was disrupted by protestors demanding answers regarding her support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

These individuals, many of them female Californian progressives who’ve likely voted for Pelosi in the past, must feel a sense of betrayal that she’s not paying proper lip service to their “current thing,” in this case the indiscriminate slaughter and rampant human rights violations taking place in Gaza.

The reality is that, like all other establishment stooges, Pelosi has long been a steadfast and loyal supporter of Israel.

Perturbed over having her swanky fundraising event interrupted by unclean commoners, she decided to go on CNN days later and express her potent disdain for the hecklers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSf-U9_-pok

You can hear the displeasure in her voice when she says “They’re outside my house all the time” just before she makes the completely unfounded, McCarthyesque claim that these protestors are somehow doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin.

These individuals, regardless of whether or not you agree with them, are exercising their constitutional rights to protest not just the war in Israel, but the role that the U.S. Government is playing in facilitating that war.

Nancy “Wrap-up smear” Pelosi does not like their position, so she defaults to the establishment Democrat’s standard operating procedure when faced with true dissent: labeling her critics agents of the Kremlin.

Even if you take the same stance as Pelosi on the conflict between Israel and Hamas and the U.S.’s role in said conflict, try to see what she is doing through an objective lens.

Nancy Pelosi frames this conflict—and any other foreign polciy issue you can point to—exclusively from the perspective of Vladimir Putin’s objectives. The Democratic Party has fostered this pathology not only among its members but also among its leadership.

Because these protestor’s views in this instance happen to align with Putin’s, then clearly they are in allegiance with Russia. Do you see how this works?

The most alarming thing about this rhetoric, especially in the post-Russiagate era, is how it actually works with certain Democrat audiences, particularly those who still consume the diseased filth oozing from the mouths of the corporate media punditry.

Another red flag worth mentioning from Pelosi’s CNN appearance is the way she brought up the FBI. Towards the end of the clip, she says “I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”

The idea that she has the right to call on the FBI to investigate people, who were exercising their constitutional rights, based on some completely concocted connection she’s invented in her head is about as authoritarian as it gets.

Even the New York Times, which typically reports very favorably on Nancy Pelosi, was unwilling to defend her for that quip.

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In a statement, a spokesperson for Ms. Pelosi pointed to a social media post by Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and professor at Columbia University, who wrote that “Putin benefits from continued war in Gaza and expanded chaos in the Middle East.”

The spokesperson said Ms. Pelosi would continue to focus on “stopping the suffering in Gaza” and demanding that all hostages be released…

“Speaker Pelosi is acutely aware of how foreign adversaries meddle in American politics to sow division and impact our elections, and she wants to see further investigation ahead of the 2024 election.”

Russia has expressed support for a cease-fire in Gaza, and Mr. Putin has used the conflict to criticize the United States’ role in the Middle East. Russia has also meddled in the United States’ past two presidential elections. (The New York Times, January 28, 2024)

Pelosi’s next run-in with protestors was caught on camera in front of her San Francisco home. This time she put a more conservative spin on her accusations, telling her heckler to “go back to China.”

Fast forward to this Wednesday, Pelosi was once again inundated with protestors inside the U.S. Capitol Building from the organization CodePink who screeched and jeered at her as she approached a vote to send additional funds to Israel.

Now, you might not agree with these protestors, you might think they’re just another posse of soy-guzzling libtards, but that doesn’t change the fact that they have every right to do so. There are plenty of the garden-variety conservatives who were out there championing free speech when campuses shut down speaking engagements by Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopolis over “hate speech” and making Liberals feel “unsafe,” who are now cheering when pro-Palestine demonstrations are shut down for the exact same reason.

It’s total hypocrisy.

Take Israel out of the equation for a moment and consider the greater implications at play here. This fracturing of the Left is a net positive for the America First crowd. Not only are they finally breaking from these establishment politicians, they are actively harassing them. You may not agree with their reasoning, but this could be catastrophic for Biden if he is indeed their choice for 2024.

Consider what Pelosi said during her CNN spot:

“I have every confidence that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be President and Vice President of the United States, I know we will carry the House and that we can improve our numbers in the Senate, and we’re going to do it because we’re going to own the ground with our organizing. We’re going to have a message of values for our country, and we’re going to have the resources to get the job done.”

What’s the “message of values” she’s speaking of? Feeding the Military Industrial complex with the blood of innocent civilians in Gaza and reluctant, conscripted soldiers in Ukraine? Good luck getting people who hate you enough to follow you around the country screaming their disapproval to organize strongly enough to counter the momentum behind Donald Trump.

The only way to counter this damage is to pull the old switcheroo with Gavin Newsome on the grounds that Biden is incapable of serving, and then have Newsome, the master of identity politics, posture as though he’s going to reign in Israel. And even if that is the play, AIPAC and the Israel lobby—arguably the most powerful special interest in Washington—will be none too pleased.

I, for one, am happy to see this, and I hope it continues through to November.

Big Finance’s Role in the Censorship Industrial Complex
Why the U.S. Treasury might be the state’s next major surveillance player.

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Last month, we reported that the office of Ohio congressman and chairman of the Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan sent a letter to Noah Bishoff, the former director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

RELATED – Jim Jordan Obtains Documents Showing Federal Agencies Flagged Transactions of “MAGA” and “Trump” Supporters

The letter requested clarity on why FinCEN had “distributed slides, prepared by a financial institution,” detailing how other private companies could use MCC transaction codes to “detect customers whose transactions may reflect ‘potential active shooters,'” Jordan’s team was requesting responses from Bishoff.

The slide indicated that the “financial company” was vigilantly searching for terms such as “Trump” and “MAGA,” as well as minor arms and sporting goods purchases, and transactions at pawn shops and Cabela’s, in an effort to detect potential “financial threats”.

Jordan’s letter to Bishoff went on:

According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of “extremism” indicators that include “transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,” or “the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.”

As part of their work during the “Twitter Files,” American journalists Matt Taibbi and his colleagues sought snapshots of the company’s denylist algorithms, or the rules the platform was employing to deamplify or remove users. It was evident that they possessed them due to the frequent allusions to them in documents (for instance, a report on the Russian denylist that included Jill Stein and Julian Assange provided one example).

They were unable to locate anything comparable to the photograph that Jordan’s team has just released:

The highlighted portion shows how algorithmic analysis works in financial surveillance.

  • First compile a list of naughty behaviors, in the form of MCC codes for guns, sporting goods, and pawn shops.
  • Then, create rules: $2,500 worth of transactions in the forbidden codes, or a number showing that more than 50% of the customer’s transactions are the wrong kind, might trigger a response.

Matt Taibbi recently commented on Jordan’s findings in a SubStack:

The Committee wasn’t able to specify what the responses were in this instance, but from previous experience covering anti-money-laundering (AML) techniques at banks like HSBC, a good guess would be generation of something like Suspcious Activity Reports, which can lead to a customer being debanked.

If Facebook, Twitter, and Google have already shown a tendency toward wide-scale monitoring of speech and the use of subtle levers to apply pressure on attitudes, financial companies can use records of transactions to penetrate individual behaviors far more deeply. Especially if enhanced by AI, a financial history can give almost any institution an immediate, unpleasantly accurate outline of anyone’s life, habits, and secrets. Worse, they can couple that picture with a powerful disciplinary lever, in the form of the threat of closed accounts or reduced access to payment services or credit. Jordan’s slide is a picture of the birth of the political credit score.

There’s more coming on this, and other articles forthcoming (readers who’ve noticed it’s been quiet around here will soon find out why). While the world falls to pieces over Tucker, Putin, and Ukraine, don’t overlook this horror movie. If banks and the Treasury are playing the same domestic spy game that Twitter and Facebook have been playing with the FBI, tales like the frozen finances of protesting Canadian truckers won’t be novelties for long. As is the case with speech, where huge populations have learned to internalize censorship rules almost overnight, we may soon have to learn the hard way that even though some behaviors aren’t illegal, they can still be punished with great effectiveness, in a Terminator-like world where computers won’t miss anything that moves.

17 Judges at Hague Permit Genocide Proceedings Against Israel, Order Leaders to Limit Fatalities

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Friday marked the decision of the highest court of the United Nations to permit the prosecution of a genocide case against Israel in relation to its military operations in Gaza.

The charges were filed by South Africa, who petitioned the court to order Israel to cease its military offensive in Gaza. In October 2023, the territory-based militant organization Hamas launched an attack against Israel, prompting Israel to declare war on Hamas.

At the Hague, seventeen judges of the International Court of Justice rendered their verdict.

Without mandating a cease-fire, the court also urged Israel to attempt to limit casualties and destruction during the offensive. Additionally, the 17 judges ordered six so-called provisional measures to protect Palestinians in Gaza.

Disease X: WHO Still Pushing for Pandemic Treaty

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, is continuing to pursue ratifying what has been called a “Pandemic Treaty,” urging nations to sign to better prepare for “Disease X.”

Analysts have warned that the so called pandemic treaty, a subversive initiative that’s gone through several name changes over the last year and a half, would essentially elevate the WHO to a defacto world government in the event of another pandemic or global health crisis.

Author’s Note: I’ve written extensively on this topic for Badlands Media, to learn more please read Behold, a Trojan Horse and The WHOs Last Stand.

“‘Disease X’ is a placeholder for an unknown pathogen that could cause a global emergency,” Ghebreyesus recently wrote on Twitter. “History has taught us that we must anticipate new threats. Failing to prepare leaves the world prepared to fail.”

Naturally, the WHO Director did not miss an opportunity to make a case for the treaty at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week.

“The pandemic agreement can bring all the experience, all the challenges that we have faced, and all the solutions into one. And that agreement can help us to prepare for the future in a better way because this is a common enemy and without a shared response, starting from the preparedness you know we will face the same problem as COVID,” Ghebreyesus said.

The deadline for the agreement has now been pushed back to May 2024.

“It’s better actually to anticipate something that may happen, because it has happened in our history many times, and prepare for it. We shouldn’t face things unprepared,” Ghebreyesus also said.