外文论坛的一些讨论

spid

美国政治走向某种‘恐怖主义’，对很多人而言川普最大的问题可能是“你不是我们的一份子”，而不是其他。
有意思的事实，尤其是佩洛西的部分，怀疑佩洛西可能是美国深层政府的一个要员。

US: The New Real Hoaxes?
Authored by Pete Hoekstra via The Gatestone Institute,

The investigative reporting by these two organizations [the New York Times and the Washington Post] was so thorough and groundbreaking it turned up things that were not even there.

For having refused to rescind these awards, the Pulitzer Committee should receive its own Pulitzer -- for fraud.

The real hoax appears to have been the CCP's ostensible good behavior and the now-hugely-discredited initial reporting on the virus.

Or how about the Hunter Biden laptop cover-up? Once again, On October 14, 2020, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, a critical story of possible extensive influence-peddling with senior intelligence officers in the CCP, Russia and Ukraine by the son of a presidential candidate. The contents of the laptop raised questions that the candidate at the time, Vice President Joe Biden, could be compromised. The entire subject was decisively pushed aside, along with the potential threat to national security that such an eventuality might entail.

Also not allowed during the January 6th hearings have been any witnesses for the defense, any cross-examination, or any exculpatory evidence.

One wonders, for instance if the January 6th Committee will consider the July 29, 2022 tweet by General Keith Kellogg, that on January 3, 2021, Trump, in front of witnesses, did indeed ask for "troops needed" for January 6. Kellogg wrote: "I was in the room."

The January 6th Committee has also not released any information about government informants or FBI undercover law enforcement officers who might have been in the crowd, and Pelosi is also said to be blocking access to a massive quantity of documents. Finally, according to attorney Mark Levin, under the Constitution's separation of powers, Congress, has no legitimacy even to hold a criminal investigation: that power belongs to the Judiciary. The entire proceeding is illegitimate and a usurpation of power.

Is it surprising that after the Pulitzer decision, the Russia collusion hoax, the Whitmer kidnapping hoax, the Covid origin hoax, the Hunter Biden laptop hoax, and now the January 6th Committee hoax, that many Americans believe there is something wrong with the system?

Recently former US President Donald Trump challenged the award of Pulitzer Prizes to the New York Times and the Washington Post for their investigative reporting on alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

The investigative reporting by these two organizations was so thorough and groundbreaking it turned up things that were not even there.

You have to hand it to them for this so-called "great reporting": the Pulitzer Committee sure did.

We now know, of course, the grand conspiracy pushed by these papers is nothing more than thoroughly debunked disinformation. For having refused to rescind these awards, the Pulitzer Committee should receive its own Pulitzer -- for fraud.

The intractability of the Pulitzer Committee is only the latest example of why so many Americans have been losing trust in their institutions, both public and private. Rather than admitting that these awards were a mistake, and that much of the reporting was not investigative reporting, but merely a recitation of fabrications put forward by political hacks for campaign purposes, the Pulitzer Committee announced that it will stand by its initial decision, facts be dammed.

The Russia hoax is emblematic of the model built by the anti-Trump, anti-America First, anti-populist movement that the American people have experienced for the last six years. It embodies many of the characteristics that have frustrated Americans. It is a combination of influential forces -- media, social media, political players, and government -- that put forward information detrimental to one -- oddly always the same -- political viewpoint. In this instance, populists -- believers in the rights, wisdom or virtues of the common people, according to Merriam Webster -- who might embrace the concept of personal freedom espoused by the Constitution, a free market economy, economic growth, energy independence, school choice, equal application of the law and decentralized governance.

Much of the material used to foster the Russia hoax originated from the discredited "Steele Dossier," pedaled by former British spy Christopher Steele, funded by Clinton-linked opposition research firm FusionGPS, and pushed by Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman. This discredited information was shared widely -- and often, it seems, with prior knowledge of its falseness -- through the mainstream media and social media when it was leaked to the press early in 2017 just before Donald Trump was sworn in as president. The material contributed to the launching of the Mueller "Russiagate" investigation, which cast a shadow over the first two years of the Trump administration. Government officials were involved as CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and DNI James Clapper all lent their credibility to the supposed authenticity or seriousness of the Russian materials. All of this did tremendous damage to the effectiveness of the Trump administration, as it sought to govern, by putting it under a cloud of suspicion and illegitimacy from the outset.

This, however, was not the only example. Consider the disrupted kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in her key swing state for presidential elections. "The FBI got walloped [in April]", according to the New York Post, " when a Michigan jury concluded that the bureau had entrapped two men accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Those men and others were arrested a few weeks before the 2020 election in a high-profile, FBI-fabricated case...."

The media, however, for the most part portrayed the kidnapping plot as the work of domestic terrorists, with the implied inference being they were right-wing Trump supporters. Whitmer went so far as to accuse Trump of being complicit in the plan, even though it emerged that these alleged plotters had also supposedly wanted to hang Trump. The FBI, it was later shown, had been heavily involved in the plot through informants and individuals it had placed in the group. By the time the case came to trial after the election, Biden had won Michigan's electoral votes and the damage had been done.

Consider, also, the COVID pandemic. The "facts" at the time were supposedly that it came from "nature" and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government had supposedly known nothing about its human-to-human transmissibility, even though it had "made whistleblowers disappear and refused to hand over virus samples so the West could make a vaccine."

The CCP, early on, was portrayed as a constructive player in controlling the spread of the virus, even as it was recalling and hoarding all of its Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This fiction was reinforced by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the World Health Organization, and other prominent participants – apart from Taiwan, which futilely tried to warn the WHO of the coronavirus's fierce human-to-human transmissibility, only to be dismissed.

The mainstream media and social media also quickly began parroting the "official" story line. Social media companies suspended the accounts of whoever might have had a different opinion and some were even canceled.

For the 10 months leading up to the November 2020 election, the narrative was set: COVID-19 was a naturally occurring virus and the CCP was in the clear. Imagine how different the 2020 presidential election might have been if the debate was how the world would have held the CCP accountable for the leak and coverup of COVID from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now in 2022, a lab-leak is considered the most "likely cause" of the coronavirus, but again the political damage, and a gigantic amount of non-political damage, has already been done. The real hoax appears to have been the CCP's ostensible good behavior and the now-hugely-discredited initial reporting on the virus.

Or how about the Hunter Biden laptop cover-up? Once again, On October 14, 2020, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, a critical story of possible extensive influence-peddling with senior intelligence officers in the CCP, Russia and Ukraine by the son of a presidential candidate. The contents of the laptop raised questions that the candidate at the time, Vice President Joe Biden, could be compromised. The entire subject was decisively pushed aside, along with the potential threat to national security that such an eventuality might entail.

Discussion of Hunter Biden's laptop with its reportedly incriminating information about the Biden family business dealings with the CCP, Russia, and other actors in what appeared to be a model of pay-for-play, was instantly shut down. Fifty-one former government intelligence officials , who we now know were perfectly well aware that the laptop was real – the FBI had been holding it for months -- wrote a letter describing the contents of the laptop as having "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" designed to damage Joe Biden.

NPR famously downplayed the story, and once again, if you used social media to post information originally reported by the New York Post, you were canceled.

A year and a half after the election, the facts were finally "officially" accepted: Well, what do you know, it really was Hunter Biden's laptop and the material on it "is real!"

Once again, the leadership at the FBI, the media, social media, and former government officials had developed a hoax to damage their political opposition and the people who supported it.

Finally, there is the January 6th Committee, a one-sided investigative body, sometimes called "the third (attempted) impeachment." The Committee appears to have been put in place to stop Trump from running for office again. Before the proceeding even began, its outcome was predetermined: Trump was to be found guilty of -- something. As Stalin secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria used to say during Soviet Russia's reign of terror, "Find me the man and I'll find you the crime." So the US show trial commenced.

Even its start was ominous. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in an unprecedented move, vetoed the committee appointments of Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan. This rebuff led House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to pull his five Republican candidates from participating. Pelosi, it appeared, wanted only anti-Trump folks to serve on the Committee. Also not allowed during the January 6 hearings have been any witnesses for the defense, any cross-examination, or any exculpatory evidence.

One wonders, for instance if the January 6th Committee will consider the July 29, 2022 tweet by General Keith Kellogg, that on January 3, 2021, Trump, in front of witnesses, did indeed ask for "troops needed" for January 6. Kellogg wrote:, "I was in the room:"

"Great OpEd. Reinforces my earlier comment on 6 Jan Cmte. Has quote from DOD IG Report regarding 3 Jan 2021 meeting with Actg Def Secy Miller/CJCS Milley in the Oval on the 6 Jan NG request by POTUS on troops needed. I was in the room."

While purportedly examining in detail every decision and action by Trump and his team, the Committee refuses to question Pelosi, among the leading figures responsible for the security of the Capitol. She reportedly "turned down" requests for greater security. According to the Federalist:

"Four days after the riot, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned his post in the aftermath, told The Washington Post his request for pre-emptive reinforcement from the National Guard ahead of Jan. 6 was turned down. Sund said House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, overseen by Pelosi, thought the guard's deployment was bad "optics" two days before the raid.... Despite the Associated Press and Washington Post's best efforts to run interference for the speaker, suddenly exonerating her of duties overseeing Capitol security, the riot on Jan. 6 was a security failure Pelosi owns. If the "speaker trusts security professionals to make security decisions," then why, as the police breach unfolded, did Irving feel compelled to seek the speaker's approval to dispatch the National Guard, as The New York Times reported? How could Pelosi also order the extended shut down of the Capitol to visitors, citing coronavirus, and install metal detectors in the House chamber?"

The Committee has not evaluated the performance of the Capitol Police or other law enforcement agencies, but it has targeted the "private records of individuals with no connection to the violence."

The January 6th Committee has also not released any information about government informants or FBI undercover law enforcement officers who might have been in the crowd, and Pelosi is also said to be blocking access to a massive quantity of documents. Finally, according to attorney Mark Levin, under the Constitution's separation of powers, Congress, has no legitimacy even to hold a criminal investigation: that power belongs to the Judiciary. The entire proceeding is illegitimate and a usurpation of power. The Committee's narrative is clear: Donald Trump is responsible for the events of January 6, now let us manufacture the evidence to prove it.

This article has not even delved into the 28 states that "changed voting rules to boost mail-in ballots." Some States apparently omitted both state law and the need for states' legislatures to be the sole arbiters of election law, as required by the Constitution; the $400 million spent by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; the 2000-plus "mules" and the algorithms that sent conservative emails to spam while emails with liberal content went through to the addressees.

Is it any wonder that many Americans have lost faith in their institutions and leaders? Is it surprising that after the Pulitzer decision, the Russia collusion hoax, the Whitmer kidnapping hoax, the Covid origin hoax, the Hunter Biden laptop hoax, and now the January 6th Committee hoax, that many Americans believe there is something wrong with the system? The media, social media, government officials and others have been complicit in undermining our rule of law and possibly even subverting an election.

*  *  *

阿兹夫定

美国快要打内战了吧？天天都是事，选几个政府官员而已，搞得跟宇宙大战一样，两党制弊端很大哇

阿兹夫定

spid 发表于 2022-8-13 15:44
美国政治走向某种‘恐怖主义’，对很多人而言川普最大的问题可能是“你不是我们的一份子”，而不是其他。
...

恐怖大王从天而降，恐怖主义撞向双子楼，恐怖病毒扑向人山人海，恐怖政治冲向川普，威武

spid

A New Epidemic Of Self-Silencing Is Plaguing America

Authored by Rajan Laad via AmericanThinker.com

A new study by the Populace organization revealed the obvious: that Americans are "self-silencing" - people saying what they think others want to hear rather than what they truly feel.
People often reshape their privately held views to conform to what they think their group believes, despite that assessment frequently being inaccurate.

This causes the illusion of consensus.

The following are two of the most significant revelations from the study:

Four times as many Democrats say Corporate CEOs should take a public stand on social issues (44%) than actually care (11%).

On Education, one in three Democrats think parents should have more influence over public school curriculum, however, only one in four dares to say it publicly.

In the current climate, it is the left that is championing the idea of groupthink which they claim is the only ‘appropriate’ way of thinking.

Under the guise of being woke, the left is ‘canceling’ dissenters and rendering them outcasts, often by inventing claims of bigotry. Wokeism that claims to emanate from empathy is merely a euphemism for totalitarianism.

It is hence essential to revisit the principle of free expression which is the core tenet of Democracy.

This includes the right to opine without repercussions i.e. the right to offend, insult, satirize, and ridicule.  The result is obscene, hateful, abhorrent, and shocking ideas may be expressed.

But personal taste can never ever be the criteria for the expression of ideas.

The reason being what is hateful to one may be compelling to another. What is bigoted to one may be a fresh perspective to another. What is obscene to one may be artful to another. What is lewd to one may be hilarious to another. What is blunt and blatant to one may be hard-hitting to another. What is repulsive to one can be riveting to another.  

A dogmatist to one may be a maverick to another. A rabid right-winger to one is a voice of reason to another. A hateful bigot to one could be a revolutionary to another. A mad man to one could be a genius to another.

A healthy exchange of ideas and relentless debates, not echo chambers, facilitates personal growth and in turn societal growth. It also causes unity as people begin to empathize with the opposing point of view and indeed the individual.

Quite often, a solitary contrarian idea that is expressed begins like a flickering flame but ends up illuminating an entire people. If a society sticks to convention, it ceases to grow.

What is troubling is that this practice of adhering to groupthink and self-silencing is spreading like an epidemic.

The corporate world, the news media, the entertainment industry, and even educational institutes have all been silenced by the mob.

Individuals from this mob have been cultivated from a very young age. The indoctrination that begins young is often irreversible. For this mob, being offended or calling others pejorative epithets is the equivalent of being virtuous. Hence, they function like puritans who are perpetually looking for heresy to condemn.

Social media plays a huge part in the development of groupthink. Quite often PR firms use bots or dummy accounts to push their agenda, which gullible users presume to be the opinion of the majority. Frequently an individual or a firm is targeted for holding the 'wrong' ideas.

The result is that some chose to self-silence.

Most people want to live a simple life. They do not want to be ostracized or rendered unemployed and unemployable.

Hence, they nod to the most ridiculous ideas to avoid being called anachronistic or bigoted.

Some hope they will be spared by appeasing the mob. They hope that by making slight compromises they can avoid being attacked. But cowardice only emboldens a mob; in time, major compromises are demanded, and soon everything you held dearly has melted into thin air.

It is also essential to understand no individual, irrespective of how cautiously restrained they are, can always hold the mob-approved thoughts. It is only a matter of time before the mob turns on its appeasers.  It therefore makes sense to challenge the mob when they take their first step.

The mob often claims to hold the right ideas and that the rest are ignorant or bigoted. If they are indeed on the right side, they should be eager to debate and vanquish their opponents. But they do the exact opposite: instead of engaging, they shut down their opponents. Despite their claims, they live in perpetual fear that fresh ideas may sway their supporters away.

The mob always claims to be standing against fascism.  Perhaps they fail to see the irony that it was fascists who suppressed opposing views and Nazis that burned books that they considered dissenting.

What is troubling is that government seems to be adopting these intimidatory tactics.

Last year the Biden’s FBI said was investigating “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”  

The goal behind this announcement was to shut down critics of the undesirable occurrences within educational institutes.

Early this year Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified that the Department of Homeland Security had set up a Disinformation Governance Board to “work and to equip local communities, to identify individuals who could be descending into violence by reason of ideologies, hate, false narratives, or other disinformation and misinformation propagated on social media and other platforms."  The board has been ‘paused’ now.

The goal behind this board was to cause self-silencing.

This revelation that Americans are self-silencing should come as no surprise.

So, what impact does this self-silencing have on society?

A deep resentment begins to brew as a result of the repression that is almost like a ticking timebomb that explodes one day.

It is said that to destroy a society you first begin by killing ideas. An unexpressed idea is an equivalent of killing an idea.

All the great modern inventions, discoveries, great works of art, and literature exist because someone, somewhere dared to think differently -- but most importantly, dared to express this difference of opinion without fear.  If we had all stuck to consensus, we would probably be living in the Stone Age.

Freedom of expression emanates from freedom of thought. If people are censoring themselves, democratic values are being compromised.

The time to rise up against this sinister totalitarian cult is now, by being the change you want to see and expressing yourself freely.

spid

阿兹夫定 发表于 2022-8-15 14:41
恐怖大王从天而降，恐怖主义撞向双子楼，恐怖病毒扑向人山人海，恐怖政治冲向川普，威武 ...

从对仗的角度来说，川普应该改成海湖庄园更好。
最新的信息，搜查令是司法部下的，司法部长调遣FBI去突击搜查。
美国这两年不少突破历史的事，创新的选举投票方式，创新的搜查前总统斗争模式，不知道还会有多少“创举”。
现任拜登说事前对此一无所知，恐怕是托辞。这种事，对现任总统也非好事，毕竟他也会成为前总统， 但是从这次FBI的指摘来看，他无法拒绝甚至无法开口，毕竟是把他儿子晾出来当了筹码，拜登被拿捏住了。

avigan

我有一种感觉，这个世界越来越不要脸了。

spid

avigan 发表于 2022-9-1 03:46
我有一种感觉，这个世界越来越不要脸了。

操作手段下限越来越低，越来越缺乏基本约束。
川普是这几届中唯一没有发动/推动外部动乱或战争的美国总统。
反对川普的主要是部分精英，不过川普后期反中，也伤害了在美华裔，其实中国只是部分精英反对他，跟部分美国精英一致，中国人群中他的口碑还不错，全面反中有点伤害平民。
至于欧洲，从精英到平民大都不太喜欢川普，媒体比较一致，但川普在位期间欧洲经济并无大动荡，如今没有嘴炮，有乌克兰战争，不知道欧洲人意下如何。

spid

Have We Entered The New Dark Ages?

BY TYLER DURDEN
Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

Elizabeth Warren must be a fool.  That, or she thinks the rest of us are fools.

The Senator recently took to CNN to publicly fret over the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes.  She’s worried they will tip the economy into recession.

The U.S. economy already is in a recession.  GDP data alone shows the economy contracted in both the first and second quarter of 2022.

The technical definition for a recession has long been understood to be two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.  So, by definition, the economy is in a recession.  Everyone knows this, save President Biden and Warren.

Recessions may not be agreeable.  But they are necessary.  In fact, the present recession is precisely what’s needed to clean up the consumer price inflation mess that Warren and her colleagues made.  There are consequences for mass money printing.  And they must be reckoned one way or another.

The fundamental fact is today’s consumer price inflation fiasco is a direct result of Washington’s spending policies.  The coronavirus hysteria provided the perfect excuse to spew printing press money into the economy.  Warren was one of the greatest advocates.

The Fed, for its part, merely obliged the wishes of Congress.  It created credit from thin air and loaned it to the Treasury in the form of Treasury note purchases.

The Treasury then obliged the wishes of Congress.  It used the money that was borrowed from the Fed to fund stimmy checks, PPP, and generous federal unemployment payments.  This was all to meet the legislative demands of Warren and the other knaves in Congress.

Money Destruction
There’s never a good time to spew printing press money into the economy.  But the years 2020-21 were particularly bad.  That’s because governments the world over locked down their economies for no good reason at all.

The United States, Europe, and nearly every government across the globe took its cues from Communist China.  The coronavirus curve wasn’t flattened.  But the economy was.

Then politicians like Warren took a bad situation and made it vastly worse by spewing printing press money everywhere.  Maybe they thought they were helping.  Maybe they believed the promise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) would make all their socialist dreams come true.

Regardless, their actions were highly destructive.  And now we all must live in the discombobulated world they made.

The critical point is that the creation of greater quantities of money by central planners does not magically increase the quantity of goods and services.  The addition of newly created money is not readily greeted with a corresponding increase in production.

Similarly, newly created money does not magically increase people’s claims to goods and services.  It does not increase how much they can consume.  Rather, it dilutes each individual monetary unit, which then appears as rising prices.

The genesis of consumer price inflation can be found in money supply inflation.  Money supply inflation is the direct act of central planners.  The inflation of the money supply comes first.  Consumer prices then follow, especially when the printing press money is injected into the economy via government giveaways.

Broken Supply Chains
The 2020-21 government mandated lockdowns succeeded in disrupting supply chains.  Many links in the chain were broken.  Some supply chains that were incrementally connected over the last 30 years were broken forever.

There’s no going back to the way things were prior to March 2020.  Yet, in addition to the ramifications of government mandated lockdowns and mass money spewing, the world continues to change in important ways.

Geopolitical shifts since the start of the Russian-Ukraine war are momentous.  Sanctions imposed on Russia have put Europe in a position where it can no longer consume cheap, abundant Russian natural gas.

This is an example of a supply chain that’s broken for good.  It will never be repaired.  The implications of this new reality are just setting in as winter appears in the distance.

Germany is particularly vulnerable to disruptions in Russian gas.  Before the war started, more than half of its gas came from Russian imports.  Now Germany is having to quickly develop contingencies.

One option is to restart coal plants that had already been shut down as part of its plan to phase out coal by 2030.  But coal is also in a supply crunch.

In Poland, for example, cars are lining up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine.  People are waiting day and night to stock up on heating fuel in advance of winter.  Demand for coal has forced Bogdanka and other mines to ration sales.

What’s going on here?  How did everything get so screwed up?  Have we entered the new dark ages?

Have We Entered the New Dark Ages?
Unless there’s a miracle, this winter will be an absolute calamity for Europe.  French President Emmanuel Macron recently clarified the situation for his cabinet.

“What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval … we are living the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance … the end of the abundance of products of technologies that seemed always available … the end of the abundance of land and materials including water.”

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles also warned of what’s to come, saying, “We [Europeans] are going to have a winter of great suffering.”

Both Macron and Robles fail to mention the source of the great upheaval and winter of suffering.  That it’s elitist policies from the U.S. and Europe that have put everyone in such a pinch.

In reality, there is an abundance of resources and the talent and capability to efficiently deliver them to market.  But government lockdowns, climate change policies, and senseless sanctions are standing in the way.

One example of the absurdity of it all was recently identified by ZeroHedge, who detailed how Europe is paying inflated prices for Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) that’s been laundered through China.  Somehow ‘dirty’ LNG from Russia magically becomes ‘clean’ when it’s brokered from China.

Here in the U.S. these mega disruptions are less pronounced, at least for now.  Yet the U.S. is not exempt.  Not with the current cadre of elitists doing everything they can to inhibit productivity and then paper over it with printing press money via misnomers like the Inflation Reduction Act.

As noted above, the U.S. is already in a recession.  The bear market rally has stalled out and reversed just as the calendar turns to September – the worst month of the year historically for U.S. stocks.  And September is followed by October, a month which has delivered several of the most epic stock market crashes on record.

So as the market slides into the fall, and the economy contracts, high consumer prices will persist.  They must.  Elitist policies assure it.

There is one way out, however.  But it won’t be very pleasant.  As the Fed yanks the cheap money rug out from under the economy the recession could turn into a decade long depression.

And if that doesn’t do it, a new dark ages will.

Remdesivir

spid 发表于 2022-9-3 14:18
Have We Entered The New Dark Ages?

BY TYLER DURDEN

马克思说，资本主义有经济危机是不可避免，不断循环的。这么看就是新常态，没啥可紧张的

Remdesivir

Remdesivir 发表于 2022-9-3 15:11
马克思说，资本主义有经济危机是不可避免，不断循环的。这么看就是新常态，没啥可紧张的 ...

new dark age，这个词听起来很酷，互联网，监控和病毒构建的黑暗时代，想想就有一种活腻了的感觉