Will Increased Election-Coup Info Contribute to Biden-Harris Removal?

John R. Houk, Blog Editor

© April 2, 2020

 

Increasingly coup-elected faux-Prez Biden is demonstrating public incoherence. It’s an indication someone else is running the Executive Branch.

 

ALSO, as Leftist MSM realizes they screwed up in protecting and promoting Dementia Joe’s election are beginning to publicize information they once discredited as conspiracy news.

 

On a personal level, I have little confidence Biden/Harris will be removed from their puppet stations because that would crack the door open to expose Deep State puppeteers operating the USA unconstitutionally. The puppeteers will not give up power willingly. Which means I doubt any legal apparatus (I hope I’m wrong) will succeed in elections or Courts.

 

SO, where does that leave a restored Republic? Either a Deep State shoring up dictatorial power ending the Founders’ Republic or a civil war which may or may not succeed restoring some form of a new Constitutional Republic hopefully with at least some of the fingerprints of America’s Founders on a restored People’s Republic.

 

Future change or resistance to Globalist Transformation could be soon or decades depending on the degree the puppeteers are exposed to the American Public. It really is difficult to tell, but there is a sense SOMETHING is about to drop. I hope others have the same sense that something is happening behind the scenes that manifests to Public review.

 

Here are some cross posts that have ignited my sense antennas.

 

JRH 4/2/22

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Documentary Blows the Lid off the $400 Million Zuckerberg Effort to Elect Biden

  

Mark Zuckerberg speaks to Congress

 

By HANNAH BLEAU

March 31, 2022

Breitbart

 

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg spent nearly $400 million on the 2020 presidential election in an effort to bolster then-candidate Joe Biden and quash former President Donald Trump, a documentary film from Citizens United Productions, Rigged: The Zuckerberg-Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump, details.

 

The 40-minute documentary blows the lid off the tech billionaire’s efforts, alongside left-wing operatives, to unseat Trump under the guise of providing aid to assist with safety in the wake of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. These leftists essentially dumped private funding into government elections, creating an artificial groundswell of get-out-the-vote efforts for Biden, whose public enthusiasm levels clearly waned throughout the election cycle, prompting jokes about the then-candidate hiding in his basement.

 

Overall, Zuckerberg spent $400 million in 2020 — only $61 million short of the $461 million the Democratic National Committee (DNC) spent in both 2019 and 2020.

 

The explosive documentary details just how these left-wing operatives sprinkled “Zuck Bucks” in various areas around the country to influence the election. All of this is documented via 990 forms non-profit groups file with the IRS.

 

Specifically, the documentary “traces the river of cash flowing from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to a pair of 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR).” Interestingly, the Chan Zuckerberg Institute happens to involve a number of well-connected Democrat players, including former President Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe, whom the press release describes as the institute’s “Strategist in Residence.” Joel Benenson, the chief strategist for twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, also conveniently served as an adviser at the institute.

 

The CTCL, which received roughly $328 million in Zuckerberg money, awarded about 2,500 grants around the country. And while Zuckerberg’s team claims that Trump areas were awarded more money than Biden areas, the documentary explains how that assertion is “enormously, and perhaps purposely, misleading, because of the approximately 160 grants of $400,000 or more – totaling some $270 million – an incredible 92 percent of those funds went to jurisdictions carried by Joe Biden in 2020.”

 

As Breitbart News detailed consistently throughout the election year, Democrats used the Chinese coronavirus pandemic to usher in new voting rules under the guise of public safety, and that is exactly what “Zuck Bucks” operated under as well, as the grants were purportedly designed to assist with the “safe administration of public elections” throughout the pandemic. In other words, this money rushed to Democrat strongholds, as well as key swing areas, under the guise of addressing pandemic needs. Yet, that is not what they really intended it to do.

 

“This is all about the great intention of, hey, we’re gonna make it more secure,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says in the documentary, as hardly any of the money went toward Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

 

“We’re gonna make it more safe. We want to make sure that people feel comfortable coming to the poll, but that’s not what they ended up doing,” Landry added, as these jurisdictions used the money to push Democrat objectives such as universal mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes, just as two examples. In other words, the money was used to create an artificial buzz benefiting Joe Biden. The money itself went to nearly every state– 48/50, including Democrat strongholds. According to the documentary, this strategy — dumping money in areas that Biden was sure to win (California) and sure to lose (Texas) “reveals that a secondary aim of the plan was to score a public relations victory by padding Biden’s popular vote tally, in the event that he lost narrowly in the Electoral College.”

 

Essentially, “Zuck Bucks” ultimately “pressured” governmental entities to adopt these radical Democrat ideas to transform the election, pushing mail-in ballots and increasing the number of ballot drop boxes, both of which stand as a “rampant invitation” for fraud, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) notes in the documentary. Ultimately, the film notes that the coronavirus provided the “perfect cover” for Zuckerberg’s money to go to work in crucial battleground states, fulfilling the Democrat mantra of never letting a  crisis go to waste.

 

Further, the film specifically focuses on three key battleground states, which Biden won by slim margins — Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia.

 

CTCL dumped $860,000 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for example, and another $1.2 million in Green Bay and Madison, $1.7 million in Racine, and $3.4 million in Milwaukee. Similarly, the documentary reveals that $5.1 million of the Zuckerberg money went to Arizona. What is more, “four difference-making counties – Maricopa, Pima, Apache, and Coconino – received nearly 76 percent of the grants, and all were carried by Joe Biden,” per the press release. Notably, Biden won Arizona by less than half a percentage point, or fewer than 11,000 votes.

 

Perhaps most stunningly, $50 million in grants from both CTCL and CEIR went to the Peach State:

 

A whopping 94 percent of the CTCL funds in the state went to jurisdictions carried by Biden. Additionally, the consent decree signed off on by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger undercut the process for matching signatures on absentee ballots and restricted the ability to challenge contested ballots.

 

“In my mind, they were clearly rigging the election,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says in Rigged. “I’m not convinced that the election was stolen on Election Day. I think the bigger story was that across the whole country for months, there was an effort to rig the election to make it virtually impossible for Trump to win.”

 

“We’ll follow the money and uncover the startling facts behind Election 2020,” Citizens United President David N. Bossie, who narrates the documentary, said. “In order to answer the question once and for all: What happened? And to ensure it never happens again.”

 

Former President Trump, who speaks in the film, noted that Zuckerberg was “putting money under the guise that he’s going to open up the election,” deeming it “crap.”

 

“That’s all crap. Not gonna open it up. He’s closing it. He’s making it impossible for a Republican to win,” he said.

 

Ultimately, the documentary is aiming at raising awareness of the powerful influence Zuckerberg and left-wing operatives had in the 2020 election, pulling strings behind the scenes and using the distraction of pandemic panic as a means to take down Trump.

 

“He should totally be held accountable,” Trump says in Rigged. “And he should never be allowed to do it again. And nobody else should. It was a rigged election. People have to find out what happened and they have to hold people accountable.”

 

The documentary will premiere at Trump’s “Winter White House” Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, on April 5, 2022. Viewers can watch the film after the premiere at www.Rigged2020.com.

 

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

Politics, David Bossie, election integrity, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg

 

Copyright © 2022 Breitbart

 

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Mark Levin lays out the FACTS on the need for a criminal investigation into Joe Biden

 

Mark Levin

 

By THE RIGHT SCOOP [staff]

April 1, 2022 1:18 PM

The Right Scoop

 

Here’s another great segment from The Great One.

 

Last night Mark Levin laid the facts out on Hannity and explained why there needs to be a criminal investigation into Joe Biden over his role into the business dealings of Hunter Biden:

 

Rumble VIDEO: The Biden Corruption Conspiracy

[Posted by Mark Levin Show

Published April 1, 2022

 

Joe Biden’s legacy is one of dishonesty and lies. A federal investigation is finally underway to find out more about Hunter and Joe Biden’s underhanded foreign dealings and monetary transactions. The records show more evidence of the Democrats and Mainstream Media’s agenda to demonize conservatives and cover up their own misconduct. Our deceiver in chief should go down as the most corrupt president in history.]

 

Levin says that is very possible that Joe Biden might be the most corrupt president we’ve ever had and the media is still running interference for him, as will his corrupt Attorney General Merrick Garland. Levin says there’s no way Garland will allow a criminal investigation into Joe Biden.

 

In calling for a special prosecutor, Levin also reminds us of Tony Bobulinski, who came out in 2020 and verified that Joe Biden not only knew of his son’s dealings but was supposed to get a 10% cut.

 

In a related segment a former US Attorney was on Fox News to discuss Hunter Biden yesterday and echoed a similar sentiment, saying that the entire family should be under investigation. He added that if it were anyone else, there would have been criminal indictments a long time ago:

 

Rumble VIDEO: Former Prosecutor on Hunter Biden: Anybody Else Would Have Been Indicted Already

[Posted by Mr Producer Media

Published April 1, 2022

 

… MORE DESCRIPTION]

 

© The Right Scoop 2009-2022. All rights reserved.

 

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Rumble VIDEO: Episode 1,752 - Miranda Devine: The Secrets Of The Laptop From Hell; Rigged 2020 The Movie

Posted by Bannons War Room

Published April 1, 2022

 

We discuss breaking news with the economy, judge Jackson, Hunter Biden's laptop, and more.

 

Our guests are: Mike Davis, Dave Bossie, Miranda Devine

Stay ahead of the censors - Join us warroom.org/join

 

Aired On: 4/01//2022

 

Watch:

On the Web: http://www.warroom.org

 

… MORE DESCRIPTION

 

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Who Is REALLY Running the Country?

We can speculate (and often do) about who is really calling the shots out of DC and across the globe. The only thing we know for certain is that it's neither Joe Biden or Kamala Harris in charge.

 

 

Puppeteers & Biden-Harris

 

By JD Rucker

April 1, 2022

NOQ Report

 

JD Rucker Podcast: Who Is REALLY Running the Country?

On today’s episode of JD Rucker LIVE, I took questions from listeners about whatever topic they liked. A variation of one question kept popping up — who is REALLY running America? It’s obviously not Joe Biden or the Democrat Party as they have demonstrated they’re somebody’s pawns. It’s not the GOP in DC who have very little power, and while at least half of them are corrupted by The Swamp they just don’t have the gumption to actually make anything happen.

 

I’m replaying this live show on my podcast, The Midnight Sentinel, because it’s an important topic. Yes, I discussed many issues outside of that question but it’s the one that stood out as important enough to discuss further.

 

So, who’s running the United States? Is it the same people who are running the world? Probably. And unfortunately that may have been the case from George H. W. Bush all the way through to Barack Obama. There was a blip in their control structure when Donald Trump won, which is why I’m convinced they did everything they could to steal the election from him in 2020.

 

Below, I made a list of the ten people/groups I believe are most likely to be truly in charge. It’s in no particular order so don’t give more weight to the top or the bottom. To be clear, neither I nor anyone outside of the inner circle of evil knowledge could possibly know for sure who’s really in charge. Whoever we might think it is at any given moment is almost certainly working on behalf of someone or something else. Until we get to the top of the evil food chain with Satan himself, everyone else is just a minion. The people and groups on this list happen to be extremely powerful minions.

 

There’s an important thing to consider before we get to the list, and that’s to know the difference between the high-level puppets and the actual puppet masters. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are definitely puppets. Missing from the list below are two prominent people and one prominent organization that are puppet masters in their own right, but who are not really at the top of the evil hierarchy even if many believe they are.

 

Bill and Hillary Clinton may be elites in the Democrat Party, but they are not top-tier globalists. They are pawns, middle managers really, who answer to higher players. The United Nations is also conspicuously missing from the list because they tend to be far too feckless to possibly be at or even near the top of the food chain. Moreover, there is far less control over who gets to participate at the U.N. than in organizations such as the World Economic Forum in which completely control is centralized.

 

By no means is this list complete. There are players I’ve never even heard of who may be more powerful than any of the people or groups below. There are probably players who we all have heard of who may be separated publicly but fully engaged privately. Elon Musk’s name was thrown out in one of the questions I was asked on the show. He’s said things that make us wonder about his motivations even as he’s said other things that make him seem like a “good guy.”

 

So, who is at least partially calling the shots? Who’s controlling Joe Biden’s strings? The closest thing to a right answer is that it’s a combination of some or even all of the ten entities listed below:

 

§  Barack Obama et al. – Susan Rice, John Brennan, and the various cohorts of Barack Obama are definitely influencing the White House, bureaucrats, and members of Congress. The only question is whether Obama emerged from being a puppet to a puppet-master or if he’s still doing the bidding of globalists above him.

 

§  Klaus Schwab and the WEF – This is arguably the most compelling option among the various individuals because Schwab has been working towards The Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution since before many of our readers and listeners were even born. The World Economic Forum is central to the globalists’ dreams. Is it the main hub or is the public facing version of a much darker organization?

 

§  The Deep State – How much control does the Deep State have over DC? All of it and none of it. That’s the enigma they represent because while they may control the three letter agencies as well as the media, they could just as easily be getting their orders from outside as they could be simply making it all up themselves.

 

§  George Soros and Open Societies – This is another intriguing consideration because while the WEF’s tentacles are geared towards grooming future globalist leaders, Open Societies works to actually put them in power.

 

§  Chinese Communist Party – They may be an external power trying to influence America or they may be so deeply embedded that they actually have much more control than we know.

 

§  Bill Gates et al. – Of all those on the list, Gates and his various organizations seem to be more likely to be powerful pawns than actual puppet-masters. Then again, that may be the front-facing persona they want everyone to think is real.

 

§  Vatican – It’s a conspiracy theory list, therefore the Vatican has to be on it. With Pope Francis in charge, there’s no telling how tied they are with the globalist elites. [Blog Editor: I’m not a hate-Roman-Catholics-kind-of-guy even though I disagree with most Catholic theology. I am an anti-Communist Pope because guy stands for Marxist Liberation theology and appears to gravitate toward acceptance of Biblically condemned morality.]

 

§  Powers and Principalities – Ephesians 6:12. We may have never even seen the puppet-masters. [Blog Editor: The context of Ephesians 6:12 via Ephesians 6: 10-17 NKJV]

 

§  The Rothchilds [sic] – It’s a conspiracy theory list, therefore the Rothchilds [sic] have to be on it. [Blog Editor: Way too many people look at the Rothschilds Jewish heritage and blame all Jewry for a NWO world domination agenda. That simply is an unjust application. It’s like blaming all Christians for a few who have a Christian heritage but turned to atheistic Communism to institute a transformed Globalist NWO. Covenant breaking is separating from God regardless if one is Jewish or Christian in their heritage.]

 

§  The Real New World Order – The nebulous New World Order may actually be a tangible New World Order that nobody fully understands. In fact, everyone on this list may be a part of it.

 

Tinfoil hat stuff aside, it’s clear that the so-called leader of the free world isn’t really the leader of anything. Someone is pushing this nation towards oblivion, but Joe Biden is just a mindless conduit.

 

Rumble VIDEO: Who Is REALLY Running the Country?

[Posted by The JD Rucker Show

Published April 1, 2022

 

… A LOT MORE IN DESCRIPTION]

 

© 2021 NOQ Report

 

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See the full list of 51 deep state “intelligence” officials who lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop to try to defeat Trump in 2020

 

John Brennan - former CIA Director

 

By JD Heyes 

3/31/22

News Target

 

If any reasonable, thinking American doubted the existence of a “deep state” before Donald Trump became president, they were treated to a four-year object lesson in just how real it is.

 

Trump, the ultimate outsider candidate who had no political skeletons, was too popular to be canceled, and could not be bought off because he was already a billionaire, rankled and frightened the powerbroker elite in Washington because he really did believe in his “America First” agenda that they will never accept because they profit off of selling America out.

 

As such, the deep state went after Trump with a vengeance that was unprecedented against a president, even prior Republicans like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the latter of whom is fully ensconced in the elitist D.C. power structure. The intelligence community came together like never before to spread lies about Trump, drop false narratives and plant fake stories that were eagerly parroted by the legacy left-wing media that serves as little more than the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

 

To emphasize just how hard the deep state went after Trump, he became the first president to be impeached twice, and on the flimsiest of reasons, though both times the Senate refused to convict him.

 

The final act of the politically weaponized deep state, however, came just a few weeks prior to the 2020 election in November.

 

In mid-October, the New York Post, citing emails, photos and other materials found on a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019, published a series of bombshell reports detailing what a scumbag he is and how he used his father’s connections to land lucrative business deals and positions with foreign governments and companies, with a kickback percentage going to Daddy Joe.

 

While Big Tech and Big Media colluded to censor and discredit the reports, 51 officials within the deep state intelligence community gave them cover by signing a letter claiming that, while they did not know for sure, it appeared that the details contained in The Post’s reporting had ‘all the hallmarks’ of a “Russian disinformation campaign.”

 

But in fact, The Post’s reporting was based on legitimate factual information gleaned from Biden’s laptop and the intelligence community ‘experts’ knew that. But their objective was to get rid of Trump and derail his MAGA agenda, a goal shared with an eager-to-be-duped media that wanted Trump gone because they just didn’t like his conservative America-first agenda.

 

It was only after the election and Joe Biden had been safely installed in the White House that some media outlets began to confirm The Post’s original reporting. Politico did last year; The New York Times did so just last week in a report noting that Hunter Biden remains under investigation by the Justice Department for potential violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) and tax fraud.

 

By the way, The Post followed up with those 51 now-former intelligence community officials, and in an editorial published earlier this week, the paper noted that it had tried to contact all of them to see if they had any remorse for claiming — falsely — that Biden’s laptop may have been Russian disinfo.

 

None did.

 

Here is the list, per The Post:

 

Mike Hayden, former CIA director, now analyst for CNN: Didn’t respond.

 

Jim Clapper, former director of national intelligence, now CNN pundit: “Yes, I stand by the statement made AT THE TIME, and would call attention to its 5th paragraph. I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate.”

 

Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary, now runs a public policy institute at California State University: Declined comment.

 

John Brennan, former CIA director, now analyst for NBC and MSNBC: Didn’t respond.

 

Thomas Fingar, former National Intelligence Council chair, now teaches at Stanford University: Didn’t respond.

 

Rick Ledgett, former National Security Agency deputy director, now a director at M&T Bank: Didn’t respond.

 

John McLaughlin, former CIA acting director, now teaches at Johns Hopkins University: Didn’t respond.

 

Michael Morell, former CIA acting director, now at George Mason University: Didn’t respond.

 

Mike Vickers, former defense undersecretary for intelligence, now on board of BAE Systems: Didn’t respond.

 

Doug Wise, former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director, teaches at University of New Mexico: Didn’t respond.

 

Nick Rasmussen, former National Counterterrorism Center director, now executive director, Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism: Didn’t respond.

 

Russ Travers, former National Counterterrorism Center acting director: “The letter explicitly stated that we didn’t know if the emails were genuine, but that we were concerned about Russian disinformation efforts. I spent 25 years as a Soviet/Russian analyst. Given the context of what the Russians were doing at the time (and continue to do — Ukraine being just the latest example), I considered the cautionary warning to be prudent.”

 

Andy Liepman, former National Counterterrorism Center deputy director: “As far as I know I do [stand by the statement] but I’m kind of busy right now.”

 

John Moseman, former CIA chief of staff: Didn’t respond.

 

Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA chief of staff, now senior advisor to The Chertoff Group:
Didn’t respond.

 

Jeremy Bash, former CIA chief of staff, now analyst for NBC and MSNBC: Didn’t respond.

 

Rodney Snyder, former CIA chief of staff: Didn’t respond.

 

Glenn Gerstell, former National Security Agency general counsel: Didn’t respond.

 

David Priess, former CIA analyst and manager: “Thank you for reaching out. I have no further comment at this time.”

 

Pam Purcilly, former CIA deputy director of analysis: Didn’t respond.

 

Marc Polymeropoulos, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Chris Savos, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

 

John Tullius, former CIA senior intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

 

David A. Vanell, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Kristin Wood, former CIA senior intelligence officer, now non-resident fellow, Harvard: Didn’t respond.

 

David Buckley, former CIA inspector general: Didn’t respond.

 

Nada Bakos, former CIA analyst and targeting officer, now senior fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute: Didn’t respond.

 

Patty Brandmaier, former CIA senior intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

 

James B. Bruce, former CIA senior intelligence office: Didn’t respond.

 

David Cariens, former CIA intelligence analyst: Didn’t respond.

 

Janice Cariens, former CIA operational support officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Paul Kolbe, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Peter Corsell, former CIA analyst: Didn’t respond.

 

Brett Davis, former CIA senior intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Roger Zane George, former national intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Steven L. Hall, former CIA senior intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Kent Harrington, former national intelligence officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Don Hepburn, former national security executive, now president of Boanerges Solutions LLC: “My position has not changed any. I believe the Russians made a huge effort to alter the course of the election . . . The Russians are masters of blending truth and fiction and making something feel incredibly real when it’s not. Nothing I have seen really changes my opinion. I can’t tell you what part is real and what part is fake, but the thesis still stands for me, that it was a media influence hit job.”

 

Timothy D. Kilbourn, former dean of CIA’s Kent School of Intelligence Analysis: Didn’t respond.

 

Ron Marks, former CIA officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Jonna Hiestand Mendez, former CIA technical operations officer, now on board of the International Spy Museum: “I don’t have any comment. I would need a little more information.”

 

Emile Nakhleh, former director of CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, now at University of New Mexico: “I have not seen any information since then that would alter the decision behind signing the letter. That’s all I can go into. The whole issue was highly politicized and I don’t want to deal with that. I still stand by that letter.”

 

Gerald A. O’Shea, former CIA senior operations officer: Didn’t respond.

 

Nick Shapiro, former CIA deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to the director: Didn’t respond.

 

John Sipher, former CIA senior operations officer: Declined to comment.

 

Stephen Slick, former National Security Council senior director for intelligence programs:
Didn’t respond.

 

Cynthia Strand, former CIA deputy assistant director for global issues: Didn’t respond.

 

Greg Tarbell, former CIA deputy executive director: Didn’t respond.

 

David Terry, former National Intelligence Collection Board chairman: Couldn’t be reached.

 

Greg Treverton, former National Intelligence Council chair, now senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “I’ll pass. I haven’t followed the case recently.”

 

Winston Wiley, former CIA director of analysis: Couldn’t be reached.

 

Sources include:

 

NYPost.com

USAFeatures.news

 

NewsTarget.com © 2021 All Rights Reserved. All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. NewsTarget.com is not responsible for content written by contributing authors. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. NewsTarget.com assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. Your use of this website indicates your agreement to these terms and those published on this site. All trademarks, registered trademarks and servicemarks mentioned on this site are the property of their respective owners.

 

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Rumble VIDEO: Joe Hoft of TGP Talks with Intel Expert Tony Shafer on Bill Barr, 2020 Election, and More

Posted by The Gateway Pundit

Published March 31, 2022

 

Joe Hoft of TGP Talks with Tony Shafer

 

[Blog Editor: TGP post associated with the video: “Bill Barr Broke the Law… The Fix Is In… Bill Barr Did Not Do His Job” – EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Tony Shaffer on Barr’s Actions After the 2020 Election; By Joe Hoft; The Gateway Pundit; 3/31/22  2:30pm]

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

[Blog Editor: The most relevant content in the video below is the roughly first 30-minutes interview with Miranda Devine author of The Laptop from Hell.]

 

Rumble VIDEO: Hunter’s Laptop from Hell and the War in Ukraine With Miranda Devine

Posted by The Ann and Phelim Scoop

Published March 16, 2022

 

Three weeks before the 2020 election, Big Tech censored and banned the New York Post’s bombshell story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which exposed his corruption related to Ukraine. Now, Joe Biden is President and there is a war in Ukraine. The story is incredibly relevant, but the media won’t touch it. We are joined by Miranda Devine, who literally wrote the book on Hunter’s laptop, to explain how this story directly relates to the Russo-Ukrainian war and US policy towards it.

 

Also on this episode, we discuss the disastrous impacts of masking and school shutdowns on kids, a tragic story from the “Sanctuary state” of California, and the somber anniversary of the start of the Gosnell trial.

 

… MORE DESCRIPTION

Regime Change in Iran?

Here is an interesting look inside Iranian politics and Shia Islamism.

JRH 5/4/12

Please Support SlantRight 2.0 - Donations are not tax deductible but are appreciated to help with the bills.

*****************************

Regime Change in Iran?

By Brendan Daly
Middle East QuarterlySpring 2012, pp. 81-86

There is every reason to believe that the Islamic Republic's days are numbered. The current government, lorded over by the religious supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i, and his Guardian Council of aging mullahs, who can overrule any policy change by the pseudo-elected president, seem wildly out of touch with the general populace. Not only are the youth of Iran—some 70 percent of whom are under the age of thirty—chaffing under the "guardianship of the Islamic jurists" (velayet-e-faqih)—but so is the economy, due to sanctions imposed by the West in response to the regime's insistence on pursuing its nuclear program.[1] Inflation has long been out of control and trade and tourism a tiny fraction of what it could be, and yet the establishment has on the whole shown little interest in sacrificing militant, revolutionary principles for economic, and indeed, political expediency. Can this approach be sustained in view of the tightening economic noose around Tehran, and at what cost?

Background

The replacement of a relentlessly Islamist regime—emerging as it is in competition with Turkey as the primary regional superpower—with a liberal, secular, democratic government that will eschew domestic repression and international subversion is certainly attractive.[2] And it is not unprecedented, for Iran long struggled for constitutional and democratic rule. The constitutional revolution of 1905 was the first of its kind in the Middle East. Even the 1979 revolution, customarily referred to as the "Islamic Revolution," was in fact, initially, the result of a confluence of agitators: republican, nationalist, Marxist, and Islamist. But in the months and years following the flight of the shah and Khomeini's triumphant return, the ayatollah wrest control from the liberals and progressives, and through a brutal campaign of street violence, assassination, intimidation, and expert propaganda, crushed any opposition to his totalitarian ideology.[3]

Any visitor who spends significant time in the country will find ample justification for the Iranians' reputation for open-mindedness, artistry, intellectualism, and an almost fanatical reverence for culture. The most popular poet in Iran is Hafez, a national hero who is more readily quoted by most Iranians than the Qur'an. His poetry is full of wine-soaked revelry, unrequited and requited love, and a palpable hatred of religious hypocrisy and austerity.

Indeed, even after decades of repressive Islamist rule, Iran is still full of apparent contradictions. It is run by a highly moralistic, puritanical clergy, yet cannabis and heroin are more freely available than in most Western countries;[4] a country where producing music with a lone female voice is illegal, yet relatively early-term abortion is not;[5] where most people are constantly on guard against expressing true political opinions, yet one will find an old woman who will loudly shout "Long live the shah!"; where nepotism reigns at almost every level of society and wealth and power go hand in hand, yet many of its most powerful political figures were three decades ago "riding donkeys in the provinces" as one Tehran resident put it.[6]

Advocates of the Islamic Republic's imminent demise point to the small semi-nationalist, Zoroastrian revival burgeoning among the youth of Iran. The Faravahar, the symbol of the religion, is a common sight on key-rings and hanging from rearview mirrors. For some it simply represents Iran and its past glory. But for others, it is a real spiritual alternative to Islam. As Ali-Reza, a construction worker in his fifties from south Tehran told me: "My grandparents were Zoroastrian, but my parents were forced to convert. … We are still Zoroastrian in our hearts, but in Islam, if you change your religion, they kill you," he adds, followed by several expletives.

But one must be careful not to get carried away with this narrative. For every Zoroastrian revivalist, for every youth in north Tehran who spits at a passing bearded militiaman; for every exile who speaks in glowing terms of the shah; for every student in Shiraz who visits the bathroom with the words "I need to say hello to our President (Ahmadinejad)"— it is hard to escape the conclusion while travelling around the country that those who demand nothing less than the total abolition of the Islamic Republic are in a clear minority. Still, it is a minority that history and demographics would suggest is steadily growing.

Why No "Iranian Spring"?

With the ostensibly pro-democratic upheavals in the Arab world in 2011, many were asking why there were no equivalent mass protests in Iran. In fact, in the earliest days of the Arab uprisings, Tehran witnessed a series of sizeable demonstrations. Two protesters, Sane Jaleh and Mohammed Mokhtari, were killed on February 14-15, 2011. Amazingly, the state-run media tried to claim that they were in fact pro-government activists and that they were killed by either anti-regime terrorists or supporters of Green Movement leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi—a quite ludicrous notion that was conclusively refuted by interviews carried out with the men's friends and family.[7]

However, the bulk of the Iranian population did not back these February-April protests. Even among north Tehran's educated middle-class, the stronghold of the opposition movement, the prevailing feeling since the failed 2009 anti-government "Green Movement" demonstrations is one of cynicism and despair. Shokoufeh, 27, is an artist and veteran of antigovernment activity. When I asked her in March 2011 of her estimated time-frame for the collapse of the regime, she said,

Twenty, thirty years. If we all protest now, and don't give up, they will kill thousands of us. They don't care. They have all the power, all the guns, and they consider us traitors. They will kill as many of us as they want; they will win easily.

There is a hard-line element of the Iranian population, estimated at anywhere between 10 to 25 percent, that is willing to die and kill for the Islamic Republic. Furthermore, this militant minority has a monopoly on political and military power. The genius of the Islamic Republic is that for every state and civic institution—parliament, judiciary, military—there is a parallel, unaccountable religious body to either mirror it or police it. The on-the-ground authority of the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and Basij militia exceeds that of the official Iranian military and police respectively.[8]

In short, the regime is strong and dynamic. Its byzantine political structure provides fundamental veto powers to any attempt at systemic, democratic change from within, and its sophisticated security and military apparatus dwarfs anything that could conceivably be mustered by the opposition. And there is no indication that the supreme leader and his circle of ayatollahs have any intention of "giving up one iota"[9] of control over the reins of power. Indeed, just the opposite is true.

Ahmadinejad Down, Ayatollahs Rising

In 2009, Ayatollah Khamene'i took the unprecedented step of publicly backing incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election victory against the reformist opposition and its claims of electoral fraud, declaring the victory a "divine assessment."[10] Several days later, as protests continued to escalate, the supreme leader appeared to backtrack somewhat, announcing that he had ordered the Guardian Council to investigate the claims of fraud—who, of course, denied the claims.[11]

Virtually all serious commentators have alleged some degree of fraud in the elections. The accusations came not only from every opposition candidate but from numerous nongovernment clerics and from foreign journalists.[12] Some results, such as Mousavi's loss in his own home province of East Azerbaijan, were too hard for many to swallow.[13] But to what extent Ahmadinejad's victory reflected, or failed to reflect, the majority's genuine preference has been hotly debated. Polls conducted by Western organizations both before and after the June 2009 elections, showed anywhere between a 12 percent to 39 percent[14] margin in favor of Ahmadinejad. However, such polls are themselves subject to a myriad of weaknesses, not least self-censorship.

Still, the Guardian Council's alliance with the president turned out to be ephemeral. Ahmadinejad and his circle have never been true orthodox conservatives. Instead, he is a part of a "religious nationalist" current within the broader conservative milieu. Ayatollah Khomeini was famous for his anti-nationalism: "Those who say that we want nationality, they are standing against Islam... We have no use for the nationalists. … Islam is against nationality."[15] In a Machiavellian twist, the president is now being derided as a "deviant" by the conservative establishment, accusing him and his inner circle of having messianic aspirations[16] and of trying to usurp the supreme leader and the velayet-e-faqih.

Ahmadinejad's closest friend and confidant Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whose daughter is married to the president's son, is particularly loathed by the orthodox conservatives and has even been jeered at by hardliners in the streets. It was the general opinion, both within and outside Iran, that Ahmadinejad was grooming Mashaei to be his successor (the presidency has a two-term limit).[17] This now seems impossible. When Ahmadinejad caused outrage by appointing Mashaei as first vice president (one of twelve VPs), Khamene'i quickly ordered Mashaei to resign from the cabinet, forcing Ahmadinejad to appoint him his chief of staff instead.[18] After being relentlessly slandered in the conservative state-run press, Mashaei has now been implicated in the largest corruption scandal in the republic's history—as have several of Ahmadinejad's other close associates.[19]

The antipathy does not end there. On November 21, 2011, Ahmadinejad's top media advisor and chief of the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Ali Akbar Javanfekr, was arrested and handcuffed by security services in his own office. Reportedly, only a personal telephone call from the president secured Javanfekr's release.[20]

In the ultimate affront to what semblance of democracy the country has, in mid-October, the supreme leader casually remarked that the position of a popularly-elected president may be abolished "someday in the distant future" and replaced with a prime minister appointed by the parliament.[21]

These events mark a high point in Khamene'i's involvement in politics from which he is traditionally supposed to be aloof. With Mousavi under indefinite house arrest,[22] and Ahmadinejad's faction despised if not decisively discredited in the eyes of the Guardian Council, it is hard to imagine what kind of reformist candidate might be allowed to run—let alone succeed—in the upcoming 2013 presidential elections.

Regime Change and the Pitfalls of Intervention

It has been a busy few months in Washington-Tehran diplomacy. First there was the FBI's revelation of a plot by Iranian nationals to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States (and possibly bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies),[23] followed by a damning International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report[24] and Washington's promise of increased sanctions,[25] then by the downing of a U.S. spy drone,[26] and now, according to some reports, by placing the Revolutionary Guards "on a war footing" in anticipation of further escalation.[27]

Keeping all these recent developments in mind, it is easy to understand why the rhetoric in favor of regime change and confrontation has escalated in the United States. At a recent Republican Party presidential debate, Newt Gingrich argued that not only was regime change in Iran possible but that it could be accomplished within a year.[28] Indeed, some of the Republican presidential candidates seem to have been trying to outdo each other in their willingness to use the "military option" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The problem with this kind of posturing, and any possible campaigns of solidarity with the opposition, is the strengthening of the regime's already dominant "siege-mentality"—thereby forfeiting more credibility, in a domestic political sense, to the hard-line conservatives. The success of the elites running the Islamic Republic depends heavily on their ability to assume the moral high-ground for their domestic audience—regardless of how twisted their moral compass might seem to outside observers. Events like the seizure of the U.S. drone or presidential candidates hinting at invasion are huge propaganda coups for the regime.

In the words of the pro-Western, antigovernment Parisa, a 28-year-old teacher from Shiraz: "I hate the government, but I hate more that [John] McCain would come over here and attack our country... Also, it would be a disaster. It would make Iraq look like nothing."

The Waiting Game

Some argue that sanctions have the same effect of rallying the Iranian people behind the regime, but conversations with Iranians have not borne this out. Whether an Iranian is likely to place the blame for the sanctions on Ahmadinejad's hostile statements or U.S. and European hawkishness tends to depend on their preexisting political views. It is true that sanctions cannot do much to hinder the activities of the likes of the Qods Force, the external Iranian intelligence agency, or the "millionaire mullahs,"[29] but their loosening or tightening can be an invaluable pressure card against the regime.

For all the ayatollahs' political maneuverings, there is no doubt about the regime's "protracted crisis of legitimacy"[30] since the 1990s. So much so that, in sharp contrast to the Islamist surge elsewhere, Iran may be the world's only sizeable Muslim-majority nation where Islamism is on the decline. Whether this makes the regime's collapse both inevitable and unpredictable, as suggested by Carnegie Endowment scholar Karim Sadjadpour, remains to be seen.[31] For now, all eyes are on the 2013 elections

Brendan Daly is a journalist with extensive experience in the Middle East and conflict and post-conflict zones.

[1] BBC News, Nov. 8, 2011.

[2] Melik Kaylan, "How a Regime Change in Iran Would Transform the World," Forbes, July 24, 2010.

[3] Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2008), chap. 6.

[4] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 18, 2005.

[5] BBC News, Apr. 12, 2005.

[6] Author interview, Mar. 2011.

[7] The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 17, 2011; Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, Tehran Bureau, Feb. 16, 2011.

[8] Harold Rhode, "How Iran's Rulers Think about the Nuclear Program," Hudson New York, Dec. 15, 2011.

[9] Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, Oct. 9, 2011.

[10] Time Magazine, June 15, 2009.

[11] Press TV (Tehran), June 29, 2009.

[12] See, for example, Agence France-Presse, July 7, 2009; Reuters, June 13, 2009.

[13] Ynet News (Tel Aviv), June 13, 2009.

[14] "Iran: Public Opinion on Foreign, Nuclear and Domestic Issues," International Peace Institute, New York, Dec. 8, 2010; "Iranian Opinion on Current Issues," WorldPublicOpinion.org, Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2009.

[15] Mehregan Magazine (Washington, D.C.), Spring and Summer 2003, p. 16.

[16] Mohebat Ahdiyyih, "Ahmadinejad and the Mahdi," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2008, pp. 27-36.

[17] The Guardian (London), Apr. 21, 2011.

[18] Reza Molavi and K. Luisa Gandolfo, "Who Rules Iran?" Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2010, pp. 61-8.

[19] Newsweek, Nov. 21, 2011.

[20] The New York Times, Nov. 22, 2011.

[21] insideIRAN (New York), Nov. 1, 2011.

[22] Amnesty International, London, Sept. 29, 2011.

[23] ABC News, Oct. 11, 2011; al-Jazeera TV (Doha), Nov. 19, 2011.

[24] Voice of America News, Nov. 10, 2011.

[25] BBC News, Dec. 1, 2011.

[26] The Scotsman (Edinburgh), Dec. 14, 2011.

[27] The Daily Telegraph (London), Dec. 5, 2011.

[28] The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 24, 2011.

[29] Paul Klebnikov, "Millionaire Mullahs," Forbes, July 21, 2003.

[30] Danny Postel, "The Specter Haunting Iran," Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, Tehran, Feb. 21, 2010.

[31] Paul R. Pillar, "Inevitable and Unpredictable Regime Change in Iran," The National Interest, May 14, 2011.

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