ragnar_forseti wrote on his newsletter:

Legalese: Having seen the lengths that the FBI and other entities in the apparatus have gone to harass citizens who expose corruption, and pursuant to 18 USC § 119, Marco Polo testifies that the contents of the Biden Laptop were abandoned property. Furthermore, Marco Polo unequivocally disclaims any intention to cause any threat, intimidating action, or incitement of harm to any person covered by 18 USC § 119 and we do not condone, encourage, intend, or have any knowledge that any other person will or may use the information herein for any unlawful purpose. Marco Polo’s motive is to see justice delivered—to all criminals—by those whose responsibility it is to carry out that duty.

CLICK HERE (Biden Laptop Emails) TO BE BROUGHT TO SEARCH PAGE

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©Wallace Bruschweiler. All rights reserved.

The Biden administration appears to be prepared to hand control of America’s national sovereignty over to the World Health Organization (WHO), as Michelle Bachmann explained on Steve Bannon’s War Room.

From May 22 to 28, 2022, the 75th World Health Assembly convenes at the UN in Geneva to vote on proposals that will enable the WHO to assert unprecedented power over the health choices of American citizens, effectively taking control over American sovereignty. Americans never thought this would happen or could happen. But it is now a genuine possibility.

These proposals would have the U.S. cede sovereignty to the WHO during anything that was deemed a health emergency. All in your best interests, of course.

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

RELATED TWEET:

BREAKING: 7 days until the 2022 WEF and WHO Assemblies begin in Davos and Geneva

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 16, 2022

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Modern Westerners, sundered from their roots, attack their own culture.

In recent years, Douglas Murray has established himself as arguably the most important conservative political commentator in the English-speaking world.

Given the rise of Black Lives Matter, the racial riots of 2020 and the upsurge in hostility towards Western history — exemplified by the determination of leftist activists to tear down statues of major historical figures — the focus of his new book is of little surprise.

The War on the West provides a thorough examination of the charges now levelled against Western (and for the most part, European and Christian) civilisation, along with a full-throated defence of what Murray argues is the positive cultural, social, religious and political inheritance of all those who belong to it.

The book’s structure is admirably straightforward, being divided into four main chapters with the titles of “Race”, “History”, “Reparations” and “Culture”.

Separate interludes also feature, each of which is devoted to a key topic which helps clarify the importance of the subject under discussion.

Cultural battles

In his usual engaging and provocative style, the author sets out his stall early on in stark terms. A highly-important cultural war, he writes, “is being waged remorselessly against all the roots of the Western tradition and against everything good that the Western tradition has produced.”

Academic courses dealing with Western civilisation are frowned upon, influential figures from history are being “cancelled” due to allegations that they held intolerable views by today’s standards, and demands for radical measures to counteract “systemic racism” in all sorts of areas are now routinely made, with dire social consequences for any who dare object to this in public.

The chorus of criticism for the past — for imperialism, colonialism, slavery and much else besides — leaves little room for any acknowledgement of the positive contributions of Europe, the United States and other outposts of a civilisation which has been responsible for such an extraordinarily disproportionate amount of man’s achievements.

The word “civilisation” is important here. Murray notes how the BBC recently sought to emulate the success of Kenneth Clark’s glorious Civilisation series from 1969 by creating a far more self-consciously inclusive show titled Civilisations, in which the presenters had to try desperately hard “to make sure that they didn’t sound as if they were saying the West was better than anywhere else.”

Murray maintains that both the West’s Judaeo-Christian heritage (what he calls its Jerusalem pillar) and the secular Enlightenment (referred to as the Athens pillar) are under attack, and he goes to considerable lengths to defend both.

Historical wounds

Considering recent unrest sparked by the killing of several unarmed African-Americans by police in the United States, it is unsurprising that race occupies so much of this book.

Many of the cultural flashpoints in recent times have related to the slave trade and America’s difficult history.

In placing these issues in a broader context, Murray observes that limited historical education or awareness means that most people are unaware of the widespread racism which still exists in most societies, notably China.

China’s monoethnic leadership class — like similar tyrants elsewhere — are quick to denounce Western countries, while rejecting any criticism of historical or current abuses taking place in their own countries — such as the vicious persecution of China’s Uyghur minority.

Western self-criticism — Murray uses the example of President Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, who has spoken at length before the General Assembly about racism in her homeland — does not encourage other countries to adopt a similar approach.

Furthermore, there is a particularly glaring double standard when it comes to topics like slavery.

While millions of Africans were sold to rapacious Europeans for use in their colonies, far more Africans were transported east as part of the Arab Muslim slave trade. The reason for this being widely unknown is particularly eye-opening: black slaves were routinely castrated by their Arab owners, and so no African population survived there long-term.

The liberal nature of Western countries, born of a political philosophy which first developed in Europe before being exported elsewhere, makes them naturally more vulnerable to this kind of attack.

Historically, this relative openness has also meant that Westerners have spent more time studying the cultures of others and incorporating aspects of them: which in turn can lead to risible charges of cultural appropriation.

A new religion

In the past, Murray — a British atheist who was raised as an Anglican, and educated in a Catholic school — has frequently pointed to the role of Christianity in shaping Western culture and values.

Here, he quotes the Columbia University Professor John McWhorter when describing how the decline of Christianity in the Western world has left a vacuum which is being filled by the “anti-racism” movement, which sees white privilege as the original sin.

Murray also describes how moribund religious institutions like the Church of England and America’s Episcopalian Church have adopted an increasingly self-flagellating tone when condemning their own historical records.

Unfortunately, the chapter titled “Religion” falls short on some counts.

Rather than being exclusively focused on the issue of the relationship between Christianity and the unique Western culture which it helped create, the discussion wanders on to how charges of racism are now being levelled against secular philosophers, coupled with an undeniably interesting critique of how the flaws and outright crimes of left-wing thinkers such as Marx and Foucault are being deliberately ignored by those who insist on deconstructing every other historical figure of note.

When pondering the willingness of those in today’s West to celebrate other traditions while ignoring their own, Murray points to “the trend that leads young Americans and Europeans to travel the world to find the temples of the Far East, while failing to spend any time in the cathedrals on their own doorsteps.”

Lost landscape

Concluding the book and emphasising one of his core points on gratitude, he again refers to Europe’s most aesthetically striking churches as an example of something important which we have inherited from those who went before us and laboured to build them.

It is a point he also made in “The Strange Death of Europe”, when considering what future lay in store for our continent. He wrote then that he could not “help feeling that much of the future of Europe will be decided on what our attitude is towards the church buildings and other great cultural buildings of our heritage standing in our midst. Around the questions of whether we hate them, ignore them, engage with them or revere them, a huge amount will depend.”

As an unbeliever, his discomfort in expanding on this point appears obvious — as was shown in his recent interview with Jordan Peterson, where he spoke of his “deeply complex, conflicted and inadequate answers,” while also describing how undeniably “God haunted, and Christ haunted” the West’s cultural memory is.

It is difficult in the long run for any society to engage with a cathedral or a great work of art focused on a religion which that society’s members no longer believe to be true.

Going further, we can also say that it is difficult for a faithless generation to relate to the ancestors who sacrificed so much to raise great churches in the very centre of each and every city and town.

When the shared bond of religious feeling between generations is ripped asunder, it becomes far easier to dismiss most or even all of what was achieved by our predecessors, while also making it easier to condemn them in unequivocal and needlessly dismissive terms for what are failings by today’s standards.

The collapse of religious belief is not just one of many factors responsible for the collapse in cultural self-confidence in the West, it is surely the pre-eminent factor, and it deserved more than the incomplete acknowledgement which is provided here.

At the same time, this book is an absorbing account of what we who are part of the Western world can be thankful for, while also being a clarion call for why the ongoing assault against our civilisation must be resisted.

“[W]hen it comes to what we in the West have inherited all around us, this must count as one of the greatest gifts, if not the greatest gift, that any civilisation has left for those who came after. A gift not just in liberal order and beautiful cities and landscapes but in artistic achievement, cultural inheritance, and a wealth of examples of how to live,” Murray writes. This theme of gratitude is keenly felt throughout this book, and anyone who believes in the Western tradition should be grateful that it has Douglas Murray as one of its most able and eloquent defenders.

The Biden administration re-defined disinformation, sanitized the term of its KGB roots, and expanded the definition by applying the label to Americans.

AKGB term of tradecraft is now part of U.S. Department of Homeland Security governance.

The new Biden administration “Disinformation Governance Board,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN, is a “small working group” to “address threats, the connectivity between threats and acts of violence” without “infringing on free speech” and while “protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right to privacy.” The board has no “operational authority” of its own, Mayorkas said.

Mayorkas denied that the board will cause American citizens to be monitored, saying, “we, the Department of Homeland Security, don’t monitor American citizens.”

That might be true. But Mayorkas went on to say the Disinformation Governance Board is mandated to provide “best practices and communicate those best practices to the operators” in agencies that do have “operational authority.”

Never before has “disinformation governance” been part of the official U.S. government terminology for defending the internal security of the country.

“Disinformation” is not a word from the English language. It is a direct translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya. It is a KGB form of tradecraft from the Red Banner Institute of the KGB First Chief Directorate, otherwise known as the KGB foreign spy academy.

Disinformation is definition 159 in the KGB’s “Lexicon of KGB Terms,” published internally by the Soviet foreign intelligence service before 1984. Here it is: “Misleading by means of false information; A form of intelligence work in the Active Measures field, which consists of the secret channeling towards an adversary of false information, especially prepared materials and fabricated documents designed to mislead him and prompt him to take decisions and measures which fit with the plans and intentions of the Intelligence Service.”

“Active measures” is another KGB term of tradecraft. The KGB lexicon defines active measures as “Agent operational measures aimed at exerting useful influence on aspects of the political life of a target country which are of interest, its foreign policy, the solution of international problems, misleading the adversary, undermining and weakening its positions, the disruption of his hostile plans, and the achievement of other aims.”

Disinformation is a component of active measures. Foreign “agent operational measures” make the defense against disinformation and active measures a counterintelligence function, not a homeland security one. DHS has no statutory counterintelligence authority. That authority, as well as the authority to combat foreign disinformation and propaganda, rests by law with the FBI.

Whether the FBI remains fit for this role is another matter. The point is that combating foreign disinformation domestically is counterintelligence, which by law is not a DHS responsibility.

Even if the Disinformation Governance Board did have such a legitimate purpose, it would rest in the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Instead, this disinformation board is housed in the very political DHS Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, and therefore is a potential domestic political instrument.

Thus the board, as Mayorkas explained it, will not spy on American citizens’ free speech per se, but will provide the “best practices” and policy guidance to those who do.

“Disinformation” did not enter into widespread use in English until the 1980s, when the Reagan administration, with bipartisan support in Congress, launched a State Department-led Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures and Disinformation to combat Soviet political warfare worldwide, without impinging on the free speech of American citizens. (References to that office have been practically wiped from online search engines.) The State Department retains a small office to monitor foreign disinformation.

KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, Czechoslovakian intelligence officer Ladislav Bittman, KGB Major Ladislav Levchenko, and others shed more light on disinformation after they fled to the United States between 1961 and 1979 during the Cold War. All agreed that disinformation was a purely KGB term of tradecraft. All wrote books on the subject.

The origin of disinformation as an operational word is rooted in Joseph Stalin’s NKVD secret police, with some references to the earliest days of World War II. The Oxford English Dictionary has no definition of the word prior to 1947, when the Cold War began. Merriam-Webster traces “disinformation” to hearings on Communist subversion in 1953, and to Nazi and Soviet techniques as early as 1940. Occasional usage of the word appeared in the 19th century as an infrequent, contrived, “non-standard synonym of misinformation.”

“Misinformation,” of course, isn’t the same as disinformation. It is a mis-statement, or the inadvertent or careless spreading of inaccuracies or untruths, without malign intent. Yet Mayorkas and others have used the two terms interchangeably. So have many public “experts.”

Under the Trump administration, DHS created a Countering Foreign Influence Task Force within the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The Biden administration morphed it into the “Mis- Dis- and Malinformation” (MDM) team whose stated job is to build “national resilience to MDM and foreign influence activities.”

Note the modification: keeping the old countering foreign influence function and adding what MDM calls “false or misleading information” in general. MDM thus became a federal government influence operational entity of its own. The Disinformation Governance Board is an interagency add-on within the DHS policy shop.

While it does explain the distinctions between misinformation and disinformation, the DHS MDM Team has sanitized the origins of “disinformation” as a KGB term of tradecraft. Indeed, it erased the distinction between disinformation as a foreign active measures technique and the simple use or abuse of words in domestic American political discourse.

Last year, DHS re-defined disinformation as follows: “Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.”

So DHS re-defined disinformation, sanitized the term of its KGB roots, and expanded the definition by removing the foreign element and applying the label to First Amendment-protected political discourse. DHS then officially adopted the KGB word as its own to create a political board for “governance” of disinformation — whatever that is — to guide agencies to monitor American citizens’ free speech.

AUTHOR

J. Michael Waller

Senior Analyst for Strategy.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.