HyperNormalisation (Adam Curtis)

H/T Farmer John

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Paranoia, paranoia

Everybody's coming to get me

Just say you never met me

I'm running underground with the moles, digging holes

I wannabe a Covidian Idiot!

GOP memo urges anti-China assault over coronavirus

The Senate Republican campaign arm distributed the 57-page strategy document to candidates.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has sent campaigns a detailed, 57-page memo authored by a top Republican strategist advising GOP candidates to address the coronavirus crisis by aggressively attacking China.

The memo [link to the actual document] includes advice on everything from how to tie Democratic candidates to the Chinese government to how to deal with accusations of racism. It stresses three main lines of assault: That China caused the virus “by covering it up,” that Democrats are “soft on China,” and that Republicans will “push for sanctions on China for its role in spreading this pandemic.”

“Coronavirus was a Chinese hit-and-run followed by a cover-up that cost thousands of lives,” the April 17 memo states.

The document urges candidates to stay relentlessly on message against the country when responding to any questions about the virus. When asked whether the spread of the coronavirus is Trump’s fault, candidates are advised to respond by pivoting to China.

“Don’t defend Trump, other than the China Travel Ban — attack China,” the memo states.

Republicans have indicated they plan to make China a centerpiece of the 2020 campaign. Trump’s reelection campaign recently released a web video painting Joe Biden as cozy with the authoritarian country. The pro-Trump super PAC America First Action has launched several TV commercials tying Biden to China.

Advisers to the president say polling shows China-focused attacks would be effective, and the reelection campaign has weighed a major TV ad campaign focused on the topic.

The NRSC memo shows that Republicans are also eager to make China an issue in down-ballot races. It was distributed by the Senate GOP campaign arm, though it was not explicitly drafted by or for the committee. It was authored by the political consulting firm of Brett O’Donnell, a veteran Republican strategist who has advised Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.

Jesse Hunt, an NRSC spokesman, said: “We routinely send campaigns different documents and sources of information dozens of times per week. That’s the role of the party committee, especially in these volatile times.”

O’Donnell declined to comment.

The memo includes guidance on what Republican candidates can say when asked whether blaming China for the pandemic incites racism. Candidates are urged to respond by saying that, “No one is blaming Chinese Americans. This is the fault of the Chinese Communist Party for covering up the virus and lying about its danger. This caused the pandemic and they should be held accountable.”

“No one has suffered more from the murderous Communist Chinese Party dictatorship than the people of China,” the memo adds. “We stand with them against their corrupt government that caused this pandemic.”

The GOP’s planned China-focused assault, however, is complicated by Trump’s occasional praise for President Xi Jinping. The liberal organization American Bridge recently launched a commercial which plays a clip of the president praising Xi and declares that Trump “gave China his trust.”

Source: Politico.

Comedy-19: The Hunt for the Corona Kisser?

UK police hunt lorry driver for KISSING woman on cheek as a THANK YOU

A lorry driver who kissed a woman on her cheek to show gratitude for her assistance is now hunted by police in the UK. After asking for help to identify the ‘criminal,’ law enforcement received a massive eye-roll from the public. In the sleepy Derbyshire town of Matlock, a most heinous crime took place on April 28. A lorry driver pecked a 70-year-old woman on the cheek, after she helped him free his stuck truck from under a bridge by directing traffic.

The man thanked her with a kiss, and now he’s wanted for sexual assault. Seriously.

Nearly three weeks after the incident, Derbyshire Police appealed to the public for help tracking down the suspect.

Such a ridiculous waste of resources, + the man will be put through lots of stress @DerbysPolice . I already had zero confidence in Derbyshire police before reading this - they're just a bunch of busybodies. pic.twitter.com/GAi4NwXLLJ

— Matt (@matthewpoll) May 16, 2020

Commenters speculated that the man may be wanted for breaching social distancing guidelines, but that’s not the case. The police explained that his crime “would be classed as sexual assault, as the woman did not [ask] the man to kiss her on the cheek.”

Quickly, arrest most of continental Europe. https://t.co/JZy4WH1n6d

— Tom Harwood (@tomhfh) May 16, 2020

More comedy-19.

Keir Starmer received £50,000 donation from pro-Israel lobbyist in leadership bid

Data published on the Register of Members’ Interests now shows that Starmer received a £50,000 donation from Trevor Chinn, a member of the executive committee of the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM).

According to Electronic Intifada, BICOM is a “British pro-Israel lobby group”. The Guardian reported on BICOM in 2009, saying:

Britain’s most active pro-Israeli lobbying organisation – which flies journalists [including Guardian staff] to Israel on fact-finding trips and organises access to senior government figures – has received nearly £1.4m in two years from a billionaire donor whose father made a fortune manufacturing arms in Israel.

In 2009, the London-Palestine Solidarity group said BICOM had a key role in “laying the groundwork for Israel’s public justifications for the onslaught [on Gaza]”.

As Open Democracy reported in 2009, moreover, BICOM officials were among those involved in planning to pressure the Guardian to retract comparisons it made of Israel with apartheid South Africa. The report in Open Democracy continued:

Two months after the end of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, BICOM sent half a dozen journalists on a free trip to Tel Aviv to talk to Israeli defence analysts. The message BICOM wanted to get across was that they should pay more attention to Iran than to the Palestinians…

While BICOM’s work is entirely legitimate, it is by no means transparent. They never declare, for example, which journalists go on trips and who they meet. In the United States, AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] must register as a lobby and declare its activities. Over here, BICOM is simply a company registered at Companies House, and doesn’t make its work public.

Journalist Simon Childs, who went on one of such trips in 2017, concurred that “BICOM ‘simply dispenses with international legal principles as an explanatory framework'”. The only Palestinian refugee camp that featured on this BICOM tour was seen by Childs as a “speck on the horizon as we looked from Israel into Gaza – abstracted to the point of near-invisibility”.

Chinn has also previously donated to former Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) chair Joan Ryan and former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson.

As The Canary recently reported, Chinn has similarly donated to shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy on numerous occasions.

The Canary.

The only thing a Flat-Earther has to Fear is Sphere itself...

Response to Globebusters - The Earth Still Isn't Flat

"Behind the Curve" is a delightful Netflix doc, mainly about the people behind the Flat Earth stupidity. In a delicious irony, the last 5 minutes shows the Globebusters suffering a massive "Uh-Oh!" moment when one of their experiments proves the Earth is a... sphere! Well done, chaps!

Bay of Pigz II?

The Grayzone speaks to Drew White – a close friend and business partner of Silvercorp mercenary firm founder and failed Venezuela coup leader Jordan Goudreau – about the botched invasion and potential involvement of the Trump administration.

By Anya Parampil

On May 5, I spoke at length to Drew White, a former US Army Green Beret and the COO of the Silvercorp mercenary firm which spearheaded a botched invasion of in Venezuela on Sunday, May 3. On May 4, I made contact with Jordan Goudreau, the Silvercorp CEO whom US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido and his Miami-based advisor, J.J. Rendon, personally contracted to lead the operation.

While Goudreau seemed nervous and suggested I call back the following day, White spoke at length about his peripheral knowledge of the failed plot as well as his relationship with the two Americans Green Berets currently in Venezuelan custody.

White lives in Colorado Springs, a good distance from Melbourne, Florida, where both Silvercorp and Goudreau are based. He said he broke with Goudreau over the boneheaded coup plot, telling The Grayzone he thought it sounded insane.

White emphasized that he was uncomfortable with the plan because its leaders did not appear to have concrete US government backing. He said that although Goudreau claimed to have a State Department contract, he hadn’t seen one, which led him to question the legality of the operation. White hoped his army buddy and former best man at his wedding did not go through with the mission. He wished they had stuck with their original business plan, which was to provide school security.

But unfortunately, the plot went through, even after Goudreau– whom White described as a “true believer”– had been exposed by name in the Associated Press. Now two of their army friends are in Venezuelan custody, and face criminal prosecution in the country for planning to kidnap and possibly kill its elected leader, President Nicolas Maduro.

So what drove Goudreau and his crew to follow through on their batshit operation? And what did Mike Pompeo’s State Department know about it, and when? White’s testimony raises they key question: why did Goudreau believe he had a State Department contract in the first place?

Pompeo says the US government had no “direct involvement” in the operation. Even if true, his assertion still leaves the door open to possible indirect support, such as reconnaissance or logistics assistance. What’s more, just days before Goudreau’s failed operation, Pompeo told reporters he was instructing his team to “update [their] plans to re-open the US embassy in Caracas”. Why?

In the video above, I put these questions to White and offers my own thoughts about them afterwards, asking how it is possible that US citizens were running a private military operation in Colombia without the knowledge of US embassy staff in Bogotá. I also question the role of US diplomat James Story, who has managed a “U.S. Virtual Embassy” to Venezuela out of the Colombian capital since he was kicked out of Caracas last spring.

A full transcript of the interview can be found here.