Reader’s Links for February 5, 2021

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Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

99 Replies to “Reader’s Links for February 5, 2021”

  1. Children’s Health Defense Team
    01/29/21

    BIG PHARMA › VIEWS

    329 Deaths + 9,516 Other Injuries Reported Following COVID Vaccine, Latest CDC Data Show
    The numbers reflect the latest data available as of Jan. 22 from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System website. Of the 329 reported deaths, 285 were from the U.S., and 44 were from other countries. The average age of those who died was 76.5.

    As of Jan. 22, 329 deaths — a subset of 9,845 total adverse events — had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID-19 vaccinations. VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before confirmation can be made that an adverse event was linked to a vaccine.

  2. Europe 03:06, 26-Feb-2020
    Translate
    ‘Copy China’s response to COVID-19,’ WHO expert urges rest of the world . Countries around the world need to follow China’s example when fighting and preparing for COVID-19, a top World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Tuesday upon returning from the epicenter of the outbreak.

    Describing the response as “striking,” Bruce Aylward, head of the joint WHO-China mission, said: “In 30 years of doing this business, I’ve not seen this before, nor was I sure it would work.”

    Aylward warned that the rest of world “was not ready” to deal with the virus, although “they could get ready fast” should they replicate responses undertaken by China.

    The WHO has consistently called for international cooperation in fighting COVID-19. The organization undertook, along with the Chinese government, a mission to the infected area – namely the epicenter of the outbreak: Wuhan, in Hubei province, which remains under quarantine.

    READ MORE: COVID-19 in Italy: how did it spread so quickly?

    Aylward, who led the 25-strong mission, immediately spoke to the press following his return to Geneva. He said: “It’s the unanimous assessment that they have changed the course of this outbreak, what was a rapidly escalating outbreak has plateaued then come down faster.”

    He added: “Hundreds of thousands of people in China did not get COVID-19 because of this aggressive response.”

    The Canadian epidemiologist talked up China’s “war-footing” and “stunning demonstration” of collective action against the virus.

    “If I had COVID-19 I’d want to get treated in China,” he added.

    “[Wuhan] is a modern city of 15 million people. It’s a ghost town, but behind every window there are people cooperating with this response. People have said there is a big presence forcing them, but there isn’t.

    “It’s staggering. Every person you talk to there has a sense they are mobilized in a war against a virus, and they’re organized,” explained Aylward.

    He spoke of how China’s response is “a good message for the world.” Saying that countries around the world need to follow its example and shift their mindset to preparing for an outbreak of COVID-19 and be ready to respond rapidly when it arrives.

    “Think the virus is going to show up tomorrow,” Aylward warned. “If you don’t think that way, you’re not going to be ready.”

    “Get organized, use the time you are trying to buy well, because it is going to save lives.”

    His comments come as the virus continues to spread in Europe, the worst outbreak outside Asia is in Italy as deaths continue to rise. Switzerland Croatia and Austria all reported their first cases on Tuesday, as did mainland Spain. Earlier in the day, a hotel in the Canary Islands, Spain, was put in quarantine after an Italian guest tested positive for the virus. Meanwhile, dozens of UK schools closed amid fears over the virus.

  3. Europe 03:06, 26-Feb-2020

    ‘Copy China’s response to COVID-19,’ WHO expert urges rest of the world
    Daniel Harries

    The Canadian epidemiologist talked up China’s “war-footing” and “stunning demonstration” of collective action against the virus.
    Countries around the world need to follow China’s example when fighting and preparing for COVID-19, a top World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Tuesday upon returning from the epicenter of the outbreak.

    Describing the response as “striking,” Bruce Aylward, head of the joint WHO-China mission, said: “In 30 years of doing this business, I’ve not seen this before, nor was I sure it would work.”

    Aylward warned that the rest of world “was not ready” to deal with the virus, although “they could get ready fast” should they replicate responses undertaken by China.

    The WHO has consistently called for international cooperation in fighting COVID-19. The organization undertook, along with the Chinese government, a mission to the infected area – namely the epicenter of the outbreak: Wuhan, in Hubei province, which remains under quarantine.

    READ MORE: COVID-19 in Italy: how did it spread so quickly?

    Aylward, who led the 25-strong mission, immediately spoke to the press following his return to Geneva. He said: “It’s the unanimous assessment that they have changed the course of this outbreak, what was a rapidly escalating outbreak has plateaued then come down faster.”

    He added: “Hundreds of thousands of people in China did not get COVID-19 because of this aggressive response.”

    The Canadian epidemiologist talked up China’s “war-footing” and “stunning demonstration” of collective action against the virus.

    “If I had COVID-19 I’d want to get treated in China,” he added.

    “[Wuhan] is a modern city of 15 million people. It’s a ghost town, but behind every window there are people cooperating with this response. People have said there is a big presence forcing them, but there isn’t.

    “It’s staggering. Every person you talk to there has a sense they are mobilized in a war against a virus, and they’re organized,” explained Aylward.

    He spoke of how China’s response is “a good message for the world.” Saying that countries around the world need to follow its example and shift their mindset to preparing for an outbreak of COVID-19 and be ready to respond rapidly when it arrives.

    “Think the virus is going to show up tomorrow,” Aylward warned. “If you don’t think that way, you’re not going to be ready.”

    “Get organized, use the time you are trying to buy well, because it is going to save lives.”

    His comments come as the virus continues to spread in Europe, the worst outbreak outside Asia is in Italy as deaths continue to rise. Switzerland Croatia and Austria all reported their first cases on Tuesday, as did mainland Spain. Earlier in the day, a hotel in the Canary Islands, Spain, was put in quarantine after an Italian guest tested positive for the virus. Meanwhile, dozens of UK schools closed amid fears over the virus.

  4. Bruce Aylward, hmm.

    Reading this article I wondered if I would find some nexus to his politicization, then I realize he’s the guy who feigned technical difficulties to get out of an interview. He is a social justice warrior with all the Dear Leader “…inclusion and equity…” lingo available to the cultural Marxist political-action lexicon.

    https://wikibio.in/bruce-aylward/

    It’s almost as if when one of these guys says it’s all about “equity” you have to look to where the science ends and the politics begins.

  7. What is meant by “Stakeholder Capitalism”? You know, Klaus Schwab’s big idea? Nothing new, it turns out. In fact, it is another failed socialist ideal that sees so-called “stakeholders” having an indirect “stake” in the largest corporations. Get it? Stakeholders are distinguished from shareholders because they live in the community in which the company operates, but hold no share equity. If a company has global reach then the whole world’s population becomes a stakeholder. If global companies continue to merge we ultimately find ourselves being governed by a single, monolithic corporate entity that has joined with a single, monolithic world government to form a single, monolithic monopoly of control.

    Voila:

    https://mises.org/wire/great-reset-part-iv-stakeholder-capitalism-vs-neoliberalism

  11. BREAKING: Head of a media education project against anti-Muslim racism detonates bomb at apartment building in Berlin – Special police unit stormed his flat – The Berlin Senate funded his project with taxpayers’ money

    https://medforth.blog/2021/02/05/breaking-head-of-a-media-education-project-against-anti-muslim-racism-detonates-bomb-at-apartment-building-in-berlin-special-police-unit-stormed-his-flat-the-berlin-senate-funded-his-project-with/

  12. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-thirty-tyrants

    The example Machiavelli gives of the last is the friendly government Sparta established in Athens upon defeating it after 27 years of war in 404 BCE. For the upper caste of an Athenian elite already contemptuous of democracy, the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War confirmed that Sparta’s system was preferable. It was a high-spirited military aristocracy ruling over a permanent servant class, the helots, who were periodically slaughtered to condition them to accept their subhuman status. Athenian democracy by contrast gave too much power to the low-born. The pro-Sparta oligarchy used their patrons’ victory to undo the rights of citizens, and settle scores with their domestic rivals, exiling and executing them and confiscating their wealth.

    The Athenian government disloyal to Athens’ laws and contemptuous of its traditions was known as the Thirty Tyrants, and understanding its role and function helps explain what is happening in America today.

    For my last column I spoke with The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman about an article he wrote more than a decade ago, during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. His important piece documents the exact moment when the American elite decided that democracy wasn’t working for them. Blaming the Republican Party for preventing them from running roughshod over the American public, they migrated to the Democratic Party in the hopes of strengthening the relationships that were making them rich…..

  13. SEPTEMBER 2020 – revolver – Meet Norm Eisen: Legal Hatchet Man and Central Operative in the “Color Revolution” Against President Trump

    In our report on Never Trump State Department official George Kent, Revolver News first drew attention to the ominous similarities between the strategies and tactics the United States government employs in so-called “Color Revolutions” and the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.

    Our recent follow-up to this initial report focused specifically on a shadowy, George Soros linked group called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), which convened “war games” exercises suggesting the likelihood of a “contested election scenario,” and of ensuing chaos should President Trump refuse to leave office. We further showed how these “contested election” scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News’ first installment in the Color Revolution series.

    This third installment of Revolver News‘ series exposing the Color Revolution against Trump will focus on one quiet and indeed mostly overlooked participant in the Transition Integrity Project’s biased election “war games” exercise—a man by the name of Norm Eisen.

    […]the Color Revolution has nothing to do with democracy in any meaningful sense and everything to do with the ruling class ensuring that the people will never have the power to meddle in their own elections again.

    on this page :

    https://www.revolver.news/2020/09/meet-norm-eisen-legal-hatchet-man-and-central-operative-in-the-color-revolution-against-president-trump/

  15. In Bosnia, migrants and locals urge EU to unlock its gate

    “We will try again,” Mohammad Amin Ibrahimi, a teacher from Kabul, says as he looks west towards the hills of neighbouring Croatia, a country he has tried to enter 30 times in his dream to bring his family to the European Union.

    For the past six months, each attempt has been cut short by Croatian border police, who have pushed them back to Bosnia, where Ibrahimi is currently sheltering in an abandoned house with his wife and two-year-old daughter.

  16. WHO calls for collaboration to speed up Covid-19 vaccinations in Europe

    Europe and pharma groups must work together to speed up Covid-19 vaccinations, the head of the European branch of the World Health Organization Hans Kluge says.

    Some trials have shown that certain vaccines do not protect as well against a highly transmissible variant first identified in South Africa that is rapidly spreading around the world.

    • COVID-19 vaccine: UK to test the effects of mixing different coronavirus jabs

      “This study will give us greater insight into how we can use vaccines to stay on top of this nasty disease,” said Jonathan Van Tam, the UK’s deputy chief medical officer.

    • How UK’s new vaccine trial could be gamechanger in race to beat COVID-19

      Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health, discusses preliminary research from Oxford-Astra Zeneca that shows its vaccine could prevent person-to-person spread of COVID-19.

    • channel 4 – Could mixing two vaccines be more effective?

      A trial is underway to find the effects of giving people a mix of two different vaccines – which could be of significant help if there are disruptions to supplies.

    • SKY News UK – COVID-19: Mixing vaccines could give stronger protection against coronavirus

      New evidence shows that mixing vaccines could provide stronger protection for longer than keeping with the same vaccine.

      With the success of the vaccination roll-out programme, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunity still recommends keeping with the same vaccine for your booster dose.

      + comments on the YT page

    • A GREAT TRUMP MOVE

      – Trump will not testify in ‘unconstitutional’ Senate impeachment trial –

      “The president will not testify in an unconstitutional proceeding,” Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told Fox News Thursday.

      The former president’s legal team fired back at impeachment manager Jamie Raskin’s request Thursday for the former president to testify as part of the Senate impeachment trial, calling it a “public relations stunt” and saying they “cannot prove” the allegations against him.

      MORE: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-response-impeachment

  18. Associated Pravda – Analysis: A race war raged before Capitol riot

    …but this war of white aggression didn’t start with the riot at the Capitol …

    The Capitol siege awakened many to the threat of domestic terror in the US.

    But it’s part of a long war that has waged by legions of white people in the thrall of stereotypes, lies and conspiracy theories.

    • SKY News – Proud Boys Leader: If Biden doesn’t listen ‘there will be more violence’

      Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio believes there will be more violence in the United States if the new Biden administration doesn’t listen to their grievances.

      It comes after the White House launched a review into domestic terrorism in the wake of the siege on the Capitol.

      A number of groups are being looked at, including the Proud Boys for their alleged role in the 6 January riot.

  19. “In some causes silence is dangerous.”
    – Saint Ambrose

    “Saving Free Speech Online – Gab founder Andrew Torba”
    Mark Dice – February 5, 2021

  22. “In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”
    – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,The Gulag Archipelago:1918-1956

    “The “S” in Biden’s “DHS” stands for sleaze”
    by Michelle Malkin – February 2, 2021
    https://www.arcamax.com/politics/fromtheright/michellemalkin/s-2475997

    Look Ahead America! – Steamed live on February 1, 2021
    Michelle Malkin with Matt Braynard

  23. https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/time-mag-trump-was-right-there-was-a-conspiracy-well-funded-cabal-powerful-people-changing-laws-steering-media-and-controlling-the-flow-of-information/

    Time Magazine has published intricate details of what they deem “a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”
    The article even confirms both The National Pulse’s reporting on former Obama lawyer Ian Bassin, as well as Revolver.news’s assertion of the involvement of Norm Eisen in what amounted to a major admission of a globalist set up to leverage the coronavirus, mail-in voting, and corporate interest to oust President Trump from office.

    NB I have not wasted my money on Time since 1995, so if anyone has read the actual article I would appreciate seeing part or all of it.

    • The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

      A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.

      The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.

      Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.

      A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”

      In a way, Trump was right.

      There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

      The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

      Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

      For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election. The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics. Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.

      The democracy campaigners watched with alarm. “Every week, we felt like we were in a struggle to try to pull off this election without the country going through a real dangerous moment of unraveling,” says former GOP Representative Zach Wamp, a Trump supporter who helped coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. “We can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case.”

      This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”

      That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.

    • THE ARCHITECT
      Sometime in the fall of 2019, Mike Podhorzer became convinced the election was headed for disaster–and determined to protect it.

      This was not his usual purview. For nearly a quarter-century, Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union federation, has marshaled the latest tactics and data to help its favored candidates win elections. Unassuming and professorial, he isn’t the sort of hair-gelled “political strategist” who shows up on cable news. Among Democratic insiders, he’s known as the wizard behind some of the biggest advances in political technology in recent decades. A group of liberal strategists he brought together in the early 2000s led to the creation of the Analyst Institute, a secretive firm that applies scientific methods to political campaigns. He was also involved in the founding of Catalist, the flagship progressive data company.

      The endless chatter in Washington about “political strategy,” Podhorzer believes, has little to do with how change really gets made. “My basic take on politics is that it’s all pretty obvious if you don’t overthink it or swallow the prevailing frameworks whole,” he once wrote. “After that, just relentlessly identify your assumptions and challenge them.” Podhorzer applies that approach to everything: when he coached his now adult son’s Little League team in the D.C. suburbs, he trained the boys not to swing at most pitches–a tactic that infuriated both their and their opponents’ parents, but won the team a series of championships.

      Trump’s election in 2016–credited in part to his unusual strength among the sort of blue collar white voters who once dominated the AFL-CIO–prompted Podhorzer to question his assumptions about voter behavior. He began circulating weekly number-crunching memos to a small circle of allies and hosting strategy sessions in D.C. But when he began to worry about the election itself, he didn’t want to seem paranoid. It was only after months of research that he introduced his concerns in his newsletter in October 2019. The usual tools of data, analytics and polling would not be sufficient in a situation where the President himself was trying to disrupt the election, he wrote. “Most of our planning takes us through Election Day,” he noted. “But, we are not prepared for the two most likely outcomes”–Trump losing and refusing to concede, and Trump winning the Electoral College (despite losing the popular vote) by corrupting the voting process in key states. “We desperately need to systematically ‘red-team’ this election so that we can anticipate and plan for the worst we know will be coming our way.”

      It turned out Podhorzer wasn’t the only one thinking in these terms. He began to hear from others eager to join forces. The Fight Back Table, a coalition of “resistance” organizations, had begun scenario-planning around the potential for a contested election, gathering liberal activists at the local and national level into what they called the Democracy Defense Coalition. Voting-rights and civil rights organizations were raising alarms. A group of former elected officials was researching emergency powers they feared Trump might exploit. Protect Democracy was assembling a bipartisan election-crisis task force. “It turned out that once you said it out loud, people agreed,” Podhorzer says, “and it started building momentum.”

      He spent months pondering scenarios and talking to experts. It wasn’t hard to find liberals who saw Trump as a dangerous dictator, but Podhorzer was careful to steer clear of hysteria. What he wanted to know was not how American democracy was dying but how it might be kept alive. The chief difference between the U.S. and countries that lost their grip on democracy, he concluded, was that America’s decentralized election system couldn’t be rigged in one fell swoop. That presented an opportunity to shore it up.

      THE ALLIANCE
      On March 3, Podhorzer drafted a three-page confidential memo titled “Threats to the 2020 Election.” “Trump has made it clear that this will not be a fair election, and that he will reject anything but his own re-election as ‘fake’ and rigged,” he wrote. “On Nov. 3, should the media report otherwise, he will use the right-wing information system to establish his narrative and incite his supporters to protest.” The memo laid out four categories of challenges: attacks on voters, attacks on election administration, attacks on Trump’s political opponents and “efforts to reverse the results of the election.”

      Then COVID-19 erupted at the height of the primary-election season. Normal methods of voting were no longer safe for voters or the mostly elderly volunteers who normally staff polling places. But political disagreements, intensified by Trump’s crusade against mail voting, prevented some states from making it easier to vote absentee and for jurisdictions to count those votes in a timely manner. Chaos ensued. Ohio shut down in-person voting for its primary, leading to minuscule turnout. A poll-worker shortage in Milwaukee–where Wisconsin’s heavily Democratic Black population is concentrated–left just five open polling places, down from 182. In New York, vote counting took more than a month.

      Suddenly, the potential for a November meltdown was obvious. In his apartment in the D.C. suburbs, Podhorzer began working from his laptop at his kitchen table, holding back-to-back Zoom meetings for hours a day with his network of contacts across the progressive universe: the labor movement; the institutional left, like Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace; resistance groups like Indivisible and MoveOn; progressive data geeks and strategists, representatives of donors and foundations, state-level grassroots organizers, racial-justice activists and others.

      In April, Podhorzer began hosting a weekly 2½-hour Zoom. It was structured around a series of rapid-fire five-minute presentations on everything from which ads were working to messaging to legal strategy. The invitation-only gatherings soon attracted hundreds, creating a rare shared base of knowledge for the fractious progressive movement. “At the risk of talking trash about the left, there’s not a lot of good information sharing,” says Anat Shenker-Osorio, a close Podhorzer friend whose poll-tested messaging guidance shaped the group’s approach. “There’s a lot of not-invented-here syndrome, where people won’t consider a good idea if they didn’t come up with it.”

      The meetings became the galactic center for a constellation of operatives across the left who shared overlapping goals but didn’t usually work in concert. The group had no name, no leaders and no hierarchy, but it kept the disparate actors in sync. “Pod played a critical behind-the-scenes role in keeping different pieces of the movement infrastructure in communication and aligned,” says Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. “You have the litigation space, the organizing space, the political people just focused on the W, and their strategies aren’t always aligned. He allowed this ecosystem to work together.”

      Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. As 2020 progressed, it stretched to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy.

      SECURING THE VOTE
      The first task was overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure–in the middle of a pandemic. For the thousands of local, mostly nonpartisan officials who administer elections, the most urgent need was money. They needed protective equipment like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer. They needed to pay for postcards letting people know they could vote absentee–or, in some states, to mail ballots to every voter. They needed additional staff and scanners to process ballots.

      In March, activists appealed to Congress to steer COVID relief money to election administration. Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, more than 150 organizations signed a letter to every member of Congress seeking $2 billion in election funding. It was somewhat successful: the CARES Act, passed later that month, contained $400 million in grants to state election administrators. But the next tranche of relief funding didn’t add to that number. It wasn’t going to be enough.

      Private philanthropy stepped into the breach. An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chipped in $300 million. “It was a failure at the federal level that 2,500 local election officials were forced to apply for philanthropic grants to fill their needs,” says Amber McReynolds, a former Denver election official who heads the nonpartisan National Vote at Home Institute.

      McReynolds’ two-year-old organization became a clearinghouse for a nation struggling to adapt. The institute gave secretaries of state from both parties technical advice on everything from which vendors to use to how to locate drop boxes. Local officials are the most trusted sources of election information, but few can afford a press secretary, so the institute distributed communications tool kits. In a presentation to Podhorzer’s group, McReynolds detailed the importance of absentee ballots for shortening lines at polling places and preventing an election crisis.

      The institute’s work helped 37 states and D.C. bolster mail voting. But it wouldn’t be worth much if people didn’t take advantage. Part of the challenge was logistical: each state has different rules for when and how ballots should be requested and returned. The Voter Participation Center, which in a normal year would have deployed canvassers door-to-door to get out the vote, instead conducted focus groups in April and May to find out what would get people to vote by mail. In August and September, it sent ballot applications to 15 million people in key states, 4.6 million of whom returned them. In mailings and digital ads, the group urged people not to wait for Election Day. “All the work we have done for 17 years was built for this moment of bringing democracy to people’s doorsteps,” says Tom Lopach, the center’s CEO.

    • The effort had to overcome heightened skepticism in some communities. Many Black voters preferred to exercise their franchise in person or didn’t trust the mail. National civil rights groups worked with local organizations to get the word out that this was the best way to ensure one’s vote was counted. In Philadelphia, for example, advocates distributed “voting safety kits” containing masks, hand sanitizer and informational brochures. “We had to get the message out that this is safe, reliable, and you can trust it,” says Hannah Fried of All Voting Is Local.

      At the same time, Democratic lawyers battled a historic tide of pre-election litigation. The pandemic intensified the parties’ usual tangling in the courts. But the lawyers noticed something else as well. “The litigation brought by the Trump campaign, of a piece with the broader campaign to sow doubt about mail voting, was making novel claims and using theories no court has ever accepted,” says Wendy Weiser, a voting-rights expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. “They read more like lawsuits designed to send a message rather than achieve a legal outcome.”

      In the end, nearly half the electorate cast ballots by mail in 2020, practically a revolution in how people vote. About a quarter voted early in person. Only a quarter of voters cast their ballots the traditional way: in person on Election Day.

      THE DISINFORMATION DEFENSE
      Bad actors spreading false information is nothing new. For decades, campaigns have grappled with everything from anonymous calls claiming the election has been rescheduled to fliers spreading nasty smears about candidates’ families. But Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories, the viral force of social media and the involvement of foreign meddlers made disinformation a broader, deeper threat to the 2020 vote.

      Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it. One component was tracking dangerous lies that might otherwise spread unnoticed. Researchers then provided information to campaigners or the media to track down the sources and expose them.

      The most important takeaway from Quinn’s research, however, was that engaging with toxic content only made it worse. “When you get attacked, the instinct is to push back, call it out, say, ‘This isn’t true,’” Quinn says. “But the more engagement something gets, the more the platforms boost it. The algorithm reads that as, ‘Oh, this is popular; people want more of it.’”

      The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place. “The platforms have policies against certain types of malign behavior, but they haven’t been enforcing them,” she says.

      Quinn’s research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line. In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others. (Gupta has been nominated for Associate Attorney General by President Biden.) “It was a struggle, but we got to the point where they understood the problem. Was it enough? Probably not. Was it later than we wanted? Yes. But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.”

      SPREADING THE WORD
      Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. It was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night.

      Dick Gephardt, the Democratic former House leader turned high-powered lobbyist, spearheaded one coalition. “We wanted to get a really bipartisan group of former elected officials, Cabinet secretaries, military leaders and so on, aimed mainly at messaging to the public but also speaking to local officials–the secretaries of state, attorneys general, governors who would be in the eye of the storm–to let them know we wanted to help,” says Gephardt, who worked his contacts in the private sector to put $20 million behind the effort.

      Wamp, the former GOP Congressman, worked through the nonpartisan reform group Issue One to rally Republicans. “We thought we should bring some bipartisan element of unity around what constitutes a free and fair election,” Wamp says. The 22 Democrats and 22 Republicans on the National Council on Election Integrity met on Zoom at least once a week. They ran ads in six states, made statements, wrote articles and alerted local officials to potential problems. “We had rabid Trump supporters who agreed to serve on the council based on the idea that this is honest,” Wamp says. This is going to be just as important, he told them, to convince the liberals when Trump wins. “Whichever way it cuts, we’re going to stick together.”

      The Voting Rights Lab and IntoAction created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by email, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, urging that every vote be counted. Together, they were viewed more than 1 billion times. Protect Democracy’s election task force issued reports and held media briefings with high-profile experts across the political spectrum, resulting in widespread coverage of potential election issues and fact-checking of Trump’s false claims. The organization’s tracking polls found the message was being heard: the percentage of the public that didn’t expect to know the winner on election night gradually rose until by late October, it was over 70%. A majority also believed that a prolonged count wasn’t a sign of problems. “We knew exactly what Trump was going to do: he was going to try to use the fact that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans voted in person to make it look like he was ahead, claim victory, say the mail-in votes were fraudulent and try to get them thrown out,” says Protect Democracy’s Bassin. Setting public expectations ahead of time helped undercut those lies.

    • The alliance took a common set of themes from the research Shenker-Osorio presented at Podhorzer’s Zooms. Studies have shown that when people don’t think their vote will count or fear casting it will be a hassle, they’re far less likely to participate. Throughout election season, members of Podhorzer’s group minimized incidents of voter intimidation and tamped down rising liberal hysteria about Trump’s expected refusal to concede. They didn’t want to amplify false claims by engaging them, or put people off voting by suggesting a rigged game. “When you say, ‘These claims of fraud are spurious,’ what people hear is ‘fraud,’” Shenker-Osorio says. “What we saw in our pre-election research was that anything that reaffirmed Trump’s power or cast him as an authoritarian diminished people’s desire to vote.”

      Podhorzer, meanwhile, was warning everyone he knew that polls were underestimating Trump’s support. The data he shared with media organizations who would be calling the election was “tremendously useful” to understand what was happening as the votes rolled in, according to a member of a major network’s political unit who spoke with Podhorzer before Election Day. Most analysts had recognized there would be a “blue shift” in key battlegrounds– the surge of votes breaking toward Democrats, driven by tallies of mail-in ballots– but they hadn’t comprehended how much better Trump was likely to do on Election Day. “Being able to document how big the absentee wave would be and the variance by state was essential,” the analyst says.

      PEOPLE POWER
      The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives.

      The best way to ensure people’s voices were heard, they decided, was to protect their ability to vote. “We started thinking about a program that would complement the traditional election-protection area but also didn’t rely on calling the police,” says Nelini Stamp, the Working Families Party’s national organizing director. They created a force of “election defenders” who, unlike traditional poll watchers, were trained in de-escalation techniques. During early voting and on Election Day, they surrounded lines of voters in urban areas with a “joy to the polls” effort that turned the act of casting a ballot into a street party. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities.

      The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.

      STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
      About a week before Election Day, Podhorzer received an unexpected message: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted to talk.

      The AFL-CIO and the Chamber have a long history of antagonism. Though neither organization is explicitly partisan, the influential business lobby has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, just as the nation’s unions funnel hundreds of millions to Democrats. On one side is labor, on the other management, locked in an eternal struggle for power and resources.

      But behind the scenes, the business community was engaged in its own anxious discussions about how the election and its aftermath might unfold. The summer’s racial-justice protests had sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder. “With tensions running high, there was a lot of concern about unrest around the election, or a breakdown in our normal way we handle contentious elections,” says Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer. These worries had led the Chamber to release a pre-election statement with the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based CEOs’ group, as well as associations of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, calling for patience and confidence as votes were counted.

      But Bradley wanted to send a broader, more bipartisan message. He reached out to Podhorzer, through an intermediary both men declined to name. Agreeing that their unlikely alliance would be powerful, they began to discuss a joint statement pledging their organizations’ shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election. They chose their words carefully and scheduled the statement’s release for maximum impact. As it was being finalized, Christian leaders signaled their interest in joining, further broadening its reach.

      The statement was released on Election Day, under the names of Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network. “It is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” it stated. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual.” The groups added, “Although we may not always agree on desired outcomes up and down the ballot, we are united in our call for the American democratic process to proceed without violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.”

      SHOWING UP, STANDING DOWN
      Election night began with many Democrats despairing. Trump was running ahead of pre-election polling, winning Florida, Ohio and Texas easily and keeping Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania too close to call. But Podhorzer was unperturbed when I spoke to him that night: the returns were exactly in line with his modeling. He had been warning for weeks that Trump voters’ turnout was surging. As the numbers dribbled out, he could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.

      The liberal alliance gathered for an 11 p.m. Zoom call. Hundreds joined; many were freaking out. “It was really important for me and the team in that moment to help ground people in what we had already known was true,” says Angela Peoples, director for the Democracy Defense Coalition. Podhorzer presented data to show the group that victory was in hand.

      While he was talking, Fox News surprised everyone by calling Arizona for Biden. The public-awareness campaign had worked: TV anchors were bending over backward to counsel caution and frame the vote count accurately. The question then became what to do next.

      The conversation that followed was a difficult one, led by the activists charged with the protest strategy. “We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street,” Peoples says. As much as they were eager to mount a show of strength, mobilizing immediately could backfire and put people at risk. Protests that devolved into violent clashes would give Trump a pretext to send in federal agents or troops as he had over the summer. And rather than elevate Trump’s complaints by continuing to fight him, the alliance wanted to send the message that the people had spoken.

      So the word went out: stand down. Protect the Results announced that it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.” On Twitter, outraged progressives wondered what was going on. Why wasn’t anyone trying to stop Trump’s coup? Where were all the protests?

      Podhorzer credits the activists for their restraint. “They had spent so much time getting ready to hit the streets on Wednesday. But they did it,” he says. “Wednesday through Friday, there was not a single Antifa vs. Proud Boys incident like everyone was expecting. And when that didn’t materialize, I don’t think the Trump campaign had a backup plan.”

      Activists reoriented the Protect the Results protests toward a weekend of celebration. “Counter their disinfo with our confidence & get ready to celebrate,” read the messaging guidance Shenker-Osorio presented to the liberal alliance on Friday, Nov. 6. “Declare and fortify our win. Vibe: confident, forward-looking, unified–NOT passive, anxious.” The voters, not the candidates, would be the protagonists of the story.

      The planned day of celebration happened to coincide with the election being called on Nov. 7. Activists dancing in the streets of Philadelphia blasted Beyoncé over an attempted Trump campaign press conference; the Trumpers’ next confab was scheduled for Four Seasons Total Landscaping outside the city center, which activists believe was not a coincidence. “The people of Philadelphia owned the streets of Philadelphia,” crows the Working Families Party’s Mitchell. “We made them look ridiculous by contrasting our joyous celebration of democracy with their clown show.”

      The votes had been counted. Trump had lost. But the battle wasn’t over.

    • THE FIVE STEPS TO VICTORY

      In Podhorzer’s presentations, winning the vote was only the first step to winning the election. After that came winning the count, winning the certification, winning the Electoral College and winning the transition–steps that are normally formalities but that he knew Trump would see as opportunities for disruption. Nowhere would that be more evident than in Michigan, where Trump’s pressure on local Republicans came perilously close to working–and where liberal and conservative pro-democracy forces joined to counter it.

      It was around 10 p.m. on election night in Detroit when a flurry of texts lit up the phone of Art Reyes III. A busload of Republican election observers had arrived at the TCF Center, where votes were being tallied. They were crowding the vote-counting tables, refusing to wear masks, heckling the mostly Black workers. Reyes, a Flint native who leads We the People Michigan, was expecting this. For months, conservative groups had been sowing suspicion about urban vote fraud. “The language was, ‘They’re going to steal the election; there will be fraud in Detroit,’ long before any vote was cast,” Reyes says.

      He made his way to the arena and sent word to his network. Within 45 minutes, dozens of reinforcements had arrived. As they entered the arena to provide a counterweight to the GOP observers inside, Reyes took down their cell-phone numbers and added them to a massive text chain. Racial-justice activists from Detroit Will Breathe worked alongside suburban women from Fems for Dems and local elected officials. Reyes left at 3 a.m., handing the text chain over to a disability activist.

      As they mapped out the steps in the election-certification process, activists settled on a strategy of foregrounding the people’s right to decide, demanding their voices be heard and calling attention to the racial implications of disenfranchising Black Detroiters. They flooded the Wayne County canvassing board’s Nov. 17 certification meeting with on-message testimony; despite a Trump tweet, the Republican board members certified Detroit’s votes.

      Election boards were one pressure point; another was GOP-controlled legislatures, who Trump believed could declare the election void and appoint their own electors. And so the President invited the GOP leaders of the Michigan legislature, House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate majority leader Mike Shirkey, to Washington on Nov. 20.

      It was a perilous moment. If Chatfield and Shirkey agreed to do Trump’s bidding, Republicans in other states might be similarly bullied. “I was concerned things were going to get weird,” says Jeff Timmer, a former Michigan GOP chair turned anti-Trump activist. Norm Eisen describes it as “the scariest moment” of the entire election.

      The democracy defenders launched a full-court press. Protect Democracy’s local contacts researched the lawmakers’ personal and political motives. Issue One ran television ads in Lansing. The Chamber’s Bradley kept close tabs on the process. Wamp, the former Republican Congressman, called his former colleague Mike Rogers, who wrote an op-ed for the Detroit newspapers urging officials to honor the will of the voters. Three former Michigan governors–Republicans John Engler and Rick Snyder and Democrat Jennifer Granholm–jointly called for Michigan’s electoral votes to be cast free of pressure from the White House. Engler, a former head of the Business Roundtable, made phone calls to influential donors and fellow GOP elder statesmen who could press the lawmakers privately.

      The pro-democracy forces were up against a Trumpified Michigan GOP controlled by allies of Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chair, and Betsy DeVos, the former Education Secretary and a member of a billionaire family of GOP donors. On a call with his team on Nov. 18, Bassin vented that his side’s pressure was no match for what Trump could offer. “Of course he’s going to try to offer them something,” Bassin recalls thinking. “Head of the Space Force! Ambassador to wherever! We can’t compete with that by offering carrots. We need a stick.”

      If Trump were to offer something in exchange for a personal favor, that would likely constitute bribery, Bassin reasoned. He phoned Richard Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan, to see if Primus agreed and would make the argument publicly. Primus said he thought the meeting itself was inappropriate, and got to work on an op-ed for Politico warning that the state attorney general–a Democrat–would have no choice but to investigate. When the piece posted on Nov. 19, the attorney general’s communications director tweeted it. Protect Democracy soon got word that the lawmakers planned to bring lawyers to the meeting with Trump the next day.

      Reyes’ activists scanned flight schedules and flocked to the airports on both ends of Shirkey’s journey to D.C., to underscore that the lawmakers were being scrutinized. After the meeting, the pair announced they’d pressed the President to deliver COVID relief for their constituents and informed him they saw no role in the election process. Then they went for a drink at the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. A street artist projected their images onto the outside of the building along with the words THE WORLD IS WATCHING.

      That left one last step: the state canvassing board, made up of two Democrats and two Republicans. One Republican, a Trumper employed by the DeVos family’s political nonprofit, was not expected to vote for certification. The other Republican on the board was a little-known lawyer named Aaron Van Langevelde. He sent no signals about what he planned to do, leaving everyone on edge.

      When the meeting began, Reyes’s activists flooded the livestream and filled Twitter with their hashtag, #alleyesonmi. A board accustomed to attendance in the single digits suddenly faced an audience of thousands. In hours of testimony, the activists emphasized their message of respecting voters’ wishes and affirming democracy rather than scolding the officials. Van Langevelde quickly signaled he would follow precedent. The vote was 3-0 to certify; the other Republican abstained.

      After that, the dominoes fell. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and the rest of the states certified their electors. Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia stood up to Trump’s bullying. And the Electoral College voted on schedule on Dec. 14.

      HOW CLOSE WE CAME
      There was one last milestone on Podhorzer’s mind: Jan. 6. On the day Congress would meet to tally the electoral count, Trump summoned his supporters to D.C. for a rally.

      Much to their surprise, the thousands who answered his call were met by virtually no counterdemonstrators. To preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was “strenuously discouraging counter activity,” Podhorzer texted me the morning of Jan. 6, with a crossed-fingers emoji.

      Trump addressed the crowd that afternoon, peddling the lie that lawmakers or Vice President Mike Pence could reject states’ electoral votes. He told them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Then he returned to the White House as they sacked the building. As lawmakers fled for their lives and his own supporters were shot and trampled, Trump praised the rioters as “very special.”

      It was his final attack on democracy, and once again, it failed. By standing down, the democracy campaigners outfoxed their foes. “We won by the skin of our teeth, honestly, and that’s an important point for folks to sit with,” says the Democracy Defense Coalition’s Peoples. “There’s an impulse for some to say voters decided and democracy won. But it’s a mistake to think that this election cycle was a show of strength for democracy. It shows how vulnerable democracy is.”

      The members of the alliance to protect the election have gone their separate ways. The Democracy Defense Coalition has been disbanded, though the Fight Back Table lives on. Protect Democracy and the good-government advocates have turned their attention to pressing reforms in Congress. Left-wing activists are pressuring the newly empowered Democrats to remember the voters who put them there, while civil rights groups are on guard against further attacks on voting. Business leaders denounced the Jan. 6 attack, and some say they will no longer donate to lawmakers who refused to certify Biden’s victory. Podhorzer and his allies are still holding their Zoom strategy sessions, gauging voters’ views and developing new messages. And Trump is in Florida, facing his second impeachment, deprived of the Twitter and Facebook accounts he used to push the nation to its breaking point.

      As I was reporting this article in November and December, I heard different claims about who should get the credit for thwarting Trump’s plot. Liberals argued the role of bottom-up people power shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly the contributions of people of color and local grassroots activists. Others stressed the heroism of GOP officials like Van Langevelde and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who stood up to Trump at considerable cost. The truth is that neither likely could have succeeded without the other. “It’s astounding how close we came, how fragile all this really is,” says Timmer, the former Michigan GOP chair. “It’s like when Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff–if you don’t look down, you don’t fall. Our democracy only survives if we all believe and don’t look down.”

      Democracy won in the end. The will of the people prevailed. But it’s crazy, in retrospect, that this is what it took to put on an election in the United States of America.

      https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

    • VICE – NEWS – Mike Lindell’s Election Fraud Movie ‘Absolute Proof’ Has Absolutely No Proof

      And the MyPillow CEO’s “docu-movie” is exactly as unhinged as you’d expect.

      MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has released “Absolute Proof,” his documentary purporting to explain the unfounded claims of election fraud, and it’s just as unhinged as you’d expect.

      Lindell published the “docu-movie” on Vimeo and YouTube, and published it to Facebook, early Friday.

      YouTube deleted the video on Friday after VICE News flagged the content. A spokesperson for the company said the video “violated our presidential election integrity policy.” The video had been viewed tens of thousands of times before YouTube took it down.

      On his own website, Lindell has now resorted to using a version of the video hosted on Rumble, a YouTube-alternative that has become popular with the far right and QAnon followers.

      But Lindell also purchased airtime on the far-right One America Network. Prior to airing the documentary, OAN aired a lengthy statement attempting to distance itself from the potentially defamatory claims it was about to air.

      “Mr. Lindell is the sole author and executive producer of this program and is solely and exclusively responsible for its content,” the statement reads. “This program is not the product of OAN’s reporting.”

      The statement goes on to say that the network doesn’t “adopt or endorse” claims about Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic—both of which have filed multibillion-dollar lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others who have pushed or promoted the election fraud conspiracy. OAN also tried to distance itself from Lindell’s claims about Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Raffensperger’s chief operating officer, Gabriel Sterling.

      It’s not clear if OAN’s disclaimer will insulate it from legal action. Though laws vary by state, disclaimers “can help, but they never guarantee anything,” Don Herzog, a University of Michigan law professor and defamation law expert, told VICE News in an email.

      “The disclaimer might be thought to be disingenuous or otherwise unpersuasive, in which case it won’t shield the disclaimer from liability. Or sometimes courts switch from what the speaker is saying to what the audience hears, or reasonably hears,” he said.

      “So for instance, if you tune in OAN and watch 45 minutes of the middle of Lindell’s movie, it would be plausible to argue that OAN is defaming, because you sensibly assume the stuff they’re broadcasting at length is their content.”

      The movie itself comes in at two hours—not three, as Lindell promised in a disastrous Newsmax appearance earlier this week—is soundtracked by and essentially rehashes all of the false claims about the election that have been debunked time and again. It also begins with a very lengthy self-pity party.

      “I have been attacked the last month relentlessly on social media, by newspapers, by TV shows, by—you name it, I’ve been attacked,” Lindell said, showing a graphic of al the companies that have dropped MyPillow from their shelves, including Kohl’s, Mattress Firm, and the Home Shopping Network. “They canceled my Twitter; today they canceled MyPillow’s Twitter account.”

      Lindell claims, falsely, that the “algorithms of these [voting] machines broke… Donald Trump got so many more millions of votes that they didn’t expect, so they had to go recalibrate. That’s why all these states shut down.”

      He then goes on to display slides that purport to show “possible errors” in the elections of various states, all of which, coincidentally, Trump narrowly lost. The claims are just repeated verbatim from the Trump campaign and local Republican officials and voters’ lawsuits, none of which were successful.

      These include the claim that 66,000 underage people voted in Georgia, when the number of people under the age of 18 who requested a ballot was actually four, and all of them turned 18 prior to November 3, according to Raffensperger’s office. Lindell also claims that 10,000 fake ballots were driven from New York to Pennsylvania, an unfounded claim based on the testimony of a man who believes he’s being haunted by ghosts.

      And Lindell claims that 130,000 people illegally voted in Wisconsin through the state “illegally expanding the definition of indefinite confinement,” because county and state election officials allowed some voters to vote by mail during the pandemic—even though these decisions were made in March, and even though the majority-Republican Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in December that it was up to voters to decide whether they’re “indefinitely confined.”

      Throughout the movie, Lindell interviews various fringe witnesses and what he claims are “cyber forensic experts” that “these machines were used by other countries to steal our election.” These guests included multiple former Rudy Giuliani witnesses including retired Col. Phil Waldron, who made the ridiculous claim that nearly every single vote cast in Arizona’s Maricopa County was potentially fraudulent, and Dominion IT contractor Melissa Carone, the IT contractor for Dominion whose disastrous testimony before the Michigan Legislature went viral in December.

      In sum, the movie feels like a bunch of old, thoroughly-debunked claims repackaged as a special report on the worst public access TV channel you’ve ever watched. But around 11:30 ET, it appeared Lindell had been “canceled” once more: Vimeo had removed the video from its platform.

      Although Lindell’s movie has been taken down from YouTube, it could make an appearance in a defamation trial coming soon. On Thursday, Dominion sent a letter to YouTube asking that it “preserve and retain” videos posted on its platform about the election by a variety of figures and networks which pushed the conspiracy. Including Lindell.

      https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7v5qg/mike-lindells-election-fraud-movie-absolute-proof-has-absolutely-no-proof

      ===============================================

      Absolute Proof

      https://michaeljlindell.com/

      ================================================
      still on YT with a Chinese title !

  28. VICE NEWS – COVID Is Making Muslim Burials Incredibly Difficult

    As COVID ravages California, funeral homes are beyond overwhelmed.

    But Muslim burials, which include traditional burials within 24 hours of death, are becoming more and more difficult.

  29. From Bill Mitchell’s GAB account:

    FUNNY MASK EXPERIENCE:

    I stopped by Starbucks to grab a coffee after lunch. While waiting I bought a cookie. I pulled down my mask to eat said cookie and the hipster behind the counter said very loudly, “Uh, siiiir, you need to put your mask back on! You cannot eat that in here!”

    Fine.

    So after he made my coffee I said to him, “Did you wash your hands before you touched my cup? No? Throw it out and make it again.” And then as he was making my new coffee I noticed his nose was uncovered by his mask. When he gave me my second coffee I said, “I saw your nose wasn’t covered by your mask. Throw it out and make it again.”

    Finally I left with my third cup of coffee which I paid only once for.

    https://gab.com/mitchellvii/posts/105675556099802461

  30. Bombing in southwestern Pakistan kills 2 people, wounds 5 (abcnews, Feb 5, 2021)
    https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/bombing-southwestern-pakistan-kills-people-wounds-75705817

    “A bomb went off near a government office in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least two people and wounding five, police said.

    No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, which took place near the office of the deputy commissioner, said Abdul Ali, a local police officer. He said rescuers transported the bodies and the wounded to a nearby hospital.

    Ali refused to speculate on who could be behind the bombing. Previous such attacks have been claimed by militants and separatist groups fighting in Baluchistan province, where Quetta is the capital.

    Baluchistan has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by small separatists groups demanding more autonomy and a greater share in the region’s natural resources, such as gas and oil.”

  31. Turkey’s Erdogan vows ‘no mercy’ to violent protesters (abcnews, Feb 5, 2021)
    https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/erdogan-rebuffs-criticism-vows-mercy-protesters-75705798

    “Turkey’s president on Friday rebuffed U.S. and European criticism of his government’s handling of weeks-long demonstrations at a top Istanbul university, saying they should focus on violent protests in their own countries instead.

    Recep Tayyip Erdogan also vowed to show “no mercy” to protesters who use violence, and reiterated his determination not to allow the demonstrations spiral into mass anti-government protests like those that rocked the country in 2013.

    Students and faculty members at Bogazici University have been demonstrating in protest of Erdogan’s Jan. 1 appointment as rector of an academic with links to his ruling party. They have been calling on rector Melih Bulu to step down and for the university to be allowed to select its own president.

    Some of the protests have led to clashes with police, resulting in hundreds of arrests — although most of the detainees were later released. Protests have been staged in the capital, Ankara, as well as Izmir and other cities in support of the Bogazici students.

    Erdogan and other government officials drew condemnation over the security forces’ often heavy-handed handling of the demonstrations and using anti-LGBT rhetoric to decry the protests, after an artwork depicting Islam’s most holiest site with LGBT flags was displayed at the university.

    Speaking to reporters as he left a mosque following traditional Friday prayers, Erdogan rejected criticism from the U.S. and from EU officials.

    “I will say this to America: aren’t you ashamed of the incidents in the United States before the elections?” Erdogan said, in refence to the violence on Capitol Hill. “Racism went over the roof,” he continued, alluding to anti-racism protests that swept the U.S. last year.

    He also called on France to “sort out” protests by the yellow vest movement which has been calling for economic justice.

    Later, in a video address to female members of his ruling party, Erdogan again accused the U.S. and European nations of double standards, for “crushing” protests in their countries but portraying as “innocent those who terrorize the streets” in Turkey.

    “We will not show mercy toward those who have become the toy of organizations involved in terror and who regard the use of violence as a means of seeking justice,” he said. “We will grab hold of their collars and bring them to justice.”

    On Friday, police broke up a protest by a small group of students on Ankara’s main commercial street in a show of solidarity with the Bogazici students. Several were detained, laid on the ground and handcuffed behind their backs.

    An Associated Press journalist said some onlookers reacted to police, calling on them to leave the “youngsters” alone.”

  32. Dem lawyer Marc Elias claims voting machine ‘irregularities’ in New York House race
    By Daily Caller News Foundation February 5, 2021

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2021/02/05/dem-lawyer-marc-elias-claims-voting-machine-irregularities-in-new-york-house-race/

    Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election attorney, argued in a court filing this week that faulty voting machines may have misread thousands of votes in a House election in upstate New York, a claim similar to the allegation some Republicans pushed regarding the 2020 presidential election.

    Elias, a partner at the firm Perkins Coie, made the argument in a court filing on Monday to challenge the results of the election in New York’s 22nd House district.

    Elias asserted that voting machines used in the district undercounted votes for incumbent Democrat Rep. Ted Brindisi. Brindisi trails Republican challenger Claudia Tenney by a razor-thin margin of 122 votes. Tenney declared victory in the race on Tuesday, but the state has not certified the results while the legal challenge unfolds.

  33. Woman whose mother died in NY nursing home claims NBC News wouldn’t let her say ‘Cuomo failed us’ – Liberty Unyielding
    Rusty Weiss
    4-5 minutes

    Woman whose mother died in NY nursing home claims NBC News wouldn’t let her say ‘Cuomo failed us’

    Dawn Best (Image: Fox News screen grab)

    A woman whose mother died in a New York nursing home has accused NBC News and other media outlets of pressuring her into not saying “Cuomo failed us” on live TV.

    Dawn Best, whose mother died in April of this past year, told “Fox & Friends” that NBC specifically asked her to say “New York failed us” rather than naming New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    “‘Can you say that a different way without Governor Cuomo’s name, and just say New York failed you?’” Best claimed were the instructions from an NBC reporter. “So I had no choice,” she continued. “So I had to say, ‘New York failed me.’”

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2021/02/04/woman-whose-mother-died-in-ny-nursing-home-claims-nbc-news-wouldnt-let-her-say-cuomo-failed-us/

  34. Al-Qaeda’s Yemen Leader Khalid Batarfi Under Arrest: UN Report
    https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/02/05/al-qaeda-batarfi-under-arrest/

    “The leader of Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate has been under arrest for several months, according to a United Nations report released on Thursday, in what will be seen as a huge breakthrough in the fight against the global jihadist threat.

    The document said Khalid Batarfi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for just under a year, was arrested and his deputy, Saad Atef al-Awlaqi, died during an “operation in Ghayda City, Al-Mahrah Governorate, in October.”

    The report — filed to the Security Council from a UN monitoring team specializing in extremist groups — is the first official confirmation of Batarfi’s arrest following unverified reports.

    The wide-ranging UN assessment, summarizing global potential jihadist threats, did not disclose the militant’s whereabouts or reveal any further details of the October operation.

    But the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors the online activity of jihadist organizations, noted “unconfirmed reports” in October that Batarfi had been arrested by Yemeni security forces and then handed to Saudi Arabia.

    AQAP revealed it had appointed Batarfi, believed to be in his early 40s, as its leader in February 2020 following the death of his predecessor Qassim al-Rimi in a US air strike in Yemen.

    Batarfi, who was designated a global terrorist by the US State Department in 2018, has appeared in numerous AQAP videos over recent years, according to SITE, and appeared to have been Rimi’s deputy and group spokesman…”

  35. Nigeria Troops Overrun ISWAP Jihadist Camps in Northeast
    https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/02/05/nigeria-troops-overrun-iswap-camps/

    “Nigerian troops backed by jets have taken control of several camps of IS-linked jihadists, with two senior commanders escaping after several other ranking militants were killed, two military sources told AFP Thursday.

    Troops overran Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP) camps in an area straddling Yobe and Borno states in northeast Nigeria after a month-long military operation, the sources said.

    The operations have been ongoing as President Muhammadu Buhari replaced his four top military commanders after months of pressure over his government’s failure to end the country’s more than decade-long Islamist insurgency.

    On Wednesday, soldiers aided by fighter jets overran Dole camp, the last jihadist stronghold in the so-called “Timbuktu triangle,” the two military officers said. “With the fall of Dole the whole area is now under the effective control of Nigerian troops,” said one of the officers.

    The jihadists have been in control of the area since 2013 when they seized it and established a strong presence, especially in the Talala area, which became the second-largest ISWAP camp outside the group’s Lake Chad stronghold.

    Tough Battle
    Last month troops took over Talala after a fierce battle in which six soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber who detonated his explosive-laden vehicle among troops, military sources told AFP.

    “It was a tough battle,” said the second source on the Dole raid. “The route leading to Dole was mined by the terrorists and troops accessed it on foot, engaging the terrorists in fierce battle with air support,” he said.

    Several hostages were rescued from the camps while dozens of vehicles seized from kidnapped hostages were recovered, the sources said.

    Two high profile ISWAP commanders, Modu Sulum and Ameer Modu Borzogo, fled along with some fighters during intense fighting while other commanders were killed, said the second source.

    Escaping fighters were believed to have fled to Lake Chad which straddles Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon, where the group maintains camps on the islands dotting the freshwater lake, said the two military officers.

    In another front, troops reclaimed five camps from the jihadists in Kidari, Argude, Takwala, Chowalta, and Galdekore villages where the jihadists used suicide bombers to stave off troops advance.

    “We lost some soldiers and several were injured in the suicide attack but the soldiers managed to subdue the terrorists,” said the second source, without giving details of the casualties.

    ISWAP split from mainstream Boko Haram in 2016 and became a dominant group, launching attacks on military bases and ambushing troops while abducting travelers at bogus checkpoints.

    Last week Buhari appointed new military chiefs, raising hope of a change in military strategy to end the 12-year old conflict that has killed 36,000 people and displaced around two million from their homes.”

  36. Iran Condemns Belgian Court’s ‘Illegal’ Ruling against Diplomat
    https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2021/02/05/2446814/iran-condemns-belgian-court-s-illegal-ruling-against-diplomat

    “The Foreign Ministry of Iran strongly condemned a Belgian court’s ruling against Iranian diplomat Asadollah Asadi, saying the illegal prison sentence has been imposed under the influence of terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO).

    In a statement on Thursday, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said Tehran strongly condemns the 20-year jail term issued by a court in the Belgian city of Antwerp against Iranian diplomat Asadi.

    “As we repeatedly announced earlier, all the procedures that have so far been taken against the diplomat, including his arrest, the case brought against him or the conviction, were all unlawful and amounted to blatant violation of international law, especially the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and the Islamic Republic of Iran will never recognize it,” he said.

    “Unfortunately, Belgium and some European countries have taken such illegal and unjustifiable actions under the influence of the atmosphere that has been created by the hostile MKO terrorist group on Europe’s soil,” Khatibzadeh noted.

    Therefore, he added, they must be held accountable for their flagrant violation of the Iranian diplomat’s rights, including the inhumane conditions he faced under arrest in Germany and Belgium.

    “The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to resort to all possible legal and diplomatic means to realize the rights of Mr. Asadollah Asadi and to hold accountable the governments that have violated their international obligations,” the spokesman added, according to the Foreign Ministry’s website.

    In June 2018, Belgian authorities said the police had intercepted a car carrying homemade explosives and a detonation device, claiming that Asadi had handed the materials to two people in Belgium earlier.

    Asadi, himself, was apprehended in Germany the next day and told he could not apply his diplomatic immunity.”

  37. Iran OPEC’s Biggest Gasoline Producer: Official
    https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2021/02/05/2446871/iran-opec-s-biggest-gasoline-producer-official

    “A deputy oil minister said Iran needs to reduce the domestic gasoline consumption by switching to vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas (CNG) in order to maintain its place as the largest producer of gasoline in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

    In an interview with Tasnim, Deputy Oil Minister Alireza Sadeqabadi said Iran is currently the largest exporter of gasoline in the region and the biggest gasoline producer among the OPEC member states.

    “This is a great capacity for the country. We must maintain such capacity, and the most important thing to do is to prevent the unrestrained consumption of gasoline at home,” he added.

    The deputy minister also stressed the need to promote the CNG solutions for lowering the rate of domestic gasoline consumption in order to keep up the exports…”

  38. Norway Arrests Syrian Teenager on Terror Suspicion
    https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2786641/norway-arrests-syrian-teenager-terror-suspicion

    “Norway’s domestic security agency said Friday that a Syrian teenager has been arrested in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on suspicion of planning an act of terror.

    The agency, known by its acronym PST, said the suspect, who was arrested Thursday, was a boy aged 16.

    The Norwegian broadcaster NRK quoted PST head Hans Sverre Sjoevold saying the youth was a Syrian national but declined to say whether the attack was planned to take place in Norway. No details were given as to when the attack was to be carried out.

    The VG newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said the suspect, who was not identified, has sympathies with ISIS extremist group. He had arrived in Norway through a family reunification scheme.

    On Twitter, PST said the boy was to appear before a court in Oslo Friday for a custody hearing, adding the agency would request it to be held behind closed doors.

    Terror attacks in Norway in recent years have mostly been carried out by right-wingers, most notably the 2011 assault by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage.

    Breivik ranted about Europe being overrun by Muslim immigrants and blamed left-wing political forces for making the continent multicultural.

    Eight years later, a Norwegian man stormed an Oslo mosque and opened fire in what he called an act of “emergency justice” after having killed his ethnic Chinese stepsister. The attack was thwarted.

    Both men are serving 21-year prison sentences for carrying out the attacks.”

  39. US rejects Turkish minister’s claim it was behind 2016 coup attempt
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-turkey-rejects-ministers-claim-behind-2016-coup-attempt

    “The US State Department has rejected a Turkish minister’s accusation that Washington was behind a 2016 failed coup that Ankara has blamed on a US-based Muslim cleric, calling it “wholly false”.

    Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu’s accusation was reported in the Hurriyet newspaper on Thursday, at a time when Turkey is seeking improved ties with its Nato ally.

    More than 250 people were killed in the attempt to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government on 15 July 2016, when rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, helicopters and tanks to seize state institutions.

    Ankara has long blamed Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan who lives in Pennsylvania, and launched a widespread crackdown on his network, which Ankara refers to by the acronym “Feto”. Gulen denies any involvement.

    Soylu told Hurriyet the US had managed the coup attempt while Gulen’s network carried it out, adding “Europe was enthusiastic about it,” reaffirming a view he said he had been expressing since the putsch.

    “It is blatantly clear the United States is behind 15 July. It was Feto who carried it out upon their orders,” he said.

    Soylu had originally appeared on the Turkish TV channel Haber Global on Tuesday, where he had insinuated that there were other actors behind the coup.

    Later, doctored footage of the minister from the broadcast was circulated on social media, where he appeared to claim that Gulenists were not part of the coup attempt.

    Soylu then clarified his remarks by speaking to Hurriyet.

    The US State Department said in a statement on Thursday: “The United States had no involvement in the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey and promptly condemned it.

    “Recent assertions to the contrary made by senior Turkish officials are wholly false.”

    It said “unfounded and irresponsible claims of US responsibility for events in Turkey are inconsistent with Turkey’s status as a Nato ally and strategic partner of the United States”.

    Washington has repeatedly rejected Turkish demands for Gulen’s extradition, citing a lack of credible evidence from Ankara…”

  41. These t-shirts at hot topic
    https://www.hottopic.com/black-history-month/

    BLACK HISTORY MONTH AMPLIFY BLACK VOICES TEXT GIRLS T-SHIRT

    BLACK HISTORY MONTH BLACK FUTURE TEXT GIRLS T-SHIRT

    Through February, all net proceeds from our tees celebrating Black History Month will go directly to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In addition, all roundup donations through February will go to LDF. LDF is a 501 (C)(3) nonprofit organization that has been completely separate from the NAACP since 1957. The Hot Topic Foundation is a component fund of the California Community Foundation, a 501 (C)(3) public charity. Contributions to the California Community Foundation represent irrevocable gifts subject to the legal and fiduciary control of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.

  42. Russia FM calls for expulsion of White Helmets from Jordan
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210205-russia-foreign-minister-calls-for-expulsion-of-white-helmets-from-jordan/

    “Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called on his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi to expel members of the Syria Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, from Jordan, during a press conference held by the officials in Moscow.

    Russian news agency TASS reported on Wednesday that Lavrov stated during the press conference that: “The West had made sure to save its clients and settle them away from tension by calling on Jordan to host the organisation’s members on its territory,” calling on Jordan to expel them within two months, as promised.

    The Russian official added: “Western money was used to set up brazen provocations, stage incidents and film choreographed videos to allege that the [Syrian] government was using chemical weapons in Syria. These so-called facts, which any even slightly objective expert will see as farfetched, were nevertheless used by Western countries to carry out airstrikes against a sovereign state without any justification in the form of UNSC decisions.”

    “This so-called humanitarian organisation was created with active participation of Western intelligence representatives. It was financed by the West, never provided its so-called humanitarian services on territories controlled by the Syrian government,” he asserted.

    Lavrov alleged that the White Helmets’ work “was limited to areas controlled by the opposition factions,” claiming that they had actively worked with Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham.

    Teams of the Syria Civil Defence, which was established at the end of 2012, were present in all Syrian governorates, working to assist those affected by the war under the Quranic verse slogan: “Whoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.””

  43. Somalia declares state of emergency over locust swarms
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210205-somalia-declares-state-of-emergency-over-locust-swarms/

    “Somalia has declared a state of emergency on Thursday over a new generation of desert locust swarms that have caused major damage to farmlands.

    On its official Twitter account, Somali state television announced that the country’s Ministry of Agriculture had declared a state of emergency due to the desert locust invasion.

    This decision was taken during a meeting held by officials of the Somali Ministry of Agriculture, representatives of the South West State of Somalia and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

    Earlier, Kenya had announced that many of the country’s regions were invaded by desert locust swarms coming from Ethiopia and Sudan.

    Locusts cause serious panic among the population, as they travel 150 kilometres daily in East Africa, causing severe damage to crops.”

  44. Turkey: exports to Saudi Arabia fall by 92% under unofficial boycott
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210205-turkey-exports-to-saudi-arabia-fall-by-92-under-unofficial-boycott/

    “Exports of Turkish goods to Saudi Arabia fell by 92 per cent last year as a result of an unofficial boycott imposed by the Kingdom. Data published by the Turkish Exporters Union (TIM) shows that the value of exports to Saudi companies fell from $221 million to just $16 million.

    Relations between the two states has been particularly strained over the past few years due to differences in foreign policy and the murder of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

    While Riyadh has denied responsibility for the assassination and blamed it on rogue agents, Turkey has presented evidence that it was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Last July, the Turkish authorities held a trial in absentia of a number of suspects who made up the Saudi hit squad believed to have killed Khashoggi.

    Hints of a boycott began when Prince Faisal Bin Bandar Bin Abdulaziz refused to drink Turkish coffee when it was offered to him in 2019. This was followed by Prince Abdullah Bin Sultan Al-Saud calling for a boycott of Turkey and its products until Ankara “reviews its policies” with the Kingdom.

    Also in July last year, reports emerged that the Saudi government was forcing businesses not to trade with Turkey and that Turkish trucks had been detained at the border. Relations got worse in September when Riyadh forced businessmen to end their investments in Turkey, followed by another Saudi prince directly calling for the boycott of Turkish imports in October.

    Despite the unofficial boycott, Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia are generally much lower compared with its exports to other Middle Eastern states. The Saudis account for just 1.8 per cent of Turkish exports annually.

    Prospects for improving the relationship between Riyadh and Ankara brightened towards the end of last year, however. The foreign ministers of both countries held a “sincere” meeting on bilateral relations and regional issues.”

  45. Kazakhstan repartiates 12 Kazakh nationals from Syria
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210205-kazakhstan-repartiates-12-kazakh-nationals-from-syria/

    “Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday that it evacuated 12 of its citizens, including seven children, from Syria.

    The ministry added that the repatriation process came through the country’s intelligence agency, the National Security Committee.

    Of those returned, the ministry explained, citizens who were involved in terrorist acts will face trial, while women and children will be placed in a rehabilitation programme.

    Two of the evacuated children are orphans.

    In 2019, Kazakhstan launched a campaign to return its citizens who had been involved in terrorist activities in Syria.”

  46. Saudi newspaper publishes Israeli writers for the first time
    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210205-saudi-newspaper-publishes-israeli-writers-for-the-first-time/

    “The most widely read English-language newspaper in Saudi Arabia published an op-ed by Israeli writers for the first time yesterday. The Arab News carried an article by Dr Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak and Dr Jonathan Spyer.

    The article looked at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “increasingly authoritarian” rule and alleged establishment of a private militia network made up of fighters from the Syrian civil war. It was, apparently, the result of joint research with an independent think tank called Trends, based in Abu Dhabi.

    “Their [private Syrian militias’] role is to advance [Erdogan’s] grand plan of re-establishing influence over a region roughly ov erlapping the former Ottoman Empire, from the Palestinian territories to Syria and the Caucasus to as far away as Kashmir, according to some reports,” wrote Yanarocak and Spyer. “These proxies provide the Turkish president with a large pool of available, organised, trained, easily deployed and easily disposable foreign manpower as a tool of power projection, which can be used with a degree of plausible deniability.”

    They added that the West must pressure Erdogan to end such “nefarious” practices. “This needs to end. Militias, terror groups and Islamist extremism are all elements that the Middle East must outgrow if it is to achieve stability and reconstruction,” they insisted.

    Although Saudi Arabia and Israel share a common enemy in Iran, Riyadh has so far declined to normalise ties with the settler-colonial state of Israel, saying that Palestinian statehood goals should be addressed first. The US has been calling for Saudi to follow in the footsteps of its neighbours and allies the UAE and Bahrain, who normalised ties last year. They were followed by Sudan and, most recently, Morocco.

    The deals drew widespread condemnation from Palestinians, who say that the so-called “Abraham Accords” ride roughshod over their legitimate rights.”

  47. Taliban attack kills 10 pro-govt Afghan militiamen
    https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2021/2/5/taliban-attack-kills-10-pro-govt-afghan-militiamen

    “At least 10 pro-government Afghan militiamen were killed in fierce overnight fighting after their checkpoint came under attack from Taliban fighters in northern Afghanistan, officials said Friday.

    The attack on the local militia, many of which work with overstretched security forces, came as violence surges across the country despite peace talks between the warring Taliban and Afghan government.

    Insurgents attacked the checkpoint in the restive Kunduz province during the night, provincial governor Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal told reporters.

    “Their attack was repelled initially but the militiamen were attacked again by Taliban fighters which led to intense fighting,” Mirzakwal said.

    “Unfortunately, 10 uprising forces (pro-government militiamen) were killed.”

    Kunduz provincial council member Amruddin Wali confirmed the attack but said at least 15 militiamen were killed.

    There was no immediate comment from the Taliban.

    The Taliban and government forces have repeatedly clashed in Kunduz, with the insurgents attempting to capture the strategic city located not far from the Tajikistan border.

    The Taliban briefly captured the city twice before — in September 2015 and again a year later.

    The Afghan government has been locked in peace talks with the Taliban that began in September in Qatar, but they have so far failed to achieve any breakthrough.

    The new US administration of President Joe Biden has said it will review a US-Taliban deal signed last year, and has accused the Taliban of not reducing violence or cutting ties with Al-Qaeda as agreed.”

  48. Soldier reportedly killed as renewed Sudanese-Ethiopian border clashes erupt
    https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2021/2/5/soldier-reportedly-killed-as-sudanese-ethiopian-border-clashes-erupt

    “New clashes erupted between the Sudanese army and Ethiopian forces in the disputed Al-Fashaqa Al-Soghra area on Sudan’s eastern border on Thursday, in which a Sudanese solider was killed.

    The local daily Al-Sudani cited eyewitness accounts in Birkat Noreen, situated in the disputed territory, claiming that Ethiopian forces attacked the Sudanese army, and that Sudanese troops responded with their own fire.

    The Sudanese army took control of the Ethiopian settlement of Melkamo inside Sudanese borders following the clashes, military sources told the Sudan Tribune.

    Eight troops were wounded in the clashes, in addition to the dead soldier.

    In April 2020, Sudanese and Ethiopian military representatives held talks in Khartoum and agreed to coordinate border control and combat cross-border crime.

    This followed the Sudanese army’s deployment to the eastern border for the first time in 25 years.

    Last December, Sudanese and Ethiopian delegates also met in Khartoum to de-escalate tensions after Ethiopian forces reportedly ambushed Sudanese troops along the border, leaving four dead and more than 20 wounded.

    Ethiopian gunmen have repeatedly attacked Sudanese farmers in the past, with the aim of looting and plundering their resources, according to Khartoum.

    Sudan accuses the Ethiopian army of supporting what it describes as “militias,” which Addis Ababa denies. Ethiopia says that the “militias” are in fact “outlaw groups.”

    Along with Egypt, Sudan has expressed misgivings about Ethiopia’s construction of the Great Renaissance Dam on the Nile River, fearing it could limit its own access to the Nile’s waters.”

  49. Saudi Arabia: Video clip of cafe offering camel urine goes viral, sparks controversy
    https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/saudi-arabia-video-clip-of-cafe-offering-camel-urine-goes-viral-sparks-controversy-1.76981543

    “A video clip announcing the “openning of the first Islamic cafe specializing in camel urine,” in Saudi Arabia has gone viral on social media sparking widespread controversy among Twitter users who consider it an offense to Islam.

    The video clip was first shared by a Twitter page called “Together Against Religion Traders”, showing a man standing in a desert area – which has not been identified – with a cart carrying a drink being sold to a group of bearded men. However, it is not yet known if the video has been fabricated.

    The Saudi writer and political analyst, Turki Al Hamad, responded to the video, saying: “With such people, Islam is really in crisis.”

    Al Hamad added in his tweet: “Is not there anything left of this great religion other than this doubtful part?! … Indeed, we are in a stifling existence crisis”.

    Drinking camel urine was and still causes controversy and division in Saudi society, as the Saudi Center for Medical Research announced in 2009 that there is a tendency to start producing medical capsules containing camel urine for use in treating cancer and related diseases.

    Earlier last year, an “Islamic medicine specialist” from Iran urged Iranians to drink camel urine, claiming it can cure several diseases including coronavirus, according to a video posted on Instagram which has since gone viral.

    Drinking camel urine can cure lung diseases, asthma, and coronavirus, “Islamic medicine specialist” Mehdi Sabili said in a video shared on his Instagram page.

    Modern medicine
    “Islamic medicine” in Iran relies on the sayings of the Shia Imams to treat patients and is dismissive of modern medicine.

    Sabili is the head of the “scientific-educational association of Imam Sadegh’s medicine” in Iran and has over 60,000 followers on Instagram. Sabili himself drank some camel urine in the video, saying he needed it to protect him from the air pollution in Tehran.

    He advised his viewers to drink camel urine three times a day for three days and said that the urine is best drunk while in its “initial, hot temperature.”

    Videos of a cleric giving coronavirus patients at a hospital in northern Iran a perfume to smell as a cure for the virus also went viral on social media last month. One of the coronavirus patients visited by the cleric died a few days later.

    The cleric, who is also a follower of Islamic medicine, was later arrested.”

  50. Turkey tests indigenous anti-ship missile in Black Sea
    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-tests-indigenous-anti-ship-missile-in-black-sea-162178

    “Turkey’s first indigenously-produced maritime missile Atmaca was tested on Feb. 4 in the Black Sea region.

    Test activities of the Atmaca, a long-range anti-ship missile developed by Roketsan, was carried out in northern Sinop province, according to the city governorate.

    Our domestic product Atmaca will fear enemies, said Naval Forces Commander Admiral Adnan Özbal after observing test fires together with Erol Karaömero?lu, Sinop governor.

    Roketsan touts Atmaca as a high-precision, long-range, surface-to-surface, precision strike anti-ship missile which can be integrated with patrol boats, frigates and corvettes and is expected to replace the U.S.-made Harpoon.

    It boasts a range of more than 200 kilometers (124 miles), posing a threat to targets far outside visual range.

    It also provides a target update, re-attack, and mission abort capability via modern data link.”