Friday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

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Deprogramming of January 6 Defendants Is Underway

Via American Greatness

“My lawyer has given me names of books and movies to help me see what life is like for others in our country. I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street.”

That passage is part book report, part white privilege mea culpa submitted to a federal court this month by Anna Morgan-Lloyd, one of the more than 500 Americans arrested for her involvement in the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The 49-year-old grandmother of five from southern Indiana was charged with four counts of trespassing and disorderly conduct even though she walked through an open door and was inside the building for about five minutes. She was ratted out to the FBI by a county worker who saw her January 6 posts on Facebook.

On Wednesday, Lloyd, who has a clean criminal record, pleaded guilty to one count of “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building”—but not before she consented to undergo a reeducation exercise at the urging of her court-appointed lawyer. (Like many January 6 defendants, Lloyd does not have the means to hire a private attorney.)

It’s safe to say Heather Shaner, a D.C.-based criminal defense attorney representing a handful of January 6 protesters, does not share the political beliefs of her Capitol clients, which is why she’s forcing them to read books and watch movies highlighting dark chapters in U.S. history.

In an interview with Huffington Post, Shaner explained her belief that “this is the most wonderful country in the world, it’s been great for all kinds of immigrant groups, except for the fact that it was born of genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of people.”

Shaner’s legal captives are learning the hard way what the government will do when one resists their commands to comply. Not only have their personal lives been shattered, finances depleted, and reputations destroyed by an abusive Justice Department investigation, Shaner’s clients must be indoctrinated with leftist propaganda about America’s alleged systemic racism.

The purge of the populist mindset is underway, courtesy of the fetid Beltway judicial system and the Joe Biden regime. Judges routinely lecture January 6 defendants about the wrongthink of a “stolen election” while prosecutors openly mock their political beliefs, including home schooling and gun ownership.

“I have had many political and ethical discussions with Anna Lloyd,” Shaner wrote in her motion agreeing to the plea and probation for Lloyd. “I tendered a booklist to her. She has read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Just Mercy, and Schindler’s List to educate herself about ‘government policy’ toward Native Americans, African Americans and European Jews. We have discussed the books and also about the responsibility of an individual when confronting ‘wrong.’”

Shaner also told the court that Lloyd watched the “Burning Tulsa” documentary on the History Channel as well as “Mudbound,” a story of two families, one black and one white, living on the same property after World War II.

On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with watching or reading any of Shaner’s “booklist.” What is very wrong is a taxpayer-paid attorney—one who is supposed to fight the government’s charges related to January 6, not play along with its phony depiction that “white supremacists” attacked the Capitol—using her authority to reprogram the political views of people she is supposed to be defending. The presumption of racist beliefs is automatic. MORE.

The “Conspiracy Theory” Charade

By James Bovard

How government and media use the phrase to suppress opposition

Biden’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” report last week declared that “enhancing faith in American democracy” requires “finding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories.” In recent decades, conspiracy theories have multiplied almost as fast as government lies and cover-ups. While many allegations have been ludicrously far-fetched, the political establishment and media routinely attach the “conspiracy theory” label to any challenge to their dominance.

According to Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law professor and Obama’s regulatory czar, a conspiracy theory is “an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Reasonable citizens are supposed to presume that government creates trillions of pages of new secrets each year for their own good, not to hide anything from the public.

In the early 1960s, conspiracy theories were practically a non-issue because 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government. Such credulity did not survive the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Seven days after Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon Johnson created a commission (later known as the Warren Commission) to suppress controversy about the killing. Johnson and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover browbeat the commission members into speedily issuing a report rubberstamping the “crazed lone gunman” version of the assassination. House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, a member of the commission, revised the final staff report to change the location of where the bullet entered Kennedy’s body, thereby salvaging Hoover’s so-called “magic bullet” theory. After the Warren Commission findings were ridiculed as a whitewash, Johnson ordered the FBI to conduct wiretaps on the report’s critics. To protect the official story, the commission sealed key records for 75 years. Truth would out only after all the people involved in any coverup had gotten their pensions and died.

The controversy surrounding the Warren Commission spurred the CIA to formally attack the notion of conspiracy theories. In a 1967 alert to its overseas stations and bases, the CIA declared that the fact that almost half of Americans did not believe Oswald acted alone “is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization” and endangers “the whole reputation of the American government.” The memo instructed recipients to “employ propaganda assets” and exploit “friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out… parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.” The ultimate proof of the government’s innocence: “Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States.”

However, the CIA did conceal a wide range of assassinations and foreign coups it conducted until congressional investigations in the mid-1970s blew the whistle. The New York Times, which exposed the CIA memo in 1977, noted that the CIA “mustered its propaganda machinery to support an issue of far more concern to Americans, and to the C.I.A. itself, than to citizens of other countries.” According to historian Lance deHaven-Smith, author of Conspiracy Theory in America, “The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited…with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.” (In 2014, the CIA released a heavily-redacted report admitting that it had been “complicit” in a JFK “cover-up” by withholding “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission.)

The Johnson administration also sought to portray critics of its Vietnam War policies as conspiracy nuts, at least when they were not portraying them as communist stooges. During 1968 Senate hearings on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara denounced the “monstrous insinuations” that the U.S. had sought to provoke a North Vietnamese attack and declared that it is “inconceivable that anyone even remotely familiar with our society and system of government could suspect the existence of a conspiracy” to take the nation to war on false pretenses. Three years later, the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers demolished the credibility of McNamara and other top Johnson administration officials who indeed dragged America into the Vietnam War on false pretenses.

Condemnations of conspiracy theories became a hallmark of the Clinton administration. In 1995, President Bill Clinton claimed that people who believed government threatened their constitutional right were deranged ingrates: “If you say that Government is in a conspiracy to take your freedom away, you are just plain wrong…. How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes!” The same year, the White House compiled a fevered 331-page report entitled “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce,” attacking magazines, think tanks, and others that had criticized President Clinton. In the following years, many of the organizations condemned in the White House report were targeted for IRS audits, including the Heritage Foundation and the American Spectator magazine and almost a dozen individual high-profile Clinton accusers, including Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers. Despite Clinton’s protestations that he posed no threat to freedom, even the ACLU admitted in 1998 that the Clinton administration had “engaged in surreptitious surveillance, such as wiretapping, on a far greater scale than ever before… The Administration is using scare tactics to acquire vast new powers to spy on all Americans.” MORE.

Pence said he’s ‘proud’ Congress certified Biden’s win on Jan. 6

Via The Hill

Former Vice President Mike Pence reiterated at a speech at the Reagan Library on Thursday he did not have the constitutional authority to stop the count of the electoral votes on Jan. 6.

“Now there are those in our party who believe that in my position as presiding officer over the joint session that I possess the authority to reject or return electoral votes certified by the states,” Pence said. “The Constitution provides the vice president with no such authority before the joint session of Congress.”

Some Republicans, including former President Trump, called for Pence to reject electoral votes on Jan. 6.

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“And the truth is, there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” Pence said. “And I will always be proud that we did our part on that tragic day to reconvene the Congress and fulfilled our duty under the Constitution.”

Pence has been rejected by some in his party due to his stance on the issue, and was recently heckled during a speech at a conservative conference.

Pence recently said he talks to Trump but “doesn’t know” if the two will “ever see eye to eye” about the Capitol riot. MORE.

WHO Official Says Mask Mandates & Social Distancing Should Continue Indefinitely

Via Zero Hedge

A top WHO official says that mask mandates and social distancing should continue indefinitely in order to protect against new variants of COVID-19.

The comments were made on Sky News by Special Envoy on Covid for the World Health Organisation (WHO). Dr David Nabarro.

Nabarro suggested that there would be a long list of mutations of the Indian variant which would in some cases evade the protection offered by vaccines.

“We will go from Delta to Lambda and then on to the other Greek letters, that’s inevitable, and some of these variants will be troublesome,” he said.

“I’m basically saying variants are going to go on coming. That’s part of life, we need to pick them up fast, we need to move quickly if we see them in a certain location, we need to build the management of variants into what we call our Covid-ready strategy, which is going to be the pattern for the foreseeable future,” he added.

According to Nabarro, mask mandates and social distancing need to remain in place for the foreseeable future “as part of our defence” against COVID, particularly in regions which have high infection rates.

As we highlighted earlier, England is set to drop all face mask rules on July 19 after it was revealed that they were having a massive negative impact on businesses and wiping billions off the economy.

Several government advisers have called for coronavirus restrictions to continue forever, not just to defend against COVID, but also to fight influenza. MORE.

UK to ban junk food advertising online and before 9pm on TV from 2023

Via The Guardian

The government is poised to announce a ban on junk food advertising online and before 9pm on TV from 2023, as Boris Johnson looks to deliver on his pledge to tackle the UK’s growing obesity crisis.

The new measures, which will be some of the toughest marketing restrictions in the world, will heavily impact the more than £600m spent by brands on all food advertising online and on TV annually.

The 9pm pre-watershed ban on advertising TV products deemed to be high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) could cost TV broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky more than £200m a year in revenue.

The online ad ban would affect all paid-for forms of digital marketing, from ads on Facebook to paid-search results on Google, text message promotions, and paid activity on sites such as Instagram and Twitter. It is estimated that more than £400m is spent on advertising food products online in the UK annually.

The tough rules, which are expected to be announced as soon as Thursday, follow Johnson changing his view on personal health decisions after his hospitalisation with coronavirus last year. The prime minister is said to blame his own health issues for contributing to his illness. Overweight people are at greater risk of severe illness or death from Covid. MORE.

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