“I strongly support free markets,” but this “corporate large-scale buying of residential homes seems to be distorting the market and making it harder for the average Texan to purchase a home,” Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote on X in March. He added, “This must be added to the legislative agenda to protect Texas families.” 

I strongly support free markets.

But this corporate large-scale buying of residential homes seems to be distorting the market and making it harder for the average Texan to purchase a home.

This must be added to the legislative agenda to protect Texas families. https://t.co/VBs6Rluh3K

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 15, 2024

Institutional ownership of single-family homes has surged in recent years, with many firms turning the bulk of these homes into rentals. This has triggered a massive uproar with some lawmakers who want to end Wall Street’s home-buying mania. 

The Wall Street Journal reports that several lawmakers in Nebraska, California, New York, Minnesota, and North Carolina have sponsored bills requiring large single-family hedge fund owners to dispose of their portfolios or risk hefty fines. 

The bill mentioned the most in the corporate press, called the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act, was introduced in the Senate by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley with companion legislation introduced in the House by Rep. Adam Smith. 

The Merkley/Smith bill could force hedge funds to divest their single-family home portfolios over the course of ten years. 

Lawmakers argue that “investors that have scooped up hundreds of thousands of houses to rent out are contributing to the dearth of homes for sale and driving up home prices,” according to WSJ, noting that limited housing supply has made housing unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans. 

Data from John Burns Research and Consulting shows that the share of institutional buying of single-family homes topped 25% in the first quarter—near a record high. The data goes back to 1Q16. 

Source: The Wall Street Journal 

Calls to block hedge funds from buying single-family homes predominantly come from Democrats, but some conservatives, such as Texas Gov. Abbott, also show support.  

In an election year, blocking hedge funds from buying single-family homes might be popular with middle-class and working-poor voters battered by the era of high inflation under failed Bidenomics. Many have been financially paralyzed in today’s economy, unable to afford a home, and stuck in a doom loop of renting and no savings with maxed-out credit cards. 

However, institutional investors have a different view of the bills being proposed by lawmakers. They’re overwhelmingly frustrated with signs that the government could step into a free market and break something. 

During a recent interview on Fox Business, Kevin O’Leary shared his stance on the proposed legislation.

“Very bad idea. Very bad policy when you try to manipulate markets or sources of capital,” O’Leary said, adding, “I don’t care if they’re Democrats or Republicans, whoever they are, stay out of the markets. Let the markets be the markets.”

The real problem isn’t the hedge funds but the Federal Reserve, which has distorted markets with record-low rates over the years. Great job, Yellen/Powell. 

Authored by Mustafa Ekin Turan via The Mises Institute,

If you have been using the internet for longer than a couple of years, you might have noticed that it used to be much “freer.”

What freer means in this context is that there was less censorship and less stringent rules regarding copyright violations on social media websites such as YouTube and Facebook (and consequently a wider array of content), search engines used to often show results from smaller websites, there were less “fact-checkers,” and there were (for better or for worse) less stringent guidelines for acceptable conduct. In the last ten years, the internet’s structure and environment have undergone radical changes. This has happened in many areas of the internet; however, this article will specifically focus on the changes in social media websites and search engines.

This article will argue that changes in European Union regulations regarding online platforms played an important role in shaping the structure of the internet to the way it is today and that further changes in EU policy that will be even more detrimental to freedom on the internet may be on the horizon.

Now that readers have an idea of what “change” is referring to, we should explain in detail which EU regulations played a part in bringing it about. The first important piece of regulation we will deal with is the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market that came out in 2019. Article 17 of this directive states that online content-sharing service platforms are liable for the copyrighted content that is posted on their websites if they do not have a license for said content. To be exempt from liability, the websites must show that they exerted their best efforts to ensure that copyrighted content does not get posted on their sites, cooperated expeditiously to take the content down if posted, and took measures to make sure the content does not get uploaded again. If these websites were ever in a place to be liable for even a significant minority of the content uploaded to them, the financial ramifications would be immense.

Due to this regulation, around the same period, YouTube and many other sites strengthened their policy regarding copyrighted content, and ever since then—sometimes rightfully, sometimes wrongfully—content creators have been complaining about their videos getting flagged for copyright violations.

Another EU regulation that is of note for our topic is the Digital Services Act that came out in 2023. The Digital Services Act is a regulation that defines very large online platforms and search engines as platform sites with more than forty-five million active monthly users and places specific burdens on these sites along with the regulatory burden that is eligible for all online platforms. The entirety of this act is too long to be discussed in this article; however, some of the most noteworthy points are as follows:

The EU Commission (the executive body of the EU) will work directly with very large online platforms to ensure that their terms of service are compatible with requirements regarding hate speech and disinformation as well as the additional requirements of the Digital Services Act. The EU Commission also has the power to directly influence the terms of conduct of these websites.

Very large online platforms and search engines have the obligation to ban and preemptively fight against and alter their recommendation systems to discriminate against many different types of content ranging from hate speech and discrimination to anything that might be deemed misinformation and disinformation.

These points should be concerning to anyone who uses the internet. The vagueness of terms such as “hate speech” and “disinformation” allows the EU to influence the recommendation algorithms and terms of service of these websites and to keep any content that goes against their “ideals” away from the spotlight or away from these websites entirely.

Even if the issues that are discussed here were entirely theoretical, it would still be prudent to be concerned about a centralized supragovernmental institution such as the EU having this much power regarding the internet and the websites we use every day. However, as with the banning of Russia Today from YouTube, which was due to allegations of disinformation and happened around the same time the EU placed sanctions on Russia Today, we can see that political considerations can and do lead to content being banned on these sites. We currently live in a world with an almost-infinite amount of information; due to this, it would be impossible for anyone or even any institution to sift through all the data surrounding any issue and to come up with a definitive “truth” on the subject, and this is assuming that said persons or institution is unbiased on the issue and approaching it in good faith, which is rarely the case.

All of us have ways of viewing the world that filter our understanding of issues even when we have the best intentions, not to mention the fact that supranational bodies such as the EU and the EU Commission have vested political incentives and are influenced by many lobbies, which may render their decisions regarding what is the “truth” and what is “disinformation” to be faulty at best and deliberately harmful at worst. All of this is to say that in general, none of us—not even the so-called experts—can claim to know everything regarding an issue enough to make a definitive statement as to what is true and what is disinformation, and this makes giving a centralized institution the power to constitute what the truth is a very dangerous thing.

The proponents of these EU regulations argue that bad-faith actors may use disinformation to deceive the public. There is obviously some truth in this; however, one could also argue that many different actors creating and arguing their own narrative with regard to what is happening around the world are preferable to a centralized institution controlling a unified narrative of what is to be considered the “truth.”

In my scenario, even if some people are “fooled” (even though to accurately consider people to be fooled, we would have to claim that we know the definitive truth regarding a multifaceted complex issue that can be viewed from many angles), the public will get to hear many narratives about what happened and can make up their own minds.

If this leads to people being fooled by bad-faith actors, it will never be the entirety of the population. Some people will be “fooled” by narrative A, some by narrative B, some by narrative C, and so forth. However, in the current case, if the EU is or ever becomes the bad-faith actor who uses its power to champion its own narrative for political purposes, it has the power to control and influence what the entirety of the public hears and believes with regard to an issue, and that is a much more dangerous scenario than the one that would occur if we simply let the so-called wars of information be waged. The concentration of power is something that we should always be concerned about, especially when it comes to power regarding information since information shapes what people believe, and what people believe changes everything.

Another important thing to note is that just because it is the EU that makes these regulations does not change the fact that it affects everyone in the world. After all, even if someone posts a video on YouTube from the United States or from Turkey, it will still face the same terms of service. Almost everyone in the world uses Google or Bing, and the EU has power over the recommendation algorithms of these search engines. This means that the EU has the power over what information most people see when they want to learn something from the internet. No centralized institution can be trusted with this much power.

One final issue of importance is the fact that the EU is investing in new technologies such as artificial intelligence programs to “tackle disinformation” and to check the veracity of content posted online. An important example of this is the InVID project, which is in its own words “a knowledge verification platform to detect emerging stories and assess the reliability of newsworthy video files and content spread via social media.”

If you are at all worried about the state of the internet as explained in this article, know that this potential development may lead to the EU doing all of the things described here in an even more “effective” manner in the future.

Tucked away in the $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan is a $3.5 billion slush fund to open new processing centers for Muslim migrants, in what Sen. Eric Schmitt described as a bid to “supercharge mass migration from the Middle East.“

Muslims pray during the “Islam on Capitol Hill 2009” event at the West Front Lawn of the US Capitol September 25, 2009, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Not only did the “Foreign Aid” package do nothing to secure our own border it included $3.5 Billion to supercharge mass migration from the Middle East. https://t.co/bsbYapsaE2

— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) April 24, 2024

And as Breitbart points out, the $95 billion package does not include any funds to help rebuild America’s border defenses against illegal migration – but it does contain $481 million to settle migrants in US cities, and of course, the $3.5 billion to expand migration programs worldwide.

The $3.5 billion was granted to the Department of State, which works with many international groups that feed and transport migrants on their way to the United States.

Biden’s deputies are now using the refugee programs as an adjunct to their diversity-expanding “equity” migration policy. For example, Biden’s deputies used the program in March to import 3,009 migrants from the safe and democratic countries of El Salvador and Guatemala.

They are also using the refugee funds to expand migration routes from many African and Muslim countries. In March, they pulled in 12,018 people from the Congo, plus 16,732 migrants from the Muslim countries of Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, and Eritrea, according to a report by Stacker.com. -Breitbart

Tucked into the folds of the new foreign aid package is $3.5 billion for mass immigration NGOs.

America Last Republicans voted to supercharge mass immigration while approving ZERO $$ for the U.S. border.

— Theo Wold (@RealTheoWold) April 25, 2024

According to an April 23 release from the Biden DHS visa-granting agency, “The Biden-Harris administration set the refugee admissions ceiling for fiscal year 2024 at 125,000 refugees,” adding “With the opening of the Doha Field Office on May 7, 2024, and the Ankara Field Office on May 9, 2024, USCIS will have 11 international field offices. Other international field offices include Beijing; Guangzhou, China; Guatemala City; Havana; Mexico City; Nairobi, Kenya; New Delhi; San Salvador, El Salvador; and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.”

So – we have the US government encouraging migration, both legal and illegal – which hurts low-income Americans the most, while neglecting to the borders. Seems we’ve learned nothing from Europe.

Authored by Stephen Katte via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Over 1,000 peaceful protesters gathered in Hamburg, Germany, over the weekend, with the leader of the group demanding the establishment of am Islamic caliphate in the European country.

Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate during the launch event rally for the SPD European elections campaign in Hamburg, Germany, on April 27, 2024. (Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images)

A caliphate is a political-religious form of government under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of the caliph or “successor of the prophet of God,” who is considered a high-ranking leader in the Muslim world.

According to local German media reports and German authorities, the protest was organized by a young man who leads a populist extremist group, Muslim Interaktiv. In several videos of the protest posted online, a speaker addressing a crowd can be heard describing the caliphate as a “system that provides security” that has been “demonized” by politicians and media in Germany. The crowd responded with cheer, and some with chants of “Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest).”

A social media account connected to the group shared multiple photos and posts of the protest, which it says was aimed at standing against the “demonization of all Islamic life in Germany.”

The organizers claim the rally was to protest against alleged Islamophobic policies of the German government and alleged media disinformation campaigns against Muslims in Germany while reporting on the unfolding Israel-Hamas war.

“We will raise our voices together, inshallah (if God wills it),” a post on X said. “Together against Islamophobic reporting, both in recent weeks and in recent months.”

Muslim Interaktiv Linked to Designated Terrorist Group

Germany’s Federal Criminal Intelligence Service, or BKA, and Hamburg’s security services claim Muslim Interaktiv is part of Hizb ut-Tahrir (‘Party of Liberation’), a global Salafi Islamist movement with the goal of uniting the world under an Islamic caliphate and implementing Sharia law.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was founded in Jerusalem in 1953, has been banned from operating in Germany since 2003. It is also banned in many Muslim-majority countries and faces resistance from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where it advocates for the re-establishment of a caliphate through non-military means, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The United Kingdom banned the group in January under its counterterrorism laws despite the group’s insistence it is a non-violent political party. Extremism analyst Ghaffar Hussain disagreed with the designation. But he warned a forum in January that, while he does not believe Hizb ut-Tahrir is a terrorist group as its ideology does not directly rally members to commit acts of violence, the ideology does spread violent and anti-Semitic rhetoric, and justifies and encourages violence and terrorism from other Islamist groups.

In his designation, UK Home Affairs Secretary James Cleverly cited risks of inciting violence and antisemitism during ceasefire protests for Gaza. The order designating them a terrorist organization makes belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir or inviting support for the group a criminal offense. Offenders can be hit with potential prison sentence time or a fine.

At the moment, there has been no suggestion that the Muslim Interaktiv’s demonstration in Germany broke the law, despite the Muslim Interaktiv group being classified by the intelligence services as extremist. In October 2023, shortly after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel and killed 1,200 people, Muslim Interaktiv held a similar protest that ended in clashes with police.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the left-wing Social Democratic Party said during an interview with local German media that police need to act if crimes are committed during political demonstrations.

“Seeing an Islamist demonstration of this kind on our streets is difficult to bear. It’s a good thing that the Hamburg police counteracted crime with a large presence,” she said.

“The red line at which Germany’s protection of the right of assembly and freedom of speech ended had to be clear. No terrorism propaganda for Hamas, no hate speech directed at Jews. If crimes like this occur, there has to be immediate and forceful intervention at demonstrations.”

Muslim Interaktiv followers are classed as “pop-Islamists,” and the increasing reach and influence among young people have been labeled as a concern by German authorities. According to Ms. Faeser, the group is being watched.

“Other groups that raise emotions, radicalize and recruit new Islamists are also being watched by our security authorities. This included the group at the Hamburg demonstration,” she said.

A sudden surge in Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russia’s vast energy industry materialized early last week (read here) and continued into the weekend (read here). To combat drone strikes on refineries and crude and or crude product storage tanks, “cope cages” have been installed to fortify at least one refinery against potential aerial threats. 

The proliferation of drones on the modern battlefield in Eastern Europe, more specifically in Ukraine, has been absolutely stunning to spectate over the last two years. From suicide drones taking out infantry troops on the first and second lines to Ukraine launching drone swarm attacks on Russia’s energy complex, warfare is forever changing. 

With that being said, military forces and even countries must adapt to this changing environment where drones and AI dominate the battlefield. And that’s why Russia is now installing anti-drone cages, known as “cope cages,” to protect these critical facilities that help fund Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. 

According to EurAsian Times: 

The latest development involves the installation of what is commonly referred to as a “cope cage” on a Russian oil facility, likely to fortify it against potential aerial threats. 

An image circulating on the internet on April 27 depicted Russian oil depots equipped with these anti-drone cages. 

Although specific details regarding the location of the fortified depot remain undisclosed, speculations suggest it might be under the ownership of the Slavyansk ECO Group, based on the logo painted on the oil depot.

X user Special Kherson Cat has posted an image of a Russian oil tank farm with anti-drone cages. 

The X user also posted several other images of Russian military machines with anti-drone cages. 

Russian armoured vehicle completely cowered with anti drone cages pic.twitter.com/690ezHbBvx

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 23, 2024

/5. Desertcross with anti-drone cage pic.twitter.com/SWqGQHy6Um

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 26, 2024

/3. Russian motorcycle with anti drone mesh, prepared to be used for assault missions on the front line. https://t.co/fVvrX2Nl4t pic.twitter.com/osot2aUDyF

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) April 23, 2024

It’s only a matter of time before US refineries and oil/nat gas storage facilities take the same proactive measures to boost security against evolving drone threats. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The UK government is updating the constitution of the National Health Service specifically to expunge the creeping effort to ‘transition’ medical language by radical gender ideologists.

The move is being taken to ensure hospitals use language that is medically accurate and based in biological science.

It means that terms such as ‘Chestfeeding’ as a replacement for breastfeeding will be effectively banned.

Referring to ‘people with ovaries’ instead of women will also no longer be considered acceptable.

The Telegraph reports that the Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins, is scheduled to announce the changes this week.

The NHS is to crack down on transgender ideology in hospitals, with terms like “chestfeeding” set to be bannedhttps://t.co/D09brjfRgs

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) April 28, 2024

The update will also prohibit biological men from being treated on single-sex female hospital wards in an effort to protect the “privacy and protection” of women and girls in hospitals.

Previously, biological men self identifying as transgender were able to be treated on women’s wards.

As we also previously highlighted, references to women were erased from NHS advice on the menopause, as well as cervical and ovarian cancer.

In addition, Midwives were mandated to use ‘gender-inclusive’ language and issued a list of ‘acceptable’ terms to use when addressing patients, including “mothers or birthing parents”, “breast/chestfeeding” and “maternal and parental.”

Instead of using the term “breastmilk”, they were asked to choose from “human milk” or “breast/chestmilk” or “milk from the feeding mother or parent.”

In 2022, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that just 29 of the 142 NHS hospitals in England with maternity units still exclusively use the words “woman” or “mother” to refer to pregnancy, while all the others include terms such as “birthing people” or “pregnant people.”

In February it was also revealed that an NHS hospital had claimed drug-induced ‘chestfeeding’ milk produced by biological men who identify as transgender is just as good as natural mother’s milk for babies.

The taxpayer-funded NHS was also found to be spending huge amounts of money asking patients, mostly elderly people, what gender they identify as.

The government changes are aimed at reversing all of this and ensuring it doesn’t happen with other NHS resources.

Maya Forstater, chief executive of the campaign group Sex Matters, described the move as a “major step” on the path to overturning “capitulation to the demands of gender extremists, which has damaged policies and practices, created widespread confusion and harmed patient care”.

The gender extremists are going down, hard 👏👏👏

— Watson (@ImWatson91) April 27, 2024

“These much-needed changes to the NHS constitution will help secure essential sex-based rights in healthcare across England,” she further asserted, adding “Clear language, single-sex wards and access to intimate care provided by a health professional of the same sex are crucial to the wellbeing and safety of female patients.”

“They should never have been compromised,” Forstater urged.

The development comes after the NHS banned puberty blockers ahead of a major review that concluded the drugs are potentially seriously harmful and the grounds on which they are being used not medically sound.

Last year it was revealed that the number of children placed on puberty blockers for ‘gender affirming care’ doubled in the UK in a year despite the government run body saying it would stop the practice outside of clinical trials.

Trans lobbyist groups, some of them government funded, continue to espouse the virtues of the drugs in their materials, which are being actively used inside schools.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Russia will soon showcase a parade of NATO vehicles captured from the battlefield in Ukraine. Or rather, we might say that Putin is about to show off his ‘trophy vehicles’.

A month-long exhibit displaying the Western military equipment will run starting May 1st at Moscow’s Victory Park, and which will be featured alongside the capital’s annual Red Square Victory Day Parade on May 9 which commemorates the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Via EPA/The Independent

The display will feature an array of armored fighting vehicles, including an American Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, a Swedish CV90 and a French-made AMX-10RC.

It will also include destroyed American tanks, per state media:

For the first time Russian troops have hauled a disabled US-made M1 Abrams tank away from the front line of the Ukraine conflict, the beginning of a journey that will eventually see the vehicle displayed at a trophy show in Moscow, officials have said.

German-made Leopard main battle tanks are also being transferred to the Russian capital to be put on display.

Russia’s defense ministry has listed that it additionally has examples of military equipment made in Australia, Austria, France, Finland, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden and South Africa – as cited in Newsweek.

Russian media sources have already begun releasing images and footage of the vehicles being staged ahead of the official event kick-off.

According to reports, some of the vehicles will even display American and British flags, highlighting that they were captured on the frontlines in Ukraine, in what appears to also be a PR effort to embarrass the Western military alliance.

Last year the Russian military released several videos and images of burning French-supplied main battle tanks from the Ukrainian battlefield. At that time Russian officials began to talk of taking “our trophies” – that is, captured and/or destroyed Western equipment that had previously been supplied to Kiev.

Russia’s military is busy hauling destroyed M1 Abrams tanks from the battlefield to Moscow:

RIA Novosti/Telegram

It appears Moscow is set to especially humiliate the US and UK this year, given both countries just passed huge amounts of extra aid, to be doled out over the coming year.

Throughout well over two years of conflict, Russia says it has destroyed dozens of West-supplied tanks and armored fighting vehicles…

German-made Leopard tank joins NATO trophy display in Moscow

Detailshttps://t.co/WQfIT7Uget pic.twitter.com/VFRsARYb1Y

— RT (@RT_com) April 28, 2024

Russia has since warned that as a consequence of Biden and US Congress authorizing $61 billion for Ukraine, its forces will have to push the frontlines back deeper into Ukraine, in order to make it harder for enemy missiles to reach inside Russian territory.

NATO TANKS BELONG IN MOSCOW MUSEUMS
– The billion dollars ‘failure’ comes from our pockets, while making millionaires in every western Govt. pic.twitter.com/vAa9ngwIcW

— Filipe Neves 🇵🇹 🇵🇸 (@_FilipeNeves) April 28, 2024

One commenter has summed up the sad reality of the situation: “The billion dollars ‘failure’ comes from our pockets, while making millionaires in every western Govt.”

Authored by John Cody via ReMix News,

The news about Alternative for Germany (AfD) MEP Maximilian Krah’s assistant and his arrest for suspected espionage on behalf of China continues to make national headlines, but as more information comes out, the more German intelligence and the political establishment continue to look worse and worse.

Now, news reports have revealed that Krah’s employee, Chinese-German national Jian G., worked for the German domestic intelligence service for years before joining the AfD politician.

Krah has since commented on the new bombshell information, writing on X:

“Remarkable turn of events!”

https://twitter.com/KrahMax/status/1783917894159458787

Much is at stake, as Krah is the top candidate for the AfD in the run-up to the EU parliamentary elections in June. The latest report shows that the powerful Office for the Protection of Constitution (BfV) not only recruited Jian G. as a spy, but also dropped him as an informant because there were concerns he was a double agent for China.

However, despite these suspicions, Jian G. gained German citizenship, became a member of the Social Democrats (SPD), and even passed the EU parliament’s security clearance.

Former minister Mathias Brodkorb questioned the story on X, writing:

They are really funny. Let’s assume the story is true:

1. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is working with the man.

2. Then, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution ends the collaboration because the man could be a double agent.

3. Then the German state naturalizes this agent.

Intermediate question: Where was the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at that time?

4. Then, Krah wants to hire the man as an employee of the EU parliament. That cannot be done without a security check. So the EU parliament should actually have asked the German security authorities whether there was anything against the man. But apparently they didn’t. Otherwise, the man would not have been cleared and could not have been hired.

Intermediate question: Where was the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at that time? And you are now seriously asking what the problem is? Seriously?

One of the main questions is why the Office for the Protection of the Constitution never informed Krah or the AfD about their suspicions, which is standard operating procedure, and one designed to protect the country’s parties from foreign infiltration. Notably, allowing Jian G. to work for Krah created a favorable political scenario for the establishment to later arrest him in order to smear the AfD. Notably, Jian G. was arrested right before EU parliamentary elections.

The question now is whether the BfV purposefully kept the AfD in the dark for years about the information it knew in order to damage the party.

Working for the BfV all the way back in 2007

According to Bild newspaper, Jian G. was an informant for the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) since 2007 at the earliest. Previously, he had unsuccessfully offered to work for the federal branch of the BfV, but he was rejected, and referred back to the Saxon branch of the BfV.

Jian G. reportedly worked with the intelligence service on his own initiative, including supplying information that dealt with Chinese state actors taking action against Chinese exiles in Germany. Eight years after joining the Saxon BfV as an informant, the Saxon branch was informed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution that G. could be a double spy.

In 2015 and 2016, G. was then directly observed by the counterintelligence department of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Officers also questioned him about their suspicions but were unable to prove that he was a spy for China. He was therefore listed as a “suspected case” during that period.

In 2018, G. was finally removed as an informant by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

However, by that time, Jian G. had already made contact with Krah and then went on to work as his employee in the EU parliament beginning in 2019. He was then intensively monitored by the domestic intelligence service from 2020 and finally arrested in April 2024.

As noted above, despite the suspicion of espionage, the Chinese national was granted a German passport, was also a member of the SPD for a time, and was able to pass the security check for the EU parliament.

In addition, the BfV under Thomas Haldenwang (CDU), who is notoriously anti-AfD and publicly working against the party, failed to inform Krah or the AfD about the suspicion of espionage against Jian G.

As Remix News has documented, Haldenwang has made numerous remarks against the AfD, including on state-funded television, all in violation of neutrality. Haldenwang belongs to the CDU party.

Notably, this is standard procedure in such cases, which means the Office for the Protection of the Constitution withheld this information from the AfD in violation of past precedent and procedure.

Read more here

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

We’ve all surely had dark thoughts that the CIA is really running the United States, including many media venues. Maybe that’s been true for decades and we just didn’t know it. If so, let’s just say that it would explain a tremendous amount of what has otherwise been clouded in secrecy.

How would this be possible? Knowledge is power while secret knowledge is full control. Even fake knowledge means power and control, such as we found out in the phony Russiagate investigation early in Trump’s term. They hounded the new administration for years under a completely fake scenario in which Russia somehow got Donald Trump elected.

Yes, that was an intelligence operation all along, one directly designed to overthrow an election, a “color revolution” on our own soil.

How dare an agency not elected by the people, and evading oversight and public accountability, put itself ahead of the Constitution and the rule of law? It’s been going on for many decades as the agencies have gained ever more power, even to the point of forcing a full lockdown of America and even the world under false pretense.

None of this is verifiable precisely because of the secrecy involved. It’s not as if the intelligence community is going to send out a press release: “Democracy in America is an illusion. We know because we control nearly everything, plus we aspire to control even more.”

The incredulous among us will shoot back: look at what you are saying! Your conspiracy theory is non-falsifiable. The less evidence you have for it, the more you believe it. How in the world can we argue with you? Your position is not really plausible but there is nothing we can do to convince you otherwise.

Let’s grant the point. Still, let’s not dismiss the theory completely. Based on a New York Times (NYT) piece that appeared last week, it contains more than a grain of truth. The article is titled: “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course.”

Quote: “Even as president, Donald J. Trump flaunted his animosity for intelligence officials, portraying them as part of a politicized ‘deep state’ out to get him. And since he left office, that distrust has grown into outright hostility, with potentially serious implications for national security should he be elected again.”

Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is?

Further, it is proven many times over that the Deep State is in fact out to get him. This is not even controversial. Indeed, there is no reason for these journalists to write the above as if Donald Trump is somehow consumed by some kind of baseless paranoia.

Let’s keep going here: “Trump is now on a possible collision course with the intelligence community …. The result is a complicated and possibly destabilizing situation the United States has never seen before: deep-seated suspicion and disdain on the part of a former and perhaps future president toward the very people he would be relying on for the most sensitive information he would need to perform his role if elected again.”

Wait just a moment. You are telling us that all previous presidents have had a happy relationship with the CIA? That’s rather interesting to know. And deeply troubling too, since the CIA has been managing regime change the world over for a very long time, and is now directly involved in U.S. politics at the most intimate level.

Any president worth his salt should absolutely have a hostile relationship with such an agency, if only to establish clear civilian control over the government, without which it’s not possible to say that we live in a Constitutional republic.

And now, according to the NYT, we have one seeking the Presidency who does not defer to the agency and that this is destabilizing and deeply problematic. Who does that suggest really rules this country?

Is the NYT itself guilty of the most extreme conspiracy theory imaginable, or is it just stating facts as we know them? I’m going to guess that it is the latter. In this case, every single American should be deeply alarmed.

Crazy huh? As for the phrase “never seen before,” we have to push back. What about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Calvin Coolidge? They were all previous presidents, according to the history books that people once read.

There was no CIA back then. If you doubt this, I’m pretty sure that your favorite AI engine will confirm it.

One must suppose that when the NYT says “never seen before,” it means in the post-war period. And that very well might be true. John F. Kennedy defied them. We know that for certain. The mysteries surrounding his murder won’t be solved fully until we get the documents. But the consensus is growing that this murder was really a coup by the CIA, a message sent as a lesson to every successor in that office.

Think of that: we live in a country today where most people readily admit that the CIA probably killed the president. Amazing.

It’s intriguing to know at this late date that the Watergate “scandal” was not what it appeared to be, namely an intrepid media holding government to account. Even astute observers at the time believed the mainstream narrative. Now we have plenty of evidence that this too was nothing but a deep state attack on a president who had lost patience with it and provoked another coup.

All credit to my brilliant father who speculated along these lines at the time. I was very young with only the vaguest clue about what was happening. But I recall very well that he was convinced that Richard Nixon was set up in a trap and unfairly hounded out of office not for the bad things he was doing but for standing up to the Deep State.

If my own father, not a particularly political person, knew this for certain at the time, this must have been a strong perception even then.

You hear the rap that these agencies—the CIA is one but there are many adjacent others—are not allowed by law to intervene in domestic politics. At this point and after so much experience, this comes across to me like something of a joke. We know from vast evidence and personal testimony that the CIA has been manipulating political figures, narratives, and outcomes for a very long time.

How involved is the CIA in journalism today? Well, as a traditionally liberal paper, you might suppose that the NYT itself would be highly skeptical of the CIA. But these days, they have published a long string of aggressively defensive articles with titles like “It Turns Out that the Deep State Is Awesome” and “Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe.” We can add this last piece to the list.

So let’s just say it: the NYT is CIA. So too is Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Slate, Salon, and many other mainstream publications, including major tech companies like Google and Microsoft. The tentacles are everywhere and ever more obvious. Operation Mockingbird was just the beginning. The network is everywhere and the practice of manipulating the news is wholly normalized.

Once you start developing the ability to see the markings, you simply cannot unsee them, which is why people who think and write about this can come across as crackpot crazy after a while.

Have you considered that maybe the crackpots are exactly right? If so, shouldn’t we, at bare minimum, seek to support a Presidential candidate with a hostile relationship to the intelligence community?

Indeed, that ought to be a bare minimum standard of qualification. There is simply no way we can restore civilian control of government and constitutional government until this agency can be thoroughly reigned in or abolished completely.

Just when you thought you’ve already witnessed a lifetime’s worth of examples of the government being excellent capital allocators with your tax money, one more shining example comes along. 

Last week it was reported that Washington Governor Jay Inslee has announced $45 million worth of subsidies that is going to allow “low income” families to purchase an electric vehicle. 

The initiative offers families the opportunity to receive financial assistance for either leasing or purchasing electric vehicles, with up to $9,000 allocated for leasing and $5,000 for purchasing, according to Must Read Alaska.

The program is open to individuals earning 300% or less of the federal poverty level and extends to both new and used EVs. Approximately 9,000 people can benefit from the grant, with the potential for either 9,000 individuals to opt for the $5,000 deal or 5,000 individuals for the $9,000 option.

“Washingtonians really get it when it comes to electric vehicles,” Inslee said at a press conference last week. 

Governor Inslee characterized the initiative as a means to “democratize EVs,” emphasizing a broader goal of advancing the electrification of transportation. He expressed optimism about widespread adoption, anticipating significant participation and benefit from the program.

However, the program has faced criticism, notably from Washington Policy Center Environmental Director Todd Myers. Myers contends that the subsidies fail to effectively curb carbon emissions and represent a misallocation of taxpayer funds that could be better utilized for other environmental priorities like (we swear we are not making this up) salmon recovery.

Hey Todd, two wrongs don’t make a right! But we digress. Despite the controversy, the grant funds are slated to become available to eligible low-income residents in August.

Myers wrote in a blog post: “This is one more example of how wasteful and ineffective Washington’s climate policy is.”

He continued: “It also reveals the disingenuousness of claiming that climate change is an ‘existential crisis’ while wasting tens of millions of dollars on projects that do nothing to address that crisis.”