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John Hopkins: U.S. deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19 - Peter Myers

(1) U.S. deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19 - John Hopkins(2) Johns Hopkins regrets publishing article that questioned Covid death rates(3) Social media censor dissenting views about COVID(4) Social Media "partnering with the intelligence community" - Max Parry  (1) U.S. deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19 - John Hopkinsarchive athttps://web.archive.org/web/20201126163323/https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19original at https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19By YANNI GU | November 22, 2020After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September.According to new data, the U.S. currently ranks first in total COVID-19 cases, new cases per day and deaths. Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master's degree program at Hopkins, critically analyzed the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in her webinar titled "COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data." From mid-March to mid-September, U.S. total deaths have reached 1.7 million, of which 200,000, or 12% of total deaths, are COVID ......snip... >... total deaths per age group and per cause of death in the U.S. and used this information to shed light on the effects of COVID-19.She explained that the significance of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths can be fully understood only through comparison to the number of total deaths in the United States.After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September, which includes the period from before COVID-19 was detected in the U.S. to after infection rates soared.Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same."The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals," Briand said.Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people's assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.This comes as a shock to many people. How is it that the data lie so far from our perception?To answer that question, Briand shifted her focus to the deaths per causes ranging from 2014 to 2020. There is a sudden increase in deaths in 2020 due to COVID-19. This is no surprise because COVID-19 emerged in the U.S. in early 2020, and thus COVID-19-related deaths increased drastically afterward.Analysis of deaths per cause in 2018 revealed that the pattern of seasonal increase in the total number of deaths is a result of the rise in deaths by all causes, with the top three being heart disease, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia."This is true every year. Every year in the U.S. when we observe the seasonal ups and downs, we have an increase of deaths due to all causes," Briand pointed out.When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.Graph depicts the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018.This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years. Interestingly, as depicted in the table below, the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19. This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19.Graph depicts the total decrease in deaths by various causes, including COVID-19.The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease."All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary," Briand concluded.In an interview with The News-Letter, Briand addressed the question of whether COVID-19 deaths can be called misleading since the infection might have exacerbated and even led to deaths by other underlying diseases."If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn't give us a choice but to point to some misclassification," Briand replied.In other words, the effect of COVID-19 on deaths in the U.S. is considered problematic only when it increases the total number of deaths or the true death burden by a significant amount in addition to the expected deaths by other causes. Since the crude number of total deaths by all causes before and after COVID-19 has stayed the same, one can hardly say, in Briand's view, that COVID-19 deaths are concerning.Briand also mentioned that more research and data are needed to truly decipher the effect of COVID-19 on deaths in the United States.Throughout the talk, Briand constantly emphasized that although COVID-19 is a serious national and global problem, she also stressed that society should never lose focus of the bigger picture — death in general.The death of a loved one, from COVID-19 or from other causes, is always tragic, Briand explained. Each life is equally important and we should be reminded that even during a global pandemic we should not forget about the tragic loss of lives from other causes.According to Briand, the over-exaggeration of the COVID-19 death number may be due to the constant emphasis on COVID-19-related deaths and the habitual overlooking of deaths by other natural causes in society.During an interview with The News-Letter after the event, Poorna Dharmasena, a master's candidate in Applied Economics, expressed his opinion about Briand's concluding remarks."At the end of the day, it's still a deadly virus. And over-exaggeration or not, to a certain degree, is irrelevant," Dharmasena said.When asked whether the public should be informed about this exaggeration in death numbers, Dharmasena stated that people have a right to know the truth. However, COVID-19 should still continuously be treated as a deadly disease to safeguard the vulnerable population.(2) Johns Hopkins regrets publishing article that questioned covid death rateshttps://www.worldtribune.com/johns-hopkins-regrets-publishing-article-that-questioned-covid-death-rates/by WorldTribune Staff, November 30, 2020Johns Hopkins University on Nov. 22 published a now-retracted article which stated there is no evidence the coronavirus has contributed to any excess deaths in the United States.A study by Genevieve Briand, the assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Johns Hopkins, determined that there were 1.7 million deaths in the U.S. between March 2020 and September 2020, of which 12 percent (or roughly 200,000) were "coronavirus-related."Briand wrote that the data shows that coronavirus deaths are being over-exaggerated. After seeing that coronavirus-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart disease — the leading cause of death in the U.S. for many years prior — Briand noted that she began to suspect that covid death toll numbers may be misleading.Briand found that "the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19.""If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some misclassification," Briand wrote."All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary," Briand wrote.The study used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).The following data comes from the CDC:In 2019, total U.S. deaths were 2,855,000, a 1.12 percent increase from the previous year.In 2020, as of Nov. 14, there were 2,512,880 total deaths in the U.S. That number indicates a 1.12 percent increase in overall mortality rates from 2019.Going back further, according to the CDC numbers, 2018 saw a 1.22 percent increase in mortality rates, 2017 saw a 1.24 percent increase, 2016 a 1.27 percent increase, 2015 a 1.27 percent increase, and 2014 a 1.29 percent increase. All exceed 2020’s increase in mortality rates.According to Briand, who compared the total deaths per age category from both before and after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the death rate of older people stayed the same before and after the virus."The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals," wrote Briand.She also noted that between 50,000 and 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after the emergence of the virus, meaning that, according to her analysis, coronavirus has had no effect on the percentage of total deaths of older people, nor has it increased the total number of deaths in the category."These results contradict the way most people see the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately affects the elderly population," Sophie Mann wrote for Just the News on Nov. 27.Several days after removing the article, Johns Hopkins University tweeted that it was retracted because "the article was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic."(3) Social media censor dissenting views about COVIDhttps://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/slanted-sharyl-attkisson-censorship/11/27/20'How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship, Hate Journalism'Social media platforms are openly censoring dissenting views about COVID, particularly its origin and treatment, says author Sharyl Attkisson in her new book on media bias and the deterioration of objective journalism.By Dr. Joseph MercolaIn the 1950s, the CIA ran a covert campaign called "Operation Mockingbird," in which they recruited journalists as assets to spread propaganda, and while the campaign officially ended in the 1970s, evidence suggests the project never really stopped.In her book, "Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism," Sharyl Attkisson addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time: media bias and the deterioration of objective journalism.Multinational industries, and the drug industry in particular, also wield powerful influence over content relating to their particular interests. As drug advertising became a major income stream for media companies, their reporting on health and medicine became increasingly biased.Big Tech companies are also masters of censoring anything that might hurt themselves or their technocratic allies.In terms of health, COVID-19 reporting has taken censorship and media manipulation to brand-new heights. All social media platforms are openly censoring dissenting views about the virus, particularly its origin and treatment. Even lauded doctors and scientists have been axed for speaking against the desired narrative dictated by the World Health Organization.Sharyl Attkisson is an award-winning investigative journalist with uncompromising integrity. Her latest book, "Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism," was released Nov. 24.In this, her third book, she addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time: media bias and the deterioration of objective journalism — a topic on which she has first-hand experience.A former anchor at CNN and CBS News, Attkisson now produces her own Sunday television news program, "Full Measure," as well as two podcasts: "Full Measure After Hours" and "The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast," in which she covers the kinds of stories that mainstream news no longer touches.Slanted mediaPropaganda through media certainly isn't a new thing. Starting in the late 1940s, the CIA ran a well-documented but at the time covert campaign called "Operation Mockingbird," in which they recruited journalists as assets to spread propaganda — news slanted in one way or another. While the program is always referred to in the past tense, as it is said to have been ended in the 1970s, evidence suggests it never really stopped."There are all kinds of ways the Intel community has, and can, manipulate the news," Attkisson says, "but we reached a new level in 2016, 2017, because they don't even have to whisper in our ear to get us to report stuff. We hired them. Meaning, Brennan, Clapper, Comey — all of them were hired as consultants. They were invited on the news directly."You didn't have to put them through a filter and anonymous sources, although plenty of anonymous sources were also used. But daily putting forth their propaganda, much of which, obviously, was proven false, particularly on the Trump, Russia narrative."But every day, we allowed them to plaster the airwaves, even after they were proven admittedly wrong … After two years of spewing this false information, they're still consulted by the media. They're still used. So, it's so easy for an intel operation if they wish to use the media towards whatever goal they may have …"I firmly believe that there have been ongoing [propaganda] campaigns that continue today. Maybe separate operations by intelligence agencies and officials to manipulate the news, and certainly have things reported a certain way to try to push for certain outcomes in politics here at home and internationally."Big industry also influences the newsMultinational industries, the drug industry in particular, also has a similar level of influence over content relating to their particular interests. In 1996, direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized, and as drug advertising became a major income stream for media companies, their reporting on health and medicine became increasingly biased.The reason is simple. They cannot afford to "bite the hand that feeds them." If an advertiser doesn't want the public to know about a particular finding, all they have to do to influence the reporting is to threaten to withdraw its advertising, which will hurt the media company's bottom line.Drug companies have also become major sponsors of medical education; thus, doctors are taught to prescribe drugs for all ills, but they're not taught about the side effects and drawbacks of those drugs.Today, the drug industry also controls fact-checking organizations such as NewsGuard, as it is funded by Publicis, which is supported by drug companies. When feeding from the Big Pharma trough, how could they possibly be objective in their fact-checking? Reality shows us they can't because they aren't.Big tech — master manipulators of mindsBig Tech companies, of course, are also masters of censoring anything that might hurt themselves or their technocratic allies. As just one of countless examples, you can no longer post a link to Mercola.com on Twitter.First, they added a false warning that made it look like my site contained dangerous malware when readers would click on a posted link. After a while, they simply blocked the ability to post links to our site altogether."This started, and I traced this in my second book, 'The Smear,' to Media Matters … the left-wing propaganda group that supported Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and is a big smear organization," Attkisson says.  "They acknowledged going to Facebook about the time when they were worried that Donald Trump was going to get elected."They really felt that the only thing giving him a leg up, and they still believe this today, is his social media outreach. They tried to think of a way to control, with the kind of social media and news people could get, so Media Matters lobbied Facebook and tried to convince them — and did so successfully — to taking a fact-checking brand-new role that nobody had ever asked for."We're not begging for our information to be curated. That was a pretend demand created by the propagandists who wanted to control the information. They had to make us think that we needed a third party to step in and tell us what to think and sort through the information … The fake news effort, the fact-checking, which is usually fake fact-checking, meaning it's not a genuine effort, is a propaganda effort …"We've seen it explode as we come into the 2020 election, for much the same reason, whereby, the social media companies, third parties, academic institutions and NewsGuard … they insert themselves. But of course, they're all backed by certain money and special interests. They're no more in a position to fact-check than an ordinary person walking on the street …"They have interests. They make sure certain things are not seen, even if true. And I think this is the most serious threat that I'm looking at right now to our media environment."I'm afraid that our kids will be telling their kids of a time when you used to be able to go on the internet and find most, any, information you wanted, because we are increasingly being pointed only to that which they, people who control the information, wish for us to see."Presidential treatment takes on a new meaningIn her book, Attkisson also spends an entire chapter dissecting the highly-biased treatment of President Trump, and how the media have, through their own admission, suspended traditional journalistic ethics simply because they consider him "uniquely dangerous.""Therefore, you don't have to follow the normal rules and guidelines when it comes to fair and accurate reporting, which I think is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard in my life, from someone in our profession, because the standards exist precisely so that we report on everybody the same way," she says."In other words, using the same standards, whether we like them or not. Particularly, perhaps, if we don't like or agree with the candidate — that's when the standards become most important. But you need only look at Politico, for example, during the last election."I interviewed them shortly afterwards. Someone in charge of some of their coverage … in almost every answer to a question, she brought up President Trump and something negative about him."One of the things she said was how many lies he tells per minute. She said, 'We actually had a team that calculated the number of lies per minute that President Trump told.' And I asked the obvious question, 'Well, what was that compared to Hillary's supposed lies per minute?' And she actually said, 'Oh, we didn't have the staffing to do Hillary too.'""Can you imagine a national news organization that purports to cover something fairly and we'll fact-check the lies per minute of one candidate and not the opposing candidate and pretend that that qualifies as fair news?"I also interviewed some noted liberals who have noticed the same thing: That they look at things from a fair-minded viewpoint and are no fan of President Trump, yet are appalled at how the media has dishonestly treated certain topics and information, which should make everybody wonder, "Are we getting the truth when it comes to things that don't have to do with President Trump?"If the media can report so many things out of context and incorrectly when it comes to somebody they don't like, what else are we getting that's not in context or that's not fully true?'"The invention of lyingPrior to President Trump, virtually no one in the media would accuse someone of lying. The standard was to question an individual's statement or point out a discrepancy to another source, but not call it an outright lie, because it's easy to get confused on specifics. A lie is a very specific allegation that implies an intent to deceive. Just because you misremember a fact doesn't mean you lied. [...]"But there was a turn taken, specifically, to target President Trump, whereby the media started frequently calling things that he said, lies — even when there was simply something that was a matter of opinion, or could not be proven, or a mistake, none of which are lies."The New York Times was proud of this when it did it. And I recount in the book the first time they made a headline where they talked about President Trump lying, and how that was cheered on by others in the media who then followed suit."They were even cheered on by a journalism professor who wrote a big op-ed about how it was time to stop doing this objective reporting and that we needed to call out President Trump's lies frequently and often. It's just, again, from a journalistic standpoint, ridiculous … I think this is a new and dangerous tactic that has really destroyed our objectivity in the eyes of the public. And rightly so." [...](4) Social Media "partnering with the intelligence community" - Max Parryhttps://off-guardian.org/2020/11/26/us-election-a-color-revolution-comes-home-to-roost/Nov 26, 2020  211US Election: A Color Revolution 'Comes Home to Roost'Max ParryIt has been more than three weeks since election day and the incumbent US president still has yet to concede defeat. Despite the media's distraction over the perspiration of his personal attorney during a bizarre press conference, the legal team led by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has actually done a decent job uncovering potential fraud in battleground states, where vote counting was delayed for several days before the former vice president was declared a "winner" by the news media and Silicon Valley.Unfortunately, the 2020 election is not a sporting event or academic paper, therefore evidence that instances of fraud occurred will likely not be enough for the litigation to change the outcome, though it does appear his camp is finally facing up to leaving the White House come January. Then again, whether or not burden of proof was ever provided is immaterial, seeing as before he even took the oath of office a silent coup was underway to remove the democratically-elected government of Donald J. Trump that is now entering its final phase.Trump found an unlikely voice of support contesting Biden's premature declaration of victory in former six-term Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, who this time was the running mate of former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura as a write-in entrant in some eligible states for the divided Greens who officially nominated labor activist Howie Hawkins.During the 2016 election, the Democrats scapegoated Jill Stein for Hillary Clinton's unexpected loss, even baselessly implicating the Green Party nominee in the Russiagate hoax simply for having appeared at a 2015 Moscow gala for the RT television network where General Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin were in attendance.Not only did the legislatures of swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin exclude Hawkins from the ballot at the behest of Democrats in a shameless act of voter suppression, but McKinney described the irregularities which plagued electronic voting machines in her home state of Georgia in 2020 as "déjà vu", having been cheated out of Congress herself by such tactics in 2006.McKinney also previously penned an essay entitled The Purple Revolution: US Hybrid Warfare Comes Home to Roost? on the establishment's efforts to remove Trump which makes an apropos historical reference.This November 22nd marked fifty-seven years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. When asked for his reaction to the killing of the 35th president in Dallas back in 1963 and less than two years before his own public murder, civil rights leader Malcolm X famously stated that "chickens were coming home to roost", alluding to the US government's interventions overseas such as the CIA-orchestrated assassination of the first Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, in 1960 following its independence from Belgian colonial rule.His remarks in the wake of a national tragedy proved too controversial even for the Nation of Islam which publicly censured its most recognizable minister who would announce his departure from the black nationalist organization a few months later. The following year, he would be gunned down in Harlem in an assassination long-suspected to have been the work of the FBI's counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) which had infiltrated his inner circle to frame the NOI for a mysterious death equally thought by the public to have been a state-sanctioned execution like that of JFK.It is unclear whether the African-American Muslim leader believed the US government was behind Kennedy's death, but chances are he was not naïve enough to think that the same machinations used abroad could not be implemented by those very forces domestically to remove someone elected by the American people they opposed. If the Kennedy assassination was indeed a result of the "unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex" which his predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower even famously warned of during his farewell address, what took place was almost certainly a secret putsch.President Kennedy had already been undercut by his own Joint Chiefs of Staff and Central Intelligence Agency in trying to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis and his back-channel negotiations with Nikita Khrushchev were sabotaged by hawkish officials within his own administration. The internal struggle that scuttled Kennedy's attempts at détente parallels the vying factions which undermined Trump's diplomacy with North Korea to a near tee.Political scientist Michael Parenti explained in his essay The JFK Assassination: Defending the Gangster State how the 35th president was targeted by the security state which perceived Kennedy as "soft on communism" and placating the Soviet Union in his diplomatic efforts following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion:The dirty truth is that Kennedy was heartily hated by right-wing forces in this country, including many powerful people in the intelligence organizations. He had betrayed the national interest as they defined it, by refusing to go all out against Cuba, making overtures of rapproachment with Castro, and refusing to escalate the ground war in Vietnam. They also saw him as an anti-business liberal who was taking the country down the wrong path. Whether Kennedy really was all that liberal is another matter. What the national security rightists saw him to be was what counted.While the widely perceived truth about the JFK assassination remains sealed from public view, the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commissions of the 1970s exposed the numerous CIA-backed juntas which unseated popular leaders in Guatemala, Syria, Iran, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Brazil, Indonesia, Chile, and countless other nations in the global south.Ever since, the CIA's preferred regime change stratagem has been to use what are paradoxically labelled "non-governmental organizations" (NGOs) — which actually receive US government funding — as cutouts to destabilize noncompliant nations under the guise of supporting "pro-democracy" opposition movements. During the Cold War, the vast majority of states overthrown were left-leaning or socialist governments aligned with the Eastern Bloc, but in the post-Soviet world many of the toppled administrations have been far from left-wing and even conservative, with their only offense favoring economic ties with Russia or China and resisting Western hegemony.Similarly, when domestic protest movements have taken shape at home in the US, the political establishment has used plutocratic foundations in Big Philanthropy and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex to defang them for its own agenda. Look no further than the way the nationwide mass demonstrations against racism and police brutality this year were rapidly transformed into a movement to elect Joe Biden, who drafted the senate version of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, with no substantial legislation passed to reform police.The corporatized Black Lives Matter movement, a recipient of $100 million dollar grants from the CIA's philanthropic frontage in the Ford Foundation, grew out of the legacy of the short-lived Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 which itself were coopted by reformist and pro-Democratic Party outfits.Not coincidentally, OWS was also infiltrated by Serbian political activist Sr?a Popovic´ of Otpor! ("Resistance!") and the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) fame who previously led the Bulldozer Revolution which overthrew Yugoslav President Slobodan Milos?evic´ in 2000.A central component of the Gene Sharp-inspired 'Color Revolution' template is the engineering of contested election scenarios where leaders singled-out for regime change can be ousted after appearing to consolidate power, as seen in election-themed revolutions in Serbia (Bulldozer), Georgia (Rose), Ukraine (Orange), Kyrgyzstan (Tulip), Moldova (Grape), and other countries.The same manner in which Biden declared himself the victor in spite of the lawsuits filed in federal court was recently observed abroad in the disputed election aftermath in Belarus where US-backed opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya announced herself the winner of its presidential contest in order to spark preplanned protests in Minsk against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. This was a replication of an unsuccessful blueprint from the 2009 Green Movement unrest in Iran during the incumbency of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the presidential crisis in Venezuela last year, among others.Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared to be confused when he alleged that the e-voting irregularities involving the election software company Dominion Voting Systems had ties to deceased former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and international financier George Soros, who actually supports the US-backed opposition to the Chavista government in Caracas.Giuliani may be mistaken but is pointing to something accurate, except in the contested US election his client is in the position of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro while Biden would be the equivalent of self-appointed "interim president" Juan Guaidó. Sans a few exceptions such as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who certainly knows a rigged contest when he sees one), most of the "international community" congratulated Biden on his assumed win just like Venezuela's illegitimate coup leader.Meanwhile, both the pseudo-left and conservative right seem to be equally misunderstood about Soros, who is neither the charitable billionaire or "globalist" bogeyman they imagine, but rather an anti-communist business tycoon who favors vulture capitalism and Western imperialism under the banner of liberal democracy.As touched on by Cynthia McKinney, in the aftermath of Trump's shocking triumph over Hillary Clinton in 2016, rumors began to swirl that a Soros-funded US 'Color Revolution' was in the works — a 'Purple Revolution', monikered after the noticeable shade Mrs. Clinton chose to don in her concession speech as a combination of blue and red intended to symbolize bipartisan opposition to Trump.Whether or not that was true, it was in the wee hours following her loss that the Clinton campaign reportedly settled on placing the blame at the feet of unproven Russian interference for Trump's unlikely victory.Or was it even earlier?Recently declassified CIA memorandums proved that months before the election in July 2016, Clinton had orchestrated a plan to whip up a smear campaign tying Trump to the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee email server. The documents also showed beyond a doubt how the Russia probe was launched even though both the FBI and CIA were privy to Clinton's intent on linking Trump with the Kremlin.The three-year Russia investigation and subsequent impeachment over the Ukraine scandal were only the beginning chapters in the slow-motion soft coup against Trump. When all else failed, the US elite began to prepare for his ouster in the 2020 election. In fact, the possibility of a second Trump term was evidently too much of a nightmare for the establishment to even fathom, so they only prepared for his defeat and presupposed refusal to relinquish power instead.Quite literally, an exclusive cabal of Washington insiders, establishment Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans were gathered by a former high-ranking Pentagon official, Nils Gilman, to participate in role-playing "election simulation" scenarios and tabletop "war game" exercises predicting various election outcomes which anticipated that Trump would resist acknowledging defeat and transferring power, precipitating a constitutional crisis. It was called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) and featured Clintonites John Podesta and Donna Brazile, who were joined by prominent neoconservative figures William Kristol, Max Boot, and the former George W. Bush speechwriter who coined the "Axis of Evil" phrase, war criminal David Frum.Bill Kristol, Max Boot, David FrumMost telling is that among the scenarios considered, even in the postulated drill where the premise was a decisive victory for Trump, TIP determined that Biden should ignore the vote result and consider any measures necessary to attain the presidency, including provoking a constitutional crisis and possible civil war where Democratic-held states would be encouraged to secede from the Union, the electoral college abolished, and statehood awarded to Washington DC and Puerto Rico.Upon reading the TIP report, it is clear that the real purpose of the bipartisan exercise was to mastermind the very disputed election outcome and concentration of power it predicts would be triggered by Trump. It is also possible that the project enlisted mass media in its scheme.Just weeks before Election Day, a highly-publicized scandal broke at The New Yorker magazine after staff writer and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin accidentally exposed himself during a Zoom video meeting with fellow employees. Many were too amused to notice the online conference call was revealed to be an "election simulation" featuring top columnists of the publication role-playing as participants.It would not be out of the realm of possibility given the unprecedented extent to which corporate outlets and Big Tech companies have gone to influence the outcome of the election. Even those within legacy media such as The New York Post, one of the oldest newspapers in the United States, found itself censored by Twitter for publishing an explosive story which contained emails from Hunter Biden's laptop of which not even the former vice president's campaign denied the authenticity.When Trump delivered a press conference outlining his campaign's allegations of election fraud, major news outlets not only made the Orwellian decision to "fact check" Trump live on-air but cut away from the speech in the middle of his remarks in coordinated unison. Then when the president's own social media posts were censored and flagged as disinformation, the jig was truly up.It's little wonder Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg openly bragged about how the platform was "partnering with the intelligence community" for censorship to be a soft power arm after the 2016 election.Lo and behold, rather than being broken up for violating anti-trust laws, Silicon Valley has already been rewarded for staying true to its roots in the national security state by Biden's transition team which consists of executives from Airbnb, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Dell, DropBox, Microsoft's LinkedIn, Lyft, Stripe and Uber.Can it really be that Trump is so hated because of his rejection of certain foreign policy orthodoxies like JFK alone? The truth is really so much more. It is because of his inclination to disgrace Washington's sacred institutions for his own political gain which the entire establishment desperately needs to maintain the faith of the masses in its corrupt political system, rogue national security state, yellow press, and obsolete democratic process.It is imperative to preserve these bureaucratic cornerstones as above criticism because they are a linchpin to holding power. As a political outsider, Trump blazed his own trail to the presidency and in doing so undermined the hallowed bastions of power in Washington, promising to "drain the swamp" while eroding faith in the leading US spy agencies as an unelected secret government or "deep state", and most of all denouncing corporate media as "fake news" and the "enemy of the people." Even though these were accuracies cynically told by Trump for his own advantage, they were misunderstood by his detractors to be falsehoods simply because he was the source.Trump's populist agitation even worried his own group of backers within the ruling elite who convinced him to soften his rhetoric and reverse many of his positions once he took office. Since the 2020 election has not resulted in a desirable outcome, he has only continued to increase popular distrust of the political order and its mechanisms which guarantee the status quo overrides the will of the people, signaling he is more than willing to take the whole system down with him.Indeed, polls indicate many Americans seem to agree with the president that the election was rigged in Biden's favor. This is precisely why his rabble-rousing is viewed as dangerous by the elite which unleashed its media organs and intelligence agencies from day one to sabotage him — they knew that he is willing to lay bare the full corruption of the powers that be in order to help his own cause. For this reason, the media has resorted to the most deceitful and partisan methods to portray Trump as a unique danger that most be ousted at any cost.It is no wonder how a coalition as incongruous as that behind Biden came into formation, from Lincoln Project "Never Trumper" Republicans to the Democratic Socialists of America, Big Tech monopolies to Black Lives Matter, Wall Street megadonors to the remnants of Occupy Wall Street, Bush-era national security officials to the inappropriately-named Revolutionary Communist Party (Refuse Fascism), and so on.Or to really give an idea of just how absurd the ideological alliance was to ensure a Biden presidency, the Transition Integrity Project was even shamefully promoted by the likes of so-called "progressive" news outlets like Democracy Now! which made its journalistic name critically covering the very neoconservative figures from the Bush years behind TIP.Somehow, those in power managed to persuade the "anti-establishment" to side with them against the bad orange man as the supposed greater evil, tricking them into defending institutions they should oppose as inviolable and the archaic US electoral system which deprives them of real democracy as unimpeachable. This is the real legacy of the Trump era — only time will tell if it is its lesson.Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at maxrparry@live.com