No President in the history of the United States has achieved as much in his first three years in his first term in office as President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, no President in the history of America has been subjected to such incessant vile and unjustified attacks as President Trump.

We are making America stronger, prouder, and greater than ever before.” President Donald J. Trump

Why? Because he believes in American exceptionalism, not globalism.

“Make America Great Again.” Just a slogan, the people of failure shout back. The Obama/Biden team had failed us for eight years in every aspect of our lives. To the leftists, failure is not only typical; it is expected. Since Donald Trump announced his candidacy, the Democrats have launched one failed hoax after another in an attempt to end his political career.

The list of their failures for the previous administration is so long and glaring that I hardly need to repeat all of them here. Under the previous administration, once well-paid manufacturing jobs had disappeared and were relocated to other countries. President Trump managed to reverse this trend and brought back many manufacturing jobs. Before President Trump was at the helm, vast swaths of this nation, from northern New York to the great states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and many others, previously vibrant manufacturing regions, looked like ghost towns but now have come back and people are optimistic about the future of this country.

“During a PBS town hall, Obama referenced Trump’s promise to bring back jobs to the United States when talking about manufacturing.

“Well, how exactly are you going to do that? What exactly are you going to do? There’s no answer to it,” Obama said.

“He just said, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, what, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have?”

If I may, on President Trump’s behalf, allow me to respond to the former President:

“Mr. Obama, I wake up every morning and see a winner. Every day of my life, a winner has looked back at me from the mirror with a smile, encouraging me to go out there and have another winning day.

“And I do that. And I am doing the same thing for our country. My wand is made of people. I can lead people to do miraculous feats. I’ve done it all my life, and after three years in office, I have done it again, and that’s just the beginning. Before America hired me, I had built some of the most magnificent buildings in the world through the combined efforts of tens of thousands of talented people. These men and women each brought their skill and energy to their jobs. They worked for living wages, that’s for sure. But they didn’t go through the motions only to get a paycheck. They worked their best and hardest because they contributed to building something beautiful. These men and women felt the priceless joy of working for something that no money can buy, the pride of being in a team of winners accomplishing greatly challenging tasks.”

“Now, the winner who looked at me in the mirror and asked me to do the same exact thing for our country. This time with a team of millions of competent men and women lining up to build a better America while seeking a better life for themselves and their children. This is how I have accomplished and brought back so many businesses and manufacturing jobs to our country. Something you failed to do.”

President Trump won against them. Why? Because the American people want a leader who believes in them and believes in America. A leader who is willing and able to end the corrupt decay of Washington, D. C. The American people are sick and tired of letting a band of losers give away the store and what’s left of it.

Although the Obama/Biden and Biden/ Kamala Harris team made a wreck of our country, they have done very well for themselves personally, and I mean hugely well.

Strange as it may seem, the above paragraphs may tell us something important about the motivation of Donald Trump to “Make America Great Again.” His monumental egotism should be viewed with the above ideas in mind. This would have been readily understood by Alexander Hamilton, whose founding of the First National Bank and his famous “Report on Manufactures” established him as the father of American capitalism.

Despite the fact that Trump’s White House and government were stacked with progressive liberals/Obama holdovers/Muslim apologists, and Muslim brotherhood career workers, President Trump still managed to reverse the disastrous course of Obama/ Biden and has made America great for every man, woman, and child of every race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and all other variations.

Unfortunately, in a shocking turn of events that had left the nation reeling, the American people were robbed of their rightful choice for leadership. Trump’s impressive victory was a reward for his tireless commitment to serving the American people. It was also the crowning achievement of an unprecedented campaign whose brilliance and high tone demonstrated the vitality of our Constitutional Republic to the entire world while keeping them spellbound.

Our responsibility as Americans to Keep America Great is to reelect President Trump, who selflessly has sacrificed his comfortable life for the sake of America and the American people.

The post Donald Trump’s America appeared first on Granite Grok.

I’ve been pondering a foray into the Green Mountain State for a few years but was burdened by the same issues with other expansions. People promising to write about local stuff and it happening regularly are very different things. They mean well, but I get it.

Writing comes easily for some, while most folks have other skill sets. They want to write, but sitting down to do it is torture. It’s a waste of their time and resources. They can participate in the fight for liberty in other ways. Adding a digital presence in Vermont was on the bucket list but until this past week untenable.

At the end of last week, True North Reports (TNR) announced that it would no longer add new content. That would leave several capable writers without that page to land on, so I started reaching out. We can count on a few of TNR’s regular contributors to provide content to VermontGrok.

It’s Time

I’ve been throwing down my fair share of words about Vermont. We’ve got a ‘Grok author who lives there. We’ve got a pair of TNR writers ready to pitch in, but will anyone else in Vermont volunteer to write state and local stories for its pages? I think we can attract a few more, add local op-eds published as we do here on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River, and with the added reach GraniteGrok, boom!

We’re doing this!

Not long from now, a New Grok will appear as a link in the header of every page. It will be part of GraniteGrok as we do our best to fill some of the void left by TNR.

And …

At some point, much as we have in New Hampshire, we intend to Dominate the Political Bandwidth in Vermont.

 

This is not the final proof, but I was fooling around with it and liked where it was going. We’ll unveil the real thing on opening day.

A Thing Worth Doing

We ask our readers to support independent media, and we practice what we preach – and my trying to go full-time with your help makes this leap tenable.

While not the only option, TNR was an important part of the other side of Vermont’s media landscape. Vermonters lose a step without alternative content or opinion on the day’s issues, culture, and news. We’re not going to allow that to happen. And what better day than Independence Day to announce it?

We’d also like to welcome all of TNR’s readers and commenters. Yes, we allow comments. You will need to sign up for DISQUS (sorry), but that’s what we’ve been using for more years than I can count. We don’t brook trolls, foul language, implied threats, or violent language against anyone, but everything else is on the table—debate matters.

I hope you will join us as readers, commenters, and op-ed writers when the urge strikes you.

A formal announcement will follow when the page is live.

One more Question. Do you like Green MountainGrok Better?

The post Coming Soon: GraniteGrok in Vermont … Should We Call it VermontGrok? Green MountainGrok? appeared first on Granite Grok.

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, we are the unfortunate victims of the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

Case in point: the FBI.

The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues, and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.

Clearly, this is not a government agency that appears to understand, let alone respect, the limits of the Constitution.

Indeed, this same government agency has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how, and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting.

Basically, it works like this: in order to justify their crime-fighting superpowers, the FBI manufactures criminals by targeting vulnerable individuals and feeding them anti-government propaganda; then, undercover agents and informants equip the targeted individuals with the training and resources to challenge what they’ve been indoctrinated into believing is government corruption; and finally, the FBI arrests the targeted individuals for engaging in anti-government, terrorist activities.

This is what passes for the government’s perverse idea of being tough on crime.

For example, undercover FBI agents pretending to be associated with ISIS have been accused of seeking out online and befriending a 16-year-old with brain development issues, persuading him to secretly send them small cash donations in the form of gift cards, and then the moment Mateo Ventura, turned 18, arresting him for providing financial support to an Islamic terrorist group.

If convicted, the teenager could spend up to 10 years in prison.

Yet as The Intercept explains, “the only ‘terrorist’ he is accused of ever being in contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him online as a 16-year-old… This law enforcement tactic has been criticized by national security researchers who have scrutinized the FBI’s role in manufacturing terrorism cases using vulnerable people who would have been unable to commit crimes without prolonged government assistance and encouragement… the Ventura case may indicate that authorities are still open to conjuring terrorists where none existed.”

In another incident, the FBI used an undercover agent/informant to seek out and groom an impressionable young man, cultivating his friendship, gaining his sympathy, stoking his outrage over injustices perpetrated by the U.S. government, then enlisting his help to blow up the Herald Square subway station. Despite the fact that Shahawar Matin Siraj ultimately refused to plant a bomb at the train station, he was arrested for conspiring to do so at the urging of his FBI informant and used to bolster the government’s track record in foiling terrorist plots. Of course, no mention was made of the part the government played in fabricating the plot, recruiting a would-be bomber, and setting him up to take the fall.

These are Machiavellian tactics with far-reaching consequences for every segment of the population, no matter what one’s political leanings, but it is especially dangerous for anyone whose views could in any way be characterized as anti-government.

As Rozina Ali writes for The New York Times Magazine, “The government’s approach to counterterrorism erodes constitutional protections for everyone by blurring the lines between speech and action and by broadening the scope of who is classified as a threat.”

For instance, it was reported that the FBI had been secretly carrying out an entrapment scheme in which it used a front company, ANOM, to sell purportedly hack-proof phones to organized crime syndicates and then used those phones to spy on them as they planned illegal drug shipments, plotted robberies and put out contracts for killings using those boobytrapped phones.

All told the FBI intercepted 27 million messages over the course of 18 months.

What this means is that the FBI was also illegally spying on individuals using those encrypted phones who may not have been involved in any criminal activity whatsoever.

Even reading a newspaper article is now enough to get you flagged for surveillance by the FBI. The agency served a subpoena on USA Today / Gannett to provide the internet addresses and mobile phone information for everyone who read a news story online on a particular day and time about the deadly shooting of FBI agents.

This is the danger of allowing the government to carry out widespread surveillance, sting, and entrapment operations using dubious tactics that sidestep the rule of law: “we the people” become suspects and potential criminals, while government agents, empowered to fight crime using all means at their disposal, become indistinguishable from the corrupt forces they seek to vanquish.

To go after terrorists, they become terrorists.

To go after drug smugglers, they become drug smugglers.

To go after thieves, they become thieves.

For instance, when the FBI raided a California business that was suspected of letting drug dealers anonymously stash guns, drugs and cash in its private vaults, agents seized the contents of all the safety deposit boxes and filed forfeiture motions to keep the contents, which include millions of dollars’ worth of valuables owned by individuals not accused of any crime whatsoever.

It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations, and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.

This certainly isn’t a constitutional democracy, however.

Some days, it feels like the FBI is running its own crime syndicate, complete with mob rule and mafia-style justice.

In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts.

USA Today estimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day (5600 crimes a year). Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.

In a stunning development reported by The Washington Post, a probe into misconduct by an FBI agent resulted in the release of at least a dozen convicted drug dealers from prison.

In addition to procedural misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, the FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, and harassment.

For example, the Associated Press lodged a complaint with the Dept. of Justice after learning that FBI agents created a fake AP news story and emailed it, along with a clickable link, to a bomb threat suspect in order to implant tracking technology onto his computer and identify his location. Lambasting the agency, AP attorney Karen Kaiser railed, “The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation.”

Then again, to those familiar with COINTELPRO, an FBI program created to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” groups and individuals the government considers politically objectionable, it should come as no surprise that the agency has mastered the art of government disinformation.

The FBI has been particularly criticized in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks for targeting vulnerable individuals and not only luring them into fake terror plots but actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons, and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”

The FBI has also repeatedly sought to expand its invasive hacking powers to allow agents to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world.

Suffice it to say that when and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state, but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.

This is how tyranny rises, and freedom falls.

The powers-that-be are not acting in our best interests.

Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.

Think about it.

Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.

In almost every instance, the U.S. government (often spearheaded by the FBI) has, in its typical Machiavellian fashion, sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.

Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us to track, control and trap us.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from threats to our freedoms.

The U.S. government is creating the threats to our freedoms. It is, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart, The Erik Blair Diaries, the source of the threats to our freedoms.

 

 

John Whitehead | The Tenth Amendment Center

The post FBI Make-Work Entrapment Schemes: Creating Criminals in Order to Arrest Them appeared first on Granite Grok.

My story begins in Chengdu, China, at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution, an insanity that gripped millions of my countrymen. We were destitute, as were most Chinese during this period.

We want to thank Lily Tng Williams for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
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We lived in a primitive worker’s row house by a river sharing one tarp-covered outhouse and one water faucet with eight families. We had a mud floor that, after occasional flooding, would sprout mushrooms.

My parents were illiterate workers, so their positions in the state factory were too low to be rationed much food. A full belly was a luxury. My uncle even taught me how to trap rats for food. All we knew was a life of arduous labor and chaos. Little time was spent thinking of philosophical fantasies concerning “oppression” and “rights,” so we labored to survive, hoping only that we would endure.

Despite the socialist rhetoric, school and childcare were not free. I even missed school for a year to babysit my infant brother. Yet despite the few resources available to Chinese students, I committed all of my energy to excel in school when I could go. But in Communist China, even fleeting joy is crushed in the young by ideological rigidity, for I was denied entry into Mao’s “Young Pioneers.” The pain was not in the denial but in learning that my friend reported me for showing “too much pride in my grades.”

From that moment forward, I was a model communist citizen. I wrote ideologically validating diaries. I memorized Mao’s words. I recited his political slogans as prayer and made sure that every word I uttered was politically correct. Mao was our god, and I was his faithful disciple.
This mindset served me well for a time, for when Mao shut down all churches and temples, I mourned not. In 1976, when I was 12 years old, Mao died, and the Cultural Revolution came to an end. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) admitted that Mao was only a man and the Cultural Revolution was just a mistake, my faith in the CCP began to crack.

China’s renaissance began, colleges reopened, and after years of hard work and preparation, I was able to pass the national entrance exam. I was accepted into a top tiered university to study law. I had hopes that China should not be ruled by men but by law. Yet even the law was but an extension of the wills of men, modeled after the Soviet Union legal code. It was the antithesis of justice.

I learned an important lesson from Mao’s regime: to become a slave, the “true horrors” are not the shackles placed around one’s wrists but the ones that are self-imposed. No longer secured by the shackles of cognitive slavery but not able to find solace in a just code of laws, I became cynical and rebellious, even befriending foreign students on campus to learn if there was more to life.

It was during this time I met an American student. What he showed me would forever change my life — the Declaration of Independence. When I read the lines, “We hold these truths to be self-evident… (that all men) are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they shattered what remained of my mental shackles. What ideas! Rights come not from the benevolence of the state but from God. All I had ever known were “collective rights,” the workers’ rights, the rights of peasants, etc. Never had I imagined that I, an individual, had rights. Those words only served to embolden me and my dreams. Knowing where they came from, I began to look to that “City upon a Hill.”

I eventually made it to America in 1988. In the decades since I have thrived in this great country. I earned my graduate degree, married, raised three children, started my own business, searched for deeper truths, learned much about liberty and the free market, rid myself of CCP indoctrination, naturalized as a U.S. citizen, and volunteered in my local community.

Lately, in my spare time, I have traveled around the country to share my personal stories and educate our youth about the horrors of Communism. I always defend the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the documents with the words that freed me from my enslavement and helped me choose America as my home. I have always wanted to thank our founding fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the most beautiful.

 

Note: This Originally Published in the Concord Monitor in NH on July 4, 2021.

The post America’s Forefathers Shattered my Communist Chains appeared first on Granite Grok.