Rant 02-10-2025: Doveryai, No Proveryai

Pascal did it again! He keeps bringing on David Pyne, without disclosing that he’s a member of the hawkish group, Committee on the Present Danger: China. Pyne is far from neutral on the issue of China!

Related:

The US Scare Campaign Against China (History of the Committee on the Present Danger)

The following statistics are from the Cato Institute, which is affiliated with the Atlas Network via the Koch Network.

Cato Scholar Debunks Trump’s Fentanyl Figures amid Tariff Talk

Decades of drug war tactics have failed, merely shifting production of fentanyl precursors from China to India, Myanmar, other parts of Southeast Asia, and even Canada. Canadian authorities report “superlabs” are shipping fentanyl to drug dealers in Australia and New Zealand and, to a lesser amount, to the US.

Canadian-made fentanyl is an international problem, RCMP says

Fentanyl Trafficking 2023

86.4% were United States citizens

U.S. Citizens Were 89% of Convicted Fentanyl Traffickers in 2022

Fentanyl Is Smuggled for U.S. Citizens By U.S. Citizens, Not Asylum Seekers

The Dark Alliance (PDF)

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (PDF)

Internet Archive: Barry & ‘the boys’ : the CIA, the Mob and America’s secret history

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did (archived)

Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE’s Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.

As WIRED has reported, Elez was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system. The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits [Social Security Disability Insurance], and veteran’s pay.

On February 4, WIRED reported that Elez did, in fact, have admin access to PAM and SPS. Talking Points Memo reported later that day that Elez had “made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment systems.” In a letter that same day that did not mention Musk or DOGE, Treasury official Jonathan Blum wrote to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, “Currently, Treasury staff members working with Tom Krause, a Treasury employee, will have read-only to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.” (Krause is the top DOGE operative at Treasury and CEO of Cloud Software Group.) The letter did not say what kind of access the staff members actually had.

Previously:

Cloud Software Group: As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System

The false narrative that Trump has ended regime change ops, & the covert nature of the empire’s next actions

The terrorists that escorted John McCain to Syria were financed by Moti Kahana. Source.

The false narrative that Trump has ended regime change ops, & the covert nature of the empire’s next actions

Anyone who’s simply saying Donald Trump has dismantled USAID, without including the other parts of this story, is putting forth a narrative of false hope. The potential for ending U.S. imperialism’s global destabilization efforts cannot be found within any top-down policy change; it can only be found within the effort to overthrow our capitalist state. The Trump White House hasn’t been pressured into dismantling the regime change network, and if Trump were to do this, the imperialist deep state would assassinate him. The thing he’s actually done is transfer resources from the State Department and its non-governmental organizations, to the covert operations programs of the CIA. Which means the destabilization efforts are now going to be much better hidden, and those who oppose them will need to be more diligent in detecting and exposing them.

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Elon Musk’s DOGE Allies Search Medicare Agency Payment Systems For Fraud

Representatives of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been working at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where they have gotten access to key payment and contracting systems, according to people familiar with the matter.

CMS in particular is a highly politically and economically sensitive agency. It is the nerve center of much of the nation’s complex healthcare economy, with outlays of about $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2024, or about 22% of the federal total. With around 6,710 employees, it oversees Medicare, the health coverage program for older and disabled Americans and Medicaid, for lower-income enrollees, among other areas. Many veteran CMS staffers have worked there for decades.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the high-profile physician and former television host, has been nominated to lead CMS, but hasn’t yet been confirmed by the Senate. Several CMS officials who are expected to work under Oz have already taken over at the agency.

Elon Musk’s DOGE Allies Search Medicare Agency Payment Systems For Fraud

Related:

As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System

‘It’s a Coup’: Musk’s DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security

Trump nominates Dr. Oz, who campaigned on privatizing Medicare, for Administrator of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System

Elon Musk is the billionaire CEO of the publicly-traded EV company, Tesla. As such, under corporate law, he owes a Duty of Loyalty to Tesla. Notwithstanding this well-established law, Musk is engaged in an array of other corporate endeavors outside of Tesla, including being the CEO of SpaceX, a private rocket company.

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USAID to be merged into State Department, 3 U.S. officials say

Source

USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, will be merged into the State Department with significant cuts in the workforce, but it will remain a humanitarian aid entity, three U.S. officials told CBS News. 

USAID to be merged into State Department, 3 U.S. officials say

When Rubio says national interests, he means the interests of big corporations.

Related:

Brian Berletic:

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