Um momento de compreensão

Escrito por Bruce Lee

Segue, em versão portuguesa, o escrito originalmente intitulado «A Moment of Understanding», inserto em Bruce Lee, The Tao of Gung Fu. A Study in the Way of Chinese Martial Art (editado por John Little, Tuttle Publishing, 1997, pp. 134-136). 


O Gung Fu é uma espécie de aptidão muito especial; uma primorosa arte jamais confinada a uma actividade física. É uma arte subtil que trata de combinar a essência da mente com o aparato técnico sobre o qual opera. O princípio do Gung Fu não é algo que, à maneira de uma ciência, pode ser apreendido mediante recolha e instrução em factos já consumados. Tem, qual uma flor, que se desenvolver espontaneamente numa mente liberta de emoções e desejos. O ponto essencial deste princípio do Gung Fu é o Tao – a espontaneidade do universo.

Após quatro anos de treino intensivo na arte do Gung Fu, comecei a sentir e a compreender o princípio da harmonia – a arte de neutralizar os efeitos produzidos pela acção do adversário, minimizando a energia despendida. Tudo isto deve ser realizado com tranquilidade e sem esforço. Parecia simples, embora em sua aplicação prática resultasse extremamente difícil. Porém, já quando em combate com um oponente, a minha mente ficava completamente perturbada e fora de si. Daí que, após alguma troca de golpes e pontapés, toda a minha teoria acerca da harmonia houvesse simplesmente desaparecido. E, nisto, assaltava-me um único pensamento: “tenho que o desancar e vencer custe o que custar!”.

Naquele tempo, o meu instrutor-chefe da escola de Wing Chun, o Professor Yip Man, aproximava-se, dizendo-me: "Loong, relaxa e acalma a tua mente. Abandona o ego e segue o movimento do oponente. Deixa que a mente, o princípio determinante, produza o contra-movimento sem que nisso interfira qualquer espécie de deliberação. Aprende, acima de tudo, a arte do despojamento."

"É isso mesmo”, pensara eu. “Devo relaxar!”. Contudo, nesse mesmo instante já algo comigo se estava operando em clara contradição com um tal desígnio. Nomeadamente ao dizer “devo relaxar”. A exigência patente no “devo” era, pois, inconsistente com o não-esforço no acto de “relaxar”. Quando minha apurada auto-percepção evoluiu no sentido daquilo que os psicólogos denominam de duplo-vínculo, o meu mestre mais uma vez me chamara a atenção: «Loong, liberta-te percorrendo os caminhos da natureza e não interfiras. Lembra-te de que jamais te deves opor à natureza; nunca te exponhas frontalmente a um problema, mas procura resolvê-lo adaptando-te a ele. Não pratiques esta semana. Vai para casa e pensa nisso.»

Na semana seguinte fiquei em casa. Depois de muitas horas de prática e meditação, desisti e, sozinho, fiz-me ao mar num junco. Aí recapitulei todo o meu treino feito no passado e, insatisfeito, desferi um murro na água! Então – nesse momento –, fui surpreendido por um pensamento: não era a água a essência mesma do Gung Fu? Não acabara ela por finalmente me fazer ver a fonte principial do Gung Fu? Nela produzira um certo embate sem que tivesse sofrido qualquer dano. Voltei a fazê-lo com todo o meu poder e força despendida – porém, permanecia incólume. Entretanto, tentei agarrá-la com a mão, o que se me afigurou inviável. A água, a substância mais informe do mundo capaz de ser contida numa pequena jarra, somente, à primeira vista, parecia vulnerável. Na realidade, podia ainda assim penetrar na substância mais dura do mundo. Era isso! A minha aspiração seria doravante identificar-me com a natureza da água.

Subitamente, apareceu um passáro projectando o seu reflexo na água. Foi por então que, ainda absorto na lição da experiência aquosa, um outro enlevo místico de significado absconso se me revelou; não deviam as emoções e os pensamentos suscitados na presença de um oponente decorrer tão naturalmente como o reflexo de um pássaro na água? Ora, fora precisamente isso o que o Professor Yip Man me sugerira ao aconselhar o despojamento – não que isso implicasse a ausência de emoções e sentimentos, mas tão-só que uns e outros não deveriam transformar-se num factor de obstrução. Por conseguinte, a fim de não perder o equilíbrio “devo”, acima de tudo, procurar fluir no mais perfeito acordo com a minha natureza e nunca ao invés.

Recostei-me no junco e de pronto senti que me havia unido ao Tao. Unira-me com a natureza. E assim estacionei, deixando que a embarcação vogasse por si mesma. Nesse momento, alcançara, pois, um estado de cumplicidade profunda em que toda a oposição mutualmente exclusiva se transmutara numa cooperação mutualmente inclusiva, cessando assim todo o conflito na minha mente. O mundo na sua totalidade, tornara-se-me um e o mesmo.

Yip Man e Bruce Lee

Ver aqui

Yip Man's Wooden Dummy

Ver aqui e aqui

Ver aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui e aqui

D. Filipa de Lencastre

Escrito por Fernando Pessoa

Que enigma havia em teu seio

Que só génios concebia?

Que arcanjo teus sonhos veio

Velar, maternos, um dia?

Volve a nós teu rosto sério,

Princesa do Santo Gral,

Humano ventre do Império,

Madrinha de Portugal!

Mensagem

Cruz de Aviz

Núpcias de D. João I e D. Filipa de Lencastre

Mosteiro de Santa Maria da Vitória

Capela do Fundador - o Repouso dos Infantes

Brasão de Aviz

Deep State: Follow the Rothschild, Soros, and Rockefeller Money

Written by Alex Newman

See here

With almost unlimited capital, Wall Street moneymen use it to centralize government. Their plans smack of worldwide crony capitalism, with government rules made to order. 

It may sound cliché, but there is a great deal of wisdom in the old saying about catching criminals: “Follow the money.” That advice applies as much to catching small-time petty thieves as it does to big-time global crime syndicates. And it is especially relevant when trying to understand the bureaucratic and intelligence community components of the Deep State, and more importantly, the Deep State behind the Deep State. This shadowy network, which is barely concealed at this point, includes secret societies such as Skull and Bones and the Bohemian Grove, as well as less-secretive organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg meetings. Money is key.

Of course, as used by the establishment media, what has typically been referred to in recent months as the “Deep State” is simply just different parts of the federal government, particularly the permanent bureaucratic caste and what is known as the “intelligence community.” However, that is only part of the story. Others who have commented on this subject have noted the prominence of the Big Business community and Wall Street in regards to the Deep State. Former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren, a top-secret security clearance holder and one of the early voices to develop the idea of a “Deep State” in America, refers to it as “a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country.”

Wall Street and the Deep State

In particular, Lofgren has noted that Wall Street and D.C. are crucial. “Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one,” argued Lofgren, who wrote a book on the subject before Donald Trump became president. “Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and threaten the status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests.” Of course, Lofgren is correct. But the proverbial “rabbit hole” goes even deeper.

Wall Street, and especially outfits such as “vampire squid” Goldman Sachs, are indeed essential elements of the Deep State. But the reality is even worse than Lofgren seems to realize. An explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” for instance, highlights the fact that a tiny group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exerts a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. According to the peer-reviewed paper, which presented the first global investigation of ownership and control architecture in the international economy, transnational corporations form a “giant bow-tie structure.” A large portion of control “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions,” investigators found, describing the core as an “economic super-entity.” Not surprisingly, this economic super-entity is dominated by members of the Deep State behind the Deep State — a relatively tiny group of individuals with unfathomable power and influence. The individuals in control of a tiny handful of mega-banks — especially Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Credit Suisse, among a handful of others — are at the very center of it all.

Lofgren was not the first observer to realize or point out that the elected officials ostensibly in charge of governing America are not really in charge. Even close friends and associates of the Deep State behind the Deep State have commented on the issue. The late Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley, a mentor to President Bill Clinton, was close to the core of the Deep State for years, and, while he disagreed with the secrecy, he admitted to agreeing with most of its aims. He was even allowed to examine their records for a period of time. And then, spilling the proverbial beans, Quigley put some of his explosive findings in his massive 1966 book Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.

Quigley offered extremely important insight into the agenda, especially the monetary machinations, of the real Deep State. “The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” he explained on page 324. “This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”

The Eccles Building in Washington, D.C., which serves as the Federal Reserve System's headquarters.

See here

Indeed, just as Quigley explained, the world now exists under what could fairly be described as a neofeudalist-type system. And international entities such as the Bank of International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank play key roles in it all. Another crucial component of that involves control of the economy and even the political systems of nations by a tiny clique, which exercises its power quietly through well-connected mega-banks that literally own the central banks. The Federal Reserve, for instance, is essentially a banking cartel, with each regional Federal Reserve bank owned and controlled by its member banks. In court filings, the “Federal Reserve” banks have even boldly declared that laws applicable to government agencies such as transparency requirements do not apply to Fed banks because they are private corporations.

That the Federal Reserve System dominates the U.S. economy today is impossible to dispute — simply observe the news coverage and endless media speculation ahead of the Fed meetings about what the central planners may or may not decide to do about interest rates. Consider, also, that amid the last economic crisis, the U.S. Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) estimated the potential total cost of the combined crisis bailouts at $23.7 trillion, with a T, or more than $75,000 per person in the United States — money created out of thin air by unelected, unaccountable central bankers. For perspective, the U.S. GDP is around $18 trillion. Those bailed out were largely the mega-banks and cronies of Federal Reserve bosses. Consider, too, that studies such as one released in 2014 by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) show that central banks, including the Fed, now dominate even stock markets, with some of them even buying and selling stocks directly using money conjured into existence out of thin air. They also rig prices for all sorts of assets, as The New American and many other sources have documented and Fed bosses have admitted publicly. In 1998, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified to Congress that “central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise,” thereby keeping prices down.

And according to top officials, many of these mega-bankers are beyond being “too big to fail” and being bailed out by unwitting American savers and taxpayers; they are also “too big to jail,” giving them free rein to perpetrate crimes at will. On March 6, 2013, testifying before a Senate committee, former Attorney General Eric Holder even said it explicitly: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”

Deep State Moneymen Love Globalism and Communism 

Senior leaders of the Deep State behind the Deep State, which uses central banks and political institutions to advance its objectives, have boasted of their agenda and their power. The late David Rockefeller, formerly CEO of Chase Manhattan mega-bank and a leading Deep State boss involved in the leadership of the Bilderberg meetings, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations, revealed his true colors — in writing — in his 2002 autobiography Memoirs. “Some even believe we [the Rockefellers] are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will,” Rockefeller explains on page 405. “If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” In short, the powerful globalist boasted of being a conspirator working against America in favor of a one-world system.

The Deep State’s supposedly “capitalist” money men have no aversion to communism, either, as Quigley revealed in his book. Decades before the startling admission in his own memoirs, Rockefeller himself showered praises on the most murderous dictatorship to plague humanity in all of recorded history. “Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded, not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering a high morale and community purpose,” Rockefeller claimed in a 1973 New York Times piece about Mao Tse-tung’s “communist revolution” that murdered tens of millions of people in cold blood. “The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.” For Deep State luminaries such as Rockefeller, then, mass murder and total subjugation of a people is a tremendous “success.” So we can safely conclude that the success or failure of the globalist world order Rockefeller and his cronies is aiming for will not be decided on how well it cares for the middle and lower classes.

Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild (4th Baron Rothschild).

Eythrope Pavilion, the home of Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild

A Rothschild house, Waddesdon Manor in Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, England, donated to the National Trust by the family in 1957.

A house formerly belonging to the Viennese branch of the Rothschild family (Schillersdorf Palace).

Schloss Hinterleiten, one of the many palaces built by the Austrian Rothschild dynasty. Donated to charity by the family in 1905.

Beatrice de Rothschild's villa on the Côte d'Azur, France.

Château de Montvillargenne. A Rothschild family house in Picardy, France.

One of the smaller city houses, Vienna. A collection of far larger Viennese palaces known as Palais Rothschild were torn down during the Second World War.

A former Rothschild family house, at the site of Château de la Muette, Paris. Built as a family residence by the secondary branch of the French Rothschild family, today it houses the headquarters of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Hotel Salomon de Rothschild, built em 1872 as a Paris townhouse for Salomon James de Rothschild.

Villa Pignatelli, Naples, with views onto Mount Vesuvius. See here

The Large Mansion at Gunnersbury Park, London.

The Neo-Gothic Castle de Haar. See here

The Neo-Gothic Rothschildschloss, Waidhofen.

Halton House, a Rothschild family mansion in Buckinghamshire, England.

Exbury House, a Rothschild estate in England.

More recently, fellow Deep State bigwig George Soros, another key moneyman, and a protégé of the even more powerful and wealthy Rothschild dynasty, echoed those remarks about Communist China. In 2009, for instance, Soros called for the communist regime enslaving mainland China to “own” what he referred to as the “New World Order.” Speaking to the Financial Times, the self-styled philanthropist declared that the United States and the U.S. dollar were on their way down, and that the Communist Party regime must step up to the plate. “I think you really need to bring China into the creation of a new world order,” Soros said, without noting that the regime has murdered more people than any other in human history. “I think you need a new world order, that China has to be part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in, they have to own it in the same way as the United States owns … the current order.”

It was hardly a slip up. The next year, while receiving the Globalist of the Year award from the Canadian International Council, Soros again called for China to play a lead role in the emerging global-governance regime. “They have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well,” declared Soros, a self-styled atheist who has said publicly that he feels like a “god” sometimes. “Today, China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States.” From Beijing to Moscow and Washington, D.C., to London, globalist Deep State operatives are all openly and covertly pushing for this new world order, which is being built through regional orders such as the European Union, the African Union, the Eurasian Union, the Union of South American States, and more as explained by so many globalist schemers.

While rarely in the spotlight, the Rothschild banking dynasty — the ultimate Deep State characters — is at the center of the rigged global financial system. The Rothschilds are wealthy and powerful beyond comprehension. On its website, Rothschild & Co, one of the many Rothschild banking operations, styles itself “one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory groups,” providing services and solutions to “large institutions, families, individuals and governments, worldwide.” “Having been at the centre of the world’s financial markets for more than 200 years we can rely on an unrivalled global network of more than 2,800 talented employees and a track-record of outstanding execution with 50 offices around the world,” the website boasts in what might even be an understatement, adding that Rothschild & Co “can be closer to current issues than any other global financial institution in our core markets.” They are not kidding. Estimates of the ultra-secretive dynasty’s wealth reach into the trillions of dollars.

The power of this dynasty is well known to historians and insiders, and it stretches back centuries. “The Rothschilds had decided the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars by putting their financial weight behind Britain,” noted historian and establishment apologist Niall Ferguson in his book The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild. In other words, even more than two centuries ago, this dynasty, which is deeply involved in the global central-banking regime described by Quigley, was able to decide the outcome of wars between two of the most powerful governments then existing on the planet. Since then, the dynasty’s power and wealth appear to have grown even further, owning businesses in financial services, real estate, mining, energy, agriculture, winemaking, and more, despite efforts to stay out of the limelight. Further highlighting the affinity of these supposed “super-capitalists” for communism, though, a leading member of the Rothschild dynasty, Baron Eric de Rothschild, publicly came out to help push the candidacy of Bulgarian Communist Party operative Irina Bokova to lead the United Nations as secretary-general.

Baron Éric Robert David de Rothschild

Rothschild Coat of Arms

Deep State Foundations Finance Evil 

Many of the globalist bigwigs, such as the Rockefellers, Soros, the Rothschild dynasty, and dozens more like them, operate through tax-exempt foundations. Aside from helping shelter the Deep State moneymen from the same onerous taxation they promote, these foundations make up another key component of the Deep State’s financial architecture. The Rockefeller dynasty, for instance, operates a massive network of foundations with many billions of dollars. It includes the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, and more. These, in turn, finance other tax-exempt foundations used to promote their agenda. Soros, meanwhile, just transferred $18 billion into his Open Society Foundations, which in turn finance hundreds of organizations, foundations, and causes around the world. Other mega-foundations controlled by the Deep State behind the Deep State include the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and many more. Each plays a unique but essential role.

To understand how crucial these tax-exempt foundations are to advancing the real Deep State’s agenda, a simple overview of their actions provides some idea. The Soros network of foundations, for instance, promotes everything from glob­alism and statism to racial hatred and abortion, even funding training programs to teach European pastors to promote the European Union to their congregations. Leaks in recent years have revealed that the Open Society Foundations even fund a wide range of pseudo-Christian groups that aim to corrupt and hijack Christianity and churches — the pro-abortion group Catholics for Choice, for instance, or training programs for Orthodox pastors in non-EU nations designed to have those spiritual leaders lead their flocks into the transnational superstate. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, meanwhile, finances everything anti-American, from Planned Parenthood and population control to K-12 Common Core school standards and efforts to globalize “education.” The Rockefellers have funded issues from pseudo-environmentalism and globalism to statism and feminism. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Consider the “Green” movement. In 2014, a report by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee exposed the network of billionaires and their foundations that it referred to as the “Billionaires Club.” This club, the report said, was responsible for creating an AstroTurf “Green” movement that hijacked vast swaths of the federal policymaking apparatus. The explosive 92-page study, entitled “The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA,” exposes the tactics, too. Among other schemes, the network relies on an “incredibly sophisticated” system of front groups and the exploitation of loopholes in the tax code. The Billionaires Club’s machinations also involve “a close knit network of like-minded funders, environmental activists, and government bureaucrats who specialize in manufacturing phony ‘grassroots’ movements and in promoting bogus propaganda disguised as science and news to spread an anti-fossil energy message to the unknowing public,” the report said.

In some cases, the network funds pseudo-scientific research, too. The findings are then disseminated by far-left “media” outlets such as the Huffington Post and Mother Jones that are also receiving Billionaires Club funds. “In one example, a story reporting on a Park Foundation-supported anti-fracking study was reproduced by a Park-funded news organization through a Park-funded media collaboration where it was then further disseminated on Twitter by the maker of Park-backed anti-fracking movies,” the report found. Three radical outfits in particular were identified as serving key roles in the scheming of the network: the Environmental Grantmakers Association, the Democracy Alliance, and the Divest/Invest movement. Other crucial components of the phony grassroots network involved in financing the deception and extremism include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Schmidt Family Foundation created by Google boss Eric Schmidt, and the infamous Heinz Family Foundation largely controlled by former Secretary of State John Kerry’s wife.

The abuse of these tax-exempt foundations by the Deep State behind the Deep State to subvert freedom in the United States and worldwide is hardly new. In fact, in 1952, Congress created the Select Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations, sometimes known as the Cox Committee and the Reece Committee after its two chairmen. Among other tasks, it was supposed to look into whether the foundations were supporting communism. It turns out that they were, but the reality was even worse. In an explosive interview with G. Edward Griffin released in 1991, Norman Dodd, the staff director of the committee, explained just how serious the threat was — and presumably still is.

See here

See here

According to Dodd, H. Rowan Gaither, who was the president of the Ford Foundation at the time, summoned Dodd to his office in New York. Dodd said that Gaither asked him, “off the record,” why Congress was interested in investigating the activities of foundations such as the Ford Foundation. But before Dodd could even answer, Gaither noted, among other things, that many of those involved in policymaking at the foundation had been involved in the “intelligence” agencies, which were filled with communists in high places, and that policy directives for the foundations were coming out of the White House. Then, according to Dodd, Gaither dropped a bombshell: “Mr. Dodd, we are here to operate in response to similar directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant-making power to so alter life in the United States, that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.” Read that sentence again and let it sink in.

The final report itself was revealing, too. “Some of the larger foundations have directly supported subversion in the true meaning of that term — namely, the proc­ess of undermining some of our vitally protective concepts and principles,” the investigators found, adding that the foundations were promoting internationalism and moral relativism. “They have actively supported attacks upon our social and governmental system and financed the promotion of socialism and collectivist ideas,” the report continued. Of course, this continues to this day. In his report, Dodd also argued that the mega-foundations were weaponizing the government “education” system to enable oligarchical collectivism. He noted, too, that a “revolution” had occurred that would never have been possible “unless education in the United States had been prepared in advance to endorse it.” The corruption of America’s “education” regime stretches back to progressive humanist John Dewey (not to be confused with Melvil Dewey of the Dewey Decimal System), who was financed by one of the Rockefellers’ tax-exempt foundations and is today known as the “father” of America’s government-education regime. Today, the Gates, Car­negie, and Rockefeller foundations, among others, continue the work.

Other analysts have documented Wall Street and Deep State money men support for communism and subversion going back even further than that. In his book Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, for instance, Stanford historian Antony Sutton exposed the key role played by certain Wall Street financiers in establishing communist tyranny in Russia, financing communism, profiting from communism, and more. The book shows also that Wall Street forces worked hard to ensure that revolutionary Leon Trostky could make it to Russia to help the process along. And they even helped the cause of global slavery by building up the Soviet economy and war machine. The results of this included the murder of more than 100 million people and the enslavement of billions more. China, Cuba, and many other nations were similarly enslaved under communist regimes with the fervent assistance of “Deep State” moneymen and government operatives, as this magazine has documented for decades.

Today, the Deep State and the forces behind it — secret and semi-secret organ­izations and networks, as well as their interlinked financial operations and “intelligence” agencies — are closer than ever before to their goal of global totalitarianism frequently touted as the “New World Order.” However, they are also closer than ever before to being completely exposed, as millions of people around the world wake up. Humanity and the Deep State are in a race against time. If the Deep State wins, liberty and self-government die. The stakes are that high. But everyone can help. Start by reading the articles on the Deep State. Then, get involved. The future of freedom is on the line. And as any good criminal investigator knows, a good place to start is to follow the money. While the Deep State moneymen have a solid grip on the government, they are not in full control of state legislatures or either house of Congress. It is way past time for Congress to hold hearings and investigate. (The New American, 08 January 2018).

See here