Category: Disinformation

  • By Marysilla Kellerton in Port Moresby

    Demonstrators gathered in Port Moresby yesterday for a march to Parliament in protest over the covid-19 vaccines, which they claimed wrongly to be mandatory, a day after Papua New Guinean police warned such gatherings were illegal.

    The protest was a result of a post circulating on social media about a “peaceful protest march” planned for the day against mandatory vaccination.

    Despite assurances from Controller of the Pandemic Response and Police Commissioner David Manning that the notice circulated was false and misleading because vaccination was not mandatory and still remained a personal choice, the protesters gathered for the rally.

    The anti-vaccine crowd disobeyed advice from the police to disperse. Instead, they took to the Gordon bus stop, gained momentum from others who joined them and attempted to march through a residential street towards the Wardstrip Primary School and on to Parliament.

    However, police thwarted their their attempts by blocked the route and spoke to the crowd who disregarded social distancing and masks.

    The NCD/Central Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Anthony Wagambie Jnr, addressed the crowd. He said their concerns had already been heard.

    It was not clear who the organisers of the march were.

    Endangering public safety
    ACP Wagambie explained that the march had to be stopped by police to prevent disorder stemmed that would endanger the safety of others in Port Moresby.

    The anti-vaxxers carried a banner with messages condemning “666” and “artificial intelligence”.

    Misinformation about the covid-19 vaccines is currently swamping genuine information available to Papua New Guineans and is allowing fear and confusion to gain momentum.

    Asia Pacific Report reports only 1.2 percent of the nine million Papua New Guineans are vaccinated against covid-19.

    According to the John Hopkins University covid dashboard, 29,715 cases of covid and 370 deaths have been reported on Papua New Guinea but health officials fear the real toll is far higher because of limited testing and records.

    John Hopkins has reported that the total death toll from covid-19 has now passed five million globally.

    Marysilla Kellerton is a Loop PNG reporter.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Nicaragua has an election to choose their president and national assembly on November 7. According to polls, the Sandinista Front (FSLN) currently in government is expected to win the presidency and a majority of seats in the assembly.

    At the same time, the Sandinista government is intensely disliked by Washington and there has been a steady stream of negative news and accusations.

    One theme of accusations concerns the indigenous peoples. In October 2020, PBS Newshour broadcast an episode claiming the US is importing “conflict beef” from the indigenous regions of Nicaragua. This story relied on an Oakland Institute report which alleges rampant violence against indigenous communities and a complicit Nicaraguan government.

    The PBS story and Oakland Institute accusations were criticized at the time, but there was no retraction or serious response.

    One month later, in November 2020,  Stephen Sefton travelled to eastern Nicaragua to interview indigenous community leaders and determine the facts. He asked the elected indigenous leaders about the situation, the challenges and whether the PBS story and Oakland Institute reports were accurate.

    Sefton,  a community worker who has lived in Nicaragua for 25 years, has published the interviews in a 79-page PDF booklet titled “Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples: the Reality and the Neocolonial Lies”.

    Sefton interviewed an impressive set of indigenous leaders. With photos below they are:

    Arisio Genaro Selso (President  Mayangan Indigenous Territorial Government);

    Eloy Frank Gomez (Secretary Mayangna Indigenous Territorial Government);

    Fresly Janes Zamora (President of the Miskito Indigenous Territorial Government Twi Yabra);

    Ronald Whittingham Dennis (President of the Indigenous and Afro Descendant Territorial Government Karata);

    Rose Cunningham Kain (Mayor of Waspam and President of the Indigenous Territorial Government of Wanghi Awala Kupia);

    Dr. Loyda del Carmen Martinez Rodriguez (District Judge of Waspam, Rio Coco);

    Lejan Mora (President of Indigenous Territorial Government of Wangki Twi / Tasba Raya).

    Nicaragua’s Autonomous Zones

    In 1987, the Sandinista government passed Law 28 which gave legal support to indigenous land claims. After the Sandinistas lost a hotly contested election in 1990,  neoliberal policies took over and progress on indigenous claims was stopped and reversed.  In 2005, the FSLN was still in opposition but secured passage of Law 445.

    As a result of these laws, approximately 31% of Nicaragua’s territory is considered communal property owned by the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples of the country.

    *****

    Key Questions and Answers

    Are cattle being raised for export in the autonomous zones?

    Rose Cunningham Kain:

    Cattle here have been like pets in other countries. And little by little we have been making a shift to having more cattle. But here there has been no certification process to permit meat exports.

    The people here supply the local market and, as often as not with some difficulty, we manage to find someone who wants to butcher their cattle for the local market. Of course, in the last few years we have been encouraging people to improve their cattle stock, so that IPSA (Institute of Agricultural Protection and Health) can do its work teaching us how to improve our cattle rearing.

    But we keep animals on a very small scale. So, this report saying that settlers are killing us for land to raise cattle on is not true either. That is not true. Not one cattle rancher has died here, not one Miskito involved in any kind of cattle related killing. It’s a Disney World story, maybe, a Mickey Mouse story, who knows. But it is not a real story of this municipality Waspam or any of these municipalities where there are indigenous peoples.

    What about media claims that a little girl was shot in the face by a land invader? 

    Lejan Mora:

    In that case, a 13-year-old boy was handling his father’s handgun inside the house. The gun went off and the bullet pierced through here and came out here on a nearby girl.  What did they do when that accident happened? The creators of fake news took charge of spreading the word through the media, through Facebook, claiming that a lot of men appeared, 200 men and attacked the community. And we showed that was false. We went to the house and to the community.

    We interviewed people. We even visited the site where it happened. Everything was false. But that information spread internationally as if it was something real, which is untrue. Today even we could go… if we go to the community, we can go and talk also to the mother of the girl about what happened, and she can tell us the truth.

    Some mestizo farmers purchased land in the indigenous regions.  How did this happen?

    Eloy Frank Gomez:

    Yatama (indigenous opposition political party) mayors and deputies of Yatama were involved in the sale of indigenous lands. The community members didn’t know. The mestizos came in big numbers, families after families entering indigenous territories, for example, in the area of the Rio Coco.

    In certain areas of our communities in the Bosawas Reserve, which borders with Miskito land, many mestizo settlers came to enter our Mayangna lands. But how? Through these sales authorized by politicians from Yatama.

    It’s no secret that Liberal mayors and municipalities with mayors opposed to the government also promoted land trafficking, even financed organized groups, armed groups to invade indigenous lands and to dispossess the indigenous people of their lands. There is evidence of that.

    Lejan Mora:

    YATAMA leaders were the ones who started selling land. We have documents showing they were the vendors. Who were the buyers? People from the Pacific, who don’t have land. So, they began selling, they began doing business, and that is where the problem of land invasion arose.

    How are relations between indigenous and mestizo settlers?

    Fresly Janes Zamora:

    From the 1980s to date, if that person lives in that area, in that community, they already know the language, the culture, they already live with the same culture. The children, for example, are already over 30 years old. So, all these things give them that right.

    But what happened? The problem of the invasions started after the year 2000. It was difficult for the communities… they didn’t even have the authority to make decisions. So, what happens then? From 2013 onwards, we do have that dominion.

    We have that dominion, and we do still have that conflict, not with the government, not with the State of Nicaragua, but the people, the mestizos themselves are invading properties. Because as I told you, we conserve areas. Our ancestors, that is our culture. We are few but we have large tracts of land, because they are the areas where we go out to hunt animals, to sow our crops, to fish. So, these are areas where we as indigenous peoples abide. That is our culture.

    So, we now have the title. We have … dominion, we do have now, and the government, the State recognizes it. The only problem we have is that sometimes outsiders want to invade us or are invading our property. So, something that we must teach them is to recognize that they are our lands, and that this land is not empty and unclaimed.

    It has an owner. And the owner is the indigenous peoples. Therefore, although they do need land, they must coordinate, to reach an arrangement, to engage in dialogue, a negotiation with the owners

    Sometimes we have a conflict. With two or three of the ten mestizos that are within our lands, not all of them agree to recognize us. Always, in everything, there are two or three families that do not agree, that do not want to recognize us. So, what do we do?

    When this is the case, we visit the place, because it is our land, and we go in a commission to explain to them the internal regulations of our communities, or the internal regulations of the territory. If they agree, we can reach an understanding.

    We can sit down and start a dialogue, negotiate. Because the lands cannot be sold, even if I want to sell, I cannot, even if I want to give them away, I cannot. Because that’s a crime. But yes, the land can be leased.

    So, what we are doing is, as Twi Yabra, we are leasing land. We are leasing land, after several lawsuits, there was even bloodshed.  But what good is that?

    Rose Cunningham Kain:

    Here in Waspam we are practicing coexistence with those who have come to settle in Waspam. So, in this municipality we have different models of relations with non-indigenous peoples, with non-indigenous settlers. At this moment in the context of the hurricane, we have also had news of agricultural losses these non-indigenous people have suffered too. And as the mayor’s office we have to listen to them because they are Nicaraguan citizens. They have human rights. They are human too.

    What is true is that we always call on them to reach agreement with the indigenous peoples. Either they leave or they come to an agreement with the owners of the land. The last violent activity must have been in about 2013/14. We have not had violent activities in this part of our territory. Here we have seen meetings where people speak their minds. We have documented meetings that have taken place in the mountains between non-indigenous settlers and indigenous settlers where 17 communities, leaders of 17 communities, come together and walk to meet at a certain point.

    The last stage of the transition in the autonomous zones is remediation (‘saneamiento’). What is the status of this?

    Lejan Mora:

    We’re in the last phase of the remediation, which is clearing the boundaries, the inter-territorial limits and so on. So, we are at that stage right now. I remember very well indeed that in 2015 there were clashes between Miskitos and those who were invading the land.

    The political opposition are insisting on self-remediation. So, the people in the communities rise up, get involved in confrontations, and then they persist, and that’s how it happened that, I think there have been four or three deaths, something like that.

    We invited the settlers and we sat there under a tree. We started to make a presentation of the real situation there because they know very well they are on land that does not belong to them, we presented this to them. And we have shown them what and how might be the most appropriate way forward. It is a negotiated way, not through confrontations or anything like that.

    We talked and reached an agreement that… because there are people who have been on that land for several years. And that land where they are located, they got it because another territory sold it. One territory agreed the sale, but it is a piece of land that belongs to a different territory.

    So, it is a bit of a complicated situation. So, we talked with them, and precisely this coming Wednesday we have planned to go and prepare the ground for to another type of approach, namely leasing. We as the territory of Wangki Twi have not yet taken that approach but seeing the situation and to alleviate it a little, we must take that step. To what end? To a point we regard as feasible for creating a calmer and more durable situation, so that there are no conflicts.

    What about “self-remediation”?

    Fresly Janes Zamora:

    The opposition is promoting violence between indigenous and mestizos… Self-remediation means promoting violence between indigenous against mestizos.

    So, when they throw a stone, someone else will throw stones.

    Why do they send NGOs and programs for this? … On paper it says one thing, but on the ground it’s something else. That’s it. So that’s what they are promoting. When there is no fire, there is no money. As I told you, things are calm, things are resolved, but that’s what they do.

    So, we as Twi Yabra territory are against those people. That is why we are not involved with any organization. Because at the beginning we thought they entered in good faith to support us. But during the execution of these projects, of these visits, which they did in my absence, they were already doing other things. We immediately prohibited their visits to our communities because they were trying to destabilize the structure of the territorial government, the structure of the communal authorities and at the same time to bring violence between the Miskito peoples and outsiders, so we are against it.

    When do you negotiate with non-indigenous people?

    Ronald Whittingham Dennis:

    There are people who say remediation is to clear out, to get everyone out …. But some people say no, remediation is to seek an understanding, to remediate is to reach an understanding. And part of that understanding is the well-known term of reordering. That is the concept.

    So, what does it mean to reorder? It is not that the mestizos or the outsiders that are within your territory, within your area, that they are going to decide where they are going to be. You will tell them where they are going to be. That is reordering. And how much you can give in the portion of land. That is the zoning.

    It is a component for solving problems. Now in that reordering you also have to see who will go and who can stay. That is reordering.

    The State provides that through the Army and the Army’s Ecological Battalion, and no territory can say that’s not the case. They have indeed provided accompaniment. They have provided accompaniment.

    If a member of the community sold a certain portion of land for whatever reason, you are forced to sit down and negotiate. To see what can be done. And to negotiate you have to do so in a spirit of wanting to solve the problem. But if there is no will to resolve the problem rather than to create more problem, then you will never solve the problem.

    So, you have to look for strategies on how you are going to resolve it. Because these people who have already, imagine, who have already come to live here for fourteen years, fifteen years, they came to plant their crops, they have their own livestock, they have their animals, they are already well established.

    And that is what we in the territories have to understand. The damage is already done. What we have to look for is how to resolve the problem.

    What happens to settlers who are violent or refuse to leave the indigenous areas?

    Dr. Loyda del Carmen Martinez Rodriguez:

    The State has vindicated the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples’ right to the land, and the State is also a guarantor in the efforts to secure social peace in our country and in our region. It is a process in which the State has guaranteed and has given those peoples this right, but the political opposition always does not see this. They also say that the cases we have prosecuted are of little importance. But no. The indigenous peoples are being protected and the rights the indigenous peoples are being vindicated. And the State has contributed a great deal to this because no other government had ever recognized the indigenous peoples, giving them a title to what before was only private property, where only the oligarchy and the bourgeoisie had the right to own land.

    Also, I have participated in dialogue between mestizos and Miskitos in which there are territories that want to resolve the remediation process by means of a leasing agreement with the territory. They make the proposal, then the territory, its president will decide if they are going to lease or not. So, we have carried out these procedures as a judicial authority… by way of accompaniment, then. So, you see, we have participated listening to both parties, the mayor of the municipality has invited me to participate and listen to proposals made by the non-indigenous party.

    Likewise, we have made progress in this aspect of property remediation, and we are not trying to drag it out, although the opposition always sees it like that. But there has been a lot of progress, because there is a dialogue between mestizos and Miskitos in which the State guarantees as established in Law 445 that those communities, that now have their legal title, can lease their land and that is allowed by law. But this is something that as regards the State and the territories, each territory president is able say whether they want to lease or not.

    Lejan Mora:

    We’ve stopped the invasion that was taking place.  By applying that law, we are able to get people imprisoned via a judicial process. We get them imprisoned and they end up with three-year prison terms.

    And that is how we are trying to calm the situation. And later, we seek to reach a peaceful solution, without confrontations or anything else. The issue of territorial rights here in Nicaragua is something new for us. What the current government has done for us is a very good thing.

    What is the role of foreign funded NGOs?

    Arisio Genaro Selso:

    There are organizations, NGOs that use the name of the indigenous peoples and indigenous organizations to make accusations against the government, to denigrate the government, to try to destroy the government’s image and that of the work it does within the protected areas, for example, in the case of the Río San Juan, for example, or in the case of the Indio Maíz Reserve, and here in the case of the Bosawas Reserve.

    Rose Cunningham Kain:

    I think that, like this person, there are many who take advantage of the poverty and conflict of others. That is not and never has been the spirit of the creation of non-governmental organizations. For me, non-governmental organizations should not want to profit from poverty or people’s conflicts. And when I say poverty, it’s not that we are poor.

    We have been impoverished by the same people who have funded the people who say that we live in conflict.

    It is a big lie. We have not had that kind of conflict for many years. We are building peace. Peace is not just words. Peace is a process. And the social reinsertion after the eighties, when the counterrevolution was also financed from the north, that peace process that led us to Autonomy, we continue to weave it, we continue to build it, and we continue to strengthen it. And today, after 33 years of Autonomy, we feel, and I feel proud to see how our community leaders are able to give you an interview and tell you the reality. And they know where the bad is and where the good is.

    What is the role of the Center for Justice and Human Rights in the Atlantic District of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN) and its leader Lottie Cunningham?

    Arisio Genaro Selso:

    CEJUDHCAN is not the institution she claims or projects at the international level, as an organization or institution defending indigenous rights.

    Why doesn’t she ever consult us? Why doesn’t she come to the communities to consult us? Why not our national leadership, which is who we are, leading the national government of the Mayangna Nation, or else to the presidents in our territorial governments…? She is not present. She speaks from afar. She uses the indigenous name. She uses it without having been there when the events are taking place. For example, when the Alal case occurred, up there in the Reserve, she said that the government was not defending the indigenous people.

    In practice, Lottie works with opposition activists. They are people who live as we Nicaraguans say, making accusations against the government, talking badly about the government. So, she takes that and exploits it to say that the government does such and such, but really if it were the organization, she says it is, she should be open to consultation. But she is not. She just turns up for a short while. And sometimes she exaggerates things. And she makes use of the indigenous peoples.

    Fresly Janes Zamora:

    CEJUDHCAN does training on the rights of indigenous peoples. But at the same time, they have another interest. Two programs came to my territory, that they are going to help me, that are going to help me with remediation, this, and that… We said, look, these are our conditions and priorities. So, help me on such and such a matter.

    For example, when in my second year as president, they saw things were going to improve, change, become more formalized, they did not like that. Why? Well, as long as there are incidents, then there are conflicts, so for them that means there is always funding. So, what did I do? I told them, I sent two letters, saying that we want nothing to do with them. We no longer want to have a relationship with them.

    Lejan Mora:

    I have seen the video that Lottie released. She says every pound of meat that sold to the United States is a drop of blood of the Miskito. Which is totally false. I don’t know what her objective is in spreading so many lies. Because it has nothing to do with anything real, nothing at all. These are not right. I mean, a lie of such magnitude.

    How are relations between the indigenous leaders and the Nicaragua government?

    Arisio Genaro Selso:

    Before there was this great project for Bosawas it was worse. There was no consultation, the decisions weren’t taken by the indigenous communities.

    Now things are different. This is an opportunity for the indigenous peoples, this recognition, this respect of the government towards indigenous institutions, towards indigenous peoples.  This also allows indigenous peoples to participate directly and broadly in the decisions that are being taken.

    Progress has been made. Why? Because the government authorized the creation of a body within the courts, namely the figure of Defenders of Indigenous Peoples was created, wherever there is the presence of indigenous population. What is the function of these Defenders? It is the direct accompaniment these Defenders provide to the indigenous organizations for the judicial process of settlers, those who are destroying the environment, all these types of cases. So, there is greater accompaniment.

    And the other important element is that we have also achieved within the judiciary, our indigenous officials also hold positions in the courts. So now the recent appointments of the Defenders of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples are also indigenous people who speak the indigenous languages. That is the other element, which for us is vital.

    The government has guaranteed that in all the municipalities where indigenous peoples are present, there will also be functionaries who speak indigenous languages.

    Summary

    Readers who are interested to learn more facts and perspectives on the situation in Nicaragua’s autonomous regions are encouraged to read Sefton’s entire book.  While there is much in common, the indigenous leaders have different experiences and perspectives on certain issues. There are many rich insights and subtleties in the full text. What comes through very clearly is that the news and analysis of the situation in Nicaragua is being hugely distorted.

    In the last month (October 2021) a violent attack took place in the Bosawas indigenous territory.  Again, Stephen Sefton travelled to the remote area by car and horse to ascertain the facts about what really happened. It turns out that the conflict was over a mining operation and both the victims and perpetrators were indigenous. This is documented in Sefton’s article “The Truth about Recent Violence in Bosawas”. From the misinformation about “conflict beef” and other accusations last year, to the recent events in Bosawas, the common thread is that information about Nicaragua is being manipulated for geopolitical ends. That is why these first person interviews and statements from indigenous leaders are so crucial to hear.

    USAID Photo

    The post Indigenous Leaders in Nicaragua Speak Out Against Western Media and NGOs first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • This one goes out to all of you who still “trust the science.” 

    Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He was a public relations pioneer, one of America’s most innovative social engineers, and the author of a 1928 book brazenly entitled Propaganda. In 1929, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to persuade women to take up cigarette smoking. His slogan, “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet,” exploited women’s fear of gaining weight (a concern purposefully manufactured through previous advertising and/or public relations work by Bernays and others).

    While Lucky Strike sales increased by 300 percent in the first year of Bernays’ campaign, there was still one more barrier he needed to break down: smoking remained mostly taboo for “respectable” women. This is where some watered-down Freud came in handy. As Bernays biographer Larry Tye said, he basically wanted to take his uncle’s works and “popularize them into little ditties that housewives and others could relate to.” With input from psychoanalyst A.A. Brill, Bernays conjured up the now legendary scheme to re-frame cigarettes as a symbol of freedom.

    “During the 1929 Easter Parade,” explains New York Times reporter Ron Chernow, “he had a troupe of fashionable ladies flounce down Fifth Avenue, conspicuously puffing their ‘Torches of Freedom,’ as he had called cigarettes.” As Chernow reports, Bernays augmented this successful stunt by lining up “neutral experts” to “applaud the benefits of smoking, all the while concealing the tobacco company’s sponsorship of his activity.” (I strongly suggest you re-read that last sentence and comprehend its relevance within today’s Big Pharma context.)

    Bernays was also concealing his knowledge of tobacco’s deleterious effects. “As he hypocritically seduced American women into smoking, he was trying to wean his own wife from the nasty habit,” Chernow continues. “His daughter Anne Bernays, the novelist, recalls that whenever he discovered a pack of his wife’s Parliaments, ‘he’d pull them all out and just snap them like bones, just snap them in half and throw them in the toilet. He hated her smoking.’” (I strongly suggest you also re-read that last sentence and comprehend its relevance within today’s Big Pharma context.)

    It’s no wonder so many of today’s Americans — all across the ideological spectrum — are so easily and willingly duped by fake news, deep fakes, and clickbait. In the era of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, we are now exposed to more propaganda than ever before. Bernays’ PR progeny continues refining and honing their skills. They keep us passive, distracted, and divided — but still inherently trusting those in power. Most Americans are thusly trapped inside news feed algorithms that serve as echo chambers to create and reinforce flawed opinions.

    We are the intended result of a century-long social experiment — but now they have artificial intelligence to more efficiently program and condition us. We’ve willingly surrendered our ability to discern fact from fiction. Even worse, we’ve surrendered our desire to discern fact from fiction. Pro tip: Nothing will change until we truly open our minds and recognize that we are being lied to.

    •  (Thanks to Joe from Maine for many of the images that appear in this article)

    The post Unholy Trinity: Medicine, Science, and Corporate Power first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • All embarked, the party launched out on the sea’s foaming lanes while the son of Atreus told his troops to wash, to purify themselves from the filth of the plague. They scoured it off, threw scourings in the surf and sacrificed to Apollo full-grown bulls and goats along the beaten shore of the fallow barren sea and savory smoke went swirling up the skies.

    Homer, The Iliad (1.365-370)

    The Biden administration’s announcement that Americans employed in companies with over 100 employees would be compelled to take an experimental gene therapy in explicit violation of the Nuremberg Code has opened a new front in the biofascist assault on democracy. Businesses and government agencies that fail to enforce this mandate will potentially face draconian fines. Should the oligarchy succeed in completely weaponizing health care, vaccine passports would undoubtedly become both pervasive and mandatory, but as Tucker Carlson pointed out during one of his recent monologues, it is also likely that dissidents would be handed over to the Cult of Psychiatry. This is not an uncommon practice in police states, and the pathologization of dissent has been ongoing in the West for quite some time now. Only through knowledge, compassion, and camaraderie can the forces of neo-Nazi medicine be outflanked. The days of medical Armageddon are upon us.

    As the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and its European counterpart unequivocally demonstrate, the Covid vaccine program is causing tremendous harm and should have been terminated many months ago. Even the efficacy of the vaccines is very much in doubt, as evidenced by soaring Covid case numbers in some of the most vaccinated places on earth, such as the Seychelles (see here and here), Israel (see here, here, here and here), Gibraltar and Iceland. As physician assistant Deborah Conrad pointed out in her interview with The HighWire, VAERS is so dysfunctional that many doctors and nurses are only vaguely aware of its existence.

    Addressing the “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Joseph Mercola, MD, writes on Mercola.com:

    In a June 29, 2021, interview, Fauci called the Delta variant ‘a game-changer’ for unvaccinated people, warning it will devastate the unvaccinated population while vaccinated individuals are protected against it. Alas, in the real world, the converse is turning out to be true, as the Delta variant is running wild primarily among those who got the Covid jab.

    As Dr. James Lyons-Weiler and other experts without ties to industry have noted, coronavirus vaccines have long had a poor safety record. Indeed, when scientists attempted to create a vaccine for SARS-CoV-1 the laboratory animals all died due to pathogenic priming.

    The vaccine mandates are causing middle class professionals to quit their jobs in droves, from highly trained fighter pilots, to large numbers of nurses leading to maternity wards being shuttered. In what is reminiscent of the anthrax vaccine (administered to the military despite the lack of both informed consent and FDA approval), army doctors are now observing serious adverse events in formerly healthy soldiers. The Covid vaccine drive has surpassed even the psychopathy of the Nazi doctors, as it would have been inconceivable to senior physicians in the Third Reich to give all of German society an experimental vaccine.

    In an incident that underscores how delusional the mass media has become, WXYZ-TV in Detroit, an ABC affiliate, reached out to people on Facebook for stories of Americans who died of Covid because they delayed getting vaccinated, but were instead inundated with thousands of stories of people who were killed or seriously injured by the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) gene therapies.

    Not only has a two-tier society emerged where the unvaccinated are being denied the right to work, attend university, eat out, go to sporting events, and enjoy the performing and visual arts; but another two-tier society has also emerged, one which has been evolving for quite some time now: the mega rich – for whom none of these draconian rules will apply – and everyone else. Video from a Democratic Party fundraiser hosted by Nancy Pelosi in Napa Valley has emerged showing affluent liberals rubbing shoulders unmasked while their brown servants wear masks. Masks and social distancing were apparently not required at the recent Met Gala in New York, where celebrities get to hobnob, have shallow conversations, and show off their outlandish costumes while millions of their countrymen wallow in unemployment, hopelessness, and despair.

    And it would seem that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio (whose real name incidentally is Warren Wilhelm Jr.) is not the only one who delights in imposing punitive measures on those who opt for the control group, with museums and concert halls enthusiastically embracing the heinous practice. The Guggenheim has even written on their website in conjunction with their vaccine requirement that “We focus on safety so you can immerse yourself in art.” (Thankfully, I have a lot of art books).

    What will transpire if the mandates remain in place? Will our leaders order their minions to shut off the water of the unvaccinated? Will workers and students be compelled to take an experimental AIDS vaccine or submit to weekly testing? These injunctions are unethical, discriminatory, and unconstitutional, as they transform inalienable rights into privileges which must be earned by participating in a dangerous medical experiment. Restaurants in Manhattan, which have some of the highest commercial rents in the world, are naturally reluctant to enforce these regulations, yet run the risk of being snitched on by Branch Covidian undercover operatives.

    Such an incestuous relationship has formed between the FDA, CDC, NIH, NIAID and the pharmaceutical industry, that going to the websites for these agencies invariably yields information that mirrors what is posted on the drug company websites. There is robust science indicating that natural immunity is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. There is likewise compelling evidence that face masks do more harm than good, yet these facts continue to be ignored by the presstitutes – a gaggle of clowns also on industry payroll.

    When reporter Emerald Robinson asked White House principal deputy secretary Karine Jean-Pierre how doctors were testing for the Delta variant, Jean-Pierre became defensive, demanding that we stop asking questions and follow “the experts.” They know best after all, who when not registering vaccinated deaths as unvaccinated and artificially inflating the Covid death toll, are busy turning the country into a nation of opioid, heroin (the two are inextricably linked), fentanyl, barbiturate, benzodiazepine, and psychotropic drug addicts. (American doctors even once prescribed cocaine and heroin). Speaking at the Washington National Cathedral, our imaginary president, Dr. Fauci, said that he was sympathetic to Brits and Americans who are accustomed to certain post-Medieval rights and freedoms, “but now is the time to do what you’re told.”

    The FDA “approval” for the Pfizer Covid vaccine attempts to conflate EUA investigational agents with FDA-approved drugs, as FDA has not approved the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which is still in use, but the Pfizer Comirnaty Covid vaccine, which isn’t even available. The FDA has argued that the two vaccines are indistinguishable from one another and that they can be used interchangeably, which is absurd. Any drug under the auspices of an EUA is by law experimental and cannot be mandated. Senator Ron Johnson wrote a letter to FDA Acting Commissioner Woodcock requesting clarification on this preposterous state of affairs.

    It is curious that Hydroxychloroquine is somehow safe as a maintenance drug for lupus, yet suddenly becomes dangerous when used to treat SARS-CoV-2, even if only taken for a very short period of time. Here is the website lupus.org:

    Given the drug’s many and varied beneficial effects and its excellent long-standing safety profile, most rheumatologists believe that Hydroxychloroquine should be taken by people with lupus throughout their lifetime. [Italics added]

    The FDA temporarily authorized the use of Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 in March of 2020, but only with hospitalized patients. The FDA notice read as follows:

    Hydroxychloroquine sulfate may only be used to treat adult and adolescent patients who weigh 50 kg or more and are hospitalized with COVID-19, for whom a clinical trial is not available, or participation is not feasible.

    As Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, Dr. Peter McCullough, and others have noted, Covid protocols using Hydroxychloroquine and other zinc ionophores are most efficacious early in the disease process. In other words, the FDA denied permission for doctors to use a medication for outpatient care where it has been shown to significantly reduce hospitalization and death, but allowed the drug to be used for hospitalized patients where the disease has often spiraled out of control, thereby setting the drug up to fail. Dr. Simone Gold has argued that the prevalence of Hydroxychloroquine in Africa, where it is frequently obtainable as an over-the-counter drug for malaria treatment and prophylaxis, has played a significant role in protecting the continent from Covid.

    So eager were the Branch Covidians to torpedo Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for SARS-CoV-2 that they conducted dangerous and unethical trials where patients were deliberately overdosed and given toxic quantities of the drug, likely causing some of the trial participants to die, and causing even far more deaths when public health agencies around the world advised (or in some instances, ordered) doctors to stop using a life-saving medication as a treatment for COVID-19.

    Writing for The Defender, the newsletter for Children’s Health Defense, Jeremy Loffredo points out that in addition to threatening the profits of the mRNA vaccines, Hydroxychloroquine posed a threat to the profits of Gilead, the manufacturer of Remdesivir:

    Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, dozens of new studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine and its first cousin, Chloroquine, against Covid. These studies occurred in China, France, Saudi Arabia, Italy, India, New York and Michigan. However, such proof of Hydroxychloroquine’s benefit to patients with Covid has posed an existential threat to Gilead sales throughout the Covid outbreak.

    Remdesivir costs over $3,000 per treatment and has been linked to serious and potentially life-threatening side effects. Nevertheless, if a drug is profitable safety, necessity, and efficacy are disregarded. It becomes “the standard of care.”

    Having had their fill of demonizing Hydroxychloroquine, the presstitutes and pharmaceutical sock puppets turned their vitriol on another unpatentable drug, Ivermectin. Described as “a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction” by the journal New Microbes and New Infections, Ivermectin has played a critical role in combating onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. Writing for The Lancet, Michel Boussinesq, MD, PhD, points out that “Ivermectin has been widely used for 30 years to combat onchocerciasis and is rightly considered a wonder drug.” In African countries where Ivermectin is regularly taken as an anti-parasitic Covid deaths have been negligible. Elaborating on this point, Kenyan doctors Stephen Karanga and Wahome Ngare pointed out in a Klartext podcast that due to Ivermectin’s effectiveness in treating Covid they weren’t worried about SARS-CoV-2; their real concerns lay with car accidents, HIV, and malaria.

    Meanwhile, the FDA refuses to even acknowledge that Ivermectin can be used in humans, tweeting “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” (Yes, those are some of the smartest people in the world). This villainy is not without precedent, as millions of Americans were prescribed highly addictive opioids as opposed to safer and more inexpensive over-the-counter pain medications. The sacking of Canadian emergency physician Dr. Daniel Nagase, who was found guilty of saving the lives of his Covid patients with Ivermectin, underscores the fact that the elites will stop at nothing to prolong the pandemic.

    In addition to fomenting the cult-like notion that a vaccine is a magical elixir for which no risk-benefit analysis is needed, the media has played a critical role in deceiving hundreds of millions of people around the world into believing that Covid is equally dangerous to all patients irregardless of age and preexisting conditions. This, in turn, has led to Black Death levels of hysteria, as evidenced by unvaccinated locals in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh being forced to wear placards displaying the skull and crossbones.

    Physicians who attempt to treat Covid early using Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) and Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) protocols are being vilified as quacks and snake oil salesmen, while doctors who are killing staggering numbers of people through a combination of nontreatment and dangerous experimental drugs are hailed as heroes. In many ways, this is the essence of biofascism: care patients desperately need is denied them, while dangerous care is imposed through coercion – both monstrous violations of the oath to do no harm.

    It is not uncommon for physicians to prescribe FDA-approved drugs to treat conditions that are different from what the drug was initially intended for. This is referred to as “off-label use” or “off-label prescribing.” How will a high-risk patient who contracts Covid benefit from masks, social distancing, lockdowns and vaccines (even if they were safe and effective)? They need something that will ward off the inflammatory phase of the disease and keep the ventilator at bay. This suppression of early treatment options has failed to escape the attention of the Indian Bar Association, which has sought criminal charges against WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan for making fallacious claims about Ivermectin to protect the Church of Vaccinology.

    A passage from the Rome Declaration, established at the Rome Covid Summit, and signed by over 10,000 doctors and scientists, states the following:

    WHEREAS, thousands of physicians are being prevented from providing treatment to their patients, as a result of barriers put up by pharmacies, hospitals, and public health agencies, rendering the vast majority of healthcare providers helpless to protect their patients in the face of disease. Physicians are now advising their patients to simply go home (allowing the virus to replicate) and return when their disease worsens, resulting in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary patient deaths, due to failure-to-treat;

    WHEREAS, this is not medicine. This is not care. These policies may actually constitute crimes against humanity.

    In the Age of Faucism, everyone who arrives at an American emergency room is being given a PCR test, and if it indicates that they have the virus (not unlikely considering the prevalence of false positives), their loved ones are summarily kicked out of the hospital, they are put into isolation, given drugs of dubious safety and efficacy, and even intubated. Dr. Jane Ruby has referred to these Covid obsessed hospitals as “the new ovens.” Furthermore, physicians are being threatened with revocation of their licenses should they be found guilty of “spreading misinformation” – a practice also commonly referred to as informed consent.

    Hitler’s physicians were fond of euthanizing the mentally ill, and it would appear that their heirs are equally enamored with the practice, as the mentally handicapped have been vaccinated by force and with armed police present in Los Angeles. Children in Toronto have been given the experimental jab, without parental permission, and in exchange for free ice cream, while irate parents were prevented from entering the grounds. Not to be outdone, whistleblowers from Aegis Living, an assisted living facility for the aged, have reported that residents have been “chemically restrained” and injected with the investigational mRNA biologicals without their knowledge. As Dr. Lee Merritt said in a talk with Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, “We have a whole society doing what we tried the Nazi doctors for.”

    As evidenced by the CDC vaccine schedule (a growing list of mandates coupled with liability protection for the manufacturer), and the fact that parents can be charged with “medical neglect” should they object to their children being placed on psychotropic drugs, the American public school system has long been in the grip of late-stage biofascism. To add insult to injury, toddlers are now being forced to wear masks and the mRNA biologicals are being injected into minors. Children’s Health Defense has reported that “Pfizer’s Covid vaccine could be rolled out to babies as young as 6 months in the U.S. this winter — under plans being drawn up by the pharmaceutical giant.”

    Australia offers another window into our future should we fail to save humanity from the hordes of Faucism. Indeed, this has become a country where farmers’ markets are shut down by riot police, senior health officials tell their countrymen not to talk to one another so as to prevent transmission of a virus, pregnant women are arrested in their pajamas for attempting to organize anti-lockdown rallies on the Internet, women are violently choked by sadistic goons for leaving their homes unmasked, young children are pepper sprayed and brutalized for committing the aforementioned sin, citizens are committed (or “sectioned” as they say in Britain) for questioning the official Covid narrative, rubber bullets are fired into crowds of informed consenters, and extreme forms of violence are unleashed against elderly protesters – acts of barbarity that have enraged the citizenry. Melbourne in particular has lost all semblance of checks and balances, with storm troopers being unleashed on the population, in harrowing scenes reminiscent of the Wehrmacht’s storming of Prague. (Granted, without the live rounds).

    Convinced that anyone who questions the veracity of the liberal media and the public health agencies is a “conspiracy theorist” (really a euphemism for “mentally ill”), neoliberals have already crossed the Rubicon and taken up the truncheon of authoritarianism. Undoubtedly, the official Covid narrative is deranged. Yet is it any more inane than “Trump’s white supremacist insurrection,” “Russia invaded Ukraine,” “the Russians hacked the election,” “Trump is Putin’s puppet,” and NATO was compelled to bomb Libya to smithereens “to save Benghazi?”

    Trapped in a vortex of amnesia and unreason, the neoliberal has been hoodwinked into believing that whatever the medical mullahs say is “the science;” and whatever the liberal media says is incontrovertible, irrefutable, and infallible; i.e., “reality.” Fauci’s contradictory statements, particularly with regard to the virulence of COVID-19 and his stance on masks, fail to diminish their fervor as they cannot even remember what they had for breakfast, let alone the tens of thousands of Americans killed by Vioxx or the over 400,000 Americans that lost their lives to the opioid epidemic.

    The liberals of the 1960s, who genuinely believed in the Nuremberg Code, would have regarded the Branch Covidians with contempt. What a pity that the ranks of these medical brownshirts are dominated largely by those who once idolized the likes of Bobby Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, yet now wallow in a pitiable state of moral and intellectual bankruptcy. It is true that conservative publications, such as The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal are parroting similar propaganda with regard to Covid. However, as evidenced by Tucker Carlson’s show, the conservative media no longer speaks with one voice. Moreover, millions of conservatives no longer believe in the infallibility of the conservative media as liberals continue to believe in the infallibility of the liberal media.

    Ultimately, the Branch Covidians are the offspring of a union between a corporatized health care system that has grown increasingly hostile to informed consent, and a liberal class that stopped thinking when Bill Clinton was inaugurated and has come to regard senior officials in the liberal media and the public health agencies as gods. The mass psychosis of the Branch Covidians is inextricably linked with the mass psychosis of neoliberalism. Without the latter the former would have about as much societal impact as the Hare Krishnas.

    The Nazis divided humanity into the subhumans (Jews, Roma, political prisoners, and Slavs); the humans (allied European fascists and the Japanese); and the supermen (the Germans, or Aryans). For quite some time now, the American health care system has been mired in a multi-tier system which divides patients up into similar categories. In light of this boorishness, teaching hospitals have long been instructing trainees that care is to be doled out depending on what kind of insurance plan patients have. Privileged patients are granted the right to choose their own doctor while the less fortunate are confined to narrow networks. Humans are permitted to meet with an attending physician while the Untermenschen are sent to resident clinics. Unbeknownst to Nazi doctors, both past and present, there is no bioethics on-off switch. In what was foundational to the Blitzkrieg but could also explain their increasingly deranged decision making, much of the German military during World War II was regularly taking Pervitin, the predecessor to crystal meth, and doing so with the support of their own doctors.

    As the forces of darkness become increasingly desperate, liberals drown in an ocean of madness and sociopathy. Hypnotized by an oligarchy they have deified, while believing that they are still marching with Martin Luther King singing “Kumbaya My Lord” and “We Shall Overcome,” this faux-left movement bears a closer resemblance to the Democratic Party of the 1860s than the Democratic Party of the 1960s. Indeed, if the Branch Covidians succeed in destroying the citadel of informed consent, only one form of government will reign in the United States: slavery.

    The post The Branch Covidians are Waging War on Humanity first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Leak Shows Facebook Knew Its Algorithms Harmed Children and Spread Hate

    An unprecedented leak at Facebook reveals top executives at the company knew about major issues with the platform from their own research but kept the damning information hidden from the public. The leak shows Facebook deliberately ignored rampant disinformation, hate speech and political unrest in order to boost ad sales and is also implicated in child safety and human trafficking violations. Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen leaked thousands of documents and revealed her identity as the whistleblower during an interview with “60 Minutes.” She is set to testify today before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. “​​​​Their value system, which is about efficiency and speed and growth and profit and power, is in conflict with democracy,” says Roger McNamee, who was an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. He says Facebook executives are prioritizing profits over safety. We also speak with Jessica González, co-CEO of the media advocacy organization Free Press and co-founder of Change the Terms, a coalition that works to disrupt online hate, who says this demonstrates Facebook is “unfit” to regulate itself. “We need Congress to step in.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at a massive leak of tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents that show the social media’s own research indicates its algorithm helps boost disinformation, hate speech and political unrest around the world and that Facebook executives knew about it but kept the damning information hidden from the public. The leak also implicates Facebook in issues of child safety and human trafficking, while it prioritized profits over people’s welfare.

    The documents were behind a sweeping investigation by The Wall Street Journal and were unveiled by whistleblower and former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen. She secretly copied the pages before leaving her job at the company’s Civic Integrity unit in May. Haugen spoke publicly for the first time Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes with reporter Scott Pelley.

    SCOTT PELLEY: To quote from another one of the documents you brought out, “We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech, and misinformation on Facebook and the family of apps are affecting societies around the world.”

    FRANCES HAUGEN: When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content, it erodes our civic trust. It erodes our faith in each other. It erodes our ability to want to care for each other. The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.

    AMY GOODMAN: Haugen has filed a federal complaint against Facebook and is testifying today before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. According to her prepared remarks, she’ll call on lawmakers to take action against Facebook for the harm it poses to its users and the world. She is expected to say, quote, “When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seat belts, the government took action. And today, the government is taking action against companies that hid evidence on opioids. I implore you to do the same here,” she said.

    Today’s panel is also looking into how Facebook downplayed its knowledge that its photo- and video-sharing app Instagram is harmful for teen girls and tweens. This is Haugen again, speaking on CBS’s 60 Minutes to reporter Scott Pelley.

    SCOTT PELLEY: One study says 13-and-a-half percent of teen girls say Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse; 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes eating disorders worse.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: And what’s super tragic is Facebook’s own research says, as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed, and it actually makes them use the app more. And so they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more. Facebook’s own research says it is not just that Instagram is dangerous for teenagers, that it harms teenagers; it’s that it is distinctly worse than other forms of social media.

    AMY GOODMAN: Lawmakers are also pursuing Facebook as part of a federal antitrust case and over its role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Documents leaked by Frances Haugen detail Facebook’s decision to dissolve its Civic Integrity unit after the 2020 election and before the assault on the Capitol. Her testimony comes a day after Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — also owned by Facebook — suffered a six-hour outage disrupting online communication worldwide. It’s the first time this has happened for so long.

    For more, we’re joined in San Francisco by Roger McNamee. He was an early investor in Facebook. He was a Mark Zuckerberg mentor, then went on to write the book Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. And in Los Angeles, we’re joined by Jessica González. She is co-CEO of the media advocacy group Free Press and co-founder of Change the Terms, a coalition that works to disrupt online hate. She’s also a member of the Real Facebook Oversight Board.

    We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jessica, let’s begin with you. As you listen to this testimony of Frances Haugen and all of these documents that have been released, I mean, it was really amazing to see these congressional hearings in the last few weeks, where you have Facebook being confronted by senators, and the senators are saying, “These studies, that you did not reveal, like the damage you do to tweens and teen girls, are astounding.” And she said, “Oh, actually, they’re really bad studies.” They said, “No, they’re really good studies.” But, overall, your response to what’s taking place right now?

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: Listen, Amy, good morning. I’m not surprised that Facebook knew that it was causing concrete harm to women, to people of color, to society as the whole. I’m not surprised it knew that it was spreading disinformation about the vaccine, the pandemic and other things. What I’m surprised about is just how blatantly they lied to the American public, including members of Congress, over and over again, about the extent to which they were causing harm here in the United States and around the world. That’s the shocking part here, is just the number of bald-faced lies repeated over and over again. It indicates clearly that Facebook is unfit to self-govern and that we need the U.S. Congress and the administration to step in and provide transparency and accountability.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jessica, I wanted to ask you — in terms of Facebook’s record and its ability to monitor hate speech, you’ve also raised questions about the fact that it’s not just in the English language, given the enormous international reach of Facebook, in other languages, as well. Have you been noticing a difference between how it even monitors English-language material versus those in other languages across the country, given, for instance, the enormous impact that right-wing groups from Latin America had through WhatsApp and other Facebook posts during the election to reach Spanish-speaking people here in the U.S.?

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: Yes, Juan, as bad as this situation is in English, it’s far worse in Spanish and other non-English languages. That’s why we worked together with partners from the Center for American Progress and National Hispanic Media Coalition to launch the Ya Basta Facebook campaign — “Enough Already, Facebook.” We were calling for concrete steps, investment in content moderation and AI systems, in the personnel needed to accurately and adequately monitor non-English content on Facebook. And we really got a complete blowoff from Facebook. In fact, Facebook wouldn’t even tell us who’s in charge of Spanish-language content moderation, how many moderators do they have, where are those people located, what are the systems and trainings in place. They won’t even provide baseline transparency.

    Well, come to find out, part of what Frances Haugen helped reveal this week is that Facebook is not adequately invested in any language, besides perhaps English and French. They’ve made some investments in those areas, but they’ve utterly failed to make the investments necessary to make Facebook safe in other languages.

    And I have to tell you, Juan, you know, if it were me and I was running Facebook and I hear from the United Nations that I played a contributing role in the genocide in Myanmar, I would have looked right away at this issue, at whether our moderation systems were keeping people safe, particularly around the globe. And so, the fact that that didn’t happen is appalling and unacceptable.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring in Roger McNamee to the conversation. Welcome to Democracy Now! And could you talk to us about your reaction to the latest revelations from Frances Haugen, and how you initially began to believe that Facebook was on a negative and dangerous course?

    ROGER McNAMEE: Well, it’s a great honor to be back on the show with you all today. And I want to tip my hat to my friend Jessica, because I think she framed many of the problems exactly correctly. I also want to throw out a huge, you know, thanks to Frances Haugen. She is so courageous, so authoritative and so utterly convincing. I mean, this is a person who was in a position of enormous responsibility at Facebook, who is very technically competent, who saw these problems and had the courage to bring documents out to make sure the whole world knows. That level of courage is just — I mean, we should be all applauding it.

    You know, my own experience, I was an adviser to Mark in the early days of Facebook. I mean, he was 22 when we met, and I advised him when the company — starting before it even had a newsfeed. My concerns became an issue for me in early 2016, and I reached out to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg just before the election in 2016 to warn them, because I was afraid. I had seen these things going on that really bothered me, and it made me fear that the culture of Facebook, the business model and the algorithms were allowing bad people to harm innocent people in the context of civil rights, which is what Jess was just talking about, but also democracy. And, you know, I pleaded with him, because I said, you know, “You’re in a business that depends on trust. You have to get this right.” And I spent months trying to convince Facebook to do the right thing, starting before the election in 2016 and then continuing for several months after. That didn’t work, so I became an activist.

    The key thing about Frances Haugen, and the reason that she has changed the game more in three weeks than I could in five years, is because she brought out documents that established definitively that the executives at Facebook were aware of the problems, and that in spite of warnings on things like COVID disinformation, on things like the insurrection, on things like the damage to teenage girls, they persisted.

    And they persisted because of a business model that’s not just at Facebook. We can’t just let this be about Facebook, because the business model of surveillance capitalism, which is a concept that was coined by the professor Shoshana Zuboff at Harvard, this is a business model of using surveillance to gather data, in every possible context, and using that to both predict our behavior and to manipulate our choices and our behavior. And that is so fundamentally un-American, so fundamentally unethical, that we have to ban it. It’s as unethical as child labor. And it’s something being adopted by companies throughout the economy. Google invented it. Facebook adopted it. Amazon uses it. Microsoft, many other tech companies have become the leaders in it. But you see it in cars now and in smart devices. You see it all over the economy. And it’s incredibly dangerous.

    AMY GOODMAN: You talked about the bravery of Frances Haugen. In fact, she is afraid, and that makes her even more brave. She’s taking on a trillion-dollar company.

    ROGER McNAMEE: Yes.

    AMY GOODMAN: Physically afraid what kind of retaliation Facebook could wage against her. Do you have thoughts on that, Roger?

    ROGER McNAMEE: I think her strategy of maximum public attention is exactly right. I mean, let’s face it: The people who organized this communications strategy have done a brilliant job. And I really tip my hat to them, and I tip my hat to her. And I think her best defense is to be so visible that Facebook wouldn’t dare. You know, their past strategy has been to use ad hominem and to, essentially, invent stories. You remember the famous one about George Soros after he gave a speech at the Davos conference criticizing Facebook. You know, they hired a negative research company to invent an antisemitic story about George Soros and spread it through the press. That has been their past behavior.

    I mean, listen, I don’t think these people are criminals, at least not in the way they think about the world. But I do believe they have a very different value system and that their value system, which is about efficiency and speed and growth and profit and power, is in conflict with democracy, and it’s in conflict with our right to make our own choices. And the country has to make a decision: Are we going to allow corporations to essentially replace the government as the people who control our lives, or are we going to recognize that the government is us and that it can, in fact, represent us, as long as we insist that it do so? And that’s what we have to do with Congress today. Frances is going in there to testify. And Congress will string this out, if we let them. And what we need to do is to say to them, “I’m sorry. It’s time to have safety laws, it’s time to have privacy laws, and it’s time to have new antitrust laws.”

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to play a few clips, for one sec, Juan, just to give people a sense of where Congress is going. In this Senate hearing, Antigone Davis, the global head of safety of Facebook, faced questions on its internal research on young children and their use of the app. She was questioned by Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection.

    SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: I don’t understand, Ms. Davis, how you can deny that Instagram isn’t exploiting young users for its own profits.

    ANTIGONE DAVIS: As someone who was a teenage girl herself and as someone who’s taught middle school and teenage girls, I’ve seen firsthand the troubling intersection between the pressure to — to be perfect, between body image and finding your identity at that age. And I think what’s been lost in this report is that, in fact, with this research, we found that more teen girls actually find Instagram helpful — teen girls who are suffering from these issues find Instagram helpful than not. Now, that doesn’t mean that the ones that aren’t aren’t important to us. In fact, that’s why we do this research. It’s leading to —

    SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Well, if I may interrupt you, Ms. Davis?

    ANTIGONE DAVIS: — product changes and the ability — mm-hmm?

    SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: These are your own reports. These findings are from your own studies and your own experts. You can speak from your own experience, but will you disclose all of the reports, all of the findings? Will you commit to full disclosure?

    ANTIGONE DAVIS: I know that we have released a number of the reports. And we are looking to find ways to release more of this research. I want to be clear that this research is not a bombshell. It’s not causal research. It’s, in fact, just directional research that we use for product changes.

    SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Well, I beg to differ with you, Ms. Davis. This research is a bombshell. It is powerful, gripping, riveting evidence that Facebook knows of the harmful effects of its site on children and that it has concealed those facts and findings.

    AMY GOODMAN: Facebook recently postponed the launch of its new Instagram app for kids under 18, once Haugen released these documents. During the Senate hearing last week, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey questioned the global head of safety of Facebook, Antigone Davis, on the platform’s potential harm to children.

    SEN. ED MARKEY: Will you stop launching — will you promise not to launch a site that includes features such as like buttons and follower counts that allow children to quantify popularity? That’s a yes or a no.

    ANTIGONE DAVIS: Those are the kinds of features that we will be talking about with our experts, trying to understand, in fact, what is most age appropriate and what isn’t age appropriate. And we will discuss those features with them, of course.

    SEN. ED MARKEY: Well, let me just say this. We’re talking about 12-year-olds. We’re talking about 9-year-olds. If you need to do more research on this, you should fire all the people who you’ve paid to do your research up until now, because this is pretty obvious. And it’s pretty obvious to every mother and father in our country, because all recent scientific studies by child development experts found that not getting enough likes on social media significantly reduces adolescents’ feelings of self-worth.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s it from the Senate hearing, but I want to end in these series of clips with Frances Haugen herself, the interview on 60 Minutes, when the former Facebook product manager explains how the social media’s algorithm works, and describes how the documents she leaked lay out Facebook’s decision to dissolve its Civic Integrity unit after the 2020 election and before the January 6th Capitol insurrection. She’s speaking with CBS’s Scott Pelley.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: And one of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is that it is optimizing for content that gets engagement or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing — it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.

    SCOTT PELLEY: Misinformation, angry content —

    FRANCES HAUGEN: Yeah.

    SCOTT PELLEY: — is enticing to people and —

    FRANCES HAUGEN: It’s very enticing.

    SCOTT PELLEY: — keeps them on the platform.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: Yes. Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site. They’ll click on less ads. They’ll make less money.

    SCOTT PELLEY: Haugen says Facebook understood the danger to the 2020 election, so it turned on safety systems to reduce misinformation.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: Too dangerous.

    SCOTT PELLEY: But many of those changes, she says, were temporary.

    FRANCES HAUGEN: And as soon as the election was over, they turned them back off, or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Frances Haugen, who’s testifying today on Capitol Hill, on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Jessica González, you are the CEO of Free Press, and you’re co-founder of the Change the Terms coalition, which works to disrupt online hate. This key point, whether we’re talking about out tween and teen girls or whether we’re talking about the insurrection, right before the insurrection, they knew the level of hate that was mounting and being amplified, and they turned off the monitors and the disruptors of that.

    JESSICA GONZÁLEZ: That’s right. That’s right, Amy. You know, and not only did they know, the fix is so easy. They have a setting. They decided to turn it off before the election results were certified, despite spotting trends of fake information about a supposed steal of the election, despite seeing the activity budding on their site, despite seeing that there were militia groups organizing calls to arms on different parts of their networks. So this was a choice to put profits over public safety, over democracy, over the health and well-being of not just Facebook users but all of us. And this is why I don’t believe that Facebook is fit to govern itself. We need to step in.

    And, you know, here’s what’s really insidious about how Facebook’s business model operates, which isn’t true of — like, maybe young girls receive negative messaging in magazines or on TV or on radio. But here’s what’s insidious, in particular, about how not just Facebook but other social media platforms earn their revenues. They are collecting and extracting our personal demographic data, the way we’re behaving on the sites, and they’re identifying what we might be vulnerable to — right? — our vulnerabilities, our predispositions, our behaviors. And they’re actually targeting us with things that they think we’ll engage more with. So this is targeted disinformation, targeted hate, targeted imagery that might have caused teen girls to feel worse about themselves, based on the extraction of our data, with — really, without informed consent. I don’t know that most people understand that we’re the product on Facebook. They’re selling us to their advertisers. And so, without even truly understanding how this works, we’re being used, and without any public interest good — in fact, a whole lot of harm. So we have to completely rethink the structures that underpin social media platforms. And we need to pass legislation, we need FTC investigations, to completely disrupt the hate- and lie-for-profit business model that is doing so much damage.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Roger McNamee, I wanted to ask you: What is the difference between what Facebook is doing now and what the old legacy media companies had done in the past? After all, those of us who came up in the old legacy media understood that the — the maxim, “If it bleeds, it leads,” that conflict and fear and division are what sell in media. To what degree is Facebook only magnifying the trends that have always existed in commercial media in the United States? Although, of course, at different times there were efforts to curb those media — the breakup of the Associated Press monopoly back in 1945 by the Supreme Court. There have been efforts — the breakup of the original NBC network because it had too much control over radio in America. Do you think it’s time to break up Facebook?

    ROGER McNAMEE: So, Juan, really important question. So, Jessica talked about how this works at the individual level. Let’s think about how traditional media worked. It was a broadcast model, so one message for everyone. What internet platforms have done, and what surveillance capitalism does, broadly, so throughout the economy, is that it targets us individually.

    There is a giant marketplace in the United States for data. So, we call this third-party data. So, companies gather data in one place and then sell it to other people in other places for other kinds of uses, and they make additional money from doing that. So, everything that you do that touches something digital — so, if you travel, if you do a financial transaction, use a credit card, your home loan, whatever — anything you do on your phone, including your real-time location, anything you do in an app, anything that you do online, all of this is captured, and it’s all available in a marketplace.

    So, these companies can create a digital model of you. And they do this for everybody, whether you’re on internet platforms or not. They have everybody in the system. They create the digital model, and they use that model to make predictions. Now, you can sell the predictions to an advertiser, or you can use them in other ways. For example, they’re used in the banking industry in order to give out mortgages. Police departments use it for predictive policing. And what have we learned? Those two things are based on artificial intelligence. They train artificial intelligence with historical data. The historical data is filled with biases. So you wind up moving to a world of digital redlining for mortgages, so that Black people can only live in certain communities; they can’t live wherever they want; they have different mortgage rates, different housing prices, because of this unfair stuff from the past. And you get things like predictive policing, which overpolice Brown and Black communities because, again, of historical biases that are built into these systems.

    So, if you think about this, the manifest unfairness of it is magnified by a corporate culture that says the only people that matter are shareholders. And if you think about it, optimizing for shareholder value is like — it’s the equivalent of saying, “I’m just following orders.” It forgives all manner of sins. And when Frances Haugen was talking about the moral crisis of CEOs who maximize profits instead of the public good, one of the challenges here is that, as a country, we have accepted this notion that corporations should only worry about shareholder value.

    That has to change. That is one of the things that Congress needs to do right now. They’ve done enough studies. We have done enough hearings. We now need to have something that looks like the Food and Drug Administration which requires that every technology product demonstrate that it is safe before it is allowed to go into the market. And that should apply to products that are in the market today. We need to have rules that say, “I’m sorry, but there should be no third-party marketplace for location data, health data, anything related to your usage of apps or the internet, maybe even financial data — things that are so intimate that they allow people to manipulate your choices.” And then we need to have new laws on antitrust, so that we can fight against entrenched corporate power.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both so much. How well does Facebook know you? After 10 likes, better than colleagues. After 70 likes, better than friends. After 150 likes, better than family. And after 300 likes, better than your partner or spouse. Roger McNamee, author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, and Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press, member of the Real Facebook Oversight Board and co-founder of Change the Terms, which works to disrupt online hate.

    Next up, we look at the revelations in the Pandora Papers about the offshore financial dealings of the world’s richest and most powerful people, and the connections between offshore banking and colonialism. Back in 30 seconds.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Again, you can’t shuttle through the headlines, the so-called news, without having spasms and fits. You will not get journalists doing shit to really go after the capitalists, uh? Baby food. And these transnational Wall Street thieves, these stockholding companies, not even a slap on the wrist. So, if I as an unjabbed person goes into a public place, and then the rabid fascists find out, they then can call the cops, do a citizen’s arrest, and take my ass down, zip ties and all. But, do these billionaires and multimillionaires get hog-tied or frog-marched into court, and have their ill-gotten profits used for a reparations fund for all those babies? Dream on:

    Baby Food Makers Kept Selling Products with Arsenic Levels Exceeding FDA-Approved Limits

    HEADLINESEP 30, 2021

     

    Baby food manufacturers allowed products contaminated with heavy metals to remain on store shelves — even after dangerous levels of the toxic chemicals were detected in their products. That’s according to a new congressional report released Wednesday, which found baby food makers Gerber and Beech-Nut failed to recall infant rice cereals tested to have arsenic levels above FDA limits.

    This is how these felons roll, these dirty rotten propagandists, the smoke and mirrors crowd, the polluters, all those elites and money grubbers:

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-14.png

    Going from baby food to land, forests, indigenous rights, we can see more putridity of the White Savior Civilizations (sic) facilitating the land rapists and the water polluters. This is not outrageous in Can/Klan/Ada?

    In Canada, a judge has ended an injunction granted to logging company Teal-Jones, which the court says was used to crack down on activists at the Fairy Creek watershed blockade in a way that violated their civil liberties and infringed on press freedom. Police have arrested over 1,000 land defenders, often violently, as they fight to protect the remaining trees in Vancouver Island’s ancient forests. The First Nations-led protest is Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience. Click here to see our coverage of this issue

    It’s a simple formula, a simple illustration of how syphilitics the ruling class is, and here, “David Graeber’s bestselling book Debt: The First 5000 Years revolutionised our understanding of the origins of money and the role of debt in human societies. But intellectual revolutions take time, and David’s sudden and untimely death left this revolution unfinished. David’s widow Nika Dubrovsky has established ‘The Fight Club’ to keep David’s unique way of challenging conventional wisdoms alive. Each ‘Fight’ will pit leading advocates of different visions of how society functions against each other. The inaugural fight, to mark the first anniversary of David’s death, is a debate between the renowned economists Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and Michael Hudson, author of And Forgive Them Their Debts. Thomas Piketty wrote the preface to the tenth anniversary edition of Debt: the First 5000 Years. Michael Hudson’s anthropological research into the origins of money and debt in ancient Sumeria was the basis of much of David’s analysis in that book. Join us for an unmissable encounter between two celebrated and highly influential economic thinkers as they debate: what is money and what is debt? What are the most serious problems of today’s finance-capital economies? And what are the best remedies?”

    Finally, the new brisk and slick predators, those capitalists, those impact bond folk, the algorithms, the mining of our minds, bodies, dreams, aspirations. Wrench in the Gears, a long one, with lots of sources to click on to enhance Alison’s work:

    This past week someone sent me a paper on augmented cognition. As I read it, a number of pieces clicked for me about earlier research I’d done into executive function. I wanted to preserve the thread, so I captured it in the screen shots below. Follow along to see how grit and resiliency intersect with Metaverse navigation and soul theft.

    Also, this week Philadelphia School Superintendent William Hite briefed the Federal Reserve. Listen carefully to hear him setting up human capital bond markets in ed-tech, social emotional learning (SEL), nutrition, and tele-health via public-private partnerships with “philanthropic” predators.

    This is accepted behavior, accepted “follow the science” bullshit; accepted state paid for university research; accepted elite school work and disgust? This is what Americans cannot handle:

    So, how can lead in Flint’s water be a big deal? Arsenic in baby food? Arresting protestors in Canada? Think about how polluted media are, how broken universities are, and how confused and full of Collective Stockholm Syndrome the public is. This last comment is pretty telling:

    The post It’s What the Babies Eat: Inflammatory Capitalism in Mush first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Note: I try and keep the plates spinning in Newport-Lincoln County, where I live, write and work. So, this piece came out in the rag, The Newport News Times, a Wednesday and Friday newspaper sucking wind for sure, but still, a newspaper. This is what the community standards can take, so after this piece, I’ll comment, take out the machetes, and blaze through what it really means, Banning Books (ideas/curricula/discussion/debate/protest/public displays/thinking) . 

    Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us. American Library Association. ala.org/bbooks

    Banning Books – An American Tradition that Should be Stopped

    site-logo I cut my teeth in El Paso as a graduate TA teaching English – writing, composition, remedial reading, literature – in the early 1980s. That’s when librarians were robust, gutsy and on the front lines of free speech. They helped develop library materials and organize talks around Banned Books Week (September 26 – October 2).

    I also peddled stories and books as a fiction writer, and I was the Sunday book reviewer for the El Paso Times. My raison d’être was to make sure my writing and everyone else’s was made available to me, my students and my colleagues.

    Throughout the next forty years, I’ve headed up talks and readings celebrating diverse voices and works from people outside the Eurocentric dominant force in our traditional K12 and higher education arenas. Books by Caribbean, Mexican, South American, Central American, Native American, Iranian or Ethiopian writers were not just curiosities. For many of my students, reading Sandra Cisneros, Edwidge Danticat, Sherman Alexie or Zora Neal Hurston created a deep and long-lasting interest in their own cultures, in education, in lifelong reading and in bringing into focus the power of their own identifies reflected in others’ writing.

    This year’s banned book week is tantamount to motivating as many people as possible to understand active and passive censorship.

    There are entire lists of books removed from high school libraries. There are all kinds of books that are targets of school boards, parents groups, religious groups and political advocacy committees. As a writer, I know my published words are not always appreciated by a variety of readers. I write with many hats on, and in that capacity, I am able to cross the Rubicon many times: from poetry, to fiction, to essays, to polemics, to blogs, to traditional journalism, and more.

    I’ve faced down bigotry and hate for books I have put on my syllabi. I have had people walk out of my readings and those of more important people like Winona LaDuke or Tim O’Brien. Walking out is one’s right, and so are bigoted diatribes.

    However, stopping the publication of books and demanding books be  removed is not a right. I was teaching at a state community college in Washington when I faced a student who demanded I give her an alternative text for – The Fight Club. Ironically, we looked at various themes in that book, and the writer, Chuck Palahniuk, was coming to town and opening himself up to talking with my students.

    That English class included other books that got under the skin of other students and/or their parents (mind you, this was a college class, not a religious school). Bringing writers to campus and having students read their books is part and parcel what educators must do to open minds and create critical thinking.

    College deans, department heads, provosts and even presidents must protect that right of freedom to read.

    Yes, students in high school have a right to have a history teacher assign Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. Or a film teacher has a right to assign her under-18-year-old students, I Am Not Your Negro and Exterminate All the Brutes to delve into filmmaker Raoul Peck’s work.

    Reading Fahrenheit 451 and then comparing Raymond Bradbury’s work to François Truffaut’s 1966 version or the 2018 adaptation directed by Ramin Bahrani is vital to learning. Today, cancel culture rests in identarian politics.

    Misinformation campaigns around the 1619 Project or what “critical race theory” are ongoing.  This muddies the water of opening up critical thinking skills for both educators and students.

    In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman posits the future would look similar to the one depicted in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World. Postman explains that the only way to avoid this fate is to see and question what we’re seeing rather than blindly trusting the media.

    Others predict a world unfolding closer to 1984, the George Orwell’s classic. Others might choose to riff with and analyze Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. All those books have been put on some school district’s banned book list: driven by a fervor seated in xenophobia, lack of understanding of what literature is, and deeply held conservative beliefs.

    Cancelling out books is akin to burning them. We all know where that led the world. This year’s theme — “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”

    +–+

    All right, then, end of the Op-Ed for the newspaper that is in a pretty typically odd community, though Newport does have that “dichotomy”: lots of professors and researchers at the Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Sciences center, and the NOAA team posted here, and, those people from Oregon who have a few college degrees who ended up with summer homes here, now turned into full-time homes AND then the service economy, the logging industry, the fishing industry. You have to look at that, too, which is the divide in America, partially self-directed, and certainly directed by the elites, the billionaire class, the military-media-propaganda overlords.

    When you see red vs blue, when you see cultural wars and the religious zealotry of the Christians, and when you have K12 so flagged and flogged, so vapid of real learning, real community- based learning, real critical thinking, then we get these divides. And, while the beautiful people, the managerial class, those in the upper income brackets far away from us, in the 80 Percent, well, they may have some Buddhist retreat or outward bound or special science camp to send their young ones, the reality is they especially, and those of us in the 80 percent, have adults and then youth and then each new brood epigenetically forced into sheeplehood and ignorance of who the enemy is, as Ralph Nader put down here:

     

    If you think elementary, middle, and high school students know too little history, geography, and government, try asking them about the corporations that command so many hours of their day, their attention, what they consume, and their personal horizons.

     

    Howard Zinn published A Young People’s History of the United States (2009), to go with his best-selling pioneering work, A People’s History of the United States (1980), but he didn’t do justice to all the modern corporate controls of just about every facet of American life, including educational institutions.

     

    Today, school children are engulfed by corporate apps and software, textbooks biased toward the corporate definitions of an economy, and myths about “free markets.” For years free school materials and videos produced or sponsored by business groups, including the coal and nuclear industries, have flooded elementary classes. Our report: Hucksters in the Classroom: A Review of Industry Propaganda in Schools by Sheila Harty (1979), documented this mercantile assault on education. Students even take tests designed by corporate institutions. (DV– “Teach Youngsters about Corporatism’s Harms”)

     

    Yes, this lack of disclosure and exposure around how curricula and school junk and colleges and university endowments are predicated on what the rich, the powerful, the gigantic, the corporations, the MIC want included and not included in teaching, books, materials, etc., it might even been worse than that.

    To the left of this piece is a list of DV-recommended books. I’ve read many, and I’ve written two of them. Few people I know, however, read books, and those they do, are insipidly bad, soap opera porn, feel good and how to do/be/see/eat/cook/make money books.

    Fiction, and hardcore deeply researched and lived books on China, on Mexico, on all those countries that are shit-holes in the eyes of Biden/Trump/Lesser Evils, they aren’t read by the so-called managers of democracy, the administration, the honchos-as appointed to all those governmental positions. The books aren’t read by the generals or the CEOs.

    The books on really the core of the problems globally and locally are not read by the people who need to be taken to the woodshed for a real tutelage of the mind by the people who live in, say, North Korea, and know the language and have books with 80 pages works cited and endnotes.

    The Zuckerberg, the USA Today, the ticker-tape of Fox-UnNews and CNN (Clinton/CIA UnNews Network) and then all the followers in media looking for less gray, fewer second and third page jumps, they are part of the problem of killing knowledge, curiosity, deep thinking and robust public arena smart dialogue.

    Echo chambers, sure, the have always been there, especially if you end up in groups like the Chamber of Commerce or any group that pushes a group-think and allegiance to a narrow (usually pro Capitalist/pro Business/pro USA/ pro Empire mentality.

    It only gets worse, this banned books concept. The reality is that the Newport News Times would NEVER run a piece, a long one, on people (let’s give them degrees and long titles and decent worldviews) who might be looking into lockdowns, the legality of lockdwons/lockups, the origin of DARPA jabs, the history of USA bio-poison-toxin weaponry research). NEVER.

    Putting my byline on that too, as a journalist, would subject me to threats, death threats, deplatforming, and probably termination. I’d not get gigs teaching (there are not many) at the local community college. Even if I wrote the piece as traditional long-form journalism, pulling in too-man-to-count experts on virology, on vaccines, on medical procedures, on the history and politics of medicine and bioweaponry research and the illegal doings of the Big Pharma. Nope.

    So, that is a form of banned books, vis-a-vis the gatekeepers, those community standards, all those aspects of Edward Bernays and Josef Goebbels concocted 9 Forms of propaganda, the one that marketers really utilize, BandWagon. This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-11.png

    I’ll list more of those techniques below. But, again, it is what isn’t taught, what isn’t allowed, what isn’t debated, what isn’t filmed/acted/written about that is what signifies as a ban. Think of all the books that were written, and alas, those are now gone, gone, gone.

    The person who controls the spigot, the information channels, the medium for the messages, controls the narrative. Having Americans unlearn all the bad things, all the insipidly racist, retrograde, misogynistic, xenophobic, anti-people of color shit that comes across the desks of teachers, educational planners, curriculum designers and then into the folders and Google Chromebooks, that is a huge task.

    Bad habits die hard, or long.

    We need a 12-step program for re-centering this generation so they can breed the next and they the next of real thinkers. And I am not just come fly on the wall, or Pollyanna. I have fought hard in the colleges and universities and newsrooms and social work domains for a real sense of social justice, but also deep knowledge based thinking, and what I have come across is the dumb-downing of everything.

    Sure, we can listen to Henry Giroux and Chris Hedges, but again, they’re two elites in their fields (millionaires with a small “m”). They never interview or have on their shows lesser known or unknown people on who might set the record straight.

    While Hedges goes after/attacks the celebrity culture, he is still colonized by it in some form, always going to the person with laurels and with titles and books.

    Yes, this a good interview, but I guarantee few like me will watch is, and the elites will never watch it:

    Then, sure, Giroux and Hedges get to some facts, but again, they go for the Republican Party and the Conservatives and Rightwing Racists as their whipping posts.

    They are far from knowledgeable around how poorly placed those Democrats are, those mandate fuckers, all those incredibly bad nightmarish Democratic Governors are.

     

    CH: Welcome to On Contact.  Today, we discuss the age of manufactured ignorance with the scholar, Henry Giroux.

    HG: Power, when it’s invisible, becomes all the more powerful, to use that term.  But I think there are two issues here for me about neoliberalism in relation to your question, that are really central.  One is it operates off the assumption that there’s no such thing as social problems, that there are only individual problems.  And this notion that we’re ultimately and individually responsible for everything that happens to us literally depoliticizes people because it makes incapable of translating private issues into larger, systemic considerations.  So there’s this question of this really putrid notion of market-based individuals, and this inability to translate and bring together, and connect issues that would give people a full understanding of the world in which they live in, what they may be able to do about it.  Particularly as it affects their everyday lives.

     

    Show:

    Yes, so much more could be written about what isn’t in the curriculum, how British Petroleum (BP, the new marketing tool after the blowout of millions of gallons of crude in the Gulf of Mexico — Deep Horizon, anyone?) designed the geology and other sciences curriculum in California. Monsanto gives money to Washington State University, so you think those departments are going to have an easy time of challenge Round-up and GMOs?

    Come on — I was in Spokane, wrote about this stupidity, and alas, this is a form of censorship that takes place and never makes the news like Michael Pollan did:

    A book chosen by a Washington State University committee as appropriate food for thought for all incoming freshmen will not be distributed at summer orientation after a member of the board of regents raised concerns about the work’s focus on problems associated with agribusiness.

    WSU’s president said the decision to halt the “common reading” program was related to the university’s financial crisis.

    In “Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” author Michael Pollan discusses the social, political, moral and environmental implications of the food people eat.

    A selection committee picked the book for this year’s WSU common reading program, which provides freshmen with a work that crosses academic disciplines and can be incorporated into study throughout the year. (source

    UPDATE: Washington State University reinstates freshman reading of ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’

    Imagine, all those books taken off the shelves of public libraries. This is not just a ban To Kill a Mockingbird moment. 

    This is not silly, either, and Banned Books week does what it does, for sure, but, again, would Ward Churchill be invited to campus to read from one of his books, or the essay that got him un-tenured? 

    …what I think we’re witnessing fifty years on is consolidation of precisely the kind of entity extolled by then-U/Cal Berkeley president Clark Kerr in his 1963 book, The Uses of the University. For those unfamiliar with the tract, Kerr likened what he preferred to call “multiversities” to governmentally/corporately-owned factories—albeit, “knowledge factories”—wherein managers such as himself employed to oversee a worker force—the faculty—whose job it was to convert raw material—that is, students—into the finished product or products desired by the owners, all with maximal efficiency. Sound familiar?  (Churchill

    Conservative professor: Ward Churchill firing a travesty – Colorado Daily

    Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2019
    View the Censorship by the Numbers infographic for 2019

    The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 377 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2019. Of the 566 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged, along with the reasons cited for censoring the books:

    George by Alex Gino

    Reasons: challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden to avoid controversy; for LGBTQIA+ content and a transgender character; because schools and libraries should not “put books in a child’s hand that require discussion”; for sexual references; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint and “traditional family structure”


    Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

    Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, for “its effect on any young people who would read it,” and for concerns that it was sexually explicit and biased


    A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller

    Reasons: challenged and vandalized for LGBTQIA+ content and political viewpoints, for concerns that it is “designed to pollute the morals of its readers,” and for not including a content warning

    Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth

    Reasons: challenged, banned, and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content; for discussing gender identity and sex education; and for concerns that the title and illustrations were “inappropriate”

    Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack, illustrated by Stevie Lewis

    Reasons: challenged and restricted for featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content; for being “a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children” with the potential to cause confusion, curiosity, and gender dysphoria; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint

    I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas

    Reasons: challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content, for a transgender character, and for confronting a topic that is “sensitive, controversial, and politically charged”

    The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

    Reasons: banned and challenged for profanity and for “vulgarity and sexual overtones”

    Drama written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier

    Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and for concerns that it goes against “family values/morals”

    Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

    Reasons: banned and forbidden from discussion for referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use “nefarious means” to attain goals

    And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson illustrated by Henry Cole

    Reason: challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content

    And so it goes. Imagine all the ideas stopped and flailed and all the books never written but should have been written. Imagine all the ignorance peddled by marketers, publishers, media, government, corporations. Imagine all the harm done with these lies. Wars and genocide, started and perpetrated because of knowledge and thinking bans. You think Turkey wants the Armenian Genocide in their k12 history books. Israel and the Nakba in their books? The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing in those Japanese books? Right!

    Planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence used to be taught by yours truly around the consumer/retail war, the Story of Stuff. Planned and perceived obsolescence is now really agnotology, and the erasing of people, the caste systems being set loose and the Fourth Industrial Digital Gulag Revolution. No little newspaper like the one in my county will deal with these topics. Why should it when the reality is giant schools like WSU try a ban, or the papers of record, the big ones, throughout the land, to include the NYT and WaPo are in so many ways rotten to the core, in the service of the Military Congressional Industrial Complex and the billionaires and giant corporations. 

    Onward, to the propaganda, those Mad Men/Mad Women and the USA and EU and Capitalists Murder Incorporated!

     

     

    Thumbnail of frame 6

    The post Banning Books is just One Form of Closed Mindedness, Close Democracy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Note: I try and keep the plates spinning in Newport-Lincoln County, where I live, write and work. So, this piece came out in the rag, The Newport News Times, a Wednesday and Friday newspaper sucking wind for sure, but still, a newspaper. This is what the community standards can take, so after this piece, I’ll comment, take out the machetes, and blaze through what it really means, Banning Books (ideas/curricula/discussion/debate/protest/public displays/thinking) . 

    Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us. American Library Association. ala.org/bbooks

    Banning Books – An American Tradition that Should be Stopped

    site-logo I cut my teeth in El Paso as a graduate TA teaching English – writing, composition, remedial reading, literature – in the early 1980s. That’s when librarians were robust, gutsy and on the front lines of free speech. They helped develop library materials and organize talks around Banned Books Week (September 26 – October 2).

    I also peddled stories and books as a fiction writer, and I was the Sunday book reviewer for the El Paso Times. My raison d’être was to make sure my writing and everyone else’s was made available to me, my students and my colleagues.

    Throughout the next forty years, I’ve headed up talks and readings celebrating diverse voices and works from people outside the Eurocentric dominant force in our traditional K12 and higher education arenas. Books by Caribbean, Mexican, South American, Central American, Native American, Iranian or Ethiopian writers were not just curiosities. For many of my students, reading Sandra Cisneros, Edwidge Danticat, Sherman Alexie or Zora Neal Hurston created a deep and long-lasting interest in their own cultures, in education, in lifelong reading and in bringing into focus the power of their own identifies reflected in others’ writing.

    This year’s banned book week is tantamount to motivating as many people as possible to understand active and passive censorship.

    There are entire lists of books removed from high school libraries. There are all kinds of books that are targets of school boards, parents groups, religious groups and political advocacy committees. As a writer, I know my published words are not always appreciated by a variety of readers. I write with many hats on, and in that capacity, I am able to cross the Rubicon many times: from poetry, to fiction, to essays, to polemics, to blogs, to traditional journalism, and more.

    I’ve faced down bigotry and hate for books I have put on my syllabi. I have had people walk out of my readings and those of more important people like Winona LaDuke or Tim O’Brien. Walking out is one’s right, and so are bigoted diatribes.

    However, stopping the publication of books and demanding books be  removed is not a right. I was teaching at a state community college in Washington when I faced a student who demanded I give her an alternative text for – The Fight Club. Ironically, we looked at various themes in that book, and the writer, Chuck Palahniuk, was coming to town and opening himself up to talking with my students.

    That English class included other books that got under the skin of other students and/or their parents (mind you, this was a college class, not a religious school). Bringing writers to campus and having students read their books is part and parcel what educators must do to open minds and create critical thinking.

    College deans, department heads, provosts and even presidents must protect that right of freedom to read.

    Yes, students in high school have a right to have a history teacher assign Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. Or a film teacher has a right to assign her under-18-year-old students, I Am Not Your Negro and Exterminate All the Brutes to delve into filmmaker Raoul Peck’s work.

    Reading Fahrenheit 451 and then comparing Raymond Bradbury’s work to François Truffaut’s 1966 version or the 2018 adaptation directed by Ramin Bahrani is vital to learning. Today, cancel culture rests in identarian politics.

    Misinformation campaigns around the 1619 Project or what “critical race theory” are ongoing.  This muddies the water of opening up critical thinking skills for both educators and students.

    In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman posits the future would look similar to the one depicted in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World. Postman explains that the only way to avoid this fate is to see and question what we’re seeing rather than blindly trusting the media.

    Others predict a world unfolding closer to 1984, the George Orwell’s classic. Others might choose to riff with and analyze Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. All those books have been put on some school district’s banned book list: driven by a fervor seated in xenophobia, lack of understanding of what literature is, and deeply held conservative beliefs.

    Cancelling out books is akin to burning them. We all know where that led the world. This year’s theme — “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”

    +–+

    All right, then, end of the Op-Ed for the newspaper that is in a pretty typically odd community, though Newport does have that “dichotomy”: lots of professors and researchers at the Oregon State University Hatfield Marine Sciences center, and the NOAA team posted here, and, those people from Oregon who have a few college degrees who ended up with summer homes here, now turned into full-time homes AND then the service economy, the logging industry, the fishing industry. You have to look at that, too, which is the divide in America, partially self-directed, and certainly directed by the elites, the billionaire class, the military-media-propaganda overlords.

    When you see red vs blue, when you see cultural wars and the religious zealotry of the Christians, and when you have K12 so flagged and flogged, so vapid of real learning, real community- based learning, real critical thinking, then we get these divides. And, while the beautiful people, the managerial class, those in the upper income brackets far away from us, in the 80 Percent, well, they may have some Buddhist retreat or outward bound or special science camp to send their young ones, the reality is they especially, and those of us in the 80 percent, have adults and then youth and then each new brood epigenetically forced into sheeplehood and ignorance of who the enemy is, as Ralph Nader put down here:

     

    If you think elementary, middle, and high school students know too little history, geography, and government, try asking them about the corporations that command so many hours of their day, their attention, what they consume, and their personal horizons.

     

    Howard Zinn published A Young People’s History of the United States (2009), to go with his best-selling pioneering work, A People’s History of the United States (1980), but he didn’t do justice to all the modern corporate controls of just about every facet of American life, including educational institutions.

     

    Today, school children are engulfed by corporate apps and software, textbooks biased toward the corporate definitions of an economy, and myths about “free markets.” For years free school materials and videos produced or sponsored by business groups, including the coal and nuclear industries, have flooded elementary classes. Our report: Hucksters in the Classroom: A Review of Industry Propaganda in Schools by Sheila Harty (1979), documented this mercantile assault on education. Students even take tests designed by corporate institutions. (DV– “Teach Youngsters about Corporatism’s Harms”)

     

    Yes, this lack of disclosure and exposure around how curricula and school junk and colleges and university endowments are predicated on what the rich, the powerful, the gigantic, the corporations, the MIC want included and not included in teaching, books, materials, etc., it might even been worse than that.

    To the left of this piece is a list of DV-recommended books. I’ve read many, and I’ve written two of them. Few people I know, however, read books, and those they do, are insipidly bad, soap opera porn, feel good and how to do/be/see/eat/cook/make money books.

    Fiction, and hardcore deeply researched and lived books on China, on Mexico, on all those countries that are shit-holes in the eyes of Biden/Trump/Lesser Evils, they aren’t read by the so-called managers of democracy, the administration, the honchos-as appointed to all those governmental positions. The books aren’t read by the generals or the CEOs.

    The books on really the core of the problems globally and locally are not read by the people who need to be taken to the woodshed for a real tutelage of the mind by the people who live in, say, North Korea, and know the language and have books with 80 pages works cited and endnotes.

    The Zuckerberg, the USA Today, the ticker-tape of Fox-UnNews and CNN (Clinton/CIA UnNews Network) and then all the followers in media looking for less gray, fewer second and third page jumps, they are part of the problem of killing knowledge, curiosity, deep thinking and robust public arena smart dialogue.

    Echo chambers, sure, the have always been there, especially if you end up in groups like the Chamber of Commerce or any group that pushes a group-think and allegiance to a narrow (usually pro Capitalist/pro Business/pro USA/ pro Empire mentality.

    It only gets worse, this banned books concept. The reality is that the Newport News Times would NEVER run a piece, a long one, on people (let’s give them degrees and long titles and decent worldviews) who might be looking into lockdowns, the legality of lockdwons/lockups, the origin of DARPA jabs, the history of USA bio-poison-toxin weaponry research). NEVER.

    Putting my byline on that too, as a journalist, would subject me to threats, death threats, deplatforming, and probably termination. I’d not get gigs teaching (there are not many) at the local community college. Even if I wrote the piece as traditional long-form journalism, pulling in too-man-to-count experts on virology, on vaccines, on medical procedures, on the history and politics of medicine and bioweaponry research and the illegal doings of the Big Pharma. Nope.

    So, that is a form of banned books, vis-a-vis the gatekeepers, those community standards, all those aspects of Edward Bernays and Josef Goebbels concocted 9 Forms of propaganda, the one that marketers really utilize, BandWagon. This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-11.png

    I’ll list more of those techniques below. But, again, it is what isn’t taught, what isn’t allowed, what isn’t debated, what isn’t filmed/acted/written about that is what signifies as a ban. Think of all the books that were written, and alas, those are now gone, gone, gone.

    The person who controls the spigot, the information channels, the medium for the messages, controls the narrative. Having Americans unlearn all the bad things, all the insipidly racist, retrograde, misogynistic, xenophobic, anti-people of color shit that comes across the desks of teachers, educational planners, curriculum designers and then into the folders and Google Chromebooks, that is a huge task.

    Bad habits die hard, or long.

    We need a 12-step program for re-centering this generation so they can breed the next and they the next of real thinkers. And I am not just come fly on the wall, or Pollyanna. I have fought hard in the colleges and universities and newsrooms and social work domains for a real sense of social justice, but also deep knowledge based thinking, and what I have come across is the dumb-downing of everything.

    Sure, we can listen to Henry Giroux and Chris Hedges, but again, they’re two elites in their fields (millionaires with a small “m”). They never interview or have on their shows lesser known or unknown people on who might set the record straight.

    While Hedges goes after/attacks the celebrity culture, he is still colonized by it in some form, always going to the person with laurels and with titles and books.

    Yes, this a good interview, but I guarantee few like me will watch is, and the elites will never watch it:

    Then, sure, Giroux and Hedges get to some facts, but again, they go for the Republican Party and the Conservatives and Rightwing Racists as their whipping posts.

    They are far from knowledgeable around how poorly placed those Democrats are, those mandate fuckers, all those incredibly bad nightmarish Democratic Governors are.

     

    CH: Welcome to On Contact.  Today, we discuss the age of manufactured ignorance with the scholar, Henry Giroux.

    HG: Power, when it’s invisible, becomes all the more powerful, to use that term.  But I think there are two issues here for me about neoliberalism in relation to your question, that are really central.  One is it operates off the assumption that there’s no such thing as social problems, that there are only individual problems.  And this notion that we’re ultimately and individually responsible for everything that happens to us literally depoliticizes people because it makes incapable of translating private issues into larger, systemic considerations.  So there’s this question of this really putrid notion of market-based individuals, and this inability to translate and bring together, and connect issues that would give people a full understanding of the world in which they live in, what they may be able to do about it.  Particularly as it affects their everyday lives.

     

    Show:

    Yes, so much more could be written about what isn’t in the curriculum, how British Petroleum (BP, the new marketing tool after the blowout of millions of gallons of crude in the Gulf of Mexico — Deep Horizon, anyone?) designed the geology and other sciences curriculum in California. Monsanto gives money to Washington State University, so you think those departments are going to have an easy time of challenge Round-up and GMOs?

    Come on — I was in Spokane, wrote about this stupidity, and alas, this is a form of censorship that takes place and never makes the news like Michael Pollan did:

    A book chosen by a Washington State University committee as appropriate food for thought for all incoming freshmen will not be distributed at summer orientation after a member of the board of regents raised concerns about the work’s focus on problems associated with agribusiness.

    WSU’s president said the decision to halt the “common reading” program was related to the university’s financial crisis.

    In “Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” author Michael Pollan discusses the social, political, moral and environmental implications of the food people eat.

    A selection committee picked the book for this year’s WSU common reading program, which provides freshmen with a work that crosses academic disciplines and can be incorporated into study throughout the year. (source

    UPDATE: Washington State University reinstates freshman reading of ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’

    Imagine, all those books taken off the shelves of public libraries. This is not just a ban To Kill a Mockingbird moment. 

    This is not silly, either, and Banned Books week does what it does, for sure, but, again, would Ward Churchill be invited to campus to read from one of his books, or the essay that got him un-tenured? 

    …what I think we’re witnessing fifty years on is consolidation of precisely the kind of entity extolled by then-U/Cal Berkeley president Clark Kerr in his 1963 book, The Uses of the University. For those unfamiliar with the tract, Kerr likened what he preferred to call “multiversities” to governmentally/corporately-owned factories—albeit, “knowledge factories”—wherein managers such as himself employed to oversee a worker force—the faculty—whose job it was to convert raw material—that is, students—into the finished product or products desired by the owners, all with maximal efficiency. Sound familiar?  (Churchill

    Conservative professor: Ward Churchill firing a travesty – Colorado Daily

    Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2019
    View the Censorship by the Numbers infographic for 2019

    The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 377 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2019. Of the 566 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged, along with the reasons cited for censoring the books:

    George by Alex Gino

    Reasons: challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden to avoid controversy; for LGBTQIA+ content and a transgender character; because schools and libraries should not “put books in a child’s hand that require discussion”; for sexual references; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint and “traditional family structure”


    Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

    Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, for “its effect on any young people who would read it,” and for concerns that it was sexually explicit and biased


    A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller

    Reasons: challenged and vandalized for LGBTQIA+ content and political viewpoints, for concerns that it is “designed to pollute the morals of its readers,” and for not including a content warning

    Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth

    Reasons: challenged, banned, and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content; for discussing gender identity and sex education; and for concerns that the title and illustrations were “inappropriate”

    Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack, illustrated by Stevie Lewis

    Reasons: challenged and restricted for featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content; for being “a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children” with the potential to cause confusion, curiosity, and gender dysphoria; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint

    I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas

    Reasons: challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content, for a transgender character, and for confronting a topic that is “sensitive, controversial, and politically charged”

    The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

    Reasons: banned and challenged for profanity and for “vulgarity and sexual overtones”

    Drama written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier

    Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and for concerns that it goes against “family values/morals”

    Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

    Reasons: banned and forbidden from discussion for referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use “nefarious means” to attain goals

    And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson illustrated by Henry Cole

    Reason: challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content

    And so it goes. Imagine all the ideas stopped and flailed and all the books never written but should have been written. Imagine all the ignorance peddled by marketers, publishers, media, government, corporations. Imagine all the harm done with these lies. Wars and genocide, started and perpetrated because of knowledge and thinking bans. You think Turkey wants the Armenian Genocide in their k12 history books. Israel and the Nakba in their books? The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing in those Japanese books? Right!

    Planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence used to be taught by yours truly around the consumer/retail war, the Story of Stuff. Planned and perceived obsolescence is now really agnotology, and the erasing of people, the caste systems being set loose and the Fourth Industrial Digital Gulag Revolution. No little newspaper like the one in my county will deal with these topics. Why should it when the reality is giant schools like WSU try a ban, or the papers of record, the big ones, throughout the land, to include the NYT and WaPo are in so many ways rotten to the core, in the service of the Military Congressional Industrial Complex and the billionaires and giant corporations. 

    Onward, to the propaganda, those Mad Men/Mad Women and the USA and EU and Capitalists Murder Incorporated!

     

     

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  • The BBC has admitted that a documentary on an alleged chemical attack in Syria in 2018 contained serious inaccuracies, suggesting that an informant known as ‘Alex’, who claimed the 2018 chemical weapons attack on Douma was staged, may have been motivated by financial reward.

    The post BBC Admits Its Douma Chemical Attack Report Did Not Meet Own Accuracy Standards first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • If people want to know what the circumstances of life are like somewhere, likeliest the best way is to actually go there and see for oneself. Otherwise one relies on other sources of information.

    On Foreign Agents, Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton expose the biggest frauds recruited as defectors and dissidents to lie about Official Enemies by the US regime.

    The post North Korean Defectors and Other Frauds Recruited by the US Regime first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • As soon as I heard Biden say, “We will hunt you down,” about the Afghan airport bombers, I knew that the US would immediately kill some Afghan women and children. The US will slaughter women and children at the drop of a smallpox blanket, an H-bomb, Agent Orange or a reaper drone. When the rampaging trillion-dollar-a-year military and surveillance empire feels it has been wronged there is no limit to its blood lust.

    So today we have the report that the US drone-striked an Afghan family, killing six children, ages two to ten, and three adults. The empire’s mockingbird media will spin this as unfortunate but necessary and, no matter how much evidence the empire offers to the contrary, US serfs will believe that they have rights and freedoms and are a “model” for the world. So another story today won’t faze them any more than dead Afghan children:

    Today former New York Times science writer Alex Berenson was permanently banned from the intelligence agency tentacle known as Twitter. Berenson tweeted that the covid vaccines do not prevent infection and transmission — which is exactly what the vaccine pushers themselves have said previously — the vaccines only lessen symptoms — but the little people aren’t allowed to tell truths about lockdowns or vaccines — vaccines developed and marketed at “warp speed” and so obviously harmless, useful and necessary that tens of millions of people have to be bribed, brainwashed, threatened, vilified, censored, entered in million dollar lotteries, thrown out of work and smashed back to feudalism in order for people to take them.

    “Covid” is no more going to end than the war on terror ended. It’s too profitable, it’s a gold mine. Covid even has a bigger market — a potential 7 billion customers shot up with yearly boosters. Whenever the government declares a war something — Communism, drugs, cancer, terrorism — the war will be endless, highly profitable for a few, and send the working class majority running in fear farther and farther away from truth, health and answers.

    The vaccine is your God. The vaccine is your government. The vaccine will decide how much 1st Amendment you get. The vaccine will decide how much freedom of movement you’re allowed. The vaccine is the be-all and end-all and you will have this piped into your brains 24/7 from every direction. If you want your Social Security checks and Medicare, take the shot. If you want to see a movie or eat at a restaurant, take the shot. If you want to travel, take the shot. If you want out of your house, take the shot. If you want us to let you live at all, take the shot. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” was one of the funniest jokes we ever told you. So long and so many freedoms ago…

    Fighting a civil war about this suits us just fine. We have many more things we’d like to do to you as we get ready for the homeland calamity (not security) of the US dollar losing its reserve currency status. Unlike you beggars, we plan ahead. Many of you don’t even know where your next meal or tent encampment is coming from. We want this vaccine as bad as we wanted the Iraq War and if you don’t like it, you’re a traitor to health, freedom, old people and children — you are a pestilence that’s destroying our way of life. It feels really great to concentrate all of our problems on powerless little vermin like you. If you were gone, everything would be all right.

    Probably sacrificing a bunch of you will make this plague go away. Follow the science. It’s not like we’re superstitious witch doctors. Wear your mask in the restaurant when you walk to your table because the virus floats up there whether you’re seven feet tall or five feet tall — when you sit down at your table, take your mask off because the virus isn’t there. Basically, the virus likes you sitting down, lying down, shutting up, staying home, shooting up, obeying and making Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos richer. What’s good for them is good for you and what’s good for you is doing everything we say when we say it even if it contradicts something we said five minutes ago — beating you down and getting you mindless is where we want you.

    But the one true God is the vaccine. Take the poison, goddamn you. The Rev. Tony Fauci don’t know nothin’ about no gain of function research. Jesus, even people at Jonestown were more cooperative than you are. But we love you, we’re concerned about you. That’s why we prohibited millions of you from working and then watched you go broke, losing your jobs, homes and savings. That’s why we gave you Medicare for All. Oh, wait…

    Just take the shot, we’ve got all kinds of things in store for you if you don’t. We’ve only just begun to fight, doctors and nurses will be our armies, they will vanquish you, hospitals will be our castles and the drawbridges will be pulled up on you unvaccinated polluted rabble. And stop being paranoid and libelous about good people like us, we’re the best people, we are so superior to you, it’s infuriating that we even have to explain ourselves — you’d think that we’ve maimed and killed people with DES, Oraflex, Vioxx or the Swine Flu vaccine — or killed innocent women and children with reaper drones. Alarmist know-nothings!

    “Two weeks to flatten the curve…” If you were gone, everything would be all right. Hurry up and take the poison, goddam you. We have to make more progress. Tomorrow belongs to us!

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  • The serial war criminality and immense cruelty of the US Alliance has been enabled by the extraordinary mendacity, genocidal racism and  resolute exceptionalism of US Alliance governments and Western Mainstream media (MSM). Summarized  below are the horrendous realities of the US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide that are ignored by deeply racist, genocide-complicit and genocide-ignoring Western leaders and MSM.

    (1). Massive US lying enabled the 9/11 false flag excuse for the invasion  and devastation of Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries. I.F. Stone: “Governments lie” and Gore Vidal: “Unlike most Americans who lie all the time, I hate lying”. Numerous science, engineering, architecture, aviation, military and intelligence experts conclude that the US Government was responsible for the 9-11 atrocity (3,000 people killed) with some asserting Israeli and Saudi involvement, but US-beholden Western Mainstream media are united in  blind belief in the “official version” of  mendacious George W. Bush whose administration told 935 lies about Iraq between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Detailed scientific reports from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Alaska Fairbanks reject the lying Bush “official version of 9/11” and evidence the explosive demolition of the 3 WTC skyscrapers on 9/11 (that necessarily implies US Government  involvement in that atrocity). Asserted “terrorism” is to the Zionist-subverted US Alliance state terrorists as asserted “antisemitism” is to the genocidally racist, Islamophobic,  anti-Arab anti-semitic, anti-Jewish anti-semitic, holocaust-complicit and holocaust-ignoring  Zionists and Apartheid Israel. Re state terrorism, the British have invaded 193 countries, Australia 85, France 82, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39 and Canada 25, as compared to Japan 30, Russia 25, Apartheid Israel 12, China 2, Afghanistan zero since 1760,  Iran zero since the 7th century CE, and India and nearly all of the Developing World zero (0).

    (2). The Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide has been associated with 3.6 million under-5 infant deaths, 5.2 million  avoidable deaths from deprivation ,  an estimated 1.6 million violent deaths, and 6.8 million deaths from violence and deprivation  in US-, Australia- and NATO-occupied Afghanistan in 2001-2021. US-backed removal of a secular Afghan government in 1978 precipitated the USSR invasion and war involving US-backed Islamists (avoidable deaths from deprivation 2.9 million, 1979-1989) followed by civil war won by the Taliban  (avoidable deaths from deprivation 3.3 million, 1989-1999).  The variously US-implicated and US-imposed 1979-2021 Afghan Holocaust has been associated with 13.0 million untimely Afghan deaths.

    (3). Global Opiate Holocaust. The  US rapidly restored the Taliban-destroyed Afghan  opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 back to 90%  by 2007,  and caused 5.8 million opiate-related deaths world-wide since 9/11. The US Government has been successively involved in the opiate scourge in Turkey, South East Asia, Afghanistan and Latin America. US-threatened and US-sanctioned Iran leads the world in interdiction of  US-protected Afghan opiates that presently kill about 0.3 million people annually. For religious reasons  the Taliban banned alcohol, prohibited smoking for government  employees, and banned opium production. Each year smoking, alcohol and illicit drugs kill about 8 million, 2.8 million and 0.8 million people each year  for  total of about 11.8 million people worldwide. In contrast, 7.4 million people presently die annually from deprivation on Spaceship Earth with the First World, notably the US, in charge of the flight deck.

    (4). The US-imposed Iranian Holocaust has been associated  with 4 million Iranian deaths in the 4-decade US-imposed Iranian Holocaust, comprising 1 million Iranian deaths in the 1980-1988 US-backed Iran-Iraq War, and 3 million avoidable deaths from US sanctions from 1979 onwards. Iran suffered huge famines associated with British and Russian occupation in WW1  (up to 8-10 million dying in the  1917-1919 famine) and  in WW2 (up to 3-4 million dying in the 1942-1943 famine). Following US withdrawal from devastated Afghanistan, a nervous  world asks: which impoverished country  is next? Iran heads the list followed by Venezuela and Cuba (all subject already to unsuccessful armed US invasions). Iran has zero (0) nuclear weapons as compared to the US (5,800-6,185), Russia (6,372-6,490), China (300-320), France (290), UK (200-215), Pakistan (160), India (150), Apartheid Israel (90), and North Korea (30-40).

    (5). The post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and American Holocaust. The 2001-2021 Afghan Genocide and Afghan Holocaust (6.8 million deaths from violence and imposed deprivation) is part of a US-imposed, post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide (32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, and imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people). 1.7 million Americans die preventably each year from “lifestyle choice reasons” and from “political choice reasons”. Thus 1.7 million per year x 20 years = 34 million Americans have died thus since 9/11. Since 9/11 Zionist-beholden US Administrations have spent $6 trillion on killing over 30 million Muslims abroad rather than trying to keep over 30 million Americans alive at home. 30% of Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists and the remainder are “moderate” Christian Zionists as opposed to the fervently Trumpist  Evangelical Zionists.

    (6). There have been 7,000 post-9/11 US combat deaths versus 146,000  US veteran deaths from suicide. About 7,018 American soldiers died in the post-9/11 US War on Terror in Occupied Iraq (4,566) and Occupied Afghanistan (3,452), but vastly more US veterans have died from suicide. The US Veterans Administration has found that an average of about 20 US veterans have suicided daily in the past few decades, and thus post-9/11 US veteran suicides have totalled (20 suicides per day) x (365.25 days per year) x 20 years = 146,100.

    (7). China observes but the US Alliance grossly violates the  Fourth Geneva Convention and the UN Genocide Convention. Killing in war occurs not just through violence (active killing) but also through avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation (passive killing). Mass mortality in a Subject population occurs in gross Occupier violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (the Fourth Geneva Convention) that unequivocally demands that the Occupier must supply its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”. Infant mortality (under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) is 12 (China), 16 ([Chinese province] Tibet), 6 (USA) and 111 (US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan). The Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) (maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) is 20-27 (China), 100 ([Chinese province] Tibet), 14 (USA) and 400-1,200 (US Alliance-occupied Afghanistan). Contrary to US Alliance claims of  a “Uighur Genocide,” in Xinjiang (50% Uighur and 50% Han Chinese) the maternal mortality rate was 27 per 100,000 in 2018, the infant mortality rate was 14 under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, the average life expectancy was 74.8 years in 2015, and there has been no mass sterilization in the region. That said, China is legitimately criticized for harsh treatment of Uighurs (mass imprisonment of 1 million for re-education) [Harsh treatment? Evidence? Is deradicalization against Uyghur terrorists not legitimate? — DV Ed], dissidents and Hong Kong democracy protestors. Genocide is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” In relation to “the fullest extent of the means available to it” the GDP (nominal) per capita (US dollars, 2021) is as follows (in brackets) for Afghanistan ($592), China ($11,819), US ($68,309), UK ($46,344), Germany ($51,860), France ($44,995) and serial war criminal US lackey Australia ($62,723).

    (8). Nazi and US Alliance  Occupied/Occupier death ratios of 10 and 1,970, respectively. In 1944 the Nazi Germany dictator Adolph Hitler ordered reprisals involving 10 Italian men and boys executed for every German soldier killed by Partisans (effected in the subsequent Ardeatine Caves Massacre). The Occupied/Occupier death ratio for the 2001-2021 Afghan War is accordingly 6,800,000/ 3,452 = 1,970 or about 200 times greater than the 10 advocated by Nazi mass murderer Adolph. Hitler. Ignoring violent Afghan deaths,  the Occupied/Occupier death ratio for the 2001-2021 Afghan War is 5,200,000/3,452 = 1,506 or about 1,500 and thus 150 times greater than the 10 advocated by Hitler. The post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust deaths/ 9/11 death toll = 32 million/3,000 = 10,667, 1,067 times greater than  the Them/Us reprisals ratio of 10 ordered by Hitler.

    (9). Vital post-war aid provision for tens of millions of Afghans versus extraction of tens of thousands of  US Alliance personnel, collaborators and other anti-Taliban people fearing reprisals. Occupied Afghanistan was heavily dependent on international aid and Biden has threatened  to hamper such aid and hence post-liberation recovery if the new regime  doesn’t play ball. Biden has already frozen the assets of impoverished Afghanistan, a move that will entrench Afghan mass mortality from dire deprivation. The Taliban  have declared Amnesty for its opponents and proper treatment of  women “under Islamic law” but many remain fearful based on harsh Taliban rule 20 years ago. For Occupied Afghanistan in 2020, under-5 infant deaths totalled 76,000 and avoidable deaths from deprivation totalled 106,000. In 2020 the “under-5 infant mortality as a percentage of total population” for Afghanistan (0.1950%) was a shocking 118.5 times greater than for Japan (0.00145%), evidence of gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention by the occupying US Alliance countries. To this carnage we must add the infant mortality and avoidable deaths from deprivation among  the circa 3.3 million internally displaced Afghans and the 2.5 million registered refugees in Iran and Pakistan from Afghanistan (present population 39 million, half requiring aid). Those rightly supporting all human rights for all as set out in the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) should also spare a thought for the  undoubted right of millions of ordinary Afghan women to see the survival of their children.

    (10). Exposure of the perpetrators of the Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide. This is an immense crime that demands war crimes trials of the  perpetrators before the International Criminal Court (ICC). That is not going to happen because the US does not recognize the authority of the ICC whereas the ICC cravenly accepts the authority of the US. However international and intra-national war crimes trials by  eminent humanitarians are feasible and urgently required. Establishment of the truth is more important than punishment of the guilty (the more so since the latter is unlikely to ever happen). Inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in post-Apartheid South Africa, war crimes trials should be legislatively constituted on the basis that there should be no punishment for truth telling accompanied by sincere apology (see Gideon Polya , “Afghan Holocaust – The Awful Truth Versus US Alliance Lies,” Countercurrents, 22 August 2021).

    The post US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gideon Polya.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • FIRST PERSON: By Ben Strang, RNZ News reporter

    RNZ reporter Ben Strang was on the streets before the latest lockdown when he was attacked, and writes that it feels like there is more animosity towards the government and media this time around.


    Despite living largely free of restrictions in New Zealand compared to almost every other nation for the best part of this covid pandemic, it is apparent that some people have no intention of living under level four restrictions.

    Hours into the first day of lockdown, Billy Te Kahika, Vinny Eastwood, and their loyal legion of conspiracy theorists launched a number of protests against the measures set out by the government.

    Te Kahika and Eastwood pitched up with about 80 others outside Television New Zealand’s headquarters in Auckland.

    Some of their views may seem idiotic, but neither of them is an idiot.

    The decision to protest outside TVNZ served many purposes: It’s a central Auckland location; it was guaranteed to get them a level of media attention; and they could try to make a point to the media who, apparently, ignore their salient points about the truth of covid-19, vaccines, Bill Gates, the moon landings, and whatever else.

    Te Kahika and Eastwood were arrested and are now going through the court process.

    It feels like part of a rising level of resentment over government action on combating the pandemic. Patience can wear thin, it might be hard to see an end point and we are left wondering when we will return to “normal”.

    Trusty black face mask
    “On Tuesday night, five hours before the restrictions were about to snap into place, I was tasked with talking to people on the streets of Wellington about the impending lockdown.

    Wearing an RNZ jacket and my trusty black face mask – and armed with an RNZ flagged microphone – I greeted people as I always do, by telling them I was an RNZ reporter.

    That’s when I was attacked.

    A tall blonde man tried to rip my face mask off, grabbed my ear and around my head.

    He yelled that covid-19 was a myth, aggressively asked why I needed the mask, and said none of the pandemic was real.

    Fortunately, I know how to handle myself and got out of the situation quick smart, but these situations are not isolated.

    Other reporters have talked about overly aggressive anti-lockdown, covid-19 conspiracy theorists confronting them while they’ve been working.

    Usually, we only see it online through social media, or in our email inbox from the brave few using creative pseudonyms.

    Tide is changing
    But if Tuesday night is any indication, the tide is changing. And it is not just the media who are noticing the swell of covid-19 discontent or disbelief.

    Police arrested three people involved in an anti-lockdown protest in Christchurch on Thursday, after a group of 10 people gathered on the Bridge of Remembrance on Cashel Street.

    Last time out, the police took an “educational approach”, telling people to pull their heads in and head home.

    This time, they are acting far quicker in locking them up.

    That is because they see the rise in this behaviour too, want to send a clear message to those who believe in “alternative facts”, and want to knock it on the head.

    It has also been noticed by supermarket workers, bus drivers, airline staff, and any number of frontline workers across the country.

    There are reports of people being kept off flights because they refuse to wear a mask.

    Arrested in Northland
    Police arrested two people in Northland on Wednesday for that very offence, and because they acted in a threatening manner towards supermarket staff at a Pak N Save.

    The protests, the arrests, the number of people requiring “education” from the police are small compared to the vast numbers who are complying with restrictions.

    But they are the tip of a digital iceberg, with a large online community which is consistently growing, feeding on the idea that covid-19 is either a hoax or perhaps a plandemic.

    We all have an uncle, or a sister-in-law, or a neighbour, who tries to tell us the truth as they see it.

    But how many people do they convince? How many people are now second guessing getting a vaccine because of misleading scientific “evidence” one of these people has been talking about?

    It’s a dangerous situation we find ourselves in.

    With anger and misinformation swelling like a tumour, there is added pressure on the government in these coming days and weeks to make the right decisions in steering the country through this current outbreak.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • In 1989, researchers from the Salk Institute in California published a paper detailing how they developed an RNA transfection system that could “directly introduce RNA into whole tissues and embryos”. The concept of using RNA as a drug is first described in this paper, making it the seminal work that formed the foundation for decades of further research in this area. The “Discussion” section of the paper states that:

    The RNA/lipofectin method can be used to directly introduce RNA into whole tissues and embryos (R.W.M., C. Holt, and I.M.V., unpublished results), raising the possibility that liposome-mediated mRNA transfection might offer yet another option in the growing technology of eukaryotic gene delivery, one based on the concept of using RNA as a drug.

    One of the Salk Institute researchers listed on the paper is Dr. Robert W. Malone, a scientist who has recently been censored on social media for warning about the possible dangers of the covid-19 vaccines. It could be argued that there’s no expert more qualified to warn us about the dangers of mRNA injections than the man who helped pioneer the technology, nevertheless, Big Tech decided he was expounding “misinformation”, because, well, they know better apparently.

    Malone’s research, which resulted in a procedure that could be used to “efficiently transfect RNA into human cells” using a “synthetic cationic lipid” was supported by grants from the American Cancer Society and the National Institute of Health (who currently have a stake in the Moderna mRNA vaccine, showing their allegiance to the technology. More on this later).

    While Malone’s contributions to the development of mRNA technology are well-known and well-documented, Wikipedia decided to remove all mention of him from their “RNA Vaccine” entry shortly after the scientist began speaking out about the dangers of the rushed-through covid vaccines. The June 14th version of the article mentioned Malone by name 3 times and cited his work 6 times. The current version of the article mentions him 0 times and cites his work only 3 times.

    However, this is unsurprising considering Wikipedia’s documented bias towards the pharmaceutical industry. Far more interesting is the institution that produced the research in the first place — the Salk Institute. The Salk Institute, named after Jonas Salk, the creator of the Salk polio vaccine, was constructed in 1962 thanks to funding from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, today known as the March of the Dimes.

    The March of the Dimes (MOD) was established in 1937 with the mission of eradicating polio and during a time when the Eugenics Establishment was already a prominent, but not yet popular, feature of the American health scene. The theory of Eugenics is based on the idea that selective procreation can lead to the gradual “improvement” of the human race and that certain families are fit to lead society by virtue of their “superior” genes.

    At the time, the nation’s key eugenics organizations included the American Eugenics Society (AES) and the American Society of human Eugenics (ASHE), funded by the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Harriman families, as well as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. It should be noted that the Rockefellers were instrumental in funding and promoting eugenics around the world. The Eugenics movement promoted selective mating, artificial insemination and compulsory sterilization and euthanasia as important means of weeding out so-called “inferior” human beings.

    The first sterilization law in the US was passed in 1907, in the state of Indiana, and by 1931, many more states had followed suit by enacting similar laws. According to the Indiana Historical Bureau:

    In 1907, Governor J. Frank Hanly approved first state eugenics law making sterilization mandatory for certain individuals in state custody.

    Those sterilized under eugenics law were deemed “undesirable” on account of mental or physical impairments such as epilepsy, blindness and physical disabilities, as well as “social inadequacies” such as drug addiction or criminality. According to estimates, around 60,000 individuals were sterilized under such laws, deprived of their right to have children and forever branded as “feebleminded”.

    In fact, the prominence of the American eugenics movement resulted in its adoption by the National Socialist Party of Germany, which sterilized more than 350,000 persons by the end of the second world war. After WW2, eugenics notions were dropped from public conversation, but the movement never dissipated, no, instead it was “re-branded” using more acceptable terminology such as “population control” and “reproductive health”, as we shall see later on.

    The emergence of the MOD as a major player in the American Eugenics movement can be traced back to the organization’s early association with the Rockefeller Institute from where it procured many of its key members and advisers, including professor Anton Julius Carlson, a member of the American Eugenics Society, recruited to serve on the MOD’s Medical and Research Committees and Professor Clair E. Turner, another AES member who served as assistant to then President, Basil O’Connor.

    Just before the establishment of the Salk Institute, the MOD announced it would be phasing out its polio programs and focusing its resources on “birth defects”. In 1959, the MOD funded courses in “medical genetics” at the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, a genetics institute founded in 1929 by Clarence Cook Little, who, “at one time or another” served as the president of the American Eugenics Society, the American Birth Control League and the American Euthanasia Society.

    Jackson Laboratory’s claimed mission is “to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in its shared quest to improve human health.” Noteworthy is that the lab received increased funding in 2020, largely from the National Institute of Health (NIH), including a grant of $10.6 million to find treatments for rare genetic diseases by using gene-editing technologies. And at the start of the coronavirus “pandemic”, the lab worked to develop genetically modified mice for use in vaccine studies and other research related to Sars-Cov-2.

    Beginning in the 1960s, the MOD financed several “Birth Defects Prevention Centers” located at medical institutions across the US. These new centers offered prenatal testing via amniocentesis to determine whether a baby would be born with “defects” and then gave the couple the opportunity to abort the affected child.

    The MOD has also made direct donations to Planned Parenthood, a clear contradiction of their claimed mission, which is to “fight for the health of all moms and babies.” Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization that provides “reproductive health care” in the US and abroad. From 2019-2020 the organization committed over 350,000 abortions and has been criticized as “steering resources away from women’s health and toward abortion.” Unsurprisingly, a look into the organization’s history reveals that Planned Parenthood has its roots in Eugenics ideals.

    Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, who, far from a “birth control activist”, as the mainstream would have you believe, was a racist eugenicist who sought to rid the world of “unfit” human stock. In her essay, “A Plan for Peace”, she describes the main objects of her proposed “Population Congress” which includes “a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.” She also mentions the need to “control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.”

    As mentioned earlier, these Eugenics ideals inspired the Nazis who took many of Sanger’s ideas and ran with them, so to speak. In his book, The War Against the Weak, Edwin Black details how the Nazi sterilization law of 1933 as well as subsequent euthanasia laws were based on blueprints drawn up by Sanger and other American “activists.” In fact, associates of Sanger knew about these Nazi euthanasia programs and praised them.

    Coming back to the Salk Institute, it should be noted that the mainstream account of the 20th-century polio outbreak, namely the notion that the disease is caused by a virus and that Dr. Salk’s miracle vaccine was single-handedly responsible for ending the epidemic, is dubious and likely altogether false.

    Paralytic polio appeared suddenly in the US in the early 1900s with continual, dramatic fluctuations in cases — a pattern that continued until the end of the 1950s. The introduction of the Salk vaccine in 1954 seemed to coincide with the almost instantaneous decline in cases, which continued for more than two decades.

    But prior to being called “polio,” conditions involving infirmity of the limbs were known by various other names including apoplexy, palsy and paralysis. Many historical writings refer to paralysis resulting from exposure to toxic substances and many of these accounts were documented by Dr. Ralph Scobey in his 1952 statement to the Select Committee to Investigate the Use of Chemicals in Food Products titled The Poison Cause of Poliomyelitis and Obstructions to its Investigation.

    Scobey’s paper includes references to several investigations that seemed to indicate a link between polio outbreaks in the 20th century and the consumption of fresh fruit, providing a link between Polio and toxic pesticide exposure. One crop pesticide in widespread use at the time was DDT, a highly toxic organochlorine that was widely publicized as being “good for you”, but eventually banned in 1972. In 1953, Dr. Morton Biskind published a paper in the American Journal of Digestive Diseases pointing out that “McCormick (78), Scobey (100-101), and Goddard (57), in detailed studies, have all pointed out that factors other than infective agents are certainly involved in the etiology of polio, varying from nutritional defects to a variety of poisons which affect the nervous system.”

    The danger of toxic pesticides, including DDT, and their disastrous effects on the environment were illustrated by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book, Silent Spring.

    In more recent times, researchers, Dan Olmstead, co-founder of the Age of Autism, and Mark Blaxil conducted two brilliant investigations into the polio epidemics of the 20th century, reaching a similar conclusion to Scobey and Biskind, namely that the disease was caused by the widespread use of neurotoxic pesticides such as arsenite of soda and DDT.

    Although Salk’s vaccine was hailed as a success, the vaccine itself caused many cases of injury and paralysis. And though there does appear to be a convincing correlation between the timing of the vaccine and the reduction in polio cases, as all good scientists know, correlation doesn’t equal causation, especially considering the fact that DDT was phased out, at least in the US, over the same period.

    Interestingly, Dr Salk’s polio research was funded by the mother of Cordelia Scaife May, an heiress to the Mellon family banking fortune who idealized Margaret Sanger and later joined the board of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation. May’s views on immigration were radical, to say the least, and according to some, she favoured compulsory sterilization as a means to limit birth rates in developing countries. May later joined the board of the Population Council, an organization founded by John D. Rockefeller III focused on population reduction. In 1995, the Population Council collaborated with the WHO to create fertility regulating vaccines.

    It would be a mistake to think that the polio epidemic was not related to the current ‘age of vaccination’ we find ourselves in. On the contrary, claiming that polio was “eradicated in the United States” due to vaccination alone is a lie that garnered public favour for childhood vaccinations and helped to set the groundwork for the widespread belief in the safety and efficacy of all vaccines. Events such as Polio and Smallpox (another lie that is beyond the scope of this article), and the subsequent pro-vaccine propaganda, “primed” much of the population to accept, without question, an experimental jab based on poorly understood technology.

    Twisting the Science

    In 1997, 8 years after the Salk Institute paper, the FDA approved the first ever trial of transfected RNA to develop immunity in cancer patients. The Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Health then voted to continue approval some months later, leading to the first-ever mRNA based vaccine administered to humans.

    Though mRNA is propagandized in the media as the next revolution in health, those with keen perception may be alarmed when reading excerpts such as this one, taken from an article on the history of mRNA, written by Damian Garde, a Biotech reporter for STATS:

    The concept: By making precise tweaks to synthetic mRNA and injecting people with it, any cell in the body could be transformed into an on-demand drug factory.”

    Talk of cells being turned into “on-demand drug factories” is exactly the sort of meaningless techno-rhetoric meant to impress and entice an uninformed public. mRNA vaccines are based on the following concept: a piece of synthetic mRNA is shuttled into your cells, where it is used as a template to create the viral “spike protein.” Once this protein leaves the cell, the body produces antibodies and “learns” how to fight future Sars-Cov-2 infections.

    mRNA-based vaccines are often touted as a safer alternative to DNA-based vaccines, which, according to researcher Steve Pascolo “may trigger permanent and dangerous changes in the genetic information of treated people”. However, do we know for sure that mRNA vaccines don’t permanently change the genetic makeup of our cells? A 2001 paper titled “RNA as a tumor vaccine: a review of the literature<" states that (emphasis added): “unlike DNA-based vaccines, there is little danger of incorporation of RNA sequences into the host genome.” The use of the word “little” would seem to indicate that there may be at least some danger of genome integration or more likely, researchers simply don’t know.

    In the 2004 “expert opinion” paper by Pascolo cited above, he outlines the link between mRNA vaccines and gene therapies, something which is continually denied and dismissed by the mainstream:
    A

    lthough located in the cytosol and not in the nucleus, mature mRNAs belong to the biochemical family of nucleic acids. mRNA, similarly to DNA, may be considered a gene and, consequently, it’s use as a vaccine may be viewed as ‘gene therapy’.

    Interestingly, it is purely due to a technicality of regulatory law that covid-19 gene therapies are allowed to be called “vaccines”. This is explained in a paper titled “The European Regulatory Environment of RNA-Based Vaccines,” which states that:

    The definition of a gene therapy medicinal product as outlined in Annex 1 to Directive 2001/83/EC is as follows:

    Gene therapy medicinal product means a biological medicinal product which has the following characteristics:

    (a) it contains an active substance which contains or consists of a recombinant nucleic acid used in or administered to human beings with a view to regulating, repairing, replacing, adding or deleting a genetic sequence;

    (b) its therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic effect relates directly to the recombinant nucleic acid sequence it contains, or to the product of genetic expression of this sequence.

    Gene therapy medicinal products shall not include vaccines against infectious diseases.

    As is evident, the mere act of calling a gene therapy a “vaccine against infectious disease” negates its classification as a gene therapy, the approval process for which, at least in Europe, involves going through the CAT which is the EMA’s (European Medicines Agency) “Committee for Advanced Therapies”. Evidently, this play on language would seem to constitute a “loophole” of sorts, allowing easier approval for mRNA based gene therapies planned for human use.

    Approval is certainly a contentious topic when talked about in the context of the current covid-19 vaccines, none of which have been fully FDA approved, only authorized under emergency use (EUA) and labeled as “investigational” products, a fact that many people are unaware of. However, early in the year vaccine manufacturers already set their sights on full regulatory approval, after only 6 months of trial data. On the 7th of May, Pfizer formally initiated their application to the FDA, with the aim of having the first-ever fully approved covid-19 vaccine. But with millions of vaccines already administered under EUA, what’s the rush?

    Furthermore, for the six “first in disease” vaccines approved by the FDA over the last 15 years, the median trial duration was just shy of two years. A vaccine approved after 6 months of data would constitute one of the fastest ever. The phase three clinical trials for Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen are two years in duration, but the FDA has not clearly stated their position with regards to minimum follow-up prior to consideration for approval.

    Longer, placebo-controlled trials are paramount to assessing vaccine safety. It is extremely alarming then that vaccine manufacturers, within weeks of receiving EUA, began to unblind trials by offering those in the placebo group the chance to get vaccinated. Moderna announced that “as of April 13, all placebo participants have been offered the Moderna covid-19 vaccine and 98% of those have received the vaccine,” meaning that their placebo group no longer exists and as such, they have no way to accurately measure long-term safety.

    In an article for the British Medical Journal, Peter Doshi quotes the FDA, on several occasions, saying that the maintenance of a placebo group would be critical to assessing both the safety and efficacy of covid-19 vaccines, which is obvious to anyone who understands the consequences of failing to adhere to scientific rigor when testing a new medical therapy.

    In reality, there could be many reasons for manufacturers wanting FDA approval for their vaccines, but likely top of the list is the “stamp of approval” that comes with full licensure and the ability to use this as a way to convince those who remain skeptical regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. Moreover, full FDA approval would pave the way for easier vaccine mandates, putting immense pressure on those of the “awakened class” who represent a thorn in the side of the Great Reset/Great Convergence agenda pushers.

    More disturbing inconsistencies can be found in the FDA’s process for assessing and approving these experimental vaccines. For example, the FDA recently cautioned against the use of antibody tests for evaluating immunity or protection from covid-19, “especially” after a person has received a vaccination, despite their EUA being originally granted, in part, due to antibody responses. The implication for this reversal is that the EUA given for covid-19 vaccines should also be reversed, but what’s the likelihood of that happening, after millions have already been jabbed?

    Moreover, the idea that “antibodies” provide protection from so-called viral infections represents a poor understanding of the body and the immune system. The fact that antibodies play little role in viral infections has been known by medical scientists since the 1950s based on research that shows persons with the genetic inability to produce antibodies, called “agammaglobulinemia,” have normal reactions to typical viral infections and even appear to resist recurrences.

    Bill Gates, Moderna, and Eugenics 2.0

    One of the covid-19 vaccine manufactures most talked about in the media is Moderna, a biotech company co-founded by Robert Langer, a researcher and inventor at MIT. In 2013, the biotech startup received $25m in funding from DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a research arm of the United States Department of Defense, and an organization well-known for ruthlessly pursuing dystopian, transhumanist technologies, such as implantable nanoparticles and bio-brain interfaces (more on this later).

    Noteworthy is that the US government, through the National Institute of Health, appears to have a financial stake in the Moderna vaccine thanks to a contract signed by both parties, giving the NIH joint ownership over Moderna’s mRNA vaccine candidates. According to Axios:

    The NIH mostly funds outside research, but it also often invents basic scientific technologies that are later licensed out and incorporated into drugs that are sold at massive profits.

    This is more than alarming considering the NIH is responsible for prioritizing promising treatments for covid-19 as well as improving clinical trial effectiveness, which, for Moderna, is impossible considering their trial no longer contains a control group. NIH’s vested interest in Moderna’s success may also provide a plausible explanation for why the biotech startup received EUA for their vaccine despite failing, for over 10 years, to bring a single product to market.

    In an interview for Economic Club, NIH director Francis Collins denied that covid-19 vaccines would be money-makers, saying that “Nobody sees this as a way to make billions of dollars”. However, evidence points to the contrary as Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine sales reached $1.7 billion in the first quarter of 2021, making their CEO, Stephane Bancel, one of the many new pharma billionaires.

    “Operation Warp Speed,” the name given to a partnership between several US Federal agencies aimed at accelerating the development of a covid-19 vaccine, was also wrought with conflicts of interest. The Operation Warp Speed administration hired several “consultants” with ties to Big Pharma, including two former Pfizer executives. And in May 2020, it was reported that their chief adviser, Dr. Monsef Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive himself, held $10m in GlaxoSmithKline stock, the same company that was later awarded a $2 billion contract to supply the US government with 100 million vials of covid-19 vaccine. Dr. Slaoui also held significant stock in Moderna, to whom the federal government has awarded over $2.5b in funding.

    Moderna co-founder, Robert Langer, whose net worth has also skyrocketed into the billions, is one of the world’s most cited researchers. A scientist at MIT, Langer holds over 1,400 patents and specializes in biotechnology, nanotechnology, tissue engineering and drug delivery. Furthermore, Langer holds an administrative role at the MIT Media Lab, the same institute that was the focus of a scandal after it was revealed that the lab accepted funding from convicted sex-offender, Jefferey Epstein. Epstein also happened to have a disturbing fascination with “transhumanism”, a modern-day version of eugenics (transhumanism is discussed later in this article).

    Then director of the MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, approved two donations from Epstein of $1.75m and allowed the prolific paedophile to “direct” funds to the lab from other wealthy benefactors, including a $2m donation from Bill Gates, who also has unsettling ties to Epstein, having flown on his private jet and met with him on several occasions. When the news broke out and Joi Ito resigned from his post at the lab, Langer was one of the first people to sign a letter calling for him to stay, and as an administrator for the lab’s Director’s Office, it’s hard to believe he didn’t know about the Epstein donations in advance.

    Described as the “common denominator” in several coronavirus efforts, Robert Langer is certainly an interesting player in the transhumanist movement. In 2015, his company, Microchips Biotech, partnered with Israeli pharmaceutical giant, Teva Pharmaceutical, to commercialize its “implantable drug delivery device”. Noteworthy is that Teva Pharmaceutical has received significant investment from Warren Buffett, who, in 2006, pledged to gradually donate his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an organization whom he served as a trustee up until very recently.

    Langer also has ties to Charles Lieber, a Harvard nanotech scientist who was arrested in January on account of making false statements to federal authorities regarding his collaboration with Chinese researchers at the Wuhan University of Technology. In 2012, Langer and Lieber worked together to create a “material that merges nanoscale electronics with biological tissues”. The material was described as “a first step toward prosthetics that communicate directly with the nervous system”.

    Much of Langer’s research is backed by Bill Gates, who began funding mRNA technology in 2010 and has also invested millions into Moderna. In 2017, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored a project at Langer’s lab to create a microparticle vaccine delivery system that could generate a “novel type of drug carrying particle”, allowing multiple doses of a vaccine to be administered over an extended period of time with just one injection. Then in 2019, Gates and Langer teamed up again to create an invisible ink tattoo that “embeds immunization records into a child’s skin”. Disturbingly, the eventual goal of the project is to inject sensors that can be used to track “other aspects” of health.

    Gates claims he needs the data for “disease prevention”, referring to his efforts to wipe out polio, measles and other “infectious” diseases from around the world. However, Gates’ various “health-related” initiatives in developing countries are not the work of a loving philanthropist like the media would have us all believe. Instead, evidence would suggest that Gates’ involvement in public health represents the continuation of a long-standing eugenics agenda, hiding in plain sight. Gates’ links to the eugenics movement start with his father, who praised the Rockefellers for their work in “public health” and even met with them in 2000 to discuss matters relating to infectious disease, vaccines and the environment. During the meeting, Gates senior was quoted as saying:

    Taking our lead and our inspiration from work already done by The Rockefeller Foundation, our foundation actually started GAVI by pledging $750 million to something called the Global Fund for Children’s Vaccines, an instrument of GAVI.

    Interestingly, almost ten years after that meeting, Gates junior co-hosted a meeting with David Rockefeller to discuss population reduction.

    Perhaps even more telling is the fact that in 2012 Bill and Melinda Gates hosted their London Summit on Family Planning, where they announced their commitment to population control in the third world, on the 100th anniversary of the First International Eugenics Congress, also held in London.

    Gates is well-known for his obsession with vaccines, a curious pursuit considering that the 9,000,000 people who die every year from hunger would be better served by having clean water, food supplies and sanitary living environments. In 2009, Gates’ Foundation funded observational studies in India for a controversial cervical cancer vaccine that was given to thousands of young girls called “Gardasil”. Within months, many girls began to get sick and within a year, five of them had died. During a similar study for a different brand of HPV vaccine, many girls were hospitalized and a further two died. The Economic Times of India reported on this in 2014, with the shocking revelation that:

    Consent for conducting these studies, in many cases, was taken from the hostel wardens, which was a flagrant violation of norms. In many other cases, thumbprint impressions of their poor and illiterate parents were duly affixed onto the consent form. The children also had no idea about the nature of the disease or the vaccine. The authorities concerned could not furnish requisite consent forms for the vaccinated children in a huge number of cases.

    Gates has also heavily promoted the oral polio vaccine in India, after endeavouring to eradicate the disease. However, as discussed earlier in this article, toxic chemicals are involved in the etiology of polio and thus the disease cannot be eradicated by the use of vaccines. In fact, global health numbers indicate that more cases of polio are now being caused by the vaccines themselves than anything else. In 2018, a group of brave Indian researchers published a paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health showing a correlation between the oral polio vaccine drives and increased cases of “acute flaccid paralysis”, a condition described as “clinically indistinguishable” from polio.

    Ironically, Gates has a $23m investment in Monsanto, the company that markets “roundup” a glyphosate-containing pesticide that is known to cause adverse health effects, including neurological disorders and paralysis.

    While many believe Gates to be selflessly giving away his money in order to fund these vaccination campaigns, it should be noted that Gates’ investment in vaccines has netted him a massive return. By 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had donated just over $10b to various vaccine-related initiatives including GAVI (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization). Gates called it the “best investment he’s ever made”, estimating a 20-1 return, or around $200b over 20 years. Indeed, Gates’ net worth has more than doubled over the last 10 years.

    And lest we forget that more than half of all deaths in low to middle income countries are caused by non-communicable diseases, which the Bill and Melinda Foundation seems to have little interest in, directing less than 3% of their budget towards such conditions.

    Furthermore, Gates’ activities in public health are wrought with conflicts of interest that that would seem to undermine the notion that Gates cares about the health of the population. Many of these conflicts of interest are outlined in a study published by Harvard researcher, David Stuckler, titled “Global Health Philanthropy and Institutional Relationships: How Should Conflicts of Interest Be Addressed?,” in which he states that:

    As one example, we found that Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has substantial holdings in the Coca-Cola Corporation, and also participates in grants that encourage communities in developing countries to become business affiliates of Coca-Cola. It has been noted by some commentators that sugary drinks such as those produced by Coca-Cola are correlated with the rapid increase in obesity and diabetes in developing countries.

    Stuckler also notes that:

    Many of the Foundation’s pharmaceutical development grants may benefit leading pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline.” And that “Several grants are linked to companies that are represented on the Foundation’s board among its investments.

    The media rarely reports on these disturbing conflicts of interest, which isn’t surprising considering Gates funds all the major news outlets.

    To call the negligent, wide-spread administration of covid-19 experimental vaccines an initiative steeped in eugenicist thinking would not be amiss considering how many figures and institutions involved in the vaccine race have ties to the eugenics movement. In fact, the developers of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are also linked to the now renamed British Eugenics Society, founded by the father of Eugenics, Francis Galton. These connections are detailed by investigative journalist, Whitney Webb, in her article titled “Developers of Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Tied to UK Eugenics Movement.”

    When it comes to protecting public health, the recklessness displayed by politicians, scientists and pharmaceutical companies is unforgivable considering the widespread impact that these experimental vaccines will have. We have already begun to see the results of unleashing a dangerous gene therapy technology on a naive and trusting public, with VAERS, (the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) showing more deaths linked with covid-19 vaccines than all other vaccines combined over the last 30 years.

    None of this is surprising though, considering the haste with which clinical trials were conducted and the question marks surrounding the reliability of the data reported. For example, vaccine manufactures reported their vaccines were “95% effective”, a number they arrived at by using a relative risk reduction as opposed to an absolute risk reduction, which was around 1% in most cases, a fact never highlighted by the mainstream media.

    Furthermore, vaccine trials were not designed to assess the vaccines’ effect on infection, transmission, hospitalizations or deaths, which is puzzling considering that, if there really was a viral pandemic, these would be the most important endpoints to test for. Though perhaps this was a calculated move by vaccine manufacturers, who knew they’d have a better chance at rigging the results using the endpoint of ‘covid-19 of any severity’. After all, the dramatic increase in the use of influenza vaccines has not been associated with a decrease in mortality.

    Peter Doshi, an editor for the British Medical Journal, has called into question numerous aspects of the controversial vaccine trials, including the potential for pain medication to mask covid-19 symptoms in trial groups and the objectivity of “primary event adjudication committees” in charge of counting covid-19 cases. In the case of Pfizer, this committee consisted of Pfizer employees.

    Recently, Doctors for Covid Ethics, a group consisting of Dr. Michael palmer MD, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi MD and Dr. Stefan Hockertz PhD, published an expert statement relating to the danger and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine that was submitted as part of a lawsuit challenging the EU’s authorization of the use of the vaccine for children 12 years and older. The paper states that the reported efficacy of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine was “most likely altogether fraudulent” and that “Pfizer, the EMA, and the FDA have systematically neglected evidence from preclinical animal trials that clearly pointed to grave dangers of adverse events.”

    But of course, none of this is ever surfaced in the mainstream. Instead, we are fed the same party lines over and over; “vaccines are safe and effective,” “follow the science,” “listen to the experts.” And by “experts” they of course mean the pharmaceutical reps like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whose been lying about so-called viral infections ever since AIDS broke out in 1984. The fact that a character like Fauci has held his post for more than 30 years is rather telling of how the system works. The late Nobel prize winner and inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), Karry Mullis, castigated Fauci in an interview, saying that:

    He doesn’t know anything really about anything, and I’d say that to his face. Nothing.

    The man thinks you can take a blood sample and stick it in an electron microscope and if it’s got a virus in there, you will know it. He doesn’t understand electron microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in […] Tony Fauci does not mind going on television in front of the people who pay his salary and lie directly into the camera.

    A Transhumanist Future

    Besides being gene therapies, a technology associated with eugenics and transhumanism, according to scientists, mRNA technology “allows rapid development of novel vaccines within a very short time span of weeks rather than months.” Hence, we may be faced with the possibility of a future filled with on-demand vaccines created to “protect” the public against new, invisible threats.

    Indeed, with vaccinologists already talking about “variants”, booster shots and periodic covid-19 top-up vaccines, it certainly looks like things are headed that way. And of course, thanks to intelligence-linked Big Tech conglomerates, this data will all be recorded on a “vaccine passport” linked to your smartphone, which will no-doubt form the basis for a new type of digital identity pass tied to your bank account and, eventually, your social credit.

    Indeed, in 2019, Bill Gates’ Microsoft filed a patent, aptly named Patent WO2020060606, for a “Cryptocurrency system using body-activation data,” another clue as to the true intentions of the technocratic elite who are funding and promoting the transhumanist agenda. The patent’s title alone conjures up images of a slave society in which humans are fitted with biosensors and awarded digital coins for completing tasks issued to them by the ruling elite.

    But perhaps even more alarming is the rush to get gene therapies licensed for use in young children. Pfizer are currently in the midst of a global clinical trial, where they are testing their mRNA jabs in babies as young as 6 months, despite the fact that “Covid-19”, if we suppose there is such a disease, barely affects children. In fact, according to CDC numbers, the IFR in children is 20 per 1,000,000, or 0.002%, which is likely lower than the risk of permanent injury or death from the MMR vaccine. It’s also lower than the covid-19 vaccine death rate as calculated using VAERS data at the time of writing (5,612 deaths over 165,000,000 fully vaccinated in the US = 0.003%). Furthermore, research has linked Pfizer’s vaccine to symptomatic myocarditis, with an estimated incidence rate of 1 in 3000 or 1 in 6000 in young men.

    The rush to bring mRNA vaccines into the mainstream as part of the regular childhood vaccination schedule is not about health or protection, but rather a step towards a much more sinister goal, which is to attain control over the human body itself.

    As mentioned previously in this article, DARPA, the research arm of the US Department of Defense, has been working to create nanotechnology that can interface with biological cells. In 2014, DARPA launched its “In Vivo Nanoplatforms (IVN)” program, with the aim of developing implantable nanoplatforms to collect biological data and provide “continuous physiologic monitoring”. The program has since helped to create injectable hydrogels that monitor physiologic responses and can sync to a smartphone.

    Furthermore, DARPA, together with the NIH, heavily funds Profusa, a Google-backed biotech company developing and marketing this very same injectable hydrogel technology, only now it is being punted as a way to detect future “pandemics”. Allegedly, Profusa’s sensors can “detect flu-like infections even before their symptoms begin to show”. While incredibly disturbing, this is only a step towards DARPA’s ultimate goal, which is to establish dominion over the mind. This goal is reflected in DARPA’s research to create “mutant-powered soldiers” using “genetic weaponry” that can “undermine people’s minds and bodies using a range of chemical, neurological, genetic and behavioral techniques”.

    DARPA is also looking at ways to genetically engineer the brain in order to read peoples thoughts and induce images and sounds in people’s minds. The research involves the use of “magnetic nanoparticles”, the same technology that some have speculated may be included in current or future covid-19 vaccines.

    Equally distressing is the “Wellcome Leap”, a new initiative created by the eugenics-linked Wellcome Trust, the world’s richest medical research Foundation, in partnership with two former DARPA frontmen. The program’s official aim is to “Deliver breakthroughs in human health over 5 – 10 years and demonstrate seemingly impossible results on seemingly impossible timelines.” Currently, the initiative has 5 main projects, the first of which is “RNA Readiness + Response”, which seeks to (emphasis added) “create a self-sustaining network of manufacturing facilities providing globally distributed, state-of-the-art surge capacity to meet future pandemic needs”, referring to the manufacturing of RNA-based products (mRNA gene therapies). Note the seeming surety of a future pandemic.

    However, the top contender for most disturbing Wellcome Leap project is, without a doubt, “The First 1000 days” (1kD), a program which seeks to use infants as test subjects in order to monitor their brain development and create AI models that can be used to “accurately predict and improve EF [executive function] outcomes.” The project also notes the use of “mobile-sensors, wearables and home-based systems.” In a detailed article on the matter, researcher Whitney Webb writes that:

    True to the eugenicist ties of the Wellcome Trust (to be explored more in-depth in Part 2), Wellcome Leap’s 1DK notes that “of interest are improvements from underdeveloped EF to normative or from normative to well-developed EF across the population to deliver the broadest impact.” One of the goals of 1DK is thus not treating disease or addressing a “global health public challenge” but instead experimenting on the cognitive augmentation of children using means developed by AI algorithms and invasive surveillance-based technology.

    The Wellcome Leap’s timeline of 5-10 years happens to line up with elite frontman, Elon Musk’s Neuralink project, which seeks to establish “the future of brain interfaces” in order to “expand our abilities”. In an interview Musk said, “I think we are about 8 to 10 years away from this being usable by people with no disability”. Musk, whose wealth increased by more than 500% during the covid-19 “pandemic”, founded Neuralink in 2016. The company recently raised $205m in funding from 7 venture capital firms (including Google’s GV) and 5 Silicon Valley executives. However, Neuralink isn’t the only biotech company pursuing this technology. Recently, Synchron, a small biotech firm and Neuralink competitor, received the go-ahead from the FDA to begin testing its brain chip implants in humans.

    10 years from now would take us to 2030, a year that comes up again and again as a year in which transhumanist technologies will be commonplace in mainstream society. According to predictions made by the US National Intelligence Council, “human augmentation” (the merging of man and machine) will be a major theme in 2030. Their Global Trends 2030 report, published in 2012, states that:

    Successful prosthetics probably will be directly integrated with the user’s body. Brain-machine interfaces could provide “superhuman” abilities, enhancing strength and speed, as well as providing functions not previously available.

    Interestingly, the report also predicts “an easily transmissible novel respiratory pathogen” that could cause a great disruptive impact. The report goes on to state that “Unlike other disruptive global events, such an outbreak would result in a global pandemic that directly causes suffering and death in every corner of the world, probably in less than six months.”

    Enslavement: A Free Will Choice

    The rollout of mRNA gene therapies and the push towards a transhumanist society represents the continuation of the eugenics movement, which was based on the pseudoscientific concept that some humans, by virtue of their genetic composition, were more “fit” to lead society than others.

    The “hero” of the Polio epidemic, Jonas Salk, had his own ties to eugenics and so does the institute named in his favour, the Salk Institute. Their mRNA research, funded by the NIH, set the foundation for the development and mass rollout of gene therapies, controversially being called “vaccines”. The danger of this experimental technology is evident, having already caused thousands of injuries and deaths worldwide.

    The role of intelligence organizations, billionaire technocrats and pharmaceutical initiatives in funding, researching and promoting mRNA vaccines, “bio-brain” interfaces, gene editing and other technologies steeped in eugenicist ideals paints the picture of a global agenda set to hit its stride fully by 2030. The current covid-19 “pandemic” has served as a means to accelerate this agenda by centralizing wealth and power, bringing transhumanist technology into the mainstream and normalizing authoritarian rule. Pfizer’s infant trials and the Wellcome Leap’s alarming “1kD” project indicate that key to this agenda is the conditioning and control of children from a young age, something that Aldous Huxley detailed extensively in his disturbingly prophetic, eugenicist novel, Brave New World.

    This agenda, though backed by some of the world’s most powerful individuals and institutions, has an obvious weakness — its success is reliant on our compliance. It will only advance if we allow it to advance. Therefore, it is up to each one of us, through compassionate, non-violent resistance, to sow the seeds of awakening in the collective consciousness of mankind.

    The post mRNA “Vaccines,” Eugenics, and the Push for Transhumanism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.

    — Thomas Paine, Letter to Mr. Erskine, Paine’s Complete Works, Vol. 3, p. 179.

    Those men, whom Jewish and Christian idolaters have abusively called heathens, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish; or in the New.

    — Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Footnote 28

    All that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the dark ages – has been done in spite of the Old Testament

    — Robert Green Ingersoll, About the Holy Bible, (May 19, 2017)  Part III. The Ten Commandments

    Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it for religious conviction.

    — Blaise Pascal

    Orientation

    According to Andrew Seidel, 32% of Americans think it is very important to be Christian to be truly American. But what does it mean to be an “American”? Well, if being an American has anything to do with the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, many Americans are in serious trouble. For example, Seidel writes:

    On the first 4th of July of Trump’s presidency, National Public Radio tweeted the Declaration and Trump supporters lost their minds. They were sure NPR was calling for a rebellion against Trump. (80)

    But the problem is even deeper because Americans really don’t know the bible very well either:

    The bible has been edited rewritten, supplemented, translated, retranslated and mistranslated so many times that claims of immutability are laughable. Yet about 30 percent of Americans, many of them Christian nationalists, believe in the bible literally …word of their god. (115)

    In fact, according to Seidel:

    research shows that atheists know the Bible better than Christians. (115)

    In 1951, 53% of Americans could not name even one of the gospel. In 2010, 49% couldn’t.

    Claim

    My article is a review of a very powerful book written by Andrew Seidel called The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American. As Seidel says, the purpose of the book is to utterly destroy the myth that the founders of the Constitution were committed to founding a Judeo-Christian nation. The contrast between the Bible on the one hand and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on the other is so great that, as Seidel says, one is almost forced to choose: are you a Christian or an American?

    Part of the book is dedicated to exposing the notion that the founders themselves had any sympathy for Christianity. Secondly, it is to show how both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution directly contradict both the Old and the New Testaments. Thirdly, within the Bible the Ten Commandments are shown to be anti-Constitutional. Lastly, the book shows how it was only through a propaganda campaign during times of national fear such as The Civil War and the anti-communist scare that right-wing preachers smuggled in Christian propaganda onto coins and paper money (In God We trust); and into the Pledge of Allegiance (One nation Under God).

    Qualifications

    This book does not argue that religion should be absent from our culture. It only says that religion should be absent from  our constitutional identity. In fact, research shows that in societies that have a separation of church and state, people are more religious than when there is no separation. Seidel argues that when there is no separation, people take religion for granted.

    Secondly, there is no simple relationship between separation of church and state and whether someone is religious or not. Someone can be religious and endorse the separation of church and state. Thirdly, while some founders were deists and others were theists, even though some were theists does not prove they used their religion to found the nation. People can make a distinction between their private and public political commitments. Fourthly, founders who were Christian were only supportive of the teachings of Jesus. There was no implication of support for any Catholic or Protestant institutions or teaching.

    Qualifications about my being an American and supporting the Constitution.

    It would be natural to think that in attacking Christian nationalism as being un-American, I identify with being an American. I don’t. My purpose in using the term “un-American” is to offer an immanent criticism of Christian nationalism. Immanent criticism means criticism from within the principles of my adversary. What I am saying is you don’t even live up to your own principles of being an American by failing to abide by the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. An externalist criticism would be to criticize Christian nationalism from a Buddhist, Muslim or socialist perspective.

    Also, in defending the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence against the Bible, it doesn’t mean I am uncritical of the of either of these American documents. As a result of reading Seidel’s book, I do have a newfound respect for the importance of separating Church from the State. There are clear limits set on religion’s invasion of science or politics. While secular laws could be much tighter, the justification for insisting on the separation is very well thought-out and it is still very important over 200 years later. 

    Were the Founders Christian?

    Seidel uses many sources to show that the painting of Washington praying in the snow was a piece of artistic Christian propaganda. Washington was not a good Christian. He attended religious services irregularly, he didn’t kneel during prayer and often skipped out of Church early. He refused to have a priest at his deathbed.  Jefferson took a more militant stand against Christianity. He attempted to rewrite the Bible cutting out the references to supernaturalism, miracles and slaughter in the hopes of salvaging something. Jefferson said later that his efforts were like “pick out diamonds from a dunghill.” Jefferson and Madison were very critical and suspicious of organized religion and the “priestcraft” that accompany them. Some founders treated the Trinity with contempt, calling it Abracadabra.

    When the founders mention “The Creator” the Christian nationalists break out in celebration, declaring victory. Hold your horses and bugles! Nowhere is Jesus or Yahweh specifically mentioned. Virtually all cultures have a creator god who are more or less involved in his creation. The same is true with the Golden Rule. Christian nationalists act is if this rule was unique to Christianity.  Most cultures in the world have their own version of the Golden Rule often dating to thousands of years before Christianity. Furthermore, when god was named it was “nature’s” god. Seidel rightly points this is more likely to resemble the god of the wind or the trees than the description of a biblical god. Nature’s god is a pagan god, not the Judeo-Christian monotheistic god.

    The founders engaged in what Seidel calls “strategic piety”:

    Writers were wise to choose language that would take advantage of the majority religiosity but still remain wholly nonsectarian. It was designed to be acceptable to deists and orthodox alike. (88)

    In psychological terms the founders were playing to people’s confirmation bias- our innate selection and interaction of evidence to support our existing beliefs. (90)

    Do You Need God to be Good?

    For themselves, the founders thought their morality was sufficient to guide them and religion was unnecessary. However, some of the founder thought religion was necessary to keep the masses moral. For many founders, religion was not the source of morality, but a substitute for it. Without religion, the masses could not be moral. But the founders were not fussy about which religion filled the bill. Washington and Adams suggested that any religion, not only Christianity, can replace morality.

    So the Founding Fathers were elitists. But were they were right about the capacity of large populations to prosper and live morally without religion?

    Do Secularists Produce Worse Societies than the Religious?

    The short answer is – no. Seidel points out:

    Social science now unequivocally shows that the less religious a society, is the better off it is. We now know that religion is not necessary for society to succeed. (49)

    Within America the states with the highest murder rates tend to be highly religious – Louisiana and Alabama. States with the lowest rates are the least religious the country, like Vermont and Oregon.

    Of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries. During the Holocaust, the more secular the people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews.

    The least religious countries:

    Have lowest rates of violent crime and homicide

    Are the best places to raise children

    Have lowest levels of intolerance vs race

    Have the highest in women’s rights

    Are the most prosperous

    Within the US, those states that are the most religious have societal ills:

    Highest rates of poverty

    Highest rates of obesity

    Highest rates of infant mortality

    Highest rates of teen pregnancy

    Lowest level of educated adults

    Highest rates of murder and violent crime (49-50)

    There were Christian Colonies but no Christian Nation    

    Christian nationalists are right to point out that during the colonial period most of the colonies were religious, whether they were Puritans, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, or Quakers. However, when the founders wrote the Constitution, they kept these religious beliefs outside the politics of founding a nation. The religions of the colonists did not help them to overthrow the British. Every colony was part of the British Empire, which was subjected to a Christian king. Colonial history also precedes the separation of Church and state which was part of the Constitution. The colonies were a British outpost, subject to a divine king. This is exactly the political theology the founders were fighting against. Table A is a contrast between the structure of life during colonial history vs after the declaration of independence. Please take a look at Table A.

    The Bible as a Piece of Literature

    The Bible is unlike other literature. Seidel points out that unlike like Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, Aesop’s fables and the legends of Greek and Roman mythology, which stood on their own merits, the Bible’s reputation was imposed and propagated over thousands of years with fire and brimstone. It was then reinforced regularly through weekly ceremonies. It is an authoritarian document which doesn’t have rhetorical appeal based on reason. Instead, the Bible is a document people must live by and bow down to, no matter what.

    The un-American, Authoritarian Nature of the bible

    Exclusivity and obedience

    Right out of the gate the bible is exclusionary, rather than inclusive. Yahweh picks the Jews as his “chosen” people, whereas in the Constitution, at least theoretically, all are welcome. Whereas in one of Paul’s letters Christians are told to obey the authorities, in fact, they are servants of God. For example, Abraham is commanded by God to murder his son Isaac as an offering. God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for looking back to see the destruction. God demands the killing of first-born children unless there is lamb’s blood on the family door frame. This contrasts with the Declaration’s note to rebel against the authorities when they are tyrannical. Why? Because “we the people” rule.

    Monarchies and divine dictatorships

    In the Bible God does not rule by consent of the governed. Neither is there a separation of powers for governing, God rules by decree. God loves monarchies. Seidel points out that the first two books of the bible are titled “Kings”. Many of the heroes in the bible are kings, specifically, Saul, David and Solomon. Whatever rights people have been given by God. Likewise, God can take away those rights. Following the Enlightenment people have human rights which no political or religious authority can take away. In terms of following rules, the Judeo-Christian God of Christian propaganda says that God lays down the laws once and for all. In fact, with different versions of the Bible the laws change.  Under the American Constitution laws can be changed by amendments. Objectively, the origin of the laws was from an Early Iron Ages society 1200 BCE years ago. The Constitution is close to 250 years old, while drawing from Greek and pre-Christian Roman law.

    Faith and reason: how do we know?

    If faith is defined as believing in something in spite of evidence, the Founding Fathers had no room for faith and that is how they came to understand the Constitution. They went through an evolving process of dialectical reasoning internally and debating, compromising and tinkering over months. Most of the founders tinkered with inventions, kept up with the sciences and saw politics, itself, as a science.

    For those who followed the Bible, the Bible was given to them completed. God did not encourage any input from humanity. You simply had faith. You believed in the Bible in spite of evidence. Belief in miracles is just one instance. So too, when it comes to Christian nationalists in politics, there is no room for compromise or tinkering. Since they believe they are acting in the name of God, compromising with non-believers is not being true to God. On the whole, Seidel says:

    what a Christian government looks like: exclusive, exclusionary, divisive, hateful, severe and lethal. (106)

    Crime and punishment

    When it comes to punishment the Bible paints with broad brush strokes. The punishments are inflexible and extremely violent. God destroys Canaan as well destroying all those believing in other gods. Disobedient children are stoned; so are wizards and women having premarital sex. Heretics and witches are tortured and followers are told that disobedience will be dealt with fire for eternity. The Constitution, on the other hand, simply strives to make punishment be proportionate to the crime, and punishments are limited to this lifetime.

    Guilt and innocence are handled in opposite ways. In the Bible, whole groups are condemned as guilty and the guilt is inherited across generations. In the Constitution, there is no collective guilt. Individuals are found guilty and that guilt is not inherited by their sons and daughters. Finally, in the Bible it is not very important that innocents suffer and are killed, provided the guilty party does not get away with anything. In the Constitution the situation is the reverse. It is better that the guilty get away than for the innocent to be punished unjustifiably.

    Origin and destiny

    For the Bible, life on earth is a reform school. Why do people need to be reformed? Because in the mythological Garden of Eden, Eve ate the fruit the devil offered her even though God forbade it. Humanity was condemned from that time forward. While self-improvement is possible, ultimate redemption can only come from the sacrifice of Christ for humanity. In terms of future generations of humans, that is not the concern of Christian nationalists. The idea is you earn a ticket to the Promised Land and the Devil take the hindmost.

    I’m afraid that the Constitution is far less dramatic. Individuals, according to Locke, are blank slates. Locke said parental socialization does matter, but in the end, it is the individual’s responsibility for what they make of themselves. There is no need for redemption either in this life or the next. However, the Constitution, unlike the Bible, was written for future generations of humanity on Earth.  Please see Table B for a summary.The Authoritarian Nature of the Ten Commandments

    Strange gods and idolatrous images

    The Ten Commandments is only a small part of the Bible, but they allow us to contrast in a very concentrated form extreme differences between this sacred document and the Constitution. The first commandment is a direct attack on religious freedom. “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” The Constitution guarantees the freedom to worship any God, not just the Judeo-Christian one. The second commandment forbids making images. This iconoclastic mania on the part of the Protestants resulted in the destruction of centuries of magnificent artwork. The Constitution, on the other hand, allows for making pubic images to honor its heroes. Any trip to the Lincoln memorial or a trip to Mount Rushmore will reveal that the non-superstitious use of images is possible and can bring great inspiration.

    Blasphemy and coercive church attendance

    The third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy god in vain”, is really about controlling language. There is a double standard about blasphemy. Jews can blaspheme heathen deities, but it is a capital crime to blaspheme Yahweh. In contrast, the Constitution makes a distinction between words and deeds. It says in effect “sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me”. The Constitution says criticism of all religion is legal. The fourth commandment to “Keep holy the Lord’s Day” is more sinister than it seems. Seidel says this is not about rest for the weary. It is really about shepherding the population to churches on days when most people are not working. Priests complain about poor attendance at church. What better way to herd people into church then by first saying even the Lord needs to rest, and so do you. But no sooner do people discover they are entitled to a day off than they find themselves in church listening to sermons. While there is nothing in the Constitution which tells people not to work, there is also nothing in the Constitution that forbids workers from taking matters into their own hands. They can legally join unions, and strike in order to have some time off. As the saying goes, it was labor that gave Yankees the weekend.

    Honor your parents no matter how authoritarian or abusive they are

    The fifth commandment says honor thy father and mother. Sounds pretty good except that the foundation of it is to honor your biological parents, no matter what they do. No matter what the parents do they should be honored. Though this has happened all too late in Yankee history, there are now child-protective services to allow children to get away from abusive and violent parents. Not all parents are worthy of respect. Furthermore, the Bible is talking out of both sides of its mouth when they talk about this because Jesus also makes a big deal about leaving your parents to come follow him.

    Clannish, parochial rules towards murder, stealing and lying

    Seidel chunks together the sixth, eight and ninth commandments and attacks them for their clannish, exclusive nature. Whether it is killing, stealing or perjury, the Bible only forbids these things when it is done to fellow Jews and Christians. With non-Jews or Christians, all bets are off. You can kill, steal or lie in dealing with people from other religions. In the case of the Constitution, killing, stealing or lying is punishable no matter what religion one is as well including people who have no religion at all.

    Patriarchal repression of sexuality

    The seventh commandment about committing adultery has an even narrower interpretation than the previous three commandments. In this, even within the Judeo-Christian tradition, the laws of adultery do not apply to married men, but only to married women. Seidel says fathers can sell their daughter into sexual slavery but only to another Israelite. Men can get away with rape, if they pay the victim’s family 50 shekels and then marry the victim.

    The Christian Bible tries to halt and repress their flock’s interest in sex by promoting celibacy. We only have to look at the record of the Catholic Church and its priests to reel in disgust over such a monstrous policy. Seidel points out Judeo-Christianity tries to kill the sex instinct, distort it and vilify it to ensure loyalty to the leader, not to one another. This is a common tactic that male cult leaders use with their followers. It builds up spiritual debt. Lusty, guilty sinners are bound more tightly to the person who can expiate their sin, Jesus, and later, priests. In the Constitution there are laws against adultery, but they apply to men as well as women and there are laws that apply to rape and sexual slavery that are punishable.

    The tenth commandment is not about actually fooling around with your neighbor’s wife. Rather, it’s about lusting after your neighbor’s wife even if you do nothing. This is where the 10 Commandments crosses the line into Orwell’s thought crime. Evil thoughts are the same thing as evil actions. Being angry is the same as being violent. As Jefferson said, the powers of government apply to action not opinion. You cannot be thrown in jail for having an opinion. Please see Table C for a summary.Smuggling in Christianity via Theological Propaganda

    In God We Trust on coins during the Civil War

    “In God We Trust” was smuggled onto coins in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War and was pushed through between 1861 and 1864.

    “Evangelical Christianity” invaded and polarized the political debate in the cases leading up to the Civil War. It turned the democratic process which relies on compromise into a battle over sacrosanct issues of faith.” (262).

    “One nation indivisible” became “one nation, under God, indivisible”. As Seidel says this change places religion, one of the most divisive and murderous forces in history, right in the middle of a badly needed unifying sentiment.

    To choose something so divisive to replace a unifying sentiment in the middle of a war that actually hindered the nation shows hubris typical of religious privilege. (272)

    Christianity promotes slavery

    Appeals to the Bible justified revivals in the slave trade and slave prisons. The pulpit and the auctioneers’ block stand in the same neighborhood. (267)

    Christian resistance to slavery was nowhere to be found when the colonies instituted slavery in the 1600s. (268)

    It was used at a time of national peril and danger when people were too busy dying for the Constitution to protect it from a rear-guard assault, to promote their personal religion. (272)

    Bible thumping anti-Communists

    In 1954 the Pledge of Allegiance was changed. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all” became “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Since the communists were atheists, it was hoped that the communists would get the message that they were not welcome.

    A year later “In God We Trust” was added to paper currency in 1955.

    What better way to spread the missionary spirit within Yankeedom than by putting it on currency everyone has to use? US currency would effectively become a Christian missionary. (271)

    In his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America  Kevin Kruse exposes the following coordinated Christian attacks on the secular world:

    • 1953 National Day of Prayer – Congress agrees
    • 1953 National prayer breakfast
    • 1953 Congressmen propose 18 separate resolutions to add “under God” to the pledge
    • 1954 “In God We Trust is placed on a US postage stamp
    • 1954 Prayer room in US capital is added. It added a stained-glass window depicting the lie that Washington prayed in the snow at Valley Forge
    • Congress added “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance
    • 1955 Eisenhower signs a bill placing “In God We Trust” on US paper currency
    • 1956 Cecil B. Demille’s movie The Ten Commandments is released
    • 10 commandments monuments made of granite are gradually erected on government property around the country

    Soon the words “American and Christian” became synonymous.

    Billy Graham wedded evangelism and anticommunism in the Christian anti-communist  crusade. Religious stars such as Fulton Sheen, Oral Roberts, Billy James Hargis and Norman Vincent Peale all achieved new prominence in the early and mid 1950s. They bombarded TV, making people sick with fear. ‘To be an American is to be Christian. All atheists are communists’. (284)

    Circulating coins, paper money and flag-waving pledges weren’t enough for nervous anti-communists. Soon time off from a secular education was granted for religious instruction.

    In 1952 the court decided that releasing children from public schools classes to receive religious education did not violate  the Constitution. Religious release time allows churches to piggyback the machinery of the state and mandatory attendance to inculcate religion. It was meant to help religious sects get attendants presumably too unenthusiastic to go to religious class unless moved to do so by the pressure of this state machinery. (286-287)

    Conclusion

    Seidel’s work challenges Christian nationalists to face the fact that the founding documents of the United States as a nation directly contradict the Ten Commandments and, more generally, the Bible. These Christians would have to trade their fundamentalism for a far more liberal theory of religion to square with the Constitution. On the other hand, secularists can be somewhat assured that while they are under attack by the right-wing religious forces, the Constitution with all its class biases, lack of limits on capitalism, its racism and sexism, is still an important support document, mostly for its clear separation between Church and State.

    • First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    The post The Bible vs the Eagle: Why Christian Nationalism is un-American first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • On 11 April 2019 Julian Assange was carried by UK police from the sovereign territory of Ecuador’s London embassy. He was then conveyed to Westminster magistrates court, which convicted him of absconding within fifteen minutes.

    The event was captured in iconic images displaying his untrimmed beard, which is significant for two overlooked reasons. One is that visual documentation would be lacking if not for the presence of vigilant supporters. The other is that Ecuador progressively deprived their asylee of everything he needed, including shaving equipment cancelled months before the last vestige of asylum.

    Disinformation and Machination

    A Newsweek headline from 2018 still reads ‘Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Tells Russia-Aligned Media the FBI Is Spying on Him’. But he only addressed a court in Ecuador. Telesur was among those covering his testimony, yet simply mentioned “a video conference” without making the legal context explicit. As this outlet is known for resisting US narrative, it may be unsurprising that Newsweek conjured an exclusive release from Assange to enemy propagandists.

    He said Ecuador was engaging in espionage against him, relaying data to the US and precipitating a health crisis to remove him from the embassy by way of death or a medical excuse for handing him over to the UK. Following suit with Newsweek, most coverage of this was dismissive and misleading.

    The Guardian also persists with a slanderous report that Assange met with Paul Manafort, Trump’s later campaign chairman. The article alleges three meetings on different days and mentions clothing details like “sandy-coloured chinos” as if to notify police. Yet none of the 24/7 security footage emerged to reveal Manafort’s person or pants, meticulous records are devoid of him and the consul in the embassy at the time, Fidel Navarez, specifically debunks the story. Originally on the byline was a reporter previously convicted by Ecuador of a false and defamatory claim, Fernando Villavicencio, whom it also accused — with metadata evidence — of fabricating a document regarding their oil drilling.

    Since its initial, perception-conditioning splash, the media has backpedalled from the article. The Guardian itself was no exception to this, despite leaving it online after an edit with some hedging terms. Perhaps that was an effort to save face, though it only seemed to increase ignominy.

    Manafort nonetheless had business with Ecuador and not in London. He went to the equatorial nation to meet its newly elected President, Lenin Moreno and it was widely reported that they discussed debt relief, in exchange for US possession of Assange, like trading oil or bananas.

    Changes brought by Moreno include removing Assange from their London embassy, beginning with harsh measures like cutting his internet, restricting visitors and issuing a list of tripwire demands. The latter were part of a document which threatened the end of his asylum, in terms replete with defamatory insinuations. Such were predictably seized upon by the media as warranting claims that happened to be false, about medical bills and his cat among other things.

    Assange responded to Ecuador with a lawsuit occasioning the testimony noted above. This was referred to its Constitutional Court, which had all judges replaced under Moreno after being shut down for the relevant months.

    Lawyers accordingly drew Ecuador’s neglect of his asylum to the attention of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, which emphasised that it must not be terminated. The IACH stopped short of issuing a formal precautionary measure on this point, to its embarrassment, as within a month Ecuador invited British police to carry Assange away.

    The reason they violated due process in terminating asylum is simply that there was no way to do it legally. Yet as always, the press was ready to ignore such technicalities and portray the eviction in terms of smears. Moreno even obliged them with lurid claims about faeces on walls. The evidence which inspired this appears to be one image capturing a discoloration on the bathroom light switch. Perhaps something was then imagined in relation to having deprived Assange of toiletries.

    Eve of the Deed

    Assange’s kidnapping correlated with publication of the fact that he had been spied on in the embassy. Wikileaks actually held a press conference which broke that news one day prior to him being hauled away.

    They mentioned at the time that sensitive communication with his legal counsel was among data suspected of having been routed to the US. Testimony given by former security contractors working at the embassy subsequently confirmed that arrangement.

    Privileged legal defence — against reprisals for publishing leaked evidence of war crimes — had been exfiltrated for US prosecutors.

    Yet questions from the press at this meeting were loaded to imply an equivalence of these two very different instances of exposure, as if Wikileaks must concede some pivotal irony which serves it right.

    Given the specific relevance of this attitude to state lawlessness, civil and military, it is seems hard to conceive of a more sinister fallacy propagated on behalf of either one.

    Yet it was seriously invoked by the press, which thereby turned its critical spotlight away from abusers of power — to abet them and betray all else — by directing it against a publisher for informing the public of such abuses.

    To be sure, they were relentless in this line of “questioning” and would not yield an inch to being disabused of their errors by thoroughly cogent answers.

    Instead of giving the story its due at the time, they worked to trivialise it. Nor did they do anything else to stop bragging conspirators abducting him on the next day, as might have been the case if they had made serious enquiries and prompted a defensive position.

    It accordingly takes ignorance to imagine the press as innocent in this grisly bit of history. Indeed, if it had not fostered the conditions for Assange’s vilification and kidnapping, none of his decade of documented torture would have transpired as it did.

    The Role of the Media

    What should all this mean to journalists who reflect on a publisher being extradited?

    It seems the high calling of the press has been answered with ultimate self-sacrifice, as they zealously worked for this very precedent to be set.

    Assange was characterised as bringing all troubles on himself. Writers apparently wondered why he refused to open his eyes to their liberating truths, when he could have just walked out the embassy door to be burnt at the stake, as the initial offering to flames they prepared for themselves.

    Whether this fire be lit for revelations of DNC abuses or US war crimes appears of no concern to many of them. It seems everything is to be torched in their view, including the essence of Western freedom, justice and accuracy, so long as the primary object is to punish or topple somebody cast as an enemy of such values.

    Assange was “an accused rapist,” as opposed to presumed innocent of rape accusations made by certain prosecutors, lawyers and other defamers in contradiction of statements from the listed complainant. He also published authentic information that reflected poorly on a presidential candidate whom many considered the lesser evil.

    So never mind the spirit of international law, its plainly written covenants or their legally binding ratification by countries such as the US, UK, Ecuador and Australia, because Assange looked ripe for decomposition under the pile of refuse dumped on him.

    Thanks to moral blinkers and conflicts of interest, establishment media and the intellectual milieu it draws upon can err grotesquely. This toxic culture is the crux of the everything to do with the struggle of Wikileaks. The necessity to overcome it is what gave birth the project. Then, when it came of age, an alliance was made, which ended in treachery on par with murder.

    Along with profound psychological impacts listed by an eminent psychiatrist in court, Assange’s health has been decimated to the extent of losing 10 lean kilos. In his shoes a less exceptionally resilient person would probably dead by now, yet nothing is done to stop a ratcheting up of his hardship. Repeated calls from organised doctors and lawyers to get him to an adequate hospital have been increasingly ignored by the media, despite the fact that he is only in prison on remand and for publishing what another country is rightly embarrassed by.

    This is plainly how the world dysfunctions and why little else can presently improve. Like most of what it professes to hold to account, journalism is increasingly a racket.

    The post How Monopoly Media Abets the Persecutors of Assange first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole.

    — Mike Pompeo, former US secretary of state on how the United States conducts its business

    One of the filters in the Propaganda Model propounded by professors Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky is stoking a fear of communism.1 The establishment’s anti-communism has never abated in the United States. The elitists require a populace fearful of communism to protect their own misbegotten wealth accumulation. Thus,the bugaboo of communism must be opposed wherever it arises. At its worst, the US would wage war against communist countries such as North Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Yugoslavia. When not militarily attacked, communist governments will be demonized by a relentless campaign of disinformation designed to bring about the fall of the government and its replacement by a government amenable to the US establishment, as happened in the Soviet Union. That is the nature of imperialism and predatory capitalism.

    The establishment’s anti-communism is alive and kicking in The Diplomat, a current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region. This one can readily glean from its article titled “How China Helps the Cuban Regime Stay Afloat and Shut Down Protests.”2

    The in-one’s-face bias of the article’s heading and the subheading (“Chinese companies have played a key part in building Cuba’s telecommunications infrastructure, a system the regime uses to control its people, just as the CCP does within its own borders.”) immediately gives pause to the discerning reader. First, regime is a tendentious term meant to delegitimize a government. Second, the subheading asserts Chinese governmental control. While it points at the means, it does not provide any evidence that the assertion holds true.

    The leaning of the writers is apparent from their bios: Leland Lazarus is a speechwriter to US Southern Command’s admiral Craig Faller, and Dr Evan Ellis is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. They write, “July 11, thousands of people across Cuba took to the streets, fed up with the lack of food, basic products, medicine, and vaccines to combat COVID-19.”

    This flash-in-the-pan, minor protest was allegedly orchestrated by the NED and US AID. Furthermore, the monopoly media narrative has been undermined by its use of fake and doctored images.3

    The writers complain, “Protesters used social media to broadcast to the world what was happening, but the communist regime shut off the internet and telephone services, pulling the plug on their connection outside the island.”

    A question: If your government is targeted by a barrage of disinformation from outside actors, would you allow for the disinformation to continue? Disinformation is hailed by many to be a crime against humanity and a crime against peace. And the disinformation campaigns of the US are myriad. Among them are the phantom missile attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, the non-existent WMDs in Iraq, the Viagra-fueled rapes in Libya, the Syrian government chemical-weapon attacks, and the current allegation of a genocide in Xinjiang, China. Millions of people died as a result of such disinformation.

    It is clear that Lazarus and Ellis would like to knock down two communist governments that US capitalism finds antithetical, with one article. What is the crime of Cuba? The State Department Policy Planning Staff pointed to the “primary danger” the US faces, “The simple fact is that [former Cuban leader Fidel] Castro represents a successful defiance of the US…,”4 a slap in the face to the imperialist Monroe doctrine.

    The writers turned to the old-school Cuba policy advocacy of US senator Marco Rubio who tweeted: “Expect the regime in #Cuba to block internet & cell phone service soon to prevent videos about what is happening to get out to the world… By the way, they use a system made, sold & installed by #China to control and block access to the internet in #Cuba.’”

    Again, monopoly media undermines itself and senator Rubio: “… Fox News, however, included a small detail that went largely unnoticed. As he [Rubio] was speaking about ‘brutal oppression’ by the Cuban government and hailing the protesters, the footage shown by the cable station depicted a rally by Cuban government supporters. Fox News apparently knew exactly what it was airing, since it was careful to blur the slogans that some of the activists were carrying.”

    Lazarus and Ellis see a sinister hand: “China’s role in helping the regime cut off communications during the protests has exposed one of the many ways Beijing helps keep the Cuban communist regime afloat.”

    Meanwhile the capitalist5 government in the US is trying its damnedest to sink the communist government in Cuba. The US has long had an adversarial relationship with Cuba, starting with launching the Spanish-American War based on a lie concocted by US media. After the successful Cuban Revolution, the US has kept in place an economic blockade of the island. And seldom discussed is the fact that the US continues to occupy Guantánamo Bay, which Cuba has often demanded be returned to its sovereignty.

    Since the article never mentions otherwise, it is assumed to be predicated upon the US and its Occidental allies not engaging in monitoring telecommunications and digital surveillance, which Edward Snowden has revealed to be patently false. This is not whataboutism because there is no evidence of a Chinese backdoor to Huawei and the company has pledged to not insert spying devices in its products; to do otherwise would be a bad business decision.

    China’s Interests in Cuba

    Lazarus and Ellis envision nefarious Chinese stratagems underlying their trade with Cuba:

    China recognizes Cuba’s geostrategic importance. Due to its position in the Caribbean, Cuba can exert influence over the southeastern maritime approach to the United States, which contains vital sea lanes leading to ports in Miami, New Orleans, and Houston. Author George Friedman has argued that, with an increased presence in Cuba, China could potentially “block American ports without actually blocking them,” just like U.S. naval bases and installations pose a similar challenge to China around the first island chain and Straits of Malacca. Cuba’s influence in the Caribbean also makes it a useful proxy through which Beijing can pressure the four countries in the region (out of the 15 total globally) that recognize Taiwan to switch recognition.

    The entire article is speculative. It is littered with words like “possible,” “can,” and “could.” The writers do not elaborate on how China might pressure the Caribbean countries. Usually countries switch allegiance to China from Taiwan based on financial inducements and not from hegemonic pressure.

    Economic Support versus Economic Sanctions

    The Diplomat writers argue that “China helps sustain the [Cuban] regime through economic engagement.”

    What exactly do the writers intend to imply by economic engagement sustaining a regime? The logical corollary is that economic sanctions are aimed at “regime change.” Stemming from this logic, the US uses economic measures to sustain the theocratic criminality and corruption in Saudi Arabia and economic sanctions to try and change socialistic governments in, among others, Venezuela, Cuba, and China. Nonetheless, trade is what countries do to build their economies.

    Regarding the US favored method of applying pressure, American academics John Mueller and Karl Mueller wrote: “economic sanctions … may have contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history.”

    The academics further noted,

    It is interesting that this loss of human life has failed to make a great impression in the United States….

    Some of the inattention may derive from a lack of concern about foreign lives. Although Americans are extremely sensitive to American casualties, they – like others – often seem quite insensitive to casualties suffered by those on the opposing side, whether military or civilian.

    The world views economic sanctions in a different light from the US. This was illuminated by the UN General Assembly vote demanding an end to the US economic blockade on Cuba for the 29th year in a row. Aside from two negative votes cast by the US and its Israeli ally, 184 countries voted in favor of the resolution.

    Perplexingly, the writers pointed out that “China has not, however, sold Cuba any significant weapons systems, as it has done with other states in the region such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.”

    To the extent that selling armaments is a legitimate business, then why shouldn’t China sell armaments? Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia are not warring with other countries. Regarding the morality of selling weapons, consider that the US sells weapons to Saudi Arabia, a country committing genocide against Yemen and to Israel, a country that serially aggresses and economically strangulates Palestine. Are the writers not aware that the US pokes China in the eye by selling armaments to its renegade province, Taiwan, in contravention of the One-China policy to which the US shook hands?

    “Digital Authoritarianism”

    The writers complain about “China exporting ‘digital authoritarianism’ to illiberal regimes across the region. In Venezuela, Chinese telecommunication firm ZTE helped the Maduro regime establish the ‘fatherland ID card’ system, which it used to control not only voting, but the distribution of scarce food packages.”

    As for the ID cards, the link provided by the writers notes that the “system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela’s government.” Besides, which country does not require ID in order to cast a vote?

    Why are the food packages scarce? What would one expect when the US has sanctions against Venezuela? It is quite disingenuous to criticize a government for food packages being scarce when that scarcity is caused by the writers’ own government. Moreover, the writers continue to use the word control pejoratively. Are the voting systems and economic distribution networks not a function of government implementation everywhere? If the writers want to insist that voting and the results are manipulated, then provide the evidence. Contrariwise, US observers endorsed the legitimacy of Venezuela’s May 2020 election; also, international observers were “unanimous in concluding that the elections were conducted fairly.” The link supplied by the writers is now dead, but the title reads: “For poor Venezuelans, a box of food may sway vote for Maduro.” While in Venezuela, a group of us visited the mercals — where food was being made affordable for the masses — where we were informed: “The Chavez administration does not want Venezuela’s food needs to be dependent on outside sources, so a concerted effort has been made to produce all foods locally.” Obviously that food independence is still a work in progress. Such progress is not made easier by being targeted by economic sanctions.

    The writers make clear their anti-leftist and their anti-democracy views:

    Leftist authoritarian regimes are consolidating control in Venezuela and Nicaragua. The populist left has returned to power in Bolivia in the form of the MAS party, in Argentina with the Peronists, and in Mexico with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the Morena movement. In Peru, the recent election of Pedro Castillo, a teacher from Cajamarca with a radical left agenda, similarly raises alarm bells. Upcoming elections in the region raise the prospects for an even broader spread of the populist left, including the prospect of victory by Xiomara Castro in November 2021 elections in Honduras, a President Petro emerging from Colombia’s 2022 elections, or the return of Lula da Silva and his Workers’ Party in Brazil’s October 2022 elections.

    Yikes! Democracy can be such a pain in the butt. As the anarchist professor Noam Chomsky wrote, “In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm.”6 For American elitists, “the United States supports democracy if, and only if, the outcomes accord with its strategic and economic objectives.”7 That the US did and would seek “regime change” in Latin America is borne out by its Operation Condor.

    Lazarus and Ellis attempt to justify the US’ machinations against Cuba and China:

    China’s continued efforts to prop up the Cuban regime matters to U.S. national security. For both good and bad, Cuba is connected to the United States through geographic proximity, historical connections, and family ties. The U.S. government has long focused on violations of the freedoms and human rights of the Cuban people.

    The language of Lazarus and Ellis is oleaginous. Having a focus on human rights violations is qualitatively different from opposing human rights violations and quantitatively different from supporting human rights violations, as the US did when it supported the Fulgencio Batista “regime” (to use the parlance of Lazarus and Ellis) in Cuba, which served American corporate and military interests while massacring his own people. How does the occupation of Guantánamo Bay, where prisoners of war languish in what Amnesty International called the “gulag of our time”; the Bay of Pigs fiasco; Operation Northwoods; and economic sanctions speak for American fidelity to human rights?

    The writers with ties to the US military accuse China of a “malign intent against the U.S. in cyberspace.” They reason that “Cuba could also be an area from which China could gather intelligence and conduct cyberattacks against the United States.”

    The writers speculate about a malign Chinese intent. Malign intent is evidenced by the Stuxnet virus that the USA and Israel inserted into the Iranian nuclear program. The authors write as if the US is not guilty of the malignity they assert that China is guilty of.

    How the United States Can Respond

    Lazarus and Ellis argue that the US “should concentrate on helping partners in the region to engage with China in the most healthy, productive ways. For example, an emphasis on transparency inhibits the ability to engage in corrupt backroom deals with the Chinese that benefit the elites signing the deals rather than the country as a whole.”

    Helping partners and advocating for transparency is great. Is this what the US does? It would be foolish to deny that the US does not engage with corrupt rulers, rulers who siphon off the loans meant for the people of the country who are then held responsible for the odious debt to the financial lenders?8

    Lazarus and Ellis write, “With respect to cybersecurity, the United States should similarly look to increase support to partners in protecting their citizens’ privacy and security from malign actors like China.”

    Let’s leave aside the unsupported allegation that China might be a malign actor. Instead, let’s ask what kind of actor is the US? Is it a benevolent actor? This is the actor that just recently ended a two-decade war in impoverished Afghanistan — a country where the US engaged in a cycle of war crimes. Ask yourself: is it a benevolent actor who engages in disinformation campaigns against countries like China that have eradicated absolute poverty (while in the US a 2019 measure of poverty showed a rate of 10.5%) and accuse it of the scurrilous and easily debunked allegation of committing genocide in Xinjiang? Is it an upstanding country that pursues the locking away of Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere?

    The writers suggest part of the solution for escaping Chinese spying is cybersecurity training by the US.

    Is that a good idea — trusting Uncle Sam? If you get trained by the US and use US technology, then you might end up being surveilled by the US. Ask German chancellor Angela Merkel and dozens of other world leaders.

    Lazarus and Ellis persist:

    While recent events in Cuba show China’s growing influence in the region, the CCP’s emphatic support of the Cuban regime’s repressive acts also highlights that it is on the wrong side of history. The U.S. must deepen partnerships with Latin American countries and Caribbean friends.

    Was the US on the right side of history in Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, historical Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Haiti, Chile, Grenada, etc? How should countries like Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and the other Latin American countries targeted by Operation Condor feel about a deepened partnership? And how would the peoples of Caribbean countries — e.g., Haiti, Grenada, Puerto Rico, etc — feel about a deepened partnership with the US?

    Lazarus and Ellis proffer the haggard imperialist platitudes of partnership based on shared values, security, prosperity, and freedom. Which populations would they like to tempt with such an offer? To the people who experienced US-supported coups in Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti, Bolivia, Brazil, or the masses in Venezuela subjected to unceasing American-government intrigues against their country? There is a reason why Latin Americans and Caribbean countries are leftists or turning leftward.

    1. See Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon Books, 2002 edition).
    2. Throughout the article all emphases within quotations have been added by this writer.
    3. See here, here, and here.
    4. Cited in Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World? Metropolitan Books, 2014: 100.
    5. Since the writers deem it important to identify the governments in China and Cuba as communist, it would seem appropriate and balanced to identify other governments by their ideology.
    6. Chomsky, 45.
    7. Chomsky, 74.
    8. See Noam Chomsky, Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order (Seven Stories Press, 1999). Chomsky describes how neoliberalism and financial institutions like the IMF and its structural adjustments have plunged the masses in developing countries into despair.
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  • “Post-Pandemic” for many countries, especially western countries, is a dream. The west will have to wake up fast, if it doesn’t want to fall prey to a destructive plan of chaos, unemployment, bankruptcies, and, yes, famine – shifting of capital from the bottom and the middle to the top – and leaving misery at the bottom.

    Not so for China.  For China, the post-pandemic era is well under way.

    When SARS-CoV-2, later renamed by WHO to Covid-19, hit Wuhan in January 2020, China was prepared. Chinese authorities proceeded with warp-speed to prevent the spread of this new corona disease, by a radical lockdown of Wuhan and extending it to Hubei Province. Later, other areas of risk were locked down, including about 80% of China’s production and manufacturing apparatus. The result was astounding. Within a few months, by about mid-2020, China was in control of Covid, and gradually started opening up crucial areas, including the production process, all the while maintaining strict protection measures.

    By the end of 2020 China’s economy was practically working at full speed and achieving, according to IMF’s very conservative account, a 2.6% growth for the year. China’s own, and perhaps more realistic projections, were closer to 3.5%. IMF growth projections for China in 2021 stand at 8.4%. China’s economic expansion in 2022 is projected at 5.6%. This is way above any other country in the world.

    Compare this with 2020 economic declines way into the red for the US and Europe, of 25% to 35%, and 10% to 15%, respectively. These are real figures. Not necessarily the published ones.

    Future expansion in China takes into account that much of the projected growth over the coming years will be internal “horizontal” growth,  helping China’s interior and western provinces catching up with infrastructure, research and development, as well as education facilities – increasing the overall level of well-being to reduce the gap with the highly-developed eastern areas.

    China’s economic recovery and her industrial apparatus working at full speed is good for China and good for the world, because China had become in the past four decades or so the western principal supply chain, mainly the US and Europe. We are talking crucial supplies, such as medical equipment, medication and ingredients for medication.  About 80% – 90% used in the west comes from China.

    China’s rapid economic growth may be mostly attributed to two main factors: large-scale investments – financed by predominantly domestic savings and foreign capital and rapid productivity growth. These two features appear to have gone hand in hand.

    China remains attractive for investors. In addition to medical equipment, China supplies the west and the world with electronic equipment and is meant to become one of the key developers and exporter of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate and facilitate research and manufacturing processes, while minimizing negative environmental impacts.

    China’s outlook for the future is bright. However, a number of anormal factors have to be considered, for instance:

    (i) The unresolved covid issues in the west, which may be reducing demand naturally or by force – possibly import restrictions for goods from China as a way of constant pressure on China;

    (ii) Continuation of a direct and indirect trade and currency war on China. To the detriment of the US-dollar, China’s currency, the yuan  and soon the digital yuan as international payment currency, independent from western controlled monetary transfer modes, is gaining rapidly in status as an international reserve money. According to some estimates, in five years the yuan may account for up to 30% of all world reserves. As a parenthesis, the US-dollar in the early 1990s amounted to more than 90% of worldwide reserve denominations; today that proportion has shrunk to less than 60%; and,

    (iii) The west, led by Washington, is intent to harm China in whatever way they can. It will not succeed. Washington knows it. But it is a typical characteristic of a dying beast to lash around itself to destroy as much as possible in its surroundings before it collapses.

    Just as an example which the world at large is probably unaware of, China is presently surrounded by about 1,400 US military bases, or bases of other countries which host US military equipment and personnel. About 60% of the US navy fleet is currently stationed in the South China Sea.

    Just imagine what would happen, if China or any other super-power, would be surrounding the US with military basis and an aggressive Navy fleet!

    China is constantly harassed, sanctioned and slandered with outright lies. One of the prevalent examples of defamations, is her alleged inhuman treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Total population of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China is about 26 million, of which some 12 million are Uyghurs, mostly of Muslim belief.

    Uyghur Muslims are regularly recruited by US secret services from across the border with Afghanistan, sent to fight the Jihad in the Middle East, and when some of them return, China makes an effort to re-school and re-integrate them into society.

    Could the real reason for this western aggression be that Xinjiang province, the largest and western-most province of China, is also a principal hub for the two or more main routes of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – trans-Asia Routes, by rail through Pakistan to the Gwadar Port in the Persian Gulf, and possibly by road through the newly to become autonomous Afghanistan, connecting China with Iran?

    China is perceived as a threat to western hegemonic thinking – to western-style globalization, which is the concept of a One World Order over a borderless western corporate and banking-controlled world – and because China is well positioned to become the world’s number one economy in absolute terms within a few years.

    These are challenges to be kept in mind in planning China’s future economic development.

    In fact, already today China is number one in PPP-terms (purchasing power parity), which is the only indicator that counts, namely how much of goods and services may be acquired with a unit of currency.

    Taking these challenges into account, and following her non-aggressive and non-expansive moving-forward style, China may be embarking on a three-pronged development approach. Overarching this tactic may include China’s 2025 Plan and 2035/2050 vision: A strong emphasis on economic and defense autonomy.

    (i) Outreach and connecting with the rest of the world through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, also called One Belt One Road (OBOR) which is patterned according to the ancient Silk Road more than 2,100 years ago, a peaceful trade route connecting Eastern China through Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

    On a global scale, OBOR embraces currently more than 130 countries and over 30 international organizations, including 18 countries of the European Union. OBOR offers their partners participation – no coercion. The attraction and philosophy behind OBOR is shared benefits – the concept of win-win. OBOR may be the road to socioeconomic recovery from covid consequences and cross-border cooperation for participating countries.

    OBOR is also aiming at a multi-polar world where partner countries would equally benefit through infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, cultural exchange, exploration of new renewable sources of energy, research and education projects working towards a joint future with prosperity for all.

    Here is the distinction between the western and Chinese meaning of “globalization”. In the west, it means a unipolar world controlled by one hegemon, the US of A, with one army called NATO which forcibly holds the west, mainly Europe, together. NATO, with its 2.5 billion-dollars official budget – unofficially a multiple of this amount reaching into the trillions – spreads already with its tentacles into South America, Colombia.

    Together the west, or Global North, is a conglomerate of NATO-vassal-countries with little autonomy as compared to Chinese globalization – meaning a multi-polar connection of countries, all the while OBOR-linked countries maintain their sovereignty. This is “globalization” with Chinese characteristics.

    (ii) In a precautionary detachment from western dependence, China is focusing trade development and cooperation with her ASEAN partners. In November 2020, after 8 years of negotiations, China signed a free trade agreement with the ten ASEAN nations, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, altogether 15 countries, including China.

    The so-called Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, covers some 2.2 billion people, commanding about 30% of the world’s GDP. This is a never before reached agreement in size, value and tenor.

    China and Russia have a longstanding strategic partnership, containing bilateral agreements that also enter into this new trade fold. The countries of the Central Asia Economic Union (CAEU), consisting mostly of former Soviet Republics, as well as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are likewise integrated into the eastern trade block.

    The RCEP’s trade deals will be carried out in local currencies and in yuan – no US dollars. The RCEP is, therefore, also an instrument for dedollarizing, primarily in the Asia-Pacific Region, and gradually moving across the globe; and,

    (iii) China will focus much of her future development on her internal and western regions – increase the standard of well-being of populations, infrastructure, research and development – industrial development, joint ventures, including with foreign capital. To achieve a better equilibrium between eastern and western China is crucial for socioeconomic sustainability.

    This dual development approach, on the one hand, external trade with close ASEAN associates, as well as with OBOR partners; and on the other, achieving internal equilibrium and well-being, is a circular development, feeding on each other, minimizing risks and impacts of western adversary aggressions.

    China’s achievements in her 71 years of revolution speak for themselves. They are unmatched by any nation in recent history. From a country largely ruined by western-influenced colonization and conflicts, China rose from the ashes, by not only lifting 800 million people out of poverty, but also by becoming food, health and education self-sufficient.

    Coinciding with the 4 March 2021, opening of the Chinese People’s political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., late President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, asked the pertinent question, “Can We Forge a New Era of Humanity Before It’s Too Late?” – His answer is simple but lucid: “Unless we move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to a life-affirming, ecological civilization, we will continue accelerating towards global catastrophe.”

    This understanding is also at the forefront of China’s vision for the next 15 to 20 years – and beyond. A China-internal objective is an equitable development to well-being for all; and on a world-scale, a community with shared benefits for all.

    The post China’s Post-Pandemic Growth:  Reaching Out and Developing Internal Markets and Well-being first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie

    It is open season again for Indonesian trolls targeting Asia Pacific Report and other media with fake news and disinformation dispatches in a crude attempt to gloss over human rights violations.

    Just three months ago I wrote about this issue in my “Dear editor” article exposing the disinformation campaign. There was silence for a while but now the fake letters to the editor – and other media outlets — have started again in earnest.

    The latest four lengthy letters emailed to APR canvas the following topics — Jakarta’s controversial special autonomy status revised law for Papua, a brutal assault by Indonesian Air Force military policemen on a deaf Papuan man, and a shooting incident allegedly committed by pro-independence rebels – and they appear to have been written from a stock template.

    And they all purport to have been written by “Papuan students” or “Papuans”. Are they their real names, and do they even exist?

    The latest letter to Asia Pacific Report, dated July 30, was written by a “Paulus Ndiken” who claims:

    “I’m a native Papuan currently living in Merauke, Papua, Indonesia. I would like to address your cover story about Indonesia apologises for ‘excessive force’ against deaf Papuan man.

    “One day after the incident, the Indonesian Air Force had detained and punished severely 2 members … that had roughly apprehending [sic] Esebius Bapaimu in Merauke, Papua province.”

    Dubious reputation
    The letter linked to Yumi Toktok Stret, a website with a dubious reputation with accuracy. The report was sketchy and the correct name of the assaulted man, according to reputable news media and Papuan sources, is actually Steven Yadohamang.

    “We regret that this kind of rough-housing [sic] happened on the street,” wrote correspondent “Ndiken”, “but we, as Papuans, [are] also glad to know that these perpetrators have received sound punishment …

    “Responding to the unfortunate events, the Indonesian netizens had asked for the Indonesian military to immediately take action against the guilty party and were glad that the institution had addressed the people’s concern in a very fast manner.”

    A more nuanced and accurate article was written for Asia Pacific Report by Brisbane-based West Papuan academic Yamin Kogoya who compared the “inhumane” assault to the tragic killing of George Floyd in the United States after a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes as he lay face down in the street on 25 May 2020.

    Indonesian disinformation letter about Papua
    Excerpt from one of the spate of questionable letters received by Asia Pacific Report about Papua. Image: Screenshot
    Tabloid Jubi report of 'knee' assault
    How Tabloid Jubi reported the assault on 29 July 2021.

    Another letter writer, “Michel Wamebu” … “a native West Papuan living in Merauke”, said on June 29 he would like to bring our attention to West Papua, “which has been painted as if the whole island is in conflict, when actually [there are] only a few small areas [that] were invaded by the Free Papua terrorists that had been exposed to enormous violence.

    “I would like to assure the world that there [is] nothing like a full-blown war.”

    In the lengthy letter about an incident on June 4 when four civilians were killed in a shooting and two were wounded, “Wamebu” provided alleged details that are likely to have been provided by military sources and at variance with actual news reports at the time.

    ‘Spike’ over special autonomy
    “Yamkon Doleon”, a “student from West Papua and currently studying in Yogyakarta, Indonesia” wrote on July 19 that there had been “a spike in the topic of Papuan special autonomy in social media and also [in] a few international media”.

    Launching into a defence of the new Special Autonomy for Papua law for the governance of the two Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua for the next two decades – adopted by the House of Representatives in Jakarta last month without consultation with the Papuans, “Doleon” wrote:

    “The Special Autonomy itself is a law that guarantees every Papuan to be the leader of their region, to have free education, free health service, and a boost I [the] economy … So which article is not in favour of the people?”

    The writer makes no mention of the heavy militarisation of Papua in recent months, the repeated allegations of human rights violations, or the rejection of the Special Autonomy law by the Papuan people.

    In a comment about the spate of Indonesian troll messages to some media outlets, West Papua Media Alerts said:

    “Indonesian intelligence bots, go away. You are being banned and reported and deleted everytime you post, so go away.”

    The engaged media advocacy and news service continued: “It is clear we are telling the truth, otherwise you wouldn’t have to spend so much money trying to counter it with a transparent influence exercise. Go home, invaders.

    “Friends, there are literally over a hundred sock accounts using random Anglo names, and the same script response. These accounts all come from the BIN-run FirstMedia in Jakarta, and were all created after March 2.

    Indonesian bots
    West Papua Media Alerts message to “Indonesian bots”. Image: Screenshot

    Report fake accounts
    “If you see a comment, please click through on the account name, click the 3 dots and report them as a fake account and going against community standards. We will obviously delete and ban these fake accounts.”

    Meanwhile, the London-based Indonesian human rights watchdog Tapol has strongly condemned the two Air Force military policemen who severely beat the disabled man, Steven Yadohamang, in Merauke, Papua, on 27 July 2021.

    Video footage which has been widely shared on social media, shows the two personnel beating up a man and crushing his body into the ground and stamping on his head.


    The footage of the assault on Steven Yadohamang. Video: Benar News

    Tapol said in a statement: “It is clear from the footage that Yadohamang does not possess the capacity to defend himself against two individuals who appear to be unconcerned with possible consequences.”

    A similar incident in Nabire took place the following day, said the statement. A West Papuan man, Nicolas Mote, was suddenly smacked on the head repeatedly during his arrest despite not resisting.

    “The incident follows a spate of previous violent incidents committed by the security forces against civilians in West Papua province and is likely to raise further questions about what purpose increasing numbers of military personnel are serving in West Papua,” Tapol said.

    Although the Air Force had apologised, it had suggested that the two military policemen, Second Sergeant Dimas Harjanto and Second Private Rian Febrianto, alone should bear responsibility for the incident, said the watchdog.

    ‘Pattern of violence’
    “They, and the Indonesian media, have described the soldiers as ‘rogues’. This assessment is not consistent with a pattern of violence committed against civilians that has been allowed to go unpunished in recent months and years,” Tapol said.

    “Indeed, had there not been such indisputable visual evidence of security force violence, it is entirely possible that the incident would not now be subject to further investigation by the authorities.

    “But despite facing punishment, the perpetrators are likely to only to receive light sentences because they will be tried in military courts.”

    Following the end of the New Order period, civilian politicians were not pushing for military personnel to be tried in civilian courts.

    Since 2019, there had been a steady build-up of military and police personnel in the two provinces of Papua and West Papua, said Tapol.

    “Deployments and security force operations have increased further since April 2021, when the Coordinating Minister for Politics and Security, Mahfud MD, designated the armed resistance movement, TPNPB, as a ‘terrorist’ group.

    “West Papuans and Indonesians have raised concerns that the designation would further stigmatise ordinary West Papuans.

    “We would also highlight that in West Papua there are significant underlying problems with institutionalised racism by the authorities.”

    Tapol called on President Joko Widodo and the House of Representatives of Indonesia to finish the post-Suharto agenda of reforming the military to combat a culture of impunity over human rights violations in West Papua.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • — Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary

    This is what real education looks like — Evo Organizes Anti-Imperialist Day School For Youth

    Iris Varela spoke about the history of the Bolivarian Revolution and explained in detail how the economic blockade in her country works. The PSUV lawmaker concluded with an invitation for participants to visit Venezuela for the inauguration of a similar project in Caracas; “we’re opening a university to teach people reporting and social media skills, we’re cordially inviting the youth of the union federations in Chapare to come and coordinate an exchange with the Juventud PSUV, maybe in August a group can come here, and a group from here can go there. Our Bolivian brothers will always be welcome to the country of father liberator, Simon Bolivar. We need to strengthen education and build cadres who can defend revolutionary processes.”

    Nieves Colque, one of the young members at the school today said of the classes, “This school of ideology and anti-imperialism helps us to grow, it’s nourishing. The economics session was especially important, learning and analyzing the principles of Bolivia’s social communitarian economic model so we can work in this new term to recover the country’s GDP”.

    Go to any of the corporate Un-News outlets, like Bing, and this is what fascism looks like —

    Chief of staff Helge Braun told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that he doesn’t expect another coronavirus-related lockdown in Germany. But Braun said that unvaccinated people may be barred from entering venues like restaurants, movie theaters or sports stadiums “because the residual risk is too high.”

    Braun said getting vaccinated is important to protect against severe disease and because “vaccinated people will definitely have more freedoms than unvaccinated people.” He said such policies would be legal because “the state has the responsibility to protect the health of its citizens.”

    More of the same dirty White Western Culture (sic), AKA, White Civilization (Sic) —Report: UK military failing to protect women from abuse

    British soldiers evaluate coordinates at the Tapa Training Grounds, Estonia.

    Around two-thirds of female veterans in the British armed forces have experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination in their careers, a parliamentary report said Sunday.

    The report also said that women who reported serious sexual offences are “denied justice” by an inadequate military court system and complaints process.

    And, the pigs trained and outfitted in “Israel,” for the most part, treating citizens like Palestinians — 9 arrested in violent clashes between Paris police, anti-vaccine protesters

    a group of people wearing military uniforms: 9 arrested in violent clashes between Paris police, anti-vaccine protesters

    Ah, the Aussies too, having their pig moments — Anti-lockdown protest: two men charged with allegedly striking police horse in Sydney

    A police strike force has been established after an anti-lockdown rally on Saturday.

    Ahh, islands on fire, Sardinia — Fires ravage Italian island of Sardinia, forcing evacuations

    Cars are parked by the road as fires have been raging through the countryside in Cuglieri, near Oristano, Sardinia, Italy, early Sunday, July 25, 2021. Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes in many small towns in the province of Oristano

    Then, of course, water, fire, flood, death by a million safety net cuts, and then the Olympians are the networks, getting — how many billions does NBCV get for these absurdities, the Olympics, by 2023? $7.7 BILLION!

    What we’re witnessing right now play out in Tokyo is unparalleled in the political history of the Olympics. And you’re pointing the finger in the right direction, when we think about the International Olympic Committee. The saga in Tokyo has exposed an International Olympic Committee that openly disrespects the will of locals, that brushes off inconvenient facts from experts, like medical experts, who have long been saying these games are a terrible idea. And the IOC tends to prioritize its profits over all else.

    Meanwhile, the Olympics tend to kneecap democracy, undercut democracy, in ways that you describe, with the very prime minister essentially reduced to a contractual supplicant to the International Olympic Committee, with no power to decide whether to cancel or not. And you’re seeing also that everything is very vulnerable to things like COVID-19 and also, I think, climate change. So, when the International Olympic Committee arrives in the host city, it’s this parastate-type organization. But what we’ve seen time and time again, and now in Technicolor in Tokyo, is that it’s also a parasite on the host city.

    There is a lot of money sloshing through the Olympic system. It just tends to slosh upwards into pockets that are already filled. NBC gives about 40% of the International Olympic Committee’s revenues. And overall, in terms of the Olympics, 73% of the revenues for the International Olympic Committee come from broadcaster fees. And I think that helps explain why they’re perfectly content to have a made-for-TV event without all those people in the stands. Of course, they’d prefer to have them in the stands, but even if they don’t, the money continues to flow into their coffers. NBC has announced that even though these games are hit with the pandemic and people won’t be in the seats, this could well be the most profitable Olympics ever for NBC because of ad sales and other measures.

    The corporate sponsors provide another 18% of the revenues for the International Olympic Committee. And I think we’re seeing a really interesting divide between the corporate sponsors right now. On one hand, the sort of long-term, worldwide partners that fork over these nine-figure fees to be associated with the five rings, they’re basically playing the long game, with the exception of Toyota, which of course has strong base in Japan. The local sponsors, domestic sponsors — by which, by the way, they raised more than $3 billion from local corporate sponsors in Japan, more than ever before — they’re in a much trickier position. And I think that’s why you’re seeing Toyota basically say out loud that the Olympics have become a toxic property inside of Japan.

    So, there’s plenty of money to be had. It just tends to shuffle to the International Olympic Committee, to broadcasters, to the corporate partners, as well as to real estate interests in the Olympic city. — Jules Boykoff

     

    PHOTO: Water levels at Great Salt Lake are shown at its record in 1986, average in 2000 and new record low this weekend. (Utah Department of Natural Resources)

    Oh, the great dysfunctional USA, Capitalism, etc. Think: Nazi Merkel and others in her cabinet blame the deaths of hundreds in Germany as a result of recent flooding on, oh well, “climate change and climate unpredictability . . . .”

    Imagine that, the mayor of the town said:

    We have had floods in this area for centuries. We have asked for help to mitigate the floods. We have had governments not responsive to the needs of people. Blaming climate change on incompetent and heartless neoliberal governments, on the excessive hording of money, the waste and corruption of trillions, stolen, given to billionaires, to the military complex, and other Corporate and Financial Complexes, then stating these German lives could not be saved because ‘climate change is so unpredictable, and just get used to it” serves the people the words from which to raise pitchforks, juice up the Molotov cocktails, grease the shotguns, tie the ropes and sharpen the guillotines for hanging and beheading deservedly so against the elite and their bed-fellows, the Eichmann Mentality, and the fascist leanings of Capitalism. This is the response of these people who go to climate change talks, who shuttling around the world in jets for Davos and World Economic Forums, for the bootlicking foisted upon us all to the murderers, the BlackRocks’s and Blackstone’s and World Bank and Goldman Sachs. You dictate those who did not get the chemical jab of Corona Capitalism will have lesser value in society, and then those smug ones who have succumbed to the pressure for yearly or twice-yearly boosters, they too will allow the rich and fascistic governments to make excuse after excuse as governments and towns go bankrupt, and all life saving services and community rights, vanish.

    Well, he didn’t say that, of course, because I made it up and politicians do not speak about capitalism as the ultimate evil. However, one German mayor was in tears about the loss of life, and said it could have been prevented with a government and localities working together to mitigate floods. Whether once in a hundred years, or otherwise.

    a person that is on fire

    Dixie Fire rips through Sierra communities, with ‘extreme’ conditions likely to worsen

    Hochwasser Dresden

    Then, more of the 80-year-olds drilling down on destroying the young, the unborn, the middle aged — Some Americans could need COVID-19 vaccine booster – Fauci

    a group of people walking down the street: People wear masks around Times Square, as cases of the infectious coronavirus Delta variant continue to rise in New York City, New York

    So, we follow the way of “Israel” — We have given up as people, this unending multi-billions in profits, mercenary, war profiteering profits these companies are stealing from the taxpayers. Like the Military industrial complex, the Big Pharma and Private Medicine industrial complexes are eating our souls. And the rot-gut corporate media and those that echo the prevailing narratives, well, they too eat our souls.

    “It’s a dynamic situation. It’s a work in progress, it evolves like in so many other areas of the pandemic,” said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “You’ve got to look at the data.”

    Last week, Israel’s health ministry reported a decrease in the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine in preventing infections and symptomatic illness. But it added that the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer with partner BioNTech still remained highly effective in preventing severe illness.

    The decline in efficacy coincided with the spread of the Delta variant, now the dominant strain in Israel.

    Israel is administering third doses of the vaccine to immunocompromised people, including those who have had heart, lung, kidney or liver transplants and cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

    Pfizer and BioNTech said on Friday that the United States had purchased 200 million more doses of their vaccine to help with pediatric vaccination as well as possible booster shots.

    No deep stories on that, uh? How and why so much money is being thrown at companies with histories of felonies? Here, this headline, censored everywhere — CDC “Panel Signals Support for Booster Shots, as Reports of Injuries, Deaths After COVID Vaccines Near 500,000

    Oh, they salute the money makers, and we are a society going down down down because of the rich, the millionaires, the billionaires, and these fascists, saluting what?

    FILE PHOTO: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on federal government coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response in Washington

    Here a local older woman, trying to make sense of the lock-step pro-lockdown, pro-mask, pro-anticivil liberties mentality of Oregonians, and their editorial boards:

    Copy of my Letter to the Editor of the Eugene Register-Guard; it has been received but not published — I usually get pleasure from wordsmith Don Kahle’s clever articles. However, in his July 16 column he encouraged incentives to get more citizens injected with an unlicensed, unapproved experimental gene procedure to lessen symptoms from a viral disease with a better than 99% recovery rate for most age groups.

    A review of history is needed. In 1986, Congress passed a law that allowed pharmaceutical companies ZERO liability from damages from their vaccine products. The PREP act is the latest iteration which gives drug companies immunity from damages caused by their vaccines.

    The Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System was established in 1990 by the CDC and FDA to monitor damages and deaths caused by vaccines. Although the system is voluntary and underreported, as of this writing, VAERS data showed a total of 463,457 adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 10,991 deaths and 48,385 serious injuries since Dec. 14, 2020. Serious injuries include myocarditis, pericarditis, paralysis, neurological disorders, blood clots, irregular menstrual bleeding, and more.

    Drug companies are poised to earn billions of dollars from vaccine sales, mostly paid for by our taxes. “Safe and effective” is a marketing slogan and is inaccurate. Mr. Kahle, I urge you to do investigative journalism regarding germ theory vs. terrain theory. Rather than promoting pills and injections, it makes sense that public health funds should be spent on improved sanitation, hygiene, nutrition and exercise guidance for individuals and communities and to promote decentralized, regenerative, organic agriculture on a global scale.

    It’s easy to say to this person that this opinion letter to the editor will not be published since the newspaper (sic) will deem the information as faux, false, and dangerous. This is the way of the present, and no matter how “alternative” or “left” the rag, those old hippies are indeed fascists, one and all, in many cases, in this case, with the Corona Capitalism. Sick stuff, capitalism crunched all up in Big Media, Big Lies, Big Propaganda:

    Fireworks explode during the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 23, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
    [The opening ceremony is being held in Tokyo’s National Stadium, but the 80,000-seat arena, built for this purpose, is largely empty. Fewer than 1,000 VIP guests have been invited to attend. Spectators have also been barred from sporting events throughout the games. The 2020 Olympic Games were originally scheduled to take place a year ago but were postponed due to the pandemic.]

    Ahh, we can go on and on about how we got here, 2021, but a great thing is we saw it in the history books.

    [The blacklisted mathematics instructor Chandler Davis, after serving six months in the Danbury federal penitentiary for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), warned the universities that ousted him and thousands of other professors that the purges would decimate the country’s intellectual life.]

    Chandler Davis — 1995 talk!

    “Shooting Rats in a Barrel”: Did the Red-hunt Win?

    These years, 1947-1950, established the ground rules that remained in force for the decade that followed. Most institutions, from the government through the unions and universities to the American Civil Liberties Union (yes, I said the American Civil Liberties Union), declared Communists unwelcome. Among the means used to exclude them were loyalty oaths, often including the phrase “I am not a member of the Communist Party or any other organization which…” It became glaringly obvious, that employers, in particular universities, would shy away from hiring anyone who might be attacked as a Communist; a reputation as a student radical was thus enough to make one a bad bet for an academic job; so student radicals became (in a few short years) very scarce. University administrators would occasionally say, if asked, that there were no Communists on the staff; but they hoped they wouldn’t be asked. The FBI and the Red Squads of state and some local police forces kept files on thousands. They had a reputation for exceeding legal restraints in interrogation and for keeping very dubious material in their files; later research bears this out. They cooperated (when it suited their own agenda) with employers who were cleansing their staffs. This put them in an ambivalent relation to the federal government in particular. The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, while nominally responsible to the Attorney General, sometimes cooperated covertly with Congressional exposés of government agencies.

    Most universities wouldn’t even let left-wingers speak on campus under auspices of a student group! Paul Robeson, Howard Fast, and Dirk J. Struik are among those banned by administrations in the early 50s. By the late 50s, the invitations had dried up.

    It was further established that one could be imprisoned for Communist Party activity itself, at least if one were a leader: the Supreme Court upheld in 1951 the conspiracy convictions against the CP officers under the Smith Act. The government maintained concentration camps in which it could incarcerate thousands of dangerous people if it declared a national emergency to exist, and everyone knew whom they considered dangerous. (These camps were invented by the “liberal” senators in 1952 in an attempt to show voters that they were just as security-conscious as the Right. But though they originated as a mere tactic, they were not merely on paper, they existed physically. I was told this in casual conversation in 1955 by an acquaintance who was employed at a federal prison — a prison, it happens, where I became an inmate five years later. The story would be better if the guard had looked me up and said hello to me then, but — sorry — we were no longer in touch.)

    These words from Davis to Chris Hedges are just the same today, for MANY of us, who have been marginalized, Google Searched into the Poor House:

    Though you see the remnants of the former academic left still, though some of us were never fired, though I return to the United States from my exile frequently, we are gone,” he said. “We did not survive as we were. Some of us saved our skins without betraying others or ourselves. But almost all of the targets either did crumble or were fired and blacklisted. David Bohm and Moses Finley and Jules Dassin and many less celebrated people were forced into exile. Most of the rest had to leave the academic world. A few suffered suicide or other premature death. There weren’t the sort of wholesale casualties you saw in Argentina or El Salvador, but the Red-hunt did succeed in axing a lot of those it went after, and cowing most of the rest. We were out, and we were kept out. — “The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum”

    See the source image
    See the source image

    Finally, read David Rovics’ blog, and he is now in Denmark playing live crowds. I feel badly for him, he being accused of antisemitism, and he is being doxxed, and his Wikipedia has been changed but “crowd-souring” folk.

    Blog —

    Confessions of an Ecumenical Leftist

    It seems a ridiculous thing to have to say, but I think intellectual discourse is generally a very good thing, rather than something to be stopped at all costs.

    I’m realizing that most people who come across something I wrote don’t seem to have read anything else I’ve ever written, and haven’t listened to my music.  This post is going to be especially personal, so it’s important that you have some idea who I am first.

    I’m 54 years old, and I’ve been some kind of an activist since I was 12.  I learn a little more with each passing year on Earth, but lately the pace has accelerated, along with everything else.  I was raised by musicians, and I became one myself early on.  When I started writing songs about different social movement activities and notable moments in history from around the US and the world, I started meeting more and more people from everywhere, and touring everywhere, too.  As a songwriter and performer I’ve been able to participate in social movements on an ongoing basis in a dozen or so countries, spending most of my adult life on the road, doing that.

    Although the campaigners may be few, I have seen these campaigns work again and again.  You spread enough rumors, they dominate the narrative.  There are already people updating my Wikipedia entry to inform people that accusations of my alleged antisemitism are “in the news.”  Of course, they’re “in the news” because there have been news stories written about the campaign against me — not because any serious person has ever accused me of antisemitism, with any basis for their claim, aside from failing to find the anti-Semitic bits in a book, and wanting to talk to people with disparate viewpoints who may have deep insight into how we might prevent a fascist future in America, regardless of anything else.

    Of course, Wikipedia and Google and the rest are propaganda and government run and ZIonist outfits, for sure:

    Indeed, already in 2007, researchers found that CIA and FBI employees were editing Wikipedia articles on controversial topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo military prison.

    Also in 2007, researchers found that one of the most active and influential English Wikipedia administrators, called “Slim Virgin”, was in fact a former British intelligence informer.

    More recently, another highly prolific Wikipedia editor going by the false name of “Philip Cross” turned out to be linked to UK intelligence as well as several mainstream media journalists.

    In Germany, one of the most aggressive Wikipedia editors was exposed, after a two-year legal battle, as a political operative formerly serving in the Israeli army as a foreign volunteer.

    Even in Switzerland, unidentified government employees were caught whitewashing Wikipedia entries about the Swiss secret service just prior to a public referendum about the agency.

    Many of these Wikipedia personae are editing articles almost all day and every day, indicating that they are either highly dedicated individuals, or in fact, operated by a group of people.

    In addition, articles edited by these personae cannot easily be revised, since the above-mentioned administrators can always revert changes or simply block disagreeing users altogether. (Source)

    There you have it, on a Sunday, just cruising through the shit-storm news of the shit-hole Mass Murdering Media!

    See the source image
    The post Out to Lunch: The Atrophying of Western Minds first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “When it comes to misinformation, not sharing is caring,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said during a White House press briefing last week. His advisory offers a detailed account of the ways that the spread of health mis- and disinformation has flooded communities with lies.

    Health misinformation was deadly prior to the rise of internet platforms, but the problem is proliferating in new ways because of the technology these companies use to extract and exploit our demographic and behavioral data.

    The post Misinformation’s Deadly Profit Motive appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • It’s not unusual for politically minded people on Facebook to claim that they’re being targeted and censored. They all think they’re “too radical” in one way or another and thus, must be silenced by the authorities. Hey, in my activist days, I’d even get insulted if I wasn’t pulled off the line to board a plane. Don’t they know who I am? These delusions of grandeur, however, are based on real, longstanding policies. The Land of the Free™ has always spied on, manipulated, and controlled its population. They usually don’t talk openly about it but, last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki let loose with this truth bomb:

    We are in regular touch with the social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 Team. Given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic. In terms of actions that we have taken or we’re working to take, I should say, from the Federal Government, we’ve increased disinformation research and tracking. Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we are flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.

    Here’s about 45 seconds of her public admission:

    The “Dr. Murthy” she mentions is US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy — and here’s a recent tweet of his:

    When faced with criticism for this unconstitutional stance, Psaki doubled down the next day with a call for bannings to cross all platforms. She mocked comparisons to “Big Brother” and again called for Facebook to step up its efforts. Interesting timing as the government is also threatening Facebook over possibly illegal monopolization. Could it be that the puppet masters behind Biden are offering Zuckerberg a deal in advance? Consider this, also from Psaki’s press conference:

    It’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know, information travels quite quickly on social media platforms. Sometimes it’s not accurate, and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful violative posts. Posts that would be within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That’s too long. The information spreads too quickly.

    What would The Home of the Brave™ prefer Facebook do? Psaki said The White House is already pressuring the company to use the government’s preferred sources of “quality information” via the newsfeed and its algorithms. Let that one sink in for a while, comrades. 

    Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park (Photo Credit: Mickey Z., September 30, 2011)

    Will this totalitarian salvo stand? I don’t know but I feel certain that it’ll have plenty of help. The majority of Facebook users will be more than happy to “turn in” anyone who dares to challenges their beloved brand of groupthink. With these unpaid spies doing their work for them, the government (and the corporations that own it) can just sit back and watch all the democracy (sic) in action. Question: What role will YOU play in this scenario?

    The post The White House and Facebook vs. Freedom of Speech first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Listen to a reading of this article:

    The weirdest thing about the Biden administration tasking itself with the censorship of “disinformation” on social media is that the United States is the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is built upon a foundation of disinformation, maintained by disinformation, and facilitated by disinformation.

    If the propaganda engine of the US-centralized empire ceased actively deceiving the public about the world, it would collapse immediately. There would be mass unrest at home and abroad, status quo politics would be abandoned, alliances and coalitions would crumble, leaders official and unofficial would be ousted, and US unipolar hegemony would end.

    The only thing keeping this from happening is the vast amounts of wealth and energy which are poured into continuously deceiving the people of America and its allies about what’s really going on in their nations and political systems, and in the world as a whole.

    Getting people believing they live in separate, sovereign nations which function independently from one another, instead of member states within a single undeclared empire which moves as one unit on the international stage.

    Getting people believing they control the fate of their nation via the democratic process, when in reality all large-scale politics are scripted puppet shows controlled by a plutocratic class who owns both the politicians and the media outlets which report on them.

    Getting people believing they are part of a virtuous rules-based international order which opposes totalitarian regimes to spread freedom and democracy, instead of a tyrannical empire that works to destroy any nation which disobeys its dictates.

    And above all, manufacturing the illusion that the oppressive, exploitative imperialist status quo is normal.

    It’s not the big, famous lies like those which preceded the invasion of Iraq that make up the bulk of the adhesive holding the empire together, it’s the small, mundane lies we’re fed every single day by the plutocratic media. The ones which distort our worldview by half-truths, spins and omissions designed to normalize a status quo of murder, theft and ecocide.

    This normalization happens in the way pundits and politicians treat any attempt to end wars or redress income inequality as freakish extremism and unrealistic fantasy, when in reality it’s the most sane and normal thing in the world and the only thing unrealistic about it is the fact that attempts to advance those agendas are always sabotaged by those same pundits and politicians.

    The normalization also happens in the way endless wars, starvation deaths by US sanctions, the looming threat of total extinction via climate collapse or nuclear war, rapidly exacerbating income inequality and increasing tyranny at home and abroad are not treated as newsworthy stories, while celebrity gossip and partisan bickering between AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene makes headline news. Every day the news media fail to report on the greatest horrors that the empire has unleashed on our world while focusing on vapid trivialities, they help normalize the horrors.

    If the mass media actually existed to share important information about the world, the US-backed genocide in Yemen would be front-page news every day instead of something which gets a marginal mention once every few weeks. Every day it isn’t, this outrageous abuse is normalized.

    If the mass media actually existed to share important information about the world, the fact that Americans are getting poorer and poorer while billionaires multiply their wealth during the pandemic would be brought front and center to everyone’s attention. Every day it isn’t, this outrageous abuse is normalized.

    If the mass media actually existed to share important information about the world, the fact that the US military just spent trillions of dollars on a decades-long occupation of Afghanistan that accomplished nothing besides making horrible people rich would have been a national scandal. Every day it isn’t, this outrageous abuse is normalized.

    But the mass media do not exist to share important information about the world. They exist to share important disinformation about the world. If they did not do this, the same US empire which is decrying the spread of disinformation today would collapse into its own footprint.

    The US empire is without exception the single most corrupt and destructive force on this planet, and it’s not even close. It is the very last institution on earth that should be in charge of deciding what online content is true and what is “disinformation”. Absolute dead last, without exaggeration.

    Depraved institutions which lie constantly and have killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century should not be the Ministry of Truth for the world’s online communication systems. This should be extremely obvious to everyone.

    _______________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi or . If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at  or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded,  to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, 

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Facebook News

    Facebook has today launched a public education campaign to help people in five Pacific Island countries and territories learn how to identify and combat health-related misinformation.

    The locations and languages are Wallis & Futuna (French), New Caledonia (French), Tonga (English and Tongan), Solomon Islands (English and Solomon Islands Pijin), and Cook Islands (English).

    The campaign, which follows an earlier launch in Samoa, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, will run for five weeks and includes graphics and videos.

    The content is designed to encourage three key behaviours by Facebook users:

    • Awareness – Be informed that misinformation exists
    • Investigation – Find out more to confirm if the information is indeed false
    • Action – Visit the local health authority to get accurate information

    Mia Garlick, director of public policy for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, says: “One of our commitments is to connect people to reliable information, and give people the tools to make informed decisions about the information they see on Facebook.

    “We are extending our efforts to reach more people across the Pacific, ensuring they can easily compare what they see with official public health resources.

    “We will continue to work with health experts including the World Health Organisation (WHO), and local partners, to make sure that we have the right policies in place to reduce the spread of harmful covid-19 and covid-19 vaccine misinformation on our platform.”

    Throughout the pandemic, Facebook has worked closely with WHO to direct people to authoritative covid-19 information, and to do more to identify and take action to remove incorrect claims about the virus.

    The campaigns can be found at:
    Wallis & Futuna (French)
    New Caledonia (French)
    Tonga (English)
    Tonga (Tongan)
    Solomon Islands (English)
    Solomon Islands (Solomon Islands Pijin)
    Cook Islands (English)

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The ultimate goal of every totalitarian system is to establish complete control over society and every individual within it in order to achieve ideological uniformity and eliminate any and all deviation from it. This goal can never be achieved, of course, but it is the raison d’être of all totalitarian systems, regardless of what forms they take and ideologies they espouse. You can dress totalitarianism up in Hugo Boss-designed Nazi uniforms, Mao suits, or medical-looking face masks, its core desire remains the same: to remake the world in its paranoid image … to replace reality with its own “reality.”

    We are right in the middle of this process currently, which is why everything feels so batshit crazy. The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new “reality.” That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute “reality.” In order to make your beliefs “reality,” you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific “experts,” academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine.

    There is nothing subtle about this process. Decommissioning one “reality” and replacing it with another is a brutal business. Societies grow accustomed to their “realities.” We do not surrender them willingly or easily. Normally, what’s required to get us to do so is a crisis, a war, a state of emergency, or … you know, a deadly global pandemic.

    During the changeover from the old “reality” to the new “reality,” the society is torn apart. The old “reality” is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two “realities” battle it out for dominance. “Reality” being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one “reality” can prevail.

    This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force. It needs to terrorize the majority of society into a state of mindless mass hysteria that can be turned against those resisting the new “reality.” It is not a matter of persuading or convincing people to accept the new “reality.” It’s more like how you drive a herd of cattle. You scare them enough to get them moving, then you steer them wherever you want them to go. The cattle do not know or understand where they are going. They are simply reacting to a physical stimulus. Facts and reason have nothing to do with it.

    And this is what has been so incredibly frustrating for those of us opposing the roll-out of the “New Normal,” whether debunking the official Covid-19 narrative, or “Russiagate,” or the “Storming of the US Capitol,” or any other element of the new official ideology. (And, yes, it is all one ideology, not “communism,” or “fascism,” or any other nostalgia, but the ideology of the system that actually rules us, supranational global capitalism. We’re living in the first truly global-hegemonic ideological system in human history. We have been for the last 30 years. If you are touchy about the term “global capitalism,” go ahead and call it “globalism,” or “crony capitalism,” or “corporatism,” or whatever other name you need to. Whatever you call it, it became the unrivaled globally-hegemonic ideological system when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s. Yes, there are pockets of internal resistance, but it has no external adversaries, so its progression toward a more openly totalitarian structure is logical and entirely predictable.)

    Anyway, what has been so incredibly frustrating is that many of us have been operating under the illusion that we are engaged in a rational argument over facts (e.g., the facts of Russiagate, Literal-Hitlergate, 9/11, Saddam’s WMDs, Douma, the January 6 “insurrection,” the official Covid narrative, etc.) This is not at all what is happening. Facts mean absolutely nothing to the adherents of totalitarian systems.

    You can show the New Normals the facts all you like. You can show them the fake photos of people dead in the streets in China in March of 2020. You can show them the fake projected death rates. You can explain how the fake PCR tests work, how healthy people were deemed medical “cases.” You can show them all the studies on the ineffectiveness of masks. You can explain the fake “hospitalization” and “death” figures, send them articles about the unused “emergency hospitals,” the unremarkable age-and-population-adjusted death rates, cite the survival rates for people under 70, the dangers and pointlessness of “vaccinating” children. None of this will make the slightest difference.

    Or, if you’ve bought the Covid-19 narrative, but haven’t completely abandoned your critical faculties, you can do what Glenn Greenwald has been doing recently. You can demonstrate how the corporate media have intentionally lied, again and again, to whip up mass hysteria over “domestic terrorism.” You can show people videos of the “violent domestic terrorists” calmly walking into the Capitol Building in single file, like a high-school tour group, having been let in by members of Capitol Security. You can debunk the infamous “fire-extinguisher murder” of Brian Sicknik that never really happened. You can point out that the belief that a few hundred unarmed people running around in the Capitol qualifies as an “insurrection,” or an “attempted coup,” or “domestic terrorism,” is delusional to the point of being literally insane. This will also not make the slightest difference.

    I could go on, and I’m sure I will as the “New Normal” ideology becomes our new “reality” over the course of the next several years. My point, at the moment, is … this isn’t an argument. The global-capitalist ruling classes, government leaders, the corporate media, and the New Normal masses they have instrumentalized are not debating with us. They know the facts. They know the facts contradict their narratives. They do not care. They do not have to. Because this isn’t about facts. It’s about power.

    I’m not saying that facts don’t matter. Of course, they matter. They matter to us. I’m saying, let’s recognize what this is. It isn’t a debate or a search for the truth. The New Normals are disassembling one “reality” and replacing it with a new “reality.” (Yes, I know that reality exists in some fundamental ontological sense, but that isn’t the “reality” I’m talking about here, so please do not send me angry emails railing against Foucault and postmodernism.)

    The pressure to conform to the new “reality” is already intense and it’s going to get worse as vaccination passes, public mask-wearing, periodic lockdowns, etc., become normalized. Those who don’t conform will be systematically demonized, socially and/or professionally ostracized, segregated, and otherwise punished. Our opinions will be censored. We will be “canceled,” deplatformed, demonitized, and otherwise silenced. Our views will be labeled “potentially harmful.” We will be accused of spreading “misinformation,” of being “far-right extremists,” “racists,” “anti-Semites,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “anti-global-capitalist violent domestic terrorists,” or just garden variety “sexual harassers,” or whatever they believe will damage us the most.

    This will happen in both the public and personal spheres. Not just governments, the media, and corporations, but your colleagues, friends, and family will do this. Strangers in shops and restaurants will do this. Most of them will not do it consciously. They will do it because your non-conformity represents an existential threat to them … a negation of their new “reality” and a reminder of the reality they surrendered in order to remain a “normal” person and avoid the punishments described above.

    This is nothing new, of course. It is how “reality” is manufactured, not only in totalitarian systems, but in every organized social system. Those in power instrumentalize the masses to enforce conformity with their official ideology. Totalitarianism is just its most extreme and most dangerously paranoid and fanatical form.

    So, sure, keep posting and sharing the facts, assuming you can get them past the censors, but let’s not kid ourselves about what we’re up against. We’re not going to wake the New Normals up with facts. If we could, we would have done so already. This is not a civilized debate about facts. This is a fight. Act accordingly.

    The post Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Image from Imgur @i.imgur.com

    Orientation

    As I was looking at images to place at the beginning of this article, I was struck by how many images and quotes there were of Le Bon. It is pretty amazing for someone whose first work was published in 1895 and whose last works are still around 100 years old. It is especially strange given how unscientific his methods were and how recent empirical studies of crowds like David Miller’s Introduction to Collective Behavior and Collective Action contradicts virtually everything Le Bon claimed. Why is Le Bon’s work still circulating despite lack of scientific rigor? Why have the last fifty years of research on crowds that have a solid scientific basis been ignored?

    Purpose of this article

    The purpose of this article is to:

    • Expose the propagandist roots and branches of our biases against crowds while showing some of the scientific evidence that supports the actual behavior of crowds.
    • To outline what historical events occurred that supported the prejudice against crowds.
    • Propose that it is ruling-class fears of crowds that fuels the perpetuation of unscientific theories about crowds.
    • Propose that ruling class fears that working-class people mobilized into crowds will seize their resources, destroy their property and enslave them.

    Crowds vs Masses

    Crowds are large collections of people who meet at the same place at the same time and are large enough that it is difficult to have a central conversation. A loudspeaker, microphone or some external device is necessary to have a single central discussion.  There are different kinds of crowds. There are casual crowds like those that meet by chance at the scene of an accident or a fire. They may congregate to watch a building go up or be torn down. A second kind of crowd are long lines that form to buy tickets to ball games or musical concerts.

    An audience is a more formal crowd with a more deliberate focus. Examples are attending a musical concert or a sporting event. Lasty, there are unconventional crowds which can lead to riots, lynchings, protests and demonstrations. Mass behavior involves large numbers of people who are spatially dispersed but participate in common activities like fads or fashions.  Mass behavior involves the use of radio (Orson Wells, War of the Worlds) television, movies which often lead to rumors or urban legends.

    Questionnaire on Crowds

    In order to understand the purposes of this article, I ask that you spend about 25 to 30 minutes answering the following true-false questions. For the answer to be true, it simply means most of the time, not all the time.  For the answer to be false, it just means it rarely happens, not never happens. Follow your answer with a one sentence justification. Feel free to draw from your experience as well as what you’ve read. It is important to answer quickly and spontaneously and not dwell on the answers. One purpose of the questionnaire is to see if you think there are any significant differences between how people in crowds behave (collective behavior) as opposed to how small groups or individuals behave.

    Here are the True – False questions:

    • Most crowds consist of strangers, rather than family, friends or acquaintances.
    • The percentage of violent behavior is higher in crowds than in small groups such as a musical band or a baseball team.
    • The behavior of crowds is more likely to be unanimous than the behavior of small groups.
    • Crowds of people are more likely to engage in unusual or extraordinary behaviors than either groups or individuals.
    • The behavior of individuals and small groups is more likely to be rational than the behavior of a crowd, which is more likely to be irrational.
    • There are certain kinds of personalities that are drawn to crowds that you could predict would join a crowd if you knew enough about their personalities.
    • There is a disproportionately higher number of working-class people in crowds compared to other social classes.
    • Compared to people without legal convictions, there is a higher percentage of criminals in crowds.
    • Individuals and small groups that are more likely to deliberate and plan their actions are less likely to be spontaneous.
    • You could predict that most individuals are more likely to lose their personal identity in a crowd rather than alone or in small groups.
    • Emotions are more likely to spread by contagions in a crowd rather than in a small group.
    • Groups are easier to disperse than crowds because people in crowds want to linger longer.
    • There has been more research done on crowds than on groups because the behavior in crowds has greater social impact.
    • People conform less to norms in crowds than they do in groups or as individuals.
    • Most violence in crowds is caused by the participants in the crowd rather than the police.
    • There is a higher degree of unpredictability of behavior in crowds than there is in small groups or within an individual.
    • The goals of a crowd are more extreme and unconventional than the goals of groups or individuals.
    • Riots are equally likely to happen regardless of the season of the year.
    • The most typical reaction to a natural disaster or emotional shock is panic – that is, uncontrolled individualistic flight as opposed to a rational, deliberate response.
    • There is a correlation between which people will engage in a protest and their political beliefs before the protests.
    • The most likely group to join a movement is the group who has absolute deprivation of resources as opposed to relative deprivation or no deprivation.

     The last three questions are about mass behavior, not crowd behavior:

    • Fads are less predictable than fashions.
    • Rumors begin mostly because people lose their ability to investigate before coming to a conclusion.
    • Fashions exist in all societies, tribal as well as industrial.

    Myths vs Facts About Crowds

    In their book, Social Psychology, Delamater Myers and Collett, citing the research of Carl Couch, Clark McPhail, David Schweingruber and Ronald Wohlstein argued that there are seven basic myths about crowds. They are:

    • Irrationality
    • Emotionality
    • Suggestibility – mindless behavior
    • Destructiveness
    • Spontaneity
    • Anonymity
    • Unanimity of purpose

    Through these seven myths we are likely to see why all the answers in relation to crowds to the True-False questions are false. The only true answers are the first two questions about masses. Rather than explaining why every single question on crowds is false, I will speak generally and then answer a few questions specifically.

    Are crowds wholes that are less than the sum of their parts?

    One of the great underlying beliefs about crowds is that terrible things happen in a crowd that somehow would not happen in a small group and especially at an individual level.  Individuals are seen as rational, non-violent and prudent, but once the individual is surrounded by enough other individuals, things turn sour. The belief is that while individuals and groups may have differences with each other, those differences melt away in a crowd as individual members turn into a group hive. In fact, differences between individuals and small groups are maintained in crowds. To cite one example, in riots, crowds rarely act in unison. Some throw rocks and break windows. Others climb telephone poles and smash statues. Others disapprove and try to talk the others out of armed conflict. Still others are altruistic and help protesters who have been injured by cops.

    Who is orderly and disorderly in crowds?

    Speaking of cops, research on mass psychology has shown that most of the time, contrary to Le Bon, riots are started by the police, not the crowd. Furthermore, crowds assemble and disassemble at ballgames and concerts without any police necessary. Once gathered crowds do not stick together like honey. They easily disperse and really do not need the police to do so. I have been to many a Yankee and Knicks game in which the crowd, anywhere from 15 thousand to 30 thousand people leave the game, peacefully get on the train and talk about the ballgame. There is no need for police because nothing controversial happens. For conservatives like Le Bon, they cannot imagine that crowds regulate themselves. For them crowds are filled with animalistic, hedonistic barbarians who need the police to whip them into order.

    Are working-class people more likely to be disorderly?

    There is some truth to the fact that a higher percentage of working-class people will be in crowds. This has more to do with the reality that middle-class or upper-middle class people can afford to take a taxi to a ball game or a concert instead of taking the train. But this has little to do with the behavior of working-class crowds. Furthermore, plenty of protests are filled with upper-middle class anarchists who torch police cars and topple monuments. There is no clear relationship between social class and crowd violence.

    How unpredictable are crowds?

    Another one of Le Bon’s mistaken generalizations about crowds is that people in crowds act without rhyme or reason. This demonstrates, as an upper middle-class doctor, Le Bon has no understanding of all the deliberation and planning that goes into protests on the part of the organizers. This planning goes on weeks before the event. It is true that unpredictable things happen in protects, but they are exceptions to the rule. Furthermore, individuals act in unpredictable ways, as in the case of mass shootings. Individuals get caught up in cults and act in unpredictable and astonishing ways. Cults are large groups, not crowds.

    Are emotions in crowds contagious?

    People are every bit as emotional in small groups as they are in crowds. There is nothing contagious about emotions in crowds. People maintain emotional judgement while in the crowd. In fact, the leaders of protests harangue people to sing and chant as a way to unify the group. Just being in a crowd does not automatically unify the individuals. It takes work to do so. When faced with members of a crowd who become hysterical, rather than mindlessly joining in, other members of the crowd will distance themselves and exercise the same prudence that individuals or people in small groups will.

    Is the crowd to social life what Freud’s id is to individual life?

    Le Bon, Freud, Bion and the rest of the crowd psychologists we will soon meet think that at the social level the crowd is like the id, lurking on the margins of society waiting for a chance to jump out and wreak havoc. This is exemplified in the movie Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. In natural disasters these crowd psychologists imagine that the socialized ego is swarmed by the individualistic dictum, “every person for himself”. They imagine the results are pillaging and raping. The trouble is that research on behavior in natural disasters shows that people are consistently heroic and cooperative.

    One hundred years of neglect of scientific research on crowds

    Lastly, unlike individual psychology and group psychology the scientific study of crowds and masses lags way behind. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that the first research was done. Why is this? On the one hand, studying crowds is far more difficult because crowds are so large and their life-times short. But something else was going on. Why were Le Bon’s, Tarde’s and Sighele’s, speculations allowed to stand unchallenged and repeated mindlessly in social psychology textbooks for almost 100 years? In large part it was because their theories served the interests of the ruling class.

    Historical Reasons for the Biases Against Crowds

    Growth of cities

    One of major changes in European history and geography was the gradual reversal of numbers of people living in cities compared to those of people living on farms.  People move to cities in part because there is more work, but also, as the saying goes, “city air makes you free”.  Some people felt trapped by the nosiness and stifling customs of rural life. Non-conformists to religious traditions, artists and hustlers with big dreams were drawn to cities for a chance to start fresh. Living on a farm, the general expectations was that you would engage in the same occupation as your parents. Moving to the city broke that tradition and it raised expectations. Especially those living in coastal cities who were exposed not only to people coming from different cities within Yankeedom, but people from other countries were also looking for work. Different languages, different religions, and different political traditions converged.

    There are rarely, if ever, crowds in rural areas. While farmers may get together on holidays, everyone knows everyone else and rarely are strangers invited.  Even when farmers would go to town to get supplies, the overwhelming number of people knew each other and greeted each other. There were no stadiums or concert halls in which large numbers of people could congregate to watch professional sports or music. Long before the Industrial Revolution, crowds in cities would gather to hear political speeches. So, what we have in pre-industrial cities are relatively rootless people with raised expectations, surrounded by strangers from different cultures for whom being in a crowd is becoming normal.

    The Great French revolutions

    As most of you know, the French Revolution of 1789 overthrew both the king and the aristocrats as the merchants rose to power on the backs of artisans and peasants. The revolution was also anti-clerical. Churches and chateaux were burned to the ground. The aristocrats never forgot this. As if your memory needed any jogging, there were more revolutions in Paris in 1830 and 1848. In all these revolutions, crowds are violent and know where the upper classes live. Doesn’t it start to make sense that the study of crowds would never be objective so long as the upper classes were threatened by them and therefore controlled the research on crowds? In this case they made sure no research was done.

    Industrialization

    At the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, cities became industrialized.  People were forced off the middle of streets to make way for wheeled vehicles accompanied by horses and later, trolley cars. Grid systems of streets were built which sped up transportation and the circulation of goods. Industrial capitalists built factories in cities as opposed to artisan shops in the countryside (the putting out system). The emergence of factories had enormous revolutionary potential because it brought large numbers of people working under horrible conditions together. For 12-15 hours a day, at least six days a week, people have a common experience while all in the same place and the same time.

    Formation of unions

    It is no accident that unions first formed in factories. When common experience is concentrated at the same place and same time, people are likely to compare experiences and accumulate grievances. Some workers begin to recognize that they have collective power if they can organize themselves. They can strike for better working conditions and better wages. Unions made crowds more dangerous because crowds can, in an extremely chilling way, stop and start the work process itself. This is like cutting off the blood supply for vampiric capitalists.

    Emergence of socialism

    The first socialists were theoretical. William Godwin was the first theoretical anarchist, writing Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. In the early 19th century, there were utopian communities set up by Robert Owen, Charles Fourier and others but none of these communities were connected to unions or workers movements. It wasn’t until the writings of Marx and Engels that socialism was really connected to worker’s struggles. The socialism of Marx and Engels or the anarchism of Bakunin both said to workers, “it is not enough to have tiny little pieces of pie. You create all the wealth; you deserve the whole pie.”

    In order to gain the whole pie, workers in crowds had to move in a mass, take over factories and run them for themselves, while confiscating the private property of the upper classes. For the upper classes, socialism and the prospects of crowds burning down their houses, and peasants taking over their land was their worst nightmare. The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first revolutionary situation that was inspired by socialism as a movement.

    Stock Market instabilities

    Crowd instabilities also came from the capitalist side, between 1873 to 1896 when the stock market was very unstable creating panics and depressions. This meant stock market traders were wheeling and dealing on the floor of the stock market at the same time that people who had money in banks were worried about their savings and, in some cases, making runs on the bank.

    Crowd Psychologists

    Origins of Crowd Theory

    Crowd theorists were social Darwinists whose ideas of a liberal society were of individuals who took care of only themselves. Beginning about 1870, crowd psychologists claimed that Darwinian evolution demonstrated that progress was a slow process, and any sudden changes based on violence were throwbacks to premodern times. Crowds were looked upon as akin to Herbert Spencer’s undifferentiated matter.

    According to H. Stuart Hughes, (Consciousness and Society), beginning in the 1890s intellectuals became obsessed with the prospect that unconscious, primitive, and emotional forces were driving things. Crowd psychologists were united in rejecting sociological theorists such as Durkheim and Marx because they ignored emotions and unconscious motivation. What was really driving crowds, they thought, was below the level of consciousness. For crowd psychologists, individuals were both more than and less than the sum of their parts. The four major crowd theorists were Hippolyte Taine, Scipio Sighele, Gabriel Tarde, and Gustave Le Bon.

    Crowd Theorists

    Taine

    Taine’s Origins of Contemporary France (written between 1876 and 1894) was a conservative attack on the Enlightenment. Taine blamed the Enlightenment ideas, including Rousseau’s, for what he considered the bloodbath of the French Revolution. Taine believed that the line between normal cognition and hallucinations, dreams and delusions, was closer than we might suspect. He cited evidence from research on organic lesions of the brain, hypnotism, and split personalities. He determined that the dramatic transformation of humans into savages is caused by what he called “the laws of mental contagion.” With the exception of the hypnosis model, Taine’s book embodies all the rudiments of French crowd psychology. For Taine, all leaders were the crazed dregs of society.

    According to Taine, the Enlightenment failed to factor in the amount of time it took for humans to develop from barbarity to civility. Enlighteners weren’t interested in how people really were, but only as they could be measured by an abstract, ideal humanity. Taine thought the French Revolution was a relapse into primitive barbarism. Like Hume, Taine thought that reason was the passive servant of the passions. Bodily needs, animal instinct, prejudices which Taine thought were hereditary, were really driving people.

    Criminalization of crowds (Sighele) 

    Theories of hypnosis were split in two directions. Followers of Charcot claimed that being suggestible was a sign of psychopathology and only certain types of people could be hypnotized. The Nancy school of Bergheim argued that anyone could be hypnotized. The criminal school of Sighele sided with Charcot, arguing that crowds were composed of criminal individuals who were naturally suggestible. He followed the work of Lombroso who was a medical scholar of deviants in the military. Lombroso measured the skulls and anatomical characteristics of 3,000 soldiers.

    According to Serge Moscovici (The Age of the Crowd), mass psychology was treated simply as part of criminal anthropology. Crowds were seen as mobs, scum, and made up of men who were out of control and would destroy anything in their path. Sighele claimed that hypnotism can explain the process by which individual minds become susceptible to outside forces, leading to actions that are carried out automatically, unconsciously, and then spread to others by contagion. The conservative hand Sighele played was transparent in his labeling of social revolutionaries such as socialists, anarchists, or even striking workers as part of the criminal crowd. The hysteria of stock market traders was never seen as criminal.

    Tarde

    More than Taine or Sighele, Gabriel Tarde placed the crowd on a broader social spectrum. All social life, according to Tarde, is based on imitation, and the process of crowd formation and reproduction simply comes from the laws of imitation sped up. He described the crowd as the first stage of association—rudimentary, fleeting, and undifferentiated. From this foundation, more stable and ongoing groups form, including corporations, political parties, and religious bodies such as churches or monasteries. Unlike other crowd psychologists, Tarde thought that literacy, newspapers, and mass communication would replace the crowd with what he called “the public.”

    Tarde also thought that the extremes of behavior demonstrated in crowds are unique to cities. Unlike his right-wing crowd theorists, Tarde thought the madness of crowds is a product of civilization. He argued that crowd madness was uncommon in rural areas and among pre-state societies. Both Tarde and Le Bon supported the Nancy school, which suggested that there were social-psychological processes that any individual could fall prey to, if exposed to them. They believed that the solitary individual was superior to the group in all ways.

    Le Bon

    Le Bon concocted a mix of anthropological, social Darwinist, and psychological theories, which were in the same family as Taine and the racist Joseph Gobineau. He thought that cranial size could be used as an accurate measure of intelligence and he believed that people in primitive societies had small skulls. Le Bon thought the European race was superior, and only Caucasian males could transcend the constraints of biology.

    Like Sighele and Tarde, Le Bon thought that what happens to an individual when in a crowd was analogous to what happens in hypnosis. All crowd theorists up to Le Bon agreed that the crowd was no more than what was already inside the psychology of individuals. They also believed that whatever destructive behavior transpired in a crowd was due to the lower-class origins of its members. Le Bon was the first to say that all personalities, regardless of class and intelligence, are susceptible to the pull of the crowd.

    According to Serge Moscovici, Le Bon directly challenged Locke’s theory of the mind. As was par for the course in the Enlightenment, Locke believed that as the mind of humanity was gradually ridding itself of religious terrors, there would be fewer and fewer secrets. Le Bon, in contrast, said that revolutions shake the mind from its perch, sending it tumbling and howling into the abyss of the primitive world, which is driven by heredity, instinct, custom, and race. For Locke, visions and dreams were overridden by simple and complex reasoning. For Le Bon, crowds could not follow reason but instead learned by association, just as individuals do in dreams.

    Furthermore, crowd theorists claimed that people in crowds do not deliberate, but are mesmerized by leaders through the power of hypnotic suggestion. When Locke argued that the truth can be seen with open eyes, he neglected to note that crowds are driven by unconscious primitive animalism, which takes over and spreads by what Le Bon called “contagion.” This contagion does not lead to prudent, rational judgment but instead can lead to cruelty or heroism. These extreme reactions are amplified by the feeling of anonymity that grips individuals, allowing a sense of individual responsibility to evaporate.

    Le Bon belonged to a liberal middle-class tradition that argued against both revolution and the weakness of liberal parliamentary systems. Despite his argument’s mediocre quality, rhetorically flattering the reader and lacking depth, Le Bon must have struck a nerve. According to Moscovici, no French thinker other than Georges Sorel and Alexander de Tocqueville has had an influence as great as Le Bon. Le Bon published The Crowd in 1890 and it was a best seller. Why was this? He mixed the disciplines of politics and psychology in an age of growing disciplinary specialization. Le Bon probably tapped into the fears that the middle and upper class and upper classes had about what would happen eventually if the new “democracy” was to expand.

    Distorting the work of Alfred Espinas

    It is worth noting that crowd psychologists distorted the work of Alfred Espinas on wasps and hornets to create an analogy between human crowds and insect societies. Espinas argued that societies were more than an aggregate of individuals and pointed out that alarm and danger were transmitted by visual contagion. Far from viewing this intensely social life of insects as a liability, he saw it as a strength in building bonds through cooperation.

    Crowd psychologists seized on his discussion of the invisible communication of wasps and hornets when confronted with an enemy to draw an analogy to crowds. Just as insects communicate collectively when faced with danger, so crowd behavior becomes contagious among spectators in a theater or when aroused by a great orator. Unlike Espinas, they saw very little, if anything, constructive in this. Crowd psychologists thought the communicability of emotions beyond the individual was proof of the primitive mentality of the crowd.

    Crowd Psychologist Distortions

    Here are Susanna Barrows’ (Distorting Mirrors) damning conclusions about crowd-psychologist theories:

    • Taine, Sighele and Le Bon did not do any empirical research (Tarde was a possible exception).
    • Taine’s work contains grave errors in the scientific method. The idea of empirical investigation was wholly alien to him.
    • What evidence they collected was extremely selective to support their case (again, with the possible exception of Tarde).
    • Statistics indicate that women committed many fewer crimes than men, yet women were blamed for a disproportionate amount of the violence that occurred.
    • Le Bon indiscriminately lumped together socialists and anarchists with common criminals.
    • Crowd psychologists distorted the work of Espinas on wasps and hornets to make an analogy between human crowds and insect societies.

    The Legacy of the 20th Century

    The events of the 20th century hardly provided a break for poor conservatives hoping for a return to religion, God, kings and aristocrats. The Russian revolution, the stock market crash in 1929, Fascism in Germany and Italy and Spain, the Spanish revolution, the Chinese Revolution and the Cuban Revolution vanquished those hopes. This does not even count the Zoot Suit race riots in 1943, Watts in 1967 or the Rodney King riots in 1992.

    Mass Media Propaganda Towards Crowds and Riots Carries Forward Obsolete Crowd Psychology

    Check any newspaper or TV news program in Yankeedom and watch how the crowd and the rioters are treated when they describe a protest or a natural disaster. If it is a riot, does the paper ever show the variety of responses that go on during the riot? No, they focus only on the rioters and assume everyone in the crowd was complicit. When they describe the origin of the riot, do they consider the research which says the police are usually the perpetuators of the riot? Not on your life! The police are depicted as restoring order rather than as being the perpetuators of disorder. Lastly, in a natural disaster do the newscasters show the overwhelming instances of cooperation, compared to natural disaster participants helping themselves in supermarkets and sporting goods stores? No, they don’t. Rather the echo chamber of capitalist media blares out “looting, looting, looting” just like they declared “weapons of mass destruction” in the lead-up to the attack on Iraq twenty years ago.

    Conclusion

    I began this article with a questionnaire designed to expose your prejudices against crowds. I contrasted these biases against what research on mass psychology actually shows about crowd behavior. The heart of my article is to show why these biases continue in spite of scientific research to the contrary. I identified the growth of cities, the revolutions in France in the 19th century, the process of industrialization, the formation of unions, the rise of socialism and stock market instabilities in the 19th century. What do these events have to do with biases against crowds?

    The answer can be found in the theories of mostly right-wing crowd theorists who wrote in the 2nd half of the 19th century. These theorists and their ruling class masters were terrified that crowds of working-class people would take their land, confiscate their resources and burn their chateaux to the ground. There was a great deal at stake for them. To call the people in crowds enraged, childish, criminal, beastly, stampeding, savage, irrational, impulsive, uncivilized, primitive, bloodthirsty, cruel and fickle is to dismiss, embarrass and mock anyone who participates. It is also a warning to future workers to stay away from crowds.

    We socialists have been the victims of a 150-year propaganda campaign that was started by crowd psychologists in the 1860s and has been perpetuated by all sources of media throughout the 20th century. Amazingly, social psychologists who pride themselves on filling their textbooks with empirical evidence, have given this discredited crowd theory a pass. There is so much money for research on what sells products and little or no money is available to study what moves crowds and masses. It is vitally important for the ruling classes to forestall the great day of reckoning by scaring people away from joining crowds that will be one of many vehicles for overthrowing them.

    • First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    The post Ruling Class Fears of The Day of Reckoning: Historical Causes for the Biases Against Crowds first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Photo credit: BPM Media – Protest at G7 summit in Cornwall UK

    The world has been treated to successive spectacles of national leaders gathering at a G7 Summit in Cornwall and a NATO Summit in Brussels.

    The U.S. corporate media have portrayed these summits as chances for President Biden to rally the leaders of the world’s democratic nations in a coordinated response to the most serious problems facing the world, from the COVID pandemic, climate change and global inequality to ill-defined “threats to democracy” from Russia and China.

    But there’s something seriously wrong with this picture. Democracy means “rule by the people.” While that can take different forms in different countries and cultures, there is a growing consensus in the United States that the exceptional power of wealthy Americans and corporations to influence election results and government policies has led to a de facto system of government that fails to reflect the will of the American people on many critical issues.

    So when President Biden meets with the leaders of democratic countries, he represents a country that is, in many ways, an undemocratic outlier rather than a leader among democratic nations. This is evident in:

    – the “legalized bribery” of 2020’s $14.4 billion federal election, compared with recent elections in Canada and the U.K. that cost less than 1% of that, under strict rules that ensure more democratic results;

    – a defeated President proclaiming baseless accusations of fraud and inciting a mob to invade the U.S. Congress on January 6 2021;

    – news media that have been commercialized, consolidated, gutted and dumbed down by their corporate owners, making Americans easy prey for misinformation by unscrupulous interest groups, and leaving the U.S. in 44th place on Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index;

    – the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with over two million people behind bars, and systemic police violence on a scale never seen in other wealthy nations;

    – the injustice of extreme inequality, poverty and cradle-to-grave debt for millions in an otherwise wealthy nation;

    – an exceptional lack of economic and social mobility compared to other wealthy countries that is the antithesis of the mythical “American Dream”;

    – privatized, undemocratic and failing education and healthcare systems;

    – a recent history of illegal invasions, massacres of civilians, torture, drone assassinations, extraordinary renditions and indefinite detention at Guantanamo—with no accountabllity;

    – and, last but not least, a gargantuan war machine capable of destroying the world, in the hands of this dysfunctional political system.

    Fortunately, though, Americans are not the only ones asking what is wrong with American democracy. The Alliance of Democracies Foundation (ADF), founded by former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, conducted a poll of 50,000 people in 53 countries between February and April 2021, and found that people around the world share our concerns about America’s dystopian political system and imperial outrages.

    Probably the most startling result of the poll to Americans would be its finding that more people around the world (44%) see the United States as a threat to democracy in their countries than China (38%) or Russia (28%), which makes nonsense of U.S. efforts to justify its revived Cold War on Russia and China in the name of democracy.

    In a larger poll of 124,000 people that ADF conducted in 2020, countries where large majorities saw the United States as a danger to democracy included China, but also Germany, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, France, Greece, Belgium, Sweden and Canada.

    After tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle, Biden swooped into Brussels on Air Force One for a NATO summit to advance its new “Strategic Concept,” which is nothing more than a war plan for World War III against both Russia and China.

    But we take solace from evidence that the people of Europe, whom the NATO war plan counts on as front-line troops and mass casualty victims, are not ready to follow President Biden to war. A January 2021 survey by the European Council on Foreign Affairs found that large majorities of Europeans want to remain neutral in any U.S. war on Russia or China. Only 22% would want their country to take the U.S. side in a war on China, and 23% in a war on Russia.

    Few Americans realize that Biden already came close to war with Russia in March and April, when the United States and NATO supported a new Ukrainian offensive in its civil war against Russian-allied separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Russia moved tens of thousands of heavily-armed troops to its borders with Ukraine, to make it clear that it was ready to defend its Ukrainian allies and was quite capable of doing so. On April 13th, Biden blinked, turned round two U.S. destroyers that were steaming into the Black Sea and called Putin to request the summit that is now taking place.

    The antipathy of ordinary people everywhere toward the U.S. determination to provoke military confrontation with Russia and China begs serious questions about the complicity of their leaders in these incredibly dangerous, possibly suicidal, U.S. policies. When ordinary people all over the world can see the dangers and pitfalls of following the United States as a model and a leader, why do their neoliberal leaders keep showing up to lend credibility to the posturing of U.S. leaders at summits like the G7 and NATO?

    Maybe it is precisely because the United States has succeeded in what the corporate ruling classes of other nations also aspire to, namely, greater concentrations of wealth and power and less public interference in their “freedom” to accumulate and control them.

    Maybe the leaders of other wealthy countries and military powers are genuinely awed by the dystopian American Dream as the example par excellence of how to sell inequality, injustice and war to the public in the name of freedom and democracy.

    In that case, the fact that people in other wealthy countries are not so easily led to war or lured into political passivity and impotence would only increase the awe of their leaders for their American counterparts, who literally laugh all the way to the bank as they pay lip service to the sanctity of the American Dream and the American People.

    Ordinary people in other countries are right to be wary of the Pied Piper of American “leadership,” but their rulers should be too. The fracturing and disintegration of American society should stand as a warning to neoliberal governments and ruling classes everywhere to be more careful what they wish for.

    Instead of a world in which other countries emulate or fall victim to America’s failed experiment in extreme neoliberalism, the key to a peaceful, sustainable and prosperous future for all the world’s people, including Americans, lies in working together, learning from each other and adopting policies that serve the public good and improve the lives of all, especially those most in need. There’s a name for that. It’s called democracy.

    The post Why Democracies in G7 and NATO Should Reject U.S. Leadership first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In April, GOP lawmakers in Connecticut launched a “Stop the Gas and Food Tax” campaign, which characterizes an effort by 13 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a plan to “punish” the middle class. The effort their ire was directed at, the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program (TCI-P), contains provisions to cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

    The post Disinformation Campaigns Target State Climate Initiatives appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper has warned the country against complacency over the covid-19 pandemic and to look to Fiji for an example of how things can easily go wrong.

    In an editorial today, The New Zealand Herald has also criticised the government over its communication strategy and failure to counter a disinformation campaign threatening the national vaccination rollout.

    “Complacency is our greatest enemy, particularly while the director-general of health continues to report no community transmissions in his regular briefings and with just 5 percent of the population having received a second vaccine shot,” said the Herald.

    “Fiji has discovered geographical isolation is not enough to avoid the increased transmissible variants of covid. Vigilance and adherence to official advice remains crucial as the best mechanism we have to the defeating this damned thing.

    “Raising our prevention and contact tracing game after it has arrived is too late.”

    From early on in the covid-19 pandemic, it was obvious that consistent communication was essential for New Zealanders to maintain compliance with key measures to limit transmission of the virus, said the newspaper.

    “Now we know ‘influencers’ were deployed in Auckland’s March [2020] lockdown to push messages into social media as the government fretted about online posts undermining the pandemic response,” the Herald said.

    Jeopardising NZ’s response
    “It appears it was thought overly harsh critics condemning infected people for not self-isolating could truly jeopardise the country’s response. A newly released Cabinet paper said ‘social licence’ was crucial to a strong covid-19 response.

    “Such hostility could undermine the overall pandemic response, wrote covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. ‘Public reaction to particular individuals who have not used the covid-19 Tracer app or otherwise failed to follow good practices suggests a possible erosion of this.’

    “So, the Government sought help from social media figures who were deemed to have sway in Māori, Pacific, Indian and youth communities. Hosts from radio stations Tarana, Flava, The Edge and Hauraki subsequently posted reassuring photos and messages, using the campaign’s hashtag #stayinforit.

    “Contrast this social media influencing tactic with the lack of action around countering misinformation on the vaccine.

    “Most will have by now seen or heard of the leaflets put in mailboxes in a concerted campaign to raise unfounded fears about the vaccine and undermine the protection offered by mass immunity.

    “The flyer was produced and distributed by a group called Voices for Freedom. Co-founder Claire Deeks ran as a candidate for Advance New Zealand at the last election, and was third on the party list.

    “The group claimed to be putting out two million flyers to coincide with the government’s vaccine campaign.”

    Information investigation
    The Herald noted how investigative journalist David Fisher had sought any communications about what government agencies might do to address the false claims being disseminated about the vaccine and was told “the information does not exist”.

    “For all its efforts and expense, Voices for Freedom failed to register as a threat.”

    The government itself had not always been clear in all its communications, with some “casual contacts” of positive cases being upgraded to “casual plus” without announcement or explanation in March this year, the newspaper said.

    “The Prime Minister was also accused of neglecting her own advice to ‘be kind’ when she publicly criticised a covid-infected person who continued to work at a KFC store.

    “Ultimately, the government is well aware the greatest risk is the public passively drifting off the necessary precautions rather than active resistance.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.