A Killing in Iran: Who Gains From Yet Another Assassination?

By Philip Giraldi

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

It is not often that one can agree with the pronouncements made by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan, but his tweeted comment on the killing of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh suggesting that the incident “…was a criminal act & highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict. Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits” was both restrained and reasonable. Or it was at least so until sentence two, which was clearly intended to attack Donald Trump and praise the incoming Joe Biden administration, which Brennan just might be seeking to join.

Bearing in mind that John Brennan was the guiding hand behind President Barack Obama’s kill lists of Americans who were marked for death by drone it is difficult to understand what moral high ground he seeks to occupy in the slaying of Fakhrizadeh. Brennan, who was a leading critic of Trump and who may have led the clandestine effort to undermine his election and term in office, subsequently found himself in an exchange of tweets with Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz which degenerated into a trading of insults. Cruz responded “It’s bizarre to see a former head of the CIA consistently side with Iranian zealots who chant ‘Death to America.’ And reflexively condemn Israel. Does Joe Biden agree?” This produced a riposte by Brennan that “It is typical for you to mischaracterize my comment. Your lawless attitude & simple-minded approach to serious national security matters demonstrate that you are unworthy to represent the good people of Texas.”

The assassination of Fakhrizadeh, the “father of Iran’s nuclear program,” took place on a road near the town of Absard to the east of Tehran. According to initial accounts, the Iranian scientist, who has long been targeted by name and in public fora by Israel, was traveling in an SUV together with his wife plus bodyguards and a driver. Initial reports suggested that there was a Nissan truck parked on the opposite side of the road loaded with what appeared to be wood, though it may have turned out that the wood was concealing a bomb which may have been triggered by a signal from a surveillance satellite. The bomb was detonated to disable Fakhrizadeh’s vehicle before an attack on the car by five or six gunmen with automatic weapons who had emerged from a vehicle following the SUV began, again according to initial reports, including reporting by eye witnesses. The Iranian official news agency FARS is now claiming, however, that the attack was carried out by a remote controlled machine gun concealed on the truck, which subsequently exploded, and no human attackers were involved. It is presumed that the bodyguards and driver were killed in the exchange. Fakhrizadeh was badly wounded and died in hospital shortly thereafter. Photos of the SUV reveal shattered windows, blood streaks, and numerous bullet holes as well as other damage from what may have been the bomb.

Iranian news agencies are now reporting that at least one of the attackers has been arrested, and if that is true he will surely be made to talk regarding what he knows. They are also reporting that two of the assailants were killed in the exchange with the bodyguards, which, if true, means they will possibly be identified. Clearly, the attack was well planned, was able to employ considerable resources, and was based on intelligence that would be very hard to obtain, particularly as the Iranian government was taking steps to protect Fakhrizadeh, to include details of his travels.

The killing comes just two weeks after intelligence officials confirmed that Al Qaeda’s second-highest leader Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah was shot dead together with his daughter by alleged Israeli supplied assassins on a motorcycle on August 7th. The hit was reportedly carried out at the request of the United States based on Abdullah’s claimed involvement in the 1998 deadly attacks on two U.S. Embassies in East Africa. The claim that Iran has been harboring al-Qaeda is already being used by the Trump White House to justify increased pressure on Iran and it might possibly even serve as part of a casus belli.

The two assassinations are not linked except perhaps in terms of sending a message to high level Iranians that they are not safe even in their own country even when they are given bodyguards. The claim that Fakhrizadeh was in charge of a secret Iranian weapons program, made regularly by Israel and the U.S., is not generally believed by most authorities. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which nuclear armed Israel is not, and its facilities are subject to regular unannounced inspections.

Likewise, the killing of Qods Force commander General Qassem Soleimani in January in a U.S. drone attack was intended more regarding sending a message concerning possible consequences of reckless behavior than it was about actually killing one man. Whatever programs Fakrizadeh and Soleimani were involved in will continue without them. Nevertheless, assassination of Iranians linked to the country’s former and current nuclear program has been Israeli policy since 2010. As many as a dozen Iranian scientists and technicians reportedly have been killed. So-called “targeted killings” have been a regular feature of Israel’s “national defense” strategy. In addition to the Iranians, at least seventy Palestinians have been assassinated.

Though Israel has clearly ordered the assassinations, it is generally believed that the actual preparation for the attacks have been carried out by Mojahedin e Khalq or MEK, a Marxist cult that came into prominence at the time of the Iranian revolution against the Shah. It is generally regarded as a terrorist group that once was virulently anti-American and killed a number of U.S. officials. MEK is a curious hybrid creature in any event in that it pretends to be an alternative government option for Iran even though it is despised by nearly all Iranians. At the same time, it is greatly loved by the Washington Establishment which would like to see the Mullahs deposed and replaced by something more amenable to western and Israeli worldviews.

MEK is run like a cult by its leader Maryam Rajavi, with a number of rules that restrict and control the behavior of its members. One commentary likens membership in MEK to a modern-day equivalent of slavery. The group currently operates out of a secretive, heavily guarded 84-acre compound in Albania that is covertly supported by the United States, as well as through a “political wing” front office in Paris, where it refers to itself as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

MEK, which is financially supported by Saudi Arabia, stages events in the United States in Europe where it generously pays politicians like John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and Elaine Chao to make fifteen-minute speeches praising the organization and everything it does. It’s paying of inside the Beltway power brokers proved so successful that it was removed from the State Department terrorist list in 2012 by Hillary Clinton even though it had killed Americans in the 1970s. MEK also finds favor in Washington because it is used by Israel as a resource for anti-Iranian terrorism acts currently, including assassinations carried out in Tehran. Israel, in fact, directs most terrorist acts carried out by MEK inside Iran.

So those are the players and, at first glance, one might reasonably come to the Ockham’s razor conclusion, i.e. that Israel ordered MEK to kill Fakhrizadeh, an order which was then executed. But that would be to ignore some of the politics currently playing out in Washington. First of all, Israel would not have carried out the high-level assassination without the consent of the White House. Indeed, U.S. intelligence resources might well have played a key role in locating the Iranian scientist. Second, the Trump Administration has clearly adopted a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran, which has included strangling the country’s economy through sanctions, condoning Israeli attacks in Syria and elsewhere, and destabilizing moves, to include assassinations, designed to make the nation’s leadership both vulnerable and nervous. It is the application of an Israeli strategic doctrine referred to as “Campaigns Between Wars,” meaning constant aggression to erode an enemy’s ability to fight without actually crossing a line that would start a shooting war.

A direct role by the Trump Administration in the assassination should not be ruled out as it is clearly seeking to harden Iranian antipathy towards any new comprehensive arms control or nuclear agreement with the incoming Biden team. Trump himself reportedly raised the possibility of bombing Iran earlier this month, though he was talked out of it by his national security team, but the Israeli Army meanwhile is on alert in case of an American attack. There are confirmed reports that B-52 bombers, capable of deploying the 30,000 pound penetrator bombs that can destroy targets deep underground, have been sent to the Middle East, presumably to Qatar where the U.S. has its principal airbase in the region. They would presumably be used against Iran’s main nuclear development site at Natanz.

Israel is in a strong position right now. Iran has significant military resources to respond to the killing, including the drones and missiles it developed and used in September 2019 to devastate the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in eastern Saudi Arabia. But if it does react robustly to the assassination and sparks a conflict that inevitably would include the United States, it would be a war that Bibi Netanyahu has long sought, destroying Iran at what he hopes would be minimal cost to Israel. If Iran does not respond, Israel will no doubt push the White House to be even more aggressive in its remaining time in office while hardliners within Iran will also demand an end to any agreements with western powers. Taken together, that would make sure that any attempt by the Biden administration to engage diplomatically with Iran would fail. The ultimate provocation by the United States would, of course, be to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unthinkable? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is already reporting that “U.S. President Donald Trump has more than a month before he leaves the White House, and on his way out he could set the world on fire. In starting this conflagration, it seems as though he plans to strike every match in the box. Standing beside him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be more than happy to lend him a lighter.”

Are Americans Rational?

By Dmitry Orlov

Source: Club Orlov

I’ve been holding back on commenting on current events because they are far too silly. At this point it is safe to say that the elections in the US have been thoroughly botched and that, no matter who is ultimately chosen as president for the next four years, enough questions will remain in the minds of enough people to thoroughly delegitimize the national leadership in the eyes of at least half the country.

Just this morning I got a missive from Paul Craig Roberts containing the following bullet points:

• Joe Biden’s Twitter account has 20 million followers. Trump’s Twitter account has 88.8 million followers.

• Joe Biden’s Facebook account has 7.78 million followers. Trump’s Facebook account has 34.72 million followers. How likely is it that a person with four to five times the following of his rival lost the election?

• Joe Biden, declared by the biased presstitutes to be president by landslide, gave a Thanksgiving Day message and only 1,000 people watched his live statement. Where is the enthusiasm?

• Trump’s campaign appearances were heavily attended and that Biden’s were avoided. Somehow a candidate who could not draw supporters to his campaign appearances won the presidency.

• Despite Biden’s total failure to animate voters during the presidential campaign, he received 15 million more votes than Barack Obama did in his 2012 re-election.

• Biden won despite underperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vote in every urban US county, but outperformed Clinton in Democrat-controlled Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, the precise cities where the most obvious and most blatant electoral fraud was committed.

• Biden won despite receiving a record low share of the Democrat primary vote compared to Trump’s share of the Republican primary vote.

• Biden won despite Trump bettering his 2016 vote by ten million votes and Trump’s record support from minority voters.

• Biden won despite losing the bellwether counties that have always predicted the election outcome and the bellwether states of Ohio and Florida.

• Biden won in Georgia, a completely red state with a red governor and legislature both House and Senate. Somehow a red state voted for a blue president.

• Biden won despite the Democrats losing representation in the House.

• In Pennsylvania 47 memory cards containing more than 50,000 votes are missing.

• Pennsylvania 1.8 million ballots were mailed out to voters, but 2.5 million mail-in ballots were counted.

Roberts is a Republican and therefore believes that the Democrats stole the election. A Democrat, once it turns out that Trump won after all, would believe the opposite. But that makes no difference because, as I keep repeating, the US is not a democracy and it doesn’t matter who is its president.

It is not a democracy because the vast majority of votes—all Democratic votes in Republican states and all Republican votes in Democratic states—are simply thrown away. That’s roughly half the electorate who have no chance of making their vote count in the state where they live. Of course, they could move to a different state, in which case their vote would be thrown away for the opposite reason—lost as part of a superfluously large majority.

This is easy enough to explain to any rational person—but not to the vast majority of Americans, for whom such logic goes in one ear and comes out the other. In short, they are not rational. Worse than that, their leaders are not rational either. This brings us to the second point—that it doesn’t matter who is president.

Trump keeps talking about making America great—by bringing manufacturing back from China. Except that the opposite has happened over the past four years: China’s industrial production has continued to grow (although more slowly than before) while in the US it has continued to decline. Nor is is there any reason at all to think that this is going to change over the next four years.

Biden keeps talking about America continuing as the leader of the free world—except that America is no longer the leader of much of anything and there is no reason to think that anything can be done to reverse this slide. Thus, no matter who becomes (or remains) president, the US administration will continue to wallow in nostalgia while steadfastly refusing to admit defeat.

This defeat has multiple elements. First, the shale oil gamble is over. Drilling rates have collapsed, many shale oil companies are bankrupt, and US oil production is set to plummet from over 12 million barrels per day at its peak to around 5 million by next June (according to Art Berman, whose opinion I trust). After that point the US will once again become a major oil importer, and since no other swing producers are available this will drive up oil prices, perhaps beyond the previous all-time record of $150/barrel, resulting in a US oil import bill of half a trillion dollars a year. But it is doubtful whether that much extra oil can be produced at almost any price.

Second, national bankruptcy is looming ever closer. The federal government now overspends its revenues by a factor of two or more, meaning that for every dollar of federal revenue it borrows and spends at least two. Previously, despite its already ridiculous size and exponential growth rate, US federal debt could be given an appearance of legitimacy because enough foreign buyers could be found for it; but this is no longer the case. And so this debt is looking less and less legitimate because it is being monetized—simply printed into existence—as the Federal Reserve degenerates into a pure pyramid scheme.

Third, the US dollar (along with some other currencies to which it is tied) is poised on the edge of a hyperinflationary wipe-out. In an effort to shore up the economy a great deal of money has been unleashed into the economy and it went chasing after stocks, keeping it from triggering hyperinflation. Thus we have the truly bizarre combination of a record-high stock market along with record-high bankruptcies, foreclosures and evictions. At some point confidence in the stock market will evaporate and all of this notional money will go chasing after anything that isn’t made of paper (with the possible exception of toilet paper). Much of this notional money will evaporate as people liquidate their stock holdings, but enough will remain to result in hoarding and hyperinflation. The US dollar will devalue internationally and the US will lose access to imports.

Fourth, the US has lost its lead militarily, definitely to Russia and possibly to China and Iran. Its major military asset is its aircraft carrier fleet, which is by now completely useless because it can be destroyed using conventional weapons from a safe stand-off distance which is greater than the reach of its aircraft. Consequently, it cannot be deployed close enough to an enemy shore to make its aircraft useful. US military bases, hundreds of which are scattered all over the globe, but mostly clustered along Russia’s and China’s borders, are also useless militarily, as demonstrated by Iran’s rocket attacks against two of them in Iraq. In short, the entire US military is by now more of a liability than an asset—likely to draw the US into a military confrontation which it cannot win.

Now, do you hear these points discussed in the national media, in the course of the election campaign or otherwise? Do these points come up at all in conversations with colleagues, neighbors, friends and family? Are these topics of discussion in high school civics classes? (Wait, what high school civics classes?) No? And yet they are real, and their consequences are at this point unavoidable, and refusing to acknowledge them will only exacerbate their effects.

Collapse is bad enough when you and everyone around you can acknowledge it. But if everyone from the president (pick either one) to the lowliest convenience store clerk is incapable of accepting it as real and thinking through some of the immediate consequences, that makes it much, much worse. I refuse to accept any of the responsibility for this dreadful state of affairs; I’ve been doing all I can to warn people for a decade and a half now. It is now pointless for me to issue any more warnings. All I can do now is watch the inevitable unfold.

Power Is An Illusion, Control Is A Facade

By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.us

This past year in numerous countries the public is being bombarded with lessons in power and control that have been forgotten for generations. I think the majority of westerners in particular have long believed themselves “safe” from totalitarian government, from collectivist micro-management and from communistic cultism. They thought we had moved beyond the nightmares of the 20th century. They thought that the “new world” was going to be more Utopian, and that freedom would grace us naturally along with technological progress.

Sure, in the back of everyone’s subconscious there is the fear that the good times are an illusion and that dystopia is just behind a thin veneer of economic stability and false optimism, but most people do not really think such catastrophes will happen in their lifetime. We are now in the midst of a deliberately over-hyped pandemic, strict national lockdowns, civil unrest, riots, aggressive tech censorship, intrusive government censorship, unprecedented corporate and treasury debt, stagflationary central bank stimulus and the collapse of massive financial bubbles. Yet, I still don’t get the impression that many in the public really grasp the extent of the danger; they still believe that the situation is going to heal itself without any effort or much sacrifice on their part.

This is the first lesson of power: Entire societies can be easily influenced when they suffer from delusions that the bad times will be fleeting, and that governments will keep them safe no matter what.

It is a historically proven pattern that governments tend to CREATE problems instead of solving them, and this is because the power dynamic of government never changes. The politicians we “vote” for are not in control, rather, the elites who fund their campaigns and who permeate their cabinets are in control. Political representatives come and go, but the establishment elites never leave. Therefore, the problems our society faces will remain; they are a direct result of the subversive and perpetual power structure that serves the interest of a select minority rather than the public. The decline of our society into tyranny will not stop until this power structure and the people behind it are erased.

This would actually be a simple thing to achieve if enough people were to accept the truth and take action. The elites, the globalists, the establishment, the “new world order”, whatever you want to call this organization of power mongers, is but a collection of mostly weak and feeble psychopaths and parasites. They are completely out in the open; they proudly proclaim their affiliations and intentions on a regular basis through their host institutions, from the Council on Foreign Relations to Tavistock to Bilderberg to the World Economic Forum, the IMF, the Bank for International Settlements, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, etc. There is very little that is hidden about these people anymore.

But, it is also a sad reality that most people have to hit rock bottom before they embrace the idea that they cannot rely on the corrupt system to save them from harm. And as long as they continue to have blind faith that the system will self correct, they will never act. The elites operate in the open with impunity because they know that human beings are more likely to seek out help from the system than they are to fix a problem for themselves. If someone was to switch off that single mass fantasy, the elites would be gone tomorrow.

The second lesson of power is that perception of consent creates legitimate consent. To put it another way – When people believe that their peers and neighbors have accepted a certain level of tyranny, they too will often accept it so that they don’t stand out or draw attention to themselves as “aberrant”. People seeking power only need to create the illusion of mass consent. Even when the majority of people are against them, the perception of compliance can sometimes overwhelm logic.

Control is usually achieved passively without force. Sometimes you don’t even need the threat of force; sometimes you only need to inspire a fear of standing out among the crowd.

For example, the pandemic has been used the past six months as a tool for creating such a narrative. Mask wearing “rules” are particularly insidious as they conjure illusions of compliance and submission. “Everyone” is wearing a mask, therefore everyone must support medical tyranny. Mask wearing is a complete farce when it comes to the actual science of virology and viral spread. The CDC still does not recommend cloth masks to their own employees and only allows them to use N95 filtered masks. A recent and censored Danish study confirms the reality that masks are mostly useless.

Strictly enforced cloth mask rules have done nothing to stop renewed spikes in infections in multiple countries and US states. The fact that in many places masks are required OUTDOORS despite endless scientific evidence showing that UV light and open air kills microorganisms including viruses shows that the lockdown response has nothing to do with science or saving lives. It is about control.

We can take all logical factors into account, but, for a lot of people, if they see others wearing masks they too will wear a mask simply because they are afraid to be judged by what they perceive to be the majority. The reality is that a majority of people are wearing the masks grudgingly, and they would take them off tomorrow if they knew other people would do the same.

This is why the mainstream media pushes mask wearing propaganda everyday, 24/7. News journalists stand on street corners or in open air parks and wear masks on camera. Politicians wear masks even when on camera in their own homes. Celebrities and companies try to sell the idea that mask wearing is “cool”. Hey, if you don’t wear a mask you could be putting hundreds or thousands of other people at risk and killing their grandmas, right?

The masks do nothing. They achieve nothing in terms of stopping the virus spread or saving lives. This is a fact made obvious by the very infection numbers the establishment holds up as a rationale for the masks. But if the establishment elites through propaganda can convince you to wear a mask everyday, then this opens the door to them dictating many other aspects of your life. The masks are just a gateway into more destructive mandates.

The solution to this type of tyranny is to stop caring what other people think, especially when the facts are on your side. In the town where I live, the vast majority of people have said no to the mask restrictions. If someone wants to wear a mask because they believe it will protect them, that’s fine. But, no one is going to tell us we have to wear them “for our own good”. That said, even if I was the ONLY person not wearing a mask around town, I would not care if it bothered others. Your credo has to be “try and force me to wear a mask, and watch what happens…”

The third lesson of power is that force only leads to control if you respond with submission. A group of people can beat you or even kill you, but they can’t force you to comply if you do not fear for your own life.

I find that the use of force by tyrants is predicated on the assumption that the people they are seeking to control will not fight back effectively. As soon as people do fight back effectively, the tyrant is shocked. Most tyrants rise to power, not because they have won multiple battles and subdued their opponents, but because they never had to fight in the first place. Or, they win a handful of easy battles, often staged to look more victorious than they really were, and then use those mediocre wins as a means to terrify all future opposition into not fighting. The tyrants start to believe their own lies and presume their own invincibility.

Predators do not seek out hard targets, they seek out weak targets. The solution to tyrants is for the hard targets to seek them out and strike them in the midst of their confidence. When predators get hit back they have a habit of running away.

But, this requires people who do not live in fear of what might happen when they fight back. The concept of sacrificing comfort (or much worse) can’t be an issue. Fear fades away when a person fights for something more than himself. It’s not always about personal survival, sometimes it’s about the survival of future generations, or the survival of a set of principles. As that fear disappears, so does the illusion of control that tyrants rely on.

The fourth lesson of power is that ideals either stem from human conscience, or they do not. And if they do not, then they are not ideals worth adopting or fighting over. The conscience of the average person is not as ambiguous and changeable as the establishment would like you to believe. A lion’s share of human beings operate on a certain set of inherent morals and principles that are universally shared; they do not need to be taught these principles, they are born knowing them. If these rules were not ingrained into our psyches our species would have self destructed thousands of years ago.

Establishment elites would like you to believe that all ideals are a product of environment, and that those who control the environment control the morals of the people by extension. This is a lie. Values such as freedom exist even in the most oppressive environments, and people seek it out even when the risk is overwhelming. Empathy is also inherent for most of us, but a certain percentage of people are born without the capacity for it. The REAL fight in the middle of any power struggle is the fight between those who are born with conscience, values and empathy, and those who are born without these grounding characteristics.

Psychopathic tyrants desperately want to prove that all other people are just as devoid of humanity and soul as they are. They want to prove that the voice of conscience that guides us is a mask we wear to pretend that we are not evil at our core. Control comes from the fallacy that we are dependent on our environments to tell us who we are as individuals. Control comes from the notion that morals are relative, and that principles are social constructs.

Conscience is inherent, but it is also a choice. You have the free will to listen to it, or ignore it. If a tyrant can convince you to ignore the voice of your own conscience then the only other guide in life is your environment. And, if that tyrant dominates every aspect of your environment, then he now has the power to rewrite your moral code, at least temporarily. You can be made to do terrible things you would not otherwise do, or support destructive causes and ideologies you would not otherwise support.

The ultimate totalitarian power is the power to make people forget their own inner voice. The ultimate tool against evil is to listen to that voice and to not be afraid of the supposed consequences.

The question of the facade of power is about to become the defining question of our epoch as the elitist establishment accelerates their agenda for greater centralized control of our lives. The truth they do not want you to understand is that they have no power. They have nothing. We could defy their mandates anytime we wish. We could do away with them tomorrow if we wanted. They are of no use to humanity, they serve no valuable purpose. They only seek to feed like vampires on the masses and fulfill their deranged fantasies of conquest. Sooner or later they will have to be dealt with – The sooner the better.

Oligarchic Imperialism Is The New Dominant World Religion

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

I was just watching a gaggle of blue-checkmarked narrative managers attack progressive commentators Katie Halper and Briahna Joy Gray on Twitter for platforming antiwar journalist Rania Khalek on the grounds that Khalek is an “Assadist”, which is imperialist for “someone who opposes western imperialism in Syria”.

At no point do any of these narrative managers bother to address the actual things these women were discussing together or why anything Khalek was saying in their video conference was wrong. They do not feel the need to do such a thing, because they have this label, “Assadist”, which they can pin on one of the speakers and thereby reject one hundred percent of her work and one hundred percent of the people who give her a platform from which to speak. They feel no need to address the arguments, because they have a label which they all agree means they can completely un-person someone who opposes western regime change agendas in a specific region.

There are many such labels that are used to exclude people from positions of influence and power for simply disagreeing with the official doctrine of status quo oligarchic imperialism in any way. “Assadist” is one of them; it allows someone to be completely marginalized from platforms of significant influence without anyone ever needing to admit that they’re simply depriving anyone of a platform who criticized the way the US power alliance used proxy armies and propaganda campaigns in a campaign to topple Damascus. “Kremlin asset” is another, as are “conspiracy theorist”, “tankie”, or “[insert imperialism-targeted leader] apologist”.

In reality, these labels are interchangeable with the word “heretic”. They mean “Someone who disagrees with the mainstream consensus religion of oligarchic imperialism”.

In ages past people would be excluded from positions of influence and power if they did not belong to the dominant religion in that place and time. If you were a Jew living in the Holy Roman Empire, for example, the door would be closed to you from ever holding a position of power or influence over the mainstream population. In the same exact way, those who do not espouse the mainstream orthodoxy of continual military expansionism and status quo politics are cut off from major positions in politics and media using the modern-day equivalent of the “heathen” label. It’s a very old dynamic adapted for a new world.

Oligarchic imperialism is the new dominant world religion. It is the scripture that everyone reads from. It is what shapes our culture. It is what holy wars are fought over and acts of terrorism committed for. It’s what power is built around. It’s what you’re branded a heretic for rejecting. It’s just as fake as any other religion, just as crafted toward the advantage of the powerful as any other religion, and just as dependent upon blind faith in insubstantial narratives as any other religion. But it lets its adherents feel smug and superior to people who believe in those primitive older religions.

Adherents of the old dominant religion used to read the Bible; adherents of the new dominant religion read The New York Times. Adherents of the old dominant religion used to go to church on Sunday; adherents of the new dominant religion go to Hollywood movies. Adherents of the old dominant religion fought in the crusades; adherents of the new dominant religion kill families with drones and Tomahawk missiles overseas. Adherents of the old dominant religion used to burn heretics at the stake; adherents of the new dominant religion imprison journalists and deplatform “Assadists”, “Putin apologists” and “conspiracy theorists” so their ideas don’t infect the rest of the flock.

These labels exist because if mainstream platforms admitted that they refuse access to literally anyone who disagrees with status quo oligarchic imperialism, they would have to admit that they are not the objective arbiters of absolute reality they portray themselves as being, but are in fact propagandists for a very specific belief system. That they are not tasked with the responsibility of reporting the news, but with promoting the doctrine of the new dominant world religion. That they aren’t news reporters, but high priests.

Religion isn’t disappearing, it has just changed its form. The world has become too small for widespread belief in omnipotent deities creating the universe in six days and controlling all our affairs, so now people tell new fairy tales about a liberal world order which must be preserved by a beneficent superpower and its allies. In reality it is nothing other than propaganda for a murderous, tyrannical theocratic empire, of just the sort once presided over by Rome.

Western imperialism is worse than every single issue the mass media are screaming in your face about on any given day. It is without exaggeration worse than 100 percent of those issues. If people could really grasp the horrific nature of imperial warmongering, the wars would be forced to end. It is the job of the imperial high priests to prevent this from happening, which is why they use dismissive labels to marginalize anyone who might be inclined to remind you of this.

In a murderous, tyrannical theocratic empire, the only sane position to hold is that of heresy and apostasy. Hopefully one day mankind will open its eyes to reality and require no blind faith in any artificial belief constructs of any kind.

Generation Numb: How Losing My Phone Exposed Me to the Pain of My Peers

This terrible void of which everyone stays pleasantly unobservant is the unofficial sickness of Gen Z.

By Ben Scheer

Source: ScheerPost

I hadn’t planned to give up my smartphone. After all, I was starting my sophomore year of college and I had not met a single adult who lives without one and definitely no other 19-year-old. If you haven’t noticed, it is part of the culture. A few weeks into the semester, I forgot my phone (a Google Pixel 2, for all you phone nerds) in the backseat of an Uber on my way back from shopping off campus. This would lead to an opening to consider a break from the phone and everything that comes with it.

I remember feeling frustrated at myself for being so absentminded and immediately rushed to track it down, anxiously calling the driver from a friend’s phone. While I listened to the open ringing on the line I began to think about this one technology’s central role in my life.

That gateway to other worlds.

Over the next few days I continued to hope my phone would come back to me and also thought further into its role in my relationships. I felt how hindering it was in communicating with the people I love.

How it had required me to be always ready to pluck it from my pocket, pull my focus and as a result, never be truly present. I saw in that reflection the possibility for healthier relationships, less dependent on constant digital connection.

More free, less reliant.

Sure, there were a thousand things that would be made more challenging and tedious, but it would be worth it if I could be more present for my own life.

Days later, after I had given up hope of seeing it again, I used a friend’s phone to call my dad to tell him.

“I will get you another one, what kind do you want?” was the first thing he said.

“Actually I think I’m good,” I responded, to his surprise. “I can write you and my mom by email. If we want to talk, I can call you from my computer.”

Quickly, I started to feel the change. My mood and habits became clearer; I felt happier, more grounded, less looming anxiety, feeling more alone and with myself, more conscious of my space and those in it.

Being alone led to more opportunities for reflection and boredom. I felt calmer, and my walking and pace of day actually slowed down. It is hard to describe how it changed the patterns in my brain but I could feel it readjusting, as it does if you spend a week in the woods or on a beach. One thing I felt was that my days were longer and more connected from one moment to the next.

I also became more aware of the moods and feelings of others around me and was suddenly terrified to see how dependent my peers were on all their screens, and, looking back just a bit, how consumed I, too, had been.

Something else bubbled up from my unconscious: My expectations of college differed from what I was seeing. Between talking to older relatives and seeing college life on TV and in the movies, I was expecting a . . . BIT MORE JOY! Young souls, free minds, positive energy, community. I was seeking some bright spark in the people around me, yet all too often what I saw was dull, void, distractible, unthinking, unfeeling people enveloped in the world of their screens instead of being in community and conversing with the people around them.

Yes, that is harsh. It is also what I see.

So much lost human potential.

I want something or someone to blame, but maybe what I should really be blaming is myself for expecting something else. The truth is, though, I feel right in blaming the phones.

It has been over a year since I gave up my smartphone, but I remember vividly when looking at my phone for hours a day seemed normal to me. I was content to stare at the screen for hours, doing the same thing: Watching mildly entertaining videos or mashing game buttons, swiping on Tinder, scrolling on IG, surfing memes and YouTube videos. In many ways, it’s a drug too good to give up, seemingly a harmless drug, but no. We have opened Pandora’s box of marvels and there is no way to close it now.

We are continually wanting what we do not yet have, an innate motivation amplified and rerouted by capitalism’s hyperdrive marketing engines. A good fix for this constant yearning, or any discomfort is to drown it out with distractions. Feeling an uncontrollable emotion? Existential itch? Low-grade anxiety? No problem: Try scrolling on the social of your choice for a bit, trust me, it takes the edge off.

Trauma or poverty, pain or loneliness, all manner of worry, we have a cure! Or at least the emotional response can be staved off long enough for you to find the next thing to click.

This terrible void of which  everyone stays pleasantly unobservant is a part of me as well, the unofficial sickness of my generation. (COVID-19 will be the official one, memorialized in our virtual yearbooks.) This hole, this pit, that is created from not knowing one’s self, not trusting one’s self, or not allowing feelings. So distracted that these insecurities that we act on every day are a mystery. That you cannot see how fundamentally OK everything actually is because you have music constantly in your ear and a fear that, in silence, your own thoughts would be too scary. The sickening thought that your true feelings for someone were no more than an act of comfort-seeking desperation and that “love” is a lifesaver from yourself.

I can’t blame anyone though. The distractions surround us, they surround the people we are with. The collective unfeeling is so great, so vast, it cracked me open, actually made me cry often once I allowed myself to experience it. I felt like I was losing my footing in the world in which I had grown up. Disconnected from my past and unsure of where we were going.

(Side note: If you haven’t yet watched The Social Dilemma, go do that, it’s worth it.)

Walking into a small college class to see no one looking at each other or chatting, the blank vacant stares. The soft glow. It felt … confusing? Why were so many interesting young people ignoring one another? What was a classroom like before these tools were available and allowed everywhere? Why were the screens so celebrated?

Then my confusion grew, and from it rage and pain. These emotions danced together, fueled me and crushed me. I saw, for the first time, the real power that the phones held. Yes, a power we had given them, but a power nonetheless. The power to keep people who were 500 miles apart tethered to one another, or keep people sitting right next to each other brutally apart.

Who can I blame? It is just the world I have been born into, and the technology- and profit-driven changes are coming faster every year. We live in the future with brain equivalents in our pockets and a web that contains all of our collective knowledge but reveals the worst of what we are and so little of the love we contain and of which we are capable.

Is the internet a good idea? Are phones good for humans? These are not questions we have answered or even barely thought to ask in the mainstream of our culture. Of course they are, what else could they be? Progress! Faster communication! More knowledge! More speed! More fun! We will all be more efficient and entertained, and from that we will live better lives.

NO! Stop, slow down. Please. These gadgets, these everywhere-anytime screens, are ruining the minds of the people who have been mesmerized since they were only little children.

To clarify: not ruining, in that people are made stupid (although it definitely does not help develop our attention span), but rather ruining our emotional capacity and spiritual selves. And these limits fetter us as we are already so strained by the pain we are able to see through our little windows; we don’t have a moment to feel, to feel our own pain, or that of our friends.

Or, for that matter, the pain of the world, or the impact of our constant consumption, or where all this STUFF comes from and where it ends up, or the pain of our history and centuries of exploitation of other humans and nature from which all this wealth originally was derived.

Being human is objectively great. We can use language and words to describe how we feel. We can feel the sun on our face and take in the taste of a thousand foods, dance to every song. Feel great pain and great happiness. Yet, all the time I see this discomfort, unrest and fear in my most distracted friends. It is coming from the disconnection from what they are feeling, a disconnection from being.

This is the worst theft of modern-day, first-world life: the theft of being present.

The phones and distractions and speed create this disconnection from the simple fact that you are actually OK, better then OK — you are alive and can feel and that is a gift to cherish.

Worse than the days of sadness are the days of not feeling anything. Some people are depressed not because anything is wrong but because they are numb to their feelings, too distracted and avoidant to feel them; avoidant, and scared of what might happen if they let themselves feel.

Try this: Really study those you love, let their face become new to you, again, and become fascinated in the way they move. Feel the wonder of being with another human.

After more than a year without a smartphone, I am more hopeful than I was in those first few months. Not to say that everything is all right, far from it. Here in the United States our technology has allowed for multiple realities to coexist alongside one another and I don’t see a clear path out of that problem. Distraction and narrow self-interest prevent us from seeing and grappling with the apocalyptic future climate change can bring in a much shorter time frame than even most globally aware people are willing to accept.

However, I do know that change is a constant and I am healed by looking past my own lifetime and by all the simple beauties of life and living. In the end, these technologies do NOT define us. We can work together to change how we coexist.

 


Postscript: For those who are interested in also letting go of your smartphone, I would recommend downgrading to a flip-phone or phone of a similar level. I now walk around the world with a thick, red brick through which I can communicate with my work and family in case of emergencies. 

Saturday Matinee: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Review: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

By Jessica Winter

Source: Film Comment

When is the audience allowed to laugh at a serious movie? How do you gauge whether the laughter expresses surprise, shock, nervousness, disdain, feigned superiority, genuine mirth, or some combination thereof? Take Werner Herzog’s films with his best fiend, Klaus Kinski: at a New York repertory screening of the deranged-conquistador saga Aguirre, Wrath of God a few years back, the patrons might as well have been watching The Hangover. Were they wrong? Or how about Abel Ferrara’s 1992 hell trip Bad Lieutenant: is it wildly inappropriate to laugh when Harvey Keitel’s depraved cop screams “You ratfucker!” at a church lady he mistakes for Jesus Christ? Is it wildly inappropriate not to laugh?

Herzog’s not-a-remake, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, tacitly addresses this dilemma. Like much of the Herzog-Kinski catalogue, it’s a case study in bug-eyed monomania, and like Ferrara’s original, it’s a descent into the swamplands of the human soul with a drug-addled, quasi-righteous, borderline-insane cop as your tour guide. Unlike either, the reboot appears to be a comedy, or something close to it. BL:POCNO has comedy props: singing iguanas, a “magic crack pipe,” Val Kilmer. It has comic refrains that become funnier with each iteration, including Nicolas Cage’s emphysematic laugh and—for reasons that are tough to explain concisely—the letter “G.” It has punch lines. (“Everything I take is prescription. Except for the heroin.”) It has, for lack of a better term, a Gator Cam. Best of all, it has Cage, a walking sight gag who throws out his back early and spends the rest of the film bathed in a cold sweat of cocaine and Vicodin, lumbering around the post-Katrina landscape like he’s got a jumbo-sized T-square surgically jammed between his shoulder blades.

Cage’s Terence McDonagh comes off as part Kinski-style holy fool, part standard-issue Rogue Cop Who Gets Results. He shuttles crookedly between his adorable coke-whore sweetheart (Eva Mendes), his alcoholic father (Tom Bower), Dad’s beery girlfriend (Jennifer Coolidge, impressively frowsy), and his 24-7 mission pursuing local crack kingpin Big Fate (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner), who’s possibly the most affable and credulous drug lord in cinema history. (This ambitious lad is happy to show new friend McDonagh the would-be flagship of a future real-estate empire: “waterfront condos” sited on some godforsaken loading dock, where Big Fate’s henchmen currently dump the bodies of their victims.)

But BL:POCNO’s shaggy police procedural (the screenwriter is NYPD Blue and Law & Order alumnus William Finkelstein) is almost an afterthought, always secondary to the Passion of the Cage: stations include a pharmacy meltdown worthy of Julianne Moore in Magnolia, a scary-funny parking-lot shakedown of two club kids out on Daddy’s credit cards, and above all, a feat of witness intimidation involving an electric shaver and a nice old lady’s nasal cannula. Pawing absently at his face, sniffing at bags of evidence (usually pocketing them for later), and huffing crack with anyone who’s holding, McDonagh is a mass of primitive, unexamined desires. In the grip of both addiction and workaholism, he has an appetite but not a will, a brain but not a mind. He is, perhaps, reptile brain incarnate—hence those singing iguanas and surveillance-camera-eyed alligators, not to mention the lone little fish swimming sad circles in a glass in a dead boy’s room.

The Herzog version almost entirely eschews the religious iconography of BL 1.0, but McDonagh does occasionally experience the kind of ecstatic self-forgetting that saints and drug addicts have in common. The dopey bliss that washes over Cage’s face when he glimpses a break-dancing ghost or regales his starry-eyed girlfriend with childhood tales of “buried treasure” is the happiest gift this erratic actor has given us in a long time. Shot in New Orleans largely for the tax break, labeled Bad Lieutenant largely because the producers had rights to the brand name, and starring an actor who, not to put too fine a point on it, makes a lot of crap, Herzog’s movie has expedience and exploitation written all over it. But it’s too weird and unhinged and endearing—and, for all its sordid details, too ingenuous—to be anything but a labor of love.

 

Watch the film on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12197641

Corrupt Science and Elite Power: Your Techno-Slavery is Now Imminent

By Robert J. Burrowes

Do you like to believe that scientists are studying the evidence – whether in relation to Covid-19 or anything else – and delivering high quality knowledge that can be used to guide public policymaking so that it might better serve the interests of ordinary people?

It is certainly a comforting idea, isn’t it?

After all, we have long been told that science is an ‘evidence-based approach’ to understanding particular phenomena and thus providing accurate guidance on how to proceed to achieve productive outcomes.

Unfortunately, this claim is just propaganda for the unwary.

In his 2005 study of the validity of published medical research, John P. A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine who also studies scientific research itself, explained why ‘It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false.’ Most? False? Here is what Professor Ioannidis concluded but you can read his entire article, cited below.

For starters, there are a range of what might be labeled methodological problems: inadequate sample size, outcomes so small that reliably gauging impact was impossible (leading, for example, to excessive ‘false positives’), and variability in research designs, definitions, outcomes and analytical modes. In addition, research in ‘hotter’ scientific fields – such as whether the SARS-Cov-2 virus exists or for a Covid-19 vaccine – may cause research teams to prioritize pursuing and disseminating their most impressive ‘positive’ results at the expense of rigor. But, importantly, Ioannidis also identified conflicts of financial and other interests (‘very common in biomedical research’) as well as prejudices (commitment to a particular theory or their own ‘findings’, research conducted purely to give physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure, and suppression via the peer review process of findings that refute their own, thus condemning their field to perpetuate false dogma) as explanations why scientific research findings are ‘less likely’ to be true.

In essence, the ‘scientific research’ that avoided/survived all of these hurdles is considerably less than we might expect and certainly less than half. See ‘Why Most Published Research Findings Are False’.

So that was in 2005. Do you think that the situation might have improved?

In an article just published in relation to Covid-19 in the British Medical Journal, Kamran Abbasi explains that ‘When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die.’ But is this happening?

Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling.

Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency – a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.

For a discussion of four examples of how the UK’s pandemic response involves suppression of science or scientists, including by simply preventing scientists keen to expose the truth from having access to appropriate mass media outlets, see ‘Covid-19: politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of science’. (And if you want to read more about how this initial corruption was exploited for political and financial gain, see ‘Cronyism and Clientelism: The Tories’ outsourcing of the pandemic response’.)

The most important point of suppression, of course, is the fact that there is no scientific proof that a virus, labeled SARS-Cov-2 exists, as Dr Andrew Kaufman, among others, has been patiently and endlessly explaining from the beginning. For one of his more recent explanations, watch ‘ZERO Evidence that COVID Fulfills Koch’s 4 Germ Theory Postulates – Dr. Andrew Kaufman & Sayer Ji’.

Moreover, according to Dr Kaufman, ‘there is no evidence of anyone dying from any novel illness’. See ‘Unmasking the Lies Around COVID-19: Facts vs Fiction of the Coronavirus Pandemic’. So what has happened?

As Dr Kaufman explains: Early scientific papers on the subject suggested an association (not causation) between a novel coronavirus ‘with human to human transmission and severe human infection’ whereas a subsequent key ‘scientific’ paper that made a claim which helped drive the global response to COVID-19 ‘flat out lied’ about their results: ‘Following the first outbreaks of unexplained pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, a new coronavirus was identified as the causative agent in January 2020.’ See ‘Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19’. In fact, Dr Kaufman points out: ‘they cannot reference any science to back that up whatsoever’.

Moreover, subsequently to this paper, another article – see ‘I study viruses: How our team isolated the new coronavirus to fight the global pandemic’ – declared ‘The emergence of a new coronavirus in a market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 set in motion the pandemic we are now witnessing in 160 countries around the world’. But again, Dr Kaufman counters, ‘no evidence was provided at all’ to support this claim: ‘just flat out lies’. For the details and citation of all the scientific sources for this explanation of how the Covid-19 ‘rumour mill’ got started, see ‘The Rooster in the River of Rats’ or ‘Koch’s Postulates: Have They Been Proven for Viruses?’

Of course, Dr Kaufman is not the only doctor or researcher who has worked tirelessly to expose this lie.

After extensively documenting his case in ‘Flaws in Coronavirus Pandemic Theory’, long-time medical researcher David Crowe noted shortly before his death mid-year that ‘despite the epidemic of testing…. There is no proof that a virus is being detected’. In fact: ‘What is being published in medical journals is not science, every paper has the goal of enhancing the panic by interpreting the data only in ways that benefit the viral theory, even when the data is confusing or contradictory. In other words, the medical papers are propaganda.’

Jon Rappoport, another long-time medical researcher who has been documenting medical fraud for decades, comes to the same conclusion after explaining, again, the complete failure of anyone in the medical industry to purify a unique virus which then causes a unique disease. See ‘Death by killing old people, not COVID – The Basic Deception’.

Meanwhile, do you know what you have? An unproven virus. A fake. A story about a virus.

Therefore, all your diagnostic tests ‘for the new virus’ are a sham. They’re based on something you never demonstrated in the first place.

Therefore, all those people, those elderly people dying for obvious reasons in nursing homes, and in their lonely apartments, and in hospitals all over the world? You obviously have no proof they’re dying from a virus. How could you? You never properly discovered a new virus.

Most notably, perhaps, Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter, the authors of ‘COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless’, wrote to the authors of four of the principal, early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus and each of them in their response ‘concede[d] they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris, pure or impure, or particles of any kind. In other words, the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith, not fact.’

Moreover, Engelbrecht and Demeter also wrote to Dr Charles Calisher, a prominent and veteran virologist, asking if he knew of ‘one single paper in which SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and finally really purified’. His answer? ‘I know of no such a publication. I have kept an eye out for one.’

But you can read the paper by Engelbrecht and Demeter if you want to consider the other efforts they made, unsuccessfully, including by contacting prominent institutions such as the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, to locate documented proof that a purified SARS-CoV-2 virus had been isolated.

If you would like to read more about the non-existence of the virus, including fraudulent attempts to represent it, see ‘Only Poisoned Monkey Kidney Cells “Grew” the “Virus”’ or ‘Dr. Tom Cowan explores the COVID virus invented out of sheer nonsense’.

More fundamentally, according to Dr Stefan Lanka: ‘Contrary to what most people believe, there are no pathogenic viruses.… All claims about viruses as pathogens are wrong and are based on easily recognisable, understandable and verifiable misinterpretations…. A real and complete virus does not exist anywhere in the entire “scientific” literature.’ See ‘The Misconception Called “Virus”: Measles as an example’.

To reiterate in the words of two other authors: ‘there is no original scientific evidence that definitively demonstrates that any virus is the cause of any disease’. See What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong. But you can read more in ‘Dismantling the Virus Theory – The “measles virus” as an example’ and watch the video interview The Real Science of Germs: Do Viruses Cause Disease?

Another option you have if you are seriously interested in the truth is to spend the time to seek out the documented scientific proof that the ‘virus’ labeled SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated, purified and proven to cause a consistent set of disease symptoms among those it ‘infects’, which is then labeled Covid-19. So far, the many of us who have searched for this document – including some of the world’s leading virologists – have not found it.

Suppression of this fact – that there is no SARS-CoV-2 virus and, hence, no Covid-19 disease – is vital, of course, because if everyone knew that there is no Covid-19 disease (and there are simple explanations for the ill-health and deaths: see ‘Halting Our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’), it would be impossible to run the terror campaign that is being conducted to take complete control of our lives in accordance with the longstanding elite plan now manifesting as The Great Reset’ of the World Economic Forum. See also: Covid-19 – The Great Reset.

So I invite you to read the above two WEF documents, both readily available, to see if you like the look of what has been planned for you without your knowledge, involvement or consent

The World Economic Forum and The Great Reset

What is the World Economic Forum and what does it mean by ‘The Great Reset’?

The British nonprofit social justice organization Winter Oak in their article ‘Klaus Schwab and His Great Fascist Reset’ answers the first question by referencing the WEF website:

The WEF describes itself as ‘the global platform for public-private cooperation’, with admirers describing how it creates ‘partnerships between businessmen, politicians, intellectuals and other leaders of society to “define, discuss and advance key issues on the global agenda”.’

The ‘partnerships’ which the WEF creates are aimed at replacing democracy with a global leadership of hand-picked and unelected individuals whose duty is not to serve the public, but to impose the rule of the 1% on that public with as little interference from the rest of us as possible.

So while the World Economic Forum ‘provides a platform for the world’s 1,000 leading companies to shape a better future’ – see Our Partners’ – and pays lip service to its network of ‘communities’, you will find little more than tokenism when it comes to human constituencies that you and I might consider important in any forum genuinely representative of humanity. Constituencies either not represented or under-represented include women; indigenous peoples; people living in poverty or extreme poverty; Muslims; people from Africa, Asia and Central/South America; working class people; small-scale farmers; disabled people and members of the LGBTQIA community. There are others.

So what does ‘The Great Reset’ mean for those of us who are ‘ordinary people’ and, therefore, not involved in its planning? Here is a sample from authors with a non-elite perspective.

Jeremy Loffredo interviewed scholar, environmentalist, food sovereignty advocate and author Dr. Vandana Shiva, which he recorded in the article ‘World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” Plan for Big Food Benefits Industry, Not People’.

Loffredo noted that in Schwab’s book Covid-19 – The Great Reset, he writes ‘global food security will only be achieved if regulations on genetically modified foods are adapted to reflect the reality that gene editing offers a precise, efficient and safe method of improving crops’. In response Shiva disagreed, arguing that the ‘WEF is parading fake science’, and ‘for Mr. Schwab to promote these technologies as solutions proves that The Great Reset is about maintaining and empowering a corporate extraction machine and the private ownership of life.’

‘The Great Reset is about multinational corporate stakeholders at the World Economic Forum controlling as many elements of planetary life as they possibly can. From the digital data humans produce to each morsel of food we eat.’

Referring to the WEF’s partner organization the EAT Forum, an aim of which is ‘to replace wholesome nutritious foods with genetically modified lab creations’ framed as ‘healthy and sustainable’, Shiva observes that ‘EAT’s proposed diet is not about nutrition at all, it’s about big business and it’s about a corporate takeover of the food system.’

Shiva argued that ‘all of the science’ shows that diets should be centered around regional and geographical biodiversity.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky in his article The Covid “Pandemic”: Destroying People’s Lives. Engineered Economic Depression. Global “Coup d’Etat”?’ outlines some essential elements of the nature of this global coup:

It’s the destruction of people’s lives. It is the destabilization of civil society. And for What?

The Lies are sustained by a massive media disinformation campaign. 24/7, Incessant and repetitive ‘Covid alerts’ for the last ten months. … It is a process of social engineering…. The entire urban services economy is in crisis…. Free Speech is suppressed.

The lockdown narrative is supported by media disinformation, online censorship, social engineering and the fear campaign. Medical doctors who question the official narrative are threatened. They lose their jobs. Their careers are destroyed.

Those who oppose the government lockdown are categorized as ‘anti-social psychopaths’….

In colleges and universities, the teaching staff is pressured to conform and endorse the official covid narrative. Questioning the legitimacy of the lockdown in online ‘classrooms’ could lead to dismissal.

Google is marketing the Big Lie. The opinions of prominent scientists who question the lockdown, the face-mask or social distancing are ‘taken down’….

The March 11 2020 Lockdown project uses lies and deception to ultimately impose a Worldwide totalitarian regime, entitled ‘Global Governance’ (by unelected officials)…. All of which is spearheaded by the installation of a global totalitarian State which is intent upon breaking all forms of protest and resistance.

The Covid vaccination program (including the embedded digital passport) is an integral part of a global totalitarian regime….

The UN system is also complicit. It has endorsed ‘global governance’ and The Great Reset.

In his article ‘Who Pressed the Great Reset Button?’ Dr. Joseph Mercola explained that:

The Great Reset refers to a global agenda to monitor and control the world through digital surveillance. You’ll be tied to it through an electronic ID linked to your bank account and health records, and a social credit ID that will end up dictating every facet of your life.

Not one area of life will be left untouched by The Great Reset plan, which aims to reform everything from government, energy and finance to food, medicine, real estate, policing – even how we interact with our fellow human beings.

The globalist technocracy is using the COVID-19 pandemic to bypass democratic accountability, override opposition, accelerate their agenda and to impose it on the public against our will.

Whitney Webb in her article US – UK Intel Agencies Declare Cyber War on Independent Media’ has also written extensively on aspects of The Great Reset coup and in this article highlights the hazards associated with vaccination and the efforts to silence those critical of it.

In just the past week, the national-security states of the United States and United Kingdom have discreetly let it be known that the cyber tools and online tactics previously designed for use in the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ are now being repurposed for use against information sources promoting ‘vaccine hesitancy’ and information related to Covid-19 that runs counter to their state narratives….

Both countries are preparing to silence independent journalists who raise legitimate concerns over pharmaceutical industry corruption or the extreme secrecy surrounding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccination efforts, now that Pfizer’s vaccine candidate is slated to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by month’s [November’s] end.

Pfizer’s history of being fined billions for illegal marketing and for bribing government officials to help them cover up an illegal drug trial that killed eleven children (among other crimes) has gone unmentioned by most mass media outlets, which instead have celebrated the apparently imminent approval of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine without questioning the company’s history or that the mRNA technology used in the vaccine has sped through normal safety trial protocols and has never been approved for human use. Also unmentioned is that the head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Patrizia Cavazzoni, is the former Pfizer vice president for product safety who covered up the connection of one of its products to birth defects.

Essentially, the power of the state is being wielded like never before to police online speech and to deplatform news websites to protect the interests of powerful corporations like Pfizer and other scandal-ridden pharmaceutical giants as well as the interests of the US and UK national-security states, which themselves are intimately involved in the Covid-19 vaccination endeavor.

In an earlier article, Coronavirus Gives a Dangerous Boost to DARPA’s Darkest Agenda’ Webb pointed out that:

Technology developed by the Pentagon’s controversial research branch [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] is getting a huge boost amid the current coronavirus crisis, with little attention going to the agency’s ulterior motives for developing said technologies, their potential for weaponization or their unintended consequences.…

Those who are fearful and desperate will not care that the vaccine may include nanotechnology or have the potential to genetically modify and re-program their very being, as they will only want the current crisis that has upended the world to stop.

In this context, the current coronavirus crisis appears to be the perfect storm that will allow DARPA’s dystopian vision to take hold and burst forth from the darkest recesses of the Pentagon into full public view. DARPA’s transhumanist vision for the military and for humanity presents an unprecedented threat, not just to human freedom, but an existential threat to human existence and the building blocks of biology itself.

Tessa Lena in her article ‘The Great Reset for Dummies: Where do we go from here?’ explains:

The practical aim of the Great Reset is to fundamentally restructure the world’s economy and geopolitical relations based on two assumptions: one, that every element of nature and every life form is a part of the global inventory (managed by the allegedly benevolent state, which, in turn, is owned by several suddenly benevolent wealthy people, via technology) – and two, that all inventory needs to be strictly accounted for: be registered in a central database, be readable by a scanner and easily ID’ed, and be managed by AI, using the latest ‘science.’ The goal is to count and then efficiently manage and control all resources, including people, on an unprecedented scale, with unprecedented digital precision – all while the masters keep indulging, enjoying vast patches of conserved nature, free of unnecessary sovereign peasants and their unpredictability. The king’s world feels far more predictable and relaxed when the chaos of human subjectivity is contained for good.

Plus, as a potentially lucrative aside, a bunch of these tightly managed ‘assets’ can be also turned into new financial instruments and traded. Game on!

In other words, it’s an ‘efficient’ global feudalism that goes much farther than its medieval brother since the scanner is all-seeing: every person, every mineral, and every berry is digitally tagged and tracked. Under that framework, every peasant has a function that is derived not from the mystery of life, and not from their inner calling – but from AI, the master of efficiency and the servant of the king. Ideally, the peasants can be convinced that it’s good for them (or necessary to be safe, see ‘contact tracing’) and that this is what progress and happiness are like – but if not, there are other ways, from classic violence to virtual prisons to ‘morality pills.’

In his article ‘Analysis: Globalists’ reboot of the world and their plans for us’ Jacob Nordangård outlines his interpretation of what is happening:

The Corona crisis is the trigger for a global coup d’état of monumental dimensions. It is the beginning of a new era, with a new international economic order that risks completely destroying human freedoms. Tyrants have now taken over to forcibly steer us into a ‘climate smart’ and ‘healthy’ world through the World Economic Forum’s new techno-totalitarian roadmap – ‘The Great Reset’….

On June 13, 2019, Klaus Schwab, President of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and UN Secretary-General António Guterres signed a partnership between their two organisations….

The agreement includes six focus areas [and] also states that the WEF’s fourth industrial revolution is an important component in implementing the agenda. Digitisation is seen as the key….

This means that the world’s tech giants (which are part of the WEF working groups) will solve the world’s problems through the use of AI, satellites, robotics, drones and the Internet of Things, and with synthetic food on the menu….

We have paid and will have to pay a high price for something that has been exaggerated beyond all proportions and which has been used as a trigger to introduce a new techno-totalitarian order.

Sarah Westall’s video presentation of the research by Grace Van Berkum – see ‘We are Being Played’ – about the future of global governance in ‘Multi-Decade Globalist Plan’ offers a comprehensive and horrifying view, which is only touched upon here:

The New World Order where there are no borders and only one government…. It is an entire comprehensive, meticulous plan for changing our entire world. No detail has not been addressed…. Covid-19 starts the journey of world globalization.….It is impossible for this crisis to be made only in the last [eleven] months. The sections on global governance and the fourth industrial revolution have been planned for decades…. The plan is for one government to have complete control of all of us. Artificial intelligence controlling our business, our food, our money, our privacy. And our freedom is to be abolished forever…. Years and years and years of elite mastermind plotting and planning on how to take over the world come together on this one website.

Covid-19 is just the first step to get the ball rolling… A scared and divided world is easy to dominate, crushing the economy and installing fear-based reactions is how you get an entire world to behave and start from scratch. All of the data and all of the videos throughout the site are updated daily, supporting propaganda is published and released daily, written by those determined to take over the world and all 7.7 billion inhabitants. You have to be able to understand this feel-good language and read between the lines to know what is really being said. I have had to re-read some things ten times to truly understand what the bottom line was but also truly understand what they were not addressing….

Using Covid-19 to harness the power of revolution to change the economy… characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres…. In its most pessimistic, dehumanized form, the Fourth Industrial Revolution may indeed have the potential to ‘robotize’ humanity and thus to deprive us of our heart and soul. The Fourth Industrial Revolution will change not only what we do but also who we are… and sooner than we think it may lead to human augmentation….

The present vast overpopulation, now far beyond the world carrying capacity, cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization and abortion, but must be met in the present by reduction of numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary.

The bulk of humanity has become expendable. We were good for the elite to have around when they could exploit our labor and enjoy the fruits of humanity’s talents. But information technology research and advisory firm Gartner predicts that at least one-third of jobs now performed by humans will be replaced by software, robots, and smart machines by 2025.

Robots do not require food, health benefits nor do they require a minimum wage…. According to Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google, by 2029 robots and other forms of technology will have reached human levels of intelligence and functionality….

Analysing the WEF’s Resetting the Future of Work Agenda: Disruption and Renewal in a Post-COVID World former World Bank economist Peter Koenig in his article ‘The Post Covid World, The WEF’s Diabolical Project: “Resetting the Future of Work Agenda” – After “The Great Reset”. A Horrifying Future’ outlines elements of the ‘horrifying future to some 80%-plus of the (surviving) population’ which ‘The Great Reset’ promises.

These elements include 84% digitization of work, 83% of people working remotely, automation of 50% of tasks, temporary and permanent reductions of the workforce resulting in massive, permanent unemployment for at least 30%, vaccination containing nanochips that combined with 5G and 6G technologies will enable control of your behaviour or kill you outright in accordance with the eugenicist plan to reduce the human population.

In his article Dystopian “Great Reset”: “Own Nothing and Be Happy”, Being Human in 2030’, Colin Todhunter focuses on the fact that:

The Great Reset entails a transformation of society resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance as entire sectors are sacrificed to boost the monopoly and hegemony of pharmaceuticals corporations, high-tech/big data giants, Amazon, Google, major global chains, the digital payments sector, biotech concerns, etc.

Using COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions to push through this transformation, the great reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which older enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or absorbed into monopolies, effectively shutting down huge sections of the pre-COVID economy. Economies are being ‘restructured’ and many jobs will be carried out by AI-driven machines.

In a short video, the WEF predicts that by 2030, ‘You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy’.

More fundamentally, as I explain in the article ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’ and as mentioned above, if the transhumanist agenda is successfully implemented as part of ‘The Great Reset’, individual human identity will vanish along with human volition.

Of course, it should not be forgotten that while this coup is taking place, there has already been a great number of disastrous outcomes. These include the staggering cost, in terms of everything from mental health, violence in the family home, loss of livelihood and hugely increased deaths from starvation – see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’ – to an acceleration in the path to human extinction on four separate counts. See ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup to Destroy Humanity that is also Fast-Tracking Four Paths to Human Extinction’.

What can we do to halt ‘The Great Reset’ and defend ourselves from the elite coup?

Fortunately, we can do a great deal, particularly if we recognize that many issues must be tackled simultaneously and while we cannot all participate in everything, we will maximize our impact if we support the vital role that others play and we act strategically.

Moreover, we only have to build on what is happening already. Despite being largely ignored or denigrated by the corporate media, resistance to one or other features of the coup is already substantial. For just one example, see this summary: ‘Anti-Lockdown Protests All Across Europe’. For an example of the legal challenges to the coup, which are set to proceed in many countries, watch this video interview of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich: ‘Lockdowns, masks & vaccines’.

So, first, if you still find it difficult to believe that people would do this, rest assured that those organizing this, and their agents, are not sane. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’. Complicating this, unfortunately, is the fact that many people are victims and easily conned by propaganda. See ‘Why Do Most People Believe Propaganda and False Flag Attacks?’

Nevertheless, as noted above, there is widespread resistance to what is happening already – awareness of which is suppressed by the corporate media, of course – so our task is to build on that resistance and increase its strategic impact.

So, if you would like to be part of the campaign to defeat the elite coup, see the list of strategic goals necessary to achieve this outcome here: Coup Strategic Aims.

If you wish to campaign to avert one or more of the four most immediate paths to human extinction, you can see a list of strategic goals for doing so here: Campaign Strategic Aims.

If you wish to nurture children to be better equipped to understand what is happening and far more able to critique it, see ‘My Promise to Children’.

If you wish to reduce your vulnerability to elite control, consider joining those who recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance by participating in The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth. In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of The Peoples Charter to Create a Nonviolent World.

Finally, if you want a better fundamental understanding of how we reached this point, see Why Violence? and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice.

More simply, if you like, you might consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
  8. I will not buy rainforest timber
  9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

 

Conclusion

The coup currently being conducted by the global elite has been carefully planned and prepared over several decades. This is evident from documents published by the World Economic Forum and other elite organizations, many elite gatherings which have discussed the subject, interim measures adopted along the way and the extraordinary measures being taken to prevent any meaningful discussion or debate, in violation of our ‘right to free speech’, about the threat supposedly posed by Covid-19 and the merits or otherwise of ‘The Great Reset’. See ‘“Collective Narcissism” and the “Dark Triad”: Those Who Protest against the “Official” Covid-19 Narrative are Categorized as “Psychopaths”. Is It A Witch Hunt? and ‘There’s no vaccine for the infodemic – so how can we combat the virus of misinformation?’

Given that the fundamental aim of the coup is to substantially reduce the human population and keep those still alive, subject to permanent surveillance as well as mind and behavioural control, as ‘techno-slaves’ to the global elite, the time to resist is now.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence? His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.