Yearly Archives: 2021

Who Will Answer?

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

Why on earth would any American with a functioning brain believe what he /she /they is being told by the public health officialdom, the politicians, or the news media? For two years, they have lied to you about everything relating to the Covid-19 virus, including where it came from, how it was developed, who sponsored its development, how the vaccines happened to come onstage thirty seconds after the disease entered the scene, how well the vaccines worked, how safe the vaccines were, and whether there were other cheap and effective treatments for the disease.

So, here we are with nearly 200-million Americans fully vaccinated (and 230-million with at least one dose), plus 47-million overall officially registered cases of Covid illness (conferring immunity among the survivors), plus X-number people infected with no symptoms, or people who didn’t get tested when sick, or didn’t bother going to see a doctor or report to a hospital, plus X-number of people with natural immunity to Covid for one reason or another (maybe a high number, based on the Diamond Princess cruise ship ratio of a Pareto-type 80 / 20 distribution) — and now, in the fall of 2021, here comes another surge of Covid-19 among both the vaxxed and un-vaxxed.

Did all that vaxxing help? It apparently did nothing to prevent transmission of the disease. The vaxxed were spreading it as effectively as the unvaxxed, and the vaxxed were catching the disease as easily, too, though supposedly suffering not as badly as the unvaxxed (if you choose to believe the official press releases, and why would you believe them?). Then, along came the reports of “adverse reactions” to the vaccines, many of them quite grave — clots, strokes, infarctions, neurological havoc, organ failure. In mid-October this year, the VAERS registry had it at 17,000 deaths and 26,000 permanent disabilities, and the rule-of-thumb was that these represented only 10 percent of the actual number of adverse events because the VAERS website was so badly designed that it crashed half the time any doctor tried to use it… plus the doctors were being silenced and punished for voicing any distrust of the vaccines.

Then why the mad rush to vaccinate all the children in America? There have been next-to-zero covid deaths among children besides a few hundred with grave co-morbidities like cancer or cystic fibrosis — and the hospitals had a cash subsidy incentive from the federal government to list them as dying “with Covid.” Children are far more likely to suffer harm from the vaccines than from the Covid-19 disease. The child vax experiment is only just underway, and there are already enough cases of myocarditis and other disorders to be very concerned. The medical establishment has no idea what the long-term effects on children might be, in particular on their reproductive systems, since the chief active ingredient in the vaccines, the spike protein, has a proclivity for the sexual organs. It happens, too, by the way, that mothers who got vaxxed in early 2021 are just now giving birth to babies with myocarditis and other signature disorders of adverse mRNA vaccine reactions. Keep your eye on that sub-plot of the story.

One wonders: is this child vax campaign an attempt to eliminate the last major control group in the population? (Or just to eliminate a big demographic chunk altogether?) Is it tied in some way to beating the release date for Pfizer’s “Comirnaty” vaccine — which would vacate the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) that protects the pharma companies from liability? Despite delirious propaganda from the likes of National Public Radio, the bad news is out, and the bad news is that the Covid vaccines for children are bad news. Parents ought to object to any official attempts to coerce them into vaxxing their kids, but will they? I’d guess that the reaction will be ferocious. Stand by on that.

Meanwhile, what would be an intelligent response to Covid-19 at this point? Well, how about letting it burn through the population as expeditiously as possible, along with an aggressive nationwide early treatment program using existing effective drugs such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, fluvoxamine, budesonide, monoclonal antibodies, for starters, along with vitamin D3, quercetin, zinc, selenium, N-acetyl L-cysteine (NAC)? That would minimize fatalities and confer superior natural immunity throughout the whole population.

Of course, one of the whopper lies you’re being told is that this early treatment protocol doesn’t work. Dozens of clinical studies in other countries and direct clinical experience in this country tell the opposite story: the early treatment protocols work remarkably well. The big question, eventually, will be: who might be held responsible in the public health and medical bureaucracies for militating against early treatment? Was it sheer epic incompetence, or something more malevolent?

Don’t Give Up on the Blessings of Freedom

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By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“All we are saying is give peace a chance.”—John Lennon

How do you give thanks for freedoms that are constantly being eroded?

How do you express gratitude for one’s safety when the perils posed by the American police state grow more treacherous by the day?

How do you come together as a nation in thanksgiving when the powers-that-be continue to polarize and divide us into warring factions?

Every year finds us struggling to reconcile our hope for a better, freer, more just world with the soul-sucking reality of a world in which greed, meanness and war continue to triumph.

Fifty years ago, John Lennon released “Imagine” and exhorted us to “Imagine all the people livin’ life in peace.” That same year, Lennon released “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” as part of a major anti-war campaign. Lennon—a musical genius, anti-war activist, and a high-profile example of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority—made clear that the only way to achieve an end to hunger, violence, war, and tyranny is to want it badly enough and work towards it.

Fifty years later, we clearly don’t want those things badly enough.

Peace remains out of reach. Activists and whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives.

For those of us who joined with John Lennon to imagine a world of peace, it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the reality of the American police state. And those who do dare to speak up about government corruption (such as Julian Assange) are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and tagged for surveillance, censorship or, worse, involuntary detention.

All the while, people still keep looking to the government to “fix” what’s wrong with this country. You’d think we’d have learned—after 20 years of heavy-handed government authoritarianism that started with the 9/11 attacks and has continued through to the present-day COVID-19 tyranny—that the only thing the government can be trusted to do is make things worse.

Now we find ourselves approaching that time of year when, as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, we’re supposed to give thanks as a nation and as individuals for our safety and our freedoms.

It’s not an easy undertaking.

Thinking good thoughts, being grateful, counting your blessings and adopting a glass-half-full mindset are fine and good, but that’s not enough. This world requires doers, men and women (and children) who will put those good thoughts into action.

Remember, evil prevails when good men and women do nothing.

Here’s what I suggest: this year, do yourselves a favor and turn off the talking heads, shut down the screen devices, tune out the politicians, take a deep breath, then do something to pay your blessings forward.

Refuse to remain silent. Take a stand. Speak up. Speak out. Recognize injustice. Don’t turn away from suffering.

Find something to be thankful for about the things and people in your community for which you might have the least tolerance or appreciation. Instead of just rattling off a list of things you’re thankful for that sound good, dig a little deeper and acknowledge the good in those you may have underappreciated or feared.

When it comes time to giving thanks for your good fortune, put your gratitude into action: pay your blessings forward with deeds that spread a little kindness, lighten someone’s burden, and brighten some dark corner.

Engage in acts of kindness. Smile more. Fight less. Build bridges. Refuse to let toxic politics define your relationships. Focus on the things that unite instead of that which divides.

Do your part to push back against the meanness of our culture with conscious compassion and humanity. Moods are contagious, the good and the bad. They can be passed from person to person. So can the actions associated with those moods, the good and the bad.

Be a hero, whether or not anyone ever notices.

Acts of benevolence, no matter how inconsequential they might seem, can spark a movement.

All it takes is one person to start a chain reaction.

For instance, a few years ago in Florida, a family of six—four adults and two young boys—were swept out to sea by a powerful rip current in Panama City Beach. There was no lifeguard on duty. The police were standing by, waiting for a rescue boat. And the few people who had tried to help ended up stranded, as well.

Those on shore grouped together and formed a human chain. What started with five volunteers grew to 15, then 80 people, some of whom couldn’t swim.

One by one, they linked hands and stretched as far as their chain would go. The strongest of the volunteers swam out beyond the chain and began passing the stranded victims of the rip current down the chain.

One by one, they rescued those in trouble and pulled each other in.

There’s a moral here for what needs to happen in this country if we only can band together and prevail against the riptides that threaten to overwhelm us.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, there may not be much we can do to avoid the dismal reality of the police state in the long term—not so long as the powers-that-be continue to call the shots and allow profit margins to take precedence over the needs of people—but in the short term, there are things we can all do right now to make this world (or at least our small corners of it) a little bit kinder, a lot less hostile and more just.

It’s never too late to start making things right in the world.

John Lennon tried to imagine a world in which we all lived in peace. He was a beautiful dreamer whose life ended with an assassin’s bullet on December 8, 1980.

Still, that doesn’t mean the dream has to die, too.

There’s something to be said for working to make that dream a reality. As Lennon reminded his listeners, “War is over, if you want it.”

The choice is ours, if we want it.

U.S. Threatens Regime Change in Nicaragua

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By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

Nicaragua has been a target of U.S. aggressions since the 1850s. The Biden administration’s attack on the newly elected government is the latest chapter in a long and sordid history. Eyewitness accounts of the electoral process reveal the manipulations and lies concocted by the U.S. and its corporate media partners in this latest regime change effort.

The United States has continuously carried out acts of aggression against Nicaragua and its people for more than 150 years. Joseph Biden’s effort to undermine that country’s sovereignty is part of a long history of invasions, coups, and support for U.S. puppets. 

The Biden administration declared the recent election fraudulent before it had even taken place. The corporate media repeated lies about an “authoritarian dictatorship” that came straight from the State Department’s script. The United States congress voted overwhelmingly to pass the RENACER Act, a regime change plot featuring the imposition of sanctions meant to create misery for Nicaraguans. Sanctions are war by other means, the modern-day version of sending the marines. 

The U.S. has done just that, occupying the country from 1912 to 1933. But that was not the first time that U.S. forces were sent to undermine Nicaraguan governments. In 1856 an American named William Walker invaded the country with a mercenary army and declared himself president. Walker was supported by the American slavocracy and sought to create new slave holding nations in the region. During his year long reign, he revoked Nicaragua’s abolition law and he was recognized as president by the Franklin Pierce administration.

The next bout of American aggressions began with an occupation by the U.S. marines in 1912 which lasted until 1933. Augusto Cèsar Sandino fought a guerrilla war against the occupation before being executed under orders of Anastasio Somoza. The Somoza family ruled until 1979 and always with the backing of the United States.

The Sandinista movement (which took its name after Sandino) emerged triumphant in 1980 against Somoza’s regime and quickly came under attack from the Ronald Reagan administration. The opposition groups known as “contras” were given millions of dollars and were assisted in fund raising through the sale of cocaine in the United States. The crack cocaine epidemic began as part of a U.S. imperialist plan. The war waged in Nicaragua was also carried out against communities of color in this country too.

President Daniel Ortega was re-elected on November 7, 2021 and Washington once again declared war on his nation. The RENACER Act passed by a vote of 387 to 35 in the House of Representatives, a huge majority indicative of bipartisan support for war by other means. 

The Biden administration acted quickly in denouncing the election before it took place, and repeated their claims of a “pantomime election ” on the day that Nicaraguans went to the polls. They followed up by orchestrating an Organization of American States (OAS) rejection of the Nicaraguan people’s electoral decision.

As a member of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) delegation in Nicaragua, this columnist witnessed the determination of Nicaraguans to choose their own government without interference. More than 200 representatives from 27 nations, were designated as acompañantes, companions, to the electoral process.

The BAP delegation travelled to the Caribbean coast city of Blue Fields where African descended Garifunas and Creoles reside with Mestizos and the Miskito, Rama, and Olwas indigenous communities. Voters from all these groups came out to well managed polling places, where all presidential candidates were listed on the ballot. The process was transparent and orderly, unlike the voting process in the United States, where eligible voters can be stricken from the ballot or be forced to wait for hours to cast their votes.

Despite what the white house and the corporate media claimed, opposition parties were able to campaign freely. Their signage and literature were quite visible, and no one can truthfully say that the public were unaware of the variety of electoral choices.

The Frente Sandinista para Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) emerged triumphant because they endeavor to meet popular needs. The Afro-descended citizens of the Caribbean coast were recognized as a group with distinct needs that were enshrined in the FSLN constitution. That region was excluded and quite literally isolated from the rest of the country without access to transportation and lacking basic infrastructure such as electricity and clean water. BAP delegates heard the consistent message that support for the FSLN is a result of concrete improvements in people’s lives. Despite the determination of the U.S. to undermine them, the FSLN now provide free health care and increased educational opportunities throughout the nation.

The 19th century Monroe Doctrine is alive and well in the 21st century. Whoever is in power in Washington considers other nations in this hemisphere to be its “backyard.” Nicaragua’s population of 6.5 million is smaller than that of New York City. Yet those few people are not allowed to exercise their rights to self-determination without raising Uncle Sam’s ire. Nicaraguans are not the first to feel imperialist vengeance. Tiny Grenada was undermined and invaded when it sought to determine democracy for itself. Venezuela is also under the sanctions hammer and Haiti is allowed to do nothing that Washington doesn’t approve.

The corporate media may be under the dictates of the state, but the people have no reason to follow suit. The presence of companion delegations in Nicaragua was an important step in revealing how the hybrid warfare playbook is put into practice.

Nicaraguans are well aware of their history. The lies are intended for a different audience. The United States seeks to fool its own people and thereby gain support for whatever form of aggression that it may choose. The plan is a consistent one which starts with media amplifying narratives that will gain support for interference. Creating falsehoods of human rights abuses is a reliable ruse to keep Americans complacent about their government’s activities.

The collusion between government and media explains why “trolls” are active on social media, attacking anyone who questions what Washington says. Facebook continued its work on behalf of the state by removing accounts expressing any support for Nicaragua’s sovereignty. The marriage of big tech companies and the Democratic party showed itself once again, proving that claims of freedom and democracy in U.S. politics are indeed an elaborate “pantomime.”

It may seem odd that a small nation can be the focus of so much determination to destroy its independence. But it isn’t hard to understand that Nicaragua threatens the U.S. should it be allowed to determine its own fate. The people who think they live in a democracy do not. They do not have access to free health care and are told they cannot expect to ever have it. Nicaragua is an example of what people in the U.S. could have if they were as free as they like to believe.

The drive to subjugate is as old as the republic, with the United States acting as a hegemon around the world, creating conflict and great suffering. The evil commitment to destroy Nicaraguan democracy is not unexpected but it must be vociferously opposed. Doing so is a litmus test which determines who is really on the left and who is not. There can be no compromise on the anti-imperialist stance. The human rights of people around the world must be respected and any United States government effort to violate them must be met with equivalent resolve.

The Metaverse Is Big Brother in Disguise: Freedom Meted Out by Technological Tyrants

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By By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“The term metaverse, like the term meritocracy, was coined in a sci fi dystopia novel written as cautionary tale. Then techies took metaverse, and technocrats took meritocracy, and enthusiastically adopted what was meant to inspire horror.”—Antonio García Martínez

Welcome to the Matrix (i.e. the metaverse), where reality is virtual, freedom is only as free as one’s technological overlords allow, and artificial intelligence is slowly rendering humanity unnecessary, inferior and obsolete.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, sees this digital universe—the metaverse—as the next step in our evolutionary transformation from a human-driven society to a technological one.

Yet while Zuckerberg’s vision for this digital frontier has been met with a certain degree of skepticism, the truth—as journalist Antonio García Martínez concludes—is that we’re already living in the metaverse.

The metaverse is, in turn, a dystopian meritocracy, where freedom is a conditional construct based on one’s worthiness and compliance.

In a meritocracy, rights are privileges, afforded to those who have earned them. There can be no tolerance for independence or individuality in a meritocracy, where political correctness is formalized, legalized and institutionalized. Likewise, there can be no true freedom when the ability to express oneself, move about, engage in commerce and function in society is predicated on the extent to which you’re willing to “fit in.”

We are almost at that stage now.

Consider that in our present virtue-signaling world where fascism disguises itself as tolerance, the only way to enjoy even a semblance of freedom is by opting to voluntarily censor yourself, comply, conform and march in lockstep with whatever prevailing views dominate.

Fail to do so—by daring to espouse “dangerous” ideas or support unpopular political movements—and you will find yourself shut out of commerce, employment, and society: Facebook will ban you, Twitter will shut you down, Instagram will de-platform you, and your employer will issue ultimatums that force you to choose between your so-called freedoms and economic survival.

This is exactly how Corporate America plans to groom us for a world in which “we the people” are unthinking, unresistant, slavishly obedient automatons in bondage to a Deep State policed by computer algorithms.

Science fiction has become fact.

Twenty-some years after the Wachowskis’ iconic film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a blue pill or a red pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making.

We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing human beings and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives.

In The Matrix, computer programmer Thomas Anderson a.k.a. hacker Neo is wakened from a virtual slumber by Morpheus, a freedom fighter seeking to liberate humanity from a lifelong hibernation state imposed by hyper-advanced artificial intelligence machines that rely on humans as an organic power source. With their minds plugged into a perfectly crafted virtual reality, few humans ever realize they are living in an artificial dream world.

Neo is given a choice: to take the red pill, wake up and join the resistance, or take the blue pill, remain asleep and serve as fodder for the powers-that-be.

Most people opt for the blue pill.

In our case, the blue pill—a one-way ticket to a life sentence in an electronic concentration camp—has been honey-coated to hide the bitter aftertaste, sold to us in the name of expediency and delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets and cell phones.

Yet we are not merely in thrall with these technologies that were intended to make our lives easier. We have become enslaved by them.

Look around you. Everywhere you turn, people are so addicted to their internet-connected screen devices—smart phones, tablets, computers, televisions—that they can go for hours at a time submerged in a virtual world where human interaction is filtered through the medium of technology.

This is not freedom. This is not even progress.

This is technological tyranny and iron-fisted control delivered by way of the surveillance state, corporate giants such as Google and Facebook, and government spy agencies such as the National Security Agency.

So consumed are we with availing ourselves of all the latest technologies that we have spared barely a thought for the ramifications of our heedless, headlong stumble towards a world in which our abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos is grooming us for a future in which freedom is an illusion.

Yet it’s not just freedom that hangs in the balance. Humanity itself is on the line.

If ever Americans find themselves in bondage to technological tyrants, we will have only ourselves to blame for having forged the chains through our own lassitude, laziness and abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos that render us wholly irrelevant.

Indeed, we’re fast approaching Philip K. Dick’s vision of the future as depicted in the film Minority Report. There, police agencies apprehend criminals before they can commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.

The key word here, however, is control.

In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have—and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.”

By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”

As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.

It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.

This “connected” industry has become the next big societal transformation, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a watershed moment in technology and culture.

Between driverless cars that completely lacking a steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedal, and smart pills embedded with computer chips, sensors, cameras and robots, we are poised to outpace the imaginations of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. (By the way, there is no such thing as a driverless car. Someone or something will be driving, but it won’t be you.)

These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.

Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.

The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.

Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices are operating entirely independent of their human creators, which poses a whole new set of worries. As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes, “As soon as you allow robots, or software programs, to act freely in the world, they’re going to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices that can’t be resolved through statistical models. That will be true of self-driving cars, self-flying drones, and battlefield robots, just as it’s already true, on a lesser scale, with automated vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.”

For instance, just as the robotic vacuum, Roomba, “makes no distinction between a dust bunny and an insect,” weaponized drones will be incapable of distinguishing between a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street. For that matter, how do you defend yourself against a robotic cop—such as the Atlas android being developed by the Pentagon—that has been programmed to respond to any perceived threat with violence?

Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.

It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains:

Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.

In other words, the IoS will rely on technology being able to access and act on your thoughts.

Fourtane outlines several trends related to the IoS that are expected to become a reality by 2030:

1: Thoughts become action: using the brain as the interface, for example, users will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination.

2: Sounds will become an extension of the devised virtual reality: users could mimic anyone’s voice realistically enough to fool even family members.

3: Real food will become secondary to imagined tastes. A sensory device for your mouth could digitally enhance anything you eat, so that any food can taste like your favorite treat.

4: Smells will become a projection of this virtual reality so that virtual visits, to forests or the countryside for instance, would include experiencing all the natural smells of those places.

5: Total touch: Smartphones with screens will convey the shape and texture of the digital icons and buttons they are pressing.

6: Merged reality: VR game worlds will become indistinguishable from physical reality by 2030.

This is the metaverse, wrapped up in the siren-song of convenience and sold to us as the secret to success, entertainment and happiness.

It’s a false promise, a wicked trap to snare us, with a single objective: total control.

George Orwell understood this.

Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, total control over every aspect of our lives, right down to our inner thoughts, is the objective of any totalitarian regime.

The Metaverse is just Big Brother in disguise.

Pfizer Hypocritically Calls Vaccine Skeptics “Criminals” While Ignoring Their Own Criminal Record

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By Matt Agorist

Source: The Free Thought Project

People who spread misinformation on Covid-19 vaccines are “criminals” and have cost “millions of lives,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a rather shocking interview on Tuesday. His comments are in line with a sentiment being pushed by the rabid mandatory vaccine crowd and sadly enough, they are being embraced by many.

Ironically enough, these comments were made to Frederick Kempe, the CEO of the Atlantic Council — you know, the NATO propaganda arm responsible for sewing wild conspiracy theories about “Russian meddling” and acting as the censorship arm for big tech — yeah, that group.

“Those people are criminals,” he told Kempe. “They’re not bad people. They’re criminals because they have literally cost millions of lives.”

During that same interview, Bourla also stated that they are “getting briefings from the CIA and FBI” — indicating just how deep their tentacles go into the federal government.

After Bourla called vaccine skeptics “criminals,” Kempe closed out the point, adding that “they should be treated like criminals as well.”

Take a second to think about what these two people just discussed. They are advocating for treating people like criminals for “spreading vaccine misinformation.” By these standards, Pfizer should turn themselves in.

As we reported last week, the British Medical Journal published an incendiary report exposing faked data, blind trial failures, poorly trained vaccinators, and a slow follow-up on adverse reactions in the phase-three trial of Pfizer’s Covid jab. Is that not misinformation? What about the CDC director stating that the vaccine is 100% effective? Or Fauci saying not to wear masks and then telling Americans to wear two masks?

Of course, none of that misinformation will ever be acknowledged by those who purvey it. In realty, the medical industrial complex, in coordination with the federal government is waging a massive campaign to control the narrative on the vaccine. Those who report being injured by the jab or who express legitimate concerns are censored into oblivion as the establishment keeps shifting goal posts with booster shots and even changing the definition of vaccination.

Misinformation is entirely subjective and as we’ve seen over the past two years, what is previously deemed misinformation and censored into the darkness, often turns out to be true down the road. Making posts skeptical of the vaccine online could easily be deemed misinformation and people could go to jail for their free speech if Bourla and Kempe have their way.

What’s more, as this Big Pharma shill refers to vaccine skeptics as criminals, he and his supporters are ignoring Pfizer’s actual criminal background.

As TFTP has reported, Pfizer has paid out billions in health care fraud fines and in fact was party to the largest health care fraud settlement in US history.

The pharmaceutical giant paid out $2.3 billion in 2009 to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products.

“Pfizer violated the law over an extensive time period. Furthermore, at the very same time Pfizer was in our office negotiating and resolving the allegations of criminal conduct by its then newly acquired subsidiary, Warner-Lambert, Pfizer was itself in its other operations violating those very same laws,” Mike Loucks, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts said at the time.

And these are the people calling you a criminal for vaccine skepticism.

But that was only a single case, this company has a track record dating back decades that includes everything from bribing government officials to illegally testing products on children to making false claims about drugs and illegally marketing them — leading to multiple deaths. Despite making the largest payout in history, Pfizer has continued to be called to the carpet since 2009 multiple times for misleading the public about their drugs — up to and including vaccines.

Nevertheless, many Americans have short memories and seemingly couldn’t care less about the criminal past of this company. Instead, those who ignore Pfizer’s criminal history, shout down others who are hesitant to take the jab and become useful idiots in shilling for a company they once looked at with scorn.

RESISTING TYRANNY DEPENDS ON THE COURAGE TO NOT CONFORM

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By Barry Brownstein

Source: Waking Times

Social psychologist Roy Baumeister begins his book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, with a proposition that will be counterintuitive to many: “Evil usually enters the world unrecognized by the people who open the door and let it in. Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil.”

Dismissing evildoers as “insane” is an attempt to absolve both them and you of responsibility. Baumeister observes, “People do become extremely upset and abandon self-control, with violent results, but this is not insanity.” If only “insane” people commit “evil” acts, you might reason there is no need to strengthen spiritual and moral muscles. You might skip the reflection, study, and practice that builds spiritual and moral strength.

Would you, Baumeister asks, “obey orders to kill innocent civilians? Would you help torture someone? Would you stand by passively while the secret police hauled your neighbors off to concentration camps?” Baumeister writes, “Most people say no. But when such events actually happen, the reality is quite different.” Today, to the point, will you obey orders to fire upon people who refuse to comply with mandates?

In one of the most instructive books about Nazi Germany, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, historian Christopher Browning explores why most people say yes and commit heinous acts even when given latitude to say no.

The men of Police Battalion 101 were not specially selected psychopathic killers. Initially, the Battalion was set up to enforce Nazi rule in occupied Poland. Eventually, their mission changed, bringing them to be the genocidal murderers of Jews they were charged with rounding up. Browning explains, “The bulk of the killers were not specially selected but drawn at random from a cross-section of German society, and they did not kill because they were coerced by the threat of dire punishment for refusing.” Mostly they were “middle-aged reserve policemen.” Battle had not driven these men to depravity, “they had not been fired on nor had they lost comrades.”

Browning explores one of their initial murderous actions, “shooting some 1,500 Jews in the Polish village of Józefów in the summer of 1942.” Major Wilhelm Trapp addressed his men before the shooting began: “Pale and nervous, with choking voice and tears in his eyes, Trapp visibly fought to control himself as he spoke. The Battalion, he said plaintively, had to perform a frightfully unpleasant task. This assignment was not to his liking; indeed, it was highly regrettable, but the orders came from the highest authorities.”

Trapp provided a “justification” for the coming slaughter—Jews were damaging Germany and threatening German troops—but then Trapp “made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out.” The task, Trapp outlined, was the immediate killing of all women, children, and the elderly.

Only twelve of the approximately 500 in the Battalion initially took Trapp’s offer to “step out.” Browning estimated “10 to 20 percent of those actually assigned to the firing squads” extricated themselves “by less conspicuous methods or asked to be released from the firing squads once the shooting had begun.” Yet for most of the police, killing became second nature: “Many reserve policemen who were horrified in the woods outside Józefów… subsequently became casual volunteers for numerous firing squads and ‘Jew hunts.’”

Browning’s research provides insights into the mindsets that fueled obedience: “Who would have ‘dared,’ one policeman declared emphatically, to ‘lose face’ before the assembled troops.” Another said, “No one wants to be thought a coward.”

Not all who followed orders lacked moral consciousness: “Another policeman—more aware of what truly required courage—said quite simply, ‘I was cowardly.’”

Some rationalized their atrocities: “It was possible for me to shoot only children. My neighbor then shot the mother and I shot the child that belonged to her, because I reasoned with myself that after all without its mother the child could not live any longer.”

To escape moral culpability, others offered the excuse of what difference could they make: “Without me [shooting] the Jews were not going to escape their fate anyway.” How many managers are saying today, what difference can I make? If I don’t fire the unvaccinated, someone else will.

Browning explains, “The men’s concern for their standing in the eyes of their comrades was not matched by any sense of human ties with their victims. The Jews stood outside their circle of human obligation and responsibility.” Today, hospital administrators are firing workers with robust natural immunity who faithfully served during the pandemic and refuse the vaccine. Like the men in the Battalion, these administrators are just following orders.

What would have happened that terrible day in 1942 if more policemen recognized the humanity of the “other” and had the courage to not conform? Today, what would happen if more businesses, like In-N-Out Burger, refuse to obey government edicts? In October, Stephen Davis, a Florida fire battalion chief, “was fired for refusing to discipline department employees listed as unvaccinated.” What would happen if more managers had the courage of Chief Davis? Without obedience, tyranny fails.

During this time of Covid, we can learn lessons from Browning’s book about how we treat people who make choices different from our own. We can notice when we fail to see the humanity in others. We can become aware when we justify an us vs. them mindset. We can question our perceptions. To wait for Biden or Fauci to change first is to ignore our power of choice.

Lessons Learned

Browning reflects on the actions of the Battalion and asks, “If obedience to orders out of fear of dire punishment is not a valid explanation, what about ‘obedience to authority’ in the more general sense used by Stanley Milgram?”

Browning wonders if there is “a ’deeply ingrained behavior tendency’ to comply with the directives of those positioned hierarchically above, even to the point of performing repugnant actions in violation of ‘universally accepted’ moral norms.” Browning explains,

The notions of ‘loyalty, duty, discipline,’ requiring competent performance in the eyes of authority, become moral imperatives overriding any identification with the victim. Normal individuals enter an ‘agentic state’ in which they are the instrument of another’s will. In such a state, they no longer feel personally responsible for the content of their actions but only for how well they perform.

Browning recounts, “Milgram made direct reference to the similarities between human behavior in his experiments and under the Nazi regime. He concluded, ‘Men are led to kill with little difficulty.’”

Importantly, “Milgram himself notes that people far more frequently invoke authority than conformity to explain their behavior, for only the former seems to absolve them of personal responsibility.” Yet, in the Battalion case, “Many policemen admitted responding to the pressures of conformity—how would they be seen in the eyes of their comrades?—not authority.” Based on his research, Browning concludes, “Conformity assumes a more central role than authority at Józefów.”

The Covidocracy demands we all conform and shames those who make different choices. Browning explains the dangers of a culture of shame: “The shame culture, making conformity a prime virtue, impelled ordinary Germans in uniform to commit terrible crimes rather than suffer the stigma of cowardice and weakness and the ‘social death’ of isolation and alienation vis-à-vis their comrades.”

The segregation of Jews was an enabler of evil actions. Browning points to pervasive banishment of Jews from German society “and the resulting exclusion of the Jewish victims from any common ground with the perpetrators made it all the easier for the majority of the policemen to conform to the norms of their immediate community (the battalion) and their society at large (Nazi Germany).”

For some policemen who did not shoot, their commercial ties shaped their view of human beings. One said, “Through my business experience, especially because it extended abroad, I had gained a better overview of things. Moreover, through my earlier business activities I already knew many Jews.”

Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport developed his famed contact hypothesis in the 1940s: “Increasing exposure to out-group members will improve attitudes toward that group and decrease prejudice and stereotyping.” Commercial ties bring people together.

Today, politicians work overtime demonizing, mocking, and punishing “out-group members” who won’t obey their dictates.

A Story of Nonconformity

Recently Tim, a reader and business owner from New Zealand, sent me his powerful testimony in an email:

Fifty odd years ago, as a young child I went to Ranui Primary School in suburban Auckland. There were two Māori boys in my class of 9-year-olds. Sometimes through the day they would make short comments to each other in Māori.

If the teacher heard them do it, he would keep our entire class in detention after school for 15 to 30 minutes. I always hated it because one of the boys was my friend, and a regular playmate of mine after school. The other one, used to walk home from school with me too, they were my friends.

But most of the class blamed these two Māori boys for us all being locked in after school. The majority of the kids disliked and bullied them in my class.

I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t dislike them because they were my friends. Perhaps even then as a boy I could see what our teacher was doing.

Our teacher was using the rest of the class as a weapon against those two young boys by encouraging the spiteful and discriminating attitudes towards them.

Tim’s choice to not conform to social pressure made all the difference to his Māori friends. Did Tim’s ability to see the humanity in others help him become a successful entrepreneur? After all, entrepreneurs succeed when they help serve the needs of others.

Tim continued his testimony:

Today, 50 years later, I am again feeling the same way as I did back in my Ranui Primary School class. The teacher is telling us all that we will continue to be locked in until 90% (or whatever) of the country is vaccinated. And further, we are told that it is the fault of the 20% (or so) that have so far chosen not to accept the two shots in the arm.

As a country, we are all encouraged to heap blame and hate towards anyone who has decided to not vaccinate.

Regardless of my own vaccination status, I have friends and family who I refuse to hate or blame.

I lay the blame exactly where it belongs. At the feet of my Primary School teacher for our detentions, not my two boyhood friends.

And at the feet of our Prime Minister for her lockdown rules, not my friends and family who have chosen to decline an injection that they don’t trust, rightly or wrongly.

Be like Tim. Be like the 10-20% of Battalion 101 who didn’t conform. Our scorn should be towards those who demand our obedience and split America into an in-group and an out-group. Become more aware when you allow your thinking to be hijacked by propaganda.

Many in the Battalion didn’t understand their crimes until decades after the war ended. Don’t wait to reflect until a future historian writes a book about how you supported tyranny by placing conformity above human rights.

Today Charles Eisenstein points out, “Many people trust the authorities and willingly comply with their rules. They face no dilemma, no initiatory moment, no self-defining world-creating choice point, not yet.”

Conforming, lacking courage, will not spare you from choices that life will demand of you. Eisenstein challenges us: “As the authorities’ narratives devolve into absurdity and their rules devolve into oppression, more and more of us face this choice: … To do what you know is right, or to cave in to the pressure, consoling yourself with words you don’t believe. ‘I had no choice.’”

We all have a personal responsibility for preserving freedom. The price of abdicating our responsibility is high. As Browning puts it, Germans paid a high price for “placing uncritical trust in the ‘firm leadership’ of seemingly well-intentioned political authority between 1933 and 1945.”

Saturday Matinee: Midnight Special

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Source: Deep Focus Review

People put their faith in the strangest things. Some feel their god will return to cast down judgment on humankind. Others are certain beings from another solar system planted genetic material on Earth to create life. And some believe, or perhaps not, that a flying spaghetti monster lives in the sky. Here’s another one: Folk music history tells us a train called the Southern Pacific Golden Gate Limited ran near Sugar Land prison in Texas, where legendary Blues man Lead Belly heard it passing. He and other inmates believed the train represented some sign of hope that soon they would be set free. Lead Belly later popularized a song about it, called “Midnight Special”, featuring a lyric in which he asks the train to “shine a light on me”. Apart from memorable covers by Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, and Credence Clearwater Revival, Lead Belly’s folk song informs the title of writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth film, Midnight Special.

People in the film believe some strange things, too. Some of them believe a young boy will grant their way to salvation, while the government believes that same boy is a threat to national security. But more on the specifics later. These belief systems pervade Nichols’ screenplay, a slow-burner infused with soulful character depth and science-fiction underpinnings. Midnight Special has much in common with Nichols’ excellent Take Shelter (2011), about a working-class family plagued by the father’s apocalyptic premonitions. That otherwise grassroots, southern-fried suspenser contains fantastical elements, though really it’s about the extremes people will go to chase what they believe. Nichols has explored similar American spirituality in his other two films, Shotgun Stories (2007) and Mud (2011). Each of his films demonstrates the potential danger inherent to blindly following our beliefs and convictions.

Nichols’ calculated opening demands the audience take time to figure out what’s happening and why, who the good guys are, and in the end, what just came to pass. It’s a picture audiences must feel their way through in the best possible way. An Amber Alert blares across the television screen, a reporter notifying us a young boy named Alton has been kidnapped by a man named Roy. As the shot pulls back, we find ourselves in a motel room with Roy (Michael Shannon, severe as ever) and Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), who, behind an ever-present pair of swimming goggles, reads a comic book by flashlight. Also in the room is a crew-cut man of action, Lucas (Joel Edgerton). They’re waiting until the sun goes down to continue their getaway. Lucas drives fast and without headlights, wearing night vision headgear to see the highway in the pitch dark.

Nichols cross-cuts to things at “The Ranch”—a Texas compound not unlike David Koresh’s Branch Davidians—populated by old-world types in hand-sewn garb. They’re led by a quietly intense organizer named Calvin (Sam Shepard), who wants Alton returned to him. The FBI raids The Ranch and puts everyone on buses to a secure location. They ask questions about Calvin’s people buying guns and about Alton’s kidnapping. A bookish NSA specialist named Sevier (Adam Driver) wants to know about Alton, who came in contact with him, and what they know about the boy’s abilities. And so we must wonder, why so many questions about this boy? The answer: When Alton is exposed to the sun, beams of light shoot from his eyes; he seems to speak in tongues; he can give people visions; in space, satellites meant to detect nuclear explosions spy an energy source emitting from him; he also picks up radio signals in his head.

But what is he? Nichols never answers that question outright. Over time, we learn Roy is Alton’s father, and Lucas is Roy’s friend, and together they’re protecting Alton from The Ranch and the government. All parties concerned feel a great power exists inside the boy and, though they don’t completely understand it, they fearfully pursue and defend him. Soon Alton’s mother (Kirsten Dunst) joins Roy and Lucas, aware of the entire plan. We learn all of Alton’s peculiarities have a hidden encryption, coordinates that point to a certain spot on a specific day. Everything depends on getting him there on time. And gradually, as men from The Ranch get closer to recapturing Alton, and the government goons track down their perceived threat, we get a greater—but not clearer—sense of what might occur if and when Alton arrives at his destination.

Rather than frustrating, that lack of transparency is engrossing, as Nichols drops hints here and there, while he binds us to the often moving, unquestionably engaging proceedings through subtle character work. So what is Alton? He finds great interest reading a Superman comic, so perhaps he’s something like Superman, a powerful alien. Perhaps he’s a messiah sent to protect people at The Ranch. Maybe he’s an advanced form of human with mutant powers, a time traveler, a living weapon, or an inter-dimensional being. Whatever the answer, it’s less important than the real-life descriptions of the humans on Nichols’ journey. His actors carry impressive weight and gravitas, particularly Shannon, who has appeared in each of Nichols’ films. But the entire cast brings substance to their performances, involving the audience in the tense, measured development of the story.

Both narratively and technically, Nichols has used the films of Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter to inform Midnight Special, but not in such a way that it feels distractingly derivative. From the perspective that the film operates as a road movie driving toward some manner of grandiose sci-fi conclusion, the film feels like Close Encounters of the Third Kind; the ending, too, resembles Spielberg’s wondrous 1977 effort. Elsewhere, Starman (1984) comes into play, as everyone who meets Alton gravitates to his kindness, soulful sureness, and power, just as everyone in Carpenter’s film found Jeff Bridges’ alien character a kind of angelic figure. Even the ending seems to combine the finales of these two films, with a touch of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The film also bears some similarity to Tomorrowland, although the association is undoubtedly unintentional. All the while, Adam Stone’s textured 35mm lensing captures familiar lens flares and widescreen compositions from Carpenter and Spielberg that influenced Nichols.

Questions about what happens in its marvelous climactic scenes aside, Midnight Special shines a light on the audience by offering a unique combination of the realistic and out-of-this-world. Nichols develops thoroughly dimensional characters, even among the not-irredeemable “villains” of the story. The director cares about Roy’s heavy brow and Sevier’s sense of unsure awe; with them, he develops intimate moments that effectively resonate further than the sci-fi gimmick. He never overplays the drama, such as a scene in which Alton tells his father not to worry about him. Roy replies, “I like worrying about you.” The understatedness of Nichols’ drama, the poignancy, renders a picture about how people react to what they believe or do not understand. Some embrace it; some fear it. No matter the reaction, Nichols finds a way to represent that through an engaging metaphor in his profoundly affecting and, in many ways extraordinary thriller.

Watch Midnight Special on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14507307