Yearly Archives: 2022

Saturday Matinee: Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

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By JPRoscoe

Source: Basement Rejects

Launching in 1974, the Z Channel became one of the first pay cable channels.  The channel eventually morphed into a movie channel highlighting directors, art films, and championing original visions portrayed on the screen.  One of the people behind this transformation and the decisions made on the channel was the program director Jerry Harvey.  Harvey (with his team) brought many films to the Z Channel that were never seen anywhere in America and created a world for film lovers…but Harvey had his own demons.

Directed by Xan Cassavetes, Z Channel:  A Magnificent Obsession is a documentary about the rise and fall of the California based Z Channel which broadcast from 1974 to 1989.  The documentary premiered at Cannes in 2004 and was released to positive reviews.

I grew up without cable so dreams of HBO were just dreams.  At the time, I wouldn’t have appreciated Z Channel and would have much rather stayed with something like HBO or Cinemax.  Watching the Z Channel:  A Magnificent Obsession, I dream about the Z Channel still being around.

There are a lot of viewing options now.  The difference between something like FilmStruck and the Z Channel is that idea of chance.  You don’t know what you are going to get and you don’t know when you’ll get to see it again.  That is something that current TV watchers (or streamers) forget…you had to wait to see the movies you wanted and a video store might not have them.  The idea of someone so diligently trying to seek out and collect these films for viewers is admirable.

The documentary of course takes a dark turn in that Jerry Harvey really was someone who seemed lost.  The documentary does struggle with the ideas of its three themes at points in trying to decide if it is about Z Channel, Jerry Harvey, or the films…and it is understandable because it is hard to separate the three because they were so bound together.  Like a lot of documentaries, I wish there was a better way to establish more of a timeline of events through the course of the movie.

The documentary features a lot of great performers and great film clips.  Robert Altman, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, James Wood, and Jacqueline Bisset are among some of the people interviewed, but it is the immense outpouring of these people for what Z Channel did for them that shows its importance on modern film.  Harvey’s personal acquaintances provide the most insight to him and what was going on at Z Channel and really help round out the documentary…plus, it becomes a film watcher’s guide for movies that should be sought out.

Z Channel:  A Magnificent Obsession is an interesting documentary, but it also is a documentary that feels like it needed a little tweaking to become a great documentary.  It is a film for film lovers and a specific kind of film lover.  The movies highlighted appeal to a certain viewer and the true crime aspect of the story probably isn’t intense enough for people interested in the true crime genre.  Still, Z Channel:  A Magnificent Obsession is a worthy documentary that should be sought out.

Watch Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14980839

Alice Walker and the Price of Conscience

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Alice Walker was disinvited to the Bay Area Book Festival after Zionist groups threatened to carry out protests. The public and presenters are complicit in her blacklisting if they attend.

By Chris Hedges

Source: The Chris Hedges Report

There is a steep price to pay for having a conscience and more importantly the courage to act on it. The hounds of hell pin you to the cross, hammering nails into your hands and feet as they grin like the Cheshire cat and mouth bromides about respect for human rights, freedom of expression and diversity. I have watched this happen for some time to Alice Walker, one of the most gifted and courageous writers in America. Walker, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Color Purple, has felt the bitter sting of racism. She refuses to be silent about the plight of the oppressed, including the Palestinians.

“Whenever I come out with a book, or anything that will take me before the public, the world, I am assailed as this person I don’t recognize,” she said when I reached her by phone. “If I tried to keep track of all the attacks over the decades, I wouldn’t be able to keep working. I am happy people are standing up. It is all of us. Not just me. They are trying to shut us down, shut us up, erase us. That reality is what is important.”

The Bay Area Book festival delivered the latest salvo against Walker. The organizers disinvited her from the event because she  praised the writings of the New Age author David Icke and called his book And the Truth Shall Set You Free “brave.” Icke has denied critics’ charges of anti-Semitism. The festival organizers twisted themselves into contortions to say they were not charging Walker with anti-Semitism. She was banned because she lauded a controversial writer, who I suspect few members of the committee have read. The poet and writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who Walker was to interview, withdrew from the festival in protest.

Walker, a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, has been a very public advocate for Palestinian rights and a critic of Israel for many years. Her friendship with Icke has long been part of the public record. She hid nothing. It is not as if the festival organizers suddenly discovered a dark secret about Walker. They sought to capitalize on her celebrity and then, when they felt the heat from the Israel lobby, capitulated to the mob to humiliate her.

“I don’t know these people,” Walker said of the festival organizers who disinvited her. “It feels like the south. You know they are out there in the community, and they have their positions, but all you see are sheets. That’s what this is. It’s like being back in the south.”

Banning writers because of books they like or find interesting nullifies the whole point of a book festival. Should I be banned because I admire Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s masterpieces Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan, and Castle to Castle, despite his virulent anti-Semitism, which even after World War II he refused to relinquish? Should I be banned for liking Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, which I recently reread, and which is rabidly misogynistic? Should I be banned for loving William Butler Yeats, who, like Ezra Pound, many of whose poems I have also committed to memory, was a fascist collaborator? Should I be banned because I revere Hannah Arendt, whose attitudes towards African-Americans were paternalistic, at best, and arguably racist? Should I be banned because I cherish books by C.S. Lewis, Norman Mailer and D.H. Lawrence, who were homophobic?

We might as well sweep clean library shelves if the attitudes of writers we read mean we are denied a right to speak. 

And let’s not even get started with the Bible, which I studied as a seminarian at Harvard Divinity School. God repeatedly demands righteous acts of genocide, transforming the Nile into blood so the Egyptians will suffer from thirst. God sends swarms of locusts and flies to torture the Egyptians, along with hail, fire and thunder to destroy all plants and trees. God orders the firstborn in every Egyptian household killed so all will know “that the Lord makes a distinction between Egyptians and Israel.” The killing goes on until “there was not a house where one was not dead.” 

The Bible contains much of this divinely sanctioned slaughtering of non-believers. It endorses slavery and the beating of enslaved people. It condones the execution of homosexuals and women who commit adultery. It views women as property and approves the right of fathers to sell their daughters. But the Bible also remains, with all these contradictions and moral failings, a great religious, ethical and moral document. Even the most flawed books often have something to teach us.

Organizers of the festival attacked Walker for her poem “It is Our Frightful Duty.” They accuse Walker of channeling Icke’s alleged anti-Semitism into her writing, as if Walker is unable to think for herself. The attack on the poem, which is a gross misreading of its intent, exposes the lie that Walker’s position on Israel and Palestine had nothing to do with her being disinvited.

“Unfortunately, Ms. Walker has not only promoted Icke’s ideas widely on her own blog and in interviews, but they may have influenced her own writing,” the festival wrote in a statement. “Ms. Walker’s 2017 poem “It is our (Frightful) Duty to Study the Talmud” encourages people to use Google and Youtube to “follow the trail of “The / Talmud” as its poison belatedly winds its way / Into our collective consciousness. // Some of what you find will sound / Too crazy to be true. Unfortunately those bits are likely / To be true.” A New York Magazine essay by writer Nylah Burton (who identifies as Black and Jewish) describes her reaction to Walker’s support of Icke and this poem.”

The poem calls out these hate-filled religious texts. “All of it: The Christian, the Jewish, The Muslim; even the Buddhist. All of it, without exception, At the root.” Walker reminds us in the poem that these texts have been used throughout millennia to sanctify subjugation, dehumanization and murder. Slave holders defended the enslavement of Blacks by citing numerous passages in the Old and the New Testament, including Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians where, equating slaveholders with God, Paul writes: “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.”  

Israel seeks, in the same way, to legitimize its colonial-settler project by citing the Old Testament and the Talmud, the primary source of Jewish law. Never mind that Palestine was a Muslim country from the 7th century until it was seized by military force in 1948. The Old Testament, in the hands of Zionists, is a deed to Palestinian land.

Walker excoriates this religious chauvinism and mythology. She warns that theocracies, which sacralize state power, are dangerous. In the poem, she highlights  passages in the Talmud used to condemn those outside the faith. Jews must repudiate these sections in the Talmud and the Old Testament, as those of us who are Christians must repudiate the hateful passages in the Bible. When these religious screeds are weaponized by zealots —Christian, Muslim or Jewish — they propagate evil. 

Walker writes:

Is Jesus boiling eternally in hot excrement,

For his “crime” of throwing the bankers

Out of the Temple? For loving, standing with,

And defending

The poor? Was his mother, Mary,

A whore?

Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews, and not only

That, but to enjoy it?

Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse?

Are young boys fair game for rape?

Must even the best of the Goyim (us, again) be killed?

Pause a moment and think what this could mean

Or already has meant

In our own lifetime.

Walker was invited to the festival to interview Honorée Fanonne Jeffers about her work, not to give a lecture on Icke or Palestine — but no matter. She ran afoul of the thought police, who are always vigilant about catering to smear campaigns against Israeli critics but blithely ignore the virulent and overt racism of Israeli politicians, military commanders, writers and intellectuals.

Walker is not the first writer targeted by Israel. Israel banned the author Gunter Grass and demanded the rescindment of his Nobel prize after he wrote a poem denouncing Germany’s decision to provide Israel with nuclear submarines, warning that Israel “could wipe out the Iranian people” if it attacked Iran. Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who calls for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to create a “Greater” Israel, described the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish as “someone who has written texts against Zionism — which are still used as fuel for terror attacks against Israel.” He said honoring Darwish was the equivalent to honoring Adolf Hitler for “Mein Kampf.” Israeli bookstores Steimatzky and Tzomet Sefarim purged Sally Rooney’s novels from some 200 branches and online sites because of her support for BDS. Israeli writer Yehonatan Geffen was beaten outside his home for calling the Israeli prime minister a racist.

Bay Area Book Festival founder and director Cherilyn Parsons defended the board’s decision to disinvite Walker when I requested a comment:  

Our decision to disinvite Ms. Walker had nothing to do with her position on Palestine, her voice as a Black woman writer, or her right to speak her mind freely. We honor all those things. We also do not hold that she is anti-Semitic. (To be pro-Palestinian does not mean a person is anti-Semitic, just as to be Jewish does not mean that one is anti-Palestine.) Our decision was based purely on Ms. Walker’s inexplicable, ongoing endorsement of David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who dangerously promulgates such beliefs as that Jewish people bankrolled Hitler, caused the 2008 global financial crisis, staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and more. (See his book “And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” available full-text on the Internet Archive.) Icke also regularly promotes “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a fabricated, uber-anti-Semitic text that was widely read during the time of social upheaval in pre-WWII Germany and turned public sentiment against Jews–a truly dangerous document for a populace to embrace. Finally, we note that Ms. Walker provided financial support for, and participation in, a documentary celebrating Icke and his work.

“I do not believe he is anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish,” Walker posted on her website. “I do believe he is brave enough to ask the questions others fear to ask, and to speak his own understanding of the truth wherever it might lead. Many attempts have been made to censor and silence him. As a woman, and a person of color, as a writer who has been criticized and banned myself, I support his right to share his own thoughts.”

“I maintain that I can be friends with whoever I like,” Walker told me. “The attachment to this belief that this person is evil is strange. He’s not.”

I worked for two years as a reporter in Jerusalem. I listened to the daily filth spewed out by Israelis about Arabs and Palestinians, who used racist tropes to sanctify Israeli apartheid and gratuitous violence against Palestinians. Israel routinely orders air strikes, targeted assassinations, drone attacks, artillery strikes, tank assaults and naval bombardments on the largely defenseless population in Gaza. Israel blithely dismisses those it murders, including children, as unworthy of life, drawing on poisonous religious edicts. It is risible that Israel  and its US supporters can posit themselves as anti-racists, abrogating the right to cancel Walker. It is the equivalent of allowing the Klan to vet speakers lists.  

Torat Ha’Melech by Rabbi Yitzhak and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur is one of innumerable examples of the deep racism embedded in Israeli culture. The book provides rabbinical advice to Israeli soldiers and officers in the occupied Palestinian territories. It  describes non-Jews as “uncompassionate by nature” and justifiably exterminated to “curb their evil inclinations.” “If we kill a gentile who has violated one of the seven commandments of [Noah]…there is nothing wrong with the murder.” It assures troops that it is morally legitimate to kill Palestinian children, writing, “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.” The Biblical prohibition on murder, Yitzhak and Elitzur write, “refers only to a Jew who kills a Jew, and not to a Jew who kills a gentile, even if that gentile is one of the righteous among the nations.” They even say it is “permissible” to kill Jewish dissidents. A Jewish dissident, the rabbis write, is a rodef. A rodef, according to traditional Jewish law, is someone who is “pursuing” another person to murder him or her. It is the duty of a Jew to kill a rodef if the rodef is told to cease the threatening behavior and does not. Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, argued that the din rodef, or “law of the pursuer,” justified Rabin’s murder.

Walker is the best among us. She is one of our most gifted and lyrical writers. She stands unequivocally with the crucified of the earth. She sees her own pain in the pain of others. She demands justice. She pays the price.

Boycott the Bay Area Book Festival.

That is the least we owe a literary and moral titan.

5 signs they are CREATING a food crisis

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By Kit Knightly

Source: Off-Guardian

It’s no secret that, according to politicians and the corporate press, “food shortages” and a “food supply crises” have been on the way for a while now. They have been regularly predicted for several years.

What’s really strange is that despite its near-constant incipience, the food shortage never seems to actually arrive and is always blamed on something new.

As long ago as 2012, “scientists” were predicting that climate change and a lack of clean water would create “food shortages” that would “turn the world vegetarian by 2050”.

In 2019, UN “experts” warned that “climate change was threatening the world’s food supply”.

Later the same year, the UK was warned that they could expect a food shortage as a result of “post-Brexit chaos”.

By early March 2020 supermarkets were already “warning” that the government had been too slow to act on the coronavirus outbreak, and they might run out of food. (They never actually did).

A month later, in April 2020 when the “pandemic” was less than three months old, “officials” warned Covid was going to create a global food crisis. Three months later it had ballooned into “the worst food crisis for 50 years”.

In the Summer of 2021 the British press was predicting the “worst food shortages since world war 2” and “rolling power cuts”, allegedly due to a lack of truck drivers blamed equally on Covid and Brexit (neither the shortages nor power cuts ever really materialised).

By September 2021, the UK was told the gas price spike would create a shortage of frozen food, and just a month later, that we may have to ration meat ahead of Christmas, due to the gas crisis. (There never was any rationing)

In January 2022, Australia saw “empty supermarket shelves” blamed on the Omicron variant crippling the supply chain, while the US had the same empty shelves blamed on bad winter weather.

Moving into the spring of 2022, the food crisis is still on its way…only now it’s because of the war in Ukraine, or China’s “Zero Covid” policies, or the bird flu outbreak.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that – since the food crisis is always expected but never arrives, and is always blamed on the current thing – that it doesn’t really exist. That it’s nothing but a psy-op designed to spread panic and give suppliers an excuse to jack up their prices in response to fake “scarcity” created by the press.

However, there are indications that this may be about to change.

In a Brussels press conference on March 25th of this year, Joe Biden said…

Regarding food shortages – yes, we did talk about shortages, and they’re going to be real.”

…which is a decidedly odd thing to say.

Most of the time the only reason to strongly affirm something is “going to be real” from now on, is that up to that point it was not.

Indeed, there are a few signs that the food supply is about to genuinely come under attack.

1. UKRAINE WAR & WESTERN SANCTIONS

It’s well documented that Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine has driven up the prices of oil, gas and wheat. Partly due to disruption on the ground, but mostly due to Western sanctions.

Russia is the largest exporter of wheat and other grains in the world, and these products are used not just for making food for humans, but also as animal feed. Western nations boycotting Russian wheat will therefore potentially drive up the price of a huge variety of foodstuffs.

We have already seen rationing of sunflower oil (a major Ukrainian export), with reports that this could extend to all kinds of other products including sausages, chicken, pasta and beer.

This war did not need to happen, it could have been prevented (and could still be stopped) by a simple agreement on Ukrainian neutrality. Combine that with the sweeping nature of the anti-Russian sanctions – unmatched in recent history – and you can reason that the chaos on the ground and concomitant increase in food prices is part of a deliberate policy serving the Great Reset agenda.

2. INCREASING THE PRICE OF OIL

The increased price of oil has natural and obvious knock-on effects for every industrial sector – most especially transport, logistics and agriculture. Despite fears of a cost of living crisis, warnings of food shortages and Russia’s status as the largest exporter of oil and gas in the world, Western nations and their allies have made virtually zero effort to lower the cost of oil.

The high oil price has already seen the Russian ruble bounce back to pre-war strength, and yet Saudi Arabia has been increasing their prices, not flooding the market to tank the price as they did in 2014/15.

Keeping the cost of petroleum high is a deliberate policy decision, and one that shows the cost of living crisis – and any resultant food shortages – are being engineered on purpose.

3. BIRD FLU

The press is claiming there is a major bird flu outbreak going on. As we published last week, the dynamics of “bird flu” seem to be identical to Covid. Birds are tested for the virus using PCR tests, culled if they are “positive”, and these culls are then labelled “bird flu deaths”.

This process has already seen at least 27 million poultry birds destroyed in the US alone, the world’s largest exporter of both chicken and eggs. France, Canada and the UK have also culled millions of birds.

Bird flu has already (allegedly) caused the price of chicken and eggs to skyrocket.

(As a potentially important aside, a new report has also warned that pigs can pass “superbugs” to humans, so pigs may be for the chop sometime soon, too)

4. UK & US PAYING FARMERS TO STOP FARMING

Going back to last May, the Biden administration began pushing farmers to add agricultural land to the “conservation reserve program”, a federally funded program allegedly aimed at preserving the environment. The program is essentially paying farmers not to farm. A very odd policy decision, given the widely predicted food shortages.

A state-level plan in California is going to pay farmers to grow less, this time in the name of saving water.

Interestingly, the UK has a similar program going on for (again, allegedly) totally different reasons. Starting this past February, the British government is paying lump sums of up £100,000 to any farmers who want to retire from farming. Again, a strange policy during a period of geopolitical unrest impacting the food supply.

5. MANUFACTURED FERTILISER SHORTAGES

Russia and Belarus are two of the biggest exporters of fertiliser and fertiliser-related products in the world, accounting for around 10 billion dollars worth of trade manually. So, the war in Ukraine (and the sanctions) are already hitting the fertiliser market hard, with prices hitting new all-time highs in March.

China, the third biggest exporter of fertiliser in the world, has had a self-imposed export ban on the product since last summer, allegedly in an effort to keep domestic food prices low.

Given that, it is very strange that America’s Union Pacific Railway has suddenly placed a limit on the number of fertiliser deliveries it will make, informing fertiliser giant CF Industries they will need to cut their train car use by as much as 20%.

In their public response, CF Industries stated:

The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers…Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers’ harvests and increasing the cost of food for consumers.”

BONUS: FIRES AT FOOD PROCESSING PLANTS

This get’s a bonus slot, not an official spot, because of the multiple unknowns in this case.

In the strangest and most ephemeral story on the list, it seems there has been a rash of fires at food processing plants all over the United States in the last six months. Since August 2021 at least 16 major fires have broken out at food processing plants all across the country.

In September last year a meat processor in Nebraska burned down, impacting 5% of the country’s beef supply. In March of this year fire shut down a Nestle frozen food plant in Arkansas and a major potato processing site in Belfast, Maine was almost levelled by a huge fire.

The examples just keep on coming.

In just the last week two different single-engine planes have crashed into two different food plants, causing major fires. One at a potato processing plant in Idaho, another at a General Mills plant in Georgia.

Right now we can’t prove this is a deliberate campaign, or even statistically unusual, but it certainly warrants some further investigation.

There’s a good write-up on this story on Tim Pool’s website, and an in-depth twitter thread covering all the recent events from Dr Ben Braddock here.

*

In summary…

  1. A war which did not need to happen is driving up food and oil prices.
  2. Sanctions which did not need to be put in place are also driving up food and oil prices.
  3. Western allies are intentionally raising their oil prices.
  4. Despite warning of a food crisis, US and UK are paying farmers not to farm.
  5. A “bird flu epidemic” very much like the fake Covid “pandemic” is driving up the price of poultry and eggs.
  6. Western companies are actively making the fertiliser shortages worse.
  7. Bizarre fires are crippling large sections of the US food industry.

Taken individually maybe these points could all be seen as mistakes or coincidences, but when you put them all together it’s not hard to spot the pattern. The press may claim we are “sleepwalking” into a food crisis, but it looks more like they’re running head-first into it.

After years of saying there’s a food shortage on the way, it looks like they might be about to finally actually create one.

A Weird, Stupid Dystopia

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

The last few days in the United States have seen a parade of wealthy freaks fellating each other’s egos and preening for the cameras in outlandish garb while ordinary Americans suffer more and more.

The weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner saw a gaggle of media celebrities congregate to congratulate one another on what a great job they’ve been doing bravely telling the truth and holding the most powerful government on earth to account. The host, Trevor Noah of The Daily Show, gushed with enthusiasm about how much freedom the press have in America to say things the powerful don’t like.

“As we sit in this room tonight, people, I really hope you all remember what the real purpose of this evening is,” Noah said. “Yes, it’s fun. Yes, we dress nice. Yes, the people eat, they drink, we have fun. But the reason we’re here is to honor and celebrate the fourth estates and what you stand for — what you stand for — an additional check and balance that holds power to account and gives voice to those who otherwise wouldn’t have one.”

“And if you ever begin to doubt your responsibilities, if you ever begin to doubt how meaningful it is, look no further than what’s happening in Ukraine,” said Noah. “Look at what’s happening there. Journalists are risking and even losing their lives to show the world what’s really happening. You realize how amazing it is. In America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth even if it makes people in power uncomfortable, even if it makes your viewers or your readers uncomfortable. You understand how amazing that is? I stood here tonight and I made fun of the president of the United States, and I’m going to be fine. I am going to be fine, right? Do you really understand what a blessing it is?”

Of course there are people who’ve said things that US presidents don’t like who are not in fact fine. Julian Assange continues to waste away in Belmarsh Prison as the US government continues its efforts to extradite him to he can become the first publisher ever tried under the Espionage Act. Edward Snowden, an American, remains in exile because one US president after another continues to refuse to pardon his heroic whistleblowing about the sinister surveillance practices of the US intelligence cartel. Daniel Hale, also an American, sits in prison for exposing the depravity of America’s monstrous drone program.

Trevor Noah did not mention these people, or the many others who’ve been persecuted, silenced, imprisoned and killed for saying things the powerful individuals who govern the US don’t approve of, because as a member of the mainstream media his job is not to inform but to propagandize.

Far from providing “an additional check and balance that holds power to account and gives voice to those who otherwise wouldn’t have one” as Noah claims, the people in his audience on Saturday night are tasked with manipulating public thought in facilitation of the interests of the powerful. The mainstream news media in America, and throughout all the so-called free democracies of the western world, are propaganda institutions whose first and foremost job is to manufacture consent for oligarchy and empire.

Which is why the President of the United States, when he took the podium that night, had nothing but friendly words for the mainstream press.

“What’s clear, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, is that you, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century,” Biden said. “We’ve all seen the courage of Ukrainian people because of the courage of American reporters in this room, and your colleagues across the world who are on the ground taking their lives in their own hands.”

This past weekend also saw a friendly gathering of brave fourth estate truth warriors and political and government operatives of the US empire at a party hosted by the billionaire owner of the neocon war propaganda rag The Atlantic.

Politico reports:

David and Katherine Bradley and Laurene Powell Jobs hosted a dinner at the Bradleys’ home. SPOTTED: Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Cabinet Secretary Evan Ryan, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, CIA Director Bill Burns, press secretary Jen Psaki, Deputy A.G. Lisa Monaco, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands), homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Jeffrey Goldberg, Nick Thompson, Peter Lattman, Anne Applebaum, Russell Berman, Franklin Foer, David Frum, Elaine Godfrey, Adam Harris, Mark Leibovich, Jeff Dufour, Heather Kuldell, Kevin Baron, José Andrés, Enes Kanter, Mitch Landrieu, Dafna Linzer, Rachel Martin, Judy Woodruff, Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, Jonathan Capehart, Katty Kay, Steve and Jean Case, John Dickerson and Jen Palmieri.

Yep, when you see a shady basketball player/empire propagandist fraternizing with the CIA Director while surrounded by media celebrities and government insiders at a party hosted by a media-owning plutocrat, you know you’re in a country where power is held to account. Right, Trevor?

The orgy of embarrassment was capped off by the 2022 Met Gala, a big weird dystopian parade of rich freaks dressed like Hunger Games aristocracy and laughing in the face of everyone who can’t afford to live.

An honest Met Gala dress would have a corset made from the bones of Yemeni children, draped with a cloth of stolen gold and lithium spun by the tiny hands of child slaves, with a full-length train that leached oil and blood wherever it went.

This while ordinary Americans struggle just to survive. While American women appear to be on the precipice of losing their reproductive sovereignty. While money is poured into a proxy war which threatens to escalate into a conflict that could easily end all life on earth.

This is your dying empire, America. This is your end-stage capitalism. This is your dystopia, in all its weird, phony, stupid glory.

It is horrifying. The longer you look at it, the creepier it gets.

https://twitter.com/kayrosef/status/1520605986259873793

Breathe it all in, folks.

We’re in for a hell of a ride.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Global Pandemic

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By Cindy Sheehan

Source: Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox

“I’m a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.” HHGTTG, Douglas Adams

Now that it appears that (for at least the time being) grossly profiting from the coronavirus issue is on the decline (except if anyone buys the “4th booster for Pfizer”) and gross war profiting is once again taking the lead, I want to reflect on MY experience with the Global Pandemic™.

I am a huge fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG) universe that was conceived and written by the brilliant Douglas Adams who died (years ago) at a too young age from unrelated coronavirus/vax heart disease.

In reflecting on the past two years, the closest match I came up with is I felt like one of the HHGTTG’s main characters, Arthur Dent.

As written, Arthur was a mild-mannered employee of the BBC who is wrenched out of bed when a construction crew comes to his home to demolish it for a highway overpass. He rushes out of his house and lies down in front of a bulldozer in his “dressing gown.” During this scene, his best friend Ford Prefect comes to “hitchhike” him off of planet Earth which is about to be demolished by the Vogon Construction Fleet aliens who are making a way for an intergalactic bypass. In both instances of demolition, the “plans” were available for view and comment in planning offices and it was too late to change anything.

Arthur goes through most of the five books in the series in a bewildered and befuddled state of mind in his dressing gown. I felt like this during much of the past two years, myself: I spent much of the time in lounging clothes, even when I went out. What was the use of getting dressed up to head to a grocery store just to put a mask on and be in disguise?

To be clear, I wasn’t in an Arthur Dent state because I had a loss of mental, or physical capacity, it was because the propaganda for the Global Pandemic™ (let’s shorten it to GloPan for the remainder of this piece) was SO obviously conflated mis/disinformation and that those around me seemed to be capitulating to it.. I was confused by the compliance, to say the least. For example, if we were told by the GloPan Chief-operating-officer (COO) Dr. Anthony Falsie, that “masks don’t work,” the GloPanBots didn’t wear a mask; When Falsie changed to “masks are mandatory and cloth masks are fine,” that’s what the GloPanBots did. Then it was “wear a surgical mask and a cloth mask over it,” “add a face-shield.” Every seamlessly told lie was shamefully obeyed by the masses without a hint of irony, or question.

To be honest, after the “two-weeks to flatten the curve” period was over and masks were being pushed hardcore in businesses that GloPanCorp allowed to remain open, I would wear a mask into grocery stores—which was the only place I went. However, I NEVER wore one outside, in my home, or in a car. Bollocks to that. Every time I passed a Masked Wonder on the street, they would do a panicked swerve and a few almost fell over trying to avoid me. I would always ask them, “Why did you do that, I am obviously NOT sick?” One woman even retorted “How do you know?” If I had more time to respond because she was already 1/2 block away from me in her rush to avoid proximity to any human not covering their breathing holes, I would have replied, “I think I would know if I were ill—and if I were ill, I’d be home bingeing Netflix.”

DON’T PANIC

In the series, the HHGTTG is an actual, constantly updated book that gives Galactic Hitchhikers information about dining, drinking, avoiding monsters, and backgrounds on each planet. In fact, Ford Prefect, Arthur’s alien best-friend was on Earth working on Earth’s entry in the Guide. However, the only thing written in the Guide under the entry “Earth” says is, “Mostly harmless.” Printed on the cover of each HHGTTG is the advice “Don’t Panic.”

I feel like most of the human race just erased the word “Don’t” and panicked like crazy over a “Mostly harmless” pathogen. Now, don’t stop reading at this point, I will explain myself using science, not $cience.

Sars-CoV-2

“If there’s any real truth, it’s that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.” HHGTTG, Douglas Adams

A real life pandemic has the potential to be VERY frightening—with so many dying, it would be impossible to count them, let alone bury them. There would also be very little immunity to the disease that would have the ability wipe out human-life on our planet. Even though the grossly inflated Cov-19 numbers were purposely significant so you would line up for an untested inoculation, the virus never got to the level of GloPan, nor does it deserve the hysteria and profound destruction that surrounded it.

We also don’t know, and may never know, the origins of Cov-19. Was it a U.S./China lab leak from Wuhan? Did it come from a wet market there? There was early speculation that the U.S. military brought it to China during a sporting event there in late 2019.

Was it intentionally, or unintentionally loosed on the world?

I am not in any of the above camps, but with the revelation of more than two-dozen U.S. bioweapon labs in Ukraine, the plot thickens, doesn’t it?

Coronaviruses have been with us for a long time. The disinfectant Lysol proclaims on its can that it kills 99% of coronaviruses (even before GloPan). As humans, most of us have built natural immunity to corona, but every now and then, a mutant comes to infect us. As observed with Cov-19, most of us develop mild symptoms that have the potential to be dangerous to the elderly and more vulnerable populations: Just like every flu-type pathogen that we’ve previously experienced.

Back in early 2020 when we started hearing about Cov-19, I wasn’t worried about the virus, because I had the attitude that even if I did contract it, I would more than likely be okay. I had a trip to commemorate International Working Women’s Day to several communities on the East Coast planned for early March, but I started to hear talk of quarantines (I don’t think we called it a “lockdown” yet, but prison-talk would gradually start to reveal itself) and I didn’t want to be blocked from returning home if I ventured outside of California. I mean, they forbade cruise ships from docking for days—we knew someone on one of them in the San Francisco Bay—and, then flights started to get cancelled, so I cancelled by activities and we were all hoping to reschedule soon.

“Soon,” became as long as “two-weeks to flatten the curve.” In March, 2020, I was sure that I would be able to travel for May Day; then it was the 4th of July—-Maybe Labor Day would work? It soon became apparent that 2020 was going to be a wash, but perhaps we could schedule some IWWD events for March 2021? Well, at the writing of this it’s April 2022 and I still haven’t been able to leave for the East Coast. Even though travel restrictions have loosened and it’s easier to travel, at this point, the issue for me is masking for half of a day—-I can barely wear one for 10-minutes, let alone 12-15 hours. Being fully un-jabbed is also a problem for some people and groups that I have worked with in the past.

How did my attitude develop towards Cov-19?

Why did I remain adamantly resistant to the agitprop? Why was I inherently immune to both Cov-19 and the coronaprop?

The answer is quite easy and evident: the same people/institutions that have lied and caused enormous harm to the people of this failed-state AND the world were telling me to panic. Literally. I never believed their bullshit about Global Terrorism (GloTerr), so why would I believe this (to me) obvious B.S. of GloPan?

Besides, who knows if I had Cov-19, or not? According to Dr. John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine (Stanford Prevention Research), of Epidemiology and Population Health, over 70% (in cross-age demographics) who were tested positive for Cov-19 had zero, or mild symptoms. The alarming numbers came from comparing test numbers to deaths, instead of using IFR (infection fatality rate) which would have dropped the numbers dramatically. Also, the powers-that-be, have adjusting their ghoulish-death rate down and admitted that those who died had an average of over THREE co-morbidities. Not saying I am happy, nor am I minimizing the pain these deaths caused, but, it seems most people who died of Cov-19 were well on their way to meeting the Grim Reaper, anyway. Some people (like me) work diligently to make our bodies hostile to pathogenic invaders, while most Americans create a very welcoming environment for disease and chronic conditions. This circumstance can be changed, but it takes effort, where taking drugs is practically effortless (if you can afford them).

Most people listened to the $cience of those who were paid to come up with supporting $cience and feed it to the public through the stenographer media class. One of the most egregious examples of this is when the current director of the CDC Rachel Walensky said: “I first heard of the efficacy of the Covid vaccine from CNN.” What!? Part of her job is to literally investigate the safety and efficacy of medicines and they operate the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS).

Pfizer spends millions of dollars sponsoring the legacy media and people like Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Falsie have carte blanche to promote the propaganda that brings them fame and fortune. The $cience has become a cult of devotees called $cientism. Dr. Anthony (“If you attack me, you’re attacking science”) Falsie is the Pope of this new religion that still has a lot of fanatical adherents who pay a steep tithe for their fake sense of safety with their health and freedoms.

Recently, Pope Falsie has made another infallible (until it’s not) proclamation that the adherents of $cientism, and we heretics, now have to evaluate our own risk to viruses and proceed with our lives. Just like other religions who believe that with fear, sin can be eliminated, the High Priests of $cientism believe that viruses can also be wiped out. Neither view is healthy or productive.

I listened to the science of epidemiologists, MDs, virologists, and other researchers that not only didn’t profit from their truth-spreading, but got banned from social media, ridiculed by the profiteers, and, in some cases lost their jobs or their licenses to practice medicine. If you know the way propaganda works, you know that the voices of those who lie are most often elevated and the ones that go against those lies are silenced.

9/11 and GloPan

Were four buildings (three WTC and one Pentagon) hit by airplanes on 9/11/2001?

There are many narrative discrepancies with the official story that day. In the midst of the terror, confusion and manufactured nationalism, the Bush regime was already busy with its ultimate goal of invading Iraq (for the oil), by way of Afghanistan. Of course, neither country/leader had anything to do with the awful events of that day, but that didn’t matter to the oil-garchy. One ironic difference between the GloTerr response and GloPan was that Bush told us to travel and shop until we drop. During GloPan we could buy groceries, but all of our other purchases needed to come from Amazon, or other online options. So, while Bezos was hoarding enormous wealth and building space rockets during that time period, Main Street businesses struggled and a couple hundred-thousand of them were collateral damage.

Despite how Cov-19 came to the world and no matter what you believe: Deadly pandemic, or mostly bullshit, I think most of us can recognize that the PTB used it to deliver unbelievable and unconscionable profits to a very few. As the diminutive Rahm Emanuel famously said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” We can argue “Made it happen,” or “Let it happen” all day for the rest of our lives, but the bottom line is, whether we speak about 9/11 or GloPan, anyone with two-eyes can see that the response was destructive to the majority, and profitable for the few.

The Effects of GloPan on Children

The initial decision to close schools came as a not unwelcome measure to my grandchildren who were happy for a break. If they, and most other students, had known that the closures would extend to over a year and that the horrors of Zoom “learning” would be in their future, I am not sure they would have been so happy.

From the beginning of this “pandemic” we were hearing that Cov-19 did not affect children the same way that it was affecting adults. However, as the closures extended, we were hearing from studies in places like Sweden that decided to take a more measured (and more successful) response to Cov-19, that even if children tested positive, they were not ill, nor were they infecting other children or adults. In fact, the children acted like a sponge, soaking up the virus without it going anywhere else. If things were done naturally here, the students could have put a brake on infection rates.

Yet, the lockdowns and school closures dragged on, month after month. It seemed to my grandchildren and other students that no one in the government, or at their schools, cared much for their mental or physical health. Suicides and attempted suicides skyrocketed in this time period to a level which was a legitimate health emergency.

Recently, a survey delivered the sad news that 44% of teenagers report being depressed, or hopeless. If this stat doesn’t damn the management of GloPan straight to the burning depths of hell, I don’t know what does (maybe the Eldercide).

Milestone activities like prom, graduations, and sports were also taken away from the unlucky ones who happened to be of that age. Playgrounds were illogically and tragically roped off and beaches were closed. Anything that could actually enhance the natural immunity of children (and others) like fresh air, sunshine, sand, salt water, sports, and socialization were taken away. Instead of prescribing more vitamin C, zinc, and vitamin D, we were told to isolate and quarantine. Here in California, to the credit of some Democratic lawmakers, they forced the lockdown fascist Newsom to reopen playgrounds making the correct claim that lower-income families and children suffered most from this misguided policy.

One thing the diseased ruling-class knows, and WE need to understand is that life is more than about avoiding germs (which is a ridiculous notion, anyway), but it’s about connections and health. The health of our children was negatively impacted by the Stasi-like measures that never made any sense from a logical or even public health standpoint.

Take two neighboring countries that took two different approaches, Sweden and Finland.

Sweden did not close schools, and Finland did. The infection rate of children 1-19 years of age were exactly the same: 0.005% The closures had zero affect on the children of either country.

The Hidden Tragedy of Eldercide

“They claimed it was for the sake of their grandparents and grandchildren, but it was of course for the sake of their grandparent’s grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s grandparents.” HHGTTG, Douglas Adams

As stated above, the justification for the flatten the curve bullshit was also put on the backs of the elders.

Andrew Cuomo of New York was one of the first governors to institute a policy of putting ill people in nursing homes, after first absolving said nursing homes from any legal liability if anything went wrong. Of course, this was for a price and an already greedy and shady businesses agreed to take in sick people to further put their elders at risk.

Cuomo is in some hot water now for hiding the nursing home deaths in his state. As of this writing over 15, 000 residents of nursing homes have allegedly died of C19, many due to Cuomo’s policies. But how awful it must be to die alone gasping for breath while no family members are allowed to visit? What? Sick people could be admitted to your family member’s room, but you can’t go visit your grandma?

Cuomo was not the only governor/health officer that took the “crisis” of GloPan to kill its elderly citizens. We identified at least a dirty-half dozen that did so: Newsolini of my state, California; and the governors of: Pennsylvania; New Jersey; Minnesota; and the liberal Republican in Massachusetts. Interestingly, DeSantis of Florida refused to do this and he is under fire for having a more measured response to GloPan.

Who or what were really “killing Meemaw?” Obviously, the policies of the lockdown regime, not your family members. There are many state governors, public health officials and random bureaucrats that need to be tried, convicted, and punished for crimes against humanity!

Alternate Realities

“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?” HHGTTG, Douglas Adams

In about June of 2020, I began to see a very disturbing trend among my anti-capitalist/empire colleagues, friends, and comrades: they were uncritically following and promoting the establishment lockdown policies and propaganda. Not only were they mesmerized by propaganda, many of them began to attack people who had legitimate questions.

Even though I have had heaps of shit piled on me for not supporting the criminal likes of Obama, Clinton, or Biden, I was surprised by the vitriol heaped on me when I started to question the obvious lies and contradictions of the Cov-19 narrative. I thought that if someone was a friend of mine by the GloPan, they would have more trust in me. I went from being a principled critic of US Empire to being a “Qanon, proud-boy, Trumper.” It was hurtful because I thought my remaining friends were more high-quality than to become uncritical supporters of the media and government.

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.” HHGTTG, Douglas Adams

Suddenly, I (and many like me) were ridiculed and even being wished death from the GloPan. These virtue-signaling, do-gooders were all about no one dying from Cov-19, but it was apparently fine and dandy for people to die from being incarcerated in a nursing home with ill patients, or from having other health conditions deferred or denied. For two years (before “I Stand With Ukraine” became THE thing), “Covid” deaths were the only deaths that literally counted: EVERY DAMN DAY by the ghouls in the media and governments.

Professor Christian Parenti stated it much better in his article (original link), How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy

The socialist left, which wants to use state power to discipline capital has instead accepted the negative image of its goal: state power used to bully, harass, and discipline workers. The left’s embrace of Covid hysteria makes a mockery of the left’s goals of planning, industrial policy, economic redistribution, worker empowerment, and environmental sustainability. This leftwing self-harm will have deleterious consequences for years to come. Indeed, the situation is worse than a mere political fumble. The left is now actively helping its own enemies. In its unwavering support for mandates, passports, punitive lockdowns, and censorship, the organized left has sided with technocratic elites, the one percent, and the repressive state apparatus everywhere. 

The Aftermath

Children are suffering the most of the policies of a government that have never given any shits about your health—or the well-being of its children. We can’t let our guard down now because this episode was just too profitable, even though it seems like we are getting back to “normal.” You know, that normal where gas is almost $6/gallon and you have to get a payday loan to buy groceries—FYI, despite what CNN and MSNBC say, this is not Putin’s doing, it’s the hyper-inflation from lockdowns and creating trillions in “wealth” backed up by nothing.

The future is bleak, but we are still here. Whether we are jabbed, or not; whether we bought the BS, or not; we are all in the same boat; and that boat is sinking.

The Future

There is a moment in ever dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.” HHGTTG, Douglas Adams

My dream would be for people to never forget that the establishment is always at war with the working-class: their wars and pandemics and distractions are designed to divide us so we fight each other and not them. Why would anyone figuratively sign up to do the bidding of diseased capital? Especially those who understood this before GloPan?

Big pHARMa (reaping tens of billions of dollars in profit) and the Imperialists do not need your uncritical support when that support is detrimental to life on this planet.

For Bob’s sake, DON’T PANIC!

Never again!

Analysis of ‘The Great Reset’ Must Lead to Practical Action to Defeat It – The We Are Human, We Are Free Campaign

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By Anita McKone

Millions of people worldwide are aware that their lives, and their children’s lives, are being threatened by lockdowns. vaccine mandates and loss of free speech.

And there is a growing awareness that these immediate and obvious threats are merely parts of a complex overall plan to implement a technocratic system of world governance that can be described as a neo-feudal system that seeks to increase and consolidate the power and wealth of the world’s billionaire individuals and families by destroying any possibility of autonomous individual behaviour. The intention of these psychopathic elitists is that we ‘the people’ become literal extensions of their will, through technological invasion of all aspects of our lives which will lead to the total loss of our capacity to feel, think and act for ourselves.

Their obsession with total control of all nature and life means they have no genuine awareness of what it means to be alive, and they see everything around them as something to be monetised, numbered and controlled to create a ‘perfect’ state of existence. Because they are so fundamentally insecure, and know that individuals do not willingly give up their existence to become slaves, their most powerful weapon to gain control is lying –  they try to con us into believing that giving them control is in our interests, or indeed that we are in fact in control of our own lives when we make superficial, meaningless choices, such as voting for political parties that inevitably end up doing the bidding of the financial power elite.

These elitists have become masters at co-opting all movements of self-respect, self-care and solidarity – their use of double speak means they claim to be supportive of community, fair wealth distribution, truth in the media, ecological sustainability, diversity, racial equality, women’s equality, freedom and nonviolence (for example) while working to implement an agenda that supports none of these things. And their increasing use over the past 70 years of NGOs that sound ‘friendly’ and ‘independent’, but which in fact pursue corporate, imperialist and other elitist agendas, has led to enormous numbers of ordinary ‘concerned’ people putting their money and energy into organisations and movements that dissipate their capacity to genuinely act in their own interests and the interests of life on the planet as a whole.

To take just a few examples – the environment movement has become dominated by the demand for a massive ‘green’ tech revolution that requires further rape and pillage of the peoples and natural environment of Africa and anywhere else rare minerals are found, union movements around the world have become utterly neutered and no longer act in the interests of their working members, medical ‘science’ is most likely to be a profit-making anti-scientific enterprise rather than one designed to further people’s health through use of genuine scientific methodology, and (particularly close to my heart) campaigns using nonviolent tactics have been used to simply achieve ‘regime change’ in centralised states, furthering the interests of transnational corporations, even though this was never the intention of the majority of activists involved.

While it does feel demoralising at times to realise that it is necessary to question everyone and everything, and not take things at face value, ever (!), there are a number of  (genuinely) independent researchers (including those I have referenced above) who expose the goings on of the Global Elite, historically and currently, through detailed research, logical analysis and referencing, who make the work of deciding who definitely not to trust a little easier for the average person. Although they do not always agree on every angle, and bring different areas of research to the table, they put together a picture of the real world elitist actors, from all countries (Russia and China – here, here and here –  included), that have shaped and continue to shape the world through their particular philosophies (eg. technocracy, eugenics), plans (eg. the New World Order/Great Reset/UN Agenda 30) and organisations.

These researchers’ particular concern is looking beyond the ‘conflict and alliances between nation states’ narrative as an explanation for political and economic behaviour in the world, to expose the transnational and transcultural nature of global finance and elitist philosophies, and the fundamental war being continually waged by the Global Elite on ordinary people (people who are content with a relatively small scale, localised frame of reference for exercising control in their lives, and who value the autonomy of others, and therefore do not feel that they have to be in control in all situations). These researchers expose the megalomaniacs who crave to rule the world, who deem every bit of control exercised by others to be a threat to their security, and whose conflicts with each other pale in comparison to their disregard, disrespect and disgust for those not of their psychopathic, criminal ‘superclass’.

From Analysis to Action

Gaining a thorough analysis is extremely important, and a key part of activism involves research, self-education and information sharing, but if we want to change the situation, it is equally important that we come up with self-empowering actions that take this deeper analysis into account. So, when the historical, real world analysis shows that the Elite (because they are elitist!) do not have any interest in listening to those ‘below’ them, and when we know the extent to which they have corrupted (or even invented) mainstream politics and legal structures, we need to stop pretending 1) that political ‘leaders’ will listen if we complain a bit louder and longer and 2) that we must wait for our corporate oppressors and their political/legal enablers to give us permission to act in defence of our own lives and fundamental existence.

We have mostly been trained to be ‘polite’ or ‘law-abiding’ or ‘respectful of authority’ as children and unfortunately this psychological structuring makes us vulnerable to abusers who falsely claim to be authorities with our interests at heart. And our childhood fear of punishment for ‘disobedience’, including social abandonment when we think or feel differently to others,  gets in the way of us trusting our own capacity to feel, think, make decisions and act for ourselves. Often it helps to pay conscious attention to this fear, so that it can cease to rule us unconsciously. It is unfortunately the case that many freedom activists are still putting their faith in some leader, political party or system to save them, because they feel powerless as individuals, as they were trained to feel by the many forces for domination in the world.

We become powerful when we trust that we, ourselves, will do a pretty good job of getting things right, and even if we make mistakes, we can keep learning and successfully negotiating a path forward in life without being mindlessly obedient to someone who ‘knows better’. We become powerful when we take the initiative to act. We become powerful when we act on our own conscience, and face our fear of unjust punishment. We become powerful when we know that even an experience of pain is our experience to feel, and that we exist, fundamentally, no matter how hard someone tries to con us into believing that we are ‘nothing’. And when we experience solidarity and kindness from other activists as part of a resistance campaign it feels real and powerful, and worth so much more than any friendship that relies on pretending ‘everything is okay’ as we sleepwalk into slavery.

The We Are Human, We Are Free worldwide nonviolent campaign to resist ‘The Great Reset’ is based on both an analysis of the many different components of the Reset, and an analysis of the elitist power structures that further the Reset agenda by disempowering individuals so that they cease to believe they have the responsibility or capacity to take effective action for themselves.

There are so many things that people can do to practically defend themselves, and while it takes a bit of time and commitment to identify and change elements of our lives that contribute to Elite control, it is these ‘small’ things that add up to genuine change in one’s own life and in society as a whole.  Change and standing up for the truth as you see it sometimes takes courage, and there will be times when your resistance may be ‘dramatic’, but it is vital to remember that everyday sensible, practical actions are what grounds an effective resistance movement in reality.

Following is a poster available in 15 languages that presents grassroots noncooperation and constructive actions for people to take in 7 different areas: Pharma, Tech, Media, Banks, Business, Human Social Interactions and Non Payment of Fines (+ Surveillance is thrown in as an added bonus!). The campaign is explained more fully on the We Are Human, We Are Free website.

So, as an example, I’m increasing the amount of organic food I grow, I pay in cash whenever possible, I boycott Youtube, Facebook, Google and all mainstream media (ie. I don’t pay directly for any of these media or engage in ‘free’ use that encourages advertisers or data mining), I shop at small businesses and boycott Amazon,  I stay healthy via natural health modalities rather than using pharmaceuticals, I don’t use 5G technology or ‘smart’ home gadgets, and I am willing to accept imprisonment if necessary rather than act against my conscience, trusting that the universe will take me where it wills for a productive purpose.

I do these things not to be ‘virtuous’ but because I reckon they are the most effective way that I can be myself, undermine the power of the Elite to dysfunctionally control us, and live a life worth living. I don’t judge others according to whether or not they are participating in all aspects of the campaign, particularly when I know that it takes time to reorient from ‘standard’ life to deliberate existence, and that the pressure of fear is always present and it sometimes forces us in directions we would rather not go.

I encourage everyone interested in freedom to begin freeing themselves to take the actions that directly transform their lives, and give them greater functional control without asking permission from a ‘leader’, a ‘representative’ or even ‘the majority’. It’s okay to just get on with it yourself! I believe in YOU.

Anita McKone is a nonviolent activist, researcher and philosopher and one of the founders of We Are Human, We Are Free.

Healing from Dissonance and Dystopia

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Accepting the inevitability of cascading collapse creates space to build alternatives beyond a system based on extraction and exploitation.

By Natalie Holmes

Source: Post Growth Institute

The beach was pure perfection. March’s sunshine warmed the wintry air. Cobalt waves lapped the shore with soothing persistence. Yet my soul started stirring and I became aware of a deep emotional discomfort — a yearning for peace of mind that not even the ocean could deliver. The infinite beauty of the moment reminded me of the fragility of the world, and the avoidable suffering that it contains.

I suppose it was, in some ways, a manifestation of the dissonance I’ve been feeling lately. The news tells devastating stories of war and environmental crises, yet here I am, in paradise. My nervous system knows there’s danger, but my physical reality says otherwise. It’s becoming harder and harder to enjoy and appreciate my utopia, because it’s harder and harder to ignore the externalized costs its creation and maintenance require.

In To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara’s dystopia is grim and disarmingly familiar — a near-future New York City, in a world ravaged by pandemics, where the US has fought, and lost, a war with China. The protagonist and narrator, Charlie, ostensibly suffered intellectual damage from experimental treatment for a virus during childhood. Pliant and accepting, she describes her life and its quotidian horrors with a seeming lack of emotion and imagination. Yanagihara encourages us to join Charlie’s family and colleagues in underestimating her, while subtly providing evidence to undermine those assumptions.

Since finishing the book I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this dystopia. Through masterful structuring, Yanagihara takes us on a journey from the present day to the future, showing how we arrive at dystopia via a series of events that are unimaginable until the moment they occur, and are then readily assimilated to become the new normal. Through it all, people remain fundamentally unchanged, driven by love, ambition, and the drive to escape suffering.

Back in the real world, life is imitating art. My longed-for post-pandemic paradise has been destroyed by war in Ukraine. Yet even as I write those words I recognize the dissonance. I feel in my body that individual happiness is incomplete while others experience avoidable suffering. I’m also aware that apocalypse is not a future to be feared, avoided or prepared for, but a lived reality for the majority of the world’s inhabitants, past, present and (at this rate) future — from the devastation wrought by slavery, war, and colonialism, to environmental destruction and the unfolding climate catastrophe.

Post Growth Fellow, Monika Bielskyte, frames the concept of utopia vs dystopia as a false binary informed by multiple biases and centuries of injustice. After all, “Haven’t most utopias been someone else’s dystopias, and vice versa?” Bielskyte calls out utopias as exclusionary, colonialist projects that perpetuate “the gaze and the experience of privilege.”

Utopian Futures are generally envisaged as so “perfect” that they can only exist by prodigiously leapfrogging all of the most urgent inequities of the present. Consequently, they are mostly closed to critical inquiry. Utopian imaginings pertain to communicating a peaceful and magically post-austerity world, yet somehow the peace of such a future is always peace without justice.

Bielskyte also criticizes dystopian futures as “despair escapism, and excuses for inaction and further consumption.” I find myself guilty of this to some extent — I savored Yanagihara’s dystopia, basking in the art of it. Yet dystopias can contain wisdom and lessons:

This is not to say that, historically, dystopian warnings, especially by authors of marginalized backgrounds, have not been extraordinarily prescient and valuable. For example, if our policy makers would have heeded the lessons of Octavia Butler’s The Parable Of The Sower (1993), we could have diminished or at least been better prepared for some of the most disheartening aspects of the last decade: the disinformation warfare-driven resurgence of inequality, alienation, xenophobia, racism, fascism, and biosphere collapse. Butler’s dystopia rings true in 2021 PRECISELY because the systems of oppression she critiques remain. Further, her embodied experiences as a Black woman, impoverished and disenfranchised early in her writing career, positioned her to see the broader societal implications of these injustices because she and those in her community were already living in these dystopias (*Ash Baccus-Clark).

As dystopia descends in real life (my life), casting a shadow over the last remaining patches of light, it’s time to finally stop pretending. When you look at capitalism’s fragile foundations and false premises, these economic, environmental, and geopolitical collapses are inevitable. The current global socio-economic system is founded on extraction and exploitation. The west has built its utopia by creating multiple dystopias, across time and space.

I’ve been asking myself lately how to honor life and find joy in its myriad gifts while acknowledging the uncertainty, fear, sadness, and loss that are its price. My instinct is to run and hide, to hold my breath and wait for ‘things to get back to normal’ — in other words, for my utopia to be restored — yet all the while I’m doing that I’m missing what life there is left, and with it any opportunity to have agency over the future.

As I continue to discover in my work at the Post Growth Institute, arguing that the current system is the only option represents a massive failure of imagination. Who’s to say we can’t maintain and develop what’s working while reframing or removing what’s not? Taking this approach requires a shift to a worldview beyond binaries.

Buddhist and deep ecologist Joanna Macy has shown that accepting our profound losses and grieving for them offers a way through shutdown and despair, towards activism and the building of hopeful, meaningful alternatives. As an alternative to the dystopia-utopia dichotomy, Bielskyte proposes Protopia, a blueprint for action based on continuous dialog that centers previously marginalized perspectives and “explores visions of embodied HOPE, futures wherein we have come together, as imperfect as our condition is.”

Imagination and speculation are not the only tools available. As several Post Growth Fellows point out, the dystopias created by capitalism also contain real-life narratives of agency and the existence of alternatives, some of which predate the current economic system and some of which are responses to it. Shrishtee Bajpai, outlines some examples from Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia in her article about the Global Tapestry of Alternatives; and Yusra Bitar, explores glimpses of systemic, post-carbon alternatives that are emerging in Lebanon in the wake of the country’s economic and political collapse.

These stories reveal the privilege and pretension of trying to avoid the cascading collapse of the current system. In looking to people and communities who have faced their own version of dystopia, I see power and possibility in the agency and alternatives that exist beyond the binary. Like Yanagihara’s Charlie, between the lines there is resilience, not resignation. It’s in accepting the end of my utopia, as difficult as it is, that I can find peace of mind — and the space to start dreaming of Protopia.