Saturday Matinee: All About Lily Chou Chou

THE GRAY TRAGEDY OF YOUTH IN JAPAN: SHUNJI IWAI’S “ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU”

By Luke Powell

Source: Sabukaru

Released in 2001, writer and director Shunji Iwai’s “All About Lily Chou-Chou” 「リリイ• シュシュのすべて」is a masterclass in complex and powerful storytelling, cinematography, and meta-textual messaging that puts on display the formative, introspective, and oftentimes malicious enigma that is the life of youth in Japan.

Set in the town of Ashikaga, the story centers around the relationship of two young boys, Shusuke Hoshino and Yuichi Hasumi, as they progress through junior high school. Hoshino is known to be one of the top students in their school and is harassed and ostracized by his classmates as a result, a commonplace occurrence for those caught outside the boundaries of conformity while growing up in Japan. Yuichi, in contrast, is shy and submissive to the societal structures that surround him, only paying attention and devoting all his personal time to the singer and songwriter Lily Chou-Chou.

In his free time, Yuichi manages an online BBS chatroom titled “Lilyholic,” which is completely dedicated to Lily and her music, and the messages sent between users of this website overlay much of the film. The mystery surrounding this chatroom and the messages between its users acts as a crucial plot point that slowly unravels in conjunction with the film’s events.

At one point, Yuichi, Hoshino, and their friends manage to secure a trip to Okinawa, during which Hoshino has a near-death experience that serves as the foundation for the cruel and unusual monster that he becomes, changing his and Yuichi’s relationship forever as he usurps his way into being the school’s bully the following school year.  Despite the title, this is not simply a story about a fictional songwriter and her music, but the disturbing and oftentimes glossed-over ways in which modern society corrupts the minds of youth, and the various ways those children attempt to cope against such odds. 

Yuichi’s love and devotion for Lily Chou-Chou is the emotional epicenter of this film, as it displays the profound ability for music to save and give meaning to young people’s lives, especially when surrounded by ignorant adults and inhumane peers. While the musician herself is fictional, Lily Chou-Chou’s mythical music expands over the course of the film, overlaying its imagery of lonesomeness, isolation, and absurdity with luscious, calming, and poignant bits of melancholic bliss; a reflection of Yuichi’s character and perspective on the world around him.

Users of the chatroom “Lilyholic” continuously exclaim their love for Lily and her ability to channel the “Ether,” an invisible yet omni-present force that connects all fans of Lily Chou-Chou together in their existence through Lily’s music. The “Ether” is an intrinsic aspect of the power her music has on those who listen to her, serving as the connective thread that weaves its way through the fabric of a fragile reality, allowing those lost in the tribulations of life to hold onto something organic, warm, and personal, an oasis among a desert of expectations, conformity, and isolation. 

It goes without saying that the music on display in this film is truly special and should be experienced firsthand, with the soundtrack growing organically as the audience learns more about Lily, her music, and the different characters in the film who become impacted by her compositions [for better or for worse].

Throughout the film, there are multiple references to the classical French composer Claude Debussy, whom users of Lilyholic cite as being one of Lily’s musical inspirations, as he was able to produce the “Ether” through his compositions. For example, the song that accompanies the opening scene of the film, titled 「アラベスク」[“Arabesuku”] is based off of Debussy’s “Arabesque No. 1.” Lily’s shrill yet comforting voice glides over synthesized piano chords, distanced hints of strained guitar, and a lo-fi drum beat that subjects the 19th-century classical work to a cybernetic restructuring – all of which results in one of the most captivating opening experiences in film.

Arranged and produced by Takeshi Kobayashi, the music of “All About Lily Chou-Chou” is a kaleidoscope of sonic captivity, melting between Lily’s somber yet grungy aesthetic as well as moments of clarity through the use of classical composers like Debussy, combining to create less of a soundtrack and more of an experience that will cling to you long after the credits have finished rolling.

The narrative direction and cinematography of “All About Lily Chou-Chou” are also aspects that cannot be ignored. The narrative’s timeline is fractured, starting chronologically from the middle of the story, eventually flashing back to the canonical beginning, and finally returning to the present to finish out the film. The script is adapted from an online novel that was written by director Shunji Iwai himself in the chatroom of a real-life version of the “Lilyholic” website, in which the director plays out the story of “All About Lily Chou-Chou” through the chat exchanges of two site users. A version of this website can still be accessed online today, and its existence is only the tip of the iceberg for the extensive material surrounding this film beyond its screen time. The narrative, in this sense, is multi-layered and meta-textual – an interactive and organic experience that not only goes beyond the medium of film but places a sense of participation and influence in the viewer, only to be powerless against the fierce, apathetic, and surreal scenes we witness.

The cinematography by Noboru Shinoda [“Hana and Alice,” “Love Letter”] is just as varied and complex as the film’s narrative, as it switches between ethereal, lush views of rice fields and angelic classroom settings in one shot, to the jarring use of hand-held cameras and disorienting angles in the next. Shinoda and Iwai were the first Japanese filmmakers to use the now discontinued Sony HDW-F900 digital video camera which was designed to reflect the look of 35mm film, further emphasizing the thematic imagery of nostalgia and dream-like isolation.

The camera work almost seems to be shot by a child at times, such as an unseen member of Yuichi’s friend group or class as they youthfully document the strange and disturbing events occurring in front of them, only focusing on the power a digital camera has without considering what they are actually recording. Or rather, Iwai may be intending for us, the viewer, to put ourselves behind the lens, acting as a silent observer to the events that unfold without the voice or power to do anything about it, which is strikingly similar to Yuichi’s character in the film itself. The combination of a fractal narrative structure and an abrasive yet realistic use of the camera encapsulates so much of the themes and messaging this film has to offer – mainly that being the confusing, frustrating, and unapologetic nature of growing up surrounded by unforgiving societal structures, while at the same time blindly attempting to hold onto and bask in the naiveté of youth. 

The subject of youth is the eye of Iwai’s proverbial hurricane of emotion and turmoil that is “All About Lily Chou-Chou.” Made in 2001, this film was produced at a time in Japan that saw a sharp increase in teenage crime and suicide following the economic collapse of 1991. In a country so wrought with societal and familial expectations, the bursting of their economic bubble proved disastrous for Japan’s teenage and young-adult population, as they were now tasked with bearing said expectations and cultural conformity against a historically low employment rate.

Commonly referred to as the “Lost Decade,” the 1990s in Japan was filled with headlines detailing the effect of the recession on the country’s young population, as teenage crime doubled in frequency, and reports of bullying and assault within schools skyrocketed. The rise in crime and disillusionment among the country’s youth resulted in many Japanese filmmakers attempting to grasp this idea of “teenage rage” through their films in the late 90s and early 2000s, such as in Takashi Miike’s “Fudoh: The New Generation” [1996] and Kinji Fukasaku’s “Battle Royale” [2000]. While these films painted a more dystopian and fantastical perspective of the violent phenomenon, Shunji Iwai wanted to represent this general angst and discontent in a more realistic manner that would directly connect with the audience it sought to portray. In one interview from 1995, Iwai reflects on his perspective towards the children who will be watching his stories: “We have to make movies that appeal to them and reflect the world they live in.” 

The characters within “All About Lily Chou-Chou” represent the cruel realities of the “Lost Decade.” They don’t conduct acts of headline-defining mass crime or comical absurdity, but instead are portrayed as unheard, misguided, and tragic children who are following in the steps of complicit adults as they attempt to find answers in a confusing world that they have no power in controlling. As shown in the film, some of these characters choose to find those answers in disturbing cruelty or abusive domination over their peers, while others try to be as passive or silent as humanly possible just to survive. And yet, while each character within this film leads a complex and difficult life that sometimes results in catastrophe, all of them are connected through the “Ether,” endlessly searching for a sense of comfort, acceptance, and understanding through the soundscape of Lily Chou-Chou. It could be said that the characters within this film are all living in, as Yuichi states in one monologue, “the age of Gray,” a liminal space of reality that seems to place their lives in a state of constant immobility and pain. Life is made void of color by the brutal violence and betrayal that these children either commit or fall victim to, and for some, Lily provides safety and guidance in that darkness, while she may also fuel the angry, merciless fire burning inside others. 

“All About Lily Chou-Chou” is dark, disturbing, and cruel in its presentation, but manages to be something so much more intimate, profound, and human in its substance. It discusses themes surrounding the troubles of youth in Japan, who are constantly cornered by cultural and familial expectations, conformity, and a social hierarchy that can be detrimental to those caught in its jaws. It portrays the fragility of youth, how easily corruptible a young mind can be, and how one source of bliss can be enough to hold onto the hope of a better tomorrow. Today, in a world dominated by online interactions, superficial connections, and an uncertain future, this film is more relevant than ever before – a true cyber hymn that anyone and everyone can find meaning within. 

We have attached the album that was released under the name “Lily Chou-Chou” after the movie was released so that you can get a better feel for the movie and the artist that is the titular character of the entire film. It features all of Lily’s music that is present in the film, and is titled “Kokyu” [or “Breathe” in English], which is in reference to the project that she released during the movie itself.

The entire thing can also be streamed on Spotify. In particular, the following songs are absolutely stunning and very representative of the movie itself:

  • Arabesque [アラベスク “Arabesuku”]
  • Flightless Wings [飛べない翼 “Tobenai Tsubasa”]
  • Glide [グライド “Guraido”] 

Watch All About Lily Chou Chou on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/5636535

The endless proxy war, by design

While privately conceding that its ally Ukraine is not “capable of winning the war,” the Biden administration keeps fueling it.

By Aaron Maté

Source: Aaron Maté Substack

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has presented the White House with a geopolitical crisis that it played a critical role in creating. In February 2014, Victoria Nuland, a current senior State Department official and former Dick Cheney advisor, was caught on tape plotting the installation of a new Ukrainian government – a plan, she stressed, that would involve Biden and his then-top aide, and current National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. Weeks later, the democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and replaced by Washington-backed leaders – including a prime minister selected by Nuland.

The regime change in Kiev made Biden the most influential US political figure in Ukraine, as underscored by the lucrative Burisma board seat gifted to his son Hunter. While the Biden family and other well-connected players profited, Ukraine fell into civil war. In the eastern Donbas region, Kremlin-backed Ukrainian rebels took up arms against a fascist-infused coup government that cracked down on Russian culture and countenanced murderous assaults on dissidents. Rather than promote the 2015 Minsk II accords — the agreed-upon formula for ending the Donbas conflict – the US fueled the fight with a weapons and training program that turned Ukraine into a NATO proxy. Influential US politicians left no doubt about their intentions. As the Donbas war raged, lawmakers declared that they were using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there” (Adam Schiff) and vowed to “make Russia pay a heavier price,” (John McCain). In February of this year, Russia invaded to bring the eight-year fight to an end, leaving Ukraine to pay the heaviest price of all.

The Biden administration shunned multiple opportunities to prevent the Russian assault. When Russia submitted draft peace treaties in December 2021, the White House refused to even discuss the Kremlin’s core demands: a pledge of neutrality for Ukraine, and the rollback of NATO military forces in post-1997 member states that neighbor Russia. At the final round of talks on implementing Minsk II in early February, the “key obstacle,” the Washington Post reported, “was Kyiv’s opposition to negotiating with the pro-Russian separatists.” Siding with Ukraine’s far-right, which had threatened to overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky if he signed a peace deal, the US made no effort to encourage diplomacy. Emboldened to escalate its war on the Donbas, the Ukrainian government then massively increased shelling on rebel-held areas in the days immediately preceding Russa’s February 24th invasion.

Looking back at the pre-invasion period, Jack Matlock, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union under Bush I, now concludes that “if Ukraine had been willing to abide by the Minsk agreement, recognize the Donbas as an autonomous entity within Ukraine, avoid NATO military advisors, and pledge not to enter NATO,” then Russia’s war “probably would have been prevented.”

For Washington, preventing the war would have interfered with longstanding objectives. As US policymakers have openly recognized, Ukraine’s historical, geographical, and cultural links to Russia could be used as a tool to achieve regime change in Moscow, or, at minimum, leave it “weakened.”

As Ukraine enters another winter of war, this time facing an intensified Russian assault, the Biden administration is apparently in no mood to end a crisis that it helped start.

The US-Nazi Connection since World War II: From Inspiring the Third Reich to Supporting the Neo-Nazis of Ukraine

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

The mafia in Washington, London, Brussels and Tel Aviv would do anything to keep their “Unipolar World Order” project in place, in fact, there are getting desperate to hold on to whatever remaining powers they have left even if it means collaborating with its worst enemies. There is a well-known ancient proverb “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” that rings true today especially since Washington, the CIA, the Military-Industrial Complex, along with Mossad and NATO have supported well-known terrorists including the Islamic State (ISIS), Al Qaeda, and other groups to overthrow governments they don’t approve of especially in the Middle East. However, their support of terrorists who were their enemies at one time or another did not start with their regime change wars against Syria or Libya, the idea of supporting its enemies began during and after World War II when the US government recruited Ukrainian Nazis to counter their new enemy, the Soviet Union. What a strange turn of events knowing that the Soviets who fought the Nazis with their American and European allies during the war were seen as a new threat. Washington and the rest of their mafia cohorts used the Nazis back then as they are now using jihadi terrorists today in their war for world domination no matter what the costs are in the long-term.

So who were the Nazis and why was Washington interested in recruiting them in the first place? For starters, the Nazis had members involved in several scientific and technological disciplines that the US government was interested in and would later utilize them to produce all sorts of weapons of war and psychological operations for its future military operations, but we will get into further details shortly. However, the Nazis did follow a far-right fascist ideology that was authoritarian that coincided with ultranationalist principals that rejected anarchy, communism, democracy, republicanism, socialism and other forms of government that was seen as a threat to their rising power. And as insane as this sounds, the Nazis also used scientific racism, or what we can call eugenics to manipulate human gene pools by separating certain groups of people between those who are considered inferior to advancing those who were deemed superior.  Then there is the element of antisemitism that was prevalent within the Third Reich. Nazism has led to genocide, torture, forced sterilizations, imprisonment of its opposition, deportations and other atrocities among those who did not fit the profile of being an ultra-nationalist especially if you did not have the racial qualities that they demanded for their movement. 

If we look back into the history of fascism, its roots were based in Europe as historians have claimed that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte ‘aka’ Napoleon III who ruled France with an iron fist from 1848 to 1852 had the elements of a fascist/Nazi state. 

America’s Extermination of Red Savages was Adolf Hitler’s Inspiration 

Adolf Hitler, Germany’s new chancellor took the lead in imposing fascist policies in his country when he came to power. Hitler’s allies also known as the Axis Alliance, Benito Mussolini of Italy and Hirohito of Imperial Japan had similar policies.   

So, what inspired this sort of ideology?  Where did the Nazis get their inspiration from?  It’s a known fact that Adolf Hitler admired America’s ways of dealing with certain groups in their short history from the Jim Crow laws against African Americans to the indigenous populations who were sent to prison camps during the American Indian wars.  John Toland’s ‘Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography’ states that “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history,” and that “He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”  So, when did the idea of a ‘concentration camp’ came into effect? It was under US President and Democrat, Andrew Jackson who introduced “emigration depots” as part of his Indian Removal Act of 1830 where tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples who were forced into what was called ‘prison camps’ and they included the Seminoles, Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, and other tribal nations mainly in the Southern part of the United States and that included Alabama and Tennessee. 

One other element of how the US model of governance that influenced Nazi Germany was the Jim Crow Laws.  James Q. Whitman, a legal scholar and author of ‘Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law’ wrote an introduction on how the Nazis viewed American race laws:

In the opening minutes, Justice Minister Gurtner presented a memo on American race law, which had been carefully prepared by officials of the ministry for purposes of the gathering; and the participants returned repeatedly to the American models of racist legislation in the course of their discussions.  It is particularly startling to discover that the most radical Nazis present were the most ardent champions of the lessons that American approaches held for Germany.  Not, as we shall see, in this transcript the only record of Nazi engagement with American race law.  In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s many Nazis, not least Hitler himself, took a serious in the racist legislation of the United States.  Indeed in Mein Kampf Hitler praised America as nothing less than “the one state” that had made progress toward the creation of a healthy racist order of the kind the Nuremberg Laws were intended to establish. 

My purpose is to chronicle this neglected history of Nazi efforts to mine American race law for inspiration during the making of the Nuremberg Laws, and to ask what it tells us about Nazi Germany, about the modern history of racism, and especially about America     

The Nazis saw US race laws as a suitable policy that they can implement on various groups such as the Jews who were a wealthy and powerful class of people which many Germans despised at the time, became non-citizens.  Native Americans, Filipinos, African Americans, and others were also considered non-citizens even if they lived in the US or its colonized territories.  But there was one aspect of US race laws that interested the Nazis and that was the anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited interracial marriages in about 30 US states where those who broke the law in the US received a severe criminal punishment.  US-inspired race laws were imposed on German society with the establishment of the Nuremberg laws that was passed on September 15th, 1935.  

Operation Paperclip: Why the US Government Recruited Nazis After WWII

The rumor of a nuclear war is more prevalent today more than ever before since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has taken place.  Ukraine’s actor, oh, excuse me, I meant President, Volodymyr Zelensky has called for “preventive strikes” to deter Russia from using nuclear weapons although he backtracked the claims shortly after, but he did call for for the West to hit Russia with nuclear weapons for preventative measures which was extremely dangerous rhetoric coming out of his mouth.  Speaking of nuclear weapons, do you know who originally proposed the idea of placing nuclear bombs on ballistic missiles in the first place?  It was an idea that was derived from Nazi rocket scientists who was hired by the US government during World War II.  The original program was called Uranprojekt or the “Uranium Project” for the purpose of developing nuclear technology to build weapons and reactors.  

In the last years of World War II, US intelligence agencies and the Military-Industrial Complex secretly transferred more than 1,600 Nazi scientists and their families from Germany who were experts in various fields that included rocket science, aerodynamics, chemical weapons, and medicine in what was called Operation Paperclip.  There were Nazis working for the US military who also prepared intelligence briefs creating fear and panic that the Soviets were going to take over the world which was over-exaggerated.  But what the US government feared most was that the Soviet Union under Operation Osoaviakhim with more than 2,500 former Nazi scientists and engineers who were recruited in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany (SBZ) and the Soviet sector of Berlin would be one step ahead of the US government in weapons development and other areas. 

One important historical fact about America’s Nazi Scientists was the recruitment of Wernher von Braun or known by his full name as Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun who was a member of the Nazi Party and the Allgemeine SS or the “General SS” which was a major branch of Nazi Germany’s paramilitary forces.  Wernher von Braun was also the head of developing rocket technology who is considered the pioneer of rocket and space technology in the US.  He was also the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that allegedly helped launch the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.  

Nazi scientists also helped the US government and the CIA develop chemical and biological weapons programs that included the use of sarin gas and other dangerous weapons of war including VX (nerve agent) and of course, the most used biological weapon during the Vietnam war, Agent Orange.  So, in other words, the US government hired Nazi scientists for their knowledge of creating weapons of mass destruction that has inflicted damage on various populations around the world since then.  During the Vietnam war, the US military unleashed Agent Orange on the Vietnamese population causing more than 3 million people to develop birth defects and other health related problems to this day.  The Nazi scientists were indeed evil geniuses when it came to developing advanced weapons of war and that was something that the US military and the intelligence community were solely interested in and that was and still is a scary thought.      

America’s Frankenstein: The Neo-Nazis of Ukraine

As we know from the valuable lessons of history that the US government and the CIA had supported and trained Ukrainian Nazis since 1946.  The CIA had organized “Stay Behind” operations with the OUN-B (neo-Nazi Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) in Eastern Europe and other areas to assist Ukrainian nationalist who were sent to destabilize Soviet Ukraine with covert operations such as using commandos to assassinate Soviet officials, to sabotage infrastructure and to commit acts of terrorism. 

The history of the US government and its CIA operatives shows that it supported Ukrainian war criminal Stephan Bandera to advance the Ukrainian underground movement to destabilize Soviet Ukraine, so the CIA and their Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) and the Office of Special Operations (OSO) planned covert operations with the OUN-B and provided support to the anti-Soviet Ukraine Insurgent Army (UPA) for psychological warfare within the Soviet sphere of influence.   The CIA declassified their historical account of their association with Ukrainian Nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis during the Cold War in ‘Cold War Allies: The Origins of CIA’s Relationship with Ukrainian Nationalists’ by Kevin C Ruffner detailed how the “CIA reestablished and expanded its contacts with the Ukrainians and others for covert action against the Communists and as wartime assets to be used behind Red Army lines as guerrillas, saboteurs, and resistance leaders.”  The historical account went further and stated that “The sometimes brutal war record of many emigre groups became blurred as they became more critical to the CIA.”

Fast forward to November 2013 were there were large-scale protests which was known as the Euromaidan against the policies of President Victor Yanukovych who made the decision to have closer ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union instead of proceeding with the idea of having a political and economic relationship with the European Union by rejecting their free-trade agreement.  Then in February 2014, what is known as the Maidan Revolution took place that ended up in violent clashes between the protesters and the government’s security forces in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv which led to a coup against the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych.  Soon after, the Russo-Ukrainian war began and the birth of the Neo-Nazi inspired Azov Battalion was established as they became the resistance against basically, anything Russian.   

On January 22nd of this year, Yahoo News who is part of the mainstream media published an article titled CIA-trained Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades basically admitted that the CIA was secretly training Ukrainian forces since 2015:

While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it, said a former senior intelligence official in touch with colleagues in government

According to Yahoo News, an unnamed former senior intelligence official said that “If the Russians invade, those [graduates of the CIA programs] are going to be your militia, your insurgent leaders,” and that “we’ve been training these guys now for eight years. They’re really good fighters. That’s where the agency’s program could have a serious impact.”  One must wonder how many were actually radicalized neo-Nazis. 

In 2018, Reuters published a commentary by Josh Cohen ‘Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem’ that explains Ukraine’s problem with the Nazis filling the ranks of its National Militia.  Cohen said that in “a January 28 demonstration, in Kiev, by 600 members of the so-called “National Militia,” a newly-formed ultranationalist group that vows “to use force to establish order,” illustrates this threat.”  Cohen added that the National Militia has recruited members from the Nazi-affiliated Azov Battalion:

Many of the National Militia’s members come from the Azov movement, one of the 30-odd privately-funded “volunteer battalions” that, in the early days of the war, helped the regular army to defend Ukrainian territory against Russia’s separatist proxies. Although Azov uses Nazi-era symbolism and recruits neo-Nazis into its ranks, a recent article in Foreign Affairs downplayed any risks the group might pose, pointing out that, like other volunteer militias, Azov has been “reined in” through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces. While it’s true that private militias no longer rule the battlefront, it’s the home front that Kiev needs to worry about now

Cohen obviously is following the mainstream media narrative when he said that Putin seized Crimea which in fact, it was the Russian-speaking Crimean people who voted in a referendum to reunite with the Russian federation.  But to his credit, Cohen does mention the fact that the Azov Battalion and the Right Sector are held in high-regards since they fought Russian-backed separatists.  Cohen also mentioned the Azov battalion’s children’s training camps:   

When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea four years ago first exposed the decrepit condition of Ukraine’s armed forces, right-wing militias such as Azov and Right Sector stepped into the breach, fending off the Russian-backed separatists while Ukraine’s regular military regrouped. Though, as a result, many Ukrainians continue to regard the militias with gratitude and admiration, the more extreme among these groups promote an intolerant and illiberal ideology that will endanger Ukraine in the long term. Since the Crimean crisis, the militias have been formally integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces, but some have resisted full integration: Azov, for example, runs its own children’s training camp, and the careers section instructs recruits who wish to transfer to Azov from a regular military unit

Although Cohen’s claims expose Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis, he also follows the Western establishment and the mainstream media’s narrative that “the Kremlin’s claims that Ukraine is a hornets’ nest of fascists are false: far-right parties performed poorly in Ukraine’s last parliamentary elections, and Ukrainians reacted with alarm to the National Militia’s demonstration in Kiev” which are all lies.  Cohen’s statement is false, in fact, it’s a contradiction when he wrote at the beginning of his article that the “National Militia’s members were recruited from the Azov movement” but not to worry because “Azov has been “reined in” through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces” at least according to Cohen who sourced his misinformation from Foreign Affairs magazine which is a publication owned by the Council of Foreign Relations, a favorite of of the US political establishment. 

So, does the US government, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the CIA support Ukrainian Neo-Nazis in their ongoing war efforts against Russia today?  Well, the answer to that question should be obvious by now.     

Biotech Giants Using GMOs to Build Food Tyranny

By Colin Todhunter

Source: Off-Guardian

The article below was written the day before India’s state-run biotech regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), approved genetically modified (GM) mustard for commercial cultivation. This decision was taken on 26 October 2022.

The regulatory clearance for GM mustard means the crop is fit for environmental release. However, the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the matter and government stated a while back that it would wait until that ruling is in.

What follows provides insight into the deceptions and scientific fraud that underpin this decision as well as the consequences for food and agriculture.

We are currently seeing rising food prices due to a combination of an engineered food crisis for geopolitical reasons, financial speculation by hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks and profiteeringby global grain trade conglomerates like Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, ADM and Bunge.

In addition, agri firms like Bayer, Syngenta (ChemChina) and Corteva cynically regard current circumstances as an opportunity to promote their agenda and seek commercialisation of unregulated and improperly tested genetically engineered (GE) technologies.

These companies have long promoted the false narrative that their hybrid seeds and their GE seeds, along with their agrichemicals, are essential for feeding a growing global population. This agenda is orchestrated by vested interests and career scientists – many of whom long ago sold their objectivity for biotech money – lobby groups and disgraced politiciansand journalists.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to deflect and sway opinion, these industry shills also try to depict their critics as being Luddites and ideologically driven and for depriving the poor of (GE) food and farmers of technology.

This type of bombast disintegrates when confronted with the evidence of a failing GE project.

As well as this kind of emotional blackmail, prominent lobbyists like Mark Lynas– unable or unwilling to acknowledge that genuine food security and food sovereignty can be achieved withoutproprietary products – trot out other baseless and absurd claims that industry critics are Kremlin stooges, while displaying their ignorance of geopolitics.

Indeed, who would you turn to for an analysis of current US-Russia relations? An advocate for GE foods and pesticides who makes inaccurate claims from his perch at the Gates Foundation-funded Cornell Alliance for Science. Or a renowned academic like Professor Michael Hudson whose specialist field covers geopolitics.

But it would not be the first time that an industry activist like Lynas has ventured beyond his field of claimed expertise to try to score points.

However, dirty tricks and smears are par for the course because the agri biotech emperor has been shown to have no clothes time and again – GE is a failing, often detrimental technology in search of a problem. And if the problem does not exist, the reality of food insecurity will be twisted to serve the industry agenda, and regulatory bodies and institutions supposedly set up to serve the public interest will be placed under intense pressure or subverted.

The performance of GE crops has been a hotly contested issue and, as highlighted in a 2018 piece by PC Kesavan and MS Swaminathan in the journal Current Science, there is sufficiently strong evidence to question their efficacy and the devastating impacts on the environment, human health and food security, not least in places like Latin America.

new report by Friends of the Earth (FoE) Europe shows that big global biotech corporations like Bayer and Corteva, which together already control 40% of the global commercial seed market, are now trying to cement complete dominance. Industry watchdog GMWatch notes these companies are seeking to increase their control over the future of food and farming by extensively patenting plants and developing a new generation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

These companies are moving to patent plant genetic information that can occur naturally or as a result of genetic modification. They claim all plants with those genetic traits as their “invention”. Such patents on plants would restrict farmers’ access to seeds and impede breeders from developing new plants as both would have to ask for consent and pay fees to the biotech companies.

Corteva has applied for some 1,430 patents on new GMOs, while Bayer has applications for 119 patents.

Mute Schimpf, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, says:

Big biotech’s strategy is to apply for wide patents that would also cover plants which naturally present the same genetic characteristics as the GMOs they engineered. They will be lining their pockets from farmers and plant breeders, who in turn will have a restricted access to what they can grow and work with.”

For instance, GMWatch notes that Corteva holds a patent for a process modifying the genome of a cell using the CRISPR technique and claims the intellectual property rights to any cells, seeds and plants that include the same genetic information, whether in broccoli, maize, soy, rice, wheat, cotton, barley or sunflower.

The agri biotech sector is engaged in a corporate hijack of agriculture while attempting to portray itself as being involved in some kind of service to humanity.

And this is a global endeavour, which is also currently being played out in India.

GM MUSTARD

recent report on the Down to Earth website stated that the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), India’s apex regulatory body, might approve the commercial cultivation of GM mustard. In response, concerned citizens have written to the government, objecting to the potential approval of unsafe, unneeded and unwanted GMOs.

The decision whether to allow the commercialisation of what would be the first GE food crop in India has been dragging on for years. COVID delayed the process, but a decision on GM mustard now appears to be close.

However, serious conflicts of interest, sleight of hand and regulatory delinquency – not to mention outright fraud – could mean the decision coming down in favour of commercialisation.

The bottom line is government collusion with global agribusiness, which is trying to hide in the background, despite much talk of Professor Pental and his team at Delhi University being independent developers of GM mustard (DMH 11).

GM mustard presents an opportunity to make various herbicide tolerant (HT) mustard hybrids using India’s best germ plasm, which would be an irresistible money spinner for the seed and chemical manufacturers.

In 2016, campaigner Aruna Rodrigues petitioned India’s Supreme Court seeking a moratorium on the release of any GMOs into the environment pending a comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocol in the public domain conducted by agencies of independent expert bodies, the results of which are made public.

In her writ, Rodrigues stated:

In 2002, Proagro Seed Company (now Bayer), applied for commercial approval for exactly the same construct that Prof Pental and his team are now promoting as HT Mustard DMH 11. The reason today matches Bayer’s claim then of 20% better yield increase (than conventional mustard). Bayer was turned down because the ICAR [Indian Council of Agricultural Research] said that their field trials did not give evidence of superior yield.”

The petition says that 14 years later invalid field trials and unremittingly fraudulent data now supposedly provide evidence of a superior yield of 25%.

Rodrigues continues:

HT DMH 11 is the same Bayer HT GMO construct – a herbicide tolerant GMO of three alien genes. It employs, like the Bayer construct, pollen sterilisation technology BARNASE, with the fertility restorer gene BARSTAR (B & B system) (modified from the original genes sourced from a soil bacterium) and the herbicidal bar gene in each GMO parental line. The employment of the B & B system is to facilitate the making of hybrids as mustard is largely a self-pollinating crop (but outcrosses at rates of up to 20%). There is no trait for yield. HT DMH 11 is straightforwardly an herbicide tolerant (HT) crop, though this aspect has been consistently marginalised by the developers over the last several years.”

In order to produce a hybrid, two parent lines had to be genetically modified. Barnase and barstar technology was used in the parent lines. And the outcome is three GMOs: the two parents and the offspring, DMH 11, which will be ideal for working with glufosinate (Bayer’s ‘Liberty’ and ‘Basta’).

According to Rodrigues:

… the plan is that the official route for the first-time release of a HT crop and a food crop will be through HT DMH 11 and/or its two HT parental lines by stealth. Since the claimed YIELD superiority of HT DMH 11 through the B & B system over non-GMO varieties and hybrids is quite simply NOT TRUE…”

In her numerous affidavits submitted to India’s Supreme Court, Rodrigues has set out in some detail why GE crops are a threat to human health and the environment and are unsuitable for India. She briefly communicated some of her concerns in a 2020 interview titled GMO Issue Reaches Boiling Point in India: Interview with Aruna Rodrigues.

Moreover, various high-level reports have advised against introducing GM food crops to India: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’ of February 2010, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal; The ‘Sopory Committee Report’ (August 2012); The ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012); and The ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (June-July 2013).

These reports conclude that GM crops are unsuitable for India and that existing biosafety and regulatory procedures are inadequate. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the TEC was scathing about the regulatory system prevailing in India, highlighting its inadequacies and inherent serious conflicts of interest. The TEC recommended a 10-year moratorium on commercial release of GM crops. The PSC also arrived at similar conclusions.

According to eminent lawyer Prashant Bhushan, these official reports attest to just how negligent India’s regulators are and to a serious lack of expertise on GM issues within official circles.

Aruna Rodrigues long ago noted the abysmal state of GMO regulatory oversight in the country and the need for the precautionary principle to be applied without delay. But not much has changed and the regulatory position basically remains the same.

Rodrigues asserts that the two parent lines and the hybrid DMH-11 require full independent testing, which has not occurred. And it has not occurred because of a conflict of interest and regulatory delinquency.

Rodrigues notes:

India is suddenly faced with the deregulation of GMOs. This is disastrous and alarming, without ethics and a scientific rationale.”

GM mustard is said to out-yield India’s best cultivars by 25-30%. The choice of the correct ‘comparators’ is an absolute requirement for the testing of any GMO to establish whether it is required in the first place. But Rodrigues argues that the choice of deliberately poor ‘comparators’ is at the heart of the fraud.

In the absence of adequate and proper testing and sufficient data, no statistically valid conclusions of mean seed yield (MSY) of DMH 11 could be drawn anyhow. Yet they were drawn by both the regulators and developers who furthermore self-conducted and supervised the trials. Without valid data to justify it, DMH 11 was allowed in pre-commercial large scale field trials in 2014-15.

For an adequate basis for a comparative assessment of MSY, Rodrigues argues it was absolutely necessary for the comparison to include the cross (hybrid) between the non-modified parental lines (nearest isogenic line), at the very start of the risk assessment process and throughout the subsequent stages of field testing, in addition to other recommended ‘comparators’. None of this was done.

Deliberately poor non-GMO mustard varieties were chosen to promote prospects for DMH 11 as a superior yielding GMO hybrid, which then passed through ‘the system’ and was allowed by the regulators, a classic non-sequitur by both the regulators and Dr Pental.

The fraud continued, according to Rodrigues, by actively fudging yield data of DMH 11 by 15.2% to show higher MSY. In her various Supreme Court petitions, she has offered a good deal of evidence to show how it was done.

Rodrigues says:

It matters not a jot if HT DMH 11 is not approved. What does matter is that its two HT (GMO) parental lines are: HT Varuna-barnase and HT EH 2-barstar will be used ‘for introgressing the bar-barnase and bar- barstar genes into new set of parental line to develop next generation of hybrids with higher yields” (according to the developer and regulator).”

She says this extraordinary admission confirms that the route to any number of ‘versions’ of HT mustard DMH 11 is invested in these two GMOs as parents – India will have hundreds of low-yielding HT mustard hybrids, using India’s best mustard cultivars at great harm to farmers and contaminating the country’s seeds and mustard germ plasm irreversibly.

In effect, according to Rodrigues, India faces a three-in-one regulatory jugglery in a brazen display of collusion to fraud the nation by regulatory institutions of governance.

Moreover, HT mustard DMH 11 will make no impact on the domestic production of mustard oil, which was a major reason why it was being pushed in the first place. The argument was that GM mustard would increase productivity and this would help reduce imports of edible oils.

Until the mid-1990s, India was virtually self-sufficient in edible oils. Then import tariffs were reduced, leading to an influx of cheap (subsidised) edible oil imports that domestic farmers could not compete with. This effectively devastated the home-grown edible oils sector and served the interests of palm oil growers and US grain and agriculture commodity company Cargill.

It came as little surprise that in 2013 India’s then Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar accused US companies of derailing the nation’s oil seeds production programme.

Whether in India, Europe or elsewhere, the industry’s agenda is to use GE technology to secure intellectual property rights over all seeds (and chemical inputs) and thus gain total control over food and farming. And given what has been set out here – they seek to achieve this by all means necessary.

What Is To Be Done?

By Paul Edwards

Source: Information Clearing House

Not an original title for a piece that will assert we are in a unique moment in world history?  No, Lenin used it to expose the cruelty and villainy of the empire that ruled Russians like a slave master.  Claiming we are in a “unique moment” is not original, either.  We Americans, with our caudal appendage, Europe, have been told time and again we are in “unique moments”, unmatched in its peril, so that it’s now routine to say it of every asinine Presidential election. 

I have spent a lifetime reading and listening to the best minds in journalism and reportage bemoan, attack, mourn, and decry the encyclopedia of lunacies and disasters our system has inflicted on our country, the world, and ourselves, its naive, ignorant people.

Since the Gulf War, and the rolling chain of shameful absurdities that followed—Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, et.al.—in the idiotic dirty joke of the bumbling “War on Terror”, I have seen the mainstream press devoured by the Capitalist Monster to the point where all voices of integrity have been marginalized and expelled, then denounced and vilified by the diseased whores who slunk into their places.

Now, with America’s ridiculous, transparent, and contemptible falsity so obvious in every aspect of governance at home and abroad, I have seen the entire press converted into an organ of crude and dishonest propaganda for the Capitalist War Machine that is coldly, inhumanly  dictating our demise.  The viciously dishonest and relentlessly stupid storm of juvenile horseshit disseminated by all mainstream outlets— print, tv, and internet—is an ethical crime of diabolical dimensions.  Our government, with its cadre of vacuous, degraded simpletons, men and women of no intellectual size, depth, or scope, profoundly ignorant yet arrogant in their smarmy inadequacy, is restricting and distorting knowingly all truth that conflicts with the malign intentions of the War Lobby to pursue nuclear war with Russia until they get it.  And, of course, they need a second enemy and so must tell China what it can and can’t do. Where do these moronic fuckers get the brass to try that shameless madness with Xi and his power? 

And this is done while the few strong voices of courage and integrity that, against all the power of money and corruption of The Empire, continue to try to provide an educating effect through reason and evidence, are exiled and suppressed from platforms of influence.

I have long wondered at their dedication and staying power in the face of the cynical, unwarranted abuse they get, including, of course, from their supposed colleagues who, collectively, aren’t worth the powder to blow them to hell, as my Dakota Grandpa used to say.  I can only assume they are held together, in place, by the unbreakable fiber of integrity in them that they have no choice but to honor.  

And yet, though those few and proud speak out against false America and denounce it where denunciation is richly warranted, I feel, even in their most blistering analyses that there is a conviction, a certainty, an honest, incontestable statement of truth, that is missing.  I had hoped to hear it expressed by those who have great credibility, and great reputations, profiles and followings, but I have been disappointed.

My list of heroes is not long.  I acknowledge them as the heirs to the great ones before: Ed Murrow, Eric Sevareid, David Brinkley, Walter Cronkite, Sy Hersh, David Halberstam.  I include among the present greats Chris Hedges, John Pilger, Aaron Mate, Michael Brenner, Max Blumenthal, Patrick Lawrence, Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange.

All of them have done honest, deeply informed work to counter the rampant imbecility and cruelty of the American government and its stenographers, the press.  The one conclusion none has plainly stated, that all have suggested, is neither obscure nor complicated.

It is this: America can not be reformed or improved under Capitalism. Its corrupt, rotten burlesque democracy must and will be destroyed.  Not by any action of the torpid, gelded, stupid people.  It will come, and soon, by financial chaos and meltdown, or by nuclear war.

We are told that unless bold action is taken, unless we find the moral courage to act, unless we come together, get money out of politics, vote for better candidates, unless we do this, that, or the other thing, disaster will follow.  Sadly, that is all nonsense.   In fact, it makes no difference what we do: America, as a viable state, is finished.

This is intolerably painful to admit.  Every instinct of self-preservation, every human yearning for safety and justice rejects it.  All our training, our education, our immersion in bullshit propaganda screams against it but, admitted or not, it is fact, it is truth, and collapse of America’s baselessly arrogant, obscene, punishing oppression of the compliant world, already tenuous and strained, is coming.   And soon…

It is said to be easier for people to imagine the end of the world, than the end of Capitalism.  This will end soon when it will no longer be necessary to imagine either, because both will have happened.  In the same way that socio-political truth has been screened out by official deceit, environmental truth has been obscured and denied by our own and the world’s rulers.   What Capitalism has done to humans is trivial beside what it’s done to the earth and all living things.  In this, too, we are told that if we can just do this or that the world will recover and all will be well.  It won’t.   No matter what we do.  And that will almost certainly be what we have done up to now: nothing. 

Humans, mostly, are large, dull children.  They have a great need to feel loved, protected, pardoned, saved.  That’s why they were given religions by elites that have always owned them.  All dogmatic religions are bullshit by definition, their fatuous fraud shown up by every advance of knowledge from Galileo to the Webb Telescope.  

I, like all my kind, wish for mercy and grace, but I don’t look for it in a ludicrous infantile fantasy, or in deluded hope where there is clearly none.  Both religion and science, in the hands of priests and hustlers, have set us up for unavoidable misery and suffering, and arranged for the suicide of our species and the murder of the living world.  There is nothing you can do about this.  We have the ability to love those we hold dear, and the world we have known.  Let that be enough, for it is all you will ever have.

Dictatorship in Disguise: Authoritarian Monsters Wreak Havoc on Our Freedoms

By John & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” — They Live 

We’re living in two worlds.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police and federal agents armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government.

This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released in November 1988 and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.

Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug traffickingsex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

We have let the government’s evil-doing and abuses go on for too long.

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.

As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth.

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, pandemics, mass shootings, etc.).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates as fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. A concern for human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.

Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hypno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

In other words: we need to get active and take a stand for what’s really important.

Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.

All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.

Wake up, America.

If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

‘Us vs. Them’ Thinking Is Hardwired—But Consciousness Can Overpower It

By Joe Martino

Source: The Pulse

Are we hardwired to categorize each other into ‘Us vs Them?’ Simply put, yes. But this hardwiring is remarkably easy to break. It’s time we equip ourselves with the knowledge and tools to do so.

Why? Well, anything from powerful governments to mainstream and alternative media is consistently trying to divide us by focusing aggressively on our differences. When we know how these mechanisms work and focus our consciousness in an effective way, these attempts to divide fail.

First a quick story.

When we first launched our membership I hired marketing teams to help. They would always tell me “in the sales messaging we need to create an ‘Us vs Them dynamic’ in order to get people to buy.” I resisted.

I felt like that wasn’t necessary and also contrary to our mission of unifying people to create a better world. But, the marketers were right. When we would A/B test sales messaging without ‘Us vs Them’ compared to sales messaging with it, the ‘Us vs Them’ messaging always won.

I have to admit this made me a bit sad. Was I thinking too idealistically about human beings? Maybe. But I always asked ‘Why doesn’t Us vs Them messaging work on me?” Before you suggest I’m naive and think “of course the messaging works on you,” read to the end of this piece. You’ll see how simply it is for this messaging not to work on anyone should they choose.

Neuroscience suggests that this Us vs Them biological trait developed thousands of years ago. As you might imagine, it had much to do with survival in much different times than we live in today.

It essentially states that human beings are primed to make very basic and categorical Us vs Them judgments. In fact, your brain is processing these Us vs Them differences in a twentieth of a second. These noticed differences are your classically promoted artificial constructs of: ethnicity, gender, skin color, age, socioeconomic class, and even something like sports team preference.

(I say artificial because social constructs tell us we should focus on these as differences. We don’t actually have to see them as differences as we are ALL one species. Other animals do not engage their Us vs Them biology within their species – only we do – and it’s a taught behaviour.)

All of this is enhanced by a multi-purposed hormone in our brain called Oxytocin.

Oxytocin has been shown to be a wonderful hormone for connecting and bonding with others that we know in our communities, ‘Us’. It’s often referred to as the love hormone or connection hormone. It essentially heightens meaningful connections with our in-group.

But on the flip side, studies have shown that when it comes to people who we see as strangers (Them), oxytocin creates a decrease in cooperation and increases envy when people are struggling. Further, it pushes one to gloat when they are ‘winning.’ In fact, there are many ways in which oxytocin is linked to dividing ourselves from ‘Them’ and keeping it that way.

In short, oxytocin enhances this Us vs Them divide. But, while this sounds like we may be doomed for division and judgment of others forever, what has also been shown is that these almost instantaneous judgements we make can be manipulated incredibly easily. And that’s without bringing in a little bit of conscious awareness and presence.

Studies have shown that when you expose people to others who look different from them, the ‘Us’ wiring often turns on when people look similar, and the ‘Them’ wiring turns on when people look different. This showed an implicit judgment based on ethnicity.

Yet when those same people were exposed to people who looked the same and different from them but were now wearing baseball hats with team logos, things changed. Suddenly the participants brains indicated that Us and Them had nothing to do with ethnicity anymore, it was about which team they supported.

A tiny change created an instantaneous manipulation of who is Us vs Them. I wrote about a similar phenomenon in a recent piece called Racism Plummeted When People Were Told Aliens Exist. This showed that when humans were told aliens existed, the Us became humans, and the Them became aliens. Suddenly people were nicer to each other and more accepting of differences.

The point? It doesn’t take much to for us to see each other as one, we just have to focus our consciousness a bit.

Consciousness Is Everything

There is much gained in our well being and in society when we become more self-aware, reflective and present. It moves unconscious and often automatic behaviour into a lens where we can ask: why do we do this?

Further, an increase in the above mentioned traits can lead to something as simple as stopping ourselves before we do something destructive out of anger. We can then pause for a short period, reflect, and respond.

The more we move from automatic, unconscious and reactive ways of living to present, reflective and conscious ways of living, the more harmony surrounds our lives.

What I’m saying can bring up similarities to new-agey, online influencer judgments that the ‘conscious’ are more than the ‘unconscious,’ this is not at all what I’m saying here. And I will expand in a moment.

First, I trust it’s clear that we can be manipulated into different Us vs Them dichotomies very easily. Studies exploring implicit bias also show that when we are exposed to different people regularly, we become less judgemental towards their differences.

Even still, we can build self awareness around how WE play into these divides in order to diffuse them.

For example, during COVID government leaders like Justin Trudeau sowed division in Canada by making unvaccinated Canadians less than. He did this by calling them names and characterizing them in ways that would cause the general population to dislike them.

“They [the unvaccinated] don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist. It’s a very small group of people, but that doesn’t shy away from the fact that they take up some space.”Justin Trudeau

He combined this rhetoric with un-contextualized and false data around vaccination status in Canada to strengthen his propaganda.

Note, I’m not focusing on Trudeau here because I’m “a Poilievre fan” or anything. In fact, I don’t feel our current structure of politics is healthy nor serving us as people. I’m simply illustrating the ways in which our society has become ‘lost’ in division. Getting out of it requires us to take a close examination of what is happening so we can choose a different path.

In contrast, some unvaccinated people around the world began to refer to themselves as ‘pure bloods’ because they were not vaccinated. This led to memes, hateful rhetoric, and actions like avoiding and separating themselves from their vaccinated friends and families. Instead of attempting to understand why some became vaccinated, it was often simply seen as ‘the vaccinated are sheep.’

Once again we see division, in/out groups, and greater than/less than beliefs.

In both cases we are seeing the destruction and damage that can occur when we allow our flimsy biological traits around Us vs Them to be fed and upheld by faulty information and propaganda.

What is also important to note is that our ‘authoritative’ institutions of government and mainstream media will often be guilty of this destructive behaviour which deeply normalizes it amongst the masses.

That said, we are not doomed. Consciousness is everything. By that I mean, the quality of our consciousness. The ways in which we slow down, reflect, and become more present in everyday life becomes an antidote to propaganda feeding Us vs Them.

This is why we have the section at the top of our articles to “Pause and set your pulse.” To cultivate more presence and self awareness, check out a couple of the pieces of content I list at the bottom of this piece.

Let’s go deeper. Perhaps why I have felt Us vs Them messaging does not work on me stems from: what happens when we have experiences that lead us to feel we are all one and interconnected with everything? I have had these experiences many times in my life. I experienced them through meditation, breath work, and even randomly.

Thrust into what can be best described as ‘sensing the nature of our reality,’ when you have these transcendental experiences you do not see yourself as all that separate from everything else. Sure, you are YOU, and you know you are an individual, but you also have a knowing of the connection and sameness you share with everything.

What happens if we nurture and hold that knowing in our consciousness and allow it to form our worldview? Does our sense of Us vs Them get triggered as easily? I don’t think so. But that’s my experience.

This direct experience has led me to believe that a shift in our consciousness can be one of the most powerful tools in changing the way we see each other and ultimately re-design our society – because it has to happen.

Albert Einstein had some thoughts on this as well:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ —a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”Albert Einstein

A task indeed, but one that is very possible with the right practice and focus.

Education Is Key Too

Why are things the way they are? We have to explore content that seeks to answer these questions. Instead of using social media for fast memes, 15 second videos, and short out of context video clips, deepen your knowledge. Consume less, but spend MORE time on each thing you consume.

Buying into this fast and distracting culture of information consumption is only furthering the problems we have. Social media algorithms are rigged to build an echo chamber around you and to give you ‘truth’ that confirms your existing bias’. This is not real education.

As for the biological trait itself, why can’t we focus our attention on our human similarities instead of our differences? We can. But culturally we have learned not to because somewhere along the lines it’s what we chose to obsess over.

Perhaps because powerful people glean more power by dividing masses. Perhaps because our current economic systems thrive off division, competition, and having various classes. Either way, we’re making this all up as we go. It doesn’t have to be like this.

For those who might think “this is our biology. We will always do best in small groups of the same type of people,” this doesn’t appear to be true. Studies have shown that diversity trumps ability. Diversity significantly enhances the level of innovation in organizations around the world.

Groups of only ‘like-minds’ become echo chambers and our efficiency and innovation suffers. Yet another reason we must learn to love, respect and communicate with one another.

(Note: here I’m pointing to the uncovering our potential as humans and having that be our driver. Not productivity and innovation tied to making more money and having a ‘bullish market economy’)

The Takeaway

The key is that consciousness can overcome a flimsy biological trait that produces Us vs Them thinking within us. We can engage experience and education that connects us to our similarities, adopts a consciousness of interconnection and a shared stewardship of our planet and people.

Everything from ‘woke ideology’ constantly obsessing over our differences, to political news commentary always inviting people to ‘dislike the other side’ is contributing to a worse direction for humanity. Don’t just sit there and blame it though, simply choose to engage differently. Improve how you use social media. Consume less content but go deeper.

Consciousness is the power here. Why can’t we extend our worldview of who we are into oneness and a deeper connectedness? Why must we fight to shut off our wonder and hold to petty differences?