Author Archives: Reid Mukai

Why the Epstein-Mossad Honey Trap Story Has Disappeared

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By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Another Day in the Empire

If you search the news, you will find very little to nothing in the corporate media about pedo Jeffrey Epstein’s connection to Israeli intelligence. This connection is obvious—from Epstein’s connection to the Zionist Les Wexner and especially his Mossad handler, Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of documented Mossad operative and double agent Robert Maxwell. 

It’s said Ghislaine had a romantic relationship with Epstein in 1992. This is likely a cover story. Maxwell was Epstein’s Mossad liaison. She also procured and trained teenage girls to work as honey traps. 

The story in the corporate media following Epstein’s arrest is that Ghislaine recruited girls for Epstein and his associates, many rich and influential. It is described as simply a pedophile sex ring when it is obviously much more—a blackmail operation designed to compromise politicians and others when and if they deviated from the Zionist agenda.

This has already swirled and descended into the memory hole. Headlines focus instead on the appeal of Epstein’s bail denial, the red flags raised about his jail records and work release, his close ties to Wall Street and Barclays, and the taint on the money he gave to Harvard and other institutions over the years. Much attention dwells on the salacious nature of Epstein’s pedophilia. 

Meanwhile, disgraced former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta’s remark on Epstein’s intelligence connections (which Acosta has since denied) fade as corporate media sensationalism and miasma dominate and shape the story. 

Leslie Wexner is described as the “most prominent client” of Epstein’s alleged money management firm. However, it appears Wexner was the only client—and he wasn’t so much a client as a conduit for money poured into a Zionist blackmail operation. 

A Twitter account under the handle “Quantian” theorized that Epstein’s main purpose was to blackmail politicians and wealthy perverts. 

“You don’t need to charge up front, just get them to have underage sex, and then blackmail them afterwards for hush money. Better ROI, but you’re still a liability, and producing and receiving big bribe money raises big questions… This scheme works just as well if the billionaires are in on it from the getgo as a way to buy sex; I assumed that was obvious but I guess not… There’s no need to invoke the Mafia/Russia/Mossad/CIA/etc, that’s just needlessly overfitting.”

Except it is not “overfitting.” It is the only explanation that makes sense. Undoubtedly, Epstein bribed these people to “invest” in his offshore “fund,” however it is unlikely a criminal scheme like this would have lasted decades. The wealthy and influential have the money and resources to deal with blackmailers. However, as Robert Maxwell discovered, it would be supremely foolish to expose or double-cross the Mossad (or the CIA and Russian intelligence) unless you want to be found floating dead off the Canary Islands or hanging in your mother’s backyard like the so-called DC Madam.  

Even if a few names are put out there for the sake of a corporate media feeding frenzy, the real story will never be fully revealed. Israel will not suffer any consequence beyond speculation that will be dismissed as the antisemitic ravings of conspiracy theorists. 

Tulsi Gabbard vs Google Goliath

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By Rick Sterling

Source: Dissident Voice

Introduction

The Tulsi Gabbard presidential campaign has filed a major law suit against Google.  This article outlines the main points of the law suit and evidence the the social media giant Google has quietly acquired enormous influence on public perceptions and has been actively censoring alternative viewpoints.

Tulsi Now vs Google

Tulsi Now, Inc vs Google, LLC was filed on July 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The attorneys demand a jury trial and seek compensation and punitive damages of “no less than $50 million”. Major points and allegations in the 36 page complaint include:

* Google has monopolistic control of online searches and related advertising.

“Google creates, operates, and controls its platform and services, including but not limited to Google Search, Google Ads, and Gmail as a public forum or its functional equivalent by intentionally and openly dedicating its platform for public use and public benefit, inviting the public to utilize Google as a forum for free speech. Google serves as a state actor by performing an exclusively and traditionally public function by regulating free speech within a public forum and helping to run elections.” (p. 22)

“Google has used its control over online political speech to silence Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate millions of Americans want to hear from. With this lawsuit, Tulsi seeks to stop Google from further intermeddling in the 2020 United States Presidential Election….. Google plays favorites, with no warning, no transparency – and no accountability (until now).” (p. 2)

* At a critical moment Google undercut the Tulsi Gabbard campaign.

“On June 28, 2019 – at the height of Gabbard’s popularity among internet researchers in the immediate hours after the debate ended, and in the thick of the critical post-debate period… Google suspended Tulsi’s Google Ads account without warning.” (p. 3)

* Google has failed to provide a credible explanation.

The Tulsi campaign quickly sought to restore the account but “In response, the Campaign got opacity and an inconsistent series of answers from Google… To this day, Google has not provided a straight answer – let alone a credible one – as to why Tulsi’s political speech was silence right when millions of people wanted to hear from her.” (p. 4)

Google started by falsely claiming “problems with billing”.  Later, as reported in the NY Times story  a Google spokesperson claimed, “Google has automated systems that flag unusual activity on advertiser accounts – including large spending changes – to prevent fraud….In this case, ‘our system triggered a suspension.’ ”

* Google has a corporate profit motive to oppose Tulsi Gabbard.

“Google has sought to silence Tulsi Gabbard, a presidential candidate who has vocally called for greater regulation and oversight of (you guessed it) Google.” (p. 5)

“During her career in Congress, Gabbard has moved to limit the powers of big tech companies like Google and has fought to keep the internet open and available to all. Gabbard has co-sponsored legislation that prohibits multi-tiered pricing agreements for the privileged few, and she has spoken in favor of reinstating and expanding net neutrality to apply to Internet firms like Google.” (p. 8)

* Google’s Actions have caused significant harm to the Gabbard campaign and violate the U.S. and California constitutions and California business law.

“Through its illegal actions targeting Tulsi Gabbard, Google has caused the Campaign significant harm, both monetary (including potentially millions of dollars in forgone donations) and nonmonetary (the ability to provide Tulsi’s important message with Americans looking to hear it).” (p. 6)

“Google engages in a pattern and practice of intentional discrimination in the provision of its services, including discriminating and censoring the Campaign’s speech based not on the content of the censored speech but on the Campaign’s political identity and viewpoint.” (p. 27)

* The public has an interest in this case.

“Unless the court issues an appropriate injunction, Google’s illegal and unconstitutional behavior will continue, harming both the Campaign and the general public, which has an overwhelming interest in a fair, unmanipulated 2020 United States Election cycle. (p. 34)

Google Explanation is Not Credible

The Tulsi Gabbard Google Ads account was abruptly suspended at a crucial time. The question is why. Was it the result of “unusual activity” triggering an “automatic suspension” as claimed by Google? Or was it because someone at Google changed the software or otherwise intervened to undermine the Tulsi campaign?

Google’s explanation of an “automatic suspension” from “unusual activity” is dubious. First, the timing does not make sense. The sudden rise in searches on “Tulsi Gabbard” began the day before the suspension. Gabbard participated in the first debate, on June 26. Her presence and performance sparked interest among many viewers. Next morning, June 27, media reported that, “Tulsi Gabbard was the most searched candidate on Google after the Democratic debate in Miami“. The second debate took place in the evening of June 27. With discussion of the Democratic candidates continuing, Tulsi Gabbard continued to attract much interest. Around 9:30 pm (ET) on June 27 the Google Ads account was suddenly suspended. If the cause was “unusual activity”, the “automatic trigger” should have occurred long before.

Second, Google was fully aware of the “unusual activity”. In fact, Google was the source of the news reports on the morning of June 27.  Reports said:

According to Google Trends, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the most searched candidate heading into the debate… After the debate, Gabbard vaulted into first.

Third, it is hard to believe that Google does not have any human or more sophisticated review before suspending a major Ads account on a politically intense night.  It should have been obvious that the cause of increased interest in Gabbard was the nationally televised Democratic candidates debate and media coverage.

Fourth, the changing explanation for the sudden suspension, starting with a false claim that there were “problems with billing”, raises questions about the integrity of Google’s response.

Google Secretly Manipulates  Public Opinion

Unknown to most of the public, there is compelling evidence that Google has been secretly manipulating search results to steer public perception and election voting for years.

Dr. Robert Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, has been studying and reporting on this for the past six years. Recently, on June 16, 2019 he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Constitution. His testimony is titled “Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat”.

Epstein has published 15 books and over 300 scientific and mainstream media articles on artificial intelligence and related topics. “Since 2012, some of my research and writings have focused on Google LLC, specifically on the company’s power to suppress content – the censorship problem, if you will – as well as on the massive surveillance the company conducts, and also on the company’s unprecedented ability to manipulate the thoughts and behavior of more than 2.5 billion people worldwide.”

As shown by Dr. Epstein, Google uses several techniques to manipulate public opinion. The results of an online search are biased. Search “suggestions” are skewed. Messages such as “Go Vote” are sent to some people but not to others.

Epstein’s written testimony to Congress includes links to over sixty articles documenting his research published in sites ranging from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to Huffington Post. Epstein’s testimony describes “disturbing findings” including:

“In 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton”. (Epstein notes that he supported Clinton.)

“On Election Day in 2018, the ‘Go Vote’ reminder Google displayed on its home page gave one political party between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes than it gave the other party.”

“My recent research demonstrates that Google’s ‘autocomplete’ search suggestions can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split without people’s awareness.”

“Google has likely been determining the outcomes of upwards of 25 percent of the national elections worldwide since at least 2015. This is because many races are very close and because Google’s persuasive technologies are very powerful.”

Google is Censoring Alternative Media  

In August 2017 TruePublica reported their experience and predictions in an article titled “The Truth War is Being Lost to a Global Censorship Apparatus Called Google“. The article says:

60 percent of people now get their news from search engines, not traditional human editors in the media. It is here where the new information war takes place – the algorithm. Google now takes 81.2 percent of all search engine market share globally…. Google has the ability to drive demand and set the narrative, create bias and swing opinion.

In 2017, the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) reported that:

In April, under the guise of combating ‘fake news’, Google introduced new procedures that give extraordinary powers to unnamed ‘evaluators’ to demote web pages and websites. These procedures have been used to exclude the WSWS and other anti-war and oppositional sites. Over the past three months, traffic originating from Google to the WSWS  has fallen by approximately 70%…. In key searches relevant to a wide range of topics the WSWS regularly covers – including the U.S. military operations and the threat of war, social conditions, inequality and even socialism – the number of search impressions …has fallen dramatically.

In essence, Google has “de-ranked” and is screening searchers from seeing alternative and progressive websites such as truepublica, globalresearch, consortiumnews, commondreams, Wikileaks, truth-out and many more. WSWS reported numerous specific examples such as this one: “Searches for the term ‘Korean war’ produced 20,932 impressions in May. In July, searches using the same words produced zero WSWS impressions.”

“The policy guiding these actions is made absolutely clear in the April 25, 2017 blog post by Google’s Vice President for Engineering, Ben Gomes, and the updated ‘Search Quality Rater Guidelines’ published at the same time. The post refers to the need to flag and demote ‘unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and conspiracy theories’ – broad and amorphous language used to exclude any oppositional content…. “The ‘lowest’ rating is also to be given to a website that ‘presents unsubstantiated conspiracy theories or hoaxes as if the information were factual.’”

Tulsi Gabbard has not only called for much stricter regulations on high tech and social media giants. She has also challenged the Democratic Party and foreign policy establishment.  In late February 2016 she resigned as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee to support candidate Bernie Sanders against the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton. Gabbard has issued sharp criticisms of US foreign policy.  Recently she said:

We hear a lot of politicians say the same argument that we’ve got to stay engaged in the world otherwise we’ll be isolationists as though the only way the United States can engage with other countries is by blowing them up or strangling them with economic sanctions by smashing them and trying to overthrow their governments. This is exactly what’s wrong with this whole premise and the whole view in which too many politicians, too many leaders in this country are viewing the United States role in the world.

Conclusion

Did Google take the next step from silently censoring websites the corporation does not like to undercutting a presidential candidate the corporation does not like?

This is a David vs Goliath story. Google/Alphabet is the 37th largest corporation in the world with enormous political influence in Washington. Whether or not the law suit succeeds, it may serve the public interest by exposing Google’s immense monopolistic power and illustrate the need for much more regulation, transparency and accountability.  It may also generate more interest in Gabbard’s message and campaign in the face of efforts to silence her.

 

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com. Read other articles by Rick.

I Speak, You Speak, We All Speak Newspeak

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By Joziah Thayer

Source: Activist Post

In George Orwell’s infamous book 1984, Big Brother imposes Newspeak on the people of Oceania. Newspeak is defined as “a controlled language of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought — personal identity, self-expression, and free will — that threatens the ideology of the regime of Big Brother and the Party, who have criminalized such concepts into thoughtcrime.”

Society today has dimensions of Newspeak infused into our everyday lives. We are all polarized penguins waddling our way through the masses, blocking, deleting or belittling anyone who has opposing views until we find ourselves face first in a corner. After waddling like penguins into the walls of our echo-chambers, we turn around and face the world, but by then we have become territorial terriers ready to attack anyone who threatens to breach the walls of our carefully crafted echo-chambers. Instead of protecting the truth, we protect our truth.

The consequences of this are that instead of the truth being known, there are two truths; and this process will duplicate and recycle itself until there is no truth, there are only lies and propaganda. People like Marc Lamont Hill are a perfect example of Newspeak being in full effect in our society today. Hill made comments about the Israeli oppression of Palestinians and he was fired, not because he said something anti-Semitic, but because he said something unacceptable in society today — in Orwellian terms Marc Lamont Hill committed a thoughtcrime.

Instead of having actual free speech, we have accepted speech. We protect the illusion of free speech— like a lonely man in the desert, protecting his paradise, which in reality is just a mirage. The will of the people will never be honored so long as we elect monetarist gargoyles in suits that are afraid of change because it means their demise. In America, we have a representative democracy and what we need is a direct democracy. A democracy in which our votes as citizens mean something and our elected officials are held accountable or voted out.

Perhaps the worst case of Newspeak in society today is when it involves war. Major news networks have long-winded debates about what they call “America’s role in the world.” This is a form of Newspeak. Instead of saying that we are actively bombing eleven sovereign nations, killing innocent men, women, and children, mainstream media casually calls it “America’s role in the world.” Another term commonly used as a form of Newspeak is: “Our troops are protecting American interest overseas,” How is it Newspeak? The accepted language for America’s endless wars is that America is only spreading democracy around the world. This “accepted language” couldn’t be any further from the truth, yet anything that deviates from this accepted language is deemed an unacceptable thoughtcrime and that is what makes it Newspeak.

War is fought in this fog of falsehood, a great deal of it undiscovered and accepted as truth. The fog arises from fear and is fed by panic. Any attempt to doubt or deny even the most fantastic story has to be condemned at once as unpatriotic, if not traitorous. This allows a free field for the rapid spread of lies. – Arthur Ponsonby (Falsehood In War-time)

We often acknowledge the faults of our government, our media, and our financial system, but in doing so we neglect to acknowledge our faults. Our way is the only way! It is as if the masses have been rocked to sleep or hypnotized into being binary static robots incapable of walking outside of the dotted line or thinking outside of the box.

Newspeak is not to be confused with “Political Correctness,” it is far more dangerous than that. Political Correctness is divided among party lines. What is politically correct to a Republican is most likely going to be politically incorrect to a Democrat and vice versa. Newspeak is not divided among party lines, Newspeak foments at will in both parties and if left uncorrected politics will remain the cesspool of polarization that it is today. The powers-that-be have no interest in fixing our political system — in their eyes, it’s working just fine.

The Just World Fallacy: Why People Bash Assange And Defend Power

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

I write a lot about how important it is for political dissidents to research and understand cognitive biases, the large number of well-documented logical glitches in the way human brains process information. I do this because the science of modern propaganda has been in research and development for more than a century, so if public domain psychology is aware of these glitches we can be absolutely certain that the propagandists are as well, and that they are exploiting those glitches currently.

If you don’t cultivate a healthy respect for just how advanced modern propaganda has become, you won’t be able to understand what the propagandists are doing when observing the behaviors of the political/media class, and you’ll almost certainly wind up being fooled by the propaganda machine in various ways yourself.

The fact that people think of themselves as rational creatures, but in reality have many large cognitive vulnerabilities which can and will be exploited to cause them to interpret data in an irrational way, is not some amusing-yet-inconsequential bit of trivia. It’s an absolutely crucial piece of the puzzle in understanding why the world is as messed up as it is, and in figuring out how to fix it. The immense political consequences of this reality extend into every facet of civilization.

For example, have you ever wondered why ordinary people you know in real life often harbor highly negative opinions about Julian Assange, seemingly to no benefit for themselves, even while he’s being viciously persecuted for his truthful publications by some of the most corrupt political forces on the planet? You’ve probably correctly concluded that it’s because they’re propagandized, but have you ever wondered why that propaganda works? Even on some of the more intelligent people you know?

The reason is partly because of a glitch in human cognition known as the just world hypothesis or just world fallacy, which causes us to assume that if bad things are happening to someone, it’s because that person deserves it. Blaming the victim is more psychologically comfortable than seeing that we live in an unjust world where we could very easily become victim ourselves someday, and we select for that comfort over rational analysis.

In the early 1960s a social psychologist named Melvin Lerner discovered that test subjects had a curious tendency to assign blame for an unfortunate event to the victims–even when said event couldn’t logically have been their fault–and to assign positive attributes to people who received good fortune–even if their fortune was due solely to random chance. Lerner theorized that people have an unconscious need to organize their perceptions under the fallacious premise that the world is basically just, where good things tend to happen to good people and bad things tend to happen to bad people. Nothing in a rational analysis of our world tells us that this assumption is in any way true, but tests by Lerner and subsequent social psychologists have backed up his theory that most of us tend to interpret events through the lens of this irrational assumption anyway.

Like other cognitive biases, this one fundamentally boils down to our annoying psychological tendency to select for cognitive ease over cognitive discomfort. It feels more psychologically comfortable to interpret new information in a way that confirms our preexisting opinions, so we get confirmation bias. It feels psychologically comfortable to assume something is true after hearing it repeated many times, so we get the illusory truth effect. It feels more psychologically comfortable to believe we live in a fair world where people get what they deserve than to believe we’re in a chaotic world where many of the most materially prosperous people are also the most depraved and sociopathic, and that we could be next in line to be victimized by them, so we get the just world fallacy.

When news first broke in November of last year that the Trump Justice Department was preparing to charge Julian Assange for 2010 publications by WikiLeaks, establishment Democrats suddenly began babbling about “karma”. These people weren’t Buddhists or Hindus, yet when the Trump administration (who they claim to oppose) began an aggressive assault on the free press (which they claim to support), they began reaching for eastern philosophical concepts which have no evidentiary basis whatsoever in order to justify it. Their irrational belief in a just world was psychologically more comfortable than going against their confirmation bias about the guy who spilled dirt on Queen Hillary, so they selected it. Not because it was more truthful, but because it was more comfortable.

You see this more and more often as facts in evidence make it abundantly clear that the Trump administration’s persecution of Assange pose the greatest threat to the free press in modern history, both among the rank-and-file citizenry and among the political/media class. Countless opinion segments and articles have flooded the mainstream media denying that Assange’s persecution poses a threat to press freedoms, on the basis that Assange is different from the mainstream press in some way.

This isn’t due solely to the fact that these establishment lackeys know they’ll never publish anything which inconveniences power like Assange did (many mainstream journalists sincerely believe that they hold power to account in some way); a lot of it is due to the fact that it’s much more psychologically comfortable to believe that Assange is being savagely persecuted because he deserves it. Believing that Assange is getting what’s coming to him is just plain more psychologically comfortable than believing you’re in an endlessly out-of-control world where bad things happen to good people, and that in fact you live in a world where your own government will torture and imprison a journalist for publishing embarrassing facts about it. And it’s certainly a lot more comfortable than believing you could be next.

The just world fallacy explains so much about what’s going on today. It explains why everyone scrambles to defend their government when it begins victimizing a sovereign nation for refusing to comply with the demands of the powerful. It explains why people have been so easily propagandized into believing that poverty is caused by the laziness of the poor rather than the exploitation of the rich. It explains why people are so quick to justify the censorship of a perceived political enemy on the internet. It explains why any time video footage of a controversial  police shooting goes viral, the comments are always flooded with people saying the victim should have known better than to get down on the ground so slowly or reach for his wallet so quickly. It explains why attempts to discuss rape culture are so often bogged down by moronic comments about how its victims should behave. It explains why people justify mass government surveillance claiming that if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Some of these issues are more obvious to those on the left of the partisan divide, and some of them are more obvious to those on the right, but the impulse to create a false sense of safety in yourself is the exact same in all examples.

Even those who are wide awake to what’s going on in the world and don’t fall for any of the victim-blaming dynamics described above still often fall for a victim-blaming illusion of their own: the impulse to blame the propagandized masses for being propagandized, instead of blaming the propagandists. This one is just as deluded as any of the others, and it works for the same reason: it’s just plain more psychologically comfortable to believe that someone is being victimized by the system because of some flaw in the victim.

If we had a just and fair world, creating propaganda would be illegal along with murder, theft, fraud, and every other infraction on an individual’s personal sovereignty. To be clear, I don’t think that trying to make it illegal would work. I believe we need to evolve beyond the manipulations so they no longer affect us, but that requires us to see it as the serious offense that it is. If in the future we are to evolve to see it clearly, propaganda will elicit an instant and aggressive backlash from the collective against the propagandist. But right now it doesn’t, and it’s protected in part by people who believe that the crime of manipulation is outweighed by the crime of being trusting. Deliberately manipulating people for money, power or both is an attack on people’s psychological sovereignty, and until we see it as such then we will never turn our anger where it’s meant to go: on the perpetrators. If we can’t eradicate propaganda then we will never be able to see and understand what’s going on in the world clearly enough to fix it.

In reality, we live in a very unjust world. We live in a world where money is the only real valuing system, and money selects for ruthlessness. Money elevates those who will do what it takes to get ahead, and so money elevates sociopaths. No amount of muddle-headed magical thinking about “karma” is going to make that untrue. There is no grand arbiter in the sky selecting for goodness and badness. We must select good and badness. People must be held to account for their actions by those that observe that those actions are unjust. Great things happen to bad people, and awful things happen to good people, and when culture elevates greed and sociopathy that is only going to get more true until we put an end to it.

It is psychologically comfortable to believe that we live in a just world. It is much less psychologically comfortable to understand that we don’t, and that we never will unless we fight very hard for it. One is an illusion, the other is reality. A preference for reality over comfort is the primary factor which separates those who serve corrupt power from those who speak out against it.

Paul Krassner, 4/9/32 – 7/21/19: American Satirist

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Photograph Source: Heidi De Vries from Berkeley, CA – CC BY 2.0

By Jonah Raskin

Source: CounterPunch

“He’s gone. Feel free to spread the word,” Michael Simmons said in an email that went out to a few dozen or so of the usual suspects, including Wavy Gravy, Judy Gumbo, Larry (Ratzo) Sloman, Jim Fouratt, Rex Weiner, Aron Kay, Kate Coleman, Jeffrey St. Clair, and Barbara Garson, some of whom had been Yippies, Zippies and their fellow travelers.

“He” who was now gone at the age of 87, was Paul Krassner, who took up where Lenny Bruce left off, edited The Realist, reinvigorated satire, defended free speech at every opportunity and who lived at the end of his life in Desert Hot Springs, California in part because of the climate and also because he could afford to live there.

Before long there will be hefty biographies of Paul that describe his birth and his childhood in Brooklyn, his days and nights in Chicago during the infamous Conspiracy Trial, his provocative piece about LBJ and the Kennedy Assassination, and his performances as a standup comedian who seemed to find less and less to laugh about, and more and more to fret about in a world gone awry. The atomic bomb and nuclear paranoia was something Krassner could laugh about; not so Putin, Trump, the plutocrats and the kleptocrats of the twenty-first century.

Before the formal obituaries that are sure to show up in all the major U.S. newspapers, and before the pundits weigh-in on the significance of Krassner, it might make sense to say here that Paul was irascible and cantankerous, true to his core beliefs and that there were zero sacred cows in his universe, at least at the beginning of his career.

I met him in 1970. Soon afterward, he published in The Realist a piece I wrote about Eldridge Cleaver, Timothy Leary and their wives, but not before he’d turned it from something tame into something irreverent.

Over the years, I saw him in New York and in San Francisco. From 2015 to 2018, I interviewed Paul several times and published most of our conversations in print and online. In 2018, I collected all of them in a booklet titled Paul Krassner Speaks: From Lenny Bruce and Obama to Hebdo. 

Here are a few of the things he had to say:

“Satire has a truth embedded in the laughter and it can serve to wake people up from their cultural brainwashing.”

“Free speech demands a sense of responsibility.”

“I think every child is born with innocent irreverence, but it’s cancelled by the osmosis of cultural repression.”

“What I’d like to forget and can’t is that there are so many prisoners serving time, as Lenny Bruce said, ‘for smoking flowers.’”

“My slogan for The Realist used to be ‘Irreverence is our only sacred cow,’ but I’ve had second thoughts. Irreverence has become an industry and can become irreverence for its own sake. Mean-spirited stereotypes in the guise of satire.”

Thanks, Paul.

 

Related Podcast:

PAUL KRASSNER: THE LIFE OF AN INVESTIGATIVE SATIRIST

Saturday Matinee: Sans Soliel

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“Sans Soliel” (1983) is an experimental film by acclaimed French director Chris Marker which compiles footage recorded in various countries around the world and presents it in collage-like form. The movie features no synchronized sound, but instead ties the various segments together with music and voice-over narration pondering such topics as memory, technology and society. As the scenes shift, locations range from Japan to Iceland to Africa, creating a truly international work.

Watch the film on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/wayf/product/sans-soleil

Extinction is Stalking Humanity: The Threats to Human Survival Accumulate

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By Robert J. Burrowes

I have previously written a summary of the interrelated psychological, sociological, political-economic, military, nuclear, ecological and climate threats to human survival on Earth which threaten human extinction by 2026. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

Rather than reiterate the evidence in the above article, I would like to add to it by focusing attention on three additional threats – geoengineering, medical vaccinations and electromagnetic radiation – that are less well-known (largely because the evidence is officially suppressed and only made available by conscientious investigative activists) and which, either separately or in combination with other threats, significantly increase the prospect of extinction for humans and most (and possibly all) life on Earth by the above date, particularly given the failure to respond strategically to these interrelated threats.

Before doing this, however, let me emphasize, yet again, that it is (unconscious) fear that is driving all of these crises in the first place and fear that underpins our collective failure to strategically address each of these interrelated threats in turn. And, as I have explained elsewhere and reiterate now, if we do not address this fear as a central feature of any overall strategy for survival, then extinction in the near term is certain. See, for example, ‘The Limited Mind: Why Fear is Driving Humanity to Extinction’.

So, beyond the usual issues that are considered imminent threats to human survival – particularly nuclear war, ecological collapse and climate catastrophe based on dysfunctional political, economic, legal and social institutions – let me briefly outline some of these other threats and, once again, invite a strategic response to each and all of these threats so that we give ourselves some chance of surviving.

In the ‘‘Human Extinction by 2026?’ article I cited above, I referred to the use of geoengineering to wage war on Earth’s climate, environment and ultimately ourselves. See, for example, ‘Engineered Climate Cataclysm: Hurricane Harvey’ and ‘The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: “Owning the Weather” for Military Use’.

But if you are unfamiliar with the evidence of how Earth is being geoengineered for catastrophe, by inflicting enormous damage on the biosphere, try watching this recent interview by Dane Wigington of Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt on the subject. Dr. Klinghardt carefully explains why geoengineering (simply: the high altitude aerial introduction of particulates – especially a synthesized compound of nanonized aluminium and the poison glyphosate in this case – into Earth’s atmosphere to manipulate the climate) creates a ‘supertoxin’ that is generating ‘a crisis of neurological diseases’ and, for example, crosses the blood-brain barrier causing diseases on the Autism spectrum (a spectrum of diseases virtually unknown prior to 1975 and now at epidemic proportions in countries, like the USA, where geoengineering is conducted extensively). See ‘World-Renowned Doctor Addresses Climate Engineering Dangers’.

While careful to distinguish the offending toxic compounds of aluminium and making the point that these adversely impact all lifeforms on the planet, Dr. Klinghardt nevertheless maintains that ‘Aluminium could be isolated as the single factor that is right now creating the mass extinction on the planet including our own’.

Because Dr. Klinghardt cites the corroborating research on glyophosate and aluminium by Dr Stephenie Seneff, Senior Research Scientist at MIT, who investigates ‘the impact of nutritional deficiencies and environmental toxins on human health’, you might like to consult relevant documentation from her research too – see Dr Stephenie Seneff – or watch one of her lectures on the subject. See ‘Autism Explained: Synergistic Poisoning from Aluminum and Glyphosate’.

Given the role of vaccination in precipitating autism, among a great many other disorders, by introducing into the body contaminants such as aluminium and glyphosate as well, you might also like to check out Sayer Ji’s 326 page bibliography with a vast number of references to the literature explaining the exceptional range of shocking dangers from vaccination. See ‘Vaccination’.

Or, if you wish to just read straightforward accounts of the history of vaccine damage and the ongoing dangers, see these articles by Gary G. Kohls MD: ‘A Comprehensive List of Vaccine-Associated Toxic Reactions’ and ‘Identifying the Vaccinology-Illiterate among Us’.

Before proceeding, it is worth mentioning that given his commitment to understanding the causes of, and healing, disorders on the autism spectrum but many others besides, Dr Klinghardt offers treatment protocols for many (now) chronic illnesses, including those on the autism spectrum, on his website: Klinghardt Academy or Institut für Neurobiologie.

But worse than these already horrible impacts, Dr Klinghardt also explains how the nanonized aluminium becomes embedded in our body, including the mitochondria (thus ‘jamming’ the body’s energy production ‘machinery’). More importantly, the metal reacts extremely negatively to electromagnetic radiation (such as wifi, which will get enormously worse as 5G is progressively introduced) and this destroys the mitochondria in the DNA very rapidly thus spelling ‘the end of higher evolution in the next six to eight years’. Why so soon? Dr Klinghardt carefully explains the exponential nature, a poorly understood concept, of what is taking place. See ‘World-Renowned Doctor Addresses Climate Engineering Dangers’.

Moreover, he explains, because geoengineering is not confined to what is sprayed over land masses but includes what is sprayed over the ocean as well, the world’s oceans effectively have a layer of microplastic and metal covering their surfaces creating the effect of confining the Earth’s oceans in a gigantic sealed plastic bag. As Dr Klinghardt explains: This has reduced the water content of the atmosphere by 40% in the past two decades, causing droughts and desertification throughout Europe and the Middle East, for example, and substantially reduced the capacity of algae in the ocean to produce oxygen.

Having mentioned 5G above, if you are not aware of the monumental hazards of this technology, which is already being introduced without informed public consultation, the following articles and videos will give you a solid understanding of key issues from the viewpoint of human and planetary well-being. See ‘5G Technology is Coming – Linked to Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Death’, ‘20,000 Satellites for 5G to be Launched Sending Focused Beams of Intense Microwave Radiation Over Entire Earth’, ‘Will 5G Cell Phone Technology Lead To Dramatic Population Reduction As Large Numbers Of Men Become Sterile?’, ‘The 5G Revolution: Millions of “Human Guinea Pigs” in Big Telecom’s Global Experiment’ and ‘5G Apocalypse – The Extinction Event’.

In essence then, there is enormous evidence that geoengineering, vaccinations and 5G technology pose a monumental (and, in key ways, interrelated) threat to human and planetary health and threaten near term extinction for humans and a vast number of other species. Of course, as mentioned above, these are not the only paths to extinction that we face.

How have these threats come about? Essentially because the insane global elite, over the past thousand years, has progressively secured control over world affairs in order to maximize its privilege, profit and power, at any cost to the Earth and its populations (and now, ultimately, even its own members), successfully co-opting all major political, economic, corporate, legal and social institutions and those who work in these institutions – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – while the bulk of the human population has been terrorized and disempowered to such as extent that our resistance has been tokenistic and misdirected (almost invariably at governments). See, for example, ‘Why Activists Fail’.

And this is why, even now, as humanity stands at the brink of extinction, most people’s unconscious fear will prevent them from seeking out or considering the type of evidence offered in this article or, if they do read it, to dismiss it from their mind. That is how unconscious fear works: it eliminates unpalatable truths from awareness.

Fear and Extinction

So here we stand. We are on the brink of human extinction (with 200 species of life on Earth being driven to extinction daily) and most humans utterly oblivious to (or in denial of) the desperate nature and timeframe of our plight.

Why? Because the first three capacities that fear shuts down are awareness (of what is happening around us), faculties such as conscience and feelings (particularly the anger that gives us the courage to act) and intelligence (to analyze and strategize our response). Which is why I go to some pains to emphasize that our unconscious fear is the primary driver of our accelerating rush to extinction and I encourage you to seriously consider incorporating strategies to address this fear into any effort you make to defend ourselves from extinction.

‘But I am not afraid’ you (or someone else) might say. Aren’t you? Your unconscious mind has had years to learn the tricks it needed when you were a child to survive the onslaught of the violent parenting and schooling you suffered – see ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’ – among the many other possibilities of violence, including those of a structural nature, that you will have also suffered.

But your mind only learned these ‘tricks’ – such as the trick of hiding your fear behind chronic overconsumption: see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ – at great cost to your functionality and it now diverts the attention from reality of most people so effectively that they cannot even pay attention to the obvious and imminent threats to human survival, such as the threats of nuclear war, ecological collapse and climate catastrophe, let alone the many other issues including the more ‘obscure’ ones (if your attention has been successfully diverted) I touched on above.

The reality is that fear induces most people to live in delusion and to believe such garbage as ‘The Earth is bountiful’ (and can sustain endless economic growth) or that the ‘end of century’ is our timeframe for survival. But the fear works in a great many ways, only a few of which I have touched on in ‘The Limited Mind: Why Fear is Driving Humanity to Extinction’, for example.

Defending Ourselves from Extinction

So how do we defend ourselves from extinction, particularly when there is an insane global elite endlessly impeding our efforts to do so?

For most people, this will include starting with yourself. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

For virtually all adults, it will include reviewing your relationship with children and, ideally, making ‘My Promise to Children’. Critically, this will include learning the skill of nisteling. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

For those who feel courageous enough, consider campaigning strategically to achieve the outcomes we need, whether it is to end violence against children or end war (and the threat of nuclear war), halt geoengineering, stop the destruction of Earth’s climate, stop the deployment of 5G or end the destruction of Earth’s rainforests. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy or Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. A lot of people doing a bit here and there, or lobbying governments, is not going to get us out of this mess.

The global elite is deeply entrenched – fighting its wars, upgrading its nuclear arsenal, exploiting people, geoengineering the destruction of the biosphere, destroying the climate, invading/occupying resource-rich countries – and not about to give way without a concerted effort by many of us campaigning strategically on several key fronts. So strategy is imperative if we are to successfully deal with all of the issues that confront us in the time we have left.

If you recognize the pervasiveness of the fear-driven violence in our world, consider joining the global network of people resisting it by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

But if you do nothing else while understanding the simple point that Earth’s biosphere cannot sustain a human population of this magnitude of whom more than half endlessly over-consume, then consider accelerated participation in the strategy outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

Or, if this feels too complicated, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

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

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

Sometime in the next few years, the overwhelming evidence is that homo sapiens will join other species that only exist as part of the fossil record.

Therefore, you have two vital choices to make: Will you fight for survival? And will you do it strategically?

If you do not make both choices consciously, your unconscious fear will make them for you.

 

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