In Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK,” Donald Sutherland played a character only identified as “X,” the “explainer” who downloads most of the suspect government and government officials’ actions in the days surrounding the Kennedy Assassination in 1963.
It’s a strange and in retrospect amusing way of throwing everything behind Stone’s thesis in the film at the wall at once in a single mesmerizing third action monologue.
Imagine a whole movie of such monologues, with more than one version of such a connect-the-dots character.
“88” is a political thriller by the one-named Nigerian/British/American filmmaker Eromose (“Legacy”), a two hour sermon on white supremacy and dark money and how America got to where it is today. It’s never less than interesting, even as its dramatic urgency wanes due to the monotony of its message and the over-the-top “thrills” this thriller never bothers to provide.
Brandon Victor Jackson plays Femi, a numbers guy who works in accounting in the fundraising office of candidate Harold Roundtree, a pre-Iowa (oopsie) “front-runner” for the 2024 presidential nomination, mainly thanks to huge infusions of cash from assorted non-profit political action committees.
Femi spots an odd thing about these donations, their bizarre numeric amounts that add up to some incarnation of the number “88.”
As he passes this info on to his senior campaign staff bosses (Amy Sloan, Michael Harney), he continues to dig and brings in a Jewish pal (Thomas Sadoski) whose “investigative” skills he can tap into. And Ira sees something straight away. Those numbers, “88?” That’s white supremacist code for the eighth letter of the alphabet, repeated.
“HH…’Heil Hitler.’”
“88” takes these two, and Femi’s pregnant activist/wife Maria (Naturi Naughton) and that campaign through a round of digging and soul-searching over the latest “chosen one” candidate, a great communicator with all the right education and background and a sketchy tie to one big non-profit PAC, the one he ran right up to the day he announced, “One USA.”
We meet the candidate who inspires Femi and convinces the veteran political operatives on the staff that he’s a winner via a long interview Roundtree has with a tough-minded, challenging journalist.
Our writer-director lets us know how to write “names” into your low-budget film’s cast, by putting the movie’s two most famous actors onto basically a single TV interview set (no background, just darkness behind them) for a series of scenes intercut into the action, scenes that might have taken just a couple of days to shoot.
Orlando Jones (“Drumline”) is surprisingly affecting and Obama-esque as Roundtree, and William Fichtner (TV’s “Mom,” “The Perfect Storm”) gets to ask the uncomfortable questions as a bulldog TV interrogator who brings up “race,” a topic our candidate dodges, Big Money in politics and white supremacy, including Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the matter.
Femi’s quest takes on “Marathon Man” intrigues (without violence), “follow the money” “All the President’s Men” plotting and “JFK” warning phone calls and “visits” from those who either want to expose the truth, or want to ensure Femi doesn’t reveal it.
“There’s a storm coming, Mister Jackson! Stay out of the way!”
Eromose gives us primers on lynching and global racist politics and even an animated “Schoolhouse Rock” style explainer on how “rich people buy elections” thanks to the infamous Citizen’s United case.
“88” is informatively watchable, thanks to all these in-story tutorials. What it lacks is high drama and a sense of the stakes, which never feel as murderous as you might expect. All this backstory about Femi’s AA membership and wife Maria’s boycott-armed activism against her own bank’s lending policies and the “plantation owners” of the National Football League and debating Black Lives Matter vs. Stop Asian Hate clutters up the film and ignores the very basic lessons of “All the President’s Men.”
“Follow the money,” and “What did the (candidate for) President know, and when did he know it?”
It’s possible to be a bit awed by the “JFK” ambition of “88,” even if the execution waters down Eromose’s message to the point where we wonder if he’s simply lost his nerve.
It has been fifty-five years since Senator Robert F. Kennedy stepped onto the presidential nominating stage to try to mend the massive breach that had opened in American society. The country was torn asunder by the Vietnam War, racism, poverty, the assassination of President Kennedy and the soon-to-be assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Chaos reigned as Lyndon Johnson lied and Richard Nixon matched him in verbal and actual treachery. A war between Middle America and the elites running the government was breaking out across the country. A great divide between whites and blacks, rich and poor, the working class and the upper class was opening wide. The Tet Offensive had just ripped the face off the official lies about the course of the war in Vietnam and the emperor, Lyndon Jonson, stood naked and would soon announce that he would not run again.
On March 16, 1968, Senator Kennedy declared his candidacy with these words:
I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I’m obliged to do all that I can.
I run to seek new policies – policies to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities, policies to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, in this country and around the rest of the world.
By the end of 1968, a plague year if there ever were one, Richard Nixon, together with his goon squad, prepared to occupy the White House, Vietnam raged on, and everything King and Kennedy stood for seemed lost. Ignorance, vituperation, and the divide-and-conquer technique long practiced by the power elites set into the body politic like a deadly cancer. Something died, all hope seemed lost, and the perilous course RFK spoke of was never stopped. Jackals with polished faces have sat in the White House ever since.
Today hope is resurrected. Enter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. center stage who will declare his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president on Wednesday, April 19, in Boston, Massachusetts.
The wheel of history has turned and 2023 resembles 1968 in many ways while getting worse in others. The divide in the country remains but has greatly widened. The CIA and the intelligence agencies totally control the mainstream media now. The Pentagon’s budget has increased exponentially. The U.S. wages a savage war against Russia in Ukraine under the blatant lie of defending freedom while supporting Nazis and greatly risking nuclear war. It provokes war with China. Permanent war is government policy with military bases and CIA and special forces all over the world, waging semi-clandestine wars, or maybe just wars that people don’t want to know about. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened while the elites mock working class people as moronic deplorables. The Department of Defense controls the development, manufacturing, clinical testing, supply, production, and distribution of the mRNA vaccines, while the criminal pharmaceutical companies reap obscene profits. Lies are piled upon lies in what amounts to an Orwellian nightmare. And while LBJ and Nixon have been replaced by Joe Biden, the warfare state roll on.
Some things have changed, of course. In 1968, liberals were turning against the U.S. war against Vietnam and were growing wary of the CIA. Today they support all the Democratic-led wars and love the CIA. They trust the obvious media lies and those of a proven liar such as Anthony Fauci. Nowhere is this sadly truer than with the extended Kennedy family, who in their support for Biden, Fauci, the CIA, etc. have betrayed JFK and RFK. Their smugness and support for Biden against their brother who is carrying on his uncle’s and father’s legacy is betrayal of the worst kind.
Despite a family actively opposed to his candidacy, despite all the media lies about him, and despite the odds makers giving him little chance, RFK, Jr. is entering the race. It is an act of supreme moral courage.
Like his father in ’68, he is the only candidate who can heal this nation’s great divide.
That he is opposed by a huge array of people who will lie about him because he is a truthteller does not deter him. Those lies immediately started up again as soon as word got out that he might run. It’s an old story.
Trash will be thrown at him. Every blemish of his nearly seventy years will be dredged up to paint him as a villain, a flawed man, a hypocrite – name all the negative terms you can think of and the real hypocrites, in their self-righteous rage, will use them against him. They will bounce off him. He is ready.
When Bobby, Jr. was young, his father handed him a book and said with urgency, “I want you to read this.” It was Albert Camus’s The Plague. He read it and it has informed his life ever since. Just as in 1968, we live in plague times, and the plague is US, it runs through all our institutions and, as in Camus’s books, the rats are running wild, devouring truth and the values that can redeem us. As he has written in his beautiful and important book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, Camus’s analysis of Sisyphus and the ancient Greeks has taught him an important lesson:
It is neither our position nor our circumstances that define us, according to the Stoics, but our response to those circumstance; when destiny crushes us, small heroic gestures of courage and service can bring us peace and fulfillment. In applying our shoulder to the stone, we give order to a chaotic universe. Of the many wonderful things my father left me, this philosophical truth was perhaps the most useful. In many ways, it has defined my life, and has allowed me to find serenity and purpose even in the most trying and tragic circumstances. (p.287)
Despite its brilliance, American Values (see this) was completely ignored by the mainstream press. Why? Because it revolves around “Chapter 9, Senator Robert F. Kennedy” and the long war between the Kennedys and the CIA that resulted in the deaths of JFK and RFK. In this chapter, RFK, Jr. brilliantly shows that he fully grasps the CIA’s evil history. All the other chapters, while very interesting personal and family history, pale in importance. No member of the Kennedy family since JFK or RFK has dared to say what RFK, Jr. does in this book. He indicts the CIA. This is probably not a small part of his extended family’s animosity toward him. Family taboos must be protected, as if they were state secrets.
But his indictment of the CIA is the fundamental reason why it and the media will at all costs try to prevent him from getting the nomination. The character assassination will be intense.
Kennedy knows he faces an uphill battle for the presidency, but no matter what forces are aligned against him, political and familial, he will not back down.
He will surprise all the pundits, for his appeal crosses party lines. He is tough and very smart. He has been so hated and falsely maligned by the mainstream media for so long that he is skilled at keeping to his message, which I think will be positive and inspirational, something that this country is desperate for after so many years of lies and treachery.
Even Biden’s supporters in the Democratic party know he is a flawed candidate on his last legs, laboring to keep his words straight and his steps solid. While he may have long served as the establishment’s war puppet, there are many nervous Democrats who want to finally cut their strings with him. And the Republicans are a party in disarray, internally torn and tired of the Trump saga which will not end.
Two clowns don’t make for a pretty picture running the country and the world into the ground. Biden and Trump and their predecessors are naked now and not just does one boy see it and shout it only to be ignored. There is a growing feeling throughout the country that truth and goodness spoken clearly are desperately needed to unite the country through common values. Bob Dylan got it right back a few years:
While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the president of the United States Sometimes must have to stand naked
Every day Americans are bombarded with bad news: the U.S. war against Russia via Ukraine, the lies about the “threats” from Russia and China, the collapsing economy, toxic spills, gun violence, corporate gangsters ripping off the average American and funneling those monies to the politicians who pimp for them, the egregious Covid-19 and “vaccine” lies that are daily being exposed as deadly frauds, the growing threat of nuclear war, etc.
Bad bad news, and with it a growing public sense of hopelessness. A pall of unacknowledged depression smothers the country. People are dying for hope, as they were in 1968. In their inner hearts there is this desperate yearning for one brave soul to stand up and tell Americans the truth about what has happened to their country. Bobby Kennedy, Jr. is the only one who can move Americans to hope again.
For years he has been telling harsh truths that many who profit from the lies do not want to hear. That our waters are polluted and the chemical companies are criminals; that the pharmaceutical companies are criminal enterprises polluting people’s bodies; that the CIA is organized crime polluting people’s minds and assassinating its anti-war leaders; that the Pentagon is a criminal enterprise not defending but risking American’s lives and their livelihood; that the U.S. government has joined with mega-corporations to run a Mob-like fleecing of the American people; that not one of Sirhan Sirhan’s bullets killed his father, Senator Robert Kennedy, who was shot from behind at close range by a CIA hit man; that the so-called Covid vaccines are very dangerous and have never been appropriately tested and many people are dying and being injured as a result; that Anthony Fauci is a liar and fraud who fronts for Big Pharma (see this) in the Covid-19 crisis that is an intelligence-run operation controlled by spooks working with medical technocrats; and that we are close to losing our country and any semblance of its democratic ideals.
These are not liberal or conservative positions. They are self-evident conclusions of a patriot, as they should be for everyone.
And because they have become such to more and more Americans who can think without reacting, Kennedy’s voice and his candidacy will grow in strength across the great divide.
The media attacks will be intense and simply full of lies. They love to call him an “anti-vaxxer,” when he is not opposed to all vaccines. But no matter how many times he has explained this, the media twist it to serve their masters.
For example, The New York Post recently published a slimy piece that could serve as a template for all the propaganda aimed at Kennedy. Let me quote:
Robert has said Sirhan did not actually participate in the murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy during a Los Angeles presidential campaign stop in 1968.
This of course is a lie. RFK, Jr. has said that Sirhan fired a pistol but none of his bullets hit the Senator. He has said a CIA hit man shot his father at close range from behind as the official autopsy clearly showed, while Sirhan was standing in front of the Senator.
Lie number two. The Post writes:
In it [a speech], he implied that those who oppose vaccines are being persecuted more severely than Anne Frank, the German teen who hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam before being sent to her death at Auschwitz.
He never implied that. His point was clear: that in the coming digital surveillance state there will be nowhere to hide, not even in an attic, because the surveillance technology will track everyone everywhere, day and night.
These are but a few examples. Look and you will find them everywhere now and in the coming days.
The hyenas with polished faces will try like hell to dismiss Robert f. Kennedy, Jr. as a flake, a fraud, and a conspiracy nut on an ego-trip. Too many people can now see through such propaganda. He is the real thing, our best hope to bridge the great divide that has been created by the elites to divide the American people.
He will not back down, and all people of good will who believe the U.S. can still find its way out of the morass we find ourselves in, should back him up. He has warned us, he has given us his voice, and his moral courage should be followed by all who hope to hope.
The pundits who dismiss his chances will then be shocked.
Is the collective West nearing the end of a cycle? Or are we still in mid-cycle? And could it be an epochal point of inflection?
The question posed at this point is: Is the collective West nearing the end of a cycle? Or are we still in mid-cycle? And is this a four-generational mini-cycle, or an epochal point of inflection?
Is Russo-Chinese Entente and the global tectonic discontent with the ‘Rules Order’ – on the heels of a long trajectory of catastrophes from Viet Nam, through Iraq to Ukraine – sufficient to move the West on to the next stage of cyclical change from apex to disillusionment, retrenchment and eventual stabilisation? Or not?
A major inflection point is typically a period in history when all the negative components from the outgoing era ‘come into play’ – all at once, and all together; and when an anxious ruling class resorts to widespread repression.
Elements of such crises of inflection are today everywhere present: Deep schism in the U.S.; mass protest in France, and across Europe. A crisis in Israel. Faltering economies; and the threat of some, as yet undefined, financial crisis chilling the air.
Yet, anger erupts at the very suggestion that the West is in difficulties; that its ‘moment in the sun’ must give place to others,and to other cultures’ ways of doing things. The consequence to such a moment of epochal ‘in-betweeness’ has been characterised historically by the irruption of disorder, the breakdown of ethical norms, and the loss of a grip on what is real: Black becomes white; right becomes wrong; up becomes down.
That’s where we are – in the grip of western élite anxiety and a desperation to keep the ‘old machinery’s’ wheels spinning; its ratchets loudly opening and closing, and its levers clanging into, and out of place – all to give the impression of forward motion when, in truth, practically all of western energy is consumed in simply keeping the mechanism noisily aloft, and not crashing to an irreversible, dysfunctional stop.
So, this is the paradigm that governs western politics today: Doubling-down on the Rules Order with no strategic blueprint of what it is supposed to achieve – in fact no blueprint at all, except for ‘fingers crossed’ that something beneficial for the West will emerge, ex machina. The various foreign policy ‘narratives’ (Taiwan, Ukraine, Iran, Israel) contain little of substance. They are all clever linguistics; appeals to emotion, and with no real substance.
All this is hard to assimilate for those living in the non-West. For they do not come face-to-face with western Europe’s repeat re-anactment of the French Revolution’s iconic secular, egalitarian reform of human society – with ‘the specific timbre, flavour and ideology’ shifting, according to prevailing historic conditions.
Other nations unafflicted by this ideology (i.e., effectively the non-West) find it perplexing. The West’s culture war barely touches cultures outside its own. Yet, paradoxically, it dominates global geo-politics – for now.
Today’s ‘flavour’ is termed ‘our’ liberal democracy – the ‘our’ signifying its link to a set of precepts that defies clear definition or nomenclature; but one, that from the 1970s, has drifted into a radical enmity towards the traditional European and American cultural legacy.
What is singular about the present re-enactment is that whereas the French Revolution was about achieving class equality;ending the division between aristocracy and their vassals, liberalism today represents a modification of ideology” that U.S. writer Christopher Rufo suggests, “says that we want to categorize people based on group identity and then equalize outcomes across every axis – predominantly the economic axis, health axis, employment axis, criminal justice axis—and then formalize and enforce a general levelling”.
They want absolute democratic levelling of every societal discrepancy – reaching even, back into history, to historic discrimination and inequalities; and to have history re-written to highlight such ancient practice so that they can be routed out through enforced reverse discrimination.
What has this to do with foreign policy? Well, pretty well everything (so long as ‘our’ liberalism) retains its capture of the western institutional framework.
Bear this background in mind when thinking of the western political class’s reaction to events, say, in the Middle East, or in Ukraine. Although the cognitive élite contends that they are tolerant, inclusive, and pluralistic, they will not accept the moral legitimacy of their opponents. That is why in the U.S. – where the Cultural War is most developed – the language deployed by its foreign policy practitioners is so intemperate and inflammatory towards non-compliant states.
The point here is that, as Professor Frank Furedi has emphasised, the contemporary ‘timbre’ is one no longer merely adversarial, but unremittingly hegemonic. It is not a ‘turn’. It is a rupture: The determination to displace other sets of values by a western inspired ‘Rules-Based Order’.
Being a ‘liberal’ (in this strictly narrow sense) isn’t something you ‘do’; it is what you ‘are’. You think ‘right thoughts’ and utter ‘right speak’. Persuasion and compromise reflect only moral weakness in this vision. Ask the U.S. neocons!
We are used to hearing western officials talk about the ‘Rules-Based Order’ and the Multi-Polar System as rivals in a new global framework of intense ‘competition’. That however, would be to misconceive the nature of the ‘liberal’ project. They are not rivals: There cannot be ‘rivals’; they can only be recalcitrant other societies that have refused the analysis and the need to root out all cultural and psychological structures of inequity from their own domains. (Hence, China is hounded on its alleged deficiency in respect to the Uyghurs).
The cognitive privilege of ‘awareness’ is what lies behind the western ‘doubling-down’ on imposing a global Rules-BasedOrder: No compromise. The moral enterprise is more intent on its elevated moral station than on coming to terms with or managing, say, a defeat in Ukraine.
Just yesterday, the Bank of America in London was forced to cut short a two-day, online conference on geopolitics; and apologised to attendees following the outrage expressed at a speaker’s comments that were deemed ‘pro-Russian’ by some attendees.
What was said? Professor Nicolai Petro’s remarks at the session where he said: “Under any scenario, Ukraine would be the overwhelming loser in the war: Its industrial capacity devastated … and its population shrunk as people departed to look for employment abroad. If this is what is meant by removing Ukraine’s capacity to wage war against Russia, then it [Russia] will have won”. Professor Petro added that the U.S. government had no interest in a ceasefire, as it had the most to gain from a prolonged conflict.
No compromise is allowed. To speak thus, to inhabit the western moral high ground creating ‘villains’, clearly is more important than coming to terms with reality. Professor Petro’s comments were condemned as “rolling through Moscow’s talking points”.
Yet, these cultural revolutionaries face a pitfall, Christopher Rufo writes,
“Theirs is actually, not an easy task. This is very difficult, and, in fact, I think is somewhat impossible. If you look at even the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s … They had a program of economic and social levelling that was more totalitarian and more drastic than anything that had ever happened in the past. [Yet] after the Revolution collapsed, after the period of retrenchment, social scientists looked at the data and discovered that a generation later, those initial inequalities had stabilized … The point is that forced levelling is very elusive. It’s very difficult to achieve, even when you are doing it at the tip of a spear or at the point of a gun.
The levelling project being essentially nihilistic becomes captured by the destructive side of the revolution – its authors so absorbed with dismantling structures that they do not attend to the need to think policies through, before launching into them. The latter are not adept at doing politics: at making politics ‘work’.
Thus, discontent at the welling string of western foreign policy flops grows. Crises multiply, both in number and across different societal dimensions. Perhaps, we are closening to a point of beginning to move through the cycle – toward disillusionment, retrenchment, and stabilization; the prerequisite step to catharsis and ultimate renewal. Yet, it would be a mistake to underestimate the longevity and tenacity of the western revolutionary impulse.
“The revolution does not operate as an explicit political movement. It operates laterally through the bureaucracy and it filters its revolutionary language through the language of the therapeutic, the language of the pedagogical, or the language of the corporate HR department”, Professor Furedi writes. “And then, it establishes power anti-democratically, bypassing the democratic structure: using this manipulative and soft language – to continue the revolution from within the institutions.”
As has been carefully documented, under cover of the ‘virus’/‘vaccine’ narrative, the Global Elite is implementing long-planned and profound changes to 200 areas of human life.
Needless to say, with some people already resisting and more people likely to perceive the truth of what is happening and join the resistance with the passage of time, policing the imposition of this program will be a critical factor in ensuring its success.
As indicated then, just one area in which profound change will take place is policing.
Future policing will be done by a smaller number of militarily-equipped police, transhuman police and technocratic police supported by corporate private security technology. In this article, I will briefly outline the key changes to policing, in these three distinct categories, and also explain why these changes must be resisted and how we can do this most effectively.
Fewer and MilitarizedPolice
Reflecting a longer term trend, in 2019 the International Association of Chiefs of Police reported that ‘Law enforcement agencies across the United States are struggling to recruit and hire police officers.’ While police killings of innocent civilians – see ‘Mapping Police Violence’ and ‘Not just “a few bad apples”: U.S. police kill civilians at much higher rates than other countries’ – failed to rate a mention in the report, it did at least acknowledge ‘Scrutiny of the police, cellphone recordings of interactions between the police and public, media coverage, and popular entertainment portrayals of police have led many young people to view police differently than their parents may have.’ See ‘The State of Recruitment: A Crisis for Law Enforcement’.
In late 2021, two years into policing the pandemic, US police reported a substantially increased rate of retirement and resignation among police officers, with more than five times as many police leaving the New York Police Department in 2021 as left in 2020. According to the report: ‘In the wake of a spasmodic year of protests and pandemic, plus an aftermath of violent crime, the profession may be fast approaching a generational and possibly historic reckoning.’ See ‘Law enforcement faces unprecedented challenges in hiring and keeping recruits’.
But on top of long-standing issues in relation to police numbers exacerbated by political direction of policing behaviour while enforcing ‘pandemic’ lockdown measures, it is clear that the number of serving police has been reduced throughout the past three years by using two additional mechanisms: In many places, forcing those who resisted the ‘kill shot’ to resign from service – see, for example, ‘Victoria Police facing exodus due to draconian Covid rules’ – and, everywhere, by killing off a proportion of the police who were mandated to take the shot (which will continue to have impact in the years ahead).
Apart from this, the damaged reputation police suffered as a result of their role in enforcing the Elite program against those people willing to nonviolently protest the violation of their constitutional and human rights, has meant that the conscience-based resignation rate of police has risen – see, for example, ‘Conscientious Resignation of Police Officer in Australia’ – while recruitment has suffered in many places.
In any case, two critical questions to ask are these: Were government policies that led to police violence during the pandemic designed to provoke public anger and induce police retirements and resignations as ways of reducing police numbers easily? And was official interference in police decisions about whether or not to investigate injection deaths partly designed to disenchant conscientious officers and induce further resignation/retirements?
Why would governments do this? Could it be part of a plan to facilitate the transformation of how policing is conducted? After all, the World Economic Forum has been clear about the Elite intention to robotize the workforce, with more than half of human workers projected to be replaced by robots within a few years. See ‘Machines Will Do More Tasks Than Humans by 2025 but Robot Revolution Will Still Create 58 Million Net New Jobs in Next Five Years’. So why should we expect police to be forced out of the workforce, one way or another, at a lesser rate than elsewhere?
Moreover, there is an additional problem: Any human police officer with a reasonably ‘normal’ psychological profile has a conscience. And these will not serve well in enforcing the coming technocratic order.
Separately from the numbers issue, the ongoing militarization of police forces around the world has been noted by many scholars. For a summary of some issues in relation to policing in the USA, see this article written in 2017: ‘Why are Police in the USA so Terrified?’
But it is clear that the trend to militarize policing has been accelerating for some years. In a recent article US constitutional attorney John Whitehead succinctly elaborates this trend as just one of the features to be expected from the US government in 2023:
‘Militarized police. Having transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are moving into the next phase of the transformation, turning the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone extraction software, Stingray devices and so much more.’ See ‘What to Expect from the Government in 2023? More of the Same’ and ‘Stingray Tracking Devices: Who’s Got Them?’
So police numbers are being reduced and police are being militarized. But that is not all.
Transhuman Police
A critical component of the Elite program is to turn those not killed into transhuman slaves.
While many people involved in this field are concerned with treating disabilities to improve the life experience of those afflicted, and some are engaged in ongoing discussions to consider the ethical issues this raises, it is clear that this is the sanitized version of a program that has far more hideous implications. For a sanitized version, watch this video of a World Economic Forum discussion held on 24 January 2020: ‘When Humans Become Cyborgs’.
But, for the Elite, there is little point deploying these technologies unless they can be controlled by Elite agents. After all, as the World Economic Forum made clear in 2016, by 2030 ‘You’ll Own Nothing. And You’ll Be Happy.’ See ‘8 predictions for the world in 2030’.
Obviously, if you are to own nothing and be happy about it, either you have reached some exalted state of human consciousness in which possessions no longer matter or someone is messing with your mind so that you believe what is not true.
And the best way to mess with someone’s mind is to implant a microchip into their body that enables control of that mind by someone else.
After all, altering what people think, feel, believe and do – through genetic manipulation and implanting technologies – is the very essence of transhumanism. So, to reiterate, transhumanists don’t want individuals with free will, they want individuals whose thoughts, feelings and behaviour can be controlled; that is, they want slaves. While this is explained at some length in the article ‘Beware the Transhumanists’ above, it is also made emphatically clear by World Economic Forum spokesperson, Professor Yuval Noah Harrari, in a 3-minute video which includes these words:
COVID is critical because this is what convinces people to accept, to legitimize, total biometric surveillance.
We now see mass surveillance systems established, even in democratic countries which previously rejected them, and we also see a change in the nature of surveillance. Previously, surveillance was mainly above the skin, now it’s going under the skin….
In summary then, the technology now available after decades of effort enables receiver nanochips to be sprayed, injected or otherwise implanted into human bodies. With the ongoing deployment of 5G (which includes extensive space and ground-based technologies: see ‘Deadly Rainbow: Will 5G Precipitate the Extinction of All Life on Earth?’), just one outcome of these combined technologies is that it will be possible to direct the individual behaviour of each person so implanted with directions from an external source.
You can watch a description of how the Covid-19 shots have been used to inject nanotechnology into the bodies of people which, under the direction of other individuals via EMF signals, can be assembled to establish a permanent communication and control link between the transhuman and those responsible for controlling it. Watch Maria Zeee’s interview of Dr. David Nixon who shows real time video footage of the nanotechnology inside the Covid-19 injections assembling robotic arms that guide the nanotechnology development: ‘World First: Robotic Arms Assembling Via Nanotech Inside COVID-19 “Vaccines” – Filmed in Real Time’.
There is another excellent video interview by Dr. Faiez Kirsten of Dr. Ana Mihalcea discussing the transhumanist agenda. This includes consideration of how geoengineering – by spraying metal particulates (such as aluminium, barium and strontium) and synthetic biology into the atmosphere – is being used to modify all life on this planet (‘to modify every cell, every microbe, to digitize it and then to fuse it in its natural state with synthetic biology’), the role of electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) such as 5G in this scheme, and the purpose of nanotechnology ingredients in the injections. In essence, they conclude,besides killing vast numbers of people, they want to control the minds of those left alive. In summarizing, Mihalcea emphasised that her research demonstrates that the unvaccinated are not safe and they must take further action to defend their health from the synthetic biology attacks through atmospheric geoengineering and contaminated food.
‘We are running out of time as the human species and our planet is being destroyed via synthetic biology. If you want to survive and you want your children and grandchildren to have a chance of survival you must rise now and you must fight.’ Watch ‘A Discussion with Dr Ana Mihalcea on Transhumanism and EDTA Chelation’.
Moreover, given that the control technology of its transhuman slaves will be owned by corporate executives, this means that the Elite will be able to control everything from the launch of nuclear weapons (by using remote control to direct the chosen individual in a particular chain of command to order [or execute] the launch of one or more nuclear weapons at the target[s] nominated at the time[s] specified), deploy ‘cyborg soldiers’, ‘cyborg workers’ and ‘cyborg consumers’ to do as directed and, of course, ‘cyborg police’ to carry out the orders issued by those controlling the command technology.
In the case of transhuman police, this could range from duties resembling those now performed by police to any other task whatsoever to which they are assigned. And because the implanted chip will override free will, the transhuman individual will have no awareness of choice and will simply robotically perform the tasks delivered by an artificial intelligence program to the technological implants in its body and brain.
So whether programmed to issue a fine, kill a noncompliant individual, forcibly relocate one or more people from a rural area to the nearest ‘smart city’ or simply go home, the cyborg police officer will do as directed without thought or feeling of its own.
Technocratic Police and Corporate Private Security
And this is clearly evident in relation to police work where, beyond even the measures outlined above, a substantial range of new technologies will robotize policing, particularly in relation to primary functions: surveillance and control.
In essence, an increasing number of policing functions are being technologized to make policing more ruthlessly efficient. This involves use of a range of technologies such as 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Bodies (IoB), the Internet of Places (IoP), artificial intelligence (AI), geofencing, digital identity, surveillance and facial recognition (3D) cameras, smart street poles and lights (which gather data via facial recognition cameras and environmental sensors, display digital signage and use speakers to instruct the immediate population how to behave), license plate readers and vehicle kill switches as well as autonomous and electromagnetic weapons.
But how these technologies are combined and deployed varies. To illustrate this, consider the Israeli private security company Gabriel Protects which offers a suite of surveillance and control services: ‘Preempt and contain physical threats in real time with smart technology. Billions are spent monitoring and recording security incidents. Gabriel detects and responds to them. Gabriel’s next generation security technology instantly detects and automates the response to violent threats, saving precious time and lives.’
As Whitney Webb explains: ‘much of the company’s future vision coincides with the vision of the intelligence agencies backing it – pre-crime, robotic policing and biometric surveillance.’ Hence, under the guise of stopping mass shootings ‘a surveillance system backed by top Mossad, CIA and FBI officials is being installed in schools, houses of worship, and other civilian locations’ throughout the USA. The Gabriel system includes the company’s ‘threat detection’ technology, which involves the use of ‘smart cameras’ that use AI as well as facial recognition and related technologies to detect weapons, ‘fights’ and ‘abnormal behavior’ in a particular area. The cameras throughout a facility, along with ‘smart shield’ panic buttons which can be activated both manually and remotely, are meant to act as ‘activation triggers’, with the triggering largely automated and managed by AI. When a trigger is set off, the Gabriel system enters the appropriate ‘alert mode’, which includes emergency, panic, silent panic and yellow (for minor incidents). Once activated, the panic button offers two-way communication, a live video feed and gunshot detection by acoustic means. See ‘CIA and Mossad-linked Surveillance System Quietly Being Installed Throughout the US’ and ‘Anonymous Philanthropist Gifts Israeli Life-Saving Tech to 500 US Synagogues and Schools’.
As one would expect, given the company is providing technologies that enable implementation of the Elite program to lock us all into their ‘smart cities’, Gabriel intends to expand far beyond schools and houses of worship to retail stores, warehouses, data centers and banks and is already heavily reliant on AI and machine learning while using drones and robots as security tools. Beyond this, it intends to develop predictive policing (‘pre-crime’) capabilities. See ‘Incident Response Solutions’ and ‘Disrupting Legacy Security’. Of course, ‘pre-crime’ protocols are designed to ‘eliminate public dissent’. See ‘CIA and Mossad-linked Surveillance System Quietly Being Installed Throughout the US’.
Gabriel is not the only corporation researching and providing technologies in these fields. Another prominent corporation is Palantir Technologies. There are others.
Needless to say, these corporations have close ties to the academy, the military and the intelligence community as well, all of which are also playing key roles in imposing the Elite program.
Obviously, these surveillance and control technologies are being widely deployed around the world with countries like China, Israel (including in Palestine) and the United States leading the way.
But ‘explosive ordnance disposal robots’ have been used offensively since 1993 when a one-metre tall, 218-kilogram remote-controlled robot was sent into an apartment, used a television camera to locate a suspect hidden in a cupboard and then, under the remote-control direction of a technician, used a high-pressure water gun to knock the shotgun out of the suspected gunman’s hands, enabling the county police department’s version of a SWAT team to arrest him.
More dramatically, a police ‘killer robot’ has already been used to kill a suspected gunman. In 2016, police in Dallas in the USA crudely attached a bomb to a robot originally designed to investigate and safely discharge explosives and then deployed it near a suspect where it was detonated remotely. See ‘How the Dallas Police Used an Improvised Killer Robot to Take Down the Gunman’.
The fundamental point is that human police officers are being replaced by a series of technologies guided by artificial intelligence and ending with the use of autonomous weapons systems (AWS).
And these technologies are already being widely deployed and used as part of the ongoing Elite program to build a technocratic state that will subvert human identity, privacy, dignity, volition and freedom.
How Can We Resist this Technocratic Policing Model Effectively?
A long-planned, vast range and parallel sequence of measures is being rapidly implemented to capture political, social, economic, medical and technological control of the human population. The intention is to kill off a substantial proportion of humanity and imprison those left alive as transhuman slaves in the Elite’s technocratic (surveillance and control) ‘smart’ cities, which will be policed by a range of current and emerging technologies.
And, as I have explained previously – see ‘We Are Being Smashed Politically, Economically, Medically and Technologically by the Elite’s ‘Great Reset’: Why? How Do We Fight Back Effectively?’ – because the Global Elite controls conventional political, economic, financial, technological, medical, educational, media and other important levers of society, the Elite has control of how events unfold while simultaneouslygiving it control of the narrative about what is taking place. As a result, the truth about the Elite planis easily concealed. Consequently, effective resistance to this complex and sophisticated program requires a response based on a full understanding of the Elite’s deeper agenda and that is equally sophisticated.
This means that we cannot rely on any conventional channel, political, legal or otherwise.
Hence, the most effective defence against any aspect, including the technocratic policing model, of the full program that Elite agents in the World Economic Forum and elsewhere are imposing on us is to take action now that prevents foundational components of their program from being put into place.
Obviously, this requires us to clearly identify the foundations on which the Elite program is being built and to then mobilize as many people as possible, in as many countries as possible, to nonviolently noncooperate with the building of these foundations or, to the extent they exist already, to disrupt them so that they cannot function effectively.
And the time to do this is now.
If we do this effectively, the technologies – including 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital ID, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), geofencing, a plethora of ‘Smart’ devices, and the surveillance and facial recognition cameras – that will make the technocratic policing model possible will be stopped before they are fully deployed.
So if you are interested in being strategic in your resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ and its related agendas, you are welcome to participate in the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.
One of these strategic goals reads as follows:
‘To cause the police and security personnel to resist the introduction and use of those surveillance and control technologies – including (among many others) 5G, 6G, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), geofencing, smart street poles and lights (which gather data via facial recognition cameras and environmental sensors, display digital signage and use speakers to instruct the immediate population how to behave), digital identity, surveillance and facial recognition cameras, license plate readers, vehicle kill switches, drones (used as aerial police), robots (including as a ‘deadly force option’), autonomous and electromagnetic weapons – that are being used to transform policing to collect your data and control your behaviour as part of the ongoing Elite program to build a technocratic prison that will subvert human identity, human dignity, human volition, human privacy and/or human freedom.’
So one vital role that you can play is to talk to individual police officers that you know personally, inform them of the role they are slated to play in the coming technocratic order, and invite them to consider the implications of this for them and their loved ones, and then listen to them as they talk about it.
And you can visit your local police station or write them a letter to raise awareness of what is happening and ask them to consider whether this is a future they wish for themselves or their family.
In addition, you can download the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 23 languages (Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Slovak and Turkish) with several more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here: ‘One-page Flyer’.
Moreover, if this strategic resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group (with a link accessible from the website).
And if you want to organize a mass mobilization, such as a rally, at least make sure that one or more of any team of organizers and/or speakers is responsible for inviting people to participate in this campaign and that some people at the event are designated to hand out the one-page flyer about the campaign.
Ideally, prior to any such event, a liaison team should visit the police responsible for policing the event to discuss it but also raise awareness of how police are being used by the Elite in this context. See ‘Nonviolent Activism and the Police’ and ‘How To Do Police Liaison’.
At this point too, it is worth keeping in mind that in virtually all contexts, including when dealing with police, it is invaluable to listen, deeply. This should help you understand the other person better and might help open a door to greater awareness on their part in the future. In any case, it is a great gift, whatever its immediate outcome. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
If you like, you can also watch, share and/or organize to show, a short video about the campaign here: ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ video.
In parallel with our resistance, we must create the political, economic and social structures that serve our needs, not those of the Elite. That is why long-standing efforts to encourage and support people to grow their own biodynamic/organic food – see ‘23 Reasons You Should Start a Garden in 2023’ – participate in local trading schemes (involving the exchange of knowledge, skills, services and products with or without a local medium of exchange), such as Local Exchange Trading Systems and Community Exchange Systems, as well as develop structures for cooperation, governance, nonviolent defence and networking with other communities are so important.
Conclusion
To summarize very simply: human police officers are being militarily-equipped in the short term, to be rapidly replaced by transhuman police as well as ‘technocratic police’: artificial intelligence (AI) that will direct policing and involve transhuman police, drones, robots and autonomous & electromagnetic weapons systems (AWS). This is one small but vital part of the comprehensive Elite program to kill off most of us, enslave those left alive, enclose the Commons forever and capture all wealth.
Hence, one valuable function we can perform is to inform police of this and invite them to resist it.
Of course, it is not a message that will resonate with every police officer or every member of the community, for that matter. As you already know.
But it is crucial that we keep telling the truth and giving people chances to perceive the deeper Elite program and what it portends for humanity. Because it is not a future any human being, including police officer, should want to embrace if they value human identity, privacy, dignity, volition and freedom for themselves or their children.
Hence, our persistence in presenting the information, while listening well when appropriate, is crucial to mobilizing the resistance we need to succeed.
4/2023
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.
The edifice of American imperial power has never been challenged at its foundation. It is now.
Russia and China are determined to hold the American perpetrators of the Nord Stream sabotage to account. Uncle Sam’s days – indeed decades – of wanton criminality are over. There’s going to be hell to pay as the imperialist tyranny in Washington hits a wall of reality.
Several weeks have gone by with the United States and its Western lackeys stonewalling at the United Nations Security Council, squirming and resisting calls from Moscow and Beijing for an international criminal investigation into the sabotage of the Baltic Sea pipelines that were blown up in September.
A swathe of independent observers, such as American economics professor Jeffrey Sachs and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, have concurred with the investigative report published on February 8 by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh which claims that U.S. President Joe Biden and his senior White House staff ordered the Pentagon to take out the natural gas pipeline that runs along the Baltic Sea bed from Russia to Germany.
Russia and China are adamant about not letting this vital subject be ignored. They want a proper investigation, international accountability and criminal prosecution. Moscow and Beijing are right to insist on this. Washington and its Western allies’ presumption of impunity has gone on for too many decades. The buck stops here and both Russia and China are strong enough to ensure that the United States cannot threaten, blackmail, or arm-twist its way out of scrutiny.
The Nord Stream project is a major international civilian infrastructure, costing in excess of $20 billion to construct over more than a decade. At 1,200 kilometres in length under the Baltic Sea, it is an impressive feat of engineering, symbolizing the mutual benefits of good neighborliness and cooperative trading.
For the United States to blow this pipeline up in order to knock Russia out of the European energy market so that it could muscle in with its own more expensive gas supplies is a shocking act of state terrorism and criminality. It is also potentially an act of war against Russia and callous sabotage against supposed European allies whose citizens are now suffering economic misery from soaring energy bills. German workers have this week shut down the entire economy from industrial protests over collapsing businesses and unbearable cost of living.
Of course, the Nord Stream sabotage is an urgent matter of basic justice, accountability for an atrocious crime, as well as massive international financial reparations. It’s almost hilarious how the self-proclaimed American protagonist of “rules-based global order” is desperately procrastinating over a glaring incident of dereliction and chaos.
But more than the essential obligation of justice is the legacy of impunity. For the perpetrators of such a wanton terrorist act not to be held accountable sets a perilous precedent. Otherwise, what is stopping the state terrorists from repeating equally brazen acts of sabotage and warmongering? The very concept of international law and the United Nations Charter is demolished, not simply undermined.
The Nord Stream incident potentially opens an era of rampant lawlessness and state banditry – by a nuclear superpower, the United States, using its Western minions for cover. The Western news media, in their reluctance to investigate, are also exposed as nothing more than propaganda channels in the service of imperial masters.
The present is reminiscent of the 1930s during a time of fascist expansionism by Nazi Germany and other imperialist nations, including the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Japan, and others. Nazi Germany was not the unique culprit during that earlier time of barbarism, notwithstanding the official Western revisionism of history to absolve itself.
After the Second World War amid the ashes of international destruction and up to 85 million deaths, the United Nations and its Charter were founded to ostensibly enshrine the stricture that there would be no repetition of the 1930s-style lawlessness and state terrorism.
That lofty aspiration was always a pathetic illusion. The decades after WWII saw no halt to the imperialist warmongering and subterfuges carried out primarily by the United States and its Western allies, in particular Britain. What a mockery that the U.S. and Britain were afforded permanent member states of the UN Security Council given that these two rogue powers have been largely responsible for countless wars post-1945. The decades-long wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are but the most notorious war crimes of the Anglo-American “special relationship”.
During the Cold War decades, the Soviet Union provided a limited check on the worst depredations by Western imperialists. The People’s Republic of China was not strong enough to act as a deterrent force.
For about two decades after the Cold War officially ended in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States rulers perceived a license for “full-spectrum dominance”. Washington embarked on a frenzy of endless wars that up till recently have prevailed.
The first reality check on the unbridled violence of the U.S. imperialists and their NATO henchmen was Russia’s military intervention in Syria in late 2015 to put an end to the Western machinations for yet another regime-change operation. Washington and its accomplices failed in their nefarious goals in Syria, albeit the Americans persist in illegally occupying part of the Arab country and stealing its oil resources.
Ukraine is the full manifestation of the end to impunity for the United States.
Russia under Vladimir Putin has recovered the military strength that was lost with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In some ways, present-day Russia is even more formidable owing to the development of new forms of weapons, such as hypersonic missiles and S-500 air defenses. Also, Russia’s economy is on a sounder footing than the Soviet Union which relied excessively on militarism. Hence, Moscow has been able to withstand the economic assault that Washington and its allies have tried to mount over the Ukraine conflict.
Just as important, too, China has risen to economic and military superpower status. Together, Russia and China now present an invulnerable countervailing force to the United States and its Western allies.
For nearly eight decades after World War Two, the United States was relatively free to run amok, trashing international law and nations’ sovereignty, racking up death tolls by the millions, and terrorizing the planet with its “benign”, narcissistic tyranny.
The conflict in Ukraine, where Russia has said “enough is enough” to years of U.S.-led NATO aggression, is demonstrating that the days of impunity are finally over for the would-be American hegemon.
Washington has recklessly raised the stakes to an unsustainable height in Ukraine. It has bet the house – and farm – on subjugating Russia for its next insatiable imperial move against China. But Moscow and Beijing are calling Uncle Sam’s bluff. The buck stops here.
The edifice of American imperial power has never been challenged at its foundation. It is now.
On Wednesday, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report on Substack that alleged the CIA was aware of widespread corruption in Ukraine and the embezzlement of US aid.
The report said the Ukrainian government has been using US taxpayer money to purchase diesel from Russia to fuel its military. Hersh said Zelensky “has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments.”
Hersh said according to one estimate by CIA analysts, at least $400 million in funds were embezzled last year. Sources told Hersh that Ukrainian officials are also “competing” to set up front companies for export contracts to private arms dealers around the world.
The issue of corruption was raised during a meeting between CIA Director William Burns and Zelensky in January. An intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting told Hersh that Burns delivered a stunning message to Zelensky.
Hersh wrote: “The senior generals and government officialsin Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because ‘he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.’”
During the meeting, Burns presented Zelensky with a list of 35 generals and senior government officials whose corruption was known to the CIA. Zelensky responded by dismissing 10 officials who were engaged in flagrant corruption. “The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official said.
Hersh said Zelensky’s “half-hearted response” and the “lack of concern” in the White House angered some US intelligence officials. The intelligence official speaking to Hersh criticized President Biden’s two main foreign policy advisors, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
“They have no experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up stories. Diplomatic deniability is something else,” the official said. The official said there was a “total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community.”
The report said the rift started in the fall when the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines were blown up. According to Hersh’s earlier reporting, President Biden ordered the operation that took out the pipelines. “Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance,by the community,” the official said.
The official said there is “no strategy for ending the war” within the Biden administration and offered more scathing criticism of Blinken and Sullivan.
“Burns is not the problem,” the official said. “The problem is Biden and his principal lieutenants—Blinken and Sullivan and their court of worshippers—who see those who criticize Zelensky as being pro-Putin. ‘We are against evil. Ukraine will fight ’til the last military shell is gone, and still fight.’ And here’s Biden who is telling America that we’re going to fight as long as it takes.”
Hersh’s story comes after a series of leaked top-secret documents from the Pentagon and other government agencies surfaced online. Some of the documents show US war planning for Ukraine and reveal the US doubts Kyiv’s ability to launch a successful counter-offensive, offering a starkly different view of Ukraine’s abilities than what Biden officials have been saying publicly.
“In my seventy-plus years from 1946 to now, the chorus of fear-mongering bullshit has never ceased – only grown louder. The joke is on us. Ha Ha Ha.”
– Oliver Stone, Chasing the Light
Perhaps silence is the best response to the endless cavalcade of official lies that is United States history. The Internet and digital technology have allowed those lies to increase exponentially in number and frequency with the result that people’s minds have become like 7-Eleven stores, open 24/7 for snack-crap “news.”
But once you become conscious that it’s lies night and day, it sets your head aswirl and plunges your soul into depths of despair. You are tempted to retreat from such knowledge and talk of trees and trivia. But you are ashamed of your country. It’s hard to laugh. You feel you are drowning. You flounder and gasp for air. You look around and wonder why most people are able to go their merry ways believing the lies and whistling in the dark. Junk news nation, indeed.
Yes, there are alternative voices who tell the truth, but their audiences and monetary support are very small or non-existent compared to the corporate mainstream media and those who shout and scream across the Internet as they take in a lot of money from naive followers. The recent revelations about Alex Jones’s wealth probably don’t bother his diehard fans, but they should. Likewise, the funding sources for websites and writers of various persuasions are important to know, for they reveal possible biases in their work. Snake oil salesmen are commonplace, and there are many naive customers lining up for their wares.
Wealth and power are the main drivers of the media chicanery that has captured so many minds. Writers, of course, should be fairly paid for their work, but in this Internet age, most are not. As with the movies and book publishing, the income gap between the big names – the celebrity stars – and less well-known writers, even if their work is excellent, is huge.
Some sites and writers make a lot of money, but who they are is a guessing game. No one’s talking. Some regularly tell their readers that if they don’t receive enough contributions, they will be unable to continue to write or publish, even when the sites do not pay their contributors. Whether this is good marketing or income-by-threat is up for grabs. Whichever it is, it seems to work, as far as I can tell, for these writers and websites don’t disappear.
Money is the dirty secret of all news and commentary. To paraphrase someone: It is very difficult to get truth from writers whose income is dependent on pleasing those who fund them.
You may have noticed how many former military officers, CIA agents, mainstream journalists, pharmaceutical company executives, and sundry other government and corporate bigwigs appear in the mainstream and alternative media to support or oppose government policies. The mainstream ones doing the propaganda they always did, while the alternative ones appear as converts to the dissident faith. No one ever explains how and by whom these people are financed or how their lucrative pensions affect their consciences. “Former” is a funny word. Ha Ha Ha.
Confidence “men” come in all shapes and sizes with no one talking money.
So let me fess up. I received about $200 in support last year for edwardcurtin.com, my website. Nothing before that and not a cent over the last 5-6 years for many hundreds of articles that have appeared very widely across the Internet. Before the Internet, publications paid for work, mine and others. Not now, at least for me. How much money writers are receiving, and who is supporting their sites, is a taboo subject.
So I am thinking about selling mugs at my site with my name and mug shot on them and a line of supplements that will increase one’s testosterone and estrogen in equal measure to make sure no one takes offense in this era of delicate feelings. Ha Ha Ha. Yes, the joke is on us. I identify as a man since I am one. Don’t be offended.
Jokes aside, as Leonard Cohen sang:
“Oh, like a bird on the wire Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free”
If you are stubborn enough and have the good fortune to find inspiration from those brave dissidents who have gone before us and those who continue to lead us on, you realize silence is betrayal and that you must speak, even if all seems hopeless at times. Even when no one is paying you, or maybe more accurately, because no one is paying you. Even though it is hopeless, even though it isn’t. This is another secret. There are many.
It’s been twenty years since the U.S. brutally invaded Iraq. When George W. Bush, at a staged pseudo-event in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, as he set Americans up for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, said, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” no one laughed him out of the house. His claim was simply an evil joke that was reported as truth. It was all predictable, blatant deception. And the media played along with such an absurdity, which is their job and what they always do. I pointed it out at the time in a newspaper column, but who listened to a hick writer in a regional newspaper.
Iraq obviously had no nuclear weapons or the slightest capability to deliver even a firecracker on the U.S. But the mainstream media, Senator Joe Biden, politicians galore, celebrities like Oprah Winfrey with her guest, the eventually disgraced Judith Miller of the New York Times, the despicable Tony Blair, et al., all supported Bush’s blatant lies. Soon Colin Powell, the “hero” of George H. W. Bush’s 1991 made-for-TV Gulf War of aggression against Iraq, would do his Pinocchio act at the United Nations and the U.S. military was off to get Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden’s evil twin, both the latest Hitlers until Vladimir Putin replaced them. I guess I skipped some others such as Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar Al-Assad. New Hitlers proliferate so fast it’s hard to keep track of them. Ha Ha Ha. The joke is on us.
As everyone knows, or should, more than a million Iraqis died because of George W. Bush, but how many cared? How many cared when once Bush was gone, Barack Obama, aided and abetted by the cackling Hilary Clinton, destroyed Libya and ignited the war against Syria? You want examples? There are too many to name here. But let it be said these lies span all American administrations, whether it’s Bill Clinton continuously bombing Iraq and Serbia through Trump bombing Syria and Somalia, up to the present day with Biden attacking Russia via Ukraine, etc. All these presidents are liars, but their followers treat them otherwise. Biden says Jimmy Carter asked him to deliver his eulogy. What does that tell you? Shall we laugh? Sing?
On the clear understanding That this kind of thing can happen Shall we laugh? Shall we laugh? Shall we laugh?
Shall we laugh harder if I mention the Covid-19 propaganda and all those writers who have failed to even address it, as they have failed to question 9/11 and other obvious official lies? Is it not evident that if they did so, their money flows might dry up? Here and no further is a widespread rule, for they must adhere to the boundaries imposed by “responsible thought” and the “no go” zones with which they tie their own hands in order to keep their wallets full.
If you are lucky, as I was, when you are young you discover how fearful of free thought and how corrupt our institutional authorities are. You don’t spend decades feasting off the spoils of those institutions only to “wake up” once you have made your name and secured your fortune, which seems to be the way of so many wise luminaries of the Internet Age who are either trying to ease their consciences as they get ready to kick the bucket or are perhaps putting us on.
When I was twenty-four years-old, I accepted my first teaching job at a small Catholic college where I taught theology. I had been trained in the latest and best scholarly work of the most renown international theologians. Rather than indoctrinating my students with rote learning, I taught them to read widely and think deeply in the tradition of a liberal arts education. To seek out the best scholarship.
But doing so became quickly apparent to the college and Church authorities who were stuck in the inquisitorial age of obedience or else and no thinking allowed. Although my students loved my courses and felt freed up for the first time to think about their spiritual lives, I was hounded to correct my heretical teaching, which of course I refused to do.
At one point when I was at lunch in the cafeteria, a nun who was a professor, stole my brief case with my notes and left the cafeteria. One of my students saw her do this and chased her into the ladies’ room where the nun hid in a stall. The nun kept flushing the toilet to scare the student away, but the student wouldn’t let her out until she returned the briefcase. Ha Ha Ha. It sounds funny to recount but was an example of my experience at this college. Someone vandalized my office door and ripped down anti-war posters that were on it. I was gone from that college soon thereafter. It taught me a lot. Obey or else.
Heresy: The Latin word is from Greek hairesis, a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice.
At another teaching job a year or so later, I had a more chilling experience. I was known as an anti-war activist, a conscientious objector from the Marines, etc., and one day, a late Friday afternoon when few were around, an administrator asked to meet me on a deserted stairwell where he proceeded in hushed tones to try to convince me to join him in Army Intelligence to spy on others. He said I would be perfect for the job since I was known as an anti-war dissident. I told him to fuck off, but I was shocked by his double life and his request.
I have since learned that this guy the spy was not an anomaly, for government confidence men are widespread.
I’ve had many other such early experiences for which I am very grateful, even though when I was fired from jobs and lost income it was traumatic at the time. By my thirtieth year, I knew the system was corrupt to its core and subsequent experience has only ratified that conclusion. I got the joke.
I recount these incidents not because my experiences are singular and I’m special, for others have suffered the same youthful fate. But such good fortune can fortify you for life or break your spirit. If the former, you don’t wait to retire to push back against all the lies or regret your past. You find that it’s all good and life has set you on the heretic’s path of freedom and choice. You realize that what you went through is absolutely nothing compared to people around the world who have and continue to suffer at the hands of the U.S. military industrial complex. You realize your experiences are trivial in the larger scope of things and that your government’s conduct is beyond condemnation. It is an abomination. You feel ashamed to live in a land where killing is a game.
The sociologist Peter Berger puts it well in his little classic, Invitation to Sociology, when he discusses experiences that lead to seeing through the play-acting nature of social life:
Experiences such as these may lead to a sudden reversal in one’s view of society – from an awe-inspiring vision of an edifice made of massive granite to the picture of a toy-house precariously put together with papier mâché. While such metamorphosis may be disturbing to people who have hitherto had great confidence in the stability and rightness of society, it can also have a very liberating effect on those more inclined to look upon the latter as a giant sitting on top of them, and not necessarily a friendly giant at that. It is reassuring to discover that the giant is afflicted with a nervous tick.
Notice the giant George W. Bush’s clicking eyes as he delivers his “facing clear evidence of peril” lies for the invasion of Iraq. He and his presidential good friends are cardboard cartoon characters whose eyes reveal their evil intentions. “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be,” but it would all fall to pieces if it weren’t for you and me failing to see through all the bad actors, not just presidents but the whole cast of characters that populate the Spectacle of news and opinion.
The Russians are coming! Ha Ha Ha. Yes, Oliver, the joke’s on us.
But it’s not really funny, except in the most sardonic and dark way, for we now do really face clear evidence of peril as a result of Biden and his crazy predecessors who have run U.S. foreign policy for so long. They have brought us to the edge of nuclear war with Russia by surrounding Russia with NATO bases and nuclear weapons, while doing the same to China.
Bertolt Brecht was right in his poem “To Those Born After”:
Truly I live in dark times!
Frank speech is naïve. A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs
Has simply not yet heard
The terrible news.
What kind of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
When the man over there calmly crossing the street
Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends
After the Crash 