The Subtleties of Anti-Russia Leftist Rhetoric

Posted on June 6, 2022 by Reid Mukai

By Edward Curtin

While the so-called liberal and conservative corporate mainstream media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media.

A woman I know and who knows my sociological analyses of propaganda contacted me to tell me there was an excellent article about the war in Ukraine at The Intercept, an on-line publication funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar I have long considered a leading example of much deceptive reporting wherein truth is mixed with falsehoods to convey a “liberal” narrative that fundamentally supports the ruling elites while seeming to oppose them. This, of course, is nothing new since it’s been the modus operandi of all corporate media in their own ideological and disingenuous ways, such as The New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Fox News, CNN, NBC, etc. for a very long time.

Nevertheless, out of respect for her judgment and knowing how deeply she feels for all suffering people, I read the article. Written by Alice Speri, its title sounded ambiguous – “The Left in Europe Confronts NATO’s Resurgence After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” – until I saw the subtitle that begins with these words: “Russia’s brutal invasion complicates…” But I read on. By the fourth paragraph, it became clear where this article was going. Speri writes that “In Ukraine, by contrast [with Iraq], it was Russia that had staged an illegal, unprovoked invasion, and U.S.-led support to Ukraine was understood by many as crucial to stave off even worse atrocities than those the Russian military had already committed.” [my emphasis]

While ostensibly about European anti-war and anti-NATO activists caught on the horns of a dilemma, the piece goes on to assert that although US/NATO was guilty of wrongful expansion over many years, Russia has been an aggressor in Ukraine and Georgia and is guilty of terrible war crimes, etc.

There is not a word about the U.S. engineered coup in 2014, the CIA and Pentagon backed mercenaries in Ukraine, or its support for the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Ukraine’s years of attacks on the Donbass where many thousands have been killed. It is assumed these actions are not criminal or provocative. And there is this:

The uncertain response of Europe’s peace activists is both a reflection of a brutal, unprovoked invasion that stunned the world and of an anti-war movement that has grown smaller and more marginalized over the years. The left in both Europe and the U.S. have struggled to respond to a wave of support for Ukraine that is at cross purposes with a decades long effort to untangle Europe from a U.S.-led military alliance. [my emphasis]

In other words, the article, couched in anti-war rhetoric, was anti-Russia propaganda. When I told my friend my analysis, she refused to discuss it and got angry with me, as if I therefore were a proponent of war. I have found this is a common response.

This got me thinking again about why people so often miss the untruths lying within articles that are in many parts truthful and accurate. I notice this constantly. They are like little seeds slipped in as if no one will notice; they work their magic nearly unconsciously. Few do notice them, for they are often imperceptible. But they have their effects and are cumulative and are far more powerful over time than blatant statements that will turn people off, especially those who think propaganda doesn’t work on them. This is the power of successful propaganda, whether purposeful or not. It particularly works well on “intellectual” and highly schooled people.

For example, in a recent printed interview, Noam Chomsky, after being introduced as a modern day Galileo, Newton, and Descartes rolled into one, talks about propaganda, its history, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, etc. What he says is historically accurate and informative for anyone not knowing this history. He speaks wisely of U.S. media propaganda concerning its unprovoked war against Iraq and he accurately calls the war in Ukraine “provoked.” And then, concerning the war in Ukraine, he drops this startling statement:

I don’t think there are ‘significant lies’ in war reporting. The U.S. media are generally doing a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine. That’s valuable, just as it’s valuable that international investigations are underway in preparation for possible war crimes trials.

In the blink of an eye, Chomsky says something so incredibly untrue that unless one thinks of him as a modern day Galileo, which many do, it may pass as true and you will smoothly move on to the next paragraph. Yet it is a statement so false as to be laughable. The media propaganda concerning events in Ukraine has been so blatantly false and ridiculous that a careful reader will stop suddenly and think: Did he just say that?

So now Chomsky views the media, such as The New York Times and its ilk, that he has correctly castigated for propagandizing for the U.S. in Iraq and East Timor, to use two examples, is doing “a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine,” as if suddenly they were no longer spokespeople for the CIA and U.S. disinformation. And he says this when we are in the midst of the greatest propaganda blitz since WW I, with its censorship, Disinformation Governance Board, de-platforming of dissidents, etc., that border on a parody of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Even slicker is his casual assertion that the media are doing a good job reporting Russia’s war crimes after he earlier has said this about propaganda:

So it continues. Particularly in the more free societies, where means of state violence have been constrained by popular activism, it is of great importance to devise methods of manufacturing consent, and to ensure that they are internalized, becoming as invisible as the air we breathe, particularly in articulate educated circles. Imposing war-myths is a regular feature of these enterprises.

This is simply masterful. Explain what propaganda is at its best and how you oppose it and then drop a soupçon of it into your analysis. And while he is at it, Chomsky makes sure to praise Chris Hedges, one of his followers, who has himself recently wrote an article – The Age of Self-Delusion – that also contains valid points appealing to those sick of wars, but which also contains the following words:

Putin’s revanchism is matched by our own.
The disorganization, ineptitude, and low morale of the Russian army conscripts, along with the repeated intelligence failures by the Russian high command, apparently convinced Russia would roll over Ukraine in a few days, exposes the lie that Russia is a global menace.
‘The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself,’ historian Andrew Bacevich writes.
But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public. Russia must be inflated to become a global menace, despite nine weeks of humiliating military failures. [my emphasis]

Russia’s revanchism? Where? Revanchism? What lost territory has the U.S. ever waged war to recover? Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, etc.? The U.S.’s history is a history not of revanchism but of imperial conquest, of seizing or controlling territory, while Russia’s war in Ukraine is clearly an act of self-defense after years of U.S./NATO/Ukraine provocations and threats, which Hedges recognizes. “Nine weeks of humiliating military failures”? – when they control a large section of eastern and southern Ukraine, including the Donbass. But his false message is subtly woven, like Chomsky’s, into sentences that are true.

“But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public.” No, it is exactly what the media spokespeople for the war makers – i.e. The New York Times (Hedges former employer, which he never fails to mention and for whom he covered the Clinton administration’s savage destruction of Yugoslavia), CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, the New York Post, etc. impart to the public every day for their masters. Headlines that read how Russia, while allegedly committing daily war crimes, is failing in its war aims and that the mythic hero Zelensky is leading Ukrainians to victory. Words to the effect that “The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself” presented as fact.

Yes, they do inflate the Russian monster myth, only to then puncture it with the myth of David defeating Goliath.

But being in the business of mind games (too much consistency leads to clarity and gives the game away), one can expect them to scramble their messages on an ongoing basis to serve the U.S. agenda in Ukraine and further NATO expansion in the undeclared war with Russia, for which the Ukrainian people will be sacrificed.

Orwell called it “doublethink”:

Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary….with the lie always one step ahead of the truth.

Revealing while concealing and interjecting inoculating shots of untruths that will only get cursory attention from their readers, the writers mentioned here and others have great appeal for the left intelligentsia. For people who basically worship those they have imbued with infallibility and genius, it is very hard to read all sentences carefully and smell a skunk. The subterfuge is often very adroit and appeals to readers’ sense of outrage at what happened in the past – e.g. the George W. Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Chomsky, of course, is the leader of the pack, and his followers are legion, including Hedges. For decades they have been either avoiding or supporting the official versions of the assassinations of JFK and RFK, the attacks of September 11, 2001 that led directly to the war on terror and so many wars of aggression,and the recent Covid-19 propaganda with its devastating lockdowns and crackdowns on civil liberties. They are far from historical amnesiacs, of course, but obviously consider these foundational events of no importance, for otherwise they would have addressed them. If you expect them to explain, you will be waiting a long time.

In a recent article – How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy – Christian Parenti writes this about Chomsky:

Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit.

Parenti’s critique of the left’s response (not just Chomsky’s and Hedges’) to Covid also applies to those foundational events mentioned above, which raises deeper questions about the CIA’s and NSA’s penetration of the media in general, a subject beyond the scope of this analysis.

For those, like the liberal woman who referred me to The Intercept article, who would no doubt say of what I have written here: Why are you picking on leftists? my reply is quite simple.

The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler. Ostensibly on the side of regular people and opposed to imperialism and the predations of the elites at home and abroad, they are often tricksters of beguiling rhetoric that their followers miss. Rhetoric that indirectly fuels the wars they say they oppose.

Smelling skunks is not as obvious as it might seem. Being nocturnal, they come forth when most are sleeping.

The Illusion of Freedom: We’re Only as Free as the Government Allows

Posted on June 3, 2022 by Reid Mukai

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”— George Carlin

We’re in a national state of denial.

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

Case in point: on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court appeared inclined to favor a high school football coach’s right to pray on the field after a game, the high court let stand a lower court ruling that allows police to warrantlessly track people’s location and movements through their personal cell phones, sweeping Americans up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.

Likewise, although the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for a death row inmate to have his pastor audibly pray and lay hands on him in the execution chamber, it refused to stop police from using hidden cameras to secretly and warrantlessly record and monitor a person’s activities outside their home over an extended period of time.

For those who have been paying attention, there’s a curious pattern emerging: the government appears reasonably tolerant of those who want to exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner that doesn’t challenge the police state’s hold on power, for example, by praying on a football field or in an execution chamber.

On the other hand, dare to disagree with the government about its war crimes, COVID-19, election outcomes or police brutality, and you’ll find yourself silenced, cited, shut down and/or branded an extremist.

The U.S. government is particularly intolerant of speech that reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. For instance, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the latest victim of the government’s war on dissidents and whistleblowers, is in the process of being extradited to the U.S. to be tried under the Espionage Act for daring to access and disclose military documents that portray the U.S. government and its endless wars abroad as reckless, irresponsible, immoral and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

Even political protests are fair game for prosecution. In Florida, two protesters are being fined $3000 for political signs proclaiming stating “F—k Biden,” “F—k Trump,” and “F—k Policing 4 Profit” that violate a city ban on “indecent” speech on signs, clothing and other graphic displays.

The trade-off is clear: pray all you want, but don’t mess with the U.S. government.

In this way, the government, having appointed itself a Supreme and Sovereign Ruler, allows us to bask in the illusion of religious freedom while stripping us of every other freedom afforded by the Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction. The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else.

The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”

Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are money and power.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

YouTube CEO at World Economic Forum: “There’ll always be work that we have to do” to censor “misinformation”

Posted on May 26, 2022 by Reid Mukai

A commitment to constant censorship.

By Tom Parker

Source: Reclaim the Net

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting for 2022, an event where powerful CEOs and world leaders meet to “find solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges,” YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki committed to persistent censorship of “misinformation” and praised YouTube’s existing censorship efforts.

Wojcicki made the comments after Alyson Shontell Lombardi, the Editor-in-Chief of Fortune Magazine, asked her whether YouTube’s efforts to censor misinformation will always be a “work in progress.”

“I think there’ll always be work that we have to do because there will always be incentives for people to be creating misinformation,” Wojcicki said. “The challenge will be to keep staying ahead of that and make sure that we are understanding what they are and the different ways that people may use to try to trick our systems and make sure that our systems are staying ahead of what’s necessary to make sure that we are managing that.”

Wojcicki continued by praising YouTube’s 5-6 year initiative of cracking down on content that’s deemed to be misinformation and said that users who look at YouTube search results or the homepage will see content from “authoritative sources” (mainstream media outlets that YouTube designates as authoritative) for “sensitive topics.”

Earlier in the conversation, Wojcicki said YouTube is “investing a huge amount to make sure that we’re fighting misinformation” and discussed the various ways YouTube is cracking down on misinformation. She pointed to YouTube introducing 10 COVID censorship policies, YouTube’s policy of not recommending “borderline content” which doesn’t break YouTube’s rules but is deemed to be “lower quality,” and YouTube’s policy of demonetizing content that’s deemed to be “propagating something that is generally understood as not accurate information.”

Wojcicki also talked about YouTube’s violative view rate (VVR) – a metric that shows how many views come from content that violates YouTube’s rules. The metric indicates how swiftly YouTube is censoring content. A low VVR signals that most of the content YouTube removes is being taken down before viewers have a chance to watch it.

Wojcicki noted that just 10-12 views of every 10,000 come from violative content and that this number has “come down significantly” over time.

“Our plan is to continue to work on it and make sure that we continue to reduce that,” Wojcicki added.

Wojcicki’s commitment to always crackdown on misinformation echoes her and the platform’s previous vows to censor misinformation. Days ago, Wojcicki promised to tackle “misinformation” to win over corporate cash. And earlier this year, she said: “Tackling misinformation and other harmful content is a top priority.”

YouTube has already deleted more than a million videos for “COVID misinformation,” plans to preemptively censor “new misinformation,” and has considered hiding the share button to prevent misinformation spread.

Related Videos

They’re Just Outright Telling Us That Peace In Ukraine Is Not An Option

Posted on May 25, 2022 by Reid Mukai

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

US Senator Joe Manchin said at the World Economic Forum on Monday that he opposes any kind of peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

Manchin, who at the moment is one of the most powerful elected officials in Washington, added that only the complete forcible ejection of Russia from all of Ukraine is acceptable, that the war should ideally be used to remove Putin from power, and that he and the strategists he talks to see this war as an “opportunity”.

“I am totally committed, as one person, to seeing Ukraine to the end with a win, not basically with some kind of a treaty; I don’t think that is where we are and where we should be,” Manchin said.

“I mean basically moving Putin back to Russia and hopefully getting rid of Putin,” Manchin added when asked what he meant by a win for Ukraine.

Joe Manchin, speaking today at the World Economic Forum, rejects the idea that the Ukraine war should ever be resolved with "some type of a treaty." Instead demands fighting "to the end," until total victory — which includes "getting rid of Putin" pic.twitter.com/wPj8qfsF1P
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 24, 2022

Manchin clarified that he did not mean pushing Putin back to “pre-February”, ostensibly meaning with Russia still controlling the largely Moscow–loyal Crimea and supporting separatist territories in the Donbass, but with Kyiv fully reclaiming all parts of the nation.

“Oh no, I think Ukraine is determined to take their country back,” Manchin said when asked to clarify, further clarifying that he wants his call for regime change in Russia to be carried out by “the Russian people.”

“I believe strongly that I have never seen, and the people I talk strategically have never seen, an opportunity more than this, to do what needs to be done,” Manchin later added. “And Ukraine has the determination to do it. We should have the commitment to support it.”

Joe Manchin, one of the most powerful elected officials in Washington, tells the WEF that he opposes any kind of peace agreement in Ukraine and only wants total victory with the ultimate goal of regime change in Russia. In the next clip, he calls this war an "opportunity". 1/2 pic.twitter.com/gsgCUzA0TF
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 24, 2022

Manchin’s comments fit in perfectly with what we know about the US-centralized empire’s real agendas in Ukraine.

Earlier this month Ukrainian media reported that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the nation’s president Volodymyr Zelensky on behalf of NATO powers that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”

Last month US Secretary of “Defense” Lloyd Austin acknowledged that the goal in this war is not peace in Ukraine or the mere military defeat of Russia but to actually weaken Russia as a nation, saying “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Last week The New York Times reported that the Biden administration is developing plans to “further choke Russia’s oil revenues with the long-term goal of destroying the country’s central role in the global energy economy.”

Just the other day Ukraine’s military intelligence chief announced that the mission has already creeped forward from the goal of defeating the Russian invaders to reclaiming the Crimean territory which was annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014.

Two months ago Biden himself acknowledged what the real game is here with an open call for regime change, saying of Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

Statements from the Biden administration in fact indicate that they expect this war to drag on for a long time, making it abundantly clear that a swift end to minimize the death and destruction is not just uninteresting but undesirable for the US empire.

This is not a proxy war with peace as an option anywhere within sight. It’s not about saving Ukrainian lives. It’s not even about beating Russia in Ukraine. It’s about achieving regime change in Moscow, no matter how many lives need to be destroyed in the process.

Peace is not on the menu.

Yes, The Ukraine War Could Have Been Prevented

An agreement in which Ukraine promised to remain a neutral country and the fulfilment of the Minsk accords could have stopped Putin’s invasion, @I_Katchanovski explains.https://t.co/iZjTYxNaA8
— The Maple (@readthemaple) May 19, 2022

This war could easily have been prevented with a little diplomacy and reasonable compromise. As the University of Ottawa’s Ivan Katchanovski recently explained to The Maple, “an agreement in which Ukraine promised to remain a neutral country and the fulfilment of the Minsk accords could have stopped Putin’s invasion.”

We know now that the US intelligence cartel had good visibility into what the Kremlin had planned for Ukraine, so they would have known exactly what could have been done to prevent the invasion. They knowingly chose to do none of those things, because the goal was to provoke this war the entire time and then weaponize it against Moscow.

That’s why the Biden administration has been hindering diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to this war, why it has refused to provide Ukraine with any kind of diplomatic negotiating power regarding the possible rollback of sanctions and other US measures to help secure peace, and why Washington’s top diplomats have consistently been conspicuously absent from any kind of dialogue with their counterparts in Moscow.

Empire spinmeisters and their propagandized victims like to claim that Ukrainian forces are fighting for “peace” in Ukraine. The other day Kyiv Independent’s Illia Ponomarenko, who has called the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion his “brothers in arms,” tweeted this:

Good god, I want peace in Ukraine by Christmas time.
Fireworks and joy in the snowy streets of Kyiv. Patriotic music, strangers hugging each other at the Maidan, “merry Christmas, war is over.”
That would be just awesome, don’t you guys think so?
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) May 21, 2022

But anyone who understands this war knows this is ridiculous. Peace is not the goal in Ukraine. Most of the Ukrainians doing the fighting surely believe they are fighting for peace in their homeland, and peace is surely their intention, but that’s not something the empire will allow if the empire gets any say in the matter.

Even if Ukraine does somehow avoid being used as cannon fodder to draw Moscow into a long and costly slog as US officials have admitted was done in both Afghanistan and in Syria, and even if they do somehow manage to deliver a crushing and conclusive defeat to Moscow in the near term (which is far less probable than the western media would have you believe), that wouldn’t be the end of the war. The war would just change shape as the empire and its proxies go on the offensive against Moscow.

This war does not end with Russia being driven from Ukraine, it ends with regime change and the balkanization of the Russian Federation. Really it doesn’t end until the rise of China has been stopped and US unipolar hegemony secured. Or when the empire collapses. Or when we all die in a nuclear holocaust.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges speaks truth the to real power in this country. No Way Out but War, by @ChrisLynnHedges https://t.co/40QLqi7fKl
— eddie pepitone (@eddiepepitone) May 22, 2022

All forward motion in this war has nothing but violence as far as the eye can see on its trajectory into the future. No matter how much wealth and war machinery you pour into this conflict, that trajectory of death and destruction will just keep stretching out to the horizon. As Chris Hedges recently explained, war is the only path the empire has left open to itself.

I’ve seen some cute kids in my time, but nobody’s as adorable as people who think the US pours weapons into foreign nations in order to achieve peace.

“Genetically Edited” Food – The next stage of the Great Reset?

Posted on May 23, 2022 by Reid Mukai

By Kit Knightly

Source: Off-Guardian

The Queen’s Speech was interesting this year.

For all the people outside the UK who don’t understand what the “Queens Speech” actually is, it’s a farcical state occasion in which the Queen (or, in this case, Prince Charles since her majesty is ill/secretly dead/having “mobility issues”) makes a speech about what “her government” intends to do for the next 12 months.

Of course, the Queen doesn’t actually write the speech, or have any input on its content, or have any control at all over what “her” government intends to do. She’s just a mouthpiece in a big gold hat.

It’s the UK equivalent of the State of the Union, only done in Halloween costumes made out of shiny stolen rocks.

The whole thing is nothing but a grand, gilt statement of intent from the British Deep State, wrapped in mink and draped in medals they never earned. It’s a joke, but it is worth listening to.

Or, if you have a sensitive stomach, you can just read the full text the next day on the UK government’s website (that’s what I do).

A lot of the content is entirely predictable.

More money to Ukraine, with a promise the UK will “lead the way in championing security around the world”. More online censorship via the “Online Safety Bill”. A compulsory register for homeschooled children via the “Schools Reform Bill”.

There’s also mention of “securing the constitution” by introducing the UK’s own “Bill of Rights”. We broke down that particular Trojan Horse back in February.

But the part I found most interesting is the stated plan to “encourage agricultural and scientific innovation at home” via the proposed Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill.

The proposed bill (which, for some reason is not available through the parliament website) follows on from DEFRA’s announced “loosened regulation” of genetic research back in January.

To quote the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), the legislation would “take certain precision breeding techniques out of the scope of restrictive GMO rules”.

Essentially, this would see new “gene-edited” foods as distinct from old-fashioned “genetically modified” foods, and therefore not subject to the same rules and oversight.

The claimed distinction is that gene editing, as opposed to genetic modification, doesn’t introduce DNA from other species. Therefore, in effect, is merely speeding up what could potentially naturally happen over time.

Now, you might think this is just semantics, and that such a law will just provide a loophole for ALL “genetically modified” foods to simply rebrand themselves as “genetically edited” foods, and thereby avoid regulation. But that is disgustingly cynical and shame on you for even thinking it.

All in all, this is pretty on-message stuff, and not especially surprising. What’s noteworthy is – by pure happenstance, I’m sure – it appears to coincide with a renewed push on the GM food front in other countries all over the world.

In December 2021, Switzerland added an amendment to its moratorium on GMO crops, permitting the use of certain “gene editing” techniques.

Last month, Egypt announced their new strain of GM wheat. Just two days ago, Ethiopia’s National Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center announced they had researched, and the country will now be growing, genetically modified cotton and maize.

Despite Russia’s sweeping ban on the cultivation and/or importing of genetically modified crops, they have nonetheless created a 111 billion Ruble project to create up to 30 varieties of genetically edited plants and farm animals.

Britain’s deregulation of GM food is always described as a “post-Brexit” move – with the EU chided around the world for its “precautionary principle” on GM crops – and yet as long ago as last April, the EU was calling for a “rethink” on GM crops.

In fact, just today, European Biotechnology Magazine reports:

The EU Commission has launched its final consultation on the deregulation of new breeding techniques in agriculture

WHY THIS? WHY NOW?

So, we’re seeing a sudden increase in the variety of GM crops available and a simultaneous push for deregulation of the industry in Western nations.

Why would they be doing this now?

Well, there is a food crisis.

Or, more accurately, they have just created a food crisis. And as the cliched Hegelian dialectic inevitably goes, their manufactured “problem” is now in need of their contrived “solution”.

We should expect to see genetic engineering pitched as a solution to our food crisis in the very near future…like yesterday. Or indeed, two months ago.

That’s how fast they work now, with barely a pretence at concealing the plan. Spitting out the answer so fast they make it obvious they knew the question beforehand.

On March 15th, when the “special operation” in Ukraine was less than 3 weeks old, the Time was already headlining:

War forces farmers to think again about GM crops

…and reporting:

Genetic modification could make Britain’s food system less susceptible to geopolitical turmoil

A week later Verdict published an article titled “Improving food self-sufficiency with GM crops during geopolitical crises”

Last week, the Times of Israel asked:

Can gene editing help farmers satisfy the rising demand for food?

Four days ago, the Manila Times published an article titled “In times of food scarcity: Revisiting genetically modified crops”.

Two days ago (so before the Queen’s speech specifically mentioning the gene editing bill), Scotland’s Press & Journal ran an opinion piece headlined: “Scottish Government must lift GM crop ban to ease cost of living crisis”.

Yesterday, the “information services” company IHS Markit published an article on GM regulation in Europe, in which they claimed:

The Ukraine-Russia conflict has demonstrated the fragility and vulnerability of global and European food supply chains. Around the world, governments in leading agricultural-producing countries are now catching up with the United States, both to better legislate gene-edited (GE) products, as well as differentiate them from the older Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) technology, and its negative connotations to some consumers, commentators, farmers, retailers, politicians and lawmakers.

And just today, the Genetic Literacy Project published an article by Ukrainian-Canadian David Zaruk, railing against the EU’s “precautionary principle” on GMOs and calling for an embracing of “new technology” to prevent widespread hunger and increase food sovereignty.

It goes on and on and on.

…LET’S NOT FORGET CLIMATE CHANGE, GUYS

Of course, it’s not all about the food crisis – giving corporate giants free rein to genetically alter all the food we eat will also be good for the planet. They talk about that a lot recently.

On February 8th this year, the University of Bonn published a new study claiming “Genetic engineering can have a positive effect on the climate”

On February 24th this year, the Cornell-based NGO “Alliance for Science” published an article claiming “GMOs could shrink Europe’s climate footprint”, based on the study mentioned above.

In a response to the Queen’s Speech, the UK’s National Institute of Agriculture and Botany claimed that genetic modification will make farming “more sustainable”.

In a reminder we’re not just talking about crops but genetically engineering livestock as well, in February Deutsche Welle suggested that genetically altered “Climate sheep and eco pigs could combat global heating”.

Three weeks ago, Stuff.NZ asked simply:

Can GM save the planet?”

The narrative is clearly set: Genetically engineered food will save us all from the food crisis, and global warming too. Plus anything else they can think of.

THE KNIVES ARE OUT FOR ORGANICS

Not content with the semi-constant fluffing of the GM business, the MSM are also turning their guns on organic farming and giving it both barrels.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Ukraine Crisis Reveals the Folly of Organic Farming: As food prices skyrocket, the world needs to admit it can’t live without modern, efficient agriculture.

The Telegraph blames organic farming policies for “tipping Sri Lanka into bloody chaos”

The “Allliance for Science” article mentioned above goes out of its way to criticise the EU’s pro-organic “farm to fork” plans, claiming “[organic farming] has lower yields and would be associated with increases in global [greenhouse gas] emissions by causing land-use changes elsewhere”.

Meanwhile, Erik Fyrwald, the CEO of the Swiss agrochemicals group Syngenta (so possessing somewhat of a conflict of interests), told Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag that the West must “stop organic farming to help future food crisis”, adding that organic farming is worse for the planet, because ploughing up fields releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

We already saw wellness “cults” accused of peddling “anti-vax conspiracy theories” last year, this will easily extend to organic farmers and their customers.

NOTE: In an interesting (again, probably totally accidental) parallel, the currently simmering “Bird Flu outbreak” has also hit organic and free-range farmers hard, with one (sponsored) Guardian article asking if “year-round” bird flu could spell “the end of free-range eggs”.

CONCLUSION

Having just seen how the Covid19 “vaccine” campaign unfolded, it’s not hard to see how the pro-GM push will go from here. Genome-edited crops and farm animals are going to become the new “settled science”.

They will be sold to the public as cheaper, more nutritious, better for the environment and good for “preventing future pandemics” (yes, they literally did say that already).

Naturally, anyone who resists the push for gene-edited food, and/or mourns the planned death of organic farming, will be accused of “questioning the science”.

Eating British GM foods will be “doing your part” and “helping Ukraine”, while people who want more expensive organic products will be deemed “unpatriotic” or “selfish”.

Just as we saw Covid sceptics denounced as spreading “Russian disinformation”, despite Russia’s willing complicity in the Covid lie, those who argue against genome-edited food will be said to be “sharing Russian talking points” or “doing Putin’s work for him” despite Russia being well onboard the gene-editing train.

It all gets very predictable from there. Organic farmers will probably be “anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist Russian spies” by the end of the summer.

…This probably explains why Bill Gates was buying up so much farmland last year, too.

The final battle for humanity: It is ‘Now or Never’ in the long war against homo sapiens

Posted on May 18, 2022 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

While elite control over human societies started to gather pace with the Neolithic revolution 12,000 years ago, it was rapidly accelerated with the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years later. Since that time, ‘ordinary’ human beings like you and me have fought an unending sequence of battles to defend ourselves against these ongoing efforts by elites to kill or control us and capture the bulk of Earth’s resources for their own use.

We have had to fight off elites in a vast range of contexts: Pharaohs and Emperors politically, the Popes and other Vatican officials religiously, the City of London Corporation and other financial elites economically, monarchs and political elites nationally, and now a Global Elite that exercises enormous control technologically, economically, politically, militarily and otherwise over the entire world. For a fuller explanation of this point, see ‘Why Activists Fail’.

But there is a profound difference between all of the battles in earlier eras and the one we are in now.

If we lose this battle, there will be no subsequent battle. The Long War against humanity will have been lost, once and for all.

Why? Because this battle is for everything that it means to be human – human identity, human freedom, human rights, privacy, dignity, free will and anything else that makes life worth living – and for control of the Earth and all its resources.

And while it is true that no human has any of these elements in anything like its entirety – who would claim to be fully ‘free’ in this world? – and many humans still lack all of these elements in any meaningful form, it is nevertheless true that the totalitarian nature of the program being imposed on us will transform the very concept of ‘human’ in a way that has only been conceived in the past 100 years or so and not previously attempted. Moreover, if successful, any ‘free will’ that humans might still possess will be utterly eliminated.

How is this Happening? The Deep Level

Despite the unending efforts of those people aware enough to perceive the true depth of this conflict, elites have been able to use a long series of techniques to ensure that the vast bulk of ‘ordinary’ people either do not perceive the conflict or waste their dissent by expressing it within frameworks designed and controlled by elites for that precise purpose. By doing this, it appears that dissent is ‘allowed’ and valued when, in fact, it is simply dissipated.

Thus, one key way in which elites have been able to subdue effective resistance is to convince us to believe in the delusion of ‘democracy’: to make us believe the twin delusions that we actually make choices about who will govern us and that those we elect will then represent us. See ‘Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’état That Is Destroying Life as We Know It’.

A second way in which elites have been able to distract us from where the real power in society lies is by convincing us that we have ‘legal recourse’ against injustice, including against elites who kill and exploit us. See ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’.

A third way in which elites retain control over societies is by designing compulsory education systems that ensure that whatever unique emotional, intellectual, sensory and physical potential a child has at birth is either utterly eliminated within a few years of that birth or channeled to serve elite will. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

And, of course, elites control populations by using extensive propaganda – marketed variously as ‘education’, ‘entertainment’ and ‘news’ – to ensure the passive submission of the bulk of the population to elite directives.

In short, an unending sequence of violence – ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ – is used to terrorize the individual throughout childhood and adolescence into submissive obedience. This violence ensures that only a rare individual survives with any sense of ‘Self’, with the capacity to critique society and resist violence and exploitation strategically. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice ’.

So here we are in 2022, deeply engaged in the final battle to defend humanity, with most of the population unaware of what is happening and the bulk of those who are aware dissipating their dissent through elite-controlled channels.

Hence, as the World Economic Forum puts it so clearly in one of its promotional videos: By 2030, ‘You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.’ See ‘8 predictions for the world in 2030’.

And that could well become true for the simple reason that key measures of the transformation taking place are shifting wealth from those with less to those who will shortly own everything, including you, as Dr Joseph Mercola points out – see ‘Who Will Eventually Own Everything, Including You?’ – and the technologies that will destroy your volition will also remove any concept of happiness.

In short, a transhuman slave needs nothing and experiences only those emotions that are programmed. A transhuman slave, whether as worker, soldier or consumer, will simply perform its programmed tasks until it is no longer functional and is ‘decommissioned’.

A human being without free will cannot resist because they do not know that they are enslaved.

How is this Happening? The Superficial Level

Well, under cover of a ‘virus’ that has never been isolated (and hence proven to exist) – see ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’, ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’ and ‘1 87 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’ – the Global Elite has been implementing its final ‘kill and control’ agenda via the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ which details changes to some 200 areas of human life. See ‘The Great Reset’. As a matter of interest, do you remember being consulted about whether, for example, you would prefer to eat laboratory-grown ‘meat’ and insects rather than real food?

In fact, this ‘Great Reset’ is a long-planned and complex series of actions designed to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and leave those left alive as transhuman slaves in a technocratic world. For some detail, see ‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’ and ‘Sleepwalking into Hell: The Global Elite’s Technological Coup d’état Against Humanity’.

Every day, while most people content themselves with trying to get on with living some version of the life that they experienced prior to 2020, another detail is mapped out and another measure is taken by compliant politicians in one or more countries around the world to destroy everything we have ever known. And the noose is ever-tightening.

Let me offer you just a taste of what else is happening, beyond what is ordinarily discussed as part of the ‘Great Reset’, as elements of the Global Elite’s agenda, about which you are not being consulted or even given thoughtful critiques to consider in government and corporate media.

The World Health Organization: International Health Regulations & the Pandemic Treaty

The World Health Organization continues to promote its initiative to create a ‘Pandemic Treaty’. Using wonderful-sounding words such as ‘to build a more robust global health architecture that will protect future generations’, the Treaty sounds like something we have all been dreaming about. See ‘Global leaders unite in urgent call for international pandemic treaty’.

But like all elite initiatives of this nature, the devil is in the detail and, often enough, hidden in plain sight. Rather than offer a detailed critique here, you can consider several fine critiques by thoughtful scholars in the following articles or videos:

James Roguski: ‘These proposed amendments will cede additional sovereignty, control and legal authority over to the World Health Organization.’ See ‘WAKE UP and Smell the Burning of Our Constitution ’.

Kit Knightly: The ‘Pandemic Treaty’ would ‘hand supranational powers to an unelected bureaucrat or “expert”, who could exercise them entirely at his own discretion and on completely subjective criteria. This is the very definition of technocratic globalism.’ See ‘“Pandemic Treaty” will hand WHO keys to global government’.

Tessa Lena: ‘the proposed World Health Organization pandemic treaty… can potentially eradicate national sovereignty as we know it’. See ‘WHO Pandemic Treaty and the Banality of Evil ’.

Dr Joseph Mercola: ‘Make no mistake, the WHO pandemic treaty is a direct attack on the sovereignty of its member states, as well as a direct attack on your bodily autonomy.’ See ‘The WHO Pandemic Treaty. A Backdoor to Global Governance: “Stripping Away Individual Rights and Liberties”’.

Professor Anthony J. Hall: ‘The creation of such a treaty would strip away jurisdiction from national, state, and provincial governments. Elected governments would cede away the right to formulate local health care policies through democratic means in the public interest.’ See ‘“Financial Reset” and Economic Warfare against Humanity: How Global Relations Should Be Restructured to Ensure National Sovereignty’.

But it would be unwise to ascribe too much significance to these latest, ongoing encroachments on national sovereignty. As explained above, the Global Elite has long exercised control over national governments (as well as international organizations) and the ongoing formalization of this process through the various measures outlined immediately above are simply the latest (health) details in this long-standing process.

Consequently, rather than focusing our resistance on these latest details by, yet again, falling for the trap of lobbying elite agents, as suggested by organizations such as the World Council for Health – see ‘#StopTheWHO: How You Can Take a Stand Against International Health Regulation Amendments’ – it is superior strategy to focus our resistance on the entire elite agenda by undermining elite power at its source.

World Government Summit

The World Government Summit was held in Dubai on 29-30 March 2022. See ‘World Government Summit 2022 ’. The event was sponsored and hosted by the United Arab Emirates, that bastion of ruthless dictatorship and human rights abuses – see ‘United Arab Emirates 2021’ – and brought together ‘thought leaders, global experts and decision makers from around the globe to share and contribute to the development of tools, policies, and models that are essential in shaping future governments.’ See ‘World Government Summit 2022’.

‘The World Government Summit community is an opportunity for thought-leaders from the public and private sectors to join forces with world-renowned experts to design a better life for citizens across the world. Through Memberships and Partnerships, the Summit brings together change makers to shape a better future for humanity.’ See ‘World Government Summit: Community’.

It is reassuring to know that the WGS felt that the views of constituencies of ‘ordinary’ people – women, indigenous peoples, working people, the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, farmers, non-white peoples, religious people… – were not required and that the ‘world renowned experts’ were quite capable of designing ‘a better life for citizens across the world’ without even consulting us. Surely, after all, these high profile people fully understand the daily struggles of those who battle to survive, have a different worldview or are just simply not white, wealthy and ‘well-connected’.

In any case, as the host country’s long record reminds us, human rights are to be eviscerated in the world that is now being introduced, which is why those attending the Summit were obviously very supportive of the UAE’s ruthless approach to human rights.

As Derrick Broze noted in his thoughtful critique of this gathering: ‘Anyone with a functioning brain should… pay attention to this little known gathering of globalist Technocrats… [who] imagine a world where the tyrannical technological systems are invisible and the average person has zero recourse for preventing exclusion or punishment based on their social credit score.’ See ‘While You Were Distracted by Will Smith, the International Elitists Met at The World Government Summit’.

The Great Narrative

The Great Narrative was a forum sponsored by the World Economic Forum from 10-13 November 2021. According to the WEF: It was ‘a collaborative effort of the world’s leading thinkers to fashion longer-term perspectives and co-create a narrative that can help guide the creation of a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable vision for our collective future.’ The gathering involved ‘Top thinkers from a variety of geographies and disciplines – including futurists, scientists and philosophers – [to] contribute fresh ideas for the future.’ See ‘The Great Narrative’.

Again, perhaps like me, you find it difficult to identify with the people at this gathering. I wonder if they could see things from your perspective? Or mine?

The good news is that Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, authors of the original book on Covid-19: The Great Reset, also wrote a book about The Great Narrative: For a Better Future. So at least you can read what they are doing to you and plan to do to you. As long as you can read between the lines.

But, again, Derrick Broze has been kind enough to offer a thoughtful critique:

Authoritarians use great narratives to legitimize their own power, and they do this by claiming to have knowledge and understanding that speaks to a universal truth…. With this understanding, the WEF’s call for a ‘Great Narrative’ should be seen for what it truly is – an attempt to displace all other visions of the future of humankind by placing the WEF and their partners at the heart of a narrative which paints them as the heroes of our time. This fits perfectly with the Technocratic philosophy employed by WEF founder Klaus Schwab. He envisions a future where ‘public-private partnerships’ of government and private business and so-called philanthropies use their wealth, influence, and power to design the future they believe is best for humanity. In actuality, the Technocrat philosophy merges with a Transhumanist mindset that sees humanity as limited, flawed, and in need of augmentation by technology in order to accelerate what Schwab calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution…. Of course, for Schwab and other globalists, the 4IR also lends itself towards more central planning and top-down control. The goal is a track and trace society where all transactions are logged, every person has a digital ID that can be tracked, and social malcontents are locked out of society via social credit scores. See ‘The Great Narrative and The Metaverse, Part 1: A Dystopian Vision of the Future ’.

Sound like the sort of world that will be good for you?

Defeating the Global Elite’s Agenda

As you ponder the enormity of this elite project, I hope it will encourage you to deeply consider what meaningful resistance in this context will entail. We cannot succeed if we beg elite agents, including politicians, to fix it for us. In the last 18 months, five presidents who resisted the elite-driven narrative have been assassinated to remind us of that.

A Global Elite that is criminally insane – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – is dealing with us ruthlessly and comprehensively.

So resisting it effectively and, ultimately, defeating its agenda, will require focused, strategic action that undermines the power of the Elite to implement its plan.

If you are interested in being part of this strategy, you can read how to do so on the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’website which offers further analysis, resources and a list of 29 strategic goals for doing so.

This includes campaigning to cause all sectors of society to refuse to develop and make available, or to purchase/use, technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution and transhumanism (including 5G and 6G, military weapons, artificial intelligence [AI], big data, nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things [IoT], and quantum computing) because these technologies will subvert human identity, human freedom, human dignity, human volition and/or human privacy. See ‘Strategic Goals related to resisting the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism’.

Beyond this it involves engaging with frontline personnel – ranging from police, the military (as well as veterans) and firefighters to healthcare professionals as well as emergency call-takers – to not enforce elite directives that are being implemented by governments. For just a few examples of frontline worker organizations already resisting part or all of the elite program, see Police for Freedom, Global Veterans Alliance, World Doctors Alliance, Operation Freedom of Choice, Australian Firefighters Alliance and Bravest For Choice.

In addition and more simply, you can download a one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 15 languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish & Slovak) with more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here: ‘The 7 Days Campaign to Resist the Great Reset’.

Notably, these latter actions avoid certain problems. Because they involve actions by people dispersed throughout the population, rather than people concentrated in one location (as with rallies), they are extremely difficult to interrupt. Hence, they virtually eliminate the risk of violent repression.

If strategically resisting the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group (with a link available from the website).

Conclusion

The insane Global Elite has launched the final stage of a long-planned program to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and enslave those left alive. They have agents (including international organizations such as the UN and WHO, politicians, medical personnel, government and corporate media) throughout society playing a part in implementing this program on their behalf.

If we are to defeat this program we must mobilize sufficient thoughtful and courageous people to act strategically to undermine the power of the Global Elite to inflict this program upon us. This can be done as described above.

As you ponder your involvement, remember this. If we do not fight successfully now to defend our humanity, no human being will have the opportunity to fight in future. It is ‘now or never’ for us all.

In that sense, this is the final battle.

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 at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

Biden Wanted $33B More For Ukraine. Congress Quickly Raised it to $40B. Who Benefits?

Posted on May 16, 2022 by Reid Mukai

US President Joe Biden speaks about the conflict in Ukraine during a visit to the Lockheed Martins Pike County Operations facility on May 3, 2022 (Photo by Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Tens of billions, soon to be much more, are flying out of U.S. coffers to Ukraine as Americans suffer, showing who runs the U.S. Government, and for whose benefit.

By Glenn Greenwald

Source: Substack

From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Biden White House has repeatedly announced large and seemingly random amounts of money that it intends to send to fuel the war in Ukraine. The latest such dispatch, pursuant to an initial $3.5 billion fund authorized by Congress early on, was announced on Friday; “Biden says U.S. will send $1.3 billion in additional military and economic support to Ukraine,” read the CNBC headline. This was preceded by a series of new lavish spending packages for the war, unveiled every two to three weeks, starting on the third day of the war:

Feb. 26: “Biden approves $350 million in military aid for Ukraine”: Reuters;
Mar. 16: “Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine”: The New York Times;
Mar. 30: “Ukraine to receive additional $500 million in aid from U.S., Biden announces”: NBC News;
Apr. 12: “U.S. to announce $750 million more in weapons for Ukraine, officials say”: Reuters;
May 6: “Biden announces new $150 million weapons package for Ukraine”: Reuters.

Those amounts by themselves are in excess of $3 billion; by the end of April, the total U.S. expenditure on the war in Ukraine was close to $14 billion, drawn from the additional $13.5 billion Congress authorized in mid-March. While some of that is earmarked for economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, most of it will go into the coffers of the weapons industry — including Raytheon, on whose Board of Directors the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, sat immediately before being chosen by Biden to run the Pentagon. As CNN put it: “about $6.5 billion, roughly half of the aid package, will go to the US Department of Defense so it can deploy troops to the region and send defense equipment to Ukraine.”

As enormous as those sums already are, they were dwarfed by the Biden administration’s announcement on April 28 that it “is asking Congress for $33 billion in funding to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than double the $14 billion in support authorized so far.” The White House itself acknowledges that the vast majority of that new spending package will go to the purchase of weaponry and other military assets: “$20.4 billion in additional security and military assistance for Ukraine and for U.S. efforts to strengthen European security in cooperation with our NATO allies and other partners in the region.”

It is difficult to put into context how enormous these expenditures are — particularly since the war is only ten weeks old, and U.S. officials predict/hope that this war will last not months but years. That ensures that the ultimate amounts will be significantly higher still.

The amounts allocated thus far — the new Biden request of $33 billion combined with the $14 billion already spent — already exceed the average annual amount the U.S. spent for its own war in Afghanistan ($46 billion). In the twenty-year U.S. war in Afghanistan which ended just eight months ago, there was at least some pretense of a self-defense rationale given the claim that the Taliban had harbored Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda at the time of the 9/11 attack. Now the U.S. will spend more than that annual average after just ten weeks of a war in Ukraine that nobody claims has any remote connection to American self-defense.

Even more amazingly, the total amount spent by the U.S. on the Russia/Ukraine war in less than three months is close to Russia’s total military budget for the entire year ($65.9 billion). While Washington depicts Russia as some sort of grave and existential menace to the U.S., the reality is that the U.S. spends more than ten times on its military what Russia spends on its military each year; indeed, the U.S. spends three times more than the second-highest military spender, China, and more than the next twelve countries combined.

But as gargantuan as Biden’s already-spent and newly requested sums are — for a ten-week war in which the U.S. claims not to be a belligerent — it was apparently woefully inadequate in the eyes of the bipartisan establishment in Congress, who is ostensibly elected to serve the needs and interests of American citizens, not Ukrainians. Leaders of both parties instantly decreed that Biden’s $33 billion request was not enough. They thus raised it to $40 billion — a more than 20% increase over the White House’s request — and are now working together to create an accelerated procedure to ensure immediate passage and disbursement of these weapons and funds to the war zone in Ukraine. “Time is of the essence – and we cannot afford to wait,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to House members, adding: “This package, which builds on the robust support already secured by Congress, will be pivotal in helping Ukraine defend not only its nation but democracy for the world.” (See update below).

We have long ago left the realm of debating why it is in the interest of American citizens to pour our country’s resources into this war, to say nothing of risking a direct war and possibly catastrophic nuclear escalation with Russia, the country with the largest nuclear stockpile, with the US close behind. Indeed, one could argue that the U.S. government entered this war and rapidly escalated its involvement without this critical question — which should be fundamental to any policy decision of the U.S. government — being asked at all.

This omission — a failure to address how the interests of ordinary Americans are served by the U.S. government’s escalating role in this conflict — is particularly glaring given the steadfast and oft-stated view of former President Barack Obama that Ukraine is and always will be of vital interest to Russia, but is not of vital interest to the U.S. For that reason, Obama repeatedly resisted bipartisan demands that he send lethal arms to Ukraine, a step he was deeply reluctant to take due to his belief that the U.S. should not provoke Moscow over an interest as remote as Ukraine (ironically, Trump — who was accused by the U.S. media for years of being a Kremlin asset, controlled by Putin through blackmail — did send lethal arms to Ukraine despite how provocative doing so was to Russia).

While it is extremely difficult to isolate any benefit to ordinary American citizens from all of this, it requires no effort to see that there is a tiny group of Americans who do benefit greatly from this massive expenditure of funds. That is the industry of weapons manufacturers. So fortunate are they that the White House has met with them on several occasions to urge them to expand their capacity to produce sophisticated weapons so that the U.S. government can buy them in massive quantities:

Top U.S. defense officials will meet with the chief executives of the eight largest U.S. defense contractors to discuss industry’s capacity to meet Ukraine’s weapons needs if the war with Russia continues for years.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told reporters Tuesday she plans to participate in a classified roundtable with defense CEOs on Wednesday to discuss “what can we do to help them, what do they need to generate supply”….
“We will discuss industry proposals to accelerate production of existing systems and develop new, modernized capabilities critical to the Department’s ongoing security assistance to Ukraine and long-term readiness of U.S. and ally/partner forces,” the official added.

On May 3, Biden visited a Lockheed Martin facility (see lead photo) and “praised the… plant that manufactures Javelin anti-tank missiles, saying their work was critical to the Ukrainian war effort and to the defense of democracy itself.”

Indeed, by transferring so much military equipment to Ukraine, the U.S. has depleted its own stockpiles, necessitating their replenishment with mass government purchases. One need not be a conspiracy theorist to marvel at the great fortune of this industry, having lost their primary weapons market just eight months ago when the U.S. war in Afghanistan finally ended, only to now be gifted with an even greater and more lucrative opportunity to sell their weapons by virtue of the protracted and always-escalating U.S. role in Ukraine. Raytheon, the primary manufacturer of Javelins along with Lockheed, has been particularly fortunate that its large stockpile, no longer needed for Afghanistan, is now being ordered in larger-than-ever quantities by its former Board member, now running the Pentagon, for shipment to Ukraine. Their stock prices have bulged nicely since the start of the war:

But how does any of this benefit the vast majority of Americans? Does that even matter? As of 2020, almost 30 million Americans are without any health insurance. Over the weekend, USA Today warned of “the ongoing infant formula shortage,” in which “nearly 40% of popular baby formula brands were sold out at retailers across the U.S. during the week starting April 24.” So many Americans are unable to afford college for their children that close to a majority are delaying plans or eliminating them all together. Meanwhile, “monthly poverty remained elevated in February 2022, with a 14.4 percent poverty rate for the total US population….Overall, 6 million more individuals were in poverty in February relative to December.” The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau found that “approximately 42.5 million Americans [are] living below the poverty line.” Americans with diabetes often struggle to buy life-saving insulin. And on and on and on.

Now, if the U.S. were invaded or otherwise attacked by another country, or its vital interests were directly threatened, one would of course expect the U.S. government to expend large sums in order to protect and defend the national security of the country and its citizens. But can anyone advance a cogent argument, let alone a persuasive one, that Americans are somehow endangered by the war in Ukraine? Clearly, they are far more endangered by the U.S. response to the war in Ukraine than the war itself; after all, a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia has long been ranked by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists as one of the two greatest threats facing humanity.

One would usually expect the American left, or whatever passes it for these days, to be indignant about the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars for weapons while ordinary Americans suffer. But the American left, such that it exists, is barely visible when it comes to debates over the war in Ukraine, while American liberals stand in virtual unity with the establishment wing of the Republican Party behind the Biden administration in support for the escalating U.S. role in the war in Ukraine. A few stray voices (such as Noam Chomsky) have joined large parts of the international left in urging a diplomatic solution in lieu of war and criticizing Biden for insufficient efforts to forge one, but the U.S. left and American liberals are almost entirely silent if not supportive.

That has left the traditionally left-wing argument about war opposition to the populist right. “You can’t find baby formula in the United States right now but Congress is voting today to send $40 billion to Ukraine,” said Donald Trump, Jr. on Tuesday, echoing what one would expect to hear from the 2016 version of Bernie Sanders or the pre-victory AOC. “In the America LAST $40 BILLION Ukraine FIRST bill that we are voting on tonight, there is authorization for funds to be given to the CIA for who knows what and who knows how much? But NO BABY FORMULA for American mothers!” explained Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Christian Walker, the conservative influencer and son of GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia, today observed: “Biden should go apply to be the President of Ukraine since he clearly cares more about them than the U.S.” Chomsky himself caused controversy last week when he said that there is only one statesman of any stature in the West urging a diplomatic solution “and his name is Donald J. Trump.”

Noam Chomsky, in an interview this week, says "fortunately" there is "one Western statesman of stature" who is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine rather than looking for ways to fuel and prolong it.

"His name is Donald J. Trump," Chomsky says.

WATCH: pic.twitter.com/z3Cug8kFHS
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 1, 2022

Chomsky says he regards Trump as a deeply dangerous figure, yet he is "the one statesman in the West who has said it, and it's the right way out."

"Let's tell the truth," Chomsky says.

Full interview here:https://t.co/UXdbAd2FfT
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 1, 2022

Meanwhile, the only place where dissent is heard over the Biden administration’s war policy is on the 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. programs on Fox News, hosted, respectively, by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who routinely demand to know how ordinary Americans are benefiting from this increasing U.S. involvement. On CNN, NBC, and in the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, there is virtually lockstep unity in favor of the U.S. role in this war; the only question that is permitted, as usual, is whether the U.S. is doing enough or whether it should do more.

That the U.S. has no legitimate role to play in this war, or that its escalating involvement comes at the expense of American citizens, the people they are supposed to be serving, provokes immediate accusations that one is spreading Russian propaganda and is a Kremlin agent. That is therefore an anti-war view that is all but prohibited in those corporate liberal media venues. Meanwhile, mainstream Democratic House members, such as Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), are now openly talking about the war in Ukraine as if it is the U.S.’s own:

Whatever else is true, the claim with which we are bombarded by the corporate press — the two parties agree on nothing; they are constantly at each other’s throats; they have radically different views of the world — is patently untrue, at least when it comes time for the U.S. to join in new wars. Typically, what we see in such situations is what we are seeing now: the establishment wings of both parties are in complete lockstep unity, always breathlessly supporting the new proposed U.S. role in any new war, eager to empty the coffers of the U.S. Treasury and transfer it to the weapons industry while their constituents suffer.

One can believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is profoundly unjust and has produced horrific outcomes while still questioning what legitimate interests the U.S. has in participating in this war to this extent. Even if one fervently believes that helping Ukrainians fight Russia is a moral good, surely the U.S. government should be prioritizing the ability of its own citizens to live above the poverty line, have health insurance, send their kids to college, and buy insulin and baby formula.

There are always horrific wars raging, typically with a clear aggressor, but that does not mean that the U.S. can or should assume responsibility for the war absent its own vital interests and the interests of its citizens being directly at stake. In what conceivable sense are American citizens benefiting from this enormous expenditure of their resources and the increasing energy and attention being devoted by their leaders to Ukraine rather than to their lives and the multi-pronged deprivations that define them?

CORRECTION (May 10, 2022, 20:47 pm ET): This article was edited shortly after publication to reflect that Russia’s total annual military budget is $65.9 billion, not $65.9 million.

UPDATE (May 10, 2022, 22:39 pm ET): Shortly after publication of this article, the $40 billion package for the war in Ukraine passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 368-57. According to CNN: “All 57 votes in opposition were from Republicans.”

On Censorship and Disinformation

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Reid Mukai

By W.J. Astore

Source: Bracing Views

The best way to combat disinformation is with more and better information. Censorship isn’t the answer.

The Biden administration has reached a different conclusion, creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” under the Department of Homeland Security. This “board” is headed by Nina Jankowicz, an unelected official and an apparent partisan hack. One example: she dismissed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story as a “fairy tale” involving a “laptop repair shop”; it’s now been confirmed that Hunter’s laptop was real, and so too was that repair shop.

Democrats, of course, don’t have exclusive rights to censorship. Republicans always seem to be calling for books to be banned or education to be policed. But the real problem is much larger than partisan hackery and bickering. Efforts at censorship are all around us, couched as a way of protecting us from harmful lies and other forms of disinformation. Yet, as the comedian Jimmy Dore points out, the government isn’t that concerned about protecting you from lies; it is, however, deeply concerned with denying you access to certain truths, truths that undermine governmental authority and the dominant narrative.

As a retired U.S. military officer and as a historian, the most insidious lies and disinformation I’ve encountered have come from the government. Consider the lies revealed by Daniel Ellsberg and his leak of the Pentagon Papers. Consider the war crimes revealed by Chelsea Manning, aided by Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Consider the lies revealed in the recent Afghan War Papers. Consider the lies about the presence of WMD in Iraq, lies that were used to justify the disastrous Iraq War. The government, in short, is a center of lies and disinformation, which is precisely why we need an adversarial media, one that is willing to ferret out truth. Instead, we’re being offered a governmental Ministry of Truth in the form of a “Disinformation Governance Board.”

All things being equal, a democratic society thrives best when speech is as free as possible, trusting in the people to sort fact from fiction, and sound theories from blatant propaganda. And there’s the rub: trusting in the people. Because the government doesn’t trust us (remember Hillary Clinton’s comment about all those irredeemable deplorables), even as the government is often at pains to mislead and misinform us. As maverick journalist I.F. “Izzy” Stone said, all governments lie. It’s truly nonsensical, then, to allow the government to police what is true and what is “disinformation.”

But don’t we need some censorship in the name of safety or security or mental health or whatever? Sorry: censorship is rarely about safety, and it most certainly doesn’t serve the needs of the vulnerable. Instead, it serves the needs of the powerful, those who already possess the loudest megaphones in the public square.

But doesn’t someone like Donald Trump deserve to be censored because he spreads disinformation? Which is the bigger problem: Trump or censorship? I happen to think Trump is a divisive con man, but it was a bad precedent for Twitter to have banned him from tweeting. The bigger problem wasn’t Trump’s tweets but the media’s obsessive coverage of them in pursuit of ratings. The way to combat a blowhard like Trump is to ignore him, and to correct him when needed. To combat his lies with the truth. We don’t need a governmental Ministry of Truth to police the tweets of a former president. Not when the government is often the biggest liar.

The solution isn’t censorship but an active, engaged, and informed citizenry, assisted by a fourth estate, the press, that is truly independent and adversarial to power. But the weakening of education in America, combined with a fourth estate that is deeply compromised by the powerful and often in bed with the government, means that these democratic checks on power are less and less effective. Hence calls for quick yet dangerous “solutions” like censorship, where the censors (governmental boards, private corporations) are opaque and almost completely unaccountable to the people.

Unless your goal is to give the already powerful a monopoly on speech, censorship is not the answer.

	You Don’t Have To Wa… on You Don’t Have To Wait For Hal…
	ALL OUT WAR ON THE L… on ALL OUT WAR ON THE LIFE F…
	Pacific.scoop.co.nz… on Killing the Biosphere to Fast-…
	Reid Mukai on Saturday Matinee: Wizards
	Lara/Trace on Saturday Matinee: Wizards

After the Crash

Dispatches From a Long Recovery (Est. 10/2024)

Category Archives: Authoritarianism

They’re Just Outright Telling Us That Peace In Ukraine Is Not An Option