Category Archives: culture

Saturday Matinee: Slices: Pete Namlook

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“Slices” is a German DVD magazine focusing on electronic music. In this segment from the 9/15/07 edition, legendary composer, producer, DJ and founder of record label FAX +49-69/450464, Pete Namlook (aka Peter Kuhlmann) is featured. Though not as well known as his contemporaries, he’s one of the most influential ambient artists of the 90s, having collaborated with Klaus Schulze, Bill Laswell, Dr. Atmo, Lorenzo Montanà, Jonah Sharp, Wolfram Spyra, Charles Uzzell-Edwards, Burhan Öçal, David Moufang, Mixmaster Morris, Higher Intelligence Agency, Gaudi, Atom Heart, Richie Hawtin and Tetsu Inoue among many others. At the age of 51, Pete Namlook died after a heart attack on November 8, 2012. Fortunately he was as prolific as he was gifted, and left the world a vast catalog of beautiful sonic explorations as his legacy. In this profile he describes the philosophy and some of the technical aspects behind his work.

The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security

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By Robert J. Burrowes

Governments around the world continue to impose an expanding sequence of measures to curtail rights and freedoms ostensibly to tackle a ‘virus’. In response, public demonstrations against these government measures are also ongoing and expanding with truck convoys the latest manifestation of this form of protest.

Unfortunately, while activists mistake these popular mobilizations for effective resistance, the Global Elite’s coup d’état against humanity gathers pace.

Concealed beneath the ‘virus’/‘vaccine’ narrative, and marketed by the World Economic Forum as the ‘Great Reset’, this coup is designed to utterly transform human society and even human life. This is because the detail outlined in the ‘Great Reset’ documentation, which anyone can investigate for themselves, clearly identifies intended changes to some 200 areas of human activity, essentially characterized as part of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’.

Beyond that, however, as a lengthening list of doctors, scientists and scholars have been warning us for some time, although their efforts are invariably heavily censored by corporate media, the injectables program is decimating the human population – see ‘Killing Off Humanity: How the Global Elite is using Eugenics and Transhumanism to Shape OurFuture’ – while ensuring that those who submit to it and survive will only do so as transhuman slaves. See ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

Even beyond the injectables, however, the Global Elite is using a vast range of other measures to implement its ‘kill and control’ agenda.

One means of doing this has been to exploit the ‘pandemic’ (and its control measures such as lockdowns) to engineer the greatest redistribution of wealth from poor to rich in human history, thus starving to death vast numbers of people in Africa, Asia and Central/South America in the process – as the Director of the World Food Program had no trouble predicting in April 2020: see ‘WFP chief warns of “hunger pandemic” as Global Food Crises Report launched’ – while impoverishing (and often rendering homeless) substantial numbers in industrialized economies as confidently predicted by geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar, also in April 2020. See ‘Who Profits From the Pandemic?’

Have these predictions been realized? As Oxfam has recently noted: ‘A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. The world’s 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty.’ See ‘Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19’.

But notable among the Elite’s other measures, including ongoing deployment of 5G which continues to devastate life generally – see ‘Deadly Rainbow: Will 5G Precipitate the Extinction of All Life on Earth?’ – are its ongoing efforts to destroy global supply chains, including those in relation to food, so that starvation functions to kill off far more than just marginalized populations but also to ensure that those left alive are compliant as the price of being ‘entitled’ to eat.

In essence, this component of their plan (which is now being rapidly implemented) is to disconnect humans from nature, herd us into ‘smart cities’ and destroy our sense of natural food; that is, destroy human culture.

Hence, using a combination of 5G, AI and blockchain technologies, the intention is to take complete control of food supply chains and get rid of natural food by creating lab-grown meat, synthetic foods and even ‘3D printed food’. Watch ‘Architecting the Beast System’ and ‘DARPA funds Soylent Green as Empty Shelves in USA – #BareShelvesBiden Trends’ and see ‘Don’t Be Fooled: Lab-Grown Meat Is a Disaster in the Making’.

If you have not been following the progressive destruction of small farmers, the consolidation of agricultural land, the relentless promotion of genetically-mutilated organisms (GMOs), the destruction of food supply chains, the hoarding of food and even the destruction of food supplies, as well as the ongoing efforts to feed you a combination of synthesized trash and insect-based food substitutes, let me briefly outline the evidence below and tell you how Mohandas K. Gandhi would respond.

Control of Food Historically
Since the neolithic revolution (the transition from hunting/gathering to farming) began unfolding 60,000 years ago – see The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia and Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture – humans have farmed open-pollinated seeds that simply allow a farmer to keep some seed harvested in one season to plant in the next. But that natural round has been progressively eroded over recent decades.

Among those who have spent considerable time drawing attention to what the Global Elite has been doing and plans for us in relation to food generally, Dr. Vandana Shiva is certainly an outstanding figure. In a series of articles and interviews over many years, Shiva and the organization she founded, Navdanya International, have pointed out how ownership of the genetic diversity of our food crops as well as agricultural land is being increasingly consolidated in the hands of fewer corporations owned by fewer individuals and how control of the food industry (from production to processing to distribution) is also being increasingly consolidated in the hands of fewer corporations and individuals.

Beyond this, Shiva has highlighted how capital and chemical intensive monoculture-based industrial agriculture is the biggest driver of species extinctions, including systematically wiping out the diversity of crops we grow and eat, and this has been transforming the very nature of the food we consume, not just by progressively eliminating this food diversity but also by aggressively introducing toxins and poisons in various forms as well as genetically-mutilated and, ultimately, synthetic foods. See ‘Gates to a Global Empire over Seed, Food, Health, Knowledge… and the Earth’ and ‘The Poison Cartel is Poisoning the World, Driving Species to Extinction, and Contributing to Hunger’.

As Shiva has pointed out, just one of the many outcomes of the aggressive marketing of genetically-mutilated seeds has been an epidemic of farmer suicides in India. See ‘How Monsanto’s GMO Creations Caused 291,000 Suicides in India’.

Another prominent figure who has drawn attention to the many dramatic reverses in the ownership, control and diversity of food and food production is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But to highlight just one of the myriad points made by Kennedy, he draws attention to a report highlighting that Bill Gates ‘has quietly made himself the largest owner of farmland in the United States.’ See ‘Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill’ and ‘Bill Gates: America’s Top Farmland Owner’.

Beyond this, researcher ‘Sam Parker’ has offered a history of the use of food as an instrument of control for the past 4,000 years beginning with the ominous words ‘The control of food for use as a weapon is an ancient practice.’ He nominates the major food conglomerates (Cargill, Continental Grain, Louis Drefuss, Bunge & Born, Andre, Archer Daniels Midland/Topfer, ConAgra, IBP, Nestle, Unilever, Philip Morris) and offers an explanation of how this food cartel, along with another three dozen food corporations, control the world’s food supply noting that, today, ‘food warfare is firmly under the control of London and New York’ and that the cartel is ‘prepared to apply a tourniquet to food production and export supplies, not only to poor nations, but to advanced sector nations as well’. See ‘The BA Cartel Part 2 (of a 3 Part Series)’.

So for those still unconcerned as humanity rapidly loses the little control it still has left of its food supply, it might be worthwhile to recall that infamous comment of Henry Kissinger: ‘Who controls the food supply controls the people.’

But whatever the threats to the food supply that have been accelerating and accumulating over recent decades, they have been dramatically compounded in the past two years.

Control of Food in the ‘Pandemic’ Era

Since the beginning of the so-called pandemic, global supply chains of goods, including food, have been severely disrupted with the intention of forcing them to collapse. This plan has been executed using a careful combination of restrictions implemented by governments, supposedly to contain spread of the non-existent virus. Primarily, it has included forcing workers out of their role in the production, transport and distribution of food supplies.

Hence, farmers have grappled with restrictions impeding their capacity to plant, tend and harvest crops or care for livestock, workers have been prevented from staffing canning and processing factories as well as abattoirs – see ‘Staff shortages due to COVID-19 taking a toll across all industries in NSW’ – truckers have been unavailable to transport foodstocks – see ‘COVID-19 vaccines still mandatory for Canadian cross-border truckers, feds say’ – wharf labourers have been unavailable to load shipping containers of food onto ships – see ‘The supply chain crisis is a jobs crisis’ – and supermarket shelves are empty as stores struggle with product and staff shortages, which is particularly challenging for those in remote communities with limited food retail outlets. See ‘Grocery store closures loom amid labour, product shortages’.

None of this has happened because a virus will kill us, because the virus does not exist. For just two of the myriad demonstrations of this point, see ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’. And for an account of researcher Christine Massey’s fruitless search over the course of more than a year to find evidence of an isolated virus, via Freedom of Information requests to health/science institutions all over the world, see ‘164 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’.

Beyond restrictions supposedly imposed in response to the ‘virus’ threat, some natural disasters have disrupted food production and supply chains, such as when ‘unfavourable weather conditions’ reduced the expected potato harvest in Russia – see ‘Russia – 2021 saw potato production drop’ – drought was a key factor is Syria’s lowest wheat production in 50 years – see ‘Syria’s wheat production “lowest in 50 years” with fears of mass starvation: UN’ – and a flood shut down Vancouver, the largest port in Canada: ‘The floods temporarily shut down much of the movement of wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters’. See ‘Floods cut rail access to Canada’s Vancouver port, disrupting goods shipments’.

Moreover, some food supplies, notably including grain among other products, are being hoarded. ‘Less than 20% of the world’s population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe’s maize and other grains, leading to steep price increases across the planet and dropping more countries into famine. The hoarding is taking place in China…. Over the past five years, China’s soybean, maize and wheat imports soared two- to twelvefold on aggressive purchases from the U.S., Brazil and other supplier nations. Imports of beef, pork, dairy and fruit jumped two- to fivefold.’ The food, including grains to be fed to farm animals, is being stored in massive food-stockpiling bases but also in container ships anchored in the port at Dalian waiting to be unloaded. See ‘China hoards over half the world’s grain, pushing up global prices’.

Other countries that traditionally supply food products just turned off the export tap early in the ‘pandemic’ to keep food supplies for domestic consumption. See ‘Countries Are Starting to Hoard Food, Threatening Global Trade’.

And food stocks are being destroyed as, for example, the ongoing worker shortages continue to serve the insidious ‘kill and control’ agenda of the elite – see ‘30,000 pigs culled on farms [in UK] as backlog remains “dire”’ – and the periodic ‘apocalyptic bird flu’ nonsense – see ‘Scientists say an apocalyptic bird flu could wipe out half of humanity’ and ‘UK: “Apocalyptic Bird Flu” Jumps to Humans as Authorities Cull Millions of Birds’ – gets yet another run and, as just one example, was used to ‘justify’ the slaughter of a million egg-laying hens in Israel. See ‘Massive New Bird Flu Outbreak Could Be 2022’s Deadly Pandemic’.

More simply, perhaps, it is easy to prevent unvaccinated farmers from delivering crops to grain silos, as happened in Australia, for example. Watch ‘Farmers, Truckers STOPPED as Food Supply Collapses’.

Beyond these problems, however, it is happening because of the interrelated nature of supply chains, including when they collapse. Farmers have been having increasing problems growing food because of the difficulties of obtaining vital inputs, ranging from fertilizers for which ‘supply chain logistics are a mess’ – see ‘Supply chain problems contribute to fertilizer worries’ – and pesticides – see ‘Pesticide industry battling supply chain challenges, working to ensure 2022 availability’ – to machine parts and other inputs – see ‘Supply chain issues hitting all segments of ag’ – as supply chains in other sectors have been shut down too.

Sometimes, there are simply no available empty containers on which to load the produce. See ‘Why there will be no end to the global container crisis anytime soon’.

And even the deployment of 5G, catastrophic for other reasons as noted above, is now exacerbating supply chain problems as it is introduced. See ‘Airlines warn of “catastrophic” crisis when new 5G service is deployed’ and ‘Why 5G Is Dangerous for Planes — and People’.

Is all of this a total surprise?
Not if you are aware of the script of the 2015 Center for American Progress simulation ‘Food Chain Reaction: A Global Food Security Game’, or have followed the progressive destruction of the food supply chain in recent years. Watch ‘Farmers Panic, Can’t Get Supplies to Grow Food’.

What Can You Do?
Fortunately, a great deal. But I gently encourage you to get on with it!

As Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was assassinated 74 years ago on 30 January 1948, was teaching more than 100 years ago, self-reliance is still the safest option, particularly when it comes to food. Whether grown in your own backyard or a community garden, and perhaps participating in a local trading scheme and/or possibly a local farmers market, individual, family and community self-reliance in food-growing is the only viable option for the near-term future if survival is among your desired personal outcomes.

If you want to grow your own food with the intention of becoming self-sufficient and you are starting from scratch, watch this recent webinar by Marjory Wildcraft, coordinator of the Grow Food Network: ‘You Can Grow Food’.

There is high quality information on growing food for vegans and vegetarians in John Jeavons’ book How to Grow More Vegetables.

In this video, the Ice Age Farmer, Christian Westbrook, interviews Marjory Wildcraft about working with the local community to establish and maintain a community food garden: ‘Building Food Security through Community – Marjory Wildcraft’.

And David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, offers excellent resources explaining how to create a permaculture food garden for your backyard and community at his website Holmgren Design.

But don’t forget, if you are not resisting the elite agenda overall, it won’t matter how self-reliant in food production you have become, you will be killed or enslaved by another component of the multifaceted nature of the elite plan.

Information on strategically resisting the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ is explained on the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ website and the simplest form of this strategic resistance is outlined on the one-page flyers, now available in 15languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish & Slovak) with more in the pipeline.

If strategically resisting the ‘Great Reset’ appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group as well.

Conclusion

The global food supply chain is being systematically destroyed. This is happening as part of the overall elite agenda to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and enslave those left alive. Any reading of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ program and its related eugenicist and transhumanist agendas makes this clear even if, occasionally, one needs to read between the lines.

While resisting this entire agenda is an absolute necessity if humanity is to survive in the form we have existed for the past 200,000 years, our sustained resistance is going to depend on people being able to eat.

So getting organized to defend yourself and your family by growing your own food and working with like-minded people in your local community are essential elements of our survival even if, in itself, self-reliance in food production is not enough.

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.

Politics Is Dead, Here’s What Killed It

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Representational democracy–a.k.a. politics as a solution to social and economic problems–has passed away. It did not die a natural death. Politics developed a cancer very early in life (circa the early 1800s), caused by wealth outweighing public opinion. This cancer spread slowly but metastasized in the past few decades, spreading to every nook and cranny of our society and economy as “democracy” devolved into an invitation-only auction of elections and political favors.

Politics might have had a fighting chance but three forces betrayed the nation and its citizenry.

1. The Federal Reserve transferred trillions of dollars of unearned wealth into the feeding troughs of the super-wealthy and corporations, vastly increasing the wealth the top 0.01% had to buy elections and favors. The Federal Reserve cloaked its treachery with jargon– quantitative easing, stimulus, etc.–and then stabbed the nation’s representational democracy in the back.

2. The Supreme Court betrayed the nation’s representative democracy by labeling corporations buying elections and political favors a form of “free speech.” (Please don’t hurt yourself laughing too hard.) The Supreme Court’s equating wealth buying elections and favors with individual citizens’ sacrosanct right of free speech was a knife in the back of the nation and its citizenry.

3. The two political parties betrayed their traditional voter bases to kneel at the altar of corporate / elite wealth, wealth which bought elections and political favors. The Democrats, traditional champions of the workforce in the 20th century, abandoned workers in favor of serving their corporate masters, masking their betrayal with fine-sounding phrases.

The Republican Party, traditionally promoters of Big Business (Wall Street, banks, mega-corporations), had maintained a narrow but crucial interest in trust-busting (limiting monopolies) to defend free enterprise and small business from the predations of monopolies and cartels. Those days are long past; just as the Democratic Party tossed the working class overboard to the sharks, the Republican Party walked small business off the gangplank right into the voracious jaws of cartels and globalized, financialized corporate sharks.

To cloak their betrayal and treachery, the parties have pursued a divide-and-conquer distraction game, pushing half the nation into one-size-fits-all “enemies lists” with labels that have lost all meaning other than as means to promote divisiveness and rancor: Liberal and Conservative, socialist and capitalist, etc.

It’s not the citizenry who are “deplorable,” it’s the parties’ corporate-derriere-kissing toadies, lackeys, apparatchiks, purveyors of propaganda, enforcers, apologists, sycophants, grifters and “leaders” who manage to greatly increase their private wealth while “serving the public” (heh).

These three betrayals of public trust and representational democracy caused the demise of politics as a solution to social and economic problems. “Politics” has been stripped to its essence: an invitation-only auction of elections and political favors. The price to watch from the rear of the auction is $1 million; to actually place a bid, the minimum is $10 million, but the winning bids are generally much higher.

(Lobbying, campaign contributions, bogus think-tanks, and philanthro-capitalist foundations are all part of the auction funding.)

Here’s “politics” in America now: come with mega-millions or don’t even bother to show up. Choose which “enemies list” you want to be on; there’s not much choice. And don’t forget to put a flower on the grave of representational democracy.

Flu/Covid Fake News Over the Real Thing

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephenLendman.com

Drowning in the former, much more of the latter is needed at the most perilous time in world history.

Things will keep worsening without mass rebellion against made-in-the-USA war against humanity with unparalleled draconian aims in mind.

Ruling US/Western regimes and their vassal state counterparts want countless millions and billions of unwanted people eliminated at home and abroad.

They want what remains of free and open societies eliminated worldwide.

They want what no one should tolerate anywhere.

Never before have so many people in so many places been assaulted by nonstop fake news over truth and full disclosure on any issues over a longer duration than on kill shots and all else flu/covid related.

For over two years, it’s been the most predominantly reported of all issues with Big Lies drowning out vital to know hard truths.

What should be explained is suppressed.

What’s reported by official sources and MSM is all fake news all the time — truth and full disclosure perhaps on the cusp of being banned.

According to fake news by the Pharma-controlled WHO, half of Europe could contract flu/covid before end of winter 2022 from what it dubiously called a “tidal wave sweeping across the” continent (sic).

Its Europe director Hans Kluge falsely claimed that “over seven million (flu/covid) cases (occurred) in the first week of 2022 (sic).”

Pushing health-destroying kill shots, including boosters, he defied science by falsely claiming that they’re remarkably effective at preventing severe illness and death (sic).

He lied claiming that in Denmark, unjabbed individuals hospitalized for flu/covid are sixfold higher than for their jabbed counterparts (sic).

He fear-mongered unacceptably about the more scariant than variant omicron — a made-in-the-West scam.

Like his counterparts throughout the US/West, he failed to explain that it’s virtually identical to other flu/covid strains.

That they’re all virtually alike.

That numbers of strains don’t matter.

That pre-2020, fear-mongering mass deception unacceptably created public hysteria about seasonal flu-now called covid.

That everything going on since early 2020 has nothing to do with protecting public health.

That it’s all about destroying it and what remains of free and open societies — along with letting Pharma cash in big on a bonanza of profits from kill shots.

Kluge and his counterparts throughout the US West consistently leave unexplained that virtually all reported outbreaks based on PCR test results are false positives.

The test isn’t designed to detect illness. 

It’s been used to falsely diagnose healthy people as ill.

The vast majority of claimed flu/covid outbreaks are either among the jabbed or based on PCR false positive results.

The real number of cases is a tiny fraction of what’s officially reported.

Former Pfizer chief scientist for allergy and infectious diseases, Dr. Michael Yeadon, is an unsung, truth-telling global hero on flu/covid jabs.

They’re designed “to harm people,” not protect them, he explained.

Experimental, improperly tested, rushed to market mRNA technology used in Pfizer and Moderna kill shots are extremely hazardous.

All vaccines risk harm. None protect as falsely claimed.

Flu/covid jabs were designed to inflict maximum harm on maximum numbers of people.

“By choosing this design, the range of outcomes is probably 1,000 times worse than it would be for a conventional vaccine,” Yeadon stressed.

What’s going on is a state-sponsored, MSM proliferated conspiracy against public health.

There’s “clear evidence of fraud,” said Yeadon, adding:

“This is a conspiracy led by the central banking clique and their clients to take over the world.”

“Once they’ve done that, destroyed the economy…a great financial reset which will have us using our vax passes and digital ID, and central bank digital currency…you won’t like those, you really won’t.” 

“It’ll be the end of cash and any privacy for any transactions.”

Without vax passes, you’ll be treated like a pariah, ostracized from society, maybe involuntarily interned, criminalized.

The diabolical “setup is so perfect” for pursuing depopulation on a never before imagined scale, saud Yeadon.

“(C)urrent so-called ‘good’ (kill shot) batches could be batches with code to activate longterm adverse events” — killing jabbed individuals slowly. 

Inventor of mRNA technology Dr. Robert Malone called state-approved, MSM proliferated rubbish “full-on media warfare, information warfare, political warfare…like we’ve never seen before, and coordinated globally.”

“The other thing for me has been the personal journey of coming to terms with what the (diabolical) World Economic Forum really represents…”

“It is a full-on globalist totalitarian vision with money in control.”

It’s beyond totalitarian rule to full-blown tyranny with the worst of diabolical aims in mind.

They include elimination of billions of unwanted people, transforming societies to ruler/serf ones worldwide, and eliminating what remains of greatly eroded freedoms.

No one understands mRNA technology better than Malone, its inventor.

“(N)obody should (be mandated to be jabbed with what’s) experimental” and unsafe based on indisputable evidence.

What’s happening throughout the US/West, Australia, apartheid Israel and elsewhere is in flagrant breach of “the Nuremberg Code, the Helsinki Agreement, the Common Rule, the Belmont Report, etc.” 

It’s state-sponsored “lawless behavior” going on unchecked.

Malone never expected that his scientific invention would land him in the eye of the storm — because of how it’s being misused.

“(A)symmetric…guerrilla warfare” is ongoing is most parts of the world, he said.

What’s crucially needed is “a great awakening” to counter the most diabolically destructive scheme ever concocted by dark forces against humanity in world history.

Totalitarian Paranoia Run Amok: Pandemics, Lockdowns & Martial Law

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By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Totalitarian paranoia runs deep in American society, and it now inhabits the highest levels of government.”—Professor Henry Giroux

Once upon a time, there was a government so paranoid about its hold on power that it treated everyone and everything as a threat and a reason to expand its powers. Unfortunately, the citizens of this nation believed everything they were told by their government, and they suffered for it.

When terrorists attacked the country, and the government passed massive laws aimed at paving the way for a surveillance state, the people believed it was done merely to keep them safe. The few who disagreed were labeled traitors.

When the government waged costly preemptive wars on foreign countries, insisting it was necessary to protect the nation, the citizens believed it. And when the government brought the weapons and tactics of war home to use against the populace, claiming it was just a way to recycle old equipment, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled unpatriotic.

When the government spied on its own citizens, claiming they were looking for terrorists hiding among them, the people believed it. And when the government began tracking the citizenry’s movements, monitoring their spending, snooping on their social media, and surveying them about their habits—supposedly in an effort to make their lives more efficient—the people believed that, too. The few who disagreed were labeled paranoid.

When the government allowed private companies to take over the prison industry and agreed to keep the jails full, justifying it as a cost-saving measure, the people believed them. And when the government started arresting and jailing people for minor infractions, claiming the only way to keep communities safe was to be tough on crime, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled soft on crime.

When the government hired crisis actors to take part in disaster drills, never alerting the public to which “disasters” were staged, the people genuinely believed they were under attack. And when the government insisted it needed greater powers to prevent such attacks from happening again, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were told to shut up or leave the country.

When the government started carrying out covert military drills around the country, insisting it was necessary to train the troops for foreign combat, most of the people believed them. The few who disagreed, fearing that perhaps all was not what it seemed, were shouted down as conspiracy theorists and quacks.

When government leaders locked down the nation, claiming it was the only way to prevent an unknown virus from sickening the populace, the people believed them and complied with the mandates and quarantines. The few who resisted or voiced skepticism about the government’s edicts were denounced as selfish and dangerous and silenced on social media.

When the government expanded its war on terrorism to include domestic terrorists, the people believed that only violent extremists would be targeted. Little did they know that anyone who criticizes the government can be considered an extremist.

By the time the government began using nationalized police and the military to routinely lockdown the nation, the citizenry had become so acclimated to such states of emergency that they barely even noticed the prison walls that had grown up around them.

Now every fable has a moral, and the moral of this story is to beware of anyone who urges you to ignore your better instincts and blindly trust that the government has your best interests at heart.

In other words, if it looks like trouble and it smells like trouble, you can bet there’s trouble afoot.

Unfortunately, the government has fully succeeded in recalibrating our general distaste for anything that smacks too overtly of tyranny.

After all, like the proverbial boiling frogs, the government has been gradually acclimating us to the specter of a police state for years now: Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls. Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that only a militarized government can alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

It’s happening already.

The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and  Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that called on the government to subject right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans to full-fledged, pre-crime surveillance.

Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons, including hollow point bullets, for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

And then there are the military drills that have been taking place on American soil in recent years.

In the latest “unconventional warfare exercise,” dubbed “Robin Sage,” special forces soldiers will battle seasoned “freedom fighters” in a “realistic” guerrilla war across two dozen North Carolina counties.

Robin Sage follows on the heels of other such military drills, including Jade Helm, which involved U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Navy Seals, Air Force Special Operations, Marine Special Operations Command, Marine Expeditionary Units, the 82nd Airborne Division, and other interagency partners.

According to the government, these planned military exercises are supposed to test and practice unconventional warfare including, but not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery.

The training, known as Realistic Military Training (RMT) because it will be conducted outside of federal property, are carried out on both public and private land, with locations marked as “hostile territory,” permissive, uncertain (leaning friendly), or uncertain (leaning hostile).

This is psychological warfare at its most sophisticated.

Add these military exercises onto the list of other troubling developments that have taken place over the past 30 years or more, and suddenly, the overall picture seems that much more sinister: the expansion of the military industrial complex and its influence in Washington DC, the rampant surveillance, the corporate-funded elections and revolving door between lobbyists and elected officials, the militarized police, the loss of our freedoms, the injustice of the courts, the privatized prisons, the school lockdowns, the roadside strip searches, the military drills on domestic soil, the fusion centers and the simultaneous fusing of every branch of law enforcement (federal, state and local), the stockpiling of ammunition by various government agencies, the active shooter drills that are indistinguishable from actual crises, the economy flirting with near collapse, the growing social unrest, the socio-psychological experiments being carried out by government agencies, etc.

And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats. Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.

What we’ve seen play out before us is more than mere totalitarian paranoia run amok.

What has unfolded over the past few years has been a test to see how well “we the people” have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly “we the people” will march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance “we the people” will offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

Most critically of all, this has been a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—could survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

We have failed the test abysmally.

We have also made it way too easy for a government that has been working hard to destabilize to lockdown the nation.

Mark my words, there’s trouble brewing.

Better yet, take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely eight short years away—but we’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

The danger signs are screaming out a message

The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.

According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

And then comes the kicker. Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes—brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

The government wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.” And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting? They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.” They are “threats.”

They are the “enemy.”

They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).

In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.

In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.

Suddenly, the events of recent years begin to make sense: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.

The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

As Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering remarked during the Nuremberg trials:

It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

It does indeed work the same in every country.

It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, 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. I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will all be enemies of the state.

THE POWER OF DISCERNMENT

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

At our general level of awareness there is often no perceptible or discernible pattern to the flow of events. Partly this stems from having been conditioned into perceiving a particular dominant reality program. We do not have access to objective reality, although there can be moments and instances when glimpses occur. The phenomenon of miracles is an example of this, when the laws of a reality outside of our own intervene/operate within our subjective reality. Likewise, many ancient tales, fables, allegories, etc, are representations of what we refer to as a ‘higher dimension’ operating within our own. Such impulses help us, whether we are conscious of it or not, to re-orientate our perception against the indoctrinated programming. What we often take to be reality is in fact only a very thin slice of a much ‘bigger picture.’

The act of discernment is an inward one; as such, it requires a disciplined focus. Yet as we have seen, modern societies not only do they not cater to such practices, but they also actively dissuade us from approaching them. The result of this is that people in general do not see – or feel – a need for such a discernment. Modern life keeps us occupied and diverted by other pursuits. Unfortunately, it is often the case that ‘shock impacts’ are required in order for us to shift our attention away from the ‘straight path’ of normalized living. And we’ve been living with such a ‘shock event’ for almost two years now since the outbreak of the pandemic. We could see our current predicament from this perspective: that modern life was in need of a ‘crisis point’ within its old patterns for there to arise within people the need for something else. It is in such moments of deep reflection that an inner realization may occur: the recognition that common (i.e., consensus) culture does not provide sufficient meaning for our lives. That is, there is the lack of any transcendental, metaphysical impulse. An awareness of such lack often occurs in times when there is a noticeable deterioration in social and cultural systems. Such recognition – or re-cognition – is not yet dominant among the majority of our modern so-called ‘civilized’ nations. Yet we are soon reaching that tipping point.

For too long we have been absent from the vale of ‘soul-making,’ to quote the poet John Keats. And yet the signs have always been there to guide the way. When our early cave-dwelling ancestors first made their handprints upon the walls of their caves they were signalling to the external world: ‘I am here – I exist.’ The inner spark of the human being was attempting to be heard – to be imprinted onto the outer life. It was an early stage in the expression of an interiorized human consciousness. In each epoch our consciousness perceives and interprets reality in a particular way. How we experience the reality around us influences our perception of it, and vice-versa. This is why our perceptions have always been a target for direct manipulation – it is our reality-sensing software.

As part of our steps toward discernment we can begin by a recognition of the following factors: i) acknowledgement of one’s situation and the need for self-development and/or life adjustment; and ii) the need for partial detachment from one’s social and cultural conditioning and external influences. By recognizing these two factors a person can make the first step to self-aware discernment. A gradual de-conditioning of the social personality (the persona) helps to develop a detached perspective and to see external impacts for what they are. In order to see and think clearly, we need to methodically de-clutter our social personality. Then, and only then, can a conscious step be taken toward inner freedom and genuine liberty. That is, the old patterns must become less determined, dogmatic, and fixed. Then through this space, where old belief patterns have left their moorings, can new perceptions emerge. As this process gradually unfolds it is important that each person stays grounded in the world – in their everyday lives – and not to entertain themselves with amusing fantasies or unwarranted intoxications. Furthermore, it is important to remember that in all we do we should be in harmony and balance, and not in conflict with our everyday life. Our dignity and decency is not in what it has achieved, nor what it is, but in what it can become. And this is a choice each person can make.

Our Choice

As in everything in our lives, we make a choice. When it comes down to basics – which it inevitably must do – then we find that we have a fundamental choice between living a life in Love or in Fear. In other words, if we choose Love then we side with compassion, empathy, creativity, connection, support, sharing, and resilience. And if we choose to align with the Fear then we give ourselves over to control, manipulation, anxiety, and vulnerability – all the expressions of a culture of oppression.

If we ascribe to a life lived as islands of separation, then inevitably we learn (or are conditioned) to place our trust externally upon a range of institutions; these may range from religious, work/career, social, educational, political, etc. And if these institutions fail us then we naturally feel vulnerability, or even betrayed. And yet the truth of the matter is that we betrayed ourselves in the first place by outsourcing our trust. If we live a life relying upon external systems, then we must be prepared to feel distraught should those external systems break-down. In such times of great transition, such as now, these social institutions are themselves very fragile. Further, many of these systems are now revealing themselves to be corrupt – or being utilized by corrupt human agents. Right now, I would say that we are witnessing the ‘great unravelling’ of many of our once trusted systems. We are seeing head-on the undoing of many dishonest, unethical, and toxic structures that inevitably can no longer serve our interests. This unravelling is revealing that our sense of vulnerability is partly the dismantling of our false assumptions. And further, that our sense of vulnerability is the fear of letting go. It is important to be open to receiving information, even if it is of the disagreeable kind. Yet in being open to such information does not mean we should adopt a position of fear. We have to make a choice of not accepting, or adopting, these external aspects of fear and toxicity. They do not ‘belong’ to us.

In knowing this, we are compelled to seek out those experiences that feel real to us, and which can assist us in developing as human beings. If there is a ‘truth’ to be discerned, then it must surely come not through artificial constructs but through our everyday personal experiences. To understand that which we call the ‘self’ is only a construct until we can experience it through the revelation brought about by others. Alone, we are unable to ‘see’ the self – no more than we can see our own faces. And just as we need a mirror in order to view our face, so too do we need other people and experiences in life to be as mirrors to reveal the workings of the inner Self. In the end, it is our participation in life that shall teach us the discernment we need to tell truth from falsehood. No online course or TV program can teach us this. Let us not back away from ourselves – let us invite us closer in.

Saturday Matinee: Macross: Do You Remember Love?

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Remembering Macross: Do You Remember Love?

By Victor de la Cruz

Source: 3rd World Geeks

There have been so many anime movies that have come and gone. A lot of them have, deservedly so, have been called classics and must-watch animes. You’ve got your My Neighbor Totoro, Ghost in the Shell, Weathering with You, Your Name and Akira. They are undoubtedly classics in their own right and every anime fan needs to see them. But there always seems to be one anime film that’s left out of the conversation for one reason or another. I’m here to shine a spotlight on that anime that usually gets lost in the shuffle when people list down great anime movies.

That movie is Macross: Do You Remember Love?

But before I do talk about Macross: Do You Remember Love?, I do have to talk about my very complicated relationship with the first Macross franchise. Like most anime fans, the very first contact I had with Macross wasn’t actually called Macross. It was from Robotech. Now, Robotech was this weird mishmash of three animes, namely, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. The original Japanese animes had nothing to do with each other. However, the people over at Harmony Gold had the bright idea to attempt to link these three disparate shows. The writers did a good job with what they were given but this did greatly affect how the later chapters, more specifically the Southern Cross story, was almost totally revamped to retrofit it into the overarching story. Thankfully, as it was the first chapter in Robotech, Macross was hardly touched story-wire. Basically, if all you have is the Robotech version of Macross, you’re still getting pretty much the original story.

I also have to mention that my first experience with Do You Remember Love? isn’t by watching the movie. The first time I did see the movie was the Clash of the Bionoids dub. And, god help me, I loved it! I managed to catch this by pure accident while channel surfing when I was a kid. Seeing they actually pushed out a movie based on Robotech (because I didn’t know any better then) blew my mind and maybe that was a part of why I loved it so much. It would be an easy excuse to say I was young and foolish to like something as bad as the dubbing done in Clash of the Bionoids. But there’s just something so earnest in the performances! Oh, I also didn’t know they cut out a lot of stuff from the original film but, hey, I didn’t know there was an unedited version back then! Of course, now that I’ve seen the original cut, it’s hard to go back to Clash of the Bionoids unless it’s to kind of laugh at some of the dialogue.

Anyway, back to Do You Remember Love? and why I believe it deserves to be called a classic. For one thing, just look at it! Despite it being released way back in 1984, a good 35 years ago now, Do You Remember Love? still looks incredible. I can’t deny they touched up the film to bring everything into high resolution. But even so, you gotta admire the amount of detail the animators put into each frame of animation here! The number of little things, like lights flashing on the screen, the wires that stick out of a console, how the shadows lay on objects realistically, the tiny details of the Valkyrie stabilization thrusters looks outstanding.

The animation of how the Valkyrie also transform from mode to mode so seamlessly is also incredible. Of course, you also have to love those spiraling missiles the Valkyrie fire at the enemy Zentradi and how well animated those things are. Considering this was way before computer animation was a thing, that means you had a bunch of animators drawing up each and every frame of those missiles careening at wild directions while making it look real. They did a fantastic job on Do You Remember Love?

I also have to commend the writers of managing to streamline the entire 36 episode arc into something that would fit into roughly a couple of hours. Well, it’s not exactly streamlining as Do You Remember Love? alters the story quite a bit. But the changes they did do make sense. The movie actually starts right in the middle of the Macross’ journey back to Earth and ends after the defeat of the Zentradi leader Boddole Zer. This does leave out a good chunk of story but it also cuts out the more boring parts. We get to see the Macross transform without having the long, complicated episode explaining how they figured out to do so. We don’t have the Macross return to Earth only to be exiled to deep space. We also don’t get the aftermath of the Macross War and see the Zentradi have difficulty integrating in human society. These may be part of the entire drama of Macross. But, by cutting out these more slower parts, Do You Remember Love? gets into the meatier part of the entire story, which does makes things more satisfying.

Of course, no talk about Do You Remember Love? can be made without talking about the phenomenal final act of the film. The big battle where the loose forces of the Zentradi, Meltradi and remaining humans join forces to attack Boddole Zer while Lynn Minmay sings the titular song. There’s just something to the entire buildup to the song and the beautiful simplicity of the lyrics that makes it come off as more awesome than it should be. Of course, it certainly doesn’t hurt that Mari Iijima, who does both the normal and singing voices of Lynn Minmay, sounds really ethereal with her performance of the song. There’s also a kind of beautiful message in the scene where a simple love song can touch even the hardest of hearts to make them do the right thing.

I’m not saying Do You Remember Love? is a flawless anime film. I actually have to say I have some problems with it. The melodrama can be irritating at times as the characters would suddenly start behaving like they’re in the middle of a cheap soap opera. Lynn Minmay can definitely be grating at times because of how bratty she comes off in certain scenes. And while I did give high praise to the writers for focusing on the more important elements of the series, there are a couple of times when things just seem to happen in order to move the story forward.

However, these shortcomings should not really detract from how great Do You Remember Love? actually is. There’s just an overall epic feel to the story and the animation, despite its age, seems to have richer details than the anime movies we get today. But it’s that really memorable final act that really clinches it for me. The song, while nothing great in itself, feels much more epic in scale because of everything that accompanies it. Honestly, I would’ve watched it for those final ten minutes and still feel satisfied with how well done everything is.

I honestly think Macross: Do You Remember Love? deserves a little love as it seems to have been lost in the shuffle of all of the other anime films out there. If you’re interested in watching it, you’re in luck! The entire movie is available on YouTube on the Macross channel. It’s not in super hi-def but the high quality animation will make you forget it isn’t.

Give it a watch if you can spare a couple of hours. You can thank me later.

Have you seen Macross: Do You Remember Love? What did you think of it? What other classic anime films do you think deserves a little more attention? Let me know in the comments section below!