Category Archives: culture

Wall Street’s Latest Scheme Is Monetizing Nature Itself

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Just in time for the UN’s policy push for “30 x 30” – 30% of the earth to be “conserved” by 2030 – a new Wall Street asset class puts up for sale the processes underpinning all life.

By Ellen Brown

Source: ScheerPost.com

A month before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP26) kicked off in Scotland, a new asset class was launched by the New York Stock Exchange that will “open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to dominate not just the human economy, but the entire natural world.” So writes Whitney Webb in an article titled “Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class”:

Called a natural asset company, or NAC, the vehicle will allow for the formation of specialized corporations “that hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water.” These NACs will then maintain, manage and grow the natural assets they commodify, with the end goal of maximizing the aspects of that natural asset that are deemed by the company to be profitable.

The vehicle is allegedly designed to preserve and restore Nature’s assets; but when Wall Street gets involved, profit and exploitation are not far behind. Webb writes:

[E]ven the creators of NACs admit that the ultimate goal is to extract near-infinite profits from the natural processes they seek to quantify and then monetize….

Framed with the lofty talk of “sustainability” and “conservation”, media reports on the move in outlets like Fortune couldn’t avoid noting that NACs open the doors to “a new form of sustainable investment” which “has enthralled the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink over the past several years even though there remain big, unanswered questions about it.” 

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with nearly $9.5 trillion under management. That is more than the gross domestic product of every country in the world except the U.S. and China. BlackRock also runs a massive technology platform that oversees at least $21.6 trillion in assets. It and two other megalithic asset managers, State Street and Vanguard (BlackRock’s largest shareholder), already effectively own much of the world. Adding “natural asset companies” to their portfolios could make them owners of the foundations of all life. 

A $4 Quadrillion Asset — The Earth Itself

Partnering with the New York Stock Exchange team launching the NAC is the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), major investors in which are the Rockefeller Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank, notorious for imposing neo-colonialist agendas through debt entrapment. According to IEG’s website:

We are pioneering a new asset class based on natural assets and the mechanism to convert them to financial capital. These assets are essential, making life on Earth possible and enjoyable. They include biological systems that provide clean air, water, foods, medicines, a stable climate, human health and societal potential.

The potential of this asset class is immense. Nature’s economy is larger than our current industrial economy ….

The immense potential of “Nature’s Economy” is estimated by IEG at $4,000 trillion ($4 quadrillion). 

Webb cites researcher and journalist Cory Morningstar, who maintains that one of the aims of creating “Nature’s Economy” and packaging it via NACs is to drastically advance massive land grab efforts made by Wall Street and the oligarch class in recent years, including those made by Wall Street firms and billionaires like Bill Gates during the COVID crisis. The land grabs facilitated through the development of NACs, however, will largely target indigenous communities in the developing world. Morningstar observes:

The public launch of NACs strategically preceded the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the biggest biodiversity conference in a decade. Under the pretext of turning 30% of the globe into “protected areas”, the largest global land grab in history is underway. Built on a foundation of white supremacy, this proposal will displace hundreds of millions, furthering the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples.

The UN’s “30 x 30”

The land grab of which Morningstar speaks is embodied in a draft agreement called the “Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework,” currently being negotiated among the 186 governments that are signatories to the Convention for Biological Diversity. Part I of its 15th meeting (COP15) closed on October 15, just ahead of COP26 (the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties) hosted in Glasgow from October 31 through November 12. COP26 focuses on climate change, while COP 15 focuses on preserving diversity. Part II of COP15 will be held in 2022. The draft text for the COP 15 nature pact includes a core pledge to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030.

In September 2020, 128 environmental and human rights NGOs and experts warned that the 30 x 30 plan could result in severe human rights violations and irreversible social harm for some of the world’s poorest people. Based on figures from a paper published in the academic journal Nature, they argued that the new target could displace or dispossess as many as 300 million people. Stephen Corry of Survival International contended: 

The call to make 30% of the globe into “Protected Areas” is really a colossal land grab as big as Europe’s colonial era, and it’ll bring as much suffering and death. Let’s not be fooled by the hype from the conservation NGOs and their UN and government funders. This has nothing to do with climate change, protecting biodiversity or avoiding pandemics – in fact it’s more likely to make all of them worse. It’s really all about money, land and resource control, and an all out assault on human diversity. This planned dispossession of hundreds of millions of people risks eradicating human diversity and self-sufficiency – the real keys to our being able to slow climate change and protect biodiversity.

30 x 30 in the United States

The 30 x 30 target was incorporated in President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad dated January 27, 2021, which includes at Sec. 219 “the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.” 

How that is to be done is not clearly specified, but proponents insist it is not a “land grab.” Critics, however, contend there is no other way to pull it off. Only about 12% of land and water in the U.S. is now considered to be “in conservation,” including wilderness lands, national parks, national wildlife refuges, state parks, national monuments, and private lands with permanent conservation easements (contracts to surrender a portion of property rights to a land trust or the federal government). According to environmental expert Dr. Bonner Cohen, raising that figure to 30%, adding 600 million acres to the total, “means putting this land and water (mostly land) off limits to any productive use in perpetuity. To accomplish this goal, the federal government will have to buy up – through eminent domain or other pressures on landowners making them ‘willing sellers’ of their property – millions of acres of private land.”

In July 2021, 15 governors wrote to the Administration opposing the plan, led by Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska. Ricketts said in a press release: 

This requires restricting a land area the size of the State of Nebraska every year, each year, for the next nine years, or in other words a landmass twice the size of Texas by 2030.

This goal is especially radical given that the President has no constitutional authority to take action to conserve 30% of the land and water. 

The Real Threat to Mother Nature

The federal government may have no constitutional authority to take the land, but a megalithic private firm such as BlackRock could do it simply by making farmers and local residents an offer they can’t refuse. This ploy has already been demonstrated in the housing market. 

According to a survey reported in The Guardian on October 12, 2021, nearly 40% of U.S. households are facing serious financial problems, including struggling to afford medical care and food; and 30% of lower income households (those earning under $50,000 per year) said they had lost all their savings during the coronavirus pandemic. In the first quarter of 2021, 15% of U.S. home sales went to large corporate investors including BlackRock, which beat out families in search of homes just by offering substantially more than the asking price. Sometimes whole neighborhoods were bought up at once for conversion into rental properties. 

BlackRock’s chairman Larry Fink is on the board of the World Economic Forum, which until recently featured a controversial promotional video declaring “You will own nothing, and you’ll be happy.”

We all want a clean environment, and we want to preserve species biodiversity. But that includes human biodiversity – acknowledging the rights of rural landowners and Indigenous peoples, the land’s natural stewards. The greatest threat to the land is not the people living on it but those well-heeled investors who swoop in to buy up the rights to it, financializing the earth for profit. 

Not just private property but those public lands and infrastructure once known as “the commons” are now under threat. We face an existential moment in our economic history, in which accumulated private wealth is acquiring carte blanche control of the essentials of life. Whether that juggernaut can be stopped remains to be seen, but the first step in any defensive action is to be aware of the threat at our doorsteps.

(New Normal) Winter is Coming

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By CJ Hopkins

Source: Off-Guardian

Winter is coming…and you know what that means. That’s right, it’s nearly time once again for the global-capitalist ruling classes to whip the New Normal masses into a state of mindless mass hysteria over an imaginary apocalyptic virus.

The same imaginary apocalyptic virus that they have whipped the New Normal masses into a state of mass hysteria over throughout the Winter for the last two years.

They’ve got their work cut out for them this time. Seriously, how much more mass hysterical could the New Normals possibly get at this point?

The vast majority of the Western world has been transformed into a pseudo-medical dystopia in which you have to show your “health-purity papers” to enter a café and get a cup of coffee.

People who refuse to get experimentally “vaccinated” against a virus that causes mild-to-moderate symptoms (or, often, no symptoms whatsoever) in about 95% of the infected, and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%, are being systematically segregated, stripped of their jobs, denied medical treatment, demonized as “a danger to society,” censored, fined, and otherwise persecuted.

If you think I’m overstating the case, look at the front page of this Australian newspaper…

Yes, the Great New Normal Purge is on. “The Unvaccinated” and other infidels and heretics are being hunted by fanatical, hate-drunk mobs, dragged before the New Normal Inquisition, and made examples of all over the world.

Here in New Normal Germany, popular footballer Joshua Kimmich is being publicly drawn and quartered for refusing to submit to being “vaccinated” and profess his faith in the New Normal World Order.

In the USA, “the Unvaccinated” stand accused of murdering Colin Powell, an 84-year-old, cancer-ridden war criminal.

Australia is planning to imprison people and fine them $90,000 for the “crime” of not wearing a medical-looking mask, or attempted worship at a synagogue, or whatever.

In Florida (of all places), fanatical school staff tied a medical-looking mask to the face of a non-verbal Downs-syndrome girl with nylon cord, day after day, for over six weeks, until her father discovered what they were doing.

I could go on, but I don’t think I have to. The Internet is brimming with examples of mass-hysterical and sadistic behavior.

And that’s not to mention the mass hysteria rampant among the New Normals themselves…for example, the parents who are lining up to get their children needlessly “vaccinated” and then rushed into the emergency room with “totally manageable myocarditis.”

Still, as mass hysterical as things are, count on GloboCap to go balls out on the mass hysteria for the next five months. The coming Winter is crunch time, folks. They need to cement the New Normal in place, so they can dial down the “apocalyptic pandemic.” If they’re forced to extend it another year…well, not even the most brainwashed New Normals would buy that.

Or…all right, sure, the most brainwashed would, but they represent a small minority. Most New Normals are not fanatical totalitarians. They’re just people looking out for themselves, people who will go along with almost anything to avoid being ostracized and punished.

But, believe it or not, there is a limit to the level of absurdity they’re prepared to accept, and the level and duration of relentless stress and cognitive dissonance they are prepared to accept.

Most of them have reached that limit. They have done their part, followed orders, worn the masks, got the “vaccinations,” and are happy to present their “obedience papers” to anyone who demands to see them. Now, they want to go back to “normal.” But they can’t, because … well, because of us.

See, GloboCap can’t let them return to “normal” (i.e., the new totalitarian version of “normal”) until everyone (i.e., everyone who matters) has submitted to being “vaccinated” and is walking around with a scanable certificate of ideological conformity in their smartphones.

They would probably even waive the “vaccination” requirement if we would just bend the knee and pledge our allegiance to the WEF, or BlackRock, or Vanguard, or whoever, and carry around a QR code confirming that we believe in “Science,” the “Covidian Creed,” and whatever other ecumenical corporatist dogma.

Seriously, the point of this entire exercise (or at least this phase of this entire exercise) is to radically, irrevocably, transform society into a monolithic corporate campus where everyone has to scan their IDs at every turn of an endless maze of perpetually monitored, eco-friendly, gender-fluid, ideologically uniform, non-smoking, totally meat-free “safe spaces” owned and operated by GloboCap, or one of its agents, subsidiaries, and assigns.

The global-capitalist ruling classes are determined to transform the planet into this fascistic Woke Utopia and enforce unwavering conformity to its valueless values, no matter the cost, and we, “the Unvaccinated,” are standing in their way.

They can’t just round us up and shoot us — this is global capitalism, not Nazism or Stalinism. They need to break us, to break our spirits, to coerce, gaslight, harass, and persecute us until we surrender our autonomy willingly. And they need to do this during the next five months.

Preparations therefor are now in progress.

In the UK, despite a drop in “cases,” and the fact (which the “authorities” have been forced to acknowledge) that the “Vaccinated” can spread the virus just like “the Unvaccinated,” the government is preparing to go to “Plan B” and roll out the social-segregation system that most of Europe has already adopted.

In Germany, the “Epidemic Emergency of National Importance” (i.e., the legal pretense for enforcement of the “Corona restrictions”) is due to expire in mid-November (unless they can seriously jack up the “cases,” which seems unlikely at this point), so the authorities are working to revise the “Infektionsschutzgesetz” (the “Infection Protection Act”) to justify maintaining the restrictions indefinitely, despite the absence of an “epidemic,” or an “emergency.”

And so on. I think you get the picture.

This Winter is probably going to get a little nutty … or, OK, more than a little nutty. In terms of manufactured mass hysteria, it is probably going to make Russiagate, the War on Populism, the Global War on Terror, the Red Scare, and every other manufactured mass-hysteria campaign you can possibly think of look like an amateur production of Wagner’s Götterdammerung.

In other words, kiss reality (or whatever is left of reality at this point) goodbye. The clock is ticking, and GloboCap knows it. If they expect to pull this Great Reset off, they are going to need to terrorize the New-Normal masses into a state of protracted pants-shitting panic and uncontrollable mindless hatred of “the Unvaccinated,” and anyone challenging their rule.

A repeat of the Winters of 2020 and 2021 is not going to cut it. It is going to take more than the now standard repertoire of fake and manipulated statistics, dire projections, photos of “death trucks,” non-overflowing overflowing hospitals, and all the other familiar features of the neo-Goebbelsian propaganda juggernaut we have been subjected to for over 18 months.

They are facing a growing working-class revolt. Millions of people in countries all over the world are protesting in the streets, organizing strikes, walk-outs, “sick-outs,” and mounting other forms of opposition.

Despite the corporate media’s Orwellian attempts to blackout any coverage of it, or demonize us all as “far-right extremists,” the New Normals are very aware that this is happening. And the official narrative is finally falling apart. The actual facts are undeniable by anyone with an ounce of integrity, so much so that even major GloboCap propaganda outlets like The Guardian are being forced to grudgingly admit the truth.

No, GloboCap has no choice at this point but to let loose with every weapon in its arsenal — short of full-blown despotism, which it cannot deploy without destroying itself — and hope that we will finally break down, bend the knee, and beg for mercy.

I don’t know exactly what they’ve got in mind, but I am definitely not looking forward to it. I’m already pretty worn out as it is. From what I gather, so are a lot of you. If it helps at all, maybe look at it this way. We don’t have to take the battle to them. All we have to do is not surrender, withstand the coming siege, and make it to April.

Or, if the strikes, sick-outs, and “bad weather” continue, it might not even take that long.

MASS PSYCHOSIS IS A REAL GLOBAL PANDEMIC

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By Dr. Mercola

Source: Waking Times

Mass psychosis is defined as “an epidemic of madness” that occurs when a “large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions.” The witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries are a classic example. We’re now in the middle of another mass psychosis, induced by relentless fearmongering coupled with data suppression and intimidation tactics of all kinds.

Fearmongering Breeds Insanity

A number of mental health experts have expressed concern over the blatant panic mongering during the COVID-19 pandemic, warning it can have serious psychiatric effects. For example, in a December 22, 2020, article2 in Evie Magazine, S.G. Cheah discussed the emergence of mass insanity caused by “delusional fear of COVID-19.”

“Even when the statistics point to the extremely low fatality rate among children and young adults (measuring 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at 25), the young and the healthy are still terrorized by the chokehold of irrational fear when faced with the coronavirus,” Cheah wrote, adding:3

“Instead of facing reality, the delusional person would rather live in their world of make-believe. But in order to keep faking reality, they’ll have to make sure that everyone else around them also pretends to live in their imaginary world.

In simpler words, the delusional person rejects reality. And in this rejection of reality, others have to play along with how they view the world, otherwise, their world will not make sense to them. It’s why the delusional person will get angry when they face someone who doesn’t conform to their world view …

It’s one of the reasons why you’re seeing so many people who’d happily approve the silencing of any medical experts whose views contradict the WHO or CDC guidelines. ‘Obey the rules!’ becomes more important than questioning if the rules were legitimate to begin with.”

In a December 2020 interview (below), psychiatrist and medical legal expert Dr. Mark McDonald4 also went on record stating “the true public health crisis lies in the widespread fear which morphed and evolved into a form of mass delusional psychosis.”We are now well beyond the first profound shocks of this crisis, and it’s deeply concerning that the number of [mental health] referrals remains so high. ~ Brian Dow, Deputy chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness

He went so far as to refer to the outside of his home or office as the “outdoor insane asylum,” where he must assume “that any person that I run into is insane” unless they prove otherwise.5

Reports of Psychotic Episodes Soar in Great Britain

Now, after some 19 months of abnormal “pandemic life,” the data are starting to reflect McDonald’s fears. For example, in the U.K., psychiatric referrals for first-time psychotic episodes have skyrocketed. As reported by The Guardian, October 17, 2021:6

“Cases of psychosis have soared over the past two years in England as an increasing number of people experience hallucinations and delusional thinking amid the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There was a 29% increase in the number of people referred to mental health services for their first suspected episode of psychosis between April 2019 and April 2021, NHS data7 shows. The rise continued throughout the spring, with 9,460 referred in May 2021, up 26% from 7,520 in May 2019.

The charity Rethink Mental Illness is urging the government to invest more in early intervention for psychosis to prevent further deterioration in people’s mental health from which it could take them years to recover.

It says the statistics provide some of the first concrete evidence to indicate the significant levels of distress experienced across the population during the pandemic.”

Psychosis Takes a Heavy Toll on a Person’s Life

Deputy chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness, Brian Dow, commented on the findings:8

“Psychosis can have a devastating impact on people’s lives. Swift access to treatment is vital to prevent further deterioration in people’s mental health which could take them years to recover from. These soaring numbers of suspected first episodes of psychosis are cause for alarm.

We are now well beyond the first profound shocks of this crisis, and it’s deeply concerning that the number of referrals remains so high. As first presentations of psychosis typically occur in young adults, this steep rise raises additional concerns about the pressures the younger generation have faced during the pandemic.

The pandemic has had a game changing effect on our mental health and it requires a revolutionary response. Dedicated additional funding for mental health and social care must go to frontline services to help meet the new demand, otherwise thousands of people could bear a catastrophic cost.”

According to a spokesperson for the British Department of Health and Social Care, the agency will expand the NHS mental health services budget by £2.3 billion ($3.1 billion) per year by 2023/2024. They’ve also added £500 million ($691 million) to the 2021 budget to provide services to those hit hardest by pandemic measures.9

Anxiety and Depression Have Increased Dramatically Worldwide

Another study,10,11 looking at the rates of anxiety and depression worldwide, found both conditions increased dramatically in 2020. The researchers estimate the COVID pandemic resulted in an additional 76 million cases of anxiety and 53 million cases of major depressive disorder, over and above annual norms, with women and younger individuals being disproportionally affected. According to The Guardian:12

“… the team estimate there were 246m cases of major depressive disorder and 374m cases of anxiety disorders worldwide in 2020, with the figure for the former 28% higher, and for the latter 26% higher, than would have been expected had the crisis not happened.

About two-thirds of these extra cases of major depressive disorder and 68% of the extra cases of anxiety disorders were among women, while younger people were affected more than older adults, with extra cases greatest among people aged 20-24.”

Lead author Damian Santomauro, Ph.D., of the University of Queensland told The Guardian:13

“We believe [that] is because women are more likely to be affected by the social and economic consequences of the pandemic. Women are more likely to take on additional carer and household responsibilities due to school closures or family members becoming unwell.

Women also tend to have lower salaries, less savings, and less secure employment than men, and so are more likely to be financially disadvantaged during the pandemic. Youth have been impacted by the closures of schools and higher education facilities, and wider restrictions inhibiting young people from peer interactions.”

Increased prevalence of domestic violence may also be a contributing factor that places women at increased risk of mental problems, while young adults are more likely to become unemployed.

Massive Rise in Mental Health Problems in Children

Children are bearing a particularly heavy burden as adults succumb to irrational fears. It’s not surprising then that mental health referrals for children have nearly doubled in the U.K. since the start of the pandemic.14 According to British authorities, 16% of children between the ages of 5 and 16 were diagnosed with a mental disorder in 2020, compared to 10.8% in 2017.15 As noted in a September 23, 2021, press release by the Royal College of Psychiatrists:16

“Eighteen months after the first lockdown and after warnings from the mental health sector about the long-lasting mental health impact of the pandemic, the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ analysis of NHS Digital data found that:

  • 190,271 0–18-year-olds were referred to children and young people’s mental health services between April and June this year, up 134% on the same period last year (81,170) and 96% on 2019 (97,342).
  • 8,552 children and young people were referred for urgent or emergency crisis care between April and June this year, up 80% on the same period last year (4,741) and up 64% on 2019 (5,219).
  • 340,694 children in contact with children and young people’s mental health services at the end of June, up 25% on the same month last year (272,529) and up 51% on June 2019 (225,480).”

Eating disorders are also more prevalent than ever, and the rapid increase has left many children waiting months for treatment — delays that could have life-threatening consequences — as facilities are at capacity. The press release quotes a mother whose teenage daughter relapsed into anorexia during the pandemic:17

“The pandemic has been devastating for my daughter and for our family. She has anorexia and was discharged from an inpatient unit last year, but the disruption to her normal routines and socializing really affected her recovery. She was spending a lot less time doing the things she enjoys and a lot more time alone with her thoughts.

Unfortunately, she relapsed, becoming so unwell she was admitted to hospital and sectioned. After 72 days in hospital with no specialist eating disorder bed becoming available, we brought her home where I had to tube feed her for 10 weeks.

My daughter urgently needed specialist help for this life-threatening illness, but services are completely overwhelmed because so many young people need help. It’s a terrifying situation for patients and families to be in.”

Mass Delusional Psychosis Traumatizes Children

Indeed, the widespread insanity on display among adults can have severe and lasting effects on children as they grow up. According to McDonald (see interview above), the mental states of the children he’s treated during this pandemic are far worse than he’s used to seeing in these age groups. This tells us the trauma inflicted by pandemic measures is very serious.

One of the worst traumas inflicted on children has been the ridiculous idea that they might kill their parents or grandparents simply by being around them. They’re also being taught to feel guilty about behaviors that would normally be completely normal — as just one example: hysterical adults calling a toddler who refuses to wear a mask a “brat,” when resisting having a restrictive mask put across your face is perfectly normal at that age.

It’s extremely abnormal for children to grow up thinking that they’re a danger to people around them, and that everyone around them is a danger to them. It’s completely abnormal to grow up thinking that facemasks, gloves and physical separation are required to stay alive.

Adults have also twisted irrational fear into a virtue, which is doubly tragic and wrong. Wearing a mask has become a way to demonstrate that you’re a “good person,” someone who cares about others, whereas not wearing a mask brands you as an inconsiderate lout, if not a prospective mass murderer, simply by breathing.

What’s more, by encouraging us to remain in fear and allow it to control and constrain our lives, the fear has become so entrenched that anyone who says we need to be fearless and fight for our freedoms is attacked for being both stupid and dangerous.

Adults Must Be Healed to Save the Children

It’s adults who are mindlessly inflicting this emotional trauma on an entire generation. As noted by McDonald in his interview, a primary cause of depression among children is feeling disconnected from family and friends.

Everyone, but children in particular, needs face-to-face contact, physical contact, and emotional intimacy. We need these things to feel safe around others and within our own selves. Digital interactions cannot replace these most basic human needs, and are inherently separating.

McDonald cites U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics showing there was a 400% increase in adolescent depression during 2020 compared to the year before, and in 25% of cases, they contemplated suicide. These are unheard of statistics, he says. Never before have so many teenagers considered committing suicide.

According to McDonald, parents and adults in general are to blame, because they are the ones scaring children to the point they don’t feel life is worth living anymore. This is why we can’t just treat the children. We must also address the psychosis of the adult population that is causing all this trauma.

Mass Delusion Is Leading Us Into Slavery

The mass delusion must also be addressed because it’s driving us all, sane and insane alike, toward a society devoid of all previous freedoms and civil liberties, and the corrupt individuals in charge will not voluntarily relinquish power once we’ve given it to them.

Clearly, many of our political leaders know COVID-19 isn’t the deadly plague it’s been made out to be. They issue stay-at-home orders from their vacation homes in the Caribbean and repeatedly break their own mask and lockdown mandates.

They ride their bikes, stroll through the park, have family gatherings and dine out without a care. They’re simply playing along, following the narrative coming from technocratic strongholds like the World Health Organization, because it benefits them.

You could say the ruling class suffers from a different kind of psychosis. As explained in “Mass Psychosis — How an Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill,” totalitarianism actually begins as psychosis within the ruling class, as the individuals within this class are easily enamored with delusions that augment their power. And no delusion is greater than the delusion that they can, and should control and dominate others.

Whether the totalitarian mindset takes the form of communism, fascism or technocracy, a ruling elite that has succumbed to their own delusions of grandeur then sets about to indoctrinate the masses into their own twisted worldview. All that’s needed to accomplish that reorganization of society is the manipulation of collective feelings.

Sadly, many citizens are unwittingly aiding and abetting the global power grab that will result in our enslavement. Fear fueled hysteria, which led to mass delusional psychosis and group control where citizens themselves support and press for the elimination of basic freedoms.

There’s no doubt at this point that a totalitarian society is the ultimate end of this societal psychosis unless we do something about it. The truth is, we’re as safe now as we ever were. We must not allow our freedoms to be taken from us due to delusional fears. As noted by Cheah in her article:18

“It’s not unthinkable that the final outcome would be total societal control on every aspect of your life. Consider this — the endpoint of a mentally ill person is for them to be put under a controlled environment (institutionalized like an asylum) where all freedoms are restricted. And it’s looking more and more like that’s the endpoint of where this mass psychosis is heading.”

We Must Restore Sanity

Once a society is firmly in the grip of mass psychosis, totalitarians are free to take the last, decisive step: They can offer a way out, a return to order. The price is your freedom. You must cede control of all aspects of your life to the rulers, because unless they are granted total control, they won’t be able to create the order everyone craves.

This order, however, is a pathological one, devoid of all humanity. It eliminates the spontaneity that brings joy and creativity to one’s life by demanding strict conformity and blind obedience. And despite the promise of safety, a totalitarian society is inherently fearful. It is built on fear, and is maintained by it too. So, giving up your freedom for safety and a sense of order will only lead to more of the same fear and anxiety that allowed the totalitarians to gain control in the first place.

Knowing this, we must remember to embrace courage, truth, honesty and freedom as we move forward — not just in our thoughts and words but also in our actions. People cannot think logically when in a state of delusional psychosis, which is why sharing information, facts, data and evidence tends to be ineffective except in cases where the person was acting out of peer pressure rather than a delusional belief.

Typically, the best you can do is stand firm and act in alignment with truth and objective reality, much like you would if you were a first responder faced with an accident victim who is responding hysterically to what you know is only a minor injury.

In short, to help return sanity to an insane world, you first need to center yourself and live in such a way as to provide inspiration for others to follow — speak and act in such a way as to demonstrate that you are not afraid to live life and return to normalcy.

Saturday Matinee: Blood of the Condor

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Source: Wikipedia

Blood of the Condor (Quechua: Yawar Mallku, Spanish: Sangre de cóndor) is a 1969 Bolivian drama film co-written and directed by Jorge Sanjinés and starring Marcelino Yanahuaya. The film tells the story of an indigenous Bolivian community receiving medical care from the Peace Corps-like United States-backed agency Cuerpo del Progreso (“Progress Corps”) which is secretly sterilising local women. The story, which was based on accounts by the indigenous people to the filmmaker, provoked an outrage in the public which led to a government investigation about the Peace Corps’ actions in Bolivia, which ended in the expulsion of the agency from the country.

The Facebook Team that Tried to Swing Nicaragua’s Election is Full of U.S. Spies

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A tacit agreement between the government and Facebook appears to have been made: you can keep the profits, but we control the message. As such, a cynic might wonder what functional difference there is between Facebook and the national security state.

By Alan Macleod

Source: Mint Press News

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA — Less than a week before Nicaragua’s presidential election, social media giant Facebook deleted the accounts of hundreds of the country’s top news outlets, journalists and activists, all of whom supported the ruling left-wing Sandinista government, a top Washington target for regime change.

Facebook claims that these accounts were bots engaged in “inauthentic behavior.” Considering that around half of the country uses the platform for news and entertainment, the decision could barely have been more heavy-handed and intrusive. However, early reports show that if their goal was to swing the result, it has failed badly and the Sandinistas have achieved an overwhelming victory.

“This is appalling interference by Facebook in particular (which is the most popular social media outlet in Nicaragua). They allege that they’ve stopped a government-deployed troll farm but what they have actually done is to close accounts of ordinary Sandinista activists, particularly young people, often with many followers,” John Perry, a journalist living in the city of Masaya, told MintPress.

Worse still, after dozens of Sandinistas took to Twitter to record video messages proving they were real people being censored, their accounts were systematically deleted as well, in what Managua-based journalist Ben Norton described as a Silicon Valley “double-tap strike.”

“These are accounts that average Nicaraguans have come to count on for news and communicating with each other about current events and, in this case, about the election. So it is very troubling that it was obviously targeted against one political group: the Sandinistas,” said Daniel Kovalik, a human-rights lawyer and an observer of this weekend’s elections.

Both Perry and Kovalik were of the opinion that it was no coincidence that Facebook had taken action against precisely the group the U.S. government is trying to overthrow.

Facebook as security-state beard

Perhaps even more worrying from a freedom-of-speech viewpoint is who made the decision at Facebook. The 11-page report detailing the company’s supposed evidence of inauthentic behavior has just two contributors: Luis Fernando Alonso and Ben Nimmo, individuals with deep and long-lasting ties to Western military intelligence. According to his biography on LinkedIn, Alonso was, until last year, working for Booz Allen Hamilton, a shadowy corporation situated in the area around Washington, D.C. colloquially known as “Raytheon Acres.” The national security state farms out much of its most controversial work to the firm, which is technically a private company (and therefore not subject to the same oversight and scrutiny as public agencies). Edward Snowden, for instance, actually worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, not the NSA. Before that, Alonso directly worked for the government at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, a Department of Defense-controlled institution that trains top military and intelligence leaders.

Nimmo’s background is equally spooky. Between 2011 and 2014, he served as NATO’s press officer, moving the next year to the Institute for Statecraft, a U.K. government-funded propaganda operation aimed at spreading misleading information about enemies of the British state. The Institute for Statecraft established a secret network of journalists across Europe who were used to push anti-Russia and pro-establishment talking points, all in coordination.

In 2019, Nimmo played a key role in downplaying the bombshell news that the Conservative government was quietly negotiating to sell off key parts of Great Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) to foreign plutocrats. When the Labour Party publicized this information just days before the election, Nimmo jumped into action, immediately announcing, without evidence, that the documents in question “closely resemble … a known Russian operation.” His supposedly expert conjecture — together with help from allied journalists in the Integrity Initiative — allowed the story to become “Labour’s links to Russia” rather than “Tories privatizing the NHS in secret,” helping the Conservatives make huge electoral gains.

Nimmo also became a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, NATO’s semi-official think tank.

Facebook — now officially called “Meta” — is extremely secretive about who actually works at their intelligence department. Nowhere can one find a list of names of key figures. However, going back through months of reports and blog posts for names reveals a veritable revolving door between big tech and big government. In short, Facebook is strewn with spies.

For example, a document published in May, entitled “The State of Influence Operations, 2017-2020,” lists five author names in addition to Nimmo’s, at least four of whom have long histories as senior agents in the national security state.

In order, they are:

  • Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Security Policy: Gleicher spent two and a half years at the White House as the National Security Council’s Director of Cyber Security Policy. Before that he also spent five years at the Department of Justice.
  • David Agranovich, Head of Security Communications: Agranovich worked for more than six years in a senior role at the Department of Defense, before, in 2017, moving on to become the Director for Intelligence for the National Security Council at the White House.
  • Olga Belogolova, Influence Operations Product Policy Manager: The most academic of the authors, Belogolova teaches cybersecurity and influence operations to students at Georgetown University, an institution notorious as America’s spy school. Before that, she worked at the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and on Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian policy at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She has also served on several working groups at government- and military-funded think tanks like The Center for New American Security, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, and The Atlantic Council.
  • Mike Torrey, Threat Intelligence Analyst: From 2010 until 2018, Torrey was a high-level CIA agent, specializing in cyberwarfare against China. Before that, he worked as a global network intelligence analyst for the NSA.

Of the six authors listed, only one, Margarita Franklin, comes from a non-governmental background.

Looking further into Facebook’s official blog, Mike Dvilyanski is described as the company’s Head of Cyber Espionage Investigations. From 2005 until 2018, Dvilyanski was an FBI agent in Washington and New York City, rising to the rank of Supervisory Special Agent, leading teams investigating cyberwafare.

Another official Facebook report from April was authored by the company’s Technical Threat Investigator, Michael Flossman, who spent nearly six years in the Australian Department of Defense.

In 2018, Facebook announced a partnership with The Atlantic Council, whereby it gave an undisclosed amount of control over users’ news feeds to the group, allowing it to help them decide what posts users saw and which ones were suppressed. Given that the council’s board features a plethora of military generals, former cabinet members, and no fewer than seven former CIA directors, this is tantamount to state censorship on a global level. A tacit agreement between the government and Facebook appears to have been made: you can keep the profits, but we control the message. As such, a cynic might wonder what functional difference there is between Facebook and the national security state.

Silicon Valley: tip of US imperial spear

It might be unfair, however, to single Facebook out. Other large platforms are similarly stocked with government plants. Reddit’s Director of Policy, for instance, was formerly a Deputy Director of The Atlantic Council’s Middle East Task Force. Meanwhile, a senior Twitter executive is also an active duty officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare and online propaganda brigade.

Silicon Valley has not only made their peace with this relationship; they actively court it. “What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century, technology and cyber-security companies will be to the twenty-first,” wrote Google executives Eric Schmidt and Larry Cohen in their book, “The New Digital Age,” laying out how they saw Silicon Valley becoming the tip of the American empire’s spear.

Washington has already used social media as a weapon aimed at its enemies. In July, Americans in Miami used Facebook to organize an attempted color revolution in Cuba, while Twitter ignored blatantly obvious bots boosting the anti-government message, even choosing to put it at the top of its “what’s happening” sidebar for 36 hours, meaning every user in the world was alerted to the news. Individuals inside Cuba complained to MintPress that the endless supply of fake news citizens receive from the U.S. via Facebook and WhatsApp is spreading disinformation and rotting Cubans’ brains.

Meanwhile, in 2009, the U.S. government persuaded Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance of its app because of widespread protests it was fomenting in Iran, knowing the platform was being used to coordinate anti-government forces. Last year, Facebook banned all positive references to Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in the wake of his assassination by the Trump administration. “We operate under U.S. sanctions laws, including those related to the U.S. government’s designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its leadership,” the company said in a statement. Despite the fact that over 80% of the country held positive views towards the general (even before his killing), this meant that even Iranians speaking Farsi with other Iranians online in Iran could not share an overwhelmingly held view. This is but one example of the extraordinary power the U.S. national security state now holds over the means of communication worldwide.

Ineffective interference

The United States has a long history of interfering in Nicaragua, from invasions to propping up the 40-year Somoza family dictatorship. When Sandinista rebels ran them out of town in 1979, Washington began a long campaign of terror against the Sandinistas, including funding, training and arming the infamous Contra death squads. After more than a decade of interference, U.S.-backed candidate Violeta Chamorro won the 1990 election. However, after Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas returned to power in 2006, the U.S. once again began trying to undermine their rule through sanctions and by supporting a 2018 coup attempt. Washington has also unleashed an army of NGOs into the country, each attempting to foment discontent with the ruling government.

In September, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met in New York with the foreign ministers of Mexico and every other Central American country in an attempt to organize a united front against Nicaragua. Last week, the U.S. also announced new sanctions on the country. Kovalik told MintPress:

This is clearly punishment for the fact that they’re going to vote [the wrong way]. And meanwhile, of course the U.S. is putting millions into the country in terms of supporting opposition groups and different propaganda sources. So that continues. Again, what passes for alleged foreign interference in the U.S. …. is nothing compared to what the U.S. is doing here.

Western journalists and election observers whose opinions the U.S. government would rather not be shared have also been targeted. British journalist Steve Sweeney was detained in Mexico en route to Nicaragua. “It is no coincidence that it came just weeks after my ban from the U.S. I fully believe my detention is political and an attack on press freedom,” he wrote, after being released. Meanwhile, Canadian observer Dr. Timothy Bood was barred from sharing his experiences on Facebook, the platform blocking him immediately after he made a comment about U.S. interference in the election.

Perry suggested, however, that if Washington thinks that sanctions sanctions or other new measures will dislodge the government and break the people’s will, they are mistaken, and that the plan could backfire:

We had the approval in the U.S. Congress of the RENACER Act a few days ago, which is another threat of U.S. interference during and after the election process. I think opinion polls show that most people reject U.S. interference very strongly. I think in most cases it will strengthen people’s desire to vote and probably to vote for the Sandinista government. So it could have the opposite effect to the one that the U.S. wants to achieve.

Judging by the jubilant Sandinista parades in Managua and other cities today, coupled with the announcement that Ortega won an estimated three-quarters of the vote on a 65% turnout rate, Perry might have been proved right.

‘It’s absolutely appalling’: Unvaccinated Canadians become social outcasts and the new persecuted minority

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By Eva K Bartlett

Source: In Gaza

In Canada, the supposedly benevolent country that prides itself on inclusivity, Covid totalitarianism has become unavoidably apparent, with its decision that soon only the fully vaccinated can travel.

Vaccine mandates have also been imposed on healthcare workers, municipal employees and federal public servants. Basically, as part of what PM Justin Trudeau called one of the world’s strictest vaccine-mandate policies, unjabbed Canadians are being increasingly restricted/excluded not only from work, but from social life as well. Supposedly, this is done for their well-being and health. I argue, though, that it’s nothing but “medical fascism.” 

Some months ago, much ado was made in media around the world when the government of Canada shed crocodile tears for the country’s imprisonment, torture, starvation and murder of indigenous children in the horrific ‘residential school’ system. The government, we were meant to believe, suddenly cared for the people it had sought to erase.

But, aside from many examples of that being mere lip service, it has become clear, over the past year and a half plus, that the government doesn’t care for Canadians, period.

Under some of the world’s longest lockdowns, Canadians had their businesses shuttered, were deprived of contact with their elderly, were prevented from worshipping and holding holiday gatherings (while Canadian leadership steadfastly ignored the rules) and, more seriously, were deprived of critical medical care—all in the name of public health.

Already, Canadians with natural immunity say they have been told that’s not enough to enter the country.

Starting from October 30, only the Covid-jabbed can travel by plane or train in Canada. While huge numbers of Canadians have got the shots, many others have legitimate concerns about the safety of vaccines, with good reason.

When Dr. Byram Bridle, associate professor of viral immunology—a well-recognized expert in vaccinology—refused vaccination due to his natural immunity, he was derided by media and banned from his University of Guelph campus. He made clear that he is, “a vaccine lover and an innovator in this field,” but has concerns about the, “possible link between this heart inflammation that is occurring and these COVID-19 vaccines.” 

And although I already realized it is unlikely that I’ll see my family in Canada in person again, the newest ‘no jab, no travel’ dictates seal the deal for me.

But, for people within Canada, it is more than just the matter of being able to see loved ones again. For some, these new dictates might mean a matter of life or death: whether they can get vital medical care and whether they can earn a living.

One such person is an Italian researcher living in Canada since 2001, who was in that year diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I recently spoke with Valentina Capurri about how the vaccine mandates will affect her.

She explained that, following her MS diagnosis, she was offered to participate in a trial program for a new medication. Although a risky decision, she accepted for different reasons, including the health care and medication it would ensure her as a then-lone international student.

She described the importance of the trial, which lasted twelve years.

“Lots of people who had severe effects of MS would have benefitted from the medication. And yet they were not able to access the medication for a reason: because you cannot give a medication whose effect–if everything goes wrong–can be worse than the cure.”

Trials like this, she emphasized, are something every new medication, or vaccine, endure.

“And none of this has been done in this particular case. So that’s what made me a little suspicious about the Covid vaccines.”

Over the past year and a half, she says, she has not been allowed to see her neurologist, all medical appointments at her Toronto hospital were suspended and replaced with  phone consultations. No physical visits, no MRIs, just phone calls.

“In 2003, when we had SARS, I used to go once a month to the hospital. Despite the fact that SARS in 2003 had a much higher mortality rate than Covid, we still were allowed to enter the hospital on a regular basis. None of our visits were cancelled back then as they are now.”

Since neither she nor her Canadian husband will take the jab, they will lose their jobs, and thus won’t be able to pay for her expensive MS medication.

“You are forcing me to lose my job, to lose my ability to support myself, just because I am exerting my right not to have an experimental medical procedure done on me. This is worse than fascism, this is absolutely appalling.”

On top of this, now, those needing organ transplants face being denied care if they do not consent to mandatory jabs.

Among other Canadians suspended without pay for their refusal to be jabbed are hundreds of hospital workers, including nurses. The sort of people who might know a thing or two about health…

And, in August, emergency room and family practice physician, Dr. Rochagné Kilian resigned over the unethical and coercive pressuring of Canadians to be jabbed.

While medical workers and average Canadians are being forced out of work, denied medical care, ostracized from society, the government has made clear the rules for thee but not for me adage still applies.

PM Trudeau said all federal workers would be compelled to get fully vaccinated but, as it turns out, that’s not the case. According to an article in the Toronto Sun, roughly 70% of the federal workforce will be exempt from getting vaccines, including: federal judges, meat inspectors, park wardens, postal workers, tax auditors, Commons and Senate staff, soldiers, sailors and air force personnel, and Canada Post employees, among others.

Canada doesn’t even pretend to follow logic any longer. Just full-on medical fascism for the majority of Canadians.

With the introduction of vaccine mandates, it is only a matter of time before Canada reaches Lithuanian-level totalitarianism where the non-jabbed are almost fully excluded from all aspects of society.

Please ask yourselves if you really believe this is about public health.

America’s Bottom 50% Have Nowhere To Go But Down

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

One might anticipate that the bottom 50%’s meager share of the nation’s exploding wealth would have increased as smartly as the wealth of the billionaires, but alas, no.

America’s economy has changed in ways few of the winners seem to notice, as they’re too busy cheerleading their own brilliance and success. In the view of the winners, who just so happen to occupy all the seats at the media-punditry-Federal Reserve, etc. table–the rising tide of stock, bond and real estate bubbles are raising all boats. What’s left unsaid is except for the 50% of boats with gaping holes below the waterline, i.e. stagnant wages and a fast-rising cost of living.

The truth the self-satisfied winners don’t include in their self-congratulatory rah-rah is there’s no place for the bottom 50% of American households to go but down. All the winnings flow to those who already owned assets back when they were affordable– the already-wealthy–whose wealth has soared as assets have shot to the moon while the the burdens of inflation and debt service hit the bottom 50% the hardest.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is whining that inflation isn’t high enough yet for their refined tastes. Boo-hoo, how sad for the Fed–inflation isn’t yet high enough. Oh wait–didn’t they each mint millions by front-running their own policies? No wonder they’re not worried about inflation.

The reality few acknowledge is that globalization and financialization have stripped the American economy of low-skilled jobs that don’t demand much of the employee. The reality is that a great many people don’t have what it takes to learn high-level skills and work at a demanding pace under constant pressure–the description of the average job in America.

There were once millions of low-skill, low-pay jobs for people who for whatever mix of reasons were unable to muster the wherewithal to fulfill the fantasy of working extra hard, going to night school, soaking up high-level skills, moving quickly up the ladder to higher pay, buying the starter home and then moving up the food chain to middle class security from there.

The cost of living was low enough that those working these low-skill, low-pay jobs could still have an independent life. There were still low-cost rentals, often derided by the wealthy, in nooks and crannies of even the costliest cities. (I once lived in a room stuffed with old tax records in a poolside shack in an upscale neighborhood. The room had been cleared for a single bed and a path to the decrepit bathroom. Its most important attribute was that I could afford it on my low earnings.)

Affordable housing has vanished, eliminated by the financialization of America’s economy. Once landlords pay double the price for the property, rents have to double to pay their higher expenses. The apartment didn’t double in size or amenities–the rent doubled without any increase in utility to the renter. You get nothing more for double the price–nice.

Yes, people could make better choices, and some do. The point here is the game is rigged against those in the lower tier of the economy who can no longer afford a house or other stake in the only winning game in town–speculative asset bubbles. Go ahead and work a second job and go to night school–you’ll still be left behind the already-rich.

Globalization opened every job in America to global competition via offshoring or the influx of undocumented workers so desperate to support their families back home that no pay was too low and no working condition too wretched to refuse.

Many overindulged pundits who never worked an honest day in their lives sneer about burger flippers without realizing how hard those burger flippers have to work. I doubt the well-dressed pundits, snobbish about their university degrees and general brilliance, could manage to work a single day in a demanding fast-food job.

As the price of housing and other assets have soared, enriching the already rich, they’re out of reach for the bottom 50% who struggle to pay their bills as wages have stagnated and the costs of essentials have skyrocketed.

The rising cost of parking tickets, junk fees, user fees, utilities and food don’t impact the well-paid top 5% technocrat class, whose stake in the Everything Bubble keeps expanding by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But for the bottom 50%, those incremental increases are, when added to higher rents, absolutely crushing.

As for getting high-quality healthcare that includes mental health support–those are reserved for the rich. But no worries, self-medication is always a “choice.”

Getting a boost in pay from $12 an hour to $15 an hour is welcome, but that doesn’t put the worker any closer to affording a house or equivalent stake in the Everything Bubble.

The new feudalism is masked by the glossy SillyCon Valley PR of a gig economy where (per the PR fantasy) bright, shiny and totally independent workers freely choose to serve the winners in the rigged sweepstakes for low pay and zero benefits.

In the SillyCon Valley PR, serfs freely choose to serve their noble masters for nothing but survival because they love the “freedom” and “choice” of kissing the nobility’s plump derrieres. (After all, there were “choices” even back in the good old days of feudalism–one could join the brigands in the forest, or enlist in a poorly paid mercenary army where the odds of dying were high–you know, “choices” of “gigs.”)

One might anticipate that the bottom 50%’s meager share of the nation’s exploding wealth would have increased as smartly as the wealth of the billionaires, but alas, no–the bottom 50%’s share of stocks (equities) actually plummeted in the the glorious decades of Federal Reserve free money for financiers, stock buy-backs and asset bubbles.

All this suits the billionaires and those collecting the crumbs of the Everything Bubble just fine. So what if the bottom 50% have nowhere to go but down? There’s plenty of room in the homeless encampment for another broken down station wagon or an old camper. There’s lots of “choices.”

And no consequences for the winners, of course, because The Fed has our backs.