Category Archives: culture

The Accelerating Destruction Of Earth’s Biodiversity: When Will We Act?

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By Robert J. Burrowes

As those individuals aware of it will have observed, presumably with deep regret, the latest ‘International Day for Biological Diversity’passed on 22 May with the bulk of the human population continuing to act in ways that destroy Earth’s biosphere at an ever-accelerating rate.

Unaware that many authors continue to report the ongoing destructionof Earth’s biodiversity, which is under siege on a range of fronts by unchecked human destruction of Earth’s biosphere as well as particular assaults on Earth’s living creatures, responses to this ‘hidden’ path to human extinction continue to waver between non-existent and token.

Consequently, in such circumstances, the destruction of biodiversity might yet become the means by which Homo sapiens is consigned to the fossil record ‘beating’ nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and electromagnetic radiation as the fundamental driver of extinction.

Of course, these drivers are intimately related. Ongoing preparations for nuclear war (requiring the extraction of vast resources from the biosphere), the accelerating climate catastrophe and the ever-expanding electromagnetic contamination of the biosphere are all heavily implicated in driving the destruction of life on Earth and seriously addressing these issues is something only discussed in narrow, genuinely aware circles while official ‘concern’ and that of the human population generally continue to exhibit negligible engagement, perhaps ‘tut-tutting’ the latest news in the corporate media of the extinction of an iconic species. See ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Report on the State of Planet Earth at Year’s End 2020’.

But given that 150-200 species of life on Earth (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles and microbes) become extinct daily, as noted in 2010 by Ahmed Djoghlaf, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity who stated that ‘We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate’, and with many biologists having noted that the species extinction rate is nearly 1,000 times the ‘natural’ or ‘background’ rate and ‘is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago’ – see ‘Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief’ – only a delusional individual would argue that this issue is drawing the attention and profound action that is needed to halt this existential crisis.

And given that, back in 2010, the UN was arguing that the ‘economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change’ – see ‘UN says case for saving species “more powerful than climate change”’ – there is obviously no doubt that, officially and otherwise, the destruction of biodiversity has been neglected compared to the (admittedly also inadequate) attention given to the climate catastrophe.

So Homo sapiens moves quickly and efficiently to its own extinction, an inevitable consequence of the destruction of the web of life.

An important aspect of the destruction of biodiversity is what precedes the extinction of a species.

In their report compiled in 2017, Professors Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich & Rodolfo Dirzo recorded that Earth continues to experience ‘a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’ Moreover, local population extinctions ‘are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’ See ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’ and ‘Our Vanishing World: Wildlife’.

But, tragically, many additional species are now trapped in a feedback loop which will inevitably precipitate their extinction as well because of the way in which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work once initiated and as has already occurred in almost all ecosystem contexts. See the (so far) six-part series ‘Our Vanishing World’. Have you seen a flock of birds of any size recently? A butterfly?

Why is this Happening?


The accelerating destruction of Earth’s biosphere is driven by one fundamental cause. Over-consumption by humans in industrialized countries. With nearly a billion people living in poverty and about 500 million indigenous peoples living or attempting to live subsistence lifestyles around the world, it is those populations in industrialized countries who are determined to consume more than they actually need and generally live unaware of their ecological impact who are destroying Earth’s biosphere.

Because whether consuming water, energy for household use, fossil fuels for vehicle or airline travel, paper, plastic, metals or meat, only a rare human is keeping track of, and consciously minimizing use of, these ‘end product’ resources which are extracted directly from, or manufactured with resources extracted from, Earth’s biosphere, with a byproduct of this production being a massive amount of waste material, much of it not able to be disposed of in any way that is remotely ecologically benign.

And because the extraction of resources from the biosphere to satisfy consumer demand fundamentally depends on state or private corporations making a profit from the extraction, corporations will exploit anywhere with negligible concern for the local environments destroyed.

To highlight the cost of our endlessly-expanding consumption, one only has to consider a few of the near ‘endless’ list of biosphere assaults adversely impacting the Earth and the species dependent on impacted ecosystems.

Did you know about the planned oil drilling in the staggeringly beautiful and, until now, pristine Okavango Delta in south-west Africa, and what this might mean for the region’s 18,000 elephants and other wildlife (not to mention the human population)? See ‘A Big Oil project in Africa threatens fragile Okavango region’.

Did you know about the ‘massive volumes of fracking waste’ being illegally dumped at Vaca Muerta in northern Patagonia in Argentina?Good for the biosphere and local wildlife do you think? See ‘Argentina’s Illegal Oil and Gas Waste Dumps Show “Dark Side” of Vaca Muerta Drilling, Says Criminal Complaint’.

And while there is a huge number of mines around the world inflicting massive damage on their immediate location – see ‘Environmental Nightmares Created by Open Pit Mines’ – mining is just one way to destroy the biosphere.

Rainforest destruction is another key driver of biosphere degradationin all parts of the world where rainforests are located, notably including the Amazon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia and West Papua, and the range of assaults is breathtaking with logging, burning, land clearance to create cattle farms, palm oil and soybean plantations, dam building as well as mining and oil drilling just among the most damaging causes. See ‘Our Vanishing World: Rainforests’.

But, as hinted at above, the emission of ‘greenhouse gases’, notably carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide is destroying the delicate composition of Earth’s atmosphere, to the detriment of the biosphere generally and with catastrophic implications for life on Earth. Despite largely successful efforts by the elite-controlled IPCC to delude people into believing that the global mean temperature has increased by only 1°C, in fact, since the pre-industrial era (prior to 1750)greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have already caused the global temperature to rise by more than 2°C above this baseline (in February 2020). This occurred despite the Paris climate agreement in 2015 when politicians pledged to hold the global temperature rise to well below 2°C above the pre-industrial level and pledged to try to limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C above this level. See ‘2°C crossed’ and‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

And electromagnetic radiation is inflicting rapidly increasing damage to all forms of life with the deployment of 5G now in full swing. See ‘Deadly Rainbow: Will 5G Precipitate the Extinction of All Life on Earth?’

Of course, all forms of military violence – invariably done to gain control over biosphere resources – as well as the preparation for it, destroys vast areas of the natural environment (including the creatures that live in it) either deliberately or as ‘collateral damage’. See ‘Ten Reasons Why Militarism is Bad for the Environment’.

As can be readily observed, the destruction of biodiversity is a primary subset of the destruction of the biosphere. Every living organism needs habitat to survive. Every time we destroy part of the biosphere, we destroy the habitat of the organisms that live in it. But we also destroy life and biodiversity directly too. How much longer can the wolf, for example, hold on against the onslaught? See ‘Bill Allowing 90 Percent of Idaho’s Wolves to Be Killed Passes House and Senate’.

Humanity generally is so unconcerned about destruction of the biosphere and the biodiversity cost that goes with it, that we studiously ignore this cost, even when it impacts our closest relatives, human and otherwise. See ‘West Africa’s chimpanzees are on the brink of extinction!’ and ‘Western Chimpanzee’.

And even the most iconic of species, such as the elephant, are not safe from the human onslaught. From 26 million elephants in 1800, the elephant population of Africa is down to 415,000, thanks to poaching for ivory, ‘trophy hunting’, destruction of habitat and other human causes. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has now listed the African forest elephant as ‘critically endangered’ and the African savanna elephant as ‘endangered’. See ‘Disappearing Elephants’ and ‘Africa’s elephants now endangered by poaching, habitat loss’.

Of course, destruction of habitat takes an almost infinite variety of forms when it comes to Homo sapiens. The latest farming venture to threaten elephant habitat is just now being created. See ‘From poaching to avocados, Kenya’s elephants face new threat’.

Besides this, assaults on particular species are pushing many endangered species to the brink of extinction. Wildlife trafficking, for example, is worth up to $20 billion each year. Illegal wildlife products include jewelry, traditional medicine, clothing, furniture, and souvenirs, as well as some exotic pets, most of which are sold to unaware/unconcerned consumers in the West although China is heavily implicated too. And to mention elephants again in this context: every 15 minutes an elephant is killed for its tusks. See Stop Wildlife Trafficking.

But if we are not concerned about the iconic species, can you imagine the collective concern for those millions of creatures of which we have never even heard, let alone given a name? And yet, as the work of Professor Gerardo Ceballos and his colleagues cited above clearly suggests, there are many unknown or obscure species that are part of the ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ that are driving the ‘biological annihilation’ that they have documented.

So What Can We Do?


Well, in theory, we can participate in official responses to this crisis. See ‘Previewing the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’.

But, as history demonstrates, we would be unwise to rely on responses generated by the elite and promulgated through its agents. Such efforts are inevitably designed to subvert effective outcomes, which they do with unrelenting monotony to which the record of uninterrupted destruction readily testifies.

Nevertheless, there is a great deal that we can do, personally, that will make a difference.

As is always the case with threats to biodiversity, the fundamental response to this crisis involves producing and consuming less. A lot less. ‘A difficult ask’ you might say. And more difficult than you probably realize, given the fundamentally dysfunctional emotional state that drives human over-consumption in materialist societies in the first place. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

But for those emotionally equipped for the challenge, you are welcome to join those who recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance by participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which outlines a ‘step by step’ strategy for achieving these ends. In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Of course, you can also campaign to do other things as well. Halting war and all military activity of any kind would save the biosphere enormous resources so effort put into that is worthwhile. If you would like to campaign, strategically, to halt war there is a list of strategic goals for doing so in Campaign Strategic Aims.

In fact, if you wish to focus on strategically resisting any of the four primary threats to human existence – nuclear war, the deployment of 5G, the collapse of biodiversity and/or the climate catastrophe – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, on that website too.

Equally fundamentally, if you would like to nurture children to become powerful individuals capable of acting strategically to prevent and respond to violence while able to critique society and elite propaganda, see ‘My Promise to Children’. A child who is emotionally whole does not need to use consumption as a substitute for giving up their unique identity as a survival strategy during childhood, as the ‘Love Denied’ article also explains.

As an aside, if you want a better fundamental understanding of how we reached this point, see ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

And if the options above seem too complicated, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge


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

1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food

6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices

7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
8. I will not buy rainforest timber
9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws

10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons

11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere

12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)

13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant

14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion


Halting the human rush to extinction through the destruction of biodiversity will require monumental effort. Raising awareness of this rapidly unfolding but still largely-hidden tragedy is, therefore, a high priority. But that is only the start. Enormous effort is required as well.

Of course, for those too terrified to contemplate the reality of ongoing destruction of Earth’s biodiversity and its implications for our own behaviour, denial or delusion are easy ‘psychological retreats’, particularly when our childhood survival largely depended on such tactics.

So it is going to take those who are powerful enough to deal with reality to make a stand.

We are on the cliff-edge of extinction. What will you do?

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.

Coronavirus – Buying a Single Version of the Truth

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By Iain Davis

Source: UK Column

The UK Column recently reported a £320 million media buy-in contract awarded to OMD Group, the brief for which was redacted from the publicly available information on the UK government’s Contract Finder website. This represents just 20% of the £1.6 billion in media buy-in contracts the government has awarded to Omnicom since 2018.

Headquartered in Manhattan New York, Omnicom is a global media, marketing and corporate communications holding company. It is currently considered the second largest advertising agency in the world, eclipsed only by WPP.

Omnicom is an advertising giant which specialises in public relations, lobbying, communications strategy, and the planning and purchasing of targeted advertising space. It builds comprehensive media campaigns for its extensive client list. Omnicom heads a North American-based network of prominent advertising and public relations agencies with a world wide collective reach.

Omnicom has been awarded a number of sizeable contracts by the UK government. These have included a December 2018 advertising campaign contract for the Cabinet Office, worth up to £184 million, a £119 million October 2020 media buy-in contract with a £230 million extension clause, and a £112 million media contract for the Ministry of Defence.

According to the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), media buying enables the government to:

buy media channels (for example, advertising space, partnerships, events and sponsorship) regionally, nationally and internationally across off and online channels.

Omnicom is the single supplier for these public relations campaigns and their UK OMD Group operations are run by Manning Gottlieb OMD (MG-OMD).

Manning Gottlieb OMD was dissolved in 2011 and struck off the companies register. It isn’t entirely clear, therefore, what the current legal status of MG-OMD is. Their website appears to be their only visible presence and it does not clarify their status. However the CCS has stated that MG-OMD is a division of OMD Group Ltd.

The CCS claim there are a number of advantages to be gained by having one US multinational corporation overseeing the UK government’s entire communication strategy, including robust pricing, neutrality and transparency. Putting aside Omnicom’s obvious monopoly, as mentioned above, when the UK Column looked at the client brief for the recent £320 million media buy-in, it was entirely redacted. We might question the CCS notion of transparency.

Who is the dominant partner in this arrangement?

Media buying is the process of acquiring space on media platforms (online and offline) to get a PR message out. In this case the UK government is the client and MG-OMD (Omnicom) is the sole supplier, often referred to as the Agent.

The supplier (Agent) is largely responsible for conducting market research and devising campaigns that will delver best value to the client. They are given a brief and then advise the client how they can achieve the client’s PR objectives.

As we have stated, it is not possible to examine the brief for the most recent contract. But the brief is available for the £112 million MoD contract. It raises some concerns.

Omnicom will agree the key performance indicators by which the efficacy of their campaigns are measured; they will evaluate and measure campaign performance and will be proactive and innovative; the Agent has the expertise to advise how to deliver all aspects of the service and it is MG-OMD (Omnicom) who deploy resources, implement the plan and collect and store the data generated by their PR campaigns on the client’s (MoD’s) behalf.

It seems that Omnicom, in the guise of MG-OMD, not only agrees what constitutes campaign efficacy, they plan, resource and operate the UK government’s communications strategy. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Omnicom is leading this process.

In 2018 the UK government awarded a four year £800 million contract to Omnicom’s OMD Group for media buy-ins. The CCS stated that the purpose of the contract was to:

Provide the best possible outcomes for communication campaigns … The successful media buying agency … will work in partnership … to deliver … fully integrated campaigns for government.

This contract is set to expire in May 2022.

Omnicom were running government PR campaigns when the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a global Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.

In an effort to maintain transparency, the signatories to the contract have been redacted as have the pricing criteria, Omnicom protected confidential commercial information and much of the Framework Agreement. However, the contract brief stated:

The Government Communication Plan is updated annually and CCS shall ensure that the Agency is notified when the plan is updated … The Agency will (if required) co-operate and work with agencies on any of the other Crown Commercial Service agreements. This includes other Framework Agencies … provision of specific single services and products including media planning and Campaign Solutions … The Agency shall manage and deliver fully integrated campaigns, either by delivering services in-house or through Sub-Contracts.

Omnicom was in place, ready and able to adapt to the UK government’s communication plans as they emerged.

Providing a “single version of the truth”

Omnicom was awarded the contract on 21st May 2018. On the 9th June (less than three weeks later), then UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the G7 had agreed to her Rapid Response Mechanism. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US and the EU agreed that they would assert a common narrative.

Omnicom responded almost immediately.

In early 2019 they launched their Learn Fast & Act Fast communications strategy. This was perfect for the Rapid Response Mechanism needs of their clients.

As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, Omnicom was able to help the UK government to “navigate the road to a new normal.” They said they had deepened their “rapid response capabilities” which enabled their client, the UK government, to make “more informed decisions while providing a single version of the truth.”

With operations in all of the G7 countries, and in both Russia and China, where they are discovering new opportunities for growth, Omnicom is well placed to deliver fully integrated campaigns. Whenever a rapid response is required to assert the common G7 narrative, Omnicom will provide the approved single version of the truth.

In September 2019, three months after the Rapid Response Mechanism announcement, the BBC convened the Trusted News Summit. To aid transparency, then BBC Director General Tony Hall said that the meeting was held behind closed doors. The BBC effectively formed a global media cartel with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook, the Financial Times, First Draft, Google, The Hindu, The Wall Street Journal, AFP, CBC/Radio-Canada, Microsoft, Reuters and Twitter.

Less than two weeks after the WHO declared the global pandemic, the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies (SAGE) issued some key advice. They outlined how our behaviour could be changed to ensure it was in line with the single version of the truth.

SPI-B (SAGE’s behaviour change experts) stated:

Guidance now needs to be reformulated to be behaviourally specific … A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened. The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging … Messaging needs to emphasise and explain the duty to protect others … Consideration should be given to use of social disapproval.

SPI-B recommended that the UK government should:

  1. Use the media (MSM) to increase sense of personal threat.
  2. Use the media (MSM) to increase sense of responsibility to others.
  3. Use social disapproval for failure to comply.

A free, plural and independent media could not be “used” to terrorise the population in this fashion. Only a controlled propaganda machine could possibly be instructed to do so. The Trusted News cartel was available. Omnicom, in the form of MG-OMD, was tasked with using it to do the hard hitting.

In doing so Omnicom has been supporting the mainstream media to stay afloat by pumping millions into their failed business models. The taxpayer funded government buy-ins directly finance the UK’s so called independent mainstream media. Like the banks, it seems they are too big to fail, and so once again the tax payer is being forced to bail them out.

OmniGOV = Fusion Doctrine

MG-OMD has given their propaganda operation the Orwellian sounding name of OmniGOV. They say they are very proud of it and recognise their responsibility as the “the single cross-HM Government agency partner.”

OmniGov were behind the snappy slogans used to change our behaviour throughout the pandemic. Phrases like “flatten the curve”, “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives” and “rule of six” all rely on a psychological mechanism called the rule of three. The £119 million Omnicom contract to modify our behaviour was in discussion long before the WHO made their pandemic declaration.

The hard hitting media campaigns designed to strike fear into the public imagination were OmniGOV public relations strategies. The now notorious “look into my eyes” campaign being another OmniGOV campaign.

“Look into my eyes” was pure propaganda. The UK government was the client and they wanted to increase the sense of personal threat and use social disapproval to compel compliance. OmniGOV created a campaign which presented a low mortality disease as some sort of plague. Covid-19 risks primarily affect older people and mortality distribution is indistinguishable from normal mortality.

OmniGOV ignored scientific and statistical evidence and presented a population scale threat that did not exist. They claimed, without evidence, that lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing could stop the spread of a viral respiratory illness. They misled the public and suggested that following the rules would save lives.

The insinuation was clearly that those who did not obey were guilty of killing people and that their behaviour was wrong. While appearing to advocate social conscience and shared community responsibility the product was baseless fear and social division — as requested by OmniGov’s client.

OmniGOV are also proud of the other projects that have been engaged with during the pandemic. For example, they have been working with the NHS and Snapchat to encouraging young people to think differently about donating their organs, introducing them to the concept of body-tracking Augmented Reality.

A Green New Deal

If we ignore the obvious risk of having a single US corporation in apparent control of the UK government’s communication strategy, and if we set aside concerns about the vast sums we have paid them to propagandise us, some may still feel, given the claimed seriousness of Covid-19, that there is nothing to be concerned about and OmniGOV has acted in good faith.

But for that to be the case, they also have to overlook that the OmniGov led response to Covid-19 is transitioning us into a new global financial and economic model which, at the most senior level, Omnicom has being trying to engineer for years.

Omnicom is not a disinterested third party merely seeking to meet their contractual obligations. They have a significant conflict of interest. The post-Covid-19 recovery they are helping to define is in their interest, not ours.

The Chairman and CEO of Omnicom is John D. Wren. His personal Omnicom bio reads:

Mr. Wren was part of the team that created Omnicom Group in 1986. Mr. Wren is a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum and is active in a number of philanthropic endeavors.

In 2012, Wren was a contributor and co-author of the World Economic Forum’s publication More with Less: Scaling Sustainable Consumption and Resource Efficiency. The report stated:

The need for rapid action to shift towards a resource-efficient economy is high … change is now urgently required at scale and greater pace than current initiatives, policies or strategies are likely to achieve … Business can catalyse scale through transforming interactions with citizens.. and playing an active role in shaping the policies and investments that define the rules of the game … The right rules of the game can catalyse citizen behaviour … and create new markets … The private sector needs to be involved in most phases of policy-making … such collaboration should be forged as a productive adjunct to more traditional inter-governmental arrangements.

Omnicom is undoubtedly delighted that the public private partnership they have forged with the UK, and many other governments, has allowed them to help define the rules of the game. Certainly they have been busy catalysing citizen behaviour and seem to be fully involved in most phases of policy making.

In 2020 the WEF’s International Business Council (IBC), with Wren as a member, released their Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism report.

Speaking about the need to shape the recovery, they noted that the global pandemic was a fantastic opportunity. They wrote:

We must mobilize all constituencies of our global society to work together and seize this historic opportunity … The principles of stakeholder capitalism, championed by the World Economic Forum … have never been so important. In 2017, the IBC spearheaded a commitment from more than 140 CEOs to align their corporate values and strategies with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) … The IBC has been leading the way in this initiative to deliver on the promise of stakeholder capitalism.

With the UK contingent of the Trusted News cartel being supported by OmniGOV, tax-avoidant members like Google can look forward to some tax payer subsidised profits. They will be free, alongside Omnicom, to spread the single version of the truth in line with the G7’s wishes.

This is stakeholder capitalism in operation. It has nothing to do with us; we merely pay for it. Nor will we be allowed to object or even question the asserted common narrative.

Dissent will not be tolerated

The UK Digital Secretary, Oliver Dowden, recently convened a meeting of G7 technology ministers who signed a ministerial declaration on “Internet safety principles.” The declaration was based upon the UK’s Online Harms white paper and, as such, there is no specific definition of “harm.” It simply means whatever the G7, the Trusted News cartel and other stakeholders like Omnicom want it to mean.

The G7 commit to “work together towards a trusted, values-driven digital ecosystem.” They declare:

Our collective recovery from COVID-19 must be rooted in a desire to build back better. Leaders … signed a declaration containing a series of shared principles on how to tackle the global challenge of online safety, including that online firms should have systems and processes in place to reduce illegal and harmful activity.

As the UK government is contractually obliged to update Omnicom on their communications strategy, and seeing as OmniGOV are their sole media campaign managers, the 2020/2021 strategy must have been agreed with Omnicom.

Given Omnicom’s long-standing commitment to creating sustainable market opportunities, they presumably welcome the fact that it is entirely based upon the rule of three with the “Build Back Better” slogan at its heart.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office Julie Lopez MP announced that control of government information campaigns will be centralised further. We can only speculate which stakeholder partner will win the 2022 contract bid.

In the meantime, practically everything we are told about Covid-19 and the allegedly inescapable global economic and monetary transformation forced upon us, will be fed to us by the Trusted News cartel, guided and financed by OmniGOV. Omnicom and their stakeholder partners have a bright future.

Western Outrage Over Belarus Force Landing Plane… How Dare You Copy Us!

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(Photo by Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP)

Washington runs its global air piracy with the full, silent complicity of European governments. If the Europeans expressed opposition to that global piracy then they might just have a bit of moral authority to comment on the Belarus incident.

By Finian Cunningham

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

There were volcanic eruptions of outrage and condemnation from American and European states after Belarus forced a commercial airliner to land in order to arrest a wanted opposition activist.

Western media headlines were dominated with expressions of “shock” and fury over what was labeled a “hijacking”, “air piracy” and an “act of state terrorism”.

European leaders who were meeting at a summit on Monday called for renewed sanctions on Belarus. U.S. President Joe Biden is being urged to raise the air incident with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin owing to Moscow’s friendly relations with Belarus, a former Soviet republic.

The Western reaction is hysterical and hypocritical. Admittedly, what took place in Belarusian airspace was irregular and possibly illegal. But the United States and European allies are in no position to sermonize about “hijacking” and “state terrorism”.

The Ryanair flight from Athens was heading for the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on Sunday. As it transited Belarusian airspace, the pilots were ordered by air traffic control to divert to Minsk. A suspected onboard bomb was cited. But that seems to have been a ploy. No device was found, and the plane departed from Minsk arriving in Vilnius six hours later.

It was opposition activist Roman Protasevich whom the Belarusian authorities wanted. He was taken off the plane in Minsk and into detention along with a female companion. Protasevich (26) has been a key player in organizing anti-government protests in Belarus since a disputed election in August 2020 which saw President Alexander Lukashenko re-elected. The Belarusian authorities claim that their country is being subjected to a “color revolution” orchestrated by the United States and European allies.

Protasevich was living in exile in Lithuania and Poland before the street protests took off. He set up an opposition media channel that has fomented demonstrations and has been accused of spreading false information damaging the Belarusian authorities. The U.S. government-funded propaganda service Radio Free Europe is associated with the Belarusian protests and several of its figures are based in the Baltic states and Poland which Minsk accuses of foreign interference in its internal affairs.

Belarus had requested those European states to hand over exile opposition figures on the basis of international arrest warrants. The exiles like Protasevich have been charged with inciting violence and could face lengthy jail sentences.

The refusal by European states to respond to Belarusian arrest warrants was no doubt what prompted Minsk to take the controversial step of forcing the airliner to land.

What should be really shocking, however, is the blatant double standards being applied by Western states. Belarus is vilified as the “last dictatorship in Europe” and the airline incident is described as an “unprecedented” violation of international aviation.

How short is the memory of the Americans and Europeans. In July 2013, the private jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales was hijacked by European states on the orders of Washington. Morales was flying back from an energy conference in Russia when France, Italy, Spain and Portugal suddenly closed off their airspace. The Americans suspected that the NSA/CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden was onboard Morales’ plane. The pilot was forced to land in Vienna where Austrian security agents searched the jet. Of course, Snowden was not on it and Morales was eventually allowed to continue his journey after several hours’ delay.

South American nations condemned the act of “state terrorism” and the violation of Bolivia’s sovereignty. It was a flagrant act of banditry perpetrated by the United States and its European minions. Then French President Francois Hollande offered a pathetic apology subsequently.

Another breach of aviation regulations that was met with silence from Washington and Europe was the forced landing of a Belarusian airliner in October 2016 by Ukraine. The plane had taken off from Kiev but was ordered to return under threat of fighter jets being scrambled. Onboard was Armenian journalist Armen Martirosyan who worked for Russian media critical of the Kiev regime. The journalist was briefly detained in Kiev before being allowed to travel on to Minsk. Somehow the American and European backers of the Ukrainian regime did not find that incident worthy of “outrage” and headlines screaming with condemnation.

If we are genuinely interested in condemning air piracy then the European governments should be far more concerned by the systematic abuse of their airspace by the American CIA and its “extraordinary rendition” program. Countless “terrorist suspects” unlawfully kidnapped by American military forces operating illegally all over the world have been transited covertly through European airports on their way to Guantanamo Bay or some black site for torture.

Washington runs its global air piracy with the full, silent complicity of European governments. Now perhaps if the Europeans expressed opposition to that global piracy then they might just have a bit of moral authority to comment on the Belarus incident. But the Europeans are craven in their support for American aviation hijacking and violations. So their selective protestations are null and void.

The Criminalization of Dissent

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By CJ Hopkins

Source: Consent Factory

One of the hallmarks of totalitarian systems is the criminalization of dissent. Not just the stigmatization of dissent or the demonization of dissent, but the formal criminalization of dissent, and any other type of opposition to the official ideology of the totalitarian system. Global capitalism has been inching its way toward this step for quite some time, and now, apparently, it is ready to take it.

Germany has been leading the way. For over a year, anyone questioning or protesting the “Covid emergency measures” or the official Covid-19 narrative has been demonized by the government and the media, and, sadly, but not completely unexpectedly, the majority of the German public. And now such dissent is officially “extremism.”

Yes, that’s right, in “New Normal” Germany, if you dissent from the official state ideology, you are now officially a dangerous “extremist.” The German Intelligence agency (the “BfV”) has even invented a new category of “extremists” in order to allow themselves to legally monitor anyone suspected of being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security,” like … you know, non-violently protesting, or speaking out against, or criticizing, or satirizing, the so-called “New Normal.”

Naturally, I’m a little worried, as I have engaged in most of these “extremist” activities. My thoughtcrimes are just sitting there on the Internet waiting to be scrutinized by the BfV. They’re probably Google-translating this column right now, compiling a list of all the people reading it, and their Facebook friends and Twitter followers, and professional associates, and family members, and anyone any of the aforementioned people have potentially met with, or casually mentioned, who might have engaged in similar thoughtcrimes.

You probably think I’m joking, don’t you? I’m not joking. Not even slightly. The Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (“Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz”) is actively monitoring anyone questioning or challenging the official “New Normal” ideology … the “Covid Deniers,” the “conspiracy theorists,” the “anti-vaxxers,” the dreaded “Querdenkers” (i.e., people who “think outside the box”), and anyone else they feel like monitoring who has refused to join the Covidian Cult. We’re now official enemies of the state, no different than any other “terrorists” … or, OK, technically, a little different.

As The New York Times reported last week (German Intelligence Puts Coronavirus Deniers Under Surveillance), “the danger from coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists does not fit the mold posed by the usual politically driven groups, including those on the far left and right, or by Islamic extremists.” Still, according to the German Interior Ministry, we diabolical “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “anti-vaxxers” have “targeted the state itself, its leaders, businesses, the press, and globalism,” and have “attacked police officers” and “defied civil authorities.”

Moreover, back in August of 2020, in a dress rehearsal for the “Storming of the Capitol,” “Covid-denying” insurrectionists “scaled the steps of Parliament” (i.e., the Reichstag). Naturally, The Times neglects to mention that this so-called “Storming of the Reichstag” was performed by a small sub-group of protesters to whom the German authorities had granted a permit to assemble (apart from the main demonstration, which was massive and completely peaceful) on the steps of the Reichstag, which the German police had, for some reason, left totally unguarded. In light of the background of the person the German authorities issued this “Steps-of-the-Reichstag” protest permit to — a known former-NPD functionary, in other words, a neo-Nazi — well, the whole thing seemed a bit questionable to me … but what do I know? I’m just a “conspiracy theorist.”

According to Al Jazeera, the German Interior Ministry explained that these querdenking “extremists encourage supporters to ignore official orders and challenge the state monopoly on the use of force.” Seriously, can you imagine anything more dangerous? Mindlessly following orders and complying with the state’s monopoly on the use of force are the very cornerstones of modern democracy … or some sort of political system, anyway.

But, see, there I go, again “being anti-democratic” and “delegitimizing the state,” not to mention “relativizing the Holocaust” (also a criminal offense in Germany) by comparing one totalitarian system to another, as I have done repeatedly on social media, and in a column I published in November of 2020, when the parliament passed the “Infection Protection Act,” which bears no comparison whatsoever to the “Enabling Act of 1933.”

This isn’t just a German story, of course. As I reported in a column in February, The “New Normal” War on Domestic Terror is a global war, and it’s just getting started. According to a Department of Homeland Security “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin” (and the “liberal” corporate-media propaganda machine), “democracy” remains under imminent threat from these “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” and other such “grievances fueled by false narratives” including “anger over Covid-19 restrictions.”

These Covid-denying “violent extremists” have apparently joined forces with the “white-supremacist, Russia-backed, Trump-loving “Putin-Nazis” that terrorized “democracy” for the past four years, and almost overthrew the US government by sauntering around inside the US Capitol Building without permission, scuffling with police, attacking furniture, and generally acting rude and unruly. No, they didn’t actually kill anyone, as the corporate media all reported they did, but trespassing in a government building and putting your feet up on politicians’ desks is pretty much exactly the same as “terrorism.”

Or whatever. It’s not like the truth actually matters, not when you are whipping up mass hysteria over imaginary “Russian assets,” “white-supremacist militias,” “Covid-denying extremists,” “anti-vax terrorists,” and “apocalyptic plagues.” When you’re rolling out a new official ideology — a pathologized-totalitarian ideology — and criminalizing all dissent, the point is not to appear to be factual. The point is just to terrorize the shit out of people.

As Hermann Goering famously explained regarding how to lead a country to war (and the principle holds true for any big transition, like the one we are experiencing currently):

“[T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That 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.”

Go back and read those quotes from the German Interior Ministry and the DHS again slowly. The message they are sending is unmistakeably clear. It might not seem all that new, but it is. Yes, they have been telling us “we are being attacked” and denouncing critics, protesters, and dissidents for twenty years (i.e., since the War on Terror was launched in 2001, and for the last four years in their War on Populism), but this is a whole new level of it … a fusion of official narratives and their respective official enemies into a singular, aggregate official narrative in which dissent will no longer be permitted.

Instead, it will be criminalized, or it will be pathologized.

Seriously, go back and read those quotes again. Global capitalist governments and their corporate media mouthpieces are telling us, in no uncertain terms, that “objection to their authority” will no longer be tolerated, nor will dissent from their official narratives. Such dissent will be deemed “dangerous” and above all “false.” It will not be engaged with or rationally debated. It will be erased from public view. There will be an inviolable, official “reality.” Any deviation from official “reality” or defiance of the “civil authorities” will be labelled “extremism,” and dealt with accordingly.

This is the essence of totalitarianism, the establishment of an inviolable official ideology and the criminalization of dissent. And that is what is happening, right now. A new official ideology is being established. Not a state ideology. A global ideology. The “New Normal” is that official ideology. Technically, it is an official post-ideology, an official “reality,” an axiomatic “fact,” which only “criminals” and “psychopaths” would deny.

I’ll be digging deeper into “New Normal” ideology and “pathologized totalitarianism” in my future columns, and … sorry, they probably won’t be very funny. For now I’ll leave you with two more quotes. The emphasis is mine, as ever.

Here’s California State Senator Richard Pan, author of an op-ed in the Washington Post: “Anti-vax extremism is akin to domestic terrorism,” quoted in the Los Angeles Times:

“These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to escalate violence against the body public … We must now summon the political will to demand that domestic terrorists face consequences for their words and actions. Our democracy and our lives depend on it … They’ve been building alliances with white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and [others] on the far right …”

And here’s Peter Hotez in Nature magazine:

“The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States. Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counter-offensive.”

We’ll be hearing a lot more rhetoric like this as this new, more totalitarian structure of global capitalism gradually develops … probably a good idea to listen carefully, and assume the New Normals mean exactly what they say.

Culture, Self and Law

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By Darren Allen

Source: Off-Guardian

This is an extract from Self and Unself, Darren Allen’s new ‘philosophy of all and everything’. Some of the terms herein — consciousness, self, ego, etc — may appear somewhat mysterious or abstract as they are explained in earlier sections of the book.

Self produces manifest culture, and then that culture shapes self. First, self is externalised as an expression — some kind of act or presentation. The expression appears as an object, a thing in the world, which is related to other objects, which are then reappropriated by man back into the self.

A band releases an album, a building company constructs a block of flats, an advertising agency puts up hoardings around town, an individual recounts a few anecdotes. The songs, the dwellings, the signs and the stories become part of a world which then shapes those within that world.

If self is unselfish this process ultimately begins “beyond” culture, with consciousness, to which the reappropriated modifications are subject to some kind of evaluation — I can reject the bullshit music, the ugly council estate, the advertising lies and the witless jibber-jabber.

If, however, self is fundamentally egoic, consciousness is given no freedom to operate, and the caddis case is formed almost entirely from without, walling up inner quality, and with it, genuine individuality.

First self speaks, then the words get set in stone, then the stone speaks to the self, writing its words back into the human heart, which speaks again.[1] If there is freedom to speak, and to be heard, and to walk away, this dialogue (or dialectic) is fruitful and serves man.

But, just as if one person screws another down and forces words into her head it is no longer a conversation, so if society (culture plus self, or selves) fills its schools and lines its streets with messages that all say the same thing, with no way of escape, then we are no longer individuals participating in a society, but stackable storage units for whomever or whatever is filling us with the things we are forced to feel, eat, look at, think about and energetically engage with; in short, build our selves with.

Culture was once built from nature, and, more intimately, from the unselfish origin of that which nature and culture have in common. This is why pre-civilised man considered nature and culture to be identical. The more culture came to be built from itself, the less it served the essence of man, until it came to compel man to accept its objective validity or suffer the consequences. Not in an overt tyrannical sense, but in the unalterable fact of its existence.

You can think away culture or pretend it doesn’t matter — ignore, say, the rules of language or pretend that they are dispensable, but you will be punished, mocked, excluded, brought back into line or killed. Likewise, if your social self is at odds with your individual self, then all kinds of problems are on their way. This does not mean that I must be something other than my social self, but that I am continually compelled to harmonise the two, and if I can’t — if I cannot be in the world who I feel I really am—then I will suffer in the world, as everyone who is honest does.

Ego keeps this suffering at bay by endlessly affirming its social self. As that most unreal and egoic of sources, the average Teevee-American has it, ‘I am a cop, it’s what I do…’ ‘I am a mother, it’s what I do…’ Or, alternatively, ‘This is my town, these are my people’.

Such a ‘self’ is not something which is invented, it is there, ‘inside me’. I look inside and see that I am the cop or mother that society takes me to be (or, for the fake outsider, that I wish society to take me to be). And I have no desire to be anything else. Not that there is anything wrong with inhabiting a role, nor with identifying with a community, nor that there aren’t always elements of self that do not fit into what is required by the social world; rather that ego hides from itself in its social representation.

Man may be psychologically and spiritually deformed by his activity within the egoic group or institution, he may work in a mechanical manner, in mediated environments, in order to produce or manage things which have no recognisable human meaning, and he may be forced to conceal his horror and disgust behind an upbeat mask of emotional management, but if there is no truth beyond a self-constructed from the group, he will defend his deformity, and consequent duplicity and misery, as truth.

All criticisms of the group are taken to be criticisms of the self — ‘I am mortally offended by your prejudice’ — and all criticisms of the self are taken to be prejudice against the group — ‘It’s not because you are repulsed by my moral deformity, it’s because you are racist/homophobic/anti-white/anti-American etc’.

The seamless unity of self and society in the egoic mind explains man’s total blindness to systemic constraints, and to the fundamental paradigms of the system. They are one with his ego, which is why, today for example, man spends so much time thinking and talking about voting, about reforming teaching, about having fairer laws, about creating cleaner motorways and so on and so forth; but not a word on how disabling democracy is, or education, or law, or transport, or the encompassing system, which is as invisible to him as water is to a fish, or anger is to a van driver.

*

The social self and its inner component, the personality, are maintained through communication, through constant confirmation (either explicit or implied) of who I am to others. When there is nobody to validate my personality, it dies, which is why solitude is so necessary to people with character — who need to periodically let their personality wither away in winter so that spring life might grow—and so terrifying to people without character, who must exist in a constant stress of forced blooming for the world.

Likewise, if a critical avenue of personality-confirming communication is permanently disrupted—if a lover leaves, or a mother dies, or self is forced to live in another country, cut off from its culture—the whole world crumbles. The egoic self, forged through the shared reality created with a partner, a family or a society, is ripped out.

This is why people stay in abusive relations and in abusive societies. Leaving the objective world of the known is to be plunged into chaos, a fate worse than death for ego, which may even choose death in preference.

Loss of self-reinforcing dialogue is not just a threat to the individual self, but to the social body, which provides all kinds of ritualised means by which the disrupted self is expected to deal with its disarray and return soothed and placated to the ‘normal’ world. A spouse torn apart by the death of a partner is fine, we can accept and sympathise; but if the grief is too noisy or outstays its welcome, then the social world will take measures to exclude it, quarantine the infection as it were, and remove conspicuous misery from the scene, so that production and consumption can smoothly proceed.[2]

For the same reason, madness, bizarre dreams and visions, psychotropic intoxication, spiritual extremism and all other exits from the system—including literally leaving it to gad off into the forest—are to be bricked up, or, if that’s not possible, managed by society, which deals with the void by projecting a screen of rationalisations onto it.[3] Your visionary dream was a message from Satan, or a repressed desire, or a random brain signal, your glorious experience of the fundamental oneness of creation was a message from Allah, or a crazed illusion, or confirmation of your status as our Mystic Cham.

All of these validations are gratefully taken up by the ego, which cannot bear to be cut off, alone (or alone with unself), and prefers to masochistically submit itself to The Worldview — or, on behalf of that world, to sadistically control others — rather than have to face any kind of reality beyond the boundaries of the social known.

Just as society is threatened by loss of face and loss of reason, so it must also deal with the danger of men and women rebelling against their internalised role; finding, for example, that being a nice obedient little wife, or the upwardly-mobile manager of a car-rental firm, is something of a burden, and that they’d rather be members of a non-stop erotic cabaret or hunting-and-gathering in Botswana.

It’s fine for a man to masturbate to high-budget porn, or for a woman to spend a month on safari, but to actually do something about their dreams, particularly the genuinely wild ones, is out of the question, and again, if substitutes are not functioning, the machinery of social meaning must step in to make sure such desires are suppressed or channelled into something ‘productive’, or at least that the dreamer is reminded that if they are not, he can expect to pay an horrendously high price to realise them.

*

The most potent and pervasive threat to selfish society is not in this or that criticism, loss or disruption, but in consciousness itself; which is everywhere and at all times. Consciousness must therefore be continually suppressed, and man’s relation to it, to ever-present unselfish quality, continually managed.

This is largely done, on a social level, through laws, legitimations, taboos and totems. These are the rules of society — the ‘walls’ of cliched thought, feeling, sensation and activity — which range from everyday non-verbal norms of behaviour (we greet in such and such a way, we react to bad news in such and such a way), through more explicit linguistic formulations of what is right and proper (the shared ethics of society, encoded in its wisdom, its maxims, its proverbs and even its jokes), through the art, myths and folk tales of a culture (by which we learn what is appropriate or tasteful, and what is to be condemned), through the explicit legal codes of a civilisation or of its various institutions, up to, finally, the various sacred justifications or secular theories which explain, in the most abstract sense, why things are as they are.

Although all these legitimations are constantly in conflict, they work as a whole to order men and women’s responses to their own conscious impulses and the context they find themselves in. In a selfless society, these ‘orders’ are soft guidelines (or, if you prefer, flexible human laws) — useful and necessary, but fluid, and at the service of the individual.

In an egoic society, the individual must serve the laws, legitimations and taboos. If he breaks them — if he smiles when he should frown, does what the gods say never to do, questions evolution, utters the magical ‘n’ word or sends a magnet in the post — he’ll be punished.

Note that men and women must be continually reminded of these justifications and continually enjoined to affirm their commitment to them, just as communities of belief must be continually reinforced and protected. Human beings are never far away from their original nature, and easily forget what has been programmed into them from without.

This is why ritualised laws of defilement, containment of outsiders (physical or ideological), and, above all, walling off experiences of unreality (dream, madness, apostatic transcendence, death and love; even taking a shit puts one outside the bounds of history and religion and must be legitimately dealt with) play such an important, ongoing role in all ideological systems.

Today, in the West, continual reinforcement takes the form of constant affirmations of the goodness and rightness of a highly invasive, technocratic, global market-economy and of constant reminders that without the various ideological totems required to engage in it—tolerance, respect, pacifistic acceptance, keeping two meters apart from one’s fellows and keeping your trousers on in the supermarket—everything would fall apart and we’d all drown in a flood of anarcho-fascism, or die of a medieval lurgy, or be overwhelmed by the Beast.

If it looks like these reminders aren’t taking hold, then their intensity is stepped up and penalties for contravention escalate and intensify until you get your mind right.

Laws, legitimations, taboos and totems, being self-justifying and self-created, are entirely causal. The notion of law is coterminous with the notion of causality; a non-causal law is a contradiction in terms. In reality there are, ultimately, no laws in nature, in consciousness or in human affairs, because there is, ultimately, no causality in them; the world today was no more caused by the world yesterday than the morning was caused by the night before.

The laws we find in history (e.g. Hegel’s or Marx’s), or in nature (e.g. Aristotle’s or Newton’s), or in society (e.g. Confucius’ or Comte’s), or in consciousness (e.g. Leibniz’s or Freud’s), are products of self, and therefore only applicable to self; occasionally useful, as facts and causes are, but with zero qualitative truth.

The truth of an individual or society moving through ‘time’, like that of a tree, like the meaning of an act or the essence of reality, are invisible to causal consideration, which can only perceive a tumult of interrelated bits and pieces, slices and sections, and shrink-wrapped events, never the whole; which means it can never give an appropriate response to the whole (except by accident) which becomes impossible as soon as laws are set, and [directly or indirectly] enforced.

This is why people without direct experience of reality, isolated from it by money, power, fame, technology or drugs, rely on laws and legitimations, and give them the same existential status as experience. When it comes to right or wrong, for example, they cannot trust their experience, because they do not have experience, and so they cleave to factual-casual calculation.

Property is inviolable, therefore stealing is wrong; a man steals an apple, therefore he must be punished, no matter how wealthy the supermarket he steals from. Context — the history of the supermarket, the functioning of the market, the state of society — and consciousness — compassion for the man, empathic understanding of his life — cannot be allowed into consideration. To do so would disrupt one’s entire life.

The brutal inflexibility of the law-abider is sometimes seen as a ‘lack of imagination’, but imagination is part of the abstract schema that the law-maker appeals to, the series of ideas codified as The Law; it is wrong to lie, it is wrong to kill, it is wrong to steal.

When these ideas harden into eternal truths — when, in the management phase of civilisation, they are codified or written down, in holy texts or in statute books, or in the consciences of men and women — they serve, and can only serve, that which is incapable of abandoning facticity and causality, the inherently dishonest, selfish and violent ego. This is why you can’t trust a law-abider.

Self and Unself is available in the usual places, and on Darren Allen’s bookshop.

Notes:-

[1] Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality.[back]

[2] Ernest Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.[back]

[3] Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy.[back]

Saturday Matinee: Killing Gaza

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Killing Gaza: Dan Cohen & Max Blumenthal’s documentary shows life under Israel’s bombs and siege

Filmed behind the walls of the Gaza Strip in the middle of Israel’s 2014 military assault, Killing Gaza presents a harrowing vision of siege and highlights a dispossessed people’s undying will to resist

By Max Blumenthal

Source: The Grayzone

In Killing Gaza, independent journalists Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen documented Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza and its devastating aftermath.

Yet this film is much more than a documentary about Palestinian resilience and suffering. It is a chilling visual document of war crimes committed by the Israeli military, featuring direct testimony and evidence from the survivors.

James North of Mondoweiss wrote, “If documentary films like ‘Killing Gaza’ appeared regularly on American television, public opinion would start turning against Israel overnight. The film, just released by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal, is inspiring and sickening.”

Vaccine hustlers can’t keep their story straight; evangelicals, black people, Trumpers; who’s “hesitating?”

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By Jon Rappoport

Source: Jon Rappoport’s Blog

First, let’s get this straight. The term “hesitancy” would apply to your pasty-faced nephew, who plays video games 19 hours a day, who’s dragged to the beach one summer afternoon, and is reluctant to stick his toe in the water as he stands near the last little gasp of foam breaking on the sand.

Most of the people who aren’t taking the COVID vaccine aren’t hesitant at all. They’re determined to reject the shot.

Most of the people who don’t want the COVID vaccine are quite sure they want to forego genetic damage, blood clots, and death.

So…who are the “hesitant” ones the vaccine hustlers are going after?

According to an old desiccated man who could play a mortician in an Abbott and Costello movie without a minute of rehearsal, and who happens to be the director of the largest medical research facility in the world—the US National Institutes of Health—Dr. Francis Collins…

According to Collins, the prime target of pro-vaccine propaganda is the dastardly evangelical/Trumper crowd.

Last week, Collins spoke with NBC’s Chuck (aging-wonder-boy) Todd, who made his original journalistic bones deftly pointing a wand at maps of voting districts on Election Night.

Collins intoned, in the manner of a funeral home director expressing condolences to customers over the accident that took the life of their beloved family member, who was driving while drunk and steered his car over a cliff:

“Particularly white evangelicals seem to be resistant to the idea that vaccines are something they want to take advantage of.”

“…certainly Republican men in particular seem to less likely to be interested in the vaccine.”

But wait. NIH head Collins—playing politics—forgot to mention that, according to a recent Harris poll, a whopping 42% of black Americans don’t want the vaccine.

Oops.

Well, no doubt “systemic racism” must be the reason black people are failing to see how glorious the vaccine is. They’re being kept in ignorance by white people.

Actually, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. A COVID Collaborative poll discovered black Americans have shockingly low levels of trust in the FDA (29%) and drug companies (19%). I’d say those numbers reveal acute intelligence, not ignorance, on medical issues.

Any group that distrusts the FDA at the rate of 71% is medically on the ball.

On the other hand, white Americans are the victims of systemic “safe and effective” lying by The New York Times, CNN, NBC, etc.

White Republicans are also being lied to by Donald Trump, Mr. Warp Speed, who is pushing the COVID vaccine like a lifeboat on the Titanic.

Trump is fronting for the COVID shot with a fervor matched only by Biden and Fauci and Bill Gates.

In an April 16 mass email to his followers (no doubt written by an aide), Trump, a major propaganda whore for Pharma, states:

Vaccine resistance is “deranged pseudo-science.”

“The federal pause on the J&J shot makes no sense. Why is the Biden White House letting insanely risk-averse bureaucrats run the show?”

It’s “sheer lunacy” for Biden “to delay millions of vaccinations and feed fears among the vax-resistant.”

“Indeed, this moronic move is a gift to the anti-vax movement.”

I spoke with a born-again Christian the other day. I asked him whether God had told him not to take the vaccine. He laughed. He said, “God told me to trust my research.”

“When did He say that?”

“I like to think it was just before I wrote to Trump telling him to wake up.”

We’re seeing hustlers on all points of the political spectrum pushing the COVID vaccine—the gene therapy that was designed, in clinical trials, to prevent nothing more than a cough, or chills and fever.

The gene therapy that has never been launched on the public before. The genetic injection that has only gained FDA certification for emergency use—a far lower and looser classification than full approval.

These criminal vaccine promoters deploy outrage and sob stories—whatever they think will play well—as they target various demographics.

Thousands of serious adverse effects from the shot are being reported. You can multiply those figures by 10 or 100 to gain a truer estimate of what is happening; and there are NO data on long-term effects.

You bet your ass people are “hesitant.” Medical authorities are telling them to accept an genetic injection that causes their cells to manufacture a protein they would never make under ordinary conditions.

Speaking of gene therapy, Dr. Francis Collins, the head of NIH, made his career on the back of discovering “genes associated with various diseases.”

In all the years of NIH’s existence, with a total budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars, show me ONE genetic cure for ANY disease across the board.

Just one.

I’m waiting.

It turns out that the history of genetics reveals the following: they can ALTER humans with it, but they can’t CURE humans.