Category Archives: Dystopia

Net Zero, the Digital Panopticon and the Future of Food 

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: Off-Guardian

The food transition, the energy transition, net-zero ideology, programmable central bank digital currencies, the censorship of free speech and clampdowns on protest. What’s it all about? To understand these processes, we need to first locate what is essentially a social and economic reset within the context of a collapsing financial system.

Writer Ted Reece notes that the general rate of profit has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s. By late 2019, many companies could not generate enough profit. Falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent.

Professor Fabio Vighi of Cardiff University has described how closing down the global economy in early 2020 under the guise of fighting a supposedly new and novel pathogen allowed the US Federal Reserve to flood collapsing financial markets (COVID relief) with freshly printed money without causing hyperinflation. Lockdowns curtailed economic activity, thereby removing demand for the newly printed money (credit) in the physical economy and preventing ‘contagion’.

According to investigative journalist Michael Byrant, €1.5 trillion was needed to deal with the crisis in Europe alone. The financial collapse staring European central bankers in the face came to a head in 2019. The appearance of a ‘novel virus’ provided a convenient cover story.

The European Central Bank agreed to a €1.31 trillion bailout of banks followed by the EU agreeing to a €750 billion recovery fund for European states and corporations. This package of long-term, ultra-cheap credit to hundreds of banks was sold to the public as a necessary programme to cushion the impact of the pandemic on businesses and workers.

In response to a collapsing neoliberalism, we are now seeing the rollout of an authoritarian great reset — an agenda that intends to reshape the economy and change how we live.

SHIFT TO AUTHORITARIANISM

The new economy is to be dominated by a handful of tech giants, global conglomerates and e-commerce platforms, and new markets will also be created through the financialisation of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the notion of protecting the environment.

In recent years, we have witnessed an overaccumulation of capital, and the creation of such markets will provide fresh investment opportunities (including dodgy carbon offsetting Ponzi schemes)  for the super-rich to park their wealth and prosper.

This great reset envisages a transformation of Western societies, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance. Being rolled out under the benign term of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the World Economic Forum (WEF) says the public will eventually ‘rent’ everything they require (remember the WEF video ‘you will own nothing and be happy’?): stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ and underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.

Climate alarmism and the mantra of sustainability are about promoting money-making schemes. But they also serve another purpose: social control.

Neoliberalism has run its course, resulting in the impoverishment of large sections of the population. But to dampen dissent and lower expectations, the levels of personal freedom we have been used to will not be tolerated. This means that the wider population will be subjected to the discipline of an emerging surveillance state.

To push back against any dissent, ordinary people are being told that they must sacrifice personal liberty in order to protect public health, societal security (those terrible Russians, Islamic extremists or that Sunak-designated bogeyman George Galloway) or the climate. Unlike in the old normal of neoliberalism, an ideological shift is occurring whereby personal freedoms are increasingly depicted as being dangerous because they run counter to the collective good.

The real reason for this ideological shift is to ensure that the masses get used to lower living standards and accept them. Consider, for instance, the Bank of England’s chief economist Huw Pill saying that people should ‘accept’ being poorer. And then there is Rob Kapito of the world’s biggest asset management firm BlackRock, who says that a “very entitled” generation must deal with scarcity for the first time in their lives.

At the same time, to muddy the waters, the message is that lower living standards are the result of the conflict in Ukraine and supply shocks that both the war and ‘the virus’ have caused.

The net-zero carbon emissions agenda will help legitimise lower living standards (reducing your carbon footprint) while reinforcing the notion that our rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. You will own nothing, not because the rich and their neoliberal agenda made you poor but because you will be instructed to stop being irresponsible and must act to protect the planet.

NET-ZERO AGENDA

But what of this shift towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and the plan to slash our carbon footprints? Is it even feasible or necessary?

Gordon Hughes, a former World Bank economist and current professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, says in a new report that current UK and European net-zero policies will likely lead to further economic ruin.

Apparently, the only viable way to raise the cash for sufficient new capital expenditure (on wind and solar infrastructure) would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10 per cent. Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war; even then, never for more than a decade.

But this agenda will also cause serious environmental degradation. So says Andrew Nikiforuk in the article The Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics, which outlines how the green techno-dream is vastly destructive.

He lists the devastating environmental impacts of an even more mineral-intensive system based on renewables and warns:

“The whole process of replacing a declining system with a more complex mining-based enterprise is now supposed to take place with a fragile banking system, dysfunctional democracies, broken supply chains, critical mineral shortages and hostile geopolitics.”

All of this assumes that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Not everyone agrees. In the article Global warming and the confrontation between the West and the rest of the world, journalist Thierry Meyssan argues that net zero is based on political ideology rather than science. But to state such things has become heresy in the Western countries and shouted down with accusations of ‘climate science denial’.

Regardless of such concerns, the march towards net zero continues, and key to this is the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals.

Today, almost every business or corporate report, website or brochure includes a multitude of references to ‘carbon footprints’, ‘sustainability’, ‘net zero’ or ‘climate neutrality’ and how a company or organisation intends to achieve its sustainability targets. Green profiling, green bonds and green investments go hand in hand with displaying ‘green’ credentials and ambitions wherever and whenever possible.

It seems anyone and everyone in business is planting their corporate flag on the summit of sustainability. Take Sainsbury’s, for instance. It is one of the ‘big six’ food retail supermarkets in the UK and has a vision for the future of food that it published in 2019.

Here’s a quote from it:

“Personalised Optimisation is a trend that could see people chipped and connected like never before. A significant step on from wearable tech used today, the advent of personal microchips and neural laces has the potential to see all of our genetic, health and situational data recorded, stored and analysed by algorithms which could work out exactly what we need to support us at a particular time in our life. Retailers, such as Sainsbury’s could play a critical role to support this, arranging delivery of the needed food within thirty minutes — perhaps by drone.”

Tracked, traced and chipped — for your own benefit. Corporations accessing all of our personal data, right down to our DNA. The report is littered with references to sustainability and the climate or environment, and it is difficult not to get the impression that it is written so as to leave the reader awestruck by the technological possibilities.

However, the promotion of a brave new world of technological innovation that has nothing to say about power — who determines policies that have led to massive inequalities, poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity and hunger and who is responsible for the degradation of the environment in the first place — is nothing new.

The essence of power is conveniently glossed over, not least because those behind the prevailing food regime are also shaping the techno-utopian fairytale where everyone lives happily ever after eating bugs and synthetic food while living in a digital panopticon.

FAKE GREEN

The type of ‘green’ agenda being pushed is a multi-trillion market opportunity for lining the pockets of rich investors and subsidy-sucking green infrastructure firms and also part of a strategy required to secure compliance required for the ‘new normal’.

It is, furthermore, a type of green that plans to cover much of the countryside with wind farms and solar panels with most farmers no longer farming. A recipe for food insecurity.

Those investing in the ‘green’ agenda care first and foremost about profit. The supremely influential BlackRock invests in the current food system that is responsible for polluted waterways, degraded soils, the displacement of smallholder farmers, a spiralling public health crisis, malnutrition and much more.

It also invests in healthcare — an industry that thrives on the illnesses and conditions created by eating the substandard food that the current system produces. Did Larry Fink, the top man at BlackRock, suddenly develop a conscience and become an environmentalist who cares about the planet and ordinary people? Of course not.

Any serious deliberations on the future of food would surely consider issues like food sovereignty, the role of agroecology and the strengthening of family farms — the backbone of current global food production.

The aforementioned article by Andrew Nikiforuk concludes that, if we are really serious about our impacts on the environment, we must scale back our needs and simplify society.

In terms of food, the solution rests on a low-input approach that strengthens rural communities and local markets and prioritises smallholder farms and small independent enterprises and retailers, localised democratic food systems and a concept of food sovereignty based on self-sufficiency, agroecological principles and regenerative agriculture.

It would involve facilitating the right to culturally appropriate food that is nutritionally dense due to diverse cropping patterns and free from toxic chemicals while ensuring local ownership and stewardship of common resources like land, water, soil and seeds.

That’s where genuine environmentalism and the future of food begins.

The US Economy Looks Good On Paper – Here’s Why It’s Actually A Disaster In Progress

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By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.us

One of my favorite false narratives floating around corporate media platforms has been the argument that the American people “just don’t seem to understand how good the economy really is right now.” If only they would look at the stats, they would realize that we are in the middle of a financial renaissance, right? It must be that people have been brainwashed by negative press from conservative sources…

I have to laugh at this claim because it’s a very common one throughout history – It’s an assertion made by almost every single political regime right before a major collapse. These people always say the same things, and when you study economics as long as I have you can’t help but throw up your hands and marvel at their dedication to the propaganda.

One example that comes to mind immediately is the delusional optimism of the “roaring” 1920s and the lead up to the Great Depression. At the time around 60% of the US population was living in poverty conditions (according to the metrics of the decade) earning less than $2000 a year. However, in the years after WWI ravaged Europe, America’s economic power was considered unrivaled.

The 1920s was an era of mass production and rampant consumerism but it was all fueled by easy access to debt, a condition which had not really existed before in America. It was this illusion of prosperity created by the unchecked application of credit that eventually led to the massive stock market bubble and the crash of 1929. This implosion, along with the Federal Reserve’s policy of raising interest rates into economic weakness, created a black hole in the US financial system for over a decade.

There are two primary tools that various failing regimes will always use to distort the true conditions of the economy: Debt and inflation. In the case of America today, we are experiencing BOTH problems simultaneously and this has made certain economic indicators appear healthy when they are, in fact, highly unstable. The average American knows this is the case because they see the effects daily. They see the damage to their wallets, to their buying power, in the jobs market and in their quality of life. This is why public faith in the economy has been stuck in the dregs since 2021.

The establishment can shove out-of-context stats in people’s faces, but they can’t force the populace to see a recovery that simply does not exist. Let’s go through a short list of the most faulty indicators and the real reasons why the fiscal picture is not as rosy as the media would like us to believe…

The “Miracle” Labor Market Recovery

In the case of the US labor market, we have a clear example of distortion through inflation. The $8 trillion+ dropped on the economy in the first 18 months of the pandemic response sent the system over the edge into stagflation land. Helicopter money has a habit of doing two things very well: Blowing up a bubble in stock markets and blowing up a bubble in retail. Hence, the massive rush by Americans to go out and buy, followed by the sudden labor shortage and the race to hire (mostly for low wage part-time jobs).

The problem with this “miracle” is that inflation leads to price explosions, which we have already experienced. The average American is spending around 30% more for goods, services and housing compared to what they were spending in 2020. This is what happens when you have too much fiat money chasing too few goods and limited production.

The jobs market looks great on paper, but the majority of jobs generated in the past few years are jobs that returned after the covid lockdowns ended (the same lockdowns Democrats tried to keep in place perpetually). The rest are jobs created through monetary stimulus, and then there is the issue of “immigrant jobs” and data that is revised to the negative months later.  I suspect we won’t ever hear the real stats unless Trump enters office in 2025.  Then the media discussion will focus intently on how terrible the labor market really is.

Part time low wage service sector jobs are not going to keep the country rolling for very long in a stagflation environment. The question is, what happens now that the stimulus punch bowl has been removed?

Just as we witnessed in the 1920s, Americans have turned to debt to make up for higher prices and stagnant wages by maxing out their credit cards to historic levels. With the central bank keeping interest rates high, the credit safety net will soon falter. This condition also goes for businesses; businesses that will soon jump headlong into mass layoffs when they realize the party is over.  It happened during the Great Depression and it will happen again today.

Stock Market Bonanza

We saw cracks in in the armor of the financial structure in 2023 with the spring banking crisis, and without the abrupt Federal Reserve backstop many more small and medium banks would have dropped dead. The weakness of US banks is offset by the relative strength of the US dollar, which lures in foreign investors hoping to protect their wealth using dollar denominated assets.

But something is amiss. Gold and Bitcoin have rocketed higher along with stocks and the dollar. This is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen. Gold and BC are supposed to be hedges against a weak dollar and weak equities, right? If global faith in the dollar and in stocks is so high, why are investors diving into protective assets like gold?

Again, as noted above, inflation distorts everything. Tens of trillions of extra dollars printed by the Fed are floating around and it’s no surprise that much of that cash is flooding into the stock market which simply pushes higher right along with prices on the shelf. But, gold and BC are telling us a more nuanced story about what’s really happening.

Right now, the US government is adding around $1 Trillion every 100 days to the national debt as the Fed holds rates higher to fight inflation.  Higher interest means exponential debt conditions, and this debt is going to crush America’s financial standing for global investors who will eventually ask HOW the US is going to handle that growing millstone? As I predicted years ago, the Fed has created a perfect Catch-22 scenario in which the US must either return to rampant inflation, or, face a debt breakdown. In either case, US dollar denominated assets will lose their appeal and stock markets will ultimately plummet.

Beyond this reality, stocks are not a leading indicator of anything, let alone the stability of the financial system. Stocks are a trailing indicator; they crash well after all the other warning signals have made it obvious that something is wrong. Average Americans, for good reason, do not care what stock markets have to say.

Healthy GDP Is A Complete Farce

Beyond the stock market, GDP is the most common out-of-context stat used by governments to convince the citizenry that all is well. It is yet another stat that is entirely manipulated by inflation. It is also manipulated by the way in which modern governments define “production and market value.”

GDP is primarily driven by spending. Meaning, the higher inflation goes, the higher prices go, and the higher GDP climbs (to a point). Eventually prices go too high, credit cards tap out and spending ceases. But, for a short time inflation makes GDP (as well as retail) look good.

Another factor that creates a bubble is the reality that government spending is actually included in the calculation of GDP. That’s right, every dollar of your tax money that the government wastes helps the establishment by propping up GDP numbers. This is why government spending increases will never stop – It’s too valuable for them to spend as a way to make the economy appear healthier than it is.

The Real Economy Is Eclipsing The Fake Economy

The bottom line is that Americans used to be able to ignore the warning signs because their bank accounts were not being directly affected. This is over. Now, every person in the country is dealing with a massive decline in buying power and higher prices across the board in all assets. Even the wealthy are seeing a compression to their profits and many are struggling to keep their businesses in the black.

The unfortunate truth is that the elections of 2024 will probably be the turning point at which the whole edifice comes tumbling down. Even if the public votes for change, the system is already broken and cannot be repaired without a complete overhaul. We have consistently avoided taking our medicine and our weaknesses have only accumulated.

People have lost faith in the economy because they have not faced this kind of uncertainty since the 1930s. Even the stagflation crisis of the 1970s will likely pale in comparison to what is about to happen. On the bright side, at least a large number of Americans are aware of the threat, as opposed to the 1920s when the vast majority of people were utterly conned by the government, the banks and the media into thinking all was well. Knowing is the first step to preparing.

The Shameful Way that the American Empire Is Ending

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: The Duran

The American empire — which is now the largest empire in history — is ending not only with defeats on every front, but with the historically profound stigma of being one of the two perpetrators (the other and more-publicized one being Israel) of the largest ethnic-cleansing operation (to remove all of the 2.3 million Gazans from Gaza) ever since Hitler’s ethnic-cleansing campaign ended.

That one ended after the Soviet Union defeated the Third Reich (or 3rd German empire) at the battle of Kursk on 23 August 1943 and so made inevitable the defeat of Hitler, and the end of his Third Reich, and the end of their organized extermination program against Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘non-Aryans’ — as well as made inevitable, from that date forward, the ultimate defeat of the Japanese empire, which (from that date forward) was only a matter of when, and no longer of whether, Japan would surrender.

The atomic bombings in August 1945 didn’t determine that victory over Japan; Hitler’s defeat at Kursk in August 1943 did. But, of course, the U.S. regime and its colonies allege that the U.S. and UK defeated Germany, though only Soviet troops entered Berlin and drove Hitler to commit suicide on 30 April 1945, thus conquering Germany. Because FDR had died just 18 days prior to that, and his successor Truman was an unknown and Stalin wanted his relations with Truman to be like his relations with FDR had been — mutually beneficial — Stalin generously allowed U.S., UK, and French, forces in as-if they all had done it, defeated Germany, so as to continue the anti-nazi alliance into the post-WW2 era. That turned out to have been a catastrophic error on Stalin’s part, simply a gamble that turned out to have been wrong.

The U.S. regime now does mainly proxy wars, because its only military victory (with its own troops) in the 130+ military invasions it has carried out ever since WW2, was the small one, 46 years later, and 33 years ago, in America’s 1991 battle for Kuwait; and America’s biggest-ever proxy war is the one that’s been going on ever since 2014 to defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine using mainly Ukrainian troops who are being supplied by the U.S. and its colonies, with weapons, intelligence, and training. And this proxy war, like all of America’s other ones, is now almost certainly going down to defeat, after the expenditures of over 600,000 dead already, and perhaps over a trillion dollars of taxpayer expenses ultimately, all in order for the U.S. Government to keep Ukraine, which it grabbed control over in a bloody and barbaric February 2014 coup that it and its allies called a ‘democratic revolution’ though it actually terminated Ukraine’s democracy and turned that nation into the U.S. regime’s springboard into the U.S. empire’s planned ultimate conquest of Russia.

The war in Ukraine culminates the U.S. regime’s plan ever since Russia ended the Cold War on its side in 1991 while America secretly continued its side of that war by expanding NATO right up to Russia’s borders, and especially into Ukraine itself because Ukraine is closer to The Kremlin than any other country is, barely 300 miles away, ideal for a blitz five-minute U.S. missile decapitation of Russia’s central command.

The U.S. regime started privately telling its stooges, first West Germany’s Helmut Kohl on 24 February 1990, but then later Francois Mitterrand and others, that though the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact mirror to America’s anti-Russian NATO military alliance — and the entire Russian side of the Cold War — all would soon end, the Cold War would secretly continue on the U.S.-and-allied side, until Russia itself will be conquered. Consequently, starting on 24 February 1990, America’s stooge regimes began to understand that though the prior excuse for the Cold War on America’s side was ‘anti-communism’, the reality was and is that on the American side, that war’s objective is — by whatever means (subversion, coup, proxy war, sanctions, or otherwise) — to win control over the entire world, and that Russia is America’s main target to grab control over, so as to culminate its empire.

Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Presidency until his death on 12 April 1945 just before WW2 ended, there was no Cold War, despite some U.S. officials, such as J. Edgar Hoover, who wanted it. President Roosevelt had no qualms about accepting the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as an ally so long as both countries would be committed to defeating Hitler: for FDR, no country has any right to interfere in any other country’s domestic affairs; and, so, the Soviet Union’s domestic affairs were irrelevant to U.S.-Soviet relations. U.S. Senator Harry Truman disagreed with FDR about that; and In 1944, the Democratic Party’s megadonors required President Roosevelt to accept Truman as his running-mate for Vice President. That decision by the Democratic Party’s megadonors produced the Cold War when President Truman, upon the advice from both his personal hero General Dwight Eisenhower and Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, decided on 25 July 1945 that America must conquer — no longer cooperate with — the Soviet Union. Within just two years, FDR’s entire Cabinet was replaced. Truman was the ultimate anti-FDR.

Today’s America is the one that Truman and his hero Eisenhower created, not the one that FDR had carefully started to plan in August 1941 until he died on 12 April 1945. Truman reversed FDR’s foreign policies. In order to understand how this happened, the reality of WW2 has to be truthfully understood.   

The most masterful summary of how WW2 ended is the 12 May 2015 article by Ronnie Kasrils, his “Op-Ed: Lest we forget the truth about World War Two”, which is 100% truthful and covers all of the historically important points, so that the reader can understand how much the U.S. regime and its post-WW2 colonies (or ‘allies’) lie about that history in order to ‘justify’ their decision (which was made on 25 July 1945) by U.S. President Truman to now go forward by creating and expanding ultimately throughout the world an American empire, the first target of which would be to conquer Russia — the very same country that had actually won WW2 for the Allies. Agents for the U.S. regime lie profusely about history in order to deceive the public that the U.S. and/or Britain was/were mainly responsible for the defeat of Hitler and the Allied victory in WW 2. We’re inundated with that propaganda.

So: the American empire, which began with a plethora of lies, is now ending with a campaign against the Gazans that might ultimately become remembered as being the second-worst genocide in history — #1 being, of course, the Holocaust by Hitler and his German Third Empire (which was carried out not by bombings and a siege like the Israel-U.S. one now is, but instead by search-and-destroy operations against its ‘racial’ targets, plus industrialized mass-murdering “concentration camps”). Though the means of carrying out the genocide aren’t identical, both of those campaigns rightfully earn the world’s contempt and disgust.

Yet the U.S. Government is a full partner with Israel’s Government in carrying out this ethnic cleansing or possibly even full genocide of the Gazans. Biden fully supports Israel’s ethnic cleansing or even genocide against the Gazans, though he speaks against it in order to fool enough voters so as to win a second term. Furthermore, the Washington Post reported on 18 March 2024 that ever since 27 October 2023, Biden has known that Israel’s saying they intending to kill only Hamas is a lie and that they’re bombing and sieging Gaza so as to exterminate or otherwise get rid of all of its residents. So, if Netanyahu gets convicted and hung for this genocide, then Biden ought to get hung too, because he is the person who authorizes all of the weapons, ammunition and guidance, in order for Israel to do it.

And there also are other ways in which the U.S. regime is shamefully behaving while its previously ever-expanding empire is starting to fall apart.

The only country that regularly and always votes in the U.N. General Assembly against Resolutions that condemn racism and bigotry in all of its forms including nazism and Holocaust-denial, is the United States, largely because ever since 1945 the U.S. has brought into this country so many elite Nazis and gave them sanctuary and hid their atrocities from the public. But in recent years, one of the main excuses it gives is that Ukraine is voting against it and so America must do likewise in order to reaffirm its support for Ukraine. (In fact, America’s U.N. Representative that year said the reason for America’s refusing to vote against nazism was America’s opposition to Russia and support for Ukraine. India’s Representative said that the fact that Russia had introduced the Resolution was irrelevant to whether it should be adopted.) The only other country that has often been joining with America’s and Ukraine’s pro-nazi votes at the U.N. has been Canada, which (like America) had brought in and provided sanctuary for many Ukrainian Nazis after WW II. In fact, as I headlined on 24 September 2023, “Canada’s Parliament Gives Standing Ovation to 98-Year-Old Nazi SS Ukrainian”. But, actually, America’s anti-Russian military alliance NATO is simply riddled with nazis. Lies cover this up. And America’s lie-based invasions of Iraq in 2003 and of Libya in 2011 and of Syria ever since 2013, are all nazistic and lie-based, too; so, the evidence that the post-WW-II U.S. Government is nazi is clear and undeniable. All of this comes from Truman, under the advice from both Eisenhower and Churchill.

Anyone who would call this a democracy would have to be either blind or crazy. The only way that the U.S. regime can keep it going is on the basis of lies. And now the empire that is based upon those lies is starting to fall apart. The key event will be when the first NATO member Government will either block a NATO action or else quit the NATO alliance. Or else, if neither of those happens, then the key event will be what will happen because neither of them did happen: WW3. Either the empire will collapse, or else the entire world will self-destruct as a result of the U.S. Government’s actions.

The fundamental crisis of the West

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By Veniamin Popov

Source: New Eastern Outlook

A growing number of media outlets in America and in Europe have recently reached the conclusion that “rules-based international order” long espoused by the West has failed.

In essence, this means that the position of the Western powers in the world has weakened: they have failed to destroy the Russian economy by imposing sanctions, and the war in Gaza has demonstrated that the US and the Western European countries are far from all-powerful.

The media frequently claim that Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine has changed the international situation, in that it has made clear the limited capabilities of the West and deepened the rift between the West and the Global South.

The Ukrainian conflict and the war in Gaza have demonstrated to the whole world, and above all to ordinary people in the West, that their ruling elites are unable to grasp this reality, lack strategic vision and are generally guided by their own personal interests.

The ruling elites in the West have demonized Russia in every possible way and have come to believe the myth that Russia can be strategically defeated. This is a huge miscalculation and this conclusion will become obvious to all in the very near future. The present author is reminded of the junker Grushnitsky, in Lermontov’s “A Hero of Our Time,” a fantasist who plays the role of an unworldly romantic for so long that he begins to believe it himself.

As Vladimir Putin has aptly put it, “Russophobia, like any other ideology based on racism, national superiority and exclusivity, blinds the person who subscribes to it and deprives them of reason.”

The state of the “rules-based international order” is becoming increasingly alarming for many Western powers. According to an article published in the weekly journal the Economist on February 15, so-called national conservatives, who “suspect free markets of being rigged by the elites,” are gaining in influence in the US and Europe. They are also hostile to migration, despise pluralism, especially multiculturalism, and are obsessed with dismantling institutions they see as tainted by globalism.

Despite their differences, these national conservatives are united by their hostility to shared enemies, including migrants, especially Muslims, globalists and all their perceived enablers. Donald Trump is leading in the polls in America. The far right is expected to make gains in the European Parliament elections in June. In Germany last December, support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AFD) reached a record high of 23 percent, according to polls. Anticipating Rishi Sunak’s loss in the elections, the right wing of Britain’s Conservative Party are hoping to grab power in the party. In 2027, Marine Le Pen may well become president of France.

According to the Economist, the current authorities need to take people’s legitimate concerns seriously: the public in many Western countries see illegal migration as a source of unrest and a drain on the public purse. They worry that their children will grow up poorer than they are. They are concerned about losing their jobs to new technologies. They believe that institutions such as universities and the press have been hijacked by hostile, illiberal, left-wing elites. They view the globalists who have flourished over the last few decades as members of a self-serving, arrogant caste.

These complaints have real merit and mocking them only confirms how detached from reality the elites have become.

The position of Washington and its hangers-on in Europe in relation to Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza has added significantly to the public’s distrust of the West’s ruling elites. By openly supporting the actions of the Netanyahu government, the governments of the Western powers are convincing everyone, including their own populations, of their own policy of double standards: only the lives of Israelis are valued and massacres of Arabs are allowed.

As the Saudi newspaper Arab News reports, Arab and Muslim Americans, and 60 percent of all other Americans, have for months wanted President Joe Biden to pressure Israel into agreeing to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The White House has, in effect, ignored these pleas.

In response to this stance, Muslim Americans in nine potentially wavering states met in Dearborn, Michigan, in December 2023 under the slogan “Abandon Biden, Truce Now.” They have vowed not to vote for Biden in the presidential election unless he changes the policies that are enabling Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip possible.

The US journal Foreign Affairs, in an article entitled “Gaza and the End of the Rules-Based Order” quotes one G7 diplomat: “We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South. All the work we did with the Global South (around Ukraine) was lost. … Forget the rules, forget the world order. They will never listen to us again.”

The economic recession, which has become a permanent situation for many European states, also provides little room for optimism. In the US, the high inflation and huge government debt are expected to worsen this spring and summer, according to some analysts. The most closely watched indicator of opinions about the economy, a monthly poll conducted by the University of Michigan, has reported that public confidence is at an exceptionally low ebb, about the same level as during the 2007-2009 global financial crisis.

With the presidential election just nine months away, this gloomy mood has become a serious problem for the Democrats. President Joe Biden is already facing a host of challenges to his bid for a second term, starting with concerns about his fitness for office as an 80-year-old man. Another major obstacle to his election bid is the opinion polls that give him low marks for his management of the economy.

The current economic problems are exacerbated by growing inequality, the worsening drug crisis and the proliferation of firearms. The promotion of non-traditional sexual orientation and the encouragement of same-sex couples have cause legitimate outrage to many conservative religious people.

In the European Union between June 6 and 9, more than 400 million voters in 27 countries will elect 720 MEPs to represent them for the next five years. Observers predict an increase in the influence of right-wing conservative parties. One major reason for the heightened interest in the upcoming election is the unprecedented corruption scandal that erupted in the European Parliament in December 2022, when the vice president and several other officials, including three MEPs, were accused of taking bribes. The investigation is ongoing, but it has already revealed instances of illegal activities and immoral behavior on the part of MEPs. Conservatives accuse the EU of being an opaque bureaucracy with vastly overpaid staff, which is disconnected from the reality experienced by ordinary residents of the EU member states, and which spends its vast budgets – totaling hundreds of trillions of euros – not for the common good but for the personal whims and fantasies of its leaders. Inflation and the cost of living are still rising in many European nations, while many blame EU bureaucrats in Brussels for policies such as the Green Deal that have made life more expensive for Europeans by raising the prices of fuel, food and most other essentials. In addition, anti-Russian sanctions, which have led to the rejection of cheap energy from Russia by a number of European countries, have had a negative impact on the well-being of ordinary citizens.

Over the past few weeks, thousands of farmers from across Europe, particularly from Germany, France, Poland, Spain, and Belgium, have taken to the streets to protest against additional spending on Ukraine and against new EU environmental policies that make farming unviable.

The short-sighted policy of the Western elites with regard to the crises in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip is leading to a loss of confidence in the ruling authorities on the part of ordinary citizens. It is easy to imagine their reaction in the event of any further military setbacks by Ukraine or any worsening of the situation within the country.

The position taken by many developing nations with regard to the current international processes is highly symptomatic. In an editorial for the Arabic international newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, Editor-in-Chief Grhassan Charbel writes: “Zelensky’s position reminded me of remarks by the late Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, that ‘the one who is covered by the Americans is naked.’ The same phrase could be said by Putin to Zelensky.

Putin has the right to be sarcastic. The leaders of the West did not accept that he could not lose… That he went to Ukraine to punish the entire West and to launch a major coup against a world that was born from the collapse of the (Berlin) Wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union.”

It is no coincidence that the ruling circles of Western Europe are currently not hiding their anxiety about what they refer to as the “threat posed by Trump and Russia.”

In fact, everything we see happening testifies to the inadequacy of the current ruling elites in the West, who are unable to reasonably and rationally assess the emerging situation, guided as they are solely by short-term personal interests.

It is very possible that they will be swept away by a wave of new unexpected events, and new leaders will come to power.

It is therefore highly likely that 2024 will be a turning point in many respects.

Technocensorship: When Corporations Serve As a Front for Government Censors

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By John & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. We must, therefore, be on our guard against extremists who urge us to adopt police state measures. Such persons advocate breaking down the guarantees of the Bill of Rights in order to get at the communists. They forget that if the Bill of Rights were to be broken down, all groups, even the most conservative, would be in danger from the arbitrary power of government.”—Harry S. Truman, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States (August 8, 1950)

Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the government has become an expert at disregarding constitutional roadblocks intended to protect the rights of the citizenry.

When these end-runs don’t suffice, the government hides behind the covert, clandestine, classified language of national security; or obfuscates, complicates, stymies, and bamboozles; or creates manufactured diversions to keep the citizenry in the dark; or works through private third parties not traditionally bound by the Constitution.

This last tactic is increasingly how the government gets away with butchering our freedoms, by having its corporate partners serve as a front for its nefarious deeds.

This is how the police state has managed to carry out an illegal secret dragnet surveillance program on the American people over the course of multiple presidential administrations.

Relying on a set of privacy loopholes, the White House (under Presidents Obama, Trump and now Biden) has been sidestepping the Fourth Amendment by paying AT&T to allow federal, state, and local law enforcement to access—without a warrant—the phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime.

The government used a similar playbook to get around the First Amendment, packaged as an effort to control the spread of speculative or false information in the name of national security.

As the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed, the Biden administration worked in tandem with social media companies to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation.

Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

Restricting access to social media has become a popular means of internet censorship.

Dare to voice politically incorrect views in anything louder than a whisper on social media and you might find yourself suspended on Twitter, shut out of Facebook, and banned across various social media platforms. This authoritarian intolerance masquerading as tolerance, civility and love is what comedian George Carlin referred to as “fascism pretending to be manners.”

Social media censorship runs the gamut from content blocking, throttling, and filtering to lockouts, shutdowns, shadow banning and de-platforming.

In fact, these tactics are at the heart of several critical cases before the U.S. Supreme Court over who gets to control, regulate or remove what content is shared on the internet: the individual, corporate censors or the government.

Yet what those who typically champion the right of corporations to be free from government meddling get wrong about these cases is that there can be no free speech when corporations such as Facebook, Google or YouTube become a front for—or extensions of—government censors.

This is the very definition of technocensorship.

On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.

In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technocensorship is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal: to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.

This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.

This authoritarian impulse to censor and silence “dangerous” speech masquerading as tolerance, civility and a concern for safety (what comedian George Carlin referred to as “fascism pretending to be manners”) is the end result of a politically correct culture that has become radicalized, institutionalized and tyrannical.

You see, the government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

As Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes write for The Wall Street Journal: “The First Amendment prohibits the government from ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies.”

It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court can see itself clear to recognizing that censorship by social media companies acting at the behest of the government runs afoul of the First Amendment.

Bottom line: either we believe in free speech or we don’t.

The answer to the political, legal and moral challenges of our day should always be more speech, not less.

Any individual or group—prominent or not—who is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

To ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers the government and its corporate operatives are allowed to claim now will eventually be used against the populace at large.

These social shunning tactics borrow heavily from the mind control tactics used by authoritarian cults as a means of controlling its members. As Dr. Steven Hassan writes in Psychology Today: “By ordering members to be cut off, they can no longer participate. Information and sharing of thoughts, feelings, and experiences are stifled. Thought-stopping and use of loaded terms keep a person constrained into a black-and-white, all-or-nothing world. This controls members through fear and guilt.”

This mind control can take many forms, but the end result is an enslaved, compliant populace incapable of challenging tyranny.

As Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry, one that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

The problem is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us, and we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government and its corporate partners to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean. The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.

In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears.

As Nat Hentoff, that inveterate champion of the First Amendment, once observed, “The quintessential difference between a free nation, as we profess to be, and a totalitarian state, is that here everyone, including a foe of democracy, has the right to speak his mind.”

What this means is championing the free speech rights of those with whom we might disagree.

That’s why James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely. He understood that freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society.

The government has no tolerance for freedom or free speech of any kind that challenges its chokehold on power.

At some point or another, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “disinformation,” “hate” or “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or speech transgression or other.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.

Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

Ultimately, the government’s war on free speech—and that’s exactly what it is—is a war that is driven by a government fearful of its people.

As President John F. Kennedy observed, “[A] nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

The State of Our Nation No One’s Talking About: Tyranny Is Rising as Freedom Falls

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By John & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Day by day, tyranny is rising as freedom falls.

The U.S. military is being used to patrol subway stations and police the U.S.-Mexico border, supposedly in the name of national security.

The financial sector is being used to carry out broad surveillance of Americans’ private financial data, while the entertainment sector is being tapped to inform on video game enthusiasts with a penchant for violent, potentially extremist content, all in an alleged effort to uncover individuals subscribing to anti-government sentiments

Public and private venues are being equipped with sophisticated surveillance technologies, including biometric and facial recognition software, to track Americans wherever they go and whatever they do. Space satellites with powerful overhead surveillance cameras will render privacy null and void.

This is the state of our nation that no is talking about—not the politicians, not the courts, and not Congress: the government’s power grabs are growing bolder, while the rights of the citizenry continue to be trampled underfoot.

Hitler is hiding in the shadows, while the citizenry—the only ones powerful enough to stem the authoritarian tide that threatens to lay siege to our constitutional republic—remain easily distracted and conveniently diverted by political theatrics and news cycles that change every few days.

This sorry truth has persisted no matter which party has controlled Congress or the White House.  

These are dangerous times.

Yet while the presidential candidates talk at length about the dangers posed by the opposition party, the U.S. government still poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life.

Police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex’s costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power: these are just a few of the ways in which the police state continues to flex its muscles in a show of force intended to intimidate anyone still clinging to the antiquated notion that the government answers to “we the people.”

Consider for yourself the state of our nation:

Americans have little protection against police abuse. The police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies with their secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. Indeed, the government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. While the courts continue to disagree over the exact nature of the rights protected by the Second Amendment, the government itself has made its position extremely clear. When it comes to gun rights in particular, and the rights of the citizenry overall, the U.S. government has adopted a “do what I say, not what I do” mindset. Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the government’s attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while viewing as suspect anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one in self-defense. Indeed, while it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at, and killed.

Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school. Incredibly, the government continues to insist that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school. This growing tension over whether young people, especially those in the public schools, are essentially wards of the state, to do with as government officials deem appropriate, in defiance of the children’s constitutional rights and those of their parents, is at the heart of almost every debate over educational programming, school discipline, and the extent to which parents have any say over their children’s wellbeing in and out of school.

Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police forces. With local police agencies acquiring military-grade weaponry, training and equipment better suited for the battlefield, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts patrolled by a standing military army.

Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., Congress, the president and the courts have done little to nothing to counteract these abuses. Instead, they seem determined to accustom us to life in this electronic concentration camp.

Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered the age of authoritarianism, where all citizens are suspects, security trumps freedom, and so-called elected officials represent the interests of the corporate power elite. This topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.

I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past seventy-plus years regardless of their political affiliation.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

We are walking a dangerous path right now.

Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.

The pickle we find ourselves in speaks volumes about the nature of the government beast we have been saddled with and how it views the rights and sovereignty of “we the people.”

Now you don’t hear a lot about sovereignty anymore. Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

In other words, in America, “we the people”— sovereign citizens—call the shots.

So when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

We have relinquished control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to government officials who, while they may occupy seats of authority, are neither wiser, smarter, more in tune with our needs, more knowledgeable about our problems, nor more aware of what is really in our best interests.

The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”

Worst of all, “we the people” have become desensitized to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

How do we reconcile the Founders’ vision of the government as an entity whose only purpose is to serve the people with the police state’s insistence that the government is the supreme authority, that its power trumps that of the people themselves, and that it may exercise that power in any way it sees fit (that includes government agents crashing through doors, mass arrests, ethnic cleansing, racial profiling, indefinite detentions without due process, and internment camps)?

They cannot be reconciled. They are polar opposites.

We are fast approaching a moment of reckoning where we will be forced to choose between the vision of what America was intended to be (a model for self-governance where power is vested in the people) and the reality of what it has become (a police state where power is vested in the government).

We are repeating the mistakes of history—namely, allowing a totalitarian state to reign over us.

Former concentration camp inmate Hannah Arendt warned against this when she wrote:

“No matter what the specifically national tradition or the particular spiritual source of its ideology, totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police, and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination.”

So where does that leave us?

Aldous Huxley predicted that eventually the government would find a way of “making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

The answer? Get un-brainwashed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries,

Stop allowing yourself to be distracted and diverted.

Learn your rights.

Stand up for the founding principles.

Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.

Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.

Most of all, do these things today.

“WHO OWNS THE WORLD?” A SMALL GROUP OF BIG MONEY

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By Peter Koenig

Source: The 4th Media

“Who Owns the World” is the title of an extraordinary documentary, describing how Big-Big Money controls not only every aspect of your life, but has a stranglehold on every government, the political UN body, as well as every UN agency, and all industries and services of this globe.

These largest investors are BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street.

These same investment groups also control over 90% of the world’s major media. Even Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is majority owned by BlackRock / Vanguard. It is therefore no miracle that hardly any news penetrates the walls of secrecy about these major shareholders of every aspect of human life and life-related activities and businesses.

It is a monopoly that can literally not be opposed by traditional means. They have also invented the “rules-based order” — overruling every international and national law at their will. They know no limits, no ethics and adhere to no human or human rights standard. POWER is them.

The two most powerful investors and investment managers are BlackRock and Vanguard. They are closely linked, to the point where their management is largely inter-changeable. Vanguard is BlackRock’s largest shareholder, meaning that they control BlackRock.

Though Vanguard is not transparent about its own shareholders, Vanguard is owned by the richest families on earth. Vanguard has been created to hide their investments and money transactions.

Through non-profit organizations, like the Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, Rothschild Foundation, JPMorgan Foundation, Clinton Foundation, Bush Foundation, Albert DuPont Charity Trust – and so on, billions of “donation” money is transferred – tax-free – to Vanguard, a shield for their potentially criminal transactions and funding.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest funder of WHO. It also controls GAVI, the vaxx-alliance – and is therefore the most influential organization over human health – and death.

These same people, alias Foundations, also own Blackrock – which is why BlackRock and Vanguard are interchangeable or can act as one, if it is to their advantage.

According to Bloomberg, by 2028, the two will own / manage some 20 trillion dollars – about a fifth of the current world GDP.

If joined by State Street, as is often the case, the world’s fourth largest investment manager, you may add another US$ 3 to US$ 4 trillion of managed assets. Sometimes they are joined by Berkshire Hathaway, City Bank, Bank of America, Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs… adding another few trillion of managed assets to their pie.

However, these second or third ranking financial institutions, in turn, are also owned by BlackRock and Vanguard. One might call it an omnipotent vicious circle from which it is almost impossible to escape.

See this one-hour Rumble-video for more details and network of ownership that literally rules the worldhttps://rumble.com/vn7lf5-monopoly-who-owns-the-world-must-see.html .

With that power they can leverage every country in the world, every institution, and every corporation – as they are the largest shareholders of the industrial, military, service and infrastructure investment machine that makes the world turn.

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Please allow just a little detour to Gaza, where the Zionist racist massacre of an entire population has been going on as today for 141 days. Some 30,000 Palestinian have been killed; 70% children and women. Children and women are the prime targets, because children are the next generation and women are the bearer of the next generation – they must be eliminated by the supremacist Zionists.

The horror and inhumanity have no words, cannot be appropriately described with our human vocabulary: Bombs have liquidated an entire family. The mutilated body of a seven-year-old girl, Sidra, is hanging from a wall. Hind, a six-year-old girl, was mercilessly killed by Israeli armed forces, as she was begging for help from an ambulance, surrounded by the cadavers of her killed family. As illustrated by “Hildebrandt”, a Peruvian, renowned non-mainstream news media (23 February 2024).

Tell me, please, are these all-powerful financial conglomerates not powerful enough to stop this massacre at once? They hold entire nations hostage to do their bidding, but they cannot stop Israel, the Zionists behind the State of Israel, from their merciless atrocious killing, murder, massacre of an entire population?

Are they powerful enough to preventing the United States, their Anglosaxon and European puppet governments from halting their money, weapon, and “moral” support of the Zionist onslaught? – Or is their power behind the US veto breaking the UN Security Council’s quest for a Ceasefire in Gaza?

In any case, by not using their power to stop the Zionist war against Palestine, to stop any war, any killing in the world, are they not complicit in the mass-murders in Gaza and around the world by not ending them?

They could. Why are they not doing it?

They are drunk with Power – and as we know, power and money have been derailing humanity for a long time – but now the extent of shame and barbarism has reached a level, where our civilization risks to disappear; and where there is no way to escape – not the traditional ways.

BlackRock / Vanguard are also major shareholders in the secondary and tertiary asset management and banking institutions. So, they control the managed investments of, say, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, City, Chase, Morgan-Stanley – you name it.

If you invest, for example, in a food conglomerate, like Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo, most have no idea that they invest in BlackRock / Vanguard, major shareholders of these food corporations, and by doing so, they also invest in the worldwide military industrial (killing) complex which is too is controlled by BlackRock / Vanguard.

BlackRock / Vanguard / State Street are also the powers behind the power – most often invisible. For example, BlackRock has close links with many Central Banks, especially with the Federal Reserve.

They lend money to the FED – and are a principal adviser to the FED and most likely to other central banks, including they advise on computer systems they use and which connects them.

BlackRock, is by far the largest influencer and donor, or “partner”, as they prefer to call themselves, therefore, also “commander”, of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the entire UN system, its political arm, as well as its sub-agencies – and by proxy, also the World Health Organization (WHO) – and not to forget GAVI, the Vaccination Association, physically located just next door to WHO – and by further extension, Big-Pharma, the pharma industry.

Together with their faithful think-alike executer of WEF’s mandates, Mr. Klaus Schwab, as well as the multibillionaires, such as the Gates, Rockefellers, Soros’ of this world, one can easily deduct – they – BlackRock and Co. – control our lives – health and death.

Through their world-domineering ownership of all that moves, shakes, and produces, they are globalists, eugenists and “green-agenda” eccentrics – pushing the climate change lie – come hell or high water. Costs in money and lives do not matter.

Were these financial monsters behind the covid-plandemic idea? What a question!

Their agenda – eugenist, destruction of current economic structures to rebuild according to this small elite’s criteria – is clearly spelled out by the Club of Rome’s (CoR) “Limits to Growth” (1972), and the follow-on Report “The First Global Revolution” (1991) which claims early on in its text that annihilation of the current system is a MUST, to rebuild, bringing the fundamental changes in favor of the elite – with eugenics and absolute control always in the fore.

Is the CoR at the service of the global financial empire? After all, the same powers are behind both.

Not by coincidence, the Rockefeller Group is the inventor of the Club of Rome, today comfortably seated, tax free and with full diplomatic immunity, in Switzerland.

The fake Covid plandemic is the first building block for this all-destructive mechanism, the “corner stone’ of destruction, so to speak. The lockdowns, the inhuman, totally invalid PCR tests, the fear-mongering – the invented covid-death rates – were very effective in manipulating people, but also in laying the groundwork for the overall annihilation of our society and even civilization, in shifting assets from the bottom to the top – and in abolishing the world economy that carries our civilization.

Once the people were shivering from fear, the deadly “vaxxes” were introduced. Lo and behold, by now, despite ever-louder opposition – about 5.7 billion people – out of the world’s 8 billion (more than 70%) have received at least one jab – and most got 2 or 3 injections.

These poisonous injections are in the human bodies and may most likely react sooner or later. According to Mike Yeadon, former VP and Chief scientist of Pfizer – over the next three to ten years, the death-toll will increase probably drastically, but most people will not link it to the “vaxxes” — either because they have been indoctrinated that deaths are due to long or late covid, or because they suffer from and live in cognitive dissonance.

Big Money to own and control it all, must drastically reduce world population. This is propagated by the WEF,  and as of this day by the CoR (see this https://www.globalresearch.ca/author-limits-growth-promotes-genocide-86-world-population/5818133 .

WEF’s Chairman, Klaus Schwab’s top advisor, Israeli Professor, Yuval Noah Harari, asks openly what to do with the “useless eaters” when their “raison d’être” has ben replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Giving them a base salary for (temporary) survival, getting them hooked on violent video games to prep them for the future, and to let them gradually “disappear”?
—–

In addition to severe human injuries and death, the vaxxes also reduce male and female fertility, cause miscarriages, highly aggressive and lethal turbo-cancers, and if course, myocardities and sudden deaths.

Overall excess mortality in the west is as high as 20% in some countries. In the UK, where excess deaths are alarming the common public, they have started modifying statistics to erase surplus mortality.

In parallel, mostly funded by the Soros Open Society Foundation, the Woke movement is ravaging the western world, with promotion of sex changes – and the infamous “multi-letter” agenda – LGBTQIA+ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual. WOW! – This is promoted in schools, in some countries with strict bans of parents’ interference in their children’s, as young as 11 years, wishes for sex-change.

This agenda reduces birth rates further.

Endless wars – create chaos, confusion, desperation and, of course, also deaths.

The Money Masters have succeeded in creating the first building blocks. WHO may soon become the most powerful health (life and death) tyranny on earth, if the infamous Pandemic Treaty and the harshly modified International Health Regulations (IHR) are approved at the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2024.

Knowing who is in possession and control of WHO and the WHA, the world is called upon to exit WHO. Internationally renowned Dr Peter McCullough testified in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, about the social and economic consequences of covid vaxxes, as well as the potentially impending WHO tyranny – concluding with a call on the EU and the US – and the rest of the world to exit WHO.

See this https://www.unitedaustraliaparty.org.au/video/dr-peter-mccullough-testified-in-the-european-parliament-in-strasbourg-chaired-by-christine-anderson/ .

To retake the world, by We the People, leaving BlackRock, Vanguard & Co. behind, exiting the UN system and WHO – would be the next step. Most important, and possibly the only way defeating this money power, is withdrawing from the current societal system and start afresh.

Small communal economies – as far away as possible from any digitization – with a dynamic cooperation among themselves, evolving naturally and on a higher spiritual level than the low vibrating one which is typical for our material world and the present strive for ever more material goods.

“Only when we are divided, can the elite retain its power over us.”

“The Wound is the Place, where the Light enters You”. By the great Sufi poet, Rumi

Their weapons are blackmail and fear.

WE MUST NOT FEAR.

We are the 99%.

We can do it.

And we MUST do it for survival of humanity.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020) Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Gaza: Genocide by Starving

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By Jamal Kanj

Source: Global Research

Imagine you are at home, with your wife and children. It’s dinner time before you put your three children to sleep. The room is cold, the propane cooking cylinder empty, no food, no electricity, or drinking water.

Your youngest child, Manar, cries, “I’m hungry. We haven’t had food for the last four days.” She rubs her dry bluish hands together, “Uhf-uh-ih-ih-uhhf, … I’m cold.” The words escape her chattering teeth.

You, let’s say your name is Nader, look at Manar’s feeble body, her pale skin has lost color. The once bouncy curly black hair had tangled and knotted like a cluttered eagle nest, unwashed for more than a month.

Ahmad asks his wife, “Noora, did you search the cabinets and closets for the dry food?”

Noora took a deep breath, “More than ten times, our kitchen is as empty as our stomachs.” She looked at the cold floor in despair, her face twisted into a sorrowful mask.

“Press this against Manar’s stomach,” he said in a low voice and handed Noora a bag full of sand. “It’ll help her sleep, again.”

It wasn’t the first night they put their children to sleep with a sack of sand on their stomach. This has become a common method for Gazans to suppress hunger. It was after midnight when Manar stopped crying, only then Nader and Noora had a chance to close their eyes, not knowing how more miserable the next day would be.

Unsure of the time, Nader jumps from the floor mattress to a strong pounding at the door. Loud pandemonium and commotion outside, he looks at his watch, 3:45 am. His first thought, the Israeli military ordering residents to vacate the building before blowing it up, as they had done dynamiting blocks of buildings in his neighborhood a week earlier. Noora and the children awake. Manar crawls to the corner with her siblings, wraps herself around her mother.

Nader leaped to the door to find his neighbor brother, Ali, on the other side panting for air.

“Come Nader … come, let’s go.” He stopped to catch a breath after running up the stairs. “Flour trucks.” His chest ballooned and deflated several times, “trucks arriving at the Nabulsi roundabout.” Ali moved sideways to make way for neighbors clumping down the stairs.

The children’s faces lit up. Their eyes like laser light, at Nader, wide open, waiting for his response.

“There were Israeli tanks at the roundabout. They ordered me home yesterday and didn’t allow me to bring water,” Nader said.

“The UN is distributing the flour. The Israelis allowed the trucks in.” Ali looked down the stairs, “Let’s go before it’s too late.” He urged Nader.

Nader turns his head toward his children, Manar’s laser focused eyes turn into a vacant stare, open mouth. He clenched his teeth, pulled the winter coat from the hook, closed the door behind and followed his older brother Ali, down to the street.

The above is not a work of imagination, but a reality of life endured by thousands of individuals in Gaza for more than 150 days. It is exactly what happened in the Flour Massacre on February 29 to thousands of starving fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters in north Gaza. Where Israel used aid trucks to lure, murder and injure almost 900 hungry civilians. The blood of the starving, young and old, man and woman, drenched the flour sacks meant to feed hungry children.

Israel’s Gaza Solution: Let Palestinians Die Before the World. Bombing Hospitals and UN Institutions. Nobody Will Stop Israel

In its efforts to render life in Gaza uninhabitable, Israel has not only targeted essential infrastructures such as hospitals, universities, water treatment plants, and roads but has also directed attacks towards civilian police. This deliberate targeting of police aimed to exacerbate the suffering and provoke a collapse of law and order. Despite warnings from the U.S. against targeting civilian police who maintained public safety and managed the orderly distribution of food, Israel dismissed such concerns, seeking to create lawlessness and chaotic conditions to worsen starvation and justify its actions as in the case of the Flour Massacre.

In covering the story, the Gaza absent Western media became willing outlets to market Israel disinformation cloaked in euphemisms to obscure the grim reality on the ground. Outlets like CNN along with other print media and the BBC for example referred to the death of 112 and the injuring of 760 hungry human beings as “Gaza food aid carnage” or “a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops,” blaming the death on stampedes and truck drivers. They then broadcasted, unquestionably, Israeli-manipulated videos showing the product of the Israeli designed chaos and claiming the hungry crowd posed a threat to its soldiers.

This wasn’t different from an earlier misinformation propagated by CNN Wolf Blitzer, when hosting Mark Regev, the Israeli version of the German Joseph Goebbels, in his show, The Situation Room, on November 15, 2023 where he started the show by saying “Happening now, the Israeli military says it uncovered Hamas weapons and a command center inside Gaza’s largest hospital.” Needless to say, it was all false. In spite of Regev’s abject disregard to basic truth, the Israeli Goebbels was brought again to CNN this week to market the flour truck massacre spinning lies, unchallenged, and claiming no Israeli involvement in the gunfire and blaming the shooting on “Palestinian armed groups.”

Unarguably, CNN, much like most of the American and European news outlets, have become a platform for disinformation with Israeli embedded hosts such as Blitzer who honed his journalistic prowess as a pro-Israel propogandist working for America Israel Public Affairs Committee, serving as an editor for its Near East Report in the mid 1970s.

It wasn’t until Al Jazeera aired a video showing the “chaotic” scene amidst heavy gunfire around the food truck, along with footage revealing bullet injuries in the upper bodies of victims, when some U.S. outlets, such as  the New York Times, who espouses a faux professionalism, couldn’t continue ignoring the flagrant Israeli lies. The paper revisited the Israeli drone video that was made available to the compliant U.S. media outlets. After careful review the newspaper concluded that the footage had been altered with “multiple clips spliced together.” The edits conveniently erased the events just before the crowd dispersed in all directions, evading bullets, scrambling over trucks, seeking cover behind vehicles and structures, and falling to the ground from direct gunshot wounds. 

It is important to point out, the targeting of aid trucks at the Nabulsi roundabout is neither the first nor the last of Israeli attempts to obstruct the delivery of food aid in Gaza. Approximately three weeks prior, on February 6, Israel fired upon a crowd gathering at the Kuwaiti roundabout, while naval gunboats targeted UNRWA humanitarian food trucks. More recently, or three days following the Flour Massacre, on March 3rd, Israel once again opened fire on a hungry crowd awaiting food trucks at the Kuwaiti roundabout, resulting in the deaths and injuries of several civilians.

The submissive prostration of Western media, providing unchallenged platforms to Israeli PR spokespersons, is unprecedented in the so called “free world.” By agreeing to Israeli directives restricting media access into Gaza, Western mainstream media has no presence to report from the theater. Gone AWOL, the media has been transformed into an active participant in whitewashing Israeli genocide where the Gaza coverage has been regulated, directly and indirectly, by an Israeli hasbara manifested by the managed evidence and narrative of the Flour Massacre. Or to paraphrase the original Goebbels, Western mainstream media has become a “keyboard on which Israel plays.”

In fact, Western, and particularly American genuflection to Israel extends beyond the media. Case in point, almost two weeks ago, the White House National Security Communications Advisor, John Kirby, disparaged his own U.S. army, praising the Israeli forces for taking actions to protect civilians, stating that he was “not sure our own (American) military would take” similar actions.

When asked about the murdering of the hungry civilians in Gaza, Kirby’s boss, Joe Biden pled ignorance stating “There’s two competing versions of what happened. I don’t have an answer yet.” 

In avoiding answering the question, the U.S. president accorded equal credence to the Israeli disinformation machine. In keeping up with his standing, Biden is consistent in his anti-Palestinian bias hyperbolizing Israeli victimhood, while downplaying Israeli crimes against Palestinians under the pretext of not having enough information.

This week and after five months of pleading for Israel to allow more aid trucks into Gaza, Biden joined other inept Arab dictators in an inconsequential gesture dropping 38,000 meals to 2,4 million in Gaza. A stunt by the incompetent leaders which is aimed more at mollifying international outrage against Israel than a genuine desire to alleviate the mounting starvation levels in Gaza.

The made for TV theatrical air drop of mere 38,000 meals was like a grain of sand on the beach of Gaza. The parachuted meals were equivalent to providing a minuscule 0.005 of the daily meal for every Gazans, or the equivalent of offering 5 loaves of bread per 1000 individuals. This is a farce and rings hollow from an Administration that plans to send Israel almost $15 billion, in addition to the weapons and political cover that empower Israel to carry out the very siege the air drops purportedly intend to mitigate. The starvation in Gaza is not due to a drought or a natural disaster, but an Israeli made catastrophe enabled by Biden, Western governments, and blessed by Arab dictators.

As you read this, remember Nader, who joined his brother Ali to feed his hungry child, Manar. He would have been most likely one of those killed or injured in the February 29, Flour Massacre. His children, if alive, are still hungry and cold at home, watching through a broken window (U.S.) aid parcels parachuting from the skies alongside the roar of an American-made jet delivering 2000-pound bombs over their heads. 

Manar, if she wasn’t among the more than 15 children who tragically perished this week from malnutrition and dehydration, will always recall how the Israeli-made starvation drove her father to death.