Our Financial System Is Optimized for Sociopaths and Exploitation

By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

We live in a peculiar juncture of history in which truth has been banished as a threat to the maximization of private gain, i.e. the hyper-pursuit of self-interest. Evidence that supports a causal chain has been replaced by cherry-picked data that supports a self-serving narrative: both the evidence and narrative are manufactured to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

In this juncture of history, evidence is easily disputed because the process of manufacturing self-serving evidence has been perfected. Indeed, self-serving evidence is now a commodity which can be purchased wholesale: rig the sample size, massage the data statistically, conjure up a context that serves to frame the evidence in a slippery self-interested fashion, omit disinterested evidence and contexts, top with arcane math and voila, evidence and narrative are presented as “facts” rather than what they really are, an elaborate, well-staged con designed to maximize the private gains of the few by exploiting the many.

Organizing the entire system to serve the pathological greed of the few is best served by devaluing truth to mere opinion and causal chains to mere narratives. In this juncture of history, truth has been revealed as a chimera; there is only opinion, and all opinions are equal. Opinions are beliefs, and all beliefs are equal. All narratives are equal. All questions boil down to values: values are all equally detached, free-floating and of the same value: zero.

This con has reached perfection in our financial system, which is now optimized for exploitation and sociopaths. As Nassim Taleb has explained (referencing Adam Smith), markets only function if there are rules which are imposed equally on all participants. In our financial system, there are two sets of rules: one which we can summarize as anything goes for the super-wealthy and the well-connected, and another set for everyone else.

Shear the sheep of billions, pay a modest fine–and if all your bets go bad, get bailed out because you’re too important to fail. Sneak a few thousand out of the credit union, go to prison. Sell a financial product that’s designed to go bust as low-risk, oh well, buyer beware, haha, that’s just the free market at work. Sell a nickel bag of drugs, get a tenner in the Gulag.

Two sets of rules: one simulacrum of rules for the rich–just another con, really–and punitive rules for everyone else.

Since evidence, causal chains and values have all been devalued, there is no longer any recognition that the desire for gain–greed–can be either exploitive or beneficial to the many. If your greed drives you to make a product that is faster, better, cheaper, more durable and efficient than what’s currently available, your gain is the result of an advance that serves the interests of the many.

If your desire for gain leads you to misrepresent a shoddy product designed to fail (subprime mortgages, Landfill Economy products) or you raise the price because you can, your greed serves your interests at the expense of the many. This is the acme of exploitation. Kleptocrats and sociopaths, rejoice!

This system is optimized for exploitation, as the exploiters can exploit the many without the many even recognizing they’ve been stripmined. We no longer have the means to differentiate fraud from fact or exploitation from rules-based markets.

This landscape of wide-open exploitation and debauchery is Heaven on Earth for sociopaths who not only do not see any difference between gains skimmed at others’ expense and gains earned by providing a superior product / service, they revel in exploiting the system and every participant: employees, partners, suppliers, depositors, borrowers and customers.

But in this desert of exploitation and the supremacy of self-interest, some things remain true and others remain false. Some truths remain self-evident. As I have shown here many times, we can look at the hourly wages and cost of essentials in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and the present and calculate how many hours of labor it took to pay for essentials such as rent, property taxes, healthcare, childcare, taxes, education, etc. These calculations reveal that the purchasing power of wages has declined for decades. This evidence cannot be made to vanish by declaring it opinion, belief or a “different set of values”–it is fact.

If we measure prosperity by how much labor can buy, all but the top few wage earners are less prosperous today. The evidence and causal chain are self-evident. The self-interested few who have reaped the vast majority of the economy’s gains can hire shills to argue that since TVs now require fewer hours of labor to buy, we’re all better off, but these obfuscations are nothing more than distractions designed to divert our attention from the mechanisms of exploitation that are operating 24/7 beneath the ceaseless churn of “news” and “market action.”

Let’s call this financial system what it really is: the MetaPerverse, a conjured world of self-serving cons that is optimized for exploitation, the perversion of justice, infinite inequality and the stripmining of the many to the benefit of the few, all securely protected by a cloud of confusion in which everything is equally valueless and truth no longer exists. All that remains is a babble of competing cons.

WAR IN EUROPE AND THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA

By John Pilger

Source: JohnPilger.com

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened.  Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain

On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now.

But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream.

The great editor David Bowman, author of The Captive Press, called this “a defenestration of all who refuse to follow a line and to swallow the unpalatable and are brave”. He was referring to independent journalists and whistle blowers, the honest mavericks to whom media organisations once gave space, often with pride. The space has been abolished.

The war hysteria that has rolled in like a tidal wave in recent weeks and months is the most striking example. Known by its jargon, “shaping the narrative”, much if not most of it is pure propaganda.

The Russians are coming. Russia is worse than bad. Putin is evil, “a Nazi like Hitler”, salivated the Labour MP Chris Bryant. Ukraine is about to be invaded by Russia – tonight, this week, next week. The sources include an ex CIA propagandist who now speaks for the US State Department and offers no evidence of his claims about Russian actions because “it comes from the US Government”.

The no-evidence rule also applies in London. The British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, who spent £500,000 of public money flying to Australia in a private plane to warn the Canberra government that both Russia and China were about to pounce,  offered no evidence. Antipodean heads nodded; the “narrative” is unchallenged there. One rare exception, former prime minister Paul Keating, called Truss’s warmongering “demented”.

Truss has blithely confused the countries of the Baltic and Black Sea. In Moscow, she told the Russian foreign minister that Britain would never accept Russian sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh – until it was pointed out to her that these places were not part of Ukraine but in Russia. Read the Russian press about the buffoonery of this pretender to 10 Downing Street and cringe.

This entire farce, recently starring Boris Johnson in Moscow playing a clownish version of his hero, Churchill, might be enjoyed as satire were it not for its wilful abuse of facts and historical understanding and the real danger of war.

Vladimir Putin refers to the “genocide” in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. Following the coup in Ukraine in 2014 – orchestrated by Barack Obama’s “point person” in Kyiv, Victoria Nuland – the coup regime, infested with neo-Nazis, launched a campaign of terror against Russian-speaking Donbas, which accounts for a third of Ukraine’s population.

Overseen by CIA director John Brennan in Kyiv, “special security units” coordinated savage attacks on the people of Donbas, who opposed the coup. Video and eyewitness reports show bussed fascist thugs burning the trade union headquarters in the city of Odessa, killing 41 people trapped inside. The police are standing by. Obama congratulated the “duly elected” coup regime for its “remarkable restraint”.

In the US media the Odessa atrocity was played down as “murky” and a “tragedy” in which “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) attacked “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”.

Professor Stephen Cohen, acclaimed as America’s leading authority on Russia, wrote, “The pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during world war two. [Today] storm-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other ‘impure’ citizens are widespread throughout Kyiv-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s…

“The police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neo-fascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kyiv has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorialising Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms, renaming streets in their honour, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more.”

Today, neo-Nazi Ukraine is seldom mentioned. That the British are training the Ukrainian National Guard, which includes neo-Nazis, is not news. (See Matt Kennard’s Declassified report in Consortium 15 February). The return  of violent, endorsed fascism to 21st-century Europe, to quote Harold Pinter, “never happened … even while it was happening”.

On 16 December, the United Nations tabled a resolution that called for “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism”. The only nations to vote against it were the United States and Ukraine.

Almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine’s “borderland” that Hitler’s divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine’s Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead.

Setting aside the manoeuvres and cynicism of geopolitics, whomever the players, this historical memory is the driving force behind Russia’s respect-seeking, self-protective security proposals, which were published in Moscow in the week the UN voted 130-2 to outlaw Nazism. They are:

– NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missiles in nations bordering Russia. (They are already in place from Slovenia to Romania, with Poland to follow)
– NATO to stop military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
– Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
– the West and Russia to sign a binding East-West security pact.
– the landmark treaty between the US and Russia covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be restored. (The US abandoned it in 2019)

These amount to a comprehensive draft of a peace plan for all of post-war Europe and ought to be welcomed in the West. But who understands their significance in Britain? What they are told is that Putin is a pariah and a threat to Christendom.

Russian-speaking Ukrainians, under economic blockade by Kyiv for seven years, are fighting for their survival. The “massing” army we seldom hear about are the thirteen Ukrainian army brigades laying siege to Donbas: an estimated 150,000 troops. If they attack, the provocation to Russia will almost certainly mean war.

In 2015, brokered by the Germans and French, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Minsk and signed an interim peace deal. Ukraine agreed to offer autonomy to Donbas, now the self declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The Minsk agreement has never been given a chance. In Britain, the line,  amplified by Boris Johnson, is that Ukraine is being “dictated to” by world leaders. For its part, Britain is arming Ukraine and training its army.

Since the first Cold War, NATO has effectively marched right up to Russia’s most sensitive border having demonstrated its bloody aggression in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and broken solemn promises to pull back.  Having dragged European “allies” into American wars that do not concern them, the great unspoken is that NATO itself is the real threat to European security.

In Britain, a state and media xenophobia is triggered at the very mention of “Russia”. Mark the knee-jerk hostility with which the BBC reports Russia. Why? Is it because the restoration of imperial mythology demands, above all, a permanent enemy? Certainly, we deserve better.

Sleepwalking Into Hell: The Global Elite’s Technological Coup D’état Against Humanity

By Robert J. Burrowes

Opposed to vaccine mandates, QR codes and other restrictions on our rights and freedom?

Refusing to wear a mask, have the vaccine and stay locked-down when ordered?

Attended a number of demonstrations protesting the government-imposed restrictions in your country? Involved in or supporting the truckers convoys?

Already celebrating some lifting of restrictions in some countries?

Unfortunately, there is one simple reason why the sorts of actions nominated above cannot win back our rights and our freedom: Our various protests are not integrated parts of a comprehensive strategy designed for the purpose. Moreover, in the case of the truckers convoys, they also complicate one already serious problem: supply chain disruptions that are causing serious food shortages. See ‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’.

And, rest assured, there is nothing to celebrate unless you do not understand what is happening beneath the surface.

Which, uniquely in this case, requires a strategy that recognizes, and addresses, the technological coup d’état that is being carried out against us.

As anyone conversant with the history of peoples’ struggles is well aware, that history is littered with the ‘bodies’ of failed social movements and national liberation struggles, even if some of these ‘bodies’ are still twitching rather than dead.

Ever wondered why the anti-war movement goes around in circles? Or whatever happened to the Occupy Movement? Or why so many environmental and social justice movements go nowhere? Or even why so many national liberation struggles fail, or lose vital gains subsequently to an initial victory.

Well, there are clearcut reasons for their failure and they can be readily identified. I have previously discussed some key reasons in the article Why Activists Fail’.

So let us consider the current freedom movement and analyze why it is on the course to failure at the moment and see if we can turn it around before it is too late. And to do this, we need a sound strategic framework.

Nonviolent Strategy


Sound nonviolent strategy has twelve components – see the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel – and, unfortunately, most social movements and (nonviolent) national liberation struggles are devoid of a comprehensive strategy simply because only the rarest activist has a sense of what strategy really means.

So what is strategy? Very simply, strategy is a planned series of actions (tactics) conducted over an appropriate timeframe that is designed to achieve the two strategic aims that govern the strategy.

You can read more about nonviolent strategy on the Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy website.

For any strategy to be effective, it must be based on a thorough understanding of the conflict in question.

Analysis


Sound strategy in any conflict begins with a deep analysis of what is taking place so that we can identify who is driving it, why they are driving it, how they are driving it, what they intend to implement and what they intend to achieve if successful?

Hence, if we deeply analyze what is taking place around the world at the moment, we can start by observing that we are being told by the World Health Organization, national governments, medical authorities and the corporate media that the human population is at risk of catching a virus (labeled ‘SARS-CoV-2’) that causes a life-threatening disease (labeled ‘Covid-19’) and that we need a long series of restrictions (including lockdowns and QR codes) as well as several injections to protect ourselves from this alleged disease.

So, obviously, any serious analysis must begin with identifying proof that the virus exists, given that it is the supposed cause of everything that follows. Then we can investigate its projected harm.

However, if we seek proof of the isolation of this virus, we quickly discover that there is none.

In fact, since the very beginning of this ‘pandemic’, an increasing number of doctors, scientists and researchers have gone to some trouble to scientifically document for us that, in fact, this ‘virus’ does not exist. See, for example, ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’. And for an account of researcher Christine Massey’s fruitless search over the course of more than a year to find evidence of an isolated virus, via Freedom of Information requests to health/science institutions all over the world, see ‘169 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’.

Of course, beyond this, as is well known in some quarters: ‘there is no original scientific evidence that definitively demonstrates that any virus is the cause of any disease’. See What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong.

However, doctors, scientists and researchers who present evidence such as this are all being censored by government and corporate media and social media. In this context, there is very little space for meaningful debate, let alone space for the truth to emerge into wider view.

If there is no virus, of course, there is no need for any of the restrictions that have been imposed and there is no need for any vaccine. So why have all these restrictions and ‘vaccines’ been imposed?

By this point in any serious investigation, research will have exposed the role of the World Economic Forum in promoting the ‘pandemic’ narrative and, under cover of these ‘virus’/‘vaccine’ lies, progressively implementing its ‘Great Reset’program. Any careful reading of this documentation quickly reveals that the ‘Great Reset’ is designed to utterly transform human society and even human life in accord with elite wishes, which is why the rest of us have not been consulted. This is because the detail outlined in the ‘Great Reset’ documentation, which anyone can investigate for themselves, clearly identifies intended changes to some 200 areas of human activity, essentially characterized as part of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’.

Beyond this, however, other important components of the elite agenda are easily identified. In essence, these include those related to the elite’s intention to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population (using a variety of measures including the ‘injectables’) and enslave those left alive in a technological prison, as is now happening. See, for example, ‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’, ‘Taking Control by Destroying Cash: Beware Cyber Polygon as Part of the Elite Coup’ and ‘The Government’s Kill Switch for Your Car, Your Freedoms and Your Life’.

And any remaining pretense that some of us live in a ‘democracy’ has been finally exposed as the delusion it has long been, with our rights and freedom eviscerated and the assassination of (now) five national presidents who resisted the elite narrative just the most graphic illustrations of this point. See ‘Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’état That Is Destroying Life as We Know It’.

The point is that democratic governance was subverted long ago: it just has many manifestations. As Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum, declared at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2017: ‘What we are very proud of is that we penetrate the global cabinets of countries with our WEF Young Global Leaders… like Justin Trudeau.’ See ‘WEF’s Klaus Schwab Boasts of Young Global Leaders Penetration of Western Cabinets’.

These ‘Young Global Leaders’, which means those, including politicians, who represent the Global Elite rather than the people of their countries, include a range of current (or immediate past) national leaders, such as Emmanuel Macron (France), Angela Merkel (Germany), Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand). See ‘World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders’ and ‘World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leaders”’.

So any careful investigation of what is happening globally reveals four fundamental points:

1. Who? The Global Elite is implementing this technological coup d’état. Hence, what little is left of the sovereignty of governments is being destroyed by the coup, and governments are powerless to restore the fundamental rights and freedom that are stake in this conflict. Of course, governments might be allowed to remove particular mandates in some contexts as the importance of particular mandates is superseded by other components of the Elite agenda. Similarly, legal challenges can bear minimal fruit, and not on the primary program.

2. Why? The Global Elite, using the World Economic Forum as its vehicle, seeks total control of the human population and the Earth’s resources.

3. What? This elite agenda, labeled the ‘Great Reset’, encompasses what is called the fourth industrial revolution but includes other components in relation to eugenics and transhumanism as well. The intention is to kill off a substantial proportion of humanity and utterly transform human life and human society for those left alive. See ‘Killing Off Humanity: How the Global Elite is using Eugenics and Transhumanism to Shape Our Future’ and ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

4. How? The ‘Great Reset’ is being implemented by using elite agents such as the World Health Organization, national governments, official medical associations, the pharmaceutical industry and the corporate media to promote the Elite’s lies – that the deadly SARS-CoV-2 ‘virus’ exists and that an onerous series of measures ranging from mask-wearing to lockdowns to multiple injections are necessary to address it – while employing heavy-handed censorship to ensure that the truth, and the evidence to explain it, about the deeper elite agenda is suppressed. Meanwhile, unaware people throughout society are playing their part in implementing the ‘Great Reset’ on behalf of the Global Elite.

So what can we do?


If we are to defeat this (fundamentally technological) elite coup against humanity, our strategy must undermine the power of the Global Elite to conduct it. Unfortunately, our protests (whether in person or by blockading with trucks) against particular mandates cannot undermine, in a strategic sense, the foundations that make possible the underlying elite agenda being inflicted upon us. Briefly, this is because they are incorrectly targeted (at governments rather than foundational elements of elite power in this context) and they are the wrong tactics in this circumstance (especially because of their failure to identify and address the technological elements of the coup), among other shortcomings.

So we have two choices: We can keep doing things that don’t work or refocus what we are doing so that it does have strategic impact.

Strangely, this doesn’t mean that we should stop conducting rallies or even cease the convoys. But it does mean that we need to use these events to explain the deeper agenda behind what is happening and to raise awareness of the strategic actions the wider public must take if we are to defeat the elite program.

Otherwise, while they build relationships and even a sense of solidarity, rallies and convoys are, strategically speaking, a waste of time.

So what does ‘strategic impact’ mean in this context?

Once we understand that the Global Elite is driving the ‘Great Reset’ to impose a global order that serves elite interests, we can identify the appropriate set of strategic goals for defending ourselves and then thoughtfully consider what actions we might take to achieve these goals, that is, actions that actually make a difference.

So what does ‘make a difference’ mean in this context? It means designing and taking action that undermines the power of those driving what is happening to achieve what they want. If an action is simply designed to allow us to express our complaint (often expressed as a list of specific demands that particular things be changed) – as the mass rallies and truck convoys are essentially doing – there is no reason for anything to be achieved. Elites have enormous experience of ignoring us and understand how well it works.

As former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig once noted about a massive anti-war demonstration: ‘Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.’ See Alexander Haig. As a four-star general, Haig, not regarded as the most intelligent Secretary of State in US history, certainly understood the importance of tactical choice. Most activists have no idea.

Which is why the history of mass mobilizations in these forms failing to achieve significant change is long. And this list starts with the largest demonstration in human history when, as part of a series of large demonstrations that was occurring, up to 30 million people in 600 cities protested the imminent US invasion of Iraq on 15 February 2003. See ‘The World Says No to War’.

And remember the Occupy Movement in 2011? It was huge, mobilizing people to camp in public places in cities all over the world. It’s focus? The 1% (wealthy individuals who own and control the major corporations and manage the financial system in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority while undermining democracy). Its strategy? Essentially occupying public locations. The movement ended after it had been heavily infiltrated – see ‘FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring’ – and police forcibly removed encampments a few months after it had taken off globally.

So why do these movements fail? It is always the same reason: poor strategy, invariably including inadequate analysis, inaccurate identification of target and wrong tactical choice, and often including failure to deal adequately with infiltrators and provocateurs. Although, it should be emphasized, movements usually make a series of ill-informed decisions so that the details of the poor strategy vary from one movement to the next. The point is that people generally do not understand the concept of strategic resistance; they simply confuse any form of mass mobilization with resisting strategically.

Identifying What We Must Resist


Once we identify who is driving the conflict – in this case, the Global Elite, not governments – as well as why and how they are doing it and what they intend, we can identify those foundational components that make possible what the Elite wants to achieve.

So, as noted above, a careful reading of the key documentation soon exposes that the Global Elite intends to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population (using a variety of measures including the ‘injectables’) and enslave those left alive in a technological prison. And this is now happening.

How, exactly, is the Elite doing this?


In relation to its eugenics program, it is using four primary measures: the injections, the massive redistribution of wealth from poor to rich, the destruction of global supply chains (including those in relation to food) and the deployment of 5G. For explanations of these measures, see ‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’.

In relation to its program of enslavement, it is using a substantial combination of measures which will make those futuristic films look archaic. For a start, the injection, if you are one of those who survive, is intended to turn you into a transhuman slave. See ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

But even those who resist the injection will be enslaved. Using drones, smart phones, GPS devices, smart TVs, social media, smart meters, surveillance cameras, facial recognition software, online banking, license plate readers and driverless cars, you will live under constant surveillance and be readily controlled whether in your home, car or out in the community. And you will be photographed many times each day. As John and Nisha Whitehead have noted: ‘We’re on the losing end of a technological revolution that has already taken hostage our computers, our phones, our finances, our entertainment, our shopping, our appliances, and now, our cars.’ See ‘The Government’s Kill Switch for Your Car, Your Freedoms and Your Life’.

Beyond even this, remember that Covid-19 test to which you submitted? Do you know what happened to your DNA? It was recorded and can be sold. You do not even own your personal DNA! See ‘The Coronavirus (Retention of Fingerprints and DNA Profiles in the Interests of National Security) (No. 2) Regulations 2020’.

Moreover, as Whitney Webb has explained, plans are well advanced to ‘require a digital ID to access and use the internet as well as eliminate the ability to conduct anonymous financial transactions. Both policies would advance the overarching goal of both the WEF and many corporations and governments to usher in a new age of unprecedented surveillance of ordinary citizens.’ See ‘Ending Anonymity: Why the WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens the Future of Privacy’. Obviously, this would also dramatically advance elite control.

In addition, using a combination of technologies largely dependent on 5G, the intention is to digitize our identity and connect it with our bank, health, legal and other records, and create a social credit score that will determine what we can and cannot do and where we can do it. In short, we will be locked in a technological prison, whether it is our own home, our car or our local community, in a ‘smart city’. Physical prisons won’t matter because everywhere will be the prison. Human volition will be unknowingly surrendered by those unaware of the degree of technological control they accepted each time they purchased the latest gadget.

A vital part of this control is explained by Catherine Austin Fitts in this short video on the ‘financial transaction control grid’ being created. See ‘Digital Concentration Camps’.

And, as the World Economic Forum has advertised, by 2030, ‘You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.’ See ‘8 predictions for the world in 2030’.

Welcome to your imminent technocratic dystopia. Human freedom? Gone. Human rights? Gone. Human identity? Gone. Privacy? Gone. Free will? Gone. Anything else that makes life worth living? Gone.

So with this briefest of summaries, hopefully you can see why these rallies and convoys, in themselves, cannot achieve anything significant. Powerlessly begging governments to remove certain vaccine mandates and even other now-familiar restrictions, while ignoring the ongoing technological measures being implemented ‘behind the scenes’, is not impeding, in any way, the elite program to entrap you in a technological prison, assuming you survive the death needle.

Hence, if we wish to resist this elite program effectively, we must identify its foundational components; that is, those components that make what the Elite wants to achieve possible. And then resist these components.

Resisting Strategically
So what are the components that give the Global Elite the power to inflict its agenda upon us?

These include the injections; deployment of 5G; the technologies that enable comprehensive (not just mass) surveillance, digitization (of our identity, banking, health, legal and other records to generate our personal social credit score) and robotization of the workforce; measures to restructure the global economy in favour of the mega-corporations and consolidation of ownership and control of agricultural land as well as the production, distribution and even nature of the world’s food supply. It also includes the power to control the narrative by using government and corporate media and social media to promote Elite propaganda while censoring the truth.

Hence, we must resist these if we are to undermine the power of the Global Elite to control us.

As noted above, rallies and convoys are only useful if we use them to educate people about the true nature and full extent of the threat and inform those involved how to effectively resist this threat. To reiterate, while we are focusing on governments, the various lockdown restrictions and ‘vaccine’ mandates, and employing the wrong tactics, people will be mobilized to no avail. This is because there are plenty of tactical options – see ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’ – but understanding what has strategic impact in any context is crucial.

Why? Because the nonviolent actions and the numbers participating, in themselves, are not determinative. It is the strategy that determines the outcome.

In short, we must give people the range of actions that will make a critical strategic difference; that is, the precise actions that will undermine the power of the Global Elite to inflict their overall program on us. Unless we do this, our rallies and convoys (and those people who speak at these events) are simply failing to inform their audiences of the vital information that is necessary for us to be successful.

So mass gatherings of resistance (such as protest demonstrations, truck convoys, religious services…), in whatever variation they take, can be useful because they mobilize people with a shared perspective but they only have strategic impact if these people are then ‘deployed’ to take action that undermines the elite’s power to inflict this coup upon us.

To illustrate this point: What is the value of mobilizing an ‘army’ in war? So that you can send it out to fight a strategically-chosen series of battles. What activists do not understand is that we need to mobilize our activist ‘army’ – which is the primary value of the mass mobilizations – but we need to use these mobilizations to inform activists what tactics we need them to undertake subsequently.

Otherwise we have simply mobilized rally participants to be told to go home again and do nothing or, in the case of the convoys, to remain until a very limited set of demands, which do not address the fundamental technological agenda, are granted (which is one option the Elite might consider as the simplest means of dissipating the dissent in this instance).

And given clear indications that police are gathering intelligence about the activists – see ‘Ottawa Police announce digital surveillance of Freedom Convoy protesters, supporters, and donors’ – this can later be used to deal with individuals, which is obviously easier than dealing with large crowds. Moreover, this can occur even if the trucks are not removed by the police and military, although this remains in option, particularly in cities where crowds are smaller, even though it would not necessarily be easy. See ‘Removing trucks could be almost “impossible,” say heavy towing experts’.

Of course, activists can work to build relationships with the police and military as one part of the effort to prevent violent removal. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Fortunately, this has been happening for some time in some contexts during the past two years, leading to some active police and military officers standing down and encouraging their colleagues to do likewise. See, for example, ‘Freedom Convoy – Speech by Canadian Army Major Stephen Chledowski’ and ‘Conscientious Resignation of Police Officer in Australia’.

But much more effort could be usefully expended in this direction.

Again, however, in itself, this will not undermine the technological nature of the Elite coup.

Nor will using violence, despite what an occasional author is suggesting will be necessary. See ‘The Elite Gathers Its Forces for a Counterattack on the Truckers’.

What Can We Do?


If you are interested in strategically resisting the Global Elite’s technological agenda and other measures associated with the ‘Great Reset’, you can read how to do so on the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ website which offers further analysis, resources and a list of 29 strategic goals for doing so.

This includes campaigning to cause civilian and military scientists and technologists to refuse to do any research or undertake any work associated with the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism, to cause workers to refuse to do any work (by producing, distributing or installing any technology) associated with the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism, and to cause consumers to refuse to buy or otherwise acquire any product associated with the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism.

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

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

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

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

Conclusion


For the first time in history, all of humanity is threatened by a coup d’état that is killing vast numbers of people through a complex series of measures while destroying human liberty and human rights for those not killed outright.

Moreover, for the first time in history, this coup is being implemented by a series of technological measures that promise to imprison those left alive in a hi-tech prison from which there will be no escape.

Hence, given that several foundational elements of this coup are not yet quite fully in place, 2022 will be the most critical year in human history to date.

But to defeat this hi-tech coup we need to be strategically savvy and mobilize enough people to participate. You are welcome to join us.

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.

The Mind Control Police: The Government’s War on Thought Crimes and Truth-Tellers

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”— George Orwell  

The U.S. government, which speaks in a language of force, is afraid of its citizenry.

What we are dealing with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it is conspiring to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority.

All of us are in danger.

In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

In the government’s latest assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—the Biden Administration has likened those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists.

The next part is the kicker.

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s latest terrorism bulletin, “These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.”

You see, the government doesn’t care if what you’re sharing is fact or fiction or something in between. What it cares about is whether what you’re sharing has the potential to make people think for themselves and, in the process, question the government’s propaganda.

Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes and truth-tellers.

For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

According to one FBI latest report, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories, especially if you “attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”

In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.

This latest government salvo against consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information” widens the net to potentially include anyone who is exposed to ideas that run counter to the official government narrative.

You don’t have to be a Joe Rogan questioning COVID-19 to get called out, cancelled and classified as an extremist.

There’s a whole spectrum of behaviors ranging from thought crimes and hate speech to whistleblowing that qualifies for persecution (and prosecution) by the Deep State.

Simply liking or sharing this article on Facebook, retweeting it on Twitter, or merely reading it or any other articles related to government wrongdoing, surveillance, police misconduct or civil liberties might be enough to get you categorized as a particular kind of person with particular kinds of interests that reflect a particular kind of mindset that might just lead you to engage in a particular kinds of activities and, therefore, puts you in the crosshairs of a government investigation as a potential troublemaker a.k.a. domestic extremist.

Chances are, as the Washington Post reports, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

In other words, you might already be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the police state’s dictates.

As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.

In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutterdrive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social mediaappear mentally ill, serve in the militarydisagree with a law enforcement officialcall in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, or appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom.

And then at the other end of the spectrum there are those such as Julian Assange, for example, who blow the whistle on government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.

Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks—a website that published secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources—was arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than 700,000 classified military documents that portray the U.S. government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

Included among the leaked Manning material were the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).

The Collateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.

In true Orwellian fashion, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.

Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day—pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.

This is why the government fears a citizenry that thinks for itself. Because a citizenry that thinks for itself is a citizenry that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, which translates to government transparency and accountability.

After all, we’re citizens, not subjects. For those who don’t fully understand the distinction between the two and why transparency is so vital to a healthy constitutional government, Manning explains it well:

When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? … I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.

This is why the First Amendment is so critical. It gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.

The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.

A little over 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Washington Post Co. to block the Nixon Administration’s attempts to use claims of national security to prevent The Washington Post and The New York Times from publishing secret Pentagon papers on how America went to war in Vietnam.

As Justice William O. Douglas remarked on the ruling, “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

Fast forward to the present day, and we’re witnessing yet another showdown, this time between Assange and the Deep State, which pits the people’s right to know about government misconduct against the might of the military industrial complex.

Yet this isn’t merely about whether whistleblowers and journalists are part of a protected class under the Constitution. It’s a debate over how long “we the people” will remain a protected class under the Constitution.

Following the current trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, watched all the time, and rounded up when the government deems it necessary.

We’re almost at that point now.

Eventually, we will all be potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government.

Partisan politics have no place in this debate: Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.

We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of all individuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.

Never forget: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.

What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

The right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, once again, we find ourselves reliving George Orwell’s 1984, which portrayed in chilling detail how totalitarian governments employ the power of language to manipulate the masses.

In Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”

Much like today’s social media censors and pre-crime police departments, Orwell’s Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the other government agencies peddle in economic affairs (rationing and starvation), law and order (torture and brainwashing), and news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda).

Orwell’s Big Brother relies on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.

Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

They don’t just lie to us about wars; they lie to us about everything

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: Intrepid Report

Propaganda isn’t just about manufacturing consent for wars and ridiculous governmental measures we’d never normally accept. That’s what most people think of when they hear that word, but there’s so very, very much more to it than that.

The lion’s share of propaganda goes not toward convincing us to accept new agendas of the powerful, but toward keeping us entranced in the status quo dream world which enables the powerful to have power in the first place. Toward normalizing status quo systems and training us to shape ourselves to fit into them like neat little cogs in a well-oiled machine.

And it’s not even a grand, monolithic conspiracy in most cases. The giant corporations who indoctrinate us with their advertisements, their Hollywood movies and shows, their apps, their websites and their news media are all naturally incentivized to point us further and further into delusion by the fact that they benefit from the status quo systems which have elevated them to wealth.

So day in and day out we are presented with media which train us what to value, where to place our interest and attention, what success looks like, and how a normal human behaves on this planet. And it always aligns perfectly with the interests of the rich and powerful.

They don’t just teach us what to believe. They teach us who we are. They give us the frameworks upon which we cast our ambitions and evaluate our success, and we build psychological identities out of those constructs. I am a businessman. I am unemployed. My life is about making money. My life is about disappointing people. I am a success. I am a failure. They invent the test of our adequacy, and they invent the system by which we are graded.

These artificial constructs take up such vast portions of our personal psychology that people will live their entire lives completely enslaved to them, making them their entire focus. This enslavement is so pervasive that people will often even take their own lives based on what those made-up constructs tell them about who they are and what they’re worth.

And it’s all a lie. A dream world, made entirely of narrative, constructed by the powerful for the benefit of the powerful. Things as intimate as the thoughts in our heads and the movement of our interest and attention are controlled and dominated with iron-fisted force, all for the benefit of some stupid made-up games about imaginary money and fictional authority.

So most of us sleepwalk through life chasing make believe goals and fleeing artificially constructed demons. Too preoccupied with the illusion to look up and notice the thunderous majesty of life as it really is, and usually too confused to truly perceive it even on those rare occasions when we snap out of the trance for a moment to make an effort.

Untangling yourself from this dream world isn’t easy. It takes time. It takes work. It takes a deep, sustained curiosity about what’s really going on underneath all the muddled mental chatter, about what life truly is underneath all the stories we’ve been told about what life is, about who we truly are underneath all the stories we’ve been told about who we are.

The difference between what we’ve been told and what we find over the course of this investigation is the difference between dream and waking life. The real world is as different from the status quo narrative about the world as it is from any other work of fiction. The two things really could not be any more different.

And the good news is that just as your false view of yourself and your world shaped your human expression in the service of the powerful, the rolling back of that mind fog shapes your human expression into something else entirely. Something grounded in reality. Something authentic. Something primal. Something that exists not for the benefit of some faceless oligarchic empire, but for the same reason the grass grows and the galaxies spin in the cosmos.

And that’s what humanity looks like on the other side of this awkward transition phase that our species is going through at this adolescent point in its development. Free from illusion. In harmony with the real. Enslaved to nobody. Striding clear-eyed into the mystery of what’s to come.

Dystopia Disguised as Democracy: All the Ways in Which Freedom Is an Illusion

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”—Frank Zappa

We are no longer free.

We are living in a world carefully crafted to resemble a representative democracy, but it’s an illusion.

We think we have the freedom to elect our leaders, but we’re only allowed to participate in the reassurance ritual of voting. There can be no true electoral choice or real representation when we’re limited in our options to one of two candidates culled from two parties that both march in lockstep with the Deep State and answer to an oligarchic elite.

We think we have freedom of speech, but we’re only as free to speak as the government and its corporate partners allow.

We think we have the right to freely exercise our religious beliefs, but those rights are quickly overruled if and when they conflict with the government’s priorities, whether it’s COVID-19 mandates or societal values about gender equality, sex and marriage.

We think we have the freedom to go where we want and move about freely, but at every turn, we’re hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. Punitive programs strip citizens of their passports and right to travel over unpaid taxes.

We think we have property interests in our homes and our bodies, but there can be no such freedom when the government can seize your property, raid your home, and dictate what you do with your bodies.

We think we have the freedom to defend ourselves against outside threats, but there is no right to self-defense against militarized police who are authorized to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, and granted immunity from accountability with the general blessing of the courts. Certainly, there can be no right to gun ownership in the face of red flag gun laws which allow the police to remove guns from people merely suspected of being threats.

We think we have the right to an assumption of innocence until we are proven guilty, but that burden of proof has been turned on its head by a surveillance state that renders us all suspects and overcriminalization which renders us all lawbreakers. Police-run facial recognition software that mistakenly labels law-abiding citizens as criminals. A social credit system (similar to China’s) that rewards behavior deemed “acceptable” and punishes behavior the government and its corporate allies find offensive, illegal or inappropriate.

We think we have the right to due process, but that assurance of justice has been stripped of its power by a judicial system hardwired to act as judge, jury and jailer, leaving us with little recourse for appeal. A perfect example of this rush to judgment can be found in the proliferation of profit-driven speed and red light cameras that do little for safety while padding the pockets of government agencies.

We have been saddled with a government that pays lip service to the nation’s freedom principles while working overtime to shred the Constitution.

By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect the constitutional rights of the citizenry while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.

Aided and abetted by the legislatures, the courts and Corporate America, the government has been busily rewriting the contract (a.k.a. the Constitution) that establishes the citizenry as the masters and agents of the government as the servants.

We are now only as good as we are useful, and our usefulness is calculated on an economic scale by how much we are worth—in terms of profit and resale value—to our “owners.”

Under the new terms of this revised, one-sided agreement, the government and its many operatives have all the privileges and rights and “we the people” have none.

Only in our case, sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, we’ve allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.

The problem with these devil’s bargains, however, is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.

We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all: the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.” In exchange for the promise of safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, lower taxes, lower crime rates, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization and government corruption.

In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives. So far, we’re up to 4500 criminal laws and 300,000 criminal regulations that result in average Americans unknowingly engaging in criminal acts at least three times a day. For instance, the family of an 11-year-old girl was issued a $535 fine for violating the Federal Migratory Bird Act after the young girl rescued a baby woodpecker from predatory cats.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people locked up, many of them doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates, who are forced to provide corporations with cheap labor.

We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”

We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red-light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments. Despite widespread public opposition, corruption and systemic malfunctions, these cameras are particularly popular with municipalities, which look to them as an easy means of extra cash. Building on the profit-incentive schemes, the cameras’ manufacturers are also pushing speed cameras and school bus cameras, both of which result in hefty fines for violators who speed or try to go around school buses.

We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, “we the people” are being reminded that we possess no rights except for that which the government grants on an as-needed basis.

Indeed, there are chilling parallels between the authoritarian prison that is life in the American police state and The Prisoner, a dystopian television series that first broadcast in Great Britain more than 50 years ago.

The series centers around a British secret agent (played by Patrick McGoohan) who finds himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic retirement community known only as The Village. While luxurious and resort-like, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, their movements are tracked by surveillance drones, and they are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.

Much like the American Police State, The Prisoner’s Village gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

Described as “an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia,” The Prisoner is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and so-called democracy.

Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of mankind to meekly accept his lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of his own making.

The Prisoner is an operations manual for how you condition a populace to life as prisoners in a police state: by brainwashing them into believing they are free so that they will march in lockstep with the state and be incapable of recognizing the prison walls that surround them.

We can no longer maintain the illusion of freedom.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have become “we the prisoners.”

How Empires Die

By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

From a systems perspective, nation-states and empires arise when they are superior solutions to security compared to whatever arrangement they replace: feudalism, warlords, tribal confederations, etc.

States and empires fail when they are no longer the solution, they are the problem. As the book The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization explains, when the dissolution of the state / empire becomes the pain-reducing solution, the inhabitants withdraw their support and the empire loses its grip and expires.

As I explain in my new book, Global Crisis, National Renewal, states and markets are problem-solving structures. These structures solve problems by optimizing adaptability and beneficial synergies that reinforce one another as evolutionary advances.

The rise of the middle class is an example of beneficial synergies: as this new class gains access to credit, expertise, trade, enterprise and pricing power for their labor, they have the means to transform their labor into capital by saving earnings and investing the capital in assets, new enterprises, etc. which then generate income from capital which fuels synergistic increases in credit, expertise, assets and income from investments.

States / empires fail and expire when they elevate the fatal synergies created by self-serving elites. Rather than encourage the dynamics of adaptation–competition, transparency, accountability, experimentation and dissent– the elites suppresses these forces as threats to their monopolies, cartels and wealth.

Stripped of adaptability and beneficial synergies, the state / empire is no longer able to solve problems. It becomes the problem which cannot be resolved.

A key dynamic fueling fatal synergies is the hubristic confidence that low-cost abundance is a birthright bestowed by the state /empire, so resources can be endlessly squandered on excess and extremes of consumption and waste. The state / empire no longer focuses on securing the material sources of security (food, energy, etc.) or the accountability, competition, dissent and transparency required to solve systemic problems.

Instead, the state / empire dissolves into divisive camps seeking to protect their petty fiefdoms and expanding their wealth at the expense of the populace. The super-wealthy build $500 million yachts and palaces, politicians trade on their positions to accumulate fortunes, and corruption replaces governance.

Markets spiral into fatal synergies as low quality products and services, speculative excess, extremes of grotesque consumption and blood-soaked entertainment become “growth industries” while blackouts dim electrical grids and store shelves empty of essentials.

The market solution to everyone already owning everything is to engineer planned obsolescence into every product and form service-sector cartels that then strip services to the bone to juice profits, a.k.a. the crapification of all goods and services.

The state / empire also fails to maintain basic security and functions such as tax collection and a fair enforcement. Petty crimes are exploited by those in power (civil forfeiture) while resistance to the state is severely punished. There are two legal systems, one for the commoners and another for the elite.

The state / empire protects those profiting from the status quo and then calls this profiteering a “solution.” But this profiteering doesn’t solve any problems; it is the problem, as self-serving profiteering protects its privileges by corrupting the state, finance and the economy.

For its part, the market seeks to maximize profits in excesses of consumption, predatory lending (student loans), the wholesale destruction of quality by monopolies and cartels and extremes of speculation.Maximizing profits by any means available has no moral foundation; predatory student loans are profitable, obscure medical billing is profitable, selling products designed to fail is profitable, declaring software outdated is profitable, deceiving consumers is profitable, and so on, in an endless array of shoddy, unhealthy products, rapacious services, fraudulent overcharges, etc.

Since problems go unresolved, things fall apart and the masses veer into extremes of derangement and magical thinking: fanaticism is substituted for friendship, cults abound, common ground vanishes and all the failures of the system are papered over with Bread and Circuses, free money, gaudy entertainments and lifeless displays of conspicuous consumption that reveal the decay and degradation.

Protecting the few stripmining the system at the expense of the many is not problem-solving. It adds a layer of problems that the state /empire is incapable of resolving. Ossified, sclerotic, self-serving, corrupt, focused on virtue-signaling and the appearance of tackling problems rather than actually solving problems because some sacred cow would lose its privileges and income stream, the state / empire is the problem, not the solution.

When the state / empire loses the ability to recognize and solve core problems of security and fairness, it will be replaced by another arrangement that is more adaptable and adept at solving problems. Artifice, fantasy, magical thinking, excuses and absurd cover stories are not part of problem-solving. Problems can only be solved if reality is faced directly.

When reality is unacceptable because it negatively impacts those stripmining the system for private gain, the state / empire is already on its fatal spiral to collapse.

DHS Suggests Those Who Spread ‘Misleading Narratives’ That ‘Undermine Trust in US Gov’t’ are Terrorists

By Matt Agorist

Source: The Free Thought Project

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday issued a bulletin warning of a heightened terrorism alert in the United States. One of the “key factors” for the heightened threat, which the DHS considers terrorism, is “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”

Naturally, this has many folks concerned, especially considering the examples cited in the bulletin which include “false or misleading narratives” about “unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.

While parts of the memo cite calls for violence and attacks by foreign terrorist organizations — which are actual terror threats — as cause for concern, the idea that the government’s definition of misinformation could potentially earn you the label of “terrorist,” is shocking.

The bulletin is titled, “Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland” and reads as follows (emphasis added):

The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation. While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions; (2) continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure; soft targets and mass gatherings; faith-based institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and mosques; institutions of higher education; racial and religious minorities; government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement and the military; the media; and perceived ideological opponents; and (3) calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on the United States based on recent events.

As stated above, reasons 2 and 3 are obvious threats of terror and make sense. However, given the government’s tendency to paint with a broad brush, undermining public trust could make millions of people terrorists, including the Free Thought Project.

It is the job of a true journalist to undermine trust in the government and given the shifting goal posts on what is defined as “misinformation” over just the last two years, literally anyone could find themselves subject to this definition. To hammer their point home, DHS specifically calls out misinformation on COVID-19.

Key factors contributing to the current heightened threat environment include:

  1. The proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions:
    • For example, there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.

Remember in 2020, when any talk of a potential lab leak theory was considered “misinformation”? By this definition, everyone who talked about the lab leak theory was a potential terrorist.

Doctors like Robert Malone and Peter McCullough, who challenge the vaccination mandate, are now, according to this bulletin, terrorists. Given the fact that the government is urging Spotify to censor Joe Rogan for “misinformation,” according to this bulletin, Rogan is also a terrorist. Their information and discussions on Covid-19 have certainly sown discord and undermined public trust — and rightfully so — but does this make them a terror threat?

Obviously, it does not. The only people who would be threatened by healthy, science-based skepticism as espoused by doctors like these two, are tyrants who wish to control the narrative.

Given the extremely broad definition of what the government considers “misinformation,” this bulletin is one of the most worrisome documents to come from the feds in recent history. What’s more, the mere act of releasing such a document, actually “undermines public trust in U.S. government institutions” by threatening those who would dare question the status quo.

Make no mistake, this is a move to criminalize free speech by allowing the executive to declare anyone who disagrees with their dictates, a terrorist. With declarations like this, the government doesn’t need terrorist organizations to “sow discord” — they are doing it themselves.