Category Archives: Empire

Is It Still Unconstitutional If the Govt. OUTSOURCES Spying on Citizens? After All, They’re Only Surveilling “Extremists.”

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Brian Stauffer

By Robert Wheeler

Source: The Organic Prepper

In 2021, there is no denying that the United States is a full-on surveillance state. The Biden Administration attempts to remove all pretense of privacy with its new consideration to use outside firms to track “extremist” chatter by American citizens online. But what exactly is an “extremist?” According to Tulsi Gabbard, recent efforts essentially criminalize half the country:

“It’s so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said.

She continued: “When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.” (source)

(So basically, if you’re reading this website, you’re probably an “extremist” in someone’s point of view.)

New efforts to spy on Americans

Their effort would expand the ability of intelligence agencies to gather information (spy) on American citizens.

Currently, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is limited on how it can monitor citizens online. For example, it is banned from assuming false identities to gain access to private messaging apps used by citizens without justification.

Instead, according to the law (but not necessarily in practice), federal agencies can only browse through unprotected information on social media sites. A source familiar with Biden’s effort said it is not about decrypting data. Instead, it is about using outside entities to access these private groups legally to gather large amounts of information that would help DHS identify “key narratives as they emerge.”

Note: Some of these outside entities are used by what the administration considers “extremists.” (Such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.) 

The Department of Homeland Security claims they are doing no such thing

According to multiple sources cited by CNN, the plan would allow the DHS to make an end-run around those limits. In response to CNN, DHS said it “is not partnering with private firms to surveil suspected domestic terrorists online” and “it is blatantly false” to suggest that it would do so.

“All of our work to address the threat of domestic terrorism is done consistent with the Constitution and other applicable law, and in close coordination with our privacy and civil liberties experts,” the DHS statement added.

But the department has considered partnering with research firms that have more visibility and reach in this area. However, it has not done so yet, according to the sources. And do recall that they recently wanted to outlaw encrypted apps.

Suppose that does happen (and we have every reason to suspect it already has). In that case, DHS could produce information that would be helpful to it and the FBI, CIA, and NSA in its ability to spy on American citizens not committing any crimes.

“Narratives” that might lead to violence justify domestic spying?

CNN unintentionally explains the reason for the Biden Admin’s new focus on these messaging platforms when it writes:

Much of the planning for the Capitol Hill riot appeared out in the open on social media platforms and encrypted apps available to anyone with an internet connection. The DHS is trying to get a better sense of “narratives” that might lead to violence as they emerge across those channels, according to two DHS officials.

But tracking those narratives, particularly in the wake of January 6, increasingly requires access to private groups on encrypted apps as extremist groups migrate from more forward-facing sites like Facebook.

By the time narratives appear on Facebook, it is usually too late, one DHS official told CNN.

“Domestic violent extremists are adaptive and innovative. We see them not only moving to encrypted platforms but obviously couching their language so they don’t trigger any kind of red flag on any platforms,” the official added.

Outsourcing some information gathering to outside firms would give DHS the benefit of tactics that it isn’t legally able to do in-house, such as using false personas to gain access to private groups used by suspected extremists, sources say. Of course, China is already spying on millions of Americans.

Isn’t domestic spying a violation of our Constitutional Rights?

CNN continues by writing:

The department is also working on expanding its ability to collect information from public-facing social media sites where users’ posts offered clear warning signs about potential violence ahead of the January 6 attack, but were either ignored or underestimated by security officials prior to that date.

But any effort by the intelligence community to wade into the murky area of domestic spying is fraught with political risks, current and former officials say.

Gathering information on US citizens — no matter how abhorrent their beliefs — raises instant constitutional and legal challenges. Civil liberties advocates and privacy hawks have long criticized any efforts to collect even publicly available information on Americans in bulk as a violation of Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights.

The growing surveillance state and expanding government spying is the ultimate issue

Notice what is being considered “extreme” by the administration and DHS. It is not BLM or Antifa who have been tearing apart and burning American cities to the ground but right-leaning and even “Constitutionalist” groups targeted.

In the hands of the radical left, the US government is moving once again against one side in the American culture war, empowering the opposing side. (The same side that terrorized innocent Americans.)

For those on the left who support the crackdown on the right-wing and what they see as white supremacy, they need only wait until they have outlived their usefulness. Or until a right-wing administration takes over. When one gets purged it leads the way for others to be purged. Then they will come to realize why government overreach is a danger to everyone and not a force to be wielded lightly. 

How much more intense do you expect the spying to become?

Do you think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg for government surveillance? What do you think they’re doing that we don’t yet know about? Are you taking any steps to protect yourself from being spied upon? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Anthony Fauci “has no clue and no authority to lecture on what is good for India”

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: Dissident Voice

In light of the current COVID-related situation in India, Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US adviser on COVID, has called for India to implement a hard lockdown and for the mass roll-out of vaccines.

However, Fauci has no clue and no authority to lecture on what is good for India.

That is the view of journalist Ratna Chakraborty. Writing on the Empire Diaries website, she argues that the US is a rich nation, prints the world’s reserve currency, has robust financial coverage for the jobless and its population is spread out.

On the other hand, India is finance-strained, has a brittle economy that lives on the brink of disaster, does not have any financial coverage for the jobless, is densely populated and its people mostly live in congested clusters.

Given the government’s incompetence and the callousness demonstrated towards poorer sections of Indian society the first time around, Chakraborty says any new lockdown would again result in disaster. She adds that nothing has been learnt, with no attempt to upgrade the healthcare set-up nationwide.

It is worth recalling what renowned academic and activist Noam Chomsky said about India’s first lockdown.

During an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! back in May 2020, Chomsky said:

… you can almost describe it as genocidal. Modi gave, I think, a four-hour warning before a total lockdown. That’s (affected) over a billion people. Some of them have nowhere to go.

He added:

People in the informal economy, which is a huge number of people, are just cast out. Go walk back to your village, which may be a thousand miles away. Die on the roadside. This is a huge catastrophe in the making…

During the first lockdown in India, rural affairs commentator P Sainath painted a dreary picture of the impacts, not least the desperate plight of migrant workers, a shortage of cash to buy food and a potential shortage of food as farmers were unable to complete their harvests.

Sainath also reported the views of Dr. Sundararaman, a former executive director of the National Health Systems Resources Centre, who argued that there was a desperate need to:

identify and act on the reverse migrations problem and the loss of livelihoods. Failing that, deaths from diseases that have long tormented mostly poor Indians could outstrip those brought about by the corona virus.

Regardless of the destructive impact of the first lockdown in India and the questionable efficacy of lockdowns in terms of what they are supposed to achieve, another one would further push hundreds of millions towards poverty and hunger. It would merely fuel and accelerate the impoverishment caused by the first lockdown.

A new report prepared by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University (APU) has highlighted how employment and income had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels even by late 2020.

The report, ‘State of Working India 2021 – One year of Covid-19’ highlights how almost half of formal salaried workers moved into the informal sector and that 230 million people fell below the national minimum wage poverty line.

Even before COVID, India was experiencing its longest economic slowdown since 1991 with weak employment generation, uneven development and a largely informal economy. A recent article by the Research Unit for Political Economy highlights the structural weaknesses of the economy and the often desperate plight of ordinary people.

The study also found that there was a loss in monthly earnings for all types of workers: 13% for casual workers, 18% for the self-employed, 17% for those with temporary salaries, 5% for the permanent salaried and 17% overall.

The poorest 25% of households borrowed 3.8 times their median income, as against 1.4 times for the top 25%. The study noted the implications for debt traps.

Six months later, it was also noted that food intake was still at lockdown levels for 20% of vulnerable households.

How bad is COVID?

Given this impact, before listening to prominent individuals with apparent conflicts of interest related to vaccine roll-outs (see the editorial in the British Medical Journal ‘Covid-19, Politicisation, Corruption, and Suppression of Science’), the current COVID-related situation in India must be contextualised. The sensationalism needs to be put to one side.

According to Yohan Tengra, a Mumbai-based political analyst and healthcare specialist, the true number of infection rates can only be known by testing symptomatic people who have tested positive with either a virus culture test or PCR test that uses 24 cycles or less.

The PCR test has been used as the gold standard for COVID cases around the world. But it has been sharply criticised for being inaccurate, inappropriate, for using cycles in excess of 40 (thereby inflating the numbers) and for producing ‘false positives’.

It seems that even the Swedish Ministry of Health now thinks that it is not fit for purpose:

The PCR technology used in tests to detect viruses cannot distinguish between viruses capable of infecting cells and viruses that have been neutralised by the immune system and therefore these tests cannot be used to determine whether someone is contagious or not. RNA from viruses can often be detected for weeks (sometimes months) after the illness but does not mean that you are still contagious.

We also need to be reminded what the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated about the PCR in December 2020. It is especially important to focus on PCR testing because these tests are the entire basis for restrictions and lockdowns (and vaccination); even when deaths were within normal annual ranges, ‘case’ levels were high and restrictions and ‘tiered lockdowns’ were still being imposed in places like the UK.

The following extract can be found on page 39 of the report from the CDC 2010-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel:

Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.

Perfectly healthy people are being tested and small often insignificant fragments of flu, common cold or some other virus can be detected. People are then labelled as a COVID ‘case’.

But that is not all. In their recent article ‘The Nuremberg Doctors Trial and Modern Medicine’s Panic Promotion of the FDA’s Experimental and Unapproved COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines’, Dr Gary G Kohls and Professor Michel Chossudovsky state that – with regard to the so-called ‘emergency use authorization’ (EUA) of COVID-19 vaccines – it is now established and confirmed by the WHO (January 20, 2021) that the entire data base pertaining to tabulation of confirmed positive cases (RT-PCR test) (since early February 2020 in 193 member states of the UN) is invalid.

The two authors note that this flawed methodology cannot be used to confirm the existence of an emergency situation. EUA criterion is therefore not only invalid but illegal.

Furthermore, there is currently decent scientific evidence to indicate asymptomatic transmission may not be significant.

According to Tengra, the case numbers being reported in India are mainly asymptomatic cases. The directors of the All India Institute of Medical Science and the India Council of Medical Research both say that there are many more asymptomatic cases this time than in the so-called ‘first wave’.

As these ‘cases’ comprise most of India’s case numbers, we should therefore be questioning the data as well as the PCR tests being used to detect the virus.

Tengra says the case fatality rate for COVID-19 in India was over 3% last year but has now dropped to below 1.5%. The infection fatality rate is even lower, with serosurvey results showing them to be between 0.05% to 0.1%.

As has occurred in many other countries, Tengra notes the way that death certificate guidelines are structured in India makes it easy for someone to be labelled as a COVID death just based on a positive PCR test or general symptoms. It is therefore often difficult to say who has died from the virus and who has been misdiagnosed.

We should also bear in mind that respiratory diseases like TB and respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis leading to pneumonia are major killers in India. These conditions are severely aggravated by air pollution and often require oxygen which can be in short supply during air pollution crises in places like Delhi at this time of the year.

Therefore, the current harrowing scenes we see in the media might not necessarily be due to the lethality of the virus but by the numbers who are ending up in hospital.

Vaccines

If the pandemic narrative has been constructed on the house of (statistical) cards outlined thus far, then we should be questioning the need for a mass vaccination campaign, which could actually lead to aggravating the current situation.

This is not lost on Dr Geert Vanden Bossche, a virologist who has held positions at several vaccine companies, carrying out vaccine research and development. He has also been involved with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and has worked with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). Not an ‘anti-vaxxer’ in any sense of the term.

He offers insight into why it is quite possible that mass vaccine rollouts will actually lead to very disturbing levels of deaths directly related to COVID-19. Far from reducing the numbers and facilitating immunity, he anticipates ‘vaccine assisted immune escape’.

Vanden Bossche warns that mass infection prevention and mass vaccination with Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic can only breed highly infectious variants. He offers a truly worrying scenario. Of course, not everyone might agree with his analysis but it is certainly a cause for concern.

There is also the entire issue regarding the necessity, efficacy and safety of the vaccines now being rolled out. The group ‘Doctors for COVID Ethics’ has recently raised serious doubts in all of these areas (its concerns have been published on the UK-based OffGuardian website).

In finishing, there are two questions we should ask.

Can we have confidence in science and evidence-based health and social policy where COVID-19 is concerned? And can we just assume – as governments and the media imply we should – that Anthony Fauci and the pharmaceutical corporations have ordinary people’s interests at heart?

In response to the first question, not much. In response to the second, certain interests have been riding and fuelling a wave of sensationalism and duplicity throughout.

Israel to Invade Gaza — Again?

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephenLendman.com

Hostile to peace, stability and the rule of law, militantly racist/fantasy democracy Israel is an apartheid police state.

Waging preemptive war on Palestinians without declaring it — again — state terror is its favorite tactic against defenseless civilians.

What’s been going on since mid-April — especially since terror-bombing of Gaza began days earlier — threatens the lives, well-being and rights of millions of long-suffering Palestinians. 

According to the Times of Israel, the IDF will present a Gaza ground invasion plan for the Netanyahu regime to consider on Thursday.

Israeli forces are mobilized along Gaza’s border for invasion if ordered, no go-ahead given so far.

If initiated, it’ll be the fourth Israeli full-scale ground war of aggression on Gaza since December 2008.

Civilian casualties are already mounting in the Strip in defiance of international law.

The Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention) states:

Article 25: “The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.”

Article 26: “The officer in command of an attacking force must, before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in his power to warn the authorities.”

Article 27: “In sieges and bombardments, all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes.” 

Fourth Geneva prohibits violence against civilians in times of war. Collective punishment is banned.

According to Article 33, “(n)o protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.” 

“Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”

Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

In 1938, a unanimously adopted League of Nations resolution — the UN’s precursor — prohibited the “bombardment of cities, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings not in the immediate neighborhood of the operations of land forces.”

The 1945 Nuremberg Principles prohibit “crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.” 

Included are “inhumane acts committed against any civilian populations, before or during the war.”  

Indiscriminate killing and “wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity” are absolutely prohibited.

In 1968, a UN General Assembly Resolution on Human Rights prohibited launching of attacks against civilian populations. 

Terror-bombing Gaza by Israel — now and earlier — resembles Nazi Germany’s aerial terror against Guernica, Spain in April 1937.

Nazi Wehrmacht warplanes destroyed the city, massacred over 1,600 people, injuring hundreds more.

According to air commander Herman Goring at the time, the attack was an “opportunity to test under fire whether (munitions) had been adequately developed.”

An aftermath eyewitness said “(t)he only things left standing were a church and a sacred tree, the symbol of the Basque people.”

“There hadn’t been a single anti-aircraft gun in the town. It (was) mainly a fire raid.”

“A sight that haunted me for weeks was the charred bodies of several women and children huddled together in what had been the cellar of a house.”

Civilian sites were fair game. Guernica had no military significance. 

It was prelude for how both sides operated viciously throughout WW II on a much larger scale.

In his book titled “The Good War: An Oral History of World War II,” the late Studs Terkel explained the “warped…view of how we look at things today (seeing them) in terms of war,” adding:

This “twisted memory…encourages (people) to be willing, almost eager, to use military force” as a way to solve problems — what Terkel called “lunatic” actions.

Examples are endless pre-during-and-post-WW II.

Gazans are again enduring the barbarity of preemptive Israeli terror-bombing, notably against civilians in harm’s way.

Is an end of it near or does the Netanyahu regime have much more mass slaughter and destruction in mind — for political reasons as a way to try holding onto to power?

For time immemorial, long-suffering Palestinians have been victimized by Israeli viciousness because the world community largely looks the other way — while feigning concern for their lives, welfare and rights.

The Future is Hawaii

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By Peter Van Buren

Source: We Meant Well

I have seen the future. It looks a lot like Hawaii. What I saw there (absent the beautiful beaches, confused tourists, and incredible nature) was a glimpse of the future for much of America.

COVID paved the way for internal travel restrictions — Americans moving around inside their own country — never before thought possible, or even constitutional. Hawaii, an American state, had to decide if they accepted American me, much as a foreign country controls its borders and decides which outsiders may enter.

Hawaii required a very specific COVID test, from a “trusted partner” company they contract with, at the cost of $119 (no insurance accepted.) To drive home the Orwellian aspects of this all, after receiving the test kit I had to spit into the test tube during a Zoom call, some large head onscreen peeping into my bedroom watching to ensure it was indeed my spit. And now of course, after clicking Accept several times, my DNA information is in Hawaiian government hands along with whoever else’s name was buried in pages of Terms of Service. I was rewarded with the Scooby snack of an QR code on my phone.

Hawaii used to offer the option of skipping the test and doing quarantine on-island. However, they now pre-screen at major airports and so no QR code, no boarding. And for those who don’t think good, today it’s a COVID test, tomorrow other criteria may be applied. Aloha!

I will add that all the extra health screening at the airport made me a little nostalgic when I finally got to the bombs and weapons detecting set up by TSA. Just like the good old days when we worried about Muslim terrorists instead of each other turning our planes into flying death tubes, I was checked to make sure I was not carrying more than 3 ounces of shampoo. It felt… quaint to remove my shoes alongside everyone else, millions of pairs a day, all because some knucklehead failed to explode his shoe bomb and was subdued by other passengers 12 freaking years ago. For old times’ sake I prepared mentally to subdue my fellow cabin mates. The nostalgia was driven home as the TSA screener made everyone remove their mask for a moment to verify the face matched the ID picture except Muslim women, ensuring every non-Muslim woman passenger got to exhale a couple of COVID-era breaths into the crowd. Viva!

The future in Hawaii strikes you as soon as you clear the airport into that beautiful Pacific air. It smells good in patches, but in fact there are growing masses of homeless people everywhere; the unsheltered homeless population is up 12 percent on Oahu. Coming from NYC I am certainly not surprised by the zombie armies, but these people live outside. You can’t escape them by surrendering control of the subway system, or by creating shelters in someone else’s neighborhood. The homeless here live in tents, some in gleefully third world shacks made of found materials, others in government-paid shanties creatively called “tiny houses.”

Some make solo camp sites alone on the sidewalk, some create mini-Burning Man encampments in public parks. I’d like to say the latter resemble the migratory camps in Grapes of Wrath, but the Joad family could still afford an old jalopy and these people cannot. The Joads were also headed to find work; these people have burrowed in, with laundry hanging out, dogs running among the trash, rats and bugs happily exploring the host-parasite relationship. These folks stake out areas once full of tourists on Waikiki, and in public spaces once enjoyed more by locals. Drugs are a major problem and whether a homeless person will hassle you depends on which drug he favors, the kind that makes him aggressive or the kind that makes him sleep standing up at the bus stop.

The future is built around the homeless, literally. My business was in the Kakaako area, once a warehouse district between Waikiki and downtown Honolulu, now home to a dozen or more 40 story condos. They are all built like fortresses against the homeless. Each tower sits on a pedestal with parking inside, such that the street view of most places is a four story wall. There is an entrance (with security) but in fact the “first floor” for us is already four floors above ground. Once you’re up there, the top of the pedestal usually features a pool, a garden, BBQ, kiddie play area, dog walking space, all safely out of reach from whatever ugly is going on down below.

If you look out the windows from the upper, most expensive floors, you can see the ocean and sand but not the now tiny homeless people. They become invisible if you’re rich enough. Don’t be offended or shocked — what did you think runaway economic inequality was gonna end up doing to us? Macroeconomics isn’t a morality play. But for most of the wealthy the issue isn’t confronting the reality of inequality, it is navigating the society it has created. Never mind stuff like those bars on park benches that make it impossible to lay down. The architects in Kakaako have stepped it up.

These heavily defended apartments can run lots of millions of dollars, with most owners either coming from the mainland U.S. or Asia. They will live a nice life. Most of them work elsewhere, or own businesses elsewhere, which is good, because the future in Hawaii does not look good for the 99 percent below. It’s inevitable in a society that is constantly adding to its homeless population while simultaneously lacking any comprehensive way to provide medical treatment, all the while smoothing over the bumps on the street with plentiful supplies of alcohol and opioids.

Hawaii’s economy may be the future. Very little is made here. As making steel and cars left the Midwest in the late 2oth century, so did Hawaii’s old economy based on agriculture. It was cheaper to grow food elsewhere and import it to the mainland. The bulk of pineapple consumed in the United States now comes from Mexican, Central and South American growers same as steel now comes from China, and the few pineapple fields in Hawaii are for tourists. Hawaii now depends on two industries: tourism and defense spending. And both are controlled by government.

Tourism accounts directly for 24 percent of the state’s economy, more if one factors in secondary spending. The industry currently does not exist in viable form, with arrivals down some 75 percent. Unemployment Hawaii-wide is 24 percent, much more if you add in those who long ago gave up looking or are underemployed frying burgers. Much is driven by COVID. Will those ever recede? No one knows. When might things get better? No one knows. The decisions which control lives are made largely in secret, by the governor or “scientists,” and are not subject to public debate or a state congressional vote. One imagines a Dickensonian kid in hula skirt asking “Please sir, may we have jobs?”

Everyone knows Pearl Harbor, not only once a major tourist destination but also a part of direct Pentagon spending which pumps $7.2 billion into Hawaii’s economy, about 7.7 percent of the state’s GDP. Hawaii is second in the United States for the highest defense spending as a share of state GDP, and that’s just the overt stuff. Rumor has it the NSA has multiple facilities strewn around western Oahu with thousands of employees. All those government personnel, uniformed or covert, do a lot of personal spending in the local economy, much as they do in the shanty towns which ring American bases abroad. Everyone relies on local utilities like water, power, and sewers, and those bases need engineers, plumbers, electricians and others. Many are local residents either directly employed by DoD or working through contracts with private companies. The point is even more then tourism, this large sector of the economy is controlled by the government. At least they’re still working.

Another important sector of the Hawaiian economy is also government controlled, those who live entirely on public benefits. Benefits in Hawaii are the highest in the nation, an average of $49,175 and untaxed. For the last 9 years Hawaii spent more on public welfare benefits, about 20 percent of the state budget, then it did on education. More than one out ten people in Hawaii get food stamps (SNAP), though the number is higher if you include free lunches at school and for the elderly. Fewer working people means fewer tax paying people, so this is unsustainable into the future.

Who owns the future? The government in Hawaii owns the land. The Federal government owns about 20 percent of everything, and the state of Hawaii owns some 50 percent of the rest. Do Not Enter – U.S. Government Property signs are everywhere if you take a drive out of town. There are also plenty of private roads and gated communities to separate the rich from the poor, but the prize goes to Oracle owner Larry Ellison who owns almost the entire island of Lanai, serving as a gatekeeper inside another gatekeeper’s turf. For the rest of the people, homeownership rates in Hawaii are some of the lowest in the nation.

The good news (for some…) is in the future whites will be a minority race in all of America. They already are in Hawaii. Asians not including Native Hawaiians make up 37 percent of the population, with whites tagging in at 25 percent. Local government, some 55 percent of the jobs, is dominated by people of Japanese heritage. Japanese heritage people also have the highest percentage of homeownership, 70 percent. Almost all have a high school diploma, and about a third have a four-year college degree.

The well-loved mainland concept of “people of color” fades quickly in Hawaii, where Japanese color people are a majority over everyone else. And unlike in some minds, people in Hawaii are very aware that the concept of “Asian” is racist as hell, and know the differences among Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Things are such that local Caucasian and Hawaii Democratic Congressman Ed Case said he was an “Asian trapped in a white body” and meant it as, and was understood in Hawaii as, a good thing and was echoed by Case’s Japanese-American wife.

White supremacy has clearly been defeated here, though I am not sure BLM would be happy with how that actually worked out without them. On a personal note, I will say as a white-identifying minority I was well-treated by the police and others. I was not forced to wear one of those goofy shirts or add an apostrophe to words while in Hawai’i against my cultural mores, so there may be hope yet in the future I saw.

The “Russian Threat”

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By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: PaulCraigRoberts.org

During 2016  CIA director John Brennan and FBI director James Comey, together with the corrupt Democrat party, began orchestrating Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from reducing the risk of nuclear war by normalizing relations with Russia.  President Trump tried to nip a New Cold War in the bud, but that was not in the interest of the power and profit of the military/security complex which desperately needs the “Russian threat” as its raison d’etre. 

Stephen Cohen, myself and a few others expressed concern that the tensions between the two  nuclear powers were being driven to more dangerous highs than ever existed during the 20th century Cold War.  Many websites joined in debunking the orchestrated Russiagate fabrication.

To discredit these voices, a new website, PropOrNot, suddenly appeared with a list of 200 “Russian agents/dupes.”  Those of us who had raised red flags about Russiagate and the worsening of tensions were on the list. The Washington Post gave the accusation credibility by reporting the PropOrNot accusation that those who dissented from a hostile policy toward Russia were “Putin agents.”

A number of the falsely accused websites were intimidated and abandoned the truth.  CounterPunch went even further. It dropped its best and most incisive writers—people such as Mike Whitney and Diana Johnstone.  CounterPunch, which  had once collected, published, and marketed a collection of my essays as a book, suddenly discovered that it preferred fiction over fact.  Other websites that had religiously reproduced all of my columns now became selective about which parts of the official narrative they would permit to be examined on their sites.  This was, perhaps, the beginning of the movement to de-platform all who challenge the narrative.

The threat to truth-tellers has now been elevated by election thief Joe Biden’s latest Executive Order declaring a “national emergency” to “deal with the Russian threat.” Pepe Escobar reports that Biden’s order opens every American to being accused of being a Russian agent engaged in undermining US security. “A sub-paragraph (C), detailing ‘actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the United States or abroad,’ is vague enough to be used to eliminate any journalism that supports Russia’s positions in international affairs.”

“Supports Russia’s position” includes an objective description and non-partisan analysis of Russian policy. The crucial point is that, in effect, Biden’s executive order places everyone reporting objectively on Russia’s political positions as a potential threat to the United States.  https://www.unz.com/pescobar/putin-rewrites-the-law-of-the-geopolitical-jungle/  

If we are honest, we will acknowledge that we have undergone the complete collapse of the United States.  Truth is prohibited in the media, school systems, and universities if it conflicts with the elite agendas served by the official narratives. The First Amendment is dead and buried. Free speech is reserved for the official narratives, such as “systemic racism”  and “Russian threat.” Those who exercise their Constitutional right find themselves de-platformed or fired.  

To understand how the victory of propaganda over truth elevates the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon, consider the difference between the 20th century and 21st century cold wars.

In the original Cold War both Soviet and American leaders worked to defuse tensions.  Agreements were made on arms control and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. There were regular meetings or summits between American and Soviet leaders.  Diplomatic decorum was maintained.  There were agreements that permitted each side to inspect the other’s compliance.  

This process began with President John F. Kennedy and  Soviet First Secretary Khrushchev.  It continued through President Reagan and, more or less, President George H. W. Bush.  It ended with the Clinton regime and has been downhill ever since.  President Trump intended to reduce the dangerous tensions, but was not permitted.  Indeed, his intent was sufficient cause for the Establishment to drive him from office.  2020 was a coup, not an election.

In the 20th century Cold War Russian experts differed in their assessments of the threat, and their differences were publicly aired. Differing assessments were debated. Dissenters were not demonized as Russian agents.  Today American Russian experts find that being Russophobic is a career boost. In the 20th century the New York Times and Washington Post were aligned with peace efforts. Today they are part of the neoconservative warmongers’ propaganda ministry.

The alarming conclusion is that since the Clinton regime, the US government has worked consistently to worsen relations with Russia even to the extent of publicly demonizing the Russian president and strangling objective debate in the US.  This is the perfect foundation for war.

All the while insouciant Americans elected governments that successively raised the likelihood of nuclear annihiliation while shutting down dissident concerns.  As I reported on March 17, “In the United States Russian Studies has degenerated into propaganda.  Recently, two members of the Atlantic Council think tank, Emma Ashford and Matthew Burrows, suggested that American foreign policy could benefit from a less hostile approach to Russia. Instantly, 22 members of the think tank denounced the article by Ashford and Burrows.”

Today even in Republican and conservative circles to question Putin’s demonization raises disapproving eyebrows (the same for China and Iran).  The US Establishment has succeeded in labeling objective analysis as “pro-Russian” (or pro-Chinese or pro-Iranian). This means that an objective view of US/Russian relations is off-limits to US policymakers.  

The “Russian threat” is another hoax, one that will destroy the world.

Denying the Demonic

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By Edward Curtin

Source: Behind the Curtain

In March of last year as the coronavirus panic was starting, I wrote a somewhat flippant article saying that the obsession with buying and hoarding toilet paper was the people’s vaccine.  My point was simple: excrement and death have long been associated in cultural history and in the Western imagination with the evil devil, Satan, the Lord of the underworld, the Trickster, the Grand Master who rules the pit of smelly death, the place below where bodies go.

The psychoanalytic literature is full of examples of death anxiety revealed in anal dreams of shit-filled overflowing toilets and people pissing in their pants.  Ernest Becker put it simply in The Denial of Death:

No mistake – the turd is mankind’s real threat because it reminds people of death.

The theological literature is also full of warnings about the devil’s wiles.  So too the Western classics from Aeschylus to Melville. The demonic has an ancient pedigree and has various names. Rational people tend to dismiss all this as superstitious nonsense.  This is hubris.  The Furies always exact their revenge when their existence is denied.  For they are part of ourselves, not alien beings, as the tragedy of human history has shown us time and again.

Since excremental visions and the fear of death haunt humans – the skull at the banquet as William James put it – the perfect symbol of protection is toilet paper that will keep you safe and clean and free of any reminder of the fear of death running through a panicked world.  It’s a magic trick of course, an unconscious way of thinking you are protecting yourself; a form of self-hypnosis.

One year later, magical thinking has taken a different form and my earlier flippancy has turned darker. You can’t hoard today’s toilet paper but you can get them: RNA inoculations, misnamed vaccines. People are lined up for them now as they are being told incessantly to “get your shot.”  They are worse than toilet paper. At least toilet paper serves a practical function.  Real vaccines, as the word’s etymology – Latin, vaccinus, from cows, the cowpox virus vaccine first used by British physician Edward Jenner in 1800 to prevent smallpox – involve the use of a small amount of a virus.  The RNA inoculations are not vaccines.  To say they are is bullshit and has nothing to do with cows. To call them vaccines is linguistic mind control.

These experimental inoculations do not prevent the vaccinated from getting infected with the “virus” nor do they prevent transmission of the alleged virus. When they were approved recently by the FDA that was made clear.  The FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for these inoculations only under the proviso that they may make an infection less severe.  Yet millions have obediently taken a shot that doesn’t do what they think it does.  What does that tell us?

Hundreds of millions of people have taken an injection that allows a bio-reactive “gene-therapy” molecule to be injected into their bodies because of fear, ignorance, and a refusal to consider that the people who are promoting this are evil and have ulterior motives.  Not that they mean well, but that they are evil and have evil intentions.  Does this sound too extreme?  Radically evil?  Come on!

So what drives the refusal to consider that demonic forces are at work with the corona crisis?

Why do the same people who get vaccinated believe that a PCR test that can’t, according to its inventor Kary Mullis, test for this so-called virus, believe in the fake numbers of positive “cases”?  Do these people even know if the virus has ever been isolated?

Such credulity is an act of faith, not science or confirmed fact.

Is it just the fear of death that drives such thinking?

Or is it something deeper than ignorance and propaganda that drives this incredulous belief?

If you want facts, I will not provide them here. Despite the good intentions of people who still think facts matter, I don’t think most people are persuaded by facts anymore. But such facts are readily available from excellent alternative media publications.  Global Research’s Michel Chossudovsky has released, free of charge, his comprehensive E-Book: The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup D’Etat, and the “Great Reset.”  It’s a good place to start if facts and analysis are what you are after.  Or go to Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s Childrens Health Defense, Off-Guardian, Dissident Voice, Global Research, among numerous others.

Perhaps you think these sites are right-wing propaganda because many articles they publish can also be read or heard at some conservative media. If so, you need to start thinking rather than reacting. The entire mainstream political/media spectrum is right-wing, if you wish to use useless terms such as Left/Right.  I have spent my entire life being accused of being a left-wing nut, but now I am being told I am a right-wing nut even though my writing appears in many leftist publications. Perhaps my accusers don’t know which way the screw turns or the nut loosens.  Being uptight and frightened doesn’t help.

I am interested in asking why so many people can’t accept that radical evil is real.  Is that a right-wing question?  Of course not.  It’s a human question that has been asked down through the ages.

I do think we are today in the grip of radical evil, demonic forces. The refusal to see and accept this is not new.  As the eminent theologian, David Ray Griffin, has argued, the American Empire, with its quest for world domination and its long and ongoing slaughters at home and abroad, is clearly demonic; it is driven by the forces of death symbolized by Satan.

I have spent many years trying to understand why so many good people have refused to see and accept this and have needed to ply a middle course over many decades. The safe path. Believing in the benevolence of their rulers.  When I say radical evil, I mean it in the deepest spiritual sense.  A religious sense, if you prefer.  But by religious I don’t mean institutional religions since so many of the institutional religions are complicit in the evil.

It has long been easy for Americans to accept the demonic nature of foreign leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.  Easy, also, to accept the government’s attribution of such names as the “new Hitler” to any foreign leader it wishes to kill and overthrow.  But to consider their own political leaders as demonic is near impossible.

So let me begin with a few reminders.

The U.S. destruction of Iraq and the mass killings of Iraqis under George W. Bush beginning in 2003.  Many will say it was illegal, unjust, carried out under false pretenses, etc.  But who will say it was pure evil?

Who will say that Barack Obama’s annihilation of Libya was radical evil?

Who will say the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo and so many Japanese cities that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians was radical evil?

Who will say the U.S. war against Syria is demonic evil?

Who will say the killing of millions of Vietnamese was radical evil?

Who will say the insider attacks of September 11, 2001 were demonic evil?

Who will say slavery, the genocide of native people, the secret medical experiments on the vulnerable, the CIA mind control experiments, the coups engineered throughout the world resulting in the mass murder of millions – who will say these are evil in the deepest sense?

Who will say the U.S. security state’s assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Fred Hampton, et al. were radical evil?

Who will say the trillions spent on nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them to annihilate the human race is not the ultimate in radical evil?

This list could extend down the page endlessly.  Only someone devoid of all historical sense could conclude that the U.S. has not been in the grip of demonic forces for a long time.

If you can do addition, you will find the totals staggering.  They are overwhelming in their implications.

But to accept this history as radically evil in intent and not just in its consequences are two different things.  I think so many find it so hard to admit that their leaders have intentionally done and do demonic deeds for two reasons.  First, to do so implicates those who have supported these people or have not opposed them. It means they have accepted such radical evil and bear responsibility.  It elicits feelings of guilt. Secondly, to believe that one’s own leaders are evil is next to impossible for many to accept because it suggests that the rational façade of society is a cover for sinister forces and that they live in a society of lies so vast they the best option is to make believe it just isn’t so.  Even when one can accept that evil deeds were committed in the past, even some perhaps intentionally, the tendency is to say “that was then, but things are different now.” Grasping the present when you are in it is not only difficult but often disturbing for it involves us.

So if I am correct and most Americans cannot accept that their leaders have intentionally done radically evil things, then it follows that to even consider questioning the intentions of the authorities regarding the current corona crisis needs to be self-censored.  Additionally, as we all know, the authorities have undertaken a vast censorship operation so people cannot hear dissenting voices of those who have now been officially branded as domestic terrorists. The self-censorship and the official work in tandem.

There is so much information available that shows that the authorities at the World Health Organization, the CDC, The World Economic Forum, Big Pharma, governments throughout the world, etc. have gamed this crisis beforehand, have manipulated the numbers, lied, have conducted a massive fear propaganda campaign via their media mouthpieces, have imposed cruel lockdowns that have further enriched the wealthiest and economically and psychologically devastated vast numbers, etc.  Little research is needed to see this, to understand that Big Pharma is, as Dr. Peter Gøtzsche documented eight years ago in Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, a world-wide criminal enterprise.  It takes but a few minutes to see that the pharmaceutical companies who have been given emergency authorization for these untested experimental non-vaccine “vaccines” have paid out billions of dollars to settle criminal and civil allegations.

It is an open secret that the WHO, the Gates Foundation, the WEF led by Klaus Schwab, and an interlocking international group of conspirators have plans for what they call The Great Reset, a strategy to use  the COVID-19 crisis to push their agenda to create a world of cyborgs living in cyberspace where artificial intelligence replaces people and human biology is wedded to technology under the control of the elites.  They have made it very clear that there are too many people on this planet and billions must die.  Details are readily available of this open conspiracy to create a transhuman world.

Is this not radical evil?  Demonic?

Let me end with an analogy.  There is another organized crime outfit that can only be called demonic – The Central Intelligence Agency.  One of its legendary officers was James Jesus Angleton, chief of Counterintelligence from 1954 until 1975.  He was a close associate of Allen Dulles, the longest serving director of the CIA.  Both men were deeply involved in many evil deeds, including bringing Nazi doctors and scientists into the U.S. to do the CIA’s dirty work, including mind control, bioweapons research, etc.  The stuff they did for Hitler.  As reported by David Talbot in The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, when the staunch Catholic Angleton was on his deathbed, he gave an interviews to visiting journalists, including Joseph Trento.  He confessed:

He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles.  He had been on a satanic quest….’Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,’ he told Trento in an emotionless voice.  ‘The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted…. Outside this duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power.  I did things that, looking back on my life, I regret.  But I was part of it and loved being in it.’  He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day – Dulles, Helms, Wisner.  These men were ‘the grand masters,’ he said.  ‘If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.’  Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup.  ‘I guess I will see them there soon.’

Until we recognize the demonic nature of the hell we are now in, we too will be lost.  We are fighting for our lives and the spiritual salvation of the world.  Do not succumb to the siren songs of these fathers of lies.

Resist.

Consent that’s manufactured by propaganda is not informed consent

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: Intrepid Report

A March 9 Twitter post by Secretary of State Tony Blinken reads as follows: “We will never hesitate to use force when American lives and vital interests are at stake, but we will do so only when the objectives are clear and achievable, consistent with our values and laws, and with the American people’s informed consent – together with diplomacy.”

Like pretty much everything ever said by Blinken, and indeed by every US secretary of state, this is an absolute lie.

Firstly, US military force is never used to protect “American lives” in modern times, unless you count the lives of US troops and mercenaries in foreign lands they have no business occupying in the first place. The US military is never used to defend American lives against an invading enemy force; that simply does not happen in our current world order. It is only ever used to protect the agenda of unipolar planetary domination, which would be the “vital interests” which Blinken obliquely refers to above.

Secondly, Blinken’s claim that the Biden administration will never use military force without “the American people’s informed consent” has already been blatantly invalidated by Biden’s airstrikes on Syria last month. The American people never gave their consent to those airstrikes, informed or uninformed. A nation the US invaded (Syria) was bombed because troops are being attacked in a second nation the US invaded (Iraq) on the completely unproven claim that a third country against whom the US is currently waging economic warfare (Iran) supported those attacks. At no time were the people asked for their consent to this, and at no time was any attempt made to ensure that they were informed of the situation before it happened.

Thirdly, US military force is never, ever conducted with the American people’s informed consent. Literally never. Consent is always manufactured for US wars by lies and mass media propaganda, one hundred percent of the time, without exception. The bigger the military operation, the more egregious the deceit used to manufacture consent for it. Even in relatively “peaceful” times when the US is merely raining dozens of bombs and missiles per day on foreign soil, Americans are subject to a nonstop deluge of distorted and outright false narratives about their military and the nations it targets for destruction.

Consent that has been artificially manufactured by propaganda is not informed consent, any more than sex with someone who’s been dosed with rohypnol is consensual sex. US imperialism does not rely on informed consent, it relies on disinformed consent; consent for it is manufactured by disinformation. Informed consent plays no role whatsoever in the use of US military force, nor indeed in any other major aspect of the behavior of the US or its allies.

Every aspect of the US-centralized power alliance is propped up by a relentless deluge of mass-scale psyops. Imperialism, capitalism, electoral politics; consent for all its key pillars is constantly being manufactured by the plutocratic news media, by television, by movies. All of the most influential generators of modern mainstream thought and culture are heavily influenced by a plutocratic class which has a vested interest in keeping power out of the hands of the people.

This is the only thing keeping us from moving into a healthy new paradigm where we collaborate with each other toward a healthy world based on truth and beauty instead of competing with each other over who can create the most profitable pieces of future landfill. No hard obstacles are in place stopping us; our cages only exist between our ears. It is only because powerful people are manipulating our minds to their advantage that we have not already used the power of our numbers to create a healthy, harmonious and enjoyable earth.

It’s important to be aware of the fact that our consent has been manufactured for this mess, because it means we never gave them our informed consent, which means no existing power structures have any legitimacy at all. They have power because they stole our power from us, and it is our prerogative to take it back. We do not need to go through the political systems they have rigged to their advantage or the ideological spectrum of acceptable debate that they have confined mainstream discourse to. We can just take it.

This will only happen after we have freed ourselves in sufficient numbers from their mass-scale psychological manipulations, which will only happen after we have prioritized weakening public trust in their propaganda operations and waking the mainstream public up to the truth. Once a sufficient number of people have been awakened from their propaganda-induced slumber, we can reclaim our world from the sociopathic manipulators without firing a shot, just by standing up to our true size and flexing our giant muscles.

I sincerely believe this will happen, and that it will happen fairly soon. Then we will extract their rapey fingers from our minds and create something truly amazing together.

Freedom Rider: The U.S. can’t control the world

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By Margaret Kimberley

Source: Intrepid Report

Slow-witted Joe Biden appears to think that we’re still in the age of the sole superpower, when in fact that era has come and gone.

As this columnist has pointed out, Joe Biden’s foreign policy differs little from that of his predecessor Donald Trump. The imperatives of the United States hegemon require treating the rest of the world as either willing vassals or as sworn enemies. Any nation that threatens economic supremacy or the ability to thwart foreign policy directives is labeled an adversary and faces an onslaught of governmental and corporate media attacks. This dynamic remains unchanged and the Biden administration has only worsened an already bad situation.

The troubles start at the top with the president himself. When asked by George Stephanopoulos in an ABC news interview if Vladimir Putin is “a killer” Biden answered in the affirmative. The president was never known for his intellect and thought that repeating Russiagate tropes would play well. It didn’t play well with the Russians who immediately recalled their U.S. ambassador back home to Moscow.

While Biden was dealing with foot in mouth disease regarding Russia, his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was making a mess of relations with China. He invited his Chinese counterparts to a meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, and proceeded to offend them by scolding them in front of the press and repeating unfounded charges about human rights abuses against the Uyghurs.

“Well, I think we thought too well of the United States.  We thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols,” said Yang Jiechie , director of the Central Commission of Foreign Affairs. It all went downhill quickly with very public bad behavior on the part of the amateurish and arrogant Americans.

It isn’t clear what Blinken hoped to achieve, but almost immediately after that debacle the Chinese began their own initiative with their partner nations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was given a warm welcome on his trip to China. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi then departed for Iran where the two countries announced a 25-year, $400 billion partnership. Among other things China committed itself to buying Iranian oil, an agreement which diminishes the impact of U.S. sanctions.

Having squandered opportunity and lost leverage, the hapless Americans have been pressured by the Europeans to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal. Talks will resume in Vienna but the Iranians are neither impressed nor intimidated. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif stated in a Twitter post that the U.S. must remove all sanctions in order for the talks to move forward. He added for emphasis, “No Iran-US meeting. Unnecessary.”

The ongoing impacts of U.S. meddling are coming to fruition all over the world. Even U.S. ally Germany is moving ahead with the Nord Stream II gas pipeline with Russia, making a lie out of claims that Russia is a threat to Europe. Despite all of its schemes to dominate, nothing is working in this country’s favor on the diplomatic front.

The United States is still the most powerful country militarily, and can do great damage should it choose. It can sanction weaker nations, but that of course drives them closer to others. China and Russia supply Venezuela with medical equipment that would otherwise be impossible to obtain under U.S. sanctions. China also purchases Venezuelan oil and along with Russia, supplies that country with Covid vaccines.

Biden is dealing with the results of decades of the United States behaving as if its brief unipolar moment would last forever. China will soon surpass the United States economically and it is using that power to its advantage. Its Belt and Road Initiative involves countries on every continent and provides opportunity where the western nations offer only debt and subjugation.

The United States believes its own hype and thinks that its relatively brief period of domination would last forever. Instead the new president is rightly viewed as a paper tiger after just a few months in office.

Only propagandized and uninformed Americans believe that Russian meddled in not one, but two elections. They have no idea that their leaders are losing influence and making enemies. They don’t know that every act of aggression brings the targeted nations closer together.

Russia’s foreign minister recently said that relations with the United States had “hit bottom” and that there were no plans to send their ambassador back to Washington. The idea that Joe Biden is the most powerful man in the world is a fantasy accepted only because of endless indoctrination.

No one else lives in this dream land. Even dim-witted Joe Biden has to learn that he can’t call other presidents killers and have any expectation of good relations. Of course his definition of good relations means other countries obeying U.S. dictates. But that isn’t how the world works any more. He and his handlers must quickly disabuse themselves of any notion that the U.S. can continue to get away with these debacles of their own making. These “grownups” in the room had better grow up fast.