Gurus of the progressive community . . . Chomsky and Goodman

Amy Goodman Say Something for FB Promo

By Dave Alpert

Source: Intrepid Report

There was a time when I, like tens of thousands of my progressive partners, held Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman in awe. After all, Amy informed us and Noam spoke for us, coherently explaining the issues. However, as I became more aware and more informed, I realized that there were great differences between their thinking and mine.

In many instances, our gurus spoke with forked tongue. Although Amy’s program Democracy Now! was informative, there were many areas of reporting that were out of bounds and were not reported on.

One could legitimately claim that reporters cannot report on everything and they would be right. But let us be honest. When 9/11 occurred, it was an historical event and an event that changed the course of history. Where was Amy? Relatively silent. She invited David Ray Griffin, who has written several books illustrating the lies and misdirections of the government’s narrative about that day, to Democracy Now! which one could claim was a significant journalistic move.

However, instead of interviewing him so that he could reveal to her listening audience the facts that he had accumulated that put into question the government’s explanations of that day, she paired him with a pro-government guest who spent the hour attacking Griffin personally and ignoring any of the data Griffin produced. It became a three-ring circus and helped sabotage any impetus the Truth Movement might have gained within the progressive community. Was that her goal? I’m not sure I can answer that but it was a successful strategy, progressives seemed reluctant to support the Truth Movement. The Movement was being portrayed as one in which there were marginal “conspiracy nuts” leading the charge and should be avoided.

Where was Noam Chomsky on this issue? Despite the significance of 9/11, Chomsky has remained relatively passive concerning this event.

During an interview on Democracy Now!, Noam Chomsky stated that he believes Osama bin Laden was probably behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. The statement was curious because in earlier interviews Chomsky described the evidence against bin Laden as thin to nonexistent, which was accurate and, no doubt, explains why the US Department of Justice never indicted bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks.

In two peer-reviewed papers published in 2008–2009, independent scientists reported finding residues of nanothermite, an incendiary, military level explosive which is capable of cutting through steel, in dust samples from the collapsed World Trade Center. The scientists also found tiny flakes of unexploded nanothermite.

How did this explosive material get into the dust at the WTC? Certainly, one could conclude that the explosives were used to bring down all three towers (WTC #7 collapsed later that day in free fall time despite the fact a plane never touched it).

This evidence of explosives coupled with the testimony of many New York City firemen, who claimed they heard a continuing series of explosions before the towers collapsed, and the testimony of Willie Rodriquez, a maintenance worker in the towers, who stated that there was an explosion in the sub-basement before any planes flew into the towers, make it clear that it was the explosives, not the planes that brought the towers down. The question now is, who planted these explosives in the three buildings that collapsed? It takes time to set up a controlled demolition which means the explosives had been placed in the buildings prior to 9/11. Does this sound like a conspiracy to anyone?

In response to a question at the University of Florida recently, Noam Chomsky claimed that there were only “a minuscule number of architects and engineers” who felt that the official account of WTC Building 7 should be treated with skepticism. Chomsky followed-up by saying, “a tiny number—a couple of them—are perfectly serious.” The reality is that close to 2,500 architects and engineers have expressed their doubts about the government’s explanation of how and why the towers fell. It doesn’t matter how many professionals or intellectuals are willing to admit it. The facts remain that the U.S. government’s account for the destruction of the WTC on 9/11 is purely false. There is no science behind the government’s explanation for WTC 7 or for the Twin Towers and everyone, including the government, admits that WTC Building 7 experienced free fall on 9/11. There is no explanation for that other than the use of explosives.

Also, Chomsky’s assumption that only a small number of architects and engineers have expressed support for the notion that the towers fell because of explosives planted in the buildings and that a much larger majority of architects and engineers have remained silent, is the argument of the absurd. It is equivalent to implying that if 10,000 New Yorkers claim the schools are substandard, because the rest of New Yorkers remain silent, the schools cannot be considered substandard.

Chomsky and Goodman are bright, knowledgeable, intelligent people. What has influenced them to avoid confronting the government regarding the events of 9/11?

The fact that 9/11 investigators had already presented substantial documented evidence for: prior warnings, Air Force stand-down, anomalous insider trading connected to the CIA, withdrawal of most of the U.S. fighter planes from the east coast to participate in military exercises on that particular day, cover-up of the domestic anthrax attacks, inconsistencies in identities and timelines of “hijackers” did not appear to influence either Amy or Noam.

Their influence on people who view themselves as progressive cannot be over estimated. When I began questioning the government’s role regarding 9/11, several of my friends responded to me negatively and said specifically that if my suspicions had any legitimacy, Chomsky and Goodman would be speaking out.

Ever since the events of 9/11, the American Left and even ultra-Left have been downright fanatical in combating notions that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks or at least had foreknowledge of the events.

This kind of response from Chomsky regarding possible government conspiracies is not new. He still insists that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in Dallas. Anyone who still supports the Warren Commission hoax after 50 years of countering proofs is either ill-informed, dumb, gullible, afraid to speak truths to power or a disinformation agent.

Michael Morrissey stated, in one of his articles, “Rethinking Chomsky,” in 1994, “we should be clear about the stand that ‘America’s leading intellectual dissident,’ as he is often called, has taken on the assassination. It is not significantly different from that of the Warren Commission or the majority of Establishment journalists and government apologists, and diametrically opposed to the view ‘widely held in the grassroots movements and among left intellectuals’ and in fact to the view of the majority of the population.”

Michael Parenti states, “Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history.”

However, the word conspiracy is often used by those in power, who have participated in a conspiracy to advance their own power and/or wealth, as a label to marginalize and neutralize those who seek to reveal the conspiracy. Thus we, as a society, have developed what Parenti calls conspiracy phobia.

The behavior of both Chomsky and Goodman have led me to conclude that they hesitate to see the conspiracies for fear that such acknowledgment would compromise their reputations. Either that or they are controlled by powerful people who censor their behavior. We cannot afford to accept what they say at face value.

Chomsky’s questionable political positioning is still evident today. On May 17, Chomsky appeared on Democracy Now! and was asked by Amy Goodman to speak on the Syrian crisis. Chomsky is a linguist and words are very meaningful to him. So what he said and how he said it is significant.

“It’s necessary to cut off the flow of arms, as much as possible, to everyone. That means to the vicious and brutal Assad regime, primarily Russia and Iran, to the monstrous ISIS, which has been getting support tacitly through Turkey, through—to the al-Nusra Front, which is hardly different, has just the—the al-Qaeda affiliate, technically broke from it, but actually the al-Qaeda affiliate, which is now planning its own—some sort of emirate, getting arms from our allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Our own—the CIA is arming them.”

I found it particularly informative that he describes Assad’s regime as vicious and brutal and places Russia and Iran right alongside ISIS.

If Assad’s government is really brutal and vicious, why did 86% of the Syrian people vote for him in the last election. Also, let it be clear that it was Russian’s entrance into the conflict last September that led to the retreat of ISIS from many cities and villages, a success that the U.S. had avoided for a year. Syrians who were freed from ISIS rule were openly happy to welcome Assad’s “brutal” army into their villages. Many Syrian refugees began returning to their homes.

Chomsky also managed to portray the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as terrorists in their conflict with Britain. He conveniently omitted the context for their behavior . . . the brutality of British rule against the Irish Catholics for hundreds of years.

Both Amy and Noam are extremely influential and have attained a degree of power amongst progressives. It is crucial that we remain aware of what they are telling us, how they are framing it, and what it is they are not telling us. Both seem to have provided, and continue to provide today, a cover from the left for the U.S.’s imperialist agenda.

Chomsky is called upon to address various issues periodically. Amy, on the other hand, is viewed every week, Monday through Friday. It is easy to identify her evolution into someone slightly to the left of MSNBC.

With the world collapsing around her, she offers relative silence on issues such as the U.S. supported takeover of the Ukrainian government by neo-Nazis, the surrounding of Russia by U.S. and NATO military forces, the threat of WW3 which would likely be a nuclear war, the Syrian crisis and the U.S. desire to overthrow Assad’s government, the humanitarian crisis in Libya, the coup to oust Dilma Rousseff from office in Brazil, the ongoing collapse of the Venezuelan economy and the threat to the Madero government (please note: both Rousseff and Madero are progressive thinkers—is the U.S. behind the collapse of their governments?). She does not address the continuous wars sponsored by the U.S. and NATO countries in their imperialistic ventures.

Instead, most of her time is spent covering the election and interviewing guests who have recently published books. Her program has mellowed. Most of her guests are establishment people, people MSNBC would not hesitate to have on. The radical view, the view that challenges the establishment, is no longer part of her coverage.

Amy’s audience expects to get the news coverage and the variety of views the MSM does not provide. Today’s Democracy Now! no longer provides that.

 

Dave Alpert has masters degrees in social work, educational administration, and psychology. He spent his career working with troubled inner city adolescents.

 

Bayer and Monsanto: A Marriage Made in Hell

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By Steven MacMillan

Source: New Eastern Outlook

In a world infected with a plethora of immoral multinational corporations, it is hard to think of two corporations who have more nefarious histories than Bayer AG and Monsanto. Considering this, it is a harrowing prospect that the two corporations could potentially strike a deal in the near future.

As Bloomberg reported earlier this month, Bayer AG – the German pharmaceutical and chemical corporation – is reportedly considering a bid for the agrochemical and biotechnology corporation, Monsanto. This comes two months after Monsanto showed some interest in acquiring Bayer Crop Sciences, a branch of Bayer AG.

Founded in 1863, Bayer may be familiar to many readers as the first company to widely sell and trademark Aspirin in the late nineteenth century. But there is a far more sinister history to this company that is often omitted. 

The Inception of Chemical Warfare

April 22nd, 1915 is widely considered to be the first successful large-scale use of poison gas in warfare, when the Germany army deployed chlorine gas against the French lines at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres. In January of that year, German forces had released gas against Russian forces, yet the cold conditions inhibited the main agents in the weapon from having the desired impact.

Even as far back as the First World War, Bayer was playing a major role in the development of Germany’s chemical weapons apparatus. Along with other German chemical giants at the time, Bayer was a key player in producing and supplying the German army with chemical weapons during WWI (it should be noted that other powers were developing and deploying chemical weapons during the Great War, not just Germany). 

Bayer and the Nazi War Machine

Fast-forward a decade or so, and Bayer was playing an integral part in amalgamating numerous chemical companies into one. The merger resulted in the creation of the most infamous chemical company in modern history – I.G. Farben. As the late Anthony C. Sutton – a former Economics Professor at California State University and Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution – wrote in his book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler:

“The Farben cartel dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six already giant German chemical companies – Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer and Griesheim-Elektron. There companies were merged to become I.G. Farben. Twenty years later the same Hermann Schmitz was put on trial at Nuremburg for war crimes committed by the I.G. cartel. Other I.G. Farben directors were placed on trial but the American affiliates of I.G. Farben and the American directors of I.G. itself were quietly forgotten; the truth was buried in the archives… Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I.G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.”

In more modern times, a division of Bayer was accused of ‘knowingly’ selling HIV-contaminated blood products to haemophiliacs, and has paid millions in damages in legal settlements.

Brothers in Death

During the Vietnam War, Monsanto was contracted to produce and supply the US government with a malevolent chemical for military application. Along with other chemical corporations at the time such as Dow Chemical, Monsanto produced the military herbicide Agent Orange which contained high quantities of the deadly chemical Dioxin. Between 1961 and 1971, the US Army sprayed between 50 and 80 million litres of Agent Orange across Vietnamese jungles, forests and strategically advantageous positions.

It was deployed in order to destroy forests and fertile lands which provided cover and food for the opposing troops. The fallout was devastating, with Vietnam estimating that 400,000 people died or were maimed due to Agent Orange, as well as 500,000 children born with birth defects and up to two million people suffered from cancer and other diseases. Millions of US veterans were also exposed and many have developed similar illnesses. The consequences are still felt today, and will continue to be felt for decades to come; with cancer rates, birth defects and other diseases still causing devastation to the victims and their families.

And today, Monsanto is still involved in producing chemical poison. Last year, the World Health Organisations (WHO) cancer agency – the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – conducted a study on glyphosate, the main ingredient in the most widely used weedkiller in the world, Monsanto’s Roundup – which is heavily sprayed on GMO crops. The IARC study revealed that glyphosate was “classified as probablycarcinogenic to humans”.

Given the history of these corporations and the atrocities they have been complicit in, the last sector they should be involved in is the agricultural industry.

Related Podcast: Radio WhoWhatWhy – Monsanto’s 50 Years of Death From Above and Below Is About to End

Clinton Does Best Where Voting Machines Flunk Hacking Tests: Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders Election Fraud Allegations

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By Doug Johnson Hatlem

Source: CounterPunch

At the end of the climactic scene (8 minutes) in HBO’s Emmy nominated Hacking Democracy (2006), a Leon County, Florida Election official breaks down in tears. “There are people out there who are giving their lives just to try to make our elections secure,” she says. “And these vendors are lying and saying everything is alright.” Hundreds of jurisdictions throughout the United States are using voting machines or vote tabulators that have flunked security tests. Those jurisdictions by and large are where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is substantially outperforming the first full wave of exit polling in her contest against Senator Bernie Sanders.

CounterPunch has interviewed hackers, academics, exit pollsters, and elections officials and workers in multiple states for this series taking election fraud allegations seriously. The tearful breakdown in Hacking Democracy is not surprising. There is a well-beyond remarkable gap between what security experts and academics say about the vulnerability of voting machines and the confidence elections experts and academics, media outlets, and elections officials place in those same machines.

In Leon County, Bev Harris’ Black Box Voting team had just demonstrated a simple hack of an AccuVote tabulator for bubble-marked paper ballots. Ion Sancho, Leon County’s Supervisor of Elections, also fights back tears in the Hacking Democracy clip: “I would have certified this election as a true and accurate result of a vote.” Sancho adds, “The vendors are driving the process of voting technology in the United States.”

In 2010, and this reminder will pain those of you who can remember when Nate Silver’s outfit did real data journalism rather than primarily yay-Clinton boo-Trump punditry, a FiveThirtyEight column argued that hacking was one of two possibilities for statistical anomalies in a Democratic Senate primary in South Carolina: “B. Somebody with access to software and machines engineered a very devious manipulation of the vote returns.”

Joshua Holland’s column in The Nation “debunking” claims of election fraud benefiting Clinton rests its case on a simple proposition: why would Clinton need to cheat when she was winning anyway? Apparently, Mr. Holland has never heard of an obscure American politician named Richard Nixon.

More importantly, entering the South Carolina primary, the pledged delegate count was 52-51. CNN’s poll two weeks out projected an 18 point Clinton win. Ann Selzer, the best pollster in the United States, projected a 22 point Clinton win. RealClearPolitics’ polling average projected a 27.5% win. FiveThirtyEight was much bolder in projecting a 38.3% Clinton win. The early full exit poll said Clinton had won by 36%, pretty close to FiveThirtyEight’s call. Tellingly, white people in that exit poll went for Sanders 58-42. But the final results said Clinton won by 47.5%, an 11.5% exit polling miss. And the exit polls had to adjust their initial figures to a 53-47 Clinton win with white Democrats in South Carolina.

Three days after South Carolina’s primary, Clinton seriously outperformed her exit polling projections again in a bunch of states on Super Tuesday, including Massachusetts where she went from a projected 6.6% loss to a 1.4% win. Super Tuesday set the narrative that Sanders had no chance of beating Clinton in pledged delegates.

Correlating Exit Polling Misses and Bad Machines

Let’s be clear: yes, correlation does not equal causality. What strong correlation does do, however, is set the agenda for reasonable investigation. Mocking fraud claims where there is a strong correlative case and actual evidence of potential vote tampering in places like Arizona, New York, and Chicago is precisely the kind of thing that has seen confidence in media outlets plummet to an all-time low. Just 6% of people in the U.S., about the same number as for Congress, have high confidence that media are unbiased and accurate.

Meanwhile, according to a September 2015 study (.pdf) by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, South Carolina uses all machines more than ten years old. In fact, drawing on the source of the Brennan Center report over at Verified Voting, South Carolina uses provably hackable voting machines without a verified paper trail. Virtually all counties in South Carolina use two machines in particular – Electronic Systems and Software’s (ES&S) iVotronic, a touch screen voting machine without a paper trail, and ES&S’s Model 100, used to tabulate absentee and provisional ballots.

Kim Zetter, the best reporter on hacking and computer security at Wired Magazine, delved into the Brennan Center report with an article entitled “The Dismal State of America’s Decade-Old Voting Machines.” Zetter noted that in 2002, after the Bush v. Gore disaster, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) with billions of dollars available for counties throughout the U.S. to upgrade to new voting machines. Zetter then hits the critical point for discussion of election fraud allegations in the Democratic presidential primary:

But many of the machines installed then, which are still in use today, were never properly vetted—the initial voting standards and testing processes turned out to be highly flawed—and ultimately introduced new problems in the form of insecure software code and design.

Things are dismal, yes, but they are not evenly so. As this map from the Brennan Center report shows, there are just a few states that are as bad off as South Carolina (all machines ten years old or greater). But there are also just as few states that are relatively well off with all machines newer than ten years old.

state-by-state-10-year-old-voting-machines

Of the nine places where the exit polling has missed by more than 7% (South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, Ohio, New York), two-thirds are states where all or the majority of election jurisdictions are using machines ten years old or greater. For these six states the average initial exit polling miss is a whopping 9.98%. From my column on exit polling misses last week, the average exit polling miss in Clinton’s favor is 5.1%. For the three states (Oklahoma, New York, Maryland) for which there is polling and for which all election jurisdictions use machines less than ten years old (gray in the map), the average is just a 1.67% miss in Clinton’s favor. Now take note, this 1.67% average includes New York with its huge miss in Clinton’s favor. Alabama is also worth looking at, with a minority of jurisdictions having machines more than ten years old, because I have been using an “Alabama Test” to see whether theories for the exit polling misses make sense.

I put figures like this to exit pollster and Executive Vice President of Edison Research Joe Lenski for question 10, which I’d previously left out of the published version of the interview I completed with him. I wanted to know whether the gap in exit polling misses raised any red flags. Here was Lenski’s reply:

The reliability of vote equipment is a true concern but I don’t see any evidence how the concentration of older voting machines in certain states would have affected either candidate more than the other.  There are many examples of vote count errors.  Here is a link reporting a recent vote count error in the Michigan primary that inflated Ted Cruz’s vote by 3000 votes  http://uselectionatlas.org/WEBLOGS/dave/ .  These types of errors are discovered all the time but there is no evidence that these are anything more than mistakes by local election officials – not a systematic attempt to affect a single candidate’s vote totals.  This reminds me of theories after the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary based upon the fact that Hillary Clinton did better in towns with voting machines while Barack Obama did better in towns that voted on paper.  That was simply an artifact of the demographics in New Hampshire of the towns that had voting machines versus those that voted on paper.  Again the states with older voting machines in 2016 may just be the same states with demographics that favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.

But again, as I argued last Wednesday, the demographics by state and other proposed reasons for exit polling misses do not actually add up. Big misses have happened in the South, in Massachusetts, and also in Ohio where Sanders otherwise did quite well in the Midwest. Nor do age or early voting patterns predict exit polling misses. Still, what is most remarkable about Lenski’s statement is that he is one of the few non-tech experts we spoke with who recognized that the “reliability of voting equipment is a true concern.”

None of the three elections academics I spoke with for last Wednesday’s piece appeared to be familiar with the Brennan Center report on aging and vulnerable machines, and Antonio Gonzalez, an exit polling expert and Latino voter registration guru who called for parties not to seat Arizona’s delegations in last Thursday’s piece, seemed a bit floored when I presented him with question ten from my interview with Lenski. “Oh,” he said, “I thought Congress was supposed to have taken care of that with HAVA.” HAVA, as noted earlier, offered money from 2002 to 2006 for states to upgrade to the then latest and greatest voting technology.

At this point we should take a look at the proven flaws in four very old and hackable machines in particular. These machines or similar elderly and vulnerable machines are in use in almost all places where Clinton outperforms exit polling most substantially. Because I am taking evidence and counter-evidence seriously, we will also look at the machines used in New York City, which are not quite so old (about six or seven years). While those machines, ES&S’s DS200, have had several problems over the years of the type suggested by Lenski, they also have not verifiably flunked independent security tests, so far as I know.

AccuVote (TS, OS, TSX models)

AccuVote technology is among the worst of the worst. This is the Diebold technology hacked in the Hacking Democracy clip. It is more than ten years old, can be hacked in such a way that even those models (OS, TSX) with a paper trail can be tricked, and it is in use throughout Georgia (12.2% miss) and in more than 300 counties or other election jurisdictions in more than 20 states.

AVC Edge and Edge II  (from my column on Chicago Friday)

The AVC Edge and Edge II (with paper trail) were provably hacked by a “Red Team” from UC Santa Barbara hired by the State of California in 2008. Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections, called and emailed to complain after my article last Friday. He dismissed the suggestion that Edge II could be hacked because of the paper trail. Not only is this laughable since his team engaged in a wildly inaccurate audit of the paper trail from the Chicago Democratic primary, but Allen apparently failed to click on the linkregarding the UCSB Red Team test that I included in the article. The first paragraph of that article notes that Edge machines, “even those with a so-called Voter Verified Paper Trail” can be successfully hacked by a single person. AVC Edge machines are in use without a paper trail throughout Louisiana (where there were no exit polls but where Clinton seriously outperformed her pre-election day polling average) and in more than 130 counties in various other states.

Model 100 (from ES&S)

Model 100 also badly flunked (.pdf) the California “Red Team” test in 2008. Like the other machines in this list, it is hackable in a way that spreads virally to other machines in the same network. Hundreds of jurisdictions still use Model 100 to tabulate votes, including especially Wayne County (Detroit), 27 counties in Ohio, 9 counties in Tennessee, 78 counties in Texas, and many more that match very well with where Clinton has outperformed exit polls.

iVotronic (ES&S)

iVotronic machines are touchscreen voting machines, many without a paper trail. iVotronic machines flunked a University of Pennsylvania test in 2007 and are the precise machines in question in the previous suspicious Democratic primary results in South Carolina in 2010. They continue to be used throughout South Carolina (no paper trail) and in hundreds of counties in states where Clinton has suspiciously overperformed exit polling.

DS200

DS200 machines have had a wide variety of malfunctioning problems, particularly in New York City, but those problems can and mostly have been addressed in places like New York City by retraining poll workers to check immediately whether each voters’ vote was counted and then offering a new chance to vote if necessary. As stated, the DS200 has not been provably hacked so far as I know. Newer machines of this sort were put into use just this year in Maryland where the overall exit polling missed in Sanders favor, for once, but by just 0.6 points. Still, the votes in Baltimore County have now been decertifiedbecause, among other things, there were more votes than voters who checked in at the polls. In Maryland, the DS200 machines are all networked to a statewide system for tabulating votes quickly. Networking, however, is not required, and my best information suggests that networking is not how the DS200 is used in New York City. Instead, precinct workers pull the results off the machine at the end of the voting day and relay them to county headquarters, according to my discussions with a poll worker from Brooklyn.

What About the Exceptions to This Correlation?

But we also would have to deal with where there are exceptions to this strong correlation between hackable machines and Clinton beating the exit polling badly. Here’s where my conversation with a particular veteran hacker comes into play. I chatted securely with a long-time member of Anonymous whom I’ll call the King of SciAm (not the handle they use publicly or privately). The King of SciAm has long worked with the Telecommix branch of Anonymous. Telecommix rose to fame when Hosni Mubarak cut off internet access in Egypt during the Arab Spring uprising. Telecommix found work-arounds via dial-up internet to keep information from activists on the ground flowing out of Egypt. As a general rule, Telecommix does not take part in Anonymous leaks or website shutdowns and defacements, but they made an exception to that rule early in this campaign cycle. Telecommix members defaced Donald Trump’s website with a tribute to Jon Stewart upon his retirement. The New Yorker’s Alex Koppleman called it the “classiest website hack ever,” a compliment the King of SciAm relishes.

The King of SciAm emphasized to me that, if hired to hack an election (which they would never do), the first thing they would do would be to figure out the best way to leave no trace: “we’d target the network packets or their headwater.” The key idea being for “a hack to survive the security audit trail after the vote is certified.” Furthermore, “we would likely try to target the thing most likely to get it’s logs wiped first – so – whatever it plugs into to move the data. Are the voting machines in use network connected?”

The King of SciAm told me that targeting old, provably hackable machines is “not an unfair theory,” but “you asked how (if we did these sort of things) we would do them.” The problem, they noted, “is that any change to the voting machine operating system or driver stack will likely be found in the security auditor’s rotation pretty quickly. This is because once the machines are down (end of election day) – they are no longer accessible to revert any source code changes or wipe any logs that said you were there, unless you’ve written STUXnet – in which case you wouldn’t be targeting the booth machines either.”

The King of SciAm was not at all surprised that sloppy hackers may be targeting older machines in places like South Carolina and Chicago, nor that elections officials were cluelessly trusting those machines and not even properly following procedures that could catch a less sophisticated hack.

So if, instead of targeting the DS200 in New York, hackers had targeted further upstream in the voting ecosystem, how would you catch it? The King of SciAm noted that you would have to use some procedure to “match 100% of the data, not 5%,” as in Chicago.

To do this, you would need to use a methodology much more like that used in the FiveThirtyEight article on irregularities in the South Carolina 2010 primary election. There, FiveThirtyEight referred to a Benford’s law test on precinct level results. That test showed an “unusual, non-random pattern in the precinct-level results suggest[ing] tampering, or at least machine malfunction, perhaps at the highest level.”

Intriguingly, after I began this series on election fraud allegations, a reader who would like to remain anonymous, emailed to point out similar irregularities in New York’s Democratic primary this year:

Results for Kings County and Bronx county [show] deviation from perfect 60-40 and 70-30 results was the same 0.035% The increase in votes in Kings (Brooklyn) from 2008 is incredible, almost a perfect 10%. Not only that but that’s where over a 100,000 voters lost their right to vote. Another 20,000 votes in Kings would mean almost a 20% increase which would be amazing compared to other counties that experienced decreases or mild increases. 

Furthermore, the overall results in New York, as announced on election night, deviated from a perfect 58-42 split “by 0.005345%. That’s 97 votes out of over 1.8 million.” Will FiveThirtyEight apply a Benford’s law test to 2016 primary results? Not a chance. They have boosted Clinton throughout and are already quite embarrassed by how badly they missed on the GOP side with Donald Trump.

But what about our test? The “Alabama Test.” What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Alabama only has a minority of jurisdictions using old, provably hackable machines. Is that a weak correlation for the theory that in most places sloppy hackers targeted old, provably vulnerable machines while apparently more sophisticated hackers would have had to have been involved with targeting New York’s results as well as registration switching operations in a wide variety of states?

Taking a look at Alabama on a county level gives us a fairly strong answer. Most of Alabama’s counties also use hand cast ballots tabulated by the DS200, but a minority use Model 100, one of our flunked election machines. Three of the flunked Model 100 counties, however, are three of the four biggest counties in Alabama (Jefferson, Mobile, and Montgomery) and accounted for around 40% of the vote for Democrats in Alabama. Clinton won by a 64.2% spread in Jefferson, by 66.5% in Mobile, and by a stunning 73.4% in Montgomery. What happened in Madison, the one county of the top four by population that votes using the DS200 model? Clinton won by just a 38.5% spread! In fact, Clinton did not make it to 80% of the vote in any of the top twelve counties by population except for those three counties using Model 100 to tabulate votes.

And controlling for factors like African American voters or wealth does not account for this phenomenon. Take for instance Mobile where the population is 35.3% black versus a 24.6% black population in Madison County. A 10% difference in black population does not account for a 28% difference in the Clinton-Sanders spread. What’s more, if you compare Mobile to a very similar county in North Carolina (where the exit polls did not really miss), you see something similarly telling.

Cumberland County, NC is very comparative to Mobile, Alabama. They have similar populations, similar numbers of black residents (with Cumberland slightly higher at 37.6% African American), very similar per capita income figures, and both counties had about 35,000 Democratic voters. Clinton won Cumberland by 32.8%, very close to the Madison County (DS200 model) results and about half the percentage spread Clinton saw in Mobile (Model 100).

Of the theories we have so far for why exit polling missed in Alabama by a huge 14%, the only theory that provides a reasonable explanation is vote tabulating machine tampering. Now, perhaps someone else will come up with a non-fraudulent exit polling miss theory that passes the Alabama Test and explains other states as well. Such a theory cannot be about early voting (Alabama had none) and over-projecting young voters (there were very few according to exit polls of Alabama).

Until someone comes up with such a workable theory, election fraud benefiting Hillary Clinton to the tune of a 120 to 150 pledged delegate difference, is the best explanation we have. People wanting to prove this theory should be suing for a technologically sophisticated and independent review of results and the voting results’ entire computer ecosystems in places like Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, Boston, Chicago, New York, and many others.

Part 1: Taking Election Fraud Allegations Seriously
Part 2: Debunking Some Election Fraud Allegations
Part 3: In-depth Report on Exit Polling and Election Fraud Allegations
An Interview With Lead Edison Exit Pollster Joe Lenski
Part 4: Purged, Hacked, Switched
Part 5: Chicago Election Official Admits “Numbers Didn’t Match”

Doug Johnson Hatlem is best known for his work as a street pastor and advocate with Toronto’s homeless population from 2005-2013. He is now a film producer and free-lance writer based in Chicago.

Welcome to 1984

1984

By Chris Hedges

Source: truthdig

The artifice of corporate totalitarianism has been exposed. The citizens, disgusted by the lies and manipulation, have turned on the political establishment. But the game is not over. Corporate power has within its arsenal potent forms of control. It will use them. As the pretense of democracy is unmasked, the naked fist of state repression takes its place. America is about—unless we act quickly—to get ugly.

“Our political system is decaying,” said Ralph Nader when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It’s on the way to gangrene. It’s reaching a critical mass of citizen revolt.”

This moment in American history is what Antonio Gramsci called the “interregnum”—the period when a discredited regime is collapsing but a new one has yet to take its place. There is no guarantee that what comes next will be better. But this space, which will close soon, offers citizens the final chance to embrace a new vision and a new direction.

This vision will only be obtained through mass acts of civic mobilization and civil disobedience across the country. Nader, who sees this period in American history as crucial, perhaps the last opportunity to save us from tyranny, is planning to rally the left for three days, from May 23 to May 26 at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., in what he is calling “Breaking Through Power” or “Citizen’s Revolutionary Week.” He is bringing to the capital scores of activists and community leaders to speak, organize and attempt to mobilize to halt our slide into despotism.

“The two parties can implode politically,” Nader said. “They can be divided by different candidates and super PACs. But this doesn’t implode their paymasters.”

“Elections have become off-limits to democracy,” he went on. “They have become off-limits to democracy’s fundamental civil community or civil society. When that happens, the very roots shrivel and dry up. Politics is now a sideshow. Politics does not bother corporate power. Whoever wins, they win. Both parties represent Wall Street over Main Street. Wall Street is embedded in the federal government.”

Donald Trump, like Hillary Clinton, has no plans to disrupt the corporate machinery, although Wall Street has rallied around Clinton because of her predictability and long service to the financial and military elites. What Trump has done, Nader points out, is channel “the racist, right-wing militants” within the electorate, embodied in large part by the white working poor, into the election process, perhaps for one last time.

Much of the left, Nader argues, especially with the Democratic Party’s blatant rigging of the primaries to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination, grasps that change will come only by building mass movements. This gives the left, at least until these protofascist forces also give up on the political process, a window of opportunity. If we do not seize it, he warns, we may be doomed.

He despairs over the collapse of the commercial media, now governed by the primacy of corporate profit.

“Trump’s campaign has enormous appeal to the commercial mass media,” Nader said. “He brought huge ratings during the debates. He taunted the networks. He said, ‘I’m boycotting this debate. It’s going to cost you profit.’ Has this ever happened before in American history? It shows you the decay, the commercialization of public elections.”

The impoverished national discourse, fostered by a commercial mass media that does not see serious political debate as profitable and focuses on the trivial, the salacious and the inane, has empowered showmen and con artists such as Trump.

“Trump speaks in a very plain language, at the third-grade level, according to some linguists,” Nader said. “He speaks like a father figure. He says, ‘I’ll get you jobs. I’ll bring back industry. I’ll bring back manufacturing. I’ll protect you from immigrants.’ The media never challenges him. He is not asked, ‘How are we going do all of this? What is step one? Step two? Is the White House going to ignore the Congress and the courts?’ He astonishes his audience. He amazes them with his bullying, his lying, his insults, like ‘Little Marco,’ the wall Mexico is going to pay for, no more entry in the country by Muslims—a quarter of the human race—until we figure it out. The media never catches up with him. He is always on the offensive. He is always news. The commercial media wants the circus. It gives them high ratings and high profit.”

The focus on info-entertainment has left not only left the public uninformed and easily manipulated but has locked out the voices that advocate genuine reform and change.

“The commercial media does not have time for citizen groups and citizen leaders who are really trying to make America great, whether by advancing health safety or economic well-being,” Nader bemoaned. “These groups are overwhelmed. They’re marginalized. They’re kept from nourishing the contents of national, state and local elections. Look at the Sunday news shows. No one can get on to demonstrate that the majority of the people want full Medicare for all with the free choice of doctors and hospitals, not only more efficient but more life-saving. There was a major press conference a few days ago at the National Press Club. The leading advocates of full Medicare for all, or single-payer, were there, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the heads of Physicians for a National Health Program. This is a group with about 15,000 physicians on board. Nobody came. There was a stringer for an indie media outlet and the corporate crime reporter. There are all kinds of major demonstrations, 1,300 arrests outside the Congress protesting the corruption of money in politics. Again no coverage, except a little on NPR and on ‘Democracy Now!’ ”

“The system is gamed,” he said. “The only way out of it is to mobilize the civil society.

“We are organizing the greatest gathering of accomplished citizen advocacy groups on the greatest number of redirections and reforms ever brought together in American history under one roof,” he said of his upcoming event. “The first day is called Breaking Through Power, How it Happens. We have 18 groups who have demonstrated it with tiny budgets for over three decades on issues such as road safety, removing hundreds of hazardous or ineffective pharmaceuticals from the market, changing food habits from junk food to nutrition and rescuing people from death row who were falsely convicted of homicides. What if we tripled the budgets and the staffs of these groups? Eighteen of these groups have a total budget that is less than what one of dozens of CEOs make in a year.”

Nader called on Sanders to join in the building of a nationwide civic mobilization. He said that while Clinton may borrow some of his rhetoric, she and the Democratic Party establishment would not incorporate Sander’s populist appeals against Wall Street into the party platform. If Sanders does not join a civic mobilization, Nader warned, there would be “a complete disintegration of his movement.”

Nader also said he was worried that Clinton’s high negativity ratings, along with potential scandals, including the possible release of her highly paid speeches to corporations such as Goldman Sachs, could see Trump win the presidency.

“I have her lecture contract with the Harry Walker lecture agency,” he said. “She had a clause in the contract with these business sponsors, which basically said the doors will be closed. There will be no press. You will pay $1,000 for a stenographer to give me, for my exclusive use, a stenographic record of what I said. You will pay me $5,000 a minute. She has it all. She can’t say, ‘We will look into it or we’ll see if we can find it.’ She has been dissembling. And her latest rant is, ‘I’ll release the transcripts if everyone else does.’ ‘Who is everybody else?’ as Bernie Sanders rebutted. He doesn’t give highly paid speeches behind closed doors to Wall Street firms, business executives or business trade groups. Trump doesn’t give quarter-of-a-million-dollar speeches behind closed doors to business. So by saying ‘I will release all of my transcripts if everyone else does,’ she makes a null and void assertion. This is characteristic of the Clintons’ dissembling and slipperiness. It’s transcripts for Hillary. It’s tax returns for Trump.”

While Nader supports the building of third parties, he cautions that these parties—he singles out the Green Party and the Libertarian Party—will go nowhere without mass mobilization to pressure the centers of power. He called on the left to reach out to the right in a joint campaign to dismantle the corporate state. Sanders could play a large role in this mobilization, Nader said, because “he is in the eye of the mass media. He is building this rumble from the people.”

“What does he have to lose?” Nader asked of Sanders. “He’s 74. He can lead this massive movement. I don’t think he wants to let go. His campaign has exceeded his expectations. He is enormously energized. If he leads the civic mobilization before the election, whom is he going to help? He’s going to help the Democratic Party, without having to go around being a one-line toady expressing his loyalty to Hillary. He is going to be undermining the Republican Party. He is going to be saying to the Democratic Party, ‘You better face up to the majoritarian crowds and their agenda, or you’re going to continue losing in these gerrymandered districts to the Republicans in Congress.’ These gerrymandered districts can be overcome with a shift of 10 percent of the vote. Once the rumble from the people gets underway, nothing can stop it. No one person can, of course, lead this. There has to be a groundswell, although Sanders can provide a focal point”

Nader said that a Clinton presidency would further enflame the right wing and push larger segments of the country toward extremism.

“We will get more quagmires abroad, more blowback, more slaughter around the world and more training of fighters against us who will be more skilled to bring their fight here,” he said of a Clinton presidency. “Budgets will be more screwed against civilian necessities. There will be more Wall Street speculation. She will be a handmaiden of the corporatists and the military industrial complex. There comes a time, in any society, where the rubber band snaps, where society can’t take it anymore.”

The U.S. Military Suffers from Affluenza

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Showering the Pentagon with Money and Praise

By William J. Astore

Source: TomDispatch.com

The word “affluenza” is much in vogue. Lately, it’s been linked to a Texas teenager, Ethan Couch, who in 2013 killed four people in a car accident while driving drunk. During the trial, a defense witness argued that Couch should not be held responsible for his destructive acts. His parents had showered him with so much money and praise that he was completely self-centered; he was, in other words, a victim of affluenza, overwhelmed by a sense of entitlement that rendered him incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Indeed, the judge at his trial sentenced him only to probation, not jail, despite the deaths of those four innocents.

Experts quickly dismissed “affluenza” as a false diagnosis, a form of quackery, and indeed the condition is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. Yet the word caught on big time, perhaps because it speaks to something in the human condition, and it got me to thinking. During Ethan Couch’s destructive lifetime, has there been an American institution similarly showered with money and praise that has been responsible for the deaths of innocents and inadequately called to account? Is there one that suffers from the institutional version of affluenza (however fuzzy or imprecise that word may be) so much that it has had immense difficulty shouldering the blame for its failures and wrongdoing?

The answer is hidden in plain sight: the U.S. military. Unlike Couch, however, that military has never faced trial or probation; it hasn’t felt the need to abscond to Mexico or been forcibly returned to the homeland to face the music.

Spoiling the Pentagon

First, a caveat. When I talk about spoiling the Pentagon, I’m not talking about your brother or daughter or best friend who serves honorably. Anyone who’s braving enemy fire while humping mountains in Afghanistan or choking on sand in Iraq is not spoiled.

I’m talking about the U.S. military as an institution. Think of the Pentagon and the top brass; think of Dwight Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex; think of the national security state with all its tentacles of power. Focus on those and maybe you’ll come to agree with my affluenza diagnosis.

Let’s begin with one aspect of that affliction: unbridled praise. In last month’s State of the Union address, President Obama repeated a phrase that’s become standard in American political discourse, as common as asking God to bless America. The U.S. military, he said, is the “finest fighting force in the history of the world.”

Such hyperbole is nothing new. Five years ago, in response to similar presidential statements, I argued that many war-like peoples, including the imperial Roman legions and Genghis Khan’s Mongol horsemen, held far better claims to the “best ever” Warrior Bowl trophy. Nonetheless, the over-the-top claims never cease. Upon being introduced by President Obama as his next nominee for secretary of defense in December 2014, for instance, Ash Carter promptly praised the military he was going to oversee as “the greatest fighting force the world has ever known.” His words echoed those of the president, who had claimed the previous August that it was “the best-led, best-trained, best-equipped military in human history.” Similar hosannas (“the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known”) had once been sprinkled liberally through George W. Bush’s speeches and comments, as well as those of other politicians since 9/11.

In fact, from the president to all those citizens who feel obliged in a way Americans never have before to “thank” the troops endlessly for their efforts, no other institution has been so universally applauded since 9/11. No one should be shocked then that, in polls, Americans regularly claim to trust the military leadership above any other crew around, including scientists, doctors, ministers, priests, and — no surprise — Congress.

Imagine parents endlessly praising their son as “the smartest, handsomest, most athletically gifted boy since God created Adam.” We’d conclude that they were thoroughly obnoxious, if not a bit unhinged. Yet the military remains just this sort of favored son, the country’s golden child. And to the golden child go the spoils.

Along with unbridled praise, consider the “allowance” the American people regularly offer the Pentagon. If this were an “affluenza” family unit, while mom and dad might be happily driving late-model his and her Audis, the favored son would be driving a spanking new Ferrari. Add up what the federal government spends on “defense,” “homeland security,” “overseas contingency operations” (wars), nuclear weapons, and intelligence and surveillance operations, and the Ferraris that belong to the Pentagon and its national security state pals are vrooming along at more than $750 billion dollars annually, or two-thirds of the government’s discretionary spending. That’s quite an allowance for “our boy”!

To cite a point of comparison, in 2015, federal funding for the departments of education, interior, and transportation maxed out at $95 billion — combined! Not only is the military our favored son by a country mile: it’s our Prodigal Son, and nothing satisfies “him.” He’s still asking for more (and his Republican uncles are clearly ready to turn over to him whatever’s left of the family savings, lock, stock, and barrel).

On the other hand, like any spoiled kid, the Defense Department sees even the most modest suggested cuts in its allowance as a form of betrayal. Witness the whining of both those Pentagon officials and military officerstestifying before Congressional committees and of empathetic committee members themselves. Minimalist cuts to the soaring Pentagon budget are, it seems, defanging the military and recklessly endangering American security vis-a-vis the exaggerated threats of the day: ISIS, China, and Russia. In fact, the real “threat” is clearly that the Pentagon’s congressional “parents” might someday cut down on its privileges and toys, as well as its free rein to do more or less as it pleases.

With respect to those privileges, enormous budgets drive an unimaginably top-heavy bureaucracy at the Pentagon. Since 9/11, Congressional authorizations of three- and four-star generals and admirals have multipliedtwice as fast as their one- and two-star colleagues. Too many generals are chasing too few combat billets, contributing to backstabbing and butt-kissing. Indeed, despite indifferent records in combat, generals wear uniforms bursting with badges and ribbons, resembling the ostentatious displays of former Soviet premiers — or field marshals in the fictional Ruritarian guards.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of brass in turn drives budgets higher. Even with recent modest declines (due to the official end of major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan), the U.S. defense budget exceeds the combined military budgets of at least the next seven highest spenders. (President Obama proudly claims that it’s the next eight.) Four of those countries — France, Germany, Great Britain, and Saudi Arabia — are U.S. allies; China and Russia, the only rivals on the list, spend far less than the United States.

With respect to its toys, the military and its enablers in Congress can never get enough or at a high enough price. The most popular of these, at present, is the under-performing new F-35 jet fighter, projected to cost $1.5 trillion (yes, you read that right) over its lifetime, making it the most expensive weapons system in history. Another trillion dollars is projected over the next 30 years for “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear arsenal (this from a president who, as a candidate, spoke of eliminating nuclear weapons). The projected acquisition cost for a new advanced Air Force bomber is already $100 billion (before the cost overruns even begin).  The list goes on, but you catch the drift.

A Spoiled Pentagon Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

To complete our affluenza diagnosis, let’s add one more factor to boundless praise and a bountiful allowance: a total inability to take responsibility for one’s actions. This is, of course, the most repellent part of the Ethan Couch affluenza defense: the idea that he shouldn’t be held responsible precisely because he was so favored.

Think, then, of the Pentagon and the military as Couch writ large. No matter their mistakes, profligate expenditures, even crimes, neither institution is held accountable for anything.

Consider these facts: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are quagmires. The Islamic State is spreading. Foreign armies, trained and equipped at enormous expense by the U.S. military, continue to evaporate. A hospital, clearly identifiable as such, is destroyed “by accident.” Wedding parties are wiped out “by mistake.” Torture (a war crime) is committed in the field. Detainees are abused. And which senior leaders have been held accountable for any of this in any way? With the notable exception of Brigadier General Janis Karpinskiof Abu Ghraib infamy, not a one.

After lengthy investigations, the Pentagon will occasionally hold accountable a few individuals who pulled the triggers or dropped the bombs or abused the prisoners. Meanwhile, the generals and the top civilians in the Pentagon who made it all possible are immunized from either responsibility or penalty of any sort. This is precisely why Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling memorably wrote in 2007 that, in the U.S. military, “a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” In fact, no matter what that military doesn’t accomplish, no matter how lacking its ultimate performance in the field, it keeps getting more money, resources, praise.

When it comes to such subjects, consider the Republican presidential debate in Iowa on January 28th. Jeb Bush led the rhetorical charge by claiming that President Obama was “gutting” the military. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio eagerly agreed, insisting that a “dramatically degraded” military had to be rebuilt. All the Republican candidates (Rand Paul excepted) piled on, calling for major increases in defense spending as well as looser “rules of engagement” in the field to empower local commanders to take the fight to the enemy. America’s “warfighters,” more than one candidate claimed, are fighting with one arm tied behind their backs, thanks to knots tightened by government lawyers. The final twist that supposedly tied the military up in a giant knot was, so they claim, applied by that lawyer-in-chief, Barack Obama himself.

Interestingly, there has been no talk of our burgeoning national debt, which former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen once identified as the biggest threat facing America. When asked during the debate which specific federal programs he would cut to reduce the deficit, Chris Christie came up with only one, Planned Parenthood, which at $500 million a year is the equivalent of two F-35 jet fighters. (The military wants to buy more than 2,000 of them.)

Throwing yet more money at a spoiled military is precisely the worst thing we as “parents” can do. In this, we should resort to the fiscal wisdom of Army Major General Gerald Sajer, the son of a Pennsylvania coal miner killed in the mines, a Korean War veteran and former Adjutant General of Pennsylvania. When his senior commanders pleaded for more money (during the leaner budget years before 9/11) to accomplish the tasks he had assigned them, General Sajer’s retort was simple: “We’re out of money; now we have to think.”

Accountability Is Everything

It’s high time to force the Pentagon to think. Yet when it comes to our relationship with the military, too many of us have acted like Ethan Couch’s mother. Out of a twisted sense of love or loyalty, she sought to shelter her son from his day of reckoning. But we know better. We know her son has to face the music.

Something similar is true of our relationship to the U.S. military. An institutional report card with so many deficits and failures, a record of deportment that has led to death and mayhem, should not be ignored. The military must be called to account.

How? By cutting its allowance. (That should make the brass sit up and take notice, perhaps even think.) By holding senior leaders accountable for mistakes. And by cutting the easy praise. Our military commanders know that they are not leading the finest fighting force since the dawn of history and it’s time our political leaders and the rest of us acknowledged that as well.

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatchregular. He blogs at Bracing Views.

Govt-Hollywood Complex to Sell “Patriotic” Martial Law Lockdown in New Boston Bombing Films

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By Berie Suarez

Source: Truth and Art TV

A massive wave of government propaganda is coming and the method of transmission will be Hollywood. Hollywood is one of the most important brainwashing tools to keep the masses ignorant of reality and government corruption. And as we’ve seen in the past, it is designed to reinforce numerous government lies the masses are supposed to believe. Whenever Hollywood releases a film endorsing a government narrative it usually represents the final phase of a false flag, staged event narrative being sold.

Remember what former CIA director William Casey said. Until EVERYTHING that everyone believes is a lie, the control system feels they are not done lying to you yet.

When it comes to propaganda Hollywood operates under a different set of rules as they have the liberty to fictionally represent a story under the guise of “entertainment” without having to be accurate about what really happened. A close look at this issue reveals how powerful and effective the Hollywood-Government complex is at cementing massive government lies in the psyche of the general public.

So it shouldn’t surprise us that it is being reported that Hollywood producers are in race to put out not one but two films about the Boston bombing hoax staged in April of 2013 featuring numerous crisis actors. One film “Patriots Day” will serve to not only reinforce the Boston bombing staged event but to glorify “lockdown” and deceive viewers into worshiping police and psychologically re-accepting that lockdown was necessary to catch the “bad guys”, thus serving to authenticate future lockdowns as necessary as well. Another film being scheduled for release this year “Boston Strong” is also based on the Boston bombing false flag event and the concept of heroism. Both films appear to correlate “strength” with obedience to lockdown as well as “patriotism” and obedience to lockdown, and both are psychological operations on the general public being likely secretly funded by the state.

So without any shame, the storyline behind Patriots Day admits the idea is to sell the manhunt against the Tsarnaev accused patsy brothers itself and the lockdown of Watertown which ensued. The lockdown itself seems to be the focus of the emotion and heroism in these movies more so than the overall false flag narrative which has been debunked and exposed on many levels.

The story of course, is told by lucky Ed Davis, the commissioner that just so happened to get a phone call right at the time of the pressure cooker detonation, and like lucky Larry Silverstein on 9/11 he wasn’t blown up. Davis was just as “lucky” as all those “Craft International” operatives clearly seen all over the place with suspicious backpacks and communicating suspiciously before during and after the explosion.

Commissioner Davis, who was right there are the marathon finish line and walked away to take a phone call moments before the blast occurred, played an integral role working with the FBI, Watertown Police Department, Boston Police Department, Massachusetts State Police and local first responders to track, identify and apprehend the suspected bombers. Their tactics included the use of sophisticated identity technology (they actually discovered the murderers acting differently than the crowd) and giving the historic order to put the city of Boston on lockdown as they rushed to catch the suspects.

The story is envisioned as an intense thriller, spanning the five-day search up to the infamous siege where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was pulled from a boat in Watertown. Three lost their lives at the Marathon blast site, 264 were injured, and a police officer was killed and several injured in the shootout that ended in the death of Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan. The younger mass murderer is currently on trial. Victims were eulogized in a touching ceremony at Fenway Park, something that most certainly will be part of each of those feature films, including an unforgettable exhortation of defiance by Red Sox slugger David Ortiz.

This is a clever attempt to appeal to everyone’s emotional and “patriotic” feelings, 9/11 Bush Jr style, while selling them that martial law lockdown is somehow “patriotic” because it helped catch the bad guys.

“There is nothing more compelling than a real story populated by real heroes,” said CBS Films President Terry Press. “The team that we have assembled for this project is determined to give audiences a very personal look at what occurred during the days when the eyes of the world were on the city of Boston and how a group of contemporary patriots faced this crisis.”

Anyone who cares about truth, freedom, and morality should be outraged by this in-your-face propaganda. This also serves as a warning of things to come. Very likely they are rushing these two films because something is coming and they need to condition the masses for a major lockdown.

I’m calling for readers to help take a stand against “lockdown” now before it’s too late. I’m currently in the process of researching how to properly draft a petition that can be used broadly across the U.S. to demand that lockdown is criminalized as illegal, not to mention it’s an ineffective and unproven tactic for catching law breakers. If anyone wants to help and contribute to the process please do or by all means carry out the idea yourself.

This entire effort by the Hollywood-Government complex to expedite the production of these two films which will glorify lockdown should concern everyone. Ask yourself: Why are they moving so fast to glorify lockdown? And why now? I’m sure we’ll soon find out.

Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill

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By Robert Parry

Source: Consortium News

For centuries hereditary monarchy was the dominant way to select national leaders, evolving into an intricate system that sustained itself through power and propaganda even as its ideological roots shriveled amid the Age of Reason. Yet, as monarchy became a dead idea, it still killed millions in its death throes.

Today, the dangerous “dead ideas” are neoconservatism and its close ally, neoliberalism. These are concepts that have organized American foreign policy and economics, respectively, over the past several decades – and they have failed miserably, at least from the perspective of average Americans and people of the nations on the receiving end of these ideologies.

Neither approach has benefited mankind; both have led to untold death and destruction; yet the twin “neos” have built such a powerful propaganda and political apparatus, especially in Official Washington, that they will surely continue to wreak havoc for years to come. They are zombie ideas and they kill.

Yet, the Democratic Party is poised to nominate an adherent to both “neos” in the person of Hillary Clinton. Rather than move forward from President Barack Obama’s unease with what he calls the Washington “playbook,” the Democrats are retreating into its perceived safety.

After all, the Washington Establishment remains enthralled to both “neos,” favoring the “regime change” interventionism of neoconservatism and the “free trade” globalism of neoliberalism. So, Clinton has emerged as the clear favorite of the elites, at least since the field of alternatives has narrowed to populist billionaire Donald Trump and democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.

Democratic Party insiders appear to be counting on the mainstream news media and prominent opinion-leaders to marginalize Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and to finish off Sanders, who faces long odds against Clinton’s delegate lead for the Democratic nomination, especially among the party regulars known as “super-delegates.”

But the Democratic hierarchy is placing this bet on Clinton in a year when much of the American electorate has risen up against the twin “neos,” exhausted by the perpetual wars demanded by the neoconservatives and impoverished by the export of decent-paying manufacturing jobs driven by the neoliberals.

Though much of the popular resistance to the “neos” remains poorly defined in the minds of rebellious voters, the common denominator of the contrasting appeals of Trump and Sanders is that millions of Americans are rejecting the “neos” and repudiating the establishment institutions that insist on sustaining these ideologies.

The Pressing Question

Thus, the pressing question for Campaign 2016 is whether America will escape from the zombies of the twin “neos” or spend the next four years surrounded by these undead ideas as the world lurches closer to an existential crisis.

The main thing that the zombie “neos” have going for them is that the vast majority of Very Important People in Official Washington have embraced these concepts and have achieved money and fame as a result. These VIPs are no more likely to renounce their fat salaries and overblown influence than the favored courtiers of a King or Queen would side with the unwashed rabble.

The “neo” adherents are also very skilled at framing issues to their benefit, made easier by the fact that they face almost no opposition or resistance from the mainstream media or the major think tanks.

The neoconservatives have become Washington’s foreign policy establishment, driving the old-time “realists” who favored more judicious use of American power to the sidelines.

Meanwhile, the neoliberals dominate economic policy debates, treating the “markets” as some new-age god and “privatization” of public assets as scripture. They have pushed aside the old New Dealers who called for a robust government role to protect the people from the excesses of capitalism and to build public infrastructure to benefit the nation as a whole.

The absence of any strong resistance to the now dominant “neo” ideologies is why we saw the catastrophic “group think” over Iraq’s WMD in 2003 and why for many years no one of great significance dared question the benefits of “free trade.”

After all, both strategies benefited the elites. Neoconservative warmongering diverted trillions of dollars into the Military-Industrial Complex and neoliberal job outsourcing has made billions of dollars for individual corporate executives and stock investors on Wall Street.

Those interests have, in turn, kicked back a share of the proceeds to fund Washington think tanks, to finance news outlets, and to lavish campaign donations and speaking fees on friendly politicians. So, for the insiders, this game has been a case of win-win.

The Losers

Not so much for the “losers,” those average citizens who have seen the Great American Middle Class hollowed out over the past few decades, watched America’s public infrastructure decay, and worried about their sons and daughters being sent off to fight unnecessary, perpetual and futile wars.

But inundated with clever propaganda – and scrambling to make ends meet – most Americans see the reality as if through a glass darkly. Many of them, as Barack Obama indelicately said during the 2008 campaign, “cling to guns or religion.” They have little else – and many are killing themselves with opiates that dull their pain or with those guns that they see as their last link to “freedom.”

What is clear, however, is that large numbers don’t trust – and don’t want – Hillary Clinton, who had a net 24-point unfavorable rating in one recent poll. It turns out that another indelicate Obama comment from Campaign 2008 may not have been true, when he vouched that “you’re likable enough, Hillary.” For many Americans, that’s not the case (although Trump trumped Clinton with a 41-point net negative).

If the Democrats do nominate Hillary Clinton, they will be hoping that the neocon/neolib establishment can so demonize Donald Trump that a plurality of Americans will vote for the former Secretary of State out of abject fear over what crazy things the narcissistic billionaire might do in the White House.

Trump’s policy prescriptions have been all over the place – and it is hard to know what reflects his actual thinking (or his genuine ignorance) as opposed to what constitutes his skillful showmanship that made him the “survivor” in the real-life reality TV competition for the Republican nomination.

Does Trump really believe that global warming is a hoax or is he just pandering to the know-nothing element of the Republican Party? Does he actually consider Obama’s Iran nuclear deal to be a disaster or is he just playing to the hate-Obama crowd on the Right?

Opposing the ‘Neos’

But Trump is not a fan of the “neos.” He forthrightly takes on the neocons over the Iraq War and excoriates ex-Secretary of State Clinton for her key role in another “regime change” disaster in Libya. Further, Trump calls for cooperation with Russia and China rather than the neocon-preferred escalation of tensions.

In his April 27 foreign policy speech, Trump called for “a new foreign policy direction for our country – one that replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace. …It’s time to invite new voices and new visions into the fold. …

“My foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people, and American security, above all else. That will be the foundation of every decision that I will make. America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.”

Such comments – suggesting that “new voices” are needed and that “ideology” should be cast aside – were fighting words for the neocons, since it is their voices that have drowned out all others and their ideology that has dominated U.S. foreign policy in recent years.

To make matters worse, Trump outlined an “America First” strategy in contrast to neocon demands that the U.S. military be dispatched abroad to advance the interests of Israel and other “allies.” Trump is not interested in staging “regime changes” to eliminate leaders who are deemed troublesome to Israel.

The real estate tycoon also has made criticism of “free trade” deals a centerpiece of his campaign, arguing that those agreements have sold out American workers by forcing them to compete with foreign workers receiving a fraction of the pay.

Sen. Sanders has struck similar themes in his insurgent Democratic campaign, criticizing Hillary Clinton’s longtime support for “free trade” and her enthusiasm for “regime change” wars, such as those in Iraq and Libya.

Examining her long record in public life, there can be little doubt that Clinton is a neocon on foreign policy and a neolib on economic strategies. She stands firmly with the consensus of Official Washington’s establishment, which is why she has enjoyed its warm embrace.

She has followed Wall Street’s beloved neoliberal attitude toward “free trade,” which has been very good for multinational corporations as they shipped millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries. (She has only cooled her ardor for trade deals to stanch the flow of Democratic voters to Bernie Sanders.)

Wars and More Wars

On foreign policy, Clinton has consistently supported neoconservative wars, although she might shy from the neocon label per se, preferring its less noxious synonym “liberal interventionist.”

But as arch-neocon Robert Kagan, who has recast himself as a “liberal interventionist,” told The New York Times in 2014, “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Summing up the feeling of thinkers like Kagan, the Times reported that Clinton “remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes.”

In February 2016, distraught over the rise of Trump, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush’s Iraq War, openly threw his support to Clinton, announcing his decision in a Washington Post op-ed.

And Kagan is not mistaken when he views Hillary Clinton as a fellow-traveler. She has often marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented their aggressive “regime change” schemes against governments and political movements that don’t toe Washington’s line or that deviate from Israel’s goals in the Middle East.

She has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results. [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon” and “Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?”]

Seeking ‘Coercion’

A glimpse of what a Clinton-45 presidency might do could be seen in a recent Politico commentary by Dennis Ross, a former special adviser to Secretary of State Clinton now working at the staunchly pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In the article, Ross painted a surreal world in which the problems of the Middle East have been caused by President Obama’s hesitancy to engage militarily more aggressively across the region, not by the neocon-driven decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and the similar schemes to overthrow secular governments in Libya and Syria in 2011, leaving those two countries in ruin.

Channeling the desires of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ross called for the United States to yoke itself to the regional interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in their rivalry against Shiite-led Iran.

Ross wrote: “Obama believes in the use of force only in circumstances where our security and homeland might be directly threatened. His mindset justifies pre-emptive action against terrorists and doing more to fight the Islamic State. But it frames U.S. interests and the use of force to support them in very narrow terms. …

“The Saudis acted in [invading] Yemen in no small part because they feared the United States would impose no limits on Iranian expansion in the area, and they felt the need to draw their own lines.”

To counter Obama’s hesitancy to apply military force, Ross calls for a reassertion of a muscular U.S. policy in the Middle East, much along the lines that the neocon establishment and Hillary Clinton also favor, including:

–Threatening Iran with “blunt, explicit language on employing force, not sanctions” if Iran deviates from the Obama-negotiated agreement to constrain its nuclear program (the bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran zombie lives!);

–“Contingency planning with GCC states and Israel … to generate specific options for countering Iran’s growing use of Shiite militias to undermine regimes in the region”;

–A readiness to arm Sunni tribes in Iraq if Iraq’s prime minister doesn’t;

–Establish “safe havens with no-fly zones” inside Syria if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not force Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

Employing the classic tough talk of the neocons, Ross concludes, “Putin and Middle Eastern leaders understand the logic of coercion. It is time for us to reapply it.”

One might note the many logical inconsistencies of Ross’s arguments, including his failure to note that much of Iran’s supposed meddling in the Middle East has involved aiding the Syrian and Iraqi governments in their battle against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Or that Russia’s intervention in Syria also has been to support the internationally recognized government in its fight against Sunni extremists and terrorists.

But the significance of Ross’s prescription to “reapply” U.S. “coercion” across the region is that he is outlining what the world can expect from a Clinton-45 presidency.

Clinton made many of the same points in her speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and in debates with Bernie Sanders. If she stays on that track as president, there would be at least a partial U.S. military invasion of Syria, a very strong likelihood of war with Iran, and an escalation of tensions (and possible war) with nuclear-armed Russia.

The logic of how all that is supposed to improve matters is lost amid the classic neocon growling about showing toughness or reapplying “coercion.”

So, the Democratic Party seems to be betting that Hillary Clinton’s flood of ugly TV ads against Trump can frighten the American people enough to give the neocons and the neolibs one more lease on the White House – and four more years to wreak their zombie havoc on the world.

 

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Pugnacious Parasites and the Provocation

insane_people

By Zen Gardner

Source: ZenGardner.com

Everyone knows the unscrupulously manipulative always accuse others of what they themselves are guilty of. It’s an age old trick to obfuscate the obvious and buy time to accomplish their purposes.

Lying is their pathological language.

Such behavior, especially in high profile public figures, is unthinkable, yet for some inexplicable reason it is not just tolerated, but ironically readily expected.

People still buy into it. And the reaction always remains the same. Complacency on the most part, and a rising sense of anger in others. No doubt a byproduct of cognitive dissonance and range of other deliberately triggered mechanisms, but surreal just the same.

A Bald Faced Lie is a Punch in the Face

This is essentially what transpires when someone knowingly lies to your face. It jars your mind and pushes you back on the defensive and you’re left to try and understand why your heart and head are not matching up with what you just heard.

Everyone, except these willingly possessed psychopaths, has a conscience. And it’s faithful to speak to us. This is why humanity has been conditioned to not respond to it, and also why fear is so essential to their game. When our signals are scrambled, our gut reaction belittled and intuition denied we’re left in a daze.

This is exactly what they want to happen. It gives them time to keep executing their programs, especially when a complicit media candies and bandies it about as if it’s true and nothing to question.

This is the whirled we’re in and up against. Again, another reason to stay fully conscious and circumspect and thoroughly educated as to their techniques and true nature. Not pretty stuff to look at, but understand it we must.

Abject bullies like Israel are relatively easy to spot – if we grasp their obvious odious nature and where they’re coming from. The bully in the playground works by pure intimidation and force and will resort to any form of expression they can – loud mouthed intimidation, brandishing weapons, and all bathed in swaggering bravado right up to and including physical force to get their point across.

Send a signal is their MO. And those who don’t cower, teach them a lesson. Again, just look at the abject genocidal insanity of the Israeli occupiers. Now that they’ve gained control of most of the world’s media, especially in the west, what they say goes. And if the media or governments don’t toe their line well enough they’ll hear from these vociferous, self serving elitist beasts.

The Provocation

Another aspect of bullying is provoking your supposed enemy. The US is at this big time, deliberately firing up the conservative right and constitutionalists. It’s full on deliberate. The opulent extravagance of the Obamas, the clearly deliberate crashing of the economy, the flagrant trashing of patriotism and removal of individual rights are all carefully planned. Threatening to disarm fiercely independent Americans is an essential part of this agenda.

The mass migration agenda is the same. While the US gets inundated with needy Central Americans with clear governmental manipulation, Europe is similarly being swept with an influx that threatens their economies and cultural identities.

What’s most amazing about this is anyone can read this agenda for themselves from UN statements and documents and the Agenda 21 or 2030 programs. That so many can’t be bothered to look into much of this is outright frightening.

Israel again is a master example of aggressive agendas designed to push back common sense and reason as well as true empathy for the plight of others. A clearly apartheid state while claiming they were the victims of such treatment is completely nonsensical. It flies in the face of simple reason and logic. Yet they get away with it. How? They’ve taken over the media and political structures through the same tactics of intimidation and potential consequence by their massive Mossad/CIA/MI6 black hand of control.

Strategy of Tension and Not Just Provoking, but Demonizing Your Subjects

What’s amazing is the thoroughness of psychopathic social engineers. This is where we need to wake up and get smart.

They operate according to something called the Strategy of Tension, keeping peoples and nations nervous and afraid and more inclined to rely on government and enforcement to protect them. It also homogenizes cultures in a form of group think and a state of malleability due to this state of fear.

The extension of their influence is far and wide. Mass shootings, weird mass “accidents” at certain interims, and most of all false flags, never mind assassinations and the like. This has been the weapon of choice for every totalitarian regime for eons and a real favorite of this latest push for world dominion by these psychopaths.

The end result, ironically, is not entirely to direct everyone’s attention to a foreign enemy. That’s just a ruse and excuse for genocide and expansion. The enemy to them is within – us. We must be contained like animals and malleable to their every whim.

So-called domestic terrorism has been a meme on the rise. The deliberate migration of “potential muslim extremists” is a key part of this, as any and every incident they stage can more and more be justified and conveniently blamed on outside influences. The end result is the same: clampdown on the populace.

Just look at this propaganda piece brought to you by the Rothschild/Rockefeller owned and CIA/Mossad/MI6 et all run Reuters news agency:

U.S. eyes ways to toughen fight against domestic extremists

The U.S. Justice Department is considering legal changes to combat what it sees as a rising threat from domestic anti-government extremists, senior officials told Reuters, even as it steps up efforts to stop Islamic State-inspired attacks at home.

Extremist groups motivated by a range of U.S.-born philosophies present a “clear and present danger,” John Carlin, the Justice Department’s chief of national security, told Reuters in an interview. “Based on recent reports and the cases we are seeing, it seems like we’re in a heightened environment.” (source)

The agenda is obvious. If we’re looking. The language as well is a giveaway, the smooth talking and use of buzz phrases like “clear and present danger”, “national security” and the like are rife.

The Subtler Techniques of Deceit

This may seem a bit tangential to the main point I’m making here but is nonetheless essential information if we’re to more fully understand how these tactics are carried out on subtler levels.

You’ll see the following logical fallacy tactics in use continually, but unfortunately most people fall for them for lack of discernment as well as awareness of just what deceitful people are capable of doing.

This is a big subject well worth researching on your own but here are a few to get you started:

1. The Strawman Argument – Misrepresenting someone’s argument to make it easier to attack.

Example: After Will said that we should put more money into health and education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenseless by cutting military spending.

You’ll see this in use continually especially in the political and government arenas. It’s very clever really, side-stepping the real issue and misdirecting the argument to a false issue having nothing to do with the original question or discussion.

2. The False Choice Dilemma – Giving an extremely narrow range of choice to an issue or situation that is much wider than is being portrayed with virtually unlimited possibilites.

Baby Bush’s carefully framed post 9/11 statement is the classic geopolitical example: “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”

You have to admit that’s pretty damn galvanizing. But in what way? Now you can’t question what the “good guys” are doing or you might be with “axis of evil”? That’s what it’s since come down to. Again, cleverly staged propaganda by these very intelligent psychopaths. Keeping the public drugged and dumbed down would sure work in their favor, wouldn’t it?

3. Correlation versus Causation. You can apply this across the board. It’s so easy to assume what we’re told is true in this context. Beware.

The easiest example is when two events occur at the same time, or in close apparent relation with each other. One is then seen as the cause of the other. An increase in robberies occurs at the same time that jobs cuts are announced, for example. There is no evidence to support the claim that the expected job losses caused the increase in robberies.

This is best seen in false flag events when the enemy or culprit is named before any investigation whatsoever. If someone “claims” responsibility it’s case closed, as they go after their pre-selected patsy to confirm this or already executed this planted persona on the spot. Done deal.

4. Overgeneralization or Oversimplification.

This is another framework for logical fallacies. Generalizing from too small of a population, or reducing complex social issues to only one choice or the other, and leaving out the complex issues that do not support the claim are examples of fallacies that stem from overgeneralization and oversimplification. (source of last two citations)

These are just a few examples. It’s a field well worth exploring and getting a handle on. When you dissect and analyze these mechanisms it is extremely empowering.

All That To Say…

Be on the look out. Stay alert and awake and aware. What we see around us is not what we get, unless we fall for it and thereby make it our reality. Personal empowerment in such an environment as we’re living in is essential.

But you have to do the work.

Psychopaths are running the external world. It’s more evident by the day to more and more people. Those not fully on board even at higher and middle levels are being bullied into it within the power structure. They can see who the apparent heirs are to the coming positions of power so they’re buckling under the pressure in an effort to save their hides.

Others at many levels of society are waking up and looking for ways to expose this nefarious agenda and help humanity push back in whatever way it can. We need to keep our voices loud and clear and distinctly truthful and helpful.

There may be many vectors by which they’re coming at us, be they geoengineering, manipulated food, societal crackdowns, media programming and the like, but we’re clearly up to the challenge.

After all, we’re here! We’re thriving just fine in spite of all they do, and we’re growing stronger by the day.

Never forget that, let down your guard, nor grow weary in well doing.

This is our day – not theirs. Let’s fulfill our mission, and use the massive spiritual weapons at our disposal – love, truth, our connection to Source and essential eternal nature which can never be taken away.

Stay true.

Love always, Zen