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Digital Authoritarianism: AI Surveillance Signals the Death of Privacy

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Illustration: Prathap Ravishankar

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.” ― Philip K. Dick

Nothing is private.

We teeter on the cusp of a cultural, technological and societal revolution the likes of which have never been seen before.

While the political Left and Right continue to make abortion the face of the debate over the right to privacy in America, the government and its corporate partners, aided by rapidly advancing technology, are reshaping the world into one in which there is no privacy at all.

Nothing that was once private is protected.

We have not even begun to register the fallout from the tsunami bearing down upon us in the form of AI (artificial intelligence) surveillance, and yet it is already re-orienting our world into one in which freedom is almost unrecognizable.

AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude.

Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer.

Governments and corporations alike have heedlessly adopted AI surveillance technologies without any care or concern for their long-term impact on the rights of the citizenry.

As a special report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warns, “A growing number of states are deploying advanced AI surveillance tools to monitor, track, and surveil citizens to accomplish a range of policy objectives—some lawful, others that violate human rights, and many of which fall into a murky middle ground.”

Indeed, with every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

Cue the rise of digital authoritarianism.

Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”

The seeds of digital authoritarianism were planted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, with the passage of the USA Patriot Act. A massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA, the Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens.

It sounded the death knell for the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, especially the Fourth Amendment, and normalized the government’s mass surveillance powers.

Writing for the New York Times, Jeffrey Rosen observed that “before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.”

Who could have predicted that 50 years after George Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel 1984, “He loved Big Brother,” we would come to love Big Brother.

Yet that is exactly what has come to pass.

After 9/11, Rosen found that “people were happy to give up privacy without experiencing a corresponding increase in security. More concerned about feeling safe than actually being safe, they demanded the construction of vast technological architectures of surveillance even though the most empirical studies suggested that the proliferation of surveillance cameras had ‘no effect on violent crime’ or terrorism.”

In the decades following 9/11, a massive security-industrial complex arose that was fixated on militarization, surveillance, and repression.

Surveillance is the key.

We’re being watched everywhere we go. Speed cameras. Red light cameras. Police body cameras. Cameras on public transportation. Cameras in stores. Cameras on public utility poles. Cameras in cars. Cameras in hospitals and schools. Cameras in airports.

We’re being recorded at least 50 times a day.

It’s estimated that there are upwards of 85 million surveillance cameras in the U.S. alone, second only to China.

On any given day, the average American going about his daily business is monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

Yet it’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.

We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, microbiomes, scent, gait, heartbeat, breathing, behaviors—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.

As one AI surveillance advocate proclaimed, “Surveillance is no longer only a watchful eye, but a predictive one as well.” For instance, Emotion AI, an emerging technology that is gaining in popularity, uses facial recognition technology “to analyze expressions based on a person’s faceprint to detect their internal emotions or feelings, motivations and attitudes.” China claims its AI surveillance can already read facial expressions and brain waves in order to determine the extent to which members of the public are grateful, obedient and willing to comply with the Communist Party.

This is the slippery slope that leads to the thought police.

The technology is already being used “by border guards to detect threats at border checkpoints, as an aid for detection and diagnosis of patients for mood disorders, to monitor classrooms for boredom or disruption, and to monitor human behavior during video calls.”

For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government: the surveillance state.

This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.

The government’s “technotyranny” surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it’s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins.

The short answer: they have become one and the same entity. The police state has passed the baton to the surveillance state, which has shifted into high gear with the help of artificial intelligence technologies. The COVID-19 pandemic helped to further centralize digital power in the hands of the government at the expense of the citizenry’s privacy rights.

“From cameras that identify the faces of passersby to algorithms that keep tabs on public sentiment online, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools are opening new frontiers in state surveillance around the world.” So begins the Carnegie Endowment’s report on AI surveillance note. “Law enforcement, national security, criminal justice, and border management organizations in every region are relying on these technologies—which use statistical pattern recognition, machine learning, and big data analytics—to monitor citizens.”

In the hands of tyrants and benevolent dictators alike, AI surveillance is the ultimate means of repression and control, especially through the use of smart city/safe city platforms, facial recognition systems, and predictive policing. These technologies are also being used by violent extremist groups, as well as sex, child, drug, and arms traffickers for their own nefarious purposes.

China, the role model for our dystopian future, has been a major force in deploying AI surveillance on its own citizens, especially by way of its social credit systems, which it employs to identify, track and segregate its “good” citizens from the “bad.”

Social media credit scores assigned to Chinese individuals and businesses categorize them on whether or not they are worthy of being part of society. A real-name system—which requires people to use government-issued ID cards to buy mobile sims, obtain social media accounts, take a train, board a plane, or even buy groceries—coupled with social media credit scores ensures that those blacklisted as “unworthy” are banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train. Among the activities that can get you labeled unworthy are taking reserved seats on trains or causing trouble in hospitals.

In much the same way that Chinese products have infiltrated almost every market worldwide and altered consumer dynamics, China is now exporting its “authoritarian tech” to governments worldwide ostensibly in an effort to spread its brand of totalitarianism worldwide. In fact, both China and the United States have led the way in supplying the rest of the world with AI surveillance, sometimes at a subsidized rate.

This is how totalitarianism conquers the world.

While countries with authoritarian regimes have been eager to adopt AI surveillance, as the Carnegie Endowment’s research makes clear, liberal democracies are also “aggressively using AI tools to police borders, apprehend potential criminals, monitor citizens for bad behavior, and pull out suspected terrorists from crowds.”

Moreover, it’s easy to see how the China model for internet control has been integrated into the American police state’s efforts to flush out so-called anti-government, domestic extremists.

According to journalist Adrian Shahbaz’s in-depth report, there are nine elements to the Chinese model of digital authoritarianism when it comes to censoring speech and targeting activists: 1) dissidents suffer from persistent cyber attacks and phishing; 2) social media, websites, and messaging apps are blocked; 3) posts that criticize government officials are removed; 4) mobile and internet access are revoked as punishment for activism; 5) paid commentators drown out government criticism; 6) new laws tighten regulations on online media; 7) citizens’ behavior monitored via AI and surveillance tools; 9) individuals regularly arrested for posts critical of the government; and 9) online activists are made to disappear.

You don’t even have to be a critic of the government to get snared in the web of digital censorship and AI surveillance.

The danger posed by the surveillance state applies equally to all of us: lawbreaker and law-abider alike.

When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

As Orwell wrote in 1984, “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

In an age of too many laws, too many prisons, too many government spies, and too many corporations eager to make a fast buck at the expense of the American taxpayer, we are all guilty of some transgression or other.

No one is spared.

As Elise Thomas writes for Wired: “New surveillance tech means you’ll never be anonymous again.”

It won’t be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whomever we wanted, buy whatever we wanted, think whatever we wanted, go wherever we wanted, feel whatever we wanted without those thoughts, words and activities being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants, sold to government agencies, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.

Tread cautiously: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, 1984 has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day AI surveillance state.

Without constitutional protections in place to guard against encroachments on our rights when power, AI technology and militaristic governance converge, it won’t be long before Philip K. Dick’s rules for survival become our governing reality: “If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.”

THE HIDDEN FORCES OF LIFE

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

“For my consciousness the whole life upon earth, including the human life and all its mentality, is a mass of vibrations, mostly vibrations of falsehood, ignorance and disorder, in which are more and more at work vibrations of Truth and Harmony coming from the higher regions and pushing their way through the resistance.” ~The Mother

“Sleep is very comfortable, but waking is very bitter.” ~G.I. Gurdjieff

It is a natural, yet incorrect, assumption to accept physical events at face value. Influences come to us upon many varied levels, and the visible, physical carrier or medium is the most superficial form. All of life is a play of forces; we may call these ‘universal forces’ for they act both within and beyond the physical. We have become accustomed to giving personal forms to many of these forces, and we believe that we are independent and free from their influence. The Greek-Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff used to say that humankind lives under 48 laws, of which they are mostly unaware or ignorant of. This is a very precise number, and it is not the numbers – the quantity – or the specifics that I wish to focus on here, but the quality. It may be necessary to have a ‘feeling’ for the forces of influence that populate our lives in the physical domain.

Most people, most of the time, are not aware of the forces acting upon them; and this is a natural condition. We all live our lives within a sea of vibrations – thoughts, suggestions, influences, etc – and we are barely aware of which ones belong to us and which we take to be our own. Let us take a common example as an illustration: information. When a person receives information, the general response is to consider the likelihood of that information in relation to their belief sets and range of accumulated opinions. The person then makes a response regarding whether the information is ‘true’ or ‘false.’ Yet this is a limited two-dimensional way to regard the relationship of the communication.

We have to also consider the background to the source of the information: what is the source; do they have an agenda; are they relaying the information from another source; what is the motivation; what are the expected outcomes? And more. We may also need to ask ourselves whether the medium of transmission is reliable or corrupted. If a technological medium is used, are there subtle subliminal messages and signalling within the transmission? Are certain frequencies being used to manipulate the hearer? Is the receiver being discreetly nudged into making desired outcomes? If this is a face-to-face communication, we may also ask whether the speaker is using specific techniques of language coercion, such as neuro-linguistic programming? These are just a very few of the potential influences that could be used in the physical communication of information. And yet, these are still those forces of influence that are limited to the physical range. It is good to be mindful that non-physical forces compete for power the same as familiar physical forces do. What is hidden to us in everyday life are the motivations behind the impulses that surface within the physical.

The human life experience conditions us to view and respond to outward aspects whilst remaining unaware of those things acting behind the veil – or behind the scenes. This disjuncture between origin and target is more than a gap; it is a gulf. As the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo remarked in relation to the hidden forces of life, ‘the only way out is through the descent of a consciousness which is not the puppet of these forces but is greater than they are and can compel them either to change or disappear.’[1] Aurobindo is saying here that the ‘way out’ is not to attempt to fight or meet these forces head on but to align with a degree of consciousness that is greater, or vibrationally beyond, the level of those forces. Rather than struggle with them, we are to resonate to a different vibrational alignment that takes us out of their spectrum of influence.

Within the general scheme of things, most people are treated as ignorant instruments; they are moved around like puppets, suspecting nothing. They live predictable lives; that is, lives that can be predicted as they move within known patterns. Often, these patterns are what have been programmed into the collective mass society. As soon as a person shifts to an inner-directed life, they begin to move away from predictability. That is, they move ‘off-pattern,’ and this is not well-liked by those of the governing forces.

The spirit-consciousness can override the lower forces, which is why the earthly life is being increasingly pulled into a physical-material direction – a pathway to both outer as well as inner automation. Stability is based on a repetition of vibrations and frequencies that our being becomes accustomed to. A person gets entrained through vibrational alignment into a mode of stability. The question we should be asking ourselves is: what type of frequencies are we aligning with? A great deal of stability within the physical realm is of a ‘lower order’ type, based on more limited patterns. Some may wonder, what is all this talk about vibrations – isn’t that new age nonsense? It all depends on how such information is presented and conveyed. A truth can easily be made into a mockery if handled incorrectly. The Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla famously said: ‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.’ Again, going back to G.I. Gurdjieff, who stated:

It is necessary to regard the universe as consisting of vibrations. These vibrations proceed in all kinds, aspects, and densities of the matter which constitutes the universe, from the finest to the coarsest…In this instance the view of ancient knowledge is opposed to that of contemporary science, because at the base of the understanding of vibrations ancient knowledge places the principle of the discontinuity of vibrations. The principle of the discontinuity of vibrations means the definite and necessary characteristic of all vibrations in nature, whether ascending or descending, to develop not uniformly but with periodical accelerations and retardations.[2]

It is interesting here that Gurdjieff speaks about the ‘discontinuity of vibrations’ that develop through periodical accelerations (increases) and retardations (delays). There is not a uniformity in the influence of vibrations. The ‘energetic background’ of life, so to speak, moves through these periodic shifts. This can be seen as a macro influence upon human life. In such times, we may feel irritable, restless, frustrated, or more. Philosopher J.G. Bennett referred to this when he wrote:

In a more subtle and pervasive manner, great regions of the earth’s surface, and sometimes even the whole of the earth, become subject to a state of tension that produces in people a strong sense of dissatisfaction with their conditions of life. They become irritable or aggressive, apprehensive, nervous and highly suggestible.[3]

These impersonal forces that influence the world, and our states of being, we know only by the results they cause. We perceive only a small degree through the lens of visible events and consequences. There are forces unknown to us that are responsible for shaping our physical, psychic, and emotional environment. The human being lives ‘constantly in the midst of a whirl of unseen mind-forces and life-forces of which we know nothing, we are not even aware of their existence.’[4]

There are currently forces acting upon human consciousness and producing a great deal of pressure. We are in need of an outlet for this pressure, before it implodes/explodes through our societies in uncomfortable and disagreeable ways. There is now a contestation of forces that are so visible that they can no longer be denied by the aware (or awake) individual. At the same time, a great evolutionary (developmental) force is pushing into the earthly domain, and there is immense resistance to this. This makes the struggle – the contestation of forces – more acute, more violent, and more definitive. Yet this very visibility of the counterforces upon the physical world stage is an important sign for us – it displays their state of desperation to come out of the shadows in this way. This opens up an important path of realization for the rest of us – and possibilities too. Even if individual transformation is upon a small scale, there is the opportunity now for a general uplifting within collective humanity. And it is this general uplifting that will usher in the potentials and conditions for a new world to emerge. Again, as Bennett says,

If a new world is to come, we must first create it in ourselves. You may ask how the work of a few people can change the world. It has always been so. Ideas are powerful, not organizations. Nothing can be done by outward force; everything can be done by inner strength.[5]

We have arrived at an exceptional hour, a privileged time for the expansion of human awareness and perception, if only we can bypass those forces of hindrance. What we need now is inner certitude and to exercise discernment – especially when open to the forces of mass vibration.

The Forces of Mass Vibration

The mass exhibits a different resonance than the individual. When in a group, or crowd, an individual invariably takes on the features, thoughts, and moods of others. In this way, the individual can be inwardly polluted and corrupted by forces they are not aware of. It is important to be conscious of who we choose to be with, mix with, for each person is a point of reception/transmission, and we vibrationally align (resonate) with those we are physically close to. That is why the mob can be psychologically, and behaviourally, dangerous. And this is also why we are advised to choose our friends carefully; a lot can be said about a person according to their friends and associates. It would do us well to remember that ‘one catches the constant contagion of all desires, all the lower movements, all the small obscure reactions, all the unwanted vibrations which come to us from those around us.’[6] Life is a continual interplay of forces, a continuous alchemy in which a person is constantly absorbing various kinds of vibration that may contain all types of possible dissonance. In this, the task of the conscious and aware person is to transmute these dissonant forces so that their action and influence is disabled.

We can do this by grounding the vibration. Let us say that something, an event, a person, or a comment, has caused us frustration. We refrain from responding to it by taking an inner pause, an internal step back, and we observe the discomfort. This ‘item’ is treated as an observable object with a life of its own – it is an energy form. And it needs to be allowed to dissipate rather than find an energy source to latch onto (i.e., oneself). In this, the energy form (the ‘item’) needs to be grounded within neutral physicality – just as electricity or lightening needs to be grounded or ‘earthed.’ Similarly, we earth the dissonant energy by visualizing its transference into the ground beneath us (it doesn’t matter if you are sitting or standing). In this way, the dissonant energy vibration is transmuted. This action is the work of perceptive consciousness and does not have to be regarded as something ‘spiritual.’ On the contrary, it is part of the task of the human being during its sojourn through physical life to transmute energies. It is through the presence of conscious individuals that, according to the Mother (Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual co-worker), a ‘minimum of general harmony’ can be accomplished:

That presence, that spiritual light – which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness – is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature’s work to be accomplished.[7]

It is through such Work as this that we become aware of the intervention of forces, impulses, and influences, which are non-visible to our ordinary states of consciousness, and which seek to affect physical life circumstances.

The forces of mass vibrational dissonance are exceptionally intense in these current times. It can be said that humanity has reached a particular state of general tension. Such ‘forces of hindrance’ would delight in creating divisions by dividing friendships and social alliances. Some divisions, however, are set to occur, for these are the breakdowns in the dysfunctional external systems that perpetuate the fractures in our societies. These are such systems as politics, economy, and social trust. We can expect some cracks to appear in these systems for ‘Nature’s Work’ to operate. Yet we cannot allow these fractures to disable the human spirit – or to numb the forces of spirit-consciousness that act through us.

As stated by the Mother in the opening citation to this essay, life is mostly awash with vibrations of disorder and falsehood, in which ‘vibrations of Truth and Harmony are coming from the higher regions and pushing their way through the resistance.’ We are tasked, in these times, to assist these ‘vibrations of Truth and Harmony’ and to help them to push their way through the resistance. And in this, we are aligning with the continuation of the alchemical work by assisting in the transmutation of the dissonance (the lead) into constructive forces (the gold). And by doing this we shall also be assisting in the alchemical transmutation of the great treasure of the philosopher’s stone – ourselves.

About the Author

Kingsley L. Dennis is the author of The Phoenix Generation: A New Era of Connection, Compassion, and Consciousness, and The Sacred Revival: Magic, Mind & Meaning in a Technological Age, available at Amazon. Visit him on the web at http://www.kingsleydennis.com/.

References:

[1] Hidden Forces of Life: Selections from the Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (Lotus Press, 1999), p6

[2] P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1949), 122-23

[3] Bennett, J.G. 1989. Is There “Life” on Earth? – An Introduction to Gurdjieff. Santa Fe, NM: Bennett Books, p31

[4] Hidden Forces of Life: Selections from the Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (Lotus Press, 1999), p81

[5] Bennett, J.G. 1989. Is There “Life” on Earth? – An Introduction to Gurdjieff. Santa Fe, NM: Bennett Books, p32

[6] Hidden Forces of Life: Selections from the Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (Lotus Press, 1999), p185

[7] Hidden Forces of Life: Selections from the Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (Lotus Press, 1999), p167

Joe Biden’s Secret War in Ukraine

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American soldiers are already “boots on the ground”

By Philip Giraldi

Source: The Unz Review

The White House keeps insisting that it will not directly involve American soldiers in the war in Ukraine, but it keeps taking steps that will inevitably lead to a large-scale open combat role for the US against Russia. Among the most recent moves to increase the pressure on the Kremlin, Biden revealed at a NATO summit meeting in Madrid on June 29th that the US will establish a permanent headquarters in Poland for the Fifth Army Corps, maintain an additional rotational brigade of thousands of troops in Romania and bolster other deployments in the Baltic states. Also, the number of US troops in Europe, currently approaching 100,000, will be increased. Biden also was pleased to learn that Turkey had been enticed to drop its objection to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

On the way to the NATO summit aboard Air Force One, Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan advised that “By the end of the summit what you will see is a more robust, more effective, more combat credible, more capable and more determined force posture to take account of a more acute and aggravated Russian threat.” Presumably Sullivan was reading from a prepared script, but the objective surely seemed to be to heighten tension with Moscow rather than attempt to reduce it and come to some kind of diplomatic settlement.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also did his bit. In an astonishing display of derriere kissing, he responded that the new US force posture commitments were demonstrative of Biden’s strong leadership. What Stoltenberg did not mention was that Biden has been lying for some time about the presence of US military personnel in Ukraine. He let the cat out of the bag back in March, when he told troops belonging to the 82nd Airborne division in Poland that they would soon be going to Ukraine, observing that “You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see —” It was an admission that US forces are already in place inside Ukraine even though the White House quickly did damage control, asserting that the president continues to be opposed to American soldiers being directly engaged in the fighting. Biden also claimed that the US was working to “keep the massacre [of Ukrainians] from continuing.” Again, the language was hardly designed to make some room for a possible accommodation with Russia to negotiate an end to the fighting.

And now there is a New York Times report entitled “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say: A secretive operation involving US Special Operations forces hints at the scale of the effort to assist Ukraine’s still outgunned military.”

The article describes a more active US role in Ukraine than the Biden Administration has been willing to admit publicly. Back in February, before intervened in Ukraine, the US reportedly withdrew its own 150 military instructors, many of whom were training Ukrainian soldiers on newly acquired American produced weapons. However, some Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary operatives and special ops troops continued their service in the country secretly, directing most of the intelligence flow the US is sharing with Ukrainian forces. In addition to that, special ops soldiers from Washington’s NATO allies have been managing the movement of weapons and equipment into Ukraine and providing some specialized training. It has also been reported that British SAS commandos are actually guarding President Volodymyr Zelensky. The NYT specifies, citing American and other Western officials, that the soldiers and CIA officers are currently not on the front lines with Ukrainian troops. Also according to the Times, even though the US and NATO member states have not acknowledged the presence of their paramilitaries soldiers in operational roles in Ukraine, Russia and other intelligence services around the world are aware of this.

The New York Times report appears to be generally correct, though it does omit some details, some of which I have been hearing from former colleagues in the intelligence services. There has been considerable overt training at the Grafenwoehr German army base as well as at the Ramstein US Air Base to familiarize the Ukrainians with the new weapons arriving. Other NATO countries are also participating in the training. Meanwhile, the cadres of special operations soldiers and intelligence personnel operating primarily in western Ukraine are not in uniform and many of them are working under various contrived cover designations, including sometimes loose affiliations with foreign embassies and NGOs. There are also a conventional CIA Station, a group from the National Security Agency and a Military Attache’s office in the recently reopened US Embassy in Kiev.

All of the above means that Biden and other western leaders have been dissimulating regarding their active participation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Apart from his possible gaffe, Biden will not admit that there are American boots already on the ground, but they are there and are playing a major role in both logistics and intelligence sharing. The potential downside for the president could come when some of these soldiers in mufti get killed or, worse, captured and start to talk about their role.

Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, observes that deploying plausibly deniable non-uniformed personnel “is completely typical of the initial stages of a US-backed long war, and for long-term political manipulation of the target country. This is the future that neoconservative ‘strategists’ in DC and their British and European allies imagine for Ukraine. Rather than a negotiated conclusion, with a new Ukrainian role as a neutral and productive country, independent of both Russian and US political influences, the US government and CIA see Ukraine as an expendable yet useful satrap in its competition with the Russian Federation.”

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson sees the activity in stark terms, while also commenting that the CIA has not won a semi-clandestine insurgent war in forty years. He observes that “Ukraine is a proxy; the West is trying to destroy Russia, it’s that simple. It would be one thing if Russia was the most evil, oppressive, authoritarian regime in the world. It’s nowhere even close. Even though the West keeps trying to portray Russia as such. The fact of the matter is, the West wants the resources that Russia has and it wants to control Russia. [But] Russia is not about to be controlled.”

In other words, Washington might be seeking an unending war entangling Russia and limiting its options globally. The Biden Administration has staked its reputation and possible political future on enabling Ukraine to survive without succumbing to Russian territorial demands. It is a risky and even dangerous policy, both in practical terms and politically. The persistence of the Ukrainians in their defense is largely a product of US and Western Europe guarantees that they will do all that is necessary to support Zelensky and his regime, which is already seeking $750 billion in aid for “reconstruction.” If western military casualties begin to surface, the political support for the Ukraine war will begin to fade in Washington and elsewhere and there will be consequences in the upcoming midterm US elections in November.

A final comment on the Times piece is in response to the question why it has appeared at all at the present time. The mainstream media has been a cheerleader for aggressive US support of Ukraine and Zelensky, but now it is beginning to step back from that position, as have also the Washington Post and other media outlets. Perhaps they are becoming convinced that the game plan being promoted by Washington and its European allies is unlikely to succeed at great cost to the respective economies. Larry Johnson puts it this way: “I think the purpose of this article coming out now is just to lay the groundwork for why we can’t put or shouldn’t put any more US military personnel or even CIA personnel inside Ukraine because continuing to put US personnel…inside Ukraine to train is becoming too risky because of Russia’s success on the battlefield.” One might also add that it is exceptionally dangerous. A misstep or even a deliberate false flag coming from either side could easily make the war go nuclear.

Vaccine Hesitancy in Haiti has led to the Lowest COVID-19 cases and Death Rates in the Western Hemisphere

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

The poorest country in the Caribbean has a problem according to Western governments and its global institutions.  That problem is with Haiti, a country that does not trust anything that comes out of the West including media propaganda and its experimental injections or what is known as the “Covid-19 vaccines.”  Haitians do not accept the West as a savior when it comes to their health or security, they don’t even trust their own government especially since most of them take orders from Washington and Paris.  The last president that the Haitian people supported overwhelmingly was ousted by a US-backed coup in 2004 and he was Jean Bertrand Aristide.  However, there is some positive news coming out of Haiti regarding Covid-19 and its experimental injections according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) own words:

In Haiti, from 3 January 2020 to 5:16pm CEST, 13 July 2022, there have been 31,980 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 837 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 8 July 2022, a total of 348,769 vaccine doses have been administered

It should not be a surprise that Haiti, a country with a population of more than 11 million people has a low vaccination rate since most Haitians do not want the experimental injections to begin with.  An article from a liberal website called Coda which you can find online under http://www.codastory.com published a propaganda piece from August 13th, 2021, titled ‘The origins of Haiti’s vaccine hesitancy’ by Erica Hellerstein on why the Haitian population refuse to get the Covid-19 vaccination shots which according to their logic, Haiti is listening to disinformation or conspiracy theories from Russia:    

Facebook unearthed a vast Russia-based anti-vaccine disinformation campaign this week. On Tuesday, the social media giant announced that it had removed 65 Facebook and 243 Instagram accounts amplifying anti-vaccine content. Investigators from the company linked the network to British marketing firm Fazze and operated from Russia. The campaign — dubbed a “disinformation laundromat” by Facebook — primarily targeted users in Latin America, India, and the U.S. through fake articles and petitions circulated on Medium, Reddit and Change.org, and then spread on social media via fake Facebook and Instagram accounts. One of the conspiracies, often accompanied in this campaign by images from the “Planet of the Apes” movies, is the claim that the AstraZeneca jab would turn people into chimpanzees – an old favorite of Russian state propaganda

Codastory.com is owned by Coda Media which is managed by a group of people who originally worked for the US mainstream-media such as Natalia Antelava, a former BBC correspondent who is the head of the organization and Ilan Greenberg who was a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal is the publisher and editorial director of the news outlet which already shows you the bias reporting they hold against Russia.  Hellerstein mentioned Jean-Claude Louis who was speaking to an acquaintance working in the medical field about the Covid-19 vaccine, according to Hellerstein, the acquaintance told Louis, “I will never get the vaccine,” she continued “You don’t know what you’re getting.”  Jean-Claude Louis is a coordinator for the Panos Institute which is described as “a Haitian nonprofit that trains journalists and youth on media literacy and identifying disinformation,” The Panos Institute is a non-profit organization that was originally based in the UK is now operating worldwide.  Louis has obviously fallen for Western propaganda on the efficacy and safety of the Covid-19 experimental injections:  

Louis has been paying close attention to the vaccine myths circulating online and in-person. And he is worried about how much of it is spreading inside Haiti’s medical community. “The problem is there are so many false rumors about vaccines,” he added. “People are very hesitant about getting the vaccines”

Hellerstein said that “I approached Louis after coming across a dataset laying out vaccination rates for the Americas. Topping the list was Uruguay, where nearly 75% of the population has gotten at least one vaccine dose. All the way at the bottom was Haiti, with just 0.14% of the population inoculated against Covid-19.”  She also mentioned that Haiti was the last country in Latin America and the Caribbean to receive Covid-19 vaccines from the US and the United Nations (UN) through the COVAX program: 

Haiti was one of the last countries in the world –and the last in Latin America and the Caribbean –to begin distributing the shot. In fact, it hadn’t gotten any at all until last month. Then, on July 14, a shipment of 500,000 doses from the United States via the United Nations-backed COVAX program arrived in the country. The delivery came a week after Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was brazenly assassinated in his home, plunging the country into political crisis

According to Hellerstein’s assessment, Haiti’s distribution of the vaccine was a “Bright spot” during the country’s political upheavals, but there was a statistic that was troubling to her:

The vaccine rollout was hailed as a “bright spot” during an otherwise tumultuous moment in Haiti. But another statistic caught my eye: according to a June survey by UNICEF and the University of Haiti, just 22% of adults said they were interested in getting the shot. Compare that with this February survey of global vaccination attitudes, where 88% of Brazilian adults, 85% of Chinese and Mexican adults, and 80% of Spanish and Italian adults said they intended to get the Covid-19 jab. Even in Russia, where vaccine acceptance was the lowest of all countries polled, 42% of adults said they would get a shot if made available — nearly double Haiti’s openness rate

There was an ounce of truth exposed by the article when UN peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti where close to 10,000 people died from the outbreak:

Haitians have good reasons to distrust international institutions; after all, experts have determined that United Nations peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti, where at least 10,000 people died of the disease, despite years of vehement denial from U.N. officials

Distrust of the UN and its Western backers is a major issue for the Haitian people:

The incident has left many Haitians deeply distrustful of the very institutions leading the global vaccination drive through the COVAX program. As Brian Concannon, founder of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, a coalition of Haitian and U.S. human rights advocates, told me: “​​Basically the international community burned all its credibility on public health messaging by lying about cholera.”  He added: “They don’t trust the U.N., they don’t trust the government. The messenger is the problem”

On April 7th, 2021, Haiti has refused a donation of more than 756, 000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the WHO also through the COVAX program as reported by Spain’s EFE from a reliable source:

According to this source the Haitian Government refused to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, manufactured under license by “Serum Institute of India” because of “the global unrest surrounding this vaccine”, considering that the population of Haiti “would not accept it”

In an interesting turn of events “The Haitian authorities have asked the WHO to send vaccines from other laboratories to Haiti, including the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson laboratories which requires only one injection and which can be stored at temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.”  However, WHO officials are pushing back against Haiti’s demands since the Johnson & Johnson vaccine takes only one shot.  However, the J&J vaccine can be just as dangerous as Pfizer and Moderna’s experimental injections, but the idea is maybe that one shot is more convincing to the public than having multiple shots for the long-term, perhaps they just wanted to avoid pushing “forever boosters” on their population who are already skeptical on any vaccine produced by the West to fight Covid-19 or any other disease.

Whatever people say about Haiti and their reaction to Covid-19 in the West and elsewhere may be negative, but one thing is certain, anything to do with Western governments and their institutions such as the WHO or the CDC concerning Covid-19 or any other new disease whether they are promoting vaccines or facemasks have resulted in more deaths and injuries. 

Haiti’s example should be proof that whatever the “health authorities” such as the Anthony Fauci’s of the world and their institutions are suggesting have no credibility and whatever they are promoting should be taken with a grain of salt.   

Although this news video is typical US mainstream media propaganda, you can watch this video to get a different perspective on the attitude towards Covid-19 in Haiti:

Calm Before the Tempest?

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Let’s start by stipulating the obvious: no one knows the future, and most of the guesses–oops, I mean forecasts–will be wrong. Arguing about the forecasts now won’t make any difference as to which ones are correct and which ones are wrong. Time alone will tell.

That said, here’s a scenario that fits the dynamics I see as most consequential: Core-Periphery and the demise of the waste is growth / financialization / globalization model as the reigning model of how the global economy should work.

Core-periphery dynamics are pretty simple: unraveling starts on the periphery and seeps toward the core. The core actually strengthens in the process as capital and talent seek havens where they’re treated well, and the core became the core by treating capital and talent well.

The periphery responds to the unraveling of financialization / globalization by tightening its grip on whatever capital and talent is still available, incentivizing the flight of capital and talent to the core.

A great many people think there are many core economies. In my analysis, there is only one, due to the qualifying requirements: 1) issues a reserve currency, i.e. not pegged to another currency 2) liquid global markets for securities, debt, commodities, etc., i.e. anyone anywhere can trade in size in the core markets 3) transparent market and governance mechanisms, i.e. no overnight devaluations, expropriations, capital restrictions, etc. 4) diverse economy not dependent on exports or imports for its well-being and 5) ease of flow: capital, talent, enterprises and employees all have essentially unlimited freedom of movement within the core.

We can argue about which nations qualify as core but it won’t change the outcome. Capital and talent will make their own decisions about risk, safety, exposure to devaluation and expropriation and where the odds of being treated fairly are highest. It’s a good exercise to put yourself in the shoes of a manager of a $10 billion fund and go through the decision tree of where to put this $10 billion to preserve its purchasing power first and foremost, and secondarily generate a return.

Would you really gamble $10 billion on a 15% return on the bonds of Timbukthree, whose currency has fallen 20% against the U.S. dollar this year? Or Timbukfour, which is dependent on exports of commodities in a shrinking global economy? Or Timbukfive, which is dependent on imports of commodities and exports of consumer goods in a shrinking global economy?? If you answer “yes,” you’re not actually playing like you are responsible for $10 billion.

As the periphery unravels financially, it also unravels politically and socially. Bordering states are at risk of destabilizing, and any entity with large exposure to the unraveling debt or markets starts unraveling, too. The destabilization spreads to second-tier nations whose exposure to the dynamics of unraveling are structural.

As all these dominoes fall, eventually those closest to the core also crumble, and then core itself is finally destabilized.

Humans have an interesting talent for adjusting to new circumstances, i.e. habituating to new conditions. Those households consuming 14,000 gallons of fresh water a month may well scream that they can’t possibly get by on 12,000 gallons, but then if circumstances change and all the water we have is what we can carry in buckets a kilometer over rough terrain, we find that we can live on the few gallons we can carry a kilometer.

The amount of waste in developed economies is beyond easy measure. It’s estimated 40% of all food in the U.S. is wasted. Energy, food and fresh water have been treated as if low cost and abundance were birthrights rather than brief explosions of excess. While we’re screaming about energy costs, empty buildings are brightly lit, water taps are left running and one individual per idling vehicle in a traffic jam frets about rising costs.

When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake closed the Bay Bridge across San Francisco Bay, the main artery between San Francisco and the East Bay, economic doom was predictably predicted. Yet people quickly managed via extra BART (subway) trains that rain beneath the Bay and carpools with four people per vehicle rather than one occupant.

Is it possible that all the predictable predictions of economic doom are somewhat exaggerated by the thrill of sensationalism and projections of past trends, as if people can’t possibly make consequential adjustments to their behaviors and consumption?

Systems have constraints, and so there are limits on what adjustments can be made without altering the structure, but in many cases, we’re far from reaching limits on basic conservation work-arounds.

Is it possible that things will prove less dire than currently expected? It seems little credence is being given to the potential to adjust to new conditions.

Is it beyond conception that the core actually strengthens for a length of time before the unraveling reaches it? In my crystal ball, it seems not just possible but likely. This will be the calm before The Tempest, when the unraveling reaches the core and structural changes are finally required.

U.S.-led Imperialism is the World’s Leading Purveyor of Chaos

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The western capitalist axis of domination is responsible for most of the world’s crises. The crisis of legitimacy extends from the UK to Japan, and U.S. imperialism is involved in every new catastrophe.

By Danny Haiphong

Source: Black Agenda Report

To say that the West, currently led by the dictates of U.S. imperialism, is in trouble would be an understatement. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned on July 7th amid an escalating political crisis of legitimacy . Three weeks before Johnson announced his departure, Emmanuel Macron’s so-called centrist alliance lost its parliamentary majority in France. U.S. President Joe Biden continues to face his own crisis of legitimacy in the form of declining favorability ratings and public humiliation from Democratic loyalists such as Debra Messing . For the West, political crisis is undergirded by an unprecedented level of system chaos which has given the vast majority of workers and oppressed people little confidence in the future.

That chaos was compounded by the murder of Japan’s former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe on July 7th. Abe was an imperialist, a neoliberal, and the highest expression of what it means to be a puppet of the American Empire . Abe’s so-called Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was a literal creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Other detestable qualities of Abe include his worship of Japan’s fascist war criminals, his membership in the fascist cult Nippon Kaigi, and his unapologetic defense of Japan’s history of brutalizing and super exploiting “comfort women” from its colonies. Most important to the United States, however, was Abe’s unquestionable loyalty to the New Cold War and the military encirclement of China.

Abe’s murder and the attendant political crises in the West are a clear demonstration that U.S.-led imperialism is the world’s leading purveyor of chaos in the world. At the economic base, the U.S. and the E.U. continue to prolong their proxy war with Russia through massive arms transfers and sanctions that have boomeranged back to spur shortages and inflation. Inflation has come with political costs. Already unpopular capitalist regimes in the West are finding themselves increasingly exposed as incapable of addressing the rising cost of living. It doesn’t help matters that the so-called military superiority of the United States and its imperialist partners is also being challenged by Russia’s successful special military operation in Ukraine.

Thanks to the U.S. obsession with NATO expansion, the future is bleak for Ukraine’s U.S.-backed coup government established in 2014. Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine has made immense progress in the Donbass region. An already fragile and privatized vassal Ukrainian economy can only look forward to more pain once the U.S. and its junior partners in NATO come looking for repayment on its exorbitant aid packages. And Ukraine is just the beginning. The recent admission of Sweden and Finland into NATO is yet another declaration of war with Russia which opens the door to future conflicts even more destructive than the ongoing U.S. proxy war in Ukraine.

It is an undeniable fact that chaos follows U.S. imperialism wherever it goes. In Latin America, stability exists only where leftist governments have secured sufficient sovereignty . In Africa, the spread of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has led to widespread destabilization and political insecurity in the aftermath of the U.S.-NATO-AFRICOM invasion of Libya in 2011. In Asia, U.S. militarism has facilitated war in the West and attempted to organize a coalition of vassal states against China in the East. U.S. meddling in Taiwan has created a dumping ground for defense contractors and prompted Joe Biden to articulate on three occasions that the U.S. is willing to militarily intervene to “defend” the island , a guaranteed nuclear exchange scenario.

U.S. militarism is the principal barrier to political stability around the world which is a prerequisite to addressing global challenges such as climate change and poverty. U.S. and E.U. sanctions murder thousands of people in poorer, non-white countries. U.S.-sponsored color revolutions and “soft power” maneuvers are preludes to regime change. So-called U.S. “soft power” strengthens the most reactionary forces in the world. The far right and fascistic Contras in Latin and Central America , ISIS in West Asia, and the Azov Regiment in Ukraine are all outgrowths of U.S. interference disguised as “soft power.”

A dialectical relationship exists between the U.S.’s domestic and foreign policy. U.S. imperialism is an advanced stage in the system of capitalism predicated upon slavery, colonialism, and racism. Jayland Walker’s brutal murder at the hands of Akron police is a near daily occurrence in the United States. Black Americans and Indigenous peoples have been subject to the cruelest forms of racist violence for centuries. The U.S.’s endless wars are an expression of this violence turned toward imperialist ends.

The chickens of chaos have come home to roost. The Euro-American imperialist world order is suffering from terminal contradictions. Political instability reigns supreme. Another economic crisis is said to be looming but is more than likely already here. Imperialist wars no longer hold any prospect for any real “victory” without serious consequences for the war-maker.

While material conditions are pregnant with possibilities, there is no organized and independent left challenge to the supremacy of U.S. capital and its armed guards of the state. That is the task ahead of the people’s movement residing in the belly of the imperialist beast. In the face of the unprecedented chaos produced by its leading purveyor, the United States, this is no doubt the most difficult one that the working class and oppressed in the long and storied history of resistance. But such a task is not a choice. It is forced upon us by the weight of imperialism bearing down on our necks.

We must not rest until we get the boot off by any means necessary.

Danny Haiphong’s work can be followed on Twitter @SpiritofHo and Telegram at The Haiphong Press. You can support Danny on Patreon by clicking this link. You can contact him at haiphongpress@protonmail.com. 

True Leadership at a Time of Crisis

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By Julian Rose

Source: Global Research

Minds that work three dimensionally cannot solve the problems of the world. They can only make them worse.

Those who see themselves as being ‘in charge’ of world events are not able to understand the actual nature of the problems they are supposed to deal with, so obviously they can’t change them for the better.

For example, those trained in banking have a two dimensional thinking process. They can see only ledgers, numbers and material gain.

Those heading leading corporations see only what their corporations can profit from. How to make them ever more profitable. Those who go into politics accept the three dimensional prison that politics is. Anyone thinking outside this box won’t last long in politics. The list goes on – interminably.

But suffice it to say that the great majority of ‘leaders’ of this world come from the above categories. Plus a smattering of billionaires, royals and a handful or two of psychopaths and megalomaniacs.

None of these, quite obviously, come anywhere near fulfilling the need for wisdom or the pursuit of truth and justice. Such values don’t even enter the picture. They are seen as the preserve of those lost in a world of illusion.

So long as this status quo prevails, no change for the better can happen – on the global stage. That place where all attention is focussed, therefore from which all actions emanate. Two/three dimensional actions bereft of insight, wisdom, truth or courage.

Those who believe and follow the edicts of these incapacitated directors of society, live in a prison of their own construction. It’s a dark place of delusional slavery to whatever they hear on ‘The News’. The State uses them to keep its two/three dimensional plans on-track.

In the world we want to become manifest, none of the two/three dimensional thinkers has any part. As we know, if we care to stop and reflect on it, only those with genuine breadth of vision, qualities of humane leadership and a deep devotion to the manifestation of truth, can fulfil the necessary qualities to direct our planet in the way – deep down – we all want and long for.

It’s a surprisingly simple message I am articulating: joining together in refusing to cooperate with those who we know have no qualities capable of improving the health and welfare of humanity and of our planetary ecology – is the only strategy which can end their sterile destructive reign.

We know that only those capable of a deep grasp of life’s challenges and how to set-about confronting them, can put us on the road we all want to be on. Make us feel moved to support the path of liberation from our slave driving oppressors – and from our own weakness –  that leads over and over again into submission to their toxic demands.

The path to victory demands dedication. Dedication to listening to our hearts, not our minds. Only to our minds when they are first informed by our hearts and by a sound sense of morality.

We are becoming aware that this is the channel through which victory will be achieved. The only channel. It is the opposite dimension from the destroyers we are up against. They fear it, because they don’t understand it. It is outside their two/three dimensional prison. Yet it is our greatest asset; our wealth as true sentient humans. Our power as spiritual warriors.

It is time to ditch all distractions from this path. Only that which supports our great awakening must be put at the top of our ‘must do’ list from now on. And the further items down that list must all be in support of this great affirmation, this passion for truth.

There is nothing else ‘to do’.

If we fail to listen and act on the voice of our deepest hearts and intuitions, we can never be free. That message, determinedly put into practice in the outside world, will unlock the gates of all barricades erected to disempower us – and will set us free.

There is no other task.

Saturday Matinee: Theaters of War

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A documentary about the U.S. military’s editorial control over thousands of Hollywood’s films and television programs.

Source: Media Education Foundation

If you’ve seen Top Gun or Transformers, you may have wondered: Does all of that military machinery on screen come with strings attached? Does the military actually get a crack at the script? Theaters of War digs deep into a vast new trove of recently released internal government documents to bring the answers to these questions into sharp focus. Traveling across America, filmmaker and media scholar Roger Stahl engages an array of other researchers, bewildered veterans, PR insiders, and industry producers willing to talk. In unsettling and riveting detail, he discovers how the military and CIA have pushed official narratives while systematically scrubbing scripts of war crimes, corruption, racism, sexual assault, coups, assassinations, and torture. From The Longest Day to Lone Survivor, Iron Man to Iron Chef, and James Bond to Jack Ryan, Theaters of War uncovers an alternative “cinematic universe” that stands as one of the great Pentagon PR coups of our time. As these activities gain new public scrutiny, new questions arise: How have they managed to fly under the radar for so long? And where do we go from here?

Watch Theaters of War on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/12327337