Category Archives: society

Totalitarian Paranoia Run Amok: Pandemics, Lockdowns & Martial Law

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By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Totalitarian paranoia runs deep in American society, and it now inhabits the highest levels of government.”—Professor Henry Giroux

Once upon a time, there was a government so paranoid about its hold on power that it treated everyone and everything as a threat and a reason to expand its powers. Unfortunately, the citizens of this nation believed everything they were told by their government, and they suffered for it.

When terrorists attacked the country, and the government passed massive laws aimed at paving the way for a surveillance state, the people believed it was done merely to keep them safe. The few who disagreed were labeled traitors.

When the government waged costly preemptive wars on foreign countries, insisting it was necessary to protect the nation, the citizens believed it. And when the government brought the weapons and tactics of war home to use against the populace, claiming it was just a way to recycle old equipment, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled unpatriotic.

When the government spied on its own citizens, claiming they were looking for terrorists hiding among them, the people believed it. And when the government began tracking the citizenry’s movements, monitoring their spending, snooping on their social media, and surveying them about their habits—supposedly in an effort to make their lives more efficient—the people believed that, too. The few who disagreed were labeled paranoid.

When the government allowed private companies to take over the prison industry and agreed to keep the jails full, justifying it as a cost-saving measure, the people believed them. And when the government started arresting and jailing people for minor infractions, claiming the only way to keep communities safe was to be tough on crime, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled soft on crime.

When the government hired crisis actors to take part in disaster drills, never alerting the public to which “disasters” were staged, the people genuinely believed they were under attack. And when the government insisted it needed greater powers to prevent such attacks from happening again, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were told to shut up or leave the country.

When the government started carrying out covert military drills around the country, insisting it was necessary to train the troops for foreign combat, most of the people believed them. The few who disagreed, fearing that perhaps all was not what it seemed, were shouted down as conspiracy theorists and quacks.

When government leaders locked down the nation, claiming it was the only way to prevent an unknown virus from sickening the populace, the people believed them and complied with the mandates and quarantines. The few who resisted or voiced skepticism about the government’s edicts were denounced as selfish and dangerous and silenced on social media.

When the government expanded its war on terrorism to include domestic terrorists, the people believed that only violent extremists would be targeted. Little did they know that anyone who criticizes the government can be considered an extremist.

By the time the government began using nationalized police and the military to routinely lockdown the nation, the citizenry had become so acclimated to such states of emergency that they barely even noticed the prison walls that had grown up around them.

Now every fable has a moral, and the moral of this story is to beware of anyone who urges you to ignore your better instincts and blindly trust that the government has your best interests at heart.

In other words, if it looks like trouble and it smells like trouble, you can bet there’s trouble afoot.

Unfortunately, the government has fully succeeded in recalibrating our general distaste for anything that smacks too overtly of tyranny.

After all, like the proverbial boiling frogs, the government has been gradually acclimating us to the specter of a police state for years now: Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls. Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that only a militarized government can alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

It’s happening already.

The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and  Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that called on the government to subject right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans to full-fledged, pre-crime surveillance.

Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons, including hollow point bullets, for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

And then there are the military drills that have been taking place on American soil in recent years.

In the latest “unconventional warfare exercise,” dubbed “Robin Sage,” special forces soldiers will battle seasoned “freedom fighters” in a “realistic” guerrilla war across two dozen North Carolina counties.

Robin Sage follows on the heels of other such military drills, including Jade Helm, which involved U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Navy Seals, Air Force Special Operations, Marine Special Operations Command, Marine Expeditionary Units, the 82nd Airborne Division, and other interagency partners.

According to the government, these planned military exercises are supposed to test and practice unconventional warfare including, but not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery.

The training, known as Realistic Military Training (RMT) because it will be conducted outside of federal property, are carried out on both public and private land, with locations marked as “hostile territory,” permissive, uncertain (leaning friendly), or uncertain (leaning hostile).

This is psychological warfare at its most sophisticated.

Add these military exercises onto the list of other troubling developments that have taken place over the past 30 years or more, and suddenly, the overall picture seems that much more sinister: the expansion of the military industrial complex and its influence in Washington DC, the rampant surveillance, the corporate-funded elections and revolving door between lobbyists and elected officials, the militarized police, the loss of our freedoms, the injustice of the courts, the privatized prisons, the school lockdowns, the roadside strip searches, the military drills on domestic soil, the fusion centers and the simultaneous fusing of every branch of law enforcement (federal, state and local), the stockpiling of ammunition by various government agencies, the active shooter drills that are indistinguishable from actual crises, the economy flirting with near collapse, the growing social unrest, the socio-psychological experiments being carried out by government agencies, etc.

And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats. Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.

What we’ve seen play out before us is more than mere totalitarian paranoia run amok.

What has unfolded over the past few years has been a test to see how well “we the people” have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly “we the people” will march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance “we the people” will offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

Most critically of all, this has been a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—could survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

We have failed the test abysmally.

We have also made it way too easy for a government that has been working hard to destabilize to lockdown the nation.

Mark my words, there’s trouble brewing.

Better yet, take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely eight short years away—but we’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

The danger signs are screaming out a message

The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.

According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

And then comes the kicker. Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes—brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

The government wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.” And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting? They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.” They are “threats.”

They are the “enemy.”

They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).

In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.

In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.

Suddenly, the events of recent years begin to make sense: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.

The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

As Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering remarked during the Nuremberg trials:

It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

It does indeed work the same in every country.

It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will all be enemies of the state.

THE POWER OF DISCERNMENT

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

At our general level of awareness there is often no perceptible or discernible pattern to the flow of events. Partly this stems from having been conditioned into perceiving a particular dominant reality program. We do not have access to objective reality, although there can be moments and instances when glimpses occur. The phenomenon of miracles is an example of this, when the laws of a reality outside of our own intervene/operate within our subjective reality. Likewise, many ancient tales, fables, allegories, etc, are representations of what we refer to as a ‘higher dimension’ operating within our own. Such impulses help us, whether we are conscious of it or not, to re-orientate our perception against the indoctrinated programming. What we often take to be reality is in fact only a very thin slice of a much ‘bigger picture.’

The act of discernment is an inward one; as such, it requires a disciplined focus. Yet as we have seen, modern societies not only do they not cater to such practices, but they also actively dissuade us from approaching them. The result of this is that people in general do not see – or feel – a need for such a discernment. Modern life keeps us occupied and diverted by other pursuits. Unfortunately, it is often the case that ‘shock impacts’ are required in order for us to shift our attention away from the ‘straight path’ of normalized living. And we’ve been living with such a ‘shock event’ for almost two years now since the outbreak of the pandemic. We could see our current predicament from this perspective: that modern life was in need of a ‘crisis point’ within its old patterns for there to arise within people the need for something else. It is in such moments of deep reflection that an inner realization may occur: the recognition that common (i.e., consensus) culture does not provide sufficient meaning for our lives. That is, there is the lack of any transcendental, metaphysical impulse. An awareness of such lack often occurs in times when there is a noticeable deterioration in social and cultural systems. Such recognition – or re-cognition – is not yet dominant among the majority of our modern so-called ‘civilized’ nations. Yet we are soon reaching that tipping point.

For too long we have been absent from the vale of ‘soul-making,’ to quote the poet John Keats. And yet the signs have always been there to guide the way. When our early cave-dwelling ancestors first made their handprints upon the walls of their caves they were signalling to the external world: ‘I am here – I exist.’ The inner spark of the human being was attempting to be heard – to be imprinted onto the outer life. It was an early stage in the expression of an interiorized human consciousness. In each epoch our consciousness perceives and interprets reality in a particular way. How we experience the reality around us influences our perception of it, and vice-versa. This is why our perceptions have always been a target for direct manipulation – it is our reality-sensing software.

As part of our steps toward discernment we can begin by a recognition of the following factors: i) acknowledgement of one’s situation and the need for self-development and/or life adjustment; and ii) the need for partial detachment from one’s social and cultural conditioning and external influences. By recognizing these two factors a person can make the first step to self-aware discernment. A gradual de-conditioning of the social personality (the persona) helps to develop a detached perspective and to see external impacts for what they are. In order to see and think clearly, we need to methodically de-clutter our social personality. Then, and only then, can a conscious step be taken toward inner freedom and genuine liberty. That is, the old patterns must become less determined, dogmatic, and fixed. Then through this space, where old belief patterns have left their moorings, can new perceptions emerge. As this process gradually unfolds it is important that each person stays grounded in the world – in their everyday lives – and not to entertain themselves with amusing fantasies or unwarranted intoxications. Furthermore, it is important to remember that in all we do we should be in harmony and balance, and not in conflict with our everyday life. Our dignity and decency is not in what it has achieved, nor what it is, but in what it can become. And this is a choice each person can make.

Our Choice

As in everything in our lives, we make a choice. When it comes down to basics – which it inevitably must do – then we find that we have a fundamental choice between living a life in Love or in Fear. In other words, if we choose Love then we side with compassion, empathy, creativity, connection, support, sharing, and resilience. And if we choose to align with the Fear then we give ourselves over to control, manipulation, anxiety, and vulnerability – all the expressions of a culture of oppression.

If we ascribe to a life lived as islands of separation, then inevitably we learn (or are conditioned) to place our trust externally upon a range of institutions; these may range from religious, work/career, social, educational, political, etc. And if these institutions fail us then we naturally feel vulnerability, or even betrayed. And yet the truth of the matter is that we betrayed ourselves in the first place by outsourcing our trust. If we live a life relying upon external systems, then we must be prepared to feel distraught should those external systems break-down. In such times of great transition, such as now, these social institutions are themselves very fragile. Further, many of these systems are now revealing themselves to be corrupt – or being utilized by corrupt human agents. Right now, I would say that we are witnessing the ‘great unravelling’ of many of our once trusted systems. We are seeing head-on the undoing of many dishonest, unethical, and toxic structures that inevitably can no longer serve our interests. This unravelling is revealing that our sense of vulnerability is partly the dismantling of our false assumptions. And further, that our sense of vulnerability is the fear of letting go. It is important to be open to receiving information, even if it is of the disagreeable kind. Yet in being open to such information does not mean we should adopt a position of fear. We have to make a choice of not accepting, or adopting, these external aspects of fear and toxicity. They do not ‘belong’ to us.

In knowing this, we are compelled to seek out those experiences that feel real to us, and which can assist us in developing as human beings. If there is a ‘truth’ to be discerned, then it must surely come not through artificial constructs but through our everyday personal experiences. To understand that which we call the ‘self’ is only a construct until we can experience it through the revelation brought about by others. Alone, we are unable to ‘see’ the self – no more than we can see our own faces. And just as we need a mirror in order to view our face, so too do we need other people and experiences in life to be as mirrors to reveal the workings of the inner Self. In the end, it is our participation in life that shall teach us the discernment we need to tell truth from falsehood. No online course or TV program can teach us this. Let us not back away from ourselves – let us invite us closer in.

Ukraine and U.S. War Propaganda

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By Margaret Kimberley

Source: Black Agenda Report

The 2014 U.S. sponsored coup against the elected government of Ukraine must be the starting point for any discussion of the current crisis. That crisis has been manufactured by Joe Biden, who was the Obama administration point person in using Ukraine as a means of destabilizing Russia.

The corporate media always carry water for the state, and they are never more dangerous than when the nation is on a war footing. Right now the United States government is sending weapons to Ukraine. One wouldn’t know that because of constant references to “lethal aid.” The euphemisms and subterfuge are necessary for a very simple reason. Everyone except the Washington war party knows that provoking war with Russia is extremely dangerous.

Joe Biden is picking up where he left off, as Barack Obama’s Ukraine viceroy. He and his incompetent foreign policy team have spun a tale about a pending Russian attack on Ukraine. In reality, it is the U.S. that is ginning up war by provoking the Ukrainians to start a fight that they can’t win. In 2014 a U.S. backed coup put a far-right clique in power. The people of the Donbass region in the east, largely ethnic Russians, wanted no part of the new anti-Russian government and sought autonomy. The resulting war has killed some 30,000 people.

Now the Biden team who publicly insulted the Chinese government and withdrew from Afghanistan without even being able to secure a major airport, have moved on to opening the proverbial can of whoopass with the world’s other major nuclear power. They are using Ukraine in an ill-advised effort to instigate what could lead to disaster.

The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place because the Russians were asleep at the wheel. They roused themselves quickly however and annexed the Crimea, yet another region of Ukraine with close connections to Russia. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries.

The U.S. is pulling all the hybrid warfare schemes out of the tool box. For months they claimed that Russian troops were massed on the border, ready to invade. They have engaged in diplomacy but only to try and get their way. Russia has held firm on a guarantee of no further NATO encroachment and the removal of missiles from their border. The French and Germans are feckless and do what Washington wants. They should be pressuring Ukraine to live up to the Minsk II Agreement which requires talks with the breakaway Donbass region.

None of this information is conveyed to the American people who live in ignorance orchestrated by republicans, democrats, and their friends in corporate media. Republican senators who want to run for president outdo one another with nonsense about stopping the Nord Stream II gas pipeline that Germany, a U.S. ally, asked the Russians to build. Winter is coming, quite literally, and Europe needs Russia’s gas. But unless they stop following Uncle Sam’s bullying they will end up with nothing.

Now Washington is pulling the same ploy they attempted in Ethiopia. They have declared that the Russians are coming and have even announced an evacuation of embassy personnel families from the capital city of Kyiv. Vassal states Australia and the United Kingdom have followed suit, but a European Union official demurred , “We are not going to do the same thing because we don’t know any specific reasons.” The Ukrainian government, a de facto U.S. colony, wasn’t happy and called the evacuations “premature.”

If the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, then one can only conclude that big lies are being told. The U.S. has been hoisted on its own petard and now has little more than dangerous bluster to get its own allies in line.

Biden himself is a part of this problem of his own making. In a recent press conference he  declared that Russia was on the verge of invading but then said a little invasion wouldn’t be so bad after all. It isn’t clear if he was speaking from his usual state of confusion or if he really meant what he said.

The Russians certainly mean what they say. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushes from Moscow to Berlin to London to Moscow, seemingly making things up as he goes along, the Russians dig in their heels and make clear that their days of being pushovers are in the past. The most committed puppet states like the U.K. go along with whatever Washington wants. They can be counted on to repeat an unsourced story of a Russian plan to overthrow the Ukrainian government or something else equally nonsensical. The people most likely to use a false flag event to justify going to war, instead claim that the other side will do so. The result is a situation that could go badly over the slightest provocation or even a perceived provocation.

The American people should just say no. The Biden administration is sorely mistaken if they think the public are in a mood for war with another nuclear power. They can call ammunition “lethal aid” if they want, but when the match is lit they can expect no support. Then again, the ginned-up conflict may be taking place for that very reason. Biden has failed in almost every respect and is facing electoral defeat for his party in November. Perhaps he thinks that he would be supported by people who have no faith in his ability or willingness to do anything on their behalf.

If hostilities are averted it will be because of forces outside of the U.S. Biden’s team of blood thirsty incompetents spent most of last year predicting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It isn’t clear if they grew bored or saw an easier opening in Ukraine.

No one should be fooled by these people. Russia and China are very close, “better than allies ,” as Xi Jinping said. Why shouldn’t they be? Both countries want to protect themselves from American aggression. People in this country had better hope for Russian and Chinese wisdom and experience. If the U.S. is allowed to do what it wants then the whole world is at risk. That statement is not hyperbole. The U.S. has withdrawn from decades old nuclear weapons agreements and now pushes the world toward the precipice.

The New York Times and Washington Post will play the role they did in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. They will repeat what spokespeople tell them to say and be a party to warfare. If ever there was a moment to break free from media disinformation this is it. They have nothing to offer except war propaganda and possibly war itself.

Is it already too late to say goodbye?

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By Jonathan Cook

Source: Jonathan Cook Blog

It seems we may have reached the moment when it is time to say goodbye. It has been fun, educational and sometimes cathartic – for me at least. I hope you got something from our time together too.

I am not going anywhere, of course. Not for now at least. I love to write. For as long as I feasibly can, I will continue to rail against injustice, call out corporate power and its abuses, and demand a fairer and more open society.

But I have to be realistic. I have to recognise that a growing number of you will not be joining me here on this page for much longer. And it feels rude after so much time together not to bid you a fond farewell before it is too late. I will miss you.

Many of you may have assumed it wouldn’t end this way. You probably imagined that I would get banned by Facebook or Twitter. You would be able to rally round, send in complaints worded in the strongest possible terms, and lobby for my reinstatement. Maybe even sign a petition.

But it isn’t going to end like that. There will be no bang. I have been too careful for that to be my fate. I have avoided rude and crude words. I have steered clear of insults (apologies if my responses have sometimes been a little caustic). I have not defamed anyone. I have avoided “fake news” – except to critique it. I have not peddled “conspiracy theories”, unless quoting the British Medical Journal on Covid now counts as misinformation (yes, I know for a few of you it does).

But none of that has helped. My blog posts once attracted tens of thousands of shares. Then, as the algorithms tightened, it became thousands. Now, as they throttle me further, shares can often be counted in the hundreds. “Going viral” is a distant memory.

No, I won’t be banned. I will fade incrementally, like a small star in the night sky – one among millions – gradually eclipsed as its neighbouring suns grow ever bigger and brighter. I will disappear from view so slowly you won’t even notice.

Which is why I am saying my goodbyes now while I can still reach you, my most obstinate followers.

But this isn’t really about one small light being snuffed out. This isn’t just about our relationship coming to an end. Something bigger, and more disturbing, is taking place.

Journalists like me are part of an experiment – in a new, more democratised media landscape. We have developed new reader-funded models so that we can break free of the media corporations, which until now ensured billionaires and the state controlled the flow of information in one direction only: to speak down to us.

The corporate media need corporate advertising – or their owners’ deep pockets – to survive. They don’t need you, except as a captive audience. You’re both their prisoner and their product.

But the lifeblood of a reader-funded journalist, as the name suggests, are readers. The more of you we attract, the better chance there is that we can generate donations and income and make the model sustainable. Our Achilles’ heel is our dependence on social media to find you, to keep reaching you, to offer you an alternative from the corporate media.

If Facebook (sorry, the Meta universe) and Twitter stop independent writers from growing their readerships by manipulating the algorithms, by ghosting and shadow-banning them, and by all the other trickery we do not yet understand, then new voices cannot grow their funding base and break free of corporate control.

And equally, for those like me who are already established and have significant numbers of readers, these tech giants can whittle them away one by one. Ostensibly, I have many tens of thousands of followers, but for several years now I have been reaching fewer and fewer of you. I am starved of connection. The danger, already only too obvious, is that my readership, and funding model, will slowly start to shrivel and die.

Joe Rogan, Russell Brand and a handful of titans of the new media age are so big they can probably weather it out. But the rest of us will not be so lucky.

Readers will lose sight of us, as our light slowly fades, and then we will be gone completely. Vanished.

I have lost count of the followers who – because, god knows, an algorithm slipped up? – tell me they have received a social media post many months after they last saw one from me. In the cacophony of media noise, they had not noticed that I had unexpectedly gone quiet until that reminder arrived or else they assumed I had given up writing.

Which is why, if you want to keep seeing posts from me and writers like me, if this is not soon to be a final goodbye, if you think it important to read non-corporate analysis and commentary, then you need to act. You should be bookmarking your favourite writers and visiting their sites regularly – not just when you are prompted to by Mark Zuckerberg.

You need to be an active consumer of news – not a passive one, as you were raised to be when the choice was between three TV channels and a dozen print newspapers.

You need to search out and maintain those connections before they are gone entirely and the window has closed. Because those voices you prize now will wither and decay like autumn leaves if they have no audience. If you leave it too long, even when you finally remember to go search for them, you may find they are no longer there to be discovered. You will have missed the chance to say goodbye.

So let us say it now, while we still can: Farewell.

UPDATE:

Writing is a solitary activity, and it can be easy to imagine that what was obvious inside your head will be clear to others when that idea takes its place in the outside world. But a proportion of early readers of this post have mistaken it for an actual goodbye, rather than as a cautionary tale of what has been happening and what is still to come. So let me reassure you: I am going to continue writing and you can continue reading me, so long as either Twitter and Facebook direct you to me or you make the effort to find me.

Here’s hoping that my goodbye will prove unnecessary.

Vaccines That Don’t Stop Transmission Can Create Conditions For More Virulent Variants To Spread

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By Arjun Walia

Source: The Pulse

Penn State biologist David Kennedy PhD, published a paper in PLOS BIOLOGY in 2015 titled, “Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens.” In it, he explains how the transmission of viruses and more severe strains by infected vaccinees could provide an opportunity for more virulent variants to spread.

The article described an experiment with a herpes virus that causes Marek disease in chickens. Vaccines against Marek disease are described as “leaky” because, although they protect chickens from getting sick, they don’t prevent them from becoming infected and transmitting the virus to unvaccinated chickens. That allows the most virulent strains that normally would die along with an infected chicken to survive and infect and kill unvaccinated chickens.

Vaccines that keep hosts alive, but still allow transmission could thus allow very virulent strains to circulate in a population…Our data show that anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts.

Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens

In other words, the vaccinated and unvaccinated can still spread the disease, and the vaccinated are protected from severe disease and symptoms. But what happens if vaccines don’t protect against severe disease and symptoms of these new variants? This means that conditions can be created that cause more severe disease in the vaccinated as well.

We’ve seen this with seasonal flu, where vaccines have to constantly be updated because of changes in the virus, and we’re currently witnessing it with COVID vaccines. COVID vaccines will most likely be tweaked as new variants continue to emerge, and shots may be encouraged once or twice a year. Who knows?

Many people have already received a third dose and in some countries, like Israel and Canada, a fourth dose is being offered to the elderly and immunocompromised patients. This is something people aren’t used to, so many jabs in such a short period of time, along with mandates as well.

We now know that COVID vaccines don’t stop the transmission of COVID, and that variants like Omicron and Delta are able to escape the protection that COVID vaccines provide. This is why the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises that even after they’re fully vaccinated, people should continue to mask up and socially distance in public places in part because they could still unknowingly become infected and transmit COVID to people who have and haven’t yet received their shots.

But do COVID vaccines help reduce the transmission? And does that mean they aren’t considered “leaky” vaccines? We will get to this discussion later.

An argument can be made that COVID vaccines protect people from severe symptoms and chances of hospitalization, but how much protection can they really provide for most people under the age of 70 who have a very high chance of survival? Furthermore, we musn’t forget that COVID added to an already existing problem of hospital capacity issues. Is COVID the issue or is an inadequate healthcare system?

And why hasn’t the science behind natural immunity been included in health policy? According to CDC statistics, for example, 95 percent of people who have died with or from COVID have an average of four other causes (comorbidities) listed on their death certificate. Furthermore, it’s not entirely clear how many people are ending up in hospitals with COVID, or because of COVID.

There are multiple real world examples showing that COVID vaccines fail to prevent transmission, including exponential outbreaks in the most highly vaccinated populations on the planet. This is why of the top five counties that have the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9–84.3%), the CDC identifies four of them as “high” transmission counties. This fact comes from a paper published in the European Journal of Epidemiology titled, “Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States.”

Right now, COVID cases are surging in the five most vaccinated states.

According to a study published in October, infected vaccinated and unvaccinated people can also carry the same viral load. Viral load is a good proxy for infectiousness.

Another study was conducted with positive samples from asymptomatic testing at UC Davis for Healthy Yolo Together and at the Unidos en Salud walk-up testing site in the Mission District of San Francisco.

The researchers looked at 869 positive samples, 500 from Healthy Yolo Together and 369 from Unidos en Salud. All the Healthy Yolo Together samples were from people who were asymptomatic at the time of positive test result, and three-quarters were from unvaccinated individuals. The Unidos en Salud samples included both asymptomatic and symptomatic cases. Just over half (198) of the Unidos en Salud samples were unvaccinated.

A press release from UC Davis Explains,

When they analyzed the data, the researchers found wide variations in viral load within both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, but not between them. There was no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated, or between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.

The idea that vaccines that are not successful in stopping the transmission of a virus can facilitate the emergence of variants has been written about by academics throughout and before this pandemic. This is evident by Kennedy’s 2015 paper cited above.

Saad O. Omais, a PhD candidate in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the American University of Beirut wrote a response to an article published by Karam Abassi, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal. In it he explains how COVID vaccines may not only allow the circulation of existing VOCs but can even facilitate the rise of new ones.

According to Eric T. Payne, MD, PMH, Pediatric Neurocritical Care & Epilepsy, Alberta Children’s Hospital Assistant Professor of Pediatrics & Neurology, the University of Calgary,

With widespread dissemination of COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, we are placing enormous evolutionary pressure on SARS-CoV-2 to continue mutating to evade our immune system, gain cell entry, replicate, and possibly cause illness. And, we are now using very “leaky” vaccines, making viral evasion from our antibodies that much easier. Only the fit will survive. Consider the reasonable analogy of antibiotic resistance – this is driven by the widespread and inappropriate use of antibiotics, not by people avoiding antibiotics.

RE: Mandatory mRNA vaccine mandate for Alberta physicians

In November, Dr. Günter Kampf, consultant hospital epidemiologist and Associate Professor for hygiene and environmental medicine at the University Medicine Greifswald, Germany published an article The Lancet explaining,

There is increasing evidence that vaccinated individuals continue to have a relevant role in transmission. In Massachusetts, USA, a total of 469 new COVID-19 cases were detected during various events in July, 2021, and 346 (74%) of these cases were in people who were fully or partly vaccinated, 274 (79%) of whom were symptomatic.

Cycle threshold values were similarly low between people who were fully vaccinated (median 22·8) and people who were unvaccinated, not fully vaccinated, or whose vaccination status was unknown (median 21·5), indicating a high viral load even among people who were fully vaccinated.2

In the USA, a total of 10 262 COVID-19 cases were reported in vaccinated people by April 30, 2021, of whom 2725 (26·6%) were asymptomatic, 995 (9·7%) were hospitalised, and 160 (1·6%) died.3 In Germany, 55·4% of symptomatic COVID-19 cases in patients aged 60 years or older were in fully vaccinated individuals,4 and this proportion is increasing each week.

In Münster, Germany, new cases of COVID-19 occurred in at least 85 (22%) of 380 people who were fully vaccinated or who had recovered from COVID-19 and who attended a nightclub.5 People who are vaccinated have a lower risk of severe disease but are still a relevant part of the pandemic.

It is therefore wrong and dangerous to speak of a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Historically, both the USA and Germany have engendered negative experiences by stigmatising parts of the population for their skin colour or religion. I call on high-level officials and scientists to stop the inappropriate stigmatisation of unvaccinated people, who include our patients, colleagues, and other fellow citizens, and to put extra effort into bringing society together.

COVID-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified

Fact Checkers and The World Health Organization Weigh In

The discussion of the possibility of vaccines creating conditions for new variants to emerge more easily started several months ago, and was quickly shut down by third party Facebook fact-checkers and the World Health Organization. Yes, COVID vaccines don’t completely stop the transmission of the virus, but arguments can be made that they at least help in reducing the transmission. But, is that enough to stop what Kennedy is talking about in his paper? Does this still mean that these vaccines are “leaky”?

For example, in May 2021 Euronews reported the following,

The World Health Organization (WHO) has rejected claims that COVID-19 vaccines are causing new variants of the virus. Reports have circulated online in France saying that vaccinated people are “more likely” to infect others with “super-strains” of the coronavirus. But the WHO and other immunologists have said that these claims are unfounded and have no scientific basis. “There is no evidence of this,” a WHO spokesperson Euronews. “Vaccination is part of the solution for suppressing transmission along with existing public health measures.”

An article published in Nature in February 2021 makes a case for COVID vaccines and their ability to reduce transmission, but also explains how this may not be the case. It does present some evidence showing that viral load is less in vaccinated individuals, but the studies cited are small compared to the ones mentioned earlier in the article.

And given the fact that we are now in 2022, there is much more data available showing cases in highly vaccinated populations and people as emphasized earlier. Breakthrough infections are happening all over the world among the vaccinated, this is no secret. Case counts are high in vaccinated people, but this is to be expected given the fact that in most regions, the majority of people are vaccinated.

But an article published by Harvard Health explains that people who are vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2 but get breakthrough infections may be less likely to spread the virus because they shed it for a shorter period than unvaccinated people who are infected, according a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. If this is true, it would reduce transmission rate but is this reduction significant? And again, it may contribute to reducing transmission, but it doesn’t stop it. Given the outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations, transmission reduction doesn’t seem to be significant.

A recent paper was published emphasizing the number of unvaccinated people that need to be excluded from a setting to prevent one COVID transmission is extremely high and negligible. The study didn’t even take into account the immunity that’s already been built up in a large amount of the population.

The authors explain,

While SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are beneficial, the high NNEs suggest that excluding unvaccinated people has negligible benefits for reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmissions in many jurisdictions across the globe. This is because unvaccinated people are likely not at significant risk – in absolute terms – of transmitting SARS-CoV-2 to others in most types of settings (as of mid-to-end November 2021). This is why so many unvaccinated people likely need to be excluded to prevent one transmission event.

Evaluating the number of unvaccinated people needed to exclude to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmissions

This topic really got the attention of Facebook fact checkers on March 6, 2021, when Geert Vanden Bossche, an independent consultant who previously worked in vaccine development, published an open letter to the World Health Organization on Twitter. In it, Vanden Bossche claimed that COVID-19 vaccines “should not be used amid an epidemic” and called for a halt to mass vaccination campaigns. Vanden Bossche claimed that global COVID-19 vaccination campaigns would accelerate the emergence of dangerous variants, which will escape vaccine-induced immunity and cause severe disease

Fact checker Health Feedback responded, stating that,

Vanden Bossche’s claim is based on two assumptions. The first is that COVID-19 vaccines “don’t prevent infection, they protect against disease”. The second is that vaccination doesn’t reduce transmission. These assumptions are unsupported.

COVID-19 vaccines are critical for controlling the pandemic; vaccines still offer partial protection against new variants of the virus

When claims made are marked as false by fact checkers like Health Feedback, and others, the claims are completely censored on social media platforms. Any outlets that share them are punished with reduced page distribution. Fact-checkers have a tremendous amount of power to limit the spread of information, be it factual, false, or even opinion based, and they’ve been criticized for being incorrect multiple times.

For example, the editor-in-chief of The British Medical Journal (BMJ), Fiona Godlee, alongside Kamran Abbasi, an executive editor of the BMJ who succeeded Godlee on January 1st 2022, published a piece in the journal criticizing Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook fact checkers, calling them incompetent. The piece was published on Nov 2, 2021.

In it, Godlee and Abbasi criticize Facebook for putting a “fake news” label on an article published in the BMJ by award winning investigative journalist Paul Thacker regarding fraud and the manipulation of data during Pfizer’s COVID vaccine clinical trials.

Here are three examples where it’s happened to us where fact checkers were forced to retract their ratings, but it’s happened many more times than this and the labels are often not removed unless you bend to the will of the fact checker.

The point is, how trustworthy are fact checkers?

Data To Support Whatever You Want To Believe

At the end of the day, although I believe it’s clear that COVID vaccines do not stop transmission or help reduce transmission in a significant manner, data and science can be used to oppose this belief. If you dive deep into the science, sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe. These days, data can be shared to confirm what you want to believe.

What doesn’t sit well, however, is that discussions that oppose what’s often presented by government health authorities is never really acknowledged within the mainstream. For example, like the idea that vaccines do not stop the transmission of the virus, and that breakthrough infections are rare. Why are we seeing so much censorship of evidence and opinion from experts in the field?

Yes, breakthrough COVID-19 cases happen in people who are fully vaccinated, and they are happening more frequently now that the Omicron variant is circulating widely and immunity from may vaccines may be waning.

Kennedy makes it clear that “imperfect vaccination” that does not stop transmission “can enhance the transmission of highly virulent pathogens.” Even if COVID vaccines do help slow down the transmission of COVID, which many would argue they clearly don’t, does this mean COVID vaccines would be considered “imperfect” by Kennedy’s definition? And does this mean that mass vaccinations are facilitating the development of more variants, for which more vaccines will be created that don’t stop transmission, thus creating the neverending development of COVID vaccines? Big pharma would certainly like that.

The Real Noam Chomsky

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By Raul Fernandez Berriozabal

Source: The Wall Will Fall

This will not be a popular post, simply because of the cult of personality of mythical dimensions built around the figure of Professor Noam Chomsky, regardless, I am posting at the insistence of a friend of mine who encouraged me to publish my critiques highlighting some of the most problematic inconsistencies of Chomksy that ironically enough, have served to “manufacture consent” for the corrupt and criminal establishment that he claims to oppose.

I admit it, for years I admired Professor Chomsky’s work, in spite of his tedious monotone, he comes across as most clever and articulate, yet there is much more to this controversial character that many of his loyal followers perceive as a guru or cult figure and his critics as a faux progressive or a gatekeeper at best and a collaborator at worst.

Here are some of the inconsistencies that I have observed (and documented) during the last few years:

• In spite of the occasional criticism towards Israeli leadership, Chomsky ultimately supports the existence of the belligerent apartheid state of Israel.

• Chomsky opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, a global non-violent campaign that uses economic and political pressure on Israel to end of Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, respect for the right of return of Palestinian refugees and recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.

• Chomsky was a propagandist of the US/NATO aggression against the former Yugoslav Federation, enabling the criminal policy that broke the Yugoslav Federation into six unstable, impoverished micro-states after carrying out a 78-day bombing campaign in which US/NATO dropped over 3,000 bombs killing thousands of civilians.

• Chomsky said that the Western military intervention was the only way to prevent genocide in Libya, advocated for the ‘no fly zone’ and subsequent destruction of Libya. Every word he uttered turned out to be completely false. The allegations of abuses by the Libyan government were total war propaganda fabrications and look what happened to Libya, once the most prosperous nation in the African continent under Qaddafi who offered, public housing, free healthcare, free education, and many other public benefits to Libyans is now a failed state, a territory disputed by al-Qaeda, Daesh and other Wahhabi takfiri groups rival groups, where organ trafficking is prevalent, where, thousands of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean after paying human traffickers to take them to Europe in tiny, overloaded boats, where sub-Saharan Africans are openly sold as slaves for as little as $200 and where human life is worth not more than infected yeast.

What is Chomsky saying about Libya these days?

Has he assumed any responsibility for his role in manufacturing consent?

No, not at all, Professor Chomsky remains invested in openly advocating for regime change in Syria.

• Chomsky routinely parrots the corporate media lines by referring to Bashar Al Assad an autocrat who needs to be forcibly removed and seems to justify with the continuous bombing of the great Syrian nation to achieve regime change. As of today, he remains a strong advocate for the U.S. occupation forces to remain illegally occupying Syrian territory.

• Chomsky supported the U.S. led coup in Ukraine which successfully installed Europe’s first Nazi government since Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich.• Chomsky acknowledges the one-party corporate oligarchy, and then urges everyone to vote for the “lesser evil”. He did in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, He publicly supported the candidacy of war criminals, Barak Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton “Butcher of Libya, Syria and Honduras” in 2016 and Crime Bill’s author, Joe Biden in 2020 just to maintain the status quo and hence a system of injustice that he claims to oppose.

• Chomsky is perfectly kosher with W Bush government’s official narrative of 9/11 – he went as far as to say, “who cares?” about who might be the real culprits of this historical event.

• Chomsky was academically formed by and works for MIT, an elitist university with close ties with the Military Industrial Complex and the CIA.

• Chomsky defines himself as an “anarcho-syndicalist” yet he defends the existence of the Federal Reserve – while Chomsky bemoans the widespread poverty in America and the Third World, he has never spoken publicly on the role of the Federal Reserve. Therefore, most leftist activists influenced by Chomsky remain unaware of the role played by this privately owned banking cartel which basically prints worthless flat currency out of thin air.

• Chomsky opposes the Right of Return of the Palestinian diaspora – which in essence is opposing international law, since the Right of Return is an inalienable and basic human right.

• These days, Chomsky has turned full-blown fascist as he called for the isolation of the unvaccinated from society even if that means their starvation. Chomsky’s most inflammatory comment came when he was asked how this isolated class he is proposing would receive food. He remarked that this was a problem for the unvaccinated. The solution then, according to Chomsky, is to appeal to moral capacity and then claim that those who do not understand should live in an isolated existence with food uncertainty. Please keep in mind that in his authoritarian views, Chomsky is oblivious to clinical data that shows that Covid vaccines do not prevent neither infection nor transmission, in fact, early data shows that the variant, Omicron is infecting those who are “fully vaccinated” at a much higher rate than the unvaccinated and American authorities also revealed the 79% of the country’s infection cases were vaccinated.

• In addition, Chomsky belittles the importance of Medicare for All in the midst of a global pandemic and cynically refers to it as “candy” to be pursued, but never achieved.In essence, Chomsky has made a career talking from both sides of his mouth while perfecting the art of manufacturing consent.

Chomsky talks like an anarchist during off years, then tucks tail and comes slinking back to the establishment during election years – that is why many refer to him as “controlled opposition” or “left gatekeeper”, this is why I have no use for Chomsky, and why it baffles me when people speak of him in tones of reverence and awe.

Another Nail in the U.S. Empire’s Coffin… Biden Signs $770 Billion War Budget

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

As this year ends, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law military spending of $770 billion. That’s just for the next year alone. The scale of wastefulness and bloated corruption is eye-watering. It eclipses what the United States is willing to invest for overhauling its badly neglected civilian infrastructure and for combating the coronavirus pandemic that has killed far more people in the U.S. than in any other nation.

If there is one thing that portends a historic collapse of U.S. global power it is its pathological addiction to militarism that is hemorrhaging vital resources.

What is also amazing is how this gargantuan deformity in economic planning is presented as somehow rational and normal by the Western media.

Three decades after the Cold War officially ended, the U.S. is setting a new record high for annual expenditure on its armed forces.

Biden’s budget – his first as president – exceeds the record set by the previous Trump administration for military largesse of $740 billion.

So much for wishing humanity peace and prosperity – as is the international tradition at this time of year – when the U.S. allocates such a grotesque amount of resources to the means of war and annihilation.

This obscene expenditure is not in any way conceivably a “defense budget” as it is termed in Orwellian newspeak. It is a dreadful and despicable war budget.

The United States spends more on its military than the next 11 top nations combined. Compared with China ($250bn) the U.S. budget is nearly three times bigger. The U.S. spends over 12 times more than Russia ($60bn) on its armed forces.

Those figures alone tell beyond any doubt which nation is the ultimate aggressor. Yet, farcically, the Western corporate media in Orwellian fashion portray China and Russia as the aggressors against whom the United States is “defending’ the rest of the world.

Biden’s 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as it is formally titled, devotes billions more to devising new nuclear weapons and to provoke China and Russia. Camouflaged with Orwellian rhetoric, there is some $7 billion for the “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” and $4 billion for the “European Defense Initiative”.

The Biden administration has committed a further $300 million in military support for Ukraine over the next year. This is on top of the $2.5 billion in arms that Washington has plowed into Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 which brought to power a Russophobic regime.

Next week, U.S. and Russian officials are to hold negotiations in Geneva to deescalate tensions over Ukraine and Europe generally. It is blindingly obvious that the crisis over security has been created by the United States pushing a policy of militarizing Europe against Russia in the form of expanding the NATO alliance all the way to Russia’s borders.

With twisted logic, Moscow is accused of “threatening” Ukraine and European security even though its troops are on Russian soil and it is American weapons that are encroaching on Russia’s territory.

The inordinate military spending by the United States year after year is proof of the source of international tensions.

When the Cold War supposedly ended in 1991 following the demise of the Soviet Union, there was a reasonable expectation around the world for a “peace dividend” to ensue. That is, whereby Cold War militarism would at last give way to peaceful economic development and cooperation. How lamentable the disappointment!

The inescapable fact is that the U.S. economy is a war-driven system. The military-industrial complex at the heart of American capitalism is dependent on massive taxpayer-funded financial subvention. If an economy is driven for war, then it follows that conflicts and wars are inevitable. This is why, 30 years after the supposed end of the Cold War, the United States is closer to starting a war with Russia and China than ever before.

In an insightful interview this week, former United Nations diplomat Alfred Maurice de Zayas condemned what he called the “universal provocation” of the US “war budget”. De Zayas points out that the United States is preeminently guilty of undermining global peace and security. Its relentless militarism compels other nations to spend excessively on defense in order to counter the threat posed by the United States. Both China and Russia have long-proposed multilateralism and “win-win” cooperation. Neither of these nations has threatened the United States. It is always the U.S. with its mixture of paranoia and hubris that constantly portrays others as enemies and existential dangers. Again, that is due to the need for justifying the abomination of American military orgy year after year.

The truth is the United States has been at war against the rest of the world since at least the end of the Second World War. For most of that period, the Cold War, Washington cited the threat of Soviet and Chinese communism. It waged wars in dozens of countries on every continent killing tens of millions of people purportedly in the “defense of democracy and the free world”. How godawful ridiculous is that?

The Cold War was supposed to have ended, yet the U.S. continues its remorseless warmongering. It retreated from Afghanistan this year after two decades of futile war, only to now wind up tensions with Russia and China. The pretexts and excuses change over the decades, but the fundamental story remains the same: the United States is at war with the rest of the world in the vain ambition of exerting hegemonic domination. Arguably, that’s an essential definition of fascism.

But it’s not just against the rest of the world that the U.S. rulers are waging war. They are waging war against their own American citizens. The Washington elite of both parties (comprising the de facto War Party) whistle through a military budget funded by taxpayers that dwarves anything the federal government is prepared to spend on societal infrastructure and decent human development.

Far above any other nation, the U.S. has a pandemic killing nearly 850,000 people so far and there is no end in sight. U.S. rulers refuse to allocate more financial help to the population to defeat the pandemic yet they are planning to spend billions on offensive weapons systems to threaten Russia and China.

The hideously perverse priorities of the United States as demonstrated by its wanton militarism are a portent and ultimate cause of its historic failure. It is a vile disgrace that the apparent solution to its inherent contradictions is to start a catastrophic war. Fortunately, Russia and China are strong enough militarily to not let that happen. And so the outcome we will witness more of over the coming year will be the United States cratering from its own internal corruption.

Orwell was Right: Control the Language, Control the World

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By Bill Rice Jr.

Source: American Thinker

Of all the elements of today’s “New Normal,” the most ominous is the “reform” that effectively changed the meanings of previously accepted words or terms. The following glossary illustrates how changes to our vocabulary played a central role in making the world a more dangerous and frightening place.

New Normal – “Normal” is something that has long been the norm and is accepted as the norm. The key point is that the “old” normal no longer applies. This change in thinking provided authority figures the license to enact reforms that would not have been widely accepted in the past. 

In the old normal, a citizen might not have complied with authoritarian mandates, but in the New Normal, most will… that is, if one accepts the premise that we now have a New Normal, a premise most people now accept.

Vaccine — Previously a vaccine was an injection that provided “immunity” or prevented diseases, as well as the spread of diseases. Today, at least as it involves the COVID “vaccines,” vaccines simply (and allegedly) reduce the probability someone will develop a severe case of this disease or die from this disease.

Safe — An activity that is not dangerous or does not cause harm. 

According to public health officials and almost all doctors, COVID vaccines are “safe and effective.” According to VAERS, approximately one million Americans believe they have suffered adverse medical reactions to COVID vaccines, with approximately 20,000 deaths possibly caused by the vaccines. Several studies have concluded that VAERS captures only a small fraction of such adverse events.

Effective — Certainly today “effective” does not mean COVID vaccines prevent infection or virus spread. In many heavily vaccinated countries, the vaccinated comprise a greater percentage of new COVID cases than the unvaccinated.

Harm — Something that injures, perhaps even kills, or causes someone pain or discomfort. The key change here is that “harm” can now be caused by speech. The nexus that would definitively trace any alleged harm to any piece of speech is nebulous and impossible to prove.

Still, a person who composes words determined to include “misinformation” or “disinformation” is held guilty of causing potential harm to people who might read these words. Such a person can be censored, maligned, lose their jobs, or even be prosecuted. In our Old Normal, this rarely happened. In our New Normal, it happens daily.

Misinformation or Disinformation — In its simplest terms, this would be information that is provably false.

In our “New Normal,” misinformation or disinformation is simply any information that challenges the veracity of pronouncements made by authorized experts or authorities. That is, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading public health authority, cannot be charged with producing “disinformation,” but skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can and should be.

Also, in today’s New Normal, many people censor their own thoughts as they know “free speech” can result in personal or professional harm. By now, the censors don’t even have to censor everyone.  People do it themselves.

Science and “The science” — A theory largely accepted by the scientific community and public. 

“Science” used to be the process of testing a hypothesis and was almost never “settled.” In the past, a skeptic who examined or challenged the conclusions of peers was himself engaging in science. Today, “The Science” is what the authorized scientists and officials at public health bureaucracies say it is, and cannot or should not be challenged by other “scientists…” who perhaps should not even be called scientists and should now be labeled as “science deniers.” Or as…

Anti-vaxxer — Technically, this would be a person who opposes all vaccines. In Newspeak, it means anyone who is against mandatory COVID vaccines. In practice, this term is used as a slur to denigrate anyone who questions the pronouncements of authorities.  If you oppose mandatory COVID vaccines for whatever reason, you are a “science denier” or “anti-science…” and, as such can and should be punished or censored because you could be causing “harm” to the public. 

Free or freedom — In “the land of the free” the definition of freedom has also been radically changed.

Today, some Americans are “free” to keep their jobs or go to a restaurant or see a play if they can prove they have received at least two injections of an experimental vaccine (a vaccine where the vaccinated waive their right to sue if they later suffer harm). Americans may be allowed to engage in “free speech” on social media… if they say the right things.

It’s not just “COVID” topics that are now being regulated by speech monitors. If you publish “extremist” speech or politically incorrect speech that can be labeled as “harmful” or “dangerous,” you also can lose your job or speech privileges. 

With the precedent established that speech can cause “harm” and that the primary role of government is to protect people from harm, the harm of being “offended” by speech is now a sanctionable offense. 

Patriotism or patriot — In the past, a “patriot” was one who stood up to tyrannical governments and/or displayed a great love for their country. Today, for many Americans, a patriot is one who complies with the edicts of their government and helps attack or embarrasses those who challenge governmental authority.

Just this week, President Biden proclaimed that Americans who get vaccinated are doing their patriotic duty. This statement builds on the “us-against-them” theme, the good American vs. bad American narrative.

Public health — This term once meant the state of overall health in hundreds of millions of people who comprise “the public.” In the last two years, it’s come to mean the “health” of people who may or may not have COVID-19.

Today, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental health, obesity – all the conditions that kill and harm people — are afterthoughts when compared to “COVID health.” 

All of the above was made possible by changes in accepted language. George Orwell was right. If you want to control people, first control the language.

COVID, a virus that poses no significant health risk to 98 percent of the population, has given us a “New Normal” where “vaccines” are not vaccines, where “freedom” is now a privilege granted to those who obey, and where unelected public health officials have made billions of dollars for pharmaceutical companies.