Category Archives: Sociology

Facebook, Twitter, Western Media Attempt to Reassert Monopoly Over “Truth”

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By Ulson Gunnar

Source: New Eastern Outlook

In a surreal and stunning example of 21st century propaganda and censorship, Google has cobbled together a coalition it is calling “First Draft” to tackle what it calls “misinformation online.” 

First Draft’s “founding partners” include News Corporation’s (parent company of Fox News) Storyful and NATO think tank Atlantic Council’s “Bellingcat” blog, headed by formally unemployed social worker Eliot Higgins who now fashions himself as a weapons expert and geopolitical analyst despite no formal training, practical real-world experience or track record of honest, unbiased reporting. In fact, between News Corporation and Bellingcat alone, Google’s First Draft appears to be itself a paragon of, and nexus for “misinformation online.” 

Google’s Glaring Conflicts of Interest 

Google too, having for years now worked closely with the US State Department, faces its own conflicts of interest in “social newsgathering and verification.” In fact, Google has admittedly been involved in engineering intentional deceptions aimed specifically to skew public perception, including doctoring its maps and Google Earth in real-time amid conflicts in favor of US-backed militant groups and through the development of applications designed to psychologically target the Syrian government into capitulating before US-backed militant groups.

The UK Independent in its article, “Google planned to help Syrian rebels bring down Assad regime, leaked Hillary Clinton emails claim,” would report that:

An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails have reportedly revealed.

By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and ‘give confidence’ to the rebel opposition.

The article would continue:

The email detailing Google’s defection tracker purportedly came from Jared Cohen, a Clinton advisor until 2010 and now-President of Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas, the company’s New York-based policy think tank.

In a July 2012 email to members of Clinton’s team, which the WikiLeaks release alleges was later forwarded to the Secretary of State herself, Cohen reportedly said: “My team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from.”

Cohen would conclude:

“Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition.”

Can Google then be relied upon to sort out “misinformation online” if it itself is directly involved in manipulating public perception to achieve US foreign policy objectives? To impartial observers, the answer is clearly “no.”

First Draft would publish on its website a post titled, “Social networks unite with global newsrooms to take action against misinformation online,” adding further details behind the alleged rationale of the coalition. It would state:

Today, news breaks online. Today, the first images to emerge from a breaking news event have been captured by an eyewitness. Today, injustices that may never have been reported become global news stories because a bystander reached for their smartphone. Today, malicious hoaxes and fake news reports are published in increasingly convincing and sophisticated ways. 

We live in a time when trust and truth are issues that all newsrooms, and increasingly the social platforms themselves, are facing. In July, the Guardian’s Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner wrote about the ways technology is disrupting the truth, explaining “in the news feed on your phone, all stories look the same – whether they come from a credible source or not.” Filtering out false information can be hard. Even if news organisations only share fact-checked and verified stories, everyone is a publisher and a potential source.

The members that constitute the First Draft coalition, however, have enjoyed an uncontested monopoly for decades in determining just what the “truth” actually is, as well as a monopoly over propagating things the global public now know for a fact were “untruths.” Again, we see another case of the proverbial fox guarding the hen house.

The Liars Who Lied About WMDs in Iraq Will Protect Us from Liars Online? 

Indeed, many of the organizations that constitute First Draft’s coalition played a pivotal role in perhaps the most destructive and costly lie of the 21st century (to date), that involving alleged “weapons of mass destruction” or “WMDs” in Iraq, serving as the pretext for the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

According to some estimates, up to a million perished in the initial invasion and subsequent occupation. More conservative estimates are still in the hundreds of thousands.

Undoubtedly, the invasion, justified by lies propagated across the entirety of US and European media, helped trigger a predictable chain of catastrophes that have left the Middle East to this day in conflict and ruination. These same US and European media organizations, the same ones now signing their names to First Draft, also helped justify the continued presence of US troops in Iraq for years after the invasion, up to and including today.

And the same names signed on to First Draft are also the same names who helped sell the disastrous intervention in Libya and who are now attempting to sell yet another direct Western military intervention in Syria.

And it is perhaps the lack of success these same names are having in selling this most recent potential intervention in Syria that has precipitated First Draft’s creation in the first place.

There is a burgeoning alternative media composed of individual independent journalists, analysts and commentators both biased and impartial, both professional and amateur, competing directly with and overcoming the West’s longstanding monopoly over international public perception. There is also the emergence of professional and competitive national media organizations across the developing world who are taking increasingly large shares of both the West’s media monopoly and its monopoly over the public’s trust.

It is clear that First Draft has no intention of protecting the truth as none among its membership have done so until now individually, but rather in collectively protecting what the special interests behind these organizations want the global public to believe is the truth. First Draft is a desperate measure taken by Western special interests to reassert the West’s dominance over global public perception by leveraging the widely used social media platforms it controls, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as IT giant Google and its large range of services and applications.

In the end, all that First Draft is likely to accomplish is convincing the developing world of the necessity of creating domestic alternatives to Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as to continue expanding their own domestic media organizations to better represent their respective national interests upon the global stage and to dilute the dangerous and destructive media monopoly the West has enjoyed and abused for decades.

Until the members of First Draft can cite a lie told by their competitors that is as destructive and as costly as their own lies preceding and underpinning the invasion and occupation of Iraq or the more recent destruction of Libya, their efforts appear more as a means of further deflecting away from the truth, not defending it.

Escapism as Spiritual Journey

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By rahkyt

Source: Sacred Space in Time

People are racing to leave this world.

Seriously.

There are virtual reality worlds you can immerse yourself in, there are fantasy role-playing worlds too. One, you can put on a headset or stare at a screen to enjoy and the other you play on boards with pieces with your friends. Both, you can lose yourself in for hours out of the day.
Or, you can go the spiritual route.

Become a New Ager, a Wiccan, a Pagan or Luciferian and learn how to astral travel or experience OOBEs. You can visit the Fae or the Reptilian and Mantis peoples; you can communicate with Galactic Councils, you may even be a member of one! You can experience your past lives and leave this one behind, living in the energy streams and the cocoon of coalescing consciousness they call the Alternative Community.

Some People are doing what they can to leave this world behind. Or should I say, some aspects of it. To voluntarily give up your grounding in Gaia is a serious thing.

People say they’re alien, ain’t from here, feel alienated from other types of humans, feel closer to machines and dream of transhumanistic transformations to our world, where the virtual will become the real world and biomechanical implants are the norm rather than the exception.

All I’m saying, is be careful what you wish for. For real.

Allow your imagination to soar free for a while and envision the consequences of your leaving this world, and the people that you don’t like, behind. What checking out of the necessity of saving the world in favor of dreaming fantasies about a future world will mean.

The manifestation of whatever the active (yin) and passive (yang) states co-create will reflect these simultaneous forms of grounding and soaring, vibratory rates of simpatico energetically supporting and releasing souls into their destinies sans plan. Or, seemingly so, at least.

It all looks crazy from this vantage point. If you gotta go join your star family, peace and well being to you. Best of luck. But if you feel your destiny is here on earth, with us mere earthlings of all persuasions and potentialities, we welcome you to join the fight. The Light against the Dark. My name is Mark. Welcome.

Ah…if only it were so simple. But shades of grey reign, as the world seems to be headed down the track in the face of an oncoming freight train, carrying Nazis and Fascists, Epidemics and comet strikes, nuclear waste and dead ocean life.

Maybe the escapists have it right.

Well, whatever the case may be, the world is splitting in twain. Two groups, one seeking the spiritual flow, the other immersed in the world we know.

Which side do you come down on? Dreaming of bringing heaven to earth and making man into gods or getting ready for the Ascension and the New Rebirth? Is Jesus coming to get you? The Maitreya singing siren songs? Or does Deus ex Machina call, luring you down into computerized depths, never to return to the meat haven of Gaia’s bowels?

Whatever folks choose, is what they will experience. Guarantee it. So better choose right. Might not have another chance, past tonight.

Life on Earth is Dying

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By Robert J. Burrowes

On the day that you read this article, 200 species of life on Earth (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles) will cease to exist. Tomorrow, another 200 species will vanish forever.

The human onslaught to destroy life on Earth is unprecedented in Earth’s history. Planet Earth is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction event and Homo sapiens sapiens is the cause. Moreover, this mass extinction event is accelerating and is so comprehensive in its impact
that the piecemeal measures being taken by the United Nations, international agencies and governments constitute a tokenism that is breathtaking in the extreme.

And it is no longer the case that mainly ‘invisible’ species are
vanishing: those insects, amphibians and small animals about which you had never even heard, assuming they have been identified and given a name by humans.

You and I are on the brink of driving to extinction some of the most iconic species alive today. For a photo gallery of threatened species, some of which are ‘critically endangered’, see ‘World’s wildlife being pushed to the edge by humans – in pictures‘.

If you want to read more about some aspects of the extinction threat, you can do so in these recent reports: ‘World Wildlife Crime Report: Trafficking in protected species‘ and ‘2016 Living Planet Report‘ which includes these words: ‘The main statistic from the report … shows a 58% decline between 1970 and 2012. This means that, on average, animal populations are roughly half the size they were 42 years ago.’

And if you want to read just one aspect of what is happening in the world’s oceans, this recent UN report will give you something to ponder:
‘New UN report finds marine debris harming more than 800 species, costing countries millions‘.

Of course, some of what is happening is related to the ongoing climate catastrophe and there isn’t any good news on that front. See ‘What’s Happening in the Arctic is Astonishing‘.

But not everything that is going badly wrong is well known either. Did you know that we are destroying the Earth’s soil? See ‘Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues‘.

And did you realise that even nitrogen is now a huge problem too? See ‘Scientists shine a spotlight on the overlooked menace of nitrogen‘.

Of course, military violence has devastating consequences on the Earth’s ecosystems too, destroying land, water and atmosphere (not to mention killing human beings) in the fight over resources. You will get no joy from the article ‘Iraq’s oil inferno – government inaction in the face of eco-terrorism‘
or the website of the Toxic Remnants of War Project. But every single aspect of military spending is ultimately used to destroy. It has no other function.

While 2.5 billion human beings do not have enough to eat. See ‘One in three people suffers malnutrition at global cost of $3.5 trillion a year‘.

As you read all this, you might say ‘Not me’! But you are wrong. You don’t have to be an impoverished African driven to killing elephants for their tusks so that you can survive yourself. You don’t have to be a farmer who is destroying the soil with synthetic poisons. You don’t have to be a soldier who kills and destroys or a person who works for a corporation that, one way to another, forces peasants off their land.

You just have to be an ‘ordinary’ person who pays your military taxes and consumes more than your share of world resources while participating without challenge in the global system of violence and exploitation managed by the global elite.

‘Why is this?’ you might ask.

This is because the primary driver of the human-induced mass extinction is not such things as some people hunting a particular lifeform to extinction, horrendous though this is. In fact, just two things drive most species over the edge: our systematic destruction of land habitat – forests, grasslands, wetlands, peatlands, mangroves… – in our endless effort to capture more of the Earth’s wild places for human use (whether it be residential, commercial, mining, farming or military) and our destruction of waterways and the ocean habitat by dumping into them radioactive contaminants, carbon dioxide, a multitude of poisons and chemical pollutants, and even plastic.

And do you know what drives this destruction of land and water habitats? Your demand for consumer products, all of which are produced by using land and water habitats, and the resources derived from them, often far from where you live. The most basic products, such as food and clothing, are produced on agricultural land, sometimes created by destroying rainforests, or taken from the ocean (where overfishing has savagely depleted global fish stocks). But in using these resources, we have ignored the needs of the land, oceans and the waterways for adequate regenerative inputs and recovery time.

We also participate, almost invariably without question or challenge, in the inequitable distribution of resources that compels some impoverished people to take desperate measures to survive through such means as farming marginal land or killing endangered wildlife.

So don’t sit back waiting for some miracle by the United Nations, international agencies or governments to solve this problem. It cannot happen for the simple reason that these organizations are all taking action within the existing paradigm that prioritizes corporate profit and military violence over human equity and ecological sustainability.

Despite any rhetoric to the contrary, they are encouraging
overconsumption by industrialized populations and facilitating the inequitable distribution of income and wealth precisely because this benefits those who control these organizations, agencies and governments: the insane corporate elites who are devoid of the capacity to see any value beyond the ‘bottom line’. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane‘.

If you want action on the greatest challenge human beings have ever faced – to avert our own extinction by learning to live in harmony with our biosphere and equity with our fellow humans – then I encourage you to take personal responsibility.

If you do, you need to act. At the simplest level, you can make some difficult but valuable personal choices. Like becoming a vegan or vegetarian, buying/growing organic/biodynamic food, and resolutely refusing to use any form of poison or to drive a car or take an airline flight.

But if you want to take an integrated approach, the most powerful way you can do this is to systematically reduce your own personal consumption while increasing your self-reliance. Anita McKone and I have mapped out a fifteen-year strategy for doing this in ‘The FlameTree Project to Save Life on Earth‘. You might also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World‘  which obviously includes nonviolence towards our fellow species.

One of the hidden tragedies of modern human existence is that we have been terrorized into believing that we are not personally responsible. See ‘The Delusion “I Am Not Responsible“‘.

For a fuller explanation, see ‘Why Violence?‘ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice‘.

It isn’t true but few people feel powerful enough to make a difference.

And every time you decide to do nothing and to leave it to someone else,  you demonstrate why no-one else should do anything either.

Extinction beckons. What will you do?

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

—
Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

Understanding Evil: From Globalism To Pizzagate

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By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.com

I have spent the better part of the last 10 years working diligently to investigate and relate information on economics and geopolitical discourse for the liberty movement. However, long before I delved into these subjects my primary interests of study were the human mind and the human “soul” (yes, I’m using a spiritual term).

My fascination with economics and sociopolitical events has always been rooted in the human element. That is to say, while economics is often treated as a mathematical and statistical field, it is also driven by psychology. To know the behavior of man is to know the future of all his endeavors, good or evil.

Evil is what we are specifically here to discuss. I have touched on the issue in various articles in the past including Are Globalists Evil Or Just Misunderstood, but with extreme tensions taking shape this year in light of the U.S. election as well as the exploding online community investigation of “Pizzagate,” I am compelled to examine it once again.

I will not be grappling with this issue from a particularly religious perspective. Evil applies to everyone regardless of their belief system, or even their lack of belief. Evil is secular in its influence.

The first and most important thing to understand is this — evil is NOT simply a social or religious construct, it is an inherent element of the human psyche. Carl Gustav Jung was one of the few psychologists in history to dare write extensively on the issue of evil from a scientific perspective as well as a metaphysical perspective.  I highly recommend a book of his collected works on this subject titled ‘Jung On Evil’, edited by Murray Stein, for those who are interested in a deeper view.

To summarize, Jung found that much of the foundations of human behavior are rooted in inborn psychological contents or “archetypes.”  Contrary to the position of Sigmund Freud, Jung argued that while our environment may affect our behavior to a certain extent, it does not make us who we are. Rather, we are born with our own individual personality and grow into our inherent characteristics over time. Jung also found that there are universally present elements of human psychology. That is to say, almost every human being on the planet shares certain truths and certain natural predilections.

The concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral, are present in us from birth and are mostly the same regardless of where we are born, what time in history we are born and to what culture we are born. Good and evil are shared subjective experiences.  It is this observable psychological fact (among others) that leads me to believe in the idea of a creative design — a god.  Again, though, elaborating on god is beyond the scope of this article.

To me, this should be rather comforting to people, even atheists.  For if there is observable evidence of creative design, then it would follow that there may very well be a reason for all the trials and horrors that we experience as a species.  Our lives, our failures and our accomplishments are not random and meaningless.  We are striving toward something, whether we recognize it or not.  It may be beyond our comprehension at this time, but it is there.

Evil does not exist in a vacuum; with evil there is always good, if one looks for it in the right places.

Most people are readily equipped to recognize evil when they see it directly.  What they are not equipped for and must learn from environment is how to recognize evil disguised as righteousness.  The most heinous acts in history are almost always presented as a moral obligation — a path towards some “greater good.”  Inherent conscience, though, IS the greater good, and any ideology that steps away from the boundaries of conscience will inevitably lead to disaster.

The concept of globalism is one of these ideologies that crosses the line of conscience and pontificates to us about a “superior method” of living.  It relies on taboo, rather than moral compass, and there is a big difference between the two.

When we pursue a “greater good” as individuals or as a society, the means are just as vital as the ends.  The ends NEVER justify the means.  Never.  For if we abandon our core principles and commit atrocities in the name of “peace,” safety or survival, then we have forsaken the very things which make us worthy of peace and safety and survival.  A monster that devours in the name of peace is still a monster.

Globalism tells us that the collective is more important than the individual, that the individual owes society a debt and that fealty to society in every respect is the payment for that debt.  But inherent archetypes and conscience tell us differently.  They tell us that society is only ever as healthy as the individuals within it, that society is only as free and vibrant as the participants.  As the individual is demeaned and enslaved, the collective crumbles into mediocrity.

Globalism also tells us that humanity’s greatest potential cannot be reached without collectivism and centralization.  The assertion is that the more single-minded a society is in its pursuits the more likely it is to effectively achieve its goals.  To this end, globalism seeks to erase all sovereignty. For now its proponents claim they only wish to remove nations and borders from the social equation, but such collectivism never stops there.  Eventually, they will tell us that individualism represents another nefarious “border” that prevents the group from becoming fully realized.

At the heart of collectivism is the idea that human beings are “blank slates;” that we are born empty and are completely dependent on our environment in order to learn what is right and wrong and how to be good people or good citizens.  The environment becomes the arbiter of decency, rather than conscience, and whoever controls the environment, by extension, becomes god.

If the masses are convinced of this narrative then moral relativity is only a short step away. It is the abandonment of inborn conscience that ultimately results in evil. In my view, this is exactly why the so called “elites” are pressing for globalism in the first place. Their end game is not just centralization of all power into a one world edifice, but the suppression and eradication of conscience, and thus, all that is good.

To see where this leads we must look at the behaviors of the elites themselves, which brings us to “Pizzagate.”

The exposure by Wikileaks during the election cycle of what appear to be coded emails sent between John Podesta and friends has created a burning undercurrent in the alternative media. The emails consistently use odd and out of context “pizza” references, and independent investigations have discovered a wide array connections between political elites like Hillary Clinton and John Podesta to James Alefantis, the owner of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C. called Comet Ping Pong. Alefantis, for reasons that make little sense to me, is listed as number 49 on GQ’s Most Powerful People In Washington list.

The assertion according to circumstantial evidence including the disturbing child and cannibalism artwork collections of the Podestas has been that Comet Ping Pong is somehow at the center of a child pedophilia network serving the politically connected. Both Comet Ping Pong and a pizza establishment two doors down called Besta Pizza use symbols in their logos and menus that are listed on the FBI’s unclassified documentation on pedophilia symbolism, which does not help matters.

Some of the best documentation of the Pizzagate scandal that I have seen so far has been done by David Seaman, a former mainstream journalist gone rogue. Here is his YouTube page.

I do recommend everyone at least look at the evidence he and others present. I went into the issue rather skeptical, but was surprised by the sheer amount of weirdness and evidence regarding Comet Pizza.  There is a problem with Pizzagate that is difficult to overcome, however; namely the fact that to my knowledge no victims have come forward.  This is not to say there has been no crime, but anyone hoping to convince the general public of wrong-doing in this kind of scenario is going to have a very hard time without a victim to reference.

The problem is doubly difficult now that an armed man was arrested on the premises of Comet Ping Pong while “researching” the claims of child trafficking.  Undoubtedly, the mainstream media will declare the very investigation “dangerous conspiracy theory.”  Whether this will persuade the public to ignore it, or compel them to look into it, remains to be seen.

I fully realize the amount of confusion surrounding Pizzagate and the assertions by some that it is a “pysop” designed to undermine the alternative media.  This is a foolish notion, in my view.  The mainstream media is dying, this is unavoidable.  The alternative media is a network of sources based on the power of choice and cemented in the concept of investigative research.  The reader participates in the alternative media by learning all available information and positions and deciding for himself what is the most valid conclusion, if there is any conclusion to be had.  The mainstream media simply tells its readers what to think and feel based on cherry picked data.

The elites will never be able to deconstruct that kind of movement with something like a faked “pizzagate”; rather, they would be more inclined to try to co-opt and direct the alternative media as they do most institutions.  And, if elitists are using Pizzagate as fodder to trick the alternative media into looking ridiculous, then why allow elitist run social media outlets like Facebook and Reddit to shut down discussion on the issue?

The reason I am more convinced than skeptical at this stage is because this has happened before; and in past scandals of pedophilia in Washington and other political hotbeds, some victims DID come forward.

I would first reference the events of the Franklin Scandal between 1988 and 1991. The Discovery Channel even produced a documentary on it complete with interviews of alleged child victims peddled to Washington elites for the purpose of favors and blackmail.  Meant to air in 1994, the documentary was quashed before it was ever shown to the public. The only reason it can now be found is because an original copy was released without permission by parties unknown.

I would also reference the highly evidenced Westminster Pedophile Ring in the U.K., in which the U.K. government lost or destroyed at least 114 files related to the investigation.

Finally, it is disconcerting to me that the criminal enterprises of former Bear Sterns financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his “Lolita Express” are mainstream knowledge, yet the public remains largely oblivious.  Bill Clinton is shown on flight logs to have flown on Epstein’s private jet at least a 26 times; the same jet that he used to procure child victims as young as 12 to entertain celebrities and billionaires on his 72 acre island called “Little Saint James”.  The fact that Donald Trump was also close friends with Epstein should raise some eyebrows – funny how the mainstream media attacked Trump on every cosmetic issue under the sun but for some reason backed away from pursuing the Epstein angle.

Where is the vast federal investigation into the people who frequented Epstein’s wretched parties?  There is none, and Epstein, though convicted of molesting a 14 year old girl and selling her into prostitution, was only slapped on the wrist with a 13 month sentence.

Accusations of pedophilia seem to follow the globalists and elitist politicians wherever they go. This does not surprise me. They often exhibit characteristics of narcissism and psychopathy, but their ideology of moral relativity is what would lead to such horrible crimes.

Evil often stems from people who are empty. When one abandons conscience, one also in many respects abandons empathy and love.  Without these elements of our psyche there is no happiness. Without them, there is nothing left but desire and gluttony.

Narcissists in particular are prone to use other people as forms of entertainment and fulfillment without concern for their humanity.  They can be vicious in nature, and when taken to the level of psychopathy, they are prone to target and abuse the most helpless of victims in order to generate a feeling of personal power.

Add in sexual addiction and aggression and narcissists become predatory in the extreme. Nothing ever truly satisfies them. When they grow tired of the normal, they quickly turn to the abnormal and eventually the criminal.  I would say that pedophilia is a natural progression of the elitist mindset; for children are the easiest and most innocent victim source, not to mention the most aberrant and forbidden, and thus the most desirable for a psychopathic deviant embracing evil impulses.

Beyond this is the even more disturbing prospect of cultism. It is not that the globalists are simply evil as individuals; if that were the case then they would present far less of a threat. The greater terror is that they are also organized. When one confronts the problem of evil head on, one quickly realizes that evil is within us all. There will always be an internal battle in every individual. Organized evil, though, is in fact the ultimate danger, and it is organized evil that must be eradicated.

For organized evil to be defeated, there must be organized good. I believe the liberty movement in particular is that good; existing in early stages, not yet complete, but good none the less.  Our championing of the non-aggression principle and individual liberty is conducive to respect for privacy, property and life.  Conscience is a core tenet of the liberty ideal, and the exact counter to organized elitism based on moral relativity.

Recognize and take solace that though we live in dark times, and evil men roam free, we are also here. We are the proper response to evil, and we have been placed here at this time for a reason. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it coincidence, call it god, call it whatever you want, but the answer to evil is us.

Freedom Rider: Black Agenda Report on the Honor Roll

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The Democrats, through their PropOrNot web site and a compliant corporate media, have targeted BAR and other sites as purveyors of Russian propaganda and partly responsible for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. We’re proud to be on their hit list. Their ludicrous neo-McCarthyism shows the Democrats are not really a party at all, but a “gigantic marketing scheme meant to keep fearful progressives in line.” And the Washington Post is revealed as a lying rag.

By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

“Obama is doing whatever he can to drum up support for the endless wars and regime change policies he ultimately failed to solidify.”

Black Agenda Report has always been dedicated to truth telling. Conversely, truth is a scarce commodity in the corporate media. They are wholly dependent on powerful people and institutions and that means they must tell lies on a constant basis. Because BAR provides analysis from a black left perspective we must wade through their falsehoods in our attempt to make sense of the world.

BAR’s commitment has not gone unnoticed. Our team is proud to be on a list of outlets accused of being purveyors of Russian government propaganda. The website Is It Propaganda or Not suddenly appeared in August of this year. No one owns up to having created it but that mystery is frankly unimportant. The site is clearly doing the work of the Democratic Party, which unsuccessfully used charges of Russian interference in American politics in the recent presidential election.

Is It Propaganda or Not is a sad attempt to continue a losing effort in the waning months of the Obama administration. The United States brooks no opposition anywhere in the world. Russia’s determination to uphold its right to self-determination made it an enemy of the voracious American appetite for control of resources and governments. When Barack Obama often said that America was the indispensable nation he meant it. George W. Bush was less eloquent when he declared “you’re either with us or against us.” Obama said the same thing as he cajoled and bullied nations to join the American imperialist effort or be run over.

The president harps on “fake news” out of desperation. He hopes to continue his imperialist legacy right up until January 20, 2017 when Donald Trump becomes president. Actually, he wants to make the case for it after Trump takes over. Obama is doing whatever he can to drum up support for the endless wars and regime change policies he ultimately failed to solidify. Trump got enough votes to claim electoral victory in part because no one except dead ender Democrats are buying what Obama is selling.

Instigating a coup in Ukraine certainly struck a blow in the 25-year long American effort at Russian subjugation and/or regime change. But Ukraine is now a shell of its former self, broke and suffering from a deadly civil war. Syria limps along after the United States, NATO, gulf monarchies and Turkey thought they could carve it up easily. It isn’t surprising that the BAR team or anyone else who called out the scoundrels would themselves be targets of official wrath, no matter how foolishly carried out.

The creation of this list is a bizarre effort to keep Donald Trump from making good on some of his campaign promises. It isn’t clear if he will act to improve relations with Russia or put an end to regime change. He also says that America should “grab the oil” but any mention of ditching years of foreign policy orthodoxy is considered a heresy that must be stamped out.

The foolishness of the Is It Propaganda or Not stunt shows why the Democratic Party has been consigned to loser status. It isn’t interested in being a political party at all. It is a gigantic marketing scheme meant to keep fearful progressives in line. The Democrats want the presidency so they can cut deals with Republicans and curry favor with elites around the world. They can’t even be bothered to campaign around the country and casually allowed Republicans to take control of state after state without even bothering to compete. All the while they convince their rank and file that they are the indispensable party in the shameless duopoly.

It is a sad spectacle to see progressives who were once champions of dialogue between nations follow the line of smear mongering and Russophobia. Now that they failed to drag Hillary Clinton to victory they are adrift with only transparent ploys to make their case. The worst fake news comes from their own mouths as they have officially reached a point of failing to fool all of the people all of the time.

If you are reading this column you already know that the corporate media tell lies for a living. They compete to act as scribes for presidents. If a president says that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction they help make the case for war. If the next president claims a right to “protect” that destroys Libya they march right along and extol the virtues of war crimes. If another nation refuses to allow itself to be victimized its leader is called a modern day Hitler who interferes in American elections. The history of American interference in elections around the world is a long sad tale that would make for a good expose. Unfortunately the people who act as White House scribes have no interest in reporting any facts. They are content to curry favor and have access to people who can make or break their careers.

Black Agenda Report and the other sites on the Democratic Party’s list are in fact the best sources of news in the country. We do not carry water for Republicans or Democrats. We are consistent in our opposition to neo-liberalism, mass incarceration, police murder, racial and other oppressions and to foreign intervention. We were never impressed with Barack Obama or the other black faces in high places. We afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Those standards put us on the honor roll of news and prove ourselves worthy of your time and attention.

 

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

The Corporate Media’s Gulag of the Mind

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

Your crime, as it were, need not be substantiated with evidence; the mere fact you publicly revealed your anti-Establishment thought convicted you.

One of the most remarkable ironies of The Washington Post’s recent evidence-free fabrication of purported “Russian propaganda” websites (including this site) is how closely it mimics the worst excesses of the USSR’s Stalinist era.

Those unfamiliar with the Stalinist era’s excesses will benefit from reading Solzhenitsyn’s three-volume masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, The Gulag Archipelago 2 and Gulag Archipelago 3.

One episode is especially relevant to the totalitarian tactics of The Washington Post’s evidence-free accusation. Solzhenitsyn tells the story of one poor fellow who made the mistake of recounting a dream he’d had the previous night to his co-workers.

In his dream, Stalin had come to some harm. In Solzhenitsyn’s account, the fellow was remorseful about the dream.

Alas, mere remorse couldn’t possibly save him. He was promptly arrested for “anti-Soviet thoughts” and given a tenner in the Gulag–a tenner being a ten-year sentence in a Siberian labor camp.

The Washington Post’s accusation is based on a “behavioral analysis”–in other words, publicly sharing “anti-Soviet thoughts”–in our era, the equivalent is sharing anti-Establishment thoughts.

Your crime, as it were, need not be substantiated with evidence; the mere fact you publicly revealed your anti-Establishment thought convicted you.

This is the Corporate Media’s Gulag of the Mind. We’ll tell you what’s “true” and what is correct to think and believe. Any deviation from the party line is a threat and must be discredited, marginalized or suppressed.

Where is the Post’s hard evidence of Russian ties or Russian influence? There isn’t any–but like Stalin’s henchmen, the Post has no need for evidence: merely going public with an anti-Establishment thought “proves” one’s guilt in the kangaroo court of America’s corporate media (a.k.a. mainstream media or MSM).

While The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the vast majority of what we read, watch and hear is controlled by a handful of corporations loaded with cash and connections to the ruling elite.

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This concentration of media control creates the illusion of choice— the same elite-propaganda spin is everywhere you look; our “choice” of “approved” (i.e. corporate) media is roughly the same as that offered the Soviet citizenry in the old USSR.

This is why the billionaire/corporate media is so desperate to discredit the non-corporate media: if an alternative to the corporate media’s elite-propaganda catches on, the corporate media will lose its audience, its advert revenues and a substantial measure of its influence.

The cornered elite-propaganda beast is lashing out, undermining its waning credibility with every attack on an independent free press. As I noted in a recent conversation with Max Keiser, democracy requires the citizenry to sort out who benefits from whatever narrative is being pushed.

That’s what terrifies the elite-propaganda mainstream media: the status quo narrative they’ve spewed for years doesn’t benefit the bottom 95%– rather, it actively impoverishes and disempowers the bottom 95%–and the citizenry is slowly awakening to this reality.

So for goodness sakes, if you have an anti-elitist dream, keep it to yourself or you’ll end up on the ruling elite’s “enemies list.”

The final irony in all this: the real enemy of democracy and freedom of the press is The Washington Post and the rest of the billionaire/corporate media. The only way to escape the Corporate Media’s Gulag of the Mind is to stop watching their TV channels, turn off their radio stations and stop reading their print/digital propaganda–except of course if you have a taste for dark humor.

 

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‘Fake news stories’ eclipse ‘conspiracy theories’ in globalist/Sorosite lexicon

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By Wayne Madsen

Source: Intrepid Report

The corporate news media, allied with “media watchdog” groups, many financed with global billionaire troublemaker George Soros, have trotted out a new dog whistle to attack their opponents: “fake news stories.” The issue of “fake news stories” was even raised by outgoing President Barack Obama in a news conference in Berlin with German chancellor Angela Merkel. Both leaders cited “fake news stories” as something that threatens international stability.

Of course, there are an ample number of fake news stories that emanate from disreputable and discredited websites, many of them vanity sites intending to serve as “click bait” for the unsuspecting web surfer and even a few professional journalists taken in by alarmist headlines. A number of individuals have been duped by totally fake stories written by “Sorcha Faal,” a pseudonym for David Booth, allegedly a U.S. computer programmer and which may also be a pseudonym for another individual or group of individuals. Faal, Booth, or whatever his name is acts as a cyber version of an arsonist who releases fake stories attributed to Russian intelligence sources and then sits back to assess the impact of his prankster works. The fact that a number of Russian news organizations have re-published Faal/Booth fake articles as actual news leads some to believe that U.S. intelligence plays a role in the obvious disinformation operation. Faal/Booth has a number of competitors in the field of cyber-pranksterism.

However, the most prominent purveyors of fake news stories are the very corporate media entities that decry “fake news.” There are a number of examples of corporate media trafficking in fake news. The following are a few stark examples:

  • In 1981, Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for a story about an 8-year old heroin addict named “Jimmy.” Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry was taken in by the story and launched a city-wide effort to search for “Jimmy” and provide him with treatment. Barry claimed “Jimmy” was real but, in fact, Cooke made up the entire story of “Jimmy’s World” and Barry lied about the supposed existence of the boy. Although Cooke’s story was totally fake, Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward submitted it to the Pulitzer committee for an award for best feature writing. Woodward, who concocted the fictional “Deep Throat” source in his Watergate reporting for the Post, was never sanctioned for advancing a fake story for a supposed serious professional journalism honor. The Post can be attributed to two major “fake news stories”—”Jimmy” the heroin addict and “Deep Throat” the high-level Nixon administration source who was not FBI deputy director Mark Felt.
  • New York Times reporter Jayson Blair wrote a series of fake news stories for the so-called “paper of record.” The following are a few of his fake news headlines that appeared in the Times:

 

October 30, 2002—”US Sniper Case Seen as a Barrier to a Confession.”
February 10, 2003—”Peace and Answers Eluding Victims of the Sniper Attacks.”
March 3, 2003—”Making Sniper Suspect Talk Puts Detective in Spotlight.”
March 27, 2003—”Relatives of Missing Soldiers Dread Hearing Worse News.”
April 3, 2003—”Rescue in Iraq and a ‘Big Stir’ in West Virginia.”
April 7, 2003—”For One Pastor, the War Hits Home.”
April 19, 2003—””In Military Wards, Questions and Fears from the Wounded.”

Blair made up from whole cloth stories about the DC sniper and Iraq war veterans. In all, 36 of the 73 national stories penned by Blair were fake. However, a number of media outlets, including the Times, reported as fact fake stories about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” all of which were false. New York Times reporter Judith Miller reported as fact information from Iraqi exiled leader Ahmed Chalabi alleging that Iraq possessed mobile weapons laboratories. The information was false, as was other U.S. “intelligence” on Iraq that was fed Miller and other reporters that was all bogus, including stories on Saddam Hussein allegedly trying to procure yellow cake uranium from Niger.

  • In May 1998, Stephen Glass of The New Republic wrote an article titled “Hack Heaven” about a 15-year old hacker and a non-existent software firm called “Jukt Micronics.” It was later determined that 27 articles Glass wrote for The New Republic were fabrications.
  • USA Today reporter and Pulitzer nominee Jack Kelly allegedly fabricated a number of stories for the newspaper, including a 1999 story alleging that the Yugoslavian armed forces was ordered to ethnically cleanse an Albanian village in Kosovo.
  • The Dateline NBC story of November 17, 1992, titled “Waiting to Explode” and alleging that poor fuel tank design caused General Motors’ pick-up trucks to explode on impact was based on rigged tests and staged explosions.
  • NBC anchor Brian Williams was suspended after making several false claims about his prior reporting. He claimed to have been riding on board an Army Chinook helicopter that was forced to land in an Iraqi desert after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The story was false as was another in which Williams claimed to have flown into Baghdad with Navy SEAL Team 6. Williams also falsely claimed to have seen a man commit suicide in the New Orleans Superdome in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Williams also claimed to have personally witnessed the Berlin Wall coming down. He was not in Berlin until a day after the wall fell.
  • In 2013, CBS “60 Minutes” interviewed a U.S. security contractor who claimed he witnessed the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. The contractor was not in Benghazi during the attack and the account was bogus.
  • Rolling Stone published a falsified story in 2014 about a University of Virginia gang rape victim named “Jackie” and school administrator Nicole Eramo. The magazine falsely claimed that Eramo covered up rape incidents at the university. A federal jury later found that Rolling Stone libeled Eramo.
  • Several news organizations falsely claimed that security guard Richard Jewell was the chief suspect in the July 27, 1996, bombing of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. Jewell successfully sued CNN, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (“FBI suspects ‘hero’ guard may have planted bomb”), NBC, and The New York Post for libel.
  • Fox News often featured a commentator named Wayne Simmons, described by the network as a former CIA “operative.” In fact, Simmons never worked for the CIA and he was a fraud. He was later sentenced to 33 months in prison for his fraudulent activities.

The corporate media is legitimized by a very phony “arbiter” of what and what does not constitute accurate news: the very problematic Snopes.com. Snopes traffics in as much fakery in its “debunking” of alternative media articles as does the corporate media in its national and international reporting.

It is clear that Obama, Merkel, the Soros operation, and others are attacking “fake news stories” in order to hide the real target for their invective rhetoric: the alternative media, which does not kow-tow to corporate executives, advertisers, and special interests ranging from Big Pharma to the Israeli Lobby. The alternative media provides the lifeblood for the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press. The corporate media is a bloated and deceitful artifice whose time is coming to an end.

 

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Public School or Prison? Here Are 10 Ways It’s Hard To Tell

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By Alice Jones Webb

Source: The Mind Unleashed

Every weekday morning, from September through June, parents across the country get up earlier than they want to, rush like crazy, wrangle kids into appropriate clothing, and wait in exhausting drop-off lines to get their children to school on time. Why? Because punctuality is a virtue? Or because they are afraid of getting in trouble?

In big cities and small communities, the same routine is repeated with minor variations. Small children and near adult adolescents will spend the majority of their waking hours somewhere they would rather not be. But few people question the set-up. Parents send their kids to school with the best of intentions, wanting to produce happy, healthy, productive adults. Public school is supposed to be for their own good. Very few question its necessity and virtue. No one questions the fact that our country’s public schools are looking less and less like places of learning and more and more like places of detention (and I don’t mean The Breakfast Club type either).

When you stop and think about it (which few people actually do), our public schools have more in common with our prison system than any parent would care to admit. Most of us are products of the system and will defend its honor and integrity like sufferers of severe Stockholm Syndrome. So let me break it down into a list of glaring similarities that even those of us who went to public school can easily understand.

1. Both School and Prison Take Away Freedom. To get into prison, a person has to be convicted of a crime (although all of us know that prisons are full of people convicted of pretty bogus crimes… just stick with me). Children in school are only guilty of the crime of being children. Since school attendance is compulsory, children, much like criminal prisoners, don’t get to choose whether they get locked up for seven or more hours a day. They are forced to go to school by strict truancy laws until they are at least 16, at which point their youth has already been squandered inside constrictive cinder block walls.

2. Both School and Prison use Security as a Means of Control. Prisons and public schools both use metal detectors, surveillance cameras, police patrols, drug-sniffing dogs, and lock downs to create a facade of greater security. In most elementary schools, there is an emphasis on moving students from location to location in a rigidly ordered manner. The straight line of silent children walking with hands behind their backs look frighteningly like lines of prisoners. The strict codes of conduct used in the majority of schools, as well as the consistent use of handcuffs and pepper spray on unruly high school students, work together to condition young people to the cultural normalcy of over-policing.

Stay in line. Do as you’re told. Don’t make trouble. These are the messages we send to both our prisoners and our school children. But it’s okay. It’s for their own good.

3. Both Schools and Prisons Serve Undesirable Food. The cafeterias in public schools are scarily similar to prison cafeterias, often even sharing the same menus. Unappetizing, bland, processed meals with little nutritional value are the norm in both institutions. And bringing a lunch from home is banned in many school districts. Add in the armed security guards that patrol most public school lunch rooms and a casual observer might not be able to tell the difference.

4. Both Schools and Prisons Enforce Strict Dress Codes. Like prisons, some schools obligate their students to wear uniforms, limiting self-expression, and encouraging a herd mentality that makes control easier (for safety’s sake, of course). But even in schools without required uniforms, strict dress codes are generally in place. Failure to tuck in a shirt tail can land a student in detention. Donning a blouse that doesn’t adequately cover a girl’s shoulders could get her sent home. Sometimes the dress code guidelines are so arbitrary and so strictly detailed, it seems like they are in place just to get students in trouble. In 2008, Gonzales High School in Texas made the national news for requiring dress code violators to wear actual prison jumpsuits. It’s like officials want the students to seem like criminals. Perhaps it makes the policing of students at their own hands seem more justified.

5. Both Students and Prisoners are Tracked. Many prisons use electronic bracelets or other tracking devices to keep track of prisoners’ locations. Many schools are doing the same thing. ID badges with built-in RFID chips can track the location of a child wherever they are wearing it, and many schools require ID badges to be worn during school hours. Some schools have even started using fingerprints and iris scanners to keep track of their prisoners… I mean students.

6. Both Schools and Prisons Have Armed Guards. Often referred to as SROs (school resource officers), most school buildings are patrolled by armed police officers. They are generally uniformed and carry pepper spray, tasers, and batons that they can use on students should the need arise. These officers police hallways and lunchrooms, administer searches of children’s lockers and school bags, and man the TSA-style checkpoints at the entrances to the buildings our children enter to learn.

7. Both Schools And Prisons do not Allow Anger. Although anger is a justifiable emotion toward constrictive and oppressive political structures, neither students nor prisoners have the power to express their emotions. In prison, angry convicts are locked away in solitary confinement, their movements and small remaining freedoms restricted for safety’s sake. In public school, anger is interpreted as a failing of the individual rather than the system that creates it. There, anger is seen as “disruptive behavior” or “cognitive impairment” or a “social or learning disability”. Often the angry student is marginalized by placement in special education classes, enrolled in “alternative schools”, or medicated to control their disruptions, all of which are just differing forms of confinement.

8. Both Students and Prisoners are Forced to Work. The scene of the prison chain gang in striped clothing, hacking away at rocks and debris is one that most people have seen in old films. Today’s prisoner work force looks a little different, with prisoners wearing orange jumpsuits and doing highway clean-up minus the bulky steel chains. Students are often forced to work, too. Sometimes they are forced to work cleaning up school grounds as a disciplinary action. But in some school systems, volunteer work or “community service” is required each year for a passing grade. Interesting to note that “community service” is frequently doled out as punishment to citizens convicted of minor crimes, but our children are only guilty of being kids.

9. Both Schools and Prisons Follow Strict Schedules. A rigid schedule of walking, eating, learning, exercise, and bathroom use is followed in both institutions. It doesn’t matter when you have to pee, or need to stretch your legs, or want a breath of fresh air. Those things can only be done during allotted times defined by those in authority.

10. Both Schools and Prisons Have Zero-Tolerance Policies. Most public schools now have policies of zero-tolerance when it comes to violence, bullying, drug possession, etc. Interestingly, much of the verbiage in our schools’ disciplinary policies come straight from the nation’s “War on Drugs” (which is directly responsible for the vast majority of our country’s prisoners). Zero-tolerance policies require harsher penalties for sometimes minor classroom offenses and often result in law enforcement being called in to handle school disciplinary actions. The result has been what many refer to as the “School-to-prison pipeline”. The policies make criminals out of students, pushing kids out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system at alarming rates. At least the transition will be easy. Those school children have already spent the majority of their lives in a system that matches the penitentiary where they’ll be spending most of the rest of it.

With such dark and intimidating surroundings, focusing on learning becomes difficult. It’s no wonder most kids don’t want to go to school. When you’re treated like a prisoner, it’s easy to feel like one.

About the Author

Alice Jones Webb is a writer, homeschooling mother of four, black belt, autodidact, free-thinker, avid reader, obsessive recycler, closet goth, a bit of a rebel, but definitely not your typical soccer mom. You can usually find her buried under the laundry and also on Facebook, Twitter, and her blog, DifferentThanAverage.com, where she blogs about bucking the status quo.