THE EIGHTFOLD PATH OF GOOD CHARACTER

By Gary Z McGee

Source: Waking Times

“Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” ~Frank Outlaw

A robust character hinges on eight core virtues: courage, curiosity, temperance, humility, liberty, honor, wisdom, and humor. These virtues are vital rungs on the ladder toward achieving wholeness in character.

Courage frees character, curiosity grows character, temperance balances character, humility grounds character, liberty stabilizes character, honor unifies character, wisdom guides character, and humor overcomes character. Let’s break it down.

1.) Courage:

“Without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” ~Maya Angelou

Courage is the bedrock of human excellence. Before any other virtue can be realized, courage must be self-actualized. There must first come a courageous deviation or there is no “first.” Period. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that you live a courage-based lifestyle over a comfort-based lifestyle.

Without the initial leap of courage there is no freedom, no excellence. Without courage, one is merely restricted to the conventional, inhibited by the whims of others, imprisoned inside the box of the status quo, and hampered by outdated reasoning. Without courage, the third eye remains calcified, rigid, blind.

With the leap of courage, however, one is emancipated. The world unlocks. The mind unbolts. The soul unfastens. Inhibitions dissolve, and serendipity, adaptability, and improvisation manifest. Boundaries transform into horizons. Comfort zones stretch into adventure. You split the smoke. You shatter the mirrors. And the glory of the path is revealed.

2.) Curiosity:

“If you are not living in awe, you are not paying attention.” ~Rumi

Curiosity is essential. It is the fuel that launches us beyond faith. It is the cure for the disease of certainty.

True curiosity is deep, primal, absorbing, imaginative and ravenous for updated knowledge that has the potential to put outdated knowledge to rest.

Curiosity is the ultimate existential leveling mechanism. It forces our thoughts outside the box, stretches our comfort zone, shatters entrenched mental paradigms, keeps us ahead of the curve, and pushes the envelope of all the things we’ve taken for granted.

Curiosity is on the edge of tomorrow, laughing into the abyss, shirking the tiny-minded perspective of our parochial past, and gaping in astonishment and wild wonder into the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of the Great Mystery.

3.) Temperance:

“The best amount of property to have is that which is enough to keep us from poverty, and which yet is not far removed from it.” ~Seneca

Luckily, health is a benchmark for temperance. It’s the core of universal law. Unluckily, this benchmark is hidden in a ‘language older than words,’ which can sometimes seem impossible to decode. Moderation is Health’s secret decoder ring.

Although some things must be moderated more than others, extremism in anything is the bane of health. We can breathe too much oxygen. We can drink too much water. We can even live too much in the moment. Through moderation we discover health. And through health we are free to practice temperance. We maintain our personal health through moderation so that health in general can manifest. As Gandhi wisely suggested, “Live simply so that others may simply live.”

A good rule of thumb, then, is this: moderation in all things, to include moderation. This way we are proactively injecting balance into the cosmos, while at the same time enjoying life. The key is to accept responsibility for the consequences of both our moderate and immoderate choices. Tricky, but that’s where humility comes into play.

4.) Humility:

“After the ecstasy, the laundry.” ~Jack Kornfield

Research suggests that a healthy dose of humility helps protect against extremism, polarization, and bias. When we are humble, we can admit that we are fallible, imperfect, and uncertain. It gives us the courage to admit when we are wrong.

Without humility we are more likely to fall victim to cognitive dissonance. Without humility we are blinded by faith and stuck in hand-me-down ideologies and outdated traditions. Without humility we are more likely to be clouded by pride. Without humility self-pity outmaneuvers self-empowerment and the Ego reigns supreme as it edges out Soul.

Humility brings us back down to earth. It unravels the roots, uncovers the bones, strikes at the core of the human condition. It reveals the wizard behind the curtain was always us. It forces our head over the edge of the abyss. It exposes our halos as mortal coils. It gets us out of our own way.

That Serbian Proverb said it best, “Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.”

5.) Liberty:

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” ~Frank Herbert

Freedom is not a given. It must be earned. It must be cultivated, practiced, and acted upon daily. The moment freedom is taken for granted is the moment it is lost.

Freedom is always a rebellion. What it rebels against is anything seeking to fetter the progressive and healthy evolution of the human spirit. In the crashing plane of an unfree world, a free human is someone who puts the oxygen mask on themselves first in order to be there for those who are incapable or who are ignorant of the fact that they are not free.

As Jean Piaget said, “We organize our worlds by first organizing ourselves.” And so self-organization (self-discipline) is the first step toward freedom. Liberty, then, is a culmination of earning freedom through self-discipline, and then holding the world accountable.

6.) Honor:

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” ~Abraham Lincoln

The core of honor is self-honesty. We cannot be honorable without self-honesty. Where honesty puts character into perspective, honor unifies character. True honor is being responsible with our power.

Foremost, honor is responsibility. If we are not responsible with our power, then we become a pawn to it. Being a pawn to power is dangerous because power causes us to believe we are always right. When we are responsible with our power, however, we are more likely to admit we could be wrong. And since the fallible and imperfect human condition tends to be wrong about a great many things, it behooves us all to take responsibility with our power so as not to become a pawn to it.

If we lord our power over others, we are being dishonorable. If we use our power to help others flourish, we are being honorable. If we hoard power at the expense of others, we are being dishonorable. If we expiate power to empower others, we are not only being honorable we are being prestigious.

7.) Wisdom:

“We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us.” ~Marcel Proust

Wisdom cannot be taught. Knowledge can be taught, skills can be taught, but not wisdom. We can discover wisdom, we can live it through experience, we can dip in and out of it in Flow States, we can do wonders with it with our creative powers thereafter, but we cannot teach it.

Wisdom is likewise just as undefinable. It is mystical, numinous, and transcendent. It can even be foolish, eccentric, and outlandish. There’s a childlike element to it that humbles mastery, just as there’s a maturity to it that towers over naivete.

Most of all wisdom is a heightened state of clarity. It’s a crispness of elevated spirit. It’s a three-eyed owl on a high branch. It’s a profound sense of humor that’s undeterred by the knowledge, experience, and tribulations that birthed it. Most of all, Wisdom has the wherewithal to get out of its own way.

As Lao Tzu wisely stated, “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”

8.) Humor:

“The individual is more completely revealed in play than in any one other way, and play has a greater shaping power over the character and nature of man than has any one other activity.” ~Luther Gulick

Humor is the only virtue that is transcendent. It sees how character is just that: a character caught within a tragicomedy, strutting itself across an all-too-mortal stage. It sees the character’s feet of clay. But it also sees the character’s wings. It honors both through a laughter born out of levity.

Such levity creates a powerful gravity. The self becomes magnetic. When you are flexible in humor you attract the world to yourself. You’re able to have a soulful laugh at all the ego seriousness. Pettiness falls away from you like water off a duck’s back. You become transcendent, detached, unconquerable.

Having a good sense of humor is the crowning achievement of good character, and the soul is the crown. It’s the golden crown chakra of character, sparking in the eternal night, a beacon of hope in the dark, a beacon of darkness in the blinding light, a symbol of recycled mastery that honors the Great Mystery despite our all too mortal angst.

Thralldom and Its Uses

By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

Spring is always convulsive, with new things heaving into life. Under every dead leaf, something stirs and seeks light, the old must make way for the new, and to some degree the earth is not quite the same place as it was the last time it turned, though the scene looks superficially familiar. Winter’s torpor is, at least, a cold comfort, but springtime’s warmth and movement rattle the nerves. Things unseen shift ominously beneath us. Everything is pending and tending, and nothing is resolved.

Having wrecked its latest business model —hypertrophic financial fakery — Western Civ stumbles into the blinding new reality that it takes real stuff to run an economy, and that money itself is not an adequate replacement for the stuff. The trillions supposedly vested, for instance, in stock market valuations mostly represent mere wishes and promises, and for what? Why, for more money — which responds by losing value, so that we’re racing ever faster toward a receding horizon.

The net result: a world with less available stuff and plenty of money that’s increasingly worthless in pursuit of stuff. It isn’t long before people recognize the disutility of both conditions. The idea that we can fix this problem with central bank digital money is hilarious. When faced with less available stuff, resorting to “money” ever more abstracted from any relation to stuff only puts you in thrall to more empty wishes and promises when this is exactly the moment to be less in thrall and more in touch.

America has had enough of being in thrall, especially to figures and forces dedicated to our destruction. This spring is the beginning of a national life with less stuff, including, looks like, stuff to eat. That will sure enough put folks in touch with something real, and then they will naturally have to do something about it. Centralized control of the population via trackable digital money is the last thing that will avail in the face of hunger and desperation. In fact, that is just another set of empty wishes and promises.

The reality is that centralized government, such as the one in Washington DC, is less and less in control of anything — except the manufactured pretense that it can fix the problems of less stuff and decaying money. The federal government is increasingly impotent, unable to discharge its basic obligations to preserve public order and safety. Its previous attempt to fix something was the response to Covid-19, which has culminated in the fiasco of the mRNA vaccines, now pending and tending toward an astounding wave of early deaths among those in thrall to the transparently dishonest promises of officialdom (“safe and effective”).

That’s the trouble with thrall. It narrows the field-of-vision so badly, you can’t see what’s coming at you indirectly, like: hardship and death. The country has been in serious trouble for more than a decade. Cavalcades of bad choices — and then lying to ourselves about these bad choices — has shoved us well over the edge of our cherished expectations. One way out, then, is to simply refuse to remain in thrall to officialdom and the manufactured bullshit that is its only product.

We are lately in thrall to the melodrama in Ukraine, largely engineered by figures and forces in our own government and for their own ends, which look suspiciously at odds with the nation’s actual interests (the nation being us, its people). Perhaps this illustrates the widening gulf between the slouching beast government has become and the people trying to operate their lives and destinies under it. No food for you, no fertilizers for future food for you, no spare parts for you, no free speech for you, no social or economic role for you, no health for you, and (watch it, now!) soon no life for you.

Collectively going crazy has been a luxury we can’t afford anymore. You fell for RussiaGate and it kept you in thrall for years. You fell for the Adam Schiff orchestrated Ukraine phone call impeachment gambit. You fell for the Covid scare and the dangerously defective vaccines forced on you. You fell for the fraud-drenched election of the empty vessel known as “Joe Biden.” Don’t fall for the invitation to World War Three.

Russia means business in its historic sphere of influence. It’s none of our business, and we’re only making it worse for the Ukrainian people by pretending it’s our business with the false promise of our support. The only thing that matters to us about Ukraine just now is that we’re standing in the way of useful negotiations to end the conflict there and egging on various other countries in Europe to aggravate the situation.

It’s been a fine distraction from everything else that is slipping away in our own country, including the loss of liberty, the right to a livelihood, the need for legitimate meaning, the value of our money, our respect for the law, the ability to speak our minds, and our duty and obligations to each other. Our government is not interested in supporting any of that, and we might doubt that it even could anymore if it wanted to. It only wants to keep you in a state of abject thrall while it fritters away our posterity.

COVID-19 Does Not Exist: The Global Elite’s Campaign of Terror Against Humanity

By Robert J. Burrowes

There is no COVID-19 virus. It does not exist. If you ask any doctor or scientist in the world to show you a scientifically-verified proof that it does exist, they will not be able to show you one.

Given that it has not been scientifically established that the COVID-19 virus exists, it is therefore clear that everything being done supposedly in the effort to tackle the ‘virus’ is being done for another purpose and COVID-19 is being used to conceal this fact.

However, with the elite-driven narrative being endlessly promoted by the World Health Organisation, governments, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, along with the corporate media, the truth is being obliterated.

And the reason for this is obvious: Any serious consideration of the underlying evidence, as I have documented previously, clearly indicates that the global elite is conducting a coup against humanity and using the fear it generates around COVID-19 to distract people from paying attention to what is happening in the background. For this reason, the coup continues to gain pace with only an insignificant number of people yet aware of the coup and its ongoing and increasingly devastating impacts.

‘How is the elite doing this?’ you might ask. Far too easily, unfortunately.

In essence, key individuals in the World Health Organisation (WHO), governments, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the corporate media are lying to you about this. They are lying to you, consciously or unconsciously, for essentially one of three reasons (essentially determined by where the individual fits in relation to the elite’s ongoing execution of its coup):

1. they are lying as an outcome of their complicity in the coup (given the perceived benefits to them personally, at least in the short term),

2. they are lying as an outcome of their ignorance (by not investigating and considering the evidence for themself and submissively accepting the elite narrative), or

3. they are lying as an outcome of their fear (of the adverse personal repercussions they would expect for resisting the elite narrative that there is indeed a virus).

And, so far, the elite is successfully executing its coup because the many voices contradicting its narrative – such as those individual doctors powerful enough to present the truth about the so-called ‘virus’ – are being denied a forum in any elite-controlled outlet such as the corporate media or they are being censored (including removed from accessible sites on the internet).

If what I have written above sounds incredible given the worldwide response supposedly to tackle the ‘virus’, the evidence presented below, together with the references to further documentation, will give you plenty to consider (provided your own fear will allow you to do so).

But before presenting this evidence, it is worth being aware of some of the existing adverse impacts of the coup:

1. The sudden destruction of the global economy has impoverished tens of millions of people in industrialized societies through unemployment, making them even more vulnerable to homelessness and other misery, as well as precipitating the death of millions of people projected to die of starvation in Africa, Asia and elsewhere because of the disruption of global food production and supply. See ‘WFP chief warns of “hunger pandemic” as Global Food Crises Report launched’ and ‘COVID-19 could kill more people through hunger than the disease itself, warns Oxfam’.

2. There has been a dramatic increase in violence against children and women all over the world and particularly in some contexts with a recent United Nations Population Fund report highlighting that an ‘additional 5.6 million child marriages can be expected because of the coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in a short-term increase in poverty and the shutdown of schools’. In addition, the ‘current pandemic is also expected to have a massive impact on the projected growth of harmful practices on women’s bodies’ including female genital mutilation (FGM). See ‘Child Marriage, FGM and Harmful Practices on Women’s Bodies to Increase Because of COVID-19’.

3. The lockdowns have imprisoned people in their homes (with its seriously adverse psychological, social and physical repercussions) and laws have been introduced regarding ‘social distancing’ and other measures (including mask-wearing which I will discuss below) that have eviscerated rights and freedoms it took centuries to win. For the details, see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’.

In response to growing concerns on a number of points, 600 doctors signed a letter to US President Donald Trump to end the ‘lockdown’ – see ‘“Mass casualty incident”: 600 doctors sign letter to Trump calling for end to lockdowns over health concerns’ – which has since been signed by thousands. See ‘Literally Thousands of Doctors and Scientists Have Come Out Against Fauci’s Lockdowns Including a Nobel Prize-Winning Biophysicist. The Media Just Doesn’t Want You to Know’.

4. Despite the ‘diagnostic’ tests for COVID-19 being ‘scientifically meaningless’ – see COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless’ – (how can they not be when there is no virus?) compulsory vaccination (again, against a non-existent virus) is being threatened – see 120 Covid-19 Vaccine Projects are Underway – in direct violation of Article 6 of the ‘Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights’ despite the extensively documented record of vaccines causing devastating harms including massive lethality. For a taste of the vast literature on this point, see ‘Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination’.

As Dr Stefan Lanka has explained about vaccines generally:

Only ignorant people who blindly trust in the state authorities who are ‘testing’ and approving the vaccines can regard vaccination as a ‘small harmless prick’. The verifiable facts demonstrate the danger and negligence of these scientists and politicians, who claim that vaccines are safe, have little or no side-effects and would protect from a disease. None of these claims is true and scientific. See ‘The Misconception Called “Virus”: Measles as an example’.

Moreover, this vaccination will be used to dramatically expand surveillance both via biometric ID and ‘immunity passes’. See ‘ID2020 and partners launch program to provide digital ID with vaccines’ and ‘Mass-Tracking COVI-PASS Immunity Passports Slated to Roll Out in 15 Countries’.

  1. Other measures to expand surveillance (apart from through vaccination) are being introduced. These include ‘contact tracing’ despite the fact that even ‘A WHO study on influenza pandemics in 2019 came to the conclusion that contact tracing is not useful from an epidemiological point of view and “is not recommended in any circumstances”.’ See ‘Facts about COVID-19’. But that is precisely the point: Contact tracing is not about epidemiological usefulness; it is about surveillance.
  2. Critically, several measures necessary to implement the so-called fourth industrial revolution, including the deployment of 5G, which will reduce human individuals to digitized identities without effective rights and freedoms, are being accelerated. See Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision.
  3. While much human activity has been brought to a standstill, this has not included any of the violence which has not only continued unchecked but has expanded. Apart from the dramatic increase in violence against children and women all over the world noted above, wars, threats of war, sanctions, the military violence of occupations in places such as Palestine, Tibet and West Papua, the structural violence that systematically exploits (that is, loots) countries in Africa, Asia and Central/South America, the ecological violence that destroys lands, oceans and atmosphere have all proceeded as usual with the caveat that there has been a reduction in the emissions of some industrial and other waste products although this is hugely problematic in one critical sense. See ‘Will COVID-19 Trigger Extinction of All Life on Earth?’
  4. And four distinct paths to human extinction – nuclear war, the climate catastrophe, the deployment of 5G and biodiversity collapse – have been accelerated, inadvertently or otherwise, by the coup. See ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup to Destroy Humanity that is also Fast-Tracking Four Paths to Human Extinction’.

COVID-19 Does Not Exist

Despite these and many other adverse impacts already happening in response to the COVID-19 crisis, as noted at the beginning, it has never been scientifically established that the COVID-19 virus actually exists. More fundamentally, according to Dr Stefan Lanka: ‘Contrary to what most people believe, there are no pathogenic viruses.… All claims about viruses as pathogens are wrong and are based on easily recognisable, understandable and verifiable misinterpretations…. A real and complete virus does not exist anywhere in the entire “scientific” literature.’ See ‘The Misconception Called “Virus”: Measles as an example’.

To reiterate in the words of two other authors: ‘there is no original scientific evidence that definitively demonstrates that any virus is the cause of any disease’. See What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong. But you can read more in ‘Dismantling the Virus Theory – The “measles virus” as an example’ and watch the video interview The Real Science of Germs: Do Viruses Cause Disease?

In addition, and specifically in relation to COVID-19, according to Dr Andrew Kaufman, ‘there is no evidence of anyone dying from any novel illness’. See ‘Unmasking the Lies Around COVID-19: Facts vs Fiction of the Coronavirus Pandemic’. So what has happened?

As Dr Kaufman explains: Early scientific papers on the subject suggested an association (not causation) between a novel coronavirus ‘with human to human transmission and severe human infection’ whereas a subsequent key ‘scientific’ paper that made a claim which helped drive the global response to COVID-19 ‘flat out lied’ about their results: ‘Following the first outbreaks of unexplained pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, a new coronavirus was identified as the causative agent in January 2020.’ See ‘Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19’. In fact, Dr Kaufman points out: ‘they cannot reference any science to back that up whatsoever’.

Moreover, subsequently to this paper, another article – see ‘I study viruses: How our team isolated the new coronavirus to fight the global pandemic’ – declared ‘The emergence of a new coronavirus in a market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 set in motion the pandemic we are now witnessing in 160 countries around the world’. But again, Dr Kaufman counters, ‘no evidence was provided at all’ to support this claim: ‘just flat out lies’. For the details and citation of all the scientific sources for this explanation of how the COVID-19 ‘rumour mill’ got started, see ‘The Rooster in the River of Rats’ or ‘Koch’s Postulates: Have They Been Proven for Viruses?’

Finally on this point, pathologist Dr Stoian Alexov, President of the Bulgarian Pathology Association, has stated that he and his colleagues across Europe:

have not found any evidence of any deaths from the novel coronavirus on that continent.

Dr. Stoian Alexov called the World Health Organization (WHO) a ‘criminal medical organization’ for creating worldwide fear and chaos without providing objectively verifiable proof of a pandemic.

See ‘“No one has died from the coronavirus”: Important revelations shared by Dr Stoian Alexov, President of the Bulgarian Pathology Association’.

Fortunately, as awareness of the fact that the COVID-19 virus does not exist gradually spreads, more people are challenging the official response to the engineered crisis on that basis. For example, one group of doctors has written to the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson challenging Public Health England to ‘show proof’ that a virus exists. See Challenge to Public Health England that they must show Proof that a Virus Exists which Causes COVID-19 or Declare there is No Virus and end the Vax and Trax Programmes.

But it is clear that the engineered crisis and the measures supposedly being taken to combat the non-existent ‘virus’ are being used to mask the truth, including the elite coup, and so actions aimed at elite agents, such as governments, must inevitably fail.

Unscientific Responses to the Non-existent Virus

The unscientific nature of the supposed threat posed by the ‘virus’ is, of course, matched by the unscientific response with countries imposing lockdowns suffering far worse outcomes – measured psychologically, socially, economically and otherwise – than countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Belarus and Sweden which did not follow this course. In any case, countries that did impose lockdowns could only use lies and statistical manipulation to make it appear that COVID-19 has been the cause of death among some of those who are recently deceased. For a taste of the extensive documentation, see ‘Facts about COVID-19: July 2020 Update’ and ‘COVID 19 Is A Statistical Nonsense’.

Given that the negative impacts of the lockdown are extensively documented, there have been many attempts (of many different kinds) occurring all over the world to end them already. See, for example, ‘“Mass casualty incident”: 600 doctors sign letter to Trump calling for end to lockdowns over health concerns’, ‘Vaccine Group Sues Trudeau Government for “Draconian and Unjustifiable” Response to COVID-19’ and ‘Popular Uprising against 2nd Covid Lockdown. Belgrade Liberated! The Govt Backs Down’.

But another way in which this unscientific response to the non-existent ‘virus’ is manifesting is immediately obvious if one examines the scientific evidence in relation to the effectiveness of masks in preventing cross infection. As it turns out, as explained in a long series of documented scientific studies, as distinct from the inaccurate claims promulgated by elite agents,

the research demonstrates that masks are at best ineffective, and at worst horribly counterproductive; that is, masks cannot achieve the purpose for which they are, supposedly, intended but they can achieve some very unhealthy outcomes.

But who among the general population is seeking out and considering this evidence (which the WHO, governments, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, the education systems and the corporate media are not going to present)?

For just a sample of the evidence about the ineffectiveness and dangers of wearing a mask, see the following:

‘Nevertheless, the question of the effectiveness of masks can be asked. In the case of influenza epidemics, the answer is already clear from a scientific point of view: masks in everyday life have no or very little effect. If used improperly, they can even increase the risk of infection.’ See ‘Facts about COVID-19: July 2020 Update’.

In a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the five co-authors stated ‘We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.’ See ‘Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era’.

In his recent article ‘Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy’ documenting the results of his research, physics professor Dr Denis G. Rancourt concludes:

No RCT [randomized controlled trial] study with verified outcome shows a benefit for HCW [health care workers] or community members in households to wearing a mask or respirator. There is no such study. There are no exceptions.

Likewise, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public.

Furthermore, if there were any benefit to wearing a mask, because of the blocking power against droplets and aerosol particles, then there should be more benefit from wearing a respirator (N95) compared to a surgical mask, yet several large meta-analyses, and all the RCT, prove that there is no such relative benefit.

Masks and respirators do not work.

By making mask-wearing recommendations and policies for the general public, or by expressly condoning the practice, governments have both ignored the scientific evidence and done the opposite of following the precautionary principle.

After reviewing more than 50 articles on masks in the medical literature and documenting her case, Dr Sherri Tenpenny concludes as follows:

There are NO randomized, controlled trials (RCT) with verified outcomes that show a benefit to healthcare workers or community members for wearing a mask or a respirator. There is no such definitive study. Likewise, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public. See ‘Coronavirus Pt 4: Masks Don’t Protect’ and, for your convenience, Tenpenny has cited the relevant passage from 35 of the articles she researched in this document: ‘Conclusion Regarding Masks: They Do Not Work’.

But if you want to read more, you can access each of the 50 articles Tenpenny cited or check out these as well: ‘Coronavirus: Face masks could increase risk of infection, medical chief warns’ and ‘Coronavirus Fact-Check #6: Does wearing a mask do anything?’

Or watch this video presentation: ‘Why Face Masks Don’t Work, According to Science’.

So if there is no virus and face masks do not work to prevent infection anyway, why are we being told to wear them and, increasingly, being terrorized into wearing them under threat of punishment if we do not? For just two of many examples, see ‘Soon, You Will Need to Wear a Mask to Enter Virtually Every Major Retail Store in America’ and ‘Total Masking: Victoria’s Coronavirus Response’.

Because the face masks, like other elements of the supposed strategy to tackle COVID-19, are simply being used to terrorize us into not resisting the ongoing elite coup. See ‘The Mask as a Symbol of Subjugation’, ‘The New (Pathologized) Totalitarianism’ and ‘The Hidden Agendas of Masks, Distancing, and Tracing’.

And it is largely working with most people projecting their fear onto the non-existent ‘virus’ and then ignorantly endeavouring to ‘protect’ themselves from it by wearing a mask (or going along with other measures supposedly intended to ‘prevent infection’).

So if you are wondering why virtually everyone is being caught up in this, there are very good psychological reasons. One of them is that virtually all humans are terrorized into obedience as children. Consequently, resisting orders from those considered to be ‘in authority’ is virtually unthinkable. I have explained this submissive obedience in the article ‘Contemplating Human Extinction Terrifies Most People: A Strategy for Survival’.

But there is another, more subtle, reason too.

COVID-19 and the Psychology of Projection

For the vast bulk of the human population, considering the fundamental evidence of what is taking place – and acknowledging that the global elite is conducting a coup against us with all that this entails – is truly terrifying. Moreover, recognizing that if we are to resist this coup, we will need to make a courageous and strategically-focused stand to defend ourselves is frightening for most people as well.

And the global elite knows this. It is for this reason that they are terrorizing us in the first place. The elite does not want people resisting the coup and it certainly does not want them resisting the coup effectively.

Hence, the global elite is exploiting our fear – by projecting it onto COVID-19 – so that we submissively go along with its coup. How is the elite doing this? Let me explain the psychology of projection, very simply.

If, when you are a child, you are scared of something but that ‘something’ is truly terrifying and inescapable – that is, you are denied any safe opportunity to feel your terror and to take action in response to it so that you can make yourself safe – your mind will precipitate one response and, if necessary, a second response to defend you in the short term.

The first response will be to significantly dampen (and possibly completely suppress) your awareness of just how terrifying the ‘something’ that is scaring you actually is so that you are not overwhelmed to such an extent that you become incapacitated. This response is intended to enable you to act powerfully to get yourself out of the terrifying situation and into a context in which you feel safe.

Ideally, following any such incident when you again feel safe, you need time to recover emotionally. Fundamentally, this means that you need time to focus on feeling the terror and other feelings that were raised during the incident so that these feelings are fully felt and expressed, rather than suppressed more deeply into your unconscious.

If, however, there is no opportunity for this emotional recovery, your mind will have no choice but to more deeply suppress your awareness of these feelings so that you can resume functioning more or less as previously. I say ‘more or less’ because you won’t be functioning precisely as previously because the unconscious terror will now be playing a part in your emotional life and, therefore, playing a part in shaping your behaviour.

However, your unconscious mind – which is enormously powerful – has not given up on enabling you to heal from the terrifying incident and, therefore, its second response is to later trick you into believing that something else, that is far less frightening, is what is really scaring you so that you can safely access and feel your terror in relation to the original incident. Your mind does this so that the terror that was initially suppressed, in order to allow you to devise and implement a strategy for immediate survival, can now be released.

By using these two responses, your mind enables you to survive in a terrifying environment so that, hopefully at some point soon, you can devise and implement a strategy to escape that environment. But also by allowing you to subsequently believe that something that is actually quite safe by comparison is what was really scaring you in the first place, it gives you the opportunity to feel your fear and act it out without (or with profoundly reduced) fear of the consequences.

In the short term, this pair of responses by your mind can enable you to survive something truly terrifying: it minimizes the risk that you will be immobilized (frozen) in terror and thus unable to survive a dangerous situation. In essence, in evolutionary terms, these responses have tremendous survival value in the short term.

If, however, you are not able to escape the truly terrifying situation in the short term and you remain trapped in the situation indefinitely, your unconscious mind will continue to both suppress awareness of the terror and ‘trick’ you into subsequently believing that it is something else that is frightening you.

Unfortunately, beyond the very short term, this mental trick is highly dysfunctional. It leads the individual to eventually ‘forget’ (deeply suppress their awareness of) the original and true source of what is terrifying them and to believe that the safe ‘target’ they unconsciously chose subsequently is actually the genuine threat.

In the jargon of psychology, this is called ‘projection’ or ‘transference’ because the victim is now blaming something other than the true cause of their terror.

This has profound societal consequences too for the simple reason that an elite can effectively nominate the ‘something’ onto which our terror is projected. And it can do this very easily by simply parading a target or ‘legitimized victim’ as terrifying which, in effect, gives ‘permission’ for us to feel scared of the target it has nominated. But in directing our fear in a certain direction, they are also invariably intent on manipulating our behaviour in response.

Historically, this has been demonstrated rather endlessly with the manipulation of our fear crucial to the achievement of certain elite ends, politically and otherwise. For example, racism (fear of other far less frightening Africans) exploded to justify the slave trade, Nazism exploited fears to mobilize Germans against far less frightening Jews (among others), Israeli leaders project the fear of Israelis to exploit far less frightening Palestinians and the entire US ‘war on terror’ has been conducted on the basis of projecting people’s unconscious terror at far less frightening Muslims. As I mentioned, however, the list of possible examples is virtually endless.

In each and every case, however, the terror exploited had its origin in something much earlier in the life of these individuals than the current circumstance exploited by elites. It had its origin during early childhood.

And this origin can be traced directly back to the parenting and teaching models virtually universally used by human beings. As I have explained many times previously, but to briefly reiterate here: virtually all human beings are terrified for the same reason: the child-raising process that sociologists like to label ‘socialization’ should be more accurately labeled ‘terrorization’. This is because from the moment of a child’s birth, parents, teachers, religious leaders and adults generally regard themselves as responsible for terrorizing the child into obedience of the commands, rules, conventions and laws that define the nature of permissible behaviour in their society.

But because evolutionary pressures do not predispose any individual to obey the will of another – for the simple reason that obedience has no evolutionary functionality – it takes enormous terrorization during childhood to ensure that the child surrenders their Self-will at the alter of obedience. To achieve this outcome and largely unknowingly, parents, teachers, religious leaders and other adults in the child’s life use a large range of behaviours from the three categories of violence that I have labeled ‘visible’ violence, ‘invisible’ violence and ‘utterly invisible’ violence. See Why Violence? and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice.

At its most obvious, all children are routinely threatened with violence and actually punished with violence (usually in each of its three forms: ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’) for ‘disobedience’ (that is, for following their own Self-will rather than obeying orders to submit). See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

And, as preposterous as I know this sounds to those reading it for the first time: The fundamental outcome of this process is that all children end up utterly but unconsciously terrified of their parents, teachers, religious figures and other significant adults in their life.

But never given adequate safe opportunities to feel this terror, each child ends up projecting it onto something or a series of targets including those ‘legitimized victims’ approved by an elite, local or otherwise.

Hence, in the current world context, this results in the bulk of the human population submitting to direction by the global elite to project their fear onto COVID-19 and then behave as ordered, rather than pay attention to the elite coup and resist it. For summaries and documentation of the evidence in relation to each of these points, see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup: Fighting for Our Humanity, Our Liberty and Our Future’ and ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup to Destroy Humanity that is also Fast-Tracking Four Paths to Human Extinction’.

The elite does this by triggering our unconscious fear through endless reporting of the ‘threat’ posed by COVID-19, issuing warnings, announcing deaths supposedly caused by the ‘virus’ (and concealing that the death rates are not even comparable to deaths caused by a serious influenza), and placing increasingly onerous limits on our rights and freedoms (through such measures as lockdowns and mask-wearing). And because virtually everyone has so much suppressed terror and needs outlets onto which this can be projected, the coup is being conducted virtually without resistance.

As I have explained before, just because the global elite is able to do this does not mean that it is sane. In fact, it is completely insane and that is precisely why it is conducting this coup but unable to see its catastrophic outcome for the elite as well. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

So what can we do?

Well, if we are to effectively resist the elite coup and fight for human survival, it would be useful to start by giving yourself time to focus on feeling your emotional responses – fear, anger, sadness, pain, dread…. – to whatever is generating an emotional reaction: COVID-19, the elite coup, the imminent threats of extinction or anything else. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

This is necessary so that you can engage meaningfully and strategically in the effort, whatever issue you choose to fight.

So once you have a clearer sense of your emotional reactions to this knowledge and have allowed yourself time to focus on feeling these feelings, you will be in a far more powerful position to consider your response to the situation. And, depending on your interests and circumstances, there is a range of possible responses that will each make an important difference.

Fundamentally, you might consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ which will include considering what an education for your children means to you, particularly if you want powerful individuals – not ones who are submissively obedient and project their terror – who can perceive reality and resist violence. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

You might consider supporting others to become more powerful. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

If you wish to strategically resist the elite coup against humanity, you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals for doing so, from here: Coup Strategic Aims.

Remaining pages on this website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, as well as articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, such as those to help you understand ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.

Given the complexity of the configuration of this conflict, however, which involves the need to fight simultaneously to retain our essential humanity, defeat the elite coup and avert near-term human extinction, it is important that our tactical choices are strategically-oriented (as are those listed at the Strategic Aims page nominated above). Hence, three further considerations assume importance.

First, choose/design tactics that have strategic impact, that is, they fundamentally and permanently alter, in our favor, the power relationship between the elite and us.

Second, when tactical choices are made, focus them on undermining the elite coup, not just features of it, such as ‘social distancing’ or the lockdowns. At its most basic, this can be achieved by using tactical choices that mobilize people to act initially, as is happening, but then inviting them to consider taking further, more focused, action as well (such as those nominated in the strategic goals referenced above). This is important because existing actions will have little impact on key underlying measures, such as those being taken by the elite to advance the fourth industrial revolution.

Third, choose/design tactics that also have strategic impact on the greatest threats to human survival, including the collapsing biodiversity on Earth, the threat of nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and the deployment of 5G. Given the incredibly short timeframe in which we are now working to avert human extinction, while people are mobilizing it is important to use this opportunity to give them the chance to perceive the ‘big picture’ of what is taking place – beyond lockdowns and other measures supposedly being used to tackle COVID-19 – and to act powerfully in response.

Fortunately, as more people become aware of the deeper strands of what is taking place, the energy to break the lockdowns, resist other limitations on our rights and freedoms (such as contact tracing, COVID-19 testing/temperature checks, mask-wearing and vaccinations) as well as resist the coup itself will gather pace. As I have previously outlined, using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural, religious or sporting event, a nonviolent action, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist.

If you wish to focus on powerfully resisting one of the primary threats to human existence – nuclear war, the deployment of 5G, the collapse of biodiversity and/or the climate catastrophe – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Campaign Strategic Aims.

You might also consider joining those who are powerful enough to recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance as essential elements of these strategies by participating in The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth. While you over-consume or are dependent on the elite for your survival, in any way, you are vulnerable.

In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of The Peoples Charter to Create a Nonviolent World.

Or, if you want something simpler, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

  1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
  2. I will not travel by plane
  3. I will not travel by car
  4. I will not eat meat and fish
  5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
  6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
  7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
  8. I will not buy rainforest timber
  9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
  10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
  11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
  12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
  13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
  14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Under cover of a ‘virus’ that does not exist, the global elite is social engineering a massive restructuring of world society to suit their own ends. If they achieve their aim, your existence as any sort of individual with meaningful rights and freedoms will have been terminated.

Apart from these ongoing disastrous outcomes, the elite coup is also unwittingly accelerating four paths to human extinction: nuclear war, the climate catastrophe, the deployment of 5G and biodiversity collapse.

To have any chance of defeating the elite coup and fighting effectively to avert our own extinction, we must fight strategically.

Fundamentally, this means recognizing that lobbying (that is, begging) elite agents, such as governments, simply reinforces the power of the elite to control us. It is only when we take action ourselves to both build our own power (which includes that of our children and those with whom we work) while campaigning strategically to undermine the power of the global elite itself that we take crucial steps to liberate ourselves from its violence, in all of the forms that this violence takes.

Given that the elite coup is jeopardizing our individuality, our liberty and our future, it is time for us to decide whether we are human beings or a planet of sheep.

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 here.

From Quarantine To Tyranny To Rebellion: Where Is The Line In The Sand?

By Brandon Smith

Source: Alt-Market.com

America is in a haze right now. It seems like half the country is in denial of the danger while the other half is awaking from apathy and frantically trying to prepare. This is creating a fog of confusion as one side screams “it’s nothing but the flu, stop buying up the grocery store…!”, and the other side just keeps stocking goods, though in an inexperienced way that prioritizes comfort over practicality.

The other day I went by the grocery store to grab a few peripheral items while they still exist on sale, and this was the first time since the Covid-19 situation began that people in my area actually seemed…different.   The usual carefree obliviousness was gone from their faces and they all had a deer-in-the-headlights look, their eyes wide as saucers as they nervously scrambled around the store.  None of them were absorbed into their cell phones.  All of them were alert as many people huddled over their cart, quickly snatching items from the shelves as if protecting themselves from potential thieves.  It seems that reality is finally hitting the masses square in the face like a sucker punch.

Suddenly, the prepper movement doesn’t look so “crazy” after all, and average people are now turning to prepper forums and websites to ask us for information on how to plan more effectively. Instead of stacking piles of toilet paper for psychological comfort, they are now buying food supplies.  The people who used to accuse us of being “chicken littles” and “doom mongers” are eerily silent. I almost miss them. At the very least, everyone is now concerned about the situation, if not for different reasons.

This is a far cry from the past two months, when governments around the world as well as the UN’s WHO continually downplayed the pandemic threat and offered the public nothing in terms of usable advice. The establishment consistently kept the public in the dark, not just on the virus and its capabilities but also on the vast weaknesses in the global economy. Abruptly in the past week they suggest that a threat is ahead and now millions of people are scrambling to prepare however they can.

As I have noted in previous articles, there is a reason why the establishment refused to inform the citizenry of the instabilities inherent in the pandemic scenario; the more unknowns there are for the public the more panic will set it, chaos ensues, and it is chaos that can be exploited to push forward numerous agendas. These agendas include global centralization as well as the erasure of constitutional liberties.

Now that a national collapse event is slowly being accepted by many as a legitimate possibility, there is a debate rising as to what measures the government should take, or should be allowed to take. Those of us in the prepper and liberty movements always knew this day was coming; a day when the public would start considering trading away an array of freedoms in exchange for promises of security.

Even now, government officials are still trying to tell people that this event will be “short lived”.

“Don’t worry”, they say, “It will only last a couple of weeks.” Oh, and “Don’t concern yourselves with food shortages, that’s not going to happen…” You can look at these lies in two different ways:

1) The government is trying to stave off a “panic” by slowly easing people into the reality that the system is breaking.

2) The government is trying to keep people passive to the danger so that when the system breaks completely they will be unprepared, desperate and easier to manipulate.

I believe the second option is the most likely given the evidence at hand, but in either case the government is crippling the public response time to the disaster. They did this for months and they are still trying to do it now.

So, my argument is, why should we suddenly take their advice or take orders from them when the manure hits the fan? They have FAILED in their responsibilities to inform and protect the citizenry, and they are about to violate their prime mandate, which is to protect the personal liberties that make our society worth living in. Without these freedoms, there is no point to keeping our system intact anyway.

The establishment and its defenders will claim that we all “have to make sacrifices” today in order to have freedoms tomorrow, but that’s not how the constitution was designed to work. Our rights are MORE important during times of distress and crisis, for it is in these times that we need to know what we are fighting for, and what we are struggling for. Survival is meaningless if we have to accept tyranny to achieve it.

Once governments see a chance to usurp freedoms from the people, they DO NOT tend to give those freedoms back later unless the people become a viable opponent that could bring the establishment down.

There are some who will say that a forced quarantine is necessary to protect the “greater good” of the greater number. It is true that the Covid-19 virus is a danger, and I think the people who claim it’s “no worse than the flu” are fighting a losing battle as the death rate is clearly much higher than the average flu virus. They will look extremely foolish a few months from now as the virus continues to cycle through the population and the dead continue to increase. That said, I think I understand why they cling to this crumbling argument.

They think that by arguing that the pandemic is “all hype” they can morally justify resistance to the inevitable totalitarian response from governments. They think it has to be one or the other:  Either the virus is hyped and resistance is acceptable, or the virus is real and resistance is unacceptable. I ask – Why can’t it be both? The virus is dangerous to many, but a totalitarian response is still unacceptable.

The virus is in fact more destructive than any flu in recent memory – It’s not a plague on the level of the Black Death, but if it continues to kill at a rate of 3% to 5% as it has been then this puts a large number of human beings at risk. It is not something to be taken lightly, and those people that are actively trying to discourage others from preparing for it are truly narcissistic in their ideology. If you don’t think it’s a threat, then don’t prepare, but don’t scream at others for taking precautions just because you desperately want to be right, and don’t come around demanding food and supplies from those same people when the ceiling comes crashing down on your head.

Also, understand that Covid-19 is only part of the problem. The bigger crisis is in the economy itself; a collapse has been built into the system for years now, and the virus has little to do with it.  Leftist kids are going around calling this pandemic the “boomer remover”, almost cheering the assumption that mostly older and conservative Americans will die from this.  I have to break it to them that during the economic collapse that is inevitably coming they will have to wipe the snot from their noses and put on their big-boy diapers otherwise they aren’t going to survive either; most of them have no discernible skills and no preparations to speak of.  They are essentially useless.

If Covid-19 is a “boomer remover”, then the economic crisis is a “snowflake bake”, and they are about to get roasted.

As I have noted time and time again over the past few years, the Everything Bubble only needed one major trigger event to fully implode, but the international banks and central banks created that precarious bubble in the first place, and they set up all the conditions which made it so dangerous. The virus is not the cause of the crash, it is just very good cover for the banks who are the real perpetrators.

Ignore the virus if you want, but the economic collapse is undeniable. Accept that the national and global emergency is real (even if it has been financially engineered), and let’s move on to a more meaningful debate: Should governments be allowed to implement martial law measures in response?

In my view there is no excuse for tyranny, even during a pandemic event. The majority of the public is more than capable of voluntary quarantine without government enforcement. Add government intervention into the mix and it will only make people want to do the opposite.  And beyond that, Covid-19 has such a long incubation period that ultimately most people will probably contract it anyway. Total containment is not achievable (as we have just seen in South Korea). Quarantines might slow the spread, which is good, but do not expect to avoid this virus indefinitely. Why sacrifice your freedoms for safety that is an illusion?

Then there is the argument of “herd immunity”, which is utter nonsense and always has been. Either a person or group is immune, or they are not, and people who are not immune do not put immune people at risk. Period. The claim that the virus might “mutate” within non-vaccinated or non-immune people and put vaccinated people at risk is a propaganda argument that ignores science. Generally, when a virus does mutate, it mutates into a less deadly or infectious strain, not a more deadly strain. Viruses are programmed to survive, too. If they evolved to kill ALL potential hosts then that would be counter to their survival imperative, which is why they usually evolve in the other direction.

In terms of Covid-19, there is no “herd immunity” by the establishment definition anyway, because it is a brand new virus. There is no vaccine and the vast majority of people have no antibodies. No one can make the argument that people need to be forcefully locked down in order to maintain a herd immunity that doesn’t exist.

Finally, there is a question of agenda and motive behind the rising call for martial law-like measures over the pandemic. For example, Champaign, Illinois mayor Deborah Frank Feinen has given herself executive powers in response to the coronavirus infection that are outright dictatorial and Soviet in their violations. Among other things, she demands the power to enforce curfews, ban public gatherings, ban alcohol, ban or confiscate firearms, as well as confiscate supplies from any citizen if those supplies are “needed for emergency response”.

Is this really about protecting the public? How does it protect the public to confiscate their only means of defense, or confiscate their food and supplies? This type of thing is usually done in communist countries, and it is done to protect government power, not protect the people.

Understand also that the Champaign mayor is not the only official calling for these types of actions. From New York to LA and beyond, those of us who are paying attention have noticed a swift and quiet implementation of orders that are whittling down American freedoms. Do not expect Donald Trump to operate differently, either. Expect him to initiate martial law measures (though he may not call it “martial law”) in the next few months. Expect him to activate Executive Order 13603, which was created by Barack Obama in 2012 and allows the federal government to appropriate everything from land to food to firearms in the event of a national emergency. This is going to happen. Count on it.

The pandemic is not an excuse for tyranny, and I for one will not comply. I and many I know will self quarantine for a time with the expectation that we will eventually contract the virus, and hopefully our immune systems are strong enough to fight it. In the meantime, I will not be allowing any government officials to confiscate my supplies or my firearms “for my own safety” or “for the greater good”.

I will not be cooperating with census takers asking questions about how much supplies I have stocked and whether or not I am ill.  I will not sit idle while checkpoints are set up in my county to enforce travel restrictions or demand people test for symptoms. I will not be signing up for government rations in exchange for my biometric data. I will not be visiting the local FEMA center for government aid. And, I will fight anyone that tries to assert martial law tactics in my area.

A message to the government: I know you won’t, but I suggest you leave people alone and let them self isolate in peace. Your brand of “help” is not the kind of help we need. You and the financial elites that reside over you created this mess, and we do not trust you to clean it up. At bottom, this disaster should result in your removal from power. You should be held accountable and replaced.

The system itself needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and principles of liberty need to return to the forefront of our society. Centralization and globalization have caused untold grief and terror to humanity; this collapse only reinforces the argument that we need to try something different. They will say that the world was “not centralized enough” and that a more global (totalitarian) framework is the solution. But, of course, who really benefits from that in the end? The common man, or the elites?

They can offer any rationalization they want in the name of public safety, but we know what the real play is here. If the line is crossed into martial law, I plan to fight. Not just for me, but for the next generation. Because if I do not, those children may grow up in the world never knowing what freedom truly is. There are fates worse than death, and a life of tyranny and slavery is one of them.

Suddenly West is Failing to Overthrow “Regimes”

By Andre Vltchek

Source: New Eastern Outlook

It used to be done regularly and it worked: The West identified a country as its enemy, unleashed its professional propaganda against it, then administered a series of sanctions, starving and murdering children, the elderly and other vulnerable groups. If the country did not collapse within months or just couple of years, the bombing would begin. And the nation, totally shaken, in pain, and in disarray, would collapse like a house of cards, once the first NATO boots hit its ground.

Such scenarios were re-enacted, again and again, from Yugoslavia to Iraq.

But suddenly, something significant has happened. This horrific lawlessness, this chaos stopped; was deterred.

The West keeps using the same tactics, it tries to terrorize independent-minded countries, to frighten people into submission, to overthrow what it defines as ‘regimes’, but its power, its monstrously destructive power, has all of a sudden become ineffective.

It hits, and the attacked nation shakes, screams, sheds blood, but keeps standing, keeps proudly erect.

What we are experiencing is a great moment in human history. Imperialism has not yet been defeated, but it is losing its global grip on power.

Now we have to clearly understand ‘Why?’, so we can continue our struggle, with even greater determination, with even greater effectiveness.

First of all, by now we know that the West cannot fight. It can spend trillions on ‘defense’, it can build nuclear bombs, ‘smart missiles’ and strategic warplanes. But it is too cowardly, too spoiled to risk the lives of its soldiers. It either kills remotely, or by using regional mercenaries. Whenever it becomes clear that the presence of its troops would be required, it backs up.

Secondly, it, the West, is totally horrified of the fact that there are now two super-powerful countries – China and Russia – which are unwilling to abandon their allies. Washington and London do all they can to smear Russia and to intimidate China. Russia is being provoked continuously: by propaganda, by military bases, sanctions and by new and newer bizarre mass media inventions that depict it as the villain in all imaginable circumstances. China has been provoked practically and insanely, ‘on all fronts’ – from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and the so-called ‘Uyghur Issue’, to trade.

Any strategy that could weaken these two countries, is applied. Yet, Russia and China do not crumble. They do not surrender. And they do not abandon their friends. Instead, they are building great railroads in Africa and Asia, they educate people from almost all poor and desperate countries, and stand by those who are being terrorized by both North America and Europe.

Thirdly, all the countries in the world are now clearly aware of what would happen to them, if they give up and get ‘liberated’ by the Western empire. Iraq, Honduras, Indonesia, Libya and Afghanistan, are the ‘best’ examples. Submitting themselves to the West, countries can only expect misery, absolute collapse and the ruthless extraction of their resources. The poorest country in Asia – Afghanistan – has totally collapsed under NATO occupation.

The suffering and pain of the Afghan and Iraqi people is very well known to the citizens of Iran and Venezuela. They are not giving up, because no matter how tough their life is under sanctions and the West-administered terror, they are well-aware of the fact that things could get worse, much worse, if their countries were to be occupied and governed by the Washington and London-injected maniacs.

And everyone knows the fate of the people living in Palestine or Golan Heights, places which have been overrun by the closest ally of the West in the Middle East, Israel.

Of course, there are other reasons why the West cannot get any of its adversaries to kneel.

One is – that the toughest ones are left. Russia, Cuba, China, North Korea (DPRK), Iran, Syria and Venezuela are not going to run away from the battlefield. These are the most determined nations on earth. These are the countries that have already lost thousands, millions, even tens of millions of their people, in the fight against Western imperialism and colonialism.

If one is following the latest attacks of the West carefully, the scenario is pathetic, almost grotesque: Washington and often the EU, too, are trying hard; they are hitting, they are spending billions of dollars, using the local mercenaries (or call it ‘local opposition’), and then they quickly withdraw after wretched but anticipated defeat. So far, Venezuela has survived. Syria survived. Iran survived. China is fighting horrible Western-backed subversions, but it is proudly surviving. Russia is standing tall.

This is a tremendous moment in human history. For the first time, Western imperialism is being not only defeated, but fully unveiled and humiliated. Many are now laughing at it, openly.

But we should not celebrate, yet. We should understand what and why this is happening, and then continue fighting. There are many, many battles ahead of us. But we are on the right track.

Let them try. We know how to fight. We know how to prevail. We have already fought fascism in many of its forms. We know what freedom is. Their ‘freedom’ is not our freedom. Their ‘liberty’ is not our liberty. What they call ‘democracy’ is not how we want our people to rule and to be ruled. Let them go away; we, our people, do not want them!

America: The Country That Never Was!

By thnkfryrslf

Source: Axis of Logic

The ideal country. Democratic and Free. The greatest country in the world, because they’re exceptional.

Saves citizens of other countries from tyrannical governments by slaying the tyrants and bringing democracy and staying to make sure that democracy is implemented, no matter how long it takes. Always doing right by those citizens in need.

A beacon of liberty to the rest of the world. Saved the world by winning the 2nd world war. Its citizens always patriotically supporting the troops. The richest country on earth. All citizens are equal under the law. Economically, presents to its citizens every opportunity to succeed. A culture of endless opportunities.

Constantly reforming education for its people. Good God-fearing moral people, supported by a God-fearing, moral government. A benevolent people, whose benevolent government shows benevolence to the rest of the world. Respecting the freedom and sovereignty of all nations.

Generous loans given to poorer countries.

Good supportive and caring neighbour to its northern and southern neighbours.

Always warning its public and the rest of the world who the enemy of their stability and peace is and that this country of exceptional people will always defend them.

Admirer of those self-made creators of wealth. They are the true rugged individuals. Showing in Hollywood movies the heroism of their noble military. Accepting all races of people, it being one of their highest values.

An engaged citizenry always challenging its government to do better. Freedom of speech exercised by all, because they are a government of the people and by the people.

Citizens love of their country runs deep, shown by not having a need to travel much to other lesser countries. The MSM always helping the people to understand politics domestically and globally and how their government is constantly practicing democratic values at home and abroad.

The envy of the world for their wealth and freedom. A country who historically fought a civil war to abolish slavery and succeeded. A country that was essentially built by Europeans. A country whose heroic history is taught as an inspiration.

America, a brutal and savage killer, posing as a liberator and keeper of peace, is the country that does exist.

Live Free or Die: The Psychology of Rebellion & Dissent

By Gary ‘Z’ McGee

Source: Waking Times

“I rebel—therefore we exist.” ~Albert Camus, The Rebel

Dissent is a tricky subject. The need to rebel against atrocity is deeply ingrained in the human condition. Even if most of us don’t act on it, the impulse is still there, churning our guts with disgust, getting our hearts pumping, moving us to spit curse words in lathered fury and shout in angry defiance. The problem is that most of us don’t know what to do with this powerful and sometimes overwhelming energy.

Most of us were raised in violent societies that use violence to keep the culture churning in a diabolical conquer-control-consume-repeat cycle. So, most of us tend to use violence to channel our deep and powerful need for dissent, thus perpetuating more violence. When the culture is jamming violence down our throat as a solution to its problems, are we really that surprised when our acts of rebellion turn out to be violent? Something’s got to give if we want to break this cycle of violence deeply imbedded in our culture.

In his book, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, Albert Camus wrote about the “true rebel.”The true rebel is in revolt against oppression, violence, slavery and tyranny for the sake of others through constructive and life-affirming action. The true rebel protests out of love, so that others may be free. Intent is everything. True rebellion, Camus argues, is an act motivated but concerned with the common good rather than by self-interest. The rebel in revolt out of selfishness, greed, or need for power, eventually becomes a tyrant. The rebel in revolt for the sake of others, becomes a hero.

Whether you are alt-right or alt-left, republican’t or democan’t, voluntarist or anarchist, if you are seeking power over others for your own selfish and greedy ends, your revolution means fuck-all. You’re just another would-be-tyrant getting churned out of the meat-mill of violence begetting violence. It doesn’t matter how noble or important you think your cause is; if you need to use violence to persuade others to follow it, your cause is fundamentally flawed and immoral. Acting violently in a violent culture only perpetuates violence. Similarly, acting immorally in an immoral society just perpetuates immorality. Unhealthy acts beget unhealthy acts. Like Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Lest we all go blind, we must rebel so that others may freely exist. This requires our dissent to be based in freedom for everyone, even those we don’t agree with. A kind of metamorality arises from this kind of thinking, like Joshua Greene writes about in his book, Moral Tribes. But, and here’s the rub, any freedom which seeks to violate the nonaggression principle must not be tolerated. Violence is where the line must be drawn. As someone once said, “Your freedom to swing your fist ends an inch from my nose” (unknown). In such cases, self-defense is paramount. As Gandhi also advised, “When there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.”

A true rebel doesn’t seek out rebellion for the sake of rebellion, or just as an excuse to act out violently. No. A true rebel passionately seeks a healthy environment (physically, culturally, and psychologically) and they rebel against anything that stands in the way of that healthy environment. As Camus said, “Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.” And that’s what it comes down to: self-defense, self-preservation, and survival. Not just personal survival, but the survival of the species.

That’s where life-affirming action comes in. When our rebellion is life-affirming, freedom-affirming, and based on nonviolence, it is healthy (heroic). When our rebellion is life-denying, freedom-denying, and based on violence, it is unhealthy (tyrannical). The hero is free, and uses that freedom with the soul intent to free others. The tyrant (or would be tyrant) is also free, but uses that freedom with the soul intent to rule others. We escape tyranny when we seek to free others through our own freedom. Liberty coincides with heroism when we’re able to go from asking, ‘free from what?’ to asking, ‘free for what?’

At the end of the day, the history of our culture of violence is only fruitful through a vigilant rebellion against it. This means a vigilant rebellion against oppression, hate, violence, and slavery of all kinds. Those who dedicate themselves to this culture of violence dedicate themselves to nothing and, in turn, are nothing. But those who dedicate themselves to life, freedom, and health, despite the culture of violence, dedicate themselves to survival and reap from it the harvest that sows its seed in the progressive evolution of our species.

A species hellbent on violence against itself is unhealthy and eventually destroys itself. A species determined to be healthy only ever uses violence as a last resort in self-defense and for the preservation of the species itself. From the former, the defiant tyrant juts his ugly head, declaring himself free at the expense of the freedom of others. From the latter, the defiant hero rises up, denying the tyrant’s violent oppression, and affirming freedom through the freedom of us all. That’s what Camus meant when he wrote: “I rebel –therefore we exist.”

Kafka Warned Us

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Source: CounterPunch

Kafka’s The Trial can be read in retrospect as a prelude to the Twentieth/Twenty-First century. Although probably not written as prophecy, Kafka’s short unfinished book nevertheless provides a road map to the terrors of the current Surveillance State.

As readers of CounterPunch are all too familiar, modern man, as a single individual, is at the mercy of the modern state and those who, lurking in semi-secrecy, direct it.

Kafka’s The Trial superbly conveys the unease of our current existential situation.

Early one morning, The Trial’s main protagonist, Joseph K, awakes to find that, totally unexpectedly, he has been arrested. Throughout the book he endeavors to find the reason for his arrest without any definite success.

However, what he does discover is a vast semi-secret bureaucracy/organizaton whose inner workings and outward displays of power and decision making remain opaque at best.

Initally, Joseph K, believes that he lives in a “Rechtsstaat” (a state where the rule of law is respected) and thus where it is expected that all civilized norms and laws are upheld.

Yet, he soon comes to see that he has lived in a state of fundamental error and illusion about the true nature of his existence.

What appeared to him as a well ordered and just state is, all of a sudden, revealed to be a capricious omnipotent octopus capable of strangling (in this case literally) anyone deemed to be, for whatever reason, expendable.

All law is suspended or, at least, made a mockery of. All that remains are the inner, turgid demands of power.

Joseph K. is convinced of his innocence. But his conviction is no match for the monolithic power that stands against him. He is eventually crushed, if not by his enemy’s repetitive legal machinations, then by his fatalistic far-reaching administrative power.

In the end, the “Organization” which Joseph K has confronted is almighty and can be controlled by neither appeals to law, logic, or custom. In this, modern man is in a similar situation.

He stands, at any moment, beneath the mercy of a gigantic machinery that, if it wills, can almost casually set into motion his utter annihilation. The devastation and erasure of ones past, present, and future self is an ever-present possible function of the modern state. Advances in technology and organization make such a function all the more easier.

How to combat this greatest threat to humankind’s liberty will make the difference of whether or not future generations live in a world of securely grounded freedom or if they will succumb “like a dog” to the increasingly totalitarian powers of what we call today: the Surveillance State.