Tuesday, December 31, 2019

John Brennan has committed treason, says counter-terror expert

ORIGINAL LINK

A former FBI counter-terrorism agent contends John Brennan, the director of the CIA for Barack Obama, committed sedition and "I would argue treason."

The charges come from John Guandolo, the founder of Understanding the Threat, an organization that trains and consults with federal, state and local leaders and agencies "to defeat the jihadi threat."

In an interview with Jamie Glazov on the "Glazov Gang," Guandolo said, "I think if you're going to stand beside John Brennan like a number of people have and they've officially put their names on a list, your putting yourself in the enemy camp."

He continued: "John Brennan what he's guilty of is sedition, and I would argue treason. This isn't something that happened in the last two years. He's made an entire adult life time of this."

Guandolo noted that Brennan admitted voting for the Communist Party candidate in the 1976 election, Gus Hall.

"And then you look at the organizations he has supported," Guandolo said. "Numerous Muslim Brotherhood jihadi organizations in the U.S. that he's supported, and his behavior toward our system and toward the leadership, specifically the president of the United States."

Guandolo graduated in 1989 from the U.S. Naval Academy and took a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps. In 1996, he began working at the FBI's Washington headquarters.

He worked in the Counterterrorism Division, developing an expertise in the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic doctrine, the global Islamic Movement and terrorist organizations, including Hamas and al-Qaida.

He was declared an Islam subject matter expert in 2006, and he eventually created the FBI's Counterterrorism Training Program, focused on the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic doctrine.

Brennan, since leaving the CIA, has been a severe critic of President Trump. The New York Times reported U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating Brennan's role in the 2016 election, seeking his emails, call logs and other documents.

The federal prosecutor wants to find out what Brennan told other officials, including former FBI Director James B. Comey, about his and the CIA's views of the debunked Steele dossier's assertions about Russia and Trump associates.

The Times noted Trump has accused Brennan of being part of a "deep state" cabal that tried to sabotage his campaign.

Durham is also examining whether Brennan privately contradicted his public comments about the dossier and Russian interference, including in May 2017 testimony to Congress.

Sorry about the 'bad information'

Brennan, now a CNN commentator, has accused Trump of treason, alleging he was an agent of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

But he was forced to backtrack when special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that there was no collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign.

Brennan told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" at the time: "I don't know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was."

The Washington Post reported that in August 2016, Brennan requested a meeting with President Obama after compiling claims of Russian interference in the election.

That same month, Brennan briefed then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid about the Steele, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Reid then transmitted some of the information in a letter to the FBI.

Brennan already has been investigated for testifying falsely under oath before the House Intelligence Committee that the Steele dossier played no role in the intelligence community's much-touted conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Brennan further declared he did not know who commissioned the dossier, even though senior national security and counter-intelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year it was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Brennan has been accused of lying on other occasions.

After Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., accused the CIA of spying on members of the Senate by hacking into computers used by her intelligence committee’s staffers, Brennan said, "Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate."

However, a CIA inspector general's report found the CIA was indeed spying on the Senate, and Brennan was forced to privately apologize to intelligence committee members.

Brennan also claimed in a 2011 speech that there had not been "a single collateral death" from U.S. drone strikes because of their "exceptional proficiency [and] precision.'"

However, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that one U.S. drone strike alone had killed 42 Pakistanis, "most of them civilians."

Brennan is regarded as the architect of the now debunked Trump-Russia collusion claim. But he apparently doesn't understand the foundational premise of the American justice system, innocent until proven guilty.

In an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe," he said "people are innocent, you know, until alleged to be involved in some kind of criminal activity."

With sincere apologies in advance to all US liberals who are offended by criticisms of former CIA chiefs, @JohnBrennan's understanding of the presumption of innocence is completely warped, but in the most unsurprising way imaginable: pic.twitter.com/IsE8ulSJMo

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 6, 2019

Zerohedge featured journalist Glenn Greenwald's Twitter post on Brennan's statement.

Greenwald wrote, "With sincere apologies in advance to all U.S. liberals who are offended by criticisms of former CIA chiefs, @JohnBrennan's understanding of the presumption of innocence is completely warped, but in the most unsurprising way imaginable:"

Zerohedge explained: "The presumption of innocence, as a foundation of the U.S. judicial system, has seemingly been under attack since November 8th 2016. An allegation is made, media runs with the narrative, the seed of possibility of guilt is implanted in the minds of zombie Americans, and the accused is maligned forever – no court required. Simple. And now, none other than former CIA Director John Brennan clarifies exactly how the deep state sees 'due process'…"

wnd-donation-graphic-2-2019

The post John Brennan has committed treason, says counter-terror expert appeared first on WND.



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Microchip Implants, Mind Control, And Cybernetics



In 1948 Norbert Weiner published a book, Cybernetics, defined as a neurological communication and control theory already in use in small circles at that time.

ORIGINAL LINK

Note on a new book



After the holidays, I’ll be starting a new serial book in this space, replacing Untitledgate with The Great Russia Caper. I spent a good part of the last three years, and much of this past summer and fall, talking to people in and around the Russia investigation.

ORIGINAL LINK

Monday, December 30, 2019

The Criminalisation of Protest in America

ORIGINAL LINK
Global Research, December 29, 2019

The US today freely interferes in the governments of so many other nations, fueling unrest and financing violence, seeking to impose on these countries a peculiarly American form of “open government” which it can control, but has always severely restricted any such activity either suspected or real, on its own soil. We have already read about the Un-American Activities Act [1] and the extensive government policies to prohibit political activism or promote other forms of government or capitalism in those years, and I briefly mentioned the Sedition Act passed by President Woodrow Wilson‘s government in the early 1900s. [2]

This latter legislation was directed against all Americans and used to firmly silence criticism of government policies. Under this Act, the government engaged in countless illegal searches and seizures of property and imprisoned tens of thousands of US citizens simply for criticising Wilson’s desire for war. The authorities organised gangs to regularly intimidate and beat up citizens, unrelated to the propaganda war on the Germans. Wilson admitted openly that many of his laws and activities were unconstitutional, but often protected himself with claims of national security.

In 1940, under President Franklin Roosevelt, the US created a law known as the Smith Act [3] which made it a crime in the US to “knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the … desirability or propriety of overthrowing … any government in the United States”. And for the following decades the government prosecuted thousands of individuals who proposed alternatives to the US system of capitalism, or promoted any form of socialism or attempted to form another political party. The act was exclusively intended to suppress any and all forms of political dissent in the United States. Many people were imprisoned or disappeared simply for publishing or circulating pamphlets or articles that discussed alternative political or economic views.

The government created internment camps where anyone suspected of being a subversive agent could be imprisoned indefinitely without charge, disappearing into a secret prison system. US authorities still continue the process they began more than 60 years ago of using the IRS – the US Tax Department – as a weapon of intimidation against those who dare to challenge the political or capitalist systems. According to records, tens of thousands of individuals and groups, colleges, charities and even religious organisations have been mercilessly harassed by the IRS as punishment for political activism.

In 1950 The US passed the McCarran Internal Security Act that effectively prohibited even the discussion of other forms of government within the US. That law required that all persons objecting to the American multi-party political system were to be registered as subversive agents, a process that would automatically deny them most of their basic rights including the ability to travel freely and would place severe restrictions on the kinds of jobs they could hold. They were also subject to arbitrary deportation even though they were American citizens.

Failure to register as subversive agents would lead to a $10,000 fine and five years in jail for each day of non-compliance, all in a circumstance where the definition of such persons and their need to register were by no means clear. Anyone interested in political reform or an increase in social justice therefore faced a stark choice: either register as a subversive agent and enemy alien and face personal destruction, or avoid registration and face certain bankruptcy and life in prison. It was apparent this law was a forceful method of using fear to intimidate individuals from criticising the government since its application was entirely arbitrary and with no transparency whatever.[4]

The McCarran Act was a far-reaching piece of legislation that served to remove most of the civil liberties from a great many people on what was essentially an arbitrary basis, the set of laws that gave Senator McCarthy the freedom to introduce fascism on a grand scale, and worked in conjunction with the House Un-American Activities Committee. The Act’s stated purpose was to protect the US against subversive activities by requiring registration of hostile foreign propagandists and agents, but it did far more than this. It prevented people from becoming citizens, it could withdraw citizenship, deport individuals, prevent their employment, and much more. In all, it had far-reaching consequences for both civil liberties in the US – which it totally trashed – and as a template for its own resurrection in the 1980s and beyond. It targeted intellectuals, anyone who might have written criticism of the US government. One Dr. Morrison received an unfortunate summons to a Congressional Committee simply for writing a review of a book that described the human horrors of nuclear war. At the time, the US was desperately trying to produce an improved atomic bomb and widely used the powers of this Act to silence all public criticism of its plans by categorising objections as subversive and treasonous.

The Act prohibited the writing or circulation of, or any teaching of, opposition to the US form of government or the removal or replacement of the US governmental system. It was forbidden to be a member of any organisation that would “raise the presumption that such person was not attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States”. It was forbidden to advocate any economic or political doctrine foreign to the US. The Act stipulated that all persons arbitrarily defined by the FBI as ‘political activists’ would be confined to automatic forced detention on the spurious grounds they might conspire to commit sabotage or espionage.

It was forbidden for any employee of the US government or of any US corporation “to communicate in any manner or by any means, to any other person whom such officer or employee knows or has reason to believe to be an agent or representative of any foreign government”. No such “agent of a foreign government” was permitted to “seek, accept or hold” any employment in the US, nor to conceal the fact that he was such an agent. All US citizens were forbidden from funding, advising or assisting any such person or organisation, and it was forbidden by law to associate with those who were not “well disposed to the good order and happiness” of America.

This legislation and other similar Acts are still in force in the US today, raising yet again the vast discrepancy between what the Americans preach externally and what they do at home. Once again, the Americans pressure China vigorously to freely and without restriction permit unlimited seditious American propaganda into China, openly declaring their intention to overthrow China’s governmental system, yet deport or imprison for life those attempting such acts in their own country.

And once again we can ask why, if these “seditious foreign agents” must be registered and identified in the US, cannot be funded or even communicated with, cannot publish or distribute any material contradictory to the American government and capitalist system, it is okay for the Americans to do precisely these things in China. Why is it not equally appropriate for China to force all Americans and their agents to register as “seditious aliens”, forbid them to communicate with Chinese and forbid employment? And why isn’t it okay for China to just deport all those Americans who are not “well disposed to the good order and happiness of China”? We must remind ourselves yet one more time that democracy is a coin with only one side.

Today, the proliferation of ‘anti-terror’ legislation in the US essentially duplicates all this past legislation in its fascist glory, but updated to the present.

The Patriot Act made all Americans potential enemies of the state, and the National Defense Authorization Act gave the US military and espionage agencies the ability to ignore all considerations of law or civil rights. You have read of some of the problems in US agriculture and the problems with so-called “factory farms” where animals are raised in abhorrent conditions.

Today in the US, anyone investigating the toxic conditions and abuses on these farms risks being prosecuted under the same terrorism legislation, for causing “losses to American businesses” owned by the top 1%. One Ph.D candidate at MIT, whose name appeared on one of these prosecution lists, wrote,

“It is deeply sobering to see one’s name in an FBI file proposing terrorism charges. It is even more sobering to realize the supposedly terroristic activities in question are merely exposing the horrific cruelty of factory farms and educating the public about what goes on behind those closed doors”.

Simply, the puppet-masters who control the White House and also direct the large corporations are avoiding exposure and prosecution and silencing all political and anti-capitalist sentiment by directing the justice system to target civilian investigators and activists as terrorists.

The process now operating within the US is that every threat, real or imagined, to the established political-capitalist order will produce increased public repression. And it is not only US government agencies and police forces that are involved in this civil suffocation; the major American banks and the Foundations play an increasingly deep role in subverting even further the free expression of dissent in America. We have already seen that the banks that were the target of the Occupy Wall Street protests surreptitiously funded the group in order to manage its direction and ensure its demise. Foundations like Rockefeller and Carnegie have done the same, with the idea of financing and participating in various civil rights movements in order to better control them and prevent the movements from taking their natural course as popular expressions of public sentiment against an unfair and brutal system. They were co-opting the movements to suit the interests of the top 1%, to make the world “safe for capitalism”. Some states have introduced legislation to criminalise all investigations of corporate crimes, in transparent attempts to use frighteningly powerful and unlimited legislation to protect corporate profits. Even photographing some of these actions will be classified as terrorism and subject to the full arbitrary power of these laws. We have reached the point where a camera is now a terrorist weapon, the possession of which is punishable by life imprisonment in a black prison without any judicial process or recourse.

Congress recently passed a new law that effectively criminalises all public protests, and categorises civil society movements like Occupy Wall Street as “domestic terrorism”. The Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act give the military and espionage agencies unlimited powers. The law is deliberately vague, so that almost anything could be included within the criminal definition, and so broad that almost every American today could be labeled a suspected terrorist. The intent is to intimidate all citizens and stifle any public criticism of US government acts or policies. Any of the following actions may get a US citizen labeled as a suspected terrorist today:

(1) Speaking out against government policies,

(2) Protesting against anything,

(3) Questioning the government’s many wars,

(4) Asking questions about Wall Street Banks and the FED,

(5) Taking pictures or video, especially of police.

According to US Department of Defense training manuals, any public protest is considered “low-level terrorism” today, and all anti-war protesters are now classified as terrorists.

The US government is using the Patriot Act and various other bits of new legislation not only to outlaw most of the basic civil freedoms in the country, but these laws are so vague as to permit virtually any domestic atrocity against civilians.

Anyone today who speaks out against any US government policies can be arbitrarily classified as either a terrorist or an “unlawful enemy combatant” and imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial. Few people seem aware that the US media are compelled by law to report to the FBI/CIA all communication (letters to the Editor, etc.) that is critical of the US government.

Another fact not widely known is that thousands of Americans are imprisoned each year for a single Tweet, a single Facebook post or a single Text message. A simple post on social media or pressing “like” on Facebook, can be deemed “terroristic threatening” in the US, and result in a sentence of three to five years in prison.

Many government agencies, including the military, now actively monitor all US social media like Facebook and Twitter to identify those who criticise the US government, then seek them out and interrogate them. This has a particularly chilling effect on American so-called “free speech” when citizens know that espionage agencies are now monitoring every online post and comment. It is not widely known, but US authorities constantly monitor the social media, bulletin boards and other Internet sites for potential political dissent, and often exercise their authority to order people to disperse from “unlawful online assembly”, which definition is as arbitrary as the authorities wish to make it.

Moreover, leaked documents revealed that any students who could be identified as having been involved in protests, or posted public but ‘sensitive’ information, or involved in various political activisms, would forever be prohibited from employment with any part of the US government. One university student who had taken part in the Occupy Wall Street protests later said, “The system in place sublimely manipulates our social reality in ways obvious only when we realize that there is nothing between us and the police but fear”. She added that if the protestors had held out and actually tried to make changes in the system, her participation would exist in a permanent record and she would never be able to get a job. And in any case, she held out no hope that the citizens could ever really change anything.

The DHS hired defense contractor General Dynamics for a $12 million program to monitor the Internet for “reports that reflect adversely on DHS, especially those that have a negative spin on DHS activities”. These agencies are not monitoring so-called “terrorist” activity, but normal social activity and political commentary. In its defense, DHS claimed the released documents were “outdated” – though they were new – and that social media were monitored for “situational awareness of man-made threats” and not to police disparaging opinions about the federal government. According to their spokesman, the manual’s instruction that analysts should identify media reports that reflect adversely on DHS activities was not at all meant to silence criticism, but simply “to identify areas where DHS wasn’t doing a good job, and to help it improve”. I can scarcely imagine a greater lie than that one. [5] [6]

In yet another attempt to silence political dissension, New York State proposed new legislation that would outlaw anonymous speech on the Internet, on the foolish pretense of discouraging ‘cyber-bullying’. The legislation states that any online comment attracting an objection, mostly from the government, must be deleted immediately unless the website or social medium clearly displays the poster’s true identity, IP address and residential home address. This was not presented as a removal of a civil right but rather the granting of a new one – the government’s “right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting”, on the basis that a valuable resource like the Internet “ought to be used properly”. Of course, there are few people anywhere so reckless as to expose themselves to the entire Internet world in this fashion, especially when it would invite a knock on the door. Naturally, government officials, media owners and anyone in the top 1% can continue to publish op-ed pieces without a byline, maintaining their own privacy while the peasants cannot.

In their book Manufacturing Consent, and writing of the elite domination of the media, Herman and Chomsky noted that the marginalisation of dissidents results from filters so natural that the media can easily convince themselves they are being objective, but the constraints are so powerful and so fundamentally built into the system that alternative choices are scarcely imaginable.

Ben Bagdikian wrote that the acceptable range of discourse determines what topics can be discussed and to what degree, which will be pushed into the shadows and which uppermost in the public mind. He claimed it is the power to treat some subjects obscurely and others in depth where the media ownership most effectively influences the news – and also the content in the public mind. And, as Chomsky has often noted, it is the assumptions that are not articulated that affect the range of public discourse. And again, it is the political-capitalist narrative that is so closely protected from dissenting voices.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers  made these very accurate observations:

“Another tool is to create insecurity in the population so that people are unwilling to speak out and take risks for fear of losing their jobs and being unable to afford food, a home and health care. Changes in the work environment, such as the attack on unions and the war on whistleblowers, have led to greater job insecurity. Changes in college education also silence dissent, including the trend toward adjunct rather than tenured professors. Adjunct professors, now comprising 85 percent of faculty, are less willing to teach topics that are viewed as controversial. These, combined with massive student debt, are tools to silence the student population, once the center of transformative action.” (Truthout)

Notes

(1) HUAC – Definition, Hearings & Investigations; https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac
(4) McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950; https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1047/mccarran-act-of-1950
(5) Lawmaker Demands DHS Cease Monitoring of Blogs, Social Media; https://www.wired.com/2012/02/dhs-media-monitoring/
(6) Department Of Homeland Security Tells Congress Why It’s Monitoring Facebook, Twitter, blogs; https://www.fastcompany.com/1816814/department-homeland-security-tells-congress-why-its-monitoring-facebook-twitter-blogs

*

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Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Global Research, 2019


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The OPCW Whistleblower Scandal: A Newsweek Reporter Resigns, A Counter-Narrative Won’t Die

ORIGINAL LINK

It is perhaps the least reported media scandal about the least reported international controversy in recent times—the resignation of Tareq Haddad, a well-regarded journalist from Newsweek, a mainstay of the mainstream media. 

At issue was what he said …

The post The OPCW Whistleblower Scandal: A Newsweek Reporter Resigns, A Counter-Narrative Won’t Die appeared first on Global Research.



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Sunday, December 29, 2019

We ‘Gender-Critical’ Feminists Pay a Price for Speaking Out. But the Price of Silence is Higher

ORIGINAL LINK

Disagreement over sex and gender have cleaved the feminist community between those who believe that biological sex is immutable, and those who believe that transitioning sex to align body with brain is not only possible, but a legally binding marker of identity. Courts, social-services organizations and schools all have been pushed to adopt the most doctrinaire precepts of trans-rights advocacy. In some cases, the issue has divided “gender-critical” women’s-rights advocates from strident trans-rights advocates. It also has caused schisms within feminism; and even within families, with some parents split over the best course of action for their kids. While this drama unfolds publicly in legislatures, town councils and on social media, it also takes a personal toll on those who’ve gotten caught up in this unusually vicious front in the culture war.

This includes “Susan” (all names changed), a gender-critical feminist and mother who plans to attend a forthcoming talk on the subject at the Seattle Public Library. An email exchange between Susan and her brother “Craig” recently was shared by the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition (HATAC), a group of gender-critical women who span the political spectrum but are united by their concern over “gender identity ideology” (their term), its impact on children, and the danger it poses to women’s sex-based rights.

The exchange began when Susan reached out to her brother to let him know she would be in town for the upcoming talk, hosted by the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), a feminist organization. Scheduled for February 1, 2020, Fighting the New Misogyny: A Feminist Critique of Gender Identity will feature Quillette contributor Meghan Murphy, feminist organizer Saba Malik and WoLF board member Kara Dansky. Because the talk has been protested by Seattle-based pro-trans groups, and the library has been under pressure to disinvite WoLF, many HATAC-affiliated women across North America have planned to attend the event in a show of support.

Susan’s brother had previously, privately, expressed agreement with Susan in regard to her critique of gender ideology. As such, she asked him if he wanted to join her at the WoLF event: “I’m traveling to Seattle at the end of next month for this event and was wondering if you would like to literally brave the crowds and join me…? If you’re not interested in risking your life entering a space being protested by huge men in skirts wielding bats wrapped in barbed wire, I totally understand. But if you are feeling up for adventure, I’d love it if you would join me.”

Turns out, he was not up for this adventure:

I am about to sound like the biggest coward in the world. I can’t go to this with you. I don’t think I have the guts to run through the gauntlet. But more importantly, if my son [“Sam”] knew I was going to an event like that, he’d be appalled. Disgusted. And if he didn’t know, I’d be afraid he would find out. He would turn his back on me. He and I have had some difficult times about this stuff, but things are good now. I think he might have softened just a bit, but mostly we don’t discuss it. He knows I’m a good person, and I think he’s willing to just leave it at that. I am terrified of jeopardizing that. He’s not an ideologue, really. He’s just a typical teenager who lives in Seattle (and on the internet!), and that means he takes certain things as gospel. Believing (or just assuming or accepting) these things is part of what it means to be a ‘good person’ these days. Transwomen are women. Duh, of course they are. Anyone who challenges that, or even asks for nuance or tries to understand what it really means, is the enemy of goodness and truth. To question is to hate. At least once a week, I promise myself that I will stop reading radfem [i.e. gender-critical] blogs, etc. It’s too upsetting to me, seeing how insane the world has become. And seeing how misogyny has been so effectively repackaged as fairness. And seeing how impossible it has become to explain anything, to speak rationally. I know, I know. This is not a good look. I have the luxury of ignoring this stuff (if I can actually bring myself to look away). I think if I was a woman, I would be frozen in despair. Or burning in anger. Or both. So I have to beg off. And I have to make what might be an offensive request: When we see you, can we just avoid the topic altogether? If we talk about it—even if only you talk about it—I will somehow end up in the middle, forced to state my loyalties. I’m even afraid of your nephew knowing why you’re in Seattle. If he knows about the WoLF thing, I’m sure he ‘knows’ it’s ‘hateful.’ Like a true coward, I’m afraid of everything about this. It’s radioactive. I can’t be associated with it in any way. Is this disrespectful to you? Maybe, yeah. Is it disrespectful to my son? Yes, it might be. But I have visions of losing him, of being shut out forever, and I can’t have that. It might be ridiculous of me, but there it is.

Susan was aghast, understandably. She responded: “When Sam and the rest of his misogynist child army have me sent to the camps, I’ll need an editor for my prison diaries. Maybe you could do it anonymously.”

She also wrote about her daughter’s experience at a liberal-arts college, where, she claims, 11 of her female classmates have undergone drastic, irreversible body modification in service to the lie that this would serve to actually transform their sex. Susan did not hide the truth from her daughter, letting her know her own, gender-critical beliefs. While things were rocky, her daughter came around, apparently. Susan writes:

Seriously, if my son were supporting this, it would be just as devastating to me as if he had joined Operation Rescue [an anti-abortion organization] or a white nationalist group. I would feel like a complete failure as a parent for not instilling critical thinking skills and for raising a misogynist. Everyone likes to think they would have been brave in previous totalitarian times, that they wouldn’t have let their kids just join the state-sponsored youth movements of the day. But throughout history, the vast majority of people are cowards. Part of the evil of totalitarianism is that it makes us fear our children, our friends, our co-workers. Part of the evil of misogyny is that it makes nice liberal men think it’s ok for their kids to join anti-woman movements.

For years, women have been hearing the message that they should “lean in,” tell their truth, and speak up against threats to female personhood, from sexual harassment to the perceived wage gap. Social-justice types tell society to #BelieveAllWomen. Yet gender-critical feminists are supposed to keep quiet, acquiesce, give in to those who call them bigots, transphobes and “TERFs.” We’re supposed to believe that we’re the bad guys, and applaud the doctors performing invasive, sterilizing surgery on the healthy bodies of our daughters and sisters. We’re supposed to be “cool” with that, and to make room in our parades for hulking “women” who instruct us on how to be allies, who we should want to sleep with, and what we’re allowed to wear, lest we “exclude” them with, say, a pussy hat, or proclaiming ourselves same-sex-attracted lesbians.

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 19, 2019

Many women are starting to realize that silence is no longer an option, because this trend is not going away. JK Rowling, author of perhaps the most beloved children’s book series in history, made her views known on Twitter this month, following a particularly appalling case in which a lifelong feminist was legally sanctioned for stating her belief in the scientific principle of sexual dimorphism. Until this time, Rowling had been hesitant in speaking up for women’s right to private space and bodily autonomy, allowing publicists to walk back her words on these subjects. But she is no longer silent, nor hiding. Nor are her critics, such as model-turned-actress Jameela Jamil. Their Twitter fights have become public proxies for the smaller skirmishes playing out within private relationships.

*Unfollows JK Rowling* #translivesmatter #idontwanttostandanywherenearmaya

— Jameela Jamil 🌈 (@jameelajamil) December 19, 2019

And sometimes, the lines between private and public blur. A prominent writer privately confessed last week that she is terrified to speak up about the issue, because she believes it will cost her freelance assignments at progressive outlets. “It’s just insane,” she wrote in a private message. “I’m half tempted to just tweet out full support [for Rowling] on principle, but am totally aware that it’s simply not worth the backlash. I’m literally afraid to express an opinion held by like 95% of the population.”

I am one of those biologically sexed women who has spoken up, and I can attest that this journalist is right to express fear. Those who speak up are too often shouted down, finding themselves both shut out of the feminist circles they once called home and bullied by woke men online. When we publish, we are harassed, called names, get death threats. When we speak up at work, we are reprimanded under cover of “human rights.” Gender-critical feminists have found an ally in conservative women, but this alliance is turned back against us as an ideological weapon by our progressive erstwhile allies.

Conservative women, often derided by the left for their views on family, motherhood and religion, may seem like awkward allies for gender-critical, radical feminists. But there are a few key views that we have in common: women have the right to choose their own path in life, without interference; women and men are different on a biological, cellular level; and children need to be protected from exploitation. This is how we came to extend our “hands across the aisle.”

Opposition to radicalized gender ideology—the false view that stating pronouns remakes your sex—was not something I ever imagined would be my cause. As a former member of the New York City theater world, I wanted to stay isolated in my arts bubble, floating on clouds of audience adoration and the glamour of poetic self-expression. But I found that I could not shy away from it. I could not keep my mouth shut, even though, like Susan’s brother, I really wanted to. For a while, every time I published on trans ideology I felt nauseous, because I knew it was taking me that much further away from the community and artistic endeavors that I loved. But like Susan, and the other women in the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, I was unable to go on knowing that I had not stood up for women and children.

If you’re out protesting the WoLF talk in Seattle, know that we are at this event not to hurt anyone, but because we have a sense of compassion and responsibility. Our words may be difficult to hear. But words cause less damage than a surgeon’s knife or a life-long drug regime that ravages a healthy woman’s body under the false conceit that a real man will pop out the other side of the pill bottle or the needle end of a syringe. And if you’re on the fence, I say: Stand up, speak your mind, and stop being terrorized by compassionate-sounding nonsense that we all know to be lies—even if it means causing a fight.

Trans ideology is simply a new form of sexism disguised as liberation. It plays on traditional stereotypes about the roles of women, it claims that body transformation is the only way to be who you truly are, and it tells women to be compassionate to others at the expense of their own well-being. Women refused to stay silent before the monolithic oppression of the old misogyny, and we won’t stay silent now. It doesn’t matter if the calls to keep women in their place are coming from the right, as they traditionally were, or the left, where they’re coming from now: We’re going to speak against it, and we’re going to do it loud.

 

Libby Emmons is a New York-based freelance writer. She Tweets at @li88yinc.

Feature image: JK Rowling attending the World Premier of Harry Potter the Deathly Hallows part two on July, 7th, 2011 in London, England / Alamy

The post We ‘Gender-Critical’ Feminists Pay a Price for Speaking Out. But the Price of Silence is Higher appeared first on Quillette.



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What’s Your Social Credit Score?

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Truthstream Media’s Melissa Dykes reports on the imminent rollout of the Chinese government’s social credit system, in which a person’s reputation is scored on a scale of 350 to 950.

By 2020, 600 million CCTV cameras paired with Artificial Intelligence for facial recognition and gait recognition will be gawking at China’s 1.4 billion citizens. The integrated, data-vacuuming social credit score system will continuously monitor them for their obedience.

Each person will be tracked, rated and then rewarded or punished by the government with the help of its high-tech corporate partners. A massive, centralized database makes it possible for authorities and some private companies to identify nearly anyone by capturing their face.

A December 2019 law already requires all citizens to use facial recognition in order to sign up for Internet services or to get a new cell phone number and citizens are now banned from transferring their numbers to someone else. All the better to verify people online and assign them with their social credit score, which goes up and down throughout the day, based on digitally tracked- and traced behaviors that are analyzed by an AI.

It’s Big Data-meets-Big Brother, where every public interaction becomes a transaction, where points can be earned or lost. The goal is to nudge people towards good behavior and obedience to the Chinese Communist Party. The government says this system will “purify society”.

The backbone of the social credit system is a set of blacklists, reportedly more than a dozen of which exist at the national level. Punishable offenses include playing video games for too long or wasting money on frivolous purchases or posting unapproved thoughts on social media. People with higher scores will have access to nicer housing, improved healthcare, more travel options and better schools for their children. “Data is the new money.”

Similar systems are being rolled out across the world. As WIRED notes, most Americans have dozens of scores, many of them drawn from behavioral and demographic metrics similar to those used in China and most of them held by companies that give us no chance to opt out. In the US this past year, some insurance companies were approved to start evaluating customer social media feeds when setting their premium rates.

In 2012, Facebook patented a method of credit assessment that could consider the credit scores of people in someone’s Facebook network the patent described a tool that arrives at an average credit score for someone based on their Facebook friends and rejects a loan application if the average is below a certain minimum. Can you imagine a future where people are watching to see if their friends’ credit is dropping and then dropping their friends, if that would affect them?

In the past two years, we’ve seen Big Tech companies de-platforming, de-banking and de-personing people – myself included – using algorithms that are proprietary secrets, leaving de-platformees with zero recourse.

As Dykes says, “These high-tech tracking and tracing systems allow whoever’s in charge to define what ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ behavior is and then attempt to modify people, whether [it’s] the Chinese government or major Silicon Valley firms…

“What happens when the game becomes so enmeshed in real life that no one is allowed to stop playing; where everything a person does in modern society, in every interaction both online and off is tracked traced and then rewarded or punished – and who gets to make up the rules of the game that we should all be forced to play by?

“…Just because we have technology doesn’t mean a system like this will prevail; that the whole thing isn’t setting itself up for its own demise. The only way a system like this can work is if the majority continues to go along with what has been put in place by a tiny elite minority.

“History has repeatedly shown there’s no greater tool for liberation than a system of total oppression – and just because it comes now packaged with the slick veneer of machine intelligence and high-definition video doesn’t really change that.”

Alexandra Bruce

Contributed by Alexandra Bruce

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2020 Prognostication and the End of this Blog

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Below I enumerate the reasons we will be unable to effectuate meaningful political and social change in America and why I have decided this blog is pointless. 

1. The wars will continue. No political solution is possible. The people are now inured to war. It is not an issue for most Americans. The media does not report the cause and effect of war in a truthful manner. If the wars are to be fought by the invisible poor and the flag-draped coffins arriving at Dover airbase are not shown—to say nothing of videos and photos of uncounted innocents killed by the US government—then most people simply don’t care. They are not motivated to do much of anything about the situation. In this way, they are analogous to the citizens of Nazi Germany. 

2. Economic predation by the ruling elite, central banks, and the so-called “one percent” (actually more like 0.001 percent) will continue until the entire house of cards collapses. This will be blamed on whoever is president at the time. It may be Trump, or his successor, be he or she Democrat or Republican. It doesn’t really matter which individual gets the blame for the coming catastrophe that will result in billions of people living in poverty or near-poverty. Anyone who knows anything about how the economy really works under the “guidance” of the Federal Reserve and its cartel of international banksters understands that the president has very little influence over economic policy. The task of the president, backed up by a raft of bogus and misleading statistics issued by government agencies, is to tell lies (he may not know they are lies) and blue sky bullshit about jobs and inflation. 

3. Because the corporate media does not tell the truth about the economy, most people are woefully ignorant and unprepared for the eventuality of a “Greater Depression.” This will result in civil violence never before experienced in this country and the government will respond with authoritarian measures. 

4. Increasingly, we are denied to right to speak and organize politically. The state is now in the process of making sure its critics cannot be heard on social media and the internet. Narratives counter to official propaganda are now considered domestic terrorism by the FBI, the state’s political police force. Activists on the “far-right” are considered racist, xenophobic, misogynist—essentially “fascist,” although it is obvious many on the “far-left” and even “center-left” have zero idea what a real fascist is. The state in league with corporations—“public-private partnership”—are fascist in orientation. Mussolini, whom we may regard as the grand-daddy of fascism, defined his authoritarian doctrine as corporatism. For most Americans, fascists goose-step in old newsreels and shove Jews in crematoria ovens. They have no idea the credit card they use to buy their corporate latte every morning essentially renders them slaves to real fascists. 

5. Donald Trump will likely escape the fate of impeachment, primarily because he is not guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump should be impeached for telling lies to the American people and engaging in war crimes, not for the patently absurd, vile, and vicious fantasies put out since 2016 by butt-sore loser Democrats led by the psychopath Hillary Clinton. It now (late December 2019) appears Trump may actually be reelected. This will result in further political and social polarization and a marked increase in violence. Again, this will provide the state with an excuse to implement draconian measures, including the rendition of political activists within the United States. The state has prepared for this since the late 60s (Rex 84, Garden Plot, Ollie North’s plan to subvert the Constitution during a “national emergency,” all should serve as examples). 

6. The political strategy now used by the state—fomenting division along political, sexual, racial, and perceived class lines—will result in violence on an unprecedented scale. The so-called Left has demonstrated over the last few years that it is not adverse to openly advocating and using violence—from shooting Republicans at baseball practice to the brutality and thuggery of Antifa and other “anarchists” (they defy the definition)—as weapons to score political points. 

7. As noted above, the strategy by the state and the global elite is to create division and violence that will require a violent “solution.” The Pentagon has prepared for this for at least a decade and police departments around the nation are now paramilitary organizations—largely due to the effort of the federal government and the Pentagon—that daily reveal a proclivity for violence, including the murder of unarmed and non-threatening civilians. 

8. Add to this stew of social and political toxicity the probability of a regional war in the Middle East initiated by Israel and the US (and the scary prospect of a military confrontation with Russia, China, or both), and we have a situation where political repression in America will resemble that of the former East Germany and the Soviet Union. The state adores war—not only for the ability to centralize government and impose sacrifice on the people—but as a sufficient cover to eradicate all political opposition. 

9. I believe we have few if any options. As noted above, the American people, by and large, are sufficiently indoctrinated and unable to organize effective resistance. It is far too easy for the state to divert the masses into meaningless and dead-end political sideshows, most obviously the idiotic circus to impeach Trump with its collection of inanities, magician illusions, lies, breaking of the rule of law, and spreading of venomous (and diversionary) hysteria. 

10. I see little reason to continue posting this blog. I am, in essence, preaching to the choir, all 200 or so who daily visit this blog. Granted, many of my posts are reposted elsewhere, but the effect, educative or otherwise, is at best minimal. I see little reason to continue. I do fear many of us will be prosecuted—or at best have our internet resources curtailed—and this will be, as the endless wars, of only minimal passing concern to a majority of Americans. After all, the corporate media has maligned us as Nazis, white supremacists, and dangerous terroristic conspiracy theorists. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out where this will lead. 

Endnote: I advise the small number of you who have pledged money to this blog through a monthly donation to end payments to my account. I sincerely appreciate your support but, unfortunately, I can no longer continue posting to ADE.



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Saturday, December 28, 2019

Two Possibilities in Trump Wiretapping, and Neither Is Good



The report of the I.G.'s findings on the use of FISA in the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation is an outrage. As a 22 year FBI Agent, I have personally conducted multiple investigations using both Title III "wiretaps" and FISA authorized intercepts.

ORIGINAL LINK

Media’s Deafening Silence On Latest WikiLeaks Drops Is Its Own Scandal

ORIGINAL LINK

This is getting really, really, really weird.

WikiLeaks has published yet another set of leaked internal documents from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) adding even more material to the mountain of evidence that we’ve been lied to about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria last year which resulted in airstrikes upon that nation from the US, UK and France.

This new WikiLeaks drop includes an email from the OPCW Chief of Cabinet Sebastien Braha (who is reportedly so detested by organisation inspectors that they code named him “Voldemort”) throwing a fit over the Ian Henderson Engineering Assessment which found that the Douma incident was likely a staged event. Braha is seen ordering OPCW staff to “remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever” from the organisation’s secure registry.

Minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists specialized in chemical weapons: "the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure". https://t.co/j5Jgjiz8UY

 — @wikileaks

The drop also includes the minutes from an OPCW toxicology meeting with “three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist”, all four of whom are specialists in chemical weapons analysis.

“With respect to the consistency of the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure,” the document reads.

According to the leaked minutes from the toxicology meeting, the chief expert offered “the possibility of the event being a propaganda exercise” as one potential explanation for the Douma incident. The other OPCW experts agreed that the key “take-away message” from the meeting was “that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified”.

Like all the other many, many, many, many different leaks which have been hemorrhaging from the OPCW about the Douma incident, none of the important information contained in these publications was included in any of the OPCW’s public reports on the matter. According to the OPCW’s Final Report published in March 2019, the investigative team found “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

We now know that these “reasonable grounds” contain more holes than a spaghetti strainer executed by firing squad. This is extremely important information about an unsolved war crime which resulted in dozens of civilian deaths and led to an act of war which cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and had many far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

Yet the mass media, freakishly, has had absolutely nothing to say about this extremely newsworthy story.

As of this writing, a Google News search for this story brings up an article by RT, Al-Masdar News, and some entries by alternative outlets you’ve almost certainly never heard of like UrduPoint News and People’s Pundit Daily.

Make no mistake about it: this is insane. The fact that an extremely important news story of immense geopolitical consequence is not getting any mainstream news media coverage, at all, is absolutely stark raving insane.

Up until the OPCW leaks, WikiLeaks drops always made mainstream news headlines. Everyone remembers how the 2016 news cycle was largely dominated by leaked Democratic Party emails emerging from the outlet. Even the relatively minor recent ICE agents publication by WikiLeaks containing information that was already public garnered headlines from top US outlets like The Washington Post , Newsweek, and USA Today. Now, on this exponentially more important story, zero coverage.

The mass media’s stone-dead silence on the OPCW scandal is becoming its own scandal, of equal or perhaps even greater significance than the OPCW scandal itself. It opens up a whole litany of questions which have tremendous importance for every citizen of the western world; questions like, how are people supposed to participate in democracy if all the outlets they normally turn to to make informed voting decisions adamantly refuse to tell them about the existence of massive news stories like the OPCW scandal? How are people meant to address such conspiracies of silence when there is no mechanism in place to hold the entire mass media to account for its complicity in it? And by what mechanism are all these outlets unifying in that conspiracy of silence?

We can at least gain some insight into that last question with the internal Newsweek emails which were published by journalist Tareq Haddad two weeks ago. The emails feature multiple Newsweek editors telling Haddad that they would not publish a word about the OPCW leaks for two reasons: (1) because no other outlets were reporting on them, and (2) because the US government-funded narrative management firm Bellingcat had published a laughably bogus article explaining why the leaks weren’t newsworthy. Haddad has since resigned from Newsweek.

We may be certain that this story is being killed in news rooms all around the world in similar fashion, and possibly using those very same excuses. As long as no other “respectable” (i.e. establishment) outlets are covering this story, it can be treated as a non-story, using a deceitful US government-funded narrative management operation as justification as needed. If one journalist threw his life into chaos and uncertainty by resigning and blowing the whistle on this conspiracy of silence, we may be certain that the same is happening to countless others who don’t have to courage and/or ability to do the same.

Our fearless media watchdogs still maintaining complete blackout on @OPCW whistleblower leaks debunking WMD attack in Douma. The leaks show that Trump-like Dubya- used fake WMDs to bomb Arab country-then strong-armed @OPCW to cover up the lies. https://t.co/bdbzf6py8p

 — @MarkAmesExiled

Many alternative media commentators are highlighting this news media blackout on social media today.

“Our fearless media watchdogs still maintaining complete blackout on OPCW whistleblower leaks debunking WMD attack in Douma. The leaks show that Trump — like Dubya — used fake WMDs to bomb Arab country — then strong-armed OPCW to cover up the lies,” tweeted journalist Mark Ames.

“The US attacked Syria for a chemical attack by Assad last year. But official OPCW scientists who investigated the event didn’t find evidence the Syrian military used chemical weapons. The media has chosen to ignore this story and fire its own journalists who try to report on it,” tweeted author and analyst Max Abrahms.

“This is the FOURTH leak showing how the OPCW fabricated a report on a supposed Syrian ‘chemical’ attack,” tweeted journalist Ben Norton. “And mainstream Western corporate media outlets are still silent, showing how authoritarian these ‘democracies’ are and how tightly they control info.”

“Media silence on this story is its own scandal,” tweeted journalist Aaron Maté.

But this spin machine is twirling off its axis trying to normalize this silence.

Surprise, surprise, Wikileaks didn't leak the next email in this chain from the OPCW questioning why Ian Henderson was creating rogue reports. This email also quite clearly contradicts "Alex's" claim that Henderson was in the FFM.

 — @N_Waters89

Bellingcat narrative jockeys such as “senior investigator” Nick Waters are already scrambling to perception manage everyone into believing their own eyes are lying to them. Waters has a thread on Twitter that’s being shared around by all the usual Syria spinmeisters claiming, based on no evidence whatsoever, that WikiLeaks is selectively publishing the documents it has to create a false impression of events in the OPCW. Waters falsely claims that an email by Sebastien “Voldemort” Braha — the guy at the center of the scandal — proves that Ian Henderson was not a part of the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) in Douma, in contradiction to the claims made by the anonymous second OPCW whistleblower who goes by the pseudonym of “Alex”.

As Waters is one hundred percent aware, Henderson absolutely was part of the Douma Fact-Finding Mission, and one of the FFM members who actually went to Douma no less. I’ve put together a Twitter thread refuting Waters’ ridiculous claims which you can read by clicking here, but in short an arbitrary distinction seems to have been made between the FFM and the “FFM core team”, or what is labeled the “FFM Alpha team” in a newly leaked email trying to marginalize Henderson’s assessment. Henderson actually went to Douma as part of the FFM, unlike almost all members of the so-called “core team” who except for one paramedic operated solely in another nation (probably Turkey).

Of course, the distinction of whether Henderson was or was not “in the FFM” is also itself irrelevant and arbitrary, since we know for a fact that he is a longtime OPCW inspector who went to Douma and contributed an assessment which was hidden from the public by the OPCW.

So this narrative being spun by the US government-funded propagandists at Bellingcat is bogus from top to bottom, but what’s infuriating is that we already know who editors in news rooms are going to listen to.

We have this alternative media ecosystem that is driving a lot of disinformation. It is not understood by journalists or anyone really beyond a very small group of people who are really engaged with it," @EliotHiggins says https://t.co/RWi2Mqy8jV

 — @brianstelter

It’s absolutely amazing how tightly interlaced Bellingcat is with the upper echelons of mainstream news media and the public framing of what’s going on in Syria. Mere hours after the latest WikiLeaks drop, CNN pundit Brian Stelter shared an article about Bellingcat founder and former Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Eliot Higgins, who warns of the dangers posed by alternative media reporters who cover underreported stories like the OPCW scandal.

“We have this alternative media ecosystem that is driving a lot of disinformation. It is not understood by journalists or anyone really beyond a very small group of people who are really engaged with it,” reads the ironic Higgins quote in the excerpt shared by Stelter.

We’ve been seeing a mad rush from mass media pundits to give this US government-funded narrative management operation unearned and undeserved legitimacy, churning out tweets like Stelter’s and fawning puff pieces by The New York Times, The Guardian and The New Yorker. This unearned and undeserved legitimacy is then used by editors to justify looking to Bellingcat for instructions on how to think about important information on Syria rather than doing their own basic investigation and analysis. It’s a self-validating feedback loop which just so happens to work out very conveniently for the government which funds Bellingcat.

It remains unknown exactly what’s transpiring in news rooms around the world to maintain the conspiracy of silence on the OPCW scandal, but what is known is that by itself this scandalous silence is enough to fully discredit the mass media forever. WikiLeaks has exposed these outlets for the monolithic propaganda engine that they really are, and they did it just by publishing extremely newsworthy leak after extremely newsworthy leak.

In order to perception manage us any harder, these freaks are going to have to go around literally confiscating our ears and eyeballs.

_______________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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Friday, December 27, 2019

Washington Post called out for 'thuggery' against Durham

ORIGINAL LINK

Former Attorney General Eric Holder and former President Obama

The former president of Americans for Limited Government is calling out the Washington Post for its "thuggery" in a posting that suggests U.S. Attorney John Durham is risking his "reputation" by investigating the Obama administration's 'Russia collusion" scandal.

"The fact that the Washington Post would engage in this type of a slur is a story unto itself. This story had one goal, to raise the specter of retaliation against Mr. Durham if he went into areas the rotting establishment wants left alone. It was thuggery in the most fundamental form," Bill Wilson wrote in the Daily Torch, a publication of ALG.

The Post article suggested that there are "some" people who believe Durham's investigative work "could tarnish" his reputation.

"We've all heard the joke. A thuggish looking guy walks into a business he is trying to shakedown and says, 'Nice little store you have here. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.' Wink, wink. The message is crystal clear; do what the bully wants or else something really bad is going to happen," Wilson explained.

"This scene has now played out in real life. In a so-called 'news' article in the Washington Post recently, 'Experts fear Durham’s Reputation at Risk in FBI Probe,' the newsletter for the deep state openly threatened U.S. Attorney John Durham who is looking into abuses by intelligence agencies and the Justice Department in launching the bogus witch hunt against President Donald Trump under false allegations that he and his campaign were Russian agents."

The article opened with a description of Durham as the "go-to guy" for ferreting out corruption in law-enforcement and intelligence ranks.

Then immediately it alleged that there was a "debate" in Washington about whether he is "carrying out a conservative political errand."

The article quotes "officials" saying they were worried "Durham's probe was meant mainly to validate Trump and [Attorney General William] Barr's criticism of the Russia probe."

Quoted prominently is former attorney general Eric Holder who said he was troubled by the prosecutor's statements.

"Good reputations are hard-won in the legal profession, but they are fragile; anyone in Durham's shoes would do well to remember that, in dealing with this administration, many reputations have been irrevocably lost," Holder suggested.

Wilson charged that was essentially a threat.

"This is the same Eric Holder who was found to be in contempt of Congress. The same Eric Holder who let people die and then walked away in his failed guns to terrorist scam Fast and Furious. And, the same Eric Holder who twisted the law in outright contortions to defend the unconstitutional actions of the Obama regime," he said.

"The Post blatantly lays out the picture. Durham has been a respected, truthful and honorable authority. But now he is looking into actions and people that the established D.C. order wants to protect. The piece hauls out a few shills to mouth the warnings but the main actor is Holder.

Wilson continued, "Having Holder take an increasingly public profile on the issue of investigating the conspiracy and probable crimes is a big 'tell.' What is Holder and his crew afraid of? How far into the Obama White House did the illegal spying on the Trump campaign go? We do know that disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok wrote that the White House knew all about their efforts and was instructed to keep them informed. Who was that exactly?"

"The whole thing smells like a desperate effort to keep anyone from asking those questions because it may in fact lead to some very high places. Given that Holder has been Obama's attack dog you have to assume that is who Holder is seeking to defend."

Wilson suggested the article and its threats show "the near-panic levels of fear that the Deep State is experiencing. They are about to be fully exposed, their vile games and manipulations evident for all to see."

wnd-donation-graphic-2-2019

The post Washington Post called out for 'thuggery' against Durham appeared first on WND.



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Thursday, December 26, 2019

The Energy has Shifted



Several high consciousness people I’ve spoken to independently told me they felt a shift in energy. Something is going on. This feeling happened 2-3 weeks ago, and it wasn’t about politics or elections. The feeling is much bigger. There has been an energy shift.

ORIGINAL LINK

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Technocracy: evolution told as a fairy tale

ORIGINAL LINK

by Jon Rappoport

December 25, 2019

“Technocratic human beings are spiritually dead. They are capable of anything, no matter how heinous, because they do not reflect upon or question the ultimate goal.” —Chris Hedges

“River and ocean turbines for electricity; hydrogen power; urban farms; massive water desalination—these are just a few of the means for making an abundant non-technocratic future. By any rational standard, technocratic idiocy is already obsolete.” —The Underground, Jon Rappoport

—Thanks to Patrick Wood and his book, Technocracy Rising, for expanding my insight into these areas.

Consider the term “scientific humanism.” The Oxford Dictionary offers this definition: “A form of humanist theory and practice that is based on the principles and methods of science; specifically the doctrine that human beings should employ scientific methods in studying human life and behaviour, in order to direct the welfare and future of mankind in a rational and beneficial manner…Origin mid-19th century.”

That definition gives you a good general meaning for “technocracy.”

Understanding the mindset of technocrats is necessary; they believe that since they can plan the shape of society, they should plan the shape of society.

Politicians are outmoded along this new evolutionary path. They will fade into extinction. Instead, engineers will take their place.

Human beings (all eight billion) will be accounted for. They will receive energy quotas. Because a master map exists for the amount of global energy available at any moment, every human will be permitted to consume just so much energy during a defined time period.

This is the technocratic “big picture.”

Wherever you see the Surveillance State, you see technocracy. The claim that surveillance is being utilized to prevent terror attacks is a cover story. In fact, there can be no all-embracing technocracy without real-time tracking of every citizen’s energy consumption.

But technocracy goes much farther than this. Humans are viewed as mis-programmed biological machines in need of basic corrections. Their tendency to engage in conflict needs to be curbed. Whatever they do, say, or think that runs counter to the tight organizing of “peaceful and harmonious” society from above is, a priori, irrational and must be eradicated at the level of Mind.

The necessary reprogramming would be achieved through genetic, electronic, and chemical means. Though never admitting it publicly, dyed in the wool technocrats see no reason to maintain the human population at its current level. Elimination of large numbers of “biological machines” would make their job easier.

Heraldic fairy tales about “transhuman” transformation are used to put a wondrous face on technocracy. For example, we’re told that soon it will be possible to connect a human brain with a super-computer and download “spiritual wisdom, knowledge, and talents” directly to the human.

Technocratic premise: society itself is a game board, and someone has to be in charge; who better than engineers with an overall plan?

So-called “advances” in human life will begin by stating the basic “rights” people are entitled to. For example, “an optimum state of social existence.” What this really means is “pegs in holes.” People will be fitted into slots that yield up the “largest amount of possible collective happiness.”

It’s all about The Plan.

Freedom? Freedom to choose? Never heard of it.

Instead, what the individual is given from above is satisfactory to him because the individual has been engineered to believe it is.

Smart-grid, sustainable development, green economy, land use, community planning, climate change, education in values, and other campaigns are signals and steps toward the far shore of technocracy. They all point to putting “pegs in holes.” They all ultimately involve quotas for energy consumption.

They all involve the assumption that, since there is only so much to go around, a higher authority must decide who gets what. Food, water, shelter, jobs, luxuries, energy…

Clue: scientists and engineers can arbitrarily say what science is, and therefore they can say The Plan is “scientific.”

If you say, “Well, look, there are genuine ways to vastly increase the amount of available water and energy and clean food,” you would be running against the technocratic blueprint. Opting for abundance is not welcomed. Abundance cuts the chords of The Plan. Scarcity must rule and it must be promoted. The lack of all essentials must be cited as the reason for imposing technocratic answers. There is no way around it.


The irony is, when you talk to really hard-core environmentalists about the means for achieving abundance through alternative technologies, they balk and grow angry. They don’t want technological solutions—and yet, the powers behind them, where the big money is, are, in fact, all about technology—technology of a certain kind, which is based on planning out a society in which permanent and growing scarcity is MAINTAINED AND PROMOTED as the immutable reality.

It’s quite mad, quite insane. But when has that ever stopped the men who are quite sure they should sit on thrones?

Vast abundance is more than a vision. It is a reachable possibility. The history of actual science and technology confirms that both essential materials and available human innovation were always downplayed as shortages—until some individual came along and demonstrated that a new way of doing things would break through the shortage.

Corporations, governments, think-thanks, and universities try to limit, curb, and bury inventions that open up the future to abundance. Technocrats are in a race to “plan society” before those inventions leak out into the public and make them, the technocrats, obsolete.

But they are obsolete. They just haven’t figured it out yet.

But we can figure it out.


Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)


Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.



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Monday, December 23, 2019

Study: A child's academic success is predicted by family status, genes



(STUDY FINDS) -- YORK, England — A new set of research that investigated the main factors behind a child’s success in school finds, surprisingly, that the most prominent predictors of academic success are usually in place before the child is even born.

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Zuesse: Proof That America's "Deep State" Exists And Controls The Government



Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Saker blog, Readers at the international-news site South Front tend to be technologically far more knowledgeable about the internet than most people (including myself) are, and so their responses to a news-report that I did on December 17th, titled “Former NSA Tec

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Sunday, December 22, 2019

Spy admits to befriending Harvey Weinstein's alleged rape victim



With her long blonde hair, catwalk figure and dazzling smile, it's easy to believe that Stella Penn Pechanac could have been one of the victims of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

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Thursday, December 19, 2019

Alarming NYT Op-Ed Reveals "Disturbing" Secretive Surveillance State Powered By Your Phone's Location Services



Millions of Americans are walking around with phones that have, unknowingly, created one of the most disturbing and unintentional "surveillance states" to ever exist.

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House-Senate Impeachment Impasse Would Mean Trump Wasn't Impeached At All: Harvard Law Prof



While Nancy Pelosi threatens to withhold articles of impeachment passed Wednesday night by the House, Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman says that President Trump isn't technically impeached until the House actually transmits the articles to the Senate.

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Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Washington Post Concedes That Government Spending on Education Has Increased, Not Decreased

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“The biggest problem plaguing U.S. public schools [is] a lack of resources.” 

So claims Robert Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, in an op-ed published last week in The Washington Post. In fact, Pianta asserts, government spending on K-12 education actually has declinedsince the 1980s. 

These claims are inaccurate, as federal government data prove.

In fact, it is so clear that government spending on K-12 education has increased dramatically – after adjusting for inflation – that The Washington Post just issued a correction to Pianta’s article:

Correction: An earlier version of this piece stated that, adjusting for constant dollars, public funding for schools had decreased since the late 1980s. This is not the case. In fact, funding at the federal, state and local levels has increased between the 1980s and 2019.

The Post was wise to issue the correction. In real dollars, total government spending per pupil increased from $7,359 in 1980 to $9,850 by 1990, reaching $13,180 per pupil by 2015. 

Taking a longer view, real spending per student in public schools has increased from $2,763 in 1960 to more than $13,000 today.

Expenditures Per Average Daily Attendance, In Real 2018 Dollars

Current Spending per Student in Public Schools

Considerable evidence shows that government spending has little if any relationship to academic achievement. Inflation-adjusted spending has quadrupled since 1960, four years before President Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society education programs designed to wage a War on Poverty and narrow opportunity gaps between affluent and poor children. 

As Stanford economist Eric Hanushek explains, despite this fourfold increase in government spending, student outcomes remained flat:

This productivity decline is remarkable, particularly when compared with dynamic improvements in productivity elsewhere in the U.S. economy. Schooling outcomes are the same in 2015 as they were four decades before, even though school funding is now several times as high.

Notably, as both Hanushek and Harvard’s Paul Peterson have documented, the gap in learning between students from the top 10 percent and bottom 10 percent of family income was the equivalent of four years’ worth of learning prior to the launch of the Great Society. Today, it stands unchanged – at four years’ worth of learning.

It is possible that Pianta was basing his assertion that school spending has declined on what he hears from teachers, who may not feel the increases in spending. As EdChoice’s Mike McShane and Jason Bedrick have documented, most of that spending has been captured by the schooling bureaucracy. 

This nice chart originating from Kennesaw State University’s Ben Scafidi puts a finer point on it:

Growth in Students and Administrators in Public Schools, 1960-2016

But no matter how you slice the data, contra Pianta, spending is in fact up. It is the one thing that has been tried ad nauseam. What hasn’t been tried is changing not what is spent, but who controls the dollars that are spent.

Giving families, rather than government officials, control over education funding is what will make a difference long term – a fact the data clearly support. Education choice improves academic achievement, attainment, safety, satisfaction, and a host of other important outcomes in later life.

So let’s set the record straight on education spending, and what really matters for students across the country.

--

This article has been republished with permission from The Daily Signal.

[Image Credit: Pixabay]



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