Saturday, November 16, 2019

The "Officer-Friendly" Police Fantasy

ORIGINAL LINK
The "Officer-Friendly" Police Fantasy

Authored by James Bovard via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

Police in Tempe, Arizona, announced plans in July for a “positive-ticketing” campaign to pull over drivers who had violated no traffic laws. A Phoenix TV station reported that the police would give the people they targeted free soft-drink coupons for Circle K as a reward for their “good driving behavior.” Police in other areas have run similar programs in recent years but the TV news report on Tempe’s plan spurred a torrent of testy Tweets:

“Keep your hands on the wheel and don’t make any sudden moves while you are being rewarded, it could cost you your life.”

“We gunned him down…. well, he refused to stop for his coupon. Self defense. Case dismissed.”

“Um, WHAT?!? They better not stop me for driving legally cause that’s illegal! #harassment”

“What if you don’t stop?”

“Cops to profile for illegal immigrants under the guise of campaign to promote good driving.”

“There goes probable cause right out the window. Police state 101.”

“I would get a panic attack. My reward for driving well is not dying. That’s all I want.”

“Unless it’s a ruse to illegally search your vehicles. And if they notice anything out of line during the mock pullover you’ll be arrested.”

“What’s next? Are they going to start walking into people’s houses to congratulate them for not breaking the law?”

One commenter suggested he could be fined for “resisting a coupon” for free drinks.

A few months before its “positive ticketing campaign” announcement, Tempe police were harshly criticized after one of their officers shot a 14-year-old boy in the back, killing him as he was running away while holding a replica airsoft pistol. An Arizona ACLU employee summarized the situation on Twitter:

“Tempe cops: the community doesn’t trust us after we shot and killed an unarmed teen (sic) what do we do

Community: stop killing us

Tempe cops: FREE THIRSTBUSTERS AND UNREASONABLE STOPS”

The Tempe Police Department responded to the uproar by issuing a statement stating that they never intended to pull over motorists without good cause. Instead, the free-coupon program would be targeted to pedestrians, bicyclists, and skateboarders. But the furious reaction of people across the nation signaled the profound distrust of police.

This is presidential campaign season, and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg claims that he will be able to end the pervasive distrust of the police. In one of the first candidate debates, he said he is “determined to bring about a day when” any driver, white or black, has “a feeling not of fear but of safety” when he sees a police officer approaching.

And how would Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, achieve this profound change? He has not yet detailed his panacea. Perhaps he believes that sensitivity training or racial consciousness-raising classes could do the trick. But Buttigieg has ignored the real source of the problem: politicians have given police so much power that citizens naturally fear them.

Arresting anyone

In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that police can justifiably arrest anyone believed to have “committed even a very minor criminal offense.” That case involved Gail Atwater, a Texas mother who was driving slowly near her home but, because her children were not wearing seatbelts, she was taken away by an abusive cop whose shouting left her children “terrified and hysterical.” A majority of Supreme Court justices recognized that “Atwater’s claim to live free of pointless indignity and confinement clearly outweighs anything the City can raise against it specific to her case” — but upheld the arrest anyhow.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that “such unbounded discretion carries with it grave potential for abuse.” Unfortunately, there are endless pretexts for people to be arrested nowadays because federal, state, and local politicians and officials have criminalized daily life with hundreds of thousands of edicts. Capt. Steve Powell of the Colorado State Patrol commented, “Ninety percent of the cars out there are doing something that you can pull them over for. There are a jillion reasons people can be stopped — taillights, windshields cracked, any number of things.” Gerard Arenberg, executive director of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me in the 1990s, “We have so damn many laws, you can’t drive the streets without breaking the law. I could write you a hundred tickets depending on what you said to me when I stopped you.”

Justice O’Connor noted in her dissent that the Fourth Amendment “guarantees the right to be free from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures.’” But when politicians have enacted endless laws that make almost everyone a criminal, then the Fourth Amendment is practically null and void.

Asset-forfeiture laws give police sweeping arbitrary power over Americans’ wallets, cars, and homes. Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher told the Supreme Court in 2018 that the government is entitled to confiscate cars that exceed speed limits by 5 miles per hour — a standard that would justify seizing most vehicles. Between 2001 and 2014, lawmen seized more than $2.5 billion in cash from 60,000 travelers on the nation’s highways — with no criminal charges in the vast majority of cases, the Washington Post reported.

Police have been trained to confiscate private property of drivers by absurdly claiming that “trash on the floor of a vehicle, abundant energy drinks, or air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors” are signs of criminal activity. Blacks and Hispanics have been victimized far more often by such laws. Tenaha, Texas, police ran an operation that stopped and plundered almost anyone passing through their East Texas locale. The names of the court filings capture Tenaha’s voraciousness, such as State of Texas v. One Gold Crucifix. “The police had confiscated a simple gold cross that a woman wore around her neck after pulling her over for a minor traffic violation. No contraband was reported, no criminal charges were filed, and no traffic ticket was issued,” the New Yorker noted. If drivers “refused to part with their money, officers threatened to arrest them on false money laundering charges and other serious felonies,” an ACLU lawsuit charged. Tenaha police stopped a 27-year-old black man who worked as a chicken slicer in a Tysons plant in Arkansas and fleeced him of $3,900 after detecting him “driving too close to the white line.”

Subverting the Fourth Amendment

Police have gutted the Fourth Amendment with dogs that will give them a positive alert almost any time they seek a pretext to forcibly search someone’s vehicle. The fact that canines are sometimes trained to give false alerts is irrelevant as long as the government always wins. Canine alerts to currency are routinely used to justify seizures even though most U.S. currency has trace amounts of drug contamination. For 30 years, the courts have condemned the abuses based on currency seizures due to dog alerts. But the official robberies continue.

There is a long history of federal, state, and local officials partnering to fabricate pretexts to stop drivers. From 1992 through 2013, the Drug Enforcement Administration illegally commandeered the phone records of all Americans who called most of the foreign nations in the world, as USA Today revealed in 2015. To keep its phone-record seizures secret, the DEA partnered with local police to concoct phony reasons for traffic stops that sometimes included staging fake auto accidents and even car thefts. Why should citizens trust law-enforcement agencies that engaged in decades of systemic fraud? If bureaucrats and cops gave themselves an unlimited right to lie regarding the source of their evidence, what other lies have they permitted themselves in the war against any American who possesses substances of which politicians disapprove?

Uncle Sam has brought the surveillance state to the nearest police car dashboard. Federal grants have enabled many states and localities to equip police cars with license-plate scanners that provide plenty of bogus pretexts to harass hapless drivers.

License-plate readers often misread plates. Brian Hofer was pulled off Interstate 80 in California and handcuffed and held at gunpoint after his rental vehicle was misreported as stolen. Hofer commented in 2019, “I’m sitting ice-cold and saying nothing because I do not want any itchy trigger fingers.” With an error rate approaching 10 percent, license-plate readers effectively generate potentially thousands of false accusations each day.

Subverting the Second Amendment

Local officials exploit surveillance data to subvert the Second Amendment. John Filippidis was driving with his family through Maryland when he was pulled over by a Maryland transportation policeman outside a Baltimore tunnel. The policeman ordered Filippidis out of his car and angrily demanded to know where his gun was. Filippidis has a Right to Carry (RTC) permit from Florida — where he had left his firearm. Police spent hours questioning him and searching his minivan before permitting him to move on, leaving his wife and daughters utterly distraught. Maryland police have targeted and rigorously searched other out-of-state drivers with RTC permits (which Maryland does not recognize). Federal grants enabled Maryland to equip hundreds of police cars with license-plate scanners that create almost 100 million records per year detailing exactly where and when each vehicle travels.

The war on drugs and its endless crackdowns and intrusions spurred far more distrust of police but politicians learned nothing from its debacles. Sixteen states have raised the smoking age to 21, and there is a push (supported by Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) to dictate a federal smoking age of 21. Why not simply issue a federal mandate for an annual additional 10 million unnecessary confrontations between police and youth? Criminalizing private vices is the surest way to make law enforcement a public menace.

Citizens are wary of police cars in their rear-view mirrors because politicians and judges made average Americans legally inferior to anyone with a badge and a gun. Police almost always receive legal immunity when they unjustifiably shoot people — it is practically a perk of their job. The existence of video footage from dashboard cams and police cameras is helping to ravage the final remnants of police credibility in many areas. The pervasive cover-ups and lies that follow dubious killings by police do more to spur wariness than a million “Officer Friendly” public-service announcements can counteract.

The best way to encourage citizens to have “a feeling not of fear but of safety” when they see a cop is to repeal legions of laws empowering police to unjustifiably accost and wrongfully subjugate peaceful citizens. But that is unlikely to happen as long as most politicians are more interested in power than in domestic tranquility.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2019 - 23:05
Tags


via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Friday, November 15, 2019

In Down Syndrome Mouse Model, Scientists Reverse Intellectual Deficits with Drugs



In a surprising finding using the standard animal model of Down syndrome (DS), scientists were able to correct the learning and memory deficits associated with the condition — the leading genetic cause of cognitive disability and the most frequently diagnosed chromosomal disorder in the U.S.

ORIGINAL LINK

In Shock To $3.5 Trillion Healthcare Industry, Trump Admin Will Force Hospitals To Disclose "Secret" Insurance Rates

ORIGINAL LINK
In Shock To $3.5 Trillion Healthcare Industry, Trump Admin Will Force Hospitals To Disclose "Secret" Insurance Rates

In a move that will send shockwaves across the $3.5 trillion US healthcare industry, on Friday the Trump administration unveiled a plan that would - for the first time - force hospitals and insurers to disclose their secret negotiated rates, the WSJ reported.

In hopes of bringing some transparency and openness to a pathologically opaque industry, one which many have blamed for being behind the explosion in US underfunded liabilities to more than $100 trillion, administration officials said the final rule will compel hospitals in 2021 to publicize the rates they negotiate with individual insurers for all services, including drugs, supplies, facility fees and care by doctors who work for the facility. The White House would also propose extending the disclosure requirement to the $670 billion health-insurance industry. Insurance companies and group health plans that cover employees would have to disclose negotiated rates, as well as previously paid rates for out-of-network treatment, in computer-searchable file formats.

As the WSJ notes, the proposal covering insurers is the newest part of the price-disclosure initiative, and would include the private-employer market, where about 158 million people get their health insurance. Insurers and group health plans would have to put the negotiated rates into a file that third-party developers could incorporate into shopping tools. As with hospitals, insurers will have to create a web-based tool for beneficiaries that discloses the list price, the negotiated rate, cost sharing, and the amount left on a plan deductible, as well as allowable out-of-network rates.

The requirements, which are more far-reaching than industry leaders had expected, could upend commercial health-care markets, which are rife with purposefully complex systems of hidden charges and secret discounts which enable the fleecing of either end users or chronically  underfunded government healthcare programs. The price-disclosure initiative has become a cornerstone of the president’s 2020 re-election health strategy, despite threats of legal action from industry.

“Right now there is too much arbitrage in the system,” a senior administration official said in an interview Thursday with The Wall Street Journal. “There are a ton of vested interests who will oppose this. We expect to get sued. We’re really goring people’s oxes.”

Hospitals and insurers typically treat specific prices for medical services as closely held secrets, with contracts between the insurers and hospital systems generally bound by confidentiality agreements. Policy makers, employers and patients are often unable to see clearly which hospital systems and doctor practices are driving high costs.

Ironically just a few days ago we showed why "US Healthcare Costs Are Exploding", and the primary culprit was soaring insurance and medical care service fees. If there is one thing that could potentially put a dent in this exponential surge, it is the elimination of all the various secret price deals and arrangements.

Why is transaprency good? Because as studies have shown, consumers are often required to pay more out of pocket when they don’t have the price information they need to comparison shop. Employer health-plan deductibles are outpacing wage growth and have risen to an average $1,655 for a single plan, according to a September survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Workers on average pay $6,015 toward the cost of their coverage.

Taken together, the WSJ notes, "the price-disclosure initiatives could reshape the $3.5 trillion health-care industry."

The good news: the much needed transparency finally may bring some - literal - price discovery to what has traditionally been the most opaque, and lucrative, sector for the aging and chronically obese US population. The bad news: as Trump is going against trillions in vested interests, expect even more "whistleblowers" to emerge from the sector that has chronically been the biggest lobbyist of Washington...

... doing their best to bring the president down.

Meanwhile, as Americans lament soaring prices of, well, everything, after shelter and rent costs, the second biggest drain of US household income and savings is insurance premiums.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/15/2019 - 09:43

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Thursday, November 14, 2019

WHOA: ‘Survivor’ Contestants Admit #MeToo Allegations Were Exaggerated To Win The Game



Controversy erupted on Wednesday when two contestants on “Survivor: Island of the Idols” admitted that they exaggerated a #MeToo allegation of “inappropriate touching” to win the game.

ORIGINAL LINK

DHS Expects To Have The Biometrics Data Of 259 Million People By 2022



The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects to have face, fingerprint, and iris scans of at least 259 million people in its biometrics database by 2022. Is there any way to escape the mass surveillance and tracking that George Orwell warned us all about in his iconic book, 1984?

ORIGINAL LINK

The Latest False News on the Trump Impeachment

ORIGINAL LINK

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

As the media are all out to get Trump, there is no way to get any valid information about the so-called impeachment. But you don’t have to pay too much attention to notice that the Democrats and the presstitutes are constantly changing the focus. The alleged whistleblower, who only had hearsay information, if that, has dropped out of the picture, being too compromised by his affliations and prior meetings with Adam Schiff during which the “whistleblowing” was planned as an attack on Trump.

The Democrats and presstitutes then shifted focus to state department types who also heard second hand from “staff” about the alleged conversation containing a quid pro quo, a claim unsupported by the transcript of the telephone call or by the President of Ukraine. So now a new alleged phone call has emerged, or been invented. The acting ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, a sleazy State Department type, today (Nov. 13) testified that a member of his staff heard Trump in another telephone call asking Sondland about the Ukraine investigation of the Bidens. This second-hand information is described by the presstitute media as a “bombshell.” God help us. It is nothing of the sort. But the presstitutes will repeat it until it is.

A person has to wonder how many members of staffs are permitted to listen to telephone conversations between heads of state. In my day it was zero.

What I want to know, and what we all should want to know, is why are the Democrats serving up hearsay information? Why aren’t the staffers themselves who allegedly heard the conversations on the stand testifying? The testimony should come under oath from those who allegedly heard the conversations. Are the House Democrats going to impeach the President of the United States on second-hand hearsay information?

As for the investigation of the Bidens and their payoffs for blocking Ukraine’s investigation of the corruption in Burisma, the Ukrainian company that hired the protection of Biden, Trump doesn’t need to ask for it in exchange for $1 billion. Ukrainian officials have released the records. http://www.stationgossip.com/2019/11/ukrainian-officials-release-records-of.html The presstitutes have not reported the release. Don’t expect the whores to report any true facts. They are incapable of it.

Burisma holdings paid Hunter Biden $3,166,000 for protection according to the records released by Ukraine. More importantly, the information released by Ukraine, according to the report, revealed that Burisma pressured the corrupt Obama State Department to intervene to end the Ukrainian investigation of Burisma for corruption. This is precisely what the Obama regime did. Joe Biden forced the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor by giving the President of Ukraine 6 hours to fire the prosecutor, thus ending the investigation, or forfeiting $1 billion.

We all need to ask ourselves why it is Trump who is under investigation and not Biden and Obama. We already know the reason. The American media is corrupt beyond the meaning of the word. The Democrats are the most corrupt political party on the face of the earth. And the military/security complex intends to deep-six Donald Trump for threatening their budget and power by normalizing relations with Russia.

If Trump goes down, America goes with him.

Most of the world will say, “Good Riddance.”

As for the Republicans, they will not choose Trump over the campaign contributions and protection of the military/security complex. Where is Trump’s attorney general Barr? Where are the Justice Department reports of the investigations of the felonies committed by the FBI and Obama’s Justice (sic) Department in the Russiagate hoax? Hasn’t Trump noticed that his own Justice (sic) Department has hung him out to dry? Indictments for the Russiagate felonies would blow the Democrats’ impeachment of Trump out of the water. Where are the indictments? The felonies have been known without doubt for a long time. A number of former US Attorneys and Assistant US Attorneys have described the felonies committed by the Russiagate hoax in detail.

Trump’s Justice (sic) Department is going to sell him out, and democracy in America will be the casualty.

Neither political party wants the profitable swamp drained.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

There Is No Such Thing as a Free Press

ORIGINAL LINK

There Is No Such Thing as a Free Press

Paul Craig Roberts

Udo Ulfkotte’s amazing book, Gekaufte Journalisten (Bought Journalism) was published by Kopp Verlag in 2014. The book was a sensation and sold 1,500,000 copies in Germany, but no major US publisher would bring out an English translation. Finally, last month a small publisher, Progressive Press, published an English language edition titled Presstitutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA.

Ulfkotte’s book destroys the illusion/delusion that there is anywhere in the Western world an independent press. Ulfkotte describes in detail the cognitive appropriation of journalists by elites. Journalists serve as propagandists and public relations agents for intelligence agencies, businesses, lobbying organizations, politicians, and US foreign policy. The function of journalism is to deliver to the people the explanations that serve the interests of elites and Washington’s foreign policy. This message was so effectively delivered to the German people that readership of the main German newspapers collapsed.

Ulfkotte describes how journalists are recruited when they are still students and find themselves indebted to and dependent on serving other interests than the truth. All from the lowest reporter to the highest editor to the owners of the news organization are caught up in enabling the elites to control the explanations. Ulfkotte names names and lists the organizations that bring journalists together with intelligence services and related think tanks, politicians, and foreign policy associations. Incestuous relationships between journalists, intelligence agencies, businesses, politicians, and US foreign policy aims are so pervasive that no one thinks anything of it. The only ones who get in trouble are those who don’t go along.

Ulfkotte’s book is written for Germans. Americans might find the German detail boring, but in the detail is the picture of how the subtle process of turning journalists into functionaries of intelligence services, politicians, and businesses is accomplished. The book starts off slowly. Ulfkotte knows that he would face readers’ disbelief if he jumped right into the horror story. So he begins with the perks and rewards of accommodating “sources” and censoring real news, such as the use of German poison gas by Iraq against Iran.

One interesting story is how the German press handled the wave of migrants from Bulgaria and Romania into Germany. The German government favored this further watering down of ethnic Germans by enlisting the press to describe the migrants as the hardworking, never-unemployed “Prussians of the Balkans.” False claims were made, such as the unemployment rate of Bulgarian and Romanian migrants was less than that of Germans. The false story was repeated endlessly without verification. Once the migrants were incorporated into Germany, the facts came out: The number of immigrants on welfare continues “to rise significantly” and has “increased 60% over the previous year.” The experts who had warned that this would be the case were demonized as “nationalists” and “nazis.” Thus, the media served to keep the facts out and fake news in.

The carefully woven matrix of controlled explanations explains why Trump, Marine le Pen, and other voices for real change are regarded as major threats to elite control. Marine le Pen faces continuous threats of prosecution, and the CIA/FBI/DNC orchestrated hoaxes are used by the presstitutes to drive Trump from office. With the Western media suborned, democracy and accountable government are not possible. Making this clear is Ulfkotte’s contribution.

Here are some of Ulfkotte’s amusing and revealing topics:

“‘Truths’ on Sale from Our Sponsors: Elite Networks and Intelligence Agencies”

“How do Journalists Pay for their Villas in Tuscany?”

“Our Lockstep Media: Synchronized, Obedient and No Questions Asked”

“In the Stranglehold of the Intelligence Agencies”

“Obama’s Trolls: America’s Fifth Column”

“Rockefeller’s Ghost—The Trilateral Commission”

“The Power of the Bilderbergers: Conspiracy Theory or Reality?”

“Two in Three Journalists are for Sale”

“The Higher Goal: Amputating Germany’s Identity”

“Merkel’s Fairy-Tale Hour: How the German Governmenbt Lies to Its Citizens”

Ulfkotte said that he could write the book, because he had no children or family to protect from retaliation. At the end of the book Ulfkotte says it is part one of a three book series. Ulfkotte died from a heart attack not long after the book was published. His death at 56 years of age raised doubts as to whether the heart attack was real or induced.

Ulfkotte’s Wikipedia biography was written by those he had exposed. Wikipedia is part of the control matrix. It is not an independent source. Wikipedia’s main function is to slander truth-tellers.

The post There Is No Such Thing as a Free Press appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

'Enormous Victory': US Judge Rules Suspicionless Searches of Travelers' Electronic Devices Unconstitutional



In a development that the Electronic Frontier Foundation declared "an enormous victory for privacy," a federal judge in Boston ruled Tuesday that suspicionless searches of travelers' phones, laptops, and other electronic devices by government agents at U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional.

ORIGINAL LINK

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND



“Secrecy begets tyranny.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land “Thinking doesn’t pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land When I read quotes by men like H.L.

ORIGINAL LINK

No More Fake News Jon Rappoport Investigative Reporter





ORIGINAL LINK

Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong



If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t.

ORIGINAL LINK

How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders?



But CBS News has found these three have something more in common - strong financial ties to the industry whose products they promote and defend.

ORIGINAL LINK

Sugar Industry Long Downplayed Potential Harms



Sugar Industry Long Downplayed Potential Harms Posted: 2017-12-11 03:59:58 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/well/eat/sugar-industry-l...

ORIGINAL LINK

50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat



In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat, according to a newly published article in JAMA Internal Medicine.

ORIGINAL LINK

Monday, November 11, 2019

Drilling down into flu deceptions and mind-boggling lies



Not every mainstream medical professional is trying to lie about the flu. Most of these people, as a result of their indoctrination, simply assume conventional wisdom is true.

ORIGINAL LINK

Narrative Managers In Overdrive After Death Of White Helmets Founder

ORIGINAL LINK

James Le Mesurier, the founder of the White Helmets, has died. He was found to have plummeted from a height to the street outside his home, and authorities are reportedly calling it a suicide.

Le Mesurier has a history with British military intelligence and was fundamentally involved with an extremely shady narrative management operation geared toward manufacturing support for yet another imperialist military intervention in yet another Middle Eastern nation, so obviously any claims of suicide should be taken with a grain of salt no smaller than a Buick. But it is worth noting that according to Middle East Eye, Le Mesurier’s wife told police that he’d been struggling with psychological issues for which he was taking medications and had previously been hospitalized. Le Mesurier’s home was reportedly only accessible by fingerprint and no video footage of anyone besides Le Mesurier and his wife entering or leaving has been found.

Establishment narrative managers, for their part, have been floating the possibility that the White Helmets founder was murdered by the Russian government. The Washington Examiner has published an article titled “Did Russia kill White Helmets founder James Le Mesurier?”, calling to mind Betteridge’s law of headlines which states that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” The BBC’s Mark Urban tweeted out and then deleted a thread (screenshots here) in which he cites an anonymous source who claims to have known Le Mesurier’s flat well enough to be sure that it’s not possible to “fall” from his balcony, then meaningfully pointing to a “black propaganda campaign by Russia and Assad media” against Le Mesurier. He apparently didn’t consider the possibility of suicide until later, saying he deleted his thread due to “new information”.

For more info on Le Mesurier and his White Helmet mates, I highly recommend watching this excellent half-hour video by James Corbett. It’s full of primary-source video footage indisputably confirming the organization’s ties to western governments and to violent extremist factions in Syria, and explaining how an allegedly “neutral” organization on the ground has been used to control the narrative about what’s been happening in Syria.

Pundits who’ve built their name on Syria narrative management have been expressing grief over Le Mesurier’s death, including Eliot Higgins, Charles Lister, Julian Röpke and Oz Katerji. Katerji, an especially aggressive imperialism proponent, was particularly stricken, acknowledging that this pervasively corrupt operative was actually a dear friend of his.

“It is with a deeply heavy heart that I do this, but I can confirm my friend James Le Mesurier, founder of Mayday Rescue of White Helmets fame, died at his home in Istanbul last night,” Katerji tweeted. “I am profoundly saddened by this, Jakes was a brave and decent man who saved countless lives. I will miss him. I am at a loss for words.”

Janine di Giovanni, who in 2016 authored a fawning puff piece on Le Mesurier and the White Helmets for Newsweek, tweeted, “Terrible news. James was funny, smart, brave,committed. He stood up to bullies. On the right side of history. Believed in the White Helmets, their mission, their drive for good. A loss to humanity.”

Journalist Jonathan Cook criticized di Giovanni’s gushing hagiography, tweeting, “This is what access journalism looks like: prize-winning war correspondents like Janine di Giovanni hanging out with ‘funny’ spooks like James Le Mesurier who’ve been responsible for stoking the very wars they report on — wars that have destroyed whole societies.”

On the death of James Le Mesurier, western governments' organiser of logistics support and propaganda for the fanatical jihadists in Syria, it is no surprise that today "Philip Cross" makes 48 edits to his Wikipedia page. https://t.co/qei9MnbgRC

 — @CraigMurrayOrg

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray has flagged the fact that Wikipedia’s imperialist narrative manager “Philip Cross” has made dozens of edits to Le Mesurier’s Wiki page since his death. Cross, who I’ve reported on previously, has made a more-than-full-time job of constantly managing the Wikipedia pages of both pro-establishment and anti-establishment media figures in a very pro-establishment slant; an article by Five Filters which you can read by clicking here documents how the “Philip Cross” account has been working morning to night with precisely zero days off toward this endeavor.

An article published by Murray last year documents the curious fact that although the serial Wikipedia editor had only about 200 followers on Twitter, he was followed by many high-profile narrative managers from huge British news media outlets like The Guardian, The Times and the BBC, as well as none other than James Le Mesurier himself.

Murray wrote at the time:

“Why then does James LeMesurier, founder of the ‘White Helmets’, follow Philip Cross on twitter? Why does ex-minister Tristram Hunt follow Philip Cross on Twitter? Why does Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon, follow Philip Cross on twitter? Why then do so the following corporate and state journalists follow ‘Philip Cross’ on twitter?”

To these questions I would add, why was Le Mesurier seen defending “Philip Cross” from someone voicing suspicion of him on Twitter after George Galloway offered a reward for information about the account? These questions have never been satisfactorily answered. And now this same account is frantically editing the Wikipedia page of his late fan James Le Mesurier. Some excerpts from the editing notes Cross has made to the page (note: according to Wikipedia, “RS” is short for Reliable Source):

  • not WH alone: “Unfounded conspiracy theories latched onto the White Helmets’ foreign funding and ties to Mr. Le Mesurier” and (earlier in the article) “who has been the target of repeated online disinformation campaigns”
  • Alternet is not considered RS, the article is by Max Blumenthal
  • this is the Assadist line which has no usable sources & should not be given undue credibility
  • rumour/conspiracy theory spread by non-RS

The article also has an editorial discussion section about whether or not it’s appropriate to have a “criticisms” section on the page, and how much any criticisms should be limited. Cross is of course intimately involved in this discussion as well.

There is an immense narrative management campaign dedicated to controlling what people think about what’s happening in Syria, aimed not solely at advancing the longstanding regime change agenda of the US-centralized empire but at protecting the credibility of the warmongering government and media institutions who the public is growing increasingly skeptical of in a post-Iraq invasion information age. If people become doubtful in the propaganda machine which greases the gears of war, then warmongering itself will become impossible to carry out without waking the masses up from the narrative control matrix they’ve worked so hard to lull us into. Without endless war, the empire will crumble.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Narrative control comes before any other priority the empire might have; before resources, before land, before even war itself. Our rulers and their goons will protect their ability to control the story of what’s happening tooth and claw. It’s up to us to see through their lies and bring an end to the lie factory.

___________________________

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.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSou

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Ron Paul: Is the 'Mother of All Bubbles' About to Pop?



When the New York Federal Reserve began pumping billions of dollars a day into the repurchasing (repo) markets (the market banks use to make short-term loans to each other) in September, they said this would only be necessary for a few weeks.

ORIGINAL LINK

EXCLUSIVE | CNN Whistleblower: Liberal Media’s Charlottesville Hoax Was My ‘Red Pill’ Moment (VIDEO)



The media, with “fake news” CNN leading the charge in conjunction with the Democrat Party, is continuously pumping out propaganda to convince the American people that President Donald Trump and his supporters are racist “white supremacists.

ORIGINAL LINK

Sunday, November 10, 2019

MSM Adamantly Avoids The Word “Coup” In Bolivia Reporting

ORIGINAL LINK

There has been a military coup in Bolivia backed by violent right-wing rioters and the US government, but you’d hardly know this from any of the mainstream media headlines.

“Bolivian President Evo Morales steps down following accusations of election fraud” proclaims CNN.

“Bolivia’s Morales resigns amid scathing election report, rising protests” reports The Washington Post.

“Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down” says The New York Times.

“Bolivian President Evo Morales resigns amid fraud poll protests” declares the BBC.

“President of Bolivia steps down amid allegations of election rigging” we are informed by Telegraph.

“Bolivia’s President Morales resigns after backlash to disputed election” says the Sydney Morning Herald.

So there you have it. The indigenous leader of a socialist South American government which has successfully lifted masses of people out of crushing poverty, which happens to control the world’s largest reserves of lithium (which may one day replace oil as a crucial energy resource due to its use in powering smartphones, laptops, hybrid and electric cars), which has an extensive and well-documented history of being targeted for regime change by the US government, simply stepped down due to some sort of scandal involving a “disputed election”. Nothing to do with the fact that right-wing mobs had been terrorizing this leader’s family, or the fact that the nation’s military literally commanded him to step down and are now currently searching for him to arrest him, leading to ousted government officials being rounded up and held captive by soldiers wearing masks.

All perfectly normal and not suspicious at all.

Fully support the findings of the @OAS_official report recommending new elections in #Bolivia to ensure a truly democratic process representative of the people's will. The credibility of the electoral system must be restored.

 — @SecPompeo

As is usual, mass media’s reporting on this story is in full alignment with the US State Department, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also advancing the “disputed election” line in a tweet shortly before the forced resignation of Morales. Pompeo cited the evidence-free and discredited allegation of suspicious vote tallies during Morales’ re-election last month from the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS). As Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic & Policy Research explains in a recent article for The Nation, the OAS receives 60 percent of its funding from Washington, which gives the US tremendous leverage over the supposedly neutral and international body. This ties in interestingly with what we discussed the other day about Washington’s known history of using its disproportionate financial support for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as leverage to force that supposedly neutral and international body to comply with US agendas.

The field of narrative management keeps making more and more advances.

They never did find any evidence of fraud in the October 20th election, but the media repeated the allegation so many times that it became "true," in this post-truth world. Thread: https://t.co/8oWFNKNebT

 — @MarkWeisbrot

The US-centralized empire just keeps throwing coup attempts at unabsorbed governments until they stick. The coup in Venezuela failed in 2002 and again in 2019, but they’ll just keep attempting them until one takes hold. A kickboxer throws strikes in combinations with the understanding that most attacks will miss or do minimal damage against a trained opponent, but eventually one will get through and score the knockout blow. Imperialist regime change agendas employ the same punches-in-bunches philosophy: just keep attacking and undermining at every possible turn, and eventually something will stick.

And the empire can afford to do this. When you have all the power and resources, you can bide your time, knowing that if the current attempt at toppling the government in a sovereign nation fails, there’s always tomorrow.

At a United Nations Security Council meeting last year, President Morales summed up the true nature of America’s role in the world very accurately, and, it turns out, very presciently.

“I would like to say to you, frankly and openly here, that in no way is the United States interested in upholding democracy,” Morales said. “If such were the case it would not have financed coups d’etat and supported dictators. It would not have threatened with military intervention democratically elected governments as it has done with Venezuela. The United States could not care less about human rights or justice. If this were the case, it would have signed the international conventions and treaties that have protected human rights.It would not have threatened the investigation mechanism of the International Criminal Court, nor would it promote the use of torture, nor would it have walked away from the Human Rights Council. And nor would it have separated migrant children from their families, nor put them in cages.”

“The United States is not interested in multilateralism,” Morales continued. “If it were interested in multilateralism it would not have withdrawn from the Paris Agreement or given the cold shoulder to the global compact on migration, it would not have launched unilateral attacks, nor have taken decisions such as illegally declaring Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel. This contempt for multilateralism is motivated by the thirst of the United States for political control and for the seizing of natural resources.”

“Each time that the United States invades nations, launches missiles, or finances regime change, it does so behind a propaganda campaign which incessantly repeats the message that it is acting in the course of justice, freedom and democracy, in the cause of human rights or for humanitarian reasons,” Morales also said.

“The responsibility of our generation is to hand over a fairer and more secure world to the following generation,” Morales concluded. “We will only achieve this dream if we work together to consolidate a multipolar world, a world with common rules that are respected by and defended from all the threats ranged against the United Nations.”

Indeed, the only reason the US is able to wage its endless campaign of regime change agendas against unabsorbed governments is because the unipolar world order it rules has allowed it the power, resources and leisure to do so. A multipolar world would enable the citizenry of this planet to have a say in what happens to them in a way that is not dictated by a few sociopaths in and around Washington, DC. A multipolar world is to democracy as a unipolar world is to monarchy. The citizens of the world should oppose this unipolarity.

_______________________________

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.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSou

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Japan leads the way: no vaccine mandates and no MMR vaccine = healthier children

ORIGINAL LINK

Japan Leads the Way: No Vaccine Mandates and No MMR Vaccine = Healthier ChildrenThe Promise of Good Health; Are We Jumping Off the Cliff in the U.S.?By Kristina Kristen, Guest Writer. Article made into a video by www.kla.tv The U.S. has the very highest infant mortality rate of all industrialized countries, with more American children dying at birth and in their first year than in any other comparable nation—and more than half of those who survive develop at least one chronic illness. ...

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK