Bulletin N° 1025

 

 

 

Subject: Radical Thought and Socialist Ideologies: problem solving and revolutionary change.

 

 

February 16, 2022

 

Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,

 

Barrington Moore, Jr. concludes his comparative study of the social origins of dictatorship and democracy in the making of the modern world -  first  in England, France, and the USA, then in Japan, China, and India – with some reflections on the theoretical implications of these specific histories and projections into the possible future. The third and final part of this book is composed of three chapters, the first of which examines the theoretical implications of the “democratic route to modern society.”

     From our present perspective we might now sketch with broad stokes the major features of each of the three routes to the modern world. The earliest one combined capitalism and parliamentary democracy after a series of revolutions: The Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution, and the American Civil War. with reservations discussed later in this chapter, I have called this the route of bourgeois revolution, a route that England, France, and the United States entered at succeeding points in time with profoundly different societies at the starting point. The second path was also a capitalist one but, in the absence of a strong revolutionary surge, it passed through reactionary political forms to culminate in fascism. It is worth emphasizing that through a revolution from above, industry did manage to grow and flourish in Germany and Japan. The third route is of course the communist variant. Finally, by the middle of the 1960s, India had no more than haltingly entered upon the process of becoming a modern industrial society. That country had experienced neither a bourgeois revolution, nor a conservative revolution from above, nor so far a communist one. Whether India will be able to avoid the appalling costs of these three forms to discover some new variant, as it was trying to do under Nehru, or succumb in some way to the equally appalling costs of stagnation, remains the ghastly problem faced by Nehru’s successors.

     To a very limited extent these three types – bourgeois revolutions culminating in the Western form of democracy, conservative revolutions from above ending in fascism, and peasant revolutions leading to communism – may constitute alternative routes and choices. They are much more clearly successive historical stages. As such, they display a limited determinate relation to each other. The methods of modernization chosen in one country change the dimensions of the problem for the next countries who take the step, as Veblen recognized when he coined the now fashionable term, ‘the advantages of backwardness.’ Without the prior democratic modernization of England, the reactionary methods adopted in Germany and Japan would scarcely have been possible. Without both the capitalist and reactionary experiences, the communist method would have been something entirely different, if it had come into existence at all. It is easy enough to perceive, and even with some sympathy, that Indian diffidence is in good measure a negative critical reaction to all three forms of prior historical experience. Although there have been certain common problems in the construction of industrial societies, the task remains a continually changing one. The historical preconditions of each major political species differ sharply from the others.

     Within each major type there are also striking differences, perhaps most striking in the democratic variant, as well as significant similarities. In this chapter we shall try to do justice to both, in analyzing certain agrarian social features that have contributed to the development of Western democracy. It is well to be explicit once more about what this rather sonorous phrase means, even if definitions of democracy have a way of leading away from real issues to trivial quibbling. The author sees the development of a democracy as a long and certainly incomplete struggle to do three closely related things: 1) to check arbitrary ruler, 2) to replace arbitrary rules with just and rational ones, and 3) to obtain a share for the underlying population in making of rules. The beheading of kings has been the most dramatic and by no means the least important aspect of the first feature. Efforts to establish the rule of law, the power of the legislature, and later to use the state as an engine for social welfare, are familiar and famous aspects of the other two.

     Though a detailed consideration of the earlier phases of premodern societies lies outside the scope of this work, it is well to raise at least briefly the question of different starting points. Are there structural differences in agrarian societies that might in some cases favor subsequent development toward parliamentary democracy while other staring points would make this achievement difficult or rule it out altogether? Certainly the starting point does not completely determine the subsequent course of modernization. Fourteenth-century Prussian society exhibited many of the same features that were the ancestors of parliamentary democracy in Western Europe. The decisive changes that fundamentally altered the course of Prussian and eventually German society took place in the next two centuries. Yet even if the starting point is not decisive in itself, some may be much more favorable to democratic developments that others.

     A good case can be made, I think, for the thesis that Western feudalism did contain certain institutions that distinguished it from, other societies in such a way as to favor democratic possibilities. The German historian Otto Hintze in his discussion of the social orders of feudal society (Städe) has perhaps done the most toward rendering the thesis convincing, though it remains a topic of lively scholarly debate. For our purposes, the most important aspect was the growth of the notion of the immunity of certain groups and persons from the power of the ruler, along with the conception of the right of resistance to unjust authority. Together with the conception of contract as a mutual engagement freely undertaken by free persons, derived from the feudal relation of vassalage, this complex of ideas and practices constitutes a crucial legacy from European medieval society to modern Western conceptions of a free society.

     This complex arose only in Western Europe. Only there did that delicate balance occur between, too much and too little royal power which gave an important impetus to parliamentary democracy. A wide variety of partial resemblances do occur elsewhere but seem to lack either a crucial ingredient or a crucial proportion among them found in Western Europe. Russian society did develop a system of estates, the soslovii. But Ivan the Terrible broke the back of the independent nobility. The attempt to recover their privileges came after the strong hand of Peter the Great had been removed and resulted in obtaining privileges without corresponding obligations or corporate representation in the process of governing. Bureaucratic China generated the conception of the Mandate of Heaven that gave some color of legitimacy to resistance to unjust oppression, but without a strong notion of corporate immunity, something the scholar officials created to a limited extent in practice and against the basic principle of the bureaucratic polity. Feudalism did arise in Japan, but with heavy stress on loyalty to superiors and a divine ruler. It lacked the conception of an engagement among theoretical equals. In the Indian cast system one can perceive song tendencies toward the conception of immunity and corporate privilege, but again without the theory or practice of free contract.

. . .

     With this brief assessment of variations in the starting point, we may turn to the process of modernization itself. One point stands out quite clearly. The persistence of royal absolutism or more generally of a preindustrial bureaucratic rule into modern times had created conditions unfavorable for democracy of the Western variety. The varied histories of China, Russia, and Germany converge on this point. It is a curious fact, for which I shall not try to offer an explanation, that powerful central governments that we can loosely call royal absolutisms or agrarian bureaucracies establish themselves in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in all the major countries examined in connection with this study (except of course the United States), namely, England, France, the Prussian part of Germany, Russia, China Japan and India. Whatever the reason may be, the fact form s a convenient if partly arbitrary peg upon which to hang the beginnings of modernization. Though their persistence has had unfavorable consequences, strong monarchical institutions have performed an indispensable function at an early point in checking the turbulence of the nobility. Democracy could not grow and flourish under the shadow of prospective plunder and pillage by marauding barons.

     In early modern times too, a decisive precondition of modern democracy had been the emergence of a rough balance between the crown and nobility, in which the royal power predominated but left a substantial degree of independence to the nobility. The pluralist notion that  an independent nobility is an essential ingredient in the growth of democracy has a firm basis in historical fact. Comparative support of this thesis is provided by the absence of such an ingredient in Akbar’s India and Manchu China, or perhaps more accurately by the failure to work out an acceptable and legitimate status for the degree of independence that in fact existed. The ways in which this independence has been hammered out are equally important. In England the locus classicus for positive evidence, the War of the Roses decimated the landed aristocracy making considerably easier the establishment of a form of royal absolutism rather milder than that in France. It is wise to recall that the achievement of such a balance, so dear to the liberal and pluralist tradition, has been the fruit of violent and occasionally revolutionary methods that contemporary liberals generally reject.

     At this point one may ask what happens when and if the landed aristocracy tries to shake free from royal controls in the absence of a numerous and politically vigorous class of town dwellers. To put the question in less exact form, what may happen if the nobility seeks freedom in the absence of a bourgeois revolution? I think it is safe to say that the outcome is highly unfavorable to the Western version of democracy. In Russia during the eighteenth century the service nobility managed to have its obligations to the tsarist autocracy rescinded, while at the same time it retained and even increased its land holdings as well as its power over the serfs. The whole development was highly unfavorable to democracy. German history is in some respects even more revealing. There the nobility carried on its struggle against the Great Elector for the most part separately from the towns. Many of the aristocratic demands of the time resembled those made in England: for a voice in the government and especially in the government’s ways of raising money. But the outcome was not parliamentary democracy. The weakness of the towns has been a constant feature in German history subsequent to their efflorescence in southern and western Germany in the late Middle Ages, after which they went into a decline.

     Without going into the evidence further or discussing the Asian materials that point in the same direction, we may simply register strong agreement with the Marxist thesis that a vigorous and independent class of town dwellers has been an indispensable element in the growth of parliamentary democracy. No bourgeois, no democracy. The principal actor would not appear on the stage if we confined our attention strictly to the agrarian sector. Still the actors in the countryside have played a sufficiently important part to deserve careful inquiry. And if one wishes to write history with heroes and villains, a position the present writer repudiates, the totalitarian villain sometimes has lived in the country, and the democratic hero of the towns has had important allies there.

     Such, for example, was the case in England. While absolutism was growing stronger in France, in a large section of Germany, and in Russia, it met its first major check on English soil, where to be sure the attempt to establish it was much feebler. In very large measure this was true because the English landed aristocracy at an early date began to acquire commercial traits. Among the most decisive determinants influencing the course of subsequent political evolution are whether or not a landed aristocracy has turned to commercial agriculture and, if so, the form that this commercialization has taken.(pp.413-419)

. . .

There are real difficulties in grouping revolutions, or for that matter, any major historical phenomena. Before proceeding any further, it might be well to discuss this point.

     Certain very general considerations make it necessary to adopt broad categories of this variety. It is or should be quite obvious that certain institutional arrangements such as feudalism, absolute monarchy, and capitalism rise, have their day, and pass away. The fact that any specific institutional complex develops first in one country and then in another, as did capitalism in Italy, Holland, England, France, and the United States, is no bar to a generally evolutionary conception of history. No single country goes through all the states, but merely carries the development a certain distance within the framework of its own situation and institutions. Thus a revolution on behalf of private property in the means of production has a good chance of succeeding in some phases and not in others. It may be hopelessly premature and but a minor current in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries and yet be hopelessly anachronistic in the second half of the twentieth. Over and beyond the concrete historical conditions at a given moment in a particular country, there are worldwide conditions, such as the state of the technical arts and the economic and political organizations reached in other parts of the world, that influence heavily the prospects of revolution.

     These considerations lead to the conclusion that it is necessary to group revolutions by the broad institutional results to which they contribute. Much of the confusion and unwillingness to use larger categories comes from the fact that those who provide the mass support for a revolution, those who lead it, and those who ultimately profit from it are very different sets of people. As long as this distinction remains clear in each case, it makes sense (and is even indispensable for the sake of drawing distinctions as well as perceiving similarities) to regard the English Civil War, the French Revolution and the American Civil War as stages in the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

     There are grounds for the reluctance to use this term, and it is worthwhile pointing out the way in which it can be misleading. To some writers the conception of a bourgeois revolution implies a steady increase in the economic power of the commercial and manufacturing classes in the towns up to a point where economic power comes into conflict with political power still in the hands of an old ruling class based mainly on the land. At this point there supposedly occurs a revolutionary explosion in which the commercial and manufacturing classes seize the reins of political power and introduce the main features of modern parliamentary democracy. Such a conception is not altogether false. Even for France, there are some good indications of an increase in the economic power of a section of the bourgeoisie hostile to the fetters imposed by the ancien régime. Nevertheless this meaning of bourgeois revolution is such a simplification as to be a caricature of what took place. To see that it is a caricature we need only recall 1) the importance of capitalism in the English countryside that enabled the English landed aristocracy to retain control of political machinery right through the nineteenth century; 2) the weakness of any purely bourgeois impulse in France, its close ties with the old order, its dependence on radical allies during the revolution, the continuation of the peasant economy into modern times; 3) the fact that plantation slavery in the United States grew up as an integral part of industrial capitalism and presented an obstacle to democracy much more than to capitalism.

     As pointed out a moment ago, the central difficulty is that such expressions as bourgeois revolution and peasant revolution lump together indiscriminately those who make the revolution and its beneficiaries. Likewise these terms confuse the legal and political results of revolutions with social groups active in them. Twentieth-century peasant   revolutions have had their mass support among the peasants, who have then been the principal victims of modernization put through by communist governments. Nevertheless I shall remain candidly and explicitly inconsistent tin the use of terms. In discussing peasant revolutions we shall be speaking about the main popular force behind them, well aware that in the twentieth century the result was communism. In discussing bourgeois revolutions the justifications for the term rests on a series of legal and political consequences. Consistent terminology imposes the invention of new terms that, I fear, would only add to the confusion. The main problem, after all, is what happened and why, not the proper use of labels.

     Now it seems just about as clear as such matters ever can be that the Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution, and the American Civil War were quite violent upheavals in a long process of political change leading up to what we recognize as modern Western democracy. This process had economic causes, though they were certainly not the only ones. The freedoms created through this process display a clear relationship to each other. Worked out in connection with the rise of modern capitalism, they display the traits of a specific historical epoch. Key elements in the liberal and bourgeois order of society are: the right to vote, representation in a legislature that makes the laws and hence is more than a rubber stamp for the executive; an objective system of law that at least in theory confers no special privileges on account of birth or inherited status; security for the right of property and the elimination of barriers inherited from the past on its use; religious toleration; freedom of speech; and the right to peaceful assembly. Even if practice falls short of profession, these are widely recognized marks of modern liberal society.

     The taming of the agrarian sector has been a decisive feature of the whole historical process that produced such a society. It was just as important as the better-known disciplining of the working class and of course closely related to it. Indeed the English experience tempts one to say that getting rid of agriculture as a major social activity is one prerequisite for successful democracy. The political hegemony of the landed upper class had to be broken or transformed. The peasant had to be turned into a farmer producing for the market instead of for his own consumption and that of the overlord. In this process the landed upper classes either became an important part of the capitalist and democratic tide, as in England, or, if they came to oppose it, they were swept aside in the confusions of revolution or civil war. In a word, the landed upper classes either helped to make the bourgeois revolution or were destroyed by it.

In closing this discussion it may be useful to set down the main conditions that have apparently been most important for the development of democracy and, as a rough test of these conclusions, set them alongside the Indian experience. If it turns out that the presence of some of these conditions has a demonstrable connection with the more successful aspects of parliamentary democracy in India or the historical origins of these aspects and, on the hand, the absence of other conditions displays a connection with the difficulties and obstacles to democracy in India, we may have greater confidence in these conclusions.

     The first condition of democratic development that our analysis encountered was the development of a balance to avoid too strong a crown or too independent a landed aristocracy. In Mogul India at its zenith the power of the crown was overwhelming in relation to the upper classes. Lacking any secure properly rights, the noble was, in Moreland’s well-known phrase, either a servant or an enemy of the ruling power. The decay of the Mogul system freed the upper classes by tipping the balance in the opposite direction toward a polity of fighting local kinglets. Nevertheless the subsequent British effort in the eighteenth century to crate on Indian soil a class of vigorous progressive squire similar to their domestic variety was a complete failure. Indian society has also failed to meet the second major prerequisite: a turn toward an appropriate form of commercial agriculture either on the part of the landed aristocracy or the peasant. Instead, the protective umbrella of British laws and order allowed population to increase and a class of parasitic landlords to skim off, together with the moneylenders, much of what the peasants did not eat themselves. In turn these conditions greatly inhibited capital accumulation and industrial growth. When Independence came, it arrived partly under the impetus of peasant yearning for a return to an idealized village past, which further limited and even dangerously delayed real modernization in the countryside. That these circumstances have been among the major obstacles to the establishment and working of a firmly based democracy needs no laboring here.

     On the other hand, the departure of the British greatly weakened the political predominance of the landed élite. There are many who would claim that post-Independence reforms have even destroyed that power. To this limited extent, the development of democratic institutions has followed the Western pattern. Even more important, the British occupation, by resting its power on the landed élite and by favoring commercial interests in England, drove a substantial section of the urban commercial and trading classes into opposition, preventing the fateful coalition of a strong landed élite and weak bourgeoisie that, as we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, has been the social origin of rightist authoritarian regimes and movements in Europe and Asia. Thus two conditions have been met: the weakening of the landed aristocracy and the prevention of an aristocratic-bourgeois coalition against the peasants and workers.

     India indeed constitutes an important instance where at least the formal structure of democracy and a significant portion of its substance, such as the existence of legal opposition and channels for protest and criticism, have arisen without a phase of revolutionary violence. (The Sepoy Mutiny was mainly a backward-looking affair.) Yet the absence of a fifth condition, a revolutionary break with the past and of any strong movement in this direction up to the present moment, are among the reasons for India’s prolonged backwardness and the extraordinary difficulties that liberal democracy faces there. Some students of Indian affairs have expressed surprise that India’s small Western-educated élite has remained faithful to the democratic ideals when they could so easily overthrow it. But they would they wish to overthrow it? Does not democracy provide a rationalization for refusing to overhaul on any massive scale a social structure that maintains their privileges? To be fair one must add that the task is a sufficiently formidable one to make any but the most doctrinaire radical quail at the thought of taking responsibility for it.

     Though it would be tempting to discuss this point further, Indian politics are relevant here only insofar as they serve to test a theory of democracy. The achievements and shortcomings of democracy in India, the obstacles and uncertainties it still faces, all find a reasonable explanation in terms of the five conditions derived here from the experience of other countries. That is not proof by any means. But I think it is fair to hold that these five conditions not only illuminate significant aspects of Indian history; they derive strong support from this history.(pp.427-432)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 16 + items below reflect important discussions now circulating in the Anglophone social media, which take into account historic events that are shaping our lives, and will continue to influence us for many years to come. The neoliberal monetization of everything, and the linguistic rapport de force which has now replaced reason can only be seen as an eminently self-destructive characteristic of “disaster capitalism,” offering at best only short-term benefits for a few.

We encourage readers to look at the underlying assumptions of the presentations below and to judge for themselves the merits of the information presented here and the reasoning behind the arguments. We acknowledge that our perceptions are often governed by the momentary lighting shed on events, while any true understanding must be determined by our knowledge of the historical origins of events, whether they be institutions or individual behavior.

 

Sincerely,

Francis McCollum Feeley

--

Professeur honoraire de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur des Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego
http://www.ceimsa.org

 

a.

Mass politics must be rooted in class struggle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsYJHPjJD7c

with Chris Hedges

(1:13:41)

+

Christian nationalists have turned the Bible into a political battering ram

https://therealnews.com/christian-nationalists-have-turned-the-bible-into-a-political-battering-ram

+

The Rule of Law: Does Might Make Right? "Does the State come before the People or Do the People come before the State?"

https://www.globalresearch.ca/rule-law-does-might-make-right/5770436

+

How the U.S. Keeps Fascism Alive and Well in Italy Today—As It Has Kept It Alive Every Year Since 1943

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/02/14/how-the-u-s-keeps-fascism-alive-and-well-in-italy-today-as-it-has-kept-it-alive-every-year-since-1943/

by Aidan O’Brien

 

===========

 

b.

The Ultimate End of NATO

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57001.htm

by Matt Taibbi

+

How Empires Die  

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56999.htm

by Charles Hugh Smith

+

New World Next Week

https://www.corbettreport.com/nwnw20220210/

with James Corbett and James Evan Pilato

(26:50)

+

America's Cold War on China. Uyghurs: To Put an End to Fake News

https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-cold-war-china-uyghurs-put-end-fake-news/5770588

by Roger Keeran

+

Viral Anti-Xi Article Reveals CCP Infighting That May Derail Xi's Bid For 3rd Term, Analysts Say

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/viral-anti-xi-article-reveals-ccp-infighting-may-derail-xis-bid-3rd-term-analysts-say

by Nicole Hao

+

Norway, Not USA, Is The 'Greatest' Democracy In The World

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/norway-not-usa-greatest-democracy-world

by Tyler Durden

 

===========

 

c.

Edelman PR and the Manufacturing of “Trust”

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/06/investigative-reports/edelman-pr-and-the-manufacturing-of-trust-1/

by Johnny Vedmore

+

Eight times the United States Has Used Biological and Chemical Weapons Since WWII

http://www.blackagendareport.com/eight-times-united-states-has-used-biological-and-chemical-weapons-wwii

by Danny Haiphong

+

The Government's COVID Narrative Is A LIE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGU6hcgWbAk

with Jimmy Dore

(1:00)

+

Still No Answers On The CIA's Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance Of Americans

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/still-no-answers-cias-unconstitutional-mass-surveillance-americans

by Matthew Guariglia & Andrew Crocker

+

New Injectable Chip For "Mass Injections" To "Monitor Temperature", Israel And Mask Coercion by TLAV

https://www.bitchute.com/video/fUzEsbLy2WVG/

(May 16, 2021)

by EarthNewspaper.com

(1:26:55)

+

States of Emergency

https://www.corbettreport.com/emergency/

with James Corbett

(59:52)

 

===========

 

d.

British Government Laundered Fake U.S. 'Intelligence' On Ukraine

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56993.htm

by Moon Of Alabama

+

How The British Establishment Functions

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/how-establishment-functions

by Craig Murray

+

Europe Relies Primarily On Imports To Meet Its Natural Gas Needs

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/europe-relies-primarily-imports-meet-its-natural-gas-needs

by Tyler Durden

+

The Strategic Blunder That Set the Stage for Today’s Ukrainian Crisis –

ttps://scheerpost.com/2022/02/12/the-strategic-blunder-that-set-the-stage-for-todays-ukrainian-crisis/

by Rajan Menon

+

Oliver Stone: American Exceptionalism Is on Deadly Display in Ukraine

https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/11/oliver-stone-american-exceptionalism-is-on-deadly-display-in-ukraine/

by Robert Scheer

+

A Ukrainian sociologist explains why everything you know about Ukraine is probably wrong

https://therealnews.com/a-ukrainian-sociologist-explains-why-everything-you-know-about-ukraine-is-probably-wrong

by Volodymyr Ishchenko

+

America’s real adversaries are its European and other allies: The U.S. aim is to keep them from trading with China and Russia 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56997.htm

by Michael Hudson

+

What does the UK gain with Ukraine war?

https://youtu.be/nhkGCbUwxBs

with Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris

 (25:52)

 

===========

 

e.

US Intel Agencies Played Unsettling Role in Classified and “9/11-like” Coronavirus Response Plan

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/03/reports/us-intel-agencies-played-unsettling-role-in-classified-and-9-11-like-coronavirus-response-plan/

by Whitney Webb

(March 20, 2020)

+

How to Survive Regime Change

https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/how-to-survive-regime-change

by James Corbett

+

Video: Coronavirus Investigative Committee Grand Jury

https://www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-investigative-committee-grand-jury/5770483

by Grand Jury

 

Historical Background

A group of international lawyers and a judge are conducting a criminal investigation modeled after the United States Grand Jury proceedings in order to present to the public all available evidence of COVID-19 Crimes Against Humanity to date against “leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices” who aided, abetted or actively participated in the formulation and execution of a common plan for a pandemic. This investigation is of the people, by the people and for the people, so YOU can be part of the jury.

Through showing a complete picture of what we are facing, including the geopolitical and historical backdrop – the proceeding is meant to create awareness about

 

+

Comedian Jokes About Vaccine Then Collapses On Stage

https://youtu.be/Nf9v2h4jvGo

with Jimmy Dore

(12:13)

+

‘Health nightmare’: Dr. Robert Malone spotlights study on mRNA spike protein

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/QgrcJHrtsvkqPsRtxrSCxRnPDPJPGsqHvwg

 

“Dr. McCullough invites anyone who thinks he's wrong, and knows enough to say so, to debate him”

https://www.bitchute.com/video/Udb5lTj3UGTD/

with TheWhistleblowerNewsroom

 

Dr. Peter McCullough talks about the fallout from his bombshell interview on the Joe Rogan Experience: celebrities have left or are threatening to leave Spotify because they’re angry Rogan interviewed guests like him who they say are spreading covid disinformation. McCullough has also been fraudulently fact-checked by several media outlets and says he’s willing to have a public discussion with any pro-vax expert as credentialed as he is but so far has no takers.

+

People Who Would Know: Staggering # of Deaths Reported by Funeral Directors, Nuns, and a Vicar's Wife

https://realcovidresearch.blogspot.com/2022/01/people-who-would-know-staggering-of.html?m=1

by Real Covid Research

+

 

"They all 'died suddenly' just this past week - February 8-14"

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/they-all-died-suddenly-just-this?r=m6kl7

by Mark Crispin Miller

See how many "sudden deaths" have made some news—while "our free press" continues to DENY this Holocaust, and thereby keeps it going

+

 

Brook Jackson Interview - Pfizer Reveals Concerns With 'Data Integrity' Vindicating Previous Claims

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/brook-jackson-interview-pfizer-reveals-concerns-with-data-integrity-vindicating-previous-claims/

with Ryan Cristián

(54:05)

+

HIV/AIDS Compared SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 & DARPA's Immune System Focused B̶i̶o̶w̶e̶a̶p̶o̶n̶ Agenda

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/hiv-aids-compared-sars-cov-2-covid-19-darpas-immune-system-focused-bioweapon-agenda/

with Ryan Cristián

(2:00:25)

+

CDC finds COVID booster protection wanes after 4 months, but UCSF doctor says immune response continues - ABC7 San Francisco

https://abc7news.com/4th-booster-shot-cdc-effectiveness-wanes-after-4-months/11560016/

by Luz Pena

 

===========

 

f.

de : News from Underground
envoyé : 13 février 2022

à : nfu@simplelists.com
objet : Daily digest for nfu@simplelists.com

 

1.Canada's police are joining protesters (though some are now harassing anti-Trudeau Facebook users) - Mark Crispin Miller (11 Feb 2022 18:52 EST)

2.Joe Rogan slams the lying twerps at CNN - Mark Crispin Miller (11 Feb 2022 19:25 EST)

3."Slash the tires, arrest the drivers": Harvard professor/CNN "analyst" Juliette Kayyem calls for violence against the truckers - Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 10:22 EST)

4.For Ottawa police, there is (apparently) NO "vaccine" mandate! - Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 10:32 EST)

5.Lexi Reed hospitalized after "organs started failing" - Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 10:58 EST)

6.They're still telling us that those "vaccines" are "safe." 1,000 peer-reviewed studies now say otherwise. - Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 12:42 EST)

7.116 pharmaceutical drugs are now in dangerously short supply in the US - Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 14:00 EST)

8."The Internet of Underwater Things" is yet another globalist attack on Planet Earth, and all that lives on it (including us) - Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 16:51 EST)

9."Letter to the New York State Department of Health" (MUST-READ/SHARE) - Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 16:57 EST)


1.      Canada's police are joining protesters (though some are now harassing anti-Trudeau Facebook users) by Mark Crispin Miller (11 Feb 2022 18:52 EST)
Reply to list

Celia Farber posted this good news earlier today, on Facebook. (Scroll down for her Substack.)

 

This (to put it mildly) cannot be good news for Justin "Fidelito" Trudeau, and his apparat. This, no doubt, is why they're cracking down on "far right" Facebook users in Ontario: 

 

Ontario residents cheering on the freedom protests on Facebook get a visit from police

Officers are monitoring Facebook conversations.

https://reclaimthenet.org/ontario-police-turn-up-fb-group-protests/

 

Canada Police Are Joining The Protest Movement, And Other Fascinating Facts: CRITICAL Press Briefing With Central Intelligence/Minds Of Canada Freedom Convoy, Quiggen and Bulford
Shattering all propaganda talking points about "insurrection," "violence," "paranoia," and so forth

 

https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/canada-police-are-joining-the-protest

 

Celia Farber

8 hr ago

 

63

33

 

Link to news conference here.

Link to news conference here.
(At the moment I have no other way of sharing this, than via FB.)
Update/edit: Link to conference on Bitchute. (Thank you Edmond)
Here is the latest effort to distort and malign the Freedom Convoy, yet when you read it, you can see the impossibility of doing so.


  1. 2.Joe Rogan slams the lying twerps at CNN by Mark Crispin Miller (11 Feb 2022 19:25 EST)
    Reply to list

 

Joe Rogan Steamrolls CNN - Slams Brian Stelter And Don Lemon Over Misinformation

 

Joe Rogan Steamrolls CNN - Slams Brian Stelter And Don Lemon Over Misinformation
February 11, 2022
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/joe-rogan-guillotines-cnn-slams-brian-stelter-and-don-lemon-over-misinformation

Joe Rogan pulled no punches in his latest podcast episode, where he savaged CNN and its top anchors for not reporting 'honest' news, and said that the network's abysmal ratings are a reflection of a lack of trust - while more people "believe me or trust me or want to listen to me talk."

 

Rogan, 54, reaches approximately 11 million listeners per episode - and there's a reason why.
"The answer is not to silence me, the answer is [for] you to do better," said Rogan. "The answer is for you to have better arguments. When you're on television talking about how I'm taking horse paste, and you know that's not true. "He's taking horse dewormer."
"What you should have said, "How did Joe Rogan get better so quick? How come he got COVID that's killing everybody and he was better in five days, negative in five days, working out in six days?" How come that's never discussed?"
CNN notoriously knocked Rogan for taking 'horse dewormer' because ivermectin was part of his Covid-19 treatment regimen. He subsequently annihilated CNN's Sanjay Gupta over the network's lies.
Click on the link for the


  1. 3."Slash the tires, arrest the drivers": Harvard professor/CNN "analyst" Juliette Kayyem calls for violence against the truckers by Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 10:22 EST)
    Reply to list

This genius wants the cops to "slash the tires," then "move the trucks"? How? (And how, with her understanding of logistics, did she get to be Obama's Undersecretary of DHS?)

"Slash The Tires, Arrest The Drivers": Harvard Professor And CNN Analyst Calls For Violence Against Freedom Convoy

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/slash-tires-arrest-drivers-harvard-professor-and-cnn-analyst-calls-violence-against

BY TYLER DURDEN

February 11, 2022
Harvard professor, CNN analyst and former Obama admin undersecretary of Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem has called for violence and vandalism against Freedom Convoy protesters who have amassed on the bridge that connects Detroit, Michigan to Windsor, Ontario.
"The Ambassador Bridge link constitutes 28% of annual trade movement between US and Canada," tweeted Kayyem. "Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks."

Click on the link for the rest.


  1. 4. For Ottawa police, there is (apparently) NO "vaccine" mandate! by Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 10:32 EST)
    Reply to list

https://youtu.be/DRvbuYoY_cQ


5.Lexi Reed hospitalized after "organs started failing" by Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 10:58 EST)
Reply to list
Multi-organ failure is a "vaccine" injury widely noted on VAERS:
https://openvaers.com/openvaers/1056153

Fitness influencer Lexi Reed hospitalised and placed in medically induced coma after ‘organs started failing’
February 11, 2022

Fitness influencer Lexi Reed is in the hospital “working on recovery” after she was placed in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator after her organs began to fail, according to her husband.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/fitness-influencer-lexi-reed-hospitalised-205544719.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall


6.They're still telling us that those "vaccines" are "safe." 1,000 peer-reviewed studies now say otherwise. by Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 12:42 EST)
Reply to list
And so do all those people, of all ages, keeling over all around us. 

1000 Peer Reviewed Studies Questioning Covid-19 Vaccine Safety

Peer Reviewed Medical Papers Submitted To Various Medical Journals, Evidencing A Multitude Of Adverse Events In Covid-19 Vaccine Recipients.
January 20
https://www.informedchoiceaustralia.com/post/1000-peer-reviewed-studies-questioning-covid-19-vaccine-safety


  1. 7.116 pharmaceutical drugs are now in dangerously short supply in the US by Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 14:00 EST)
    Reply to list

Whereas there is no shortage of "vaccines."

 

Rampant Drug Shortages! Right Now There Are Shortages Of 116 Different Pharmaceutical Drugs In The United States
February 8, 2022 by Michael Snyder

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/rampant-drug-shortages-right-now-there-are-shortages-of-116-different-pharmaceutical-drugs-in-the-united-states/

Global supplies of pharmaceutical drugs are getting tighter and tighter, and this has very serious implications for 2022 and beyond.  If you depend upon a certain pharmaceutical drug in order to stay alive, I would recommend doing whatever you can to make sure that you have as much of that drug stockpiled as possible, because a day may come when you are unable to get any more for an extended period of time.  Much of our drug production has been outsourced to China, and our relations with China are not going so well right now.  In fact, the moment that China invades Taiwan we are going to have a major league national crisis on our hands.
Let me try to explain this one step at a time.
Click on the link for the rest.

 


  1. 8."The Internet of Underwater Things" is yet another globalist attack on Planet Earth, and all that lives on it (including us) by Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 16:51 EST)
    Reply to list

The vast pollution of our oceans with discarded masks was just the start of something bigger and worse yet, by far.

New Threat to Life: The Internet of Underwater Things

Analysis by 
Tessa Lena
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/02/12/internet-of-underwater-things.aspx

The Internet of Underwater Things is an invasive and dangerous initiative that has been quietly unfolding for a number of years
Development of “smart oceans” is a part of the overall agenda of financialization of nature
The initiative requires introduction of a wide range of invasive technologies into the ocean on a massive scale (including potentially 6G)
The Internet of Underwater Things involves device communication using acoustic waves, which can drastically interfere with marine life as inhabitants of the ocean rely on acoustic signals for basic everyday functions
Among the interested parties are World Economic Forum and DARPA

Click on the link for the rest.


  1. 9."Letter to the New York State Department of Health" (MUST-READ/SHARE) by Mark Crispin Miller (12 Feb 2022 16:57 EST)
    Reply to list

This should guide all those of us who are fighting (unelected) Governor Hochul's heinous regulations.

Letter to the New York State Department of Health
On Proposed Regulations That Threaten Human Rights, Bodily Autonomy, Health, & Social Bonds

https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-new-york-state-department

Margaret Anna Alice
32 min ago

10
11

 

“‘I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they’ve built. They’ve built their own prison. And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners, and as a result, they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or to even see it as a prison.’”
—English tree expert quoted by Andre Gregory, My Dinner with Andre
I am not a New Yorker, but that doesn’t matter. I am a human being, and I am a defender of human rights, and Dr. Mary Bassett, it appears you are, too, having previously served as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health & Human Rights and FXB Professor of the Practice of Health & Human Rights at Harvard.
And so I speak to you, Katherine Ceroalo, and your fellow decision-makers as defenders of individual rights, as New Yorkers, and as human beings. I ask that you shed any political biases, social pressures, preconceptions, cognitive biases, and coercive influences—whether financial, pharmaceutical, institutional, media, or otherwise—as you consider the following amendments and additions:
Amendment of Part 2, Section 405.3 and Addition of Section 58-1.14 to Title 10 NYCRR (Investigation of Communicable Disease; Isolation and Quarantine)
Amendment of Section 2.60 of Title 10 NYCRR & Repeal of Subpart 66-3 of Title 10 NYCRR (Face Coverings for COVID-19 Prevention)
Amendment of Section 415.3 of Title 10 NYCRR and Addition of Section 485.18 to Title 18 NYCRR (Personal Caregiving and Compassionate Caregiving Visitors in Nursing Homes and Adult Care Facilities)
Addition of Section 2.61 to Title 10 NYCRR, Amendment of Sections 405.3, 415.19, 751.6, 763.13, 766.11, 794.3 & 1001.11 of Title 10 NYCRR & Sections 487.9, 488.9 and 490.9 of Title 18 NYCRR (Prevention of COVID-19 Transmission by Covered Entities)
Before you rubber-stamp these changes into effect, please understand that you hold the lives of individual human beings in your hands, and you will be personally responsible for any physical, psychological, and emotional damage that comes to people because of your decisions.
The proposed amendment of Part 2, Section 405.3 and addition of Section 58-1.14 to Title 10 NYCRR (Investigation of Disease; Isolation and Quarantine) include treacherously broad redefinitions of terms such as “case” and “suspected case”:
(b) [A case is defined as] Case shall mean a person who has been diagnosed [as likely to have] as having a particular disease or condition. The diagnosis may be based [solely] on clinical judgment, signs and symptoms combined with known exposure based on the best available evidence of transmissibility to a case or suspected case, [solely] and/or on laboratory evidence, [or on both criteria] as applicable.
(c) [A suspected case is defined as] Suspected case shall mean a person who has been [diagnosed] determined as [likely to have] possibly having a particular disease or condition. [The suspected diagnosis] A suspected case may be based [solely] on signs and symptoms, signs and symptoms combined with known exposure based on the best available evidence of transmissibility to a case or suspected case, [or solely] and/or on laboratory evidence, [or on both criteria] as applicable. The term “suspected case” shall include persons under investigation, consistent with any guidance that the Commissioner of Health may issue with respect to a particular disease.”
Here’s a little tip: Whenever you’re reviewing legislation, always consider that you could one day be on the receiving end of the very policies you are approving.
Altering the definitions of “case” and “suspected case” such that they can be determined based solely on an authority’s judgment opens the floodgates for abuses and politically motivated persecutions the likes of which have historically been documented in totalitarian regimes to the tune of hundreds of millions of incarcerations and deaths. Believe me, you do not want to be responsible for flinging open that Pandora’s box.
Anyone with the faintest awareness of history—or every dystopian story ever written, for that matter—should understand that Orwellian redefinitions of language and ambiguous shades of meaning can and will be abused to the fullest extent that the law permits, so it is your responsibility to ensure the law reigns in rather than expands tyrannical powers. You may think those in control will exercise it responsibly, but as the past two years of escalating global authoritarianism have proven, the opposite is true.
Realize the amendments you are considering are not unlike those used to stigmatize and ghettoize the Jews during World War II.

Nazi poster distributed in Poland, March 1941
The translation of the above poster reads, “Jews are lice; They cause typhus.” Substitute today’s presently defined enemy and manufactured public health crisis made possible by the redefinition of “pandemic”false positives generated by highly manipulable PCR tests, and inventions such as the myth of asymptomatic transmission, and you’ll find no difference between that poster and today’s fear-spiking propaganda about the unvaccinated as spreaders of disease.
Each policy enacted in the name of COVID has been driven not by “the science” but rather by political science and pharmaceutical profit motives. Thousands of exceptionally qualified scientists, physicians, and medical professionals of integrity have been voicing grave concerns about detrimental COVID policies for two years, but their cries have been smothered and their reputations smeared by the pharma–owned media, Big Tech, politicians, $cientists, and phy$icians.
Gates Foundation–bought scientists formulate conclusions scripted by their paymasters against protests from ethical scientistscareer bureaucrats with god complexes formulate public health policy and remain in office despite exhaustive evidence of corruption and crimes against humanitytyrants perpetually ratchet up their emergency powers while colluders enforce their totalitarian policies; captured agencies propagate disinformation campaigns; for-hire fact-chokers label inconvenient scientific truths “misinformation”; medical professionals violate the Nuremberg Code by administering experimental drugs without informed consentschool boards and hospitals are incentivized to enact injurious and even fatal policies; and propagandists whip up fear campaigns to “nudge” the public based on manipulation tactics devised by behavioral psychologists—a practice now under investigation in the UK after a group of psychologists condemned the government for using “grossly unethical” fear tactics, noting in their letter:
“More disturbingly, the inflated fear levels will have significantly contributed to the many thousands of excess non-Covid deaths that have occurred in people’s homes, the strategically-increased anxieties discouraging many from seeking help for other illnesses.
“Government scientists deploying fear, shame and scapegoating to change minds is an ethically dubious practice that in some respects resembles the tactics used by totalitarian regimes such as China, where the state inflicts pain on a subset of its population in an attempt to eliminate beliefs and behaviour they perceive to be deviant.”
Even Chief Medical Propagandist and WEF Young Global Leader Dr. Leana Wen now declares “the science has changed” (i.e., the public is catching on to their lies and reaching a tipping point in their awareness of the mass formation they’ve been inculcated into) and says we “should lift restrictions now.” You can get a sampling of her “evolving” messaging in this clip: 

As Wen’s progenitor Goebbels says:
“There will come a day, when all the lies will collapse under their own weight, and truth will again triumph.”
We are witnessing that collapse now, and even BigPharma accomplices like Johns Hopkins are admitting policies like lockdowns not only failed but actually caused harm and even mortality.
At a time when the scientific evidence for the inefficacy of and health risks associated with masks could not be clearer, you are considering the amendment of Section 2.60 of Title 10 NUCRR and repeal of Subpart 66-3 of Title 10 NYCRR (Face Coverings for COVID-19 Prevention), which would permanently equip the governor with the power to declare mask mandates at will—sans consensus.
Click on the link for the rest.


---
Support News from Underground: https://bit.ly/NFUSupport
Visit News from Underground: https://markcrispinmiller.com
For archives, please go to: https://archives.simplelists.com/nfu

 

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g.

James Corbett Lays Out the Biosecurity Agenda

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1698-james-corbett-lays-out-the-biosecurity-agenda/

with James Corbett and Jaime Santiago

(54:45)

+

Deep Dive: Vaccine Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, HIV Inserts In SARS-CoV-2 & The Aftermath

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/deep-dive-vaccine-acquired-immune-deficiency-syndrome-hiv-inserts-sars-cov-2-aftermath/

with Ryan Cristián

 (2:24:48)

+

2021 (And 2022) Worse Than 2020 Despite Jab & "Fully Vaxed" In UK's Last Month Over 80% Of Deaths

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/2021-2022-worse-than-2020-despite-jab-fully-vaxed-uks-last-month-over-80-percent-deaths/

with Ryan Cristián

(1:19:01)

+

What About Excess Mortality? – February 2021

https://www.corbettreport.com/what-about-excess-mortality-questions-for-corbett-073/

with James Corbett

(42:41)

+

NOW What About Excess Mortality? – February 2022

https://www.corbettreport.com/mortality/

with James Corbett and Denis Rancourt

(1:11:07)

+

Embalmer Reveals 93% of Cases Died from the Vaccine

https://www.globalresearch.ca/exclusive-embalmer-reveals-93-cases-died-vaccine/5770522

by Steve Kirsch

 

===========

h.

Palestinian Factions Revolt Against PA Which “Cancels” Security Coordination With Israel

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/palestinian-factions-revolt-against-pa-which-cancels-security-coordination-with-israel/

by Robert Inlakesh

+

Will Israel ever free itself from its Pegasus state of mind?

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-pegasus-ness-is-trojan-horse-in-the-israeli-consciousness-1.10611300

by Liran Gordon

+

Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2019/08/investigative-series/mega-group-maxwells-and-mossad-the-spy-story-at-the-heart-of-the-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/

by Whitney Webb

+

Labour blew $1.3 million pursuing "anti-Semitism" leakers

https://electronicintifada.net/content/labour-blew-13-million-pursuing-anti-semitism-leakers/34026

by Asa Winstanley

+

Israel Pumps $30M into “Concert,” a Revamped Propaganda Campaign to Fight Apartheid Label

https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-pumps-30m-into-concert-revamped-propaganda-campaign-fight-apartheid-label/279624/

by Jessica Buxbaum

+

Will Scathing Amnesty Apartheid Report Lead to Change in Israel’s Criminal Practices?

https://www.mintpressnews.com/will-scathing-amnesty-apartheid-report-lead-change-israels-criminal-practices/279633/

by Miko Peled

+

Texas anti-BDS measure ruled unconstitutional -- again

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/texas-anti-bds-measure-ruled-unconstitutional-again

by Nora Barrows-Friedman

+

Israel Bombs Syria, Syria Defends Itself, Israel Bombs Again In "Self Defense"

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/israel-bombs-syria-syria-defends-itself-israel-bombs-again-self-defense/

by Robert Inlakesh

 

===========

 

i.

BAR Book Forum: Ahjamu Umi’s “A Guide for Organizing Defense against White Supremacist, Patriarchal, and Fascist Violence”

http://www.blackagendareport.com/bar-book-forum-ahjamu-umis-guide-organizing-defense-against-white-supremacist-patriarchal-and

by Roberto Sirvent

+

CIA Bad Boy John K. Singlaub, Virtual Director of Contra War, Dies at 100

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/02/09/cia-bad-boy-john-k-singlaub-virtual-director-of-contra-war-dies-at-100/

by Jeremy Kuzmarov

+

How the US Uses the NED to Export Obedience, with Matt Kennard

https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-uses-ned-export-obedience-matt-kennard/279642/

by Aidan O’Brien

+

1 in 3 Big Defense Contractors Profit from US Prisoner Suffering

https://www.mintpressnews.com/1-3-big-defense-contractors-profit-us-prisoner-suffering/279648/

by Alan Macleod

 

===========

 

j.

Conflicting Views from the “Left » :

 

If labor truly believes that "an injury to one is an injury to all," it must build support for global vaccination.
https://truthout.org/articles/defeating-vaccine-apartheid-will-require-unions-that-fight-global-inequality/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Truthout+Share+Buttons
by Saurav Sarkar

+

The Mandates Are Leaving Europe. Is Freedom Winning?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mandates-are-leaving-europe-freedom-winning

by Joanna Miller

+

Anti-democratic forces like the trucker convoy are subverting the idea of freedom in service of right-wing extremism.

https://truthout.org/articles/convoy-movement-isnt-a-struggle-over-freedom-its-an-attempt-to-kill-democracy/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Truthout+Share+Buttons

by Henry A. Giroux

+

Video: World Awakening - Freedom Convoys

https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-world-awakening-freedom-convoys/5770607

by Marcel Irnie

 

The Great International Convoy Fiasco 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57000.htm

by Matt Taibbi

+

Canadian Civil Liberties Association Condemns Trudeau For Invoking National Emergency Over Truckers

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trudeau-unleash-never-used-emergency-powers-act-counter-protests-us-canada-bridge-reopens

by Tyler Durden

+

Video: Has Justin Trudeau Been Duly Vaccinated? Registered Nurse Expresses Doubt on Authenticity of Trudeau's Vaccine Jab

https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-has-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-been-duly-vaccinated-registered-nurse-expresses-doubt-authenticity-trudeau-vaccine-jab/5756186

by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

+

Freedom Convoy: Trudeau declares emergency just hours after Ontario announces end to vaccine passports |

https://theweek.com/protests/1010176/freedom-convoy-trudeau-declares-emergency-just-hours-after-ontario-announces-end

by Grayson Quay

+

Worldwide Freedom Movement against Covid Mandates, QR Codes and Restrictions: The Global Elite’s Technological Coup d’État Against Humanity

https://www.globalresearch.ca/sleepwalking-hell-global-elites-technological-coup-detat-against-humanity/5770445

by Robert J. Burrowes

+

Our Moment – Our Movement! Beyond the Covid Mandates. A New Horizon

https://www.globalresearch.ca/our-moment-our-movement/5770450

by Julian Rose

 

===========

 

k.

Mexico City Health Ministry Stands By Ivermectin Use After 'Colonialist & Authoritarian' Censorship Of New Study

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/mexico-city-health-ministry-stands-by-ivermectin-use-after-colonialist-authoritarian-censorship-major-study/

by Derrick Broze

+

How a little trade union in Mexico 'defeated a many-headed monster'

https://therealnews.com/how-a-little-trade-union-in-mexico-defeated-a-many-headed-monster

by Meizhu Lui

+

Google & Oracle To Monitor Americans Who Get Warp Speed’s Covid-19 Vaccine For Up To Two Years

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/10/reports/google-oracle-to-monitor-americans-who-get-warp-speeds-covid-19-vaccine-for-up-to-two-years/

by Whitney Webb

+

World's Rivers Awash in Pharmaceuticals, Historic Study Reveals

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/14/worlds-rivers-awash-pharmaceuticals-historic-study-reveals

by Jessica Corbett

 

===========

 

l.

Demokracy and the Whole Point of Political Cartooning and Satire

https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/12/mr-fish-demokracy-and-the-whole-point-of-political-cartooning-and-satire/

by Mr. Fish

+

“Democrats, the More Effective Evil”

https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-democrats-effective-evil/279654/

by Chris Hedges

+

 “Rather Than Sink Main Street by Raising Interest Rates, the Fed Could Save It. Here’s How” 

https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/10/ellen-brown-rather-than-sink-main-street-by-raising-interest-rates-the-fed-could-save-it-heres-how/

by Ellen Brown

+

'Net-Zero'? Europe's Top Banks Have Pumped $400 Billion Into Oil and Gas Since 2016

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/14/net-zero-europes-top-banks-have-pumped-400-billion-oil-and-gas-2016

by Kenny Stancil

+

Afghan central bank calls US theft of $7 billion 'Injustice to people of Afghanistan'

https://therealnews.com/afghan-central-bank-calls-us-theft-of-7-billion-injustice-to-people-of-afghanistan

by Jon Queally

 

===========

 

m.

Medical providers reported performing thousands less abortions in September 2021

https://truthout.org/articles/abortions-in-texas-fell-60-percent-in-first-month-of-ban-new-data-shows/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Truthout+Share+Buttons

by Sharon Zhang

+

African Civil Society Slams Moderna Attempt to 'Derail' Vaccine Project

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/14/african-civil-society-slams-moderna-attempt-derail-vaccine-project

by Jake Johnson

 

===========

 

n.

Groups Warn Texas Voting Rights 'In Jeopardy' as GOP Law Wreaks Havoc

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/14/groups-warn-texas-voting-rights-jeopardy-gop-law-wreaks-havoc

by Jake Johnson

+

Police Murder of Amir Locke in Minneapolis Sparks Outrage

https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/09/police-murder-of-amir-locke-in-minneapolis-sparks-outrage/

by Natalia Marques

 

===========

 

o.

Propagandist for Syria terror proxies compromised Amnesty International, leaked docs show

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/02/08/leaked-documents-syrian-terror-amnesty-international-syria/

by Kit Klarenberg

+

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Has a New Corporate Megadonor

http://www.blackagendareport.com/congressional-black-caucus-foundation-has-new-corporate-megadonor

by Donald Shaw

 

===========

 

p.

From: Reclaim The Net <hello@reclaimthenet.org>
Date: Feb 9, 2022
Subject: Canada begins vaccine passport backtrack, free speech app banned mandates will be removed on Februqry 14, while Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney said his province will remove the mandates on February 15 at midnight.

 

Two Canadian provinces drop vaccine passports; “It is time for us also to heal the divisions in our communities” Will others follow?

https://reclaimthenet.org/two-canadian-provinces-drop-vaccine-passports/
by Christina Mass
On Tuesday, the premiers of the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta announced plans to end several Covid policies, including the divisive vaccine passports.
The two provinces will become the first to end the mandates that have been sparking protests all over the country.

According to both premiers, the mandates have outlived their usefulness, and that it was time to heal the divisions caused by Covid measures.



“The program is no longer serving a useful and compelling purpose,” Mr. Kenney said on Tuesday. “I could not stand in front of Albertans tonight and justify a continuation of a program that has done its job.”

Moe said that the vaccine mandate would create “deep divisions,” adding that the mandate helped with the Delta strain, but its benefits do not outweigh the costs with the Omicron strain.

“It is time for us also to heal the divisions in our communities over vaccinations,” he said. Moe also asked residents not to judge each other on the basis of vaccination status or become adversarial to those who choose to continue wearing masks after the restrictions are lifted.

“Don’t lose a friend to COVID,” he implored.

Quebec also released a plan to lift most of the restrictions by mid-March. However, the vaccine and mask mandates will remain. Quebec’s Premier François Legault urged residents to decide for themselves about what is safe.

“We’ll have to learn how to live with the virus,” he said at a news conference in Quebec City. “What does that mean? It means that each person will have to evaluate their own risks. ‘I’m with how many people? How many have three doses? How many are over 60?’”

Reclaim The Net accepts no advertising and is funded entirely by the community. If you support free speech, the eradication of cancel culture and restoring privacy and civil liberties, please become a supporter here.

ANOTHER LOSS

Google Play Store bans freedom-focused social network Flote

Google Play, the primary app distribution channel on Android devices, has booted the alternative social network Flote from its app store after Flote, in its words, refused to "conform to their idea of 'community standards.'"

Flote, an crypto-enhanced social network which supports free speech, free trade, individual liberty, privacy, and security, said that Google has been threatening to remove the app for months and that Google wanted "multiple emails of content and accounts" removed. It added that one of the accounts Google wanted Flote to remove was a porn account and another was a current events account, neither of which were breaking any of Flote's rules.

While both the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store have rules that ban apps that serve adult content, this rule is enforced selectively and larger apps, such as Twitter and Reddit, get a pass.

"At Flote we believe we have our own community standards… that you as individuals are not only capable but also responsible for what you say and for what you read," Flote said in its response to the Google Play Store ban. "We trust you to make your own decisions to, for example, consume adult material or express your political views, without the constant threat of running afoul of some arbitrary and ever-changing set of rules made up by people you don’t even know."

According to Flote, the removal of the app will not only mean that it's no longer available in the Google Play Store but that previously installed versions of the app will also stop working.

Flote's Android app can still be installed directly via Flote's Android Application Package (APK) or accessed via an Android web browser. Flote also plans to add its app to the free and open-source Android app repository F-Droid.

"We understand this is not ideal for members accustomed to using the Android app and apologize for this disruption but we strongly believe that your freedom to express yourself is more valuable than the convenience that will be lost," Flote said.

"Furthermore, we encourage you to voice your opinions about big-tech censorship and the general weakening of public discourse that’s resulting from it in whatever manner you see fit by joining us at Flote.app."

Flote's Chief Technology Officer, Patrick Smith, added: "We didn't bend the knee to Google. @floteofficial has been removed from their app store. This will either be the end game or just the beginning for us. Which way it goes is up to you. Do you want a place to truly associate freely absent religious and political dogma? Lets go!"

Google's decision to ban Flote is the latest of many examples of the tech giant banning alternative apps from its popular app store. The alternative social networks Parler and Gab, and the alternative video sharing platform BitChute are some of the many apps that have been booted from the Google Play Store.

In addition to banning apps, Google often forces popular apps, such as the messaging app Telegram and the non-fungible tokens (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, to restrict or block in-app content.

NEW SPEECH RESTRICTION

TikTok explicitly bans "misgendering" and "deadnaming" with new policy

TikTok has updated its “hateful ideologies” policy with new speech restrictions to specifically include a ban on “misgendering,” and “deadnaming.”

The term “misgendering” on social media often means referring to someone as a gender with which they do not identify - for example calling someone that sees themselves as a transgender woman a “man.”

“Deadnaming” refers to using the birth name or former name of a person that they no longer use.

Cormac Keenan, the head of trust and safety at TikTok, said in the post that these “ideologies have long been prohibited” on the Chinese-owned social platform, but that the company wanted to make it more explicit.

Keenan said the change came after complaints from “civil society organizations” who said that it was “important to be explicit in [TikTok’s] community guidelines.”

“On top of this, we hope our recent feature enabling people to add their pronouns will encourage respectful and inclusive dialogue on our platform,” Keenan said.

The GLAAD organization praised TikTok for the ban saying that platforms “create an unsafe environment for LGBTQ people online” when “misgendering or deadnaming” are not banned.

WANTS JAIL

Scottish politician Julie McKenzie wants comedian Jimmy Carr prosecuted for Netflix special

On Christmas Day, Netflix released comedian Jimmy Carr’s special “His Dark Materials,” where the comedian made a controversial joke. You can read about that here.

A Scottish Nationalist Party councilor has now weighed in, suggesting Carr and anyone in the audience that applauded him during the Netflix special should be prosecuted.

Julie McKenzie, the councilor for Oban North & Lorn said the Netflix special contained “hate speech” because of a joke about the holocaust.

"Jimmy Carr and his Netflix hate speech, and his applauding audience should be prosecuted,” she wrote.

The remark was criticized by social media users for being authoritarian and anti-free speech.

"Just so I can get this right, you think people who laugh at offensive jokes should be jailed and thought this would make the SNP look good how?" one user said.

Before making the joke, Carr admitted that it might be career-ending. He then explains that the joke is good because it is educational and “edgy as hell.”

“It’s a joke about the worst thing that’s ever happened in human history, and people say ‘never forget’, well this is how I remember,” he said.

Netflix is under pressure to remove the special, while The Auschwitz Memorial and Holocaust Memorial Day Trust asked Carr to educate himself.

The controversy has sparked debate over comedic value and free speech. Those in support of free speech have criticized “cancel culture,” with Carr saying “comedy is dead.”

The controversy led to UK’s culture secretary Nadine Dorries suggesting the creation of a law to prevent the broadcasting of such comments, which she described as “abhorrent and they just shouldn’t be on television.”

PERVASIVE

Britain's schools, towns, and police forces are filled with Uyghur-linked surveillance

The UK has long been leading the way with the mass use of mass surveillance, such as CCTV cameras, but it is now emerging that much of the technology enabling this policy and trend is not manufactured at home.

In fact, the use of Chinese surveillance cameras is widespread in the UK, including equipment manufactured by two Chinese state-owned companies, Hikvision and Dahua, which the US government previously blacklisted, preventing the purchase of their products by that country's federal bodies.

Related: Huawei accused of hiding facial recognition tech that singles out Uyghurs

The reason the two firms are considered a national security threat in the US, and by several human rights activists, is the charge that they supply the tech infrastructure used against China's Uyghur minority.

Nevertheless, in the UK, their products are deployed by thousands of schools, the police, local councils, and even government departments, The Times writes, citing data it has had access to.

This data comes from the Big Brother Watch civil rights group, who was able to obtain it thanks to freedom of information requests. According to this, the use of Hikvision and Dahua cameras is widespread in England: for example, over half - 386 - secondary schools use them.

When it comes to local authorities, 75 percent of respondents, which translates to 251 institutions, said they had this tech installed. Among those who rely on surveillance devices made by Chinese state-owned firms are the Metropolitan Police in London - one of 15 police departments who do the same, and they are joined by 35 hospitals and 49 universities.

Government bodies are not immune to this trend either: the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Department of Health and Social Care all said they are using products manufactured by Hikvision and Dahua.

Some of this tech is sophisticated enough to detect facial and behavioral patterns and gender, something that is particularly worrying from the privacy point of view.

Some of the schools mentioned in the report said that the cameras they use can carry out facial recognition, track people, and search by the color of their clothes and hair. The tech can also tell if a fight breaks out. Others have cameras that detect students' clothes and gender.

The Times reports that "when asked if the widespread use of the equipment was appropriate, the UK government said it would not discuss security arrangements."

WHAT'S THE ENDGAME?

Bluesky goes official as a public benefit company, adds Jack Dorsey to the board

What cynics consider to have been Twitter's "pie in the blue sky" - the Bluesky project - is apparently not forgotten.

The website for the project has just announced the setting up of the Bluesky PBLLC, which is now an independent public benefit limited liability company, that those behind it say will implement the project's "vision" as an "independent organization."

Bluesky was first announced by then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in December 2019, in a series of tweets that revealed this social company, that's a poster child for centralized web, was looking into how the other side - i.e., the decentralized part of the internet - lives, and, trying to position itself as the leader in developing a future social media protocol in that space.

Many thought of it as an attempt to "reinvent the wheel" (since very similar protocols already exist) and an odd choice, given the fact it was precisely Twitter that over the years shed many of its initial, decentralized elements, in favor of the other model that has proven to be one of the internet's ills.

Many suspected that Twitter was simply looking for ways to eventually exert control over the decentralized web as well, by bankrolling the development of a new protocol that would be widely adopted across the social media landscape.

In any case, when Dorsey first announced the project, he said it would have a team of as few as five open source experts, and be funded by Twitter. And his publicly revealed reasoning was that centralized platforms these days, when it comes to "enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information" are "unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people."

Now, the Bluesky PBLLC's declared goal will be precisely to ensure that the hard part, when it comes to breaking into the largely cemented by the biggest players and their technologies market: achieving large-scale adoption.

Board members for this new company are Dorsež, as well as Jabber/XMPP inventor Jeremie Miller, and Bluesky's CEO Jay Graber.

"Decentralization is a structural change that in itself is insufficient for creating a healthy social media ecosystem," the Bluesky LLC writes, and adds, "However, by creating an environment where developers can freely build, communities can self-govern, and users can easily switch services, decentralization can catalyze the innovation necessary to improve the public conversation."

Acknowledging that the tech already exists - such as federated and P2P networks - Bluesky wants to use elements of both, providing self-certifying protocols but also the ease-of-use of delegated hosting.

Bluesky values "moderation" highly, we are informed, and the way this would be solved is through tools for "reputation and moderation systems that are transparent, opt-in, and multi-layered" - but also "create frameworks for others to build such tooling."

SOMETHING TO BE AWARE OF

GiveSendGo error exposed user data, report says

GiveSendGo, an alternative crowdfunding platform that came to the rescue after GoFundMe pulled the plug on fundraising for the Freedom Convoy, has suffered a vulnerability that exposed private data, TechCrunch reports.

The company has since fixed the vulnerability.

Last week, GoFundMe deleted the fundraiser page of the truckers protest. As a result, the organizers started another fundraiser on alternative platform GiveSendGo which is a more free speech friendly alternative.

Like the one on GoFundMe, GiveSendGo quickly gained traction raising millions on the first day, despite suffering from server issues and the platform saying it suffered a massive DDoS attack.

However, according to TechCrunch, there was a vulnerability on the GiveSendGo page that potentially exposed the data of thousands of users.

The outlet was tipped off to the data vulnerability by a security researcher who found that the page’s Amazon-hosted S3 bucket was exposed. The S3 bucket contained more than 50GB of files that included the driver’s licenses and passports of users.

The researcher discovered the exposed S3 bucket by inspecting the Freedom Convoy’s fundraiser page’s source code.

TechCrunch contacted GiveSendGo about the data lapse and the issue was fixed shortly after.

While the data was exposed, there is not yet any evidence to suggest that data was obtained or used by any bad actors.

GiveSendGo is yet to respond.