Bulletin N° 856
“Charlotte’s Web”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY9_cgdgi-4
animation of 1952
children’s novel by E.B. White
(1hr 54min)
&
“The
Walrus and the Carpenter”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43914/the-walrus-and-the-carpenter-56d222cbc80a9
poem
by Lewis Carroll from Through the Looking-Glass, 1872.
Subject : The Etiology of Neofascism and the
Changes it Promises to Bring.
August 7, 2019
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Studying fascist formations as an organic
development out of the economic, political and social milieux of capitalist society - rather than as a mechanistic
deviation from normative political behavior – opens up the landscape of capitalist
social relationships to new vistas. Princeton University professor
Lawrence Stone’s classic histoire des
mentalities study, The
Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (1977), provides many
valuable insights into roots of social relationships as they developed over the
centuries in early modern England, thus fulfilling the historians first task of
informing readers whence we have emerged and whither we are likely heading.
I met Professor Stone in the spring of 1987, during
his visit to San Diego State University, where I was a member of the history faculty. One afternoon at a
faculty wine-and-cheese party, we engaged in an animated discussion in which we
discussed the apparent overlap of idealist theory and historical materialism.
He was quite open to discussing the tentative conclusions of his research in a
very matter-of-fact fashion, though I found the conclusions he had drawn, as I told him
at the time, a bit underwhelming.
In this expertly organized treatise of some 400
pages, Stone begins with an introductory chapter on “Problems, Methods and
Definitions”, and a second on “Demographic Facts”; he then moves quickly to
descriptions of the “open lineage family” as evidenced in England between 1450
and 1639, discussing its structure, it values and the affective relationships
that were promoted by the society and within the family. This portrait is
followed by a description in the next part of the book of the “restricted
patriarchal nuclear family” in England as it emerged from 1550 to 1700. Here he
takes up the evidence for a decline of influences traditionally imposed by
kinship, clientage, and the community in all social classes, and the sometimes
brutal enforcement of patriarchy in the husband-wife and parent-child
relationships within the nuclear family in the early modern history of England,
emphasizing “areas of permissiveness” and “areas of repression,” and the normative role played by formal education.
The fourth part of this impressive book concerns the “closed domesticated
nuclear family,” which, according to Professor Stone, made its appearance in
England between 1640 and 1800. It is in this section of the book that the
author discusses evidence for the emergence of “affective individualism” in
early modern English society and within families of every rank. This part of
his study begins chapter 6, where Professor Stone introduces the subject with
an overall view of the new formations he is about to describe.
The
sixteenth-century trend towards increasingly authoritarian relationships within the middle – and
upper-class families was progressively overtaken in the late seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries by an opposite trend towards greater freedom for children
and a rather more equal partnership between spouses. It was a development that
was accompanied by a further walling-off
of the nuclear family from either interference or support from the kin, and a
further withdrawal from the community. Thirdly, there developed much warmer
affective relations between husband and wife and between parents and children,
which was itself a powerful reason for the declining influence of kin and
community. A fourth feature was the identification of children as a special
status group, distinct from adults, with its
own special institutions, such as schools, and its own information
circuits, from which adults now increasingly tried to exclude knowledge about
sex and death.
Another
development, which emerged only among the landed elite and hardly affected the
bourgeois and professional classes, was the increasingly open recognition and
acceptance of sensuality. One result was the open inclusion of eroticism in
marital relations as well as in the extra-marital liaisons to which it had
previously been, in theory and perhaps also in practice, largely confined.
Further discussion of this fourth feature, however, will be postponed until the
problem of sexuality is taken up in Part Five of this volume.
Apart
from eroticism, these trends first became prominent in wealthy merchant and
professional households in the city in the last third of the seventeenth
century; From there they spread to the upper landed classes, gathering strength
rapidly in the early eighteenth century and reaching a climax towards 1800.
These
changes in human relations within the microcosm of the family cannot be
explained except in terms of changes in the macrocosm of the total cultural
system, a major reorientation of meaning among those sectors of society which
experienced these changes. This being so, the search for explanation must carry
us to areas far removed from the family itself, since what is involve is a
change in how the individual regarded himself in relation to society (the
growth of individualism) and how he behaved and felt towards other human
beings, particularly his wife and children on the one hand, and parents and kin
on the other (the growth of affect). Before beginning a discussion of this very difficult subject,
it should be clearly understood that what is being put under the microscope is
a secondary, but highly significant , tendency at work within what still
remained at all levels a deferential society based, although to a diminishing
extent, on the time-honored principles of hierarchy and obedience. These
principles found open expression in the elaborate rituals of doffing of hats in
the presence of superiors; the giving of the wall when passing in the street;
the meticulous ordering of official processions such as funerals, by which
every rank was allotted his appropriate place; the socially graded arrangements
for seating in churches. The array of huge family tombs which filled the
chancels of so many English parish churches in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries were, like the elaborate genealogies so lovingly drawn up by the
heralds, evidence of a widespread and cultivated ancestry-worship, which supported
the authority of the elders in the family over the younger members of it.
These
elaborate rituals and symbols had profound psychological significance, their
purpose being to buttress the social order and protect it from the chaos
threatened by the Reformation and redistribution of church property and the
growing inequalities of wealth and poverty. In the long run, these efforts were
successful in containing the threat of social disintegration, and by the early
eighteenth century a period of calm began. The ‘quality’ were once more
reunited on basic issues.
It was
precisely because of this underlying unity of the elites, and of the largely
unquestioning habits of deference by those below, that the state apparatus
could remain so relatively weak in eighteenth-century England without a total
collapse of social order. It was a close thing, anarchy lay only just below the
surface, and the authority of the elite was tempered by the fear and reality of
the mob riot. But authority held, for, as Burk pointed out, political liberty
was – and is – bought as the price of internalized respect for social
discipline. Individual autonomy – contemporaries called it ‘freedom’ or
‘liberty’ – therefore, was a new luxury which could now safely be indulged in by
the well-to-do, and which modified and mitigated the rigidities of a society
whose fundamental cohesion was preserved by habits of obedience to legitimate
authority, two of the most important aspects of which were the subordination of
children to parents, and of women to men.(pp.149-151)
He goes on to attempt to explain the shift in
mentality that began in the late seventeenth century, which saw a “different
set of values, which placed the individual above the kin, the family, the
society, and even in some eighteenth century judicial pronouncements, the state”. This “very
unusual phenomenon” demands explanation:
It
should be noted that the development of personal introspection and the growth
of toleration for other individuals stem from what are in some ways
antithetical psychological impulses. The most powerful influence behind the
first was the overpowering sense of sin and the preoccupation with individual
salvation that was the hallmark of the Puritan personality in the seventeenth
century, and was greatly stimulated be literacy and the habit of private
reading and meditation. The interests in the self sprang from the urgent need
to discipline the self – the ‘sphincter morality’ as the Freudians describe it.
Puritanism, introspection, literacy and privacy form a single affinity group of
characteristics. They do not, however, necessarily lead to a willingness to
respect the liberty of privacy of others. On the contrary, both in England and
in New England, they led directly to the creation of suspicious and
inquisitorial society, constantly on the watch to spy out the sins of others
and to suppress all deviations from the true way.
The
spirit of toleration for the autonomy of others derives as much from
indifference as from principle. With its stress on the liberation of other
individuals and their freedom in the pursuit of personal goals, it is a feature
of the opposite personality type, extrovert, easy-going, and willing to
tolerate diversity, if only for the sake of peace. What seems to have happened
was this. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, two different
world views, the Puritanically ascetic and the secularly sensual, were
competing for the allegiance of the ruling classes. Between 1640 and 1660 the
former won, abused its victory by attempting to impose its values by force, and
then collapsed. The result was a strong reaction to hedonism, while Puritanism
persisted as a viewpoint adhered to by a minority.
There
was thus a major oscillation between two predominant personality types in
England in the seventeenth century. Both types, in their different ways, made
their contribution, the first to the growth of introspection and the second to
the growth of respect for the autonomy of others. Puritanism in its death throes
left behind it certain critically important legacies. Despite its authoritarian
inclinations, it also emphasized the importance of the individual conscience
and of private prayer to God, and in defeat after 1660 it had no option but to
plead for religious toleration from the majority. Moreover its stress on the
importance of holy matrimony – meaning marriage bound by mutual affection –
helped to undermine its contrary emphasis on the need for strict filial
obedience to parents. But it was the post-1660 cultural supremacy of the
anti-Puritan character type which built on this foundation decisively to change
attitudes towards authority, affection and sex within the middle and upper
ranks of society.(pp.152-153)
The growth of affective individualism is seen in
the changing attitudes toward cruelty, as well.
Another
broad philosophical movement, which gathered strength throughout the mid and
late eighteenth century, was a growing antipathy to cruelty. The origins of
this sentiment may be traced back to some obscure zone of English Puritan thought, since its first
clear expression is to be found in The Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony,
adopted by the General Court in 1641. This document placed strict limits on the
use of judicial torture to extract information, and forbade husbands to beat
their wives or maltreat their servants or apprentices. It even, for the first
time in history, legislated to protect domestic animals: ‘No man shall exercise
any tyranny or cruelty towards any brute creatures which are usually to be kept
for man’s use.’ Since 1641 was the last year’ in which the English state
formally ordered the use of torture on a political prisoner, the same motives
must have been working in England to place restraint on the treatment of prisoners
by the Parliamentary leaders and Oliver Cromwell, despite the hatreds generated
by the bitter civil war.
Late
seventeenth-century evidence for this trend of Puritan thought is hard to find,
and the spread of revulsion against cruelty in the eighteenth century seems to
have been concurrent with, and related to, the spread of Enlightenment ideas
throughout Europe. Even then, it was at all times a state of mind confined to a
relatively small part of the population. But it was a highly articulate and
ultimately very influential part which slowly learned to employ all the devices
of mass persuasion available in what was increasingly an educationally literate
and politically open society. Organized in societies formed for the purpose of
promoting this or that change, the reformers used the spreading bulk of newspapers, as well as pamphlets, sermons,
novels, cartoons and prints, to influence a wider public and then mobilize that public thought through
the machinery of the mass petition to bring pressure on Parliament. They were
responsible in the end for such things as the abolition of the slave trade, the
suppression of most cruel sports, prison reform, and reform in the treatment of
the mentally sick. It is too facile to point out that the most successful of
these endeavours affected others than the reformers themselves, and that it was
therefore only too easy for the English elite to incorporate the concept of
benevolence into their set of cultural imperatives. The movement was a
genuinely moral one involving the upsurge of new attitudes and emotions, which
acquired an enormous stimulus thanks to the development of the mid-eighteenth
century of a new ideal type, namely the
Man of Sentiment, of Man of Feeling, the prototype of the late eighteenth-century
Romantic. Conformity to this new ideal positively reinforced the legitimacy of
the ruling class.
The
connection between maltreatment of animals and maltreatment (and murder) of
human beings was the theme of Hogarth’s popular set of openly propagandist
prints, The Four Stages of Cruelty, published in 1751. Years later,
Hogarth remarked that he thought ‘the publication of them has checked the
diabolical spirits of barbarity to the brute creation, which I am sorry to say,
was once so prevalent in this country’. . . .
This
moralizing was often wrapped up in a package which to modern tastes seems
nauseously sentimental, but the message was new and clear. . . . But behind the
flow of tears lies a new attitude towards man’s inhumanity to man. For about
half a century, from 1770 to 1820, it was fashionable to express emotional
anguish concerning cruelty, a distress which finally opened the way to remedial
legislation and institutional reform.
In its
effect on family life, the connection between hostility to cruelty to animals
and to cruelty to children is clear enough, while both slaves and women were
ultimately beneficiaries, along with felons and madmen, of the drive for legal
protection for the helpless. At the same time, the Romantic movement encouraged
a more openly emotional involvement in family relationships. Thus some of the
improvements in the treatment of wives and children of the middle and upper
classes, particularly in the latter half of the eighteenth century, were
spin-offs from this growing desire to ameliorate the human lot and to reduce
the amount of sheer physical cruelty in the world. Why this movement should
have emerged with such power at this particular moment in history remains a mystery, but its success
undoubtedly owes much to the evangelistic enthusiasm of its leading
protagonists and their skillful use of the new media of mass communication that
had only recently become available.(pp.162-164)
While drinking from a bottle of chilled California
Chablis, my discussion with Professor Stone turned to class struggle, and the
fact that his focus on the history of the evolution of English mentalities
excluded any reference to the historic significance of such conflicts.
Question: To what extent does the ruling class rule society?
Answer: To the same extent that a horseback rider rules his horse.
It was
in the atmosphere created by this relaxation of psychological tension, this
decline in religious enthusiasm, and this new political theory that in the
mid-eighteenth century some of the ideas of the Enlightenment were enabled to
take root. Thus family relationships were powerfully affected by the concept
that the pursuit of individual happiness is one of the basic laws of nature,
and also by the growing movement to put some check on man’s inhumanity to man
and animals which is so prominent a feature of eighteenth-century intellectual
and political life.
By the
eighteenth century, complete identification had been made between the pursuit
of gratification by the individual and the welfare of the public. In 1733
Alexander Pope concluded one section of his Essay on Man with the words:
‘Thus God and Nature link’d the general frame/And and self-love and social be
the same.’ He then went even further, concluding the next section with the
claim ‘That reason, passion answer one great aim/That true self-love and social
are the same.’ In these two couplets Pope drags in God, Nature, Reason and
Passion to support a proposition which can only be described as a
transformation of human consciousness. For the first time, some men were
beginning to believe – with very little justification – that the egocentric
pursuit of self-interest contributed to the public good rather than to its
destruction. Secondly, Pope’s identification of passion and reason as working
to the same end rather than as polar opposites harmonized emotion and logic. It
thus prepared the way for the rise of romantic love as a respectable component
of marital strategy and married life.
In order
to answer the subsidiary question, not why individualism grew in this period,
but why England took the lead over continental Europe, it is necessary to
separate developments which were peculiar to England from those which were
common throughout the whole of western Europe.
This-worldly secularism, literacy, the pursuit of happiness,
humanitarianism, physical and bodily privacy, were common to the whole of
Western cultures. But it was the high development of the market economy in
England that made possible and necessary the theory of economic individualism;
the legacies from Puritanism of respect for the individual conscience, the
ideals of holy matrimony, and the admission by Protestant theology that sex
could be for purposes other than procreation were also ideas very limited in
their geographical scope; the development of a large, wealthy, powerful and
cultivated upper bourgeoisie was confined to Holland, England and France; the
seizure of power by the gentry after a bloody civil war and the creation of a
state based on the theory of a mutual contract between sovereign and people
were purely English; the strong sense of cautious pragmatism engendered by such
an historical experience and so delicately balanced polity was very English; the cultural
homogeneity of upper bourgeoisie and gentry, which allowed ideas to flow freely
from the one to the other, was also peculiarly English, as was the absence of
censorship and the creation of a large unified market of ‘ the quality’ for
literary production of all kinds; the role of London as the only political, economic
and cultural centre of the country was unique; the development of the novel of
sensibility, and the enormous growth of novel-reading thanks to the generalized
institution of circulating libraries, were especially English phenomena. One
can thus identify some specifically English features over and above those
shared by all of Europe, which adequately explain the wide and early diffusion
of new familial ideals and practices throughout the middle and upper ranks of
English society. As a result, nowhere else, so far as we know, did the landed
classes accept so readily the wide ramifications of the ideology of
individualism, the notion that self-interest coincided with the public welfare.
The
abandonment of the principle of human interchangeability and the rise of the
concept that each person is unique, and cannot be exactly replicated or
reproduced is adequately explained by these convergent forces. The rise of
affect, however, is only partly a product of individualism, and seems to have
its roots also in a basic personality change. In the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries there predominated a personality type with ‘low gradient’ affect, whose capacity for warm
relationships was generally limited , and who diffused what there was of it
widely among family, kin, and neighbors. In the eighteenth century there
predominated among the upper bourgeoisie and squirarchy a personality type with
‘steep gradient’ affect, whose general capacity for intimate personal
relationships was much greater, and whose emotional ties were now far more
closely concentrated on spouse and children. The cause of this personality
change is not known, but it seems plausible to suggest that it may have been
associated not only with the broad social and intellectual changes of the
period, but also with a series of changes in child rearing, which created among
adults a sense of trust instead of one of distrust. There were also two ideas
which helped to stimulate affect in the eighteenth century. The first was the
new confidence that the pursuit of happiness, best achieved by domestic
affection, was the prime legitimate goal in life. The second was the new ideal
of the ‘Man of Sentiment’ who was easily moved to outbursts of indignation by
cruelty and to tears of sympathy by benevolence. Finally there was the slow
structural shift that first weakened the power of the kin, and then that of the
parents. With this shift in power went a change in concepts of duty and
obligation.
These
two trends towards individualism and towards affect came together to form
affective individualism . . . . (pp.178-180)
We can see from this history that physical violence
is usually a last resort when it comes to social control. Political power - as
defined as the ability to impose the will
of one party upon another - is a practice that employs many different
techniques, both violent and non-violent. As tactics, they can be understood
only in the context of the specific grand strategies they aim for: What did these
tactics accomplish? How? Why? And at What cost?
In the first chapter of his book, Stone discusses
the methods which he employs for this study of the family and English society
over a period of three centuries:
Any
generalization inevitably runs into the objection that any behaviour model of
change over time imposes an artificial schematization on a chaotic and
ambiguous reality.
. . .
The
historian of the family is faced with the usual problem, but in its most
intractable form, of how best to interweave fact and theory, anecdote and
analysis. As Lévi-Strauss has well said, ‘biographical and anecdotal history .
. . is low lowered history, which is not intelligible in itself, and only
becomes so when it is transferred en bloc to a form of history of a
higher power than itself. . . . The historian’s relative choice . . . is always
confined to a choice between history which teaches more and explains less and
history which explains more and teaches less.’ This book oscillates between
analysis, which tries to explain, and anecdote, which tries to teach, in the
perhaps vain hope that it may thus be possible to have the best of both worlds.
In
dealing with the anecdotal material, the alternatives are to offer brief
extracts from a large range of sources, or to use selected case studies to
illustrate a point in depth. In this book the second method has been adopted,
since in so sensitive an area as family relations only fairly detailed accounts
can bring out the nuances of the situation. This choice has been deliberately
made in full awareness that the method is open (to the charge that the case
studies selected are unrepresentative of the whole sample. All that can be said
in defence is the that a deliberate effort has been made to find representative
examples and to eliminate exceptional sports.(pp.26-27)
This study of change in English family structures
from 1500 to 1800 supports, I believe, the contention that liberal capitalism
from the very start contained the embryo of fascist capitalism; that there is
no overcoming neo-fascism without overcoming capitalism and its current
incarnation as neoliberalism.
The 22 + items below represent a variety of interpretations of
current events that will shape our future. The capitalist crisis seems to be
spiraling out of control, and the increasing chaos takes on a suicidal cast as
the ruling classes seem to find no alternatives, beyond virtual realities, which might assure higher private profits on their
investments. This change affects us all . . . .
Francis Feeley
---
Professor emeritus of American Studies
University Grenoble-Alpes
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and
Social Movements
The University of California-San Diego
a.
“It Wasn’t a
Golden Age”: Cornel West Says Democrats Have to Reckon with Mixed Obama Legacy
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/1/seg_1
+
From: "World BEYOND War" <info@worldbeyondwar.org>
Sent: Monday, August 5, 2019
Subject: Video: Civil Society and Achieving Peace
|
+
Tulsi
Gabbard: R.I.P.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52044.htm
by
Paul Craig Roberts
===========
b.
Roaming Charges: Measure for Half-Measure
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/roaming-charges-measure-for-half-measure/
by Jeffrey St. Clair
+
Tainted Meat Market
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52037.htm
+
Russiagate Fanatic
Michael Isikoff’s Curious Project
https://www.blackagendareport.com/russiagate-fanatic-michael-isikoffs-curious-project
by Ann Garrison
===========
c.
The Big Lie Democratic Centrists Are Telling About 2018
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/the-big-lie-democratic-centrists-are-telling-about-2018/
+
Robert B. Reich: The State of the Disunion
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/robert-b-reich-the-state-of-the-disunion/ar-AAFieee
+
Mackler Running Against War
https://www.blackagendareport.com/mackler-running-against-war
(audio, 17min)
with Socialist Action Party presidential
candidate Jeff Mackler
===========
d.
Jesse Ventura: “Powerful forces covered up
the Epstein case the first time for a reason.”
+
Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s Mentor and the Dark Secrets of the Reagan Era
https://www.mintpressnews.com/blackmail-jeffrey-epstein-trump-mentor-reagan-era/260760/
+
MSNBC Axed My Show for Being
Anti-War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhj0pRVqxec&feature=youtu.be
===========
e.
World 'will diminish role of dollar and US banking system': Russian
minister at Non-Aligned Movement
+
Keiser Report: Money Printing & Landed Gentry (E1417)
+
More Fake Happy News About Jobs
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52032.htm
+
Putin’s Pledge to Ditch the Dollar Is Slowly Becoming a Reality
===========
f.
Walter Benjamin:
How WWI Changed the Meaning of 'Barbaric'
https://lithub.com/walter-benjamin-how-wwi-changed-the-meaning-of-barbaric/
+
International
bankers and WW I
https://nation.com.pk/13-Apr-2012/international-bankers-and-ww-i
+
The Economic,
Political and Social Origins of Fascism
https://libcom.org/library/economic-political-social-origins-fascism
===========
g.
U.S. Troops Are
Back in Saudia Arabia - “This Will End Badly”
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/u-s-troops-are-back-in-saudia-arabia-this-will-end-badly/
+
Iran has two
nuclear options
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/iran-nuclear-options-190729112714738.html
+
Attack on Iran would be an attack on Russia
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52049.htm
by Pepe Escobar
Moscow is proposing a diametrically opposed vision to Western sanctions,
threats and economic war, one that is drawing it ever closer to Tehran
h.
From 2006 to 2019:
after failures in Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen, war is no longer an option
for Israel
by Elijah J.
Magnier
+
Palestine in
Pictures: July 2019
https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestine-pictures-july-2019/28031
+
"Le silence des
prophètes," une réflexion sur le judaïsme
(13min)
avec l'écrivain, psychiatre,
psychanalyste Gérard Haddad
+
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2019
Subject: [MCM] "I watched the terrifying way in which we Judaize
the land": Israel's best are saying NO to the atrocities that "our
free press" ignores (2)
This has to stop—along with the attacks on those
who say so.
(Scroll down for Jonathan Cook's piece on the
crushing of US dissent
against Israel's bloody and sadistic occupation.)
MCM
·
‘I watched the terrifying way in which we
Judaize the land’: an eyewitness account of the Sur Baher home demolitions
Ismail sits with one of his sons after being thrown
out of their home. (Screenshot from Yuval Abraham's film "A Dark Night in
Wadi al-Hummus")
by Yuval Abraham on August 2, 2019
Translator’s note: Below is
the testimony of Yuval Abraham, a filmmaker and journalist, who stayed with a
family in Sur Baher the night their home was demolished by Israeli forces.
Abraham’s account,
translated from Hebrew, was originally published on Facebook and addressed to
fellow Israeli Jews. The story of Ismail’s family, described here through
Abraham’s eyes, is one of many. That night, 72 other families had their homes
demolished by Israeli forces. Abraham and filmmaker Rachel Shor made a
short film about these events, available at 972 Magazine: A dark
night in Wadi al-Hummus. — Yarden Katz
Click on the link for the rest.
+
With Criticism Crushed in
the West, Israel Can Enjoy Its Impunity
https://www.globalresearch.ca/criticism-crushed-west-israel-can-enjoy-its-impunity/5684977
Global Research, July 29, 2019
Recent
events have shone a spotlight not only on how Israel is intensifying its abuse
of Palestinians under its rule, but the utterly depraved complicity of western
governments in its actions.
The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House
two-and-a-half years ago has emboldened Israel as never before, leaving it free
to unleash new waves of brutality in the occupied territories.
Western states have not only turned a blind eye to these
outrages, but are actively assisting in silencing anyone who dares to speak
out.
It is rapidly creating a vicious spiral: the more Israel
violates international law, the more the West represses criticism, the more
Israel luxuriates in its impunity.
This shameless
descent was starkly illustrated last week when hundreds of heavily armed
Israeli soldiers, many of them masked, raided a neighbourhood of Sur Baher, on
the edges of Jerusalem. Explosives and bulldozers destroyed dozens of homes,
leaving many hundreds of Palestinians without a
roof over their heads.
During the operation, extreme force was used against residents,
as well as international volunteers there in the forlorn hope that their
presence would deter violence. Videos showed the soldiers cheering and
celebrating as they razed the neighbourhood.
‘Whoever’s on
Israel’s side, we’re against’: Erdogan slams Netanyahu & US over
Palestinian killings
https://www.rt.com/news/465342-turkey-slams-israel-us-palestine/
+
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Subject: [MCM] "Humanitarian" Irwin Kotler and the
whitewashing of the (atrocious) White Helmets
Shame also on George Clooney, who is (or was)
reportedly developing a movie further
glamorizing those fanatics:
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/george-clooney-syria-white-helmets-film/
On Israeli/US backing of Islamist terrorism,
there's also this:
Israeli Islamic State fighter
captured in Syria asks Netanyahu to bring him home
https://www.mintpressnews.com/irwin-cotler-white-helmets-israel-whitewashing/261073/
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Faux Humanitarian Irwin Cotler, the White Helmets, and the
Whitewashing of an Appalling Agenda
Cotler’s
campaigns for foreign regime change or intervention almost always march in
lock-step with neoconservative U.S. foreign policy. His “humanitarian” branding
is but a thin veneer of hypocrisy to conceal his establishment policies —
policies that almost always serve the interests of Israel.
August 01st, 2019
18 Comments
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On July 22, 2018, Israel
organized and facilitated an exceptional evacuation of White Helmet operatives from
southern Syria, claiming the operatives were at risk from an advancing Syrian
Arab Army. A number of NATO member states backed the move, calling on Israel to
bring their intelligence assets to safety.
The White Helmets
have been discredited and exposed as a British-government-incubated project by
a number of independent geopolitical analysts, including Scott Ritter, Philip Giraldi, John Pilger, Seymour Hersh, Eva Bartlett, Graham Porter, Rick Sterling , Cory Morningstar and many more.
This
journalist’s extensive work has shown that the U.K.
Intelligence-manufactured group of pseudo “humanitarians” — financed by the
majority of member states within the U.S.-led interventionist alliance waging
war against Syria — is nothing more than an auxiliary of the Al Qaeda generic
offshoots in Syria. The White Helmet image has been professionally polished by
a vast network of PR agencies, billionaire philanthropists, and
media outlets aligned with their respective government objectives to overthrow
the Syrian government and reduce Syria to a “failed state,” as they succeeded
in doing with Libya.
Israel has a history of supporting terrorism in Syria since the start of the U.S. coalition war against the
nation officially began in 2011. Israel has offered medical treatment to the various militant groups
previously occupying areas of southern Syria. Stories abound of Israeli troops
providing covering fire for groups dominated by Al Qaeda affiliates or rebrands
as they came under attack from the Syrian Arab Army legitimately reclaiming
territory lost to internationally-backed armed groups.
As journalist
Sharmine Narwani pointed out in her article “Are Al Qaeda affiliates fighting alongside U.S. rebels in
Syria’s south?”
If forced to
choose, Israel prefers the presence of terrorist groups to Iranian influence
[…] Israel is so heavily [in]vested in keeping Syria and its allies away from
its borders, it has actively bolstered al-Qaeda and other extremists in
Syria’s southern theater.”
Israel’s
evacuation of the White Helmets was an extension of its terrorist-supporting
operations in southern Syria — and a response to a cry for help from a U.S.
ally that has also supported proxy terrorism in Syria for the last eight years.
Certainly Israel would not lift a finger to help any entity opposed to its
existence in the Middle East, regardless of the pressure brought to bear by its
allies in the U.S. or the U.K. It must also be noted that Israel and NATO
member states did not offer the same humanitarian assistance
to ordinary Syrian refugees gathered at the borders with Jordan and in Israeli
annexed territory.
The following
video footage of the Israel forces enabling the White Helmet evacuation process
was published on Twitter by
former Israeli security affairs expert Shai Ben-Ari:
+
Time to boycott Israel?
+
How a Group of Pro-Israel Activists Blacklisted
MintPress on Wikipedia
https://www.mintpressnews.com/pro-israel-activists-blacklist-mintpress-wikipedia/261022/
===========
i.
From: Cat McGuire [mailto:cat@catmcguire.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2019 6:43 AM
Subject: First they came for the comedians. . .
Well, actually no, the comedians were
not the first to come under fire in what is now the most unprecedented wave of
censorship in US history.
In case you haven't heard, hundreds of
alternative voices -- both right and left -- are being memory-holed with
impunity.
Newly added is Adam Garrison, a
comedian who is neither right nor left, but enjoys skewering both sides of
the political divide. His shtick consists of impersonating liberal Dan Myers and
his Trumpian doppleganger Rusty Myers, flip sides of each other.
Recently, without even so much as a
"sorry, bro," Facebook deleted his account, wiping out his entire
collection of comedy videos which had been getting hits in the millions.
YouTube likewise censored Garrison, but astonishingly, only the Rusty
character.
Check out a couple of Garrison's comedy
videos and decide for yourself if you feel democracy is safer without Rusty
Myers' threatening hate speech.
At the pool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETw9enm8fUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Hfm5RLMKA
Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vcs7zQqWk0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3uFfQl4kvk
Area 51
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43eN27ZpfEc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LYpjToimww
See more of Dan and Rusty
at the Organic
Comedy Network where they're being heavily marginalized by algorythms.
Listen to a 15 min audio interview with Adam Garrison
explaining how he got banned Soviet-style.
===========
j.
From:
Cat McGuire [mailto:cat@catmcguire.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Subject: Charles Manson exposed as CIA mind control asset
Once
again, yet another so-called "conspiracy theory" bites the dust as we
discover that the official Helter Skelter narrative and the
Manson murders were highly manipulated events that served a hidden purpose --
as reported in an exciting new book that took the author, Tom
O'Neill, 20 years to investigate before the truths finally unraveled.
Dr.
Kevin Barrett has written a superlative review of the book (see below) in which
he builds on the Manson counter-narrative to address other unspeakable crimes
that to this day in the mainstream and mainstream-left media remain absurdly
suppressed, saddled as they are by the CIA-invented "conspiracy
theory" stigma. Dr. Barrett is a Voltaire for our age: a preeminent
philosopher-critic/public activist whose dead-on analysis can fully hold its
own with the Manson book's startling revelations.
Book
review by Dr. Kevin Barrett
The Manson Murders, JFK, 9/11, and the
Psychopathy of Power
“With Alan Scheflin, a forensic psychologist and law
professor who’d written a book on MKULTRA, I laid out a circumstantial case
linking (CIA mind control guru Jolly) West to Manson. Was it possible, I asked,
that the Manson murders were an MKULTRA experiment gone wrong? ‘No,’ he said,
‘an MKULTRA experiment gone right.’” (Tom O'Neill, CHAOS, p. 369)
Dr.
Kevin Barrett: I moved out of Southern California in the summer of 1969.
I was ten years old, and my parents were fleeing decadence and depravity in
favor of the more wholesome Midwest.
Before
our move, a story had circulated about some local (Newport Beach) high
schoolers who had “gone on an LSD trip” and gotten caught by police. As I
understood it, the teenagers had “taken LSD” and started leaping from rooftop
to rooftop, “tripping” all over the neighborhood and waking people up to the
sound of thundering hoofbeats overhead. At the time I wondered whether LSD
conferred a miraculous leaping or flying ability, since the houses in Lido
Sands, though rather tightly clustered, were mostly spaced perhaps eight or ten
feet apart, which seemed like a long way to jump.
I
vaguely recall this “LSD-fueled teenage midnight horsemen of the apocalypse”
story having something to do with my parents’ decision to move back to
Wisconsin. Southern California circa 1969, a few years after the hippie
movement had peaked and turned into a bad trip, didn’t seem like a good place
to send your kids to high school. (Little did my parents know that the 60s
would hit Wisconsin high schools ten years late, putting me and my siblings
directly in the path of the psychedelic hurricane.)
Years
later, as an “experienced” (in the Jimi Hendrix sense) subversive teenage
wannabe intellectual, I would read about the Manson murders and notice how
convenient they had been for the Establishment. From the moment Charlie
Manson’s grinning, demonic face started leering from every front page and TV
screen in America, the whole hippie-antiwar thing had seemed a whole lot
scarier. I read the official version of the Manson myth, Vincent
Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, and thought: This is
too crazy to be true. None of the Wisconsin hippies I know are even remotely
like these characters. Maybe it’s something they add to the fluoride in the
Southern California water.
By
1975 I had seen Mark Lane’s presentation of the Zapruder film and knew that
America had experienced an unspeakably evil coup d’état in 1963. In
1979 I read John Marks’ The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind
Control and discussed it with William S. Burroughs, who
told me he had been aware of such activities for many years before they were
publicly revealed by the Church and Rockefeller Commissions: “The thing about
these secrets is they’re not all that secret.”
Well,
maybe not, Bill. But if you had proclaimed in 1960 that the CIA’s most heavily
funded program aimed at turning people into killer zombies, you would have
gotten blank stares at best. Rumors whispered in bohemian demimondes, blown up
into dystopian parody in books like Naked Lunch, are hardly threats
to national security secrecy.
Looking
back, it seems doubtful that America ever recovered from the bad trip of the
1960s. Indeed, one has to wonder whether potential recovery wasn’t
intentionally forestalled. The Kennedy assassinations, along with the killings
of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and so many others, were a
national nightmare. So was the pointless carnage in Vietnam. The protest
movement that rose up against the nightmare, seeking to awaken the nation and
return it to sanity, collapsed into the drug-fueled promiscuity and bloody
chaos whose avatar was none other than Charles Manson. Now, on the occasion of
the fiftieth anniversary of the Manson murders, we must wonder whether Manson
was also an avatar another kind of CHAOS: the CIA’s ultra-secret, ultra-illegal
domestic counterinsurgency program.
That
notion isn’t entirely new. In 1993, while researching my first book, A Guide to Mysterious San Francisco, I
heard rumors that Manson was a CIA mind control slave. But since this was just
hearsay, unsupported by citable sources, I left it out of the book, and
consigned it to the relatively short list of major conspiracy theories that
might actually not be true.
That
list keeps getting shorter. Tom O’Neill’s CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of
the Sixties makes a convincing, thoroughly documented
case that the official Vincent Bugliosi rendition of the Manson
murders is as blatantly bogus as Bugliosi’s “Oswald acted alone” version of the JFK
assassination. Though O’Neill doesn’t quite come right out and
say so, his evidence suggests that CIA mind control maniac Louis Jolyon “Jolly”
West and/or his acolytes brainwashed a psychopathic prisoner named Charles
Manson, gave him a CIA get-out-of-jail-free card, set him up next door to
Jolly’s safe house in the Haight-Ashbury hippie district of San Francisco, and
taught him how to control human minds using drugs and hypnosis. The CIA’s
Operation CHAOS, it may be plausibly surmised, first weaponized the Manson
family for use against the Black Panthers, then finally turned Manson into the
ultimate TV commercial against the antiwar counterculture. When Manson and one
of his CIA handlers, Reeve Whitson, rearranged the Tate murders crime scene
before anyone else got there, they were literally setting the stage for the
upcoming theatrical production.
Tom
O’Neill’s twenty years’ research definitively demonstrates that a massive
cover-up of the truth about the Manson murders is no longer a hypothesis, it is
established fact. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, as well
as the courts and big media, have been effectively corrupted and muzzled. But
the truth, or at least enough of it for us to get the picture, is tucked away
in the documents they forgot to shred. Though the most important Manson-related
documents have either “mysteriously disappeared” from various archives or are
being stubbornly withheld for undisclosed reasons, O’Neill—an obsessively
persistent journalistic gumshoe—managed to get his hands on enough of them, and
to find and interview enough witnesses, to turn the conventional picture of the
Manson family upside-down and inside-out.
The
whole story, in its multilayered complexity of detail and documentation, is beautifully
told in O’Neill’s book. Like many authors with mainstream publishers, O’Neill
generally refrains from speculating about the big picture; instead, he lays out
the hard facts and invites the reader to connect the dots. So let’s accept his
invitation and consider the the CIA’s Operation Manson in historical
perspective.
Political
Demonization and the Creation and Maintenance of Public Myth
The
Manson op was an exercise in demonization. Manson, an ordinary
psychologically-disturbed small-time criminal with psychopathic tendencies,
became, under the expert tutelage of Jolly West & Co., an avatar of the
demonic second only to Hitler in the mass mediated popular imagination.
Manson’s long hair and scraggly beard became an icon of pure evil, as Hitler’s
mustache had before, and as Bin Laden’s beard would later. In literally
demonizing Manson, Jolly and The Company (wasn’t that a ‘60s Bay Area band? No,
you’re thinking of Big Brother) figuratively demonized the antiwar
counterculture that was giving the Establishment fits.
By
demonizing Manson, the CIA “skunked” the antiwar counterculture’s message of
“peace, love, freedom” by associating it with an image of violence, hatred, and
extreme authoritarianism. After all, the people behind such operations know that
the best way to discredit a message is to put it in the mouth of an unpleasant
spokesperson. That’s why criticism of the world’s worst crime syndicate, the
international bankster cartel, has come to be associated with Hitler’s evil
mustache. In like fashion, resistance to Zionism and other Western assaults on
the Islamic world has come to be associated with Bin Laden’s big black beard.
These associations didn’t just happen by accident. They were engineered.
Philip
Zelikow, effectively the sole author of that work of fiction known as the 9/11 Commission
Report (which he completed in chapter outline before
the Commission even convened) is a history professor and self-styled expert in
“the creation and maintenance of public myths.” Zelikow defines public myths as
“beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with
certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community.”
The public myths he is most interested in are those that most powerfully shape
political perception and behavior; the first example he gives is the myth of
the dastardly Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which transformed
America from an isolationist republic to an interventionist empire.
Anyone
who has studied the alternative literature on such events as Pearl Harbor, the
Kennedy assassinations, and 9/11 knows that any overwhelmingly powerful mythic
event that changes public perceptions and, in so doing, changes history, ought
to be greeted with profound suspicion and subjected to the most painstaking
scrutiny. As Philip Zelikow wrote in a 1998 Foreign Affairs article,
a catastrophic terror attack on America, such as the destruction of the World
Trade Center, would be a “transforming event,” a “watershed event in American
history” that would, “like Pearl Harbor…divide our past and future into a
before and after.” The “after” would feature “draconian measures, scaling back
civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of
suspects, and use of deadly force.” Zelikow’s 2001 false flag operation would
achieve all that and more. It succeeded in demonizing opposition to Zionism and
empire, and to tyranny in general, by associating resistance with the fearsome
image of a scary looking guy sporting an easily-identifiable villain’s beard.
Indeed,
bearded heavies like Bin Laden and Manson seem to come straight out of central
casting. They remind us of neoconservative guru Leo Strauss’s advice to Machievellian operators:
Make your operation like a B-grade Hollywood Western: slap a big white hat on
the good guy and a big black hat on the bad guy. And if you don’t have a real
enemy to play the villain’s role, invent one.
The
official version of the Manson myth is told by its self-aggrandizing,
profiteering hero, Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor who put the bad guy behind
bars. In somewhat similar fashion, the official version of the 9/11 myth,
ventriloquized by Zelikow, seems told by a sort of Greek chorus representing
the heroic victims, the American people. But in both cases, the ostensibly
heroic narrator is the real villain. In the case of 9/11, Zelikow must be
suspected of involvement in writing the script for the 9/11 false flag operation
itself, and then plagiarizing that script for his Report. And in
the case of Bugliosi, it’s clear that he consciously crafted a big lie for the
jury that he later adapted for his bestseller, committing numerous crimes,
including subornation of perjury, in the process.
As
for the villains, both Manson and Bin Laden were manufactured by the CIA. As
O’Neill’s evidence suggests, Manson was Jolly West’s golem, taught by Jolly how
to manufacture more golems…preferably 14-year-old female ones. Bin Laden, for
his part, was created by the CIA and its Saudi assets as a front man for the
CIA-Saudi war to expel the Russians from Afghanistan. Originally assigned the
hero role for an audience of Muslims, Osama was later transferred to a
different movie in which he played the villain for an audience of Americans.
Though
the official Manson narrative demonizes hippies, O’Neill’s revisionist account
shows that the worst decadence and depravity was located not at the corner of
Haight and Ashbury, but in Hollywood and the entertainment industry; Los
Angeles, as Faulkner famously said, is “the plastic asshole of the universe.”
The movie and music business, O’Neill shows, was (and presumably remains)
infested by gangsters, intelligence agency criminals, and an astonishing variety
of perverted human vermin. (There is considerable overlap between those three
categories.) The worst part is that these people, the scum of the earth,
literally run the show. Real power and authority is invested not in elected
officials and the courts, but in supermob [Cat: absolute, must-read, jaw-dropping article] gangsters and their
intel agency partners in crime. The cops, courts, and media are terrified of
such people, and basically do whatever they’re told.
The Manson murders and the JFK assassination,
two nightmarish crimes, bookended “the 1960s”: that brief period from 1964 to
1969 that witnessed the meteoric rise and fall of youthful idealism, whose
chief expressions were the civil rights and antiwar movements. Like 9/11, the
JFK assassination divided time into a more innocent “before” of wholesome
family sitcoms and a less innocent “after” of protests, violence, and social
breakdown fueled by pills, especially of the psychedelic and birth control
varieties. Between JFK and Manson, youthful idealism looked like it might win
the day. After Manson, America entered a “whole new world” of extreme
disillusionment.
The JFK and Manson murders aren’t just linked
in the American mythic imagination; they also intersect by way of a certain
already-mentioned CIA mind-control psychopath, Dr. Jolly West. O’Neill’s Chaos
presents evidence that Jolly West brainwashed and rendered mad two key figures
in the respective dramas, Charles Manson and Jack Rubenstein a.k.a. Ruby. We
have already seen how West made a madman of Manson. As for Ruby, it seems he
was very likely programmed to kill Lee Harvey Oswald, just as Sirhan Sirhan was
later programmed to fire in the general direction of Robert Kennedy. And though
there is no hard-and-fast documentation proving West mind-controlled Ruby,
O’Neill does document West’s suspiciously quick and intense post-assassination
interest in Ruby, which culminated in West getting a private audience with the
gun-smuggling cop-bribing Mickey Cohen organization hit man. Prior to West’s
closed-door no-witnesses one-on-one with Ruby, the latter had been perfectly
sane, though puzzled about being accused of a crime he had no memory of
committing. From the moment West stepped out the door of Ruby’s cell, Ruby was
stark, raving nuts.
America has real enemies, people like Jolly
West and his bosses, psychopathic vermin who have infested the highest echelons
of power. In the wake of their murder of JFK, they understandably feared
exposure. The biggest threat was coming from honest, idealistic,
politically-engaged citizens, most of whom leaned toward the political left in
general, and the civil rights and antiwar movements in particular. To
neutralize that threat, they flooded the civil rights and antiwar communities with
LSD and amphetamines (as well as Cointelpro and CHAOS agents provocateurs).
After several years of this, they administered the coup de grace by
immortalizing the iconic evil hippie, Charles Manson, in a mass mind-control
operation that sounded the death knell of the 1960s and set the stage for the
age of dystopian neoliberal authoritarianism that followed.
The takeaway is that our real enemies conceal
themselves by fabricating ersatz enemies and elevating them to mythic, iconic
status. Their controlled mainstream media summon us daily to engage in the
obligatory Orwellian two minutes of hate. When will we wake up and learn to
hate not the cartoon figure on the screen, but the psychopath behind the
curtain?
Listen
to an excellent interview with Tom O'Neill on Coast
to Coast.
===========
k.
Ship of Fools: Britain, America and the Iranian Oil Tanker Incidents
+
Defying U.S. Sanctions, China and Others Take Oil From 12 Iranian
Tankers - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/03/world/middleeast/us-iran-sanctions-ships.html
===========
l.
A "No Deal" Brexit Would Spark an Economic Cold War with the
EU
+
On Contact: British government psyops
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOBzXJd9UnI&feature=youtu.be
(27min)
with Mohamed Elmazzi
===========
m.
Notes
From a Caribbean Colony in Turmoil
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/31/notes-from-a-caribbean-colony-in-turmoil/
+
"Regime change begins at home” - Max Blumenthal speaks in Venezuelan
presidential palace
===========
n.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: 21
Minutes, 27 Dead
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/weapons-of-mass-destruction-21-minutes-27-dead
+
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Subject: [MCM] El Paso shooter's father is a very
spooky guy
.... assuming that this Patrick Crusius was
the shooter, or the only shooter.
MCM
Published:
August 6, 2019
Follow the Dots: MKUltra & the El Paso Shooting » Sons of Liberty
Media
https://sonsoflibertymedia.com/follow-the-dots-mkultra-the-el-paso-shooting/
===========
o.
From: Mark Crispin
Miller
Sent: Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Subject: [MCM] Slow death by 5G (2)
Be sure to scroll
down for Richard Gale and Gary Null's comprehensive survey of the hazards of 5G.
Please share that, and the powerful video linked just below. Families
injured by Verizon cell antenna testify before Sacramento City Council for the 8th time since early
May:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgxd1X8as-U&feature=youtu.be
Their story:
In December
Verizon installed a cell antenna approximately 45 feet from my family's home as
part of the 5G testing here in Sacramento. A month later my nieces came down
with cold/flu like symptoms. A month later they were still sick. We began
researching the safety of cell antennas and the radiation they emit. Our lives
have not been the same since. My nieces were sick for another month. They went
from being perfectly healthy, active, and happy children to chronically ill and
low energy. It was a devastating transformation to watch. We hired a local
Certified Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist to come take measurements in our
home. Measurements in my niece's bedroom were the highest he had ever measured
indoors. He suggested we move them to a back room and install shielding on the
walls facing the antenna. We took his advice and a weak later their symptoms
went away. We still worry that they are continuing to be harmed and that the
symptoms might not manifest until sometime in the future. It is a horrible way
to live and it is a direct result of Verizon's antenna. We have been fighting
to have this antenna removed since March 2019. In June I organized a group of
family, friends, and neighbors to attend and speak at a city council meeting on
the topic of 5G (fifth generation wireless technology). 5G will require
millions of small cell antennas to be installed closer than ever to people's
homes and schools exposing us to unprecedented levels of RF radiation. 5G also
uses a higher energy frequency of RF radiation than all previous generations of
wireless technology. As a result the long term health effects are completely
unknown. Experts around the globe are warning against the deployment of 5G
without any evidence that it will be safe. We do not want to be guinea pigs in
this experiment.
A Slow Death by 5G Wireless Technology
A Slow Death by 5G
Wireless Technology
Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD
Progressive Radio Network, July 9, 2019
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/FMfcgxwChcpNLbppqRQTSzZdkFRFlJvd
During the past year, Senate hearings leading up to the roll out of 5G wireless
technology have made it quite clear that the race to capture first prize in
the Internet of Things has little do to
with popular consumer demands for improved internet access. Being called the
fourth industrial revolution, the hype is that 5G will provide internet speeds
up to one hundred times faster than 4G. Yet aside from the idealized and
perhaps hyperbolic benefits of faster internet connections and downloads, 5G is
best understood within the context of the US’ competitive race against China to
establish global wireless dominance. The Obama administration’s FCC,
under the influence of the telecommunication industry’s insider Tom Wheeler,
who served as the chair of the agency, launched the Spectrum Frontiers rules to
mandate the 5G rollout as a “national priority.” Therefore, rather than the
fundamental incentive to improve the lives of citizens, more important is 5G’s
role to reinforce American global economic expansionism and military hegemony.
For past presidents, and Trump in particular, economic figures hold
all-consuming importance. One estimate claims 5G will bring over $12 trillion
into the global economy, about $3.5 trillion in the US while providing 22
million new jobs. While 5G surely holds the promise of a huge windfall for the
economy, these benefits will be eventually be neutralized by medical and
environmental catastrophes.
For the Defense Department, 5G will further harness global military dominance
and strengthen the US’ lead as the planet’s policeman. For the Department of
Homeland Security, other federal intelligence agencies, and local law
enforcement 5G assures more far-reaching surveillance and policing on the
American public. International spying and interference in other nations’
internal affairs will also advance exponentially. All the while the
telecommunications industry wets its lips over the certain forecasts of rising
stock prices and enormous executive compensations.
For the Trump administration, the 5G roll out is imperative. Last December the
White House released an announcement that “[I]t is imperative that America be
first in fifth-generation (5G) wireless technologies — wireless technologies
capable of meeting the high-capacity, low-latency, and high-speed requirements
that can unleash innovation broadly across diverse sectors of the economy and
the public sector.” What we are really looking at is a competitive war
the US is waging with China, which has already installed 1.9 million wireless
sites. As the US continues to lag behind, it is equally imperative that
5G opponents keep careful watch of the predictable rise in disease and mental
health disorders in China.
5G smart cities will provide the government with total surveillance of society.
This was announced by T-Mobile’s Chief Technology director Neville Ray at the
2018 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Sprint Vice President Ron Marquardt
remarked that city government officials will have the capacity to monitor
“security issues.” The new generation technology, therefore, will offer a boon
for the private security industry.
Writing for The New Yorker, investigative journalist Sue Halpern describes how
the new era of electromagnetic connectivity will increase the risks and
severity of cyber attacks. “Ransomware, malware, crypto-jacking, identity theft, and data breaches have become so common that more Americans
are afraid of cybercrime than they are of becoming a victim of violent crime.”
writes Halpern. “Adding more devices to the online universe is destined
to create more opportunities for
disruption.” 5G will not simply connect your alarm clock and television to your
mobile unit. It is estimated that millions of new 5G base stations will be
installed, 20,000 new satellites orbiting in space, and 200 billion objects
with wireless antennas will be transmitting EMF waves by 2020. A few years
later it is expected to expand to one trillion electronic objects. 5G
technology will be fully integrated into airplanes, automobiles, trains and
subway systems. Imagine being in a commercial flight 6 miles above the earth
and a major 5G disturbance occurs.
5G servers are already being utilized for spy operations. Halpern reports on
the discovery of Huawei wireless servers installed in the African Union’s
headquarters in Addis Ababa “sending sensitive data back to China every
evening.” Israel, Russia and the US have already been accused on many
occasions for conducting industrial and defense cyber espionage. On all
accounts, the threats of cyber warfare will worsen after 5G is functioning
fully on a global scale.
In the meantime, Washington and our mainstream media proclaim 5G is perfectly
safe and the next great stride for America’s utopian progress. Yet it may very
well be the trojan horse that brings the US into
an electronic dark age.
The overarching question being ignored by Congress concerns 5G’s public safety
and environmental implications. During a Senate Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee hearing last February, Senator Richard Blumenthal
(D-Connecticut) challenged representatives from the telecommunication industry
about the technology’s health risks. When queried on the industry’s commitment
to comply with the FDA’s insistence to fund “independent research” on EMF’s
biological effects, Brad Gillen, an executive VP for CTIA – the leading trade
association representing the wireless communications industry — denied there
were any industry-funded studies and no research on 5G’s health risks were
active. Nor was Steven Berry, President of Competitive Carriers Association,
aware of any ongoing research. Blumenthal also sent a formal request to Trump’s
FCC Secretary requesting information about the scientific evaluation of 5G’s
risks. The FCC failed to acknowledge his request.
Besides the unbelievable arrogance displayed by the industry’s spokespersons,
from our perspective it is perhaps worse that Senator Blumenthal, a ranking
committee member and highly respected in Congress, failed to present any of the
scientific literature confirming 5G’s health risks. He could have also
subpoenaed the FCC for ignoring his request. He has unlimited resources through
the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health medical
database, the EPA, and FDA yet didn’t cite a single study nor invite an
independent medical expert to testify what we already know about 5G’s and
earlier generation’s EFM adverse effects on the human body. Dr. Henry Lai, a
DNA researcher at the University of Washington could have been called to
testify. Prof Lai was quoted in the British Medical Journal for stating “I can
name 600 studies showing bioeffects of microwaves off the top of my head.”
Earlier this year, a petition signed by 26,000 scientists, medical doctors and environmental
experts warned the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the EU and
Council of Europe and the governments of all nations that “the deployment of 5G
constitutes an experiment on humanity and the environment that is defined as a
crime under international law.”
The Senate hearing was another typical dog and pony show that we have become
accustomed to over the decades, with pro-industry shills declaring ignorance of
facts, and pleading for a green light while repeating false promises to conduct
further research. In the meantime, Congress concedes to industry demands
because revenues are being lost and shareholders are becoming impatient. We
have heard this all before with the approval of asbestos, Monsanto’s glyphosate
and genetically modified crops, tobacco and countless pharmaceutical drugs with
questionable safety and efficacy records.
May’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 5G was even more of a charade.
Senators Lindsay Graham and Barbara Feinstein completely avoided the evidence
supporting 5G’s detrimental effects on human, animal, insect and environmental
health. The 5G rollout was a certainty in the mind of every Committee member.
Questioning of industry representatives focused solely on national security and
cyber threats to the Internet of Things. Nor were the larger public
consequences of safety from having all electronic systems controlled by
artificial intelligence suddenly being disabled discussed. Clearly national
security, protecting the country’s military, intelligence and the elite trumps
health issues. Since no modern military can realistically win a
conventional war, then how likely will the next war between superpowers be
waged in the cyber world? This possibility seemed foremost in the minds of our
Senators.
The FCC is a fully industry-captured agency. In 1996, President Clinton
willingly handed over to the telecommunications industry carte blanche power
over state and local governments to install 5G technologies. Clinton’s
Telecommunications Act (TCA) is a corrupt piece of legislation. It decrees that
no health or environmental concern can interfere with telecom installations. In
addition, the TCA gives full power to the FCC to regulate telecom EMF’s health
effects. This ruling was a dangerous joke because the FCC is not a health
agency, nor does it employ biomedical experts. The Act also overrides the
authority of towns, cities, and county councils to rule against 5G stations and
cell tower installments.
Under President Obama, FCC chair Tom Wheeler in no uncertain terms called for
the private industry’s technology to drive national policy rather than vice
versa. In other words, the telecommunications industrial complex has been
handed precedence over elected legislators, including Congressional leaders,
such as Senator Blumenthal, who voice deep concerns about 5G’s human and
environmental risks. Wheeler, a principal architect behind the 5G strategy, has
never acknowledged that there is an enormous body of medical research
concluding EMF threats. He is a product of the same private industrial mindset
that has churned out climate change deniers in the fossil fuel corporations and
the GMO-risk deniers in Big Agriculture.
Obama’s FCC also established a criterion whereby the technology antecedes
the warnings voiced by medical, health and environmental institutions and
agencies. And under Trump and the chairmanship of Ajit Pai, the FCC’s
corruption has entered steroidal hyper-drive to destroy net neutrality laws and
“dismantle existing consumer protections.” Pai, a former Verizon attorney, was
originally appointed by Obama and has been accused by the New York Times for
running the department in secrecy and failing to make the agency’s internal
policy decisions public.
It therefore seems certain that Washington, in full collaboration with the
telecommunications industry, has been scheming full spectrum dominance of the
global wireless connectivity for two and half decades. During this time, the
tactic has been to demolish public protections. In return for America’s efforts
to achieve telecommunication hegemony in order to expand the police state and
the nation’s imperium, average citizens are handed the leftover crumbs of
faster internet speeds. The real victims in the US’ cyber chess match
with China is the world’s population. No animal, bird, insect, plant or
human will be able to avoid exposure. 5G will expose us to levels of radiation
that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what we face today. And this
exposure will be uninterrupted throughout the day, throughout the year and well
into the future. It is now just a matter of a short period of time before we
will all be saturated with microwave pulses.
Unfortunately, the telecom industry and its contracted scientists remain in
complete denial. A plethora of medical and environmental research has
accumulated about the health and ecological risks of electromagnetic frequency
radiation (EMF) and microwaves. Four hundred new studies on electromagnetic
radiation risks have been compiled by public health Professor Joel Moskowitz at
the University of California at Berkeley. These studies cover earlier
generation technologies, whereas 5G will be far more evasive and less safe.
Compared to 4G technology in use today, every 5G base station will contain
hundreds of thousands of antennas each aiming laser like microwave beams to all
devices.
In a study published in the August 2018 issue of Journal of Medical Imaging and
Health Informatics, after an extensive review and analysis of the medical
literature researchers concluded that “incidence of cancer cases was remarkably
higher among people who resided in 400 meters from mobile antennas, in
comparison to those who lived further away. Inhabitants living close to
cellular antennas are also at increased risk for developing neuropsychiatric
complaints.” Under the 5G regime every American in a suburb or city will be
living 100 meters or less from an antenna. In 2016, the Europa EM-EMF guideline
found “strong evidence that long-term exposure to certain EMFs is a risk factor
for diseases such as certain cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and male
infertility…Common EHS (electromagnetic hypersensitivity) symptoms include
headaches, concentration difficulties, sleep problems, depression, lack of
energy, fatigue, and flu-like symptoms.”
In our opinion, the 5G rollout is an irresponsible experiment with potential
holocaust-like consequences in the long term. Neither the US nor China have
ever felt obliged to follow UNESCO’s Precautionary Principle to avoid “morally
unacceptable harm” when the science is plausible but still uncertain. In the
case of 5G, the harm to human life is conclusive, and in the view of Dr.
Lennart Hardel, an oncology professor at University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden,
it may be in violation of the Nuremberg Code.
Among the many research papers on the adverse effects of electromagnetic
radiation, some are especially worrisome:
Nearly 100% of studies employing real mobile phone exposures reveal adverse
effects, which include associations to brain tumors, declines in animal
populations, and symptoms of un-wellness. (published in BioMed Research
International).
Children are at greater risk than adults and absorb more microwave radiation
than adults. (Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure)
The geometry of a child’s head significantly increases mobile phone EMF
absorption in the brain, eye, cortex, hippocampus, and hypothalamus. Children
have especially high bone marrow conductivity, greatly increasing EMF
absorption.(published in the journal Physics in Medicine and Biology)
Simultaneous exposure to lead and RF from mobile phone use was associated with
increased ADHD symptom risk.(Published in PLOS One)
Chronic multi-system illness” correlates electromagnetic hypersensitivity to 3
MHz-300 GHz, with headaches, concentration difficulties, sleep problems,
depression, lack of energy, fatigue, and flu-like symptoms. (published in
Reviews of Environmental Health).
Oxidative stress due to 900 MHz and 1.8 GHz microwave exposure associated with
cognitive impairment and inflammation in rat brain (Published in the Indian
Journal of Experimental Biology)
Use of laptop computers connected to internet through Wi-Fi decreases human
sperm motility and increases sperm DNA fragmentation (published in the journal
Fertility and Sterility)
Radiofrequency waves emitted from conventional Wi-Fi devices poses potential
effect on both fertility and the integrity of sperm cells. (Published in the
Journal of Pediatric Urology)
Population living within 350 meters of an 850 MHz, 1500 watt cell phone tower
in Netanya, Israel experienced a 4 fold cancer increase (i.e., carcinoma of the
breast, ovary, lung, kidney, bone, and Hodgkin’s disease). (published in the
International Journal of Cancer Prevention).
In addition there is something largely missing from the 5G debate in the US,
whereas some European nations are paying attention to it; that is, existing
safety standards for wireless technology are obsolete. This conclusion was
arrrived at independently by Vienna Medical University in Austria and Carl
Blackman at the University of North Carolina, published in the journal
Pathophysiology. The problem herein lies in the failures of federal regulatory
agencies to be truthful to the scientific evidence rather than show favoritism
to the wireless industry’s own junk science and commercial interests. Again,
private interests profit, and the public is harmed.
Finally, we may consider 5G’s vulnerability and dangers to society in the event
of a solar storm, such as a massive coronal plasma emission (CPE). Such a
threat is very real, as University of Michigan professor of space sciences
Justin Kasper told members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security last
February. Kasper specializes in how solar activity effects society. His fears
are that a solar flare similar to the one that engulfed the earth in a
“magnetic tsunami” in 1859 could potentially wipe out the country’s electrical
power grid. Power transformers are massive utilities costing tens of millions
of dollars each and generally there are no backups. Therefore, imagine if such
a solar storm were to assault a fully installed global 5G wireless network
whereupon everything modern culture depends upon is interconnected. Satellite
communications will be an essential component of the 5G infrastructure and are
defenseless against massive radiation emissions from the sun. Without operative
electrical and water utilities, septic systems, gas pumps, air conditioning in
summer or heating in winter, for weeks, months and perhaps a year in the event
of a massive coronal plasma emission, society as we know it would come to a
standstill. Nuclear power plants would likely spiral downward into meltdown.
Transportation as we know it would come to a halt. And in the event of a super
“magnetic tsunami” chaos could follow.
Therefore, 5G poses far more problems than even its sharpest critics voice. It
is not simply a threat to human health and the environment from constant
exposure, but the security of the entire international community of nations is
in peril. Our Congressional leaders are a national disgrace for failing to side
with the public rather than the telecommunications industry. Obviously
contaminating all life on the planet is too insignificant of a concern. In
fact, 5G holds the possibility in being another tipping point in the sixth
extinction.
===========
p.
Aug 5,
2019
Can the Progressive-“Conspiracy” Divide be Bridged?
https://off-guardian.org/2019/08/05/can-the-progressive-conspiracy-divide-be-bridged/
by John Kirby
People from a variety of advocacy communities who
tackle issues ranging from the assassinations of the 1960’s to vaccine safety
are rightly upset by a recent NBC News.com
op-ed authored by Lynn Parramore, a progressive journalist
known for her insightful pieces for Alternet and other outlets.
In the article, Parramore argues that those who
espouse “conspiracy theories” might be displaying “narcissistic personality
traits,” suffer from “low self-esteem,” and share a “negative view of
humanity.” Various studies are cited in support of this claim.
As a filmmaker acquainted both with the author of
the op-ed as well as a number of people from the communities under fire, I hope
it’s possible to dispel some of the misconceptions on all sides and even find
some common ground.
At the outset, it should be acknowledged that
Parramore’s piece is an uncharacteristically harsh ad hominem smear, taking its place in a long line of
similar attacks on people who have dared question—sometimes at great personal
cost—a whole range of suspect official narratives over many years.
But Parramore and many journalists like her are
neither assets of an
intelligence service nor unthinking tools of big media; she is
fully conscious of the ways in which power and wealth can be used collusively
(one might even say conspiratorially) to deceive and abuse the public.
So what accounts for a piece like this one? Why does it
rankle a progressive like Parramore so intensely when she hears someone mention
that the U.S. military-industrial complex had the most to gain from
the September 11th attacks, or that Big Pharma may be applying the same
racketeering techniques to the ever-expanding vaccination schedule she
discovered at play in the opioid
crisis?
Those of us who have labored long to
publicize state crimes against
democracy have our own list of the psychological,
political, and economic factors that may be preventing smart
people from seeing evidence that we regard as overwhelming.
The primary difficulty may lie in just how smart
and thoroughly educated many of these writers are: no one who has spent a
lifetime looking into the way the world works wants to think they might have
missed something big.
And as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the more
educated we are, the more we are a target for state-corporate propaganda. Even
journalists outside the mainstream may internalize establishment values and
prejudices.
Which brings us to Parramore’s embrace of the term
“conspiracy theory.” Once a neutral and little-used phrase, “conspiracy theory”
was infamously weaponized in 1967 by a memo from
the CIA to its station chiefs worldwide.
Troubled by growing mass disbelief in the “lone
nut” theory of President Kennedy’s assassination, and concerned that “[c]onspiracy theories have frequently
thrown suspicion on our organization,” the agency directed its
officers to “discuss the
publicity problem with friendly and elite contacts (especially politicians and
editors)” and to “employ
propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews
and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”
As Kevin Ryan writes,
and various analyses have
shown:
In the 45 years before the CIA memo came out, the
phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ appeared in the Washington Post and New
York Times only 50 times, or about once per year. In the 45 years after
the CIA memo, the phrase appeared 2,630 times, or about once per week.”
While it turns out that Parramore knows something
about this hugely successful propaganda drive, she chose in her NBC piece to deploy
the phrase as the government has come to define it, i.e., as “something that
requires no consideration because it is obviously not true.” This embeds
a fallacy in her argument which only spreads as she goes on.
Likewise, the authors of the studies she cites, who
attempt to connectbelief in >em>“conspiracy theories” to
“narcissistic personality traits,” are not immune to efforts to manipulate the
wider culture. Studies are only as good as the assumptions from which they
proceed; in this case, the assumption was provided by an interested Federal
agency.
And what of their suggested diagnosis?
The DSM-5’s criteria for narcissism include “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity…a need
for admiration and lack of empathy.” My experience in talking to
writers and advocates who—to mention a few of the subjects Parramore cites—seek
justice in the cases of the political murders of
the Sixties, have profound concerns about vaccine safety, or reject the official
conspiracy theory of 9/11, does not align with that
characterization.
On the contrary, most of the people I know who hold
these varied (and not always shared) views are deeply empathic, courageously
humble, and resigned to a life on the margins of official discourse, even as
they doggedly seek to publicize what they have learned.
A number of them have arrived at their views
through painful, direct experience, like the loss of a friend or
the illness of a child, but far from having a “negative view of humanity,” as
Parramore writes, most hold a deep and abiding faith in the power of regular
people to see injustice and peacefully oppose it.
In that regard, they share a great deal in common
with writers like Parramore: ultimately, we all want what’s best for our
children, and none of us want a world ruled by unaccountable political-economic
interests.
If we want to achieve that world, then we should
work together to promote speech that is free from personal attacks on all
sides. Even more importantly, we should all be troubled by efforts to shut down
content and discussions labeled “false and misleading” on major social media
platforms.
Who will decide what is false and what is
true?
In the case of vaccines, there is actually no
scientific consensus that they are safe—only a state-media
consensus, emanating from groups like the CDC, which act as sales agents for
Big Pharma.
A terrible precedent is being set, and both
unfettered scientific inquiry and free speech are suffering greatly. Today it
is vaccines and “conspiracy theories” that are being banned and labeled “dangerous” by the FBI.
What will we be prevented, scared, or shamed away from discussing tomorrow?
President Kennedy said:
a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the
truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its
people.”
Perhaps we should take a closer look at ideas that
so frighten the powers-that-be. Far from inviting our ridicule, the people who
insist that we look in these forbidden places may one day deserve our thanks.
John Kirby is a documentary filmmaker. His latest
project, Four Died Trying, examines what John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther
King and Robert Kennedy were doing in the last years of their lives which may
have led to their deaths.
===========
q.
‘Regime change begins at home’ – Max
Blumenthal speaks in Venezuelan presidential palace
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52034.htm
by Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone’s Max
Blumenthal and the Embassy Protection Collective address the media after meeting
with President Nicolás Maduro at Miraflores palace in Caracas, Venezuela.
+
U.S. Americans Should Be Very Skeptical Of Calls For New “Terrorism”
Laws
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52047.htm
by Caitlin Johnstone
Two
mass shootings have rocked the United States in less than 24 hours,
leaving dozens dead and many more wounded. The first in El Paso, Texas
was allegedly
perpetrated by a white supremacist whose racist motives are outlined
in a rambling “manifesto”, the second allegedly by a
self-described “leftist” whose motives, like
the 2017 Las Vegas shooter, are presently
unknown. These incidents occurred a week after another
mass shooting in Gilroy, California.
All the usual US
gun control debates have of course reignited, which is understandable.
Alongside this debate, however, we are seeing another, far more pernicious
agenda being raised that I would like to address here.
===========
r.
Algérie. Ceux qui, toutes les semaines, « vendredisent »
https://paroles-citoyennes.net/spip.php?newsletter30
Macrone on Brink: French president crisis as support plummets
- shock poll
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1162109/emmanuel-macron-france-news-macron-approval-ratings-yellow-vests-gilets-jaunes
===========
s.
'A Dystopian Surveillance State Being Built in Plain Sight': Pentagon
Tests Radar-Equipped Balloons to Spy on Vehicles Across Midwest
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52050.htm
by Julia Conley
"These
programs are not about stopping violence, they're about social control."
Millions of Americans across the
Midwest this summer are being subjected to surveillance from above as the
Pentagon experiments with the use of surveillance radars attached to
high-altitude balloons.
As The Guardian reported
Friday, the defense and aerospace contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation was authorized by
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to send up to 25 balloons across
six states to track vehicles.
U.S. Southern Command commissioned the
project for the stated purpose of creating a "persistence surveillance
system" to deter drug traffickers and perceived "homeland security
threats."
Civil liberties advocates were
distressed at the newly-reported project on Friday, which the Sierra Nevada
Corporation obtained a license to begin on July 12 and end on September 1.
"The deployment of this kind of
surveillance capability in the United States is incredibly alarming," Mana
Azarmi, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Common Dreams. "Persistent
government surveillance, such as that facilitated by this technology, raises
many civil liberties concerns and should not be permitted in the absence of a
warrant."
"Mass surveillance doesn't make us
safer," the digital rights group Fight for the Future tweeted.
Mass surveillance
doesn't make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn't make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn't make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn't make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn't make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn't make us saferhttps://t.co/jpHTWfwItd
— Fight for the Future
(@fightfortheftr) August
2, 2019
Programs like the Pentagon's balloon
experiment "pose a grave threat to basic human rights, freedom of
expression, and civil liberties," Fight for the Future Deputy Director
Evan Greer told Common Dreams.
"These programs are not about stopping violence, they're about social
control."
===========
t.
Let’s admit it: This is who we are
by Nestor Ramos
“This is not who we are.”
We hear these words again and again in the hours
after a mass shooting. A politician will speak them, or perhaps a police
officer. They clatter out of the television or the computer screen like an
incantation.
And so it was no surprise to find these words echoing through the aftermath of
Saturday’s shooting in El Paso — 20 dead — and it was tempting to once again
believe them. They are defiant words reserved for moments that demand strength
and fury and indignation. They sound earnest and true.
Then, not quite 13 hours later, someone opened fire in Dayton, and the lie
revealed itself yet again.
We are what we repeatedly do, and in this country what we repeatedly do is mow
down civilians with .223-caliber semiautomatic rifles. The mass shootings pile
on top of each other, occurring so close together this weekend that cable news
covers them in split-screen, like playoff games.
And so, according to all the available evidence, this is exactly who we are.
It’s obvious if you confront the reality. Mass shootings are so routine now
that it is possible, unless you have a personal connection to a particular
massacre, to forget quite recent tragedies entirely.
The shooting at a garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif., a week ago would already
be totally forgotten by the public at large were it not for the unusual
setting. By next week it will be subsumed entirely.
How much do you remember about the shooting at a Virginia Beach municipal
building three months ago, where 12 people died? Before El Paso, it was the
deadliest American mass shooting of 2019. It happened three months ago. I had
to look it up.
This is who we are.
===========
u.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Subject: [MCM] Official stories of El Paso/Gilroy/Dayton triad are full of gaping holes . . . which anyone who really cares about them can't ignore.
https://www.winterwatch.net/2019/08/shooting-events-red-flags-and-anomalies/
To the many stark anomalies and contradictions noted in the piece that's
linked below, I'd add the strange exclusion of the 7/27 Brownsville shooting
from the narrative now flooding "our free press" (with eleven pieces in today's
NYTimes—not including two op-eds and six letters to the editor).
https://nypost.com/2019/07/28/shooting-at-brooklyn-block-party-leaves-six-injured-one-dead/
Or maybe this exclusion isn't strange at all, inasmuch as Brownsville was
"off-script"—i.e., not (seemingly) explicable as an explosion of "white
nationalist hate," the shrieking theme of what may (or may not) one day be
acknowledged as a classic propaganda drive.
Of course, this sort of dispassionate analysis is likely to enrage those who've
been swept away by the emotional effect of all that wrenching coverage (the
usual effect of all atrocity propaganda). In their eyes, anyone who's not on
board with this whole push against "white nationalist terror" and—especially
—hate speech, along with stricter gun control, is morally obtuse, or an apologist
for "terror," if not a terrorist himself.
Meanwhile, those official stories are so clumsy and, in many ways, absurd that
it's not hard to see why Beto burst out laughing while attempting to deplore the
carnage in El Paso.
MCM
p.s. As I've urged before, please read Paul L. Williams' Operation Gladio.
For more, see CEIMSA Bulletin n° 853 :
===========
v.
We’re All Enemies of the State: Draconian Laws, Precrime & the
Surveillance State
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52051.htm
by John W. Whitehead
“The
whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence
clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them
imaginary.”—H.L. Mencken
We’ve been down this road many times before.
If the government is consistent about any one thing, it is this:
it has an unnerving tendency to exploit crises and use them as opportunities for
power grabs under the guise of national security.
As David C. Unger, a foreign affairs editorial writer for the New York Times, explains, “Life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis
management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of
ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our
enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been
shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system
was explicitly designed to prevent.”
Cue the Emergency State, the government’s Machiavellian version of
crisis management that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the
so-called name of national security.
Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic
collapse, loss
of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or
insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and
human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and
preparing for such crises for years now.
It’s all part of the grand plan for total control.
The government’s proposed response to the latest round of mass
shootings—red
flag gun laws, precrime surveillance, fusion centers, threat assessments,
mental health assessments, involuntary confinement—is just more of the
same.
These tactics have been employed before, here in the U.S. and
elsewhere, by other totalitarian regimes, with devastating results.
It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you
capitalize on it by seizing power.
For instance, in his remarks on the mass shootings in Texas and
Ohio, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever
they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism.
Let that sink in a moment.