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Interventionist Hypocrisy on U.S. Deaths in Afghanistan

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 21, 2021

I’m always fascinated by the sacrificial mindset that interventionists have toward the lives of U.S. soldiers who they want to do the intervening. A recent example is Brett Stephens, a columnist for the New York Times. In an op-ed entitled “Abandoning Afghanistan Is a Historic Mistake,” Stephens writes:

The U.S. has lost fewer than 20 service members annually in hostile engagements in Afghanistan since 2015. That’s heartbreaking for those affected, but tiny next to the number of troops who die in routine training accidents worldwide. 

Yes, it’s heartbreaking and the number of deaths might be “tiny” compared to other things but the point that Stephens is making, whether he realizes it or not, is that it’s worth sacrificing the lives of those 20 men every year for the indefinite future. 

The important question is: What are those soldiers being sacrificed for? According to Stephens, they are being sacrificed to prevent the Taliban from retaking control over Afghanistan. He points out that if the Taliban end up winning Afghanistan’s civil war, that will mean tyranny for the Afghan people.

Is the prevention of tyranny for the Afghan people worth sacrificing 20 U.S. soldiers per year indefinitely into the future? Indeed, is it worth sacrificing even one U.S. soldier to accomplish that goal?

Stephens would say yes. He says the prevention of a Taliban victory is that important.

But there is one big problem with Stephens’s reasoning: his own personal commitment to the cause. After all, if preventing a Taliban victory is so important, what is Stephens doing here at home? There is nothing to prevent him from traveling to Afghanistan and offering his services to the Afghan government to assist it in prevailing over the Taliban.

Stephens is only 47 years old. There are plenty of men in the Afghan army that are that age. Why does he choose to remain here at home living a cushy life writing for the New York Times instead of traveling to Afghanistan and helping the U.S.-installed regime prevail in the conflict?

There is one simple reason: Stephens places a higher value on his cushy life here at home than he does on preventing a Taliban victory over there. He’s not willing to give up what he has here at home to risk his life by traveling to Afghanistan and offering his services in order to prevent a Taliban victory.

But when it comes to the lives of those 20 soldiers a year, that’s a different story. In Stephens’s internal ranking of values, the lives of those soldiers are of secondary value compared to preventing a Taliban victory.

We saw this interventionist mindset, of course, during the Vietnam War, when more than 58,000 American men were sacrificed to prevent the communists in North Vietnam from prevailing in that country’s civil war. Interventionists said (and still say) that sacrificing those 58,000-plus American men sacrifice was worth it. In fact, if interventionists had had their way, American soldiers would still be in South Vietnam today, being sacrificed to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam.

There are lots of bad things that happen around the world. But that doesn’t mean that American soldiers should be sacrificed to prevent them. If interventionists are outraged over bad things that happen in the world, let’s just let them travel overseas to risk their lives to right the wrongs.

My hunch is that Stephens is one of those people who exhorts everyone to thank the troops for their service and sacrifice. I wonder how many U.S. soldiers can see through this interventionist hypocrisy, especially after 20 years of official lies and deception surrounding the U.S. war on Afghanistan.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 1 Comment

As demand for natural gas skyrockets in booming China, Russia says it’s ready to meet Beijing’s needs

By Jonny Tickle | RT | April 21, 2021

China’s fast-growing economy has an insatiable need for natural gas, and Russia is ready to heavily ramp up its cross-border supplies. That’s according to Viktor Zubkov, the chairman of Russian energy giant Gazprom.

As things stand, gas is sent from Far-Eastern Yakutia to China through the Gazprom-operated Power of Siberia pipeline, which first became operational in December 2019. Its construction secured another economic partnership for Moscow, while its gas connections to Europe face increasing resistance.

On Wednesday, when speaking to Moscow news agency TASS, Zubkov revealed that China’s demand for gas increases every two years at the rate of the entire capacity of the Power of Siberia pipeline, which transports 38 billion cubic meters every year.

According to Zubkov, China has already become the largest importer and the third-biggest consumer of natural gas globally.

“It will remain the most promising gas market for the foreseeable future as well,” he said. “We are sure that China needs additional gas supplies from Russia, and Gazprom is ready to supply them.”

He also noted that Chinese gas consumption is growing at an accelerated, ‘double-digit’ rate and in the next 15 years could double from its current level.

In recent years, Russia and China started to move closer economically, with both countries sending a large volume of exports across their shared border. Beijing is now Moscow’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade exceeding $100 billion annually.

“Asia acts as a locomotive in the development of the global economy,” Zubkov concluded. “In 2020, the world economy faced its worst pandemic crisis in recent memory, and it was Asia, with its strong growth, that laid the foundation for a global recovery from the downturn.”

On April 13, Gazprom approved the analysis of a project to build the Soyuz Vostok gas pipeline through Mongolia to China, another route that would send more fuel to Asia.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Airlines Won’t Call Digital ID A ‘Vaccine Passport’ Because “It Carries Too Many Connotations”

By Steve Watson | Summit News | April 21, 2021

A report from Yahoo News notes that airlines won’t be calling the imminent vaccine passports by that name because “It carries too many connotations,” according to one aviation CEO.

The forthcoming ‘digital certificates’ that will show COVID-19 vaccination status won’t be referred to as vaccination passports says Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, because that would turn people off.

Bastian declared that airlines are “more focused on a credential, travel credential, if you will, to indicate that you’ve been vaccinated and or tested based on the regulatory requirements.”

The CEO added that he expects “Either a vaccination or a test,” to be a requirement to travel, and airlines are “working with a number of technology providers to be able to facilitate that in an open source way.”

Right. A vaccine passport then.

That is exactly what the ID will be, but never mind, just call it something else to placate the sheeple and hope they remain only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.

It’s the exact same policy that the UK government is adopting for the system which is slated not only for international travel but also domestically. We are also reliably informed that the vast majority of Brits are willing to accept vaccine passports in order to engage in basic day to day activities, and that they are willing to go along with the digital ID card system PERMANENTLY.

Recent surveys also indicate that almost half of Americans support the introduction of vaccine passports in order to get “back to normal.”

Airline consultant Mike Boyd warned that the companies “would rather not deal with this, but they need to express their points of view very carefully,” adding that creating a global protocol to enforce vaccine passports “could resemble a DMV [Department of Motor Vehicles] on steroids.”

The EU is already ensconced on the vaccine passport road, with a bloc wide ‘Digital Green Certificate’ system set to be rolled out in June.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Mandatory Covid Mass-Jabbing of Students at Columbia College, Chicago

By Stephen Lendman | April 21, 2021

In late March, Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway explained the following:

Students arriving on campus this fall will be required to be jabbed for covid.

According to Holloway, it’s to “provide a safer and more robust college experience for our students (sic).”

There’s nothing remotely safe and effective about experimental, unapproved, hazardous mRNA technology or vaccines.

Covid is seasonal flu renamed.

Despite years of research, scientists never located an alleged SARS-CoV-2 virus claimed responsible for causing covid.

If not found, perhaps it doesn’t exist.

How then can what may not exist produce a virus or anything else harmful to health?

Covid and seasonal flu/influenza are two names for the same viral illness.

Their symptoms include coughing, shortness of breath, fatigue, sore throat, runny nose, muscle pains, body aches, headache, loss of taste, appetite, and/or smell, and at times vomiting and diarrhea.

Symptoms can be mild or more serious, the latter more likely for individuals over age-70.

Serious complications can include pneumonia, respiratory failure, sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, cardiac injury, multiple organ failure, worsening of chronic medical conditions, inflammation of heart, brain or muscle tissues and secondary bacterial infections.

When occur, the elderly or others with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable.

Years earlier when flu killed up to 650,000 people worldwide in a six-month season, no shutdowns, quarantines, masks, social distancing, and mass-jabbing were called for and heavily promoted by media propaganda.

Yet all of the above and other draconian policies have been in place in the West and elsewhere since seasonal flu underwent a name change early last year.

In mid-April, Chicago-based Columbia College announced the following covid mass-jabbing policy:

For the fall semester beginning September 7:

Students residing on campus are required to be jabbed for covid before “mov(ing) in (to their) residence halls” this September.

All “Fall 2021” students must be jabbed for covid.

“International students already vaccinated in another country with a vaccine not approved by the (FDA) will not be required to be (jabbed), but (jabbing) will be made available to them.”

“The college’s health experts at Rush University Medical Center… advised… that it is safe (sic) for a person (jabbed) with another (covid drug) to be re-(jabbed) with (an) existing USFDA-approved” one.

There are none at this time, and Columbia failed to explain — FDA emergency use authorization alone when no emergency exists.

“International students who arrive (unjabbed) from another country will be required to begin a (jabbing) course upon arrival to campus.”

“(T)he college expects to start offering (covid mass-jabbing) on campus over the next two weeks.”

“The college anticipates its initial batch of doses to be the Pfizer” experimental, rushed to market, high-risk, DNA-altering mRNA technology Columbia falsely called a “vaccine.”

“Future doses may be Moderna(’s) (mRNA technology) or Pfizer.”

“Use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is currently suspended by federal and local health authorities.”

According to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), nearly 800 — potentially life-threatening — blood clots were experienced by individuals in the US jabbed with Pfizer, Moderna, or J & J covid drugs.

Overall from mid-December to April 8, over 68,000 adverse events and more than 2,600 deaths were reported.

According to HHS, these numbers captured “fewer than 1% of injuries.”

Actual numbers of adverse events over 100-times more than reported totals — harm on a massive scale, rising exponentially as long as this uncontrolled madness continues.

Columbia College added that “faculty and staff will not be required (to be jabbed for covid), but will be strongly encouraged.”

As explained to me by a Columbia faculty member on April 20, “compuls(ory) weekly PCR testing (will be) institute(d) for (unjabbed) faculty and staff…who will be on campus.”

What Rutgers announced weeks earlier, Columbia is now instituting — perhaps many more US colleges, universities, and public schools to follow.

Instituting this policy breaches federal law 21 USC § 360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III).

It requires that individuals may “accept or refuse administration of” experimental, unapproved drugs.

According to the Nuremberg Code, voluntary consent is required on all things related to health.

The FDA’s Fact Sheet on Pfizer’s mRNA technology states:

“It is your choice to receive or not receive (it). Should you decide not to receive it, it will not change your standard medical care.”

The same holds for other experimental covid jabs.

The Congressional Research Service states:

Private businesses (and other entities) are subject to civil liability unless they comply “with applicable directions, guidelines, or recommendations by the (HHS) secretary…”

Mandating covid jabs with experimental, unapproved drugs flagrantly breaches US federal law and the Nuremberg Code.

Yet unjabbed Columbia students — as well as faculty and staff not complying with weekly PCR tests — most likely will be barred from campus.

These policies — and today’s brave new world regimen — show indifference to health and well-being by ignoring the legal right of individuals to choose on all things related to health and well-being.

A Final Comment

Columbia College, my residential building, and other public places follow draconian/harmful to health federal, state of Illinois, as well as Chicago guidelines and mandates.

They include:

Masks that don’t protect and risk harm to health from longterm use.

PCR tests not designed to diagnose viral infections.

Social distancing that disrupts normal interactions.

Restrictions on numbers of people permitted to gather in public.

Disinfecting public places.

Travel restrictions.

Personal hygiene requirements and recommendations.

Workplace requirements.

Testing, jabbing and tracking.

Federal, state, and local policies are all about instituting social control, along with manipulating people to self-inflict harm.

They’re unrelated to protecting and preserving public health.

If that aim was prioritized, none of the above policies would have been instituted.

Not intended to be short-term, they’re highly likely to be in place longterm — perhaps permanently.

Forever mass-jabbing was planned, promoted by Pharma and their media press agents.

Two jabs aren’t enough. Drug companies called for annual or semi-annual booster jabs instead of flu shots — no longer needed after renaming the seasonal illness covid.

Left unexplained is that repeated jabs increase the risk of serious harm to health near-or-longer-term.

Protecting and preserving health requires refusal to play fast and loose with what’s too precious to lose.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Scientists Say Summer Covid Surge Is Likely – Pull The Other One

By Richie Allen | April 21, 2021

So-called experts are warning today, that the relaxation of coronavirus measures, means there will inevitably be a third wave of cases this Summer.

Professor Adam Finn, of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said that all the modelling points to a rise in cases, because many adults have not yet been immunised.

Finn said that the UK was still vulnerable and warned that the dates for easing restrictions may have to be adjusted. Speaking to BBC Breakfast this morning, Finn said;

“The models that we’ve seen on JCVI clearly point to a summer surge in cases as the lockdown is relaxed, because there are still many people in the adult population who’ve not been immunised.

The sense that the problem is all over, I’m afraid is a flawed one, we’re still in a vulnerable situation, and there are still significant numbers of people who potentially could be harmed by this infection if this happens.”

In England, the next relaxation of lockdown restrictions is due on May 17th. From this date, people can meet in groups of up to 30 outdoors and six people or two households can meet indoors.

Adam Finn and his colleagues are scaremongering. They get away with it because of the corruption and ineptitude that is endemic in the UK media. The more that presenters fail to eviscerate these spoofers, the bolder they become. Their claims become more ridiculous too.

University College London reported three weeks ago that the UK has reached herd immunity against covid-19. The Office for National Statistics said last week that nearly one quarter of all deaths categorised as Covid-19 deaths were not caused by the virus. In reality of course, it’s a lot more than one quarter.

I’ve never said the virus is a hoax, but the pandemic is. There never was a pandemic. This has always been about the vaccine and the vaccine passports. Claims of Summer spikes and double mutant variants are nonsense. Don’t believe them. They’ve lied every step of the way.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 7 Comments

Covid’s IFR just keeps DROPPING

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | April 21, 2021

With every new study, with every new paper, the “deadly” pandemic gets less and less, well, deadly. The most recent data review, published in late March, puts the infection fatality ratio (IFR) at 0.15%.

That is, once again, pretty much the same as a normal flu season.

The new paper is the work of Dr John Ioannidis, whom you likely remember. He is an eminent epidemiologist and statistician who publicly urged the need for “good data” last spring.

Do you remember last spring? The blissful days of never having even heard of “infection fatality ratio”? (I do. Fondly.)

The phrase really rose to prominence last year, after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the IFR of the scary new virus was 3.4%.

This is not, in and of itself, especially high. But it is significantly higher than most cold/flu viruses.

Around the same time, somebody (or multiple somebodies) actually edited the Wikipedia page of the Spanish Flu, to change its IFR and make it seem like Covid was just as dangerous. Who did this remains a mystery, although why has become fairly obvious.

At the time, many experts (such as those listed in our 12 Experts article) predicted the actual IFR of “Covid” would be much, much lower than the WHO’s estimate, and that this would become clear as new data were gathered.

Dr John Ioannidis was one of the most vocal on this point, he was featured on our list and was also the first interview in the Perspectives on the Pandemic series. All the way along he has urged the need for cool heads and good data. His first a study, last April, found the REAL IFR of Covid19 was 0.27%. Then he did another in October that found it may be even lower at 0.2%.

And now, this most recent study found 0.15%. Right in line with seasonal influenza (which has, conveniently enough, dropped off the face of the planet).

That’s a reduction of 95% of the WHO’s estimate, in less than a year. It’s also right along the same lines as the WHO’s (accidental) admission, made last October, that around 10% of the world had likely been exposed to the virus, rendering an IFR of roughly 0.14%.

And remember to bear in mind the ridiculous way national governments collate their so-called “Covid deaths”. Even with the official death statistics being “substantial overestimates” the IFR is still low. Very low.

Now, let’s couch this with all the usual disclaimers: Yes, the virus may not ever have been isolated, and thus has not as yet been proven to exist. And yes, even supposing it does exist, it has not been proven to cause the disease known as “Covid19”.

But, increasingly, the distinction between “no virus” and “a virus that isn’t dangerous” seems entirely moot, doesn’t it?

As the real IFR of Covid is revealed to be lower (and lower, and lower) than the original estimates, it moves further and further into line with the basic background risk of just being alive.

Still, don’t forget to take that experimental gene-therapy “vaccine”. We don’t know if they’re completely safe yet, because long-term trials won’t finish for two years, and the technology has never been used on humans before, but still… you’ve only got a 99.85% chance of survival without it.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

The Covidian Cult (Part II)

By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory, Inc | April 21, 2021

Back in October of 2020, I wrote an essay called The Covidian Cult, in which I described the so-called “New Normal” as a global totalitarian ideological movement. Developments over the last six months have borne out the accuracy of that analogy.

A full year after the initial roll-out of the utterly horrifying and completely fictional photos of people dropping dead in the streets, the projected 3.4% death rate, and all the rest of the official propaganda, despite the absence of any actual scientific evidence of an apocalyptic plague (and the abundance of evidence to the contrary), millions of people continue to behave like members of an enormous death cult, walking around in public with medical-looking masks, robotically repeating vacuous platitudes, torturing children, the elderly, the disabled, demanding that everyone submit to being injected with dangerous experimental “vaccines,” and just generally acting delusional and psychotic.

How did we ever get to this point … to the point where, as I put it in The Covidian Cult, “instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it?”

To understand this, one needs to understand how cults control the minds of their members, because totalitarian ideological movements operate more or less the same way, just on a much larger, societal scale. There is a wealth of research and knowledge on this subject (I mentioned Robert J. Lifton in my earlier essay), but, to keep things simple, I’ll just use Margaret Singer’s “Six Conditions of Mind Control” from her 1995 book, Cults in Our Midst, as a lens to view the Covidian Cult through. (The italics are Singer. The commentary is mine.)

Six Conditions of Mind Control

1. Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time. Potential new members are led, step by step, through a behavioral-change program without being aware of the final agenda or full content of the group.

Looking back, it is easy to see how people were conditioned, step by step, to accept the “New Normal” ideology. They were bombarded with terrifying propaganda, locked down, stripped of their civil rights, forced to wear medical-looking masks in public, to act out absurd “social-distancing” rituals, submit to constant “testing,” and all the rest of it. Anyone not complying with this behavioral-change program or challenging the veracity and rationality of the new ideology was demonized as a “conspiracy theorist,” a “Covid denier,” an “anti-vaxxer,” in essence, an enemy of the cult, like a “suppresive person” in the Church of Scientology.

2. Control the person’s social and/or physical environment; especially control the person’s time.

For over a year now, the “New Normal” authorities have controlled the social/physical environment, and how New Normals spend their time, with lockdowns, social-distancing rituals, closure of “non-essential” businesses, omnipresent propaganda, isolation of the elderly, travel restrictions, mandatory mask-rules, protest bans, and now the segregation of the “Unvaccinated.” Basically, society has been transformed into something resembling an infectious disease ward, or an enormous hospital from which there is no escape. You’ve seen the photos of the happy New Normals dining out at restaurants, relaxing at the beach, jogging, attending school, and so on, going about their “normal” lives with their medical-looking masks and prophylactic face shields. What you’re looking at is the pathologization of society, the pathologization of everyday life, the physical (social) manifestation of a morbid obsession with disease and death.

3. Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.

What kind of person could feel more powerless than an obedient New Normal sitting at home, obsessively logging the “Covid death” count, sharing photos of his medical-looking mask and post-“vaccination” bandage on Facebook, as he waits for permission from the authorities to go outdoors, visit his family, kiss his lover, or shake hands with a colleague? The fact that in the Covidian Cult the traditional charismatic cult leader has been replaced by a menagerie of medical experts and government officials does not change the utter dependency and abject powerlessness of its members, who have been reduced to a state approaching infancy. This abject powerlessness is not experienced as a negative; on the contrary, it is proudly celebrated. Thus the mantra-like repetition of the “New Normal” platitude “Trust the Science!” by people who, if you try to show them the science, melt down completely and start jabbering aggressive nonsense at you to shut you up.

4. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person’s former social identity.

The point here is the transformation of the formerly basically rational person into an entirely different cult-approved person, in our case, an obedient “New Normal” person. Singer gets into this in greater detail, but her discussion applies mostly to subcultural cults, not to large-scale totalitarian movements. For our purposes, we can fold this into Condition 5.

5. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group’s ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors. Good behavior, demonstrating an understanding and acceptance of the group’s beliefs, and compliance are rewarded, while questioning, expressing doubts or criticizing are met with disapproval, redress and possible rejection. If one expresses a question, they are made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to be questioning.

OK, I’m going to tell you a little story. It’s a story about a personal experience, which I’m pretty sure you’ve also experienced. It’s a story about a certain New Normal who has been harassing me for several months. I’ll call him Brian Parks, because, well, that’s his name, and I no longer feel any compunction about sharing it.

Brian is a former friend/colleague from the theater world who has gone full “New Normal” and is absolutely furious that I have not. So outraged is Brian that I have not joined the cult that he has been going around on the Internet referring to me as a “conspiracy theorist” and suggesting that I’ve had some kind of nervous breakdown and require immediate psychiatric treatment because I do not believe the official “New Normal” narrative. Now, this would not be a very big deal, except that Brian is impugning my character and attempting to damage my reputation on the Facebook pages of other theater colleagues, which Brian feels entitled to do, given that I am a “Covid denier,” a “conspiracy theorist,” and an “anti-vaxxer,” or whatever, and given the fact that he has the power of the state, the media, etc., on his side.

This is how it works in cults, and in larger totalitarian societies. It isn’t usually the Gestapo that comes for you. It’s usually your friends and colleagues. What Brian is doing is working that system of rewards and punishments to enforce his ideology, because he knows that most of my other colleagues in the theater world have also gone full “New Normal,” or at least are looking the other way and staying silent while it is being implemented.

This tactic, obviously, has backfired on Brian, primarily because I do not give a fuck what any New Normals think of me, whether they work in the theater world or anywhere else, but I am in a rather privileged position, because I have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish in the theater, and would rather stick my hand in a blender than submit my novels to corporate publishers for review by “sensitivity readers,” so there isn’t much to threaten me with. That, and I have no children to support, or administrations to answer to (unlike, for example, Mark Crispin Miller, who is currently being persecuted by the “New Normal” administration at NYU).

The point is, this kind of ideological conditioning is happening everywhere, every day, on the job, among friends, even among families. The pressure to conform is intense, because nothing is more threatening to devoted cultists, or members of totalitarian ideological movements, than those who challenge their fundamental beliefs, confront them with facts, or otherwise demonstrate that their “reality” isn’t reality at all, but, rather, a delusional, paranoid fiction.

The key difference between how this works in cults and totalitarian ideological movements is that, usually, a cult is a subcultural group, and thus non-cult-members have the power of the ideology of the dominant society to draw on when resisting the mind-control tactics of the cult, and attempting to deprogram its members … whereas, in our case, this balance of power is inverted. Totalitarian ideological movements have the power of governments, the media, the police, the culture industry, academia, and the compliant masses on their side. And, thus, they do not need to persuade anyone. They have the power to dictate “reality.” Only cults operating in total isolation, like Jim Jones’ People’s Temple in Guyana, enjoy this level of control over their members.

This pressure to conform, this ideological conditioning, must be fiercely resisted, regardless of the consequences, both publicly and in our private lives, or the “New Normal” will certainly become our “reality.” Despite the fact that we “Covid deniers” are currently outnumbered by the Covidian cultists, we need to behave as if we are not, and hold to reality, facts, and real science, and treat the New Normals as exactly what they are, members of a new totalitarian movement, delusional cultists run amok. If we do not, we will get to Singer’s Condition 6 …

6. Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order. The group has a top-down, pyramid structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing.

We’re not there yet, but that is where we’re headed … global pathologized totalitarianism. So, please, speak up. Call things what they are. Confront the Brians in your life. Despite the fact that they tell themselves that they’re trying to help you “come to your senses” or “see the truth,” or “trust the Science,” they are not. They are cultists, desperately trying to get you to conform to their paranoid beliefs, pressuring you, manipulating you, bullying you, threatening you. Do not engage them on their terms, or let them goad you into accepting their premises. (Once they’ve sucked you into their narrative, they’ve won.) Expose them, confront them with their tactics and their motives. You will probably not change their minds in the least, but your example might help other New Normals whose faith is slipping to begin to recognize what has been done to their minds and break with the cult.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

As chemical weapons watchdog’s credibility crumbles, OPCW member states strip Syria’s voting rights

RT | April 21, 2021

Syria has been stripped of most of its rights at the global chemical weapons watchdog for alleged breaches. The OPCW stands accused of suppressing facts reported by its own inspectors in Syria for political purposes.

The vote to penalize Syria took place on Wednesday at the conference of the states that are parties to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Syria was punished for allegedly violating the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), of which the OCPW is the guardian, based on reports by the special Investigation and Identification Team (IIT).

The penalties were imposed at the proposal of France and backed by Western nations who helped pass it overwhelmingly by 87 to 15, with 34 abstentions out of 136 countries taking part.

The mechanism was created last year and was authorized to name perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks. It has on several occasions accused Syria of CWC infractions. Damascus sees the IIT as a “propaganda tool” used by countries seeking to topple its government, and says its reports cannot be considered scientific, as a Syrian representative said at the conference prior to the vote.

The concern is shared by some other countries, including Russia and China. The Chinese representative reminded on Wednesday that the IIT has remarkably less rigorous standards for collecting evidence than the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) did. The JIM was tasked with investigating incidents of alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria before the ITT.

“The IIT, instead of conducting on-site investigations, gave credence to samples provided by the so-called ‘non-government organizations,’ heeded the opinions of the so-called ‘external experts’ and interviewed the so-called ‘witnesses in third countries’,” Ambassador Jian Tan said, stressing that the work of the IIT went beyond the mandate under the CWC and couldn’t guarantee impartiality of the results.

Skepticism about the IIT and the OPCW in general has been growing among member states since 2019, when the organization was accused of covering up evidence discovered by its own inspectors after an incident in the Damascus suburb of Douma, which happened in April 2018. The US, the UK and France swiftly responded to the highly-publicized incident with retaliatory missile attacks against Syria.

The watchdog’s final report in 2019 all but accused Damascus of dropping chlorine gas canisters on the area as part of its effort to capture it from jihadist forces. But several whistleblowers came up after the report’s release with documents and testimonies indicating a different scenario.

They said the evidence collected by a JIM mission on the ground pointed to possible staging of the scene to blame the Syrian army. The OPCW allegedly suppressed the contradictory evidence and brought in external experts, who helped it arrive at the conclusions favorable to the three countries, which launched the strikes at Syria.

The OPCW leadership responded to the allegations by painting the whistleblowers as rogue elements disgruntled at the organization and ignoring calls for a rigorous scientific examination of how the final report on Douma was penned. Western governments and media treat their testimonies as a conspiracy theory peddled by Russia.

However this attempt to brush aside the dissenting voices seems to be hurting OPCW’s credibility. Earlier this month, members of the UN Security Council held an informal meeting to discuss the issue, and during the events India for the first time openly criticized the watchdog’s recent Syria reporting issued under the IIT mechanism.

As an OPCW state party, India expects the organization to conduct “impartial, credible and objective investigation into any use of chemical weapons,” in line with the convention principles, Indian envoy K. Nagaraj Naidu said. “The current report falls short of these expectations”.

The report in question details three alleged chemical weapons attacks in the town of Ltamenah in March 2017, which the IIT attributed to the Syrian Air Force. It updates an earlier version explaining OPCW’s findings, which was released last year and which New Delhi didn’t publicly comment on.

India was among the countries that voted against the creation of the IIT, citing its concerns over ‘mandate creep’. It abstained in July 2020, when the OPCW Executive Council voted to condemn Syria for IIT-reported use of chemical weapons.

Syria joined the OPCW in 2013 and declared massive stockpiles of chemical weapons, which were subsequently destroyed. The move was taken after Washington said it was considering military action against Syria after an alleged chemical weapons attack. The OPCW received the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize for bringing Syria into the CWC fold.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Another case of “vast fraud” in Israel’s ever-shady binary options industry

By Kathryn Shihadah | Israel-Palestine News | April 21, 2021

The Times of Israel disclosed today that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed charges against SpotOption, an Israel-based binary operations company, alleging that it used “deceptive and manipulative” tactics to commit global fraud.

According to the SEC, SpotOption (more recently known as Spot Tech House Ltd) has defrauded US investors alone out of more than $100 million – worldwide, the number runs into the billions – offering products and services to brokerage firms which then marketed binary options worldwide.

The brokerage firms themselves, and SpotOption, were (covertly) the counterparties for all trades. That is, whenever an investor lost money, brokers and SpotOption made money.

SpotOption amassed partners by boasting of huge potential profits, as “the average investor lost 80% of their investment within five months.”

According to the SEC’s complaint, SpotOption served as a one-stop shop for “white label partners” who wished to start a binary options website. These partners directly marketed binary options to investors around the world without telling them that they were the counter-parties on all investor trades. In other words, the websites, and SpotOption, made money when investors lost money.

Its two largest shareholders, Malhaz Pinhas Patarkazishvili (also known as Pini Peter) and Ran Amiran are also named in the complaint.

Subsidized by Israeli government

Even as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu urged a worldwide ban on binary options, and after the Israel Security Authority banned the practice in Israel, the Israeli government was giving taxpayer money to SpotOption to enable it to expand its operations to China.

Times of Israel adds:

The fraudulent binary options industry flourished for over a decade, from 2007, until it was outlawed by the Knesset in 2017…Many of the Israeli firms have since relocated overseas and continued the scam.

Israel has not prosecuted any of the thousands of employees of the binary options industry. The US Department of Justice has prosecuted several key individuals, notably including Lee Elbaz, the CEO of Yukom Communications Ltd. who was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2019. Her bosses, Yossi Herzog and Kobi Cohen, have both been indicted, and are still at large.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | 2 Comments

Israel official calls for executing Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem

MEMO | April 21, 2021

Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh King, yesterday called on Israeli police to execute Palestinian protesters who take to the streets of the holy city at night, Shehab news agency reported.

He proposed a change in police policy regarding dealing with protesters and stop using traditional means to disperse them.

According to the Israeli TV Channel 7, King said that shooting the protesters “is the only way which can end the night protests phenomenon.”

Police “do not save any efforts to prevent these demonstrations which were aggravated by the start of Ramadan,” he added.

King, Israeli newspaper Haaretz said, is best known for settling Jews in occupied East Jerusalem and evicting Palestinian families from the city’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 4 Comments

Biden & Harris are crass opportunists for branding the US as systemically racist while standing on George Floyd’s grave

By Micah Curtis | RT | April 21, 2021

After the guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris wasted no time in labelling America racist. This exploitation of a shocking death is thoroughly distasteful.

Although there is likely to be an appeal, Derek Chauvin has been found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in relation to the death of George Floyd. Justice has been served. But, clearly, justice is not enough for the heads of the executive branch of the United States government.

Immediately after the verdict was handed down, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris held a press conference where they delivered a verdict of their own. They framed the very country that they serve as racist, and made clear that the only way to address this is to pass legislation.

“We still must reform the system,” said Harris. “America has a long history of systemic racism,” she claimed, adding that it’s “holding our nation back from realizing our full potential.”

Biden was in agreement. He said systemic racism “is a stain of our nation’s soul, the knee on the neck of the nation’s black Americans.”

Strong words. But let’s keep something in mind here. Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have spent pretty much their entire careers within the United States government, in one way or another. It seems to me they’re a little too comfortable with getting a paycheck from this supposedly ‘racist’ country.

What I find most insulting is the absolute ignorance of what happened in court. Race was not established as a factor in the death of George Floyd. The scary part about Floyd’s death is that it could literally happen to anyone, and yet we have the leaders of the US acting as if race was unquestionably a factor.

I would be curious if any single member of their administration could show me any point within the trial which conclusively showed that the death of George Floyd was racially motivated. I have a feeling they wouldn’t be able to do it. And that’s what makes Harris and Biden’s comments doubly insulting. They don’t see George Floyd as a person. They see him as a pedestal.

Their speech covered the same themes put forward by Barack Obama during his presidency. The US is apparently a racist country, and the only cure is to pass the laws that they advocate. Never mind that by calling America a place that suffers from systemic racism, you are calling every single person you want to vote for that legislation racist. Never mind that you’re framing your own constituents as racist. All that matters is that you give them what they want, and maybe they’ll stop insulting you.

I feel horrible for George Floyd’s family. It’s one thing to lose a loved one. It’s another thing completely to have politicians across the country take this member of your family and use him to try to establish laws that wouldn’t have prevented his death in the first place. The absolute insincerity of it all is stomach churning.

Yes, there are lessons to be learned from this case and Chauvin’s conviction. But these are lessons for law enforcement in how to handle situations like they encountered with George Floyd in a better manner. There are also lessons to be learned about the importance of the right to life that is detailed within the Constitution. We should be discussing those, but instead an entire country is being branded as a racist because one bad cop is going to jail.

Biden and Harris need to be asked what they have been doing for the past few decades – other than leeching off our tax dollars – to address this supposed “systemic racism.” They have done very little to change things, and I have little doubt that they have no ability to change anything now. They can put the presidential podium on George Floyd’s grave if they want, but it won’t change how inept and shallow they have shown themselves to be as human beings.

Micah Curtis is a game and tech journalist from the US. Aside from writing for RT, he hosts the podcast Micah and The Hatman, and is an independent comic book writer.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Sound The Alarm!

Scott Jensen | April 16, 2021

Immoral vaccine passports serve the purpose of creating a biosecurity state with both government and private sector invasion of our rights.

April 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 3 Comments