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DEBORAH BIRX UNMASKED

I BET YOU DON’T KNOW THIS ABOUT THE SCARF LADY

Amazing Polly | August 2, 2022

Birx is a pivotal member of the Medical Mafia – here are some stories you might not know about the evil scarf lady. Can you support this channel with a financial gift? Visit my website: https://amazingpolly.net/contact-support.php Birx now says she knew all along that the Covid vaccines wouldn’t work and admitted to subverting the US government (and tricking the world!) in multiple ways while on the COVID-19 Task Force.

Michael Senger’s Substack: https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/deborah-birxs-silent-invasion-a-guide
National File report on Birx’s Book: https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/07/17/sabotage-dr-birx-admits-to-revising-and-hiding-info-from-trumps-covid-team-while-altering-cdc-guidelines-without-approval/
Ivanka cheers for Birx, convincing Trump to keep her: https://www.one.org/us/press/one-applauds-trump-decision-to-retain-deborah-birx-as-interim-global-aids-coordinator/
Corey’s Digs AIDS $90billion dollar slush fund: https://www.coreysdigs.com/health-science/is-aids-us-90b-taxpayer-dollars-a-global-slush-fund/
PEPFAR Ukraine State Department Memo for FY 2019 funding: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Ukraine.pdf
Soros Embezzlement Investigation, Ukraine AIDS dollars: Judicial Watch: https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/u-s-soros-funded-ukrainian-hiv-charity-under-criminal-probe-for-embezzlement/
Paige Reffe worked as Clinton’s Advance Man: https://heavy.com/news/2020/04/deborah-birx-husband-paige-reffe/

Fauci #pepfar #aids #taintedblood #trump #covid19

August 4, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia calls for reform of UN Security Council

Samizdat | August 3, 2022

The United Nations is in dire need of reform and the Security council must be “democratized” by expanding its representation, Russian foreign ministry official Alexey Drobinin has written in a keynote article published on Wednesday.

Drobinin, the Director of the Department of Foreign Policy Planning, commented on the current state of international relations and came to the conclusion that “more conscious effort and imagination is needed” to reform the UN.

He pointed out that the organization’s current agenda, which is primarily fueled by the West, is not necessarily in line with the interests of the majority of its international members.

Drobinin suggested that for most UN members the most important issues are things like access to cheap energy sources rather than the transition to “green” technologies, socio-economic development rather than human rights “in an ultra-liberal interpretation,” and security and sovereign equality rather than the artificial imposition of electoral democracy according to Western patterns.

He added that another topic that has once-again become relevant is the process of decolonization and ending the neo-colonial practices by transnational corporations in regards to the development of natural resources in developing countries.

However, international organizations such as the UN have essentially been “privatized” by the West, Drobinin points out. He suggests that the UN Secretariat and the offices of special envoys and special representatives of the Secretary General have all been saturated with the West’s own “tested” personnel, and that this also extended to non-UN organizations as well, such as the OPCW.

“The saddest thing is that this rust is eating away at the ‘holy of holies’ of the UN system – the Security Council,” Drobinin writes. “It devalues the meaning of the right of veto, which the founding fathers endowed to the permanent members of the Security Council with one single purpose: to prevent the interests of any of the great powers from being infringed, and thus save the world from a direct clash between them, which in the nuclear age is fraught with catastrophic consequences.”

While there are no “clear and simple recipes for correcting the situation here,” the diplomat continues, “clearly more conscious effort and imagination is needed when it comes to UN reform.” He goes on to suggest that the Security Council needs to be “democratized,” first of all by expanding the representation of African, Asian and Latin American countries.

Drobinin suggests that whatever the fate of international organizations such as the UN, WTO, IMF, World Bank or G20 is, the divisive policies of the West makes it “an absolute imperative for the coming years to form a new infrastructure of international relations.”

“After their frankly perfidious decisions and actions against Russia, its citizens and tangible assets, we simply cannot afford the luxury of not thinking about alternatives. Especially since many of our friends who have lost faith in Western benevolence and decency are thinking about the same thing,” the diplomat surmised.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US asks Argentina to confiscate aircraft linked to Iran

MEMO | August 3, 2022

The US Department of Justice said on Tuesday that it has asked the government in Buenos Aires for permission to seize an Iranian plane that was sold to new owners in Venezuela but is being held in Argentina on suspicion of being linked to international terrorist groups.

The unannounced arrival of the plane in Argentina on 8 June raised concerns within the Argentinian government about its relations with Iran, Venezuela and companies that the US has imposed sanctions on. The Justice Department said that the seizure request followed the disclosure of a warrant in the District Court for the District of Columbia dated 19 July to take the aircraft for violating export control laws.

According to the department, the US-made Boeing 747-300 is under sanctions because Iran’s Mahan Air sale to Emtrasur last year violated US export laws. Both companies are subject to US sanctions over their alleged cooperation with terrorist organisations.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said that, “The department will not tolerate transactions that violate our sanctions and export laws.” Mahan Air faces sanctions for its ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, which the US has listed as a terrorist organisation.

There were 14 Venezuelans and five Iranians travelling on the aircraft when it landed in Buenos Aires. Seven of the passengers are still being held by the Argentinian authorities.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

OPEC+ approves tiny oil output rise in rebuff to Biden

MEMO | August 3, 2022

OPEC+ is set to raise its oil output goal by 100,000 barrels per day, an amount analysts said was an insult to US President Joe Biden after his trip to Saudi Arabia to ask the producer group’s leader to pump more to help the United States and the global economy, Reuters reports.

The increase, equivalent to 86 seconds of daily global oil demand, follows weeks of speculation that Biden’s trip to the Middle East and Washington’s clearance of missile defence system sales to Riyadh and the United Arab Emirates will bring more oil to the world market.

“That is so little as to be meaningless. From a physical standpoint, it is a marginal blip. As a political gesture, it is almost insulting,” said Raad Alkadiri, Managing Director for Energy, Climate and Sustainability at Eurasia Group.

The increase of 100,000 bpd will be one of the smallest since OPEC quotas were introduced in 1982, OPEC data shows.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, led by Russia, a group known as OPEC+ that formed in 2017, had been increasing production by about 430,000-650,000 bpd a month, as they unwound record supply cuts introduced when pandemic lockdowns choked off demand.

They had, however, struggled to meet full targets as most members have exhausted their output potential following years of under-investment in new capacity.

Combined with disruption linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the lack of spare supply has driven up energy markets and spurred inflation.

With US inflation around 40-year highs and Biden’s approval ratings under threat unless gasoline prices fall, the President travelled to Riyadh last month to mend ties with Saudi Arabia, which collapsed after the murder of journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, four years ago.

Saudi de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who Western intelligence accused of being behind the Khashoggi murder – which he denies – also travelled to France last month as part of efforts to rebuild ties with the West.

On Tuesday, Washington approved $5.3 billion worth of defensive missile system sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but it has yet to roll back its ban on offensive weapon sales to Riyadh.

OPEC+, which will next meet on 5 September, said in a statement that limited spare capacity requires it to be used with great caution in response to severe supply disruptions.

It also said a chronic lack of investment in the oil sector will impact adequate supply to meet growing demand beyond 2023.

Sources within OPEC+, speaking on condition of anonymity, also cited a need for cooperation with Russia as part of the wider OPEC+ group.

“(This decision) is to calm down the United States. And not too big that it upsets Russia,” said an OPEC+ source.

Benchmark Brent oil futures jumped by around $2 per barrel after OPEC’s decision to trade close to $101 per barrel.

Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow terms a “special military operation”, oil prices rose to their highest in 14 years.

By September, OPEC+ was meant to have wound down all of the record production cuts it implemented in 2020 in response to the impact of the pandemic.

But, by June, OPEC+ production was almost 3 million barrels per day below its quotas as sanctions on some members and low investment by others crippled its ability to boost output.

Only Saudi Arabia and the UAE are believed to have some spare capacity.

French President, Emmanuel Macron, has said he had been told that Saudi Arabia and the UAE had very limited ability to increase oil production.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Swiss People’s Party Says Anti-Russian Sanctions Violate Switzerland’s Constitution

Samizdat – August 3, 2022

The adoption of anti-Russian sanctions violates Switzerland’s Constitution, Swiss People’s Party, also known as Democratic Union of the Centre (UDC), stated on Wednesday.

“The introduction of sanctions violates the neutrality of the country, and, consequently, its Constitution. The Constitution stresses that Switzerland is neutral. We are against sanctions,” UDC press secretary Andrea Sommer said.

The statement was made shortly after the Swiss Federal Council announced that the seventh package of sanctions against Russia had been given a green light.

“… the Federal Council imposed further sanctions against Russia on 3 August in line with the EU’s latest sanctions on gold and gold products. The measures come into force at 6pm on 3 August,” the council said. The latest sanctions also include an asset freeze on Sberbank.

Last week, a Swiss bank also froze a personal account of Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva Gennady Gatilov.

According to the Russian permanent mission to the UN office, the fact that Switzerland lost its neutrality did not only affect its political and economic relations with Russia but also daily life of diplomats in Geneva.

“The situation is also escalated by artificial obstacles in the daily life of our diplomatic mission. A number of banks, insurance and car maintenance companies, with which we had long-standing partnerships, decided to abandon the contracts they had with us, while openly saying the reason – because we are from Russia. Even the personal account in the local bank of the Russian permanent representative in Geneva, which was used, among other things, to cover medical expenses, was frozen,” the mission told Sputnik.

Switzerland has adopted seven packages of sanctions against Russia that include an embargo on Russian oil supplies, import of caviar, seafood, coal, timber and cement, among others. Switzerland prohibited support for Russian entities in public ownership and registration of trusts for Russian nationals or residents.

The sanctions were imposed in response to Russia’s special military operation to de-Nazify and demilitarize Ukraine and protect the Donbass population.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

As Lebanon suffers food crisis, Ukraine uses Western support to block flour and wheat from its markets

By Robert Inlakesh | Samizdat | August 3, 2022

A Syrian-flagged ship named the Laodicea that docked in the Lebanese port of Tripoli was detained last Saturday, preventing desperately needed flour and barley from reaching people in the Middle East. The move came after Western threats against Beirut and unsubstantiated claims from Kiev that the cargo was stolen from Ukraine. The ship, which has been on a US blacklist since 2015 for allegedly carrying shipments from sanctioned Crimea, is now under investigation.

On Friday, allegations emerged in Western media, citing the Ukrainian embassy in Beirut, that “stolen” flour and barley had been transferred to the Lebanese port of Tripoli and that Kiev had warned the Lebanese government against buying the grain. The news was said to have sparked protests from Western governments “warning” Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, over the allegedly stolen cargo. It later turned out that Kiev possessed no evidence that the flour and barley aboard the ship was from Ukraine. Despite this, Lebanon has now seized the ship and will act according to legal proceedings on the issue, after reported Western pressure.

The Ukrainian embassy in Beirut told Reuters that “the ship has traveled from a Crimean port that is closed to international shipping, carrying 5,000 tonnes of barley and 5,000 tonnes of flour that we suspect was taken from Ukrainian stores,” without presenting evidence to support the claim. An official from a private firm responsible for the import of the grain, Loyal Agro Co LTD, based in Turkey, not only denied that the goods were Ukrainian, but also clarified that the ship was carrying 8,000 tonnes of flour and 1,700 tonnes of barley in total. The vessel was also said to have been seeking private buyers in Lebanon, not a sale to the Lebanese government, and was destined to travel on to Syria after its stop in Tripoli.

Additionally, the Russian embassy in Beirut said that it had “no information regarding the Syrian vessel or a cargo brought to Lebanon by a private company.” An official at the Lebanese port authority also stated that there was “nothing wrong” with the cargo aboard the ship. None of this however, was enough to prevent the issue being pursued and for Lebanon to be threatened.

What makes this issue troubling, is that – without evidence – Western nations and Kiev can openly pressure Lebanon to keep much needed supplies away from its people, in this case potentially forever and for at least 72 hours under detention. The country is currently suffering its worst ever economic collapse, enduring shortages in food, medicine, electricity and essential goods. According to some UN estimates, some 78% of the Lebanese population now live in poverty. The food shortage has led to long queues at bakeries, sometimes resulting in gunfire and brawls between people fighting over the limited supply of bread. The Ukraine crisis has made Lebanon’s predicament even tougher, with a lack of flow of supplies from Ukraine and difficulties bringing in Russian goods due to sanctions. The Western “Caesar Act” sanctions against Syria have also made the situation even worse, as Lebanon has historically benefited greatly from its bigger neighbor.

What Kiev is doing, by threatening the future of bilateral relations between Lebanon and Ukraine over this issue, could be interpreted as blackmail. Ukraine has 20 million tonnes of wheat that it still hasn’t exported and a severing of relations with Beirut would mean that Lebanon could potentially miss out on acquiring it during a food shortage. The Lebanese government is clearly in a weak position and Kiev, backed by the power of NATO, is now attempting to bully Beirut over unsubstantiated claims that are denied by all sides, notwithstanding that officials won’t even state the allegation with certainty.

Another issue here is the double-standard at play, whilst Western nations suffer economically themselves, there is no hesitation at sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine every other week. Yet when it comes to simply amending sanctions, after pledging to do so, in order to allow Egypt to send gas to ease the energy crisis in Lebanon, Washington still refuses to allow it, a year later.

Instead, based upon unsubstantiated claims, Lebanon is forced to suffer even more by having basic food supplies dangled over its head. Whilst the West acts holier-than-thou on the issue of unsubstantiated claims of Ukraine’s grain being sold by private firms in Lebanon, it seemingly forgets that the US illegally occupies neighboring Syria’s most fertile agricultural lands, in addition to the majority of its oil and gas fields.

America has repeatedly been accused of smuggling Syrian grain and oil into Iraq, resources which should belong to the Syrian government and could be part of the answer to Lebanon’s current shortage.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Ukraine worst conflict since WW2’ narrative allows the West to forget horrific war which shook Europe

Samizdat | August 3, 2022

Europe had “77 years of almost uninterrupted peace” until Russia chose to end it by “invading” Ukraine, according to a peculiar “analysis” published by the Associated Press (AP) over the weekend. Having thus erased Yugoslavia’s bloody destruction in the 1990s, the author contradicts himself just two paragraphs later.

In a surreal opener, AP’s John Leicester argues that the conflict in Ukraine is the kind of world-changing event on the same level as the first nuclear bomb test in 1945 or the 1969 moon landing. Except the moon landing didn’t really change the world – the Apollo program arguably was NASA’s high water mark – so it’s puzzling why it would even get a mention. Perhaps to emotionally prime the reader for the following whopper, which is that on February 24 this year,. Russian President Vladimir Putin “chews up the world order and 77 years of almost uninterrupted peace in Europe by invading Ukraine.”

Come again? Leicester, who writes from Paris and has covered Europe for AP since 2002, clearly missed out on the Balkans Wars of the 1990s. Not to mention conflicts in the north of Ireland and Cyprus.

People who did not, and live with the consequences to this day, were predictably upset.

The war in Bosnia (1992-1995) certainly did not qualify as “uninterrupted peace” – unless this was considered Europe only on the maps. Nor did the 1999 “humanitarian intervention” in Kosovo, which had consequences that were on display on Sunday. The entire article basically hinges on that one word, “almost.”

It might be possible Leicester – and his AP editors – had forgotten all about these episodes. There is a curious lack of interest in the West in questioning the official narratives of the Yugoslav wars, after all. Except just two paragraphs later, Leicester cites an emotionally charged issue straight out of the Bosnian War – Srebrenica – to compare the Russians to Nazis.

Taking into consideration that his “analysis” is just dripping with emotionally charged language, this suggests that either Leicester and AP don’t consider the Balkans properly “Europe,” or chose to gloss over the conflicts there in order to bend reality to their preferred narrative – that of Russia upsetting Europe’s peaceful slumber.

Just look at this verbiage: “generations of Europeans who had grown up knowing only peace have been brutally awakened to both its value and its fragility.” Or this: “the need to take sides — for self-preservation and to stand for right against wrong.”

Or lamenting that the world was making such “progress, with speedy vaccines against the Covid-19 global pandemic and deals on climate change, before Russia’s all-powerful Putin made it his historical mission to force independent, Western-looking Ukraine at gunpoint back into the Kremlin’s orbit, as it had been during Soviet times, when he served as an intelligence officer for the feared KGB.” Just one trope after another, strung together for maximum emotional impact.

At this point it is tempting, as one online researcher did, to wonder “how quickly the once venerable AP descended into an all-out dumpster fire.” Not just when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, either – the agency’s almost comical “don’t say recession” coverage of the US economy under President Joe Biden has prompted one pollster to describe them as “disgustingly dishonest” people who have been “shilling” for the Democrats for years.

Another example of this is on display in AP’s coverage of the House January 6 Committee, an unusual collection of Democrats “enriched” by two rabidly anti-Trump GOP representatives. In addition to the emotional undertones, the agency insists on calling the Capitol riot an “insurrection,” a loaded term preferred by the Democrats, in order to invoke the 14th Amendment and disenfranchise the opposition.

Compare that to AP bending over backwards not to describe the 2020 riots as “riots,” but literally anything else. Their explanation? The word “riot” would “stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s.”

Instead, the AP’s Stylebook – used by most English-speaking journalists around the world – advises using different euphemisms, depending on who the violence is directed at. In other words, the What matters less than Who is doing it to Whom.

If once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, and three times is enemy action, then this is a veritable onslaught on the very meaning of words, perpetrated by one of the world’s largest “news” agencies. This is about more than Ukraine, or the Balkans wars, or the Biden recession, or the “fiery but mostly peaceful” riots – it’s about reality itself and the people who try to twist it, whatever their reasons.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Former German chancellor says Russia wants a ‘negotiatated solution’

Free West Media | August 3, 2022

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has expressed confidence that Russia would seek a negotiated solution to the Ukraine war. During his recent trip to Moscow, he also met with the Russian President. According to him, the Kremlin would like to negotiate.

“The good news is that the Kremlin wants a negotiated solution.”

In an interview with Stern magazine and RTL/ntv broadcaster, he said that the recently reached agreement on grain exports from Ukraine was an “initial success” that could perhaps “slowly be expanded into a ceasefire”.

In addition, the SPD politician again defended his contacts with Russia stating that it was not illegal.

In view of the gas crisis, the former chancellor also recommended commissioning the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia and described this as the “simplest solution” in view of possible gas bottlenecks.

“It’s over. When things get really tight, there is this pipeline, and with the two Nord Stream pipelines there would be no supply problem for German industry and German households.”

“If you don’t want to use Nord Stream 2, you have to bear the consequences. And they will also be huge in Germany,” said Schröder. Anyone who heats with gas is already feeling the effects: that is half of the country’s 40 million households. Compared to the prices ​​of December 31, 2022, gas will quadruple after further increases for consumers have been announced.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Chinese firm’s US plans paused over Pelosi

Samizdat | August 3, 2022

China’s CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, will delay a decision on building a multibillion-dollar factory in the US, due to the controversial visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co (CATL) was expected to announce its choice for a site in the US in the coming weeks, but will now wait until September or October, Bloomberg quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying.

It was reported in May that CATL was in the final stages of vetting locations to build electric vehicle batteries that would supply Ford, Tesla and BMW. Potential sites were said to include South Carolina and Kentucky, where those automakers have assembly plants. Locations in Mexico are also reportedly under consideration.

Tuesday’s visit to Taiwan by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was strongly condemned by China, which views the island as its sovereign territory. Beijing branded Taiwan and the US “destroyers of peace” on the same day.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Taiwan accuses Beijing of air and sea blockade

Samizdat | August 3, 2022

Taiwanese defense officials have accused Beijing of seeking to “invade” the island’s territorial waters and airspace, after China announced a series of “targeted military operations” in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.

Military officials claimed on Wednesday that several exclusion zones around the island, where China intends to conduct live-fire drills and other military exercises later this week, overlap with “Taiwan’s territorial space.” According to the Guardian, a military spokesman accused Beijing of violating “UN rules” with what would amount to a de facto “blockade of Taiwan’s air and sea space.”

Accusing Beijing of waging “psychological warfare on Taiwan and citizens,” Taipei vowed to “firmly defend its national security” and boost its military preparedness to the highest level, while adhering to the “principle of not asking for a war.”

Pelosi arrived in Taipei late on Tuesday despite repeated warnings from Beijing against attempting to visit territory that it regards as an integral part of China.

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is on high alert and will launch a series of targeted military operations to counter this, resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and resolutely thwart external interference and ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist attempts,” China’s Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Tuesday night, without providing further detail.

In a separate statement, China’s Eastern Theater Command announced joint military drills off Taiwan, live-firing in the Taiwan Strait and missile test-launches in the sea east of Taiwan. According to a map shared by state media, the military drills, set to begin on Thursday, after Pelosi’s departure, will take place in six large maritime areas and their airspace all around Taiwan.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US Should Withdraw All Nuclear Weapons From Europe: China’s UN Envoy

Samizdat – 02.08.2022

“The US should withdraw all its nuclear weapons from Europe and refrain from deploying nuclear weapons in any other region,” the director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s arms control department, Fu Cong, said during the 10th Review Conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations.

He went on to say China is ready to cooperate with all countries to strengthen the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

“This April President Xi Jinping proposed a global security initiative … Guided by the initiative, China is ready to join hands with all countries to continuously strengthen the universality, authority and effectiveness of the NPT to inject stability and certainty into this era of turbulence and transformation and make a new contribution to world peace, stability and prosperity,” Fu said.

Notably, Fu further stressed that Beijing does not compete with other states in the quantity of nuclear weapons and is committed to the principle of no first use.

“China will under no circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons,” he said.

The envoy added that China keeps its nuclear stockpile at a minimum level to ensure the protection of national security and does not compete with other countries in numbers and capabilities in this area.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a greeting to the conference that Moscow always abides by the wording and spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, noting that there could never be winners in a nuclear war and that it should never be started.

For his part, US President Joe Biden emphasized that Washington is now prepared to collaborate with Russia on talks to forge a new nuclear arms limitation agreement that would take the place of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (also dubbed “New START”), which is scheduled to end in 2026.

However, the proposal was met with skepticism by Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council. The former president wondered in a Telegram post whether Russia “even need it,” since the world “has changed.”

Then, he claimed that although things are far worse now than they were during the Cold War, Russia is not to blame.

August 3, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Into The Metaverse (The Media Matrix — Part 3)

Corbett • 08/02/2022

We stand at a precipice. On one side is “reality”: the original, authentic, lived human experience. And on the other side is the metaverse: the world of constantly mediated experience. In the middle is hyperreality, that blurry space between the real world and the mediated world. And, living as we do on this side of the electronic media revolution, it is the only place we have ever known.

Watch on Archive / BitChute / Odysee or Download the video

For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.

For those interested in audio quality, CLICK HERE for the highest-quality version of this episode (WARNING: very large download).

TRANSCRIPT

VOICEOVER: Media. It surrounds us. We live our lives in it and through it. We structure our lives around it. But it wasn’t always this way. So how did we get here? And where is the media technology that increasingly governs our lives taking us? This is the story of The Media Matrix.

PART 3: INTO THE METAVERSE

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, if you saw anything, read anything, listened to anything, it was, more likely than not, placed in front of you by one of the handful of corporations that controlled the major television and radio networks, newspaper syndicates, film studios and music companies. These companies didn’t control what people thought; it was more subtle than that. These companies controlled what people thought about.

We all knew the daily news from the newspapers. We all heard the latest Billboard chart topper. We all saw the latest episode of Must See TV and we all knew about the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Even if we managed to avoid these media ourselves, we knew them anyway from cultural osmosis.

Yes, by the year 2000 we had arrived at the pinnacle of mediated reality. The media oligopoly’s control of society was complete, and nothing could ever come along to change it.

And then something did.

SINGER: You’re riding on the internet! Cyberspace, set us free! Hello, virtual reality! Interactive appetite, searching for a website, a window to the world that to get online. Take the spin now you’re in with the techno set, you’re going surfing on the internet!

SOURCE: Kids Guide to the Internet (1995)

Given that the only thing most people can agree on these days is that the internet is ruining society, it’s difficult to remember that the general public’s introduction to the World Wide Web was accompanied by a torrent of hyperbole and over-the-top enthusiasm that would make a pimply-faced teenager blush.

The internet was going to solve all of our problems! It was going to democratize information. It was going to give a voice to the voiceless. It was going to bring the world together. And most importantly, it was going to help us order pizza without having to pick up our phone!

[Sandra Bullock orders pizza on the internet.]

SOURCE: The Net (1995)

It’s easy to laugh at the gee-whizery and pie-in-the-sky promises of the Information Superhighway hype. But make no mistake: the advent of the web was a revolution. It did upend the economic model that had given rise to the media oligopoly in the first place. And it did give a voice to countless millions around the globe who would never have been heard at all if it weren’t for the advent of new media platforms.

JAMES CORBETT: This is James Corbett of corbettreport.com, and I’d like to welcome you to a new episode of a completely new news update series that I’m doing with my good friend, and the host and webmaster of mediamonarchy.com, James Evan Pilato. James, it’s great to have you on the program today.

JAMES EVAN PILATO: Thanks a lot, man. I’ve looked forward to doing this.

CORBETT: Yeah, me too. . . .

SOURCE: New World Next Week Pilot Episode — Oct. 11, 2009

As the general public started to get online in the 1990s, not even the wildest flights of cyber-utopian fancy could have imagined the sea change in news and information that was about to sweep over the public. As the printing press had given birth to our very concept of “the news” and as radio and then television again transformed our understanding of what it meant to hear or see the news, so, too, did this new medium change our perceptions of world events and our relationship to them.

Suddenly, “the news” was not something you heard a well-coiffed elderly man in a three-piece suit in a million dollar studio reading to you from a teleprompter. In the online age, the news was as likely to be a story written from home by a guy in his pajamas or a video of a protest uploaded from someone’s smartphone or a tweet by an anonymous account. Blogs and websites, and, later, Facebook feeds and Reddit posts, became places people went for news and analysis on breaking events. Information was condensed into memes, and meme literacy became necessary to even understand what was happening online.

And all the while, the media whose hold over the public mind had seemed so unassailable mere decades ago was now old hat, reduced to just another stream of information accessible on the always on, infinite scrolling online content feeds.

But if we have learned anything from this study of mass media history by now, it’s that a predictable pattern is at play: a new technology transforms the way people communicate and promises a flowering of knowledge and understanding. The existing power structure then spends all of its considerable resources censoring or co-opting that technology and, ultimately, using the new media as an even more effective tool for spreading propaganda.

As we saw in Part 1 of this series, the Gutenberg press sparked a true revolution, overturning the social, political and economic order and empowering individuals to share ideas on a scale never before imaginable. But we also saw the censors swooping in to repress those ideas before the corporatization of the press finally tamed the mighty juggernaut that Gutenberg had unleashed.

And, as we saw in Part 2 of this series, the commercial radio revolution prompted the Rockefellers and other entrenched financial interests to begin studying how best to use the electronic media to shape the public consciousness. And television, with its ability to put its viewers into an alpha brainwave state of susceptibility, proved to be an even more effective tool for the corporate interests that soon monopolized the public airwaves.

The story of the World Wide Web follows a depressingly similar trajectory. Whatever promise the internet held to kick off a new Gutenberg revolution—putting the power of the press back in the hands of the average person—that promise has been consistently betrayed by the the centralization of online discovery and identity into corporations, as even Twitter founder Jack Dorsey now admits.

Perhaps the fact that the web has been so quickly co-opted into a medium of control isn’t surprising. After all, the internet is no movable type printing press. However much work went into the design of the printing press, it was still possible for a skilled fifteenth century craftsman to create and operate one with nothing more than the knowledge of the latest technologies and the capital of a few business partners. But the internet arose not from a medieval tinkerer’s workshop, but from the bowels of the Pentagon.

The long history of collusion between Big Tech, the Pentagon and the US intelligence community is by now a well-documented one. The story leads from Silicon Valley—home of Big Tech and the site of much of the research that helped birth the personal computer revolution and the internet—through Pentagon research grants and In-Q-Tel investments to the development of the ARPANet, the birth of the internet, and, eventually, the rise of Google and Facebook and the World Wide Web as we know it today.

The result of that history is apparent to all by now. A medium that should be the most participatory medium ever invented has become a web to trap its audience in an infinite scroll of social media distraction, one designed specifically to keep its users seeking the scientifically scheduled hit of their next dopamine reward.

SEAN PARKER: If the thought process that went into building these applications—Facebook being the first of them to really understand it—that thought process was all about “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and that’s gonna get you to contribute more content, and that’s gonna get you more likes and comments. So it’s a social validation feedback loop. I mean, it’s exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. And I think that we—the inventors/creators, you know, it’s me, it’s Mark, it’s Kevin Systrom at Instagram, it’s all of these people—understood this consciously and we did it anyway.

SOURCE: Sean Parker – Facebook Exploits Human Vulnerability 

The results of Big Tech’s experiment are now in: the would-be social engineers were successful beyond their wildest expectation. The zombie apocalypse has already happened; in its wake lay the increasingly mechanistic automatons of the social media revolution, eschewing the dull world of human interaction for the cyber world of likes, shares and dopamine rewards. The smartphone has become the digital god of the zombie hordes, demanding we bow down in prayer at every free moment.

Perhaps most frightening of all is the astonishing speed with which this revolution is taking place. As transformative as Gutenberg’s press was, it took decades for the technology to propagate out across Europe, and it took centuries for the effects of that technological upheaval to play itself out in the body politic. The electronic media revolution took the better part of a century of development from its earliest iteration, the telegraph, to its introduction to the average person’s living room in the form of radio sets, and, later, televisions.

But the online media revolution has happened with astonishing speed. In the span of one decade, smartphones went from curious novelties to ubiquitous items, and they are now on the cusp of being made mandatory for participation in everyday life. This incredible change is already manifesting in a world of profound and rapid dislocations in every facet of our lives: political, economic and social.

So where is this revolution taking us? Can we learn to navigate this new world of nearly constant mediated experience? Should we?

To answer that, we need to look at the nature of media itself.

Media, from the earliest smoke signals and scratches in clay tablets to the printed page to the recorded images and sounds of the modern era, has always existed as a means for extending our bodies in space and time. The written word is an extension of our mind out into the world, allowing people in far-distant places and far-off times to read our innermost thoughts. The phonograph was an extension of our voice, the filmed image an extension of our bodies themselves, permitting them a type of 2D immortality.

But somewhere along the way, the balance between the media and the real world that it represents began to shift. We went from this world to this world, where most of what we see, most of what we hear, most of what we think we know about the world comes not from the people and places that populate our direct, lived experience, but from mere representations.

We have our friends, of course, but we also have Friends. We have neighbours, but we also have Neighbours. We have something better than real life. We have reality TV!

We have entered the world of the simulacrum.

JEAN BAUDRILLARD: Mais dans la définition que j’ai du réel, au sens où je l’ai dit : c’est-à-dire faire advenir un monde réel, c’est déjà le produire, c’est déjà quelque-chose comme un simulacre.

Pour moi, le réel n’a jamais été qu’une forme de simulation. Le principe de réalité, c’est la première phase, si on veut, du principe de simulation, quoi . . . Mon postulat ce serait : il n’y a pas de réel, le réel n’existe pas. On peut objectivement le cadrer, faire qu’il existe un effet de réel, un effet de vérité, un effet d’objectivité, et cetera . . . mais moi je n’y crois pas au réel.

SOURCE: Jean Baudrillard — Mots de passe (documentaire 1999)

At a certain point, the boundaries between the real world and the world of media begin to blur. Is television reflecting the types of people we are, or are we emulating the characters we see on TV? Are the sad songs we listen to the product of broken-hearted people or the cause?

But if nothing is less real than reality TV, what is the reality that that TV is attempting to portray? Does it even exist anymore?

This is no idle question. As pervasive as the online media has become, as important as our participation in that mediated world has become for our daily lives, a new medium has already appeared. The metaverse. Introduced to the public consciousness by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse represents the apotheosis of the media revolution. Soon, the internet will not exist as a cyperspace that we access through our clunky smartphone gadget. Instead, it will be a fully realized, immersive, 3D virtual world that we can literally step into.

No matter our reluctance to enter this virtual world, we will soon, all of us, have the opportunity to enter the metaverse for ourselves, whether by putting on the glasses and adding an augmented reality layer to the world as we know it, or by strapping on the goggles and entering the cyber domain completely. And, after we do so, we may find the idea of living our lives in bare, unmediated reality will be as quaint, as unthinkable, as living in a world of smoke signals and clay tablets.

[Scenes from HYPER-REALITY]

We stand at a precipice. On one side is “reality”: the original, authentic, lived human experience.

And on the other side is the metaverse: the world of constantly mediated experience.

In the middle is hyperreality, that blurry space between the real world and the mediated world. And, living as we do on this side of the electronic media revolution, it is the only place we have ever known.

It has been suggested that the metaverse is not a space—not a virtual world that we can jack ourselves into and live a virtual life, like in The Matrix—but a time. Specifically, the metaverse is that time when our digital lives become more meaningful to us than our “real” lives. If that is the case, then who can deny that, for an increasing number of people around the world, that time has already arrived?

In this series we have examined the history of the mass media, from the Gutenberg Revolution to today. But if we don’t understand that history, then we will be like the ignorant masses identified by George Santayana, condemned to repeat a past that we cannot remember.

From one perspective, the history of media is merely the story of the development of the machinery of communciation. The movement from the printing press to the telegraph to the radio to the television to the internet to the metaverse is a story of technological progress, and each new technology brings us closer to the ideal of total communication.

But there is a more fundamental perspective, one that sees media not as a technology, but as the expression of our need as human beings to connect with others, to fight off our original state as beings cast alone and naked into the world through communion with others. But as our technology of communication begins to create its own world and as we increasingly place ourselves inside that media world, we would do well to ask ourselves, “At what point do we lose our essential nature as human beings? Once we’re jacked into the metaverse, are we still homo sapiens, or will we have become homo medias? Have we considered what that means? Do we care?”

Perhaps it’s inevitable that the curved mirror of the Gutenberg conspiracy has finally brought us here, to the black mirror at the doorway to the metaverse. Perhaps we were destined to end up here. Perhaps this is an expression of a fundamental urge that is part of human nature.

Perhaps. But it’s also good to know that this has an “off” button. That the real world still exists. That you are watching an image on a screen. And that the power to turn it all off is still in our hands.

The Media Matrix

Written, Directed and Presented by James Corbett

Video Editing and Graphic Design by Broc West

Recording Assistance: Murray Carr

Special Guest Appearance by James Evan Pilato

Series Title Theme “What Hath God Wrought” by KODOMOSAN

Transcript and links: corbettreport.com/media

August 2, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment