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A Pandemic Reading List for Left, Right, and Libertarians

 

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | American Institute for Economic Research | January 14, 2021

Daily the news is pouring in: SARS-CoV-2 behaves like a textbook respiratory virus in its vectors of transmission and its conferring immunity. It is not and never was a strange and unfamiliar pathogenic meteor hitting the earth warranting panic to the point of shutting down the normal course of life.

The policy response should have followed the proven path of the past: vulnerable people protecting themselves while non-vulnerable populations go about life as normal with an expectation of exposure. This was the settled presumption of public health. This is what the Great Barrington Declaration said and it is what Public Health England is saying now.

Why did all this happen? Did sizable parts of the world fail to pay attention in 9th grade biology class when the subjects of viruses and immunity were discussed? For that matter, is this stuff not taught anymore?

I’m just not sure what accounts for this sudden loss of knowledge. I do know that people who specialize in political economy were blindsided last March with the policy response to pandemic. Nothing like widespread lockdowns had ever been attempted in the US, which accounts for why so little has actually been written about it. The result was that many intellectuals – on all sides! – found themselves unprepared. Subjects like cell biology and infectious disease are not topics usually examined by economists and philosophers, so many people decided to say nothing at all, thereby granting the lockdowners a free hand that dominated public discussion.

I had been variously writing on the topic of pandemic policy responses since 2006, but beyond the general conviction that government would only make things worse, I too was unprepared to deal with the specifics concerning viruses and their mitigation. Is it really true that closing restaurants and churches makes a contribution to stopping disease spread? Is forcing people apart actually a sound response to the presence of a pathogen? Is there no other path to minimizing the social harm of a virus other than waiting for a vaccine? For that matter, can a virus really be stopped?

Answering these questions takes more than political or ideological conviction. It requires at least some knowledge of cell biology, pathogens, pandemic history, public health practices, and immunological history. I scrambled to get up to speed so that I could understand more thoroughly and write in a more compelling way.

Mostly this consisted of reading as many medical studies on Covid as possible, in addition to listening to endless hours of talks online by specialists. That was essential. Even so, what I really needed was to embed myself in the bigger topic more deeply.

The books below provided me the most help on this intellectual journey.

The History of Public Health, by Paul Rosen. This fascinating treatise was first published in 1958 and reissued in 1993 with new material. It is a wonderful introduction to the whole concept of public health and how it evolved through the centuries. A major theme of the book is how poor understanding of disease dominated public health from the ancient world through the 19th century. Ignorance and fear led to a run-from-the-miasma mentality. Once the science of cell biology improved, so too did public health.

The last bout of medieval-style brutality toward disease was in 1918, after which public health got very very serious and swore that nothing like that would happen again. The turning point occurred when it became clear that large-scale collective efforts to beat back and hide from pathogens were futile and tremendously harmful. Instead, disease is something to be managed by doctors and their patients. The job of public health became to focus on clean sanitation and water and otherwise give a message of calm, and clear recommendations to people in light of medical resources.

The hardest challenge for public health was to get common people to understand the scalability of their own immune systems, so that people would stop fearing exposure as such but rather embrace evolutionary reality. After World War II, this became a major feature of public education.

Rosen further emphasizes how modern public health differs from ancient and medieval theory in that it is never about chasing away a single pathogen. Rather, public health must consider all aspects of health including economic and mental health. So panicking by running away from a germ is completely contrary to modern public health, to say nothing of lockdowns, which have zero to do with health.

One thing that slightly bothers is Rosen’s tendency to attribute all improvement in health to science and better policies. He has a whole chapter on the strange disappearance of a vast number of diseases after WWI. He thinks it is due to better sanitation and so on, which is undoubtedly true in part. But even while reading, I couldn’t shake Sunetra Gupta’s point that trade and migration vastly improved immune systems. It was a natural process of tossing off naive systems for exposed systems that made the largest contribution to longer lives and better health.

Molecular & Cell Biology For Dummies, by Rene Fester Kratz. This quick Kindle download provides an accurate look at the core of the topic at hand while minimizing the amount of technical and medical razzle-dazzle you would otherwise face with a first-year textbook from medical school. Not having an extensive background in this topic myself, I not only found the book fascinating; I was amazed that I found it fascinating! The human immune system shares features with any complex evolved system: as a reader you cannot help but be in awe of its workings and interactions with the world. In a year in which the lockdowners tried to pretend as if the immune is nonoperational without a vaccine, this introduction to disease basics is an outstanding corrective.

Smallpox: The Death of a Disease: The Inside Story of Eradicating a Worldwide Killer, by Donald A. Henderson. This is a spectacular history of one of the greatest triumphs in modern medicine. It is also beautifully written. Inoculation against smallpox has been around since the 18th century, and the vaccine since the late 19th century. The real challenges that met the eradicators – the author himself among the most famous and dedicated of them all – was about production, distribution, and administration. Here was what requires decades of work, and Henderson chronicles the litany of difficulties he faced around the world. I think of this book often these days given the completely predictable chaos of Covid vaccine distribution in 2021.

The Plague, by Albert Camus. This short but powerful book, written about the author’s own quarantine and published in 1947, is a work of fiction that speaks to the terrifying reality of lockdowns in the midst of a plague – the sort of plague that takes people down ferociously and brutally. He captures perfectly how the fear of sickness and death taps into a primal instinct and causes first denial and then panic. He speaks profoundly to the loss of direction and purpose in the midst of lockdown, the isolation and psychological damage that being cut off from the normal flow of life brings about. And he speaks to the loss of control felt both by citizens and officials when confronted with a mysterious pathogen, and just how disorienting it is to discover that the disease is smarter and more powerful than any of us.

Coronavirus and Economic Crisis, edited by Peter C. Earle. I am listing this one not because I have several essays in it, but rather because this book compiles some of the best research and writing from the early months of the pandemic lockdown. It is filled with white-hot passion and tremendous erudition. It also provides proof that what many of our writers predicted came true: tremendous social, cultural, and economic damage. We were warned at the time that we were acting too soon in publishing this, and it is true that AIER was just about first out the door with a book on the topic. But it turned out to serve as a great inspiration to others, and gave the principles that guided the opposition to lockdowns for the rest of the year. In the meantime, AIER released three additional books on the topic in addition to my own book Liberty or Lockdown.

Pandemic responses will continue to serve as a convenient rationale for government interventions in the future. Anyone who has a concern for human liberty and prosperity should be armed with intellectual ammunition to combat this huge increase in government power. We need more than ideological instincts here; to fully understand, we need to be aware of the sciences of infectious disease and the discipline of public health.

At this point, ignorance threatens everything we hold dear. We owe the cause of freedom some effort on our part to read up, learn, and be prepared for the long battle ahead.

January 14, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

‘Modern-day book burners’: Portland bookstore forced to evacuate after protesters demand it pulls book critical of Antifa

RT | January 13, 2021

Powell’s City of Books in Portland, one of the world’s largest independent bookstores, had to evacuate repeatedly after it was besieged by protesters enraged over its plans to sell a book claiming Antifa is “destroying democracy.”

A crowd of protesters flocked to the store on Monday to denounce its decision to distribute a book by a local author, conservative journalist Andy Ngo, known for documenting and highlighting instances of violence associated with Antifa on social media. The owners were forced to evacuate employees and customers out the back door. Later that day, the store announced it would not be putting the book on the shelves, but that it would remain in its online catalogue, along with many books that Powell’s itself deems “abhorrent.”

“While we understand that our decision to carry such books upsets some customers and staff members, we do not want to create an echo chamber of preapproved voices and ideas,” the company said.

However, that concession apparently failed to placate all of the protesters, as a smaller crowd was back at the store the next day, chanting slogans and vowing to force the store out of business if it failed to exercise self-censorship.

“You will lose money every day. Every day that you sell his book, we will shut down this store,” protesters could be heard shouting in footage circulating online.

Powell’s was forced to close early and evacuate customers on Tuesday as well.

Set for release in February, the book – titled ‘Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy’ – chronicles Antifa’s history of violence and its “radical plan to destroy democracy.” It is touted as an in-depth study of the origins and the history of the left-wing movement that features accounts by former supporters, as well as those who fell victim to its violence. The book is said to contain “a trove of documents obtained by the author that he will publish for the first time,” according to Amazon’s description of the tome.

While some critics of the book and the store itself have accused Powell’s of giving a platform to “fascists and racists,” others argued that Ngo had endangered protesters by exposing them, insisting that freedom of speech doesn’t protect the book since it could “incite actions that would harm others.”

Ngo’s supporters, on the other hand, decried the efforts to block the book’s distribution, calling the protesters “modern-day book burners.”

“There are few acts of censorship as overt as a mob deciding which books people should be allowed to read,” wrote author and Reason journalist Robby Soave.

Ngo, who is Asian, came to increased prominence after he was attacked by a mob of Antifa protesters while covering a rally in 2019.

January 13, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden and the Post-Corona “Great Reset”. The Protest Movement

Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research | January 9, 2021

In the wake of the Wednesday January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill Event, we must reflect on what a  Joe Biden Administration will look like.

Joe Biden was not duly elected, he was selected. He is a groomed and “reliable” politician. He is a political instrument of the global capitalist establishment.

Biden is a firm supporter of the Corona lockdown. His statements concerning a “Dark Winter” in 2021 confirm that he not only endorses the adoption of staunch Covid-19 lockdown policies, his administration will pursue and adopt the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” as an integral part of US foreign policy, to be implemented or more correctly “imposed” Worldwide.

In turn, the Biden-Harris administration will attempt to override all forms of popular resistance to the corona virus lockdown.

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in World history. We are living history, yet our understanding of the sequence of events since January 2020 has been blurred.

What is unfolding is a new and destructive phase of US imperialism. It’s a totalitarian project of economic and social engineering, which ultimately destroys people’s lives Worldwide.

This “novel” neoliberal agenda using the corona lockdown as an instrument of social oppression has been endorsed by the leadership of the Democratic Party.

The Biden White House will be used to instate what David Rockefeller called “Global Governance”, which is tantamount to a Worldwide “democratic dictatorship”.

It should be noted that the protest movement in the US, against the lockdown is weak. In fact there is no coherent grassroots national protest movement. Why? Because “progressive forces” including leftist intellectuals, NGO leaders, trade union and labor leaders, most of which are aligned with the Democratic Party have from the outset been supportive of the lockdown. And they are also supportive of Joe Biden.

In a bitter irony, antiwar activists as well as the critics of neoliberalism have endorsed Joe Biden, who is now being accused by Trump supporters of being a “socialist”.

The preceding text is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of my E-Book: entitled.

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”  first published in mid-December 2020.

To access the full text of nine chapters click here 

January 12, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

The “Russian hacking” NATO psyop has finally been solved

CrowdStrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch (center) at the US-NATO Atlantic Council, 2014 (AC)
Swiss Policy Research | December 2020

To professional analysts, it has long been clear that the “Russiagate” saga – including the “Russian hacking” claims, the Trump-Russia collusion claims, as well as the “Skripal poisoning incident” and the more recent “Navalny poisoning incident” – has been a US and NATO psychological operation aimed at containing a resurgent Russia and a somewhat unpredictable US President.

Several aspects of the “Russian hacking” psychological operation had already been uncovered by independent researchers like Stephen McIntyre, “Adam Carter” and “The Forensicator”.

In early November, however, British researcher David J. Blake essentially solved the “Russian hacking” psyop, down to the operational level, as described in his new book “Loaded for Guccifer 2.0”.

US/NATO-controlled IT used for “Russian” hacking and phishing operations (DJB)

Blake shows how the “Russian hacking” psyop was initiated by the US and NATO in 2014 in response to Russia’s reaction to the US regime change in Ukraine, when Russia retook control of the Crimean Peninsula and supported the de-facto secession of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

The US/NATO psyop was inspired by the actual amateur hackers “CyberBerkut” in Ukraine and “Guccifer” in Romania. Blake shows how in 2014, NATO created a “Cyber Defence Trust Fund” and used this entity to initiate false-flag “hacking operations” against the US and other NATO members that would then be falsely “attributed” to alleged Russian “state-sponsored hacking groups”.

Regarding the most prominent such case, the alleged “hacking” of the US Democratic Party (DNC) and the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Blake shows how the emails and documents in question were in fact exfiltrated by the FBI and FBI cybersecurity contractor CrowdStrike, whose founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a Senior Fellow at the US-NATO think tank Atlantic Council.[1]

Blake shows how the mysterious persona of Guccifer 2.0, who claimed the hack, was played by none other than Alperovitch himself, while the technical infrastructure, including the notorious website dcleaks.com, was provided by US and NATO intermediaries in NATO member Romania.

Later, former FBI director Robert Mueller would pretend to “investigate” the cyber operation, attributing it to alleged “Russian hacking groups” named “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear” based on information provided by FBI and DNC contractor CrowdStrike and its CTO Dmitri Alperovitch.[2]

Blake also shows how other alleged “Russian hacks”, including the “hacking” of the German parlia­ment in 2015, relied on the very same NATO-controlled technical infrastructure. Blake was able to show this based on archived information about previous owners of IP addresses, name servers, and SSL security certificates – all pointing to the US military, NATO, and the Ukrainian government.[3]

Archived IP and SSL data tying covert operations to NATO and the Ukrainian government (DJB)

In the case of the staged hack of the US Democratic Party, Blake shows how FBI cybersecurity contractor CrowdStrike added false “Russian fingerprints” by embedding the documents into previously published CyberBerkut documents and inserting additional false signatures. However, CrowdStrike made a few technical mistakes that ultimately revealed their US time zone.

Blake highlights the important fact that in all of these false-flag “Russian hacks”, originating from NATO-controlled infrastructure, either no data or only trivial data was released to the public. Some questions continue to remain open, however, such as the role of murdered DNC employee Seth Rich and the actual source of Wikileaks, whose founder Julian Assange is still in British custody.

In the wake of the 2014 US regime change in Ukraine, the family of then Vice President Joe Biden exfiltrated millions of dollars from Ukraine, protected against corruption investigations by Joe Biden himself, as leaked phone recordings confirmed.

As of 2021, the professionals behind the Ukraine regime change and the “Russiagate” pysop will once again be in full control of the US government.

Most US and European media have promoted the “Russiagate” and “Russian hacking” psyops and will continue to do so. This is because most US and European media, both liberal and conservative, are themselves embedded in networks linked to NATO and the US Council on Foreign Relations. It is only some independent media that have been seriously investigating these topics.

Are there real Russian state-sponsored hacks against Western targets? Yes. Blake argues that, for instance, the hacking operation against the British Institute for Statecraft and its “Integrity Initiative” – itself deeply involved in the “Russiagate” psyop – was likely a professional Russian operation. The problem is that such real operations are much harder to “attribute” than fake ones.

∗∗∗

David J. Blake‘s book can be purchased in paperback, and is available as an adapted digital version.

January 5, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

What Is the Great Reset? Part I: Reduced Expectations and Bio-techno-feudalism

By Michael Rectenwald – Mises – 12/16/2020

The Great Reset is on everyone’s mind, whether everyone knows it or not. It is presaged by the measures undertaken by states across the world in response to the covid-19 crisis. (I mean by “crisis” not the so-called pandemic itself, but the responses to a novel virus called SARS-2 and the impact of the responses on social and economic conditions.)

In his book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab writes that the covid-19 crisis should be regarded as an “opportunity [that can be] seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will put economies on the path toward a fairer, greener future.”1 Although Schwab has been promoting the Great Reset for years, the covid crisis has provided a pretext for finally enacting it. According to Schwab, we should not expect the postcovid world system to return to its previous modes of operation. Rather, alternating between description and prescription, Schwab suggests that changes will be, or should be, enacted across interlocking, interdependent domains to produce a new normal.

So, just what is the Great Reset and what is the new normal it would establish?

The Great Reset means reduced incomes and carbon use. But Schwab and the WEF also define the Great Reset in terms of the convergence of economic, monetary, technological, medical, genomic, environmental, military, and governance systems. The Great Reset would involve vast transformations in each of these domains, changes which, according to Schwab, will not only alter our world but also lead us to “question what it means to be human.”2

In terms of economics and monetary policy, the Great Reset would involve a consolidation of wealth, on the one hand, and the likely issuance of universal basic income (UBI) on the other.3 It might include a shift to a digital currency,4 including a consolidated centralization of banking and bank accounts, immediate real-time taxation, negative interest rates, and centralized surveillance and control over spending and debt.

While every aspect of the Great Reset involves technology, the Great Reset specifically entails “the Fourth Industrial Revolution,”5 or transhumanism, which includes the expansion of genomics, nanotechnology, and robotics and their penetration into human bodies and brains. Of course, the fourth Industrial Revolution involves the redundancy of human labor in increasing sectors, to be replaced by automation. But moreover, Schwab hails the use of nanotechnology and brain scans to predict and preempt human behavior.

The Great Reset means the issuance of medical passports, soon to be digitized, as well as the transparency of medical records inclusive of medical history, genetic makeup, and disease states. But it could include the implanting of microchips that would read and report on genetic makeup and brain states such that “[e]ven crossing a national border might one day involve a detailed brain scan to assess an individual’s security risk.”6

On the genomic front, the Great Reset includes advances in genetic engineering and the fusion of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.

In military terms, the Great Reset entails the creation of new battle spaces including cyberspaces and the human brain as a battle space.7

In terms of governance, the Great Reset means increasingly centralized, coordinated, and expanded government and “governmentalities,” the convergence of corporations and states, and the digitalization of governmental functions, including, with the use of 5G and predictive algorithms, real-time tracking and surveillance of bodies in space or the “anticipatory governance” of human and systems behavior.8

That being said, “the Great Reset” is but a coordinated propaganda campaign shrouded under a cloak of inevitability. Rather than a mere conspiracy theory, as the New York Times has suggested,9 the Great Reset is an attempt at a conspiracy, or the “wishful thinking”10 of socioeconomic planners to have corporate “stakeholders”11 and governments adopt the desiderata of the WEF.

In order to sell this package, the WEF mobilizes the warmed-over rhetoric of “economic equality,” “fairness,” “inclusion,” and “a shared destiny,” among other euphemisms.12 Together, such phrases represent the collectivist, socialist political and ideological component of the envisioned corporate socialism13 (since economic socialism can never be enacted, it is always only political and ideological).

I’ll examine the prospects for the Great Reset in future installments. But suffice it to say for now that the WEF envisions a bio-techno-feudalist global order, with socioeconomic planners and corporate “stakeholders” at the helm and the greater part of humanity in their thrall. The mass of humanity, the planners would have it, will live under an economic stasis of reduced expectations, with individual autonomy greatly curtailed if not utterly obliterated. As Mises suggested, such planners are authoritarians who mean to supplant the plans of individual actors with their own, centralized plans. If enacted, such plans would fail, but their adoption would nevertheless exact a price.

Author:

Contact Michael Rectenwald

Michael Rectenwald was a professor of liberal studies at New York University (retired).

December 26, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Economics, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

The case for Keto – a review

By Malcolm Kendrick | December 9, 2020

Gary Taubes has a new book out called ‘The Case for Keto,’ which he sent to me in the form of a real book with real pages, that he wanted me to read. Which I have.

I then suggested I should do a review and stick it up on my blog. I shall say, right up front, that I strongly recommend this book.

This may not be a surprise to those who know my thoughts on diet, heart disease and suchlike. In my case Gary is preaching to the converted. This is a book which covers the fact that fats, saturated fats, indeed any fats (other than trans-fats, and the industrially produced fats from grains) are perfectly healthy. Humans have eaten them for millennia.

You don’t see cave paintings of early humans out scything autumn wheat fields. No, you see pictures of men, because men always get the easy jobs, chasing woolly mammoths with spears. They are not just taking the mammoths out on early morning exercise, and throwing the spears to play catch. They are throwing those spears at the mammoths, and chasing them into spike filled pits, then eating them – saturated fats and all.

Anyway, as Gary makes very clear, despite the endless claims that animal fats are bad for us, when you get down to it, the evidence simply does not exist. The idea that fats make us fat and diabetic and kill us with heart disease is simply a ‘meme.’

An idea so widely held that everyone just believes it must be true. So much so that there is no need to even think about it. Fat gets into your body, floats about and gets stuck to your artery walls. Fat, cholesterol, same thing innit? ‘My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts.’

I think I should mention that Gary first gained considerable fame in this area with his book ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories.’ In the UK and Australia, it was called. ‘The Diet Delusion.’ This is where he first looked at the idea that fats were bad for us and found it to be based almost entirely on hot air.

So, if it is not fat in the diet that is capable of causing weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, and other such nasty things, what is it? As Gary points out clearly, and inarguably, the answer is sugar. By sugar, he means carbohydrates (all sugars are just simple carbohydrates).

Slightly more complex carbohydrates are bread, and pasta, and rice and potatoes. These are just made up of lots of glucose molecules stuck together. Many people are unaware that our body takes in pasta, bread, rice etc. and simply breaks them down into sugar. So, pasta = sugar. Bread = sugar. Potatoes = sugar. Just as much as sugar = sugar. They all have the same effect.

Gary goes through the history of the brave individuals who have been those pointing out the damage that can be caused by excess carbohydrate intake for decades. Those who have been squashed flat by the mainstream. An English professor of nutrition, John Yudkin, tried to make this all clear in his book on sugar(s): ‘Pure, white and Deadly’ first published in the early 1970s. He was attacked and shouted down by Ancel Keys – the main promoter of the diet/heart hypothesis.

Gary maintains a calm and reasonable tone when discussing some of these events. Which is admirable. If I were him, I would be breaking the furniture, and chewing the curtains. He also calmly points out where the evidence is strong, and where it is weak, or where it does not exist at all. He does not overclaim, nor suggest that cutting down on carbs is a panacea that will benefit everyone. It is the calm reasonable tone that is actually most impressive. He knows his stuff, and he lays it out carefully and clearly.

What of the title of the book itself? ‘The case for Keto.’ For those who know this area ‘Keto’ is the metabolic state achieved when the body stops using sugar for energy and starts to break down the stored fats instead. These stored ‘fatty acids’ are converted to molecules known as ketone bodies in the liver. The body is perfectly happy to use them for energy. This is ‘ketosis’. Explaining the title of the book.

Many people think ketones are the preferred energy source for most organs in the body. Virtually the only exception being some processes in the brain, that require glucose, and only glucose, to function.

The downstream benefit to entering ketosis is that, when you burn up fats and ketones, you are also using up your “energy stores” aka fat. So, once you stop burning glucose, and start using ketones, you can finally lose weight. Also, your blood glucose levels fall, your insulin levels fall, and the body has a chance to reset itself.

Gary has spoken to many, many doctors and researchers who are now absolutely convinced that the best way to prevent, even reverse, the wave of obesity and diabetes sweeping the modern world is to change from eating carbohydrates and eat more fats. I agree with him. If you read this book, I believe you will agree with him too. He makes a compelling case. It is the Case for Keto.

December 20, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

The National Security Establishment Is In Charge

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 11, 2020

In the debate over whether a recently retired military man, Gen. Lloyd Austin, should be secretary of defense, the New York Times published an editorial yesterday emphasizing the importance of “civilian control” over the military.

How quaint! Never mind that Times, by its own admission, endorsed President Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Gen. James Mattis. The Times now says that two times in a row would be too much because civilian control of the military is so vitally important in America.

What nonsense. The fact is that the national-security establishment, which consists of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, has long been in charge of the levers of power within the federal government. Anybody who becomes secretary of defense, military or civilian, is going to be taking orders, not giving them.

But we have to cling to our myths and lies — you know, like the one that holds that American servicemen died in America’s many foreign wars to protect our “freedom.” As long as we cling to such falsehoods, myths, and unrealities, everything will be fine, or so the argument goes.

But everything isn’t fine. Just look around. Look at the ever-increasing numbers of young people committing suicide. Is that normal? That’s the surest sign yet of what clinging to lies and myths and selling them as reality can do to a nation. Add to those suicides the suicides of veterans and the massive drug addition, alcoholism, and other self-destructive behavior and all the irrational killings and other acts of violence that pervade American society.

Yep, just look around. It’s not hard to see that America is a very unhealthy society.

There is one book that captures perfectly what has happened to the United States: National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon. Glennon’s thesis is a simple one: It is the national-security establishment that is in charge of the federal government.

Oh, yes, I know, everyone thinks that the other parts of the federal government — the president, the Congress, and the Supreme Court are in charge. That’s because they are inculcated with that notion in their public school civics classes or at the state-supported colleges they attended. As Glennon points out, that notion is false. The real power and control lies with the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. They permit the other parts of the federal government to maintain the veneer of power. That doesn’t matter to them. What matters is that they are in charge and that the other three branches defer to them on critical matters, such as who is going to be secretary of defense,

And just in case you’re wondering, Glennon is not some sort of crackpot author, which makes his book so dangerous to the national-security establishment. Since 2002, he has been a professor of law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He also served three years as counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He also was a professor of law at the University of California and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International School for Scholars. Glennon is an author to be reckoned with.

Recall that when Trump was running for president, he was making bold statements against the deep state and its “forever wars.” This was one of the big reasons so many people voted for him. Not since Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy had a president stood up to the “military industrial complex.”

And then look at what happened, almost immediately. Look at what the national-security establishment did to Donald Trump. At the very start of his administration, they defanged him and rendered him impotent. Trump surrounded himself with generals. He even appointed one to be his secretary of defense. Now nearing the the end of his four year term, he failed to end his “forever wars,” as he promised to do. Just as bad, he tried his best to start new ones, like in Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia.

One of the biggest signs that Trump caved was with respect to the long-secret JFK records of the national-security establishment. Just think — almost 60 years of secrecy based on the ridiculous notion of “national security.” Early on, Trump declared openly that he was gong to release the records, as mandated by Congress 25 years before in the JFK Records Act. And then at the last minute, Trump surrendered to the will of the CIA, agreeing to its demands for more years of secrecy.

Moreover, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the mainstream press didn’t issue a peep of protest over the continue secrecy of the records. Continued secrecy of decades-old records relating to the supposed lone-nut assassination of a president is treated as something completely normal. It’s just one more example of the weird dysfunction that pervades American life, not to mention the control that the national-security establishment wields over the mainstream press, especially when it comes to the Kennedy assassination.

Why did Donald Trump cave on the JFK records, the forever wars, and the deep state, knowing that he was inevitably going to disappoint his millions of supporters? I don’t think we can eliminate the possibility that Trump got “Hooverized” — that is, that the national-security establishment may have employed the same tactic mastered by former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover — use secrets of a person’s personal life to acquire mastery of his public life.

With Joe Biden, they don’t need to do that. Given Biden’s lifetime of public subservience to the Washington, D.C. establishment, he’s going to bow to whatever the national-security establishment wants. In fact, I don’t think we can eliminate the idea that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA rejected Biden’s choice for secretary of defense, another deep state lackey named Michèle Flournoy, and chose Gen. Austin instead. But hey, at least Austin’s appointment would reflect the reality of who’s in charge of the federal government.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education.

December 11, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Remembering the Intifada and its prisoners of freedom: “Ansar III: The Camp of Slow Death”

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | December 9, 2020

The great Palestinian popular intifada (uprising) that mobilized, organized and unified the Palestinian masses – especially inside occupied Palestine, but also in the refugee camps, in exile and in diaspora – launched in December 1987. As we recall its 33rd anniversary, we note that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – some estimates reaching up to 600,000 – were arrested, detained and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces during the Intifada.

There, they experienced severe torture under interrogation, harsh conditions of confinement, medical neglect and abuse, collective punishment and home demolitions targeting their families, brutal beatings and mistreatment and the widespread and systematic use of administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. Inside the prisons, however, despite all forms of repression, generations of Palestinian organizers developed “revolutionary schools” of politics, literature and organizing, developing powerful young activists to return to the streets embroiled in a great popular uprising.

In a failed attempt to suppress the Intifada, the Israeli occupation launched new prison camps and detention centers to hold the thousands of Palestinians detained in mass arrests throughout occupied Palestine. The following historical booklet, published in English in 1988 by ROOTS and Friends of Palestinian Prisoners, focuses on one such prison camp: Ansar III, “a barbed wire compound in the heart of the Negev desert.” At the time of the booklet’s publication, Janet Jubran of the Friends of Palestinian Prisoners noted in her introduction, “In one year, since the Intifada began, more than 25,000 Palestinians have been arrested. At this moment, nearly every family has one or more of its members in prison.”

This powerful booklet, including documentation, testimony and facts about Ansar III and its Palestinian prisoners – including many labor leaders, human rights defenders and journalists – was a part of the burgeoning organizing of Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora (in this case, in the United States) and the growing movement of international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is republishing this booklet today, on the 33rd anniversary of the Intifada, to bring this important historical document to new audiences, continuing to build upon this legacy of struggle, standing with the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation and return. 

Download the PDF here: Download PDF

December 9, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Those Who Don’t Fear the Lobby

By Craig Wood | Dissident Voice | December 8, 2020

With the encouragement of friends and after serving eleven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1961-1983), Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) wrote a book, They Dare to Speak Out, about influences and pressures inside the Israeli lobby.

His was the first book to point out ways the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), along with pro-Israel affiliates, use recruiting inducements and propaganda to steer political candidates toward a favorable view of Israel. It also exposed how Zionists in Israel and the U.S. get away with surreptitiously funneling money and perks to political allies while smearing its detractors — something the author had experience with firsthand.

Findley took an interest in Middle East politics in 1974 when he returned home from a humanitarian mission in the south of Yemen where he secured the release of an imprisoned American. His perceptions of the region changed after research and discussions with area experts — “Gradually, Arabs emerged as human beings” he recalled.

His trouble with the Israeli lobby began later in the 70s after he opened a dialogue with Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Arafat, against the wishes of Israel and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. While those conversations proved helpful to Americans with the freeing of American hostages in Iran, the U.S. refused to formally acknowledge the talks and Findley was tagged as an anti-Semite even though he was also against officially recognizing the PLO. In 1980 he said “it makes sense for us to talk to the PLO, to communicate with them and try to influence their behavior. It would reduce tension and conflict in that area. We can’t wish the Palestinians away — they’re a fact.”

Nevertheless, he was maligned by hard-case Zionists and shunned by colleagues in his own party for the rest of his career. President Ronald Regan going so far as to avoid any contact with him during a campaign stop in his district. Hollywood star Bob Hope backed out of an agreement to help Findley with his 1980 campaign after hearing stories he was a PLO sympathizer and betrayer of Jews.

Two years later Findley lost his bid for re-election by less than 1% of the vote. AIPAC executive director Thomas A. Dine noted three days after the election that 150 students from the University of Illinois had been recruited to “pound the pavement and knock on doors” adding “This is a case where the Jewish lobby made a difference. We beat the odds and defeated Findley.” Despite both candidates raising similar amounts of money, Dine estimated that $685,000 of $750,000 raised by Findley’s opponent came from Jews.

Among others who incurred the wrath of the Israeli lobby were reporters, educators, and politicians from both parties. Former Illinois Governor, Senator and Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson Il (D-lL) received numerous honors from Jewish organizations before he became the target of a smear campaign when he criticized Israeli polices and called for a halt in settlement funding. After that Senator Rudy Boschwitz (R-MN) commented at a breakfast gathering in Chicago that Stevenson was “a very steadfast foe of aid to Israel” and Dine would chime in again “The memory of Adlai Stevenson’s hostility toward Israel during his Senate tenure lost him the Jewish vote in Illinois and that cost him the gubernatorial election.”

Like Stevenson, U.S. Senator and Congressman J. William Fulbright (D-Ark) was accused of being anti-Semitic for questioning aid to Israel and advocating for an investigation that exposed an illegal scheme Israelis used to funnel five-million dollars into the American Zionist Council. Before leaving the Senate he warned “Endlessly pressing the United States for money and arms—and invariably getting all and more than she asks—Israel makes bad use of a good friend.”

Tentacles from the Israeli lobby put a stranglehold on campus too. Curricula focusing on Arab culture and history were investigated for possible anti-Israel biases, academic conferences were mercilessly scrutinized for speakers critical of Israeli policies and AIPAC created files on intellectual dissidents including Jews like Noam Chomsky. Not content with ostracizing critical thinkers and threatening to cut off academic grants, AIPAC and its ilk started training student activists in 1979 to increase pro-Israel influence on campus with the Political Leadership Development Program. Four years later over 5,000 students were onboard with their agenda.

Other Jews worried privately about blowback or even losing their jobs if they openly complained about Israeli injustice. First Amendment champ and Jewish writer Nat Hentoff frequently wrote about those fears in his New York Village Voice column. And radical Jewish journalist I. F. Stone noted the massive amounts of hate mail reporters received if they expressed “one word of sympathy for Palestinian Arab refugees.”

In Minneapolis, journalist Richard Broderick used his weekly “Mediawatch” column in the Twin City Reader to point out media biases favoring Israel when it invaded Syria in 1982. This disturbed some readers including area movie distributors who threatened to pull advertising. Not wanting to lose a huge amount of revenue, the paper’s editor offered disgruntled advertisers space for a 1,000 word unedited rebuttal.

Broderick came under fire again that summer after calling out local media for not bothering to check a source Senator Boschwitz used to suggest Syria welcomed the attacks. After doing some research he discovered that Boschwitz’s source, the American Lebanon League (ALL) was not only in favor of Israel invading Syria in 1982, it was according to the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee (ADC) “the unregistered foreign agent of the Phalange Party and the Lebanese Front. They work in close consultation with AIPAC, which creates for them their political openings.”

After Broderick made the information public, Senator Boschwitz got on the phone and balled him and his editor out — and according to Broderick during a recent FB chat with me, the Chief of Staff in Senator Boschwitz’s office informed the business association representing predominantly Jewish theater owners that the Twin City Reader had a “Nazi” on its staff. He also mentioned he wasn’t anti-Israel or dissing Boschwitz, he was simply doing his job as a reporter by investigating a source and had no idea he’d be fired for that. Nonetheless he was told not to write anymore commentaries, which he refused to do and was let go a few weeks later.

Lucky for Findley he didn’t have a boss who could get rid of him for checking sources or looking for pieces of information that might solve a puzzle. Although he had trouble with sources who were reluctant to go on record, he found enough who weren’t and collected more than enough surprising facts and discovered enough underhanded strategies to keep readers turning the page. His narrative which sometimes evokes the sinister cleverness of a spy novel can also be a reliable reference for those interested in how a foreign power, along with its operatives, affected so many Americans from the 50’s to the early 80’s.

The book is as timely today as it was when it was first published in 1984 because when it comes to smearing critics of Israel, with few exceptions — the Israeli lobby still gets its way.

They Dare To Speak Out is available to read for free here.

Craig Wood is a Minneapolis writer and member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at craig2mpls@yahoo.com

December 8, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The Fallacy behind ‘Normalization’

By Lubna Tarabey – Al-Manar – November 28, 2020

“Normalization” is the process through which relationships can become normal or the process of bringing or returning something to a normal state or condition. Normalcy requires a balance of relationships, a regularization, an orderly state of affairs. Is that really the basis of the relationship between the so called “State of Israel” and the other countries of the Arab World that appear to be rushing to sign such ‘normalization’ agreements? Would such a state of affairs result in something that is even remotely balanced?

Let us take a look at this assumed balance and see if it is skewed in any direction – in whose direction. What does the “State of Israel” have? It has a nuclear ability- unlike the Arab countries, the strongest army, and the unconditional support of the United States of America and the Western world. What do any of the Arab states embarking on normalization have? Nothing of the above – not even the support of their people. Yes, they do have an oil-based wealth which can be robbed, used or abused, and that is what the Israelis are after. What resources does ‘Israel’ have that it promises to share with these Arab states? It promises to share nothing – promising peace. The idea in itself would be funny if it was not so pathetic. When were these Arab states now signing agreements ever in a state of war with ‘Israel’? When did any ever offer to send one soldier to fight alongside the Palestinians? The promised peace is pathetic as it is being offered as a gift among two parties that had never even been in war. Arab regimes are fools if they think they would benefit from the Zionists controlling the policies, both internal and external, in ‘Israel’. Which Arab state – those who actually were engaged in armed conflict – ever benefited from any agreement with the Zionists? Did Egypt benefit? Did Jordan benefit? The answer is categorically NO. None of these states benefited and none can hope to ever benefit from such agreements. That is against the policies of the Zionists state as the following clarifies.

The Zionists have a long history of using others. Ends justifies means. No other principle matters to them. Not justice, not equality, not fairness, not even peace. The principle of ‘end justifies means’ is the only principle they adhere to and to achieve their aims they gladly walk over other people. They even did that to Americans themselves – their number one ally. This is something that was seriously and meticulously documented by Alison Weir, the author of a must read book titled “Against Our Better Judgment: the hidden history of how the U.S was used to create Israel” (2014). Describing the scheming of the Zionist movement in the US, the author writes, “It has targeted virtually every sector of American society; worked to involve American in tragic, unnecessary and profoundly costly wars, dominated congress for decades; increasingly determined which candidates could become serious contenders for US presidency; and promoted bigotry towards an entire population, region and culture.”(Weir, 2014:2). The Zionist movement has constantly used any and whichever method to realize its end – using other people, benefiting from other nations economic powers, draining their resources and even stealing and appropriating other people’s history and culture. This is what they have done all over the world. This is what they have done in Palestine.

How can one even consider a normal relationship with an entity that is anything but normal. Its very existence represents an abnormality among nations. The only state in the world that has no history – a mere 60 years of existence – younger than my own father! Created in a land whose people have a history of more than 4000 years. This abnormal state was established at the cost of killing and displacing the natives of the land. The ‘engineers’ behind the establishment of this abnormality were quite aware that their claim to the land had no foundation. So, what was their brilliant solution? Let us steal the needed foundations! It was not enough to steal the land and houses of the Palestinians. Why not go the extra mile? Steal their history and, along the way, their culture. After all, no one can stop them. They enjoyed the support of the almighty western superpowers along with all the technological resources need to do so. The plan was deviously simple: Erase all traces of anything Palestinian and replace it with ‘Israeli’. Hence, the world wide famous Middle Eastern dish called the hummus became Israeli Hummus. The famous relics of the church of Bethlehem were stolen and documented as part of the Jewish heritage. The embroidery work of the Palestinians which for thousands of years stood as a signature of the clothing of the people of Palestine was also stolen and renamed ‘Israeli’. Even names of villages were changed in line with the Jewish pronunciations to establish a sense of continuity and belonging. For example Asqalan became Ashkelon …. The story goes on and on. Palestine was removed from the maps used all over the world and replaced with ‘Israel’. One theft after another. All carried out under the eyes of the so called ‘free world’ which mostly reacted by turning a blind eye, intentionally so, further supporting these atrocities.

Such practices cannot be allowed to continue. People of the Arab World must become active agents, calling out and exposing these practices. A documentation of Palestinian cultural heritage must be embarked upon. The youth of the Arab world must be reminded of how the ‘state of Israel’ was established. Whose houses were destroyed? Whose land was stolen? Whose culture was destroyed? Normalization of what! What a fallacy! There can be no normal relationships – the very basis of the concept is not applicable.

Lubna Tarabey is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Social Sciences, Lebanese University.

Alison Weir is an American research with a lot of publications on the Zionist movement and the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

November 29, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

‘The Machines Did The Killing’: Obama Awkwardly Defends Drone Kill List In New Memoir

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 11/24/2020

Former President Barack Obama still can’t shake his legacy as the “drone president” given he still holds the record for number of ordered covert assassination strikes via drones.

“There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush,” one prior human rights study found.

“Obama embraced the US drone program, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush,” the study said.

This infamously included not only the killing of Yemeni-American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki due to his suspected al-Qaeda links, but also his son, 16-year-old US citizen and Colorado native Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, by a drone airstrike ordered by Obama on October 14, 2011. The boy was not even suspected of a crime upon his death while he had been casually eating dinner with this friends at a cafe in Yemen.

The Obama administration later claimed the teen’s death was “collateral damage” and despite lawsuits related to the CIA operation, no US official has ever been held accountable for literally assassinating two US citizens without trial or so much as filing official charges.

In his new 768-page memoir out this month, A Promised Land, there’s scant mention of the massively expanded secret drone ‘targeted killing’ program under his watch, however, when it does receive brief attention, it’s merely in passing but is still filled with cringeworthy level of self-justification and rationalization:

“… the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead,” he wrote.

Clearly he and the editor (and his ghostwriters) took pains to twist the limits of grammar and bizarre sentence structure to create as much distance as possible between the former president and owning up to the killings.

Here’s the section in full from the book, where he actually attempts to present himself as the ‘savior’ of those victims he ordered killed:

In places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.

Under Obama estimates of the number of victims that were a result of the White House’s secretive “Kill List” often range from 300 to over 500 civilians killed, including over 60 children.

But that’s just a snapshot of a few years out his total two terms, and the true numbers remain classified.

The New York Times would report in 2012 that Obama began to designate “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

Obama adviser Robert Gibbs previously said when asked point blank about the ordered killing of a 16-year old American citizen: He should’ve “had a more responsible father.”

So it seems years later Obama’s justification is now essentially ‘the machines did it’.

Or again in his own bizarre and twisted words, “… the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.”

Abdulrahman Awlaki, the 16-year old American-born son of Anwar al-Awlaki, was ordered killed by Obama in 2011.

And let’s not forget, this is the man awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and who is still heralded by Liberals as the most enlightened leader this country has ever had.

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

New Book Exposes History and Money Behind the Transgender Lobby

By Eric Striker • National Justice • November 23, 2022

A new book from Antelope Hill provides meticulously sourced insight into the corrupt institutions and wealthy financiers that have created and imposed the inorganic transgender movement on the West and beyond.

In The Transgender Industrial-Complex, a copy of which was provided to National Justice for review, author Scott Howard provides over 400 pages of mostly unknown names and groups who, largely over the last 20 years, have used their money to fund phony science, corrupt law, judges and politicians, disseminate disinformation, and organize often thuggish and violent activism to force mostly English-speaking liberal democracies to seriously debate whether men can get pregnant or children should be allowed to choose to take drugs and have irreversible “gender affirmation surgeries.”

Those who disagree on the grounds of ethics or science are marked for destruction.

Howard’s book is effective because its chapters focus on tracing the money, examining the history, and looks at how the European Union and Washington export transgenderism to other nations. It effectively packages the actual science on transgenderism, that it is nothing more than organized and well-funded delirium, in a highly readable format.

The history of transgenderism as we know it is believed to have originated in Jewish circles in early 20th century Germany, but Howard’s research shows that references to breaking down gender in Jewish circles go back to the 14th century, almost hundreds of years years before Martha Baer, a B’nai B’rith member in Germany, became the world’s first “sex-change” operation recipient. There is an interesting anecdote where a Jew involved in gender ideology converted to Catholicism and exposed the movement as an attempt to provoke moral chaos in European host societies. Magnus Hirschfeld is generally credited with creating the ideological rationale for “Trans” and “queerness” more broadly, but it was a Hirschfeld adept named Henry Gerber who imported the bizarre doctrine to the United States via “The Society for Human Rights” in Chicago.

Disagreeing with the concept of transgenderism or what the gender ideology does to those who subscribe to it is forbidden in American society. Howard explains the mechanism for this censorship, listing the small group of wealthy people — most of them Jews — who have created carrots and sticks in academia, the press and the culture at large for aspiring professionals to defy their own two eyes and embrace the 21st century’s Lysenkoist crusade.

Just recently, the largest study ever conducted on transsexuals found that rather than being a biological flaw for man to correct through drugs and surgery, the lifestyle and practice of wanting to change your sex is merely a type of aggressive autism with psychiatric co-morbidities such as schizophrenia.

Conservative examinations of the transgender issue rarely provide a why for the what, but Howard pulls no punches in describing the impulse behind the neo-liberal transsexual push: powerful Jews believe traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity along with the normal family are philosophical categories and social assumptions Fascism swims in — thus they must be destroyed to preserve the power of the ruling class.

By deconstructing nature, our morality breaks down and we are more likely to embrace obscene and discordant unnatural behavior across the board. This makes populations weak and defenseless.

The Transgender Industrial-Complex is an authoritative tome that answers all of one’s questions behind an issue that induces confusion and befuddlement among the vast majority of people.

Gender ideology is not just a strange liberal fad. It is a pernicious attack on Western civilization by wealthy and powerful people motivated by equal parts mental illness and malice.

November 23, 2020 Posted by | Book Review | | Leave a comment

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