Spain allows Israeli agent to interrogate Palestinian journalist in Madrid
MEMO | April 15, 2021
The Spanish security services have allowed an Israeli agent from the Mossad spy agency to interrogate a Palestinian journalist seeking asylum, Wafa news agency has reported. The incident at the Civil Guard building in the capital has been condemned by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.
The syndicate called on the Spanish government to assume its responsibilities by ensuring the security of Muath Hamid and his family. It also called for the Spanish authorities to open an investigation into what happened during the interrogation.
Spain’s Civil Guard is the oldest law enforcement agency in the country and “military in nature”. The journalists’ union said that it is suspected of being “complicit” with Mossad in allowing the Israeli agent to interrogate Hamid in its building. “This was a gross violation of international law, a violation of Spanish sovereignty and a threat to the journalist’s security and safety,” the syndicate insisted.
It added that the case is being followed closely in conjunction with the Union of Spanish Journalists, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry, and the Spanish political and security authorities to ensure that Hamid is not subject to any harm or torture. The reporter for Al Araby TV and freelance contributor to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed is currently a refugee in Spain, where he lives with his wife and two children.
According to popular Spanish online newspaper Público last Friday, on 9 December Hamid received a telephone call from “Nicolás”, an officer on duty at the Civil Guard’s Spanish Information Services “Nicolás wanted to discuss Hamid’s work as a journalist, his past and his current life in Spain. This is a regular procedure for refugees and migrants.”
When the journalist went to meet “Nicolás” in Bilbao, he met another officer, Javier. “Hamid answered all the questions, explaining why he applied for asylum in Spain and describing his journey from Palestine to Europe through Turkey,” reported Público. “In early February, the young Palestinian journalist was summoned again by Nicolás… this time in the Spanish capital, Madrid.”
This time there was also another man in the room, allegedly named Omar, “who was introduced to him as a Palestinian. Hamid, however, immediately noticed his strong Israeli accent… and he decided to answer his questions in Hebrew.” Omar acknowledged that he was an Israeli, at which point Javier “left the room, leaving Muath in the hands of the supposed Mossad agent… who threatened the Palestinian journalist and his family, saying that they will never be allowed to go back to Palestine due to one of his journalistic investigations” related to the work of the Israeli spy agency.
Público sought comments and clarifications from the Israeli Embassy and the Civil Guard, as well as Spain’s Interior Ministry. It has received no replies.
HOW IS THIS A THING? April 10, 2021
Computing Forever | April 10, 2021
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Magic mushroom treatment on par with pharma drugs for combating depression, study finds
RT | April 15, 2021
In a small phase two trial, Imperial College researchers have found that psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, is at least as effective as pharmaceutical medication at treating depression.
In their admittedly small scale study, some 59 volunteers with depression were split into two groups.
One group was given a daily dosage of the widely used antidepressant escitalopram (AKA Lexapro, Cipralex, and others). They were also administered very weak doses of psilocybin twice, three weeks apart, over the course of the study.
The second group received much stronger doses of psilocybin, with a placebo instead of antidepressant medication.
After six weeks, the self-reported results from the patients suggested the psilocybin was just as effective as the pharmaceutical, and in many cases showed a slightly bigger – but ultimately statistically insignificant – improvement in symptoms.
The research team, led by Imperial College London neuroscientist Robin Carhart‑Harris, also highlighted the limited timeframe of the study as playing an important factor in the results, and suggested that a longer study might yield different results, possibly favouring pharmaceutical intervention.
The scientists were also quick to highlight the importance of guided psychotherapy to manage any hallucinatory experiences among the trial volunteers, lest members of the public attempt to self-medicate.
“We strongly believe that the … psychotherapy component is as important as the drug action,” Carhart-Harris said.
“With a psychedelic it is more about a release of thought and feeling that, when guided with psychotherapy, produces positive outcomes.”
Some five patients taking the SSRI stopped or reduced their doses due to negative effects, but none in the psilocybin group did. Furthermore, volunteers with a family history of psychosis were excluded from the trial, which may have tipped the results positively in favour of the psychedelic intervention.
Previous research has found that psilocybin treatment had fewer side effects and had an almost immediate impact compared with common antidepressant medication, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
SSRIs are often perceived to blunt emotional response, whereas the psilocybin had the opposite effect, according to fMRI scans which showed an apparent increase in emotional connections within the patients’ brains.
There are often a slew of side effects associated with SSRIs, ranging from lethargy and mood swings to so-called ‘brain zaps’, or the sensation of electrical shocks in the brain associated with the use (or discontinuation) of the medication.
SSRIs also typically have a lead time of up to six weeks to reach full effect, while ongoing side effects which can persist beyond this initial phase include insomnia, weight gain, and persistent fatigue, among others.
Further, the efficacy of such antidepressants can wane for some patients over time, so breakthroughs in the field of psychedelic treatments may provide huge relief for patients with adverse reactions to the more common interventions – though it is still too early to make any sweeping assertions about psilocybin treatments among the wider populace.
Still, with an estimated 800 million people with mental health disorders worldwide, new treatment options could soon be available.
The DOJ is Lying about the Ashley Babbitt case
The force was excessive so the DOJ punts on “willfulness”
Technofog | April 14, 2021
Today, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia issued a press release explaining their decision to not prosecute the officer who shot and killed unarmed protester (and veteran) Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021.
It states that DOJ officials, along with the Metropolitan Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, “conducted a thorough investigation of Ms. Babbitt’s shooting.” This included reviewing video footage, getting statements from officers and other witnesses, collecting physical evidence, and the results of Ms. Babbitt’s autopsy.
They explain:
“As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out. An officer inside the Speaker’s Lobby fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor.”
You’ll notice there’s no mention of a verbal warning to Ms. Babbitt or other efforts to subdue her without the use of deadly force.
Continuing on, the DOJ maintains that the “focus of the criminal investigation was to determine whether federal prosecutors could prove that the officer violated any federal laws, concentrating on the possible application of 18 U.S.C. § 242, a federal criminal civil rights statute.”
The press release focused on the term “willfully”:
The DOJ concluded:
“The investigation revealed no evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer willfully committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242. Specifically, the investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber.”
This conclusion should be no surprise. Not because of the law or the facts, but because of the people in charge of the Department of Justice. The U.S. Capitol Police, like the Park Police, have always had a special relationship with the DOJ – one that includes preferential treatment. This case is no different.
For starters, the three basic elements to a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 242 are that the defendant (1) acting under color of law; (2) willfully; (3) deprived the victim of a federally protected right.
Excessive force is easy to establish. The Supreme Court has held that the government must introduce evidence that the action of the officer in shooting to kill Babbitt was “excessive in relation” to a legitimate government objective. Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 135 S. Ct. 2466, 2473-2474 (2015). This is an objective standard – the force must be objectively unreasonable when viewed from the standpoint of a reasonable officer at the scene. Here, Babbitt was unarmed, was climbing through a window and not attacking anyone. In response, she is shot and killed. Easily excessive.
This brings us to “willfulness.”
We have serious doubts about the DOJ position that there was “no evidence” to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer willfully violated Section 242. As an initial matter, the DOJ press release neglects to mention whether the officer used excessive force, instead going right to an analysis on willfulness. We believe this reveals their intent to soften the blow of the press release.
As to willfulness, 18 U.S.C. applies “when the defendant understands that he is unjustifiably invading a legally protected interest, or acts in reckless disregard of the law.” However, the defendant need not have been “thinking in constitutional terms,” as long as his “aim was not to enforce local law but to deprive a citizen of a right and that right was protected by the Constitution.” Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 106 (1945).
Here, the DOJ exaggerates – and at worst, lies – about its “willfulness burden.” We doubt the DOJ couldn’t prove willfulness in this case.
In fact, the DOJ has brought Section 242 prosecutions with less egregious facts.
As the DOJ has argued in other cases, the officer’s prior training on the use of force could be viewed “as evidence that his conduct was willful.” Are we to think that this officer didn’t have training on when force became excessive?
In another case, the DOJ argued to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that to establish “willfulness,” the jury was required to find that the defendant “intended to use more force than was reasonable under the circumstances – i.e., force that violated [the victim’s] well-established due rights as a pretrial detainee.”
What makes the Babbitt case different? The victim and the location.
This case should have gone to the jury. If this killing took place in Minnesota or Chicago the results would have been different.
Rolling Out Paedophile Enablers To Promote The COVID-19 Vaccine
Wake TF Up Weekly | April 14, 2021
If we live in a society that truly advocates for informed consent, it is paramount that we only take advice from reliable sources. It is also crucial to ensure that those who may be of a nefarious nature, attempting to sway our decisions in a particular direction, are kept at an arm’s length.
For example, you would never take medical advice from a trio of genocidal mass murderers.
Hence, on Monday, when I learned on watching UK Column that Edwina Currie was propagating for vaccine uptake, I took notice. In her video piece, she did the dirty work of her handlers, as instructed, playing her part in the stage show, doing what politicians do best – sowing division.
Referring to those who will decide against being vaccinated, or those who cannot be vaccinated, she exclaimed;
“Exercising their freedom not to have a vaccine? And they’re ‘perfectly healthy’? I don’t want them sitting next to me in theatre. I don’t want them standing next to me at the theatre bar. I don’t want them next to me or anywhere near me, or even on the same carriage on the train. So yea, they can exercise their freedom by staying at home. But millions and millions of us – 15 million pensioners – can’t wait to get out. You know what the main side effect of being vaccinated is, don’t you? And that’s itchy feet. We can go out there and I think there’s an obligation on our government to try and keep us as safe as possible. We are the majority.”
It should first be mentioned that ‘itchy feet’ is not the main side effect of being vaccinated, as Edwina points out. Far more common, as per the data of the UK’s government-approved Yellow Card system are cardiac disorders, of which there have been almost 6000 cases, and psychiatric disorders, of which there have been, give or take a few, 10,000 reports. This is on top of the 92 cases of blindness, the 55 spontaneous abortions, the 6700 blood disorders, 608 anaphylactic reactions and the 2000+ immune system disorders. And of course, there is another known side effect that can be considered a little more serious than mere itchy feet syndrome – namely, death – which has occurred 786 times. Surely worth a mention? Or why let facts spoil a good Big Pharma marketing promotion?
It should also be mentioned to Edwina that the idea the COVID-19 vaccine will keep her safe is erroneous. Recently released documents by the UK government predict that the next wave of COVID-19 infection will see the majority of hospitalisations and deaths ‘dominated’ by people who have already been vaccinated. Straight from the mouths of the corrupt horses that she served for decades. Perhaps, it should be the unvaccinated who are best avoiding people like Edwina if that’s the case. But why mention any of that when the COVID cult you shill for is watching?
In fact, sitting next to Edwina or standing next to her at a bar may not be desirable for a lot of people when we consider her background – and it has nothing to do with her immune system or vaccination status. Having her sat in a separate carriage on a train may indeed be worth contemplating – particularly if the train is bound for a prison. Surely, when one enables the mass rape and rampant sexual abuse of innocent children, there is no alternative destination for them, right?
British MP, Peter Morrison was Private Parliamentary Secretary to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister of the UK and, like a long list of Westminster squad members, he was a notorious paedophile. Morrison would prey on children who were resident in care homes in the North Wales region. Between the years of 1974 and 1990, it is believed that over 600 children were abused in these institutions, of which the MP was a regular visitor. The depraved pervert was on two separate occasions found in the company of young boys in public lavatories by police officers where he would subject them to sexual abuse. In the typically British tradition of governments and law enforcement agencies allowing paedophiles to abuse, without the consequence of punishment, Morrison was not charged by British police, who we now know in 2021 are more suited to harassing and assaulting women, children and senior citizens than they are to putting away actual criminals such as paedophiles.
But police officers were not the only people to have turned a blind eye to the crimes of Peter Morrison. The Prime Minister did too. Margaret Thatcher had been warned by her own personal bodyguard, Barry Strevens, who was aware of claims that the MP was involved in orgies of abuse involving children. Instead of taking action to stop the paedophilia and having Morrison investigated and charged, the most powerful woman in the nation did nothing – besides subsequently promoting Morrison to Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, that is.
As the years went on, victims would begin to come forward testifying to the crimes of Morrison, including a man who claimed to have been plied with alcohol before being raped by him at the age of 14 when he was an occupant of the now infamous Elm Guest House. Then in 2015, an investigation was initiated into a possible link between Morrison and the murder of an 8-year-old boy by the name of Vishal Mehrotra, who died mysteriously in 1981. It wasn’t until 2020 when an independent inquiry was carried out, that it was proven many top government officials were fully aware of these crimes and instead of intervening to prevent further rape and abuse, decided to look the other way.
One of those government officials was Edwina Currie.
In 2002, Edwina wrote and published her autobiography. In it she broached the topic of Morrison’s paedophilia and very clearly stated that she knew he was ‘a noted paederast’, and had heard him admit to this. Edwina would even go so far as to defend him when she opined that the crimes he engaged in would not be illegal today. As your average person will be aware, raping 14-year-old children after setting them drunk is as illegal and immoral today as it was back when Morrison was doing it. So is having sex with boys in public toilets. Not in the eyes of this demented woman though. To this day, she sees nothing wrong with her failure to act, as the lives of children were destroyed at the hands of a political reprobate. When quizzed about this she claimed that she had no proof that Morrison was a rapist, contradicting the claims in her book that she knew perfectly well and that he himself was not shy about talking of his twisted sexual preferences.
5 years, neither Edwina nor any of her colleagues did anything to stop the child abuse that they knew was occurring under their very noses. The ‘open secret’ led to continued sexual exploitation of vulnerable children in care homes. Refusing to act on the information that was present allowed the sick pervert, Morrison, to resume his rape and assault of boys. And now, today, this woman who actively and admittedly enabled a cycle of abuse to take place at the hands of a filthy vulture wants to lecture the public, looking down her big nose at those who value their freedom? A woman who allowed children to be defiled and degraded is virtue signalling to the public, brashly condemning those who don’t obey the dictates of the criminals in Westminster and their slithering, greasy pharmaceutical companions? Is this woman for real?
She should be hanging her head in shame every day of her existence, knowing that she allowed the deranged psychopaths of her institution to rape children. She should be summoned to court for her failure as a human being to prevent the unmentionable acts that were committed on the innocent and locked up for her complicity. Instead, she is publicly carrying out the wishes of a criminal cabal who will stop at nothing to see that humanity is fractured. Instead, she bows to the demands of a cesspit full of reptiles who are determined to create an underclass of citizens. She wilfully, with glee, mocks the people who are ‘exercising their freedom’ – the same people who paid her salary throughout the entirety of her useless political career and received zilch from her in return for their contributions.
Except of course for one thing which no one will ever forget. It was righteous-acting Edwina, who sees herself as such a responsible citizen that she would not dare risk sitting next to an unvaccinated person in a theatre lest she picks up and spreads a virus with a 99.97% survival rate, who introduced one of the most maniacal, evil and disgusting paedophiles/necrophiles in history into the lives of the children of Broadmoor hospital. I am of course talking about Jimmy Saville. It was indeed Vaccina Edwina who rubber-stamped and signed off on Saville’s access to the hospital, giving him unrestricted passage to the patients. As is now well known, Saville would go on to become a serial abuser of children and the tales of his monstrous, unnatural behaviour would leave scars on the minds of those who heard them first hand. It would devastate the lives of those who had to live them.
Saville was an individual Edwina once described as being ‘an amazing man’, stating he ‘has my full confidence’. This, despite the fact that, many civil servants in her circle had been privy to rumours that Saville had a reputation as a sleazebag, with a particular preference for younger girls. Regardless, Saville’s position in the hospital was approved, and with Edwina’s freshly stamped blessings he launched a campaign of perversion on children on an unimaginably horrific scale.
This is Edwina Currie – who views you as a second class citizen if you do not agree to be injected with a dangerous, experimental, unapproved, unnecessary jab that may leave you paralysed, blind or dead.
In my book, The COVID-19 Illusion; A Cacophony of Lies, I show how the COVID-19 pandemic is an illusion designed to bring about a New World Order that will enslave every man, woman and child alive and change the very essence of our society if it is allowed to happen. Those who designed this illusion are deeply disturbed, shameless creatures with zero empathy. They think that they can do or say whatever they like without any accountability. A perfect example of such a person is Edwina Currie. Coldheartedly and devoid of empathy, this psychopath has allowed children to be brutally raped. Callously she enabled paedophilia to be carried out inside what were believed to have been trusted establishment buildings. Edwina has no remorse and does not feel at all guilty about this. She is a soulless narcissist; unfeeling and uncompassionate. Yet, she believes that, if you chose not to be vaccinated, it is you who is unworthy and it is you who society should shun. Not her.
This is how detached from reality these people are. They are swimming in a sea of malevolence, helplessly corrupted to the core. They are the people who spit on the freedoms that were earned over centuries of battle by men and women with dignity and pride. They want to infect that freedom with their poisonous Communitarianism, which will benefit them in their Ivory Towers as the rest of humanity suffers. If you do indeed let them, they will succeed. Whether you are vaccinated or unvaccinated, people like Edwina Currie are a threat to your existence and a stain on your contentment and happiness. They are obsessively enabling the psychopathic leeches above them, as they destroy Western values. Just like Edwina sided with the predators who stalked Broadmoor and the North Wales children’s homes, she is now siding with the sinister forces that want to create hell on earth for you and your family. She will attempt to do this by turning you against your fellow human being. She will try to convince you that those who are not beholden to illegal government dictates are dangerous and dirty. She will try to brainwash you into believing this garbage, as she demonizes what she thinks is the minority and boasts of being part of the majority – exactly like the Nazis did in the 1930s.
Crazed and deranged people like Edwina Currie, who turn their backs on the vulnerable when they are being abused, are only relevant when people are divided.
Unite. Don’t allow her to be relevant.
Lessons In Woke “Science”: Covid-19 And Climate
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | April 11, 2021
Over time, I have had many posts on the scientific method, most recently in January 2021 here. You posit a falsifiable hypothesis. Then you collect and examine the evidence. If the evidence contradicts your hypothesis you must abandon it and move on. Really, that’s the whole thing.
Then there is woke “science,” most visible these days in the arenas of response to the Covid-19 virus and of climate change. Here the principles are a little different. In woke “science” there is no falsifiable hypothesis. In place of that, we have the official orthodox consensus view. The official orthodox consensus view has been arrived at by all the smartest people, because it just seems like it must be right. The official orthodox consensus view must not be contradicted, particularly by the little people like you. Based on the official orthodox consensus view, those in power can take away all your freedom (Covid) and/or transform the entire economy (climate). After all, it’s the “science.”
But what if evidence seems to contradict the official orthodox consensus view? I’m sorry, but as I said the official orthodox consensus view must not be contradicted. Today’s news brings a couple of extreme examples of that, one on the virus front, and the other relating to climate. Both of these are from Europe, so you may not have seen them.
On the virus front, we consider the case of Germany. For some reason, Germany has been relatively lightly hit by the virus, at least so far. According to the latest from Worldometers, Germany has had 940 deaths per million population to date. This compares, for example to 2,593 deaths per million in Czechia (worst of all countries), 1,864 in the UK, and 1,732 in the U.S. But starting in about mid-March, Germany has seen a renewed “surge” of cases. Why? Some might say that the virus is just going to get you sooner or later. But on March 23 German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a new three-week “lockdown” of the strictest variety, which included the forced closing of most stores from April 1 – 5. And with that three-week period about to expire, the website No Tricks Zone reports today that even further extensions are under consideration:
The German government is looking to impose even stricter lockdown measures. Liberty has been suspended indefinitely in Europe.
The problem here is that if the proposition that lockdowns work were a falsifiable hypothesis, it would have been falsified by now. The most striking data come from here in the U.S., where strict lockdown states like New York (2642 deaths per million as of today), New Jersey (2800), Illinois (1878) and Michigan (1759) continue to get shown up by wide open places like Florida (1584) and Texas (1705). Try to find any actual data for the efficacy of lockdowns, and you can’t. That is, except for their efficacy in generating an unemployment rate of 13% in New York City versus 4.8% in Florida.
But Germany, like the blue U.S. states, operates by the alternative principles of woke “science.” After all, data or no data, all the smartest people know that lockdowns must work. No Tricks Zone reports today on a news conference that took place on Friday (April 9) in Germany. An independent journalist named Boris Reitschuster got a chance to pose a question to Oliver Ewald, a spokesman for the German Ministry of Health. Here is the question (translation from NTZ ):
Herr Ewald, [a journalist] at the WZ wrote in a report that the German government has no proof of the effectiveness of lockdowns. So my question is: what scientific studies do you have? Thank you.”
And here is the initial response, plus some further back and forth:
Ewald: Herr Reitschuster, you know that as a fundamental rule, we do not assess comments from journalists, and so here I will stick to that.”
Reitschuster: There’s a misunderstanding, Herr Ewald, I only brought up a quote and then followed it up with a stand-alone question, and this question has nothing to do with the quote. I’ll gladly repeat the question once again; what scientific study…”
Ewald: When you read one sentence from this comment here and request an assessment without, so to speak, providing further context or basis, I can’t say anything on that.”
Reitschuster: Completely without the sentence, for the third time, what scientific study does the German government have? Thank you.”
Ewald: I’ve said what I have to say say on that!”
NTZ comments: “We all know there is no study that supports lockdowns, and so spokesman Ewald is clearly trapped.” However, you should expect the lockdown to continue in Germany.
Over to the subject of climate change. As you may have read, last week brought record-breaking cold to much of Europe which, given that we are well into April, caused substantial damage to crops in their early stages of Spring growth. Actually, it’s likely that you didn’t read about that at all. That’s because the U.S. mainstream media mostly only report on record warmth, not record cold. As an example, I can’t find any mention of the subject of Europe’s cold snap in the New York Times (although I do find an article in the Washington Post ).
But, particularly given the extensive crop damage, let alone the readership personally experiencing the bitter cold temperatures, the European press can’t avoid reporting on the subject. Doesn’t this extreme cold kind of undermine the official orthodox consensus view that the climate is rapidly getting warmer?
Here is the story from France’s Le Figaro, April 9 (my translation):
A bout of severe frost struck numerous crops this week in France. Temperatures plummeted, in some places, below 0 degrees C (32 F) at a speed never seen since 1947 for the month of April.
Quick, somebody needs to explain how that is consistent with “global warming.” Le Figaro calls in one Thierry Castel, identified as a “climatology researcher.” Here’s his explanation:
This is well linked [to global warming]. The differences in temperatures between the polar zones and the mid-latitudes are decreasing. That process modulates the undulations of the jet stream (the fast winds over the North Atlantic that play a big role in atmospheric circulation). Because of that, we are faced with the descent of cold Arctic air, and the more important northward movement of warm air.
Sure, Thierry. Meanwhile, the UAH guys report another substantial drop in world atmospheric temperature in March 2021. The global temperature anomaly for the month is -0.01 deg C (as against the 30 year average of 1991-2020). That brings us back down to about the same temperature we had back in 1988. Needless to say, Le Figaro was way too polite to confront M. Castel with this information.
Here is the latest UAH chart of global temperatures, going back to 1979:
Big Corporations Now Deploying Woke Ideology the Way Intelligence Agencies Do: As a Disguise
Customers wait in line to purchase limited-edition Air Jordan 1 on July 25, 2019, in Yichang, Hubei Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
By Glenn Greenwald | April 13, 2021
The British spy agency GCHQ is so aggressive, extreme and unconstrained by law or ethics that the NSA — not exactly world renowned for its restraint — often farms out spying activities too scandalous or illegal for the NSA to their eager British counterparts. There is, as the Snowden reporting demonstrated, virtually nothing too deceitful or invasive for the GCHQ. They spy on entire populations, deliberately disseminate fake news, exploit psychological research to control behavior and manipulate public perception, and destroy the reputations, including through the use of sex traps, of anyone deemed adversarial to the British government.
But they want you to know that they absolutely adore gay people. In fact, they love the cause of LGBT equality so very much that, beginning on May 17, 2015 — International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia — they started draping their creepy, UFO-style headquarters in the colors of the rainbow flag. The prior year, in 2014, they had merely raised the rainbow flag in front of their headquarters, but in 2015, they announced, “we wanted to make a bold statement to show the nation we serve how strongly we believe in this.”
Official publication of the British surveillance agency GCHQ, May 17, 2015
Who could possibly be opposed to an institution that offers such noble gestures and works behind such a pretty facade? How bad could the GCHQ really be if they are so deeply committed to the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people? Sure, maybe they go a little overboard with the spying sometimes, and maybe some of their surveillance and disinformation programs are a bit questionable, and they do not necessarily have the highest regard for law, privacy and truth. But we know that, deep down, these are fundamentally good people working within a fundamentally benign institution. Just look at their flamboyant support for this virtuous cause of social justice.
Similar agencies of deceit, militarism and imperialism now robustly use this same branding tactic. The CIA — in between military coups, domestic disinformation campaigns, planting false stories with their journalist-partners, and drone-assassinating U.S. citizens without due process — joyously celebrates Women’s Day, promotes what it calls The Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Officers (ANGLE), hosts activities for Pride Month, and organizes events to commemorate Black History Month. The FBI does the same.
Throughout the month of June, CIA hosted a series of events, panels, & activities celebrating the progress toward equality for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community. #PrideMonth bit.ly/2MY0LqZ
June 26th 2018
115 Retweets402 Likes
It’s so sweet that one is tempted to forget about, or at least be more understanding of, all the bombing campaigns and all the dictatorships they install and prop up that repress and kill the very people that they purport to honor and cherish. Like the GCHQ, how menacing can an intelligence agency be when it is so deeply and sincerely supportive of the rights of the people they routinely spy on, repress and kill?
Again, this does not make the CIA perfect — sure, they make some mistakes and engage in some actions that are worthy of criticism — but to combat real evil, you do not go protest at Langley. They are engaged in important work combating homophobia, racism and misogyny. Thus, real warriors against evil look not to them but instead go searching online for the Boogaloo Boys and boomers on Facebook who post Q-Anon and other problematic memes. That is where your focus should remain if you want to root out the real threats.
Large corporations have obviously witnessed the success of this tactic — to prettify the face of militarism and imperialism with the costumes of social justice — and are now weaponizing it for themselves. As a result, they are becoming increasingly aggressive in their involvement in partisan and highly politicized debates, always on the side of the same causes of social justice which entities of imperialism and militarism have so effectively co-opted.
Corporations have always sought to control the legislative process and executive branch, usually with much success. They purchase politicians and their powerful aides by hiring them as lobbyists and consultants when they leave government, and those bought-and-paid-for influence-peddlers then proceed to exploit their connections in Washington or state capitals to ensure that laws are written and regulations enforced (or not enforced) to benefit the corporations’ profit interests. These large corporations achieve the same goal by filling the campaign coffers of politicians from both parties. This is standard, age-old K Street sleaze that allows large corporations to control American democracy at the expense of those who cannot afford to buy this influence.
But they are now going far beyond clandestine corporatist control of the government for their own interests. They are now becoming increasingly powerful participants in highly polarizing and democratic debates. In the wake of the George Floyd killing last summer, it became virtually obligatory for every large corporation to proclaim support for the #BlackLivesMatter agenda even though many, if not most, had never previously evinced the slightest interest in questions of racial justice or policing.
One of the very few companies that refused to do so was the Silicon Valley-based cryptocurrency exchange platform called Coinbase — which announced that it would remain apolitical and not involve itself in partisan debates or causes of social justice unrelated to its core business mission. When announcing that policy of political neutrality, the company’s co-founder Brian Armstrong explained that “the reason is that while I think these efforts are well intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division.” That once-anodyne announcement — to stay out of politics as a corporate entity — produced instant backlash. And exactly two months after, the notoriously censorious and politicized “tech reporters” of The New York Times punished the company for its heresy of neutrality with a lengthy article depicting Coinbase as a bastion of racism and toxic bigotry (the company was also savaged by journalists because of its audacity to reveal and respond to the NYT’s allegations in advance of the paper’s decision to publish).
Ever since, large corporations are diving into numerous other political debates with great vigor and force — provided that their views are in alignment with affluent liberal culture and prevailing social justice pieties (though, like NBA officials and stars, they confine themselves to easy domestic causes and scripted liberal platitudes while they steadfastly avoid commenting on any injustices that may implicate their business interests, such as debates over labor abuses in China or Amazon’s abuse of its workers). The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that “dozens of chief executives and other senior leaders gathered on Zoom this weekend to plot what several said big businesses should do next about new voting laws under way in Texas and other states.” The campaign against these laws includes not just corporate giants but also the nation’s largest and richest corporate law firms.
Part of the motive may be self-serving strategy. With Democrats controlling both houses of Congress as well as the Executive Branch — all of the instruments that can legislate and regulate their businesses — they may be calculating that using their massive weight to serve the Democratic Party’s political agenda is wise. Doing so could curry favor with powerful lawmakers and regulators and result in rewards or, conversely, allow them to avoid punishment and recrimination for the crime of refusing to engage in activism. That motive at least partially explains why they have been so generous with their donations to Democratic candidates. “Wall Street is putting its money behind Democrat Barack Obama for president,” reported Reuters in 2008, while they did the same overwhelmingly in 2020 to support Biden over Trump (just as Democrats have increasingly become the party of affluent suburbanites, they are also increasingly supported by the wealthiest corporate and tech power centers).
The farcical nature of all of this is obvious. Just as it is laughable that the CIA and GCHQ care about social justice, feminism, and racial diversity as they bomb and subvert the rest of the world in ways that contradict all of those professed values, the idea that corporate giants who use sweatshops, slave labor, mass layoffs and abuse of their workforce care about any of these causes would make any rational person suffocate on the stench of their insincerity.
New York Times, Nov. 20, 2020
But whatever the motives, the dangers of growing corporate involvement in U.S. political debates are manifest. In its healthiest form, the way democracy would function is that citizens vote for the representatives they believe will best serve their interests, and those representatives then enact laws they believe their constituents favor. But when giant corporations use their unparalleled economic power to override that process — by forcing state and local governments to rescind or reject laws they would otherwise support due to fear of corporate punishment — then the system, by definition, far more resembles an oligarchy than a democracy. Rod Dreher, writing on Monday in The American Conservative, advanced arguments and concerns that were once the province of the left:
This is progressive oligarchy. Woke Capitalism is a threat to democracy. As I write about in Live Not By Lies, these same people are eventually going to eagerly collaborate with government to create the Social Credit System necessary to make this country controllable.
When is it going to occur to people on the Left that Big Business is doing all this because it knows that if it makes the right moves on cultural issues that matter to the Woke, it will be able to do whatever it wants to workers? It has never had to worry about Republicans. That may be changing soon, if we elect a crop of populists who know how to do more than tweet and make belligerent but empty speeches. I’d like to see Republicans like this get elected, and get active to remind Big Business of its proper place. . . .
Big Business is already quite powerful in our society. Do we really want a society in which Big Business reserves to itself the right to tell polities what their laws and policies are going to be, at the risk of punishing that polity economically if it resists? Does this sound like the kind of country you want to live in? If you are pro-choice, imagine that Big Business decided to threaten your state’s legislature with economic consequences if it doesn’t pass pro-life legislation. One expects the business lobby to engage itself on legislative questions pertaining to its own sphere, but beyond it? Big Business already has a lot of power over our lives — and now it wants more. The only force powerful enough to reign it in is the State. Whatever else you might say about the State, at least it is democratically accountable — unlike Big Business.
Residing beyond the dangers of even greater corporatist control over our lives and politics is the deceitful branding and distractions that this exploitation of social causes, by design, engender. If large corporations are crusading for voting rights, why would anyone regard them as a menace? The contrary is true: we should be grateful for their noble activism.
When it comes time to identify the root causes of social pathologies, we will look elsewhere. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the corporate class and the ways they abuse and eliminate labor, control government, and destroy the working and middle classes will be impossible to see, as we are all blinded by the glare of their virtuous Instagram posts about racial justice and their unified campaigns against voter suppression. In an instant of swooning over their benevolent devotion to social justice, we will forget what they actually exist to do. When we work to harness their power to support our own political causes, we forget about how out of control and menacing that power is, and what it is most often used for. And that is exactly the way they want it.
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From the Archives
Genetic baloney in thick slices
MAYBE COULD BE INC.
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | July 8, 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease. … continue
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