Project 2025 is hollowing out government — and it’s just getting started 

As we approach the fifth month of Donald Trump’s second term, you might be asking: “What’s up with Project 2025?” According to GPAHE (Global Project Against Hate and Extremism), “Data compiled by the Project 2025 Tracker reveals a presidency operating with methodical precision, adhering to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook. Of the 313 total objectives identified in Project 2025, 98 have been completed as of June 2025, representing a 42 percent completion rate in just five months of governance. This rapid-fire execution creates one of the most striking paradoxes of the early Trump presidency: a policy framework the candidate repeatedly disavowed during his campaign has become the most reliable predictor of his administration’s priorities.”

In short, despite the Trump administration denial that it is following the Heritage Foundation’s playbook, Project 2025 is aggressively strip mining government agencies, providing rebar for an authoritarian takeover of democracy.

Let’s review. Project 2025 is the 920-page blueprint for authoritarianism in the U.S., spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation. More than 100 far-right organizations were involved in crafting the document, which, according to GPAHE “is proving to be the source for Trump’s anti-democratic policies, despite his repeated disavowal of Project 2025 during his campaign.” In addition, “Dozens of members of the new administration have direct ties to the effort.”

Project 2025’s playbook turns back the clock on civil rights and deprives people of their hard-won constitutional rights, while “pushing for the erosion of environmental and education protections. It also advocates for a frightening centralization of power in the executive branch, something Trump is keen to achieve.” [Full analysis of Project 2025]

So what is up with Project 2025?  

In a June 1 interview with Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director, CNN’s Dana Bash asked him about DOGE, presidential power potentially overruling Congress, and the “woke” administrative state, among other topics. Vought was smoothly responding until the conversation turned to Project 2025, when things got a little frosty.

According to GPAHE, “Bash asked him about the unmistakable convergence between Trump’s governing agenda” and Project 2025 — “a document for which Vought himself had served as a key architect and co-author — and his denial came swiftly and absolutely.”

“‘No, of course not,’ Vought declared when asked whether his current work represented an enactment of Project 2025. ‘The only people that are delusional about whether the president is the architect, the visionary, the originator of his own agenda that he was very public about throughout the campaign … are his adversaries.’”

Here are excerpts from GPAHE’s reporting on Project 2025:

The chronological record tells the story that Vought seemed determined to obscure during his CNN appearance. Within hours of his January 20 inauguration, Trump had executed 25 distinct Project 2025 recommendations, ranging from deploying active-duty military personnel to the southern border to eliminating diversity offices across federal agencies. The systematic nature of implementation becomes particularly apparent when examining agency-specific progress rates.

The personnel enacting these policies also tell the story. A report by DeSmog reveals that 70 percent of Trump’s cabinet maintains direct ties to Project 2025 organizations — more than 50 high-level officials bound to the very groups that authored or co-sponsored Project 2025, the blueprint they are now executing. Vice President JD Vance connects to five Project 2025 entities, Secretary of State Marco Rubio to four, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins to three. This represents the Heritage Foundation’s ultimate victory: the architects have become the executors.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has achieved 100 percent completion of its single objective: to reduce regulations on cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, all six of Project 2025’s objectives regarding USAID have been completed. The White House itself has completed 88 percent of its 13 objectives, while the Department of State has finished 75 percent of its 10 Project 2025 objectives.

Environmental policy offers the most vivid illustration of this systematic execution. Project 2025 called for eliminating “the use of the social cost of carbon” in federal decision-making — Trump’s January 20 executive orders accomplished precisely that objective. Project 2025 recommended immediate withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — both withdrawals were announced within hours of the inauguration. When Project 2025 suggested abolishing the Office of Domestic Climate Policy, Trump dissolved it before the inaugural celebrations had concluded. The Environmental Protection Agency has proven exceptionally responsive to Project 2025’s policies.

In May, the agency repealed energy efficiency standards for appliances, with Trump signing four Congressional Review Act resolutions to roll back energy efficiency rules while the Energy Department simultaneously rolled back 47 efficiency regulations. Earlier, the EPA had fired 388 probationary employees and terminated grant agreements worth $20 billion.

Project 2025 has been methodically checking off the boxes of its agenda. ICE, under “border Czar” Tom Homan is cranking up its activities; private prison corporations and companies providing infrastructure for ICE are profiting handsomely; and, the Department of Homeland Security eliminated its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, while also dissolving the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman. Media companies and individual journalists are under attack.

GPAHE noted that when Bash When Bash “pressed Vought about pending Project 2025 recommendations — ‘eliminating the Fed, privatizing Fannie and Freddy, banning medication abortion’ — his response carried the careful ambiguity of calculated evasion. ‘What’s on the agenda is what the president has put on the agenda, most of which he ran on,’ he replied, neither confirming nor denying while maintaining the fiction of presidential originality. Vought’s Sunday CNN performance was pure political theater designed to obscure systematic policy execution of a document designed to foment authoritarianism and Christian nationalist policies.”

The Trump administration and its allies have been working at breakneck speed to implement Project 2025. The administration’s work is serving as a rallying cry for Trump’s White supremacist allies, who see the Project’s successes as a much-welcomed blueprint for authoritarianism and an attractive recruiting tool.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

What is unfolding right now in California—with hundreds of Marines deployed domestically; thousands of National Guard troops federalized; and military weapons, tactics and equipment on full display—is intended to intimidate, distract and discourage us from pulling back the curtain on the reality of the self-serving corruption, grift, graft, overreach and abuse that have become synonymous with his Administration.

Don’t be distracted. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t be sidelined by the spectacle of a police state.

This is yet another manufactured crisis fomented by the Deep State.

When Trump issues a call to “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” explaining to reporters that he wants to have them “everywhere,” we should all be alarmed.

This is martial law without a formal declaration of war.

This heavy-handed, chest-thumping, politicized, militarized response to what is clearly a matter for local government is yet another example of Trump’s disregard for the Constitution and the limits of his power.

Political protests are protected by the First Amendment until they cross the line from non-violent to violent. Even when protests turn violent, constitutional protocols remain in place to safeguard communities: law and order must flow through local and state chains of command, not from federal muscle.

By breaking that chain of command, Trump is breaking the Constitution.

Deploying the military to deal with domestic matters that can—and should—be handled by civilian police, despite the objections of local and state leaders, crosses the line into authoritarianism.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

In the span of a single week, the Trump administration is providing the clearest glimpse yet of its unapologetic, uncompromising, corrupt allegiance to the authoritarian Deep State.

These two events—the federalization of the National Guard deployed to California in response to protests and the president’s lavish, taxpayer-funded military parade in the nation’s capital—bookend the administration’s unmistakable message: dissent will be crushed, and power will be performed.

Trump governs by force (military deployment), fear (ICE raids, militarized policing), and spectacle (the parade).

This is the spectacle of a police state. One side of the coin is militarized suppression. The other is theatrical dominance. Together, they constitute the language of force and authoritarian control.

Yet this is more than political theater; it is a constitutional crisis in motion.

As we have warned before, this tactic is a familiar one.

In times of political unrest, authoritarian regimes often invoke national emergencies as a pretext to impose military solutions. The result? The Constitution is suspended, civilian control is overrun, and the machinery of the state turns against its own people.

This is precisely what the Founders feared when they warned against standing armies on American soil: that one day, the military might be used not to defend the people, but to control them.

It is a textbook play from the authoritarian handbook, deployed with increasing frequency under Trump. The optics are meant to intimidate, broadcast control, and discourage resistance before it even begins.

Thus, deploying the National Guard in this manner is not just a political maneuver—it is a strategic act of fear-based governance designed to instill terror, particularly among vulnerable communities, and ensure compliance.

America is being transformed into a battlefield before our eyes.

Militarized police. Riot squads. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Stun grenades. Crowd control and intimidation tactics.

This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order.

This is the language of force.

This transformation is not accidental—it’s strategic. The government now sees the public not as constituents to be served but as potential combatants to be surveilled, managed, and subdued. In this new paradigm, dissent is treated as insurrection, and constitutional rights are treated as threats to national security.

What we are witnessing today is also part of a broader setup: an excuse to use civil unrest as a pretext for militarized overreach.

We saw signs of this strategy in Charlottesville, Virginia, where police failed to de-escalate and at times exacerbated tensions during protests that should have remained peaceful. The resulting chaos gave authorities cover to crack down—not to protect the public, but to reframe protest as provocation and dissent as disorder.

Then and now, the objective wasn’t to preserve peace and protect the public. It was to delegitimize dissent and cast protest as provocation.

It’s all part of an elaborate setup by the architects of the Deep State. The government wants a reason to crack down, lock down, and bring in its biggest guns.

This is how it begins.

Trump’s use of the military against civilians violates the spirit—if not the letter—of the Posse Comitatus Act, which is meant to bar federal military involvement in domestic affairs. It also raises severe constitutional questions about the infringement of First Amendment rights to protest and Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure.

Modern tools of repression compound the threat. AI-driven surveillance, predictive policing software, biometric databases, and fusion centers have made mass control seamless and silent. The state doesn’t just respond to dissent anymore; it predicts and preempts it.

While boots are on the ground in California, preparations are underway for a military spectacle in Washington, D.C.

At first glance, a military procession might seem like a patriotic display. But in this context, it is not a celebration of service; it is a declaration of supremacy. It is not about honoring troops; it is about reminding the populace who holds the power and who wields the guns.

This is how authoritarian regimes govern—through spectacle.

By sandwiching a military crackdown between a domestic troop deployment and a showy parade, Trump is sending a unified message: This is about raw, unchecked, theatrical power. And whether we, the people, will accept a government that rules not by consent, but by coercion.

The Constitution was not written to accommodate authoritarian pageantry. It was written to restrain it. It was never meant to sanctify conquest as a form of governance.

We are at a crossroads.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Strip away that consent, and all that remains is conquest through force, spectacle, and fear.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we allow the language of fear, the spectacle of dominance, and the machinery of militarized governance to become normalized, then we are no longer citizens of a republic—we are subjects of a police state.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about control.

According to news reports, the Trump administration is quietly collaborating with Palantir Technologies—the data-mining behemoth co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel—to construct a centralized, government-wide surveillance system that would consolidate biometric, behavioral, and geolocation data into a single, weaponized database of Americans’ private information.

This isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about rendering freedom obsolete.

What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience.

The tools enabling this all-seeing surveillance regime are not new, but under Trump’s direction, they are being fused together in unprecedented ways, with Palantir at the center of this digital dragnet.

Palantir, long criticized for its role in powering ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and predictive policing, is now poised to become the brain of Trump’s surveillance regime.

Under the guise of “data integration” and “public safety,” this public-private partnership would deploy AI-enhanced systems to comb through everything from facial recognition feeds and license plate readers to social media posts and cellphone metadata, cross-referencing it all to assess a person’s risk to the state.

This isn’t speculative. It’s already happening.

Palantir’s Gotham platform, used by law enforcement and military agencies, has long been the backbone of real-time tracking and predictive analysis. Now, with Trump’s backing, it threatens to become the central nervous system of a digitally enforced authoritarianism.

As Palantir itself admits, its mission is to “augment human decision-making.” In practice, that means replacing probable cause with probability scores, courtrooms with code, and due process with data pipelines.

In this new regime, your innocence will be irrelevant. The algorithm will decide who you are.

To understand the full danger of this moment, we must trace the long arc of government surveillance—from secret intelligence programs like COINTELPRO and the USA PATRIOT Act to today’s AI-driven digital dragnet embodied by data fusion centers.

Building on this foundation of historical abuse, the government has evolved its tactics, replacing human informants with algorithms and wiretaps with metadata, ushering in an age where pre-crime prediction is treated as prosecution.

Every smartphone ping, GPS coordinate, facial scan, online purchase, and social media like becomes part of your “digital exhaust”—a breadcrumb trail of metadata that the government now uses to build behavioral profiles. The FBI calls it “open-source intelligence.” But make no mistake: this is dragnet surveillance, and it is fundamentally unconstitutional.

Already, government agencies are mining this data to generate “pattern of life” analyses, flag “radicalized” individuals, and preemptively investigate those who merely share anti-government views.

This is not law enforcement. This is thought-policing by machine, the logical outcome of a system that criminalizes dissent and deputizes algorithms to do the targeting.

Nor is this entirely new.

For decades, the federal government has reportedly maintained a highly classified database known as Main Core, designed to collect and store information on Americans deemed potential threats to national security.

As Tim Shorrock reported for Salon, “One former intelligence official described Main Core as ‘an emergency internal security database system’ designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.”

Trump’s embrace of Palantir, and its unparalleled ability to fuse surveillance feeds, social media metadata, public records, and AI-driven predictions, marks a dangerous evolution: a modern-day resurrection of Main Core, digitized, centralized, and fully automated.

What was once covert contingency planning is now becoming active policy.

What has emerged is a surveillance model more vast than anything dreamed up by past regimes—a digital panopticon in which every citizen is watched constantly, and every move is logged in a government database—not by humans, but by machines without conscience, without compassion, and without constitutional limits.

This is not science fiction. This is America—now.

As this technological tyranny expands, the foundational safeguards of the Constitution—those supposed bulwarks against arbitrary power—are quietly being nullified and its protections rendered meaningless.

What does the Fourth Amendment mean in a world where your entire life can be searched, sorted, and scored without a warrant? What does the First Amendment mean when expressing dissent gets you flagged as an extremist? What does the presumption of innocence mean when algorithms determine guilt?

The Constitution was written for humans, not for machine rule. It cannot compete with predictive analytics trained to bypass rights, sidestep accountability, and automate tyranny.

And that is the endgame: the automation of authoritarianism. An unblinking, AI-powered surveillance regime that renders due process obsolete and dissent fatal.

Still, it is not too late to resist—but doing so requires awareness, courage, and a willingness to confront the machinery of our own captivity.

Make no mistake: the government is not your friend in this. Neither are the corporations building this digital prison. They thrive on your data, your fear, and your silence.

To resist, we must first understand the weaponized AI tools being used against us.

We must demand transparency, enforce limits on data collection, ban predictive profiling, and dismantle the fusion centers feeding this machine.

We must treat AI surveillance with the same suspicion we once reserved for secret police. Because that is what AI-powered governance has become—secret police, only smarter, faster, and less accountable.

We don’t have much time.

Trump’s alliance with Palantir is a warning sign—not just of where we are, but of where we’re headed. A place where freedom is conditional, rights are revocable, and justice is decided by code.

The question is no longer whether we’re being watched—that is now a given—but whether we will meekly accept it. Will we dismantle this electronic concentration camp, or will we continue building the infrastructure of our own enslavement?

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we trade liberty for convenience and privacy for security, we will find ourselves locked in a prison we helped build, and the bars won’t be made of steel. They will be made of data.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.

Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.

Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.

Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.

Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.

Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.

Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.

Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.

Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.

Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.

Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.

In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.

Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?

For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.

“We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.

Trump may have contributed to this revival in constitutional awareness, but as we warn in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the challenge isn’t just knowing our rights—it’s defending them, before they’re gone for good.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.

Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.

Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.

Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.

Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.

Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.

Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.

Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.

Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.

Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.

Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.

In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.

Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?

For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.

“We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.

Trump may have contributed to this revival in constitutional awareness, but as we warn in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the challenge isn’t just knowing our rights—it’s defending them, before they’re gone for good.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”—James Madison

We are being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun. Or rather, hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.

Let’s not mince words: President Trump’s April 28 executive order is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook: martial law masquerading as law and order.

Officially titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” this order is a “heil Hitler” wrapped in the goosestepping, despotic trappings of national security.

Don’t be fooled by Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric, cloaked in patriotic language and the promise of safety.

This is the language of every strongman who’s ever ruled by force.

The White House claims the order will “empower state and local law enforcement to relentlessly pursue criminals and protect American communities.” But under this administration, “criminal” increasingly includes anyone who dares to exercise their constitutional rights.

The order doesn’t merely expand policing—it institutionalizes repression.

It sets us squarely on the road to martial law.

If allowed to stand, Trump’s executive order completes our shift from a nation of laws, where even the least among us had the right to due process, to a nation of enforcers: vigilantes with badges who treat “we the people” as suspects and subordinates.

Without invoking the Insurrection Act or deploying active-duty military forces, Trump has accelerated the transformation of domestic police into his own paramilitary force.

With the stroke of his presidential pen, he has laid the groundwork for a stealth version of martial law by:

• Expanding police powers and legal protections;
• Authorizing the DOJ to defend officers accused of civil rights violations;
• Increasing the transfer of military equipment to local police;
• Shielding law enforcement from judicial oversight;
• Prioritizing law enforcement protection over civil liberties;
• Embedding DHS and federal agents more deeply into local policing.

All of this has occurred without congressional debate, judicial review, or constitutional scrutiny.

For years, we have watched as the government transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military: outfitted with military hardware and trained in battlefield tactics.

However, this executive order goes one step further—it creates not just a de facto standing army but Trump’s own army: loyal not to the Constitution or the people but to the president.

This is the very danger the Founders feared: a militarized police force answerable to a powerful executive, operating outside the bounds of the law.

This is martial law without a declaration.

Today, law enforcement is equipped like the military, trained in battlefield tactics, and given broad discretion over who to target and how to respond. But these are not soldiers bound by the laws of war. They are civilian enforcers, wielding unchecked power with minimal oversight.

And they are everywhere.

Armored vehicles on neighborhood streets. Flashbang raids on family homes. Riot police in small towns. SWAT-style teams deployed by federal agencies. Drones overhead. Mass surveillance below.

We are fast approaching a reality where constitutional rights exist in name only.

In practice, we are ruled by a quasi-military bureaucracy empowered to:

• Detain without trial;
• Punish political dissent;
• Seize property under civil asset forfeiture;
• Classify critics as extremists or terrorists;
• Conduct mass surveillance on the populace;
• Raid homes in the name of “public safety”;
• Use deadly force at the slightest provocation.

In other words, we’ve got freedom in name only.

It’s the same scenario nationwide: in big cities and small towns alike, militarized “warrior” cops—hyped up on power—ride roughshod over individual rights by exercising almost absolute discretion over who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence has already ensured that unarmed Americans—many of them mentally ill, elderly, disabled, or simply noncompliant—will continue to die at the hands of militarized police.

From individuals shot for holding garden hoses to those killed after calling 911 for help, these tragedies underscore a chilling truth: in a police state, the only truly “safe” person is one who offers no resistance at all.

These killings are the inevitable result of a system that rewards vigilante aggression by warrior cops and punishes accountability.

These so-called warrior cops, trained to act as judge, jury, and executioner, increasingly outnumber those who still honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and serve the public.

Now, under the cover of executive orders and nationalist rhetoric, that warrior mentality is being redirected toward a more dangerous mission: silencing political dissent.

Emboldened by Trump’s call to reopen Alcatraz and target so-called “homegrown” threats, these foot soldiers of the police state are no longer going to be tasked with enforcing the law—they will be deployed to enforce political obedience.

This is not a theory. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes.

We are living in a creeping state of undeclared martial law.

The militarization of police and federal agencies over recent decades has only accelerated the timeline toward authoritarianism.

This is how freedom ends—not with a loud decree, but with the quiet, calculated erosion of every principle we once held sacred.

We’ve come full circle—from resisting British redcoats to submitting to American forces with the same disdain for liberty.

Our constitutional foundation is crumbling, and with it, any illusion that those in power still serve the public good.

For its part, Congress has abdicated its role as a constitutional check on executive power, passing sweeping authorizations with little scrutiny and failing to rein in executive overreach. The courts, too, have in the past sanctioned many of these abuses in the name of national security, public order, or qualified immunity. Instead of acting as constitutional safeguards, these institutions have largely become rubber stamps.

Indeed, the president, Congress, the courts, and the police have come to embody the very abuse the Founders fought to resist. Only now are the courts beginning to show glimmers of allegiance to the Constitution.

This is not about partisanship. This is about power without restraint.

As tempting as it is to place full blame on Trump for this full-throttle shift into martial law, he is not the architect of this police state. He is its most shameless enabler—a useful frontman for the Deep State in its ongoing war on the American people.

As we warned in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

We ignore these signs at our peril.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle.
—James Otis, Revolutionary War activist, on the Writs of Assistance, 1761

What the Founders rebelled against—armed government agents invading homes without cause—we are now being told to accept in the so-called name of law and order.

Imagine it: it’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is asleep. Suddenly, your front door is splintered by battering rams. Shadowy figures flood your home, screaming orders, pointing guns, threatening violence. You and your children are dragged out into the night—barefoot, in your underwear, in the rain.

Your home is torn apart, your valuables seized, and your sense of safety demolished.

But this isn’t a robbery by lawless criminals.

This is what terror policing looks like in Trump’s America: raids by night, flashbangs at dawn, mistaken identities, and shattered lives.

On April 24, 2025, in Oklahoma City, 20 heavily armed federal agents from ICE, the FBI, and DHS kicked in the door of a home where a woman and her three daughters—all American citizens—were sleeping. They were forced out of bed at gunpoint and made to wait in the rain while agents ransacked the house, confiscating their belongings.

It was the wrong house and the wrong family.

There were no apologies. No compensation. No accountability.

This is the new face of American policing, and it’s about to get so much worse thanks to President Trump’s latest executive order, which aims to eliminate federal oversight and empower local law enforcement to act with impunity.

Titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” the executive order announced on April 28, 2025, removes restraints on police power, offers enhanced federal protections for officers accused of misconduct, expands access to military-grade equipment, and nullifies key oversight provisions from prior reform efforts.

Trump’s supporters have long praised his efforts to deregulate business and government under the slogan of “no handcuffs.” But when that logic is applied to law enforcement, the result isn’t freedom—it’s unchecked power.

What it really means is no restraints on police power, while the rest of us are left with fewer rights, less recourse, and a constitution increasingly ignored behind the barrel of a gun.

This isn’t just a political shift. It’s a constitutional unraveling that hands law enforcement a blank check: more weapons, more power, and fewer consequences.

The result is not safety; it’s state-sanctioned violence.

It’s a future in which no home is safe, no knock is required, and no officer is ever held accountable.

That future is already here.

We’ve entered an era in which federal agents can destroy your home, traumatize your family, and violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity. And the courts have said: that’s just how it works.

These rulings reflect a growing doctrine of unaccountability enshrined by the courts and now supercharged by the Trump administration.

Trump wants to give police even more immunity, ushering in a new era of police brutality, lawlessness, and the reckless deployment of lethal force on unarmed civilians.

This is how the rights of ordinary Americans get trampled under the boots of unchecked power.

There was a time in America when a person’s home was a sanctuary, protected by the Fourth Amendment from unlawful searches and seizures.

That promise is dead.

We have returned to the era of the King’s Writ—blanket search powers once used by British soldiers to invade colonial homes without cause. As James Otis warned in 1761, such writs “annihilate the privilege” of privacy and due process, allowing agents of the state to enter homes “when they please.”

Trump’s new executive order revives this tyranny in modern form: armored vehicles, night raids, no-knock warrants, federal immunity. It empowers police to act without restraint, and it rewards those who brutalize with impunity.

Even more alarming, the order sets the stage for future legislation that could effectively codify qualified immunity into federal law, making it nearly impossible for victims of police violence to sue.

This is how constitutional protections are dismantled—not in one dramatic blow, but in a thousand raids, a thousand broken doors, a thousand courts that look the other way.

Let’s not pretend we’re safe. Who will protect us from the police when the police have become the law unto themselves?

The war on the American people is no longer metaphorical.

Government agents can now kick in your door without warning, shoot your dog, point a gun at your children, and suffer no legal consequences—so long as they claim it was a “reasonable” mistake. They are judge, jury, and executioner.

With Trump’s new order, the architecture of a police state is no longer theoretical. It is being built in real time. It is being normalized.

Nowhere is this threat more visible than in the unholy alliance between ICE and militarized police forces, a convergence of two of the most dangerous arms of the modern security state.

Together, they’ve created a government apparatus that acts first and justifies itself later, if at all. And it runs counter to everything the Bill of Rights was designed to prevent: punishment without trial, surveillance without suspicion, and power without accountability.

When ICE agents armed with military-grade equipment conduct predawn raids alongside SWAT teams, with little to no accountability, the result is not public safety. It is state terror. And it’s exactly the kind of unchecked power the Constitution was written to prevent.

The Constitution is intended to serve as a shield, particularly the Fourth Amendment, which safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures. But in this new reality, the government has nullified that shield.

All of America is fast becoming a Constitution-free zone.

The Founders were aware of the dangers of unchecked power. That’s why they gave us the Fourth Amendment. But rights are only as strong as the public’s willingness to defend them.

If we allow the government to turn our homes into war zones—if we continue to reward police for lawless raids, ignore the courts for rubber-stamping abuse, and cheer political leaders who promise “no more handcuffs”—we will lose the last refuge of freedom: the right to be left alone.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Constitution cannot protect you if the government no longer follows it—and if the courts no longer enforce it.

The knock may never come again. Just the crash of a door. The sound of boots. And the silence that follows.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Malcolm was our manhood, our living black manhood.

— Ossie Davis

Treat me like a man, or kill me.

— Malcolm X[1]

February 21, 2025 marked sixty years since Malcolm X was gunned down in a hail of bullets at the Audobon Ballroom in New York City as he was starting to give a speech. The previous week his house had been firebombed, and days before that the French government had refused to allow him into the country to fulfill a speaking engagement, apparently fearing the assassination might take place on French soil.

Malcolm fully expected these attempts on his life, which grew out of circumstances surrounding his break with the Nation of Islam the previous year. U.S. intelligence had infiltrated his security team, and at the time of his death Malcolm recognized that though the assassination plot originated with the corrupt advisers around Elijah Muhammad in the Nation of Islam, by the end the circle of intrigue had broadened considerably and the U.S. government was certainly involved.

Malcolm was undergoing rapid transformation in the final year of his life. He renounced the aberrant strand of Islam favored by Elijah Muhammad, shed his view that white people could do nothing to end racism, and apologized for having repeatedly called civil rights leaders “Toms” and other degrading nicknames. He lectured and traveled widely, met and talked with important leaders of national liberation movements abroad, and embraced a broad, internationalist vision focused on delivering freedom and justice to all peoples regardless of race. But he stuck to his view that black unity in the United States was a pre-requisite to any constructive change in American race relations.

Though often portrayed as a violent extremist (he insisted on self-defense against racist attacks), he was actually quite conservative in his habits (he didn’t drink, smoke, gamble, or swear), and was never known to have laid a hand on anyone. James Baldwin considered him one of the gentlest men he ever met, and when Baldwin was once called on to referee a debate between Malcolm and a young civil rights activist — on the assumption that Malcolm would overpower the youth — Baldwin discovered that he was not at all needed. Like an oldest son protecting a younger brother, Malcolm treated the youngster with tender solicitude, smiling indulgently and gently correcting his view that being born in the U.S. was all it took to be a full U.S. citizen: “Now, brother, if a cat has kittens in the oven, does that make them biscuits?”[2]

The same gentleness was evident in Malcolm’s home life. In a 1992 interview his daughter Attalah remembered him as a firm father, a mushily romantic husband, and a gentle and funny presence sparking frequent laughter throughout the house. Though work required he be away for long periods, he managed to be present even when he was absent by hiding little surprises around the house for his daughters. Then when he was on the road, he would send letters home telling them to go into a certain room and look in a special place to find a treat he had left for them.[3]

How did such a man gain a reputation for uncontrolled rage and violence? Easy. He was born in a deeply racist country.

He grew up broke and hungry in a family of eight. “We were so hungry we were dizzy,” he recalled years later.[4] His father Earl died when Malcolm was six, run over by a rail car, and his mother was slowly driven insane trying to raise eight children alone after her husband’s life insurance company refused to honor the $10,000 policy it had issued him.[5]

Disciples of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm’s parents were proud and rebellious, living isolated from whites but refusing to reside in officially segregated housing. Malcolm’s father took his son along on trips to secret, private homes to hear the “Back To Africa” gospel. This early public exposure with its heavy emphasis on black racial pride prepared Malcolm for the speaker’s platform and the barricades years later,[6] but he took a very circuitous route before re-connecting with Garvey’s ideas and fashioning them into his life’s work and legacy after years of evasive wandering.[7]

Born in Omaha, raised in Lansing, the flash of Michigan street life claimed Malcolm by age twelve. Strutting into town with a fistful of reefers, he was soon seen as a rising star on the streets. Bold to the point of recklessness, he openly challenged authority, once telling a notoriously abusive police officer who put a gun to his head to, “Go ahead! Pull the trigger, Whitey.” [8] Kids who knew Malcolm at the time foresaw a future of jail and an early grave for him.[9]

Malcolm’s fascination for the streets deepened at fifteen, when he spent a summer in Boston, where he was exhilarated by the neon lights, fancy cars, and late-night partying.[10] Though he briefly returned to Michigan, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the fact that blacks from New York and Boston always had a hustle going that gave them money or kept them in clothes, a far better fate than being a ditch-digger or a janitor, which was the limit of realistic black aspirations in the Mid-West. Boston soon proved to be his most natural habitat, a place where he could live out his desire to survive by his wits.[11]

Living with his half-sister Ella on “Sugar Hill,” Malcolm loathed the status-conscious blacks he encountered there, preferring to hang out with “his people” in the “valley” below:  pool sharks, pimps, hustlers, and hard-working blacks pursuing snatches of weekend escapism. They, and the pawnshops, bars, pool halls, cheap restaurants, walk-up flats, barbershops, beauty salons, and storefront churches that surrounded them, were Malcolm’s entire world.[12]

Blessed with a steely self-confidence taught him by his Garveyite parents, Malcolm thrived in this environment and quickly developed a commanding presence that belied his age. But he rejected his parents’ proud work ethic, and cared not a whit about morality or religion. A fast-talking con artist who excelled at finessing himself out of dangerous situations, easy money was all he lived for.[13]

Employed as a shoeshine “boy” at a Boston dance hall, Malcolm was thrilled to see the great bands of the day – Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Gene Krupa, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and the Andrews sisters.[14] No small part of his excitement was making piles of cash as the middleman for sexual hookups of white men wanting black women and white women wanting black men, proclivities that were not at all in line with racial pronouncements in the land of the supposedly free.[15] Malcolm’s knowledge of this reality would prove to be a source of great uneasiness in his future debate opponents.

Inevitably, Malcolm’s life as a hustler drew him to Harlem, where he attracted broad attention with his wide-brimmed hats, orange shoes, and exuberant, loose-fitting “zoot suits.” A familiar figure at uptown magnets like the Audobon Ballroom, Smalls Paradise, the Theresa Hotel, and the Savoy and Renaissance Ballrooms, Malcolm narrowly escaped death on various occasions working as a quasi-pimp, petty thief, and drug dealer for traveling musicians and curbside junkies. His ambition, he wrote in his autobiography, was “to become one of the most depraved, parasitical hustlers among New York’s eight million people.”[16]

After eight years of drug-dealing, burglary, numbers-running, and occasionally armed robbery, Malcolm landed in a Massachusetts federal prison at the age of twenty.[17] There he underwent a religious conversion, gave up drugs, dedicated himself to Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, and became a voracious reader and skilled debater. Paroled in 1952, within a year he was named assistant minister of Temple No. 1 in Detroit, and the year after that minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem.[18]

He soon proved himself an extraordinarily adept disciple, gaining a reputation as the most ascetic young zealot for Allah imaginable.[19]A superb organizer and proselytizer, he was adored by Harlem blacks for his courage and wit, and they called out to him to “make it plain” with his blunt and uncompromising declarations and exquisite sense of drama. He was far and away the Nation’s most effective recruiter, provoking envy and resentment among his peers, which would ultimately form the basis for his assassination. In just a few years, he expanded the flock of the faithful from a few thousand members to many tens of thousands, easily surpassing the efforts even of Elijah Muhammad himself. He was especially good at making converts on streets he formerly prowled as a hoodlum.[20]

In short, he found his calling as a minister, though it was not his first choice. In his final year in school his eighth grade English teacher had urged him to “be realistic about being a nigger” and abandon his goal of becoming a lawyer. In a way, though, Malcolm ended up achieving his goal, becoming the most electrifying “lawyer” in U.S. history by relentlessly advancing the most powerful case ever made against American racism.

Possessed of a fierce, nationalist critique and a broad international outlook, no one could take Malcolm in debate. A spell-binding speaker with a bitter wit, he spoke in an emotionally charged tone of angry eloquence that blacks considered “good preaching,”[21] always bristling with unimpeachable facts leading directly to heretical conclusions. When unwary adversaries detected what they naively took to be loopholes in his arguments, James Baldwin once observed, they quickly found out they were really hangman’s knots that left their cherished rebuttals dangling lifeless in mid-air.

Drug dealer, convict, hustler, thief, Malcolm rose to become the greatest black revolutionary of the 20th century, a prophet telling truths few could comprehend and nobody wanted to hear.[22] Deeply religious, he identified the fight for justice as the central act of faith, which made him that rarest of men who practice what they preach.[23]

Flatly refusing to abide the hypocritical pieties of racist Christianity, he angrily denounced the nerve of its God and his preachers for plaguing American blacks in the name of love. He found temporary solace and self-respect under the paternal guidance of Elijah Muhammad, but ultimately could not accept a theology claiming that whites were a genetically impoverished, degenerate race of “blue-eyed Devils,” however compelling the thesis might appear in a white supremacist society dedicated to slavery, lynching, and segregation.[24]

Nevertheless, it has to be conceded that the Nation of Islam was a considerable draw in the North, being a religion created by and for blacks, especially those trapped in ghettos and prison, and highly effective at teaching discipline and self-respect as a cure for drug addiction, crime, unemployment, gambling, prostitution, and juvenile delinquency, among other problems routinely found in such environments.[25]

Seeing clearly the connection between low self-esteem and such vices, Malcolm indignantly rejected civil rights supporters claiming that blacks should love whites, insisting instead that they love themselves, at least enough to rise in self-defense when violently attacked, as they all too frequently were. He recommended that advocates of the “love your enemies” approach teach it to the Klan before expecting it of blacks, and insisted in the meantime on “an eye for an eye” as the only language a racist oppressor could reasonably be expected to understand.[26]

Appealing to the conscience of the oppressor was simply a fool’s errand, Malcolm thought, as the whole point of racism was to allow whites to subjugate blacks on the pretext that they were sub-human and therefore by definition without rights. There was no point in appealing to a conscience that either didn’t exist or wasn’t allowed to exist, which amounted to the same thing.[27]

As sit-ins swept the south in the early sixties Malcolm denounced the hypocrisy of nonviolence at an appearance in Alabama. “If the Negro clergy didn’t discourage us from participating in violent action in Germany, Japan, and Korea to defend white America from her enemies,” he announced, “why do these same Negro clergymen become so vocal when our oppressed people want to take the same militant stand against these white brute beasts here in America who are now endangering the lives and welfare of our women and children?”[28]

Though a committed Muslim, the most influential holy book Malcolm had to appeal to was the Christian Bible, as he had no path to large black audiences until and unless he successfully engaged with the religious tradition they were most familiar with. Elijah Muhammad taught that whites were simply evil, preaching Christianity to blacks to make them hate themselves, with devastating consequences.[29] With more political sophistication than Muhammad, Malcolm developed the most formidable race critique of Euro-American Christianity of anyone in the modern world, condemning the faith as a “perfect slave religion” that preached salvation in the next life to enslaved, colonized, and segregated blacks while white hypocrites had their heaven in this world.[30]

Malcolm blamed the plight of blacks squarely on their acceptance of this white racist Christianity. “Christianity is the white man’s religion,” he emphasized. “The Holy Bible in the white man’s hands and his interpretations of it have been the greatest single ideological weapon for enslaving millions of non-white human beings. Every country that the white man has conquered with his guns, he has always paved the way, and salved his conscience, by carrying the Bible and interpreting it to call people ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’; then he sends in his guns, then his missionaries behind the guns to mop up.”[31]

Rejecting focus on the hereafter, Malcolm told his black audiences that their hell was obviously right here on earth. “Hell is when you’re dumb. Hell is when you’re a slave. Hell is when you don’t have freedom and when you don’t have justice. And when you don’t have equality, that’s Hell.”[32]

One of Malcolm’s greatest strengths was his courage in adopting unpopular stances when conscience and the facts demanded it. Unlike Christian ministers, for example, who reflexively sided with Israel’s Jewish-supremacy in the Middle East, Malcolm’s support for the Arab world was so fervent that he was frequently labeled anti-Semitic.[33] He would not have been at all surprised at Israel’s current wholesale massacre and expulsion campaign in Gaza.

Unlike civil rights leaders, Malcolm rejected the self-defeating idea that blacks in the United States were a small minority, internationalizing his focus to state that they were in fact part of a world-wide Islamic community of “725 million Muslim brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia and in the brotherhood of Islam,” also pointing out that people of color with more than passing familiarity with white racism formed the vast majority of the world’s population.[34]

Finally, Malcolm’s critical dissection of the March on Washington demonstration in Washington D.C. in August 1963 showed unique insight into the direction black rage was beginning to take due to the persistence of white terrorism after nearly a decade of “non-violent resistance” that was supposedly the cure for it. Acidly dismissing the protest as “the farce on Washington,” Malcolm deftly pointed out this appropriate and necessary anger had been deliberately excluded from the day’s agenda:

The Negroes were out there in the streets …. They were talking about how they were going to march on Washington … That they were going to march on Washington, march on the Senate, march on the White House, march on the Congress, and tie it up, bring it to a halt, not let the government proceed. They even said they were going out to the airport and lay down on the runway and not let any airplanes land. I’m telling you what they said. That was revolution. That was revolution. That was the black revolution.

No leader had any chance of stopping it:

It was the grass roots out there in the street. It scared the white man to death, scared the white power structure in Washington D.C. to death; I was there. When they found out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital, they called in …. these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, ‘Call it off.’ Kennedy said, ‘Look, you all are letting this thing go too far.’ And Old Tom said, ‘Boss, I can’t stop it because I didn’t start it.’ I’m telling you what they said. They said, ‘I’m not even in it, much less at the head of it.’ They said, ‘These Negroes are doing things on their own. They’re running ahead of us.’ And that old shrewd fox, he said, ‘If you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it. I’ll endorse it. I’ll welcome it. I’ll help it. I’ll join it.’

And this co-optation worked like a charm:

This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it … became part of it, took it over. And as they took it over it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising. Why it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all….

No dictator could have achieved more thorough control:

No, it was a sellout, a takeover. They controlled it so tight, they told those Negroes what time to hit town, where to stop, what signs to carry, what to sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn’t make, and then told them to get out of town by sundown.[35]

So James Baldwin flew all the way from Paris, but was not allowed to speak. John Lewis’s speech wondering why the government could indict civil rights activists for civil disobedience but couldn’t bring white terrorists to justice or even stop appointing racist judges to the bench was censored by John and Robert Kennedy, a decision with which Dr. King went along. Lewis read a watered-down speech absent his pointed inquiry – “I want to know – which side is the federal government on?” – while two JFK aides stood by ready to pull the plug on his microphone should he fail to follow the script.[36]

Eighteen days later four black girls attending Sunday School in Birmingham were blasted into eternity at the 16th Street Baptist Church.

Though Malcolm spent the last thirteen years of his life trying to prevent America’s racial powder keg from exploding into irreparable disaster, the capitalist media never ceased to portray him as a violent madman. After his brutal assassination the New York Times heaped scorn on what the editors took to be Malcolm’s “pitifully wasted” life marked by “ruthless and fanatical belief in violence.” The Washington Post bid good riddance to him as “the spokesman of bitter racism.” Newsweek mocked Malcolm for “blazing racist attacks on the ‘white devils’ and his calls for an American Mau Mau.” Walter Winchell dismissed him as a “petty punk,” and the Nation magazine back-handedly complimented him for being the “courageous leader of one segment of the Negro lunatic fringe.”[37]

One of Martin Luther King’s associates, Alfred Duckett, provided a far more accurate view, calling Malcolm “our sage and our saint,” a prophet who inspired his black brothers and sisters to fight back against racism and persecution. Even Dr. King had to concede that Malcolm’s portrayal of the plight of American blacks was accurate and his rage authentic, once reportedly telling a friend that “I just saw Malcolm on television. I can’t deny it. When he starts talking about all that’s been done to us, I get a twinge of hate, of identification with him.”[38]

But it may have been Malcolm himself who was the most reliable source on what his work was about, saying in his autobiography that, “sometimes I have dared to dream . . . that one day, history may even say that my voice – which disturbed the white man’s smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency – that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even fatal catastrophe.”[39]

SOURCES:

James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America – A Dream or a Nightmare, (Orbis, 1991)

Les and Tamara Payne, The Dead Are Arising – The Life of Malcolm X, (Norton, 2020)

Alex Haley ed., The Autobiography of Malcolm X, (Grove, 1964)

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, (Vintage, 2003)

Taylor Branch, At Caanan’s Edge – America in the King Years, 1965-68, (Simon & Schuster, 2006)

Barbara Rogers interview with Attalah Shabazz, “Bay Sunday,” November 15, 1992

Michael K. Smith, Portraits of Empire, (Common Courage, 2003)

ENDNOTES:

[1]Cone, p. 251

[2] Smith, p. 110

[3] Barbara Rogers, “Bay Sunday,” November 15, 1992

[4] Payne, p. 94

[5] Payne, p. 89. Malcolm thought his father had been murdered by the Klan, but this appears not to have been the case.

[6] Payne, p. 86

[7] Payne, p. 75

[8] Payne, p. 122

[9] Payne, p. 122, 145

[10] Payne, p. 141

[11] Payne, p. 146

[12] Payne, p. 152

[13] Payne, p. 115

[14] Payne, p. 152-3

[15] Payne, p. 155-6

[16] Payne, p. 168, 170, 174

[17] Cone, p. 154

[18] Payne, p. 272, 274

[19] Payne, p. 278

[20] Payne, p. 285

[21] Cone, p. 172

[22] Cone, p. 152

[23] Cone, p. 164

[24]Cone, p. 170. The worst effects and limitations of Elijah Muhammad’s views were altered or eliminated in Malcolm by his frequent interactions with white university students.

[25] Cone, p. 162

[26] Cone, p. 160

[27] Cone, p. 166

[28] Cone, p. 176

[29] Cone, p. 162

[30] Cone, p. 166

[31] Cone, p. 166, 170

[32] Cone, p. 174

[33] Cone, p. 163

[34] Cone, p. 164

[35] Zinn, p. 457-8

[36] Quoted in Cone, p. 181

[37] Branch, p. 11, 373

[38] Cone, p. 251, 256

[39] Cone, p. 181

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael K. Smith.

Oh, yeah, that Messiah, Mister Rapist, Grifter, Dirtier than Dirt Kushner-Guided, Roy Cohen-Trained TRUMP: “My Uncle Donald Trump Told Me Disabled Americans Like My Son ‘Should Just Die’”

Read the Time Magazine article written  by his nephew.

Here, reality check for democrats and republicans:

Some legit writing here from me to be published in “legit” media around my area:

When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful

“I’d like to have enough resources, money, to take a trip somewhere. I don’t want to be homeless if housing finds out I have extra money in my bank account.”

Seems like a wish for anyone supposedly in the land of the free – not to be homeless. Variations on this goal were broached at the Oct. 23-24 self-advocacy meeting at the Best Western at Agate Beach.

More than forty people attended the planning and visioning session to carve out some future collective goal to make change a community of people living in the developmental disability and neurodiverse world. One of the main organizers of this self-advocacy event is Julie Chick, Sammy’s Place Director, a nonprofit out of Nehalem.

I attended the event wearing several hats – an educator, an activist, journalist and assisting working with clients in the neurodiverse “world” with Essential Services. Right out of the blocks I asked Chick to synthesize what she got out of the two-day meeting.

What did you find valuable in the event?

“The person-to-person connections and relationships again can be taken for granted by those that easily access their community, and can be difficult if you have no wheels or knowledge of public transportation. Relationships of all types are the bedrock of humanity, yet some of the people in our DD system had not had much opportunity to get out and make friends. These folks have been meeting though this self-advocacy work, Arc of Lincoln’s Day Services Activities, and Beach Buddies, and their circle is growing with some coming in from other counties.”

The critical mass around self-advocacy is fighting for basic rights, like lifting up the maximum allowable savings and checking account balance above the draconian $2000 law.

With such a limit on money given to or earned by people living in subsidized housing, and those receiving disability payments from the government, and other services, like personal assistants, the fear losing those hard-fought safety nets is palatable.

Connecting with others along the coast, in the seven counties situated along the Pacific, the participants were passionate and determined to come away with tools to advocate for themselves not only politically, but through better transportation services, more opportunities to make money on the side with arts and crafts creations, and better ways to make personal connections, even romantic ones.

“I want to meet people who respect me for who I am and so I can follow my dreams,” stated advocate Frank Perdue. “I don’t understand why ‘normal’ people don’t want to go out on dates with people like us. We need better opportunities to meet people who think like us.”

For anyone interested in the complexities of life as a man or woman living in the neurodiverse world, a recent Hulu documentary might be their entry point. “Patrice” follows New Jersey school crossing guard Patrice Jetter. The kids love her, and she loves them.

She is also an amazing artist, entertainer and performer. She is romantically involved with Garry, who lives with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. The story is about a commitment ceremony – between Patrice and Garry – since they were told their marriage quest would jeopardize their individual monthly social security stipends and their subsidized housing.

The documentary utilizes vérité footage of Patrice and Garry’s daily life, both together and apart. Their lives are at a rather challenging level just accomplishing daily routines like preparing a meal. Patrice walks with a cane and leg braces, whereas Garry uses a wheelchair and needs help into bed.

They both have their separate apartments, 20 minutes apart via bus. Also part of the movie is the handicapped-equipped van Patrice owns which breaks down for good in the documentary. Much of Patrice’s story focuses on raising funds (and awareness) around a vehicle they need – for Patrice to get to work as a school crossing guard and for Garry to live a more mobile life with his significant other. Collecting aluminum cans just won’t cut the $55,000 price tag, and alas, a Go Fund Me drive gets Patrice to that goal and the new vehicle.

Many of my current and past clients will relate well with this documentary, from the Special Olympics participation, to the end-of-the-month dilemma of $28 left for food or incidentals. The shared values and the care each of the main protagonists display should melt any cold heart, but the reality is that both democrats and republicans have stalled on a marriage equity bill allowing a legal union AND continuation of both spouses’ Social Security/Medicaid support.

Garry and Patrice had terrible upbringings and experiences  during their formative years, and Patrice’s reads read like a horror story of abuse, bullying, assaults and rape. The oppression from the government agencies is just another knife in the heart. We learn that Patrice’s mother was from a family of abusers, and that Patrice’s stepfather abused her mother.

Patrice is on her own as her siblings are dead, as well as her mother. But by the end of the movie, with the Go Fund Me videos, it is clear that she has a plethora of friends and tribal family.

Compelling is Patrice’s real life friend, Elizabeth Dicker, who happens to be the Accessibility Specialist at Rutgers Center for Adult Autism Services. Elizabeth summarizes how Garry and Patrice’s situation is not just cruel, but also illogical:

“If two people are having Medicaid benefits, and then those two people get married and then they just don’t lose their benefits, how is the government making or losing any money?”

Situating the real policy issues now, after billions ($15.5 billion) were spent on the 2024 elections, we learn from advocates like Julie Chick and Frank Perdue that the limitations on Supplemental Security Income are badly out of date.

Organizations like Oregon Self Advocacy Coalition (OSAC) work hard to engage communities in advocating for the rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

I spoke at length with Gabrielle Guedon, director of OSAC. She was really interested in the power of the press to bring OSAC members’ struggles to the general public. She is also inviting people to read the GO! Bulletin on how to get involved in advocacy about policies.

She lives by this credo by Malala Youseif: —

And, on the OSAC webpage we see she’s just like anyone you might know:

“I build miniature doll houses and make pillow cases. I love camping. I’m a carb-o-holic! I like rock-n-roll and I would love to visit Australia.”

Fred C. Trump III is the author of

All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way.

In January 2020, just before COVID hit, Lisa, myself, and a team of advocates met with Chris Neeley, who headed the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, a much-needed federal advisory committee that promotes policies and initiatives that support independent and lifelong inclusion. We discussed the need for all medical schools to include courses that focus on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We emphasized how crucial it was for hospitals and other acute-care facilities to help patients transition from pediatric to adult services. We emphasized the importance of collecting sufficient data to explain medically complex disorders. This was not about more government spending. It was about smarter investing and greater efficiency.

We spent the next few months making calls and talking with officials and gathering our own recommendations, giving special attention to the critical need for housing support for people with disabilities. We were back in Washington in May.

By this time, COVID was raging. We were all masked up and COVID tested on the way into the White House Cabinet Room. Once we got inside, we sat down with Alex Azar, the administration’s secretary of health and human services, and Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health, both of whom served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. The promising agency motto stated: HHS: Enhancing the Health and Well-Being of All Americans.

Sharp, direct, and to the point, Azar exhibited my kind of efficiency with no time to waste. His first question was, “OK, why are you here?”

I made a brief introduction. Our group included a leading doctor and several highly qualified advocates. What followed was a great discussion. Something clicked with Giroir—an idea for a program everyone could agree on that would cut through the bureaucracy and control costs and also yield better and more efficient medical outcomes.

Excellent. We were making progress.

“Really appreciate your coming in,” Azar finally said, more warmly than he had sounded at the start. “I know we’re going to see the President.”

The meeting I had assumed would be a quick handshake hello with Donald had turned into a 45-minute discussion in the Oval Office with all of us—Azar, Giroir, the advocates, and me. I never expected to be there so long. Donald seemed engaged, especially when several people in our group spoke about the heart-wrenching and expensive efforts they’d made to care for their profoundly disabled family members, who were constantly in and out of the hospital and living with complex arrays of challenges.

Donald was still Donald, of course. He bounced from subject to subject—disability to the stock market and back to disability. But promisingly, Donald seemed genuinely curious regarding the depth of medical needs across the U.S. and the individual challenges these families faced. He told the secretary and the assistant secretary to stay in touch with our group and to be supportive.

After I left the office, I was standing with the others near the side entrance to the West Wing when Donald’s assistant caught up with me. “Your uncle would like to see you,” she said.

Azar was still in the Oval Office when I walked back in. “Hey, pal,” Donald said. “How’s everything going?”

“Good,” I said. “I appreciate your meeting with us.”

“Sure, happy to do it.”

He sounded interested and even concerned. I thought he had been touched by what the doctor and advocates in the meeting had just shared about their journey with their patients and their own family members. But I was wrong.

“Those people … ” Donald said, trailing off. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

I truly did not know what to say. He was talking about expenses. We were talking about human lives. For Donald, I think it really was about the expenses, even though we were there to talk about efficiencies, smarter investments, and human dignity.

I turned and walked away.

And, yes, this is an equal deformity essay, so, drum roll, Harris did what?

And, yes, bullying at school is a effing big thing, leading to depression, and, yep, suicide. But another clown just didn’t/doesn’t get it.

The Human Costs Of Kamala Harris’ War On Truancy

[Cheree Peoples outside of the apartment where she lives when her 17-year-old daughter, Shayla Rucker, is at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Peoples was arrested six years ago for Shayla’s repeated truancy despite ample evidence given to the Orange County school showing Shayla suffers from sickle cell anemia, which leaves her in constant pain and requires frequent hospitalization.]

On the morning of April 18, 2013, in the Los Angeles suburb of Buena Park, a throng of photographers positioned themselves on a street curb and watched as two police officers entered a squat townhouse. Minutes later, their cameras began clicking. The officers had re-emerged with a weary-looking woman in pajamas and handcuffs, and the photographers were jostling to capture her every step.

“You would swear I had killed somebody,” the woman, Cheree Peoples, said in a recent interview.

In fact, Peoples had been arrested for her daughter’s spotty school attendance record under a truancy law that then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris had personally championed in the state legislature. The law, enacted in January 2011, made it a criminal misdemeanor for parents to allow kids in kindergarten through eighth grade to miss more than 10 percent of school days without a valid excuse. Peoples’ 11-year-old daughter, Shayla, had missed 20 days so far that school year.

[Cheree Peoples outside of the apartment where she lives when her 17-year-old daughter, Shayla, is at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Peoples was arrested six years ago for Shayla’s repeated truancy despite ample evidence given to the Orange County school showing Shayla suffers from sickle cell anemia, which leaves her in constant pain and requires frequent hospitalization. (Credit: Tara Pixley for HuffPost) ABOVE: Buena Park police officers Luis Garcia (left) and James Woo escort Peoples, 33, to their patrol car on April 18, 2013. She was handcuffed and under arrest.]

Yet the penalties she once championed for truancy and the way she originally thought about the issue are foundational to how California handles truancy today. Peoples’ arrest wasn’t a freak occurrence ― it was the inevitable outcome of Harris’ campaign to fuse the problem of truancy with the apparatus of law enforcement. And Peoples is far from an outlier. There are still hundreds of families across California entering the criminal justice system under the aegis of Harris’ law.

“I think it was a good thing that she shined a light on [truancy],” Jeff Adachi, who served as San Francisco’s chief public defender from January 2003 until his death on Feb. 22, told HuffPost in February. “There is a correlation between children who fail at school and what happens later in life. [But] the idea of locking parents up, or citing them with a crime because they’re not taking their children to school — it doesn’t address the root of the problem.”

“What it ended up being, practically, is families and kids having to come to court to be told to utilize certain services in order to come to school. Which, from where I sit, is very much the job of the school district and not the job of the criminal court.” – a public defender

And then this criminal, Trump?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

Our dying republic.

We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.

The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

So, what’s the answer?

For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Our dying republic.

We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.

The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

So, what’s the answer?

For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Former Green MP Keith Locke, a passionate activist and anti-war critic once described as “conscience of the year”, has died in hospital, aged 80.

Locke was in Parliament from 1999 to 2011, and was known as a human rights and nuclear-free advocate.

His family said he had died peacefully in the early hours this morning after a long illness.

• READ MORE: Keith Locke, former Green MP, dies: Party pays tribute to leading figure in New Zealand activism
• Other Keith Locke reports

“He will be greatly missed by his partner Michele, his family, friends and colleagues. He kept up his interest and support for the causes he was passionate about to the last.

“He was a man of integrity, courage and kindness who lived his values in every part of his life. He touched many lives in the course of his work in politics and activism.”

The son of activists Elsie and Jack Locke of Christchurch, Keith was politically aware from an early age, and was involved in the first anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid marches of the 1960s.

After a Masters degree at the University of Alberta in Canada, he returned to New Zealand and left academia to edit a fortnightly newspaper for the Socialist Action League, a union he had joined as a meatworker then railway workshop employee.

He joined NewLabour in 1989, which later became part of the Alliance party, and split off into the Greens when they broke apart from the Alliance in 1997, entering Parliament as their foreign affairs spokesperson in the subsequent election two years later.

Notable critic of NZ in Afghanistan
While in Parliament, he was a notable critic of New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan and the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, and advocated for refugee rights including in the case of Ahmed Zaoui.

He also long advocated for New Zealand to become a republic, putting forward a member’s bill which would have led to a referendum on the matter.

Commentators dubbed him variously the ‘Backbencher of the Year’ in 2002 — an award he reprised from a different outlet in 2010 — as well as the ‘Politician of the Year’ in 2003, and ‘Conscience of the Year’ in 2004.

He was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to human rights advocacy in 2021, received NZ Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender award in 2012, and the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand’s Harmony Award in 2013.

In a statement today, Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick said Locke was a dear friend and leading figure in the party’s history, who never wavered in holding government and those in positions of authority to account.

“As a colleague and friend, Keith will be keenly missed by the Greens. He has been a shining light for the rights of people and planet. Keith Locke leaves a legacy that his family and all who knew him can be proud of. Moe mai ra e te rangatira,” they said.

“From 1999 to 2011, he served our party with distinction and worked extremely hard to advance causes central to our kaupapa,” they said.

Highlighting ‘human rights crises’
“Not only did Keith work to defend civil liberties at home, but he was vigilant in highlighting human rights crises in other countries, including the Philippines, East Timor, West Papua and in Latin America.

“We particularly acknowledge his strong and clear opposition to the Iraq War, and his commitment to an independent and principled foreign policy for Aotearoa.”

They said his mahi as a fearless defender of civil liberties was exemplified in his efforts to challenge government overreach into citizens’ privacy.

“Keith worked very hard to introduce reforms of our country’s security intelligence services. While there is much more to be done, the improvements in transparency that have occurred over the past two decades are in large part due to his advocacy and work. We will honour him by ensuring we carry on such work.”

Former minister Peter Dunne said on social media he was “very saddened” to learn of Locke’s death.

“Although we were on different ideological planets, we always got on and worked well together on a number of issues. Keith had my enduring respect for his integrity and honesty. Rest in peace, friend.”

‘Profoundly saddened’
Auckland councillor Christine Fletcher said she was also sad to hear of the death of her “Mt Eden neighbour”.

“We worked together on several political campaigns in the 1990s. Keith was a thoughtful, sincere and truly decent person. My condolences to Keith’s partner Michele, sister Maire Leadbeater and partner Graeme East.”

Peace Action Wellington said Locke was a tireless activist for peace and justice — and the organisation was “profoundly saddened” by his death.

“His voice and presence will be missed,” the organisation wrote on social media.

“He was fearless. He spoke with the passion of someone who knows all too well the vast and dangerous reach of the state into people’s lives as someone who was under state surveillance from the time he was a child.

“We acknowledge Keith’s amazing whānau who have a long whakapapa of peace and justice activism. He was a good soul who will be missed.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Vale #KeithLocke, tireless and fearless campaigner for peace, justice and a sustainable future for a green planet … I’ll also remember him for friendship and commitment to independent truth publishing and OneWorld progressive bookshop. – @DavidRobie, editor, #AsiaPacificReport pic.twitter.com/SC0obJzfOA

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 21, 2024

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

It wants the power to decide who lives or dies and whose rights are worthy of protection.

Abortion may still be front and center in the power struggle between the Left and the Right over who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, sexual freedom, the rights of the unborn, and property interests in one’s body, but there’s so much more at play.

In the 50-plus years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, the government has come to believe that it not only has the power to determine who is deserving of constitutional rights in the eyes of the law but it also has the authority to deny those rights to an American citizen.

This is how the abortion debate has played into the police state’s hands: by laying the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights.

Despite the Supreme Court having overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry all along the spectrum of life.

Take a good, hard look at the many ways in which Americans are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

American families killed by errant SWAT team raids in the middle of the night are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Disabled individuals who are being strip searched, handcuffed, arrested and “diagnosed” by police as dangerous or mentally unstable merely because they stutter and walk unevenly are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Unarmed citizens who are tasered or shot by police for daring to hesitate, stutter, move a muscle, flee or disagree in any way with a police order are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

American citizens subjected to government surveillance whereby their phone calls are being listened in on, their mail and text messages read, their movements tracked and their transactions monitored are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Individuals whose DNA has been forcibly collected and entered into federal and state law enforcement databases whether or not they have been convicted of any crime are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Drivers whose license plates are being scanned, uploaded to a police database and used to map their movements, whether or not they are suspected of any crime, are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Protesters and activists who are being labeled domestic terrorists and extremists and accused of hate crimes for speaking freely are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Hard-working Americans whose bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash are seized by police (operating according to asset forfeiture schemes that provide profit incentives for highway robbery) are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

So, what is the common denominator here?

These are all American citizens—endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, rights that no person or government can take away from them, among these the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and they are all being oppressed in one way or another by a government that has grown drunk on power, money and its own authority.

If the government—be it the President, Congress, the courts or any federal, state or local agent or agency—can decide that any person has no rights, then that person becomes less than a citizen, less than human, less than deserving of respect, dignity, civility and bodily integrity. He or she becomes an “it,” a faceless number that can be tallied and tracked, a quantifiable mass of cells that can be discarded without conscience, an expendable cost that can be written off without a second thought, or an animal that can be bought, sold, branded, chained, caged, bred, neutered and euthanized at will.

It’s a slippery slope that justifies all manner of violations in the name of national security, the interest of the state and the so-called greater good.

Yet those who founded this country believed that what we conceive of as our rights were given to us by God—we are created equal, according to the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence—and that government cannot create, nor can it extinguish our God-given rights. To do so would be to anoint the government with god-like powers and elevate it above the citizenry.

Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this particular devil for quite some time now.

If we continue to wait for the government to restore our freedoms, respect our rights, rein in its abuses and restrain its agents from riding roughshod over our lives, our liberty and our happiness, then we will be waiting forever.

The highly politicized tug-of-war over abortion will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale.  Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity.

Humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being. As such, we haven’t even begun to wrap our heads around how present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty, and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies.

Yet here is what I know.

Life is an inalienable right.

By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” (that of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights.

If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection.

Likewise, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together.

Freedom cannot be a piece-meal venture.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

— H.L. Mencken, In Defence of Women, 1918

First came 9/11, which the government used to transform itself into a police state.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which the police state used to test out its lockdown powers.

In light of the government’s tendency to exploit crises (legitimate or manufactured) and capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state, one has to wonder what so-called crisis it will declare next.

It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power.

Frankly, it doesn’t even matter what the nature of the next national emergency might be (terrorism, civil unrest, economic collapse, a health scare, or the environment) as long as it allows the government to lockdown the nation and justify all manner of tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

Cue the Emergency State.

Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now.

As David C. Unger writes for the New York Times:

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

Here’s what we know: given the rate at which the government keeps devising new ways to establish itself as the “solution” to all of our worldly problems at taxpayer expense, each subsequent crisis ushers in ever larger expansions of government power and less individual liberty.

This is the slippery slope to outright tyranny.

You see, once the government acquires (and uses) authoritarian powers—to spy on its citizens, to carry out surveillance, to transform its police forces into extensions of the military, to seize taxpayer funds, to wage endless wars, to censor and silence dissidents, to identify potential troublemakers, to detain citizens without due process—it does not voluntarily relinquish them.

The lesson for the ages is this: once any government is allowed to overreach and expand its powers, it’s almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. As Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe recognizes, “The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable.”

Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.

In this way, every crisis since the nation’s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government.

Each crisis has also been a test to see how far “we the people” would allow the government to sidestep the Constitution in the so-called name of national security; a test to see how well we have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly we’ll march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance we offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

Most critically of all, it has been a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—could survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

Unfortunately, we’ve been failing this particular test for a long time now.

Indeed, the powers-that-be have been pushing our buttons and herding us along like so much cattle since World War II, at least, starting with the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, which not only propelled the U.S. into World War II but also unified the American people in their opposition to a common enemy.

That fear of attack by foreign threats, conveniently torqued by the growing military industrial complex, in turn gave rise to the Cold War era’s “Red Scare.” Promulgated through government propaganda, paranoia and manipulation, anti-Communist sentiments boiled over into a mass hysteria that viewed anyone and everyone as suspect: your friends, the next-door neighbor, even your family members could be a Communist subversive.

This hysteria, which culminated in hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where hundreds of Americans were called before Congress to testify about their so-called Communist affiliations and intimidated into making false confessions, also paved the way for the rise of an all-knowing, all-seeing governmental surveillance state.

By the time 9/11 rolled around, all George W. Bush had to do was claim the country was being invaded by terrorists, and the government used the USA Patriot Act to claim greater powers to spy, search, detain and arrest American citizens in order to keep America safe.

By way of the National Defense Authorization Act, Barack Obama continued Bush’s trend of undermining the Constitution, going so far as to give the military the power to strip Americans of their constitutional rights, label them extremists, and detain them indefinitely without trial, all in the name of keeping America safe.

Despite the fact that the breadth of the military’s power to detain American citizens violates not only U.S. law and the Constitution but also international laws, the government has refused to relinquish its detention powers made possible by the NDAA.

Then Donald Trump took office, claiming the country was being invaded by dangerous immigrants and insisting that the only way to keep America safe was to expand the reach of the border police, empower the military to “assist” with border control, and essentially turn the country into a Constitution-free zone.

That so-called immigration crisis then morphed into multiple crises (domestic extremism, the COVID-19 pandemic, race wars, civil unrest, etc.) that the government has been eager to use in order to expand its powers.

Joe Biden, in turn, has made every effort to expand the reach of the militarized police state, pledging to hire 87,000 more IRS agents and 100,000 police officers, and allowing the FBI to operate as standing army.

What the next crisis will be is anyone’s guess, but you can be sure that there will be a next crisis.

So, what should you expect if the government decides to declare another state of emergency and institutes a nationwide lockdown?

You should expect more of the same, only worse.

More compliance, less resistance.

More fear-mongering, mind-control tactics and less tolerance for those who question the government’s propaganda-driven narratives.

Most of all, you should expect more tyranny and less freedom.

Given the government’s past track record and its long-anticipated plans for using armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems in response to a future crisis, there’s every reason to worry about what comes next.

Mark my words: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if and when another crisis arises—if and when a nationwide lockdown finally hits—if and when martial law is enacted with little real outcry or resistance from the public— then we will truly understand the extent to which the powers-that-be have fully succeeded in acclimating us to a state of affairs in which the government has all the power and “we the people” have none.

In the meantime, if all we do to reclaim our freedoms and regain control over our runaway government is vote for yet another puppet of the Deep State, by the time the next crisis arises, it may well be too late.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?

—Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, in Papers of Jefferson, ed.

The government is goosestepping all over our freedoms.

Case in point: America’s founders did not want a military government ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

Yet sometime over the course of the past 240-plus years that constitutional republic has been transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

Most Americans seem relatively untroubled by this state of martial law.

Incredibly, when President Biden bragged about how the average citizen doesn’t stand a chance against the government’s massive arsenal of militarized firepower, it barely caused a ripple.

As Biden remarked at a fundraising event in California, “I love these guys who say the Second Amendment is—you know, the tree of liberty is water with the blood of patriots. Well, if [you] want to do that, you want to work against the government, you need an F-16.  You need something else than just an AR-15.”

The message being sent to the citizenry is clear: there is no place in our nation today for the kind of revolution our forefathers mounted against a tyrannical government.

For that matter, the government has declared an all-out war on any resistance whatsoever by the citizenry to its mandates, power grabs and abuses.

By this standard, had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.

This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning.

For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

A 2008 Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report goes on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

Subsequent reports by the Department of Homeland Security to identify, monitor and label right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) have manifested into full-fledged pre-crime surveillance programs. Almost a decade later, after locking down the nation and spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that is colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

The events of recent years have all been part of a master plan to shut us up and preemptively shut us down: by making peaceful revolution impossible and violent revolution inevitable.

The powers-that-be want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law.

This is how it begins.

As John Lennon warned, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.”

Already, discontent is growing.

According to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, 7 out of 10 Americans believe that American democracy is “imperiled.”

Americans are worried about the state of their country, afraid of an increasingly violent and oppressive federal government, and tired of being treated like suspects and criminals.

What we’ll see more of before long is a growing dissatisfaction with the government and its heavy-handed tactics by people who are tired of being used and abused and are ready to say “enough is enough.”

This is what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent.

Our backs are against the proverbial wall.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Brace yourselves.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Any time you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Any time you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And any time you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

The architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.

The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to express their displeasure with the government is through voting, yet that is no real recourse at all.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, what is unfolding before us is not a revolution. This is an anti-revolution.

We are at our most vulnerable right now.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.

— Justice Neil Gorsuch

We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency.

Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

COVID-19, for example, served as the driving force behind what Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch characterized as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

In a statement attached to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Arizona v. Mayorkas, a case that challenged whether the government could continue to use it pandemic powers even after declaring the public health emergency over, Gorsuch provided a catalog of the many ways in which the government used COVID-19 to massively overreach its authority and suppress civil liberties:

Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.

Federal executive officials entered the act too.  Not just with emergency immigration decrees. They deployed a public-health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide. They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans.  They threatened to fire noncompliant employees, and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement.  Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.

While executive officials issued new emergency decrees at a furious pace, state legislatures and Congress—the bodies normally responsible for adopting our laws—too often fell silent.  Courts bound to protect our liberties addressed a few—but hardly all—of the intrusions upon them. In some cases, like this one, courts even allowed themselves to be used to perpetuate emergency public-health decrees for collateral purposes, itself a form of emergency-lawmaking-by-litigation.

Yet while the government’s (federal and state) handling of the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a knockout blow to our civil liberties, empowering the police state to flex its powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., it was merely one crisis in a long series of crises that the government has shamelessly exploited in order to justify its power grabs and acclimate the citizenry to a state of martial law disguised as emergency powers.

These attempts to use various crises to override the Constitution are still happening.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be: civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

They have all become fair game to a government that continues to quietly assemble, test and deploy emergency powers a long laundry list of terrifying powers that override the Constitution and can be activated at a moment’s notice.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die.

While these are powers the police state has been working to make permanent, they barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has unilaterally claimed for itself without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

As David C. Unger, observes in The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs:

“For seven decades we have been yielding our most basic liberties to a secretive, unaccountable emergency state – a vast but increasingly misdirected complex of national security institutions, reflexes, and beliefs that so define our present world that we forget that there was ever a different America. … Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

This rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security is all happening according to schedule.

The civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters,” the government’s reliance on the armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems, the implicit declaration of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security: the powers-that-be have been planning and preparing for such a crisis for years now.

The seeds of this ongoing madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.“

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

Essentially, the president would become a dictator for life.

It has happened already.

As we have witnessed in recent years, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

The emergency powers that we know about which presidents might claim during such states of emergency are vast, ranging from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, including implementing an internet kill switch, and restricting travel.

Yet according to documents obtained by the Brennan Center, there may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public.

Remember, these powers do not expire at the end of a president’s term. They remain on the books, just waiting to be used or abused by the next political demagogue.

So, too, every action taken by the current occupant of the White House and his predecessors to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the executive branch of government makes us that much more vulnerable to those who would abuse those powers in the future.

Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

The Executive Branch’s willingness to circumvent the Constitution by leaning heavily on the president’s so-called emergency powers constitutes a gross perversion of what limited power the Constitution affords the president.

As law professor William P. Marshall explains, “every extraordinary use of power by one President expands the availability of executive branch power for use by future Presidents.” Moreover, it doesn’t even matter whether other presidents have chosen not to take advantage of any particular power, because “it is a President’s action in using power, rather than forsaking its use, that has the precedential significance.”

In other words, each successive president continues to add to his office’s list of extraordinary orders and directives, expanding the reach and power of the presidency and granting him- or herself near dictatorial powers.

All of the imperial powers amassed by Obama, Bush, Trump and now Biden—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects (including American citizens) indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to wage wars without congressional authorization, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to establish a standing army on American soil, to operate a shadow government, to declare national emergencies for any manipulated reason, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—have become a permanent part of the president’s toolbox of terror.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

As an investigative report by the Brennan Center explains:

“There are currently 41 declared national emergencies, most of which have been in place for more than a decade… Some of the emergency powers Congress has made available to the president are so breathtaking in their vastness that they would make an autocrat do a spit take. Presidents can use emergency declarations to shut down communications infrastructure, freeze private assets without judicial process, control domestic transportation, or even suspend the prohibition on government testing of chemical and biological agents on unwitting human subjects.”

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

We must recalibrate the balance of power.

For starters, Congress should put an end to the use of presidential executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts.

At a minimum, as The Washington Post suggests, “all emergency declarations [s]hould expire automatically after three or six months, whereupon Congress would need to vote upon any proposed extension. It is time for both parties to recognize that governing via endless crises — even when they are employed to implement broadly popular policies that win plaudits from key political constituencies — subverts our system of constitutional government.”

We’ve got to start making both the president and the police state play by the rules of the Constitution.

As Justice Gorsuch recognized:

Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat. A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force. We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree. Along the way, we will accede to the loss of many cherished civil liberties—the right to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes. We may even cheer on those who ask us to disregard our normal lawmaking processes and forfeit our personal freedoms. Of course, this is no new story. Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear.

Unfortunately, the process of unseating a dictator and limiting the powers of the presidency is far from simple but at a minimum, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it must start with “we the people.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.

— Justice Neil Gorsuch

We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency.

Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

COVID-19, for example, served as the driving force behind what Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch characterized as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

In a statement attached to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Arizona v. Mayorkas, a case that challenged whether the government could continue to use it pandemic powers even after declaring the public health emergency over, Gorsuch provided a catalog of the many ways in which the government used COVID-19 to massively overreach its authority and suppress civil liberties:

Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.

Federal executive officials entered the act too.  Not just with emergency immigration decrees. They deployed a public-health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide. They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans.  They threatened to fire noncompliant employees, and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement.  Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.

While executive officials issued new emergency decrees at a furious pace, state legislatures and Congress—the bodies normally responsible for adopting our laws—too often fell silent.  Courts bound to protect our liberties addressed a few—but hardly all—of the intrusions upon them. In some cases, like this one, courts even allowed themselves to be used to perpetuate emergency public-health decrees for collateral purposes, itself a form of emergency-lawmaking-by-litigation.

Yet while the government’s (federal and state) handling of the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a knockout blow to our civil liberties, empowering the police state to flex its powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., it was merely one crisis in a long series of crises that the government has shamelessly exploited in order to justify its power grabs and acclimate the citizenry to a state of martial law disguised as emergency powers.

These attempts to use various crises to override the Constitution are still happening.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be: civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

They have all become fair game to a government that continues to quietly assemble, test and deploy emergency powers a long laundry list of terrifying powers that override the Constitution and can be activated at a moment’s notice.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die.

While these are powers the police state has been working to make permanent, they barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has unilaterally claimed for itself without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

As David C. Unger, observes in The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs:

“For seven decades we have been yielding our most basic liberties to a secretive, unaccountable emergency state – a vast but increasingly misdirected complex of national security institutions, reflexes, and beliefs that so define our present world that we forget that there was ever a different America. … Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

This rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security is all happening according to schedule.

The civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters,” the government’s reliance on the armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems, the implicit declaration of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security: the powers-that-be have been planning and preparing for such a crisis for years now.

The seeds of this ongoing madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.“

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

Essentially, the president would become a dictator for life.

It has happened already.

As we have witnessed in recent years, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

The emergency powers that we know about which presidents might claim during such states of emergency are vast, ranging from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, including implementing an internet kill switch, and restricting travel.

Yet according to documents obtained by the Brennan Center, there may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public.

Remember, these powers do not expire at the end of a president’s term. They remain on the books, just waiting to be used or abused by the next political demagogue.

So, too, every action taken by the current occupant of the White House and his predecessors to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the executive branch of government makes us that much more vulnerable to those who would abuse those powers in the future.

Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

The Executive Branch’s willingness to circumvent the Constitution by leaning heavily on the president’s so-called emergency powers constitutes a gross perversion of what limited power the Constitution affords the president.

As law professor William P. Marshall explains, “every extraordinary use of power by one President expands the availability of executive branch power for use by future Presidents.” Moreover, it doesn’t even matter whether other presidents have chosen not to take advantage of any particular power, because “it is a President’s action in using power, rather than forsaking its use, that has the precedential significance.”

In other words, each successive president continues to add to his office’s list of extraordinary orders and directives, expanding the reach and power of the presidency and granting him- or herself near dictatorial powers.

All of the imperial powers amassed by Obama, Bush, Trump and now Biden—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects (including American citizens) indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to wage wars without congressional authorization, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to establish a standing army on American soil, to operate a shadow government, to declare national emergencies for any manipulated reason, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—have become a permanent part of the president’s toolbox of terror.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

As an investigative report by the Brennan Center explains:

“There are currently 41 declared national emergencies, most of which have been in place for more than a decade… Some of the emergency powers Congress has made available to the president are so breathtaking in their vastness that they would make an autocrat do a spit take. Presidents can use emergency declarations to shut down communications infrastructure, freeze private assets without judicial process, control domestic transportation, or even suspend the prohibition on government testing of chemical and biological agents on unwitting human subjects.”

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

We must recalibrate the balance of power.

For starters, Congress should put an end to the use of presidential executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts.

At a minimum, as The Washington Post suggests, “all emergency declarations [s]hould expire automatically after three or six months, whereupon Congress would need to vote upon any proposed extension. It is time for both parties to recognize that governing via endless crises — even when they are employed to implement broadly popular policies that win plaudits from key political constituencies — subverts our system of constitutional government.”

We’ve got to start making both the president and the police state play by the rules of the Constitution.

As Justice Gorsuch recognized:

Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat. A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force. We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree. Along the way, we will accede to the loss of many cherished civil liberties—the right to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes. We may even cheer on those who ask us to disregard our normal lawmaking processes and forfeit our personal freedoms. Of course, this is no new story. Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear.

Unfortunately, the process of unseating a dictator and limiting the powers of the presidency is far from simple but at a minimum, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it must start with “we the people.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Gorsuch and five of his Supreme Court colleagues approach the law through the eyes of originalists. The idea of originalism is rooted in John Locke’s theory of natural rights. Liberty, proclaimed Locke, is not a product of society or government, it’s a gift from our Creator, hence the only legitimate role of government is to protect our God-given natural rights. Any rights we as citizens decide to create or enlarge, a woman’s right to choose abortion for one, have no such divine sanction. They can be narrowed, retracted, or denied, depending on the Court’s will. Hence Jefferson’s dictum: that government is best which governs least. Originalism at its broadest seeks to establish the intent of the framers, but the late Justice Scalia defined originalism as “the doctrine of original meaning.” That is, originalists interpret the law by asking how the public of the time would have understood the meaning of the words of the constitution when it was written in 1789. By strictly adhering to the supposed original meaning of the constitution’s words for a highly exclusive male, property owning public, originalists claim that their judging is, in essence, an apolitical process of thumbing through18th century dictionaries. It is matter of transferring understandings written in 1787 into the adjudication of 21st century conflicts.

In other words, Gorsuch and his pals want to use an originalist time machine to transport contemporary America back to the rural, agrarian society of 1790, when the population of the United States was about 4 million, including 700 thousand enslaved people; and the only citizens who could vote were white male property-owners, most of whom were largely engaged in farming. The Union consisted of only 13 states, a tiny sliver of North America along the Atlantic coast. Obviously, the United States is a far more complex society today, with a diverse population of over 350 million, the majority of whom – women – claim rights the Framers’ resolutely denied.

Whatever else you can say about Gorsuch and his extremist clique, you can’t say they’re stupid. They are perfectly aware that times have changed. The fact is, they have no problem with change, unless its’ politically progressive change. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of property” was the original Lockean concept, not “the pursuit of happiness” and their Constitution is a Lockean document designed to protect property and the wealthy from what Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.” Originalism is just their smokescreen for protecting a privileged oligarchy. Yet the historic irony of their “originalism” is that property was in fact closely regulated by the states in early 19th century America, none more than the institution of the corporation, whose medieval origins lay in highly restricted monarchical and parliamentary charters. Andrew Jackson’s ideas about freeing up corporations to do whatever they pleased to make a buck would have been anathema to 18th century conservatives, who believed that corporations must primarily serve public purposes, not their own profit. Citizens United, the 2010 decision that allowed corporations to spend their own money in political campaigns, is therefore but one more in a long line of instances of the Court twisting the Constitution to protect the wealthy class and preserve their political power. Let’s not forget Bush v. Gore, when the conservative Court majority halted the electoral count in Florida, effectively declaring their own winner of the presidential election because, after all, citizens have no constitutional right to vote for president. More recently, in a particularly clear example of “originalist” innovation, the Court’s majority in West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency, simply invented a new category of jurisprudence – the “major questions” doctrine – to justify setting aside Congress’ “original” 1972 delegation to EPA of power to regulate air pollution. As dissenting Justice Elena Kagan observed in her caustic dissent, conservative justices declare faithfulness to statutory text, but “(w)hen that method would frustrate broader goals,” such as rolling back administrative authority and environmental policy, “special canons like ‘the major questions doctrine’ magically appear as get-out of-text-free cards” Then, of course, there’s the infamous Dobbs decision overruling the half-century old precedent of Roe v. Wade, the first time in U.S. history the Supreme Court took away an existing civil right. But then Dobbs v. Jackson is consistent with originalist philosophy: since the Framers mentioned neither privacy nor abortion – it is a socially created right, after all – the states, equipped with the wide berth of their police power, can do virtually anything they want to limit a woman’s right to choose, including making abortion a capital offense. More, in his concurrent opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas strongly hints that the right to use birth control and the right to marry who you wish should be the next civil liberties on the chopping block.

But we have only to look at recent Second Amendment decisions to see the hypocrisy of this Court. The originalists apply the principle of originalism only when it benefits their extremist conservative world view. Gone is any consideration of “a well-regulated militia” when the GOP needs NRA money. As the Roberts court takes us forward to the past, don’t look for judicial consistency. Just remember, outrage isn’t enough. The Court’s actions call for structural reform.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin.

Gorsuch and five of his Supreme Court colleagues approach the law through the eyes of originalists. The idea of originalism is rooted in John Locke’s theory of natural rights. Liberty, proclaimed Locke, is not a product of society or government, it’s a gift from our Creator, hence the only legitimate role of government is to protect our God-given natural rights. Any rights we as citizens decide to create or enlarge, a woman’s right to choose abortion for one, have no such divine sanction. They can be narrowed, retracted, or denied, depending on the Court’s will. Hence Jefferson’s dictum: that government is best which governs least. Originalism at its broadest seeks to establish the intent of the framers, but the late Justice Scalia defined originalism as “the doctrine of original meaning.” That is, originalists interpret the law by asking how the public of the time would have understood the meaning of the words of the constitution when it was written in 1789. By strictly adhering to the supposed original meaning of the constitution’s words for a highly exclusive male, property owning public, originalists claim that their judging is, in essence, an apolitical process of thumbing through18th century dictionaries. It is matter of transferring understandings written in 1787 into the adjudication of 21st century conflicts.

In other words, Gorsuch and his pals want to use an originalist time machine to transport contemporary America back to the rural, agrarian society of 1790, when the population of the United States was about 4 million, including 700 thousand enslaved people; and the only citizens who could vote were white male property-owners, most of whom were largely engaged in farming. The Union consisted of only 13 states, a tiny sliver of North America along the Atlantic coast. Obviously, the United States is a far more complex society today, with a diverse population of over 350 million, the majority of whom – women – claim rights the Framers’ resolutely denied.

Whatever else you can say about Gorsuch and his extremist clique, you can’t say they’re stupid. They are perfectly aware that times have changed. The fact is, they have no problem with change, unless its’ politically progressive change. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of property” was the original Lockean concept, not “the pursuit of happiness” and their Constitution is a Lockean document designed to protect property and the wealthy from what Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.” Originalism is just their smokescreen for protecting a privileged oligarchy. Yet the historic irony of their “originalism” is that property was in fact closely regulated by the states in early 19th century America, none more than the institution of the corporation, whose medieval origins lay in highly restricted monarchical and parliamentary charters. Andrew Jackson’s ideas about freeing up corporations to do whatever they pleased to make a buck would have been anathema to 18th century conservatives, who believed that corporations must primarily serve public purposes, not their own profit. Citizens United, the 2010 decision that allowed corporations to spend their own money in political campaigns, is therefore but one more in a long line of instances of the Court twisting the Constitution to protect the wealthy class and preserve their political power. Let’s not forget Bush v. Gore, when the conservative Court majority halted the electoral count in Florida, effectively declaring their own winner of the presidential election because, after all, citizens have no constitutional right to vote for president. More recently, in a particularly clear example of “originalist” innovation, the Court’s majority in West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency, simply invented a new category of jurisprudence – the “major questions” doctrine – to justify setting aside Congress’ “original” 1972 delegation to EPA of power to regulate air pollution. As dissenting Justice Elena Kagan observed in her caustic dissent, conservative justices declare faithfulness to statutory text, but “(w)hen that method would frustrate broader goals,” such as rolling back administrative authority and environmental policy, “special canons like ‘the major questions doctrine’ magically appear as get-out of-text-free cards” Then, of course, there’s the infamous Dobbs decision overruling the half-century old precedent of Roe v. Wade, the first time in U.S. history the Supreme Court took away an existing civil right. But then Dobbs v. Jackson is consistent with originalist philosophy: since the Framers mentioned neither privacy nor abortion – it is a socially created right, after all – the states, equipped with the wide berth of their police power, can do virtually anything they want to limit a woman’s right to choose, including making abortion a capital offense. More, in his concurrent opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas strongly hints that the right to use birth control and the right to marry who you wish should be the next civil liberties on the chopping block.

But we have only to look at recent Second Amendment decisions to see the hypocrisy of this Court. The originalists apply the principle of originalism only when it benefits their extremist conservative world view. Gone is any consideration of “a well-regulated militia” when the GOP needs NRA money. As the Roberts court takes us forward to the past, don’t look for judicial consistency. Just remember, outrage isn’t enough. The Court’s actions call for structural reform.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin.

He’s a short red-bearded white cop standing over me and my friend, KK (initials to be revealed soon). We are in KK’s hometown, Merrill, Wisconsin, population 9,300.

“What’s up, officer?”

“We have a complaint from a resident who says you were on his property taking pictures of his house and a juvenile daughter.”

So begins the morning in Merrill, or at least, after a few hours of photographing KK’s old haunts with a borrowed Canon — his schools, churches, and, yep, the house he grew up in. It was 9 am when I got him to stand on the sidewalk to photograph KK in front of the small house where he spent his youth. It was his grandparents’ home. Small, sort of shotgun clapboard style no with faded vinyl siding.

Four shots, and we took off, turned for some of the street scenes where he played, and, then we moved on out with the pick-up and my shutterbug disease.

I call these drive-by shoots, so we drove and then stopped, posed, and then shot film. He is a 65 year old who I met on the “internet” who has been a good friend, a good reader of my stuff, including books, for more than a year. His wife died in October 2022, in River Falls, where they moved to decades before leaving Merrill, hometown for both of them. Merrill is his and his deceased wife’s birthplace and family locales. Bad memories for KK, and I don’t know about his wife, Cheri.

“The owner of the home accused you have trespassing, stepping on his lawn and photographing his teenage daughter. He is wanting you arrested.”

Welcome to America, and sure, I knew I’d get out of this stupidity, but what flashes in my mind is the mindlessness of America, the flyover states’ policing and politics, the rural places with contradictory “values,” old sagging towns with closed businesses, tired homes, and more which I will cover in this series. Lots of strip malls and drive-thru food joints you see all over America.

“I’m a journalist, and I have been taking photos of Merrill the past few hours, and I can tell you we did not go on the lawn, and I was photographing KK who is from Merrill. I saw no girl in a window, and there is no girl in a window in the four shots I took of a guy out in front of his childhood house.”

“The house owner said his daughter was upstairs, wondering what you were photographing and said you photographed her.”

The conversation when from here and there, and we gave up our IDs, and alas, yeah, KK is an ex-con (with air quotes), ten years behind bars total, six in prisons throughout Wisconsin. He’s known in these parts, and he’s still on paper, which means he is on “supervision,” not allowed to leave the state, and his name and his “crimes” would be coming up on the ID check.

I went outside to the camper and pulled out the Canon. The shots showed I was on the public access, sidewalk and road, and there is no peeping woman in any photograph looking at these aliens. KK stayed on the sidewalk. I shot him there.

America. The big burly guy/father followed the cops who went around town looking for this camper/pick-up truck combo, a unique looking rig. They spotted us at the local restaurant, The Pine Ridge.

America. This guy came up to me, as the cop was facing me, and while I showed him the photos in question; this guy, the so-called victim, pulled out his phone camera and started filming me and the cop.

America. “I’m telling you if they come back and start photographing my house, I will shoot them. I’ll shoot anyone coming onto my property.”

“Well, we’ll deal with that if that happens.”

“I’m not fucking joking. I will get my rifle and shoot the sons of bitches.”

America. After he went back to the five other police vehilces, I gave the cop the old thought exeperiment: “So, in this little Wisconsin town, you have people shooting anyone going onto lawns, with all these homes with no fences, no signs about no tresspassing, you really think I am supposed to believe you can arrest me for stepping on a lawn and photographing my friend’s old childhood home?”

America. “Well, it is trespassing.”

“So you have a lot of shootings in Merrill? Especially in the summertime when kids and teens and their dads and aunts and uncles might be throwing frisbees and balls for dogs and then errant throws and tosses might get a ball or frisbee near the house and some innocent ball player retrieving it by some window or wall?”

America. “It’s trespassing to step on someone’s property and you can get arrested.”

America. “So Merrill has a lot of arrests for kids and dads trespassing? You bust dogs pooping on property, too?”

America. “So, you did background checks on us, what about this guy?”

“Yes.”

“And, you found some ‘interesting’ things in his background?”

The cop smiled. “Yep, there are some rough things in his past.”

America. “So, put the shoe on the other foot. Now, if I was in this parking lot, and say, none of this happened, but I started photographing the parking lot, the cool sign, and then this guy with his Duck Dynasty beard, I know this asshole would go after me hard, no questions asked. I’ve been around the block, around many parts of the world, worked in prisons, and I KNOW for a fact this punk would go after me for photographing him in a public place. Just like he just did with me.”

America. The cop smiled, nodded his head. “Look, think about it, officer. If say I was in Madison, on a street around the university, and had buddies and me tossing footballs, and maybe me photographing them, and then one ball ended up on a lawn, the home owner/resident could call the cops and have us arrestred? And then this shoot to kill crap, you think in a university town the cops would be allowing this? The city’s lawmakers, they’d be okay with college students or faculty or whomever getting arrested for going after a loose beachball or softball off the lawn?”

America. “I’ve never been a policeman anywhere but here, in Merrill. I don’t know about other cities’ ordinances.”

America. Ahh, imagine the headlines: “Trick or Treaters Shot in Merrill, Wisconsin, after a dozen home renters pulled out AR-15s and Glocks and started firing away.” Or, “Local Photographer Dies after Homeowner Plugs him Between the Eyes for Photographing old Historic Home.”

America. And, it only gets worse. “Look, we will be keeping him here until you all get on your way to make sure he doesn’t follow you. Are you done photographing in that area of town?”

America. “I am photographing bridges, pubs, old fronts of buildings, and more. And, we have a graveside service at the cemetary at one. His wife just passed last October and there is a monument marble bench in the graveyard and 20 family members showing up. I’m officiating it.”

America. “Well, we’ll keep him here. You should be fine. The cemetary is a good mile from his house.”

America. “So, this guy wanted to have you ticket us?”

“Actually, he wanted us to arrest you both for trespassing and stalking his daughter.”

America. “You know this is bullshit, really. Smalltown Wisconsin, and I take other small towns in this cheesehead state have similar values, similiar ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ ordinances.”

“Well, he lives in a sketchy part of town and they are worried about their stuff in the yard and on porches.”

America. Shoot to protect the barbeque and patio furniture.

City of Parks. Well, the next iteration of this first part deals with The City of Bars.

“At one time there were 53 bars in Merrill,” KK said. “I knew them all. That’s what people did when I was growing up. They still do, but there aren’t that many now. Many closed up.”

Bars and churches, on every street corner. All Aboard, Gesundheit, and so many run-down joints and holes in the wall, even back when KK was taking fast cars and noisy motorcycles through town to push the oppressiveness out of his skin. His first take down by the law was when he was 16. Booze.

America. The Chatterbox, Hub Inn, Newwood Tap, Ali Baba’s, Dee’s Bear Den, Northway Club, Hinz’s Cork and Dine, 1-900 Club, Beacon Bar, Dick and Shirl’s, Victory Lane.

The victory in this town is working in bone numbing mill jobs, living in a town of killing deer and yanking walleyes from the lakes and rivers, beatings at home, knuckling the young ones in the head, and, drinking at those favorite watering holes.

America. The best Friday Fish Fries are had at those booze joints. Hamburger runs, deep-fried Wisconsin cheese curds, and puffy fries. Bars. Pubs. Clubs. Lounges.

America. In Eagle River north of Merrill, we have the Pioneer, where you pay a buck for an ashtray to smoke inside, so the collected tray fees are used if anytime the bar gets cited for allowing cigs and combustion inside.

America, the land of Disney thinking, cutesy names, and one’s legacy emblazoned on some Blatz or PBR lighted sign, passed from generation to generation.

Merrill, America: Plowman’s Playhouse, Mid-City Tap, Frish’s Place, Clubs 64 or 107, Club Morder, Gail’s Place, Urban Darlene’s, E and K Tap, The Robber’s Roost, Corner Bar, Avenue Bar, Gil’s Bar, Ballyhoo’s, Trophy Bar, Legion Lounge, Rock Island Resort and we can’s forget S & S Bar — Social and Sick. This one gives money gained from liver damage and all night with the boys and a $100 tab to the local hospital. You know, smoke up a pack of Kools, down whiskey a-go-go, and then at the end of the year, S & S’s proprietors hand over some of that mullah go to cancer education, treatments, what have you.

America. Drink, carouse, stay away from the kids, pound back the beers and shots, yell at the top of your lungs how you are right, and the America is about might makes right, aervednd then, maybe, just maybe, a head-on collision with a tree. Or pond. Death by exposure, drowning, all in a night’s bar hopping.

KK got wrapped up into drinking young. Nature and nurture. He’s more than just a smart guy, and he holds a boyhood with no interest in school, a whipper snapper in math, and alas, that teacher who wacked him on the head many times while he struggled to do division. That was grade three.

Imagine, years later, he’s working as a CNA, and lo and behold, this monster teacher is in memory care, in need of bathing and all that. She called him “my sweet Kelly.” All those math division wacking sessions long dust to the wind roiling him her Merrill brain. From sadistic teacher to broken brained old lady dying in a care facility.

So when we traversed this town, one he moved away from decades ago, the lights of nostalgia and nightmares came pulsating out. He knows every nook and cranny, every business that was, every place where he hung out at after ditching school. And the bars.

So when the fuzz came buzzing into our Pine Ridge Diner, more than just flashbacks were surfacing. He, KK, haven been fighting the law all his life, with a total of 10 years behind bars, he shook his head and laughed.

Since I was the accused perpetrator — photographer — I calmly dealt with the cops and their stupidity. Five or six cop vehicles, and big bearded bruisers holding onto their flak jackets and holsters.

Yeah, the illogic of having cops tell me I should have knocked on the guy’s door at 8:30 am on a Saturday, well, this is America. Imagine, I shot 130 pics in a two hour period. Courthouse, churches, cool architecture, funky yards, Trump and Go Brandon signs next to a white cross, you know, all that artsy fartsy stuff. The thought experiment is this: So, a photographer has to knock on what, a dozen, two dozen, more doors? Ask permission to photograph a man standing in front of the old broken down home?

I’ve talked with a few people about this, and hands down they say this is absurd, and then all the photos they took in places like Juarez or throughout the world. Kids and chickens. Three-legged dogs next to a woman hanging out clothes. Vietnam or Venice.

America. You will have the cops come blazing in to interrogate you about photo shoots. We are talking shoot and dash.

Yeah, the guy’s got a rough background, i.e., criminal background. But still, an ex-con was yelling and spitting that he wanted me arrested. A 66 year old guy from Oregon.

America — Friendliest place on the planet.

A sidenote to this is I just opened up my phone call log, and there is a message from the investigating officer. He wanted to let me know that when we drove off by him standing with the accuser, it was the pissed off father who returned back and wanted to apologize for his threats and bullshit. He was, again, Duck Dynasty addled, and no matter how many people reading this think I should have or could have might have done this or not done that, it’s all in a day’s work for me, and while the dramatic overtones may sound as if I am frazzled, well, I am not.

America. Within thirty minutes of the guy’s threats and his bullshit filming me with his toy phone, well, he apologized, and wanted the cop to let me know he was just overprotective and that there was a past, that is, some past incidents with his two daughters. I just listened to the cop’s message, two days later.

America. Triggered. Triggers. Trigger locks. Unlocked trigger locks. Rapid-fire triggers. Triggers all lined up while the weeds take over the yard and the Walmart shit piles up.

America. Wisconsin. Shooting ranges all over the place. Golf courses and shooting ranges. And a shitload of shit factories, that is, dairies.

America. Dairies and fields of GMO corn and soy. You gotta get the cows fed. Shit factories, those daity cows. America. What to do with the shit? America. America Don’t Take No Shit from Anyone (bumper sticker I saw on the highway).

A cautionary tale of manure, insurance and the neighbor’s well – Ohio Ag Net | Ohio’s Country Journal America. Hair triggers and trigger brains. Lots of shit.

Graveyards and dairies. So, some of those 53 Merrill haunts are gone, turned into chiropractor offices.

One’s a florist. Old, sagging boarded up. You have to look closely for a bright beacon coming from a foggy window. “No Coors Served Here!”

Those cemetaries are loaded with German and Polish names. Wisconsin, the state with the most beer:

From grain to glass—a complete illustrated history of brewing and breweries in the state more famous for beer than any other

Few places on Earth are as identified with beer as Wisconsin, with good reason. Since its first commercial brewery was established in 1835, the state has seen more than 800 open and more than 650 close—sometimes after mere months, sometimes after thriving for as long as a century and a half. The Drink That Made Wisconsin Famous explores this rich history, from the first territorial pioneers to the most recent craft brewers, and from barley to barstool.

From the global breweries that developed in Milwaukee in the 1870s to the “wildcat” breweries of Prohibition and the upstart craft brewers of today, Doug Hoverson tells the stories of Wisconsin’s rich brewing history. The lavishly illustrated book goes beyond the giants like Miller, Schlitz, Pabst, and Heileman that loom large in the state’s brewing renown. Of equal interest are the hundreds of small breweries across the state started by immigrants and entrepreneurs to serve local or regional markets. Many proved remarkably resistant to the consolidation and contraction that changed the industry—giving the impression that nearly every town in the Badger State had its own brewery. Even before beer tourism became popular, hunters, anglers, and travelers found their favorite brews in small Wisconsin cities like Rice Lake, Stevens Point, and Chippewa Falls. Hoverson describes these breweries in all their diversity, from the earliest enterprises to the few surviving stalwarts to the modern breweries reviving Wisconsin’s reputation as the place to find not just the most beer but the best.

Within the larger history, every brewery has its story, and Hoverson gives each its due, investigating the circumstances that meant success or failure and describing in engaging detail the people, the technology, the marketing, and the government relations that delivered Wisconsin’s beer from grain to glass.

America. Americana: things associated with the culture and history of America, especially the United States.

This is part one to KK’s magical mystery re-tour of Merrill, the roots of where the hell started for him. I’ve been in small towns in Mass. and Delaware and New Jersey, for sure, and the bars and pubs and wreckless legacy of cops owning booze joints, all of that, it’s been taught to me early. As a traveler. I’ve seen the idiocy of men and women plastered in Edinburgh and Dublin. And in Hamburg and Munich.

Limey monsters in British Honduras and now Belize slamming drinks and spewing the shit of military men high on rum and beer. Yeah, one of the worst times was when my former wife and I were in Athens, and the four Brits — military on R & R — in the room adjoining went from toasting and hoisting to singing and yelling to actually beating the shit out of each other, the walls pounding, some of the pictures in our hotel room crashing down.

KK isn’t that kind of a drinker, but the drinking started for a dark hidden reason, and that too will be explored in part two. Booze, meth, fentynal, the whole nine yards of America.

Smalltowns in rural America, shuttering some of the businesses. Farms going belly up. Big bruiser Germanic men, brothers and fathers, working the manure and the milking machines. Endless winds and chill and snow and rain. Hot as hell in the summer. A lot of flat land. Marshy land and swamps all over.

Guns and butter, Wisconsin. America. One kid with higher ambitions, locked into a mold for a while, a product of father beatings as a kid, beatings by teachers, the kid, KK, always throwing in to protect the bullied fat boys. Wisconsin. Ten years behind bars in more than a dozen shitholes, from county lock-ups to state correctional institutions.

KK fought the law, and the law waylaid him.

I met KK a year ago when he tracked me down via email. Reading my stuff over at DV, and alas, I learned about his River Falls life, his wife of 41 years struggling with small cell lung cancer. And she eventually succumbed to the cancer. More about that in parts two and three.

“How did you meet him?” some have asked. “You are flying all the way to Wisconsin for eight days to see a fellow you never met, some guy with a shady past?”

Yeah, and that’s also in parts two and three. Why I came, and what transpired, again, more microcosm of the flagging United States of Go Find Bradon and Trump Derangement Syndrome . . . America, my first time in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

America. Trigger warnings. Meth and cancer, family estrangement, pedophilia, violence, hoarding what you have, endless cycles of have’s and have’s not.

America. On the surface, all fine and dandy in those cul-de-sac hoods and on those thousand acre farms. Soy and corn. A belly full of toxins and a belly full of Friday Fish Fry and Old Milwaukee. But boy, so many addiction clinics, so many lost grandkids on meth.

America. Where oh where are the Red Nations?

• Brothertown Nation

• Forest County Potawatomi

• Ho-Chunk Nation

• Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin

• Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians

• Oneida Nation

• Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

• Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

• Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

• Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

• Sokaogon Chippewa Community (Mole Lake Band of Lake Superior Chippewa)

• St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin

That’s a whole other story, Red Nations, USA. America. Trigger Warnings. Tribes. Prisons and PBR. Endless mud pits and manure ponds. Wisconsin Cheese, the Best in Show. Where are the tribes?

TBC. Wisconsin First Nations.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

FDR —

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils, which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers’ stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

— March 4, 1933

Indeed, is it fearing fear itself which has taken this country down so many notches? Chaotic times, chaotic thinking. Chaotic allegiances to despots and mad money changers have lead to chaotic politics. Fearing fear. Oh, fearing BlackRock and Blackstone and the Group of 147, or make that 737.

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

Graphic below: The 1,318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy

(Data: PLoS One)

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1,318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1,318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1,318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group. (Source)

Unfortunately, the article in The New Scientist cites people defending this, even saying owning all this wealth and power by a few is a good thing, almost tying it directly to nature, as if this control of power is paralleled in nature.

“A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.”

The bombing list:

Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-1961
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Iran 1987
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1993
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
Yemen 2002
Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
Iraq 2003-2015
Afghanistan 2001-2015
Pakistan 2007-2015
Somalia 2007-8, 2011
Yemen 2009, 2011
Libya 2011, 2015
Syria 2014-2016

However, my screed today  is partially precipitated by the very fact I skipped out of a web-in-nar (amazingly stupid language of the techies) touted as a way “to bridge the divide in a country that is now so polarized, more than ever before.”

That of course is false — that we are in “the most polarized point in the USA, ever, politics and values wise.” And what does it mean to bring the nation together? To bridge two polar opposites? Can we “bridge” or scaffold these wonderful American values? Expropriation of indigenous lands? Slavery? Jim Crow? The Korean War? Vietnam? 9/11? Economic exploitation? Felonious finance? The entire false premise those on either side of the “dividing line” both professing makes this an exceptionally dutiful, good, glorious, top dog society? Bullshit. Any look at the old political screeds and cartoons will show that the USA has always been a white man’s/woman’s land, of the most evil of kindred spirits (see below for a sampling).

We are divided because of Trump v. Biden? Pence v. Harris? This is the sad bullshit of people we call elites and who have way too much time on their hands to babble about “bridging the divide.” This country has never atoned for its murders, its thefts, its disease. The country carries on, and if one rails against the military industrial complex, points out the sheer horror of collapses under the planned-demic, all the ended retail and other global contracts and dead/dying mom and pops, and then collectively, the country sits on those Trump or Biden thumbs up to actually believe no military contract shall be breeched, broken, or ended prematurely. This rah-rah for IT, AI, ICE, DoD, et al, has generated wave after wave of the future looking glass that has all of us is seeing in spades: more and more people will accept sacrifice zones for “the other” and for themselves when it comes to job, a house, anything to stave off the reality of the billionaire class in cahoots with the capitalists and corporate loving government heads.

Some might want UBI, Universal Buffon Income, others want to make banks, and the majority of this country makes money doing nothing, that is, making nothing, and in many cases, making hell to be paid to us, the lower classes, the dissidents, the precarious, the non-traditional, irregular workers.

As I stand dying, I witness more and more of that shifting baseline syndrome, on steroids, across a full spectrum of things and values that have been shifted, morphed anew, devolved, destroyed and deep-sixed. Mass media/Prostituting Press have done much to shift the baseline. Recall, just a few decades ago, it was commonplace to despise billionaires, the rich, or hate too much car traffic, or attack gluttony of all kinds, including too much food in the gullet, or criticizing too many hours in front of a screen, or the possibility of too many days forcefully locked up (corona-madness) and again, we would have railed and railed against too much insertion into our lives by the government. The old shifting paradigm went from a majority of people wanting collective bargaining, work supports, anything to put the fire to the feet of the bosses, to now — how many right to fire (work) states are there? You have 30 minutes to clear out your dumpy desk sort of Amerika.

States have these supposed safety nets, like unemployment insurance, but that too is a scam, as adjudicators come swooping in and spend hours on both sides of the fired/terminated line, in an attempt to make the terminated person feel shame and feel responsibility for unethical, unimaginable, and wrongful termination.

Do you think people want to talk about that? My so-called leftist friends, well, they would rather not get into the weeds of schmucks like myself fighting for unemployment wages (the dole). Irony of all ironies, that these Unemployment Insurance workers are state hired, sometimes state employees (now they do the deeds from their bloody Zoom Doom/Google Hangout homes). They have jobs, with benefits, because of the long arm of the unethical and putrid arrogance of companies, big and small, for profit and nonprofit, carrying out their daily dirty deeds of sacking people.

No due process.

Hours writing grievances. Hours on the phone with HR directors. Hours filing employment discrimination complaints, and hours filing for unemployment insurance and applying for jobs. Two months later, still in limbo, still no finding of facts in the worker’s favor that he or she was terminated on false allegations of “insubordination,” and alas, there you have it, no income stream for, well, two months.

This is a corrupt, broken, sick, and inhumane system. Typical. One microcosm into even more horrific treatments of us, we, by the people.

While on the other hand, people with time on their hands, would rather muck about with these inane ideas that profess today is as bad as ever in these here United Snakes of America, and today we must bring unlike minded people — Trumpies and Bidenettes — together to agree on the core principles and values of Amerika.

The question is simple: Bridging which political polarization? Capitalism is the all-encompassing bacteria and virus, the cancer of the ages, so there is nothing but oppression on a massive scale. This is a greasy mat of all choking red tide explosions covering the land, the people. Yet, are we talking about left-right divide? Or about the political tyranny of both parties wanting to smear each party respectively? You can take a lifetime researching this country’s history of “polarization,” which of course, for the body public, is no big chasm, but for freaks like me, this is the inherent — DNA baked-in — racism, xenophobia, outright theft of native lands and manifest destiny within this continent’s borders, and beyond that defines this United Snakes of Amerika.

How was that polar opposite as a first people’s, first nations, up against the dirty and slimy Puritans, the first Amerika corporation/monopoly. Brits and Hudson Bay and the theft, theft, theft of land, land, land.

June 14, 2021. Nearing Juneteenth.

The New York Times’ “1619 Project” essays on the arrival of African slaves in Jamestown, Virginia “is not a critique of American exceptionalism – it is an attempt to fold slavery into American exceptionalism,” said Josh Myers, professor of African American Studies at Howard University. “Africans were not seeking to become Americans; they were seeking to be free,” said Myers.

I write this a week or so after the anniversary of “Israel” murdering and wounding  USS Liberty sailors, and that was a cover-up by the enemy and cover-up (8 June 1967) by LBJ, et al.

Those big lies, man, a dime a dozen, so, who the hell is worth their salt, or their own weight in gold, if they can’t imagine more and more assaults on truth, more contrived and planned and organized lockdown madness? Is this the best and the brightest, now? Real doctors losing licenses to practice for saying a hold should be put on vaccinating youth, 12 or younger. Imagine that shifting baseline.

The big lie gets bigger, and out in the open, and so the people are zombies wearing smiley face masks, running around backyards with N95 respirators swatting the famous jumping Covid/SARS2. Fucking looney bin, after fucking looney bin.

And we can’t say that the entire fabric of shit hole Amerikkkaaahhh is finally cracked through? Multiple concussions of the soul, of the intellect? Then, okay, it is part of a plan, bits and pieces of the machinery that was part of the old New Order, old New World Ordering. Now, the New or New-New, or Newest New-New World Order manifestation. An old story spruced up in our all-encompassing 24/7 nano-microprocessed world.

Here, four guys are talking about the New World Order — origins, manifestations, congealed collusions, the hit and miss conspiratorial angle, the disconnectedness of it, along with the conspiracy of a small cabal perpetrating some form of multivariant New World Order. What’s Left is also part of the movement, Left Lockdown Skeptics. 

Alas, on one special scale, the USA (connected to the other Five Eyes, conjoined with secret and overt banking diseased ones, and colluding through all kinds of  strange Masonic and Jewish ties to many headed serpents of propaganda-AI-war-land theft-cultural appropriation) is behind this movement of Imperial-Next Industrial Revolution-New/Old Order(s) to an order of the 100th degree, reaching this point of, well, some of us dissidents witnessing more and more people mired in the fluff, the daily deluge of thousands upon thousands of unimportant and unconnected stories. It is a rape-weather-Space X-#metoo-Q-Anon-etc. mad mad mad world,  to the point of mindlessness and unimportant stories getting us, collectively into this New New World Order of Distractions!

The times were good and the times were bad — they are, for sure. That is the goal, to bring triangulation and divide and conquer operations to levels never even thought of before, to the umpteenth level, so finely parsed and so rarefied, that we don’t know that we are being manipulated into not only dividing and conquering our allies and enemies, but actually conquering our own self-agency, our own will but also staving off our own will to not just fight the bastards, but to fight for our own lives.

America, and the White Culture (sic-sic) is hell-bent on mass murder in so many forms, and that’s not just blunt object force, but sophisticated marketing and propagandistic force. Their weapon is the media, which is the cloud server, the constant data dredging and profile manufacturing. Our pasts are not just open books, but our futures are determined, and we are more than just pawns in some pre-crime sci-fi dilemma.

In the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus of the Civil War, observing that a limb may be sacrificed to save a life, but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. We do not have due process, and the informed consent, and all those supposed freedoms — choice, speech, associations, etc. — out the window for an “emergency” declared by WHO, and, this emergency, it never necessitated huge global deployment of MASH tents, large-scale therapies for those who “got” Covid-19 and large-scale debate and deep thinking about origins and who might have to pay the ferryman.

Charon – Ferryman of Hades

The basic thing is, how frightened are you of chaos? And how happy are you with order?

—Philip K. Dick

Dick makes his Matrix point, and makes it very clearly: “We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs.” These alterations feel just like déjà vu, says Dick, a sensation that proves that “a variable has been changed” (by whom—note the passive voice—he does not say) and “an alternative world branched off.”

Dick, who had the capacity for a very oblique kind of humor, assures his audience several times that he is deadly serious. (The looks on many of their faces betray incredulity at the very least.) And yet, maybe Dick’s crazy hypothesis has been validated after all, and not simply by the success of the PKD-esque The Matrix and ubiquity of Matrix analogies. For several years now, theoretical physicists and philosophers have entertained the theory that we do in fact live in a computer-generated simulation and, what’s more, that “we may even be able to detect it.”  (Source)

Oh say can you see … Is this a computer-generated simulation? Imagine that!

I could go on and on slicing and dicing the sickness of the white order, the white new order, the whites and their knights in shining drone armor. Some simulated universe, uh?

To believe that now is the worst of times, that today is the most polarized of times, is exactly what the overlords want (training us) us (sic) to think and act (react, fight or flight fear). So many ways this is all theater, choreographed and directed by many many mean and monstrous folk. A kind of “matrix,” but not one that is, well, inside the zero’s and one’s and cross-patches of Artificial Intelligence.

You gotta love Phillip K. Dick, and he was a creative mind, a fiction writer. Science Fiction, a whole other realm of right-left brain syncopation.

Again, the webinar I was invited to and partially attended is the precipitating factor in all of this polemic. Here, as follows, the preamble to the webinar  — but with the caveat here, interesting, with this “spectrum” (not real) alluded to:

“Americans from all walks of life representing the full political spectrum. Some align fully within their designated party, while others identify based on values and topics. Within party affiliation, many participants self-identify along the spectrum of conservative, moderate, liberal, or progressive. Yet others self-identify along the spectrum dependent on the topic, for example, fiscally conservative and socially liberal.”

This webinar will be led by Lisa Swallow, Co-founder and Executive Director of SAGE’s partner organization, Crossing Party Lines.

Before the event, please take a few moments to:

Download/print all three attachments so you have them as a reference during the webinar.
In the attachment “Talking About Morals,” fill in the first row of the table with a 1 to 3 sentence summary of your views on each of the three issues presented.

Please see below for additional information on this webinar.

Drawing on the work of Jonathan Haidt and his book, The Righteous Mind, Lisa Swallow will spotlight six moral foundations that are held across cultures and how they manifest in different people at different times. We’ll explore the tensions within our morals, so we can better understand ourselves and our views, and relate to people who may hold different views.

In this webinar you will:

• Learn to recognize the moral underpinnings of your own views;
• Listen for indications that one or more of the six moral foundations is at play in an any political discussion; and
• Bring morality into your political discussions in a non-confrontational way.

We are offering this event through the SAGE Citizen Project, which is an important program to foster conversation across political and other divides. Thank you for joining us.

Warm regards,  Executive Director of SAGE (Senior Advocates for Generational Equity )

The areas that we had to discuss included “homelessness”; “school choice”; and “job loss to artificial intelligence.” There were three categories to jot down ideas: Your Views; Your Morals; Morals-Based Statement.

Well, again, these people are on Zoom, and I don’t know them, and of course, there is no room for building community. I am already a triple-threat — Marxist, communist, anti-authoritarian and anti-Imperialist; skeptical of everything coming out of so-called educated handlers; not a pacifist. To say I am anti-capitalist is a small tip of a larger iceberg. So, I was on the Zoom to see what would shake out, and alas, it was confusing for most of the participants, and, well, I had gardening to do, and getting ready for my sister, 10 years my junior, flying out from the hell-hole that is Chandler/Phoenix (106 degrees in the shade) to visit here, for a few days — highs in the low 60s — so I bowed out after a few odd statements by the facilitator and one or two of the participants.

I’m struggling to find work, once again, but at least the Pacific and the eagles and other wildlife are amazing in my daily dread. You have to take what you can in this world of humble pie, bread crumbs and predatory EVERYTHING.

I just Zoomed off, as the dude who weighed in on the third issue — AI and job loss — just was a beaming you all just don’t know how great and all-encompassing AI is and will be kinda guy:

Listen up. In 20 years there will be no job that AI can’t do better than humans. I’ve been reading science fiction for years, and this is the reality.

He was throwing it out as a know-it-all voice of reason, and he wasn’t pushing back against AI and Control, but reveling in the fact that people on the planet, in his estimation, will be shit out of luck, workwise, and so what are you going to do about it.

So, in a real situation (face-to-face, or in an interchange even on Zoom Doom, with real people with a shit-load of varying views and experiences) that statement would be pulled apart — not only is it wrong, but it’s not accurate, but he seemed to be admitting he has zero knowledge of a world in huge climate heating shifts/crises, and one where land protectors will gain steam, and agriculturalists will gain steam, and people building small communities connected largely will gain steam. He might be mixing up Phillip K. Dick’s great works with some fantasy, something about in fact he missed — most science fiction writers are not proponents of this AI world, or precrime Dystopias, etc., even though they tend to write about these subjects. “Brave New World” is not the goal, nor is One World, New Order, Point-Zero Zero One Percent controlling us all.

But this old fellow, well, he seemed happy to announce — “Listen up folks, but AI will be doing all the jobs in 20 years. Get used to it!”

Well, in the classroom, I suppose, that would be a fun statement to dice and slice up. If he is right — 20 years, uh? — then what are the morals and values of that world, or at least the devolution of humanity in that high income country world? Do we not have hundreds of millions of people — maybe billions —  left out of society? I’m talking about clean water, clean air, food, healthcare and education and just life without strongarms and killers and the taxmen and armed men destroying futures. Billions stuck in this paradigm, and that is most likely you the reader and me the writer. Do people who want simplicity, water, air, soil, simple stuff — community centers, farmers markets, advocacy clinics, outdoor activities, and intergenerational living — are they shit out of luck? Because of transhumanism, fourth industrial revolution, internet of nano things, total awareness/control/destiny?

It’s as if these Baby Boomers who participate in this SAGE thing, or at least some of them, are so old, so scooped out of the muck of mainstream media, that there is no alternative.

“There is no alternative,”  used by the Conservative British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, as her claim that the market economy is the only system that works, and that debate about this is over. Of course she meant “globalized capitalism, so called free markets and free trade, were the best ways to build wealth, distribute services and grow a society’s economy. Deregulation’s good, if not good with the extra ‘o’ missing —  God.”

That’s what that guy is stating — AI is coming, and it’s here to stay, a foregone conclusion. It is the morality set forth by the capitalists, the tax cheats, the supreme leeches of taxpayer goods and services, labor, and of course, government proles. But these SAGE talkers would never critique this Shit Hole USA that way, because the series is about “bridging gaps.”

It is not about free choice, but dictated markets, monopolies, hedge funds, and the immorality of the Complex — Big Pharma (five shots a year, mandatory); Banks (bailed out and swimming in money) ; Real Estate (buying up all the properties of the Planned-demic and the new Zoom/Remote Work model); Education (now pushing more people/faculty out of work for that webinar, for those lower courses sold as enhanced Power Points); Surveillance (DNA for the cops, and total control of humanity through RFIDs, and more); Military (the coin of the realm in Western Civilization — unending pipeline to those Murder Incorporated thugs big and small); Medicine (for the rich, gene editing, stem cell Fountain of Youth, disease management for the poor).

Oh, here’s Paulie’s blurbs that facilitator asked us to offer:

Job Loss to Artificial Intelligence

Your Views

The World Economic Forum, and the intention of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are the drivers of controlling people, controlling communities, and controlling narratives. We need to stop the overlords pushing more and more people away from face to face interaction.

Your Morals

I am an educator, journalist, artist and activist. In no way is this paradigm shift helpful, and we have been co-opted by again the wrong people, and the wrong values.

Morals-Based Statement

We are a people evolved through communities, hunter gathering groups, and agrarian groups. In no way is the AI, Internet of Things, and control of people’s agency through Digital Dashboards.

Homelessness

Your Views

This is a systemic issue, and I have worked as a case manager for many rough sleepers, homeless and those nearly homeless. We have Diaspora worldwide, and we have climate refugees and refugees of neoliberalism and capitalism that puts people behind parasitic usury.

Your Morals

Education, health case, food systems, housing, and cultural engagement are the most important things in life. Having societies set up by financial felons and military industrial complex thieves impact all problems we face in society.

Morals-Based Statement

Social and environmental justice are tops, and ending the world’s largest terrorist organization, USA, from deadly interference into other countries’ destinies.

School Choice

Your Views

The entire education system needs revamped. Community directed, and holistic and creative. Public education has to be experiential and away from this capitalist system of killing creativity and creating worker bees.

Your Morals

I am an ecosocialist, and Marxist, for sure, so liberal to me is a pretty damning term, but in the end, liberal arts, humanities, deep regard for rhetoric, biology, ecology, history, and critical thinking, debate, music, all that makes culture, we have to build creative spirits. There is no choice when the rich or the lucky few out in the boondocks get their home schooling. School choice is another term for charter schools.

Morals-Based Statement

We have seen a public education systems set up to destroy young people’s creativity and genius. It has been delivered through a pernicious system of dictatorial control modeled after the Prussian system of the 1850s.

Look, it’s about translation, and it’s also about narrative framing, and my own expectations tied to what I have lived and experienced and have felt under the strong arm of the law — predatory, competitive, dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest capitalism.

There is a certain intolerance I am developing, and that my fine readers I would have never guessed could have percolated from my tireless soul just two years ago, but over the course of a few dozen months, with the background and foreground radiation/noise of this Pan-Plan-Planned-Demic condemning us to a continuous battery of stupidity and fear, control and a dictatorship of Eichmann’s floating more and more to the top of the scum pile, I am wondering what sort of alliances and allegiances I have developed over the course of, well, shall we say, gulp, five decades? Do those relationships end up on the trash heap of my own history?

There is an endless list of turncoats, and my own reality as age 19 is now at 64, and for some three decades, maybe, or since having a child, now 25, I have played the game, pugnacious, outlier, sure, and rebel and anti-authority, but I let those early years where the burning bush of desert Caterpillar front end loaders and outdoor signs announcing more and more development run wild, and the immolation was liberating and real for me, racing through the Earth First and Liberation Front mentality made sense. Smuggling this and that, and even people, across that Tortilla Curtain.

It all makes sense now, too —

The Unabomber Affair: Ted Kaczynski, also known as the ‘Unabomber’, is a US terrorist known for his 17-year bombing campaign as the terror group ‘FC’, which targeted individuals involved in technical fields like computing and genetics.

In early 1995, the New York Times received a communique from FC in the mail:

This is a message from FC…we are getting tired of making bombs. It’s no fun having to spend all your evenings and weekends preparing dangerous mixtures, filing trigger mechanisms out of scraps of metal or searching the sierras for a place isolated enough to test a bomb. So we offer a bargain.

The ‘bargain’ offered by the group was simple: publish its manifesto, and it will stop sending bombs.

The manifesto, entitled Industrial Society and Its Future, was a 35,000 word polemic detailing the threats that industrial society posed to freedom and wild Nature. At the crux of the document’s analysis was a concept called ‘the power process’, or an innate human need to engage in autonomous goal setting and achievement. Despite this psychological necessity, ‘in modern industrial society, only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one’s physical needs.’ As a result of the mismatch between human need and industrial conditions, modern life is rife with depression, helplessness, and despair, and although some people can offset these side-effects with ‘surrogate activities’, the manifesto says that these are often undignifying, menial tasks. Interestingly, these concepts have numerous parallels in contemporary psychology, the most notable similar idea being Martin Seligman’s concept of ‘learned helplessness’.

Ultimately, the manifesto extols the autonomy of individuals and small groups from the control of technology and large organizations, and it offers the hunter-gatherer way of life as a vision of what that kind of autonomy might look like. Still, the end of the manifesto only argues for the practical possibility of revolution against industry (rather than a complete return to hunter-gatherer life), and it outlines some steps to form a movement capable of carrying out that revolution.

When Kaczynski was apprehended, he looked dirty and disheveled, with an unwashed body and torn clothing and hair that reached in every direction. It was a typical look for Montana men in the winter, but it nevertheless solidified the media image of the man as a lone wingnut. In reality, Kaczynski was very likely a genius. He was accepted into Harvard at the age of 16, later went to the University of Michigan for his Masters degree, and then taught at Berkeley as an assistant professor. His doctoral thesis solved several difficult problems relating to ‘boundary functions’, which even Kaczynski’s math professor, George Piranian, could not figure out. ‘It’s not enough to say he was smart’, Piranian said. (Source).

This is a protestation of the calamity of capitalism, and the brainwashing, and the embedded fear, now, the embedded Spiked Protein of the jabs, the digital passports, the additional fun stuff planned for those boosters. Expect some pretty interesting viral outbreaks, but then, other outbreaks. head Cold 4.0. Strange and mysterious gut ailments. Headaches? Ringing in the ears? Chronic Fatigue Syndromes to the 10th power. West Nile Virus, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Dengue. Zeka. Oh, the scientists, the fear factors, the masks and magic jabs. A pill for this, then that, and for nothing yet, but be prepared.

And the progressives are as bad as the milquetoasts. The leftists, again, lockdown, police intrusions, cabals of global cops, global dictums, and global alliances. Billions pushed through the banks. Elon Musk admits to the Bolivian lithium coup, and he isn’t shackled and renditioned out of here? Right, the plan-planned-planning pandemic.

Richest prick in the world? This is it, man. The biggest lie(s) ever told.

Telling, for me, about this criminal capitalism. Looking at Musk is smelling the rot of this kind of guy, seeing his kind of principles (sic) and his kind of power and money unleashing hell onto the world. Another way to see,  Internationalist 360. Read alternative headlines. Enrich yourselves. These are the worst of times in the best of times for dissidents unraveling the web of lies, deceits, deranged realities of capitalism. Power, man, it is an addiction, looking at it, uncovering it, stripping it of its bullshit uniform and armor. Read — INTERNATIONALIST 360°!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

Cities and counties across the country have banned government use of face surveillance technology, and many more are weighing proposals to do so. From Boston to San Francisco, Jackson, Mississippi to Minneapolis, elected officials and activists know that face surveillance gives police the power to track us wherever we go. It also disproportionately impacts people of color, turns us all into perpetual suspects, increases the likelihood of being falsely arrested, and chills people’s willingness to participate in first amendment protected activities. Even Amazon, known for operating one of the largest video surveillance networks in the history of the world, extended its moratorium on selling face recognition to police.

Now, Congress must do its part. We’ve created a campaign that will easily allow you to contact your elected federal officials and tell them to support the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act.

Face surveillance disproportionately hurts vulnerable communities. The New York Times published a long piece on the case of Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, who was arrested by Detroit police after face recognition technology erroneously identified him as a suspect in a theft case. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on his behalf against the Detroit police.

The problem isn’t just that studies have found face recognition disparately inaccurate when it comes to matching the faces of people of color. The larger concern is that law enforcement will use this invasive and dangerous technology, as it unfortunately uses all such tools, to disparately surveil people of color.

Williams and multiple other Black men (Michael Oliver, Nijeer Parks, Randal Reid, and Alanzo Sawyer) have garnered the attention of national media after face recognition technology led to them being falsely arrested by police. How many more have already endured the same injustices without the media’s spotlight? These incidents show another reason why police cannot be trusted with this technology: a piece of software intended only to identify investigative leads is often used in the field to determine who should be arrested without independent officer vetting.

This federal ban on face surveillance would apply to increasingly powerful agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Customs and Border Patrol. The bill would ensure that these and other federal agencies cannot use this invasive technology to track, identify, and misidentify millions of people.

Tell your Senators and Representatives they must co-sponsor and pass the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act. It was recently introduced by Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Representatives Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), Earl Blumenauer (OR-03), Cori Bush (MO-01), Greg Casar (TX-35), Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), Barbara Lee (CA-12), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), and Jan Schakowsky (IL-09).

This important bill would be a critical step to ensuring that mass surveillance systems don’t use your face to track, identify, or harm you. The bill would ban the use of face surveillance by the federal government, as well as withhold certain federal funds from local and state governments that use the technology. That’s why we’re asking you to insist your elected officials co-sponsor the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, S.681 in the Senate and HR.1404 in the House.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Matthew Guariglia.

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday joined the ranks of progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups voicing opposition to proposals to ban TikTok as Republican Sen. Josh Hawley plans to force a vote on his bill sometime this week.

"I am opposed to efforts by some Republicans and Democrats to unilaterally ban an entire social media platform," Omar (Minn.) said in a statement.

"First of all, I don't like censorship," said Omar. "There are very legitimate concerns about privacy and the harvesting of private user data on social media platforms, but this proposal doesn't address those. Instead, it singles out one platform—TikTok—and bans it outright."

Amid a rise in what Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) has called "xenophobic anti-China rhetoric," U.S. lawmakers have introduced three pieces of legislation that would crack down on TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.

Rep. Michael McCaul's (R-Texas) DATA Act, which passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year, would require the White House to sanction companies that are "subject to the jurisdiction" of China and "believed to have facilitated" the transfer of sensitive personal data.

The RESTRICT Act, introduced by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Thune (R-S.D.), would authorize the U.S. Commerce Department to "review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries," which could trigger a TikTok ban or sale.

Hawley's (Mo.) No TikTok on United States Devices Act, meanwhile, seeks to outlaw TikTok use nationwide.

The far-right lawmaker "plans to seek unanimous consent on the floor this week" to pass his bill, Punchbowl Newsreported Tuesday. Hawley said that "this is the moment to act" after last week's "unbelievable" hearing, during which TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was accosted by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

According to the outlet, Warner and Thune may put forth their competing bill, in which case there's a chance of neither passing the Senate before the Easter recess.

"We should create actual standards and regulations around data harvesting and privacy violations across social media companies—like many countries around the world have already done—not ban particular platforms we don't like."

"Aside from raising legitimate First Amendment concerns, this is bad policy," Omar said Tuesday. "We should create actual standards and regulations around data harvesting and privacy violations across social media companies—like many countries around the world have already done—not ban particular platforms we don't like."

With this line of criticism, Omar echoed Bowman and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose inaugural TikTok video on Saturday endorsed arguments made last month by defenders of digital rights and civil liberties.

Fight for the Future director Evan Greer, for instance, said in February that if members of Congress truly want to protect U.S. residents from the surveillance capitalist business model also embraced by domestic Big Tech firms, "they should advocate for strong data privacy laws that prevent all companies (including TikTok!) from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in what amounts to xenophobic showboating that does exactly nothing to protect anyone."

For her part, Omar stressed that "as a frequent target of disinformation campaigns, I am sympathetic to... concerns that TikTok could be used for propaganda and hate speech."

"But again, this problem is not unique to TikTok," the lawmaker continued. "Twitter, Instagram, and famously, Facebook have all been used by foreign adversaries for disinformation campaigns targeting U.S. citizens. Our regulations should address these broad issues instead of singling out one platform."

"Lastly, there are legitimate concerns about the Chinese government—including their brutal repression of the Uyghur people and their suppression of basic rights of freedom of expression in their country," said Omar. "But banning one social media company based in China will not solve those problems."

"The American model rests on our protection of those freedoms—the ability to speak publicly against the government, or if you choose, to share a 10-second video cooking your favorite meal," she added. "That is the beauty of our democracy and our constitution. That is what sets us apart from authoritarian regimes like China. And that is the example we should set for the world."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

Privacy advocates on Wednesday said testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray at a U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing offers the latest evidence that Congress must take action to keep the government from performing mass surveillance on people across the United States, as Wray admitted the bureau has purchased cellphone geolocation data from companies.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Wray at a hearing about national security threats whether the FBI purchases "U.S. phone geolocation information," showing the location of users.

Wray said the bureau does not currently make such purchases, but acknowledged for the first time that it "previously, as in the past, purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project," drawing on data "derived from internet advertising."

He said the project has been inactive "for some time" but said he could only provide more information about it and the past purchase of geolocation data in a closed session with senators, adding that the FBI currently accesses "so-called ad tech location data" through "a court-authorized process."

"This is a policy decision that affects the privacy of every single person in the United States."

"I think its a very important privacy issue that [geolocation data purchases] not take place," said Wyden, an outspoken advocate for privacy rights.

Grassroots social welfare organization Demand Progress called Wray's admission "both shocking and further proof of the need for Congress to take immediate action to rein in mass surveillance."

"This is a policy decision that affects the privacy of every single person in the United States," said Sean Vitka, the group's policy counsel. "We should have the right to decide when and how our personal information is shared, but instead intelligence agencies continue to obstruct any accountability or transparency around this surveillance."

The revelation came as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is scheduled to expire at the end of the year and as Congress is expected to soon begin debating its reauthorization.

As written, the provision allows the U.S. government to conduct targeted surveillance of people in foreign countries, but intelligence agencies have also used the law to collect data on Americans.

"Congress must fix this before considering any reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act this year," said Vitka of Wray's admission.

Vitka and Fight for the Future director Evan Greer were among the critics who demanded to know "who told [Wray] buying Americans' location info from data brokers would be legal?"

Privacy advocates have long warned that the Supreme Court ruling in the 2018 case Carpenter v. United States, in which the court decided government agencies that accessed location data without a warrant were violating the Fourth Amendment, contains a loophole allowing the government to purchase data that it can't obtain legally.

"The public," Vitka told Wired, "needs to know who gave the go-ahead for this purchase, why, and what other agencies have done or are trying to do the same."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Twenty House Democrats on Monday pressed the Biden administration to immediately halt the flow of security funding to the Peruvian government over its vicious crackdown on protests against unelected President Dina Boluarte, who rose to power following the arrest of leftist President Pedro Castillo last month.

Since Castillo's arrest and imprisonment—which drew vocal opposition from political leaders in the region—mass demonstrations have broken out and spread across Peru as largely low-income and Indigenous supporters of Castillo mobilize to demand his release, Boluarte's resignation, and sweeping constitutional reforms. Peru's security forces have swiftly and violently cracked down in an unsuccessful attempt to quell the uprising, killing more than 50 people and injuring hundreds more.

In a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, a group of House Democrats led by Reps. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) and Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.) condemned the "indiscriminate violence" and "consistent use of excessive force" by Peruvian security forces and urged the administration to "publicly denounce these ongoing human rights violations."

The lawmakers also called on Biden to pause all security funding to Peru, which amounts to tens of millions of dollars annually. The House Democrats pointed with alarm to the U.S. ambassador to Peru's "recent meeting with the Peruvian minister of defense and announcement of $8 million in further U.S. funding for CORAH, a Peruvian government coca eradication program, which includes funding for forces involved in the egregious human rights violations that are currently taking place."

"We urge your administration to immediately suspend U.S. security assistance to Peru until the violent repression of protests ends and steps are taken by the country's authorities to investigate human rights crimes and prosecute those responsible," the lawmakers wrote.

The letter came days after police killed a 55-year-old demonstrator in the Peruvian capital of Lima, where protests have swelled in recent days.

Boluarte, who has imposed curfews in several regions and curtailed civil liberties, is urging Peru's conservative-dominated Congress to approve a plan to hold new elections this year instead of in 2024 in an effort to end the demonstrations. Resisting pressure to resign, Boluarte—who served as vice president under Castillo—has pledged to stay on as president until new elections are held.

As Agence France-Presse reported Monday: "Boluarte said that if lawmakers refused to bring forward the vote, she would propose a constitutional reform so that a first round of elections would be held in October and a runoff in December. Demonstrators are calling for immediate elections, as well as Boluarte's removal, the dissolution of Congress, and a new constitution."

In their letter, the 20 House Democrats raised concern that the Biden administration has granted legitimacy and support to the Boluarte government as it rolls back basic freedoms and kills demonstrators.

Less than two weeks after Castillo's arrest, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a call with Boluarte in which he said he "looks forward" to working with her "on shared goals and values related to democracy, human rights, security, anti-corruption, and economic prosperity."

The Democratic lawmakers also pointed to the Biden administration's expressed support for "peace on all sides," a message that the members of Congress called "ambiguous" in the face of massive human rights violations.

"The U.S. government can and must do more," the lawmakers wrote. "We believe our proposed actions would send a powerful signal in support of fundamental rights and help promote effective engagement for a political resolution."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

— President Harry S. Truman

Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Lockdowns.

This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order.

This is the language of force.

This is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who speak out against government corruption, misconduct and abuse.

These overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear.

We didn’t know it then, but what happened five years ago in Charlottesville, Va., was a foretaste of what was to come.

At the time, Charlottesville was at the center of a growing struggle over how to reconcile the right to think and speak freely, especially about controversial ideas, with the push to sanitize the environment of anything—words and images—that might cause offense. That fear of offense prompted the Charlottesville City Council to get rid of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that had graced one of its public parks for 82 years.

In attempting to err on the side of political correctness by placating one group while muzzling critics of the city’s actions, Charlottesville attracted the unwanted attention of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and the alt-Right, all of whom descended on the little college town with the intention of exercising their First Amendment right to be disagreeable, to assemble, and to protest.

That’s when everything went haywire.

When put to the test, Charlottesville did not handle things well at all.

On August 12, 2017, government officials took what should have been a legitimate exercise in constitutional principles (free speech, assembly and protest) and turned it into a lesson in authoritarianism by manipulating warring factions and engineering events in such a way as to foment unrest, lockdown the city, and justify further power grabs.

On the day of scheduled protests, police deliberately engineered a situation in which two opposing camps of protesters would confront each other, tensions would bubble over, and things would turn just violent enough to justify allowing the government to shut everything down.

Despite the fact that 1,000 first responders (including 300 state police troopers and members of the National Guard)—many of whom had been preparing for the downtown rally for months—had been called on to work the event, and police in riot gear surrounded Emancipation Park on three sides, police failed to do their jobs.

In fact, as the Washington Post reports, police “seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields… At one point, police appeared to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend to the injured.”

“Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville,” reported ProPublica.

Incredibly, when the first signs of open violence broke out, the police chief allegedly instructed his staff to “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.”

In this way, police who were supposed to uphold the law and prevent violence failed to do either.

Indeed, a 220-page post-mortem of the protests and the Charlottesville government’s response by former U.S. attorney Timothy J. Heaphy concluded that “the City of Charlottesville protected neither free expression nor public safety.”

In other words, the government failed to uphold its constitutional mandates.

The police failed to carry out their duties as peace officers.

And the citizens found themselves unable to trust either the police or the government to do its job in respecting their rights and ensuring their safety.

This is not much different from what is happening on the present-day national scene.

Indeed, there’s a pattern emerging if you pay close enough attention.

Civil discontent leads to civil unrest, which leads to protests and counterprotests. Tensions rise, violence escalates, police stand down, and federal armies move in. Meanwhile, despite the protests and the outrage, the government’s abuses continue unabated.

It’s all part of an elaborate setup by the architects of the police state. The government wants a reason to crack down and lock down and bring in its biggest guns.

They want us divided. They want us to turn on one another.

They want us powerless in the face of their artillery and armed forces.

They want us silent, servile and compliant.

They certainly do not want us to remember that we have rights, let alone attempting to exercise those rights peaceably and lawfully, whether it’s protesting politically correct efforts to whitewash the past, challenging COVID-19 mandates, questioning election outcomes, or listening to alternate viewpoints—even conspiratorial ones—in order to form our own opinions about the true nature of government.

And they definitely do not want us to engage in First Amendment activities that challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

Why else do you think WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continues to molder in jail for daring to blow the whistle about the U.S. government’s war crimes, while government officials who rape, plunder and kill walk away with little more than a slap on the wrist?

This is how it begins.

We are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts.

In the wake of the January 6 riots at the Capitol, “domestic terrorism” has become the new poster child for expanding the government’s powers at the expense of civil liberties.

Of course, “domestic terrorist” is just the latest bull’s eye phrase, to be used interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist,” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.”

This unilateral power to muzzle free speech represents a far greater danger than any so-called right- or left-wing extremist might pose. The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

Watch and see: we are all about to become enemies of the state.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

So what’s the answer?

For starters, we need to remember that we’ve all got rights, and we need to exercise them.

Most of all, we need to protect the rights of the people to speak truth to power, whatever that truth might be. Either “we the people” believe in free speech or we don’t.

Fifty years ago, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas asked:

“Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet… [A]t the constitutional level, speech need not be a sedative; it can be disruptive… [A] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”

In other words, the Constitution does not require Americans to be servile or even civil to government officials. Neither does the Constitution require obedience (although it does insist on nonviolence).

Somehow, the government keeps overlooking this important element in the equation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Peaceful protest and civil disobedience are essential in a democratic society – without these mechanisms of peaceful expression, demonstration, and opposition there can be no democracy.

There is no national emergency caused by the Freedom Convoy protesters. Therefore, the government’s use of the Emergencies Act can only be understood as an opportunistic political act intended to eliminate protest that opposes the policies of the sitting government, to manipulate public opinion by further demonizing “the unvaccinated”, and to advance the ongoing degradation of civil liberties in Canada by setting an extreme precedent of governmental intervention to freeze or appropriate the assets of individual citizens who peacefully oppose the policies of the government of the day.

Related statements by other organizations and individuals are linked below:

• Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) statement
• Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) statement
• Statement by Derek Sloan, Leader of the Ontario Party
• “This is the furthest thing from a national emergency one could imagine …” — statement by Ontario lawyer Nicolas Wansbutter
• Twitter thread by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA)

The full text of Prime Minister Trudeau’s February 14, 2022, Emergencies Act announcement can be read at the link here (published by The Peterborough Examiner).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dissident Voice Communications.

As an Ottawa resident and an anarchist, it seems to me that an ultra-leftist analysis at ground zero of this thing is fundamentally necessary, specifically concerning the Canadian Government’s draconian get vaxxed or get fired policy. Having walked the congested downtown of Ottawa, it’s clear that this is an issue that transcends the political spectrum between the left and the right, since all walks of life and political stripes can be found in the downtown these days, contra the mainstream media’s coverage. And the exact point where the left and right sides of the political spectrum meet is upon the Government’s authoritarian application of its get vaxxed or get fired policy.

In short, to throw people out of work during a pandemic is insane and a serious error in judgment and governance. It is a total failure of leadership, policy, bureaucracy, and any form of decent human conduct during a global crisis when people are seriously struggling, both on the left and the right.  It is on this point, and this point alone, that any ultra-leftist analysis must revolve, and I dare say align with the other side of the political aisle. In my estimation, there is no significant issue for the ultra left pertaining to masks, social distancing, and lockdown policies since, from personal experience, it seems these innocuous practices have, to a certain extent, mitigated Covid-19 numbers, especially in my region. After all, people’s health must come before the economy.

However, upon the dreaded get vaxxed or get fired policy, there can be no compromise, no retreat or surrender. The Government is coercively enacting a fascist policy straight out of the 1930’s fascist playbook in order to construct a scapegoat, a lightening rod capable of diverting attention away from the Government’s own major failures during the pandemic. In sum, the Government is attempting to whip the population into a fascist hysterical frenzy of hate and retribution against a small minority of the population so as to absolve the Government of the fact that it has seriously fucked up in a lot of ways. And its get vaxxed or get fired policy (a major Government fuck up) is the mechanism by which the State is ducking its own liabilities, misgivings, and responsibilities. And, from any ultra-left perspective, such draconian State authoritarianism must be met with the unbridled force of anti-authoritarianism, namely, anti-fascism by any means necessary.

I

At the moment, society is in the full-throes of shotgun science, shotgun science being a  State form of one-sided medical science administered by means of coercion, hysteria, and mandated totalitarian threats, rather than any notion of sound reasoned scientific argument and scientific study. In brief, shotgun science is a perversion of the principles of genuine scientific inquiry in service of political power and profit. It is the acceleration of scientific inquiry and scientific study haphazardly in service of political power and profit via the removal of safeguards, as well as an expedited product roll-out coupled with authoritarian mandates, or more specifically, one serious fascist mandate that overrides human rights, liberty, and/or autonomy. Shotgun sciences come into existence when the State arbitrarily installs itself as the great arbiter of scientific truth and falsehood, and shuts down debate and scientific inquiry, thus, fast-forwarding and accelerating the implementation of an inadequate science in and across socio-economic existence regardless of the immediate and long-term consequences.

In short, shotgun science is a one-sided seemingly unanimous science, celebrated and buttressed by the repressive and ideological apparatuses of the State, which silence any and all dissenting voices by means of an underlying sense of terror and coercion, both mental and physical. To quote Paul Feyerabend, a shotgun science may be defined as a “monster Science that speaks with a single voice, [in the sense that it] is a paste job constructed by [a set of State-approved]  propagandists” for political and economic purposes.¹ For Feyerabend, the real sciences never speak with a single voice because the real “sciences are full of conflict”.² As a result, according to Feyerabend, any State-sanctioned shotgun “science cannot stand diverging opinions. [As a result,] it calls them [conspiratorial] lies” and, through the powers of the State apparatus, it strives to silence these diverging opinions and their scientific research permanently. In fact, any shotgun science paints itself to be an “alleged friend of reason, [but] it distorts it [in order] to make [reason fit its political and economic] intentions”.³

In  sum, shotgun science is political anti-science and an exercise in an anti-scientific rationality, despite portraying itself to be the embodiment of the pure spirit of scientific study and scientific rationality. In a word, it is a grotesque distortion of real science in service of profit and a nefarious political agenda. It is the one-sided bias politicization of a science.  And, out of the logic of these shotgun sciences, the Government’s get vaxxed or get fired policy arose and flourished like a poison weed in the brains of our centrist politicians. Whereby, the State squarely places a sawed-off shotgun in the people’s back and declared with its usual smug righteousness, to quote Jean-Francois Lyotard, “adapt [yourself] to our ends—or else”.⁴

II

As a Métis aboriginal, when the liberal governments of the world saw fit to mandate vaccines and vaccine passports under pain of duress, it was clear the government was no longer in support of democracy or rights, but instead preferred the capitalist authoritarianism of big business and big pharma. And not unfamiliar with these types of coercive mandates, aboriginals have a long history of dealing with a State government, drunk on power and a sense of righteousness, who decrees authoritarian mandates, willy-nilly. That is a set of micro-fascist mandates whereby a segment of the population must cough up its children under pain of duress since the government has deemed itself the great arbiter of what is true and what is best for each and all. To note, fascists are the great historical proponents of authoritarian mandates. And like the fascists before them, the liberal governments of the world are rummaging through the fascist playbook for despotic policies in the sense that vaccine mandates and vaccine passports are akin to all those fascist decrees that littered the 1930s. In the liberal Government’s case it is to identify and ban the unvaccinated from employment and from participating in public life. Like the fascists of old, the Government’s get vaxxed or get fired policy is an attempt to exclude and discriminate against a segment of the population simply because they are exercising caution or the individual rights to abstain. And like the fascists of old, the Government is defending its draconian policy in the name of Nationalism, absolute power, and the (health) purity of the people, specifically, those people who support the Government’s political agenda, unconditionally.

The injection mandate and passports discriminate against people’s right to choose, to move freely, and most importantly, to make a living. For example, abortion rights have given women the right to choose what they do with their bodies, pertaining to a specific medical procedure. And the same should apply with vaccines. People must be given the right to choose what they do with their bodies pertaining to a specific medical procedure regardless of consequences. This is what democracy and human rights are all about. You cannot pick and choose which rights you will champion on a given issue and which rights you will stomp on because it suits your myopic political agenda.

Imagine an employer or the State giving women the ultimatum: you either get an abortion or you get fired, this is our business policy. You must submit to the specific medical treatment of our work establishment or you starve on the unemployment line, either/or. In the sense that to work for us, you must resign your bodily autonomy to us, to do with as we please, medically. Like Doctor Mengele, who medically experimented with prisoners of the German State against their bodily autonomy and will, the Liberal Government is flirting with the same fascist modus operandi. Although, not as extreme, the same logic applies with mandatory vaccination and passports, get vaxxed or get fired. And clearly, being fired is the labor market equivalent of facing a fascist firing squad.

III

Ultimately, the State is ill-equiped and too ideologically partisan to be able to make any type of informed decision as to what people should put in their bodies pertaining to a specific medical treatment. We would call any government, who attempts to impose a ban on abortion, fascist.

And, in all honesty, it is our democratic duty at the moment to categorize the current liberal government and all its obedient media lackeys as fascists for supporting these get vaxxed or get fired policies. Because that is what they are — when these authoritarians and totalitarians attempt to arbitrarily remove rights from a segment of the population because this segment does not buy into the State-manufactured ideological tripe paraded before our eyes.

Abortion rights and vaccine injection rights are the same thing. You cannot champion abortion rights for one segment of the population, allowing them to make an informed decision about their own bodies, while denying the same rights to others when it comes to a different medical treatment. This is what Systemic Discrimination is, People!

It is giving leeway and rights to one segment of the population through State policies while denying another segment of the population the same rights, through another set of State policies. And both abortion rights and vaccine refusal rights work according to the same logic. That is, people must have bodily autonomy and bodily governance over their own bodies pertaining to their own personal decisions concerning various types of medical procedures. Whether it is abortion rights or the right to refuse a shitty vaccine, choice must fall with the individual and never with the State! In the sense that the State is too political, too partisan, too heavy-handed, clunky, bureaucratic, and mediocre to fully grasp the plethora of nuances, varieties, and differences found throughout the general-population. The State’s only job is to offer safe medical options and never to coercively impose by force one option upon the general-population, by means of terror, the terror of unemployment, a shotgun in people’s faces.

IV

History repeats itself, but, history repeats itself in a different form every time, hence its cunning and its ability to dupe the gullible over and over again. And like the authoritarian residential school mandates applied to aboriginals, once again we are faced with a totalitarian coercive mandate against our will and under pain of duress by a government who has lost its mind, but nonetheless, once again, has the gerrymandered support for its vile authoritarian State decrees, which are anti-democratic and straight out of the fascist playbook. Sunny ways have degenerated into an authoritarian State nightmare.

As a result, there is a strong likelihood that our future descendants, one hundred years from now or sooner, after endless denials, white-washing, and the smothering of facts by the State and its media propagandists, will be privy to another flurry of half-hearted apologies by another set of mediocre State-officials, bemoaning another State tragedy that could have been avoided if cooler and smarter heads had prevailed. And this time around, the teary-eyed apologies will be about the handling of Covid-19 and the implementation of the authoritarian State injection mandate and passports. Aboriginals know these half-hearted apologies all too well and have been their recipients all too often.

To have doubt; i.e., healthy doubts, is the cornerstone of any real science. To quote Paul Feyerabend, “science is not one thing, it is many. Science…[is] a wide variety of [opinions and] products held together, rather artificially (or should I say artistically) by a single name”.⁵  Science is never completely unanimous. It is never totalitarian. It is messy with many diverging verities. As Feyerabend states, “science is full of lacunae and contradictions”.⁵  Science does not speak in a single voice and does not offer a single coherent viewpoint, no matter how hard the State tries to pass off its shotgun science as unified, safe, and without side effects. Indeed, there are many undocumented side effects, not including the State-manufactured trauma of having to face unemployment head-on, due to a set of State-approved, authoritarian micro-fascist injection mandate. From an aboriginal perspective, the get vaxxed or get fired policy raises the spectre of colonialism all over again in a new guise, that is, the guise of bio-colonialism, bio-colonialism being the forceful application of State coercion via the medical community upon a racial minority who refuse to abide by a shoddy ineffective science.

Ultimately, doubt and plurality are central features of science, scientific rationality, and scientific inquiry. They are the double-helix at the center of science, by which science oscillates, and slowly, carefully, and rationally advances. And when the State shuts down dissenting voices and freedom of choice, it turns science into a grotesque monstrosity. It turns science against scientific rationality and/or logical-reason, that is, the pivot upon which any genuine science is founded and developed. In fact, the State transforms science into a totalitarian, I dare say, fascist-like Frankenstein monster, one that goose-steps across the globe with ear plugs in and blinkers on, regardless of the collateral damage it causes.  In short, science only becomes totalitarian when it is super-charged by a State-manufactured army of submissive centrist extremists, who saturate and populate the offices and cubicles of the State apparatus, as well as the talking slots of the mainstream media, spewing the State talking points on cue, devoid of critique and/or critical thinking.

In fact, a good rule of thumb is that whenever any State-approved scientist talks to you about the unanimous authoritarian nature of a specific science, you are in the presence of a quack, peddling another shotgun science. A quack is, by definition, a medical stool pigeon, who quacks on cue the latest platitudes presented to him or her by the State. A quack is a person with medical credentials who, being quite mediocre in the general practice of medicine and the general research of science and, broadly speaking, the philosophy and inherent ethics of science, finds refuge upstairs in the corridors of State power, that is, in the special administrative channels of scientific institutions as an obedient government lackey and spoke-person, namely, a quack on demand.  To reiterate Feyerabend, “there is not a single science”.⁶ Thus, whenever, you hear State officials or State-approved scientists speak in absolutes, you are in all likelihood being forced-fed a soup of verbal diarrhea by a government lackey, a quack at the beck and call of the higher-ups in the Medical-Darwinian hierarchical pyramid.

V

All things considered, there is nothing abnormal or conspiratorial about having serious doubts about a fast-food, shotgun type of government science, which is being rammed down the throats of citizens, a double-barrel shotgun pressed tight against the curve of their backs, care of the State and our profit-driven capitalist employers. In the short-term, these shotgun sciences are shoddy and full of questions and untested hypotheses. And most shotgun sciences lead to catastrophes in the long run, akin to the authoritarian mandated horror show that was John A. Macdonald’s State-approved residential school genocidal program.  In fact, any shotgun science works best under the heavy blanket of ideology and hysteria since shotgun science is political and economic, first and foremost. And the liberals, whether federal or municipal, have showered the National airwaves with gallons upon gallons of mass hysteria. One only needs to examine the news coverage of the Freedom Convoy’s first weekend in Ottawa to see an endless parade of Government lackeys, hysterical politicians, propagandists, and State-partisan news journalists, hysterically attempting to manufacture large-scale public hysteria against the convoy and in favor of drastic forms of State-repression (Goebbels would be so proud of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s dreadful one-sided coverage that initial weekend).

Notwithstanding, this is the operationa mechanics of shotgun science, namely, how it functions and operates on the ground; how it uses a mainstream media monolgue, devoid of critique and/or dissent, to drown out any and all opposing viewpoints to its own State-manufactured, distorted, alternate pseudo reality. Shotgun science conceals its own scientific inadequacies by pounding a State-manufactured scapegoat, politically, ideologically, and economically, that is,  a scapegoat of the State’s own design. In the sense that all shotgun sciences are foremost concerned with profit and the submission of the general population to the State. Shotgun science is about political, ideological, and economic profitability at the expense of a State-manufactured scapegoat. It is about the health of the State and its State power before the health of the citizenry.

Like the despot John A. Macdonald before, the federal government and its provincial and municipal underlings, have returned to John A.’s preferred mode of State terror so as to ram through another set of dubious State policies, namely, another round of dubious authoritarian John A. State mandates, namely, the get vaxxed or get fired State-policy. However, this time around, the State-imposed colonialism is biological in nature. It is bio-colonialism. That is, the coercive enforcement of a State-mandated medical treatment against the free will and autonomy of indigenous persons and/or the general-population. Like abortion rights for women, medical rights apply to all people. Everyone has the right to choose what they put into their own bodies, what treatment they will subject themselves to.

Yet, the average vaccine-marinaded citizen is giving full-fledged support to our government’s bio-colonialist John A. authoritarian mandate, oblivious to the financial consequences of such flagrant despotism. In the sense that most citizens are spellbound by the government’s vox populi, bellowing loudly and incessantly from the government’s bull-horn, namely, the State-gospel according to the CBC, the Canadian Brainwashing Corporation.

Therefore, at this exact moment in history, to refuse shoddy vaccination is one of the most courageous and heroic things a person can do right-now, especially as an ultra-leftist. Any State that partakes in authoritarian shotgun science must be resisted since all forms of authoritarianism must be resisted, at whatever the cost.  And, as an anarchist and an aboriginal, I will not submit to another State-approved authoritarian mandate like the ones imposed upon my indigenous ancestors. To exercise caution and patience, when it comes to these fast-food shotgun sciences, is good practice. No one should take the Government at its word without doing his or her due diligence.

Due to the fact that when the State and a shoddy science make a covenant, science is no longer benign and neutral. Indeed, science becomes a political and economic force, a highly partisan politico-economic force, whose notion of consensus becomes like that of the State, namely, that consensus is subjugation. In the sense that, according to the State, a consensus is reached when all dissenting voices are silenced, ignored, and/or marginalized into acquiescence, due to the fact that, for the State apparatus, consensus and subjugation are one and the same thing. One implies the other. Subjugation is consensus and consensus is subjugation, according to the State.

In a nutshell, the State builds consensus by silencing all dissenting voices, and, according to the State, a dissenting voice not heard is a consenting voice, nodding jubilantly in approval. Thereby, the fundamental values of real science; i.e., inquiry, debate, counter-argument, doubt, rationality, independent research etc., are usurped and made inoperative when, by covenant, the State absorbs a science into its partisan authoritarian agenda.  And, at that moment, scientific inquiry is corrupted by the State. It becomes an ideological tool of statecraft. It becomes a shotgun science, a degenerate version of its former self, whereby the verity of scientific facts, scientific rationality, and the efficacy of scientific treatments are in the end determined by the partisan political agenda of the State and, more importantly, capitalist profit. The motto of any shotgun science backed by the State, is: “a patient cured is a customer lost”.  As Feyerabend states, when science is subjugated to the State, scientific “research in large institutes is [no longer] guided by Truth and Reason, but by the most rewarding [element of the economy, namely,]…money”.⁷   And  the authoritarian vaccine mandate and passports are a sure way for the State to make sure that Big Pharma gets the large sums of money and big profits it so desperately desires and has forcefully imposed upon the Liberal Governments of the world.

Thus, regardless of the consequences, authoritarianism in all its forms, medical or otherwise, must be resisted by any means necessary if need be. And indeed, I am willing to put my money where my mouth is, willing to sacrifice my employment (or worse) for the most basic founding principle of any open-participatory democracy, ANTI-AUTHORITARIANISM! Better to die, principles intact, with a breathing machine stuffed-down my throat than to submit to a set of duplicitous State officials who are currently dabbling in fascist John A. mandates and a new State form of hard-line paternalistic authoritarianism.

And no-one should want to live in a world where the State exercises blatant forms of State-sanctioned fascist decrees at the expense of democracy and democratic human rights. It is better to give one’s life for anti-authoritarianism and cherished human rights than to live under the fascist thumb of a set of centrist liberal fanatics and their degenerate Statecraft experiments in hard-line totalitarian despotism!

Bottom-line, the spirit of any real science is never despotic.  It only becomes so when the capitalist State apparatus subjugates it for its own political and economic ends. Because, as Feyerabend states, “science [is comprised of] many different [scientific] areas…which are run by people with different interests and, [thus], produce widely differing results”.⁸  Real science does not require a State-sanctioned shotgun in one’s face in order to be accepted as fact as the grounding factuality of any real science invariably converts rational people to its basic scientific facts over an extended period of time without the threat of unemployment and/or any hard-line anti-democratic mandate or passport.

Only by means of the State and its zombie army of State-approved medical quacks can the creative spirit of scientific study be extinguished and turned into something authoritarian, that is, the tyranny of science over scientific rationality, scientific inquiry, and sound ethics. To quote Feyerabend, it is “by irrational means such as propaganda, emotion,… [that] a blind faith [in any shotgun]…science [becomes]…sound knowledge”.⁹ In short, as the saying goes, a well-crafted State falsehood has the chance to go half-way around the world before the truth can even get its pants on. Or more apropos, a shoddy shotgun science has the chance to go into the blood-stream of half the world’s population before genuine scientific research can even get its syringe filled and ready to counter the government’s own credentialized snake oil peddlers, namely, the snake oil peddlers of these dubious State-sanctioned shotgun sciences.

All in all, according to Feyerabend, the shotgun sciences are nowadays first and foremost “business enterprises run on business principles”, backed by the power of the State.¹⁰  And, when it comes to any shotgun science, the ethics and principles of real science are muted in favor of the profit imperative and the political agenda of the State, which are the central pillars of any shotgun science. The point is power and profit. The point is to manufacture ideological hysteria in service of greater profits and more draconian powers.

Unfortunately, the liberal-centrist State has descended into a form of radical centrist extremism with its injection mandate, passport, and these shotgun sciences. The fact of the matter is we the people are being ideologically massaged by the State and its media outlets daily, so they can change the narrative and cover up their errors, failures, and mishaps through their very own creative statistical experimentations.

VI

In the meantime, by State mandate, the vast majority of the global citizenry line up on the global treadmill of these assembly-line shotgun sciences like Christian parishioners looking for absolution by syringe; i.e., 1 shot, 2 shots, 3 shots, 4 shots etc., endlessly into the future, year after year, with no end in sight, cash registers ringing with sweet delight. Indeed, not until the citizenry is aptly marinaded by the revelry of State ideology and the periodic unexplained fevers and strokes of these new shotgun sciences run-amok can the citizenry be deemed fit for work, fit for public service, and fit for democracy, according to these John A. authoritarian neo-liberals.

Norms about truth and falsehood are based upon ethical decisions. Ethics is the basis that drives real science and real scientific inquiry, and when the ethics are corrupt, duplicitous, and down-right authoritarian, shotgun science is the result. Thus, when any shotgun science, backed by the overwhelming power of the State, is put into practice, it is inevitable that there will be collateral damage; i.e., accidents, accidents conveniently buried by government statistics and propaganda.

In fact, as if by magic, the grim reality of these vaccine accidents will be massaged by the State. They will be given a thorough rubdown by the State. Whereas any damning visible facts will be downplayed by the soothing digital touch of creative statistical massages, care of the mind-numbing propagandists of the State. To quote Feyerabend, “scientific ideas [and empirical data] can be modified in many ways, [since, empirical data]…can be interpreted in a strict way and in more lenient ways. [Ultimately, State] models are [never] direct pictures of reality”, no matter how much the zombie army of State medical quacks repeat this State-sanctioned talking point on cue with ardent religious regularity. There will always be more than one way to fry an egg.¹¹

In the final analysis, any hard-edge scientific facts against the State’s partisan agenda are to be polished clean, care of the many docile, obedient, and hopelessly servile State officials and/or medical professionals looking for a little morsel of media recognition. As a result, any hard-edge scientific facts will be concealed from public view and public scrutiny, hidden conveniently inside the broad general data sets, numbers, and numeric models, paraded before our screens by the functions and operations of State-manicured modeling, devoid of critique and/or dissent because dissent and critique have been outlawed by the State and its partisan media outlets. Like residential schools statistics, the numbers will be massaged in favor of the State and its civil servants. To quote Feyerabend, “empirical evidence is [always] sifted and str’amlined in accordance with [a State-approved] criteria that were [ultimately] developed in a [government] office” so as to serve the State’s partisan agenda rather than the principles of rigorous scientific inquiry. ¹²

In the end, the State must preserve its purity, sanctity, legitimacy, and supremacy first and foremost, even when it is wrong and/or makes a slew of significant errors along the way. It must always be perceived to be empathetic and on the right side of history, even when it is not. And to do this, the State must have the final say on what constitutes scientific truth. Therefore, according to Feyerabend, “power over minds and institutions [plays an] important…role in [any State] science”, despite the fact that “questions of [scientific] reality are too important to be left [solely] to [the State’s zombie-army of politically pliable] scientists”.¹³

In truth, the individual must be given reasonable room and freedom to rationally decide what constitutes scientific verity for him or herself without State-sanctioned consequences. Thus, when the State takes an authoritarian paternalistic stance against freedom of choice by outlawing the freedom of choice of individuals, the State shows its true colors. That is, the State shows it is inherently totalitarian, nothing but a mechanism of subjugation, working on behalf of a small aristocracy; i.e., the 1 percent and Big Pharma, against the general-population, namely, the 99 percent, which the State seeks to keep docile, ignorant, and in the dark about the real scientific facts. For Feyerabend, “every [science] has opponents”.¹⁴  And when, these opponents are censored, bullied, and/or prevented from freely sharing and freely choosing to abstain, scientific advancement and scientific rationality are short-circuited. They are short-circuited in service of super profits and State ideology. Whereby scientific advancement and scientific rationality are distorted beyond recognition in service of State propaganda, State ideology, and the instant profitability of these weaponized shotgun sciences. For the aboriginal community, this is means a new and improved form of State-sanctioned, John A. bio-colonialism, whereupon, aboriginals and the general-population must donate their bodies, including those of their children, in service of the State, which, like its past, the State denied aboriginals their human rights, not to mention the rights of the general-population.

Conclusion

As the residential school catastrophe has shown, regardless of the immediate costs, the State will never admit wrongdoing or immediate errors in judgment, until generations upon generations have passed on and the initial State-sanctioned trauma has been significantly dulled in people’s minds. Then, and only then, after many decades, with overflowing crocodile tears, akin to the crocodile tears pouring out of any well seasoned actor or actress, the State will offer up a plethora of empty apologies, worthy of a Shakespearean melodrama since its supremacy is now secured and no longer threatened by the obvious ineptitude of its own State-personnel.

Ultimately, whenever the State resorts to totalitarian mechanisms such as shotgun science, vaccine passports, and a get vaxxed or get fired policy, it does so foremost in order “to keep the capitalist production machine going”, in the sense that keeping the capitalist production machine going is the prime objective of the State, not the lives of people, per se.¹⁵  The health of people is only a distraction and/or a secondary consideration to corporate interests.

Thus, by forcefully injecting the public with doses upon doses of a shoddy shotgun science, including a constant stream of State-propaganda, according to Feyerabend, it “only shows how little objectivity there is in [these so-called shotgun] scientific arguments”, peddled to us daily by the State’s zombie-army of medical quacks/lackeys.¹⁵

It is true, as Feyerabend argues, that  State “science…seems [to be] an irresistible force,…but only if you…give into the PR of the [State] science mafia”, since, in actuality, as Feyerabend articulates, “different sciences have vastly different [voices and] ideologies”.¹⁶ In the sense that genuine science is never authoritarian and/or unified. Real science is a plurality. It is open-ended and full of scientific deviations and mutations. To quote Feyerabend, real “science is…complex and heterogeneous”.¹⁷ Or more specifically, “there are many different kinds of scientists [and] there are [many] different [ kinds of scientific] opinions”, nothing is truly settled or unanimous in the real sciences, once and for all.¹⁸ Real science is always evolving and rewriting its paradigms. It is only the shotgun sciences that are truly unanimous, unitary, and static once and for all, but they are only unanimous, unitary, and static by means of State terror; i.e., the forceful acquiescence of the general-population to a shoddy ineffective science by means of State coercion, namely, by way of the shotgun; i.e., by way of an authoritarian mandate and passport.

When all is said and done, to quote Feyerabend, “the sciences are [never] the last authority” and, even more so, when it concerns the validity of any shotgun science.¹³  The final authority is always the individual. And to deny and forcefully subjugate the individual to the State is the historical definition of fascism. And, if the barbarism of the residential schools has taught us anything, it is that any fascist-like tyranny, like mandatory injections, must be opposed with every fibre of one’s being no matter the cost, especially if this fascism stems from the authoritarian paternalism of the State. And no matter how benevolent the State and its submissive lackeys paint themselves out to be in the biased mainstream media, the fact of the matter is John A. authoritarian mandates are despotic and piss all over indigenous rights to self-governance and the personal bodily autonomy of the general-population. In essence, the State apparatus is riven with incompetence and mediocrity, as the best and brightest are blocked from the upper echelons of the State apparatus due to the fact that they do not subscribe heart and soul to the dominant State ideology and the religious centrist fanaticism of its State officials, who have lost all scruples to the grand spectacle of bio-colonialism and these shotgun sciences.

All told, true science is conflict. It is a plurality of miniature power struggles in and across a litany of micro-fronts, concerning what is true and what is false, what is ethical and what is not whereby the freedom of the individual always has the final say. To violently repress individual freedom and coercively impose another form of State-sanctioned colonialism; i.e., bio-colonialism, upon aboriginals, or anyone for that matter, is to castrate democracy and  transform all indigenous rights, and all human rights into a joke, a falsity without consistency in its application.

Overall, real science is one of the most important theaters of power struggle, that is, the power struggle in between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. And the pandemic has only intensified these power struggles, having clearly demonstrated that the State invariably sides with the 1 percent and the economy against the 99 percent and its bodily autonomy.  In the age of totalitarian capitalism, the State delivers its health services and recovery benefits by means of terror, that is, by means of a sawed-off shotgun, the sawed-off shotgun of State-sanctioned unemployment and the terror of financial ruin.

My Body! My Land! My Governance!

Postscript

The most vile aspects of history tend to repeat themselves in new disguises, and like John A. Macdonald before, we the people are witness once again to a State government stomping on aboriginal rights and people’s rights to self-governance and bodily autonomy. The State is attempting to purge non-compliant people from employment, so as to reassert its power against a segment of the population it seeks to utterly destroy financially. Thus, we must break the ideological spell of the State, its despotism, and its latest doctored platitudes that seem to indicate that the vast majority of people are devoid of critical thinking and lack any adequate understanding of what actually constitutes human rights!

Any time the State resorts to John A. authoritarian mandates, whether it is mandated residential school attendance or mandated vaccinations, the State is partaking in an excessive use of force against a minority, a minority of the population, which the State sees fit to exterminate and humiliate so as to safeguard and enlarge its power and supremacy into the future. The State has learnt nothing from the mandated atrocities it has sanctioned in the past! Thus, it is doomed to repeat another set of discriminatory acts, because, once again, it puts its faith in John A. authoritarian mandates against a minority, a specific segment of the general-population it seeks to crush into acquiescence.

All told, having sufficiently learnt the lessons of my residential school ancestors, there will be no reconciliation here! I will not submit to another anti-aboriginal John A. authoritarian mandate, imposed by a government out of control and out of its mind, whatever the cost! Due to the fact that the State and its government lackeys are clearly high on liberal ideology and fascist bio-accelerations. And now, the State is functioning and operating beyond the pale of reasonable restraint and any decent human conduct. Sunny ways have devolved into an authoritarian nightmare! And if the State does not return from the brink of authoritarian catastrophe, it will have to be forcefully demolished, one way or another.

Because  I will not be marinaded ad nauseam by any type of State-sanctioned fast food shotgun science! I will not be another guinea pig, another faceless numeric bar code on a cell phone, another compliant pin cushion of a failed State, attempting to line the pockets of Big Pharma; i.e., those corporate aristocrats who are really calling the shots inside those so-called liberal governments of the world!

All in all, we are faced with an anti-democratic, authoritarian-paternalist State right now. And it has learnt nothing from John A. Macdonald and his degenerate daddy-knows-best, authoritarian genocidal fascism, that is, the unmitigated terror of his authoritarian residential school mandates! Therefore, faced with the Government’s get vaxxed or get fired policy, I can only raise my fists to the sky and yell out with certain conviction, resolve, and an inflexible iron will:

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. Paul Feyerabend, The Tyranny Of Science, ed. Eric Oberheim (Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press, 1996)  p. 56.
2. Ibid, p. 56.
3. Ibid, p. 74.
4. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, p. 64.
5. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, (London, England: Verso, 2010) p. 204.
6. Ibid, p. 203.
7. Paul Feyerabend, The Tyranny of Science, ed. Eric Oberheim (Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press, 1996) pp. 73-74.
8. Ibid. p. 9.
9. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, (London, England: Verso, 2010) p. 113.
10. Paul Feyerabend, The Tyranny of Science, ed. Eric Oberheim (Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press, 1996) p. 73.
11. Ibid, p. 50.
12. Ibid, p. 47.
13. Ibid, p. 51.
14. Ibid, p. 66.
15. Ibid, p. 53.
16. Ibid, p. 55.
17. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, (London, England: Verso, 2010) p. 105.
18. Paul Feyerabend, The Tyranny of Science, ed. Eric Oberheim (Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press, 1996) p. 57.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michel Luc Bellemare.

I want to address the prime minister: No matter what you do, we will hold the line. There are no threats which will frighten us. We will hold the line.

— Tamara Lich, convoy organizer, 14 February 2022

Justin Trudeau had cornered himself by grotesquely smearing the trucker convoy and its supporters as racist, misogynist, fringe, anti-science, vandals, and otherwise holding unacceptable views. He is unable to negotiate a peaceful outcome because he has refused to speak to the pro-freedom/anti-mandate protest movement.

Many of the truckers have insisted they aren’t leaving the capital of Ottawa. This is despite Trudeau trying his darndest to get them to leave. In addition to his invective against the truckers, he tried to have their funding cut off, he had jerry cans bringing fuel to the truckers seized, and he beefed up the police presence to cower them. All to no avail.

Meanwhile, Trudeau’s popularity has been tanking among Canadians. Desperate, he resorted to a nuclear option from his father Pierre Trudeau’s days. In Pierre’s case, he invoked the War Measures Act during the October Crisis in 1970 to fight the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec), terrorists seeking Quebec’s separation from Canada. The FLQ had kidnapped British diplomat James Cross and Quebec labor minister Pierre Laporte, the latter being killed by the FLQ.

The situation in Pierre’s day was decidedly different from the situation now for Justin’s invocation of, what is now called, the Emergencies Act. Justin has undertaken an extraordinary action to grab extra powers to handle the pro-freedom protests across the country. Perversely, Justin’s power grab would further diminish freedoms. One can only imagine how the truckers, who have vowed not to leave Ottawa until the mandates are removed, will react to the increased diminution of freedoms.

One side will be crushed in this final showdown.

“It is now clear that there are serious challenges to law enforcement’s ability to effectively enforce the law,” said Trudeau.

Effectively enforcing constitutional law is what former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford is seeking, citing Justin’s mandates as abrogating Canada’s Charter of Rights. These charter rights were enacted by Pierre Trudeau’s government along with nine provinces, one of which was Peckford’s.

Justin Trudeau calls the emergency measures “reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address.”

Is the convoy a threat? Up to now, the demonstration has been peaceful. However, the convoy poses a threat to the political viability of Justin Trudeau. And as for threats, Trudeau’s tweet sounds eerily close to a threat, even toward the kids of truckers:

Make no mistake: The border cannot, and will not, remain closed. Every option is on the table. So, if you’re participating in these illegal blockades that are taking our neighbourhoods and our economy hostage, it’s time to go home – especially if you have your kids with you.

Make no mistake: The border cannot, and will not, remain closed. Every option is on the table. So, if you’re participating in these illegal blockades that are taking our neighbourhoods and our economy hostage, it’s time to go home – especially if you have your kids with you.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 11, 2022

The Emergencies Act also allows the government to direct banks to freeze money for the protestors.

Cryptocurrency exchanges surely welcome such an action.

To invoke the Emergencies Act, the government must demonstrate that a state of emergency exists, and it must be approved by the parliament within seven days.

Errol Mendes, a professor of constitutional and international law at the University of Ottawa, opined, “If you look at what’s happened not just in Ottawa but at the Ambassador Bridge and Coutts, Alberta and in BC, essentially we have a national emergency.”

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) demurs:

The federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: the Act allows government to bypass ordinary democratic processes. This standard has not been met.

The federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: the Act allows government to bypass ordinary democratic processes. This standard has not been met. 1/3

— Canadian Civil Liberties Association (@cancivlib) February 15, 2022

Mendes argues that asking poses a national security threat: “You have this small group basically asking the government to do whatever they want. That’s the national security problem.”

It is true that relative to the Canadian population the truckers are a small group. However, that argument applies more so to the federal government. The members of parliament are a small group demanding, not asking, Canadians comply with mandates.

For whatever likes on a tweet are worth, the CCLA tweet (14 February 5:36 PM) has received 52.3 K likes while Trudeau’s tweet (14 February 8:36 PM) making clear the government’s position has received 5470 likes.

Granted, it is a ballsy move by Trudeau, but even more ballsy has been the “righteous dissidence” of the convoy of truckers in taking on the government and its gendarmes by behaving peacefully, being friendly, and keeping the streets clean. Crime has dropped during the protest.

The lines have been drawn. One of two likely outcomes will likely prevail: either Canadians will sacrifice their freedoms and comply with the mandates or the mandates will be repealed and Trudeau will have to step down.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

This piece is in the local rag, again, Newport, Lincoln County, Oregon. On the coast. (see story/Op-ed below — Newport News Times.)

Yes, the world is a microcosm in places wherever you find yourself, if you are willing to explore how universality is a common thread for most people, excluding the elites and rich and super-rich and sociopaths in those classes as well as down and dirty people born from a bad seed or with the evil encased in DNA. If you are willing to believe that not all humanity and all cultures frame their needs and wants and goals the same, but that we mostly want peace, prosperity, justice and a safe, clean, working world.

You can look at, say, Israel, and see that that apartheid state, that colony, well, the roots are there to apply the same sort of overall logic of oppression and land theft and human subjugation we see in the White United States of America. Imagine, ripping land away from people — Original Peoples — and then creating a policy of civilian (white) patrols and military patrols as part of an eradication policy to rid people of their ancestral land, but to rid the people altogether. Call it Indian Removal, Pacification or Assimulation, but like modern day “Israel,” the policy then was to remove people from being. From a future. From their right to travel freely. The system then got legalized, full of the lies of governments breaking treaties (all of them) to facilitate Manifest Destiny and Expansion for the rich. Those sociopaths I allude to above!

Now, again, more patronizing “month” number 12 to give lip service to Black people of this land. Black History Month now, in a time of right-wing hate of alternative (real) history and overall white disgust for the lives of Blacks now and Blacks then. This month of Netflix Black specials and other lip service fandangos seem like another blip on the screen of this out and out systemic and over hatred of people questioning their place here.

Black Lives Matter — the movement — was better than, well, nothing, and, sure, capitalism and egoism did take it down the ugly road of cooption and Hollywoodization. But. Yes, police are murderers, and so is the military, and then, defacto, we as taxpayers and citizens are part of that murder inc. See-speak-hear-rebuff no evil? Amerikkkaaah.

Then, this concept of wanting a campus with some semblance of “pacification” makes sense in this time of outright bigotry. Cancel Culture is an outgrowth of the fear porn Media have served up. Ivory Tower pencil necks, many of them in the Chosen Few class, they have messed up college, for sure. Bowing to elites, to the professional managerial class, and then fawning the super-stars of Capitalism, well, that’s the new normal for millions.

But throwing out the babies with the bathwater, that is the new normal with blogs, podcasts, YouTube shows, and infinite blathering on Instagram and TikTok lambasting everything tied to liberalism, to socialism, to a new way forward.

If you were to come back from the dead, say, dead in 1957, there would be an amazing schizophrenia buzzing in your head with all of the noise, the digital dimwit traffic, all of it, bombarding you dead sucker each second of the resurrection. To believe universities would not be subject to virtue signaling and cancel culturing, and to believe that snowflake making would not be the outgrowth of this dastardly warring, mean, racist society, that is, if you don’t get cause and effect, the why and how, then you have had to have lived in a toxic bubble of echo after echo of your own malfeasance.

What is good about Black Empowerment and Black History is certainly demonstrated by folks over at Hood Communist and Black Agenda Report, to name just a few. Black Alliance for Peace is another group. But most people do not tie into those sites, those thinkers on those sites.

The problem is that in USA, everything is turned into celebrity fawning or celebrity denigrating. Of course, Whoopi Goldberg is too rich and too stupid to understand what she was attempting to say on that stupid show about the Holocaust not being about race. She gets suspended for two weeks. Bizarre. All of it. The fact I am writing about it!

Of course, we have endless prattling and war mongering from African Americans, who should know what their place has been in the eyes of all administrations, even the one with the mixed race Obama. Blacks do not live in a democracy, and Biden is a racist, and, the systems in this country are against Black empowerment. And, yes, against worker empowerment. Against all people of color and those whites, too.

What passes for leadership is always a joke played upon Black people. The high water mark of the CBC being the “conscience of the congress” is long gone. No one can look to them on the issue of Ukraine or anything else. The people must restore the historical Black radical consensus as a matter of survival.  —

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

“It all makes sense” that in 2022, with the fear porn of billionaires and millionaires holding a thousand axes above our heads, those of us in the 80 Percent Class, with the Holly-Dirt engine of triple lies, with the Media in bed with the Deep-Shallow-Military State, with lab coat-wearing billionaires getting platforms to yammer on and on about universal yearly vaccinations for everything on planet earth; with the world going digital before our very eyes, with privatization on steroids; with a world so confused and dazed it collapses every minute;  and with the gear work of the slick and $2000 an hour racists working their magic to get the masses, the working class, the middle class, all lathered up and hateful against youth, the old, the homeless, BIPOC, educated, uneducated, sick, worn down, poor, all of this and more, as I say, it all makes sense that we are on a collision course of lack of solidarity. Big Time.

Try talking sense to anyone, and the conversation ends up spiraling into a cesspool of, well, Americana Amnesia. Americans the Children. Americans the Red-White-Blue Consumers. Americans the Nanny-Held Citizens. All those Americans Making a Buck Anyway Possible. A Little Bit of Poison in Air-Water-Soil-Food? The price to pay for capitalism. Capitalism with a big C for CANCER.

Remember, mostly, though, this America was created by religious zealots, by profiteers, mercenaries, Christian extremists, racists, superstition peddlers, peddling PR and smear and lies with a sucker is born every minute snake oil and poison gruel for children ethos.

Capitalism is the outgrowth of that theft of land and deployment of slaves to till the land, plant the crops, harvest the cotton, etc., etc.

Black History Month My Ass! We need daily rolling strikes. Shut them down, these planned pandemic psychopaths. Shut down these hoarders, these Bezos Yacht Boys. Shut the Musk Military Magic down. All of them need to be, well, you know, Exterminate All THOSE Brutes!

Black History Month Through the Eye of the Needle 

It’s an adage by P.T. Barnum:  “A sucker is born every minute.” In the USA, there are so many suckers now who don’t know their country’s history. It takes people from other countries to give them our history lessons.

When it comes to the struggles of Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and African-Americans, the racist systems in place – even in 2022 – work to continue making Americans more ignorant.

I’ve been teaching for going on 50 years. I’ve mentored many in community colleges, universities, K12, special programs for gifted and talented, gang intervention projects, refugee centers, military compounds, prisons, and homeless programs.

In a public arena where debate should take place by deploying critical thinking and rhetorical skills, most people who espouse banning books, who have no idea what the history of the USA is through the eyes of minorities or women, and who have no clue about other countries, I find can’t hold onto their prejudices and biases when up against smart, schooled and experienced debaters.

I’ve had many a run-in and debate with racists, sexists, and bigots. One thing they have in common is fear permeated with an undeserved sense of entitlement.

We’ve reached a point in the USA where dumb-downing vis-à-vis superficiality, lack of reading, a disregard for community engagement, and all that poisonous influence of “entertainment” consumed have created a large section of Americans who have zero concept of the power to change.

There is no doubt this country is based on exploitation, land theft, breaking every treaty signed with the First Nations tribes. This is a country that rose to success through slave labor – black slave labor. This is a country determined to expand by hook or by crook through Manifest Destiny and Imperial overreach.

It’s not to say other countries do not have these damning elements to their pasts. The point is, though, Americans are in a paradigm shift of consciousness. Black History Month is just one of many “months” or weeks to rethink bad history, lies and propaganda perpetrated by the dominant race.  Native American Heritage Month and banned book week are two topics I have explored here.

The issue at hand is, of course, February’s Black History Month. The work of researchers, internationally-traveled writers, educators, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists is solid around this emerging history.

There is no Critical Race Theory conspiracy to denigrate the “white race.”

Paul Robeson — singer, athlete, actor, and, socialist Black man — stated:  “My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you….  The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.”

I consider Black intellectual, Cornel West, a friend, and I’ve marched with him in Seattle during Occupy Seattle. At Green River College, where I taught, we filled an auditorium with people wanting to hear him. I’ve written a story on him.

He’s smart, Christian, ministerial, deep into music, a writer and a public thinker. He is not a fan of Obama, Bush, Biden, Trump or Clinton. I know no person who is an avowed racist, white supremacist, or on a spectrum of angry history-denying white person I have taught and counseled who really could argue themselves out of a paper bag when faced with anti-racists. Think of anti-racists like Angela Davis (writer, Black Panther, educator) or Raoul Peck (filmmaker of HBO’s “Exterminate All the Brutes”) or Gary Howard (“We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools”).

I’ve been in Gary’s diversity workshops in Tacoma, and I have been in trainings with others, like Brown Eagle with Spokane’s Medicine Wheel Academy. I’ve worked with Winona LaDuke and have been a counselor for African-American ex-New Orleans Saints Toussaint Tyler.

Everywhere I have lived, worked and taught at I’ve found myself in a milieu of learning about other people: people that historians have lied about, that is, those whose ability to be humans and citizens in this country has been systematically thwarted through vicious systems of oppression. List some of them as sundown laws, red lining and overt racism and lynching.

When I taught mostly white students at Gonzaga University, many had never known the story of Emmett Till, the boy who was murdered by racists, and whose body was dumped in a river with a cotton gin fan wrapped around his neck.

His mother had an open casket funeral attended by thousands in Chicago. He was kidnapped, shot and disfigured by white guys because of a “wolf whistle” directed at one of the cracker’s wives. They got off free. However, with so much entitlement, they were paid for a magazine article and admitted to torturing and killing the 14-year-old Emmett August 28, 1955.

The entire world heard about Emmett’s case. His disfigured face was photographed by dozens of journalists. His murder by racist whites in Mississippi kick-started the civil rights movement, even before Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus.

I was 19 years old when President Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976. Plain old white guy Gerald Ford stated he wanted all Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

This was a no-brainer for me. My old man, in the Army for 32 years, recounted how three of his servicemen were refused food in Kentucky. That eatery then became off-limits for soldiers. There was a big movement to list all other places that refused service to Blacks, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans.

That was before I was born. It’s great to have these celebrations for Blacks’ accomplishments, but really, overlooked and denied now is the price African Americans have paid to reach their aims. Sometimes these struggles to live, work, vote, and excel were set into stone by racist courts, racist businesses, and racist communities.

Change is always in the wind. Let’s hope more Americans get smart sooner than later. People live their histories. Listen to them.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

Men wearing Japanese imperial military uniform visit the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan August 15, 2019, on the 74th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War Two. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Somehow, however, this has not translated into victory celebrations or a round of applause for government health officials for preventing a public health disaster, or much praise for the residents of Japan for their very diligent cooperation with government health guidelines. Indeed, the panicked language continues, such that we were recently told by journalists that Japan is “bracing” for the omicron variant. The government is now considering vaccine booster shots for everyone, not just health workers. The Nation’s borders were sealed quickly and tightly when omicron emerged in November. And even now we are told that we need greater security, and that local and national government agencies are willing and able to provide it, as long as we all trust and obey them.

With full awareness of the relatively low lethality of the virus, there is still widespread fear and a (mis)recognition that we are all in an exceptional situation now, one that will require, for our own health, greater austerity and sacrifices, and even more violations of Japan’s constitution. Nicknamed the Peace Constitution and promulgated in 1947, it is not yet clear whether it will be weakened through a “state of exception” in which the constitution is set aside “temporarily,” or through “amendment by interpretation,” or through actual legal revision, but what now appears almost inevitable is that elite ultranationalist forces in government will continue to take advantage of the present crisis to weaken the human-rights-defending potential of the Constitution, deprive the people of their civil liberties, and dismantle Japan’s fragile democracy.

With awareness of COVID-19’s impact on class struggle, we are now beginning to get a picture of who the losers and winners in Japan might ultimately be. Some of the key winners may include pharmaceutical and biotech companies, big business in general, universities and companies with public-private partnerships, liberal intellectuals in the fields of medicine and economics, pro-U.S. factions, and the ultranationalist political party Nippon Ishin no Kai (“Japan Innovation Party”), who are considering calling for the creation of an emergency situation clause in the Constitution. The losers will probably include not only the working class but also single mothers, victims of domestic violence, homeless people, small business owners and employees, immigrants, asylum seekers, and children without parents or with parents who cannot take care of them.

Healthy hygiene is important for us all, but we have to be careful that this discourse does not cause a loss of freedom, such as what we saw with the obsession with terrorism and national security after 9/11. Many people believe that a nation-state is supposed to achieve health security in the same way that it is supposed to achieve national security, i.e., by annihilating the enemy. If we are not careful, a similar bloodthirsty logic can take over, whether the enemy is a country, a terrorist, an insect, or a virus. Whether you use a nuclear bomb, a pesticide, or an mRNA vaccine, when the people are in a warring mood, the goal becomes annihilating the foreign Other. This is key to understanding COVID-19 deceptions.

Giorgio Agamben (1942-), the philosopher who, for many years, has deeply probed the question of the political uses of movements for greater “biosecurity,” emphasizes how the state exaggerates the bio-threats, just as it exaggerated terrorism and advertises itself as the savior of the people. He writes that “We could argue that, once terrorism ceased to exist as a cause for measures of exception, the invention of an epidemic offers the ideal pretext for widening them beyond all known limits” (Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics, Valeria Dani, trans., Kindle edition [Rowman & Littlefield, 2021] p. 13). The “limitation of freedom” that is imposed by governments seems limitless, just as the desire for security is limitless (Where Are We Now? p. 38). Governments tell us that we need more security, we believe them, we desire more security, and then they intervene to satisfy that desire. (I have previously discussed the state of exception in Japan here). Just as governments were supposed to be the only ones who could protect us from terrorism, especially after 9/11, now they tell us that only they can protect us from nature.

The following quote often attributed to the Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring (1893-1946) seems appropriate for today. “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” Many advocates of peace are aware of this problem, how states gain power by exaggerating threats from the outsiders within our communities and from people in foreign countries. Fear of the unknown plays into their hands.

More specifically, the system or the “regime” that we are now struggling under is the modern ideology of the plague that was famously described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) and other works. This is aptly explained by Carlos Salzani:

It has been noted that the COVID-19 pandemic is a biopolitical dream (or rather nightmare) come true—and in fact Foucault’s poignant analyses of the intertwined evolution of politics and medicine in modernity have been evoked from the very beginning. To describe the mutations of power between the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Foucault tellingly used three models based precisely on infectious diseases. In the lecture on 15 January 1975 of his 1974-1975 course at the Collège de France titled [“Abnormal”] and, more in depth, in the opening of the chapter on panopticism of Discipline and Punish (published a month later, in February 1975), he counterpoised the management of leprosy and that of the plague as two distinct modalities of control and organization: whereas the former required the leper’s exclusion from society, the latter installed a disciplinary mechanism that mobilized society in its totality. Both models, Foucault noted, are very ancient, but in a sense at the dawn of modernity the plague model became prevalent. According to Foucault’s by-now famous distinction, the exclusion of lepers (premodern power) is a negative model based on rejection and prohibition and pursuing the dream of purifying the community; the plague model (modern, disciplinary power), to the contrary, is a positive technology of power demanding the inclusion of the infected within a space meticulously analyzed, partitioned, organized, and controlled, with the concomitant production of an appropriate knowledge. Exclusion is replaced by quarantine, rejection by inclusion and the assignment to each individual of a proper name and a proper place. The goal is no longer that of purifying the community but rather of producing a healthy population. This model contradicts the “literary dream of the plague,” all those political fables (like Camus’ or Saramago’s) which liken the plague to orgiastic outbursts of lawlessness, disorder, and confusion; the “political dream of the plague” is instead precisely the contrary, “the marvelous moment when political power is exercised to the full. Plague is the moment when the spatial partitioning and subdivision (quadrillage) of a population is taken to its extreme point.” In truth, the plague is met by order, discipline, hierarchy, control: “The plague-stricken town […] is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.” (Author’s italics).

Salzani explains that Foucault defined biopolitics as “the peculiarly modern political focus on the preservation of life,” and notes that this goes back to Cicero’s words, Salus populi suprema lex esto. (The health/safety of the people should be the supreme law). In “An Essay concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government” (1690) John Locke wrote, “Salus populi suprema lex is certainly so just and fundamental a rule, that he who sincerely follows it cannot dangerously err.” And every American knows from our “Declaration of Independence” that we have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Many people are familiar with the words, “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” And ominously from the perspective of government officials, the Declaration also told us that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”

But the “Declaration of Independence” does not claim that safety and health are supreme, that they are far more important than liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There are limits to how much safety should be demanded, especially in times and places where governments do not respect human rights or democracy. Too much emphasis on safety can permanently damage democratic institutions. As the Japanese internist Dr. Irohira Tetsurō has argued, it is not possible for a society to simultaneously enjoy freedom of expression, freedom of profit, and zero [coronavirus] infections (Japanese weekly magazine, Shūkan Kinyōbi 1322 [26 March 2021] p. 34). Just as in China, some politicians in Japan have advocated the dangerous social goal of “zero corona.”

Kiuchi Minoru, like many politicians of the largely ultranationalist ruling party LDP, expressed worry about what would happen if Japan’s national legislative assembly did “not function when an urgent response is required.” Many Japanese believe that quick responses from the government will be necessary in the future when pandemics and natural disasters occur. This kind of concern was behind the 2020 revision of the 2012 Act on Special Measures against Novel Influenza, etc. (Shingata infuruenza tō taisaku tokubetsu sochi hō), which is now often abbreviated as the “Special Measures Law” in English. (The English translation of the law can be found on the page entitled “Japanese Law Translation” at the website of the Ministry of Justice). This Special Measures Law was revised on 13 March 2020 by the Diet (i.e., Japan’s national legislative assembly). In the midst of the crisis presented by the new coronavirus, the Diet granted the prime minister “the authority to declare a state of emergency in the event of the spread of an infectious disease that could gravely affect people’s lives.”

The next day, on 14 March, the revision came into effect, and Prime Minister Abe Shinzō gave a speech saying that the new law would prevent the spread of the virus and that the government would be asking the public to accept “substantial difficulties and inconveniences.”

At first glance, this new Special Measures Law sounds like a fair and reasonable response to a dangerous virus, until one recalls that the “state of emergency,” or “state of exception,” is precisely how the Nazis of Germany got their start. Some Japanese scholars of law have pointed out the danger of such a thing happening in Japan, such as the scholar of modern German history, Professor Ishida Yūji at the Graduate School of the University of Tokyo. The Weimar Constitution was once thought of as the most democratic constitution in the world, but it was through the abuse of the state of emergency clause (Article 48), which gave the president the power to issue an emergency decree, that Adolf Hitler rose to power. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia,

Embedded within the Weimar Constitution was an article that encompassed the right/left political tension and would be fundamental to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. This was Article 48, which stated that “If public security and order are seriously disturbed or endangered within the German Reich, the President of the Reich may take measures necessary for their restoration, intervening if need be with the assistance of the armed forces.” It also allowed the President to suspend civil liberties guaranteed in the Weimar Constitution.

This was the Constitution’s “fatal flaw,” and it is probably also what Asō Tarō referred to as the “Nazi Trick.” Asō, one of the right-hand men of the former prime minister Abe, is presently the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. In 2013 he made the notorious suggestion, “Why don’t we learn from that (Nazi) trick?” (Various translations appeared in English). He made this statement in connection with the debate over the revision of the Constitution.

Ishida explains:

The fact that a minister who made such a comment and undermined the trust of the nation is able to retain his post shows the true nature of the [Abe] administration. The LDP [Liberal Democratic Party] will use this experience to try to write an emergency clause into the Constitution… A state of emergency gives the government the authority to suspend the normal constitutional legal order (i.e., separation of powers and the guarantee of human rights) and take emergency measures in emergency situations such as war, civil war, depression, and major disasters.

Ishida is the author of two books in Japanese relating to this fatal flaw in the Weimar constitution. He is the author of Hitler and Nazi Germany (Hitoraa to Nachi Doitsu [Kodansha Gendai Shinsho, 2015]) and the co-author with Hasebe Yasuo of Nazi “Tricks” and the State of Emergency Clause (Nachisu no “teguchi” to kinkyūjitai jokō [Shūeisha shinsho, 2017]). Thus it is not surprising that he was one of the first to raise the alarm when the Special Measures Law was revised in March 2020. For Ishida it was “incomprehensible” that all of the opposition parties, with the exception of the Communist Party and the Reiwa Shinsengumi, voted in favor of this law, when it does not require the prime minister to obtain prior approval from the Diet, who are the representatives of the people, when declaring a state of emergency. He said that the original 2012 law should have been corrected regardless of the fact that it was passed under the administration of the Democratic Party of Japan (Minshutō, a liberal opposition party to the left of the ruling LDP). This law gives the executive branch the authority to place restrictions on the fundamental rights of the citizens. He argues that it could easily wind up allowing Japan’s ultranationalist government to completely abandon the Constitution.

Hitler’s government, formed in January of 1933, was a coalition between the Nazi Party and the German National People’s Party (who were traditional conservatives). The Nazi Party had received 33.1% of the vote, so Hitler’s government initially came into power as a minority government. On 27 February 1933 the parliament building went up in flames. This was the famous “Reichstag Fire,” which happened just before election day (on 5 March). An atmosphere of panic and terror followed, and the Nazis blamed the fire on the communists.

On the day after the fire, the “Emergency Decree for the Protection of the German People” was passed. This was a declaration of a state of emergency. Democratic institutions were suspended, freedom of speech was restricted, and the right to own property and the right to trial before imprisonment were removed.

A month after the state of emergency was declared, on 24 March, the Enabling Act (Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich, or “Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich”]) was rammed through the Reichstag. This law granted legislative power to the Hitler Cabinet. Hitler could now rule by decree. By July, Hitler and the Nazi Party had managed to establish a one-party system, with the Nazis as the sole ruling power. This was only six months after the Nazis had taken the reins of government. The parliament gradually ceased to function as a true legislature, to the extent that people wondered why the Reichstag even existed.

Ishida suspects that the government of Japan is likewise doing rehearsals for a state of emergency clause that would allow prime ministers to side-step the constitution. His warnings about Japan’s state-of-emergency legislative changes echo the those of Giorgio Agamben, who warned in 2020 and earlier that making the state of exception as permanent as possible is one of the primary goals of getting people to panic about biosecurity. According to Agamben, health security used to be “at the margins of political calculations” but is now becoming an “essential component of state and international political strategies” (Where Are We Now? p. 55). What certain politicians may now be hoping for is a permanent state of emergency.

Former Lower House Speaker Ibuki Fumiaki said at a meeting for an LDP faction on 12 March 2020, the day before the Special Measures Law was revised, that we must not “play too much or drink too much.” Suzuki Miho, the Mainichi journalist who interviewed Ishida, wrote that this statement reminded her of the World War II-era slogan in Japan “We will sacrifice everything for the victory” (Hoshigarimasen, katsu made wa), and she sensed anxiety about the virus among the people. With little known about it, there is an atmosphere of people coerced into enduring their suffering.

It does seem that when people are so focused on contributing to a “war effort,” they can easily lose awareness of the fact that their rights are being stolen from them. On 7 April 2020, a few weeks after the Special Measures Law became law, Abe did declare a state of emergency, making use of his new power under the revised law. Even at that early point, Abe wielded the mighty authority to restrict people’s right to freedom of movement and assembly. Yet, Ishida notes, a poll conducted by the Mainichi on the following day, indicated that 72% of the respondents approved of Abe’s declaration, and only 20% disapproved.

Another troubling feature of the Special Measures Law for Ishida is that it allows for a wide range of compulsory measures to be taken, such as requests to refrain from mingling with other people outside one’s home; restrictions on the use of schools and assembly halls; the prime minister’s new power to give instructions to NHK (Japan’s national broadcaster); and his power to expropriate land, buildings, and supplies. He warns that the day may not be far off when rallies and demonstrations become impossible, when people “clam up” no matter how dissatisfied they are with the government. In his view, too, Japan’s Diet is now weak, as was the Reichstag when Hitler became chancellor.

Many lawyers have made statements against the Special Measures Law, too. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA), an organization of lawyers with 42,991 members, opposed it, in fact. Their concern was not with the parallels with Nazi history or the state of exception but with the negative effects on COVID-19 patients and businesses. They worry that patients may be stigmatized and human rights may be violated:

Anyone may contract COVID-19 because of its significant transmissibility. People infected do not deserve blame for their contraction of the virus, whereas the amendment bill presented this time ignores such circumstances and seeks to impose obligations by means of punishment without adequate deliberation. It neglects the aims of and the historical background to the legislation of the Infectious Diseases Act and makes light of the fundamental human rights of those who are affected by infectious diseases.

This is exactly the situation that Agamben describes when writing, “the citizen no longer has a right to health (‘health safety’) but is instead forced by law to be healthy (‘biosecurity’)” (Where Are We Now? p. 56).

As the JFBA statement explains, in the past “…there was groundless discrimination or prejudice” against patients suffering from Hansen’s disease, (AIDS), and other infectious diseases in Japan. That is “the historical background to the legislation of the Infectious Diseases Act.” (The full name of the Infectious Diseases Act is the “Act on the Prevention of Infectious Diseases and Medical Care for Patients with Infectious Diseases,” or Kansenshō no yobō oyobi kansenshō no kanja ni taisuru iryō ni kan suru hōritsu. This law has been part of Japan’s infectious disease surveillance system since 1 April 1999. The JFBA opposes both these laws, the Infectious Diseases Act and the Special Measures Act). The JFBA statement also cites violations of worker’s rights, such as dismissals of unvaccinated workers; increases in hate speech against minorities; and people infected with COVID being unable to vote.

The Special Measures Law was established at a time when Japanese perceived, correctly or incorrectly, that Japan needed more biosecurity, and many people were unaware of the fact that a “state of exception,” in the sense of an ideological operation, was in the works. Although historians like Ishida and lawyers such as those with the JFBA have raised concerns, Japan’s journalists are not problematizing this law.

Yet, the Special Measures Law may be the greatest threat to Japan’s Peace Constitution in decades. This is because it opens the way for a state of exception in which prime ministers and prefectural governors possess the authority to issue decrees that have the effect of a law. While the Peace Constitution still exists, prime ministers and prefectural governors are able to do things during an official state of emergency that they could not normally do. However weak or gentle such decrees may appear, they could set the stage for much more Draconian decrees in the future, and there is no guarantee that future prime ministers and governors will not abuse their new power.

This Special Measures Law may even weaken the authority of the Diet, and violate Article 41, which says, “The Diet shall be the highest organ of state power, and shall be the sole law-making organ of the State.” Contrary to Article 41, the Special Measures Law gives the prime minister the authority to suspend certain articles of the constitution whenever there is a war, economic crisis, or pandemic. Setting aside the constitution in this way is dangerous because there is no clear end in sight. Japan has had at least three major crises in the last two decades: 9/11, “3/11” (the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami), and the 2020 coronavirus crisis, and as a result of all three, the Constitution has been violated and rights have been trampled on.

Who can be sure, for example, that what happened to Japan and Germany during WWII, where people like Adolf Eichmann (1906-62) and Tōjō Hideki (1884-1948) went about their work calmly and confidently organizing massacres as if they were harvesting cabbage, will not happen again. Under a state of exception, when the constitution is repeatedly ignored, powerful officials are often in a position where they are able to say with a straight face that they are just following orders. No illegal acts are committed because the constitution is no longer in effect. In the case of Japan now, coronavirus justice depends solely on the judgment of a small number of individuals, primarily the prime minister and the regional governors.

Governors can “request” a state of emergency for their prefecture from the prime minister. The way this process seems to work is that the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare distributes information to prefectural government offices and, based on that information, if the number of COVID-19 cases is sufficiently large, governors single-handedly make a decision to request a state of emergency for their region from the prime minister. If the prime minister is convinced (as he always is), he complies with the governor’s request and issues a state of emergency for that prefecture. It is a win-win situation for the prime minister and the governors. This system of declaring states of emergency empowers governors of regions with large case numbers, including ultranationalists like Tokyo Governor Koiki Yuriko and Osaka Governor Yoshimura Hirofumi (who has been likened to Adolf Hitler), not only liberals like Aichi Governor Ōmura Hideaki and Okinawa Governor Tamaki Denny. This overly empowers a small number of elite officials; encourages unconstitutional and undemocratic governance; and hurts the lives of many people, such as those working in the restaurant industry.

The lawyers group JFBA predicted the last problem. Governors, with the cooperation of the prime minister, can force business operators to “change their operating hours or take other measures and, in the event of non-compliance with the order,” they “can impose petty fines and publicize the fact of having issued the request and order,” which hurts the reputation of the business operator/owner.

There is a lack of regulation of governors as they punish businesses for not cooperating with their biosecurity protocols. The JFBA explains that the law does not provide clear criteria for issuing the request or order, “while the scope of the authority granted to the prefectural governors is quite extensive.”

Such orders from governors can cause “immediate” and “grave” consequences, they warn, for people who work at businesses operating under severe conditions, and those people could “lose their livelihood or even their lives.” They emphasize the difficult situation that restaurant owners find themselves in:

The businesses involved in dine-in food service or serving alcoholic beverages, namely the major target of the request/order, are not engaged in operations which are harmful in themselves. It is too cruel to require them to change operating hours (which could be critical to their trade), etc. only because there are risks of spreading infection in food and drink establishments regardless of how hard they try to contain it. If such request or order is due, it must be combined with the necessary and adequate compensation defined in the Constitution of Japan as “just compensation there for” for businesses that are affected.

What compensation will be given to affected businesses has not been spelled out and, in the future, governors could theoretically lash out at certain persons in an arbitrary and unjust way, e.g., attacking the restaurants that are on the side of their personal enemies or political opponents. Orders from governors could impinge on the rights of business owners to provide products and services. “Additionally, the indifferent issuance and publicizing of the request/order may produce unjustifiable reputational damage or discrimination and prejudice, and entails violations of the business operators’ honor, right to privacy, and freedom of business.” For restaurant owners, employees, and many others, the new emphasis on hygiene, sanitization, and biosecurity presents them with the danger of worsened health, stigmatization, and the loss of human rights. One person’s safety is another person’s danger.

Tokyo Governor Koike has, in fact, already ordered four restaurants to pay 250,000 yen (USD $2,000) fines for refusing to shorten their business hours, which they were ordered to do under her state of emergency. While it may be fine to call Japan’s biosecurity policies “lockdown lite,” these fines demonstrate that the Special Measures Law does have legal teeth in it. In the words of the JFBA, this law grants “broad authority to the prefectural governors for the purposes of containing the spread of COVID-19.” According to Japan’s constitution, people have the right to work (Article 27) and the right to own property (Article 29). Article 31 states that “no person shall be deprived of life or liberty, nor shall any other criminal penalty be imposed, except according to procedure established by law.” Under Article 21 Japanese are also supposed to enjoy the right of assembly and association. One could argue that the rights of the above four restaurant owners have been violated.

The political scientist and activist Douglas Lummis has underscored how dear the Constitution has been to the hearts of millions of people throughout the Archipelago of Japan:

Under the protection of the human rights provisions of the Constitution, Japan developed a politically active civil society, and this civil society in turn made protection, or better, full realization of the Constitution its principal piece of business. The country’s ruling elites made the amendment of Article 9 and the remilitarization of the country its first goal as far back as the 1950s; the civil society has so far prevented this. If the Constitution was not legitimized by the Diet vote in 1947, it surely was legitimized in the decades of struggle by the civil society to preserve it.

One of the most dramatic examples was the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty Uprising (or “Anpō” protests. “By the time the protests climaxed in June 1960, an estimated 30 million people—about one-third of Japan’s population at the time—participated in some manner in cities, villages, and towns all across the nation”). These were protests for peace and the sovereignty of the people, against the US-Japan Security Treaty, which is the treaty that continues to this day to allow the U.S. to station troops on Japanese soil.

Peace-loving people and others throughout the Archipelago have often brought out the best in the Constitution, using it during the three quarters of a century since it was promulgated to build a foundation of peace, democracy, and human rights. Now the question is, “Will Japanese civil society stay strong, maintain a ‘politically active civil society,’ and continue to breathe life into the Constitution? Or, does the Constitution have one foot in the grave already?” For the sake of the people of East Asia and future generations of Japanese, let us hope that the former is true, that Asō Tarō’s ultranationalist dream of the death of the Peace Constitution does not occur. He was ignorantly but cunningly plotting for its death on 29 July 2013 when speaking before an ultranationalist audience: “It should be done quietly. One day everybody woke up and found that the Weimar Constitution had been changed, replaced by the Nazi Constitution. It changed without anyone noticing. Maybe we could learn from that. No hullabaloo.”

Lummis points out Asō’s ignorance: “The Weimar Constitution was never amended by the Nazis; the Nazis did not take over the government ‘quietly’.” Indeed, it was not “amended.” It was state-of-exceptionized. It is not necessarily true “that the LDP is aiming for a Nazi-type regime. They have their own, local, model for authoritarian government: the Japanese government as it was before 1945.” It is an undemocratic and militarist past that nobody in East Asia except former colonizers and colonizer-collaborators looks back on with nostalgia.

Many thanks to Olivier Clarinval for answering several questions about how current government health policies in the Global North are threatening democracy.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Joseph Essertier.

The discord is getting more discordant by the day.

Just recently, for instance, the Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board suggested that government officials should mandate mass vaccinations and deploy the National Guard “to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.”

In other words, lock up the unvaccinated and use the military to determine who gets to be “free.”

These tactics have been used before.

This is why significant numbers of people are worried: because this is the slippery slope that starts with well-meaning intentions for the greater good and ends with tyrannical abuses no one should tolerate.

For a glimpse at what the future might look like if such a policy were to be enforced, look beyond America’s borders.

In Italy, the unvaccinated are banned from restaurants, bars and public transportation, and could face suspensions from work and monthly fines.

In Austria, anyone who has not complied with the vaccine mandate could face fines up to $4100. Police will be authorized to carry out routine checks and demand proof of vaccination, with penalties of as much as $685 for failure to do so.

In China, which has adopted a zero tolerance, “zero COVID” strategy, whole cities—some with populations in the tens of millions—are being forced into home lockdowns for weeks on end, resulting in mass shortages of food and household supplies. For those unfortunate enough to contract COVID-19, China has constructed “quarantine camps” throughout the country: massive complexes boasting thousands of small, metal boxes containing little more than a bed and a toilet. Detainees—including children, pregnant women and the elderly— were reportedly ordered to leave their homes in the middle of the night, transported to the quarantine camps in buses and held in isolation.

If this last scenario sounds chillingly familiar, it should.

Eighty years ago, another authoritarian regime established more than 44,000 quarantine camps for those perceived as “enemies of the state”: racially inferior, politically unacceptable or simply noncompliant.

While the majority of those imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps, forced labor camps, incarceration sites and ghettos were Jews, there were also Polish nationals, gypsies, Russians, political dissidents, resistance fighters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

Culturally, we have become so fixated on the mass murders of Jewish prisoners by the Nazis that we overlook the fact that the purpose of these concentration camps were initially intended to “incarcerate and intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a threat to the survival of the regime.”

How do you get from there to here, from Auschwitz concentration camps to COVID quarantine centers?

Connect the dots.

You don’t have to be unvaccinated or a conspiracy theorist or even anti-government to be worried about what lies ahead. You just have to recognize the truth in the warning: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This is not about COVID-19. Nor is it about politics, populist movements, or any particular country.

This is about what happens when good, generally decent people—distracted by manufactured crises, polarizing politics, and fighting that divides the populace into warring “us vs. them” camps—fail to take note of the looming danger that threatens to wipe freedom from the map and place us all in chains.

It’s about what happens when any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and a disregard for the rights of the individual.

The slippery slope begins in just this way, with propaganda campaigns about the public good being more important than individual liberty, and it ends with lockdowns and concentration camps.

The danger signs are everywhere.

Claudio Ronco, a 66-year-old Orthodox Jew and a specialist in 18th-century music, recognizes the signs. Because of his decision to remain unvaccinated, Ronco is trapped inside his house, unable to move about in public without a digital vaccination card. He can no longer board a plane, check into a hotel, eat at a restaurant or get a coffee at a bar. He has been ostracized by friends, shut out of public life, and will soon face monthly fines for insisting on his right to bodily integrity and individual freedom.

For all intents and purposes, Ronco has become an undesirable in the eyes of the government, forced into isolation so he doesn’t risk contaminating the rest of the populace.

This is the slippery slope: a government empowered to restrict movements, limit individual liberty, and isolate “undesirables” to prevent the spread of a disease is a government that has the power to lockdown a country, label whole segments of the population a danger to national security, and force those undesirables—a.k.a. extremists, dissidents, troublemakers, etc.—into isolation so they don’t contaminate the rest of the populace.

The world has been down this road before, too.

Others have ignored the warning signs. We cannot afford to do so.

Which brings me back to the present crisis: COVID-19 is not the Holocaust, and those who advocate vaccine mandates, lockdowns and quarantine camps are not Hitler, but this still has the makings of a slippery slope.

The means do not justify the ends: we must find other ways of fighting a pandemic without resorting to mandates and lockdowns and concentration camps. To do otherwise is to lay the groundwork for another authoritarian monster to rise up and wreak havoc.

If we do not want to repeat the past, then we must learn from past mistakes.

January 27 marks Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a day for remembering those who died at the hands of Hitler’s henchmen and those who survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps.

Yet remembering is not enough. We can do better. We must do better.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the world is teetering on the edge of authoritarian madness.

All it will take is one solid push for tyranny to prevail.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Tyranny does not flourish because perpetuators are helpless and ignorant of their actions. It flourishes because they actively identify with those who promote vicious acts as virtuous.

— An academic study into pathocracy

Disgruntled mobs. Martial law. A populace under house arrest. A techno-corporate state wielding its power to immobilize huge swaths of the country. A Constitution in tatters.

Between the riots, lockdowns, political theater, and COVID-19 mandates, 2021 was one for the history books.

In our ongoing pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, here were some of the stumbling blocks that kept us fettered:

Riots, martial law, and the Deep State’s coup. A simmering pot of political tensions boiled over on January 6, 2021, when protesters stormed the Capitol because the jailer of their choice didn’t get chosen to knock heads for another four years. It took no time at all for the nation’s capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned. The subsequent military occupation of the nation’s capital by 25,000 troops as part of the so-called “peaceful” transfer of power from one administration to the next was little more than martial law disguised as national security. The January 6 attempt to storm the Capitol by so-called insurrectionists created the perfect crisis for the Deep State—a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State—to swoop in and take control.

The imperial president. All of the imperial powers amassed by Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Joe Biden, the nation’s 46th president.

The Surveillance State. On any given day, the average American going about his daily business was monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. In such a surveillance ecosystem, we’re all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted. Consider that it took days, if not hours or minutes, for the FBI to begin the process of identifying, tracking and rounding up those suspected of being part of the Capitol riots. Imagine how quickly government agents could target and round up any segment of society they wanted to based on the digital trails and digital footprints we leave behind.

Digital tyranny. In response to the events of Jan. 6, the tech giants meted out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship. Suddenly, individuals, including those who had no ties to the Capitol riots, began to experience lock outs, suspensions and even deletions of their social media accounts. It signaled a turning point in the battle for control over digital speech, one that leaves “we the people” on the losing end of the bargain.

A new war on terror. “Domestic terrorism,” used interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist,” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous,” became the new poster child for expanding the government’s powers at the expense of civil liberties. As part of his inaugural address, President Biden pledged to wage war on so-called political extremism, ushering in what investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald described as “a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting ‘terrorism’ that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

Government violence. The death penalty may have been abolished in Virginia in 2021, but government-sanctioned murder and mayhem continued unabated, with the U.S. government acting as judge, jury and executioner over a populace that had already been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence. Police particularly posed a risk to anyone undergoing a mental health crisis or with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent.

Culture wars. Political correctness gave way to a more insidious form of group think and mob rule which, coupled with government and corporate censors and a cancel culture determined not to offend “certain” viewpoints, was all too willing to eradicate views that do not conform. Critical race theory also moved to the forefront of the culture wars.

Home invasions. Government agents routinely violated the Fourth Amendment at will under the pretext of public health and safety. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the many ways the government and its corporate partners-in-crime used surveillance technology to invade homes: with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, and other monitoring devices. However, in a rare move, the Supreme Court put its foot down in two cases—Caniglia v. Strom and Lange v. California—to prevent police from carrying out warrantless home invasions in order to seize lawfully-owned guns under the pretext of their so-called “community caretaking” duties and from entering homes without warrants under the guise of being in “hot pursuit” of someone they suspect may have committed a crime.

Bodily integrity. Caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called “emergency” state, concerns about COVID-19 mandates and bodily integrity remained part of a much larger debate over the ongoing power struggle between the citizenry and the government over our property “interest” in our bodies. This debate over bodily integrity covered broad territory, ranging from abortion and forced vaccinations to biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these were just a few ways in which Americans continued to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

COVID-19. What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) became yet another means by which world governments (including our own) expanded their powers, abused their authority, and further oppressed their constituents. Now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., it remains to be seen how the rights of the individual will hold up in the face of long-term COVID-19 authoritarianism.

Financial tyranny. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) exceeded $29 trillion and is growing. That translates to almost $230,000 per taxpayer. The amount this country owes is now greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens). That debt is also growing exponentially: it is expected to be twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2051. Meanwhile, the government continued to spend taxpayer money it didn’t have on programs it couldn’t afford; businesses shuttered for lack of customers, resources and employees; and consumers continued to encounter global supply chain shortages (and skyrocketing prices) on everything from computer chips and cars to construction materials.

Global Deep State. Owing in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations, it became increasingly obvious that we had entered into a new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations. We’ve been inching closer to this global world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which saw governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, shifted this transformation into high gear. Fascism became a global menace.

20 years of crises. Every crisis—manufactured or otherwise—since the nation’s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government to expand its reach and its power at taxpayer expense while limiting our freedoms at every turn: The Great Depression. The World Wars. The 9/11 terror attacks. The COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the government’s (mis)management of various states of emergency in the past 20 years from 9/11 to COVID-19 has spawned a massive security-industrial complex the likes of which have never been seen before.

The state of our nation. There may have been a new guy in charge this year, but for the most part, nothing changed. The nation remained politically polarized, controlled by forces beyond the purview of the average American, and rapidly moving the nation away from its freedom foundation. Over the past year, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans found themselves repeatedly subjected to egregious civil liberties violations, invasive surveillance, martial law, lockdowns, political correctness, erosions of free speech, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc.

In other words, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Only two years ago most people understood “bodily autonomy” to be a fundamental, unquestionable human right. Now it is being treated as some kind of perverse libertarian luxury, as proof that the “deplorables” have been watching too much Tucker Carlson or that they have come to idealise the worst excesses of neoliberalism’s emphasis on the rights of the individual over the social good.

This is dangerous nonsense, as should be obvious if we step back and imagine what our world might look like had the principle of “bodily autonomy” not been established through centuries of struggle, just as were the right to vote and the right to health care.

Because without the principle of bodily autonomy, we might still be dragging virgins up high staircases so that they could be sacrificed to placate the sun gods. Without the principle of bodily autonomy, we might still be treating black people like animals – chattel to be used and exploited so that a white landowning class could grow rich from their enforced labours. Without the principle of bodily autonomy, we might still have doctors experimenting on those who are “inferior” – Jews, Romanies, Communists, gays – so that “superior races” could benefit from the “research”. Without the principle of bodily autonomy, we might still have the right of men to rape their wives as one of the unwritten marital vows.

Many of these battles and others were won far more recently than most of us care to remember. I am old enough to recall listening in the car on the way to school to “serious” debates on BBC Radio 4 about whether it was justifiable for the courts to presume a husband’s right to rape his wife.

Arguments about whose bodily autonomy has primacy – a woman’s or the foetus she is carrying – are at the heart of ongoing and inflammatory abortion debates in the United States. And protection of bodily autonomy was the main reason why anyone with an ounce of moral fibre opposed the US torture regime that became normalised in the war on brown people known as the “war on terror”.

Bad faith

There is good reason why, in western societies, vaccination uptake is lowest among ethnic minorities. The clues are embedded in the three preceding paragraphs. Powerful nation-states, run by white elites for the benefit of white elites, have been trampling on the bodily autonomy of black and brown people for centuries – sometimes because those elites were indifferent to the harm they were causing, and sometimes because they professed to be helping these “inferior” peoples, such as in the “war on terror’s” promotion of neoliberal “democracy” as the grounds for invading countries whose oil we coveted.

The pretexts change but the bad faith is the same.

Based on their long histories of suffering at the hands of western, colonial states, black and brown communities have every reason to continue assuming bad faith. It is not solidarity, or protecting them, to ignore or trivialise their concerns and their alienation from state institutions. It is ugly arrogance. Contempt for their concerns will not make those concerns evaporate. It will reinforce them.

But, of course, there is also something arrogant about treating the concerns of ethnic minorities as exceptional, patronising them by according them some kind of special dispensation, as though they need indulging on the principle of bodily autonomy when the rest of us are mature enough to discard it.

The fact is each generation comes to understand that the priorities of its ancestors were misplaced. Each generation has a powerful elite, or a majority whose consent has been manufactured, that luxuriate in the false certainty that bodily autonomy can be safely sacrificed for a higher principle. Half a century ago the proponents of marital rape argued for protecting tradition and patriarchal values because they were supposedly the glue holding society together. With 50 years’ hindsight, we may see the current debates about vaccine mandates – and the completely unscientific corollary that the unvaccinated are unclean and plague carriers – in much the same light.

The swelling political consensus on vaccine mandates intentionally ignores the enormous spread of the virus after two years of pandemic and the consequent natural immunity of large sections of the population, irrespective of vaccination status. This same consensus obfuscates the fact that natural immunity is most likely to prove longer-lasting and more effective against any variants of Covid that continue to emerge. And the consensus distracts from the inconvenient fact that the short-lived efficacy of the current vaccines means everyone is potentially “unclean” and a plague carrier, as the new variant Omicron is underscoring only too clearly.

No solidarity

The truth is that where each of us stands on the political divide over bodily autonomy says less about how much we prioritise human rights, or the social good, or solidarity with the weak and powerless, and much more about other, far less objectively rational matters, such as:

• how fearful we are personally about the effects of Covid on ourselves or our loved ones;
• whether we think the plutocrats that run our societies have prioritised the social good over the desire for quick, profit-making technological fixes, and the appearance of strong leadership and decisive action;
• how sure we are that science is taking precedence over the interests of pharmaceutical corporations whose profits are booming as our societies grow older and sicker, and whether we think these corporations have captured our regulatory authorities, including the World Health Organisation;
• whether we think it helpful or dangerous to scapegoat an unvaccinated minority, blaming it for straining health services or for the failure to eradicate a virus that is, in reality, never going away;
• and, especially in the left’s case, how reassured we are that non-western, official “enemy” governments, such as Cuba, China, Russia and Iran, have thrown most of their eggs into the vaccine basket too – and usually as enthusiastically as western societies.

It is possible, however, that the way our technological, materialist world has evolved, ruled by competitive elites in nation states vying for power, means there was always likely to be a single, global conception of how to end the pandemic: through a quick-fix, magic bullet of either a vaccine or a drug. The fact that nation states – the “good” and “bad” alike – are unlikely to think outside this particular box does not mean it is the only box available, or that this box must be the one all citizens are coerced into.

Basic human rights do not apply only in the good times. They can’t just be set aside in difficult times like a pandemic because those rights are a nuisance, or because some people refuse to do what we think is best for them. Those rights are fundamental to what it means to live in a free and open society. If we get rid of bodily autonomy while we deal with this virus, that principle will have to be fought for all over again – and in the context of hi-tech, surveillance states that are undoubtedly more powerful than any we have known before.

Coerced vaccination

It is wrong, however, to focus exclusively on bodily autonomy. The undermining of the right to bodily autonomy is slipping into an equally alarming undermining of the right to cognitive autonomy. In fact, these two kinds of autonomy cannot be readily disentangled. Because anyone who believes that people must be required to take a vaccine will soon be arguing that no one should be allowed to hear information that might make them more resistant to vaccination.

There is an essential problem about maintaining an open and honest debate during a time of pandemic, which anyone who is thinking critically about Covid and our responses to it must grapple with every time they put finger to keyboard. The discourse playing-field is far from level.

Those who demand vaccine mandates, and wish to jettison the principle of bodily autonomy as a “medical” inconvenience, can give full-throated voice to their arguments in the secure knowledge that only a few, isolated contrarians may occasionally dare to challenge them.

But when those who value the principle of bodily autonomy or who blanch at the idea of coerced vaccination wish to make their case, they must hold back. They must argue with one arm tied behind their backs – and not just because they are likely to be mobbed, particularly by the left, for trying to widen the range of arguments under consideration in what are essentially political and ethical debates masquerading as scientific ones.

Tonight I will oppose both compulsory vaccines for NHS staff, and the introduction of vaccine passports. Both measures are counterproductive and will create division when we need cooperation and unity.

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 14, 2021

Those questioning the manufactured consensus – a consensus that intentionally scapegoats the unvaccinated as disease carriers, a consensus that has once again upended social solidarity among the 99 per cent, a consensus that has been weaponised to shield the elites from proper scrutiny for their profiteering from the pandemic – must measure every word they say against the effect it may have on those listening.

Personal calculations

I place a high value on autonomy, of both the cognitive and physical varieties. I am against the state deciding for me what I and you are allowed to think and say, and I am against the state deciding what goes into my and your body without our consent (though I also recognise that I have little choice but to breathe polluted air, drink polluted water, and eat chemically altered food, all of which have damaged my and your immune systems and made us more susceptible to viruses like Covid).

But at the same time, unlike the vaccine mandate mob, I never forget that I am responsible for my words and that they have consequences, and potentially dangerous ones. There are a significant proportion of people who almost certainly need to be vaccinated, and probably regularly, to avoid being seriously harmed by exposure to the virus. Any responsible writer needs to weigh the effect of their words. I do not wish to be responsible for making one person who would benefit from a vaccine more hesitant to take it. I am particularly wary of playing God during a pandemic.

However, my reluctance to pontificate on a subject on which I have no expertise – vaccine safety – does not confer a licence on others to command the debate on other subjects about which they appear to know very little, such as medical and political ethics.

The fact is, however much some people would be best advised to take the vaccine, there is a recognised risk involved, even if we are not supposed to mention it. The long-term safety of the vaccines is unknown and cannot be known for several more years – and possibly for much longer, given the refusal of the drug regulators to release vaccine data for many more decades.

The vaccine technology is novel and its effects on the complex physiology of the human body and the individual vagaries of each of our immune systems will not be fully apparent for a long time. The decision to take a new type of vaccine in these circumstances is a calculation that each individual must weigh carefully for themselves, based on a body they know better than anyone else.

Pretending that there is no calculation – that everyone is the same, that the vaccines will react in the same manner on every person – is belied by the fact that the vaccines have had to be given emergency approval, and that there have been harsh disagreements even among experts about whether the calculation in favour of vaccination makes sense for everyone, especially for children. That calculation is further complicated by the fact that a significant section of the population now have a natural immunity to the whole virus and not just vaccine-induced immunity to the spike protein.

But stuffing everyone into a one-size-fits-all solution is exactly what bureaucratic, technocratic states are there to do. It is what they know best. To the state, you are I and just a figure on a pandemic spread-sheet. To think otherwise is childish delusion. Those who refuse to think of themselves as simply a spread-sheet digit – those who insist on their right to bodily and cognitive autonomy – should not be treated as narcissists for doing so or as a threat to public health, especially when the immunity provided by the vaccines is so short-lived, the vaccines themselves are highly leaky, and there is little understanding yet of the differences, or even potential conflicts, between natural and vaccine-induced immunity.

Perpetual emergency

Nonetheless, parts of the left are acting as if none of this is true, or even debatable. Instead they are proudly joining the mob, leading the self-righteous clamour to assert control not only over the bodies of others but over their minds too. This left angrily rejects all debate as a threat to the official “medical” consensus. They insist on conformity of opinion and then claim it as science, in denial of the fact that science is by its nature disputatious and evolves constantly. They cheer on censorship – by profit-driven social media corporations – even when it is recognised experts who are being silenced.

Their subtext is that any contrary opinion is a threat to the social order, and will fuel vaccine hesitancy. The demand is that we all become worshippers at the altars of Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, at the risk otherwise of being denounced as heretics, as “anti-vaxxers”. No middle ground can be allowed in this era of perpetual emergency.

This is not just disturbing ethically. It is disastrous politically. The state is already massively powerful against each of us as individuals. We have collective power only in so far as we show solidarity with each other. If the left conspires with the state against those who are weak, against black and brown communities whose main experiences of state institutions have been abusive, against the “deplorables”, we divide ourselves and make the weakest parts of our society even weaker.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn understood this when he was one of the few on the left to publicly resist the recent move by the UK government to legislate vaccine mandates. He rightly argued that the correct path is persuasion, not coercion.

But this kind of mix of reason and compassion is being drowned out on parts of the left. They justify violations of bodily and cognitive autonomy on the grounds that we are living in exceptional times, during a pandemic. They complacently argue that such violations will be temporary, required only until the virus is eradicated – even though the virus is now endemic and with us for good. They silently assent to the corporate media being given even greater censorship powers as the price we must pay to deal with vaccine hesitancy, on the assumption that we can reclaim the right to dissent later.

But these losses, in circumstances in which our rights and freedoms are already under unprecedented assault, will not be easily restored. Once social media can erase you or me from the public square for stating real-world facts that are politically and commercially inconvenient – such as Twitter’s ban on anyone pointing out that the vaccinated can spread the virus too – there will be no going back.

Political instincts

There is a further reason, however, why the left is being deeply foolish in turning on the unvaccinated and treating the principles of bodily and cognitive autonomy with such contempt. Because this approach  sends a message to black and brown communities, and to the “deplorables”, that the left is elitist, that its talk of solidarity is hollow, and that it is only the right, not the left, that is willing to fight to protect the most intimate freedoms we enjoy – over our bodies and minds.

Every time the left shouts down those who are hesitant about taking a Covid vaccine; every time it echoes the authoritarianism of those who demand mandates, chiefly for low-paid workers; every time it refuses to engage with – or even allow – counter-arguments, it abandons the political battlefield to the right.

Through its behaviour, the shrill left confirms the right’s claims that the political instincts of the left are Stalinist, that the left will always back the might of an all-powerful state against the concerns of ordinary people, that the left sees only the faceless masses, who need to be herded towards bureaucratically convenient solutions, rather than individuals who need to be listened to as they grapple with their own particular dilemmas and beliefs.

The fact is that you can favour vaccines, you can be vaccinated yourself, you can even desire that everyone regularly takes a Covid vaccine, and still think that bodily and cognitive autonomy are vitally important principles – principles to be valued even more than vaccines. You can be a cheerleader for vaccination and still march against vaccine mandates.

Some on the left behave as if these are entirely incompatible positions, or as if they are proof of hypocrisy and bad faith. But what this kind of left is really exposing is their own inability to think in politically complex ways, their own difficulty remembering that principles are more important than quick-fixes, however frightening the circumstances, and that the debates about how we organise our societies are inherently political, much more so than technocratic or “medical”.

The right understands that there is a political calculus in handling the pandemic that cannot be discarded except at a grave political cost. Part of the left has a much weaker grasp of this point. Its censoriousness, its arrogance, its hectoring tone – all given cover by claims to be following a “science” that keeps changing – are predictably alienating those the left claims to represent.

The left needs to start insisting again on the critical importance of bodily and cognitive autonomy – and to stop shooting itself in the foot.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

At the same time, with no sense of irony and with no fidelity to science, news headlines from around the world continue to scream that the economy in many countries and regions is doing great and that more economic recovery and growth depend almost entirely, if not entirely, on vaccinating everyone (multiple times). In other words, once everyone is vaccinated, we will see really good economic times, everything will be amazing, and we won’t have too much to worry about. Extremely irrational and irresponsible statements and claims of all kinds continue to be made in the most dogmatic and frenzied way by the mainstream press at home and abroad in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the deep economic crisis continually unfolding nationally and internationally. Dozens of countries are experiencing profound economic problems.

While billions of vaccination shots have already been administered worldwide, and millions more are administered every day (with and without people’s consent), humanity continues to confront many major intractable economic problems caused by the internal dynamics of an outdated economic system.

A snapshot:

1. More rapid and intense inflation everywhere
2. Major supply chain disruptions and distortions everywhere
3. Shortages of many products
4. “Shortages” of workers in many sectors worldwide
5. Shortened and inconsistent hours of operation at thousands of businesses
6. Falling value of the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies
7. Growing stagflation
8. Millions of businesses permanently disappeared
9. More income and wealth inequality
10. High dismal levels of unemployment, under-employment, and worker burnout
11. Growing health insurance costs
12. Unending fear, anxiety, and hysteria around endless covid strains
13. More scattered panic buying
14. The stock market climbing while the real economy declines (highly inflated asset valuations in the stock market)
15. Spectacular economic failures like Lehman Brothers (in the U.S. 13 years ago) and Evergrande (in China in 2021)
16. All kinds of debt increasing at all levels
17. Central banks around the world printing trillions in fiat currencies non-stop and still lots of bad economic news
18. And a whole host of other harsh economic realities often invisible to the eye and rarely reported on that tell a much more tragic story of an economy that cannot provide for the needs of the people

The list goes on and on. More nauseating data appears every day. Economic hardship, which takes on many tangible and intangible forms, is wreaking havoc on the majority at home and abroad. There is no real and substantive economic improvement. It is hard to see a bright, stable, prosperous, peaceful future for millions under such conditions, which is why many, if not most, people do not have a good feeling about what lies ahead and have little faith in the rich, their politicians, and “representative democracy.” It is no surprise that President Joe Biden’s approval rating is low and keeps falling.

What will the rich and their political and media representatives say and do when most people are vaccinated, everyone else has natural immunity, and the economy is still failing? What will the rich do when economic failure cannot be blamed on bacteria or viruses? To be sure, the legitimacy crisis will further deepen and outmoded liberal institutions of governance will become even more obsolete and more incapable of sorting out today’s serious problems. “Representative democracy” will become more discredited and more illusions about the “social contract” will be shattered. In this context, talk of “New Deals” for this and “New Deals” for that won’t solve anything in a meaningful way either because these “New Deals” are nothing more than an expansion of state-organized corruption to pay the rich, mainly through “public-private-partnerships.” This is already being spun in a way that will fool the gullible. Many are actively ignoring how such high-sounding “reforms” are actually pay-the-rich schemes that increase inequality and exacerbate a whole host of other problems.

It is not in the interest of the rich to see different covid strains and scares disappear because these strains and scares provide a convenient cover and scapegoat for economic problems rooted in the profound contradictions of an outmoded economic system over-ripe for a new direction, aim, and control. It is easier to claim that the economy is intractably lousy because of covid and covid-related restrictions than to admit that the economy is continually failing due to the intrinsic built-in nature, operation, and logic of capital itself.

There is no way forward while economic and political power remain dominated by the rich. The only way out of the economic crisis is by vesting power in workers, the people who actually produce the wealth that society depends on. The rich and their outmoded system are a drag on everyone and are not needed in any way; they are a major obstacle to the progress of society; they add no value to anything and are unable and unwilling to lead the society out of its deepening all-sided crisis.

There is an alternative to current obsolete arrangements and only the people themselves, armed with a new independent outlook, politics, and thinking can usher it in. Economic problems, health problems, and 50 other lingering problems are not going to be solved so long as the polity remains marginalized and disempowered by the rich and their capital-centered arrangements and institutions. New and fresh thinking and consciousness are needed at this time. A new and more powerful human-centered outlook is needed to guide humanity forward.

Human consciousness and resiliency are being severely tested at this time, and the results have been harsh and tragic in many ways for so many. We are experiencing a major test of the ability of the human species to bring into being what is missing, that is, to overcome the neoliberal destruction of time, space, and the fabric of society so as to unleash the power of human productive forces to usher in a much more advanced society where time-space relations accelerate in favor of the entire polity. There is an alternative to the anachronistic status quo.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

In a June 29, 2021, interview, Fauci called the Delta variant ‘a game-changer’ for unvaccinated people, warning it will devastate the unvaccinated population while vaccinated individuals are protected against it. Alas, in the real world, the converse is turning out to be true, as the Delta variant is running wild primarily among those who got the Covid jab.

Given the drug’s many and varied beneficial effects and its excellent long-standing safety profile, most rheumatologists believe that Hydroxychloroquine should be taken by people with lupus throughout their lifetime. [Italics added]

Hydroxychloroquine sulfate may only be used to treat adult and adolescent patients who weigh 50 kg or more and are hospitalized with COVID-19, for whom a clinical trial is not available, or participation is not feasible.

Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, dozens of new studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine and its first cousin, Chloroquine, against Covid. These studies occurred in China, France, Saudi Arabia, Italy, India, New York and Michigan. However, such proof of Hydroxychloroquine’s benefit to patients with Covid has posed an existential threat to Gilead sales throughout the Covid outbreak.

WHEREAS, thousands of physicians are being prevented from providing treatment to their patients, as a result of barriers put up by pharmacies, hospitals, and public health agencies, rendering the vast majority of healthcare providers helpless to protect their patients in the face of disease. Physicians are now advising their patients to simply go home (allowing the virus to replicate) and return when their disease worsens, resulting in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary patient deaths, due to failure-to-treat;

WHEREAS, this is not medicine. This is not care. These policies may actually constitute crimes against humanity.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by David Penner.

Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges.

— George Carlin

You think you’ve got rights? Think again.

All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

This is the grim reality of life in the American police state.

In fact, in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs, our so-called rights have been reduced to mere technicalities, privileges that can be granted and taken away, all with the general blessing of the courts.

This is what one would call a slow death by a thousand cuts, only it’s the Constitution being inexorably bled to death by the very institution (the judicial branch of government) that is supposed to be protecting it (and us) from government abuse.

Court pundits, fixated on a handful of politically charged cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this term dealing with abortion, gun rights and COVID-19 mandates, have failed to recognize that the Supreme Court—and the courts in general—sold us out long ago.

With each passing day, it becomes increasingly clear that Americans can no longer rely on the courts to “take the government off the backs of the people,” in the words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. When presented with an opportunity to loosen the government’s noose that keeps getting cinched tighter and tighter around the necks of the American people, what does our current Supreme Court usually do?

It ducks. Prevaricates. Remains silent. Speaks to the narrowest possible concern.

More often than not, it gives the government and its corporate sponsors the benefit of the doubt, seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government interests than with upholding the rights of the people enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Rarely do the concerns of the populace prevail.

Every so often, the justices toss a bone to those who fear they have abdicated their allegiance to the Constitution. Too often, however, the Supreme Court tends to march in lockstep with the police state.

As a result, the police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance.

In recent years, for example, the Court has ruled that police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits; police officers can stop cars based only on “anonymous” tips; Secret Service agents are not accountable for their actions, as long as they’re done in the name of “security”; citizens only have a right to remain silent if they assert it; police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes,” justifying any and all police searches of vehicles stopped on the roadside; police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime; police can stop, search, question and profile citizens and non-citizens alike; police can subject Americans to virtual strip searches, no matter the “offense”; police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home; and it’s a crime to not identify yourself when a policeman asks your name.

Moreover, it was a unanimous Supreme Court which determined that police officers may use drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. That same Court gave police the green light to taser defenseless motorists, strip search non-violent suspects arrested for minor incidents, and break down people’s front doors without evidence that they have done anything wrong.

The cases the Supreme Court refuses to hear, allowing lower court judgments to stand, are almost as critical as the ones they rule on. Some of these cases have delivered devastating blows to the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

By remaining silent, the Court has affirmed that: legally owning a firearm is enough to justify a no-knock raid by police; the military can arrest and detain American citizens; students can be subjected to random lockdowns and mass searches at school; police officers who don’t know their actions violate the law aren’t guilty of breaking the law; trouble understanding police orders constitutes resistance that justifies the use of excessive force; and the areas immediately adjacent to one’s apartment can be subjected to warrantless police surveillance and arrests.

Make no mistake about it: when such instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution, one can only conclude that the system is rigged.

By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it last year that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, “we the people” are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

Lawyers tend to offer a lot of complicated, convoluted explanations for the doctrine of qualified immunity, which was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to rig the system, ensuring that abusive agents of the government almost always win and the victims of government abuse almost always lose.

How else do you explain a doctrine that requires victims of police violence to prove that their abusers knew their behavior was illegal because it had been deemed so in a nearly identical case at some prior time?

It’s a setup for failure.

A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.”

Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

For those in need of a reminder of all the ways in which the Supreme Court has made us sitting ducks at the mercy of the American police state, let me offer the following.

As a result of court rulings in recent years, police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless arrests based on mere suspicion. Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.  Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime.  Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing.

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous. Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them.

To sum it up, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat.

So where does that leave us?

For those deluded enough to believe that they’re living the American dream—where the government represents the people, where the people are equal in the eyes of the law, where the courts are arbiters of justice, where the police are keepers of the peace, and where the law is applied equally as a means of protecting the rights of the people—it’s time to wake up.

We no longer have a representative government, a rule of law, or justice.

Liberty has fallen to legalism. Freedom has fallen to fascism.

Justice has become jaded, jaundiced and just plain unjust.

And for too many, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the American dream of freedom and justice for all has turned into a living nightmare.

Given the turbulence of our age, with its government overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, profit-driven prisons, corporate corruption, COVID mandates, and community-wide lockdowns, the need for a guardian of the people’s rights has never been greater.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

— Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions.

The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.

Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation—one that has been spreading like wildfire—is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live and the constantly shifting crises that keep the populace in a state of high alert.

Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of a virus, fear of the unmasked, fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

Fear makes people stupid.

Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.

Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail.

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology, endless wars, COVID-19 mandates, etc., hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police, marauding SWAT teams, and egregious assaults on the rights of the citizenry.

America has already entered a new phase, one in which communities are locked down, employees are forced to choose between keeping their jobs or exercising their freedoms, children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents, and law-abiding Americans are finding their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented and their communications monitored.

These threats are not to be underestimated.

Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.

Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.

So far, these tactics are working.

An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America.

Each successive crisis in recent years (a COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, etc.)—manufactured or legitimate—has succeeded in reducing the American people to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”

Sanchez continues:

I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…

I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…

Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.

As history makes clear, fear leads to fascistic, totalitarian regimes.

It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled.

The following are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:

·       The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).

·       The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.

·       The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.

·       The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

·       The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.

·       The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.

·       The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.

·       The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.

·       The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.

·       The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore.

“Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized,” writes Jeffrey Tucker. “Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect.”

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.

Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring.

It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences.

For example, neuroscientists have observed how quickly fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports:

In the experiment, researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling.

The conclusion? “A newborn mouse pup, seemingly innocent to the workings of the world, may actually harbor generations’ worth of information passed down by its ancestors.”

Now consider the ramifications of inherited generations of fears and experiences on human beings. As the Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, fear, trauma and compliance can be passed down through the generations.

Fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it now operates in our contemporary world—all of which raises fundamental questions about us as human beings and what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

In the words of psychologist Erich Fromm:

[C]an human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love—that is to say, can man forget he is human? Or does human nature have a dynamism which will react to the violation of these basic human needs by attempting to change an inhuman society into a human one?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

A novel coronavirus, deadly and unnecessary lockdowns, civil unrest, political division, economic crises, a rise in mental health issues — the list goes on and on and on. Since March 2020, most of the world has suffered immensely in one way or another. But, amidst the madness, there is room for gratitude. More specifically, I’m suggesting we should be grateful for who and what has been exposed over the past 18 months or so.

6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid

1. EXPOSED: Science and Medicine

If you ever had a doubt that these two “institutions” were hotbeds of corruption and greed, the response to Covid-19 surely cleared things up for you. Everything — from social distancing to masks to vaccines to variants to other treatments being demonized and beyond — was a poorly constructed lie.

2. EXPOSED: Corporations

The biggest money grab in history, #woke opportunism, support for mandates, and so much more. All their rainbow flags and BLM banners can’t change who they are (and have always been).

3. EXPOSED: Government

It’s a well-worn script: A crisis unfolds and elected officials — across the ideological spectrum — exploit it to enhance their power. If you were unsure whether or not any politician could be trusted, you now have your answer.4. EXPOSED: The #woke Left

The same clowns who once marched against Monsanto are now shilling for Moderna. Plus: Censorship, support for mandates, hypocrisy, thought control, groupthink… need I go on?

5. EXPOSED: Media and Social Media

All media outlets and social media platforms — regardless of their ostensible “narrative” — are nothing more than AI-assisted stenographers to power.

6. EXPOSED: The General Population 

Before Covid, did you ever wonder how your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, etc., would respond to a genuine (or manufactured) crisis? Well… take a good look around. Most of them, it seems, will follow orders and respect authority without question. They’ll willingly abdicate their autonomy, enthusiastically volunteer to be lab rats, and ruthlessly turn on anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep. They will embrace totalitarianism and surrender their freedoms in exchange for the illusion of safety. So, yeah… now you know.

I’m thankful that so many people and institutions in my life have clarified who they are and how they behave under duress. To connect with like-minded and open-minded comrades, you are required to move on from those seeking to harm you or, at least, hold you back. You know exactly who they are because they’ve openly exposed that they do not have your best interests at heart.

In order to move forward in a positive and powerful way, it’s essential to know where you stand in relation to others. If you wish to continue growing, learning, and evolving, you must be willing to see and accept what’s going on. Translation: You must reclaim the subversive pleasure of thinking for yourself. #gratitude.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

A novel coronavirus, deadly and unnecessary lockdowns, civil unrest, political division, economic crises, a rise in mental health issues — the list goes on and on and on. Since March 2020, most of the world has suffered immensely in one way or another. But, amidst the madness, there is room for gratitude. More specifically, I’m suggesting we should be grateful for who and what has been exposed over the past 18 months or so.

6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid

1. EXPOSED: Science and Medicine

If you ever had a doubt that these two “institutions” were hotbeds of corruption and greed, the response to Covid-19 surely cleared things up for you. Everything — from social distancing to masks to vaccines to variants to other treatments being demonized and beyond — was a poorly constructed lie.

2. EXPOSED: Corporations

The biggest money grab in history, #woke opportunism, support for mandates, and so much more. All their rainbow flags and BLM banners can’t change who they are (and have always been).

3. EXPOSED: Government

It’s a well-worn script: A crisis unfolds and elected officials — across the ideological spectrum — exploit it to enhance their power. If you were unsure whether or not any politician could be trusted, you now have your answer.4. EXPOSED: The #woke Left

The same clowns who once marched against Monsanto are now shilling for Moderna. Plus: Censorship, support for mandates, hypocrisy, thought control, groupthink… need I go on?

5. EXPOSED: Media and Social Media

All media outlets and social media platforms — regardless of their ostensible “narrative” — are nothing more than AI-assisted stenographers to power.

6. EXPOSED: The General Population 

Before Covid, did you ever wonder how your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, etc., would respond to a genuine (or manufactured) crisis? Well… take a good look around. Most of them, it seems, will follow orders and respect authority without question. They’ll willingly abdicate their autonomy, enthusiastically volunteer to be lab rats, and ruthlessly turn on anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep. They will embrace totalitarianism and surrender their freedoms in exchange for the illusion of safety. So, yeah… now you know.

I’m thankful that so many people and institutions in my life have clarified who they are and how they behave under duress. To connect with like-minded and open-minded comrades, you are required to move on from those seeking to harm you or, at least, hold you back. You know exactly who they are because they’ve openly exposed that they do not have your best interests at heart.

In order to move forward in a positive and powerful way, it’s essential to know where you stand in relation to others. If you wish to continue growing, learning, and evolving, you must be willing to see and accept what’s going on. Translation: You must reclaim the subversive pleasure of thinking for yourself. #gratitude.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

Yes, we’re all well aware that the Pfizer vaccine just got full FDA approval. Did anyone think that it wouldn’t? Did anyone in the media bother to ask if the forces of power, money, and technocratic medical tyrants would back down and not give full approval, considering how these forces have managed to shape reality and scare to death half of the population over a disease with a very low mortality rate? Regardless of your opinion of how severe the disease is, mandates and passports are incontrovertibly coercive, tyrannical measures. If the vaccines do not stop transmission, which the medical authorities have already admitted to varying degrees, then what is the point of these mandates and passports?

Furthermore, the vaccine passport will effectively be discriminatory since minorities are less likely to get the vaccines. African Americans especially have lower vaccination rates, for good reasons, the US medical establishment experimented on black populations throughout the Cold War and even beyond. It’s not difficult to see the ramifications of bio-digital segregations. One does not need a PhD or medical degree; in fact, these “credentials” seem to blinker one’s view in support of this new form of discrimination.

In the view of what we might term the technocracy, or perhaps the emerging biosecurity establishment, it is virtuous to separate the “clean” vaxxed from the supposedly disease-carrying, uneducated, lower-classes who won’t take these experimental shots.

All of the power and money, all the “Science ” snowballed into an unstoppable corporate/government momentum which shows no signs of letting up. All that propaganda, the deliberate lies about mask efficiency (they don’t work) and vaccine holiness (they don’t prevent transmission) they’ve been shoving down the public’s throats for over a year and a half? Yeah, the nanny-state politico-medical tyrants are not going to give up this narrative without a fight. They are doubling down on the fear and quest for total obedience and control. It suits late-stage capitalism just fine if small and medium sized businesses go under and the excess labor supply of the unemployed are evicted and go hungry. They are extraneous to the monopoly cartels which run the “economy”, which is run by giant tech corporations, the stock market, the military-industrial complex, and the FIRE sector, multinational conglomerates who operate with almost no competition in nearly every industry.

There is no way to fight back against these abuses of power through the court system. In my opinion, the most rational approach would be to boycott, in any way possible, the corporations and public institutions that are going along with vaccine mandates and passports. Part of this involves the vote with your dollars approach. Hurting the corporate lemmings and technocrat sociopaths in their wallets and lack of tax revenues are the only things they will understand.

If you were thinking of traveling to Europe, skip France and Italy. Guess what?  If globally millions of tourists suddenly gave the middle finger to these two countries and vacationed elsewhere, the dent in lost revenue and GDP might actually have some effect on the political establishment. In France and Italy citizens are rightly fed up with protests every day against the passports, and many vaccinated people have burned their vaccine papers in solidarity.

Similarly, if people in the US abstained from traveling to and spending money in NYC and SF, every restaurant owner, museum board, theater, and small business would then put immediate pressure on city, state, and federal politicians to ban vaccine passports, hopefully for good. If millions of people refuse to shop and do business with companies that have mandatory vaccination requirements for their employees, it would also put immense pressure to relent.

Investors should also divest from corporations that insist on mandating vaccines for employees. It may, in fact, be legal for companies to do so, but it is frankly coercive and is a sort of crossing of the Rubicon, blurring one’s private life and medical choices with public duties, to create a new type of “good citizen”, a biopolitical subject serving capitalism with zero critical thinking skills.

For those in the workforce facing mandates, such as federal/state public employees and health care workers, if possible it is definitely worth considering if another career/job can be found. If enough teachers, nurses, etc., quit or go on strike against their employee mandates, pressure can be applied and the mandates could potentially be lifted.

It’s worth pointing out that the goalposts continue to be changed from slowing the pace of transmission to eradicating the virus- from two weeks to flatten the curve (tacitly acknowledging that coronaviruses cannot really be stopped) to mandates for wide swaths of public and private work, as well as military and police presence on the streets of Australia, to name one of the most obvious police state measures. The goalposts are changing to determine our “good citizen” status. Before, one simply had to go along to get along, obey the laws, pay taxes, and keep one’s head down; now, not only are we expected to do and say the right things, but to inject the right experimental drugs into our bodies.

My humble prediction is the goalposts are going to continue to move. The game is akin to the frogs boiling slowly in the pot; by consenting to our own freedom being curtailed and our own imprisonment, the establishment gets what it wants without having to crack down using excessive force and coercion. The innate desire to have access to public spaces, to go on vacation, will lead many people ignorant of the wider implications to accept these new dystopian measures.  The horizon of getting “back to normal” will recede faster as new variants naturally emerge, as viruses tend to do, and this will continue to be used as a new scare tactic, even as death rates effectively returned to normal four months ago (May of 2021) in the US, and many other countries show no more excess deaths, or none outside normal yearly variations, as well in 2021.

The virus is now endemic, but the powers that be are going to insist upon using it as a weapon for total control over the population. We’re through the looking-glass, we now have a form of “scientism” which is irrefutable no matter how unsettled the truth really is. Statistics such as death counts from Covid are unreliable, with doctors confessing to listing Covid-19 as the primary cause of death when it’s not- dying “from Covid” is conflated as dying “with Covid”. Deaths from the lockdowns are not seriously considered, even though many scientists are on record stating that the lockdowns led to a large chunk of the excess deaths.

Frankly, the near future looks pretty bleak for the US and the chances to have an open, honest dialogue about the seriousness of the pandemic, the capitalist world-system which stands to gain by using a 21st century tech-driven shock doctrine, and the police-state that will be built on the back of the panic caused by incessant propaganda. The fault lines are deepening and Democrats yammer to “trust the science” without any understanding themselves, and are willing to demonize anyone who doesn’t get an experimental jab or wear two masks while alone in their car; while Republicans continue to frame the “reopen the economy” debate in terms of those supposedly wonderful job-creating corporations, all the while being willing to sell the average worker out for an extra buck or two. Both parties are more than willing to screw over the poor, minorities, and working classes; if either cared about their citizens’ lives they wouldn’t throw people out into the streets via the mass evictions that are already underway.

As imperial decline and rot deepen, and the domestic surveillance apparatus pulls its noose tighter against our necks, our best bet to resist these freedom-crushing decrees is to deploy citizen power, mass protests, and coordinated direct action against inhumane vaccine mandates and police-state vaccine passports.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by William Hawes.

In response to the events of September 11, 2001, the emergency use authorization (EUA) concept was created. The ostensible idea was to empower the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow the use of potentially life-saving products (e.g. medicines, etc.) after a terrorist attack. However, the EUA designation was not put into effect until late 2020 — for the COVID-19 “vaccines.”

The squashing of civil liberties in The Land of the Free is hardly a novel idea. For just a few (of endless) examples, one may recall Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996), Espionage and Sedition Act (1917), National Defense Authorization Act (2011), or the FBI Counterintelligence Program, COINTELPRO (technically 1956-1971, but probably still going). Also, the interned Japanese-Americans in the 1940s just might have something to say about FDR’s concept of “freedom.” Doling out and taking away rights is essentially a side quest for America’s power elite.

A common theme of these power grabs involves exploiting a crisis. Two decades ago, the Bush-Cheney Administration used the guise of “emergency” to reshape the country’s psyche. Steps that seemed like temporary precautions are now deemed permanent and normal. These include a wide range of changes like the Transportation Security Administration, three-ounce bottles of liquid, full-body scanners, a “No Fly” list, and the completely laughable concept of taking off your shoes before going through security (soon to be rendered fully obsolete thanks to foot scanners).

All of the above (and so much more) would’ve once seemed like details from a bad, futuristic novel. Today, they exist without comment. The powers-that-be have effectively conditioned us to accept whatever is imposed upon us. And, post-9/11, that included the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act,” a.k.a. the USA PATRIOT Act.

This totalitarian salvo includes what the ACLU called “a host of alarming and unconstitutional anti-speech provisions” and was been condemned by three state legislatures and almost 250 municipalities across the United States.

Adele Welty declared the PATRIOT Act to be “a serious threat to the exercise of our Constitutional rights.” Welty’s son Timothy lost his life in the WTC collapse — one of the 343 firefighters who died that day. She later testified before the New York City Council and said, in part: “[The USA PATRIOT Act] undermines our Fourth Amendment right to privacy and expands the ability of the government to use wiretaps and computer surveillance and to look at confidential medical, financial, business and educational records.”

Such talk of rights and overreach sounds quaint to today’s ears. Like the internet or cellphones, the USA PATRIOT Act is just something that’s passed down to new generations without examination, thought, or even conscious awareness. That’s part of what made it so easy for the elites to use the COVID-19 pandemic to garner even more control and wealth.

Twenty years later, we’ve come full circle to see the emergency use authorization of an experimental gene therapy being forced upon a compliant population. If you scare enough people for a long enough time, they’ll believe anything. They’ll even trust their abusers to help them. It’s trauma bonding on a macro scale.

That’s how they got us to line up in our socks for a flight. One alleged shoe bomber event happens, a frenzy is created, and Americans happily surrender rights for the illusion of safety. Today’s thugs in charge use a faulty PCR test to inflate Covid numbers, impose useless and psychologically damaging mitigation tactics like masks and distancing, and then tell us how lucky we are that they’re here to save us with a magic shot. But, if the shot doesn’t work or causes injury, you can’t sue them.

Here in New York City, we’re living under a vaccine mandate — almost 20 years to the day of 9/11. Unvaccinated adults can’t attend movies, work out at gyms, visit museums, or dine in restaurants. It’s to protect everyone, of course. Except that unjabbed children under 12 can go anywhere they want. Why? Because science, of course. To question this decree is to expose yourself as a potential domestic terrorist. But the authorities won’t have to find you. Your friends and neighbors will gladly turn you in — to protect everyone, of course. Remember: We’re all in this together! (Even the ACLU is now in favor of mandates.)

Meanwhile, the majority of black and Latino adults in the Big Apple have wisely avoided the shots. Thus, this mandate is limiting the ability of People of Color to live their lives and make a living. Sounds like “structural racism” to me. Not a peep has been heard from Black Lives Matter or any other #woke organization. Some call it coincidence.

There’s a direct line from the anti-anarchist Palmer raids to the smashing of labor unions to the Red Scare to FISA to today’s demonization of anyone who questions the patently insane Covid narrative. There’s also a direct line running through all those, um, helpful citizens who gleefully support the repressive tactics imposed by a cabal of Corporate and State actors.

Unless and until everyday people break free of the programming, there will be more experimental drugs, more invasive technologies, more surveillance, more artificial intelligence, and more transhumanism. You’ll never stop lining up to be scanned, injected, genetically modified, and “enhanced.” There is only one hope and one path away from this dystopian future vision: rediscover the subversive of thinking for yourself.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

https://worldbeyondwar.org/guantanamo-past-the-point-of-all-shame/

U.S. high schools should teach courses on Guantanamo: what not to do in the world, how not to make it even worse, and how not to compound that catastrophe beyond all shame and recovery.

As we tear down Confederate statues and continue brutalizing victims in Guantanamo, I wonder if in 2181, had Hollywood still been around, it would have made movies from the perspective of Guantanamo’s prisoners while the U.S. government committed new and different atrocities to be bravely confronted in 2341.

That is to say, when will people learn that the problem is cruelty, not the particular flavor of cruelty?

The purpose of the Guantanamo prisons was and is cruelty and sadism. Names like Geoffrey Miller and Michael Bumgarner should become permanent synonyms for the twisted dehumanizing of victims in cages. The war is supposedly over, making it difficult for aging men who were innocent boys to “return” to the “battlefield” if freed from the Hell on Earth stolen from Cuba, but nothing ever made sense. We’re on President #3 since promises were first made to shut Guantanamo down, yet it moans and rattles on, brutalizing its victims and their captors.

Don’t Forget Us Here is the title of Mansoor Adayfi’s book about his life from age 19 to age 33, which he spent in Guantanamo. He could not be seen as the youngster he was when first kidnapped and tortured, and was seen instead — or at least the pretense was made — that he was an important top anti-U.S. terrorist. That didn’t require seeing him as a human being, quite the opposite. Nor did it have to make any sense. There was never any evidence that Adayfi was the person he was accused of being. Some of his imprisoners told him they knew it was false. He was never charged with any crime. But at some point the U.S. government decided to pretend he was a different top terrorism commander, despite the lack of any evidence for that one either, or any explanation of how they could have captured such a person accidentally while imagining that he was someone else.

Adayfi’s account begins like so many others. He was abused by the CIA in Afghanistan first: hung from a ceiling in the dark, naked, beaten, electrocuted. Then he was stuck into a cage in Guantanamo, having no idea what part of the Earth he was in or why. He only knew the guards behaved like lunatics, freaking out and screaming in a language he couldn’t speak. The other prisoners spoke a variety of languages and had no reason to trust each other. The better guards were awful, and the Red Cross was worse. There seemed to be no rights, except for the iguanas.

At any opportunity, guards stormed in and beat prisoners, or dragged them off for torture/interrogation or solitary confinement. They deprived them of food, water, healthcare, or shelter from the sun. They stripped them and “cavity-searched” them. They mocked them and their religion.

But Adayfi’s account develops into one of fighting back, of organizing and rallying the prisoners into all variety of resistance, violent and otherwise. Some hint of this appears early on in his atypical reaction to the usual threat to bring his mother there and rape her. Adayfi laughed at that threat, confident that his mother could whip the guards into shape.

One of the main tools available and used was the hunger strike. Adayfi was force-fed for years. Other tactics included refusing to come out of a cage, refusing to answer endless ridiculous questions, destroying everything in a cage, inventing outrageous confessions of terrorist activity for days of interrogations and then pointing out that it was all made-up nonsense, making noise, and splashing guards with water, urine, or feces.

The people running the place chose to treat the prisoners as subhuman beasts, and did a pretty good job of making the prisoners play the part. The guards and interrogators would believe almost anything: that the prisoners had secret weapons or a radio network or had each been a top ally of Osama bin Laden — anything other than that they were innocent. The relentless interrogation — the slaps, the kicks, the broken ribs and teeth, the freezing, the stress positions, the noise machines, the lights — would go on until you admitted being whoever they said you were, but then you’d be in for it bad if you didn’t know lots of details about this unknown person.

We know that some of the guards really thought all the prisoners were crazed murderers, because sometimes they’d play a trick on a new guard who fell asleep and put a prisoner near him when he awoke. The result was sheer panic. But we also know it was a choice to view a 19-year-old as a top general. It was a choice to suppose that after years and years of “Where is Bin Laden?” any answer that actually existed would still be relevant. It was a choice to use violence. We know it was a choice to use violence because of an extensive multi-year experiment in three acts.

In Act I, the prison treated its victims as monsters, torturing, strip-searching, routinely beating, depriving of food, etc., even while trying to bribe prisoners to spy on each other. And the result was often-violent resistance. One means that sometimes worked for Adayfi to lessen some injury was to beg for it like Brer Rabbit. Only by professing his deep desire to be kept near screaming loud vacuum cleaners put there, not to clean, but to make so much noise around the clock that one couldn’t talk or think, did he get a break away from them.

The prisoners organized and plotted. They raised hell until interrogators stopped torturing one of their number. They jointly lured General Miller into position before hitting him in the face with shit and urine. They smashed their cages, ripped out the toilets, and showed how they could escape throught the hole in the floor. They went on mass hunger srike. They gave the U.S. military vastly more work — but then, is that something the military didn’t want?

Adayfi went six years without communication with his family. He became such an enemy of his torturers that he wrote a statement praising the crimes of 9/11 and promising to fight the U.S. if he got out.

In Act 2, after Barack Obama became president promising to close Guantanamo but didn’t close it, Adayfi was permitted a lawyer. The lawyer treated him as a human being — but only after being horrified to meet him and not believing he was meeting the right person; Adayfi did not match his description as the very worst of the worst.

And the prison changed. It became basically a standard prison, which was such a step up that prisoners cried for joy. They were allowed into common spaces to sit and talk to each other. They were allowed books and televisions and carboard scraps for art projects. They were allowed to study, and to go outside into a recreational area with the sky visible. And the result was that they didn’t have to fight and resist and get beaten all the time. The sadists among the guards had very little left to do. Adayfi learned English and business and art. Prisoners and guards struck up friendships.

In Act 3, in response to nothing, apparently due to a change in command, old rules and brutality were reintroduced, and the prisoners responded as before, back on hunger strike, and when intentionally provoked by damaging Qur’ans, back to violence. The guards destroyed all the art projects the prisoners had made. And the U.S. government offered to let Adayfi go if he would dishonestly testify in court against another prisoner. He refused.

When Mansoor Adayfi was finally freed, it was with no apology, except unofficially from a Colonel who admitted to knowing his innocence, and he was freed by forcing him to a place he did not know, Serbia, gagged, blindfolded, hooded, earmuffed, and shackled. Nothing had been learned, as the purpose of the whole enterprise had included from the start the avoidance of learning anything.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by David Swanson.

We began the journey with a cool launch as version 2.0 of the roaring twenties commenced, but that quickly gave way to the Age of  Terror in which the villainous machinations of mad scientists were revealed as they unleashed their plagues, which in turn brought us face to face with the next stage of Orwell’s fevered dream that has manifested in the form of draconian lockdowns, suppression of effective medical treatments, massive censorship, propaganda campaigns, forced inoculations in many parts of the world, and the rise of globalist-inspired technocratic tyranny.

It’s created one hell of a whirlwind thus far, so I can’t say I’m surprised that so many peoples’ heads are still spinning and that they can’t make heads or tails of what’s being imposed upon them as the jewels of liberty are methodically stripped away. But, even so, there’s really no excuse for not being informed and having a strong sense of discernment at this point in the process. It’s all been prophesized and warned about enough, no doubt.

Thankfully, it does seem as though some of the heralded signs have been taken to heart.

Protests in Cuba? Beautiful to see. Protests in the UK? Wonderful to behold. Protests in France? Glorious to witness.

Did the World Economic Forum and the Fortune 100 corporations and the United Nations and the World Health Organization and Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation and the Big Tech oligarchs and all the minions of these authoritarian governments across the globe that are continually imposing increasingly despotic edicts outside of natural and common law think that humanity was going to just collectively roll over, assume a fetal position, and suck their thumbs without putting up any resistance when the “build back better” and “great reset” and “sustainable development” and “Agenda 2030” bullshit hit the fan?

Not a chance.

Well, of course, they understood quite well that a large swath of the sheepish population would do just that. But, hell, a lot of people at this point would put a bullet in their own brain or jump off a thousand foot cliff if certain experts that they worship as false idols informed them that such actions were the scientifically proven methods toward achieving radiant health and immortality (or even just simple immunity from a souped-up, bio weapon virus). That’s perfectly evident at this point of the game, and such behavior is no different than the people who gleefully lined up to turn their babies over to be sacrificed atop the Aztec pyramid when the priest class of that era convinced them that the sun had disappeared in a fit of anger when really it was just catching some shade during an eclipse and would pop back out at any moment without the need for slitting any throats.

That lemming-mimicking segment of society has never been concerned much with the precepts of common sense, critical analysis, or free thinking throughout the ages, and so their current fear-induced hysteria is no different in the modern epoch we’re currently living through.

But that doesn’t account for a solid 25% of people (or, if we’re fortunate, even more) who do care, greatly, about maintaining their own sovereignty. And so they won’t go down without questioning the so-called authority figures who are pulling all these heinous stunts. And, in the long run, it’s this courageous minority who will be victorious. Though it’s certainly going to be a bumpy ride along the way to reach that point down the line. So be it. The principles of autonomy are well-worth the effort to preserve, and a bit of discomfort in the short term sure beats the hell out of the Satanic one world government system of the beast being offered as an alternative path with an endgame of complete destitution and neo-feudalistic nonsense that will only bring about total enslavement of the species.

So it’s encouraging to watch the resistance as it mounts and grows by the day. It’s no doubt true that order arising out of chaos is a real principle that plays out in nature, society, and individual psychology. It’s just not going to be the type of manufactured decline of civilization that these transhumanist demons at the top of the scam are hoping for so they can offer their depraved solutions after the crash. It is their plans, ultimately, which are destined to fail, fall, and burn. Magnificently. Then the phoenix of renaissance can take flight.

I guess the big question that looms in the air before us now is: when does the Nuremberg Trial redux begin? Because I know that karma weaves its web and works its wiles on its own terms and in its own mysterious ways, but I’m sort of keen on the concept of justice being rendered swiftly and served in a timely fashion at this stage of the plot.

I’ve no doubt it will happen. For though it may seem as if darkness and deception have taken the upper hand and garnered dominion across the earth, there are always reciprocal forces at work behind the scenes keeping the overall energy in balance; and so, as the lies spewed forth from the mud-caked lips of swine become intolerably blatant, truth is risen up more quickly to breach the surface of the collective consciousness.

In fact, that’s why the authoritarians have taken their gloves off. They didn’t foresee in their algorithmic equations that resistance to their schemes would be so large, or how vehement certain folks would be in the desire to keep their freedoms intact. The control freaks feel their grip loosening and losing sway, and so they are doing everything they can in a hurried, bumbling, blundering fashion to try and keep hold of their tenuous grasp.

But we all know how sand slips through the fingers of a closed fist, and we’ve all heard tell about the genie that can’t be shoved back in the bottle once released. Yeah, Pandora is out and about, and there’s no turning back the clock now, darling.

The times have never been more interesting, and I’ve never been more thankful to be alive. The show must go on, and though the action might get a bit more perilous and sketchy as we reach the climatic scenes of this drama, there’s a big bright light shining from the other side pulling us forward with a magnetic tug of love.

So walk steady with a straight, sturdy spine in high spirits. Hallelujah.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Scott Thomas Outlar.

I am of the opinion that people have the right to decide whether to accept vaccines or not, especially since these are experimental vaccines … My concern is I know there are risks but we don’t have access to the data … We don’t really have the information we need to make a reasonable decision.

— Dr. Robert Malone, “Inventor of mRNA Interviewed About Injection Dangers“

No, it is not the sky is falling overreach. Any leftist worth her or his understanding of Capitalism’s History, of the entire project of this country’s Indian Removal campaign, the entire force of slavery then and slavery now, and the dirty murderers in every aspect of American government and corporate prostitution of government/politicos, knows this new normal policing of the Internet is just another variation on a theme of USA Surveillance Central: snitches, Scarlet Letters, superstitious Skull and Bones antihuman Ivy Elites, House Committee on Unamerican Activities  (HCUA), COINTELPRO, CIA Murder Inc., Confessions of Economic Hit Men, Chicago School, Edward Bernays School of Pulling the Wool Over the Sheeple’s Eyes.

Batty Bioweapons, 5G, and Star Wars

Note that the YouTube interview of me has been scrubbed, and Andy Libson thinks it’s Artificial Intelligence doing it, though I am surfing the internet all the time for jobs, and many remote jobs are in the pipeline, and there are humans doing $20 an hour gigs surfing the internet with those tools of oppression provided them to, well, scour the internet of  ideas! Here, Andy’s email to me:

Hey Paul,

I thought this might happen…and it did!

If you want you can post your episode up on bitchute.

I actually wonder if they got all bent out of shape about the comments.  Who knows with these creatures.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/jZU9I0A83CI7/

Here, a partial blurb from that Fascist YouTube:

From: YouTube Community Guidelines <moc.ebutuoynull@ylper-on>
Date: Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 12:54 AM

Hi What’s Left?,

Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our medical misinformation policy. We’ve removed the following content from YouTube:

Video: Haeder’s Reimagining Sanity – Batty Bioweapons, 5G, Star Wars

We know that this might be disappointing, but it’s important to us that YouTube is a safe place for all. If content breaks our rules, we remove it. If you think we’ve made a mistake, you can appeal and we’ll take another look. Keep reading for more details.

It is childish, all “vice principal thuggery like”, suspensions for not standing during the pledge of allegiance, or expulsions for defending oneself with fists when a bunch of thugs jump you in the high school bathroom. The nanny state on growth hormones, and this just is a long line of compliancy, the school system John Taylor Gatto discussed. One hundred and fifty years in the making, until today: Zoom Doom Schools, adult teachers as children, children as infants, wasted thoughts, busy work, coloring and snack-snack-snack, all that school loyalty, mascots on underwear, administrators who sound like two-bit car salespersons: the rise of Consumo Pithecus and Retailosapiens:

Twentieth-century scientific schooling is best described as the social experiment of inculcating into children what Gatto calls the “seven lessons of school teaching.” These lessons of mass forced schooling merit lengthy quotation:

• It confuses the students. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television; it fills almost all the “free” time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
• It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
• It makes them indifferent.
• It makes them emotionally dependent.
• It makes them intellectually dependent.
• It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
• It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.

Or, as Rockefeller’s General Education Board summed up in a 1906 document on scientific schooling:

In our dreams … people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk…. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…. We will organize children … and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

This is the new normal since we’ve had 150 years of Gestapo schooling, even before the words, Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police) were put together in order to exact obedience. You can hear Glen Greenwald’s most recent analysis of the cancel culture, and worse, the libeling and destruction of human beings with a counter thought, contrarian, outside the main paradigm, critical of systems, left, right or center under this fascist state, USA:

On this special edition of System Update, Glenn Greenwald dives into the latest online war to erupt in the Liberal media ecosystem to explore the underlying pathologies driving liberal and Democratic Party discourse. He focuses on two reputation-destroying cancers in particular that have become dreadfully commonplace: baselessly accusing people of being paid Russian agents, and weaponizing accusations of sexual misconduct.

The irony of my hour and 49 minutes with Andy, Eduardo and Kenny, on their three-year-old show, What’s Left, is that I bar no holds, and actually critique the entire mess that is the echo chamber, the Jimmy Dore’s, Bill Maher’s, Jon Stewart’s, SNL’s, all of them who think they are giving to humankind in their endless prattling and rattling. Millionaires, like Joe Rogan? Really. Oh, the work they don’t do to have $ thrown at them. All the prognosticators, all those making hay commenting on the commenters and the news (sic) and the political whoring that is DC/K-Street/Big Media/DoD/Three Branches of the Poison Tree called Government! It is endless, meaningless, and worthless in the scheme of things, but should never be 86-ed off any platform.

Do we get taken off Word Press for the stories Dissident Voice runs, the fun word play I have with life in the Matrix? Gestapoization connected to YouTube, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook, this concept too much for the worldwide net? Do those algorithms and deep boring AI tools go looking for these sorts of juxtaposed concepts by writers, to tally up and then eventually remove?

I’m attempting to get Andy, Eduardo and Kenny to get me in on interviewing THEM at What’s Left, and, the irony is, we can’t talk about bans by YouTube, or discuss this Internet Gestapoization without, well, getting the bloody YouTube video banned, culled, taken down, First Amendment Ripped! Here’s what I just email What’s Left:

So, how many times has this happened to What’s Left, Andy? I will be writing a piece on this ASAP, but give me a sense of the times you all got taken down, by YouFuckYourselfTube, so I can frame some of what I write about ties into your work. What are the takedowns about? Just “medical misinformation”?

Andy — We’ve had 4 episodes removed.

1. What’s Left came about why?

Andy — About saying the the previous prez election was stolen. And that the “insurrection” was a setup and a fraud. (Yours) … I think it’s the idea that it is a bioweapon. That is my guess at least.

2. What are some of the more compelling topics and issues you all have covered? Why?

Andy — They were about talking about vaccines and maintaining that they were gene therapy techniques and were dangerous. And we were skeptical of them even being vaccines.

3. What topics would you like to cover in the future?

+–+

4. What’s your background, quickly (I did see your interview on Left Lockdown Skeptics)?

5. As a socialist, for you and Kenny and Eduardo, what has all of this Facebook and YouTube and Twitter lockdowning, censoring, etc., done to your framing, your perspective?

6. Are you three educators? This sort of culling of discussion and debate and information flow back and forth being culled by ruthless people, the elites and their foot soldiers, it seems like something you all would talk about in HS current events, communications classes, history, no? What would you tell students who might ask you why all the websites and podcasts and videos are coming down.

7. Here you go, Green Peace gets Exxon, but this is business as usual for the elites. And, Green Peace will be sued. Discuss?

8.  So much for peaceful protests — how do you frame a story like this to your compadres and students? “In Iowa, a federal judge has sentenced climate activist Jessica Reznicek to eight years in prison for damaging parts of the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and ’17. U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger also ordered Reznicek to pay nearly $3.2 million in restitution. In 2016, Jessica Reznicek and fellow activist Ruby Montoya set fire to five pieces of heavy machinery being used to construct the Dakota Access pipeline.”

Harkens to Bidder 70, Tim DeChristopher — “Tim DeChristopher disrupted an illegitimate Bureau of Land Management oil and gas auction in December of 2008, by posing as Bidder 70 and outbidding oil companies for parcels around Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah. For his act of civil disobedience, DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in federal prison. Held for a total of 21 months, his imprisonment earned him an international media presence as an activist and political prisoner of the United States government.”

9. Define what it means to be a human/man in 2021 — your perspective.

10. What does community mean to you?

11. Each of us has the elevator (masked and only two aboard under Covid-19 Craziness) speech on what is socialism, what is communism. What’s yours?

12. Where do you see USA in 20 years?

13. Where do you see the world in 20 years?

14. Are you a pacifist, and if so, why, and if not, then what, and why?

15. Biggest influencers in your life to have gotten you where you are now?

16. And, exactly where are you know? Define!

That’s the idea, at least, to drill down and peel back all the obfuscation and over and covert propagandization and disenfranchisement of real leftists, for sure — revolutionaries, socialists, communists.

Getting knocked off of YouTube pales in comparison to the issues of the day, of the hour, of the second, but it does have reverberations. All the people looking into the fascist states around the world and the fascist corporations and the thugs of the World Economic Forum and World Health Organization kind, well, those stories will be culled, and if you do an Internet search, not only are stories put to the 20th page of a Google search, there are 19 pages of fake articles, faux forums and other variations of mass media mush that hit you/us with countervailing articles (sic) on the very topic you might be writing about and posting/publishing.

They are at war with the people, with ideas, with free thinking, with free learning, with freedoms. The elites and their handmaids of oppression, subjugation and repression are working 24/7, each nanobit and nanosecond we breathe:

• global heating
• ocean inundation
• water crises
• rolling black outs
• anti-microbial resistance
• dumbdowning
• censorship
• jailing whistleblowers
• murder environmental, unionization, cultural, racial activists
• 2,700 billionaires and 36,000,000 millionaires running through every aspect of life, of communities, families, regions like wildfire, pathogens, cancers, viruses, armies
• ocean harvest collapses
• bioaccumulation of 10,000 chemicals
• poisoned waters, poisoned landscapes, poisoned air, poisoned food, poisoned thoughts
• civil society being hog-tied and disappeared
• patriarchy as ham-fisted murderers of the military industrial complex kind
• Hollywood (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, too) as the arbiters of the lies, the propagandists, the chosen few — Lies Incorporated
• any given minute, read the news feeds of your choice and see the perversions the elites and the mainstream feed the minds of Westerners
• digital gulags
• educational gulags
• economic gulags
• environmental gulags
• personal gulags
• agricultural gulags
• health system gulags
• pharmacological gulags
• legal gulags
• AI & Surveillance gulags

It all adds up — polluted skies, polluted thoughts, polluted discourse, or lack of discourse, that is!

Finally, the inventor of the mRNA process, Dr. Robert Malone, has been not just scrubbed from YouTube, but from Wikipedia. This is how Gestapo works:

… the adult public are basically research subjects that are not being required to sign informed consent due to EUA waiver. But that does not mean that they do not deserve the full disclosure of risks that one would normally require in an informed consent document for a clinical trial.

And now some national authorities are calling on the deployment of EUA vaccines to adolescents and the young, which by definition are not able to directly provide informed consent to participate in clinical research — written or otherwise.

The key point here is that what is being done by suppressing open disclosure and debate concerning the profile of adverse events associated with these vaccines violates fundamental bioethical principles for clinical research. This goes back to the Geneva convention and the Helsinki declaration.12 There must be informed consent for experimentation on human subjects. (Source; Source)

Pulitzer or Izzy or Project Censored awards? Those don’t matter in these Mad Hatter times of faux news, invented news, spurious news, demented news. It’s just another day in the “if it bleeds, it leads” gambit of mainstream and askew stream news. We have to keep digging, keep interviewing, keep researching. The ultimate arc of social justice and freedom is truth.

The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you’re going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing — for the sheer fun and joy of it — to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.

— I. F. Stone, quoted from, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear,  Paul Rogat Loeb

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.
— Gore Vidal, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, 2004

As Americans drown in debt and atomization, the liberal class applauds the arrival of a post-nation-state neo-feudal order which is devoid of checks and balances, integration, national cohesion, or collective memory, rendering any working class resistance to fascism a Herculean task. This has been made possible because of the demise of traditional American liberalism, rooted in the values of the civil rights movement and the New Deal, and its usurpation by the cult of neoliberalism which is anchored in unrestricted immigration, multiculturalism, identity politics, and the nakedly imperialistic policies embraced by the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton. This growing collaboration between neoliberals and the oligarchy has fomented an unprecedented degree of both tribalism and unfettered capitalism, and placed us on a runaway train racing to authoritarianism.

Identity politics, supported by a cornucopia of faux-left elements since the ‘90s with a cult-like zealotry, has unleashed an apocalyptic counter-revolution that is disintegrating our national identity. The anti-working class has been created to facilitate this dissolution. Children are being indoctrinated in the multicultural curriculum, which is predicated on the idea that white people are the oppressor and people of color are the oppressed. This has made both class consciousness and any understanding of history impossible, while depriving Americans of color and immigrant youth with a proper grounding in American letters and classics of Western Civilization. Such a curriculum constitutes the quintessence of racism, yet has been sold to the masses as “fighting racism.”

The multicultural society, essentially a Tower of Babel, has transformed the US into a hellscape of ghettoized enclaves which break down along lines of ethnicity, religion, and language. It has also facilitated the rise of the vocational community and the phenomenon of hyper-careerism. This, in turn, poses yet another threat to civil society, as fanatical careerists are generally indifferent to everything outside of their field.

Indeed, it has become commonplace for Americans who are ensconced in excellent jobs to be so indifferent to life outside of their specialty that they would shrug apathetically if informed that US and Chinese warships had opened fire on one another in the South China Sea. As long as Weill Cornell, Sloan Kettering, Columbia University, or the Metropolitan Opera House don’t get incinerated, they would only feel a vague and abstract connection to such an event. This obsessive single-minded devotion to one’s career, an identity which has come to envelop one’s very soul, is inextricably linked to the multicultural society, as many Americans increasingly feel that no life exists outside of work. As our society disintegrates, the ability of our countrymen to think rationally unravels along with it.

Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993, liberals have collaborated with every reactionary policy that has been promoted by the establishment: illegal wars of aggression, the privatization of the prisons, deindustrialization and offshoring, the oligarchy’s importation of tens of millions of undocumented workers and guest workers to depress wages and foment deunionization, the destruction of the public schools, the Patriot Act (which revoked habeas corpus), the Military Commissions Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, the return of Russophobia, the monopolization of the media into just a handful of corporations, the use of academia to generate student loan debt (now in excess of $1.5 trillion), the privatization of health care, the fomenting of unprecedented forms of tribalism and atomization; and more recently, the lockdown. Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet unleashed the dogs of war on the left. In the West today this is unnecessary, for the left has destroyed itself.

The more liberals sell their souls to the forces of reaction, the more they delude themselves into thinking that they are on the left. This has led to a kind of political schizophrenia, as those who betray the legacies of FDR and Martin Luther King are pulled inexorably into a vortex of ignorance, dogmatism, and superstition. Neoliberals, who should really be called “illiberals,” fail to see the preposterousness of their claiming to combat “the far right,” even as deep state operatives like John Brennan are regurgitating the exact same identity politics language that multiculturalists have been churning out for decades. Furthermore, we have political commentators such as General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of American forces in Afghanistan, comparing Trump supporters (i.e., the scourge of “white privilege”), to Al-Qaeda. Now replete with its own Green Zone, the Capitol is under martial law.

Recall that “humanitarian interventions” resulted in civil wars in Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, Syria (granted, many jihadis have been foreigners), and Afghanistan. This pitting of identity politics acolytes against what remains of American society is reminiscent of the way in which Washington pitted Sunnis and Shiites against one another in Iraq.

The anti-white jihadi is the offspring of ghettoization, the multicultural curriculum, and identity studies, and harbors a deep-seated hostility to Western Civilization. This anti-working class is being used by the establishment not unlike jihadis have been used by the Western elites in Syria: as a battering ram to degrade, destabilize, fragment, and if left unchecked, ultimately obliterate our national identity, thereby granting the oligarchy illimitable powers. Our jihadis are undoubtedly less violent than Syria’s (or even Sweden’s for that matter); and yet the two crusades are not dissimilar, as both are fanatically committed to the destruction of a particular civilization.

Siccing a majority on a minority is irrefutably reactionary, but doing the inversion is no less so, especially when there are powerful forces at work attempting to transform the minority into a new majority. A significant swath of leftists in the West have been hoodwinked into believing that multiculturalism is diametrically opposed to Nazism, when they are, in fact, two sides to the same coin. The relentless demonization of Trump, coupled with the dubious nature of his removal, mirrors the demonization and removal of Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Noriega, and Milošević, where the vilification of a head of state served as a pretext for launching wars on the citizenry of these countries.

The loathing of liberals for the Orange One, which they petulantly cling to despite his ouster, is tied to the fact that he made a mockery of the idea that liberals represent the lesser of two evils. While indubitably crass and bombastic at times, Trump had the temerity to take a principled stand on a number of key issues, such as pursuing detente with Russia, questioning the need for NATO following the breakup of the USSR, tirelessly ridiculing the lies of the presstitutes, condemning critical race theory, and denouncing the catastrophic offshoring of jobs. Trump’s support for hydroxychloroquine, and his warnings that the lockdowns were destroying New York City, have likewise proved prophetic. Meanwhile, liberals haven’t taken a principled stand on anything in thirty years.

Don’t misconstrue my intentions: I am not attempting to equate Trump supporters with the supporters of Allende. Undoubtedly, some of his supporters hold certain reactionary beliefs. Yet unlike liberals, whose solution for every domestic problem is to carry out more witch hunts and outsource more jobs, millions of Trump voters have legitimate grievances, as their lives have been upended by deindustrialization and offshoring, the lockdown, the opioid epidemic, inadequate health care, and the systematic dismantling of public education.

Liberal complicity in sustaining our unconscionable for-profit health care system, as evidenced by their enthusiastic support for Obamacare, has resulted in a demise of medical scientific integrity. Vioxx, the opioid epidemic, the psychotropic drug epidemic, and the anthrax vaccine constitute four of the most catastrophic drug regulatory failures in the history of medicine. The problem is that for the pharmaceutical industry, these aren’t failures at all, but successes, as these drugs have yielded staggering profits. The greatest danger posed by privatized health care is that medicines and procedures which represent the greatest threat to patient health are often extremely lucrative. This medical profiteering is so rampant that it is instigating a weaponization of health care and a restoration of Nazi bioethics, where informed consent and respect for patient dignity are completely jettisoned. Should Covid vaccines become mandatory – and keep in mind that drug companies are shielded from liability in the US should their vaccines cause harm – this would constitute an unequivocal violation of the Nuremberg Code. (A code, incidentally, written by white guys, hence ripe for burning). The SS physician credo, that any medical atrocity is justified as long as it is done “for the greater good,” is thriving under the lockdown.

A considerable amount of evidence exists that effective and inexpensive Covid treatment options involving hydroxychloroquine, budesonide, and ivermectin were suppressed (see here, here, here, here and here), which could have negated the need for lockdowns altogether and saved many thousands of lives. Granted, these drugs would have torpedoed the pharmaceutical industry’s desire to profit off of the crisis with Remdesivir and mRNA vaccines, the latter of particularly dubious safety and efficacy. (The authorities have explicitly stated that the vaccines, which are experimental and have only been granted an Emergency Use Authorization, will not end social distancing and the mandatory wearing of masks). We have been told that half a million Americans have died from Covid, but how many of these patients were under the age of 70 and had no significant comorbidities?  PCR tests have churned out vast numbers of false positives which has also helped maintain the hysteria and relentless fearmongering, while the notion of asymptomatic spread remains mired in conjecture. According to Reuters, the US lost over 20 million jobs in April of 2020 alone. Nevertheless, the lockdown did what it was designed to do: further erode civil liberties, while exacerbating atomization and economic inequality.

It is important to note that powerful tycoons that are not ensconced in the medical industrial complex, such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, have profited off of the pandemic, adding even more wealth to their already bloated fortunes. Consequently, lockdown profiteering is not confined to the robber barons within the health care oligarchy.

Commenting on the draconian lockdown measures, Daniel Jeanmonod, MD, writes in “Lockdowns are a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:”

The following two examples confirm these results: a country with low lockdown stringency like Sweden has at the moment the same fatality rate per million inhabitants as France, but lower than Spain, Italy and UK, where severe lockdown measures were applied.

In addition, Sweden has had for the second wave a much smaller excess mortality than France, Italy or Spain, an observation which allows one to suspect that lockdown measures are delaying the establishment of herd immunity. This is not desirable, as the time during which the old, sick and frail can be exposed to the virus gets longer.

In “The Covid Pandemic Is the Result of Public Health Authorities Blocking Effective Treatment,” Paul Craig Roberts questions the motives behind the lockdown:

Why are authorities enforcing ineffective measures while ignoring proven successful measures that greatly reduce the Covid threat and perhaps eliminate it altogether? Is it because the proven measures are inexpensive and offer no opportunity for large profits from vaccines?  Is it because the ‘Covid pandemic’ is useful for mandating control measures that curtail civil liberties?  Is it because the lockdowns decimate family businesses and enable further economic concentration?  The answer is ‘yes’ to all three questions.

Dr. Simone Gold, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors (and recently arrested to the delight of MedPage), has reiterated these concerns, tweeting on February 3rd:

What do lockdowns, masks, and panic all have in common?
Their positive impact on hospitalization rates is ZERO.
But their negative impact on life and liberty is severe and totally unnecessary.
The science doesn’t lie. The ‘scientists’ do.

Yet liberals continue to support the lockdowns, and in Germany Antifa have marched against their countrymen who have protested against the coercive measures, equating them with “the far right.” The degree to which Western societies have been tribalized by identity politics has made it very easy for the elites to impose what is essentially a collective house arrest on the entire Western world.

Democracy fell into grave jeopardy when liberals abandoned liberty of thought in favor of genuflecting at the altar of the presstitute priesthood. Indeed, when The New York Times tells liberals to jump they jump, when The New York Times tells liberals to be indifferent they are indifferent, when The New York Times tells liberals to be outraged they are outraged, and when “The Newspaper of Record” tells liberals to be ecstatic they are ecstatic. Can a democracy survive if a vast swath of its inhabitants can no longer differentiate between right and left, journalism and propaganda, psychological operations and intellectual analysis, even day and night? No less worrisome, the majority of American doctors are blindly accepting whatever they are told by the mullahs of FDA, CDC, NIH, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. This is the inevitable result of physicians becoming increasingly specialized while often possessing the humanities education of a junior high school student. In many ways, we have become a nation of Adolf Eichmanns and Albert Speers.

Those who stray from ideological “norms,” regardless of whether it be the lockdown or identity politics, are increasingly portrayed as either unhinged or guilty of incitement, and this language has become particularly vitriolic following “the riot” on January 6th. As Dmitry Babich pointed out on the January 11th Russia Today Cross Talk episode, the precise details of what transpired during the “storming of the United States Capitol” (to quote Wikipedia) are not of paramount importance. What matters is that the incident is being exploited by the establishment as a neoliberal Reichstag fire.

When identity politics youth brigades were assaulting people and inflicting billions of dollars in property damage over a period of many months, in an orgy of violence that was clearly designed to pressure the Trump administration to resign, the media applauded enthusiastically, even referring to the rioters as “peaceful demonstrators.” Calls for revenge against Trump administration officials are likewise unprecedented. As the Democratic Party has thrown away the rule book and turned the country into a banana republic, what is to prevent leaders in the Christian Right from meeting with some like-minded generals and doing the same? The peculiar events of January 6th conveniently scuttled an ongoing congressional investigation into serious allegations of voter fraud, and succeeded in transforming the anti-constitutionalists into the constitutionalists in the minds of millions of people, both at home and around the world.

Those who once sang “Kumbaya My Lord” and “We Shall Overcome” are now calling for dissenting voices to be silenced, either through deplatforming on social media, placing dissidents on a blacklist, or with the iron heel. Writing for The Atlantic, Graeme Wood, in addressing the problem of Americans who object to the dissolution of their national identity, prefers a more refined approach to CIA hit squads: “The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.” Having burned their own books, and sworn allegiance to the god of unreason, neoliberals have no other option than to relinquish ties to this death cult or pick up the truncheon of authoritarianism.

The mindless faux-left support for the most barbaric foreign policies could only lead to their support for lawlessness, violence, and barbarism at home. Indeed, those who kill and torture abroad, if not held accountable, will inevitably seek to do so domestically. This fine line is embodied by the story of Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was brutally tortured by US-backed Guatemalan security forces in 1989, and who recently passed away, another soul lost to the cancer wards. That this totalitarianization is being supported in the name of protecting the country from imaginary neo-Nazis signifies the complete moral and intellectual collapse of the liberal class, a pitiable gaggle that will support any domestic policy, provided it is officially carried out in the name of fighting intolerance and bigotry. Such a tactic was glaringly on display when Biden, in condemning violence against women a couple of years ago, remarked that “This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change.” Translation: let’s burn the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the name of fighting racism and sexism.

What are we to make of this strange country where lawyers are indifferent to the rule of law, doctors are contemptuous of informed consent, journalists regurgitate whatever they are told by establishment spokespersons, and leftists speak of the working class as “deplorables?” As conservatives typically associate privatization with democratization, and nationalization with tyranny, there are no longer any significant firewalls in place to protect the people from despotism. Moreover, due to multiculturalism’s antipathy to all things white and Western, the WASP right in turn has rejected all things foreign, even as this leads them to untenable and patently erroneous conclusions, such as the idea that Americans have the best health care system in the world, a canard parroted ad nauseam in online medical blogs.

The multicultural society is an anarchic and atomized zone where solidarity, reason, morality, empathy, and any sense of a collective memory cease to exist. Unsurprisingly, this has turned workers into nothing more than plastic cutlery, to be used once and then discarded. Civilization is in grave danger due to the rise of the woke book burners who have declared classics of Western Civilization to be the quintessence of “white supremacy.” Thanks to their implementation of the anti-humanities, the overwhelming majority of New York City public high school graduates have never even heard of Ernest Hemingway, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, John Hersey, Theodore Dreiser, Norman Thomas, Carl Sandburg, John Dos Passos, Dalton Trumbo, Gore Vidal, Clarence Darrow and William Kunstler. (I could go on for an entire page, at least). For all their incessant whining about racism, American liberals, who enjoy total ideological hegemony over most urban public schools, look at children of color as less than animals, and take better care of their poodles and dachshunds. Inculcated with the song of anti-whiteness, the post-American, simultaneously ghettoized prisoner and settler, unleashes its rage on America, but in so doing, puts on the shackles of the oligarchy.

The messianic crusade to eradicate whiteness is destabilizing the country and fomenting an inverted Manifest Destiny. Writing in “Whiteness Is a Pandemic,” Damon Young posits that “Whiteness is a public health crisis.” Continuing, he informs us that “White supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect.” (Note how the author uses “whiteness” and “white supremacy” interchangeably). Indeed, this article epitomizes the pathological, anti-Western, and deeply divisive and sectarian dogma being pushed on impressionable young people, both by the media and by the multicultural curriculum.

The Taliban recently came for Dr. Seuss, who we are now told is “offensive.” Teachers that challenge these pieties and attempt to introduce children of color and immigrant youth to the dreaded “dead white men” incur the wrath of the anti-literacy overseers, and if they continue to flout neoliberal pathologies, invariably face termination. Perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that instead of “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” the oligarchy has been kind enough to give us a snappy slogan for the counter-revolution: “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Just bear in mind that the anti-white jihadi isn’t interested in sending the aristocracy to the guillotine but the working class itself.

Historically significant black writers and orators such as Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson, all of whom were unwavering in their support for integration, are dismissed as Uncle Toms and Oreos (black on the outside, white on the inside). To quote Captain Beatty, the anti-intellectual pyromaniac of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: “If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.”

As transpires in Orwell’s 1984, the burning of the humanities has turned much of the population into automatons, who are not only illiterate, but who are also stripped of any sense of a cultural identity. Unlike many countries in the global south that have a history of weak democratic institutions, the oligarchy understands that in order to destroy democracy at home they have to sever the link between the American people and their past. Hence, if one were to show a World War II film such as Au Revoir les Enfants to a group of teenagers in an identity politics madrassa, it would be incomprehensible to them, as they aren’t taught anything about fascism, and they wouldn’t understand why on earth white people would be hunting down and murdering other white people. In many ways, both our civilization and our democracy were lost in the classroom.

Liberal cultists (who are, in fact, doubly enslaved, both to the cult of identity politics and to the lockdown cult), rejoice in the dismantling of the nation-state which has ensued following offshoring, unrestricted immigration, and the rise of the multicultural curriculum and identity studies. What they fail to acknowledge are the devastating consequences, as these policies are inextricably linked with the annihilation of the middle class, the public schools, checks and balances, and any semblance of national cohesion. One could make the argument that in this post-nation-state neo-feudal America, the plutocracy has ceased to be a capitalist class in the Marxist sense and taken on the characteristics of a new baronage. Irregardless of whether the establishment’s endgame is tyranny under identity politics or tyranny under the Christian Right, once freedom of speech lies gelid and lifeless on the bloodstained ground it will be lost forever.

There is a chilling passage in John Hersey’s epistolary novel The Conspiracy, which opens a window into life in imperial Rome under Nero, where Tigellinus sends a confidential letter to Faenus Rufus, both of whom are co-commanders of the Praetorian Guard. Addressing his fellow totalitarian, he writes, “We believe we are now on the threshold of uncovering certain crimes of opinion, the punishment of which, I am confident, will provide ample propitiation.”

Aren’t Simone Gold and Julian Assange being prosecuted for “crimes of opinion?” The cruel treatment meted out to Julian serves as a particularly harrowing warning regarding the ongoing implosion of democracy in the West. What a pity that the righteous campaigners who once fought so valiantly for the New Deal and the civil rights movement now look upon those very ideals with sneering, ridicule, and contempt.

This article was posted on Sunday, April 11th, 2021 at 11:54pm and is filed under Authoritarianism, Barbarism, Bill Clinton, Civil Liberties, COVID-19, Crimes against Humanity, Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump, Fearmongering, Health/Medical, Identity Politics, Immigration, Joe Biden, Liberalism, Lockdown, Media, Multiculturalism, Neoliberalism, Opinion, Racism, The “Left”, Vaccines, War Crimes.

We are now firmly in a time of fear – not only of the virus, but of each other. Fear destroys solidarity. Fear forces us to turn inwards to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Fear refuses to understand or identify with the concerns of others.

In fear societies, basic rights become a luxury. They are viewed as a threat, as recklessness, as a distraction that cannot be afforded in this moment of crisis.

Once fear takes hold, populations risk agreeing to hand back rights, won over decades or centuries, that were the sole, meagre limit on the power of elites to ransack the common wealth. In calculations based on fear, freedoms must make way for other priorities: being responsible, keeping safe, averting danger.

Worse, rights are surrendered with our consent because we are persuaded that the rights themselves are a threat to social solidarity, to security, to our health.

Too noisy’ protests

It is therefore far from surprising that the UK’s draconian new Police and Crime Bill – concentrating yet more powers in the police – has arrived at this moment. It means that the police can prevent non-violent protest that is likely to be too noisy or might create “unease” in bystanders. Protesters risk being charged with a crime if they cause “nuisance” or set up protest encampments in public places, as the Occupy movement did a decade ago.

And damaging memorials – totems especially prized in a time of fear for their power to ward off danger – could land protesters, like those who toppled a statue to notorious slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol last summer, a 10-year jail sentence.

Police & Crime Bill allows for:-

• Gypsy & Traveller vehicles to be seized;
• 3 months jail or £2.5k fine for a nomadic life without a travellers passport;
• Banning of “disruptive” protests;
• Up to 10 years jail for damage to a statue;

Dangerous, totalitarian legislation.

— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) March 15, 2021

In other words, this is a bill designed to outlaw the right to conduct any demonstration beyond the most feeble and ineffective kind. It makes permanent current, supposedly extraordinary limitations on protest that were designed, or so it was said, to protect the public from the immediate threat of disease.

Protest that demands meaningful change is always noisy and disruptive. Would the suffragettes have won women the vote without causing inconvenience and without offending vested interests that wanted them silent?

What constitutes too much noise or public nuisance? In a time of permanent pandemic, it is whatever detracts from the all-consuming effort to extinguish our fear and insecurity. When we are afraid, why should the police not be able to snatch someone off the street for causing “unease”?

The UK bill is far from unusual. Similar legislation – against noisy, inconvenient and disruptive protest – is being passed in states across the United States. Just as free speech is being shut down on the grounds that we must not offend, so protest is being shut down on the grounds that we must not disturb.

From the outbreak of the virus, there were those who warned that the pandemic would soon serve as a pretext to take away basic rights and make our societies less free. Those warnings soon got submerged in, or drowned out by, much wilder claims, such as that the virus was a hoax or that it was similar to flu, or by the libertarian clamour against lockdowns and mask-wearing.

Binary choices

What was notable was the readiness of the political and media establishments to intentionally conflate and confuse reasonable and unreasonable arguments to discredit all dissent and lay the groundwork for legislation of this kind.

The purpose has been to force on us unwelcome binary choices. We are either in favour of all lockdowns or indifferent to the virus’ unchecked spread. We are either supporters of enforced vaccinations or insensitive to the threat the virus poses to the vulnerable. We are either responsible citizens upholding the rules without question or selfish oafs who are putting everyone else at risk.

A central fracture line has opened up – in part a generational one – between those who are most afraid of the virus and those who are most afraid of losing their jobs, of isolation and loneliness, of the damage being done to their children’s development, of the end of a way of life they valued, or of the erasure of rights they hold inviolable.

The establishment has been sticking its crowbar into that split, trying to prise it open and turn us against each other.

‘Kill the Bill’

Where this leads was only too visible in the UK at the weekend when protesters took to the streets of major cities. They did so – in another illustration of binary choices that now dominate our lives – in violation of emergency Covid regulations banning protests. There was a large march through central London, while another demonstration ended in clashes between protesters and police in Bristol.

What are the protesters – most peaceful, a few not – trying to achieve? In the media, all protest at the moment is misleadingly lumped together as “anti-lockdown”, appealing to the wider public’s fear of contagion spread. But that is more misdirection: in the current, ever-more repressive climate, all protest must first be “anti-lockdown” before it can be protest.

The truth is that the demonstrators are out on the streets for a wide variety of reasons, including to protest against the oppressive new Police and Crime Bill, under the slogan “Kill the Bill”.

There are lots of well-founded reasons for people to be angry or worried at the moment. But the threat to that most cherished of all social freedoms – the right to protest – deserves to be at the top of the list.

If free speech ensures we have some agency over our own minds, protest allows us to mobilise collectively once we have been persuaded of the need and urgency to act. Protest is the chance we have to alert others to the strength of our feelings and arguments, to challenge a consensus that may exist only because it has been manufactured by political and media elites, and to bring attention to neglected or intentionally obscured issues.

Speech and protest are intimately connected. Free speech in one’s own home – like free speech in a prison cell – is a very stunted kind of freedom. It is not enough simply to know that something is unjust. In democratic societies, we must have the right to do our best to fix injustice.

Cast out as heretics

Not so long ago, none of this would have needed stating. It would have been blindingly obvious. No longer. Large sections of the population are happy to see speech rights stripped from those they don’t like or fear. They are equally fine, it seems, with locking up people who cause a “nuisance” or are “too noisy” in advancing a cause with which they have no sympathy – especially so long as fear of the pandemic takes precedence.

My latest: Trump is not the cause of US political woes, he is one obnoxious symptom. For that reason, banning him from Twitter will not heal the US political divide, it will deepen and inflame it https://t.co/Qe5FYwSICN

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 11, 2021

That is how fear works. The establishment has been using fear to keep us divided and weak since time immemorial. The source of our fear can be endlessly manipulated: black men, feminists, Jews, hippies, travellers, loony lefties, libertarians. The only limitation is that the object of our fear must be identifiable and distinguishable from those who think of themselves as responsible, upstanding citizens.

In a time of pandemic, those who are to be feared can encompass anyone who does not quietly submit to those in authority. Until recently there had been waning public trust in traditional elites such as politicians, journalists and economists. But that trend has been reversed by a new source of authority – the medical establishment. Because today’s mantra is “follow the science”, anyone who demurs from or questions that science – even when the dissenters are other scientists – can be cast out as a heretic. The political logic of this is rarely discussed, even though it is profoundly dangerous.

Political certainty

Politicians have much to gain from basking in the reflected authority of science. And when politics and science are merged, as is happening now, dissent can be easily reformulated as either derangement or criminal intent. On this view, to be against lockdown or to be opposed to taking a vaccine is not just wrong but as insane as denying the laws of gravity. It is proof of one’s irrationality, of the menace one poses to the collective.

But medicine – the grey area between the science and art of human health – is not governed by laws in the way gravity is. That should be obvious the moment we consider the infinitely varied ways Covid has affected us as individuals.The complex interplay between mind and body means reactions to the virus, and the drugs to treat it, are all but impossible to predict with any certainty. Which is why there are 90-year-olds who have comfortably shaken off the virus and youths who have been felled by it.

But a politics of “follow the science” implies that issues relating to the virus and how we respond to it – or how we weigh the social and economic consequences of those responses – are purely scientific. That leaves no room for debate, for disagreement. And authoritarianism is always lurking behind the façade of political certainty.

Public coffers raided

In a world where politicians, journalists and medical elites are largely insulated from the concerns of ordinary people – precisely the world we live in – protest is the main way to hold these elites accountable, to publicly test their political and “scientific” priorities against our social and economic priorities.

That is a principle our ancestors fought for. You don’t have to agree with what Piers Corbyn says to understand the importance that he and others be allowed to say it – and not just in their living rooms, and not months or years hence, if and when the pandemic is declared over.

The right to protest must be championed even through a health crisis –most especially during a health crisis, when our rights are most vulnerable to erasure. The right to protest needs to be supported even by those who back lockdowns, even by those who fear that protests during Covid are a threat to public health. And for reasons that again should not need stating.

Politicians and the police must not be the ones to define what protests are justified, what protests are safe, what protests are responsible.

Because otherwise, those in power who took advantage of the pandemic to raid the public coffers and waste billions of pounds on schemes whose main purpose was to enrich their friends have every reason to dismiss anyone who protests against their cupidity and incompetence as endangering public health.

At what point does the UK officially become a banana republic? At the point when its health secretary awards a massive contract for medical supplies to his former neighbour and pub landlord? https://t.co/9DPlVXj5DB

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 27, 2020

Because otherwise, leaders who want to crush protests against their their current, and future, criminal negligence with extraordinary new police powers have every incentive to characterise their critics as anti-lockdown, or anti-vaccine, or anti-public order, or anti-science – or whatever other pretext they think will play best with the “responsible” public as they seek to cling to power.

And because otherwise, the government may decide it is in its interests to stretch out the pandemic – and the emergency regulations supposedly needed to deal with it – for as long as possible.

Selective freedoms

Quite how mercurial are the current arguments for and against protest was highlighted by widespread anger at the crushing by the Metropolitan Police this month of a vigil following the murder of Sarah Everard in London. A Met police officer has been charged with kidnapping and murdering her.

A reactionary police force full of white men picked chiefly for their physical attributes is not only inherently violent, institutionally racist and hostile towards political protest but also anti-women. Now who would have guessed that? https://t.co/PfCYwwmF1N

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 15, 2021

This article was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2021 at 8:55am and is filed under Activism, Authoritarianism, Censorship, Civil Disobedience, Civil Liberties, COVID-19, Fearmongering, Freedom of Expression/Speech, Lockdown, Martial Law, Police, Politics, Propaganda, Propagandists, Protests, Repression, Resistance, UK Hypocrisy, United Kingdom, United States, Vaccines.

Donald Trump, for better or for worse, is not a Globalist. He calls himself a patriot. He wanted to Make America Great Again (MAGA). Sounds silly? Perhaps. But it’s not globalist. Therefore, Mr. Trump was not the guy of the Globalist Cabal, currently calling the shots on world events – way above Presidents like Donald Trump and those of the other 192 UN member countries. This Globalist Cabal has enormous power. Joe Biden and his gang respond to this power.

What is behind Donald Trump’s “silly” idea of MAGA, the western globalist-brainwashed world cannot understand?  It was supposed to bring the United States back to again becoming a sovereign, independent, economically autonomous nation. On more occasion than one Mr. Trump said he wishes the same for every nation in the world. He also insinuated that NATOs purpose was passé.

In foreign policy – interfering in other countries’ affairs – he certainly didn’t act according to his pre-election promises (or was not allowed to by the PTB); not in Syria, not in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea – not in Europe, not anywhere in the world where “American interests” are at stake – as they euphemistically call “interference” in other sovereign nations’ affairs.

Especially not in Russia and China. Quarreling with these sovereign nations, and menacing them, was a lost cause. He knew it, but it was good for cosmetics. It presents well as an international show of upmanship, for maintaining the image of a super-power and an emperor. Both of which are long gone. But perception is always limping behind facts.

However, you have to give him this: Against the wishes and pressure of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), Donald Trump did not start any new wars. He maintained those started under his predecessors – six active ones – give or take a conflict here and there. Thereby keeping the MIC at bay.

Donald Trump obviously did not fit the Globalist agenda. It was not his plan. Contrary to what many may think, he had no ambitions for a One World Order (OWO), which is clearly the Globalist’s goal. This is the plan behind the Great Reset (see this The World Economic Forum (WEF) Knows Best – The Post-Covid “Great Global Reset”). To achieve completion of the Great Reset, millions of people may have to die.

The Globalist Cabal doesn’t care. Joe Biden doesn’t care. Because Joe Biden is a Globalist, as well as his crew, inherited mostly from the Obama era – and so is Hillary (on her “demolish Libya” initiative, cynically laughing and referring to Muammar Gaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died”), still an important figure of this – let me call it what it is – a criminal clan.

The political career of Joe Biden was born in the swamp of Washington – and the way it looks today, it will end in the swamp of Washington, either with him as President – or without him as President. At this age, despite all the noble words spoken at his inauguration, Joe Biden will not reform his conscience. “I will be President not only for those who voted for me, I will be President also for those who didn’t vote for me; I will be President for all Americans.” This slogan-style wishy-washy palaver has no meaning.

There is not one US President who hasn’t used such words, at least during the inauguration – and most of them much earlier during their campaigns. “I will work to unite our badly divided America again.” When in the last 70 years were the United States united? Never. Will Joe Biden meet the challenge?

During his inauguration speech, as well as in several previous occasions, including the pre-election Presidential Debates, Joe Biden referred to the coming “Dark Winter” – hoping that America will get through it without harm. What is the “Dark Winter”?  Why the mystery instead of transparency? Why talk in code-language, when American people are, as Biden implied, his number one priority?

Did his remark refer to Operation Dark Winter which was a code name for a senior-level bio-terrorist attack simulation conducted on June 22–23, 2001, at Andrews Air Force Base Maryland? The simulation was designed to carry out a mock version of a covert and widespread smallpox attack on the United States. The simulation was sponsored and carried out by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies (CCBS) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Note:  the Johns Hopkins research and teaching complex is strongly supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Does this mean that there is or may be a plan for a biowarfare attack in the form of Ebola, smallpox or a stronger strand of coronavirus? Or any other highly infectious and deadly disease? If so, Mr. Biden, and all the others who mentioned a Dark Winter ahead, including Barrak Obama, must know what’s behind it. And they hide it from the people.

The insinuation that such a catastrophe may be in the making, without openly warning the people, or better, preventing the Dark Winter, is certainly not a sign of caring for the people. To the contrary, it shows disdain for the people – the lower casts. Sounds like Hillary Clinton’s “Basket of Deplorables” in a 2016 Presidential campaign speech. Seems the core of the Dems, as they pan out with Joe Biden’s election, have a particular flair to feel above the rest of the people.

People, and unity within the United States, seem clearly not to be a priority preoccupation of Joe Biden’s. Much more important, how can he – or rather the team behind him – be a driver in the implementation of the globalist agenda, the Great Reset? Because, he, Joe Biden, and the swamp behind him are committed to this cause. The Globalist Cabal chose him over a continuation of Donald Trump’s Presidency.

Never mind that there was massive – but massive, proven voter fraud, possibly in the hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million votes were added to Biden or electronically switched from Trump to Biden. But Mr. Trump’s legal team was not successful in bringing forward and defending their evidence before any court, including the US Supreme Court. Imagine the Immense power behind this Global Cabal!

Mr. Trump, like him or not, for his country he had another agenda. He wanted to rebuild the US economy again. Bringing back outsourced labor, create jobs. His approach may have been inadequate, and at times he sounded awkward addressing economic issues, as well as the people. But he was not a Globalist, he did not strive for an OWO. That’s why 80 million Americans voted for him. They do not want an OWO. Most of the world – 99.99% – do not want an OWO.

Those who voted for Trump also sensed that the so-called Dems had not the least interest of the people in mind. Never had, at least not since JFK.

So, Donald Trump did not fit the agenda of the Global Cabal – also called “Deep State”, those who are way above the President of the US and the leaders (sic) of the world. They are dead-set on implementing the Great Reset – grabbing more power for themselves, more wealth – and a technified, digitized, robotized world, a totally electronic plutocracy – a technocracy cum tyranny, under which the Epsilon-people (lowest cast in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World) will behave and obey as they are digitally ordered – modern slaves – own nothing and be happy – the Great Omen of the Great Reset.

And if their eugenics wish comes through, they, the Globalist Cabal, will reign over a massively reduced population. That’s where the current western inoculation campaign comes in – all three of the most used vaccines, or rather toxic injections – Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraSeneca – contain mRNA, thus, DNA-altering substances  and have so far not proven effective as vaccines. To the contrary, dangerous side effects and death rates exceed by far the common measures of traditional vaccines. They also contain sterilization and infertility components which fits the eugenics agenda well.

Unfortunately, Russian and Chinese traditional live-attenuated vaccines (a weakened form of the virus) that creates a strong and long-lasting immune response, are not freely available in the west. Such vaccines do not affect the human DNA. However, the methodology is based on decades of experience.

The imminent question is – why suddenly a new type, never tested before vaccine? What is the agenda behind these new types of jabs? Do they have to do with the implementation of the Great Reset? Why are scientists not allowed to talk openly about the effects and possibly long-term negative impacts of these new-type injections? Why do governments around the globe keep any true science about them under wraps – prohibited – censored in the media, even forbidden under fine and in extremis arrest in psychiatric wards?

Why this immense drive to vaccinate everyone as fast as possible – under menace “if you are not vaccinated, you cannot move”? And that for a virus – covid-19 – that has a mortality rate approximately comparable to, or in some years even less than, the common flu? See Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID/NIH – USA), in “Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted”, New England Journal of Medicine – NEJM (28 February, 2020):

If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)…

Among Joe Biden’s first decisions during his few days as President is an increased effort of vaccination – with the mRNA-type vaccines, as well as massive testing by the also proven ineffective and a totally inappropriate PCR test – in the US.

He vows to vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of his Presidency. This is spot-on with the Great Reset and the Globalist Cabal’s agenda. He has already been warning about the spread of a new more infectious covid-mutation – which would require more of the unpopular repressive measures – also further infringing on the already hard-hit economy. And if Washington decides to “tighten the screws” on the population (Mme. Merkel’s expression), Europe will soon follow suit and so will all the other western world’s vassals.

Think that’s exaggerated? You may want to read up on the Great Reset and its follow-on White Paper, “Resetting the Future of Work Agenda: Disruption and Renewal in a Post-COVID World” which is basically an implementation manual of the Great Reset. See also The Post Covid World, The WEF’s Diabolical Project: “Resetting the Future of Work Agenda” – After “The Great Reset”. A Horrifying Future.

Following the agenda of the Globalist Cabal is Mr. Biden’s number one priority. On his first “work day”, actually on his Inauguration Day, he has not hesitated to sign 17 Executive Orders, of which the New York Times says:

Despite an inaugural address that called for unity and compromise, Mr. Biden’s first actions as president are sharply aimed at sweeping aside former President Donald J. Trump’s pandemic response, reversing his environmental agenda, tearing down his anti-immigration policies, bolstering the teetering economic recovery and restoring federal efforts to promote diversity.

Among these measures are returning the US to WHO, making Anthony Fauci, Director NIAID/NIH, the head of the U.S. delegation to the organization’s Executive Board. “He will jump into the role with a meeting this week”, says the New York Times. Mr. Fauci has long been known for his conflict of interest with the vaccine pharma-companies, and for working hand-in-hand with Bill Gates, who funds up to one third of WHO’s budget, and calls the shots on WHO’s vaccination policy. What does that say for Joe Biden, other than he plays already on his first day into the hands of the Globalist Cabal.

President Biden also signed a National Mask Mandate – or “the 100 days masking challenge”, when every serious scientist says how dangerous wearing masks is. However, this is a step towards the Globalist Cabal’s crackdown on humanity, that and social distancing, and isolation by quarantining – leading to lockdowns after lockdowns – all within a massive fear campaign. This is supposed to bring the populace at large to its knees, so that the implementation of the horrible steps within the Great Reset will encounter less resistance.

Mr. Trump never saw lockdowns or mask wearing as the solution to the covid-19 crisis – an opinion shared by many high-ranking scientists and professors the world over. He wanted the already covid-destroyed economy to get back running again, as quickly and as closely as possible to “normal” – thereby also improving the desperate employment situation of the people.

You may see the details of Mr. Biden’s 17 first-day Executive Orders here.

So, because Mr. Trump didn’t see eye to eye with the Globalist Cabal, he had to go. His quest for justice from the High Courts with regard to voter fraud was denied.

The Great Reset agenda, dictated by the Globalist Cabal, is to be implemented in its cruelest details under the supervision of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Medicine (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation), WHO, the IMF, World Bank, and the entire UN apparatus. It is an integral part of the UN Agenda 21-30, which depicts to the world the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as the agenda’s glorious “raison d’être”.

In fact, the Great Reset is the key driver of the UN Agenda 21-30. The SDGs are but a noble gesture to tell the Global South how interested the West, or Global North is in the well-being of the poor and marginalized people of the nations of the Global South, also called Third World or “developing countries”.

The caveat for the implementation of the SDGs is that the “developing” countries are expecting massive funding from the IMF, World Bank and regional development banks, as well as western bilateral aid organizations, to implement these goals. But, as we know, these development assisting funds come with tight strings attached.

In the case of the SDGs, countries receiving foreign funding from the financial gods mentioned before, have to commit to following the rules and dictates of the Globalist agenda; i.e., the rules and narrative of the Great Reset. Plus, most of the funding comes in the form of loans. That means further debt-enslavement, further dependence on the west, the Global North, for trade and exploitation of their natural resources.

One may wonder, who needs more development the West/Global North or the Global South? It depends on the criteria of development. It could be the more digitized and uniformly controlled the world population is, the more developed it is. Or alternatively, the more sovereign nations collaborate peacefully as independent nations, each with their own culture, their own money, their own fiscal policies and social coherence – the more developed, equal, just and peaceful the world will become.

You choose.

This article was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2021 at 6:32pm and is filed under Bill Gates, China, Civil Liberties, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Economy/Economics, Eugenics, Fearmongering, Freedom of Expression/Speech, Global Capitalism, Health/Medical, Joe Biden, Lockdown, Media, Neoliberalism, Opinion, Pharmaceuticals, Propaganda, Russia, The “Great Reset”, The “Left”, The “Right”, The “West”, Vaccines, World Health Organization (WHO).

The explanation is that the financial elites know that they win regardless of who occupies the Oval Office, which is something that some leftists, who had advocated temporarily subordinating an independent working-class alternative to campaign for the leading neoliberal candidate, did not firmly grasp.

Trouncing the contender that Noam Chomsky hyperbolically called “worse than Hitler” would be a blow to overt white supremacy. But bedrock institutional racism, entombed in the US carceral state, will still endure and the tasks of the left will remain.

Legitimizing neoliberal rule

The left’s vote was not needed to ensure a Biden victory. But it was needed to justify voting for the “lesser evil” based on the false narrative of TINA – “there is no alternative.”

The Revolutionary Communist Party, normally marginalized by the corporate media, received banner headlines when it declared for Biden. The “paper of record” for the Democratic wing of the two-party duopoly, The New York Times, opportunistically posted an op-ed by a self-described socialist because it pleaded, “leftists should vote for Biden in droves.”

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) readily acknowledged “there is no choice at the top of the ticket that would advance our movement or constitute a ‘victory’ for democratic socialism.” But that did not deter them from jumping on the Biden bandwagon. DSA seemed more worried about Biden losing than about Sanders being excluded by the DNC.

It is not the left’s responsibility to strategize how the Democrats could have run this or future campaigns. Incidentally, a Biden/Harris victory would preclude a liberalish Democrat, such as a member of the Squad, making a run as the Democratic standard bearer for next 12 to 16 years.

The contribution of those parttime leftists who campaigned for Biden was not to put him into the White House – they didn’t have the numbers to do that – but to help legitimize neoliberal rule. Their preemptive political surrender obscured the failure of a political system incapable of addressing the critical issues of our times.

Politics of fear obscured critical issues

Fear was the operational motivator for apocalyptic fantasies of a fascist coup, which served to obviate a progressive agenda. A tanking economy, a still uncontained pandemic, and unprecedented protests against racialized police brutality were attributed solely to Trump’s watch, instead of being understood as also endemic to the neoliberal order.

Neither presidential candidate advocated comprehensive healthcare in a time of pandemic, with both in effect opting for triage of the most vulnerable – people of color and the elderly. The two wings of the duopoly mainly differ on this existential health issue over the advisability of wearing face masks.

Climate catastrophe remains an existential threat. Biden may throw a few more crumbs than Trump in the direction of the alternative energy industry. But both candidates contested to see who was more enthusiastic about fracking, while they agree that tax cuts and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry will be continued. Biden’s predecessor, whom he served as VP, boasted “we’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some.” The next four years portends a choice of someone who denies global warming or another who believes in the science but does not act on it.

The financial elites disproportionately lavished their support on the Democrats. The oligarchs understood more clearly than certain elements of the left where their class interests reside. “Wall Street,” Politico reported, grew “giddy about Biden,” because Uncle Joe would best help recover their legitimacy while carrying their water. The financiers also hedged their bets with contributions to Trump. Along with the DNC, they understood that another four years of the current occupant would be better than a Bernie Sanders presidency for the owning class.

Game of Thrones

While the outcome of the presidential election is uncertain, the legitimacy of the ruling class has surely been sullied by the arguably ugliest campaign in recent history. The elite club must now figure out how to anoint their new emperor without further damaging their image. The hiccups over their transfer of power is their dilemma and our good fortune.

It may be too early to tell, but the widely feared Trump coup has yet to be realized. The Proud Boys, with their mail-order munitions, have yet to replace the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Nervous leftists, apprehensive about a Trump coup, are calling upon labor to wage a general strike to install a neoliberal into the White House. Joe Hill would find that ironic at best.

While “President Donald Trump has cast doubt on whether he will commit to a peaceful transfer of power,” CNN revealed, “the secretive process to prepare a would-be Biden administration has been underway for months with help from top Trump officials (emphasis added).”

Biden may now be less unpalatable than Trump, but Uncle Joe had the advantage of not being in power for the last four years. He may not look so hot after another term of neoliberal rule, characterized by increasing austerity for working people, entrenched institutional racism, oppressive surveillance and security state measures, and an aggressive imperialism abroad. Substantial differences exist between Trump and Biden, but those differences do not extend to which class they serve.

Recovering the left alternative

With record turnout, never before have so many voted for so little. Now is auspicious for alternatives to the two-party duopoly.

As reported by Alan Mcleod, Trump’s abysmal approval rating of 42% is barely edged out by Biden’s of 46%. Two-thirds of prospective Democratic voters polled claim they would be voting against Trump rather than for Biden; only a quarter of the prospective Republicans are voting so much for Trump as against the Democrats. Biden way squeak through on the appeal of not being Trump, but that will wear thin quickly.

With both major parties continuing to abandon the interests of working people, the left must either take the initiative or surrender it to a growing right wing. Rather than this being the time when never before has there been a greater need to support the lesser-evil Democrats and give them an extraordinary mandate to rule, this is a time to leverage the ruling class’s loss of legitimacy to articulate a left alternative.

Taking a left initiative, despite the loss of legitimacy of the ruling elites, is challenging. With a Republican victory, the left has historically gotten absorbed into a resistance that devolves into an assistance – the graveyard of social movements that is the Democratic Party. With a Democratic victory, the illusion of hope and that anyone’s better than Trump are false excuses to “give Biden a chance.” After campaigning for the Democrat, it will be problematic for these same left forces to credibly do an about-face and fight him. As for an independent electoral left, more rigorous party registration rules targeting left alternatives, recently imposed by Democrats, foreshadow fewer left choices on future ballots.

However, the majority of working people support a progressive agenda, which has been ignored and suppressed by the duopoly:

• Effectively addressing global warming
• COVID safety over economic activity and economic relief
• Ending forever wars and sanctions, while de-escalating the threat of nuclear conflagration
• National healthcare program modelled after Medicare
• Opposition to the militarization of the police and preservation of civil liberties
• Reduction of income inequality, stronger anti-trust laws, and fairly taxing wealth

These were among the critical issues that were lost in the distracting political theatre of the 2020 campaign and the basis for a renewed left initiative.

The post Leveraging the Ruling Class’s Loss of Legitimacy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

German soldiers could be sent on crisis missions to other NATO and partner countries during the second wave of the Corona pandemic. As a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense confirmed, the German government has promised NATO support for its “Allied Hand” emergency plan. According to this plan, medical personnel, pioneers and experts from the force would be made available for foreign missions to counter nuclear, biological or chemical hazards as required. The contingency plan is to be activated, for example, if a collapse of the health care system is imminent in allied or NATO partner countries due to very high infection rates and the affected state asks for support.

In clear text, this means that German soldiers may be deployed on covid-related “crisis missions” to other NATO partners. Covid-restrictions and related government oppression and tyranny may lead to massive civil unrest, and German soldiers, alias German NATO soldiers, along with soldiers from other NATO countries, could help the local governments suffocate such potential people upheavals, applying military force. Live bullets and killing, if “necessary”.

In some European countries, covid-unrests already clearly visible; i.e., Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Spain, and, of course, in the very Germany. Civil and societal unrest is also boiling hot in France, currently one of the most repressive regimes in the western world.

Worldwide people of these 15 countries staged this weekend a coordinated Global Resistance mass demonstration against their governments covid-related health tyranny: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay, Italy, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Austria.

All these countries were told and brainwashed into believing they live in a “democracy”, and in a democracy what is happening to them could and should never happen. They were never asked. Their governments didn’t even bother telling them that these “measures” were for their own good. Now, they are even being told by people like Boris Johnson, British PM, not to hope to go back to “normal”. There will be no more normal as we knew it, he literally said. Instead, there will be a Great Reset.

Thereby he is aping the words of Klaus Schwab, the founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), who just published (July 2020) a book, called “Covid-19 – The Great Reset”. The book is available on Amazon (where else!), and I highly recommend reading it, not for Schwab to get richer, but for you and us the people to know what “their” plan is. Only if we know what the plan is, we may stop it if we organize in solidarity and resist.

There is no “democracy”, there has never been. The EU is one of the least democratic institutions there is. But, yet, we are being indoctrinated with this huge lie, we are living in a democracy. It is covid that finally brings this abject global deceit to light.

And our lie-prone politicians and their bought mainstream media, continue to praise our western beautiful democracy, while deviating our attention from the truth, by bashing western-made enemies, like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, and others just so we are blinded at home, but are told with false-propaganda that all these other countries are evil. They are evil, because they do not believe in our western greed-economy. The media does a very successful firing up of “cognitive dissonance’.  We know something is not right, but our feverish want for remaining in our comfort zone makes us believe that we are well protected by our “elected” masters, and those, for example, in the east, who may follow another life philosophy than is ours which is made up of greed and violence, are evil.

An interesting Pew poll, made public today in Switzerland, shows that on average more than two-thirds of the EU population thinks negatively about China and Russia. Why? China and Russia have never done anything harmful to Europe, to the contrary.  They have offered truthful cooperation against coerced collaboration US-style. So, the question “Why?” is answered with the corporate paid brainwashed media.

Is this “democracy”?  Is this democratic thinking? Do these people realize that their brains have been captured years ago by a consumer-comfort propaganda and gradually converted into a submissive slave-behavior that still believes in “democracy”?

The German people have not been asked whether they agree to sending German troops to other countries, nor whether they should participate in NATO exercises. The truce that is in force for Germany since the end of WWII allows no foreign intervention by German military. In fact, no formal Peace Agreement has (yet) been signed between Germany and the winning powers. The armistice accord contains a clause that dictates that Germany ought to never undertake any actions that go against the interests of the United States. This would explain, at least in part, why the German Government bends over backwards  to please Washington.

But most of the Germans are oblivious to this fact.  On purpose. Because “democracy” would dictate the ethical: Let the public know. Get a public debate going about the autonomy and sovereignty that Germany currently has and that she – and her people – deserve.

The decision of using German troops as NATO soldiers in other countries has nothing to do with “democracy”. It goes against the grains of democracy. Is Germany under a “covid emergency law”, which would be similar to Martial Law? As is France, Switzerland, Spain, the UK? If so, have the people been properly informed?

Switzerland has just recently extended her Covid Emergency Law until the end of 2021 – and then what? It could easily be extended again, as it was now. The law was rammed through a right-wing congress, regardless of political parties, congress men and women largely agreed. No questions asked. The people were never consulted.

Now a People’s Referendum (a privilege the Swiss still have) that would ban this so-called “Notrecht” (emergency Law), is under way. But by the time enough signatures will be assembled and the referendum will be “allowed” by the Government to be presented to the public for a vote, it may be too late to change the drastic measures that were implemented under the quasi-Martial Law.

That’s “democracy”?  Or is it?

France, under Mr. Macron, a Rothschild gnome, has reimposed a State of Health Emergency and introduced curfews, a ban on weddings and being out in the streets is permitted only with special permits. This as the result of a “sudden and spectacular acceleration” in the spread of the coronavirus, Jean Castex, the Prime Minister said, justifying this audacious draconian measure. He added that the national COVID-19 incidence rate over the past ten days had jumped from 107 to 190 cases per 100,000 population with “particularly alarming levels” in some large cities. But who checks the figures, the statistics, how they are assembled? Nobody.

That’s “democracy”?  For disobedience fines are €135 for first offenders, rising to as much as €7,500 and a six-month prison term. Well, is this dictatorship or what?

It is far away from “democracy”, that’s for sure. Especially if we know what covid really is; namely, nothing more than closely similar to a regular flu. This is according to Anthony Fauci, chief of NIAID/NIH of the US, when he writes peer-reviewed articles in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), like “Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted”  …. “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

When Fauci speaks to the media in countless interviews to mainstream TV he uses the usual fear-mongering narrative of the deadliness of the corona virus.

This shows that there is clearly a different agenda behind covid than controlling the “Pandemic”, but rather controlling the people. We ought to wake up. It’s too late to talk about reinstating “democracy”. Truth is, we never had democracy. And now we have to fight for our sheer survival as human beings. Trust me.

“Democracy” is but a wishful slogan. Democracy in today’s world certainly doesn’t exist. It never did. Not even in ancient Greece it worked, where the term was invented some 2500 years ago by well-off, but admittedly well-thinking philosophers. Democracy was always for the educated, for the fortunate and wealthy, but it never played out in truth to all of the people to what the term in its original translation meant and means. As soon as the term “democracy” is given to politicians as a concept to be applied to ruling a nation, the meaning of “democracy” is vandalized into “the people choose, but the elite decides”. It is the same as of this day. Democracy is derived from the ancient Greek “demokratia,” literally meaning that power belongs to the people. It never did, and even less so today.

“The power belonging to the people” was and is conceded to the people, always to the extent that the controlling elite deems appropriate. If the people want to take over what’s theirs, the controlling elite brings out controlling forces and plays the propaganda game, misinformation, manipulated truth and outright lies. This was the case then and is practiced today in even more sophisticated ways.

Today, deceit is not just applied as the ruling elite sees fit and for personal gains, it is manufactured by algorithms, actually by Artificial Intelligence. Today’s elections, particularly in the west, are decided by oligarch or deep state-controlled algorithms. The voters play an alibi role. Not more. There is hardly any election in the (western) world which is not ultimately controlled and decided by the United States.

Back to the non-democratic European Union. It is using NATO troops for urban warfare, if you will. There is a not-much-talked about German/NATO military base in the small “Land” (State) of Saxony-Anhalt, not far from Hamburg. According to the German online journal “Pivot Area”, the urban warfare military base in “Schnöggersburg is being built since 2012. It should be finished by the end of 2020. By then it will consist of more than 500 buildings stretched over 6.25 square kilometers. The so called “urban agglomeration“, as the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) labeled its training ground, has a whole city infrastructure; i.e., a canalization (water supply and sewerage), an underground (metro) line, a train station, an industrial park, as well as a sport stadium, slums, residential areas and a high-rise district. The German MoD (Ministry of Defense) planned to invest 140 million Euros into the project (by completion, it will likely be considerably more). According to lieutenant-general Frank Leidenberger, head of the land forces innovation-department, the last decade shows the clear trend, that “warfare moves from the field to the cities.“ Therefore Schnöggersburg should give the German armed forces a supreme training ground for state of the art operations in urban scenarios. Leidenberger says also that the Bundeswehr considers its new high training city as a strategic resource to push the framework of nation concept with partner armies.”

The key phrase is “the framework of nation concept with partner armies.”  That’s where NATO comes in.

How many Germans have been democratically informed about this Monster Project? It clearly indicates that urban social unrest, on massive scale, was already foreseen way before 2012 – probably around the time that the Global Great Reset started taking form, decades ago, in the criminal heads of the all-controlling Deep Dark State; those that started this new phase of societal digitization with 9/11 in 2001, curiously also the beginning of a new western calendar landmark, the Third Millennium. Starting with 9/11, the western empire and its minions went downhill. And the East started rising.

The downhill slide will undoubtedly mean the end of the empire. But on the way there, all the most mischievous powers will be used to enslave the population, digitally and with AI algorithms. Since this Deep Dark State has also eugenicists in its core, a massive population reduction is also part of the plan.

Monetary digitization is likewise part of the plan. In fact, it is already well under preparation, as an element of WEF’s Great Reset, or as the IMF calls it, “The Great Reformation”. The IMF (and the World Bank), both controlled by the US Treasury, are planning a so-called Bretton Woods 2.0, a Reset of the monetary system, where eventually the western dollar economy would be replaced by a digital crypto-currency, in which selected western currency may partake. The role of gold in it is not clear, nor is the role of the de facto strongest currency, the Chinese Yuan.

If this as of yet hypothetical new IMF-BIS controlled crypto-currency materializes, it would most likely wipe out all US debt and make lines of credit available – perhaps in the hundreds of trillions of dollars equivalent – to help bail-out small central banks of poorer, highly indebted countries. See:

Would these countries’ debt base just balloon out of proportion with the new IMF-BIS bail-outs, or would they simply (have to) concede their national asset base to the IMF-BIS managed Global monster fund to be able to limp along in “lockstep” and poverty, according to the Masters’ rules, is not clear.

In any case be prepared.  There is much to come, if, We, the People, allow the Covid-19 induced Great Reset to move forward. It is increasingly clear that covid is nothing more than an instrument for a much grander plan, The Great Reset. The Great Reset is the antidote to “democracy”. It is a further demolition of any hope towards a “democracy”.

Fortunately, there is China, also with a new digital (crypto?) currency, in test phase, under preparation, eventually to be rolled out for international payment use, as an alternative to the dollar economy, or the new IMF-BIS treacherous US Treasury controlled crypto-currency. In contrast, the digital yuan is meant as a peaceful means of trading among equals in view of a more balanced multi-polar world. Yes, this despite the negative wester thinking about China.  The Tao life philosophy that the west doesn’t want to know or understand, is not confrontational, not even when constantly confronted by the aggressive west.

In the meantime, to escape the new monetary tyranny (from fiat dollars to fiat-fiat crypto), countries could simply retake their sovereignty, take back their national central banks, their national currencies and start producing for local markets with local public banks and with local debt as much as possible towards a state of self-sufficiency, with cross-border trading in local currencies. If this happens, the IMF-BIS controlled crypto currency will bite the dust.

This article was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2020 at 11:59am and is filed under “New Normal”, “The West”, 9-11, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Boris Johnson, China, Civil Liberties, COVID-19, Cryptocurrency, Democracy, Espionage/”Intelligence”, Eugenics, Exploitation, Fearmongering, France, Germany, Health/Medical, Human Rights, IMF, Media, Militarism, NATO, Opinion, Ruling Elite, Spain, Switzerland, United States, US Hypocrisy, World Economic Forum (WEF), World Health Organization (WHO), Yuan.

At the time he made that comment about surveillance drones over Afghanistan, Maj. General James Poss was the Air Force’s top intelligence officer. He was preparing to leave the Pentagon, and move over to the Federal Aviation Administration. His job was to begin executing the plan to allow those same surveillance drones to fly over American cities.

This plan was ordered by Congress in the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. It directed the Departments of Defense and Transportation to “develop a plan for providing expanded access to the national airspace for unmanned aircraft systems of the Department of Defense.” Gen. Poss was one of nearly two dozen ex-military officers who, starting in 2010, were put into positions at the FAA to oversee drone integration research. With little public scrutiny, the plan has been moving forward ever since.

If you’re thinking that this is a partisan issue, think again. This plan has been enacted and expanded under Presidents and Congresses of both parties. If you’re uncomfortable with a President Biden having the ability to track the movements of every Tea Party or Q-Anon supporter, you should be. Just as we should all be concerned about a President Trump tracking…well, everybody else.

Along with civil liberties, a major concern must be safety. The military and the drone manufacturers, principally General Atomics, are arguing that the technology has advanced far enough that flying 79-ft. wingspan, six-ton drones over populated areas and alongside commercial air traffic is safe. We have one response: self-driving cars. Self-driving cars present a technological problem that is an order of magnitude simpler than aircraft flying hundreds of miles per hour in three dimensions. Yet they still can’t keep these cars from plowing into stationary objects like firetrucks (or people) at 60 mph in two dimensions. Are we really comfortable with pilotless aircraft operating in the same airspace as the 747 at 30,000 feet that is bringing your children home for Christmas? These drones have a troubled history of crashing and unfortunately, the process for determining whether these drones are now truly safe has been compromised by having the military, which wants this approval, largely in charge of the testing.

Which brings us to San Diego. Last October, General Atomics announced that they would be flying their biggest, most advanced surveillance drone yet, the SkyGuardian, over the City of San Diego sometime this summer. The stated purpose was to demonstrate potential commercial applications of large drones over American cities. In this case, the drone would be used to survey the city’s infrastructure.

But when General Atomics first began preparing for the flight, the goal was a very different one: Back in 2017, military technology analysts were predicting that by 2025, drones similar to those used in Afghanistan and Iraq would be hovering above U.S. cities, relaying high-resolution video of the movement of every citizen to police departments (and who knows who else). When there was public pushback to this police department drone use—even a pro-industry reporter called the idea “dystopian”—General Atomics changed the purpose of the flight from providing data to the police to “mapping critical infrastructure” in the San Diego region.

The FAA, which is responsible for granting permission to General Atomics, has kept the process secret. When the Voice of San Diego asked for more information, the FAA refused on the grounds that this supposed commercial demonstration was actually “military.” The Voice of San Diego is now suing to get answers and the ACLU has also expressed concern about the flight. Amid the scrutiny, General Atomics quietly announced that the flight was cancelled, but this is certain to be a small hiccup in their long-term plan.

In fact, General Atomics’ drones are already being used domestically. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) flies Predators over parts of the U.S.- Mexico and U.S.-Canadian borders. Recently, CBP has expanded their reach, using these drones to assist police in Minneapolis, San Antonio and Detroit in the wake of protests against police brutality. Deeply concerned, members of Congress wrote to federal agencies denouncing the chilling effect of government surveillance on law-abiding Americans and demanding an immediate end to surveilling peaceful protests.

The concerns of these members of Congress should be echoed by the general public. What are the possible effects on our civil liberties from having high-tech surveillance platforms circling over millions of Americans, gathering information about our every move? We know from past experience that every government surveillance technology that can be abused has been abused. Allowing this powerful technology to be taken from overseas wars and turned inward on American citizens isn’t something that should happen without a robust public debate. The implications for civil liberties are too profound.

This article was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2020 at 12:45am and is filed under Civil Liberties, Drones, Espionage/”Intelligence”, United States.

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the US have obscured “The Other 9/11,” the US attack on Chilean democracy in the US-backed coup on September 11, 1973. The two 9/11s are connected by what the CIA calls “blowback.” The CIA first used the term in describing the unintended negative consequences of the US and UK sponsored coup against the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. The September 11, 2001 attacks were blowback from decades of US intervention in the Middle East. That doesn’t justify the terrorism, but it does explain it. If we want peace and security for our nation, we should respect the peace and security of other nations.

Contrary to Trump’s lies about ending the endless wars, his administration has escalated the “Long War” in the Middle East and North Africa with increased troop deployments, drone strikes, and Special Operations.

Trump is also morphing the War on Terror abroad into a war against dissent at home. He encourages and uses law enforcement to attack nonviolent protesters, calling them “thugs” and “antifa terrorists.” He encourages white racist vigilante militias that show up armed to menace Black Lives Matter demonstrators and to intimidate local and state governments in armed protests against climate action (Oregon) and COVID-19 public health measures (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin).

Trump encourages these actions with statements that amplify paranoid far-right fantasies that call climate change and COVID-19 hoaxes perpetrated by secret elite conspiracies. Trump has instructed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) and Border Patrol to violate immigration laws and subject immigrants and asylum seekers to unspeakable brutality, including separating children from their parents and internment in concentration camps where COVID-19 is running rampant. He stokes racial fears and civil strife to justify authoritarian rule. He calls the news media “fake,” the elections “rigged,” and promotes conspiracy fantasies on Twitter. Trump is sowing confusion and demoralization so people will not be able to resist repression by sections of law enforcement and the racist militias should Trump decide to resist a peaceful transfer of power. The ultimate blowback against US coups and wars abroad against democracy threatens to be a coup against democracy at home.

End the Wars on Terrorism Abroad and Dissent at Home

One of my first steps as President would be to end the wars on “terrorism” abroad and at home. Neither major party calls for ending the endless wars against “terror” abroad even though the top priority in the official National Security Strategy of the United States has changed to “Great Power Competition” with the goal of preventing the emergence of strong regional powers in Eurasia, namely China, Iran, and Russia. This New Cold War, like the War on Terrorism, is about the profits of US-based global corporations abroad, not the security of the people of the United States at home.

The nuclear modernization program initiated under Obama and continued under Trump with bipartisan support has destabilized the nuclear balance of terror and kicked off a new nuclear arms race. The nuclear threat, coupled with inaction by the great powers on the climate emergency and the proliferation of disinformation propagated by state actors on all sides that makes it difficult for publics to come to agreement on what to demand of their governments, has prompted the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move their Doomsday Clock the closest it has ever been to midnight.

I would end the saber rattling against Russia, China, and Iran in the Great Power Competition strategy and focus on diplomacy. We need to partner with other major powers to address our common problems, notably nuclear arms, climate, and cyberwar.

I would also end the bipartisan repression of dissent at home. With Trump’s encouragement, law enforcement is using militaristic tactics to suppress peaceful protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Both major parties are united in suppressing whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and publishers like Julian Assange, whose real crimes in the eyes of the National Security State is that they exposed its secret wrongdoings.

The US should speak out against violations of human rights and democracy wherever they occur, but that should not preclude also working with authoritarian governments to resolve life-or-death global issues like climate change and nuclear arms. War and threats of war are the most powerful destroyers of civil liberties, democracy, and human rights. Military threats, economic sanctions, and covert meddling in the politics of other countries only reinforces the nationalist rationalizations of authoritarian governments for repression at home in order to ward off threats from abroad.

The most powerful way to promote human rights is to set a good example. If the US wants its advocacy of human rights to be credible and effective, it must set the right example at home, where police killings of Black people are seen on social media around the world.  A country where there is mass incarceration in the largest prison system in the history of the world, and from where the US military is deployed in some 800 foreign military bases for its endless wars, making the US the nation that the world’s people consider the biggest threat to peace.

The Other 9/11: Chile

Thirty years before the United States’ 9/11, the CIA orchestrated the violent overthrow of the democratically-elected socialist government of Chile on September 11, 1973.

It is a tragic coincidence of the US bloody intervention history in Latin America that President Salvador Allende was overthrown and pushed to suicide on the same date that decades later would affect US soil by a terrorist attack. The same feelings that American felt of being violated by the first foreign attack since Pearl Harbor were felt in Chile that September 11 in 1973. The sin of Salvador Allende in the eyes of Nixon, Kissinger, and CIA Director Richard Helms was to advance deep socialist reforms that would create a more equal society, a just distribution of incomes, real freedom of expression, and a truly democratic framework that could allow, finally, the participation and voices of all sectors, specially the impoverished workers of Chile.

Sound familiar? These are exactly the challenges that the US faces today, problems that have riddled the US throughout its history and become worse in the Trump era – the authoritarian duopoly of Republicans and Democrats, voter suppression, third party suppression, deep inequality from coast to coast, and chronic poverty. It is the same kind of repression that Chile suffers today under the conservative millionaire Sebastián Piñera when people again advance the same reforms that Allende worked for and paid for with his life. It is the same social, economic, and political oppression that the two countries share on this anniversary of 9/11.

Aid, Not Arms – Make Friends, Not Enemies

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, the Green Party of the United States warned against the danger that the two major parties and the corporate media would turn this horrific crime into a rationale for destructive wars abroad and political repression at home.

Instead of treating the 9/11 attackers as criminals to be brought to justice, the US used the attacks as a pretext for a long series of regime change wars in the Middle East and North Africa. The foreign policy leadership of the Bush administration had already written about the need for a “new Pearl Harbor” in order to provide the pretext for an invasion of Iraq to seize its oil fields. They wasted little time in getting started after 9/11.

The Authorization To Use Military Force (AUMF) against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks passed Congress on September 18 with only one dissenting vote. The US invasion of Afghanistan started on October 1. The AUMF legislation is still the legal basis for today’s endless wars.

The Patriot Act, which gave the federal government broad new intrusive surveillance and investigatory powers that weakened civil liberties, was overwhelmingly voted through Congress by October 25.

The Bush administration, joined by the Democratic amen corner led by Senator Joe Biden, lied about weapons of mass destruction and about Iraq’s alleged role in 9/11 to start a second war in Iraq by March 2003.

After 19 years, US combat troops are now engaged in 14 wars. At least 37 million people, and as many as 59 million people, have been displaced by these wars, creating the greatest refugee crisis since World War II.

The annual observation of 9/11 has been turned by politicians into a militaristic celebration of American power that is used to garner public support for US military spending and imperial aggression abroad. Right after 9/11, the world was united in its grief for our country. It was a moment that should have been used to build peace based on mutual cooperation and respect.

Let us remember 9/11 this year by demanding that the US withdraw from its endless wars, prioritize diplomacy to resolve conflicts, end arms sales to belligerents, and provide humanitarian aid for war refugees, including reopening immigration to the US from these countries.

Let’s turn the US into the world’s humanitarian superpower instead of its global military empire. Providing aid instead of arms is the best way to promote peace and security. It is time for the US to make friends instead of enemies.

This article was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2020 at 9:44pm and is filed under 9-11, Afghanistan, Chile, Civil Liberties, Democrats, Donald Trump, Iraq, Joe Biden, Police brutality, Republicans, US Foreign Policy, US Green Party, US Hypocrisy, War Crimes, War Industry, War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

The US is at a moment of truth. This week, Congress has to face up to a pandemic that is out of control and an economy that is collapsing. The Republican’s and Democrat’s proposals show they will fail this test. The people will need to protect themselves and lead from below.

The pandemic is worsening with more than 60,000 new cases and approximately 1,000 new deaths daily. Deaths, now over 158,000, are spiking across the sunbelt and increasing across the Midwest. By Election Day, the US could have 250,000 deaths making COVID-19 the third largest killer after cancer and heart disease.

The economy shrank at a record 32.9% annual pace in the second quarter, the largest since records were first kept in 1947. Jobless claims increased for the second week in a row with 1.4 million new people seeking unemployment benefits and continuing claims have risen to 17.06 million. More than 35 million people have lost their jobs since March.

In the face of these depression-era numbers, neither the Democrats nor Republicans are planning enough spending to rebuild the economy. President Trump, who has botched the response to the pandemic, is unable to lead but seems willing to sign anything that passes Congress.

Boxes of food are distributed by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, at a drive thru distribution in downtown Pittsburgh, 10 April, 2020 (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar.)

Republican HEALS Act Will Spread the Virus, Deepen Economic Collapse

The Republican Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection, and Schools (HEALS) Act seeks to push people back to work and reopen schools even if it is not safe to do so. Their proposals to cut unemployment benefits are designed to make workers desperate so they will work in conditions that put their health at risk. A large portion of school funding is restricted to schools that physically reopen forcing unsafe schools. Here are some of the details of the bill:

Health care: The inadequacy of for-profit healthcare has been magnified by the pandemic. The loss of jobs resulted in millions of people losing their health insurance on top of almost 30 million people who were already uninsured. Republicans do not include a funding increase for Medicaid, which 70 million people rely on. The National Governor’s Association reports states are experiencing budget shortfalls ranging between 5 and 20 percent. The Republicans do not provide any funding to state and local governments to make up for this loss of income. Without new funding, states will have to cut Medicaid eligibility, reduce benefits, or reduce payments to providers at a time when the economy and virus mean more people need it.

Food: The Census reports 26 million people do not have adequate food. Food banks are reporting shortages and 14 million children are going hungry but the Republicans did not extend funding for food assistance programs. The Republicans did not extend either the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known as food stamps, or the Pandemic EBT program, a benefit for households with children who have temporarily lost access to free or reduced-price school meals, which ended in June. In contrast, they did propose a 100 percent deduction on business meals through the end of 2020.

Housing: The eviction moratorium expired last week. It protected an estimated 12 million renters in federally-backed properties. The HEALS Act does nothing to prevent evictions from restarting. There are 110 million Americans who live in rental households. Twenty percent of them, 23 million people, are at risk of eviction by September 30 according to the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project. With the cut in unemployment benefits, the Census Bureau estimates 24 million people will be unable to pay next month’s rent, including 45 percent of Black and Latinx households.

Worker safety: As workers are being forced back to work, the HEALS Act cuts their ability to sue at a time when worker-safety is at its greatest risk in a century.  Senator McConnell calls this a “red line” that must be in the final bill. His proposal would preempt the few state workplace safety laws that exist and supersede such federal worker safeguards as the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, among others. The Republican proposal would erect almost insurmountable obstacles to lawsuits by workers who become infected at their workplaces and limit damages. To be immune, employers would merely have to show they were  “exploring options” to comply with federal law, or they found the risk of harm to health could not be “reduced or eliminated by reasonably modifying policies, practices, or procedures.” A worker whose lawyer issues a demand letter and settlement offer would find themselves potentially facing litigation by the employer against them. If employers sue workers, there is no limit to punitive damages. These provisions would be retroactive to December 1, 2019, and remain in effect at least until October 1, 2024.

Student debt: The HEALS Act doesn’t extend the interest-free payment pause on federal student loans or halt debt collection on government-held student debt, two forms of relief in the original CARES ACT. Without extending the relief Congress first granted to student loan borrowers through the CARES Act, 40 million people are likely to have to resume payments on September 30, 2020 at a time when there are Depression-like levels of unemployment.

Business support: The Act provides $100 billion more for the problematic Paycheck Protection Program, which has been rife with corruption as members of Congress and the administration as well as their friends, families, and donors got payouts. Big businesses got loans even though the program was intended for small businesses, making small business owners furious. Black and minority businesses were denied loans. Money is needed for main street businesses but PPP needs major changes rather than just pouring more money into the failed program.

The bill also includes $1.75 billion for the FBI building. This was added at the insistence of the Trump administration because the president’s hotel is across the street from the FBI. Without funding to refurbish the building, the FBI could move to Virginia or Maryland, leaving the current building to be torn down and likely replaced with a hotel that would compete with Trump’s hotel.

Military spending: Nearly $30 billion in the HEALS Act would be allocated in a brazen giveaway to the military. The bill includes billions for the Pentagon including $686 million for F-35 stealth fighters, $650 million for A-10 ground attack airplane wing replacements, $1.4 billion for four expeditionary medical ships, and $720 million for C-130J transport aircraft, $375 million for armored vehicles, $360 million for missile defense, and $283 million for Apache helicopters. This is reportedly being added to make up for money taken from the Pentagon for the border wall and comes after Congress recently passed a record military spending bill.

Paramedics taking a patient into an Emergency Room at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

The Democrats Fail To Use Their Power

The Democrats control the House of Representatives. Nothing can pass the Senate without Democratic Party support. The Senate Republicans are divided and Trump is desperate to sign a bill. Polls show Republicans could lose the Senate so they need to pass a good bill. The political alignment favors the Democratic Party but it still isn’t doing what is needed.

The Democrats passed the HEROES (Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions) Act in May, a $3 trillion proposal compared to the $1 trillion HEALS Act. Two months ago this may have been adequate but now that figure needs to be increased as more jobs have been lost, state and city governments have lost income, and the cost of treating the virus has increased with more cases.

A “red line” for the Democrats should be funding state and local government with at least $1 trillion to continue basic services. More than 20 million people work for state and local governments such as firefighters, teachers, police, sanitation workers, and transportation workers. The Economic Policy Institute estimates 5.3 million jobs will be lost without state and local funding. President Trump and the Republicans do not want another massive increase in job loss, so the Democrats are in a strong position to make this demand.

The decrease in unemployment benefits should be another unacceptable “red line” as this will further shrink the economy. The Economic Policy Institute finds the loss of the extra $600 of unemployment benefits, which people are currently spending on basic needs, will result in the loss of an additional 3.4 million jobs.

One area where the Democrats can build on some agreement is the $1,200 COVID-19 relief payment to individuals. These payments are too small. A good COVID-19 relief package would increase payments to $2,000 per person monthly for the duration of the pandemic and recession for households earning under $150,000 as suggested by Sen. Bernie Sanders. This would slow the economic collapse and ease suffering.

It is essential to extend the moratorium on evictions not just for federally-subsidized housing, but the federal government should also cover rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the crises. Otherwise, millions of families will lose their homes in an election year, which should be politically unpalatable for both parties.

Health workers give people free Covid-19 tests in Arlington, Virginia, on May 26 (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

We Need a Plan

What is missing from both the Republican and Democratic bills is a strategy to control and stop the pandemic. The virus is 7 months old and still spreading rapidly. President Trump has failed to lead so Congress must do so. The bill should include a massive investment in making rapid testing available across the country. Every business and school should have rapid testing capability before they reopen. This should be combined with hiring 500,000 public health tracers so those who have been exposed to COVID-19 can be tracked to prevent further spread of the virus.

Everyone wants to restart the economy but this must be done safely. In addition to testing and tracing, workplaces and schools must be safe. School districts should decide whether to restart or continue web-based learning and should be supported by the federal government whatever they choose. Hundreds of thousands of tutors who can do one-on-one teaching to support web-based learning are needed. With high unemployment, especially among recent graduates and college students, there are people available to take on this task.

Congress should authorize OSHA to rapidly enact stringent standards for workplaces to reopen, along with funding for necessary safeguards. There should be increased funding for OSHA workplace inspections and investigations of inadequate safety. Employers who meet the standards for a safe workplace should have legal protection from frivolous lawsuits but employees should also have the right to sue if workplaces do not meet safety standards. This approach protects both workers and employers and will reduce the spread of the virus.

Neither party handled healthcare well even before the pandemic. COVID-19 has magnified the failure of for-profit healthcare. To stop the spread of the virus, Congress needs to break away from its privatized approach to healthcare. With the widespread job loss, 5.4 million workers lost their health insurance as did millions more family members. This is the largest decline in health insurance coverage in US history. The rapid response to this healthcare crisis should be the expansion of Medicare to everyone in the United States. Ideological opposition to publicly funded healthcare should not block this essential step. The long term failure of our healthcare system and widening health disparities demonstrate why we need a community-controlled, public, universal healthcare system.

Workers strike over safety (Yahoo Finance)

he People Must Rule, and Protect Ourselves

Congress and the President are unlikely to enact the laws needed to confront the pandemic and economic collapse. As a result, both will worsen. We will have to take action to protect ourselves and build popular power to win our demands.

We need to organize mutual aid to people meet people’s basic needs, such as for food and housing. Many cities have vacant buildings owned by the local and federal governments. As homelessness rises, these should be taken over to house people. We discuss the practical steps for taking over homes with Cheri Honkala this week on Clearing The FOG, (available as a podcast on Monday).

We build popular power by taking the streets as people have been doing for over two months now across the country, only buying essentials, refusing to pay rent or debt payments, blocking evictions and by building in our workplaces for a general strike.

Our actions must not be about which presidential candidate from the two parties of the millionaires to elect. Only one serious presidential campaign is right on COVID-19 and the economy, the Green candidates Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker. Our actions need to be about building a people’s movement that grows in power before and after the November elections. No matter who is elected, the people will need to resist, create new systems and rule from below.

This article was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2020 at 2:44am and is filed under Activism, Civil Liberties, COVID-19, Democrats, Donald Trump, Elections, Evictions, Food Sovereignty, Food/Nutrition, Health/Medical, Media, Medical Insurance, Medicare for All, On Line Education, Politics, Protests, Racism, Rent/rent strikes, Republicans, Resistance, Social Movements, Sustainable Economy, Transparency/Secrecy, Unemployment, US Congress, US Military, Workers’ Safety.

He added:

We’ve all got to be clear, this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.

In a report, the Imperial College had warned of modelling that suggested over 500,000 would die from the virus in the UK. The lead author of the report, epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, has since revised the estimate downward to a maximum of 20,000 if current ‘lockdown’ measures work. Johnson seems to have based his statement on Ferguson’s original figures.

Before addressing the belief that a lockdown will help the UK, it might be useful to turn to an ongoing public health crisis that receives scant media and government attention – because context is everything and responses that are proportionate to crises are important.

The silent public health crisis

In a new 29-page open letter to Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason spends 11 pages documenting the spiralling rates of disease that she says (supported by numerous research studies cited) are largely the result of exposure to health-damaging agrochemicals, not least the world’s most widely used weedkiller – glyphosate.

The amount of glyphosate-based herbicides sprayed by UK farmers on crops has gone from 226,762 kg in 1990 to 2,240,408 kg in 2016, a 10-fold increase. Mason discusses links between multiple pesticide residues (including glyphosate) in food and steady increases in the number of cancers both in the UK and worldwide as well as allergic diseases, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, obesity and many other conditions.

Mason is at pains to stress that agrochemicals are a major contributory factor (or actual cause) for the spikes in these diseases and conditions. She says this is the real public health crisis affecting the UK (and the US). Each year, she argues, there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with no treatments making any difference to the numbers.

Of course, it would be unwise to lay all the blame at the door of the agrochemicals sector: we are subjected each day to a cocktail of toxic chemicals via household goods, food processing practices and food additives and environmental pollution. Yet there seems to be a serious lack of action to interfere with corporate practices and profits on the part of public bodies, so much so that a report by the Corporate Europe Observatory said in 2014 that the then outgoing European Commission had become a willing servant of a corporate agenda.

In a 2017 report, Hilal Elver, UN Special rapporteur on the right to food, and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes Baskut Tuncak were severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”.

The authors said that pesticides have catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole, including an estimated 200,000 deaths a year from acute poisoning.  They concluded that it is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.

At the time, Elver said that, in order to tackle this issue, the power of the corporations must be addressed.

While there is currently much talk of the coronavirus placing immense strain on the NHS, Mason highlights that the health service is already creaking and that due to weakened immune systems brought about by the contaminated food we eat, any new virus could spell disaster for public health.

But do we see a ‘lockdown’ on the activities of the global agrochemical conglomerates? Not at all. As Mason has highlighted in her numerous reports, we see governments and public health bodies working hand in glove with the agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals manufacturers to ensure ‘business as usual’. So, it might seem strange to many that the UK government is seemingly going out of its way (by stripping people of their freedoms) under the guise of a public health crisis but is all too willing to oversee a massive, ongoing one caused by the chemical pollution of our bodies.

Mason’s emphasis on an ongoing public health crisis brought about by poisoned crops and food is but part of a wider story. And it must be stated that it is a ‘silent’ crisis because the mainstream media and various official reports in the UK have consistently ignored or downplayed the role of pesticides in fuelling this situation.

Systemic immiseration

Another part of the health crisis story involves ongoing austerity measures.

The current Conservative administration in the UK is carrying out policies that it says will protect the general population and older people in particular. This is in stark contrast to its record over the previous decade which demonstrates contempt for the most vulnerable in society.

In 2019, a leading UN poverty expert compared Conservative welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses and warned that unless austerity is ended, the UK’s poorest people face lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, accused ministers of being in a state of denial about the impact of policies. He accused them of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”.

In another 2019 report, it was claimed that more than 130,000 deaths in the UK since 2012 could have been prevented if improvements in public health policy had not stalled as a direct result of austerity cuts.

Over the past 10 years in the UK, there has been rising food poverty and increasing reliance on food banks, while the five richest families are now worth more than the poorest 20% and about a third of Britain’s population lives in poverty.

Almost 18 million cannot afford adequate housing conditions; 12 million are too poor to engage in common social activities; one in three cannot afford to heat their homes adequately in winter; and four million children and adults are not properly fed (Britain’s population is estimated at 63 to 64 million). Welfare cuts have pushed hundreds of thousands below the poverty line since 2012, including more than 300,000 children.

In the wake of a lockdown, we can only speculate about how a devastated economy might be exploited to further this ‘austerity’ agenda. With bailouts being promised to companies and many workers receiving public money to see them through the current crisis, this will need to be clawed back from somewhere. Will that be the excuse for defunding the NHS and handing it over to private healthcare companies with health insurance firms in tow? Are we to see a further deepening of the austerity agenda, let alone an extension of the surveillance state given the current lockdown measures which may not be fully rolled back?

The need for the current lockdown and the eradication of our freedoms has been questioned by some, not least Lord J. Sumption, former Supreme Court Justice. He has questioned the legitimacy of Boris Johnson’s press conference/statement to deprive people of their liberty and has said:

There is a difference between law and official instructions. It is the difference between a democracy and a police state.

Journalist Peter Hitchens says a newspaper headline for what Sumption says might be – ‘Former Supreme Court justice says Johnson measures lead towards police state’ or ‘TOP JUDGE WARNS OF POLICE STATE’.

But, as Hitchens implies, such headlines do not appear. Indeed, where is the questioning in the mainstream media or among politicians about any of this? To date, there have been a few isolated voices, with Hitchens himself being one.

In his recent articles, Hitchens has questioned the need for the stripping of the public’s rights and freedoms under the pretext of a perceived coronavirus pandemic. He has referred to esteemed scientists who question the need for and efficacy of ‘social distancing’ and keeping the public under virtual ‘house arrest’.

An open Letter from Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, emeritus professor of medical microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, to Angela Merkel calls for an urgent reassessment of Germany’s lockdown response to Covid-19. Then there is Dr Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University. He argues that we have made such decisions on the basis of unreliable data. These two scientists are not alone. On the OffGuardian website, two articles have appeared which present the views of 22 experts who question policies and/or the data that is being cited about the coronavirus.

Shift in balance of power

Professor Michel Chossudovsky has looked at who could ultimately benefit from current events and concludes that certain pharmaceutical companies could be (are already) major beneficiaries as they receive lavish funding to develop vaccines. He asks whether we can trust the main actors behind what could amount to a multi-billion dollar global (compulsory) vaccination (surveillance) project.

The issue of increased government surveillance has also been prominent in various analyses of the ongoing situation, not least in pushing the world further towards cashless societies (under the pretext that cash passes on viruses) whereby our every transaction is digitally monitored and a person’s virtual money could be declared null and void if a government so decides. Many discussions have implicated the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in this – an entity that for some time has been promoting the roll-out of global vaccine programmes and a global ‘war on cash’.

For instance, financial journalist Norbert Haring notes that the Gates Foundation and US state-financial interests had an early pivotal role in pushing for the 2016 demonestisation policy with the aim of pushing India further towards a cashless society. However, the policy caused immense damage to the economy and the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions in India who rely on cash in their everyday activities.

But that does not matter to those who roll out such policies. What matters is securing control over global payments and the ability to monitor and block them. Control food you control people. Control digital payments (and remove cash), you can control and monitor everything a country and its citizens do and pay for.

India has now also implemented a lockdown on its population and tens of millions of migrant workers have been returning to their villages. If there is a risk of corona virus infection, masses of people congregating in close proximity then returning to the countryside does not bode well.

Indeed, the impact of lockdowns and social isolation could have more harm than the effects of the coronavirus itself in terms of hunger, depression, suicides and the overall deterioration of the health of older people who are having operations delayed and who are stuck indoors with little social interaction or physical movement.

If current events show us anything, it is that fear is a powerful weapon for securing hegemony. Any government can manipulate fear about certain things while conveniently ignoring real dangers that a population faces. In a recent article, author and researcher Robert J Burrowes says:

… if we were seriously concerned about our world, the gravest and longest-standing health crisis on the planet is the one that starves to death 100,000 people each day. No panic about that, of course. And no action either.

And, of course, each day we live with the very real danger of dying a horrific death because of the thousands of nuclear missiles that hang over our heads. But this is not up for discussion. The media and politicians say nothing. Fear perception can be deliberately managed, while Walter Lippmann’s concept of the ‘bewildered herd’ cowers on cue and demands the government to further strip its rights under the guise of safety.

Does the discussion thus far mean that those who question the mainstream narrative surrounding the coronavirus are in denial of potential dangers and deaths that have been attributed to the virus? Not at all. But perspective and proportionate responses are everything and healthy debate should still take place, especially when our fundamental freedoms are at stake.

Unfortunately, many of those who would ordinarily question power and authority have meekly fallen into line: those in the UK who would not usually accept anything at face value that Boris Johnson or his ministers say, are now all too easily willing to accept the data and the government narrative. This is perplexing as both the government and the mainstream media have serious trust deficits (putting it mildly) if we look at their false narratives in numerous areas, including chemical attacks in Syria, ‘Russian aggression’, baseless smear campaigns directed at Jeremy Corbyn and WMDs in Iraq.

What will emerge from current events is anyone’s guess. Some authors like economist and geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig have presented disturbing scenarios for a future authoritarian world order under the control of powerful state-corporate partners. Whatever the eventual outcome, financial institutions, pharmaceuticals companies and large corporations will capitalise on current events to extend their profits, control and influence.

Major corporations are already in line for massive bailouts despite them having kept workers’ wages low and lining the pockets of top executives and shareholders by spending zero-interest money on stock buy backs. And World Bank Group President David Malpass has stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet – on the condition that further neoliberal reforms and the undermining of public services are implemented and become further embedded:

Countries will need to implement structural reforms to help shorten the time to recovery and create confidence that the recovery can be strong.  For those countries that have excessive regulations, subsidies, licensing regimes, trade protection or litigiousness as obstacles, we will work with them to foster markets, choice and faster growth prospects during the recovery.

In the face of economic crisis and stagnation at home, this seems like an ideal opportunity for Western capital to further open up and loot economies abroad. In effect, the coronavirus provides cover for the further entrenchment of dependency and dispossession. Global conglomerates will be able to hollow out the remnants of nation state sovereignty, while ordinary people’s rights and ability to organise and challenge the corporate hijack of economies and livelihoods will be undermined by the intensified, globalised system of surveillance that beckons.

This article was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2020 at 8:32am and is filed under “The West”, Boris Johnson, Civil Liberties, COVID-19 (coronavirus), Currency, Disinformation, Economy/Economics, Espionage/”Intelligence”, Fearmongering, Food Security, Glyphosate, Health/Medical, Lockdown, Media, Migration/Migrants, Mind Control, Police State, State Repression, UK Media, UK Politics, United Kingdom.

“War is the health of the state.” So said the eerily prescient and uncompromising anti-war radical Randolph Bourne in the very midst of what Europeans called the Great War, a nihilistic conflict that eventually consumed the lives of at least 9 million soldiers, including some 50,000 Americans. He meant, ultimately, that wars — especially foreign wars — inevitably increase the punitive and regulatory power of government. He opposed what Americans commonly term the First World War on those principled grounds. Though he’d soon die a premature death, Bourne had correctly predicted the violations of civil liberties, deceptive propaganda, suppression of immigrants, vigilantism, and press restriction that would result on the home front, even as tens of thousands of American boys were slaughtered in the trenches of France.

This, the war on the free press, free speech, and dissent more generally, is the true legacy of the American war in Europe (1917–18). More disturbing, in the wake of 9/11 and Washington’s two-decade-old wars for the Greater Middle East, the dark, twisted, underbelly of World War I’s legacy has again reared its ugly head. Bipartisan, interventionist presidential administrations — unilaterally tyrannical in foreign affairs — from George W.Bush to Barrack Obama to Donald Trump have sought mammoth expansions of executive power, suppressed civil liberties, trampled on the Constitution, and waged outright war on the press.

All this was done — in 1917 and today — in the name of “patriot-ism,” what Oscar Wilde (perhaps apocryphally) labeled the “virtue of the vicious.” World War I produced the repressive and now-infamous Espionage and Sedition Acts, along with brutal vigilante attacks on Germans and other immigrants. The 21st century’s endless wars have engendered the equally autocratic USA PATRIOT Act, and their own reinvigorated brand of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim abuses. It is for this reason that a brief reflection on America’s troubled — and oft-forgotten — experience on the home front during the First World War is more relevant than ever.

Rethinking American intervention in World War I

The truth about this particular war, at least of America’s own late intervention, is that it was unnecessary. That is not, of course, how World War I is today collectively remembered, but it was a common — perhaps even majority — viewpoint in the interwar period of 1919–1940. The more common modern memory, of Uncle Sam rushing into the war at last to save the day, ensure victory, and thereby “save democracy,” was, in fact, carefully crafted in the aftermath of the Second World War when the United States decided, once and for all, to seek global imperium. No doubt, the Germans were no angels during the First World War. None of the belligerents was. All contestants (even little Belgium) were land-hungry belligerent states with sometimes large (and distant) overseas empires. If the great sin of Germany was to violate Belgian neutrality (Britain’s declared casus belli for war), it was instructive that nothing was said about Brussels’s decades-long rape of the Congo, a campaign that bordered on the genocidal.

Early in the war, there were, now famous, German attacks on U.S. ships that sometimes killed American citizens, and that had already whipped up anti-German rancor among some, but did not lead to outright war. They included the German submarine sinking of the famed British ocean liner Lusitania, which killed more than 100 Americans. Jumping to conclusions, as the former president was apt to, Theodore Roosevelt denounced the attack as “murder on the high seas.” The problem was, it turned out that Germany had been correct: the liner was carrying armaments in secret, including a total of 1,248 cases of 3-inch artillery shells and 4,927 boxes of rifle cartridges bound for the British Army. When he felt Woodrow Wilson protested too vehemently, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan — an ardent opponent of intervention — resigned in protest. “A Ship carrying contraband, should not rely on passengers to protect her from attack,” the outgoing secretary accurately noted regarding the Lusitania, adding that “it would be like putting women and children in front of an army.” Nonetheless, the biggest dove in the Wilson cabinet was gone and the path to war became that much more open.

Nevertheless, Germany did — by the winter of 1916-17 — declare unrestricted submarine warfare on U.S. merchant ships bound for the Allies, and even sent a telegram to Mexico that appeared to entice Mexico’s entry into the war on the Kaiser’s side in exchange for the reclamation of its lost provinces of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. These seemed, to many, to be unacceptable provocations that required war. But were they?

Germany had a point, after all. For years, as Washington pledged neutrality, it had floated massive banking loans to the Allies, traded almost exclusively with Allied states, and hardly raised a peep about Britain’s own violation of neutral trading rights through its starvation blockade of German ports. Feeling itself backed into a corner, squeezing the British economy seemed the only way to end the war on terms favorable to Germany. While unrestricted warfare turned out to be a tactical blunder, it need not have prompted outright American military intervention. The United States might have insisted on true neutral trading rights whereby its merchant ships could pierce the blockade of Germany, and refused loans or arms deals of any kind to any belligerent power. True neutrality — in action — just might have averted war. It was not to be.

It seems ironic that it was Woodrow Wilson — a self-described “Progressive” who had run just months earlier on the campaign slogan “He kept us out of war” — who asked Congress for a martial declaration against Germany on April 2, 1917. Wilson had always favored the British and French Allies over the Central Powers of Germany and Austria, but he had once seemed genuinely leery of the potential consequences of intervention. In 1914, he had said, “Every reform we have won will be lost if we go into this war.” He’d soon be proven correct.

Contrary to common — albeit now debunked, but still prevalent — historical mythology, the pre–Great War United States was never a full-tilt isolationist state. Although since the War of 1812 at least, Washington had tended to avoid intervention in Europe’s endless conflicts, Uncle Sam had nevertheless expanded its own continental empire through aggressive conquests at the expense of Indians and the state of Mexico. Then, after 1898, the United States joined in the overseas imperial game, gobbling up Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and various other Pacific and Caribbean Islands in the wake of the one-sided, unnecessary Spanish-American War.

Nevertheless, Washington’s early spring 1917 entrance into a catastrophic and epic European ground war was a profound departure from America’s past. The United States would have to raise armies exceeding even those of the Civil War and somehow deploy them to France. Intervention would also, inevitably, alter society. As the historian David M. Kennedy summarized, “The war temporarily required the United States … to discipline and mobilize its citizens in a manner from which history and geography had theretofore singularly spared them.” Only, as it turned out, those economic and social changes would prove far from temporary. Furthermore, as war always does, the war across the Atlantic eventually came home, affecting domestic politics, constitutionally protected civil liberties, and the very existence of the ostensible republic.

Civil liberties in the First World War

“Woe be to the man or group of men that stand in our way.”
— President Wilson in a June 1917 warning to peace advocates

In this, one of the darker, if rarely remembered, phases of American history, the U.S. government waged a veritable war on peaceful dissent. Pacifism, skepticism, radicalism: seemingly overnight all three were officially or practically criminalized. In a familiar pattern in the suppression of civil liberties, the White House would raise the national-security alarm and request the power to curtail freedom and squash protest; then Congress would do the president’s bidding and pass repressive legislation forthwith; much later the courts tended to uphold the highly questionable laws.

War fever produced a vehement “patriotic” crusade against even the sentiment of peace or doubt. When, in the congressional debates that followed Wilson’s request for war, some representatives and senators questioned the case for intervention, they were regularly met with shouts of “Treason! Treason!” Earlier, in response to the Progressive senator Robert La Follette’s opposition to the arming of U.S. merchant ships, Teddy Roosevelt had quipped that the Wisconsin senator “has shown himself to be an unhung traitor, and if the war should come, he ought to be hung.” When even a still-popular, and ostensibly Progressive, former president used such provocative language, it proved unsurprising that thousands of private citizens would indeed inflict violence on their anti-war neighbors in 1917-18.

Had La Follette been so far off the mark in his criticism? Honest analysis proves otherwise. Prudently, if rarely among his contemporaries, the senator questioned the Manichean duality of Wilson’s official framing of the war as one between liberal Western states and autocratic Germanic states. After all, where did monarchical Tsarist Russia — a core member of the Allies — fit into that equation? And what of the massive overseas imperium of Britain and France, which dwarfed the German and Austrian empires? On April 4, 1917, during the congressional war debate, La Follette pointed out the contradictions then at work, as he asserted “[Wilson] says this is a war … for democracy…. But the president has not suggested that we make our support of Britain conditional to her granting home rule to Ireland, Egypt, or India….” It was a fair point; indeed, World War I was a war between empires, not — as Wilson pretended — against empire.

The primary tool of oppression for the U.S. government was the Sedition Act, overwhelmingly passed into law on May 16, 1917. The impetus for the bill was Attorney General Thomas Gregory’s request for an amendment to the press-constricting Espionage Act, which would allow him to prosecute “disloyal utterances.” The result was a new law that prohibited “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government … or Constitution … or flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy.” Beyond the law’s troubling, and obvious, attack on free expression, the very vagueness of the statute lent itself to abuse.

It was the fanatic Gregory who would wield this new tool of federal oppression. He performed his duties with glee, stating of war opponents, “May God have mercy on them, for they need expect none from an outraged people and an avenging government.” It didn’t take particularly violent or catalyzing speech to earn an arrest, conviction, and federal prison sentence. When a New Hampshire citizen cited his opinion that “this was a [banker J.P.] Morgan war and not a war of the people,” he received a three-year prison sentence.

More famous, when the prominent Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs delivered an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio — which focused mainly on the supposed ills of capitalism and hadn’t explicitly urged violation of conscription laws — he was arrested and earned a ten-year term in the federal penitentiary. Ultimately, the martyrdom of Debs partly backfired. Running, from federal prison, for the presidency in 1920, he earned nearly a million votes, the highest popular vote percentage by a Socialist in American history.

No court challenges of the deplorable Sedition Act bore fruit, and the law remained on the books until repealed in December 1920. By then the war was over, precedent was set, and damage was done. Many languished in prison for years for the crime of war opposition, even criticism. As historian David Kennedy concluded, “Commentators ever since have rightly viewed it as a landmark of repression in American history…. [It] reveals a great deal about the popular temper at the midpoint of American belligerency.” Indeed it was, and did.

That the Sedition Act needed to be used so broadly deflates the myth that Americans rushed en masse to recruiting stations and waged war with great enthusiasm. In reality, when the government called for one million military volunteers only 73,000 enlisted. Six weeks later the United States settled on conscription. Throughout the war 330,000 Americans were officially classified as war evaders and thousands of pacifists were detained in so-called Conscientious Objector Prison Camps.

One outgrowth of the government war on dissent — and the failed yet furious counteraction — was the formation of what later became the still-prominent (if controversial) American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The battles waged by the new organization and countless other grassroots protests against the war and liberty violations demonstrated the potential power, and vigorous persistence, of dissenters. The battle rages again today, as after 9/11 to be anti-war is to be brushed with the toxic brand of “Un-Americanism.”

When Edward Snowden was an anonymous National Security Agency subcontractor with documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs, Glenn Greenwald, then at The Guardian, was among the small group of journalists Snowden trusted to publish the documents in 2013.

The publication earned Greenwald a reputation as an outspoken defender of free speech and whistleblowers. He went on to co-found The Intercept, and then The Intercept Brasil, after moving to Brazil in 2005.

A staunch critic of Brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsanaro, Greenwald has been charged with cybercrimes by the Brazilian government, for his role in publishing articles based on text messages that, The New York Times says, “embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force.”

The Intercept Brasil’s articles questioned the integrity of the task force and the Brazilian judiciary as a whole, including Sérgio Moro, a former judge, and now Bolsanaro’s minister of justice. In addition, as The Daily Beast explains, “The messages implicated Brazilian prosecutors and judges in a plot to arrest and jail Bolsonaro’s opponent, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on bogus charges and prevent him from running for a third term in the 2018 election.”

Brazilian prosecutors allege that Greenwald and The Intercept Brasil went beyond the boundaries of journalism and the public interest. They claim Greenwald and his colleagues played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime” and are part of a “criminal organization” responsible for hacking into public officials’ mobile phones.

Six other people were named in the complaint.

The charges were a surprise, as Greenwald was previously cleared of charges by Federal Police in a December report. HuffPosts’ Ryan Grenoble called the development “an alarming sign that Brazil’s increasingly authoritarian government is punishing a journalist for revealing explosive information.” Greenwald and his family had previously received death threats from Bolsanaro supporters. Bolsanaro himself even threatened Greenwald with jail time, and said Greenwald married his husband, David Miranda, a Rio de Janeiro council member, to avoid getting deported.

“The Bolsonaro government and the movement that supports it has made repeatedly clear that it does not believe in basic press freedoms,” Greenwald said in a statement to The Daily Beast. He continued:

Less than two months ago, after examining the same evidence cited today by Brazil’s Public Ministry, the Federal Police stated that not only have I never committed any crimes in my contacts with our source, but also that I exercised extreme caution as a journalist. This new accusation — brought by the same prosecutor who just tried and failed to criminally prosecute the head of the Brazilian Bar Association for criticizing Minister Moro — is an obvious attempt to attack a free press in retaliation for the revelations we reported about Minister Moro and the Bolsonaro government.

Multiple international civil liberties and journalism organizations defended Greenwald. The ACLU denounced the charges on Twitter:

Our government must immediately condemn this outrageous assault on the freedom of the press, and recognize that its attacks on press freedoms at home have consequences for American journalists doing their jobs abroad, like Glenn Greenwald. https://t.co/fHycUBq3Dq

— ACLU (@ACLU) January 21, 2020

Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm posted a statement of support on the organization’s website:

These sham charges are a sickening escalation of the Bolsonaro administration’s authoritarian attacks on press freedom and the rule of law. They cannot be allowed to stand. We call on the Brazilian government to immediately halt its persecution of Greenwald and respect press freedom — as the Brazilian Supreme Court has already ordered them to do. In the meantime, we dearly hope Glenn is safe and is able to continue doing his job as a journalist.

Greenwald told The Daily Beast he intends to fight the charges however he can.

When Edward Snowden was an anonymous National Security Agency subcontractor with documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs, Glenn Greenwald, then at The Guardian, was among the small group of journalists Snowden trusted to publish the documents in 2013.

The publication earned Greenwald a reputation as an outspoken defender of free speech and whistleblowers. He went on to co-found The Intercept, and then The Intercept Brasil, after moving to Brazil in 2005.

A staunch critic of Brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsanaro, Greenwald has been charged with cybercrimes by the Brazilian government, for his role in publishing articles based on text messages that, The New York Times says, “embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force.”

The Intercept Brasil’s articles questioned the integrity of the task force and the Brazilian judiciary as a whole, including Sérgio Moro, a former judge, and now Bolsanaro’s minister of justice. In addition, as The Daily Beast explains, “The messages implicated Brazilian prosecutors and judges in a plot to arrest and jail Bolsonaro’s opponent, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on bogus charges and prevent him from running for a third term in the 2018 election.”

Brazilian prosecutors allege that Greenwald and The Intercept Brasil went beyond the boundaries of journalism and the public interest. They claim Greenwald and his colleagues played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime” and are part of a “criminal organization” responsible for hacking into public officials’ mobile phones.

Six other people were named in the complaint.

The charges were a surprise, as Greenwald was previously cleared of charges by Federal Police in a December report. HuffPosts’ Ryan Grenoble called the development “an alarming sign that Brazil’s increasingly authoritarian government is punishing a journalist for revealing explosive information.” Greenwald and his family had previously received death threats from Bolsanaro supporters. Bolsanaro himself even threatened Greenwald with jail time, and said Greenwald married his husband, David Miranda, a Rio de Janeiro council member, to avoid getting deported.

“The Bolsonaro government and the movement that supports it has made repeatedly clear that it does not believe in basic press freedoms,” Greenwald said in a statement to The Daily Beast. He continued:

Less than two months ago, after examining the same evidence cited today by Brazil’s Public Ministry, the Federal Police stated that not only have I never committed any crimes in my contacts with our source, but also that I exercised extreme caution as a journalist. This new accusation — brought by the same prosecutor who just tried and failed to criminally prosecute the head of the Brazilian Bar Association for criticizing Minister Moro — is an obvious attempt to attack a free press in retaliation for the revelations we reported about Minister Moro and the Bolsonaro government.

Multiple international civil liberties and journalism organizations defended Greenwald. The ACLU denounced the charges on Twitter:

Our government must immediately condemn this outrageous assault on the freedom of the press, and recognize that its attacks on press freedoms at home have consequences for American journalists doing their jobs abroad, like Glenn Greenwald. https://t.co/fHycUBq3Dq

— ACLU (@ACLU) January 21, 2020

Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm posted a statement of support on the organization’s website:

These sham charges are a sickening escalation of the Bolsonaro administration’s authoritarian attacks on press freedom and the rule of law. They cannot be allowed to stand. We call on the Brazilian government to immediately halt its persecution of Greenwald and respect press freedom — as the Brazilian Supreme Court has already ordered them to do. In the meantime, we dearly hope Glenn is safe and is able to continue doing his job as a journalist.

Greenwald told The Daily Beast he intends to fight the charges however he can.