Billionaires Don’t Make Their Billions — They Steal Them From the Poor
[Economic] [Social]
Billionaires Don’t Make Their Billions — They Steal Them From the Poor
by Julia Horvath
Posted September 18, 2021
“The only thing better than controlling money and power is to control the efforts to question the distribution of money and power. The only thing better than being a fox is being a fox asked to watch over hens.”
— Anand Giridharadas
If you earned $10 million in your lifetime you’d consider yourself rich. However, you’d still be $990 million away from being a billionaire.
You can’t spend a billion dollars in a lifetime. That’s what hoarding wealth means. There’s no reason anyone should have more money they can spend in several high-end lifetimes while others starve, are homeless, and die of curable diseases.
Imagine a monkey that hoards more bananas he could ever eat while other monkeys around him starve. Scientists would study that monkey. They’d want to understand what’s wrong with him— and conclude he’s a mentally ill monkey. More…
How States and Communities Can Fight Back Against Biden’s COVID Tyranny
[Justice] [Political] [Social]
How States and Communities Can Fight Back Against Biden’s COVID Tyranny
By Brandon Smith
Posted October 19, 2021
A war is coming. I have heard it argued that this war must be avoided; that it is “exactly what the establishment wants.” I disagree. I think globalists like those at the World Economic Forum certainly want enough chaos to provide cover for the implementation of their global “Reset” agenda, but they don’t want a full blown rebellion. They only want events in which the outcome is controllable or predictable – They do not want a massive organized resistance that might surprise them.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter because the war is already at our doorstep. A person has two choices: Fight or be enslaved. There is no third option. There is no walking away. There is no hiding from it and there is no passive solution to it.
Joe Biden’s recent declaration of a federal level nationwide vaccine mandate has all but ensured that conflict is inevitable. Why? Because it is the first major step towards a two-tier society in which the unvaxxed are cut out of the economy. The next step? Forced vaccinations under threat of fines and imprisonment, the threat of confiscation of one’s children, or vaccination at the barrel of a gun. Needless to say, this was not at all surprising to me. More…
Why Does No One Ever Talk About Sweden Anymore?
[Politics] [Social] [Media]
Why Does No One Ever Talk About Sweden Anymore?
by IM Unmasked
Posted September 17, 2021
New Covid cases, Israel vs Sweden Source: Johns Hopkins + World Health Organization
One of the most consistently repeated trends of COVID has been the premature declarations of victory from areas with a perceived level of “success” in “controlling” the pandemic.
It’s happened in countries all over the world — Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Mongolia — just to name a few examples. They all have been praised for their ability to “control” the virus with masks and public health measures, only to then see cases invariably skyrocket.
Incompetent media reporting and dangerously ignorant “expert” pontifications have been an infuriatingly persistent aspect of COVID messaging, with their incoherent ravings becoming increasingly desperate as time wears on.
On the flip side to inaccurate praise, the incomprehensible inability of experts to get anything right is perhaps best exemplified by Sweden.
“Experts” and the media declared Sweden was the world’s cautionary tale, a dangerous outlier who shunned The New Science™ of masks and lockdowns and stuck to established public health principles and pre-pandemic planning.
Over much of 2020 and into 2021, Sweden was persistently criticized by the media and on Twitter arguments due to comparisons to their neighbors, a standard curiously not applicable to most other countries around the world. Yet as we’ve progressed further into 2021, those same media outlets have suddenly gone quiet as their chosen victors have flailed unsuccessfully against ever increasing outbreaks.
So let’s see what’s transpired recently which resulted in the deafening silence, and examine what that means for The Science™, shall we? More…
Authoritarians Drunk on Power: It Is Time to Recalibrate the Government
[Justice] [Political] [Social]
Authoritarians Drunk on Power: It Is Time to Recalibrate the Government
By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
Posted September 17, 2021
We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.
This COVID-19 pandemic has provided the government with the perfect excuse to lay claim to a long laundry list of terrifying lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level) that override the Constitution: 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, reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die, and impose health mandates on large segments of the population.
These kinds of crises tend to bring out the authoritarian tendencies in government. That’s no surprise: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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. More…
Meet Your New Feudal Overlords
[Economic] [Social] [Community]
Meet Your New Feudal Overlords
by Marlon Weems
Posted September 16, 2021
Classic feudalism was a system where a wealthy land-owning nobility (the 1%) controlled the peasant class of workers known as serfs (everyone else). The elites provided serfs with a small piece of land on which to live. Although they paid taxes, generally, serfs owned no property, had no economic power or upward mobility. During the Middle Ages, as much as 90% of Europe’s population fell into this category.
Sound familiar?
I admit it’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s something worth considering — especially given what’s happening not just with housing but with land ownership in general. In our system, owning real estate is the most common vehicle for wealth accumulation. So what happens when only the wealthiest Americans can afford to own property?
Before you answer, you should know that billionaires are buying up land like it’s going out of style. Do you know who owns the most farmland in the United States? Bill Gates and his soon-to-be ex-wife Melinda, that’s who. With 242,000 acres of cropland plus nearly 30,000 additional acres of land in their real estate portfolio, they’re playing real-life monopoly. More…
What is Pegasus spyware and how does it hack phones?
[Justice] [Media]
What is Pegasus spyware and how does it hack phones?
by David Pegg and Sam Cutler
Posted September 15, 2021
NSO Group software can record your calls, copy your messages and secretly film you.
It is the name for perhaps the most powerful piece of spyware ever developed – certainly by a private company. Once it has wormed its way on to your phone, without you noticing, it can turn it into a 24-hour surveillance device. It can copy messages you send or receive, harvest your photos and record your calls. It might secretly film you through your phone’s camera, or activate the microphone to record your conversations. It can potentially pinpoint where you are, where you’ve been, and who you’ve met.
Pegasus is the hacking software – or spyware – that is developed, marketed and licensed to governments around the world by the Israeli company NSO Group. It has the capability to infect billions of phones running either iOS or Android operating systems. More…
Call Me a Traitor
[Political] [Justice]
Call Me a Traitor
By Kerry Howley
Posted September 14, 2021
Daniel Hale exposed the machinery of America’s clandestine warfare. Why did no one seem to care?
No one owns a secret state, and no one answers for it. There was a moment in 2012, 2013, when various people outside Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan began to notice that inside Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan, the U.S. was waging constant, secret war under a set of rules known to few.
It was May 2013 when Obama finally felt it necessary to give his big drone speech, in which he acknowledged that drones were morally complicated, promised to “review proposals to extend oversight,” deemed them an unfortunate necessity for the safety of Americans, and generally gave the impression that he would make the program accountable. But everything of note that happens in this story happened after such gestures were forced, and made, and forgotten. More…
The COVID-19 Reset
[Economic] [Political] [Social] [Media]
The COVID-19 Reset
by OpenSourceTheNews
Posted September 14, 2021
Flatten the curve, lock down for 2 weeks
While authorities are quick to blame COVID-19 for the damage caused by public health policies, in reality these policies were neither grounded in science nor unavoidable. The public has not been given a chance to properly evaluate these issues however, because rational debate has been shut down. Mainstream orthodoxy has become a religion. Questioning it is akin to heresy.
In the early stages of the pandemic we were told that the emergency powers being enacted by governments around the world were temporary. At first we were told the measures would last 3 to 4 weeks. Then weeks became months and the story morphed to ensure us that that only when vaccines finally arrived would life go back to normal. After a year had gone by the story changed again. Now we’re told that COVID-19 is here to stay, and life will never be the same again. Periodic lockdowns, mask mandates and and travel restrictions will continue. Only those with valid “health passports” proving vaccination status will be allowed to bypass these restrictions.
If you question the wisdom of lockdowns, which destroy lives and businesses while achieving nothing… if you question the wisdom of injecting the entire human population with experimental vaccines — that are only marginally effective — against a disease that kills less than one tenth of one percent of those who get it… if you dare to walk outside without a mask because you don’t consider social conformity a valid justification for public health policy you’re the crazy one. You’re a problem that needs to be dealt with. Can’t have people thinking so much. It might start to spread.
Once you see how absolutely illogical the official response to COVID-19 has been, one has to consider the possibility that nothing is as it seems. What if the goal of these policies was never to stop the spread of a virus, but rather to condition the public to accept a totalitarian new normal? As we enter an era of chaos and upheaval that will ultimately culminate in a great collapse, what better way to maintain control of the population than emergency powers that allow governments to lockdown entire cities and outlaw gatherings of any kind? More…
Kucinich Memoir Is a Moving Account of a Battle Against Corporate Power
[Economic] [Political] [Justice] [Community]
Kucinich Memoir Is a Moving Account of a Battle Against Corporate Power
by Chris Hedges
Posted September 13, 2021
“The Division of Light and Power,” by Dennis Kucinich, like Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” is a gripping, moving and lucidly written account of the hidden mechanisms of corporate power in the United States and what happens when these corporate interests are challenged. It is essential reading, especially as we face an intensified corporate assault, done in the name of fiscal necessity following the financial wounds imposed by the pandemic, to seize total control of all public assets.
Kucinich warns that this assault is more than the seizure of public assets for private gain. These corporate forces, which function as a shadow government in Washington and cities across the country, threaten to achieve a monolithic lock on all forms of power and extinguish our anemic democracy.
As Kucinich discovered throughout his career, these corporate forces will deploy every weapon in their arsenal against those brave or foolish enough to defy them. “The Division of Light and Power” is destined to become a classic text for those who seek to understand the corporate coup d’etat that took place in the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
When the “boy mayor” of Cleveland took a stand against privatization of public power, the region’s elites deployed every weapon they had, including attempted assassination. More…
Klaus Schwab the Humanist versus Klaus Schwab the Terrorist
[Economic] [Social]
Klaus Schwab the Humanist versus Klaus Schwab the Terrorist
by Joaquin Flores
Posted September 12, 2021
The World Economic Forum presents an upside-down world, one where their policy briefs and white papers voicing concerns about poverty are working in harmony with the IMF’s upwards distribution schemes. Reduction of the local power of sovereign states are framed as ‘anti-corruption’ and ‘transparency’. The austere reduction in access to health and human services in developing countries are viewed positively as economic growth indicators, despite the high causal direct relationship between austerity (via structural adjustment) and poverty.
They present the developing world’s compliance with global governance, i.e. stability, as directly related to poverty eradication – when in reality these two vectors are inversely related.
To wit, the more that countries comply with structural adjustment schemes, the more difficult it actually is to overcome poverty. The IMF had until now oriented its work towards geopolitical and geoeconomic monopolarity, with its own Trans-Atlantic hub as the loci of power. More…
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Quotable Sayings
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
______________________________
You do not become a billionaire through labor. You become a billionaire through inheritance, corruption or economic rents – or, in most cases, some mixture of all three.
Grace Blakeley
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Mainstream American liberals think they’re clear-eyed because they can see the propaganda strings being pulled by Fox and Donald Trump, and mainstream American conservatives think they’re clear-eyed because they can see the propaganda strings being pulled by MSNBC and the Democrats, but the propaganda strings on both trace back to the same puppet master. And seeing that is just the beginning.
Caitlin Johnstone
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You alone are the judge of your worth and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks.
Deepak Chopra
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It is obvious that the US government is destroying Assange to signal to journalists the consequences of publishing information. It is therefore also obvious that any journalist who fails to use whatever platform they have to speak out against Assange’s persecution has no intention of ever publishing anything that the US government doesn’t want published. Their silence on or support for what is being done to this man can and should be taken as an admission that they are nothing other than state propagandists.
Caitlin Johnstone
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It’s quite fitting that the – imperially pre-determined – judicial fate of Julian Assange is being played out in Britain, the home of George Orwell.
Pepe Escobar
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