Year Zero
[Social] [Political]
Year Zero
by CJ Hopkins
Posted January 22, 2021
2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges them.
In the relatively short span of the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.
The authorities have assumed control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated to keep us compliant. More…
48% Of U.S. Small Businesses Fear That They May Be Forced To “Shut Down Permanently” Soon
[Community] [Economic]
48% Of U.S. Small Businesses Fear That They May Be Forced To “Shut Down Permanently” Soon
By Michael Snyder
Posted January 21, 2021
What would the United States look like if we lost half of our small businesses? The reason I ask that question is because approximately half of all small business owners in the entire country believe that they may soon be forced to close down for good. Not even during the Great Depression of the 1930s did we see anything like this.
The big corporate giants with extremely deep pockets will be able to easily weather another round of lockdowns, but for countless small businesses this is literally a matter of life and death. Every day we are seeing new restrictions being implemented somewhere in the nation, and the politicians that are doing this are killing the hopes and dreams of countless small business owners.
According to a recent Alignable survey, 48 percent of U.S. small business owners fear that they could be forced to “shut down permanently” in the very near future. More…
Media Cheers DC Under Military Occupation
[Media] [Political]
Media Cheers DC Under Military Occupation
by Michael Tracey
Posted January 20, 2021
Downtown Washington, DC is currently under what essentially amounts to military occupation. Streets are locked down, guarded by Army vehicles and blocked off by huge, garish checkpoints. Vehicular traffic is limited to motorists who can show papers demonstrating that, as one Guardsman told me, they are conducting “legitimate business.” (Apparently this includes Uber drivers and food delivery workers.) According to official estimates, 25,000 military personnel are now deployed to the area — on top of countless federal, state, and local law enforcement agents. Troops roam around carrying rifles with no ammo loaded. If you can manage to navigate on foot to the perimeter of the National Mall, you encounter an enormous fencing apparatus, complete with barbed wire.
Question: does anyone with a media job find this situation to be worthy of some further inquiry? Or in other words, worthy of questioning the premise of why such an extravagantly intensive military presence is allegedly necessary? Is it proportionate to the scale of the purported threat? Has the nature of the threat itself — whatever that might be, exactly — been adequately probed to determine whether it is grounded in reality? Already a bunch of purported threats initially trumpeted across the media with the usual five-alarm-five hysteria have dissipated in short order, so there is perhaps some reason for doubt in that regard. More…
The Covid “Pandemic”: Destroying People’s Lives. Engineered Economic Depression. Global “Coup d’Etat”?
[Economic] [Social]
The Covid “Pandemic”: Destroying People’s Lives. Engineered Economic Depression. Global “Coup d’Etat”?
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Posted January 20, 2021
Red Zones, the facemask, social distancing, the closing down of schools, colleges and universities, no more family gatherings, no birthday celebrations, music, the arts: no more cultural events, sport events are suspended, no more weddings, “love and life” is banned outright.
And in several countries, Christmas is on hold …
It’s the destruction of people’s lives. It is the destabilization of civil society. And for What?
The Lies are sustained by a massive media disinformation campaign. 24/7, Incessant and repetitive “Covid alerts” for the last ten months. … It is a process of social engineering.
Manipulation of the Estimates. The RT-PCR Tests are Misleading. More…
The Viral Assault On Small Businesses
[Economic] [Political]
The Viral Assault On Small Businesses
by MN Gordon
Posted January 19, 2021
COVID-19 has provided the perfect cover for Schwab’s disciples to assault one of America’s remaining expressions of freedom and independence: small businesses. With lockdowns, politicians get to pick and choose what businesses survive and what businesses don’t. They get to decide who’s essential and who isn’t.
By and large, corporations, having interests aligned with politicians, are considered essential. Small businesses aren’t. Walmart lives. Dick’s barbershop dies. McDonald’s survives. Tito’s Tacos doesn’t.
What’s more, legislation with the supposed intent to stop the spread of coronavirus has devastated small businesses. Roughly 100,000 small businesses have permanently closed. At the same time, big corporations are reaping record profits. More…
No Escape from Our Techno-Feudal World
[Community] [Economic] [Social]
No Escape from Our Techno-Feudal World
By Pepe Escobar
Posted January 18, 2021
The political economy of the Digital Age remains virtually terra incognita. In Techno-Feudalism, published three months ago in France (no English translation yet), Cedric Durand, an economist at the Sorbonne, provides a crucial, global public service as he sifts through the new Matrix that controls all our lives.
Durand places the Digital Age in the larger context of the historical evolution of capitalism to show how the Washington consensus ended up metastasized into the Silicon Valley consensus. In a delightful twist, he brands the new grove as the “Californian ideology”.
We’re far away from Jefferson Airplane and the Beach Boys; it’s more like Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” on steroids, complete with IMF-style “structural reforms” emphasizing “flexibilization” of work and outright marketization/financialization of everyday life. More…
If You Thought 2020 Was Bad, Watch What Happens In 2021
[Economic] [Political] [Social]
If You Thought 2020 Was Bad, Watch What Happens In 2021
By Brandon Smith
Posted January 17, 2021
In terms of the economy and the American social situation, 2020 is definitely one of the ugliest years on record, there’s really no way around it. That said, I get the impression that many in the public are operating under the assumption that we are about to cross over the peak of the mountain and it will be all downhill from here on. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
All eyes have been focused on the pandemic event, and the thinking is that once the pandemic is “over”, the crisis will be over and everything will go back to normal. But, as the globalists have been telling us since the outbreak began, the world “will never go back to normal again”. It’s not because of the pandemic, mind you, it’s because THEY won’t allow things to go back to normal. The “great reset”, as the World Economic Forum calls it, is meant to go on for many years. And, the globalists intend that every aspect of our lives be changed into something almost unrecognizable.
First I want to make it clear that I don’t expect the reset agenda to be successful. In fact, I think it’s going to fail miserably. The globalists have reached too far too fast and exposed themselves, and millions upon millions of people around the world and in America are not buying the pandemic narrative. But here is the problem; the pandemic is a distraction from a much greater threat, namely the economic collapse that is developing right now. More…
California Found to be Harvesting Newborn DNA for Decades Without Parental Consent
[Social]
California Found to be Harvesting Newborn DNA for Decades Without Parental Consent
by Jack Burns
Posted January 16, 2021
Every individual who is born in a hospital in California now has a sample of their DNA stolen and kept in a state-run database. What used to take a court order now happens regularly, and the disturbing invasion of privacy takes place with hardly a whimper of protest from the nation’s most populous state.
According to a report from CBS San Francisco, the DNA of every person born in California since 1983 is stored in a state biobank. Police, the government, and outside researchers have access to it. While parents can request that their children’s DNA samples be destroyed, the state is not obligated to honor the request or to report if it has been carried out.
In what may seem as far-fetched as NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelation that the government is spying on all Americans, such DNA could potentially be used against children in a court of law, or be sold to potential bidders much like Planned Parenthood reportedly does with aborted baby body parts. What scientists can do with one’s DNA is limitless. More…
The Only Thing Covid-19 Test Kits Are Good for is Illegally Collecting and Surveilling Human DNA
[Social]
The Only Thing Covid-19 Test Kits Are Good for is Illegally Collecting and Surveilling Human DNA
by Lance D Johnson
Posted January 15, 2021
In 2020, human populations were thoroughly convinced that they could eradicate viruses from the universe by assuming everyone was sick and by avoiding human interaction.
Lock downs, business restrictions, mask mandates and social distancing guidelines promised safety from “the virus.” Human populations were taught that collective avoidance was the most empathetic response, and local and state governments stepped in to enforce this mentality.
This mentality became a cult of compliance; free human beings were shamed into complying with public health orders or face threats to their livelihood, their business and their ability to move about freely.
In many parts of the United States, civil liberties are a shred of what they used to be. For example, NYC is setting up choke points to fine people who haven’t had their DNA harvested via covid-19 testing kits. More…
How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler
[Media]
How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler
by Glenn Greenwald
Posted January 14, 2021
Critics of Silicon Valley censorship for years heard the same refrain: tech platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter are private corporations and can host or ban whoever they want. If you don’t like what they are doing, the solution is not to complain or to regulate them. Instead, go create your own social media platform that operates the way you think it should.
But today, if you want to download, sign up for, or use Parler, you will be unable to do so. That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies — Amazon, Google and Apple — abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country.
If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor. 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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