The Most Vital Battle for Press Freedom in Our Time
[Media] [Justice] [Political]
The Most Vital Battle for Press Freedom in Our Time
by Chris Hedges
Posted October 29, 2021
If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting. The United States has charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of trying to hack into a government computer, charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years.
Assange, with long white hair, appeared on screen the first day from the video conference room in HM Prison Belmarsh. He was wearing a white shirt with an untied tie around his neck. He looked gaunt and tired. He did not appear in court, the judges explained, because he was receiving a “high dose of medication.” On the second day he was apparently not present in the prison’s video conference room.
A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice. The battle for Assange’s liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating, not only for Assange and his family, but for us.
Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality. They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those, such as Assange, who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence. More…
While Everyone Cheers Soaring “Wealth,” America’s Social Order Is Unraveling
[Economic] [Social] [Media]
While Everyone Cheers Soaring “Wealth,” America’s Social Order Is Unraveling
by Charles Hugh Smith
Posted October 29, 2021
So by all means, focus on the inexorable rise of stocks, cryptos and housing as “proof” of America’s soaring “wealth” while the social order unravels beneath our feet.
It is a supremely tragic irony that while the corporate media ceaselessly touts America’s soaring financial “wealth,” the nation’s true wealth–its social order–is fast unraveling. While we’re encouraged to cheer billionaires blowing a tiny sliver of their wealth on space tourism and $500 million yachts as evidence of “prosperity,” our media and leadership (ahem) professes to being mystified by The Great Resignation, known here on Of Two Minds as The ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ Recession, and other unmistakable signs of unraveling.
In my analysis, the social order is comprised of all the intangible social elements which serve to bind a nation’s people beyond their legal rights. The social order includes (but is not limited to) social (upward) mobility–the ladder to advancing one’s agency (control of one’s life) and opportunities for improved security and well-being.
Behind every PR narrative lies the corruption of self-interest. How is it that day-traders now rabidly follow Pelosi’s stock portfolio, and super-wealthy Federal Reserve “leaders” front-run the Fed’s policies to further enrich themselves while claiming the mantle of “public service”? More…
FDA Committee Members Reviewing Pfizer Vaccine For Children Have Worked For Pfizer, Have Big Pfizer Connections
[Justice] [Political] [Social]
FDA Committee Members Reviewing Pfizer Vaccine For Children Have Worked For Pfizer, Have Big Pfizer Connections
by Patrick Howley
Posted October 28, 2021
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is holding a virtual meeting Tuesday October 26 to discuss authorizing a Pfizer-BioNTech Coronavirus vaccine for children between the ages of 5 to 11 years old.
This committee has a lot of sway with the FDA and their findings will be relevant, considering the Biden administration is getting ready to ship vaccines to elementary schools and California has already mandated the vaccine for schoolchildren pending federal authorization.
But the meeting roster shows that numerous members of the committee and temporary voting members have worked for Pfizer or have major connections to Pfizer.
Members include a former vice president of Pfizer Vaccines, a recent Pfizer consultant, a recent Pfizer research grant recipient, a man who mentored a current top Pfizer vaccine executive, a man who runs a center that gives out Pfizer vaccines, the chair of a Pfizer data group, a guy who was proudly photographed taking a Pfizer vaccine, and numerous people who are already on the record supporting Coronavirus vaccines for children. Meanwhile, recent FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is on Pfizer’s board of directors.
HERE’S THE MEETING ROSTER: Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee October 26, 2021 Meeting Draft Roster. More…
The Facts:
The FDA’s Advisry Committee is voting on whether to authorize the Pfizer vaccine for children. This committee is stacked with people with huge conflicts of interests with deep connections to Pfizer.
Reflect On:
With no long term safety testing studies, why is the government rushing these vaccines to children who are at minimal risk to the virus? Why is the public blindly accepting the outcomes of these highly conflicted meetings? Why is the corporate controlled main stream media not covering these conflicts?
Edward Snowden Is Asking You To Help Julian Assange
[Justice] [Social] [Political]
Edward Snowden Is Asking You To Help Julian Assange
by Joe Martino
Posted October 28, 2021
Snowden is a rebel himself, taking a stand for ‘doing the right thing’ in the face of corrupt governments. Assange had done similar, revealing war crimes the US had committed during their occupation in Iraq, among many other things.
Assange has long been a hero amongst people who believe the government should be held accountable for their crimes and who believe their power has grown too great – people like myself. As a journalist watching what is happening to Assange, I can only imagine how he feels. We’ve gone through extreme hardship as censorship and demonetization has completely uprooted our business and company, but I am free, not sitting in a prison like Assange is.
The fact that Assange can be held in prison for what he has done shows not only how much power governments and powerful elite figures have, but it also shows how steep their control over mass perception truly is. They have been able to use the media to convince the public that what Assange is going through is right. Perhaps the biggest sign of mass psychosis in this case is watching most journalists in mainstream media go along with the governments ideas about Assange, effectively putting their own profession at risk and doing the opposite of what it was designed to do – hold the government accountable.
If extradited and convicted in the US, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison. 10 years for each of the 17 charges filed under the Espionage Act, and five for a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act violation.
Hopefully more of us can take a moment to step back, take a breath and think about whether we have given government too much power. More…
Inspector General Audit Finds ‘Widespread’ Problems With FBI’s FISA Applications
[Justice] [Political]
Inspector General Audit Finds ‘Widespread’ Problems With FBI’s FISA Applications
By Jack Phillips and Ken Silva
Posted October 28, 2021
Inspector General finds FBI problems widespread
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a report (pdf) on Sept. 30 on the FBI’s applications to surveil U.S. citizens, finding “widespread” failure that “raises serious questions” and criticizing agents for not fixing flaws spotted in previous audits.
The inspector general (IG) reviewed about 7,000 applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants—the same used to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016—and found that the agency had failed to follow key rules, the Woods Procedures, in the program. In December 2019 review, Horowitz discovered 17 significant errors and omissions in the FISA surveillance application targeting Page.
The most recent audit of the agency’s Woods Procedures—rules that the FBI follows to ensure that FISA applications are “scrupulously accurate”—found sweeping “non-compliance” that “raises serious questions about the adequacy and execution of the supervisory review process in place at the time of the applications we reviewed,” Horowitz said, stating that the FBI’s quality-control officials apparently missed these problems. More…
Dr. Fauci Accused of Funding Horrific Experiments On Beagles & Other Animals
[Justice] [Social]
Dr. Fauci Accused of Funding Horrific Experiments On Beagles & Other Animals
by Arjun Walia
Posted October 27, 2021
News of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), the division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci), funding an experiment in Tunisia where beagles heads were placed in mesh cages allowing starved sand flies to eat them alive has made its way into the mainstream.
The tests were done outdoors and repeated multiple times with the beagles placed in cages in the desert overnight for nine consecutive nights. The experiments were done in an area of Tunisia where sand flies were abundant.
A bipartisan letter is now demanding answers from the NIAID and Biden’s chief medical adviser.
These experiments were done to test an experimental drug on the animals. Many of the 44 beagle puppies used also had their vocal cords removed, allegedly, so scientists could work without them barking and crying. More…
All Out War On the Life Force
[Spiritual] [Economic] [Social] [Political]
All Out War On the Life Force
by Julian Rose
October 27, 2021
While this very small and very sick cabal leads the way, their army of foot soldiers trudge along behind, gazing into their mobile phones and wide screen TV’s, awaiting the next instructions. Their designer-slave minds already given over to the slow march into spiritual oblivion. Their bodies bent with denial. Their souls’ vital transmissions suffocated under a heavy blanket of uncontrolled and poisoned thinking, whose chief ingredient is – fear.
We know the plan – and we know of human-kind’s retrograde passivity which has been responsible for allowing this plan to get as far as it has.
We have learned that the Covid jab, chemtrails-aluminium, WiFi and fluoride combine to calcify the pineal gland and block its function as chief receptor of the higher vibrational cosmic energies.
We have learned that GMO and pesticides do a very similar thing to the plant kingdom which is here to nourish us. And we know that a great part of the food chain carries the burden of this toxicity.
We know that all such brutal attacks on this living planet and its occupants stem from a grossly distorted perception of what Life is all about. A reversal, in fact. More..
It’s A Fourth Turning: What Did You Expect?
[Economic] [Social] [Political]
It’s A Fourth Turning: What Did You Expect?
by James Quinn
Posted October 26, 2021
I’ve been pondering this Fourth Turning in articles since its spectacular onset in September 2008, with the Wall Street/Federal Reserve initiated global financial implosion. The description above is apt, as this ongoing two-decade long storm gains intensity and our freedoms, liberties and rights are slowly extinguished as the electricity flickers and our modern civilization reverts to a more brutish state of antipathy among competing tribes, based on race, gender, class, party, geographic location, and now medical status.
We are in the midst of a saecular winter that is guaranteed to become more violent and bitter, as the malevolent forces propelling this Crisis have decided to ramp up fear propaganda to implement their global reset, using authoritarian methods to compel the masses to comply. I’ve intellectually understood we would be faced with trials and tribulations that would threaten the continuation of our way of life and survival as a unified nation. The reality is proving to be far worse. The core elements of debt, civic decay, and global disorder are most certainly propelling this Crisis towards its bloody climax. I knew there was no way to sidestep or escape this Fourth Turning. More…
A 21st Century Peace Movement Begins in the Heart
[Spiritual] [Community]
A 21st Century Peace Movement Begins in the Heart
by Marianne Williamson
Posted October 25, 2021
The world will transform from the inside out, or it will not transform at all.
Think of the world as a huge screen onto which are projected our accumulated thoughts and feelings. Just as in a movie theatre, we cannot change the plot of the movie by trying to manipulate the screen.
The turbulent forces we are experiencing in the world are not just reflected in our inner chaos; they are also created by our inner chaos. The internal is the realm of cause, not effect. And the Law of Cause and Effect is inviolable. Only by changing things on the level of cause can we fundamentally and permanently change the world.
That’s why the search for inner peace is key to transforming the world. Gandhi spoke of the “inner light” within every man, woman and child, saying that this light was key to healing not only our personal relationships, but our political and social ones as well. The light we find inside is the light that casts out all forms of darkness both within us and without. More…
Exclusive Data: An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning — and Now Won’t Leave
[Community] [Media] [Social]
Exclusive Data: An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning — and Now Won’t Leave
By Mark Keierleber
Posted October 24, 2021
A week after the pandemic forced Minneapolis students to attend classes online, the city school district’s top security chief got an urgent email, its subject line in all caps, alerting him to potential trouble. Just 12 seconds later, he got a second ping. And two minutes after that, a third.
In each instance, the emails warning Jason Matlock of “QUESTIONABLE CONTENT” pointed to a single culprit: Kids were watching cartoon porn.
Over the next six months, Matlock got nearly 1,300 similar emails from Gaggle, a surveillance company that monitors students’ school-issued Google and Microsoft accounts. Through artificial intelligence and a team of content moderators, Gaggle tracks the online behaviors of millions of students across the U.S. every day. The sheer volume of reports was overwhelming at first, Matlock acknowledged, and many incidents were utterly harmless. About 100 were related to animated pornography and, on one occasion, a member of Gaggle’s remote surveillance team flagged a fictional story that referenced “underwear.”
Nearly a year after The 74 submitted public records requests to understand the Minneapolis district’s use of Gaggle during the pandemic, a trove of documents offer an unprecedented look into how one school system deploys a controversial security tool that grew rapidly during COVID-19, but carries significant civil rights and privacy implications. 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
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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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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
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