Why Propaganda is Vital In Upholding The Illusion of a Democracy
[Politics] [Media]
Why Propaganda is Vital In Upholding The Illusion of a Democracy
By Cynthia Chung
Posted November 22, 2020
Democracy is something that has been completely taken for granted here in the West. There is an ongoing triumph over past laurels, without paying heed to the road we have strayed from. We criticize others for failing to uphold a standard we consider ourselves the leaders of, but democracy is not something simply “acquired” and subsequently “retained,” it is not a “possession.” This is because a system of democracy is at every moment of its existence defined by the character of its citizenry. Democracy only exists if it is upheld, and if a citizenry fails to do so, it renders itself defenseless to an ever-creeping tyranny.
For such a “creeping tyranny,” control is conditional to whether the citizenry is satisfied with an ever-growing “illusion of democracy.” Such a construct needs to give its subjects the impression that they have “free choice” in what shapes their future and their way of life, including: who will be their “friends” and who will be their “foes.” More…
The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End
[Social]
The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End
by George Musser
Posted November 21, 2020
In a series of breakthrough papers, theoretical physicists have come tantalizingly close to resolving the black hole information paradox that has entranced and bedeviled them for nearly 50 years. Information, they now say with confidence, does escape a black hole. If you jump into one, you will not be gone for good. Particle by particle, the information needed to reconstitute your body will reemerge.
Most physicists have long assumed it would; that was the upshot of string theory, their leading candidate for a unified theory of nature. But the new calculations, though inspired by string theory, stand on their own, with nary a string in sight. Information gets out through the workings of gravity itself — just ordinary gravity with a single layer of quantum effects. More…
EFF Files Comment Opposing the Department of Homeland Security’s Massive Expansion of Biometric Surveillance
[Justice] [Politics] [Media]
EFF Files Comment Opposing the Department of Homeland Security’s Massive Expansion of Biometric Surveillance
By Saira Hussain, Jennifer Lynch, and Nathaniel Sobel
Posted November 20, 2020
EFF, joined by several leading civil liberties and immigrant rights organizations, recently filed a comment calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to withdraw a proposed rule that would exponentially expand biometrics collection from both U.S. citizens and noncitizens who apply for immigration benefits and would allow DHS to mandate the collection of face data, iris scans, palm prints, voice prints, and DNA. DHS received more than 5,000 comments in response to the proposed rule, and five U.S. Senators also demanded that DHS abandon the proposal.
DHS’s biometrics database is already the second largest in the world. It contains biometrics from more than 260 million people. If DHS’s proposed rule takes effect, DHS estimates that it would nearly double the number of people added to that database each year, to over 6 million people. And, equally important, the rule would expand both the types of biometrics DHS collects and how DHS uses them. More…
Sugar and Spice and Everything Vice: the Empire’s Sin City of London
[Economic] [Social]
Sugar and Spice and Everything Vice: the Empire’s Sin City of London
By Cynthia Chung
Posted November 19, 2020
The 2008 crisis put in the spotlight the psychopathic level of greed, vice, apathy and short-sightedness from those who wanted to play into the City of London and Wall Street casino houses. Get rich quick and don’t care who you screw in the process, after all, at the end of the day you’re either a winner or a loser.
Since the general public tends to consist of decent people, there is a widespread difficulty in comprehending how entire economies of countries have been hijacked by these piranhas. That we have hit such a level of crime that even people’s hard earned pensions, education, health-care, housing etc. are all being gambled away… LEGALLY.
Looking upon investment bankers today, one is reminded of those sad addicts in the casino who are ruined and lose everything, except the difference is, they are given the option to sell their neighbour’s family into slavery to pay off their debt. More…
Something Wicked This Way Comes: Anarchy Is Being Loosed Upon the Nation
[Politics] [Social]
Something Wicked This Way Comes: Anarchy Is Being Loosed Upon the Nation
By John W. Whitehead
Posted November 18, 2020
The public’s faith in the government to do its job—which is to protect our freedoms—is deteriorating.
It doesn’t take a weatherman to realize when a storm is brewing: clouds gather, the wind begins to blow, and an almost-palpable tension builds.
It’s the same way with freedom.The warning signs are everywhere.
The upcoming election and its aftermath will undoubtedly keep the citizenry divided and at each other’s throats, so busy fighting each other that they never manage to present a unified front against tyranny in any form. Yet the winner has already been decided. More…
Hmm… America Keeps Getting Attacked By Nations It Hates In Ways Only The CIA Can See
[Politics]
Hmm… America Keeps Getting Attacked By Nations It Hates In Ways Only The CIA Can See
by Caitlin Johnstone
Posted November 17, 2020
I’d like to tell you a folktale. It’s called “The Emperor’s New 9/11”.
Once upon a time there was an Emperor who loved war and military expansionism. He was always searching for new ways to instigate military conflicts without losing the support of the international community or waking up the populace to the fact that they’re just propagandized cogs in the machine of a globe-spanning Empire which uses endless military and economic violence to maintain its unipolar hegemony.
One day two men calling themselves Intelligence Experts came into town claiming that they had devised a wondrous new type of enemy threat that is invisible to the common folk.
“Is it as good as 9/11?” asked the Emperor excitedly. “Oh how I loved how that one allowed me to initiate a new era of military expansionism on the pretence of fighting global terrorism!” More…
What the Great Reset Architects Don’t Want You To Understand About Economics
[Economic]
What the Great Reset Architects Don’t Want You To Understand About Economics
By Matthew Ehret
Posted November 16,2020
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Vice President of the World Bank Carmen Reinhardt recently warned on October 15 that a new financial disaster looms ominously over the horizon with a vast sovereign default and a corporate debt default. Just in the past 6 months of bailouts unleashed by the blowout of the system induced by the Coronavirus lockdown, Reinhardt noted that the U.S. Federal Reserve created $3.4 Trillion out of thin air while it took 40 years to create $14 Trillion.
Meanwhile panicking economists are screaming in tandem that banks across Trans Atlantic must unleash ever more hyperinflationary quantitative easing which threatens to turn our money into toilet paper while at the same time acquiescing to infinite lockdowns in response to a disease which has the fatality levels of a common flu.
The fact of the oncoming collapse itself should not be a surprise- especially when one is reminded of the $1.5 quadrillion of derivatives which has taken over a world economy which generates a mere $80 trillion/year in measurable goods and trade. These nebulous bets on insurance on bets on collateralized debts known as derivatives didn’t even exist a few decades ago, and the fact is that no matter what the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have attempted to do to stop a new rupture of this overextended casino bubble of an economy in recent months, nothing has worked. More…
Court Records Show Google Gives Keyword Searches of Innocent People to Cops
[Justice] [Media]
Court Records Show Google Gives Keyword Searches of Innocent People to Cops
by Matt Agorist
Posted November 15, 2020
Everyone reading this knows that there are few things on the internet more revealing than their internet search data.
It is for this reason that police must seek out a warrant for an actual suspect in order to obtain said data.
However, a recently unsealed court document found that government can request such data in reverse order by asking Google to disclose everyone who searched a keyword rather than for information on a known suspect.
To spell it out more clearly, authorities can simply pick a search term and construct a warrant around it without anyone being accused of a crime or being a suspect in a crime, and then Google will simply hand over their data. What could possibly go wrong? More…
There Is A Solution To Big Tech Censorship – But No Politician Will Touch it
[Politics] [Economic] [Media]
There Is A Solution To Big Tech Censorship – But No Politician Will Touch it
by Brandon Smith
Posted November 14, 2020
If you value freedom and the Bill of Rights, then this debate leaves us at an impasse. Both sides (perhaps conveniently) lead to a totalitarian outcome. The thing is, the publicly presented argument is a contrived one, a manipulated discussion that only presents two sides when there are more options to consider. The narrative is fixed, it is a farce.
The public has been led to believe that government and corporations are separate tools that can be used to keep each side in check. This is a lie. Big government and big corporations have always worked together while pretending to be disconnected, and this needs to stop if we are to ever defuse the political time bomb we now face.
To solve the social media censorship debacle we need to examine the very roots of corporations as entities. First, corporations as we know them today are a relatively new phenomenon. Adam Smith described the concept of a corporation as a “joint stock company” in his treatise ‘The Wealth Of Nations’, and stood against them as a threat to free market economics. He specifically outlined their history of monopoly and failure, and criticized their habit of avoiding responsibility for mistakes and crimes. More…
Uncle Of Children Sick From Verizon 5G Tower Next To Home Fights To Prevent It Happening to Other Families
[Media] [Political]
Uncle Of Children Sick From Verizon 5G Tower Next To Home Fights To Prevent It Happening to Other Families
by B.N. Frank
Posted November 13, 2020
As the march to install superfast 5G wireless service continues across the country, advocates for patients with electro-sensitivity are questioning the technology’s safety.
Noah Davidson of Sacramento began lobbying to have 5G antennas moved away from people’s homes and offices because his five- and seven-year-old nieces got sick for two months straight, right after Verizon installed a 5G box on a light pole next to their home.
The family hired an expert to measure the radio-frequency levels.
“He conducted some measurements and told us it was the highest indoor measurements that he’d ever recorded,” Davidson claimed. “So, we ended up installing some shielding in the home, moving the kids into a back room. And within a few days, their symptoms went away.” 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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