Political Articles from 2021
When Corporations Become More Powerful Than The Government, Our Definition Of “Big Brother” Needs To Change
[Economic] [Political] Social]
When Corporations Become More Powerful Than The Government, Our Definition Of “Big Brother” Needs To Change
by Michael Snyder
Posted April 12, 2021
Throughout human history, our God-given liberties and freedoms have often been brutally crushed by oppressive governments, and that is still happening all over the world today. But in our time, an additional threat to our liberties and freedoms has emerged. Global corporations just continue to get larger and more powerful, and in recent years they have been increasingly using that power to shape society. This is a very dangerous trend, because in the western world many of the constraints that our national governments are forced to operate under simply do not apply to corporations. This gives them an enormous amount of leverage, and they are using it.
Here in the United States, the federal government still has a monopoly on power in areas such as border security, national defense and foreign policy.
But when it comes to the things that matter the most in the day to day lives of most Americans, it could be argued that the giant corporations have now become more powerful than the federal government. More…
Why the Push Is on to Make Pandemic Life ‘Permanent’
[Politics] [Social]
Why the Push Is on to Make Pandemic Life ‘Permanent’
by Tom Mullen
Posted April 11, 2021
One year after Americans were ordered to close down society for “two weeks to flatten the curve,” Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth warned, “We Must Start Planning for a Permanent Pandemic.”
Because new variants of SARS-COV-2 are impervious to existing vaccines, says Kluth, and pharmaceutical companies will never be able to develop new vaccines fast enough to keep up, we will never be able to get “back to normal.”
“Get back to normal” means recovering the relative liberty we had in our already overregulated, pre-Covid lives. This is just the latest in a long series of crises that always seem to lead our wise rulers to the same conclusion: we just cannot afford freedom anymore.
Covid-19 certainly wasn’t the beginning. Americans were told “the world changed” after 9/11. Basic pillars of the American system, like the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, were too antiquated to deal with the “new threat of terrorism.” Warrantless surveillance of our phone, e-mail, and financial records and physical searches of our persons without probable cause of a crime became the norm. A few principled civil libertarians dissented, but the public largely complied without protest. More…
European Plans for ‘Vaccine Passports’ Were in Place 20 Months Prior to the Pandemic.
[Politics] [Social]
European Plans for ‘Vaccine Passports’ Were in Place 20 Months Prior to the Pandemic. Coincidence?
By Paul Anthony Taylor
Posted April 10, 2021
With the world being told that so-called ‘vaccine passports’ will be required for all international travel in future, and in many countries even to enter shops, restaurants, bars, gyms, hotels, theatres, concerts and sports events, the impression we are being given is that the measure is a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic. In Europe, however, which hosts 8 of the top 10 pharmaceutical exporting countries, planning for vaccine passports began at least 20 months prior to the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Apparently, the pandemic conveniently provided European politicians with the ‘excuse’ they needed to introduce the idea.
The ‘European Commission’ – the executive body of Europe – first published a proposal for vaccine passports on 26 April 2018. Buried deep in a document dealing with ‘Strengthened Cooperation against Vaccine Preventable Diseases’, the proposal was essentially ignored by the mainstream media.
A roadmap document issued in early 2019 subsequently set out specific plans for implementing the European Commission’s proposal. The primary action listed in the roadmap was to “examine the feasibility of developing a common vaccination card/passport” for European citizens that is “compatible with electronic immunization information systems and recognized for use across borders.” The plan aimed for a legislative proposal to be issued in Europe by 2022. More…
Who Wanted Pandemic Lockdowns?
[Politics] [Social]
Who Wanted Pandemic Lockdowns?
Jeffrey A. Tucker
Posted April 7, 2021
People of the future will look back at these 11 months and be very confused. How could virtually the entire world have thrown out settled practices of civil, economic, and cultural liberties for a virus that resisted every attempt to control it?
This virus is not Ebola and it has come nowhere near approaching the death rates associated with H1N1 of 1918. By some measures, it’s not been as deadly as 1957-58, a virus that came and went without much public attention at all. New pathogens are part of life, and there was and is nothing particularly unusual about this one.
That we will look back with astonishment at what has happened to the world is a near certainty. The folly! And people of the future will never stop asking that great question of why. The answer is finally unsatisfying. It was a massive screw up by people and groups who wanted to try something completely new, none of whom were willing to bear responsibility for the results. It will be up to the rest of us to pick up the pieces and get life on the right track again. More…
The “Unvaccinated” Question
[Politics] [Social]
The “Unvaccinated” Question
by CJ Hopkins
Posted April 5, 2021
So, the New Normals are discussing the Unvaccinated Question. What is to be done with us? No, not those who haven’t been “vaccinated” yet. Us. The “Covidiots.” The “Covid deniers.” The “science deniers.” The “reality deniers.” Those who refuse to get “vaccinated,” ever.
There is no place for us in New Normal society. The New Normals know this and so do we. To them, we are a suspicious, alien tribe of people. We do not share their ideological beliefs. We do not perform their loyalty rituals, or we do so only grudgingly, because they force us to do so. We traffic in arcane “conspiracy theories,” like “pre-March-2020 science,” “natural herd immunity,” “population-adjusted death rates,” “Sweden,” “Florida,” and other heresies.
They do not trust us. We are strangers among them. They suspect we feel superior to them. They believe we are conspiring against them, that we want to deceive them, confuse them, cheat them, pervert their culture, abuse their children, contaminate their precious bodily fluids, and perpetrate God knows what other horrors. More…
We Mapped How the Coronavirus Is Driving New Surveillance Programs Around the World
[Social] [Political] [Media]
We Mapped How the Coronavirus Is Driving New Surveillance Programs Around the World
by Dave Gershgorn
Posted April 5, 2021
It’s a complex trade-off: Governments need information to create containment strategies and know where to focus resources. At the same time, governments have a way of holding onto tools that undermine citizens’ privacy long after the moment of crisis has passed. Take, for example, the United States’ 2001 Patriot Act, which was passed in response to the 9/11 attacks. The Patriot Act gave the government broad surveillance powers with little oversight, including demanding customer data from telecoms without court approval. Twenty years later, it’s still around.
To document global surveillance measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic, OneZero compiled press reports from more than 30 countries where potential privacy issues are occurring.
The most common form of surveillance implemented to battle the pandemic is the use of smartphone location data, which can track population-level movement down to enforcing individual quarantines. Some governments are making apps that offer coronavirus health information, while also sharing location information with authorities for a period of time. More…
The Great Unvaxxed
[Justice] [Community] [Political] [Social]
The Great Unvaxxed
by TE Creus
Posted March 31, 2021
The vaccine was a resounding success. Yes, there had been a final death rate of 10% among the vaccinated, but this was mostly among the elderly or the already ill, so it was probably not the vaccine’s fault, and if it was, no one could prove it one way or another, and even if they could, well, the vaccine manufacturers were not liable to lawsuits due to the agreements they had made with the various governments.
In any case, the pandemic had ended, that was for sure.
Of course the masks and the lockdown mandates continued to be enforced; the reason was that while the pandemic had most certainly been defeated, the virus still existed in its natural form somewhere out there, and so it was vital to continue with the safety procedures to avoid any possible resurgence of the disease.
So what? People got used to it, as they had gotten used to so many other things before that. And was wearing a mask in the end much worse than wearing a helmet or a safety belt? Was being forced to stay at home for a few months every year much different than being forced to be at the office working for five days out of the seven in the week? Rules are rules, and those were not as bad as others that had been instituted in the past. More…
The Facts:
The US Congress passed the stimulus bill that allocated 10’s of billions of dollars to Covid testing and tracing, as well as $160 billion for a nationwide vaccine program that’s been helping state and local governments get the vaccine into people’s arms.
Reflect On:
What sort of Orwellian surveillance technologies, health police forces, checkpoints, and other intrusive elements will be developed with sort of huge funding? Does the fictional story in this article now sound far fetched or prophetic?Once the government has accrued these sort of powers, do you believe they will ever voluntarily relinquish them?
Biden Backs Revival of His Brainchild: Plan Colombia 2.0 Set to Begin Next Month
[Justice] [Political]
Biden Backs Revival of His Brainchild: Plan Colombia 2.0 Set to Begin Next Month
by Alan Macleod
Posted Mar 29, 2021
Colombia is set to return to a massive aerial campaign of spraying Monsanto’s glyphosate across the country, a plan Biden once fought hard with his Republican colleagues to enact.
In an effort supposedly aimed at reducing cocaine production, Colombia is set to return to a massive aerial campaign of spraying Monsanto’s glyphosate across the country. Defense Minister Diego Molano confirmed that the highly contentious practice of fumigation — shelved since 2015 — will resume in April.
“The constitutional order is clear: the Colombian military must develop operations all over the country to ensure the safety of Colombians,” Molano announced. “That’s why we’re using every tool at our disposal to protect the entire population.” How spraying a known carcinogen across a nation nearly twice the size of Texas would protect citizens, he did not explain.
The news was greeted with applause in Washington D.C, a State Department report describing it as a “most welcome development.” The new administration also confusingly described Colombia as a “bright spot” in regional counter-narcotics, despite also noting that the country had seen “explosive growth” in cocaine production in recent years, rising to become “the world’s top cocaine producer and exporter.” More…
Breaking the Chain of Obedience
[Political] [Social]
Breaking the Chain of Obedience
By Gary Z McGee
Posted March 27, 2021
The chain of obedience has always existed. For instance, people have always been told, “because I said so,” or “because it’s the law,” or “it’s just the way it is.” These simple words contain remarkably many themes of false and bad reasoning.
Do not look to the plutocratic mandarins for assistance, or expect anything but vaudevillian smoke and mirrors from the billion-dollar corporate circus that’s rampaging across the globe like a retarded elephant on steroids flinging Monsanto seeds with nuclear weapons strapped to its back.
The local killers want us distracted by foreign killers so they can rob us blind, and so that we can slip further and further into slavery. You must become your own authority. Wake up and smell the collateral damage. Question the so-called authority of your chain of command. Think for yourself. Question your orders, whether they seem immoral or not. More…
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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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