[Social]
From Occupation to ‘Occupy’: The Israelification of American domestic security
By Max Blumenthal
Posted July 27, 2020

In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. More…

[Social]
War is Good for Business and Organized Crime: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Opium Trade. Rising Heroin Addiction in the US
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Posted July 25, 2020

Opium production has increased 50 times in relation to 2001 (following the Afghan government’s drug eradication program). In 2001, the areas of opium cultivation had fallen to 8000 hectares (185 metric tons of opium).

The profits are largely reaped at the level of the international wholesale and retail markets of heroin as well as in the process of money laundering in Western banking institutions, an issue which is not addressed by the Vienna based UNODC.

The global monetary value of the heroin market (which is protected by powerful groups) is colossal. The global monetary value of the heroin market is of the same order of magnitude as the defense budget of the USA.

Needless to say, the Pentagon not to mention the CIA which launched the opium economy in Afghanistan in the late 1970s are intent upon protecting this multibillion dollar industry. More…

[Social]
COVID, Identity Politics, and the Global Ruling Elite
by Kurt Nimmo
Posted July 19, 2020

The following is my opinion based on more than a decade and a half of research into ruling elites. Please be aware this sort of commentary is now considered domestic terrorism by the FBI, the national security state, and its propaganda media.

I am convinced the ruling and financial elite consider most of us useless eaters, cattle to be exploited. They have spent the last decade accruing vast wealth at the expense of the so-called 99%. They are responsible for endless wars—now largely irrelevant to the average American—and are responsible for the murder of millions of innocent civilians and igniting social and sectarian violence in the smoldering ruins left in their “creative destruction” wake.

Finally, I sincerely doubt the American people are capable of confronting the elite and returning the nation to a sanity that has been missing for decades. First and foremost, they are unable to break free of the voodoo spell of relentless narrative propaganda. Millions view the left-right paradigm not as a cynically crafted ploy to divert them from the real problem—the theft of the future and present by psychopathic and misanthropic rulers, condemning billions of misery and privation—but rather as a political reality. More…

[Social]
Against Big Philanthropy
by Alexis C. Madrigal
Posted July 18, 2020

First, big foundations are unaccountable. They answer neither to voters or to marketplace competition.

Second, they do not have to be transparent. They file one tax form. The $8 billion Simons Foundation International doesn’t even have a website.

Third, they are donor-directed. The employees—the people on the ground— “can’t determine the mission” of the organization.

Fourth, the donor’s intent must be respected even when the donor has died. Societies grow and change, but the mission defined by the creator of the foundation remains the mission in perpetuity.

And fifth, on top of all this, foundations are tax-subsidized. “We’re at a moment in American society in which the winners in the marketplace attempt to diminish their tax burdens, both corporately and individually, as low as they can legally go,” Robert Reich told me. “Then having diminished their tax burden as low as it can go, they turn around and set up a private foundation, taking a further tax break.”

Then, with money that would have otherwise have gone to the government, where at least there is nominal democratic control over spending priorities, the philanthropists use that money on whatever social purpose they’ve decided to support.

Is this system, as Reich describes it, really one that any democracy would want? More…

[Social]
Why this ‘Pandemic’ Is Looking More Like a Social Engineering Experiment
By Richard Enos
Posted July 17, 2020

Now as to that staunch figure of worldwide deaths from COVID-19, which tells us that over a quarter of a million people have died from the virus–not an insignificant number, when it gets stand-alone framing in big bold print on mainstream media 24/7. That, in combination with the ongoing ticker of new cases cropping up, is used strategically to maximize fear, thereby maximizing public compliance.

Evidence is coming out every day that these numbers and the way they are presented are not truthful and are conflating the level of danger (and thus the need for a lockdown).

For example, many of the deaths that are in the official number of COVID-19 deaths are actually co-morbidities, meaning that the person who died had other pre-existing health conditions that contributed to their death. There is no evidence of the extent of the impact, if any, of COVID-19 in the case of these co-morbidities. In fact, in some cases, even where an alternative cause is determined, it is still registered as a COVID-19 death. More…

[Social]
The Federal Reserve Has Its Own Police and Is Part of a Vast Surveillance Center – Should You Worry?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Posted July 16, 2020

Without any Congressional hearings on the matter, the USA Patriot Act in 2001 bestowed on the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks domestic policing powers. While the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. is deemed an “independent federal agency,” with its Chair and Governors appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the 12 regional Fed banks are private corporations owned by the member banks in their region. As settled law under John L. Lewis v. United States confirms: “Each Federal Reserve Bank is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region.”

In the case of the New York Fed, which is located in the Wall Street area of Manhattan, its largest shareowners are behemoth multinational banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. So what the USA Patriot Act effectively did was to give multinational corporations domestic policing powers in New York City via the New York Fed. More…

[Social]
Bill Gates’ Web of Dark Money and Influence – Part 1: Philanthropic Narrative
by Derrick Broze
Posted July 13, 2020

In the first few months of 2020, business tycoon and billionaire Bill Gates saw his popularity soar through the roof. According to YouGov, 58 percent of Americans polled about Gates had a positive opinion of him, he is equally liked by men and women, and both Boomers and Millennials adore him. Gates’ popularity might have increased due to a viral Netflix documentary about his life being released in late 2019. Combine that positive press with a wave of media interviews seeking the guidance of the man who “predicted” the next major pandemic, and voila – Bill Gates is a superhero here to save the planet from impending doom.

Of course, this rather cartoonish view ignores several incontrovertible facts, and a few strong theories regarding Gates’ true intentions. First, the facts. Bill Gates has used his immense wealth to garner influence and media time, spreading his message of fixing global health issues while he continues to make billions. Using the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to dole out grants and donations, Gates has created a web of organizations who owe their budget to the foundation or answer directly to Gates.

By tracing the Foundation’s investments and Gates’ relationships we can see that nearly every person involved in the fight against COVID-19 is tied to Gates or his foundation by two degrees or less. This gives Bill Gates and his foundation an unchallenged influence over the response to the pandemic. Equally worrisome is Gates’ call for global lock down until the entire world has been vaccinated and given a digital certificate to prove immunity. More…

[Social]
Defunding Police – Is this the Right Choice or the Next Step in Revolution?
by Martin Armstrong
Posted July 12, 2020

All of the protests making this a racist issue have distorted the real problem which remains immunity created by the Supreme Court. We must look at these protests in their historical context for calling them simply racist rather than abuse of power hides them from the view of these events forming part of a revolutionary cycle. We must step back and look at these events not in the context of simply race or those who have exploited this to simply loot stores. The central position is one of police brutality and the lack of any accountability.

There are more whites killed by police than blacks which further illustrates that this is not a racist problem but one of no accountability because of this qualified immunity which is not supported by the constitution. This should not be Black Lives Matter, but ALL Lives Matter. The riots have spread worldwide as in Paris over police abuse further illustrating that the core issue is the fact that governments are not accountable to the people. More…