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https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-pandemic-like-social-engineering-experiment/5716199

Why this ‘Pandemic’ Is Looking More Like a Social Engineering Experiment

Yesterday my wife, a native of Korea, made the arduous trip to her homeland from Toronto in order to help her mother, who had been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, with the protocols of High-Dose Vitamin C and a natural eating regimen. This hopefully will be an inspiring story in itself as things continue to progress along.

However, the reason I bring it up is because of the difficulties my wife experienced in getting to Korea as a result of COVID-19 regulations, and how this has gotten me thinking even more deeply about the nature of this pandemic.

In order to go to Korea to assist her mother, my wife had to go to the Korean Consulate in Toronto, provide proof that she was not suffering from the Coronavirus, (with the documentation having a 48-hour expiry date), proof that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer, proof that she had enough money to sustain herself while in Korea, and proof that she would have a place to stay in Korea. Eventually satisfying all these conditions, she was given a visitor’s visa and set out to fly to Korea through Vancouver. Before boarding the flight to Korea, she was given a document in which she was asked to agree to finance her own quarantine in a special hotel for 14 days (about $1600) if deemed necessary and agree to abide unconditionally to all government measures including departure from Korea orders if the authorities deemed it appropriate.

Arriving in Korea, she told me she literally had to go through hoops from one counter to the next and get documents sent from her mother’s house certifying her family identity, then agree to pay a taxi over $100 in order to be ushered directly to her mother’s house, where she had to sign off on a strict 14-day quarantine in the house that would be monitored by the government and law enforcement on a daily basis.

What strikes me as odd, from this one experience that is absolutely factual and affects my family personally, is the amount of care, attention, precision, and gravity that was given in the case of a person (my wife) who had no signs of illness and furthermore had a doctor-certified test document saying that she did not have COVID-19. Measures like this worldwide would purport to solely be motivated by the prevention the death of world citizens, would they not? I would argue that, even based on mainstream-accepted ‘dangers’ about COVID-19 (themselves dubious at best), all these measures were useless, a complete waste of time, money, and valuable human resources.

For Saving Human Lives?

This all got me thinking. If that attention and the human and financial resources that have been spent on this ‘pandemic’ had been given to end world hunger, do any of you doubt that world hunger would have been eradicated by now?

The ‘official’ numbers of COVID-19 deaths worldwide, according to the website Worldometers.info, as of May 4th, is 251,421. I will not contest this figure for the moment, but later on will give evidence that this number is inflated. But let’s use this number for now.

Let’s compare it to the number of deaths worldwide from starvation since January 1st, according to the website theworldcounts.com: 3,073,421. Even as I type in this number it has already changed, as it does continuously every two seconds or so. My question is, if our world leaders are so concerned about human mortality, should they not be devoting at least 10 times the amount of financial and human resources that they are giving to this pandemic to ending world hunger? Should they not have come together and done this decades ago?

The Pandemic That Never Was

This is just one example. There are countless, which show us time and again that the true agenda of our political leaders is almost completely antithetical to the actual health and safety of the people of the world. And it should have all of us suspecting that the coordinated worldwide efforts to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on the global population is not really about public health and safety but rather part of a different agenda.

Inflating Numbers, Maximizing Fear

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.

This chart below of weekly pneumonia deaths reported shows a precipitous decline in the number of pneumonia deaths in the US which coincides with, you guessed it, the beginning of the reporting of COVID-19 deaths.

In other words, deaths that would have been determined to be caused by pneumonia in previous years are being called COVID-19 deaths, in some cases without that person even being tested for COVID-19! In effect, more and more evidence is pointing to the idea that there is nothing really happening in the world any different from any other year in terms of deaths from infectious flu-like diseases. Yet my wife has to go through all sorts of machinations in order to be permitted to visit her mother?

So much more can be said about particular ways that figures and projections are manipulated to create a perception of fear and danger for this pandemic, but for now let’s look at the larger mechanism at play here.

The Script Followed By Our Leaders

In the interests of having an informed and capable public, are our leaders keeping us updated on these inconsistencies, and helping us get an accurate picture of the true extent of the dangers involved with this particular disease? For the most part, no. Politicians of all stripes come onto the airwaves to make the same announcements everywhere: “Because you have been good boys and girls, we, your authority, has been able to start getting this crisis under control,” combined with “you are warned that you must continue to obey us to prevent a rebound in the number of infections.” Then they might criticize examples of “bad” citizens not complying.

Again, I simply need to reflect on my personal experience here in Ontario, Canada, to reinforce my theory. Most readers could do the same within their locality. With just a cursory glance at the official briefings here, I heard Ontario Premier Doug Ford try to convince viewers how deeply concerned he was about the safety and health of Ontarions. He was quick to rebuke those who protested in front of parliament in Toronto calling for an end to the lockdown as ‘a bunch of Yahoos.’

And on the subject of something that affects me personally with a 6-year old at home, namely the opening of schools, he has done his best to bring  gravitas to his proclamation that schools will continue to stay closed for the forseeable future, citing that ‘my No. 1 concern is protecting our kids out there.’ From stories I’ve heard about Doug Ford, he may be one of the last people I would trust to protect my child. And the notion that keeping kids cooped up at home and not in contact with their friends is keeping them safe ignores the known statistics about COVID-19, where children are in the lowest risk-class for infection and morbidity.

Social Engineering

Many theories floating around out there as to the true origins and purpose of COVID-19, based on evidence that it was man-made and the possibility that it was released intentionally, are certainly worth investigating. However, none of those have to be proven for us to be able to see that the pandemic is being used as a social engineering experiment. Now this is nothing new, as basically everything our leaders do is grounded in their attempts to see how much more power they can amass and how much more of our freedoms can be taken away. “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” as Churchill said.

In the case of COVID-19, we are dealing with a worldwide event, and perhaps the biggest social engineering experiment ever attempted. Those who have the ultimate power in the world, those who control our political leaders, are trying to determine how much the public will comply under the circumstances of a pandemic. You can see everything being said by our leaders is based on affirming that they are in control, that we must follow. When attempts to control things in Ontario went too far and the people pushed back, as when an Aurora mom was fined $880 for standing too long in a park with her baby, Doug Ford said bylaw officers “could have used a little bit different judgment.”

Without ceding his own power, he yielded some ground in order to reinforce his own legitimacy, using a famous Machiavellian political strategy. This type of push and pull has been happening all around the world as this pandemic continues to be employed to erode our freedoms. It is part of a bigger war that is being fought between forces with a dark agenda of control and those who are working to bring out the truth. The sooner we all start to see what is going with this pandemic in this larger context, the sooner the truth will shine for everyone to see, and empower us to restore our freedom.

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/truth-about-covid-19/5743911

The Truth About COVID-19

National and global crises are seen as opportunities by government technocrats, billionaire oligarchs, Big Pharma, Big Data, Big Media and the military industrial intelligence apparatus to increase their power and wealth.

Incitement of fear has been a central strategy of totalitarian systems for millennia. Demagogues weaponize fear to justify demands for blind obedience and to win public acquiescence for the demolition of civil and economic rights

The technocrats’ plan, as laid out in various papers and reports, is to use bioterrorism to take control of the world’s resources, wealth and people

That pandemic measures are not about protecting public health and saving lives can be ascertained by the fact that no cost-benefit calculations for any of the measures have ever been presented. They are merely tools for control

The “scientific consensus” the medical technocracy wants you to believe in is that vaccines are the only available answer to this pandemic. The reality is there are many alternatives, and all of them are far safer than the experimental COVID-19 gene therapies being given. Two of the most important are vitamin D optimization and nebulized peroxide. I review many others in “The Truth About COVID-19”

*

In the interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. interviews me about my new book, “The Truth About COVID-19 — Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports and the New Normal,” co-written with founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association, Ronnie Cummins.

Watch the video here.

Kennedy wrote a piercingly insightful foreword¹ to it. The book is being released today. If you preordered, thank you! If you didn’t, you can now pick it up without delay.

The Weaponization of Fear

In “The Truth About COVID-19,” we review the evidence suggesting a laboratory origin, and how the technocratic elite have used this pandemic as a justification for eroding liberty, freedom and democracy from Day 1. As noted by Kennedy in his foreword:

“Government technocrats, billionaire oligarchs, Big Pharma, Big Data, Big Media, the high-finance robber barons and the military industrial intelligence apparatus love pandemics for the same reasons they love wars and terrorist attacks. Catastrophic crises create opportunities of convenience to increase both power and wealth.

In her seminal book, ‘The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,’ Naomi Klein chronicles how authoritarian demagogues, large corporations and wealthy plutocrats use mass disruptions to shift wealth upwards, obliterate the middle classes, abolish civil rights, privatize the commons and expand authoritarian controls …

The methodology is, in fact, formulaic, as Hitler’s Luftwaffe commander, Hermann Göring, explained during the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg: ‘It is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country.’”

Bioterrorism Is the New ‘War on Terror’

As stressed by Kennedy, the 9/11 attack was used to launch the “war on terror” and implement the ironically named Patriot Act which, far from protecting the rights of patriots actually eroded them and laid the groundwork for the modern surveillance state. Now, the enemy is microbes, which are even more nebulous and untouchable than the amorphous “terrorism” before it.

The suspension of due process, and notice, and comment rulemaking meant that none of the government prelates who ordained the quarantine had to first publicly calculate whether destroying the global economy, disrupting food and medical supplies, and throwing a billion humans into dire poverty and food insecurity would kill more people than it would save. ~ Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Make no mistake, the plan, as laid out in various papers and reports — including the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2010 report,² “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” in which they describe their “Lockstep” scenario, a coordinated global response to a lethal pandemic, and its 2020 white paper,³ “National COVID-19 Testing Action Plan” — is to use bioterrorism to take control of the world’s resources, wealth and people.

It’s to use the need for coordinated pandemic response as the justification for permanent surveillance and social controls that hobble personal liberty and freedom of choice.

Pandemic measures indeed are not about protecting public health and saving lives. This can be ascertained by the fact that no cost-benefit calculations for any of the measures have ever been presented — not even now, nearly a year and a half later, at a time when states and nations are again considering another round of lockdowns and home quarantines. As noted by Kennedy:

“The suspension of due process, and notice, and comment rulemaking meant that none of the government prelates who ordained the quarantine had to first publicly calculate whether destroying the global economy, disrupting food and medical supplies, and throwing a billion humans into dire poverty and food insecurity would kill more people than it would save.”

If public health were the primary goal, no measure would be reimplemented a second, third or fourth time without first making those calculations. After all, we have well over a year’s worth of data on mask wearing, lockdowns and social distancing from all around the world. The only reason for ignoring that crucial part of health policy making is because they know the data do not support any of these strategies.

Censorship Is an Essential Feature of Totalitarianism

In addition to the weaponization of fear, totalitarian regimes need censorship. Not only must objections be quashed, but to effectively subvert democracy, with the aim of eliminating it altogether, you must first eliminate freedom of speech. As explained by Kennedy in his foreword:

“In including free speech in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison argued that all our other liberties depend on this right. Any government that can hide its mischief has license to commit atrocities.

As soon as they get hold of the levers of authority, tyrants impose Orwellian censorship and begin gaslighting dissenters … The free flow of information and self-expression are oxygen and sunlight for representative democracy, which functions best with policies annealed in the boiling cauldron of public debate. It is axiomatic that without free speech, democracy withers …

To consolidate and fortify their power, dictatorships aim to replace those vital ingredients of self-rule — debate, self-expression, dissent and skepticism — with rigid authoritarian orthodoxies that function as secular surrogates for religion. These orthodoxies perform to abolish critical thinking and regiment populations in blind, unquestioning obedience to undeserving authorities …

Censorship is violence, and this systematic muzzling of debate — which proponents justify as a measure to curtail dangerous polarization — is actually fueling the polarization and extremism that the autocrats use to clamp down evermore draconian controls. We might recall, at this strange time in our history, my father’s friend, Edward R. Murrow’s warning:

‘The right to dissent … is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail to totalitarianism.’”

Fabricated Dogma Poses as ‘Scientific Consensus’

For years, I have exposed corruption and the collusion between private industries and the government agencies that are supposed to regulate them. Today, the danger captured agencies pose to public health is clear for anyone to see.

Conveniently enough, the only “reputable sources” people are allowed to peruse are the very agencies that have been captured and corrupted by industry. Meanwhile, there are many thousands of independent medical experts and scientists who vehemently disagree with the “scientific consensus” presented by these agencies, and have the evidence to back up their objections.

All of them are now being censored to some degree or another. The end result is a thoroughly underinformed and misled public, and not a single good thing can come from that. As Kennedy says:

“Instead of citing scientific studies to justify mandates for masks, lockdowns and vaccines, our medical rulers cite WHO, CDC, FDA and NIH …

So, it’s unsurprising that, instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, the badly compromised and newly empowered government health officials charged with managing the COVID-19 pandemic response collaborated with mainstream and social media to shut down discussion on key public health and civil rights questions.

They silenced and excommunicated heretics like Dr. Mercola who refused to genuflect to Pharma and treat unquestioning faith in zero liability, shoddily tested experimental vaccines as religious duty.

Our current iatrarchy’s rubric of ‘scientific consensus’ is the contemporary iteration of the Spanish Inquisition. It is a fabricated dogma constructed by this corrupt cast of physician technocrats and their media collaborators to legitimize their claims to dangerous new powers.

The high priests of the modern Inquisition are Big Pharma’s network and cable news gasbags who preach rigid obedience to official diktats including lockdowns, social distancing and the moral rectitude of donning masks despite the absence of peer-reviewed science that convincingly shows that masks prevent COVID-19 transmission. The need for this sort of proof is gratuitous.

They counsel us to, instead, ‘trust the experts.’ Such advice is both anti-democratic and anti-science. Science is dynamic. ‘Experts’ frequently differ on scientific questions and their opinions can vary in accordance with the demands of politics, power and financial self-interest.

Nearly every lawsuit I have ever brought pitted highly credentialed experts from opposite sides against each other, with all of them swearing under oath to diametrically antithetical positions based on the same set of facts. Science is disagreement; the notion of scientific consensus is oxymoronic.”

Protect Your Own Health

The “scientific consensus” the medical technocracy wants you to believe in is that vaccines are the only available answer to this pandemic. So far, all preventive strategies and safer drug therapies have been downplayed at best, and censored or banned at worst.

The reality is that there are many alternatives, and all of them are far safer than the experimental COVID-19 gene therapies being given. I review the ones I believe are the most important in “The Truth About COVID-19.”

Nebulized Hydrogen Peroxide

Why this ‘Pandemic’ Is Looking More Like a Social Engineering Experiment

A heavily censored and ridiculed strategy that can be used either preventatively or acutely is nebulized hydrogen peroxide.

It’s extremely inexpensive, easy to use (0.1 percent, which is 30 times less concentrated than regular drugstore 3 percent peroxide).

Your immune cells actually produce hydrogen peroxide. This is in part how they kill cells that have been infected with a virus. It appears that nebulized hydrogen peroxide merely enhances your immune cells to perform their natural function more effectively.

The key is to have your nebulizer already purchased and ready to go so that you can use it at the sign of first symptoms. You can also use it concomitant with vitamin C, as they likely have a powerful synergy and use different complimentary mechanisms.

For more details, check out my interviews with Dr. David Brownstein and Dr. Thomas Levy. Both have extensive experience with this treatment and have treated hundreds of COVID-19 patients with it.

Brownstein published a peer-reviewed consecutive case series of 107 COVID-19 patients treated with nebulized peroxide and other remedies, including oral vitamins A, C and D, iodine, intravenous hydrogen peroxide and iodine as well as intravenous (IV) vitamin C, along with intramuscular ozone, in the July 2020 issue of Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law.⁴

Since then, he’s treated more than 100 additional patients with these strategies. All have survived. Levy also details how to use nebulized peroxide in his free e-book, “Rapid Virus Recovery.” It’s also available in Spanish.

Hope, in the Face of Tyranny

At the end of my discussion with Kennedy, I express what I believe is the absolute truth: We will ultimately stop their drive toward global tyranny. It’s not going to be easy. It may take years, and it may get far worse before it gets better.

The founders of the U.S. actually fled repressive societies or were children or grandchildren of those who did. They had to personally reckon with criminalized speech, arbitrary arrests and state sanctioned torture and even murder. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew that if they lost the war, they would be executed for treason.

These men and women were radicals, fighting for liberty and personal freedoms. They had a vision of reality that was an absolute slap in the face of what the rest of the world tolerated. They were willing to sacrifice their lives to turn that vision into a reality. Most all of us have forgotten their sacrifices and have capitulated to the carefully constructed narrative to create fear that allows most to give up their claim to freedom.

The Founders NEVER expected us to become complacent and fall sleep or simply get lazy. They trusted us to be ever vigilant, to keep the precious web of liberty and personal freedom that they constructed from evaporating so that there would never be an American tyrant. The creators of the U.S. Constitution understood that the price of liberty was eternal vigilance.

Hopefully, enough people will see through the mainstream fog and see the truth of where we’re headed and how we got here (if you don’t, read “The Truth About COVID-19”), and once you understand who the actual enemy is, you become less fearful and more efficient. You can now help educate others, so that they understand what’s going on, how they’re being deceived, and what they’re actually about to give up.

Lastly, there are legal solutions that can help thwart the globalist takeover, technological solutions that can strengthen citizen’s lobbying power, and censor-proof technologies that will allow us to circumvent current Big Tech monopolies. We have to work on all of these fronts, but together, I believe we can resecure freedom for our children and future generations.

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Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6uQQwlNoIs

The DARK FUTURE Of Health Passports

Comment to video:   " Thanks for posting. A dire warning on a dystopian future "

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https://scheerpost.com/2021/04/26/the-cia-has-been-taking-over-for-decades-even-former-presidents-tried-to-warn-us/

The CIA Has Been Taking Over for Decades—Even Former Presidents Tried to Warn Us

If you're looking for proof the CIA and the whole cavalcade of other intelligence agencies working with them have gotten too big, look no further than the DNI's latest report.

December 22, 1963 — exactly one month after President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, former President Harry S. Truman published an op-ed in the Washington Post that most people, especially our perfumed ruling elite, wanted to ignore. 

Truman, who signed the CIA into existence just after World War II, wrote, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—the CIA. […] For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas. …There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.” 

Not only did that adorn the pages of the Washington Post one month after JFK’s death, Truman hand wrote the first draft just one week after JFK met up with a bunch of bullets in Dallas. Sure, one may wish Harry had sent his thoughts to John a month before the President’s televised execution. Maybe he could’ve sent a singing telegram or something. But let’s at least give Truman partial credit for the belated message. 

Before his death President Kennedy also held no love for the Central Intelligence Agency. Following the calamitous Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy said he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” 

Point being, clearly Truman, who created the CIA, and Kennedy, who met a mysterious untimely end by professional killers, knew the agency had run amok. 

Yet the CIA is still here, bigger and filled with more Bond villains than ever, and now they have a whole cavalcade of other intelligence agencies working with them. The Intelligence Community just recently put out a report that showed that their component agencies are indeed working to surveil, harass, and attack an assortment of U.S. citizens. This particular report from the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was written in consultation with the CIA, the FBI, the DIA, the DHS, and a partridge in a pear tree. (An evil, kinda dastardly partridge. Not a good partridge at all. Like the kind of partridge that would eat the last pickle and then put the jar back in the fridge, so that later when you’re excited to grab a delicious crispy pickle, there’s nothin’ there but a jar full of pickle urine. So yeah, the worst partridge.) 

The new report stated, “The Intelligence Community assesses that domestic violent extremists who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the U.S. pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote of the report, “It makes clear that its target encompasses a wide range of groups from the left (Antifa, animal rights and environmental activists, pro-choice extremists and anarchists: those who oppose capitalism and all forms of globalization) to those on the right (sovereign citizen movements, anti-abortion activists and those deemed motivated by racial or ethnic hatreds).”

Leave it to our stellar Intelligence Community to group together animal rights activists — who have killed essentially no one ever — with racial hatred extremists — the perpetrators of just about every mass shooting or American terror attack this century. Such a comparison is like saying the 15-year-old who puts a thumb tack on his teacher’s chair is the same as a U.S. military drone aircraft in that they’re both trying to cause harm. Ummm, I think one may cause slightly more harm than the other.

And freeing animals isn’t harm to begin with. What kind of person sees someone release a cow and yells, “Whoa! That’s just like a bomb going off in an elementary school!” 

On top of that, the CIA and their wannabes are surveilling and grouping alongside domestic terrorists anyone who points out capitalism causes a lot of problems. Such an analysis is just, well, fact. Capitalism is an economic system requiring infinite growth on a planet with finite resources — so at the end of the day, it can only result in epic collapse. That’s not an opinion. That’s just how it is. (Sidenote: It would be totally cool, FBI, if you could stop watching me through my iPhone camera. …How about at least not when I’m on the toilet? …Please?) 

Greenwald said, “To the Department of Homeland Security, an ‘extremist’ is anyone who opposes the current prevailing ruling class and system for distributing power. Anyone they believe is prepared to use violence, intimidation or coercion in pursuit of these causes then becomes a ‘domestic violent extremist,’ subject to a vast array of surveillance, monitoring and other forms of legal restrictions.”

Coercion? Well, shit — I’m willing to use coercion to change our class structure! I think I almost named my TV show Coercion to Bring Down the Class Structure with Lee Camp. I guess that makes me a domestic violent extremist?! How’s this for irony: you could be named a domestic violent extremist for non-violently protesting to end war. That’s like being called an addict for watching too many “Say No To Drugs” commercials. 

But the larger point here — which the mainstream media intentionally avoids discussing — is that the CIA is expressly forbidden from operating domestically. It’s not supposed to be in our living rooms. It’s supposed to be in their living rooms! (You can’t see it, but I’m pointing furiously in the other direction, clearly implying the living rooms of other countries. If you were in my living room as I type this, you’d understand. …I don’t know why you’d be here. That would be weird since I don’t know you. But, as long as you’re here, can you take out the trash?) 

The only people in Congress voicing concerns about this latest report are ten Republicans, which is pathetic for many reasons, not least of which being that Republicans haven’t gotten anything right since before… ummm… Wow, this is their first time. Good for you guys. Even a blind squirrel finds your nuts sometimes! …Or wait, not your nuts. Someone else’s nuts. …Don’t quote me on that. 

Greenwald pointed out how nefarious things are getting. “The Biden administration, along with leading Democrats such as Adam Schiff, have been stating explicitly that one of their top priorities is the adoption of new laws designed to import the Bush/Cheney/Obama War on Terror onto U.S. soil for domestic purposes. As recently as February 14, The Washington Post published an article titled ‘The agency founded because of 9/11 is shifting to face the threat of domestic terrorism.’”

I know it might be easy to read that and think, “Good! They’re going to arrest those damn domestic terrorists.” But — and I can’t stress this enough — we need another “war on terror” about as much as we need a hole in the head, or a venereal disease, or another Sarah Palin. The War on Terror has been an utter disaster for any country on the ass end of it. So why would any American want our own citizens to be on the ass end of the next one? 

There’s nothing like bringing overseas disasters back home. While we’re at it, let’s build some Fukushima-style nuclear plants on the coast of California. 

Point being, violence is already illegal. Planning to harm people is already illegal. Hence, domestic terrorism is already illegal. The Intelligence Community already has loads of power and money and weapons and people. They don’t need more. They already violate our rights and our privacy and our freedom on a regular basis. They don’t need to do it more. 

Remember, fascism will come to America wrapped in an American flag, holding a cross, dressed in a skimpy outfit, cradling a bucket of KFC fried chicken, and giving out free handies. Or, as Greenwald put it, “There are few dangers more acute than the weaponization of these security-state-instruments against U.S. citizens for political ends.”

For generations the Intelligence Community has been a runaway truck — crushing everything in its path, creating coups around the world, killing thousands, and intruding on the lives of average citizens. As I already mentioned, even the president who created the CIA and dropped atomic bombs on people — even that guy felt the CIA was a grave danger to the American experiment. Those concerns started just after he saw a president get whacked live on prime time. I wonder why.

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Comment to article:

" Kennedy fired CIA head Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. After Kennedy’s assassination Dulles flew to Truman’s home and got him to retract his article. Allen Dulles became the main man in the Warren Commission set up to find who killed JFK. He should have been a suspect. Kennedy also fired second in charge of the CIA General Charles Cabell. His brother was the mayor of Dallas at the time of the assassination."

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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_global_deep_state_a_new_world_order_brought_to_you_by_covid_19

The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought to You by COVID-19

 “A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power.”― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

For good or bad, COVID-19 has changed the way we navigate the world.

It is also redrawing the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.

Owing in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations, it has become increasingly obvious that we have entered into a new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations.

This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.

We’ve been inching closer to this global world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which has seen governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, has shifted this transformation into high gear.

Fascism has become a global menace.

It remains unclear whether the American Deep State (“a national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it”) answers to the Global Deep State, or whether the Global Deep State merely empowers the American Deep State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked.

Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven corporate interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the security sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, the pharmaceutical industry and, most recently, by the pharmaceutical-health sector.

All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins. The profit-driven policies of these global corporate giants influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care

Global Disease

The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled us into a whole new global frontier. Those hoping to navigate this interconnected and highly technological world of contact tracing, vaccine passports and digital passes will find themselves grappling with issues that touch on deep-seated moral, political, religious and personal questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers.

We are about to find our ability to access, engage and move about in the world dependent on which camp we fall into: those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and those who have not.

“It is the latest status symbol. Flash it at the people, and you can get access to concerts, sports arenas or long-forbidden restaurant tables. Some day, it may even help you cross a border without having to quarantine,” writes Heather Murphy for the New York Times. “The new platinum card of the Covid age is the vaccine certificate.”

This is what M.I.T. professor Ramesh Raskar refers to as the new “currency for health,” an apt moniker given the potentially lucrative role that Big Business (Big Pharma and Big Tech, especially) will play in establishing this pay-to-play marketplace. The airline industry has been working on a Travel Pass. IBM is developing a Digital Health Pass. And the U.S. government has been all-too-happy to allow the corporate sector to take the lead.

Global Surveillance

Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.

Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice.

Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.

Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to The Intercept:

“The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.’ It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it ‘has access to information that transits the nation,’ but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.”

Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the “14 Eyes Program,” also referred to as the “SIGINT Seniors.” This global spy agency is made up of members from around the world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).

Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.

Global War Profiteering

War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its biggest buyers and sellers.

The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide).

Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (that’s $8.3 million per hour). That doesn’t include wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

The illicit merger of the global armaments industry and the Pentagon that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than 50 years ago has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation’s fragile infrastructure today. America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe.

Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world's population, America boasts almost 50% of the world's total military expenditure,  spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. There’s a good reason why “bloated,” “corrupt” and “inefficient” are among the words most commonly applied to the government, especially the Department of Defense and its contractors. Price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire.

It’s not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.

Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons better suited to a war zone. President Biden, marching in lockstep with his predecessors, has continued to expand America’s military empire abroad and domestically in a clear bid to pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in its clutches.

Global Policing

Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those belonging to other nations. There’s a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.

There’s a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force: they belong to a global police force.

For example, Israel—one of America’s closest international allies and one of the primary yearly recipients of more than $3 billion in U.S. foreign military aid—has been at the forefront of a little-publicized exchange program aimed at training American police to act as occupying forces in their communities. As The Intercept sums it up, American police are “essentially taking lessons from agencies that enforce military rule rather than civil law.”

This idea of global policing is reinforced by the Strong Cities Network program, which trains local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the global network include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo.

The objective is to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police—acting as extensions of the United Nations—will identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.

Of course, the concern with the government’s anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

Are you starting to get the picture now?

On almost every front, whether it’s the war on drugs, or the sale of weapons, or regulating immigration, or establishing prisons, or advancing technology, or fighting a pandemic, if there is a profit to be made and power to be amassed, you can bet that the government and its global partners have already struck a deal that puts the American people on the losing end of the bargain.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.

The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished.

In its place is a shadow government—a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy—that is fully operational and running the country.

Given the trajectory and dramatic expansion, globalization and merger of governmental and corporate powers, we’re not going to recognize this country 20 years from now.

It’s taken less than a generation for our freedoms to be eroded and the Global Deep State’s structure to be erected, expanded and entrenched.

Mark my words: the U.S. government will not save us from the chains of the Global Deep State.

Now there are those who will tell you that any mention of a New World Order government—a power elite conspiring to rule the world—is the stuff of conspiracy theories.

I am not one of those skeptics.

I wholeheartedly believe that one should always mistrust those in power, take alarm at the first encroachment on one’s liberties, and establish powerful constitutional checks against government mischief and abuse.

I can also attest to the fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I have studied enough of this country’s history—and world history—to know that governments (the U.S. government being no exception) are at times indistinguishable from the evil they claim to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

And I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.

Remember, people used to scoff at the notion of a Deep State (a.k.a. Shadow Government). They used to doubt that fascism could ever take hold in America, and sneer at any suggestion that the United States was starting to resemble Nazi Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.

As I detail in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re beginning to know better, aren’t we?

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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr21/expropriation4-21.html

What's Yours Is Now Mine: America's Era of Accelerating Expropriation

Expropriation: dispossessing the populace of property and property rights, via the legal and financial over-reach of monetary and political authorities.

All expropriations are pernicious, but the most destructive is the expropriation of labor's value while the excessive gains of unproductive speculation accrue to the elite that owns most of the nation's wealth.

In a nation in which the leadership has finely honed the art and artifice of legalized looting and financial legerdemain, it's not surprising that the expropriation of labor's value takes many forms. For the self-employed and small business proprietor, the list is practically endless:

1. Proliferating junk fees for permits, licence renewals, applications, late fees, penalties, fines for violating obscure regulations, etc. (Never mind if you're losing money; by definition, as a business owner you're "rich" and deserve petty expropriations. If you're Amazon, however, we'll shower you with subsidies and tax breaks.)

2. Sky-high liability insurance, disability insurance and workers compensation insurance, because all the fraud and friction in these systems adds expense and you're the one who will pay for it all.

3. Sky-high rent. Now that the Federal Reserve jacked up the "market value" of a $1 million commercial building to $10 million via asset inflation, rents have soared even though no improvements have been made to the tenants' spaces. Thanks to the Fed, rents are many multiples of what they would be if the Fed hadn't jacked up real estate to absurd overvaluations.

4. Taxes on wages. Consider the Self-Employed in a High-Tax State: let's start with the 15.3% federal self-employment tax on wages up to $142,000, then add federal tax rates that quickly reach 32% and up and state taxes that hit 10% and higher in high-tax states, and then don't forget the extra 3.9% Medicare tax above $125,000, and when we add all this up, the total tax rate exceeds 61%. (You want to quibble? OK, make it 55%. How much difference does this make? None.)

Now this may be acceptable in Scandinavian nations where you receive virtually free healthcare and higher education, but here in the Accelerating Expropriation USA, the Self-Employed in a High-Tax State has to pay insanely costly healthcare insurance out of the 39% that's been oh-so-generously left to live on, as well as the insanely high student loans that were taken out to attend university.

Factor those in and the Self-Employed in a High-Tax State gets a third or less of her labor's value. This only rises slightly in so-called lower-tax states, which tend to compensate for lower income taxes with high sales taxes and property taxes ("they get you coming and going.")

Inflation is stealth expropriation, and like all expropriation, we're told it's for our own good, just like any other beating delivered by authorities. So as the Fed pushes asset inflation to Mars and whines that real-inflation isn't high enough yet, the Self-Employed in a High-Tax State are experiencing a monthly expropriation of the purchasing power of what little labor value has been left to them.

I received an insightful email on this topic from A.C.:

"Expropriation.

Once you've had it done to you personally (as I did through my business) you view the world in a whole new light.

Without assets in which you can store the excess value of your labor minus the worry of debasement or theft, the incentive to create that excess goes away. That's why the BLS 'take this job and shove it' JOLT measure is staying so stubbornly high.

Unfortunately, it's that excess labor that funds what we call civilization.

People without the margins which excess labor can create tend to revert, for their own security, to community groupings based on familial bonds. They're a store of value that's stable and can't be inflated away.

Those without such bonds are SOL. Hunger goes a long way in mitigating the personality disorders which impair the creation of such bonds."

Here's the takeaway: Any "wealth" denominated in financial instruments will be expropriated by one means or another, so "wealth" has to be denominated in some other "currency", social, cultural, skills / intellectual, that is beyond the grasp of monetary and political authorities. This is the primary reason why crazy risky speculation is being pursued with such intensity: there is no way to escape the grinding impoverishment of expropriation for most wage-earners except to make more "wealth" via crazy-risky gambles than is being expropriated.
The Only Way to Get Ahead Now Is Crazy-Risky Speculation.

There's another dynamic few grasp: When the Empire runs out of colonies to exploit, it brings its expropriation machinery home to stripmine the domestic populace. I explained this dynamic back in 2012:

Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model (4/24/12)

Welcome to Neocolonialism, Exploited Peasants! (10/21/16) October 21, 2016

Why are we not surprised that as expropriation accelerates on all fronts, the Middle Class Now Holds Less Wealth than Top 1 Percent? (brookings.edu) Thanks to the magic of pay-to-play "democracy," the super-wealthy and corporate elites escape all the expropriation machinery stripmining wage earners. The corporate taxes collected are a tiny slice of the hundreds of billions corporations spend on stock buybacks, the only purpose of which is to enrich insiders and the super-wealthy who own most of the nation's financial assets.

The takeaway here is obvious: earn as little money as possible and invest your surplus labor in assets that can't be expropriated. Develop low-overhead gigs and enterprises that are 100% yours so you can legitimately write off expenses and control how much work you decide to take on. Keep accurate records and pay whatever taxes are due, but by minimizing net income then taxes will be modest. Invest your best self, time and energy in assets that can't be assessed, taxed or expropriated: your skills, networks, value you create and invest in your own self-sufficiency, sharing and good living of the kind that can't be bought or sold or expropriated.

I cover these topics in greater depth in my books:

Get a Job, Build a Real Career, Defy a Bewildering Economy

An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times

Money and Work Unchained

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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr21/lost-faith4-21.html

The People Have Lost Faith in the State, and the State Has Lost Faith in its People

Democracy is fundamentally about advocacy: the people are free to advocate for their interests and form groups to represent their shared interests. In the broadest scope, the people are free to advocate for what they hold as the common good, policies and programs that benefit the entire populace rather than one special-interest group.

Since the state (all levels of government) concentrates wealth and power via taxation and a monopoly on force, groups advocate/lobby the state to recognize and respond to their interests. At the local level, this advocacy entails contacting city council members, speaking at council meetings, developing outreach tools (email lists, website, etc.), holding rallies at city hall, etc.

People advocate when they still have faith in their government. When they lose that faith, their only option is dissent. When advocacy yields zero results because government really only responds to corporations and the super-wealthy, then people lose faith in the representational branch of the state.

Since advocacy failed, people dissent, protesting government policies, rallying behind alternative policies and demanding a hearing of their concerns and interests.

The state tolerates polite advocacy because it is easily dismissed, but it views dissent as a threat, and responds accordingly. The state's elected officials and unelected functionaries view citizen advocacy as an annoyance, but dissent is understood as a direct challenge to the state's monopoly on force and its concentration of wealth via taxation, and a challenge to the state's freedom to exercise its powers whenever and however it wants.

Dissent is thus intolerable, especially if it demands transparency, which threatens the cozy corruption of politicos and functionaries, or threatens the wealth and power of the parasitic elites that control virtually all the nation's wealth and power.

This study of political influence and state policy decisions found that the average citizenry had zero influence: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.

Note the difference between conventional wealth and super-wealth. Someone earning $500,000 is wealthy to the average wage earner, but that individual pays 40+% in taxes, so they net less than $300,000, and if they live in high-cost states and have elderly parents in assisted living and kids in university, their income available to lobby the state is inconsequential compared to the tens of millions of dollars corporations and the super-wealthy routinely spend to cement their political influence.

When the people realize advocacy is an empty promise of political influence and they move to dissent, the state's powers of suppression are unleashed. This includes the judiciary (one set of oppressive laws for the average citizen, and another for the corporations and super-wealthy), law enforcement and the security agencies, which are now in bed with the Big Tech monopolies which can effortlessly suppress free speech by banning or shadow-banning dissenters, all under the convenient guise of "banning disinformation."

When the state views dissent as an existential threat to its monopoly powers, it has lost faith in its own citizenry. Fearful that the citizenry might not approve of the corruption of political deal-making and the state's Imperial machinations globally, the state devotes enormous resources to hiding its actions, policies and intentions.

Since the citizenry can't be trusted with the truth, lest they disagree with the elites' choices, whistleblowers are savagely punished and dissenters are marginalized, suppressed or silenced.

As dissent is crushed, the citizenry lose faith in the state's judiciary, law enforcement, taxation and security agencies--in effect, faith in the state is completely destroyed. Once self-serving elites control the state, dissent cannot be tolerated, as the parasitic elites' hold on power is illegitimate and thus precarious. This is why whistleblowers pose such an existential threat to a thoroughly corrupt, debauched, incompetent self-serving state.

This is how states and empires decay and slide into the dustbin of history. When the citizenry lose faith in the state and the state has lost faith in its citizenry, then everything become theater and artifice: the pantomime of elections, the carefully curated simulacra of "free speech," (free as long as you mouth the approved narratives), the flood of absurd promises (free money for everyone forever!) that can never be fulfilled, the tiresome parade of politically expedient fake-fixes, a central bank slavishly devoted to expanding already jaw-dropping wealth and income inequality, and a political leadership so clueless they believe their pathetic strutting on stage is actually persuading the audience of their competence and sincerity. 

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-urgent-warning-world-dr-mike-yeadon/5743336

Video: Experimental Gene-based Injections: “An Urgent Warning to the World” by Dr. Mike Yeadon 

Two of the experimental gene-based injections have been paused or halted, and reports of clotting, stroke, anaphylaxis, miscarriage, Bell’s Palsy, and a host of other neurologic and auto-immune disorders plague the others. And those are just the short-term risks.

Has all humanity been enrolled in a vast and unimaginably dangerous phase-three clinical trial without our informed consent? All for a disease that for the overwhelming majority of us is, officially, 99.7% or better survivable… if we even get it?

Dr. Mike Yeadon, formerly a Vice President and Chief Science Officer at Pfizer, believes the big experiment is well under way, and that the hypothesis it seeks to prove is as bold as it is terrible.

A cogent and clear thinker who has been attacked in proportion to his qualifications, Dr. Yeadon, at great personal risk, issues a chilling warning, not just about the grave dangers surrounding the injections, but about the looming threat of digital health “passports” that will take inexorable control over every aspect of our lives.

If we allow them.

We have been warned.

Video link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6MYCslZ1E&t=3025s

"An Urgent Warning to the World"

Comment to video:

"  Dr Mike, you have not ruined your reputation & scientific professionalism, you have enhanced it & on the right side of history. Thank you, is so inadequate, just know, you are so highly thought of & respected, by your own humankind. "

View this as soon as possible!

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/americans-do-not-need-american-empire/5728710?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles

Imperial Overstretch Arrives: Americans Do Not Need the American Empire

This piece is being written as voters are going to the polls on election day in the United States. While it has been useful to consider how things might change, possibly for the worse, one must also recognize that much of what happens in the U.S. and in its far-flung empire operates by virtue of its own internal dynamics and rules, something that is often referred to as the “Deep State” or perhaps more accurately as the Establishment.

Witness for example the occasional possibly sincere but unsuccessful White House attempts over the past four years to withdraw or reduce the numbers of U.S. troops embroiled in various armed conflicts worldwide. All of those initiatives have been frustrated or redirected in one way or another and it is not simply a question of bungling by a politically insensitive Donald Trump versus the result that might have been obtained by a more experienced and responsible Democrat. What drives the empire’s engine is essentially bipartisan, even in its own way, apolitical, existing as it does as a form of leaderless shadow government that functions as a community-of-interest rather than a bureaucracy. It is inclusive and reflective of the real centers of power in the country, namely the national security state and Wall Street.

In a recent article Pepe Escobar dispels any expectation that a kinder, gentler foreign policy might emerge from the election. He describes with some alarm how victory by Biden will mean that the national security “Blob” team that wrecked Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and Libya while also assassinating Americans overseas under President Barack Obama will be back. He cites former CIA presidential briefer Ray McGovern who persuasively describes the “Blob” as the MICIMATT (the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex). One might well add the Federal Reserve Bank to that list.

So, the engine keeps chugging on, driven my its own self-interests and completely oblivious to what is going on around it. The irony is that the crisis in confidence that simultaneously is besetting the United States in part reflects a very real, largely self-inflicted decline in America’s place in the world due to insistence that it maintain global hegemony. It comes at a time when the empire is entering into a phase of increasing irrelevancy which many of the key players involved are either unable or unwilling to recognize, no matter what their political affiliation might be. That means that the United States is locked into a pattern of behavior that it is incapable of changing. It is a nation that has become addicted to war for no good reason, and that addiction has brought neither security nor prosperity.

The signs are everywhere. The costs of empire continue to rise while real benefits to be derived from it are elusive. The United States government spends far more on a bloated defense budget than it can afford, adding to an unsustainable national debt that currently exceeds $27 trillion, which is 128% of the country’s entire gross domestic product. The debt will likely increase dramatically if there are any more coronavirus stimulus packages. The nation is becoming hollowed out as a result.

America’s “allies” have inevitably rightly become increasingly disengaged from Washington, reluctant to comply with Washington’s directions and demands, while the developing transition from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is proceeding and will have catastrophic consequences. When the U.S. Treasury stops being able to print money at will, there will be national insolvency.

In terms of the United States’ interaction with the world, a country that not so long ago was widely respected is now regarded as the principal source of international instability, disliked everywhere but Israel, another rogue nation. And the internal damage inside the U.S. to core values and expectations is also evident, to include increasingly dysfunctional schools that focus on political correctness rather than education, crumbling infrastructure, a broken health care system, and a dying industrial and manufacturing base. Unique among all developed countries, life expectancy among working class Americans is declining.

At the root of it all is what Yale professor Paul Kennedy once described as “imperial overstretch,” which means projection of power in support of global commitments that are not essential to national well-being and bankrupting oneself in the process. The reality is that unless an “imperial” acquisition is done purely for exploitative reasons, as Belgium did in the Congo, having an empire operates at a considerable loss. Napoleon “overstretched” when he invaded Russia and both Russia and Austria-Hungary collapsed as a result of the First World War because the stress of external conflict made their obligations far exceed their resources. Great Britain’s Empire likewise became expendable after World War Two when the costs of maintaining outposts “east of Suez” became much larger than the benefits.

So, there are many good reasons for the United States to retrench and again become a “normal” nation, if that is at all possible, but the fact that no candidate but Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders even suggested that America’s global interventionism might be reconsidered or even reversed is telling. Both were eliminated by the Democratic party establishment. In the case of Gabbard, the executioner was no less than Hillary Clinton. Whoever is the new president, he will inherit the awful conceit that he is the “leader of the free world.” It is past time for a serious discussion of America’s proper place in the world, but that will require completely overturning the country’s Establishment and challenging the “exceptionalism” view that the U.S. must dominate as a “force for good.” Unfortunately, there is no politician anywhere on the horizon who is able and willing to take the lead on such an endeavor.

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https://scheerpost.com/2021/04/21/the-director-of-national-intelligences-hypocritical-annual-threat-assessment/

The Director of National Intelligence’s Hypocritical Annual Threat Assessment

Make no mistake: much policy indecency is permitted and enabled by vacuously vague bureaucratic reports peddling in platitudes. For further evidence bolstering this increasingly open-and-shut case, see Exhibit number 3,472, or so: last week’s release of the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community – the latest contribution from that politest of polite militarists, President Biden’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), The Honorable Avril Haines.

At root, the 2021 “annual report of worldwide threats to the national security of the US” warns of a frightfully “diverse array” of undead – and ever useful for war industry profits – global threats. And the intelligence community (sort of a peculiar phraseology for a gang implicated in torture, kidnapping, and coup-catalyzing for decades, no?) sure opened their assessment with some rather big, over-the-top promises. The real doozies come in sentence two, in fact. These spook-kooks had the gall to trumpet the report’s reflection of their “collective insights” and daily commitment “to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence” that “policymakers” and “warfighters” need to protect the populace.

Independence? Nuance? Maybe they’re talking about a different “intelligence community.” Seriously, though, that’s a decidedly bold – and suspiciously loud and early – assertion coming from the people who brought you such scandalous fumbles, failures, and/or fabrications as: the 9/11 attacks; Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; “extraordinary rendition” (overseas kidnapping) to “black sites” for a potential splash of freedom-baptismal water-boarding; America’s in-house (or, rather, outsourced) Guantanamo purgatory; Libyan regime change and resultant regional blowback; support for Syria’s “moderate rebel” Islamist-extremists; Afghan “bounty-gate” (and for that matter, much of Russiagate writ-large); and a mass illegal domestic data collection and surveillance program. And that’s just a post-2001 highlight reel!

Ignoring all that inconvenient egregiousness, DNI Haines led off her opening statement to Congress on April 14th with some standard conceptual ground rules:

Our goal today is to convey to you and the public we serve and protect, the threat environment as we perceive it and to do our best to answer questions about the challenges we face. I will only highlight a few points and provide some context in my opening statement…

Well, in line with Ms. Haines’s congressional testimonial-pitch, here are only a few highlights on the opaque and misleading mess – as I “perceive it” – of debunk-able assumptions and evasions spread across all 27 pages of this annual exercise in ritualistic fear-mongering subterfuge; plus some passing speculations on what this report is really all about:

Everyone, at least all the usual suspects – besides the US and its melange of allies and partners – has “malign” intentions driving their “provocative” actions.

It’s pretty straightforward stuff inside the intel-echo chamber of predictive assessment. For example, apparently “Iran will remain a regional menace with broader malign influence activities.” Now, to many Middle Easterners, that may have an “I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I” read, since the US essentially shattered the region with it’s ill-advised, illegal, and immoral Iraq invasion and that fiasco’s resultant refugee, radicalization, and civil war catalyzation. Also, nowhere in the document do the theocratic war criminals – say the Saudis and Emiratis – who’ve been terror bombing and starving Yemeni civilians for some time now merit even a mention, let alone the label malign-menacer. As for the other bit, Iran, Russia, and North Korea each rate a full section labeled [Insert ostensible adversary here]’s “Provocative Actions” – mainly for engaging in activities that Washington, its treaty allies, and favorite partnered proxies perform as a matter of course.

China is the top dog threat, and pushing “for global power” that’s assumedly an inherent challenge to our values and “our” norms (which the report politely rebrand as “international”).

Most of its exaggerated by the way – there’s no specificity in, or comparison of, things like military, nuclear, and overseas bases spending and strategy. Furthermore, there’s a dangerous conflation of economic and military-imperial ambitions running through the entire analysis. Nor is there any semblance of interest in causation. For example, the report decries “China’s increasing cooperation with Russia on areas of complementary interest includes defense and economic cooperation.” Yet it offers no mention of the way reflexively adversarial US rhetoric and policies, drives these two natural enemies turned peculiar-bedfellows together.

Furthermore, for an assessment that the intel community self-styles as “independent” and “nuanced,” there’s near zero sense of scale in discussions of Beijing’s basing posture. There’s talk of China’s desired expansion of its “military presence” abroad, but no detail or comparison-capable statistics on just how much overseas presence they have. Well, that wouldn’t have great optics now, would it? After all, China only established its first official overseas military base (in Africa’s Djibouti) in 2017, and so far their total count remains a big fat uno (despite reported plans for some more). By way of inconvenient contrast, the US has at least 29 official bases in Africa alone, and some 800 in 80 countries worldwide.

No matter, Uncle Sam is just as alarmed by – and unwilling to countenance – Beijing’s primacy in waters touching, and named after, China itself. You know, that supposed existentially vital to US security Caribbean-equivalent South China Sea The Sino-sins, according to the report, revolve around how “Across East Asia and the western Pacific, which Beijing views as its natural sphere of influence,” – imagine that?!? – “China is attempting to exploit doubts about the US commitment to the region.” Let’s be real for a moment: what the assessment’s authors really mean is “hegemonic desire to dominate,” not “commitment to,” the Western Pacific. Besides, anyone else ever wonder why there’s scant questioning of why, or whether, the US should be military committed to the region at anywhere near the current scale – on the basis of both strategic soundness and what-in-holy-hell-entitles-us merits?

Moscow may no longer be the strongest, but it’s certainly still the favorite – and most malign and provocative – enemy of all.

Per usual, the Intel community’s antagonistic Russian blind spot manifests in a stunningly, and embarrassingly, section of self-awareness-anemic hypocritical accusations.

Example#1:

Russian officials have long believed that the United States is conducting its own “influence campaigns” to undermine Russia, weaken President Vladimir Putin, and install Western-friendly regimes in the states of the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.

Well, aren’t we? – Ukraine, Georgia, NATO expansion right into the Baltic States, etc. – Well actually, aren’t you specifically, dear authors?

Worse still is the list of predicted “tools” the report’s authors “assess” Moscow will employ “to advance its agenda and undermine the United States:”

…especially influence campaigns, intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation, military aid and combined exercises, mercenary operations, assassinations, and arms sales…

Seriously, has Washington’s repeatedly demonstrated unwillingness or inability to [accurately] see its own reflection in the mirror – thereby outing itself as a member of the declining hegemonic undead – even been more obvious than in this list of predicted nasty acts planned by America’s favored naughtiest nemesis? Tell me: which of these enumerated nefarious tactics is the USnot also doing, and usually doing more of?

Influence campaigns? For starters, Ukraine and Georgian meddling spring to mind.

Military aid and combined exercises? We do this with and for scores of countries – plenty of which are led by equally brutal authoritarian regimes that Washington thereby enables.

Mercenary operations? Come on, Putin may have ties to the Russian Wagner Group private military outfit, but American mercenaries attempted an overt – if incompetently farcical – coup in Venezuela, and President Trump even took a serious briefing on privatizing the entire Afghan war via hired guns from none other than the brother (Erik Prince) of the administration’s Secretary of Education (Betsy Devos).

Arms sales? Give me a break – gun-running is one of the last great American industries. The US literally leads the world in arms-dealing, accounting for more than one-third of the global total – and almost twice the Russian portion of sales – from 2016-20.

We’re number one! We’re number one!

Avril and all 17 of her subordinate Intel-agency knights of the table want more money!

Well, that’s pretty standard bureaucratic budget-jockeying stuff. After all, even today’s unprecedented north of $1 trillion in total annual cash-for-national-[in]security resources apparently count as scarce and competition-worthy in Washington. (Recall that it was nearly 50 years ago that Air Force General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, interrupted a junior briefing officer who had repeatedly referred to the Soviet Union as “the enemy.” LeMay supposedly corrected him thus: “Young man, the Soviet Union is our adversary. Our enemy is the Navy.”) Yet, Ms. Haines’s solicitation-spiel was delivered rather shamelessly, and soon.

Of course, dialing for dollars requires first dialing up the dread. So, before even digging into the meat of her report, Haines came in hot:

I will summarize our views on [traditional threats] but first I want to take note of the shifting landscape we see today and its implications for our work. The trends underlying and intersecting these issues are increasing the pace, complexity, and impact of these threats in ways that require us to evolve…we assess that the world will face more intense and cascading global challenges ranging from disease to climate change, to disruptions from new technologies and financial crises.

In other words, it’s a jungle out there fair congress-members – scarier than you even know! Having said that, well, umm…as it turns out, you’re just the sort of purse-possessing folks who can do something about that:

In short, at no point has it been more important to invest in our norms and institutions, our workforce, and the integration of our work. Doing so, provides us with the opportunity to meet the challenges we face, to pull together as a society, and to promote resilience and innovation.

To translate into the vernacular from the esoteric establishmentarian Latin: Haines had the almost impressive gall to imply that there’s never been more need for ample, and presumably increased, funding for the various agencies in her Intel community cornucopia. Such largesse, should her congressional audience accept its indispensability, provides her spook squads at least “the opportunity” to meet these scarier than ever before challenges. The inverse, of course, is more than implied: deny us the annual – clearly not performance-based – raise, and well, we can’t promise your beloved children will make it safely to school in the morning. Seriously, the well-mannered, well-dressed, and ever-articulate Avril delivers a lesson in Extortion 101 with the demeanor of a Dapper Don: “Nice national security, youse got there – be a shame if something should happen to it!”

And look, that’s just the initial highlights – stay tuned and I might just expand to the “global terrorism,” “cyber,” “foreign and illicit drugs,” and ongoing “conflicts and instability” sections with equally skeptical aplomb very soon. Most of it is equally insincere and often just as absurd.

The problem with such reports actually transcend the individual omissions, obfuscations, and outright fabrications polluting the pages. In other words, the trouble is bigger than the sum of its assessment-parts. By peddling in various trickery targeted at the media and broader public – the true tradecraft of the clandestine services at this point – all absent context, contrast, and any real sense of self-awareness or proportionality, the intelligence community’s witchdoctors mostly diagnose the wrong threat-and-challenge diseases.

So another year passes, another polite report passes Congress’s uncritical muster, and the American spying and military machine sets off on another season of Quixotic crusading to solve the wrong unsolvable problems. All the while, America’s collective Cubs-fan citizenry cheers on, and holds out hope, for that perennial hometown underdog – sensible strategy.

But hey: “We’ll get ‘em next year!”

....

Comments to article:

" I am so appreciative of your analyses….which invariably shrivel the seeming limitlessness of the propaganda serving not us, not our daily needs and requirements here at home, but bolster lies (no-/half-truths/fictions ) in service of the war machine, the weapons manufacturers, their lobbyists, and think (ie. covert lobbyist) tanks, congressional members’ campaign coffers, and the stock marketeers. How many of which I wonder actually worked where bombs fall? Thank you Danny Sjursen for your clear voice and integrity. "

" Thanks to Danny for cutting through all the lies and fearmongering. Pres. Putin was correct in his description of Joe Biden looking at others and seeing the picture of himself. All that the USA claims to fear is what it does to everyone who is not a puppet or completely pushed to the edge. None of the “threats” to the USA are really dangerous compared with the terrible effects of US policies and behavior towards most of the rest of the world, even alleged “allies” like the EU. Even to consider trying to see other point so view seems impossible for any “leaders” in the USA, of any Party. "

" I just read about the Senate Sub-Committee voting in favor of sending more military and financial support to the Nazi’s in Ukraine…..pretty much daring Russia not to invade. Not a wise thing to do on any level. We have been poking the Russian bear for no reason at all other then greed and I get the feeling the Russian Bear is about to bite back. Just wait till the spring mud dries up and then it’s game time.

Ukraine when push comes to shove the US will leave you to your fate and then use your corpse as a fund driving effort for the MIC. "

SC233-9

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/04/21/the-rising-threat-of-nuclear-war-is-the-most-urgent-matter-in-the-world/

The Rising Threat Of Nuclear War Is The Most Urgent Matter In The World

US Strategic Command, the branch of the US military responsible for America’s nuclear arsenal, tweeted the following on Tuesday:

“The spectrum of conflict today is neither linear nor predictable. We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option.”

The statement, which STRATCOM called a “preview” of the Posture Statement it submits to US Congress every year, was a bit intense for Twitter and sparked a lot of alarmed responses. This alarm was due not to any inaccuracy in STRATCOM’s frank statement, but due to the bizarre fact that our world’s increasing risk of nuclear war barely features in mainstream discourse.

#USSTRATCOM Posture Statement Preview: The spectrum of conflict today is neither linear nor predictable. We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option. pic.twitter.com/4Oe7xkl05L

— US Strategic Command (@US_Stratcom) April 20, 2021

STRATCOM has been preparing not just to use its nuclear arsenal for deterrence but also to “win” a nuclear war should one arise from the (entirely US-created) “conditions” which are “neither linear nor predictable”. And it’s looking increasingly likely that one will as the prevailing orthodoxy among western imperialists that US unipolar hegemony must be preserved at all cost rushes headlong toward America’s plunge into post-primacy.

The US has been ramping up aggressions with Russia in a way that has terrified experts, and it looks likely to continue doing so. These aggressions are further complicated on increasingly tense fronts like Ukraine, which is threatening to obtain nuclear weapons if it isn’t granted membership to NATO, either of which would increase the risk of conflict. Aggressions against nuclear-armed China are escalating on what seems like a daily basis at this point, with potential flashpoints in the China Seas, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, India, and any number of other possible fronts.

STRATCOM commander Charles Richard told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that China’s nuclear capabilities are advancing so rapidly that they’re not even bothering with intelligence vetted more than a month ago in their briefings because it’s probably already out of date, urging an upgrade in America’s nuclear infrastructure. Richard reportedly testified that a portion of China’s nuclear arsenal has been recently primed for ready use.

The fact that those in charge of US nuclear weapons now see both Russia and China as a major nuclear threat, and the fact that US cold warriors are escalating against both of them, is horrifying. The fact that they’re again playing with “low-yield” nukes designed to actually be used on the battlefield makes it even more so. This is to say nothing of tensions between nuclear-armed Pakistan and nuclear-armed India, between nuclear-armed Israel and its neighbors, and between nuclear-armed North Korea and the western empire.

While China keeps the majority of its forces in a peacetime status, increasing evidence suggests China has moved a portion of its nuclear force to a Launch on Warning (LOW) posture and are adopting a limited “high alert duty” strategy. @US_Stratcom testimony at SASC right now.

— Barbara Starr (@barbarastarrcnn) April 20, 2021

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has the 2021 Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight, citing the rising threat of nuclear war:

“Accelerating nuclear programs in multiple countries moved the world into less stable and manageable territory last year. Development of hypersonic glide vehicles, ballistic missile defenses, and weapons-delivery systems that can flexibly use conventional or nuclear warheads may raise the probability of miscalculation in times of tension. Events like the deadly assault earlier this month on the US Capitol renewed legitimate concerns about national leaders who have sole control of the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear nations, however, have ignored or undermined practical and available diplomatic and security tools for managing nuclear risks. By our estimation, the potential for the world to stumble into nuclear war—an ever-present danger over the last 75 years—increased in 2020. An extremely dangerous global failure to address existential threats—what we called ‘the new abnormal’ in 2019—tightened its grip in the nuclear realm in the past year, increasing the likelihood of catastrophe.”

In a recent interview with Phoenix Media Co-op‘s Slava Zilber, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft nuclear policy specialist Joe Cirincione described a ramp-up in weapons technology among all nuclear-armed nations in the world, the future of which he described as “bleak”:

“We right now have a global nuclear arms race. Each of the nine nuclear-armed nations are building new weapons. Some are replacing weapons that are getting old. Others are expanding their arsenals. But all of these new weapons represent new capabilities for these countries. So you’re seeing a qualitative and a quantitative arms race that is completely unchecked.

 “If you look at the data that’s collected by the Federation of American Scientists, for example, you see that – since the 1980s at the height of the Cold War – we have slashed the global nuclear arsenals. We went from a world in 1986 where there were almost 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world down to where we are now where there’s just about 13,500 nuclear weapons. Tremendous progress. 85% reduction in the stockpile…

 “But it’s flattened out. There really haven’t been significant reductions for years. The 2010 New START agreement was the last successful arms control agreement. That was 11 years ago. There’s been no reduction agreement since then. There’ve been no talks about new reductions agreements. Now I think the future of arms control is bleak. It’s bleak. And I see no interest really in a new round of arms control either from the United States or from Russia. So I’m pessimistic about our prospects.”

As I all too frequently find myself having to remind people, the primary risk here is not that anyone will choose to have a nuclear war, it’s that a nuke will be deployed amid heightening tensions as a result of miscommunication, miscalculation, misfire, or malfunction, as nearly happened many times during the last cold war, thereby setting off everyone’s nukes as per Mutually Assured Destruction.

The more tense things get, the likelier such an event becomes. This new cold war is happening along two fronts, with a bunch of proxy conflicts complicating things even further. There are so very many small moving parts, and it’s impossible to remain in control of all of them.

People like to think every nuclear-armed country has one “The Button” with which they can consciously choose to start a nuclear war after careful deliberation, but it doesn’t work that way. There are thousands of people in the world controlling different parts of different nuclear arsenals who could independently initiate a nuclear war. Thousands of “The Buttons”. It only takes one. The arrogance of believing anyone can control such a conflict safely, for years, is astounding.

A 2014 report published in the journal Earth’s Future found that it would only take the detonation of 100 nuclear warheads to throw 5 teragrams of black soot into the earth’s stratosphere for decades, blocking out the sun and making the photosynthesis of plants impossible. This could easily starve every terrestrial organism to death that didn’t die of radiation or climate chaos first. China has hundreds of nuclear weapons; Russia and the United States have thousands.

This should be the main thing everyone talks about. There is literally no more urgent matter on earth than the looming possibility that everyone might die in a nuclear war.

But people don’t see it.

On a recent Tucker Carlson Tonight appearance, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard did a solid job describing the horrors of nuclear war and the very real possibility that it could be inflicted upon us due to America’s insane brinkmanship with Russia. She spoke earnestly about how “such a war would come at a cost beyond anything we can really imagine,” painting an entirely accurate picture of “hundreds of millions of people dying and suffering, seeing their flesh being burned from their bones.”

Gabbard is correct, and was right to give such a confrontational account of what we are looking at right now. But if you read the replies to Gabbard’s tweet in which she shared a clip from the interview, you’ll see a deluge of commenters accusing her of “hyperbole”, saying she’s being soft on Putin, and admonishing her for appearing on Tucker Carlson. It’s like they can’t even hear what she’s saying, how real it is, how significant it is.

People’s failure to wrap their minds around this issue is a testament to the power of normalcy bias, a cognitive glitch which causes us to assume that because something bad hasn’t happened in the past, it won’t happen in the future. We survived the last cold war by the skin of our teeth, entirely by sheer, dumb luck; the only reason people are around to bleat “hyperbole” is because we got lucky. There’s no reason to believe we’ll get lucky in this new cold war environment; only normalcy bias says we will. Believing we’ll survive this cold war just because we survived the last one is as sane as believing Russian roulette is safe because the guy passing you the gun didn’t die.

It’s also a testament to the power of plain old psychological compartmentalization. People can’t handle the idea of everything ending, of everyone they know and love dying, of watching their loved ones die in flames or from radiation poisoning right in front of them, all because someone made a mistake at the wrong time after a bunch of imperialists decided that US planetary domination was worth rolling the dice on the life of every terrestrial organism for.

But mostly it’s a testament to the ubiquitous malpractice of the western media. It’s inconvenient to the agendas of the imperial war machine to have people protesting these insane cold war games of nuclear brinkmanship, so their media stenographers barely touch on this issue. If mainstream journalism actually existed, this flirtation with nuclear war would be front and center in everyone’s awareness and people would be flooding the streets in protest against their lives being toyed with as casino chips in an insane all-or-nothing gamble.

This is so much bigger than any of the petty little things we spend our mental energy on from day to day. It’s bigger than whatever your number one pet issue is. It’s bigger than your disdain for Moscow or Beijing. It’s bigger than my disdain for the US empire. It’s bigger than our political opinions. It’s bigger than whatever argument we might be having on the internet. It’s bigger than whether or not we’ve got a problem with Tulsi Gabbard appearing on Tucker Carlson.

Because once the nukes start flying, none of that will matter. None of it. All that will matter is the fact that this is all ending. If you open the door and see a mushroom cloud growing on the horizon, all of your mental priorities will rearrange themselves real quick.

We should not be in this situation. There is no good reason governments should be playing these games with these weapons. There is no good reason we can’t just get along with each other and collaborate toward a healthy world together. Only the psychopathic agendas of power-hungry imperialists perpetuate this insane balancing act, and it benefits none of us ordinary people in any way.

The rising threat of nuclear war is the most urgent matter in the world, and it’s absolute madness that we’re not talking about it all the time.

Let’s do what we can to change that.