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https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/04/20/the-empire-of-lies-2/

Paul Craig Roberts’s Quest for Truth and Justice

Paul Craig Roberts knows government from the inside. He is a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. His experience and his studies of economics and history have made him deeply suspicious of government propaganda, and in The Empire of Lies, he shows how forces behind the scenes plot to destroy us through manipulation.

In “Why Disinformation Works,” he explains his guiding principle: “Have you ever wondered how the government’s misinformation gains traction?

“What I have noticed is that whenever a stunning episode occurs, such as 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, most everyone whether on the right or left goes along with the government’s explanation, because they can hook their agenda to the government’s account. 

“The leftwing likes the official stories of Muslims creating terrorist mayhem in America, because it proves their blowback theory and satisfies them that the dispossessed and oppressed can fight back against imperialism.

“The patriotic rightwing likes the official story, because it proves America is attacked for its goodness or because terrorists were allowed in by immigration authorities and nurtured by welfare, or because the government, which can’t do anything right, ignored plentiful warnings.

“Whatever the government says, no matter how problematical, the official story gets its traction from its compatibility with existing predispositions and agendas.

“In such a country, truth has no relevance. Only agendas are important.

“We have reached the point where evidence is no longer required. The government’s statements suffice. Only conspiracy kooks produce real evidence.”

Roberts fears that government control of opinion will doom us. “Will Truth Be Criminalized?” he asks. “The Establishment’s determination to close down narrative-challenger Alex Jones has put Sandy Hook back in the news.  As First Amendment protection is fading, I checked to see what I had written about Sandy Hook.  I was relieved to see that I had only reported on the skepticism and asked questions.

“My search of the IPE archives brought up my articles on other controversial shootings–Las Vegas and Orlando–and the Oklahoma City Bombing.  The common thread in all of these incidents is that the narrative is established the minute the news is reported, and officials and media never vary from the narrative.  As soon as it happens, the government and the media already know what happened.  No investigation ever takes place.  It was the same for President Kennedy’s assassination, his brother’s assassination, 9/11, the Gulf of Tonkin, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, etc.

“Legitimate questions about the narratives are ignored by officials and media who seem to be involved in a conspiracy to bury the truth.  Skeptics, no matter how prominent or fact-based are demonized as ‘conspiracy theorists’ unworthy of attention.

“Clearly, America no longer has a media watchdog.  America has a propaganda ministry for official narratives.

“What this tells us should shock every American, every US puppet government, and Washington’s chosen enemies–Russia, China, and Iran–respect  for truth is hard to find in the American media and the American government.

“In the not distant future, it will become actionable to doubt the presstitues and the government on the grounds that doubt implies disbelief and disbelief is a crime or proves that you are a foreign agent.  Slander and libel will evolve to apply to media and government as institutions.  As we are so gullible, so trusting, we are going to be reduced to silence or praise.  Silence will bring official suspicion.  Praise of the false narratives will bring career success and rewards.  This is the stark situation that we face.

“It is unclear that anything can be done to rectify this situation.  Older Americans generally are comfortable with the idea that government and media have integrity.  This is their picture of the bygone world that they grew up in.  Younger people have been indoctrinated in schools that government and media protect blacks, homosexuals, and transgendered from racist, homophobic and transphobic white people who use normality as an illegitimate standard of approval. Sodom and Gomorrah are approved, but not the white family unit.

“Can we believe that there is a future for freedom in America when Democrats, media, CIA, FBI, and NSA can create a narrative of President Donald Trump as a Russian agent?

“Can we believe that there is a future for freedom in America when the same collection of schemers can create a show trial of the President of the United States planning a coup by a couple of hundred unarmed supporters seizing the government of the United States by walking around in the Capitol and sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s chair?

“Can we believe that Americans sufficiently stupid to believe such implausible narratives have any possibility of holding on to their freedom?”

The Ukraine war is one of the main areas in which we have been manipulated. Zelensky isn’t a “freedom fighter” resisting Russian aggression. In “Western Looting of Ukraine Has Begun,” Roberts says: “It is now apparent that the Maiden protests in Kiev were in actuality a Washington organized coup against the elected democratic government. The purpose of the coup is to put NATO military bases on Ukraine’s border with Russia and to impose an IMF austerity program that serves as cover for Western financial interests to loot the country. The sincere idealistic protesters who took to the streets without being paid were the gullible dupes of the plot to destroy their country.”

“Politically Ukraine is an untenable aggregation of Ukrainian and Russian territory, because traditional Russian territories were stuck into the borders of the Ukraine Soviet Republic by Lenin and Khrushchev. The Crimea, stuck into Ukraine by Khrushchev, has already departed and rejoined Russia. Unless some autonomy is granted to them, Russian areas in eastern and southern Ukraine might also depart and return to Russia. If the animosity displayed toward the Russian speaking population by the stooge government in Kiev continues, more defections to Russia are likely.”

In contrast to the not-so-recent past when the historians correctly argued the Civil War was a conflict between the North and South over tariffs, today we are propagandized to accept that the war was a conflict between the “good” North and the “evil” South over slavery. This narrative won’t stand up. The Civil War was not fought to end slavery. “Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th President, Congress, consisting only of the Northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address, saying ‘I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.’”

Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war in order to end slavery when on the very eve of war the US Congress and incoming president were in the process of making it unconstitutional to abolish slavery.

Here we have absolute total proof that the North wanted the South kept in the Union far more than the North wanted to abolish slavery.

If the South’s real concern was maintaining slavery, the South would not have turned down the constitutional protection of slavery offered them on a silver platter by Congress and the President. Clearly, for the South also the issue was not slavery.

The real issue between North and South could not be reconciled on the basis of accommodating slavery. The real issue was economic as DiLorenzo, Charles Beard and other historians have documented. The North offered to preserve slavery irrevocably, but the North did not offer to give up the high tariffs and economic policies that the South saw as inimical to its interests.

Blaming the war on slavery was the way the northern court historians used morality to cover up Lincoln’s naked aggression and the war crimes of his generals. Demonizing the enemy with moral language works for the victor. And it is still ongoing. We see in the destruction of statues the determination to shove remaining symbols of the Confederacy down the Memory Hole.

“Today the ignorant morons, thoroughly brainwashed by Identity Politics, are demanding removal of memorials to Robert E. Lee, an alleged racist toward whom they express violent hatred. This presents a massive paradox. Robert E. Lee was the first person offered command of the Union armies. How can it be that a ‘Southern racist’ was offered command of the Union Army if the Union was going to war to free black slaves?”

Covid-vaccines, Roberts concludes, are a plot to reduce the human population. They are an instrument of genocide. “Never before have there been massive excess deaths following vaccination.”

Never before have there been children, young adults, athletes in their prime, entertainers, dropping dead “cause unknown” following vaccination.

“Of course, the cause is known.  The leading doctors and medical scientists of our time–which excludes health agency bureaucrats, such as Fauci, who serve as marketing agents for Big Pharma and corrupt, politicized state medical boards and HMOs–have explained why and how the mRNA ‘vaccines,’ which are not vaccines, kill, destroy the immune system, and cause health injuries.  What is not known is why some die immediately after receiving the deadly substance, others a month later, and others remain, so far, alive.  Some researchers think the content of the ‘vaccines’ differed by lot, and some think some of the jabs were placebos for the purpose of producing an uninjured cadre to tout the safety of the jabs.

“Professor Michel Chossudovsky has collected here a number of videos documenting the widespread sufferings and deaths of the vaccinated.  It is not the unvaccinated who are “mysteriously” dropping dead all over the world.  It is the vaccinated.

“Yet the coverup continues.  The western media–a collection of whores–are at work covering up for themselves as well as for Fauci, Biden, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the FDA, NIH, CDC, and the utterly corrupt and irresponsible medical profession.  Big Pharma and the FDA continue to push jabbing babies with the killer vaccine, and there are still parents so utterly stupid and insouciant that they participate in the murder of their own children.

“With people all over the world so stupid and so blindly trusting of authority, we can see why the Satanic Bill Gates and Satanic Klaus Schwab are confident that they can succeed in reducing the world population and effecting their Great Reset.

“What do I mean when I say Gates and Schwab are Satanic? Think about it this way.  From time to time when discussing the subject, someone will say that people can be so awful they can understand why some would want to genocide them.  I ask them if they would be willing to push the genocide button, and they say ‘no.’  They understand that they have no right to cause people’s deaths in behalf of  their opinion or a climate or ideological agenda.  The difference between them and Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab is that Gates and Schwab are willing and eager to push the genocide button.   What is so horrifying is that this willingness has acquired a high moral position. Exterminating people has become the way to save the planet.

“The perpetrators of this mass murder are confident that their crime is too huge to be recognized as such.  Naive populations simply won’t believe that ‘their’ governments would do this to them.  No one wants to admit that they executed their own family members and their own children by blindly trusting ‘authorities’ who had announced their genocide agenda in advance.

“In the United States only a tiny percentage of the people have any idea what is happening. The time and energy of the population is used up in making ends meet and in entertaining themselves.  They fall for one transparent crime after another.  Whatever government announces they accept–President John Kennedy’s assassination, Senator Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the Gulf of Tonkin, 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Covid pandemic, ‘safe and effective’ Covid vaccine.  They never learn.

“Now they face genocide, and they still haven’t learned.

“The perpetrators of mass genocide are still in control.

“If it is not genocide, tell me what it is when distinguished medical scientists warm in advance about the mRNA ‘vaccine’ and are censored and punished, when the inventor of the PCR “Covid test” states that the test does not indicate the presence of the virus and is ignored, when the evidence of the harmful effects of the ‘vaccine’ are kept secret by Pfizer and the FDA, when medical doctors are prevented from treating Covid with known cures Ivermectin and HCQ,  when pharmacies refuse to fill doctors’ prescriptions for the cures, when illegal and unconstitutional mandates are used to force citizens under threat of loss of job to submit to being injected,  when no official attention is paid to the massive increase in excess deaths among the vaccinated, when the media carries on a deceptive campaign of lies and propaganda?

“Americans–indeed the world–are faced with a monstrous criminal enterprise.  Do they have the strength and intelligence to recognize it?  Are they going to do anything about it?”

Paul Craig Roberts is one of the best and most-informed political commentators today. I urge everybody to read his indispensable book, The Empire of Lies.

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https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/bobby-steps-up/

Bobby Steps Up

“It is neither our position nor our circumstances that define us, according to the Stoics, but our response to those circumstances; when destiny crushes us, small heroic gestures of courage and service can bring us peace and fulfillment. In applying our shoulder to the stone, we give order to a chaotic universe.” — RFK, Jr.

Of course, Yahoo News, and all the rest of the in-the-tank news media greeted Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presidential announcement by branding him a “noted-anti-vaxxer,” as if that’s a bad thing. Yes, noted, thank you very much. Reuters elaborated: “Kennedy has been banned from YouTube and Instagram for spreading misinformation about vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic.” By now, whenever you see the agit-prop platitude spreading misinformation, does your brain not instantly translate that into telling the truth? And by now, does banishment from social media not tell you that certain guilty parties recognize a truth-teller when they see one?

     Bobby Kennedy stepped up on Wednesday and gave a long and comprehensive speech so rich with historic resonance, intelligence, and flat-out bravery — in the face of, let’s face it, a Satanic opposition — that he made every other figure aspiring to high office within memory look like quality-control rejects from evolution’s Homo sapiens assembly line. For 90-minutes in a Boston ballroom, RFK, Jr. told America the truth: that its entire matrix of leadership has laid one trip after another on our country going all the way back to the murders of his father and uncle, and he did it plainly, gently, humorously at times, but with an unmistakable gravitas and decorum that must scare the beJeezus out of the low life-forms currently running things.

     Most of all, Bobby demonstrated that there is a way out of the bad-faith wilderness America has been lost in for years. He spoke to the audience in the ballroom, and to the country, in an adult conversational tone, without notes, as if he expected that voters would actually understand the problems we face: the wicked partnerships of corporations and governments to swindle and gaslight the public; the reckless military adventurism-for-profit campaign that has bankrupted the USA, now culminating in the Ukraine fiasco; the botched response to the Covid-19 episode and the chicanery that induced it; the insults to our ecosystem that are destroying the other organisms who live with us on this planet; and the financial chicanery that is driving America into inflation and bankruptcy. He reminded the nation of the good-faith efforts sixty years ago to end racial injustice — which has lately turned into a series of dispiriting hustles to promote antagonism and separation.

     Bobby’s entry onto the national stage is already a shock to the political system, which is why the captive news media is trying so hard to squash the news about it. They know that he brings something to this game that can trip-up the players currently on-the-field and take the 2024 contest in a wholly different direction than the owners of the game expected. Bobby’s confident adult demeanor at the podium alone is a reassuring and sharp contrast to the spookish mental vacancy of “Joe Biden” and the egotistic childishness of Mr. Trump. Voters will not fail to notice the difference, possibly even Woke Democrats lost in vaccine raptures and other cultish transports of self-righteousness.

     I think RFK, Jr. sees very clearly the historical moment he represents. He’s keenly aware of the shade thrown over this land by the murders of his father and President Kennedy, and he has said flat-out in so many words that our own CIA was behind the dastardly acts. He’s been in a position to know the animus between JFK and the founding director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, and the reckless blunders of the agency and its partners in the Pentagon who buffaloed President Kennedy into the Bay of Pigs farce and then tried to drag him deeper into the Vietnam quagmire. JFK resisted that, threatened to shred the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the four winds… and Allen Dulles whacked him. He got away with it the same way that today’s Intel “community” got away with RussiaGate and all their subsequent crimes. In short, Bobby Kennedy knows what it looks like when a government is at war against its own people.

     Everybody I know is justifiably worried that the Intel spooks might have no qualms about whacking Bobby Jr. He is at least as dangerous to the establishment today as his father and uncle were back in their day. Thus, his bravery in stepping up now, knowing what he knows. At the least, he will drag a set of issues into the political arena that his rivals would prefer to keep out in the cold and dark. He’ll get some assistance from events themselves, which are spooling out fast now.

     The Neocon’s Ukraine project has gone south. The result, which should be hugely embarrassing to our State and Defense departments, will be the paradox of Russia restoring order to a region that we wrecked on-purpose at great cost to the denizens of Ukraine — and, as Bobby pointed out, at great cost to the shattered American middle-class. America will also have to face all the criminal activities around the Covid-19 story: the machinations of Dr. Fauci and company in developing the virus and then the vaccines that proved to be so harmful and deadly; the stupid, disastrous lockdowns; and the government-directed censorship campaign against any and all voices in opposition to medical tyranny.

     Most of all, the Democratic Party faces a severe reformation. It’s about to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the diabolical Woke hall-of-mirrors it gamboled into under the Clintons and Barack Obama. How those characters deal with the uncomfortable reality of RFK, Jr. will be something to behold. Finally, there is the news, straight from The New York Times, that “Joe Biden” intends to announce his reelection plans within days. The idea is preposterous, of course, the old grifter visibly oxidizing a little more each day in plain sight of the whole world.

     In fact, it’s just another one of their lies, another trip they’re laying on America. The establishment Dems are actually prepping Gavin Newsom to run, another haircut-in-search-of-a-brain, like John Kerry before him. Governor Newsom: the man who almost overnight proudly turned California into a third world shithole. That’s who Bobby Kennedy will be debating, one way or another, in the many months ahead. Whether American handle the truth remains to be seen.

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https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/18/here-come-the-militarized-robots-but-there-go-our-civil-liberties/

Here Come the Militarized Robots (But There Go Our Civil Liberties)

Domestic uses of robotic dogs are fundamentally dehumanizing and would further suggest that they contribute strongly to the militarization of culture and strengthening the power of the surveillance state.  

Many decades ago, when science fiction was still whimsical and fun rather than dark and dystopian, we saw robots appear in popular culture that were benign and friendly. Some may recall Robbie the Robot from the movie “Forbidden Planet” and, of course, there was R2D2 in “Star Wars”, with a demeanor as cute as any Fox Terrier. But now our movies seem to be much darker for reasons we can only speculate about. Cinematically, perhaps, the turning point was the movie “Terminator” which introduced the idea of the cyborg human that was able to project overwhelming power.

While the nation was busy coping with Covid, several dystopian trends seem to have sprung from a Pandora’s box. I confess that they escaped my notice and the more I continue to research high-tech weaponry as a journalist, the more concerned I find myself getting. Now, looking more deeply into these trends, it’s easy to wonder if we’re living in one of those dystopian sci-fi movies. One of these concerning trends is the advent of the robotic dog, an ugly and malevolent-looking device that looks not unlike a giant, malformed, metallic insect. This trend should concern peace advocates for many reasons but, at the very least, because the development of these machines has its roots in the defense sector and started right here in Massachusetts with a company called Boston Dynamics.

Founded as an MIT spin-off, Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google in 2013, underscoring Google’s deep ties to the defense industry. The Waltham-based company (now with a different owner) went on to develop a sophisticated array of highly mobile robots, including “Spot”, a product released in 2019. The company developed Spot and other products with funding from the Naval Air Warfare Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Early Uses and Abuses

One of the first uses for robotic dogs was for Covid-related crowd control, often coupled with the use of drones. Robot dogs from Boston Dynamics were used by the Singapore government to patrol public parks to ensure Covid compliance. Since that time, here in the US, there have been numerous ill-advised public sector experiments — fortunately with significant levels of pushback from the local citizens involved. The cities that appear to have most enthusiastically adopted robotic dogs are Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Robotic dogs are part of a new high-tech technology explosion that’s radically altering weapons systems. However, this trend has significant crossover implications when domestic use is involved. It’s important for peace activists to appreciate the implications of this trend in terms of issues such as social justice, mass surveillance, the loss of civil liberties, and the still increasing militarization of police forces happening nationally. Militarism and the militarization of culture are both amped up through such efforts.

The use of robotic dogs should not be seen as an isolated development but also needs to be contextualized in terms of the surveillance state. In February 2023, a groundbreaking article appeared in the Boston Globe describing how pervasive military-style surveillance and control systems have become in the Boston area. The article methodically detailed how law enforcement agencies here operate a huge apparatus of drones, license plate readers, and devices called cell-site simulators.

Robots and More Robots

With this cheery background in place, here’s a quick summary of some history and developments:

• In November 2022, San Francisco approved the use of lethal force for their police robots. There was a huge city-wide backlash and the following month they quickly reversed the decision. It’s now under consideration again.
• In 2021, as reported by WBUR, Honolulu police used a robotic dog purchased with federal Covid relief money to take the temperatures of people at a homeless camp. The ACLU called for an end to this practice describing it as “dehumanizing”.
• Robotic dogs have been used in Boston as health care “intake workers”. The Globe reported that, in 2020, a Boston Dynamics dog was purchased by Brigham and Women’s Hospital to process Covid patients.
• The Department of Homeland Security has plans in place to deploy robotic dogs at US borders.

In December 2022, the ACLU weighed in on this topic stating: “Our overarching position is that the police should be prohibited from using robots to enact violence. Robots should not be used to kill, subdue, push, constrain, or otherwise control or harm people.” The ACLU further tied this trend to the nationally publicized problem of excessive violence in policing, leading in many cases to the horrific and unnecessary deaths of black citizens. Because of this vigorous and principled public pushback, Boston Dynamics was forced to state that it would not arm its robots or support customers that chose to do so. However, another manufacturer, Ghost Robotics, has already built robots equipped with rifles which are being marketed to the military.

Whether armed or not, there are other aspects of the use of these devices related to the inappropriate control of social behavior through fear or intimidation. I agree with the ACLU that domestic uses of robotic dogs are fundamentally dehumanizing and would further suggest that they contribute strongly to the militarization of culture and strengthening the power of the surveillance state. I would urge MAPA members and MAPA working groups to oppose their use. Even apart from considerations about whether these devices are armed or not, we face a fundamental choice about the quality of life and the kind of world that we want to build for ourselves and future generations. For more information or to discuss possible MAPA initiatives in this area or those related to other high-tech weaponry, please contact MAPA at info@masspeaceaction.org.