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https://www.globalresearch.ca/shock-awe-state-mind-millions-deaths-not-made-americans-safer/5742821

“Shock and Awe” Is a State of Mind: Millions of Deaths Have Not Made Americans Safer

That the United States likes to use expressions like “shock and awe” or “maximum pressure” would rather suggest that there is a psychopath working in the White House basement whose full-time job is to come up with pithy one-liners to somehow euphemize government bad behavior. The expressions hardly mean anything in and of themselves apart from “tough talk” but they do serve as an alternative to having to admit in plain language to the killing of millions of people since the Global War on Terror began in 2001. “Millions?” one might skeptically ask. Yes, millions if one includes all those killed directly or indirectly as a result of the wars. Direct victims of the violence number at least 157,000 in Afghanistan, 182,000 in Iraq, 400,000 in Syria and 25,000 in Libya. And if you want to go back a few years three million Vietnamese died in 1964-1975 while 2.5 million civilians were killed in Korea. And even in the “Good War” World War 2 there were unnecessary incidents to include the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed 105,000, the firebombing of Tokyo adding another 97,000, and the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden that together killed 45,000.

An estimated ten million more civilians have been displaced from their homes since 2001, creating refugee crises in both Europe and the Americas, while trillions of dollars have also been wasted or “misplaced” by the geniuses at the Pentagon and in Congress. And some might reasonably argue that the violence taking place all around the world has also been internalized in the U.S., with mass murders surfacing in the news media every few days. Some argue that the United States has nearly always been at war since its founding, which would be true, but it is also correct to note that the nature of America’s lethal engagement with the rest of the world has changed in the past twenty years. Old wars were fought to expand territory and trade or to acquire colonies for the same purpose, meaning they were intended to increase one’s power and wealth. Since 9/11, however, the wars are being fought seemingly without any real identifiable objective while also inflicting significant losses in relative wealth and power on the United States.

The fundamental problem is that the United States is being led by a political and financial elite that has completely bought into a radical view that Americans have a “manifest destiny” to create an international order that is both plausibly democratic and rules-based that would as the theory goes benefit everyone. This is, of course, nonsense as the United States itself is becoming increasingly totalitarian while it also nurtures in its bosom anti-democratic states like Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The elite that might be blamed for many of the missteps of the past twenty years includes both liberals and conservatives, all of whom for one reason or another embrace America’s mission. There is, for example, little to differentiate the world views of Donald Trump appointees Mike Pompeo and John Bolton from those of the current foreign policy incumbent Tony Blinken, as all three men believe that the use of force is the completely acceptable ultimate response to recalcitrant nations and leaders.

Blinken shares the very same trait visible in Pompeo and Bolton, that they actually radiate a sense of moral superiority while implementing policies that result in the pointless deaths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and even millions of innocents. They occupy the bully pulpit as they sanctimoniously call for action regarding their “noble cause” of making the rest of the world both look like America while also deferring to Washington for direction and guidance.

Tony Blinken is not surprisingly a protégé of Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who famously cackled that “it was worth it” when asked about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. enforced sanctions on food and medicine. Somehow it seems that whenever one turns over a rock in the Democratic Party up pops someone connected with the Clintons. Blinken recently produced and tweeted out a bizarre video that attempts to explain the real “humanity” behind the current Syrian policy, which he helped to define and initiate working closely with Joe Biden while serving under President Barack Obama. It is a sanctions-plus military intervention construct that has, inevitably, resulted in the deaths and the displacements into Europe and the Middle East. The policy was from the beginning clearly intended to bring about “regime change” in Damascus even though the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad in no way threatened the United States.

Blinken tweeted: “When I think of the suffering of the Syrian people, including Syrian children, I think of my own two children. How could we not take action to help them? Our common humanity demands it. Shame on us if we don’t. We have to find a way to do something to take action to help people.” Blinken fails to mention that the blood of the Syrian children is largely on his hands, particularly as the U.S. and Israel effectively turned loose and otherwise supported the terrorist and separatist groups that killed so many Syrian civilians while also destroying entire towns, religious centers and many irreplaceable relics of the country’s history.

So Blinken is really a good guy, thinking about his own kids while mourning the deaths of so many Syrian boys and girls? No. If he really wanted to help those children, he would have announced that U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Syria immediately. He would have lifted sanctions on the country so that it can begin serious reconstruction, together with restoring access to food and needed medicines. He did nothing of the sort and clearly is fully on board with the agenda set over the past ten years by the neocons and their Israeli masters plus the “democracy promotion” at all costs wing in his own party.

And the real problem is that Syria is not alone. Blinken and his cohorts are also encouraging Ukraine’s irredentism which is close to bringing on a war with Russia while also poking China over Taiwan. And then there is also Venezuela which appears to need a regime change and the perennial problem with Iran. And Afghanistan? Blinken should realize that all the deaths of the children that so concern him could be avoided if he and those pulling his strings would adopt a more modest agenda and stay at home. We have enough problems in the United States, but then again, the hubris which has created a pointless foreign policy would likely be channeled to drive still more of the destructive impulses that are turning the country into a collective of hostile enclaves.

....

https://stephenlendman.org/2021/04/us-censorship-rears-its-ugly-head-again/

US Censorship Rears its Ugly Head — Again

Supported by establishment media, US dark forces keep pushing the envelope for silencing what conflicts with the fabricated official narrative.

Last February, press agent for powerful interests NYT called for establishing a US Ministry of Truth headed by a “reality czar.”

Perhaps it had itself in mind for the job. It’s been featuring fake news mass deception since the 19th century.

All the news it claims fit to print isn’t fit to read in its daily propaganda editions — truth and full disclosure on major issues consistently suppressed.

The same goes for all establishment media, serving as collective press agents for wealth, power and privilege.

War on dissent in the US rages. Increasingly equating it to domestic terrorism is part of a diabolical plot to silence what’s most important for everyone to know.

Free and open societies in the US and West are on the chopping block for elimination.

Totalitarian rule enforced by police state harshness is the new abnormal, things heading toward full-blown tyranny if the current trend continues.

All rights are threatened by eroding speech, media and academic freedoms.

The Center for Constitutional Rights  earlier said: 

“The growing threat to the right to dissent has been demonstrated in the US government’s efforts to silence speech, and criminalize and target peaceful movements,” adding: 

“These efforts are becoming more aggressive, emboldened further by the Supreme Court’s increasingly conservative decisions, for instance regarding material support in the form of humanitarian aid to so-called terrorist organizations.”

Activism and dissent are increasingly threatened in the US and West – for freely expressing views dark forces want suppressed. 

Because of what I and others like me do, being shut down or falsely accused of domestic terrorism and abused like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and other truth-telling whistleblowers looms as a threat in no longer free and open Western societies.

Southfront.org calls itself “a public analytical umbrella organization created and maintained by a team of experts and volunteers…” 

It focuses on truth and full disclosure “on issues of international relations, armed conflicts and crises.”

It “provides military operations analysis, military posture of major world powers, and other important data influencing the growth of tensions between countries and nations.”

It “dig(s) out (hard) truth(s) dark forces and their press agent media suppress.

According to State Department fake news, Southfront is a “pillar” of Russian anti-US disinformation (sic).

On Thursday, the Biden regime’s Treasury Department reinvented Southfront, saying:

It’s an online disinformation site (sic) registered in Russia that receives taskings from the FSB (sic).” 

“It attempts to appeal to military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists, all while going to great lengths to hide its connections to Russian intelligence (sic).” 

“In the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election, SouthFront sought to promote perceptions of voter fraud by publishing content alleging that such activity took place during the 2020 US presidential election cycle (sic).”

Left unexplained by Treasury was that brazen fraud handed the nation’s highest office to loser Biden over winner Trump.

Southfront is an independent truth-telling group unconnected to any governments.

Claiming otherwise is an intimidating tactic aimed at demonizing and silencing vital information and analysis that deviates from official narrative fake news.

No matter what US and allied dark forces do to try silencing truth and full disclosure, they’ll always be independent groups and individuals involved in explaining what everyone has a right to know.

Operating pro bono, I’m proud to be an independent writer involved in truth-telling on cutting edge domestic and geopolitical issues.

Fighting the good fight for peace, equity and justice, according to the rule of law, is what my activism is all about.

I stand forthrightly with Southfront and others reporting accurately about what everyone has a right to know.

I deplore dark forces in the US, West, and elsewhere — responsible for the highest of high crimes in pursuit of their diabolical interests.

As long as my health and energy hold out, I’ll continue at what I know is the right thing to do.

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-end-of-empire/5611808?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles

The End of Empire

The American empire is coming to an end. The U.S. economy is being drained by wars in the Middle East and vast military expansion around the globe. It is burdened by growing deficits, along with the devastating effects of deindustrialization and global trade agreements. Our democracy has been captured and destroyed by corporations that steadily demand more tax cuts, more deregulation and impunity from prosecution for massive acts of financial fraud, all the while looting trillions from the U.S. treasury in the form of bailouts. The nation has lost the power and respect needed to induce allies in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa to do its bidding. Add to this the mounting destruction caused by climate change and you have a recipe for an emerging dystopia. Overseeing this descent at the highest levels of the federal and state governments is a motley collection of imbeciles, con artists, thieves, opportunists and warmongering generals. And to be clear, I am speaking about Democrats, too.

The empire will limp along, steadily losing influence until the dollar is dropped as the world’s reserve currency, plunging the United States into a crippling depression and instantly forcing a massive contraction of its military machine.

Short of a sudden and widespread popular revolt, which does not seem likely, the death spiral appears unstoppable, meaning the United States as we know it will no longer exist within a decade or, at most, two. The global vacuum we leave behind will be filled by China, already establishing itself as an economic and military juggernaut, or perhaps there will be a multipolar world carved up among Russia, China, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and a few other states. Or maybe the void will be filled, as the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power,” by “a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral military forces like NATO, and an international financial leadership self-selected at Davos and Bilderberg” that will “forge a supranational nexus to supersede any nation or empire.”

Under every measurement, from financial growth and infrastructure investment to advanced technology, including supercomputers, space weaponry and cyberwarfare, we are being rapidly overtaken by the Chinese.

“In April 2015 the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested that the American economy would grow by nearly 50 percent over the next 15 years, while China’s would triple and come close to surpassing America’s in 2030,” McCoy noted.

China became the world’s second largest economy in 2010, the same year it became the world’s leading manufacturing nation, pushing aside a United States that had dominated the world’s manufacturing for a century. The Department of Defense issued a sober report titled “At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World.” It found that the U.S. military “no longer enjoys an unassailable position versus state competitors,” and “it no longer can … automatically generate consistent and sustained local military superiority at range.” McCoy predicts the collapse will come by 2030.

Empires in decay embrace an almost willful suicide. Blinded by their hubris and unable to face the reality of their diminishing power, they retreat into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with unilateral threats and the blunt instrument of war.

This collective self-delusion saw the United States make the greatest strategic blunder in its history, one that sounded the death knell of the empire—the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The architects of the war in the George W. Bush White House, and the array of useful idiots in the press and academia who were cheerleaders for it, knew very little about the countries being invaded, were stunningly naive about the effects of industrial warfare and were blindsided by the ferocious blowback. They stated, and probably believed, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, although they had no valid evidence to support this claim. They insisted that democracy would be implanted in Baghdad and spread across the Middle East. They assured the public that U.S. troops would be greeted by grateful Iraqis and Afghans as liberators. They promised that oil revenues would cover the cost of reconstruction. They insisted that the bold and quick military strike—“shock and awe”—would restore American hegemony in the region and dominance in the world. It did the opposite. As Zbigniew Brzezinski noted, this “unilateral war of choice against Iraq precipitated a widespread delegitimation of U.S. foreign policy.”

Historians of empire call these military fiascos, a feature of all late empires, examples of “micro-militarism.” The Athenians engaged in micro-militarism when during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) they invaded Sicily, suffering the loss of 200 ships and thousands of soldiers and triggering revolts throughout the empire. Britain did so in 1956 when it attacked Egypt in a dispute over the nationalization of the Suez Canal and then quickly had to withdraw in humiliation, empowering a string of Arab nationalist leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and dooming British rule over the nation’s few remaining colonies. Neither of these empires recovered.

“While rising empires are often judicious, even rational in their application of armed force for conquest and control of overseas dominions, fading empires are inclined to ill-considered displays of power, dreaming of bold military masterstrokes that would somehow recoup lost prestige and power,” McCoy writes. “Often irrational even from an imperial point of view, these micromilitary operations can yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the process already under way.”

Empires need more than force to dominate other nations. They need a mystique. This mystique—a mask for imperial plunder, repression and exploitation—seduces some native elites, who become willing to do the bidding of the imperial power or at least remain passive. And it provides a patina of civility and even nobility to justify to those at home the costs in blood and money needed to maintain empire. The parliamentary system of government that Britain replicated in appearance in the colonies, and the introduction of British sports such as polo, cricket and horse racing, along with elaborately uniformed viceroys and the pageantry of royalty, were buttressed by what the colonialists said was the invincibility of their navy and army. England was able to hold its empire together from 1815 to 1914 before being forced into a steady retreat. America’s high-blown rhetoric about democracy, liberty and equality, along with basketball, baseball and Hollywood, as well as our own deification of the military, entranced and cowed much of the globe in the wake of World War II. Behind the scenes, of course, the CIA used its bag of dirty tricks to orchestrate coups, fix elections and carry out assassinations, black propaganda campaigns, bribery, blackmail, intimidation and torture. But none of this works anymore.

The loss of the mystique is crippling. It makes it hard to find pliant surrogates to administer the empire, as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The photographs of physical abuse and sexual humiliation imposed on Arab prisoners at Abu Ghraib inflamed the Muslim world and fed al-Qaida and later Islamic State with new recruits. The assassination of Osama bin Laden and a host of other jihadist leaders, including the U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, openly mocked the concept of the rule of law. The hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees fleeing our debacles in the Middle East, along with the near-constant threat from militarized aerial drones, exposed us as state terrorists. We have exercised in the Middle East the U.S. military’s penchant for widespread atrocities, indiscriminate violence, lies and blundering miscalculations, actions that led to our defeat in Vietnam.

The brutality abroad is matched by a growing brutality at home. Militarized police gun down mostly unarmed, poor people of color and fill a system of penitentiaries and jails that hold a staggering 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although Americans represent only 5 percent of global population. Many of our cities are in ruins. Our public transportation system is a shambles. Our educational system is in steep decline and being privatized. Opioid addiction, suicide, mass shootings, depression and morbid obesity plague a population that has fallen into profound despair. The deep disillusionment and anger that led to Donald Trump’s election—a reaction to the corporate coup d’état and the poverty afflicting at least half of the country—have destroyed the myth of a functioning democracy. Presidential tweets and rhetoric celebrate hate, racism and bigotry and taunt the weak and the vulnerable. The president in an address before the United Nations threatened to obliterate another nation in an act of genocide. We are worldwide objects of ridicule and hatred. The foreboding for the future is expressed in the rash of dystopian films, motion pictures that no longer perpetuate American virtue and exceptionalism or the myth of human progress.

“The demise of the United States as the preeminent global power could come far more quickly than anyone imagines,” McCoy writes. “Despite the aura of omnipotence empires often project, most are surprisingly fragile, lacking the inherent strength of even a modest nation-state. Indeed, a glance at their history should remind us that the greatest of them are susceptible to collapse from diverse causes, with fiscal pressures usually a prime factor. For the better part of two centuries, the security and prosperity of the homeland has been the main objective for most stable states, making foreign or imperial adventures an expendable option, usually allocated no more than 5 percent of the domestic budget. Without the financing that arises almost organically inside a sovereign nation, empires are famously predatory in their relentless hunt for plunder or profit—witness the Atlantic slave trade, Belgium’s rubber lust in the Congo, British India’s opium commerce, the Third Reich’s rape of Europe, or the Soviet exploitation of Eastern Europe.”

When revenues shrink or collapse, McCoy points out, “empires become brittle.”

“So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly wrong, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, eleven years for the Ottomans, seventeen for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, just twenty-seven years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003 [when the U.S. invaded Iraq],” he writes.

Many of the estimated 69 empires that have existed throughout history lacked competent leadership in their decline, having ceded power to monstrosities such as the Roman emperors Caligula and Nero. In the United States, the reins of authority may be in the grasp of the first in a line of depraved demagogues.

“For the majority of Americans, the 2020s will likely be remembered as a demoralizing decade of rising prices, stagnant wages, and fading international competitiveness,” McCoy writes.

The loss of the dollar as the global reserve currency will see the U.S. unable to pay for its huge deficits by selling Treasury bonds, which will be drastically devalued at that point. There will be a massive rise in the cost of imports. Unemployment will explode. Domestic clashes over what McCoy calls “insubstantial issues” will fuel a dangerous hypernationalism that could morph into an American fascism.

A discredited elite, suspicious and even paranoid in an age of decline, will see enemies everywhere. The array of instruments created for global dominance—wholesale surveillance, the evisceration of civil liberties, sophisticated torture techniques, militarized police, the massive prison system, the thousands of militarized drones and satellites—will be employed in the homeland. The empire will collapse and the nation will consume itself within our lifetimes if we do not wrest power from those who rule the corporate state.

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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar21/tumor3-21.html

Do We Really Think a Band-Aid Will Heal a Tumor?

If we misdiagnose the disease, our treatment won't work. We're all familiar with medical misdiagnoses, which lead to procedures and prescriptions that can't possibly fix the patient's illness because the source has been missed or misinterpreted.

Medical diagnoses are often tricky, as many general symptoms can arise from a variety of sources.

Social and economic ills can also be tricky to diagnose, and the diagnosis is hindered by political polarization and sacrosanct orthodoxies which make it difficult to have a rational discussion in public about many difficult issues.

If we can't even discuss a problem, then that creates another problem, because problems that can't be discussed openly cannot be solved.

There's also a human tendency to choose the diagnosis with the easiest-at-hand solution. This allows us to quickly apply an approved solution and then declare the problem solved.

The current flood of financial stimulus is an example of this misdiagnosis and application of an easy solution which fails to address the underlying disorder.

The conventional diagnosis of the post-pandemic economy is that the only problem is people don't have enough money, and so giving them money to spend will cure the financial damage the pandemic inflicted. (Never mind that the economy was rolling over in 2019 long before the pandemic, which served as a catalyst in a sick, unstable status quo.)

Creating $1.9 trillion out of thin air and distributing it is painless: who doesn't like free money? But is a scarcity of cash the source of America's economic malaise?

The general view is that pumping free money into the economy will automatically increase employment, launch new businesses, increase profits and tax revenues, etc.

Yet as I discussed in my blog post on the velocity of money, Our Dead Money Economy, as the money supply expands in a parabolic fashion, the frequency that all this new money is changing hands (money velocity) is in a free-fall to historic lows.

Simply put, much of this money is either being saved ("hoarded" to economists who want us all to spend every dime of it), applied to debts outstanding (back rent, credit cards, etc.) or sent overseas for imported goods.

There is no guarantee that all this stimulus will generate the jobs, new enterprises, profits and tax revenues that are anticipated.

Distributing stimulus money and expecting this solution to fix America's economic malaise is akin to applying a Band-Aid over a tumor. It may well hide the problem but it cannot heal the disorder or save the patient.

My current work focuses on three dynamics that define any human civilization: the distribution of resources, capital and agency. Resources are straightforward--food, energy, shelter, etc.-- and capital is financial (money), tangible (tools, ownership of land and enterprises, etc.) and intangible (social and human capital). Capital productively invested produces income.

Agency is control of one's life and having a say in community/public decisions and having some control and power over one's circumstances.

When these three are distributed asymmetrically, where the majority of the resources, capital and power are distributed to an elite, the society and economy are imbalanced and prone to stagnation and eventual discord.

The statistics are unequivocal: income-wealth inequality in the U.S. continues reaching new heights. This is reflected in asymmetric access to healthcare and other resources, asymmetric ownership of income-producing capital and limited agency. ( Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018)

The bottom 90% of the U.S. economy has been decapitalized: debt has been substituted for capital. Capital only flows into the increasingly centralized top tier, which owns and profits from the rising tide of debt that's been keeping the bottom 90% afloat for the past 20 years.

As I've often observed here, globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top 0.1% and the top 5% technocrat class that serves the New Nobility's interests. Everyone else has been been reduced to a powerless peasantry of debt-serfs who rely on lotteries and playing the stock market casino or hoping their mortgaged house on the Left or Right coasts doubles in value, even as the entire value proposition for living in a congested urban sprawl vanishes.

America has no plan to reverse this destructive tide of Neofeudal Pillage. Our leadership's "plan" is benign neglect: just send a monthly stimulus of bread and circuses (the technocrat term is Universal Basic Income UBI) to all the disempowered, decapitalized households so they can stay out of trouble and not hinder the New Nobility's pillaging of America and the planet.

The bottom 90% of American households receive a mere 3% of capital-generated income. That 3% might as well be 1% or 0.1%--it's inconsequential.

As for agency: Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University are the authors of the study "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens."

Professor Gilens gave this brief summary of their conclusions:

"I'd say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups -- of economic elites and of organized interests." (Source: Foreign Affairs, January 2021, Monopoly Versus Democracy)

That is as definitive as soaring income-wealth inequality. Both are inherently destabilizing.

Meanwhile, central bankers, monopolists and the politicos whose campaigns are funded by monopolists are all frantically trying to convince us their Band-Aid will heal the metastasizing tumor consuming America. And if it doesn't, well, it was inevitable that the central banks would boost the wealth of the top 0.1% and leave the bottom 90% spiraling into the abyss; we really can't stop "technology" (heh) or "capitalism" (heh-heh). Consider this excerpt from the article:

"...high-tech monopolists (pursue) a strategy of encouraging people to see immense inequality as a tragic but unavoidable consequence of capitalism and technological change. But as Lynn shows, one of the main differences between then and now is that, compared to today, fewer Americans accepted such rationalizations during the Gilded Age. Today, Americans tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. Back then, a critical mass of Americans refused to do so, and they waged a decades-long fight for a fair and democratic society."

Distributing "free money" (much of which goes to favored industries and cartels) is a Band-Aid over the metastasizing tumor of perversely imbalanced distributions of resources, capital and agency/power.

If America cannot bear to discuss these realities (and structural solutions-- yes, there are solutions) openly, they will unravel the social, economic and political orders in a non-linear Cultural Revolution with a highly uncertain outcome.

Borrowing a quarter of the nation's entire economic output every year to prop up an ineffective, corrupt status quo is putting a Band-Aid over a tumor.

....

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr21/fatal-synergies4-21.html

America's Fatal Synergies

Why do some systems/states emerge from crises stronger while similar systems/states collapse? Put another way: take two very similar political-social-economic systems/nation-states and two very similar crises, and why does one system not just survive but emerge better adapted while the other system/state fails?

The answer lies in what author Geoffrey Parker termed Fatal Synergies and Benign Synergies in his book Global Crisis: War, Climate Change, & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. Synergy results from "interactions that produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects." In other words, 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8 is linear, while synergy is 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 = 16.

Given that the core function of states is the distribution of resources, capital and agency, we can distill the difference between Fatal Synergies and Benign Synergies into two questions:

1. What problems cannot be resolved by the financial system/state, no matter how many reforms are thrown at them?

2. Which groups have a meaningful voice in decision-making / governance and which groups are effectively voiceless / powerless?

The first question identifies the structural weak points in the system. These weak points could have any number of sources: they could be perverse incentives embedded in the system, elites caught up in their own enrichment, or even a willful blindness to the nature of the crisis threatening the system.

Here's an example in the U.S. system: corporations reap $2.4 trillion in profits annually, roughly 15% of the nation's entire output. Politicians need millions of dollars in campaign contributions to win elections. Those seeking political influence have not just billions but tens of billions. Those needing to distribute political favors will do so for mere millions.

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens:

"I'd say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups -- of economic elites and of organized interests."

This asymmetry cannot be overcome. Indeed, the past 40 years have witnessed an increasing concentration of wealth and power in corporations and their lobbyists and a decline of political influence of the masses to near-zero. Every reform has failed to slow this momentum, which is constructed of incentives to maximize profits, gain political favors and win elections.

In a similar fashion, the Imperial Presidency has gained power at the expense of Congress for decades--a reality that scholars bemoan but the reforms allowed by the system are unable to stop. So we have endless wars of choice without a declaration of war by Congress, one of the core powers of the elected body.

An analogy to these systemic weak points is the synergies of an organism's essential organs: if any one organ fails, the organism dies even though the other organs are working just fine. In other words, any system is only as robust as its weakest essential component/process.

Whatever problems the system is incapable of resolving have the potential to bring down the system once they interact synergistically.

The second question identifies how many groups have been suppressed, silenced or ignored by those at the top of the heap. If these groups have an essential role in the system as producers, consumers and taxpayers, their demand to have a say in decisions that directly affect them is natural.

Another group with understandable frustrations at being left out of the decision-making are those in the educated upper classes whose expectations of roles in the top tier were encouraged by their families, society and training. When these expectations are not met because there are no longer enough slots in the top tier for the rapidly proliferating upper classes, the group left out in the cold has the time, education and motivation to demand a voice.

In other words, those denied access to resources, capital and agency who felt entitled to this access will not be as easily silenced as those who accept their low status and restricted access to resources, capital and agency as "the natural order of things."

All the groups that are denied a voice and access to resources, capital and agency are in effect a sealed pressure cooker atop a flame. The pressure builds and builds without any apparent consequence until it explodes.

The more that power is concentrated in the hands of the few, the greater the desperation of the groups who are locked out of power. As their desperation rises, some of these groups are willing to go to whatever lengths are necessary to effect change.

The process of explosive demands for change erupting is difficult to manage once released. The system's essential subsystems may be destabilized--the equivalent of organ failure--and once destabilized, it's often no longer possible to restore the previous stability.

In this environment, the common good falls by the wayside and the system collapses.

In the context I've laid out, Fatal Synergies arise when access to resources, capital and agency are limited by elite hoarding or massive declines in available resources and capital.

Beneficial Synergies arise when whatever resources and capital are available are shared, if not equitably, at least in a process in which every group affected by the distribution has a voice in public decision-making.

Fatal Synergies arise when the identity of each group is based not on shared values and cooperation but on unyielding resistance to competing claims on the nation's wealth and income.

Beneficial Synergies arise when all groups have a voice and a say in the process of distribution, even if it is limited.

Crises reveal the problems the system is incapable of resolving. How we respond to those constraints and weak points is the difference between Fatal Synergies and collapse and Beneficial Synergies that generate successful evolutionary responses to pressing selective pressures: simply put, "adapt or die."

America's financial system and state are themselves the problems, yet neither system is capable of recognizing this or unwinding their fatal synergies.

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https://stephenlendman.org/2021/04/escalated-biden-regime-cold-war-on-russia-at-risk-of-turning-hot/

Escalated Biden Regime Cold War on Russia at Risk of Turning Hot

Escalated Cold War by Biden regime hardliners on Russia risks pushing the envelope for direct confrontation by accident or design.

On Wednesday at NATO headquarters in Brussels, interventionist Blinken and war secretary Austin recited a familiar litany of bald-faced Big Lies about Russia.

Ignoring US-orchestrated aggression by Kiev proxy forces along the contact line with Donbass near Russia’s border, Austin falsely accused Moscow of “provocations” that threaten Ukraine’s “territorial integrity (sic)” — that don’t exist.

Blinken made similar hostile remarks, falsely accusing Russia of “aggressive actions (and) rhetoric directed at Ukraine (sic).”

He lied calling Crimea “occupied” Ukrainian territory.

He lied claiming Russia “invade(ed)” Ukraine in 2014.

He lied saying Moscow threatens to invade Ukraine again.

He lied accusing “Russian-led forces (of) attacks (along) the line of contact in eastern Ukraine.”

Defying reality, he praised US-orchestrated aggression by Ukrainian conscripts on Donbass, claiming they “demonstrated…real restraint in the face of…Russian provocations (sic).”

He lied saying he and other Biden regime hardliners “prefer…stable predictable relation(s) with Russia (sic)” — while pushing the envelope for direct confrontation.

According to Bloomberg News on Wednesday, the Biden regime intends imposing (illegal) sanctions on 12 Russian officials and 20 entities — along with expelling at least 10 Russian diplomats from the US.

Reportedly the Biden regime will also target Russia’s financial sector, including its sovereign debt.

According to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the Biden regime will “expand…existing prohibitions on US banks trading in Russian government debt,” adding:

Previous US actions prohibit US “financial institutions from buying new bonds directly from Russia’s central bank, finance ministry and the country’s…sovereign-wealth fund after June 14.”

In cahoots with escalated US war on Russia by other means, Brussels, Britain, Canada and Australia intend imposing new sanctions on its officials and entities, the Journal reported.

Last month, US intelligence falsely accused Moscow of “influence operations” to undermine Biden’s presidential campaign (sic).

US allegations and accusations against Russia and other nations free from its imperial control are consistently baseless.

Not a shred of credible evidence supports them.

Indisputable evidence documents US war on humanity at home and worldwide in pursuit of its diabolical hegemonic aims.

Separately according to Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev on Wednesday:

Biden regime hardliners, their NATO partners, and colonized Ukraine are plotting to destabilize Crimea, “destroy” its economy, and “worsen living conditions on the peninsula, including through food, energy and water blockades,” adding:

They’re plotting “to destabilize the social…political and socio-economic situation” in the Russian republic.

Online they’re calling for “protest rallies..revanchist and nationalistic” actions.

According to Ukraine’s Security Service, the country’s (US-controlled) military began conducting (provocative) “anti-terrorism drills (sic) in the Kharkov region near Russia’s border from mid-April “until the end of May.”

First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s upper house Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee Vladimir Dzhabarov said the following:

Moscow will respond symmetrically to hostile Biden regime actions.

“We cannot leave this unnoticed,” he stressed, adding:

Retaliatory actions will be taken.

“It is necessary to pinpoint sore spots that will be really very sensitive for America.” 

“I think that our relevant agencies, the Foreign Ministry and other agencies will begin considering it now.”

“I think that we will continue behaving in a reserved and quiet manner, but will retaliate if need be.”

“(N)othing will affect us.”

“We have gone through a lot throughout our history – the Great Patriotic War, the disintegration of the country, the 1990s.” 

“(W)e rose from our knees and keep moving forward, something which irritates the Americans most of all.” 

“They cannot put up with the fact that Russia is no longer what it was when they saw it in the early 1990s.” 

“(T)here is no turning back. (T)he more they work against our country, impose sanctions, the more the country consolidates around its leader.”

For nearly three months since replacing Trump by brazen election rigging, the illegitimate Biden regime has been pushing the envelope for possible confrontation with Russia, China, and other nations free from US control.

Run by megalomaniacal monsters, the US risks destruction of planet earth and all its lifeforms by its rage for unchallenged global dominance it can’t achieve.

....

https://stephenlendman.org/2021/04/biden-regime-threatens-more-toughness-on-nonbelligerent-russia/

Biden Regime Threatens More Toughness on Nonbelligerent Russia

In response to Russia’s justifiable — but woefully inadequate — steps announced to counter escalated Biden regime cold war, the State Department heightened tensions further on Friday, saying:

Our recent actions were proportionate and appropriate to Russia’s harmful activities (sic).” 

“Today’s announcement by the Russian government was escalatory and regrettable (sic).”

“It is not in our interest to get into an escalatory cycle (sic), but we reserve the right to respond to any Russian retaliation against the United States (sic).”

In less than three months since usurping power by brazen election rigging, the illegitimate Biden regime has done more damage to relations with Russia than any previous time post-WW II.

They risk unthinkable war between nations able to destroy each other and planet earth if continue recklessly pushing the envelope for direct confrontation.

In announcing retaliatory steps on Friday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said they’re in response to “unprecedented complications in Russia-US relations provoked by” Biden regime hardliners.

Their recklessness indicates unwillingness to show “restraint that we have displayed despite the tensions that have been purposefully fueled” since the Obama/Biden regime launched war by other means on Russia — greatly escalated by Biden hardliners.

Limited cooperative relations are in tatters.

According to Russia’s lower house State Duma Foreign Affairs First Deputy Chairman Dmitry Novikov:

Hostile US actions aim to weaken Russia politically and economically.

Biden regime hardliners “say that they are ready to meet and contact, but only on topics that interest them, and in all other respects they will continue pressure.” 

“They call this a pragmatic approach.”

Reportedly, new US sanctions against Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany and other European markets were drafted and will take effect ahead when announced.

According to Ukraine’s puppet president Zelensky — based on talking points supplied by his US handlers — Russia’s Nord Stream 2 is part of its hybrid war.

He falsely called the Russian Republic of Crimea and breakaway Peoples’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk occupied Ukrainian territory.

On Thursday, Russian State Duma Energy Committee Chairman Pavel Zavalny said the following Nord Stream 2’s progress:

“We hope very much that both construction and gas supply adjustment will be completed by the end of the summer, and that Germany will obtain the first batch of gas through this pipeline,” adding:

After Russia’s Akademik Cherskiy pipe-laying vessel became involved, the pace of construction accelerated.

“(T)he second string, as well as the first string, will be laid no later than June, if foreign military ships do not interfere. We have already witnessed such precedents.”

Days earlier, German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass rejected calls for construction of Nord Stream 2 to be halted because of heightened tensions along Russia’s border with Ukraine.

He warned of making a bad situation worse if this step is taken.

Hostile Biden regime steps against Russia are likely to escalate further ahead.

The same goes for cold war on China and other nations free from its control.

Peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other nations counter Washington’s hegemonic aims.

Endless wars by hot and other means on humanity contribute greatly to its longterm decline.

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http://edwardcurtin.com/denying-the-demonic/

Denying the Demonic

In March of last year as the coronavirus panic was starting, I wrote a somewhat flippant article saying that the obsession with buying and hoarding toilet paper was the people’s vaccine.  My point was simple: excrement and death have long been associated in cultural history and in the Western imagination with the evil devil, Satan, the Lord of the underworld, the Trickster, the Grand Master who rules the pit of smelly death, the place below where bodies go.

The psychoanalytic literature is full of examples of death anxiety revealed in anal dreams of shit-filled overflowing toilets and people pissing in their pants.  Ernest Becker put it simply in The Denial of Death:

No mistake – the turd is mankind’s real threat because it reminds people of death.

The theological literature is also full of warnings about the devil’s wiles.  So too the Western classics from Aeschylus to Melville. The demonic has an ancient pedigree and has various names. Rational people tend to dismiss all this as superstitious nonsense.  This is hubris.  The Furies always exact their revenge when their existence is denied.  For they are part of ourselves, not alien beings, as the tragedy of human history has shown us time and again.

Since excremental visions and the fear of death haunt humans – the skull at the banquet as William James put it – the perfect symbol of protection is toilet paper that will keep you safe and clean and free of any reminder of the fear of death running through a panicked world.  It’s a magic trick of course, an unconscious way of thinking you are protecting yourself; a form of self-hypnosis.

One year later, magical thinking has taken a different form and my earlier flippancy has turned darker. You can’t hoard today’s toilet paper but you can get them: RNA inoculations, misnamed vaccines. People are lined up for them now as they are being told incessantly to “get your shot.”  They are worse than toilet paper. At least toilet paper serves a practical function.  Real vaccines, as the word’s etymology – Latin, vaccinus, from cows, the cowpox virus vaccine first used by British physician Edward Jenner in 1800 to prevent smallpox – involve the use of a small amount of a virus.  The RNA inoculations are not vaccines.  To say they are is bullshit and has nothing to do with cows. To call them vaccines is linguistic mind control.

These experimental inoculations do not prevent the vaccinated from getting infected with the “virus” nor do they prevent transmission of the alleged virus. When they were approved recently by the FDA that was made clear.  The FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for these inoculations only under the proviso that they may make an infection less severe.  Yet millions have obediently taken a shot that doesn’t do what they think it does.  What does that tell us?

Hundreds of millions of people have taken an injection that allows a bio-reactive “gene-therapy” molecule to be injected into their bodies because of fear, ignorance, and a refusal to consider that the people who are promoting this are evil and have ulterior motives.  Not that they mean well, but that they are evil and have evil intentions.  Does this sound too extreme?  Radically evil?  Come on!

So what drives the refusal to consider that demonic forces are at work with the corona crisis?

Why do the same people who get vaccinated believe that a PCR test that can’t, according to its inventor Kary Mullis, test for this so-called virus, believe in the fake numbers of positive “cases”?  Do these people even know if the virus has ever been isolated?

Such credulity is an act of faith, not science or confirmed fact.

Is it just the fear of death that drives such thinking?

Or is it something deeper than ignorance and propaganda that drives this incredulous belief?

If you want facts, I will not provide them here. Despite the good intentions of people who still think facts matter, I don’t think most people are persuaded by facts anymore. But such facts are readily available from excellent alternative media publications.  Global Research’s Michel Chossudovsky has released, free of charge, his comprehensive E-Book: The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup D’Etat, and the “Great Reset.”  It’s a good place to start if facts and analysis are what you are after.  Or go to Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s Childrens Health Defense, Off-Guardian, Dissident Voice, Global Research, among numerous others.

Perhaps you think these sites are right-wing propaganda because many articles they publish can also be read or heard at some conservative media. If so, you need to start thinking rather than reacting. The entire mainstream political spectrum is right-wing, if you wish to use useless terms such as Left/Right.  I have spent my entire life being accused of being a left-wing nut, but now I am being told I am a right-wing nut even though my writing appears in many leftist publications. Perhaps my accusers don’t know which way the screw turns or the nut loosens.  Being uptight and frightened doesn’t help.

I am interested in asking why so many people can’t accept that radical evil is real.  Is that a right-wing question?  Of course not.  It’s a human question that has been asked down through the ages.

I do think we are today in the grip of radical evil, demonic forces. The refusal to see and accept this is not new.  As the eminent theologian, David Ray Griffin, has argued, the American Empire, with its quest for world domination and its long and ongoing slaughters at home and abroad, is clearly demonic; it is driven by the forces of death symbolized by Satan.

I have spent many years trying to understand why so many good people have refused to see and accept this and have needed to ply a middle course over many decades. The safe path. Believing in the benevolence of their rulers.  When I say radical evil, I mean it in the deepest spiritual sense.  A religious sense, if you prefer.  But by religious I don’t mean institutional religions since so many of the institutional religions are complicit in the evil.

It has long been easy for Americans to accept the demonic nature of foreign leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.  Easy, also, to accept the government’s attribution of such names as the “new Hitler” to any foreign leader it wishes to kill and overthrow.  But to consider their own political leaders as demonic is near impossible.

So let me begin with a few reminders.

The U.S. destruction of Iraq and the mass killings of Iraqis under George W. Bush beginning in 2003.  Many will say it was illegal, unjust, carried out under false pretenses, etc.  But who will say it was pure evil?

Who will say that Barack Obama’s annihilation of Libya was radical evil?

Who will say the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo and so many Japanese cities that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians was radical evil?

Who will say the U.S. war against Syria is demonic evil?

Who will say the killing of millions of Vietnamese was radical evil?

Who will say the insider attacks of September 11, 2001 were demonic evil?

Who will say slavery, the genocide of native people, the secret medical experiments on the vulnerable, the CIA mind control experiments, the coups engineered throughout the world resulting in the mass murder of millions – who will say these are evil in the deepest sense?

Who will say the U.S. security state’s assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Fred Hampton, et al. were radical evil?

Who will say the trillions spent on nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them to annihilate the human race is not the ultimate in radical evil?

This list could extend down the page endlessly.  Only someone devoid of all historical sense could conclude that the U.S. has not been in the grip of demonic forces for a long time.

If you can do addition, you will find the totals staggering.  They are overwhelming in their implications.

But to accept this history as radically evil in intent and not just in its consequences are two different things.  I think so many find it so hard to admit that their leaders have intentionally done and do demonic deeds for two reasons.  First, to do so implicates those who have supported these people or have not opposed them. It means they have accepted such radical evil and bear responsibility.  It elicits feelings of guilt. Secondly, to believe that one’s own leaders are evil is next to impossible for many to accept because it suggests that the rational façade of society is a cover for sinister forces and that they live in a society of lies so vast they the best option is to make believe it just isn’t so.  Even when one can accept that evil deeds were committed in the past, even some perhaps intentionally, the tendency is to say “that was then, but things are different now.” Grasping the present when you are in it is not only difficult but often disturbing for it involves us.

So if I am correct and most Americans cannot accept that their leaders have intentionally done radically evil things, then it follows that to even consider questioning the intentions of the authorities regarding the current corona crisis needs to be self-censored.  Additionally, as we all know, the authorities have undertaken a vast censorship operation so people cannot hear dissenting voices of those who have now been officially branded as domestic terrorists. The self-censorship and the official work in tandem.

There is so much information available that shows that the authorities at the World Health Organization, the CDC, The World Economic Forum, Big Pharma, governments throughout the world, etc. have gamed this crisis beforehand, have manipulated the numbers, lied, have conducted a massive fear propaganda campaign via their media mouthpieces, have imposed devastating lockdowns that have further enriched the wealthiest and economically and psychologically devasted vast numbers, etc.  Little research is needed to see this, to understand that Big Pharma is, as Dr. Peter Gøtzsche documented eight years ago in Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, a world-wide criminal enterprise.  It takes but a few minutes to see that the pharmaceutical companies who have been given emergency authorization for these untested experimental non-vaccine “vaccines” have paid out billions of dollars to settle criminal and civil allegations.

It is an open secret that the WHO, the Gates Foundation, the WEF led by Klaus Schwab, and an interlocking international group of conspirators have plans for what they call The Great Reset, a strategy to use  the COVID-19 crisis to push their agenda to create a world of cyborgs living in cyberspace where artificial intelligence replaces people and human biology is wedded to technology under the control of the elites.  They have made it very clear that there are too many people on this planet and billions must die.  Details are readily available of this open conspiracy to create a transhuman world.

Is this not radical evil?  Demonic?

Let me end with an analogy.  There is another organized crime outfit that can only be called demonic – The Central Intelligence Agency.  One of its legendary officers was James Jesus Angleton, chief of Counterintelligence from 1954 until 1975.  He was a close associate of Allen Dulles, the longest serving director of the CIA.  Both men were deeply involved in many evil deeds, including bringing Nazi doctors and scientists into the U.S. to do the CIA’s dirty work, including mind control, bioweapons research, etc.  The stuff they did for Hitler.  As reported by David Talbot in The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, when the staunch Catholic Angleton was on his deathbed, he gave an interviews to visiting journalists, including Joseph Trento.  He confessed:

He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles.  He had been on a satanic quest….’Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,’ he told Trento in an emotionless voice.  ‘The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted…. Outside this duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power.  I did things that, looking back on my life, I regret.  But I was part of it and loved being in it.’  He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day – Dulles, Helms, Wisner.  These men were ‘the grand masters,’ he said.  ‘If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.’  Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup.  ‘I guess I will see them there soon.’

Until we recognize the demonic nature of the hell we are now in, we too will be lost.  We are fighting for our lives and the spiritual salvation of the world.  Do not succumb to the siren songs of these fathers of lies.

Resist.

....

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/04/16/the-cia-used-to-infiltrate-the-media-now-the-cia-is-the-media/

The CIA Used To Infiltrate The Media. Now The CIA Is The Media.

Back in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world. Nowadays, there is no meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald just highlighted an interesting point about the reporting by The New York Times on the so-called  “Bountygate” story the outlet broke in June of last year about the Russian government trying to pay Taliban-linked fighters to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“One of the NYT reporters who originally broke the Russia bounty story (originally attributed to unnamed ‘intelligence officials’) say today that it was a CIA claim,” Greenwald tweeted. “So media outlets – again – repeated CIA stories with no questioning: congrats to all.”

Indeed, NYT’s original story made no mention of CIA involvement in the narrative, citing only “officials,” yet this latest article speaks as though it had been informing its readers of the story’s roots in the lying, torturing, drug-running, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency from the very beginning. The author even writes “The New York Times first reported last summer the existence of the C.I.A.’s assessment,” with the hyperlink leading to the initial article which made no mention of the CIA. It wasn’t until later that The New York Times began reporting that the CIA was looking into the Russian bounties allegations at all.

    One of the NYT reporters who originally broke the Russia bounty story (originally attributed to unnamed "intelligence officials") say today that it was a CIA claim. So media outlets – again – repeated CIA stories with no questioning: congrats to all.https://t.co/4GbUXBCOpI

    — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 15, 2021

This would be the same “Russian bounties” narrative which was discredited all the way back in September when the top US military official in Afghanistan said no satisfactory evidence had surfaced for the allegations, which was further discredited today with a new article by The Daily Beast titled “U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops“.

The Daily Beast, which has itself uncritically published many articles promoting the CIA “Bountygate” narrative, reports the following:

    It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

     But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.

    D'oh! US spy agencies basically admitted they lied about Russia supposedly paying militants in Afghanistan to kill American occupation forces.

    Of course the entire Western media spread this lie for weeks, but don't expect them to issue any corrections https://t.co/itOniutu0D

    — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 15, 2021

So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of, because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning. They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.

This allowed the CIA to throw shade and inertia on Trump’s proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany, and to continue ramping up anti-Russia sentiments on the world stage, and may well have contributed to the fact that the agency will officially be among those who are exempt from Biden’s performative Afghanistan “withdrawal”.

In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and the news media unquestioningly publish it.

In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird. It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media is meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

    SUPERCUT:

    A look back on how cable news went all in on the discredited Russian bounties story. pic.twitter.com/QaG9xAqiuR

    — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 15, 2021

This isn’t Operation Mockingbird. It’s so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.

This is bad. This is very, very bad. Democracy has no meaningful existence if people’s votes aren’t being cast with a clear understanding of what’s happening in their nation and their world, and if their understanding is being shaped to suit the agendas of the very government they’re meant to be influencing with their votes, what you have is the most powerful military and economic force in the history of civilization with no accountability to the electorate whatsoever. It’s just an immense globe-spanning power structure, doing whatever it wants to whoever it wants. A totalitarian dictatorship in disguise.

And the CIA is the very worst institution that could possibly be spearheading the movements of that dictatorship. A little research into the many, many horrific things the CIA has done over the years will quickly show you that this is true; hell, just a glance at what the CIA was up to with the Phoenix Program in Vietnam will.

    In case anyone needs reminding, here’s a partial list of the ex-spooks who served as media figures in the Trump years: https://t.co/CJT8YGcvkN

    — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) April 16, 2021

There’s a common delusion in our society that depraved government agencies who are known to have done evil things in the past have simply stopped doing evil things for some reason. This belief is backed by zero evidence, and is contradicted by mountains of evidence to the contrary. It’s believed because it is comfortable, and for literally no other reason.

The CIA should not exist at all, let alone control the news media, much less the movements of the US empire. May we one day know a humanity that is entirely free from the rule of psychopaths, from our total planetary behavior as a collective, all the way down to the thoughts we think in our own heads.

May we extract their horrible fingers from every aspect of our being.

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https://alt-market.us/globalists-will-need-another-crisis-in-america-as-their-reset-agenda-fails/

Globalists Will Need Another Crisis In America As Their Reset Agenda Fails

It might sound like “US exceptionalism” to point this out (…and how very dare I), but even if the globalist Reset is successful in every other nation on Earth, the globalists are still failures if they can’t secure and subjugate the American people. As I’ve noted many times in the past, most of the world has been sufficiently disarmed, and even though we are seeing resistance in multiple European nations against forced vaccination legislation and medical tyranny, it is unlikely that they will have the ability to actually repel a full on march into totalitarianism. Most of Asia, India and Australia are already well under control. Africa is almost an afterthought , considering Africa is where many suspect vaccines are tested.

America represents the only significant obstacle to the agenda.

Conservative Americans in particular have been a thorn in the side of the globalists for generations, and it really comes down to a simple matter of mutual exclusion: You cannot have an openly globalist society and conservative ideals at the same time in the same place. It is impossible.

Conservatives believe in limited government, true free markets, individual liberty, the value of life, freedom of speech, private property rights, the right to self defense, the right to self determination, freedom of religion, and the non-aggression principle (we won’t harm you unless you try to harm us). None of these ideals can exist in a globalist world because globalism is at its core the pursuit of a fully centralized tyranny.

There are people on this planet that are not satisfied to merely live their lives, take care of their families and make their mark peacefully. They crave power over all else. They desperately want control over you, over me, over everything, and they will use any means at their disposal to get it. I would compare it to a kind of drug addiction; globalists are like crack addicts, they can never get enough power, there is always something more to take.

They tell themselves and others that they are “philanthropists”, that “they know what is best” for the rest of us. They believe themselves superior and therefore it is their “destiny” to dictate and micro-manage society for the “greater good” of us all. But really, when we witness their methods it becomes clear that they have no noble aspirations. They have no empathy or honor. They don’t care about the average human being, or the environment, or the economy or society in general. They only care about themselves and their delusions of grandeur. These people are a cancer on the rest of civilization.

They seem to be particularly obsessed with deconstructing and sabotaging America in the pursuit of their global Reset. Real philanthropists would not have a problem if someone didn’t want to accept their “charity”, but psychopaths cannot abide a group of people rejecting them and their ideology. You are not allowed to walk away from them. You are not allowed to do things your own way. You must be forced to comply. The agenda only works if EVERYONE submits.

Unfortunately for the globalists, the Reset is not working out for them everywhere. In the US, the agenda is failing miserably compared to Asia and parts of Europe.

As the head of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, is so fond of reminding us, the Covid pandemic is the “perfect opportunity” to push forward the globalist plans for a total Reset of human economy and society. To the globalists, the crisis is a panacea, a doorway to their version of a better world. They love the pandemic, they are not distressed by it.

The problem is, it’s not doing enough damage or terrifying enough people.

Consider the Event 201 coronavirus pandemic simulation – It was held by the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation only two months before the real thing “coincidentally” happened in early 2020. The pandemic war game was less about saving lives and more about how the elites planned to keep the public under control. The suppression of alternative media and censorship in social media was discussed at great length. Dissenting voices need to be silenced if the Reset is going to prevail.

One factor within the Event 201 simulation that never played out, though, was the WEF projections on deaths. The war game suggested at least 65 million initial deaths due to the pandemic. Early projections on the death rate suggested 2% to 3% of the population or more. The same projections were repeated by the UN’s World Health Organization when the real pandemic was first revealed to the public.

Instead, Covid-19 has been a letdown for the globalists, with a tiny death rate of around 0.26% outside of nursing homes. Meaning, 99.7% of the population has nothing to worry about from covid. Millions of Americans are becoming savvy to the situation and are refusing to comply with mandates over a virus that is a non-threat.

Instead of backing off of the Reset scheme, the globalists are continuing to double down. Why? Because they have no other choice. They let the cat out of the bag and bloviating big-mouths like Klaus Schwab told the world exactly what the plan is. If they retreat now, they might NEVER get another chance to implement a world centralization plan; a massive grift which requires medical tyranny in order to prevent rebellion.

You see, if the death rate had been dramatically higher than 0.26% and covid represented a legitimate threat, then maybe a larger portion of the US population would have been on board with longer term restrictions and medical passports. Maybe not. The fact remains that 40% of deaths have been in nursing homes among patients with preexisting illnesses, the death rate outside of these facilities is minimal, the mask mandates have been proven completely ineffective and the states that have remained open and removed mask mandates have FALLING death and infection rates when compared to states that are enforcing lockdowns.

The fear narrative is falling apart. States across the US are opening and are refusing to implement useless mandates. In my home state of Montana, legislators and the governor are passing laws that forbid the enforcement of medical passports. Even major corporations are not allowed to demand vaccine passports from customers or employees.

On top of that, 40% to 50% of the US population in polls are refusing to comply with the vaccine rollout or medical passports. Why take a vaccine for a virus that 99.7% of the population is unaffected by anyway?

The jig is up. The globalists are going to need another crisis if they hope to enforce further lockdowns in the US, along with medical passports and disarmament. Do not be surprised if there is more engineered chaos going into the summer months. But what will the next crisis look like? I think we are already seeing the signs…

Covid Mutations

The mainstream media is pushing a non-stop narrative of covid mutation hype. We hear about UK and Brazilian variants on a weekly basis, and the assertion has been that surely, these variants will be more infectious and more deadly that the original virus. There is still no proof whatsoever to confirm this, but the globalists only care about planting the idea in people’s heads. They only care about reigniting the fear.

My feeling is that this strategy is going to fail, at least in the US. Too many Americans are aware of the con game, and a new virus threat is not going to have the same effect as Covid-19 did in the early months of the pandemic. None of us really knew what we were facing back then, and caution was a practical response. Today, we know for a fact that covid is not a concern for the vast majority of the public. Media attempts to amp up the threat will be ineffective, but they will of course still try.

BLM Riots

This is the next obvious tactic on the part of the establishment. Numerous state officials are openly supporting renewed riots across the country due to a recent police shooting in Minnesota. The shooting itself was accidental, with the suspect violently resisting arrest and leaping into his car. A female officer grabbed her pistol in a panic instead of her taser and fired.

This event had nothing to do with racism, and nothing to do with police brutality. But, that’s not stopping Marxist groups like BLM from taking advantage and making it all about “white supremacy”. The real danger of unrest, however, will arrive at the closing of the Derek Chauvin trial.

With the trial coming to an end, evidence has been revealed that George Floyd was involved in heavy drug use and the medical examiner indicated that this along with heart disease were contributing factors to Floyd’s death. A “speed ball” containing Fentanyl was also discovered in the back of the police cruiser in which Floyd was originally restrained. So, even if Derek Chauvin’s knee to the neck tactic helped kill Floyd, it is unlikely that a jury will convict him of 1^st or 2^nd degree murder based on the evidence. Any lesser charges will undoubtedly trigger more BLM riots.

Conveniently, these powderkeg events are taking place at the onset of the warm spring and summer months, which is prime time for riots.

My concern is that civil unrest will be allowed to spread and fester in the US until regular citizens start taking matters into their own hands. And, of course, any community that tries to defend itself against looting and destruction will be accused of “racist aggression” – At which time the Biden Administration will then try to assert the authority to institute martial law measures in various regions. This combined with renewed attempts at covid lockdowns is a highly likely scenario.

Cyber Polygon

Just as the Event 201 simulation of a coronavirus pandemic preceded the real thing by only two months, there are concerns that the next World Economic Forum simulation event will also be a precursor to another crisis.

Cyber Polygon is a war game being held by the WEF this July which is meant to simulate a major cyber attack on the global supply chain and the economic system. There has been endless discussion in the media the past year building up fears of cyber attacks by Russia, China, Iran and even North Korea.

In terms of supply chain threats, I’m not sure exactly how a cyber attack could do much to disrupt global shipping, unless we are talking about another blockage in a major shipping route like the Suez Canal. But, a successful attack on stock exchanges in places like Wall Street could be devastating. I suggest watching this event carefully as it may be designed to precede a real cyber attack sometime this year.

Global War Tensions

The media and the Biden Administration are very busy trying to create tensions with Russia over Ukraine. There are renewed tensions between Iran and Israel and continued destabilization by the West in Syria. And, a rising danger of confrontation with China over Taiwan.

War could be the goal, or, the goal could merely be economic conflict. After all, China has already been dumping dollars and US treasuries the past year, and it would not take much to cause damage to the dollar’s world reserve status if China and Russia both diversified into a basket of currencies for global trade.

Beyond that, there are many advantages for globalists in creating regional wars and drawing Americans into pointless conflicts. For example, the threat of war could be used to institute a new draft. What better way to keep American men in particular busy and stop them from rebellion against the Reset than to draft them so they can die in a meaningless war overseas?

There is also a narrative advantage to global tensions; when presented with a foreign threat, are Americans more likely to reject notions of rebellion against government trespasses? I have no doubt that the establishment will try to claim the liberty movement is not a movement for freedom, but an “astro-turf” movement created by the Russians to destabilize America. This has been the leftist media propaganda strategy for years now; so why would they stop?

The bottom line is this: America is the primary target of the globalists because we are one of the only countries with the means and the numbers to stop them and the Reset. Until they are removed from the equation they will continue to throw crisis after crisis at us in order to wear us down and force us to accept totalitarianism. Do not get too comfortable in the fact that the pandemic agenda is failing here; stay alert and continue to organize your communities.

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Video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWoDbGNt4wg&t=946s

Watch Dr Naomi Wolf Discuss "Why Vaccine Passports Equal Slavery Forever"

Comment to article:   " Well said. This is not a partisan issue, this is something that everyone is going to have to deal with and the repercussions are grave. Keep disseminating this information!! "

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/fearmongering-pandemic/5742696

Fearmongering Goes Nuclear — ‘We’re in Brand-New Pandemic’

In some areas of the world, including Florida, where I live, life has been fairly normal for almost a full year.  Restaurants opened last April, and people have flocked here from out of state and even from other countries to enjoy the fresh air and open businesses.  This clearly does not benefit the globalists’ agenda, so, right on cue, fearmongering is ramping up another notch. The latest fear du jour is a “double-mutation” of SARS-CoV-2, said to target younger people.

April 5, 2021, the New York Post¹ reported the “double mutant” COVID-19 strain has been detected in California — a state that has experienced some of the longest and most restrictive pandemic measures in the U.S. At the time of that report, one case of the variant had been confirmed by a Stanford laboratory. Seven suspected cases were still being screened.

Fear Du Jour: Vaccine-Evading Variants

The double-mutation virus allegedly has two mutations previously found in two separate variants, which “help it latch onto cells,” the New York Post writes.² What they want you to fear now is that this new variant may be more resistant to vaccine antibodies. Younger people might also be more susceptible to it.³

According to the Observer,⁴ “COVID-19 variants could beat vaccines within a year if pharma policy doesn’t change.” In other words, they claim that unless sufficiently high numbers of the global population are vaccinated within nine to 12 months, the virus might mutate to evade first-generation vaccines, rendering them useless.

Oklahoma has also confirmed the presence of variants — one that initially emerged in the U.K., and another that emerged in Brazil. According to The Oklahoman,⁵ “The faster people can get vaccinated, the slower the virus will spread and fewer people will be exposed to variant strains of the virus, said Dr. Dale Bratzler, the University of Oklahoma’s chief COVID officer.”

In other words, they’re putting everyone’s feet to the fire. Hurry, hurry. Get the vaccine now. If you wait, it’s going to be your fault that the vaccine fails and everyone dies. CNN⁶ also warns that, unless Americans “double down on safety measures until more people are vaccinated,” more contagious variants will spread like wildfire.

According to CNN, the variant known as B.1.1.7 “is changing the pandemic’s playbook and could spell trouble for younger groups that haven’t yet been vaccinated.”

‘We’re in a Brand-New Pandemic’

Dr. Peter Hotez went so far as to state that B.1.1.7 should be thought of as a “brand-new virus” that is “acting differently from anything we’ve seen before.”⁷ This “we’re in a brand-new pandemic” narrative is also being parroted by Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.⁸ Osterholm, however, claims that current vaccines are, in fact, effective against the B.1.1.7 variant.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, clusters of positive cases among young people have been “connected to participation in youth sports and extracurricular activities.” As a result, the CDC is now suggesting that such activities should be limited, CNN reports.⁹

If you’ve got the creeping suspicion that we’re about to face another round of lockdowns around the U.S., your spidey senses are probably working just fine. In a recent interview, Osterholm said:¹⁰

“There isn’t a country in the world right now that has seen a big increase of this B117 that is not locking down. We’re the exception. And so the bottom line message from all of these countries is, ‘we could not control this virus until we did lock down.’

We have to do a better job of helping the public understand that this is short term. All we’re trying to do is get through this surge of cases that are going to occur over the next six to eight to 10 weeks because of this B117 variant.”

Where, oh where, have we heard that before? “It’s going to be a short-term lockdown, just a couple of weeks to flatten the curve and ensure a functioning hospital system.” Right. Those short-term measures ended up lasting many months in many places, even though hospitals were at no risk of being overrun.

We now have a year’s-worth of data showing that lockdowns simply do not work. They cause far more harm than good. Yet they’re trying to sell us the same non-solution using the same justification once more. As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Dissenting Is Now Domestic Terrorism

The problem we now face is that logical thinking is being vilified. According to pediatrician and California state senator Dr. Richard Pan, people who criticize the COVID-19 vaccine ought to be labeled as domestic terrorists. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, he writes:¹¹

“Vaccines don’t stop viruses. Vaccinations do. This common public health saying means a vaccine does no good if we can’t get it into people’s arms … but the overall goal of vaccinating a large majority of the U.S. population may ultimately be hampered by the anti-vaccine movement unless steps are taken to limit its impact …

[T]o poison public opinion against vaccinations, could result in countless American deaths. That is akin to domestic terrorism … Some anti-vaccine leaders’ financial well-being depends on endangering everyone else’s health and safety. Social media companies should not be complicit in this dangerous movement … Getting vaccinated is a patriotic act. So is speaking up to support public health efforts.”

With that manipulative and hostile diatribe against law-abiding citizens, Pan secures a lead role in the medical fascism directorate that is spreading faster than the virus.

He even stresses that local and public health officials, not politicians, should be relied upon to lead us to safety. In other words, he’s promoting iatrarchy — meaning government by physicians — which as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out has been catastrophic in every instance that it’s been tried. In his foreword to my new book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” Kennedy notes:

“The medical profession has not proven itself an energetic defender of democratic institutions or civil rights. Virtually every doctor in Germany took lead roles in the Third Reich’s project to eliminate mental defectives, homosexuals, handicapped citizens and Jews.

So many hundreds of German physicians participated in Hitler’s worst atrocities — including managing mass murder and unspeakable experiments at the death camps — that the allies had to stage separate “Medical Trials” at Nuremberg. Not a single prominent German doctor or medical association raised their voice in opposition to these projects.

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.”

War on ‘Disinformation’ Is Really War on Dissent

Having a frank and open discussion about pros and cons, risks and benefits of vaccination or any other pandemic measure is more likely to result in optimal public health than shoving just one side of the argument down everyone’s throat. But optimal public health is not what the technocratic, globalist elite are after. Their end goal is to manipulate the masses into obedience so that they can acquire even more of their assets.

As noted by Ash Staub in his article¹² “The War on Disinformation Is a War on Dissent,” the terms “disinformation” and “misinformation” are simply used “to excuse incompetence and punish opposition.” He provides a number of examples proving that “theories or facts that don’t fit the official narrative, despite being true, are treated as misinformation or disinformation.”

I would add that this is particularly true when it comes to health information, seeing how it’s virtually impossible to find a single remedy or strategy that works 100% for every single person. There are no absolute truths in medicine. It all depends. Many individual factors come into play. Staub continues:

“Whereas misinformation merely refers to inaccurate or misleading information, the label of disinformation implies an intent to deceive. Both have served as the source of much consternation and hand-wringing from media figures and politicians alike …

While our inability as a society to agree on basic facts is certainly a problem, what should be self-evident is that misinformation and disinformation naturally abound when there is very little trust in sense-making institutions.

If the information sources that are deemed ‘authoritative’ are so often wrong or misleading, and inspire little public confidence, is it any wonder that people turn to alternatives? Misinformation and disinformation are natural consequences of our public institutions’ inconsistency and incompetence.”

Most Americans Think Government Officials Are Lying

According to Staub, 69% of Americans “believe their government intentionally lies to them,” and 61% “believe the news media deliberately ignores certain stories or information.” These are record-low rates of confidence, and government and media would do well to take notice of the fact that censorship only erodes trust, it does not build it.

The fact that they turn to censorship rather than trying to be more forthright suggests they are in fact lying and have no intention of stopping. Since they refuse to tell the truth, the only option they have is to silence counter-narratives in the hope that, over time, objections will die out for lack of support.

The problem is, truth has an appeal of its own, and so, in what appears to be a desperate effort to maintain control, “disinformation” is now being called out as “dangerous,” indeed a form of “domestic terrorism,” because if people listen to “bad” information, they might make decisions that will harm them.

Basically, they’re saying that you’re too stupid to think for yourself. You’ll buy whatever you’re sold, no questions asked, and so they have to make sure you’re exposed only to information that will benefit you. Everyone on the planet ought to be insulted by censoring, because, ultimately, it’s a sign that government and media have zero trust in your ability to make decisions for yourself.

“Just last month, former NSA general counsel Glenn Gerstell called for an ‘integrated disinformation center within the federal government’ that would employ ‘counterterrorism’ tactics to combat disinformation.

It’s not exactly clear what these counterterrorism tactics would entail, but the idea that institutions that so often lie to the public should be able to decide what is and what is not ‘disinformation,’ with the help of a surveillance apparatus designed to combat terrorism, is truly unnerving,” Staub writes.

“When the only acceptable information is that approved by the ruling administration, there can be no meaningful check on state power. Consent for the establishment agenda can easily be manufactured, and opposition can simply be deemed ‘disinformation’ and treated as ‘dangerous,’ deserving of censorship and removal. With a silenced opposition, power can therefore be exercised with impunity.”

Understanding the Plan Robs Their Power

In a nutshell, authoritarians are taking extreme steps to control the public discourse because they know we don’t trust them. What’s more, they also realize that if people understand the grand plan, their power over the people will be stripped away. The public can only be controlled as long as we don’t understand what they’re trying to accomplish.

So, what are they trying to accomplish? As detailed in many previous articles, it boils down to the global implementation of a new economic system based on technocratic ideology, that will so radically transform and dehumanize society that they simply cannot “sell” it with honesty. The vast majority would be horrified and refuse to go along with it.

Their only option is to sneak it in under the guise of something else. Right now, that something else is the so-called COVID-19 pandemic. Under the pretext of public health safety, we’re told we need censorship, lockdowns, social distancing, mask wearing, new domestic terrorism laws and vaccine passports.

We need none of those things in order to optimize public health. Those things, however, are necessary for the swift and easeful implementation of the Great Reset.

Supreme Court Justice Speaks Out Against Censorship

Needless to say, without Big Tech monopolies aiding and abetting, the current level of censorship simply could not occur. The good news is, we may slowly be inching toward a solution. As noted by The Federalist,¹³ “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas offered a roadmap to eliminating rampant social media censorship from online monopolies on Monday.”

They’re referring to an April 5, 2021, ruling¹⁴ for writ of certiorari on the case of President Joe Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in which Thomas weighed in on the ability of social media giants to control free speech. The Federalist explains:¹⁵

“Thomas concurred in an opinion to send the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit with instructions to dismiss as moot, now that Biden is in the White House.

The case, launched in August, questions whether the First Amendment strips government officials of their ability to block third-party accounts on Twitter if the personal account is used to conduct official business. The lower court ruled Trump violated the First Amendment when blocking users on the platform, which served as a public forum.”

However, while then-President Trump was found to have violated free speech rights by blocking certain Twitter followers, Twitter faced no repercussions when it deleted Trump’s account in its entirety, thereby violating the First Amendment rights of 89 million people, which is the number of followers he had when the account was taken down. As noted by Thomas:¹⁶

“It seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it. The disparity between Twitter’s control and Mr. Trump’s control is stark, to say the least.”

Immunity Without Corresponding Responsibility 

Draconian COVID-19 Lockdown Powers: It’s a Slippery Slope from Handwashing to House Arrest

Thomas highlights the monopoly power of Big Tech, stressing that when a company has unilateral control over a public forum, it ceases to be a public forum. The solution, then, might be to turn them into public utilities, which aren’t allowed to discriminate against any customer.

“Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties,” Thomas writes.

“We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms … It changes nothing that these platforms are not the sole means for distributing speech or information.

A person always could choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail. But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.

If the analogy between common carriers and digital platforms is correct, then an answer may arise for dissatisfied platform users who would appreciate not being blocked: laws that restrict the platform’s right to exclude.

When a platform’s unilateral control is reduced, a government official’s account begins to better resemble a ‘government-controlled spac[e]’ … This analysis may help explain the Second Circuit’s intuition that part of Mr. Trump’s Twitter account was a public forum.

But that intuition has problems. First, if market power is a predicate for common carriers (as some scholars suggest), nothing in the record evaluates Twitter’s market power. Second, and more problematic, neither the Second Circuit nor respondents have identified any regulation that restricts Twitter from removing an account that would otherwise be a ‘government-controlled space.’

Even if digital platforms are not close enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of public accommodation … ‘[I]t stands to reason that if Congress may demand that telephone companies operate as common carriers, it can ask the same of’ digital platforms. Turner, 512 U. S., at 684 (opinion of O’Connor, J.).

That is especially true because the space constraints on digital platforms are practically nonexistent (unlike on cable companies), so a regulation restricting a digital platform’s right to exclude might not appreciably impede the platform from speaking …

Yet Congress does not appear to have passed these kinds of regulations. To the contrary, it has given digital platforms ‘immunity from certain types of suits’ … with respect to content they distribute, 47 U. S. C. §230, but it has not imposed corresponding responsibilities, like nondiscrimination, that would matter here.

None of this analysis means, however, that the First Amendment is irrelevant until a legislature imposes common carrier or public accommodation restrictions — only that the principal means for regulating digital platforms is through those methods.”

Thomas Confirms Illegality of Government-Sponsored Censorship

Thomas makes another very important point in his statement. He points out that while private entities are “not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,” they are indeed so constrained “if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.”

In other words, a private company has the right to decide what the kinds of speech it will allow and which it will not, BUT, if government officials demand that they censor an otherwise lawful viewpoint on their behalf, then that company is liable for having violated the First Amendment.

The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly … Under this doctrine, plaintiffs might have colorable claims against a digital platform if it took adverse action against them in response to government threats. ~ Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

This is pertinent right now, as elected officials are getting ever more belligerent in their demands that social media platforms censor certain kinds of speech, such as “anti-vaccine” material. As detailed in “Free Speech Threatened by Censorship Extremists,” what they’re doing is illegal, yet they’re doing it anyway.