Apple And Google Laid The Foundations For A Dystopian Industry Which Should Not Exist

haaretz  |  We’re being monitored. It’s a universally acknowledged truth about this digital age. Technology firms and advertisers know almost everything about us: where we are, what we buy, which apps we download and how we use them, our search histories and past purchases, even our sexual orientation and what fetishes we’re into. There’s only one thing that advertisers don’t or aren’t supposed to have access to: our identity. The world of ads and the data behind them is meant to be anonymous.
We’ve all been there. We read the post of a friend who just got back from vacation, and a few hours later an ad for a hotel pops up on our screen, and similar ones hound us for days, following us across websites and social media – but few of us have any idea how or why this happens.

Whenever we open an application or a website on our phone, without our noticing, a rapid process of mass negotiation takes place, and a complex and aggressive market embodying the whole economy of the internet plays out: In a split second – a fraction of the moment that elapses until the page we want opens – an automatic bidding process occurs between hundreds of thousands of different advertisers. They are fighting to advertise exactly to us at this exact moment in time. The more accurate the information the advertisers have about us, the more segmented and targeted the data, the greater the chances that we’ll actually click – and thus the price of the ad increases.

But some have the ability to take advantage of that fraction of a second to perform a much more malicious mission: to send people a distinctive, seemingly innocent, ad that contains advanced spyware. Though the ad looks completely standard, it is in fact a cyberweapon that is capable of infiltrating our phone or computer. 

In the past, it was believed that only state intelligence organizations had this capacity. It exploits the world of digital advertising, which is supposed to be completely anonymous, to bypass the security mechanisms of Apple, Google and Microsoft and install advanced spyware on our devices.
“These capabilities can turn any ad into a kind of digital bullet,” says a source familiar with the technology.

The new technology has also begun to trickle out into the commercial defense market. An investigation by Haaretz Magazine and the paper’s National Security & Cyber digital investigation desk has discovered that in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic – when certain tools were developed and deployed to track the spread of the virus – a new and disturbing cyber and espionage industry has come into being in Israel. A number of Israeli firms have developed technologies that are capable of exploiting advertising to collect data and monitor citizens. Hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people can be monitored in this way.

The investigation, which is based on interviews with over 15 sources from Israel’s offensive cyber, security systems and defense industries, further reveals that a small group of elite companies have taken things a step further: They have created technology that use ads for offensive purposes and injecting spyware. As millions of ads compete for the right to penetrate our screens, Israeli firms are clandestinely selling technology that transforms these ads into tools of surveillance – or even into weapons that are capable of penetrating our computers or phones.

One of these companies is Insanet, whose existence is being made public here for the first time. As its name suggests, it possesses insane capabilities, according to sources in the industry. Founded by a number of well-known entrepreneurs in the fields of offensive cyber and digital intelligence, the company is owned by former ranking members of the defense establishment, including a past head of the National Security Council, Dani Arditi. The investigation reveals that the company has developed technology that exploits ads both for tracking and for infection. It’s not by chance that the company has named their product Sherlock.

America Has No Hypersonics Because IT Tools CANNOT Replace Math And Physics Knowledge, Skill, And Ability...,

 

cf2r.org  | We will start, if necessary, by reading this article [1] . He reports on Russian advances in this area and discusses the potential concerns of the Western world about its ability to follow them, with the United States in the lead. We are asking ourselves the question here not of a delay which would be due to later development, but what seems to us to be a real conceptual difficulty in making such machines work.

Since we are in the West, let us remember these words of Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in physics: “the goal of the physicist is to make the equations speak” .

Let us note then that at the end of the Cold War, we find ourselves in a rather strange situation at first glance. The West pushed electronics and computing much further than the Soviet Union. It did not occur to anyone that the latter had held up without this and we were content to think, here, that its equipment was obsolete and ineffective. The Ukrainian conflict demonstrated the opposite!

However, those who worked on equipment opposing the collapse of the Berlin Wall know very well that the “enemy” of the time had implemented treasures of thought to precisely make the equations speak and understand what was really in-game without having to go through computer calculations. This was the case, for example, with so-called “ionic” space propulsion engines.

Meanwhile, at home, we relied more and more on software. They constituted a black box over which we had no control and we “swallowed” the results, whatever they were, as if they were the naked truth coming out of the well.

An example is often better than a long speech. In 2013, I had a machine of my design tested in a digital wind tunnel. Contract was signed with the School of Mines which included one of its best students from the Polytechnico Milan. The aim of the study was to determine the drag and lift coefficients of my aircraft. I had made an estimate by hand which took me 10 minutes. After 6 months of effort, the super calculator produced a drag coefficient which was equal to mine to within 10%. If we stop the story here, you might think I was 10% wrong. Nay! Indeed, in essence, my concept had to have a non-zero lift coefficient. But the one who emerged from the “hellish” program was zero. It was therefore a clear error which showed that we could not have any confidence in the result concerning the drag. I will spare you the analysis that followed as well as its conclusions.

Today, engineering schools, in full agreement with companies, want people who are efficient in handling various IT tools: Catia, etc. If in fact the latter, at the time they were designed, brought great progress for those who were used to thinking, they only “Taylorized” the real profession by degrading it enormously, leading to the incremental improvement which tomorrow will be the prerogative of artificial intelligence. On the other hand, from my point of view, replacing the Soviet physicists and engineers of the time with AI would absolutely not be possible.

So this is where we are and until our scientists are able to make the equations speak, it seems very unlikely that the West will be able to make hypersonic missiles worthy of the name. What do I mean by that? Not rockets that go to Mach 5, which is the limit between supersonic and hypersonic, but that reach Mach 9 like the Zircon at sea level or 27 like the Avangard at high altitude, while remaining maneuverable .

To reach such a level, it is imperative to return to studies focusing on paper and pencil. Write the equations, try to solve them by hand and understand, when you make approximations, what they correspond to physically and if they are legitimate.

Let's take one more example. There are so-called phase change fluid loops for cooling parts of, for example, satellites. If we do not carry out, with ad hoc approximations, an expansion limited to order 4 of the Navier-Stokes system, we cannot conceive of such loops. A computer will never be able to achieve this, although excellent engineers in the past have been able to do so.

When we see the low level in mathematics and physics today throughout the Western school structure, we say to ourselves that the light will come from elsewhere. And this is what we are seeing.

Dementia Among U.S. Officials Poses National Security Threat

theintercept  |   As the national security workforce ages, dementia impacting U.S. officials poses a threat to national security, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a Pentagon-funded think tank. The report, released this spring, came as several prominent U.S. officials trusted with some of the nation’s most highly classified intelligence experienced public lapses, stoking calls for resignations and debate about Washington’s aging leadership.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who had a second freezing episode last month, enjoys the most privileged access to classified information of anyone in Congress as a member of the so-called Gang of Eight congressional leadership. Ninety-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whose decline has seen her confused about how to vote and experiencing memory lapses — forgetting conversations and not recalling a monthslong absence — was for years a member of the Gang of Eight and remains a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which she has served since 2001.

The study, published by the RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division in April, identifies individuals with both current and former access to classified material who develop dementia as threats to national security, citing the possibility that they may unwittingly disclose government secrets. 

“Individuals who hold or held a security clearance and handled classified material could become a security threat if they develop dementia and unwittingly share government secrets,” the study says.

As the study notes, there does not appear to be any other publicly available research into dementia, an umbrella term for the loss of cognitive functioning, despite the fact that Americans are living longer than ever before and that the researchers were able to identify several cases in which senior intelligence officials died of Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder and the most common cause of dementia.

“As people live longer and retire later, challenges associated with cognitive impairment in the workplace will need to be addressed,” the report says. “Our limited research suggests this concern is an emerging security blind spot.” 

Most holders of security clearances, a ballooning class of officials and other bureaucrats with access to secret government information, are subject to rigorous and invasive vetting procedures. Applying for a clearance can mean hourslong polygraph tests; character interviews with old teachers, friends, and neighbors; and ongoing automated monitoring of their bank accounts and other personal information. As one senior Pentagon official who oversees such a program told me of people who enter the intelligence bureaucracy, “You basically give up your Fourth Amendment rights.” 

Yet, as the authors of the RAND report note, there does not appear to be any vetting for age-related cognitive decline. In fact, the director of national intelligence’s directive on continuous evaluation contains no mention of age or cognitive decline.

While the study doesn’t mention any U.S. officials by name, its timing comes amid a simmering debate about gerontocracy: rule by the elderly. Following McConnell’s first freezing episode, in July, Google searches for the term “gerontocracy” spiked.

“The president called to check on me,” McConnell said when asked about the first episode. “I told him I got sandbagged,” he quipped, referring to President Joe Biden’s trip-and-fall incident during a June graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, which sparked conservative criticisms about the 80-year-old’s own functioning.

Pinkertons Making A 21st Century Comeback With Impunity

 

counterpunch  |  During a recent visit to Portland, Oregon, my husband and I watched a private security guard help up an unhoused man from the sidewalk. Three white women looked on at the interaction that took place in the trendy Nob Hill neighborhood on August 7, 2023, right in front of a yoga studio.

But the guard was not responding with compassion. Seconds earlier, the tall and very muscular man sporting a flak jacket emblazoned with the word “security,” had walked right by me toward the unhoused man and savagely knocked him to the ground without provocation or warning. Blood streamed from the victim’s face and onto the sidewalk. He stood up as the guard hovered over him and stumbled toward the damaged glasses that had fallen off his face during the assault. The guard, who was twice the man’s size, picked up and offered him the hat that had also fallen off his head and ushered him away.

It’s increasingly common to see private security guards patrolling the streets of Portland—considered one of the most progressive cities in the United States. Not only are businesses banding together to pay for private armed patrols, but even Portland State University is using such a service on its campus. The city of Portland also recently increased its private security budget for City Hall by more than half a million dollars to hire three armed guards.

The trend is a knee-jerk response to sharply rising homelessness. There are tents belonging to unhoused people sprinkled throughout downtown Portland and Nob Hill. Like much of Portland, many of the unhoused are white, but, as Axios in a report about a homelessness survey pointed out, “the rate of homelessness among people in the Portland area who are Black, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander grew more rapidly than among people who are white.”

Three summers ago, Portland—one of the nation’s whitest cities—was also an epicenter of the nationwide racial justice uprising in response to the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “There are more Black Lives Matter signs in Portland than Black people,” joked one Black resident to the New York Times. As Donald Trump’s administration sent armed federal agents to Portland to quash the uprising, the city’s residents and officials came to symbolize a heroic resistance to rising authoritarianism.

The brutal savagery of what we witnessed in Nob Hill was in jarring contrast to the signs, stickers, and posters that many Portland businesses continue to display on their windows, declaring that “Black Lives Matter,” or “All Genders are Welcome,” and that promise safety to everyone. Everyone but the unhoused, apparently.

Shocked by the violence of the security guard’s assault, my husband and I confronted the perpetrator. He responded that hours earlier the victim had allegedly assaulted a woman in the neighborhood. In the seconds before he was attacked, however, I had walked within a few feet of the unhoused man as he muttered to himself in what sounded like a mix of English and a foreign language. The man had been minding his own business.

In a detailed three-part investigation for Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) in December 2021, Rebecca Ellis examined how businesses have begun paying unknown sums of money to hire private security patrols. According to Ellis, “Private security firms in Oregon are notoriously underregulated, and their employees are required to receive a fraction of the training and oversight as public law enforcement.” She added, “They remain accountable primarily to their clients, not the public.”

Business owners and residents are claiming that rising homelessness is the result of increased drug addiction, forcing them to resort to private security. But researchers point to high rents and a lack of affordable housing—not drug use—as the cause of people living without homes.

Dirty Cop Gideon Cody Raids Newspaper Causing Death Of 98 Year Old Owner...,

boing boing  |  The Marion County Record was raided by local police, who took all of its equipment and even confiscated the personal cellphones of workers there, they claim. The newspaper's co-owner, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, died within hours of the smash-and-grab, and journalistic organizations are sounding the alarm about a shocking attack on the press.

The Marion County Record's co-owner and publisher, Eric Meyer, believes Friday's raid was prompted by a story published Wednesday about a local business owner. Authorities countered they are investigating what they called "identity theft" and "unlawful acts concerning computers," according to a search warrant.

"Based on public reporting, the search warrant that has been published online, and your public statements to the press, there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search —particularly when other investigative steps may have been available — and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement's ability to conduct newsroom searches," the letter said.

Turns out the police chief, Gideon Cody, thought that the paper was about to publish a story about him leaving his last job after allegations of sexual misconduct.

Meyer said that, before the raid, his newspaper had investigated Cody's background and his time at the Kansas City Police Department before he came to Marion. He declined to provide details of the newspaper's investigation of Cody. "I really don't think it would be advisable for me to say what it was we were investigating, other than to characterize the charges as serious….," Meyer said. He told The Star the newspaper didn't publish a story about the allegations. "We didn't publish it because we couldn't nail it down to the point that we thought it was ready for publication," he said. "He (Cody) didn't know who our sources were. He does now." Meyer said the newspaper told city leaders they had received information about Cody but could not confirm it.

Another factor in the raid appears to be the anger of a local politically-involved restauranteur:

He and his reporter Phyllis Zorn were kicked out of an August 2nd meeting at a local establishment with US Congressman Jake LaTurner (R-KS) by the City of Marion Police Chief after restaurant owner Kari Newell demanded they leave. Meyer and Zorn published a subsequent story about the hostile encounter, which infuriated Newell and prompted angry Facebook posts. 

The paper then received a tip about Newell having her license suspended in 2008 after a DUI, checked it out, decided not to publish it, and ultimately shared it with the local police because they believed it might've been shared with them as part of Newell's ongoing divorce battle. The police then told Newell what the newspaper shared, and she attended Monday's City Council meeting to make outrageous claims about the newspaper and one of the council members (who had also obtained the letter) violating her rights. She also called Meyer later that evening and erroneously accused him of identity theft. Not even four days later, police arrived at the newspaper office, Meyer's home and the council member's home with search warrants signed by a judge

 Lots of things about to be tried in this small town.

The Profound Irony Of David Brooks Sermonizing On Moral Formation In Collapsing America

theatlantic  | A modern vision of how to build character. The old-fashioned models of character-building were hopelessly gendered. Men were supposed to display iron willpower that would help them achieve self-mastery over their unruly passions. Women were to sequester themselves in a world of ladylike gentility in order to not be corrupted by bad influences and base desires. Those formulas are obsolete today.

The best modern approach to building character is described in Iris Murdoch’s book The Sovereignty of Good. Murdoch writes that “nothing in life is of any value except the attempt to be virtuous.” For her, moral life is not defined merely by great deeds of courage or sacrifice in epic moments. Instead, moral life is something that goes on continually—treating people considerately in the complex situations of daily existence. For her, the essential moral act is casting a “just and loving” attention on other people.

Normally, she argues, we go about our days with self-centered, self-serving eyes. We see and judge people in ways that satisfy our own ego. We diminish and stereotype and ignore, reducing other people to bit players in our own all-consuming personal drama. But we become morally better, she continues, as we learn to see others deeply, as we learn to envelop others in the kind of patient, caring regard that makes them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is the kind of attention that implicitly asks, “What are you going through?” and cares about the answer.

I become a better person as I become more curious about those around me, as I become more skilled in seeing from their point of view. As I learn to perceive you with a patient and loving regard, I will tend to treat you well. We can, Murdoch concluded, “grow by looking.”

Mandatory social-skills courses. Murdoch’s character-building formula roots us in the simple act of paying attention: Do I attend to you well? It also emphasizes that character is formed and displayed as we treat others considerately. This requires not just a good heart, but good social skills: how to listen well. How to disagree with respect. How to ask for and offer forgiveness. How to patiently cultivate a friendship. How to sit with someone who is grieving or depressed. How to be a good conversationalist.

These are some of the most important skills a person can have. And yet somehow, we don’t teach them. Our schools spend years prepping students with professional skills—but offer little guidance on how to be an upstanding person in everyday life. If we’re going to build a decent society, elementary schools and high schools should require students to take courses that teach these specific social skills, and thus prepare them for life with one another. We could have courses in how to be a good listener or how to build a friendship. The late feminist philosopher Nel Noddings developed a whole pedagogy around how to effectively care for others.

A new core curriculum. More and more colleges and universities are offering courses in what you might call “How to Live.” Yale has one called “Life Worth Living.” Notre Dame has one called “God and the Good Life.” A first-year honors program in this vein at Valparaiso University, in Indiana, involves not just conducting formal debates on ideas gleaned from the Great Books, but putting on a musical production based on their themes. Many of these courses don’t give students a ready-made formula, but they introduce students to some of the venerated moral traditions—Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Enlightenment rationalism, among others. They introduce students to those thinkers who have thought hard on moral problems, from Aristotle to Desmond Tutu to Martha Nussbaum. They hold up diverse exemplars to serve as models of how to live well. They put the big questions of life firmly on the table: What is the ruling passion of your soul? Whom are you responsible to? What are my moral obligations? What will it take for my life to be meaningful? What does it mean to be a good human in today’s world? What are the central issues we need to engage with concerning new technology and human life?

These questions clash with the ethos of the modern university, which is built around specialization and passing on professional or technical knowledge. But they are the most important courses a college can offer. They shouldn’t be on the margins of academic life. They should be part of the required core curriculum.

Intergenerational service. We spend most of our lives living by the logic of the meritocracy: Life is an individual climb upward toward success. It’s about pursuing self-interest.

There should be at least two periods of life when people have a chance to take a sabbatical from the meritocracy and live by an alternative logic—the logic of service: You have to give to receive. You have to lose yourself in a common cause to find yourself. The deepest human relationships are gift relationships, based on mutual care. (An obvious model for at least some aspects of this is the culture of the U.S. military, which similarly emphasizes honor, service, selflessness, and character in support of a purpose greater than oneself, throwing together Americans of different ages and backgrounds who forge strong social bonds.)

Those sabbaticals could happen at the end of the school years and at the end of the working years. National service programs could bring younger and older people together to work to address community needs.

These programs would allow people to experience other-centered ways of being and develop practical moral habits: how to cooperate with people unlike you. How to show up day after day when progress is slow. How to do work that is generous and hard.

Moral organizations. Most organizations serve two sets of goals—moral goals and instrumental goals. Hospitals heal the sick and also seek to make money. Newspapers and magazines inform the public and also try to generate clicks. Law firms defend clients and also try to maximize billable hours. Nonprofits aim to serve the public good and also raise money.

In our society, the commercial or utilitarian goals tend to eclipse the moral goals. Doctors are pressured by hospital administrators to rush through patients so they can charge more fees. Journalists are incentivized to write stories that confirm reader prejudices in order to climb the most-read lists. Whole companies slip into an optimization mindset, in which everything is done to increase output and efficiency.

Moral renewal won’t come until we have leaders who are explicit, loud, and credible about both sets of goals. Here’s how we’re growing financially, but also Here’s how we’re learning to treat one another with consideration and respect; here’s how we’re going to forgo some financial returns in order to better serve our higher mission.

Early in my career, as a TV pundit at PBS NewsHour, I worked with its host, Jim Lehrer. Every day, with a series of small gestures, he signaled what kind of behavior was valued there and what kind of behavior was unacceptable. In this subtle way, he established a set of norms and practices that still lives on. He and others built a thick and coherent moral ecology, and its way of being was internalized by most of the people who have worked there.

Lots Of Talk About Depopulation Agendas

⚠️Holy shit⚠️

US Congressman @RonJohnsonWI alleges that covid was “pre-planned by an elite group of people. Event 201”.

In reference to the John’s Hopkins Center tabletop exercise with the WEF and the Gates Foundation.

Pretty substantial allegations!pic.twitter.com/IfziWIE3SB

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) August 11, 2023

merylnass  |  Here is another wonderfully researched and written look into the long morbid history of how the powerful repeatedly sterilize the powerless. Hard to believe, but California was still sterilizing women in prisons until about 20 years ago, that we know of. The Midwestern Doctor has produced another tour de force.

The Forgotten Side of Medicine

How Did We Know That the COVID-19 Vaccines Would Decimate Global Fertility?

When I started this Substack, my goal was to draw attention to the things with the vaccines I felt would create significant problems in the future if something was not done about them. One of the initial topics I decided to cover (on April 2nd 2022) was the history of elitist population control initiatives because I saw a lot of different signs that re…

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15 days ago · 442 likes · 334 comments · A Midwestern Doctor

Michel Chossudofsky discusses actual news reports of meetings on depopulation:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-may-2009-meeting-of-the-good-club-billionaire-club-in-bid-to-curb-overpopulation/5742626

“Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population”: Secret Gathering Sponsored by Bill Gates, 2009 Meeting of “The Good Club”

Is Worldwide Depopulation Part of the Billionaire's "Great Reset"

For more than ten years, meetings have been held by billionaires described as philanthropists to Reduce the Size of the World’s Population culminating with the 2020-2022 Covid crisis.

Recent developments suggest that “Depopulation” is an integral part of the so-called Covid mandates including the lockdown policies and the mRNA “vaccine”. 

Flash back to 2009. According to the Wall Street Journal: “Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population”.

In May 2009, the Billionaire philanthropists met behind closed doors at the home of the president of The Rockefeller University in Manhattan.

This Secret Gathering was sponsored by Bill Gates. They called themselves “The Good Club”. 

Among the participants were the late David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg  Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and many more. 

In May 2009, the WSJ as well as the Sunday Times reported: (John Harlow, Los Angeles) that

“Some of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.”

The emphasis was not on population growth (i.e Planned Parenthood) but on “Depopulation”, i.e,. the reduction in the absolute size of the World’s population.

To read complete WSJ article click here—and I have a subscription so have reproduced the full text at the bottom of the page—Meryl

The Class Factor In Journalism

caitlinjohnstone  |  Iraq war cheerleader David Brooks has an article in The New York Times titled “What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?“, another one of those tired old think pieces we’ve been seeing for the last eight years that asks “golly gosh could we coastal elites have played some role in the rise of Trumpism?” like it’s the first time anyone has ever considered that obvious point (the answer is yes, duh, you soft-handed silver spoon-fed ivory tower bubble boy).

One worthwhile paragraph about the media stands out though:

“Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.”

Brooks is not the first to make this observation about the drastic shift in the socioeconomic makeup of news reporters that has taken place from previous generations to now.

“The class factor in journalism gets overlooked,” journalist Glenn Greenwald said on the Jimmy Dore Show in 2021. “Thirty or forty years ago, fifty years ago, journalists really were outsiders. That’s why they all had unions; they made shit money, they came from like working class families. They hated the elite. They hated bankers and politicians. It was kind of like a boss-employee relationship — they hated them and wanted to throw rocks at them and take them down pegs.”

“If I were to list the twenty richest people I’ve ever met in my entire life, I think like seven or eight of them are people I met because they work at The Intercept — people from like the richest fucking families on the planet,” Greenwald added.

Journalist Matt Taibbi, whose father worked for NBC, made similar observations on the Dark Horse podcast back in 2020.

“Reporters when I was growing up, they came from a different class of people than they do today,” Taibbi said. “A lot of them were kind of more working class — their parents were more likely to be plumbers or electricians than they were to be doctors or lawyers. Like this thing where the journalist is an Ivy League grad, that’s a relatively new thing that I think came about in the seventies and eighties with my generation. But reporters just instinctively hated rich people, they hated powerful people. Like if you put up a poster of a politician in a newsroom it was defaced instantaneously, like there were darts on it. Reporters saw it as their job to stick it to the man.”

“Mostly the job is different now,” Taibbi said. “The fantasy among reporters in the nineties about politicians started to be, I want to be the person that hangs out with the candidate after the speech and has a beer and is sort of close to power. And that’s kind of the model, that’s where we’re at right now. That’s kind of the problem is that basically people in the business want to be behind the rope line with people of influence. And it’s going to be a problem to get us back to that other adversarial posture of the past.”

 

Why The West Is So Weak And Russia Is So Strong

gaiusbaltar  |  The main thing to understand is that western societies and economies have been put on an ideological footing. Productivity, competitiveness, technology and science are simply not priorities anymore in the West. Explaining the consequences of this process for the West would take many articles, or a book of several hundred pages. Still, let’s mention a few examples.

The inverse competence crisis – The goal of this entire project has been to place the ideologically pure in all positions of power at all levels of society. These positions are, in a normal and competitive society, occupied by the highly competent 1.5/8 group. The process has now reached near-completion with most positions of power occupied by the ideologically pure. Some of those people have high IQs but they are neither objective nor independent thinkers. The Ideology they must subscribe to is simply incompatible with those qualities. This has some serious consequences.

Remember that positions of power and influence are more likely to demand general competence than other positions (as opposed to specific competence). The greater the power, the more the position demands general competence. The people in these positions now are selected by ideological fervor and reliability – so the higher you go, the more ideologically enthusiastic the people who hold them. This means that the least objective and independent thinking people hold the positions which require the greatest objectivity and independent thinking. Therefore, in the West incompetence becomes greater and more common the higher you go. As someone said - “a general is an incompetent colonel.” This can be seen absolutely everywhere except in some holdout private companies. Those exceptions are of course being addressed as we speak.

The second problem is that many of the irrational/subjective people holding all the power have reasonably high IQs. That may seem to be a positive thing but it has a major disadvantage. Moderate to high IQ irrational/subjective people are the easiest to brainwash of all people. The reasons for that are complicated and need to be addressed in another article – but what this means is that the top tier in the West is not only the most incompetent it can possibly be in comparison to what their jobs require – but are also the most malleable and delusional.

The cost and debt crisis – The migration of the ideologically pure into the ideological power base and positions of influence has created millions of jobs in western societies which create no value. These jobs are much more numerous and more widespread than most people realize, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something like 20%-30% of the entire labor force of the West could be fired without any adverse effect. In fact, the effect would be positive, especially if those people could be made to work the (mostly menial) real-economy jobs they are suitable for.

Deindustrialization has been blamed for the extreme debt levels and tax burdens of the West. That is, as far as it goes, true – but maintaining this giant group of incompetents in their fake jobs is also placing an extreme burden on the West. Western societies are now completely unsustainable and cannot be run without constant debt increase.

The competition crisis – This crisis can be explained by the following example: Let’s say there are three companies with combined 100% market share in some sector. There is no real competition between them and everybody can just relax because the customers can’t go anywhere else. These companies can get away with absolute incompetence on most levels, including in management. They don’t need to think about efficiency, safety, productivity or costs, except on their websites and in annual reports. However, if a competitor with competent employees manages to infiltrate the sector, those three companies will hit a wall. There will be an enormous crisis and one or more of them will most likely go under.

This is exactly the situation in the western economies now. Monopoly and oligopoly is the rule and the main objective of most large western companies is to prevent anyone from infiltrating their sector – usually by bribing regulators or by buying the competition. This is a necessity because a huge number of western companies are now run by incompetent management and staffed by incompetent people, particularly in support and management functions. The immortal words of the nameless Boeing employee about the 737 MAX apply to most large western companies; “this airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” Western companies are no longer competitive. They cannot compete with Chinese companies now and soon they won’t be able to compete with companies in general outside the West. They simply can’t function except inside an economic safe-space. In fact, the situation is such that the Chinese already do the real work for many of them and reshoring the work is problematic because of (surprise!) the human capital degradation in the West caused by the repurposing of its education system.

This also applies to western societies as a whole. The entire leadership and diplomatic classes of the West are no longer competitive against the rest of the world for exactly these reasons. They are being outmaneuvered by the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and everybody else at every turn. Even African leaders are now more competent than western leaders. They have consistently made decisions that are better for their people than leaders in the West - for the last few years anyway.

The complexity crisis – Earlier in this article I stated that the 1.5/8 group is extremely valuable for modern societies and without it complicated modern societies cannot be managed. In the West this group has been successfully sidelined to a great degree and a good part of it doesn’t even bother with university education anymore. The situation, however, is even worse than that. The reconfiguration of the education system and the break between competence and reward in the job market has fundamentally changed the decision making process behind the selection of university education. Why study engineering (which is hard) when you can get an even better paying job with a degree in psychology (which is easy nowadays)? The reconfiguration of the western education system has changed the reward structure, encouraging young people to pursue easy and useless education – simply because the “system” will provide them with jobs.

This has already caused a major crisis in western societies, particularly in the US. The “maintenance” of complex aspects of US society needs a large group of engineers and people with related education. This maintenance is faltering now, and significantly relies on foreign engineers educated in US universities. You see, why would Americans study engineering in a system which doesn’t reward it? If China and India could somehow recall their engineers and others with hard education from the US, the US system could probably not be maintained, let alone advanced. This will get progressively worse and we will soon reach a point where complex systems which underpin society cannot be kept running. That will require some kind of “reset” to a less complex society, with less prosperity of course.

There are far more crises than those four, but I wouldn’t want to sound like a doomsayer by listing more.

Chase DeBanks Mercola: DeBanking As A Weapon To Punish Covid Dissent

amidwesterndoctor  |  •At the end of June, English Politician Nigel Farrage reported that his bank accounts had been closed due to him sharing political views that challenged the conventional narrative. Although his bank originally denied deplatforming him for political reasons, an about-face occurred and a few weeks later, the CEO resigned.

•On July 4th, a federal judge ruled that the Biden administration was illegally violating the first amendment by encouraging social media companies to censor anyone who questioned the flawed COVID-19 narrative. Prior to this ruling, the Biden administration was actively having critics of the pandemic policy be censored and de-platformed. Since this ruling, as best as I can tell, it is no longer as easy for them to de-platform political opponents on social media.

Note: In May, a moderately large regional bank collapsed and the Federal Government decided to address the bank failure by having Chase bank to take the failed bank over. This suggests that the Biden Administration is working hand in hand with Chase and may be able to make requests in return for deals (like the bank acquisition) it offered to Chase.

•On July 6th, the FDA gave full approval to the Alzheimer’s drug that had received a questionable backdoor approval in January (discussed below). This approval was based on a 1795 person trial (with 898 receiving the drug) where it was found the drug caused a small decline in the rate of developing cognitive decline over 18 months (based upon the results of a survey that could easily be prone to bias) while at the same time 21.5% of those who received the drug experienced brain bleeding and or brain swelling.

•On July 25th, Dr. Mercola announced not only he, but also his employees and their families had been abruptly deplatformed by Chase:

There are a lot of ways to interpret what happened. The most common interpretation has been that debanking dissidents is fast becoming the preferred way to suppress political opposition (e.g., do you remember last year when Justin Trudaeu had Canada’s banks close all the bank accounts of anyone who peacefully attended the Trucker protests against Canada’s vaccine mandates).

This is likely being pushed forward since debanking is a relatively easy way to create compliance in the population and there is an increasing risk of widespread political rebellion against the bad policies (e.g., the COVID-19 vaccine mandates) that have been pushed by governments around the world. Typically, when policies like these are done, initially small but visible tests are carried out (e.g., a lot of people can clearly see what was done to the families of Dr. Mercola’s employees was wrong) to gauge how the public will react to them and if that tyranny can be normalized. Much of this in encapsulated by a famous poem I live my life by:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

For example, during Obama’s presidency, I watched easy to disparage groups affiliated with the alt-right first be censored online and then be deplatformed by Silicon Valley payment processors (e.g., Paypal). Many of my left-wing friends who were worked in natural health applauded this persecution and could not process why it might not be in their best interests to promote it. That same censorship was then rolled out against them (at which point no one stood up for them) and not to long after that, against anyone who dissented against the COVID narrative.

Note: Since the Federal Government was recently forced to back off from overtly violating the First Amendment on social media, less overt ways of suppressing speech are likely becoming a more and more needed tool for those nonetheless wishing to do so.

However, while all of the above is likely true, there is another important facet to this entire story—antitrust violations.

After the civil war, the US economy was taken over by a group of conniving scoundrels who eventually came to be known as the Robber Barons. A key approach they all shared was creating absolute monopolizations of their respective industries, which allowed them to milk obscene amounts of money as possible from everyone else.

Eventually Theodore Roosevelt put a stop to this through the 1890 Sherman Antitrust act, and broke up their monopolies. I and many others believe that Roosevelt was not entirely successful, because he caused the Robber Barons to diversify into other areas (e.g., after Rockefeller had to break up Standard Oil, he bought out the medical industry).

Since Roosevelt’s time, efforts have been made to prevent big players from monopolizing their respective industries (e.g., in the 1990s, Antitrust Lawsuits against Microsoft revolved around Bill Gates having his Windows operating system not allow competitors software on it), but they have not been as successful. Since that time, Gates appears to have followed in Rockefeller’s monopolizing footsteps and has gradually bought out the global health industry through the leverage created by his foundation and its media advertising dollars (which became obscene during COVID-19).

During Obama’s presidency, we began to see a merger between Big Tech and Big Pharma (as each invested in the other)—discussed further here and here. This was then followed by a gradually increasing censorship of any information online which challenged the pharmaceutical industry’s narrative.

During COVID-19, this kicked into overdrive. First, people were denied access to information about numerous lifesaving therapies for COVID-19 (ultimately resulting in many of them instead being forced to succumb to the remdesivir-ventilator protocol). Following this, a blockade was enacted against any information even hinting at the widespread harm emerging from the COVID-19 vaccines, something most of us believe now caused even more harm than denying the public access to early treatment options for COVID-19. As you all know, many of the things Big Tech censored for being “misinformation” (e.g., COVID-19’s origin from a lab) have since been proven true.

Many have thus argued the Big Tech companies should be held accountable for the harms that resulted from their monopolistic censorship. Although their conduct is beyond egregious, it nonetheless makes a lot of sense if you consider how many investments each industry had in the other and the incentives they all had to monopolize the marketplace so they could all make astronomical amounts of money off COVID-19.

Strokes, Heart Attacks, Massive Infertility Resulting From mRNA Jabs

amidwesterndoctor  |  Reducing global population has been a consistent goal of the ruling class for centuries.  While many support the abstract idea of population control, no one wants to volunteer to be the ones who are culled.  The business of population control has hence been a very messy subject.

When the COVID vaccine program began, I—and likely many others—suspected the COVID vaccines would have an “unexpected” side effect of reducing fertility.  Early in their development, Mike Yeadon (and others) at great personal risk publicly warned regulators of a clear fertility danger inherent to the vaccine (found in section IX of their petition).

Subsequent regulatory document leaks from the European FDA revealed Pfizer exempted themselves from testing the key areas of concern (infertility, autoimmunity and cancer) in animals.  This highly unusual moved further suggested serious problems existed in these three areas (as you can’t find something if you don’t officially test for it).

Despite repeated denials, signs of each of these key complications from the vaccine have now emerged.  While I do not have every piece of the puzzle—there are likely many “population control initiatives” I’ve never heard of—I know enough to paint a clear picture of this dirty business. 

The first half of this two-part article will lay out the historical precedent of using any means necessary to reduce the population, while the second part will examine how this has been attempted with vaccinations. 

Cruel Philosophies

As best as I can tell, there are three overlapping schools of thought that have created the zealous belief in a need for population control. 

            1. Many governments, especially those in the East, have adopted the viewpoint that periodic wars are necessary for the stability of the society.  This viewpoint primarily arises from social instability caused by too many young adult males in the state coupled with the issues that occur when there is insufficient food available to the population. In turn, many wars have been fought specifically for this reason. (I am most familiar with this being a common theme in China, as they have observed over the centuries the one thing that will cause rebellions are famines.)

Following World War 2, the Western ruling elite came to a consensus that the war approach was no longer tenable due to the extreme collateral infrastructure and environmental damage modern weaponry (ie. nukes) created. I only know of two exceptions to this rule:

     Wars in third-world nations lacking advaced weaponry where the collateral damage those wars caused was inconsequential to first-world nations.

     Talks that occurred within the Chinese military leadership, but have so far not materialized, over starting a war with India so both countries could mutually alleviate their challenging population burden. For context, China has attempted population control with their “one-child” policy, but it has been met with mixed success and widespread social resistance.

The alternative to war is a multi-pronged attack that seeks every possible avenue to reduce fertility and accelerate aging, which many argue is the more humane option of the two.  One of the curious facts I have observed over the decades is how frequently an odd policy or environmental agent always seems to converge on the common pathway of reducing population.  Once or twice, you can write it up as a coincidence, but at a certain point, you have to wonder if it is all intentional.

When I studied the early history of infectious diseases (discussed in my previous articles on smallpox), one of the most striking things to me was the absolute squalor the serfs were forced into as the feudal lords kicked them off the land to live in the early cities.  It was much worse than most people of this modern era can even conceive of. 

When I first learned of this, I guessed the suffering that move caused for the lower class must have been viewed as a necessary trade off by the European rulership to facilitate the Industrial Revolution, something vital for national development.  After I learned about the Malthusian philosophy, I realized those abhorrent living situations was likely the goal in of itself. 

In 1798, Rev. Thomas R Malthus published the influential work An Essay on the Principle of Population, which argued that human populations tend to increase at a geometrical (exponential) rate, but the means of subsistence (food) grows at only an arithmetic (linear) rate.  "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man," according to Malthus, who therefore believed the standard of living of the masses could not be improved without the checks of war, famine, or disease. In their absence, population would increase by a geometric rate and lead to a catastrophic “Malthusian” food supply collapse. 

While there are numerous errors in his theory, Malthus was appointed to multiple important positions, and his ideas appear to have gradually become a prevailing conviction among members of the ruling classes in the 19th century. These ideas also influenced other key figures, such as Charles Darwin while he created his theory of evolution and natural selection. 

Numerous groups were founded over the decades, which emphasized birth control and increasing mortality of the poor.  These groups included Dr. George Drysdale's Elements of Social Science in 1854, the Malthusian League in 1877, and Margret Sanger’s National Birth Control League in 1915, which became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.  Initially these groups were domestic, but gradually they became global, at which point, they tied international aid and development to population control measures. 

The Malthusian and Darwinian ideals gradually gave birth to Social Darwinism and Eugenics, which were both widely adopted by the ruling elite.  Social Darwinism argued that class divisions were the will of nature and that this form of natural selection, rather than being evil, was necessary.  The most extreme version of this ideology, eugenics, appears to have arisen from two key factors:

1.     The tribal nature of human beings and the tendency to view all other tribes as inferior (the ruling class felt this way towards the poor).

2.     The advances of society were making it possible for many of the weaker members of society, who previously would have died off, to survive long enough to reproduce and, over time, significantly weaken the gene pool.

Eugenics in turn advocated preventing those who were less “fit” from breeding.  This has been responsible for horror upon horror since its inception, and it provided the theoretical foundation for why, among other things, the Nazis forcibly sterilized the mentally-ill.  When the Nazis eventually were tried at Nuremberg for their crimes against humanity, few know that that many cited the fact similar actions were first conducted by the “Great United States” as part of their defense.

Disclosure Is FAR From Sudden Transparency To The Public

AOC on UAP hearing & government corruption, Full Video
by u/strawberrybrooks in UFOs

 

What we are witnessing is the results of years of hard work by more than a few brave souls that have been working (and risking) their asses off to bring about more transparency to this issue.

I recently put together a timeline of some of what I consider the most important events that I feel have led us here. I share it in case some of you reading find it useful or interesting. Just keep in mind these are but a handful of remarkable events in an ongoing process that arguably has decades in the making.

2017 - The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) — previously known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) — hits the public stage.

An unclassified but unpublicized investigatory effort funded by the United States Government to study unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP).

2017 - The Pentagon declassifies and releases 3 videos of confirmed Unidentified Flying Objects — obtained from credible military instruments and sources (Now renamed to “UAPs”, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). The NY Times reports on the story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/us/pentagon-ufo-videos.html

2020 - Fighter pilot Commander David Fravor reveals he had an aerial interaction with an UPA — which displayed tech capabilities far beyond what we currently have. An incident related to the operations involved to one of the videos released by the Pentagon, which were recorded back in 2004.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

2021 - Lt. Cmdr. Chad Underwood, Navy Weapon Systems Officer corroborates Commander Favor's testimony — and comes forth as the person who recorded the “Tic Tac Video”, one of the Pentagon's declassified UFO/UAP videos.

https://youtu.be/xPXFcFyZma0

2022 - The US Department of Defense announces the establishment of AARO, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other phenomena in the air, sea, and/or space and/or on land: sometimes referred to as "unidentified aerial phenomena" or "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP); after mounting evidence of the potential existence of these technologies.

AARO was succeeding the "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force" (UAPTF), a program within the Office of Naval Intelligence used to "standardize collection and reporting" of sightings of UFOs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-domain_Anomaly_Resolution_Office

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3100053/dod-announces-the-establishment-of-the-all-domain-anomaly-resolution-office/

2022 - The US senate passes the "Whistleblower Protection Improvement Act of 2021" — UFO Whistleblowers would get immunity under new amendment, giving government employees and contractors immunity from reprisal for coming forward about UFO encounters and secret programs.

https://amendments-rules.house.gov/amendments/UAP%20Reporting%20Procedures220705122640993.pdf

https://www.realcleardefense.com/2022/07/08/ufo_whistleblowers_would_get_immunity_under_new_amendment_841436.html

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ufo-whistleblowers-would-get-protection-under-new-amendment

June 5, 2023, - U.S. Air Force (USAF) officer and former intelligence official David Grusch testimony — a decorated combat officer within the USAF during the War in Afghanistan and is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), publicly claimed, based upon information he alleged to have received from other officials, that the U.S. federal government maintains a highly secretive UFO retrieval program, is in possession of non-human spacecraft, and has seen pilot corpses belonging to another intelligent species.

Full video interview: https://youtu.be/gfZUA9DMzYQ

And over the past few weeks:

*A USAF Officer and former Intelligence Official comes out publicly stating Non-human intelligent beings are real, we have their tech, and bodies, and not telling congress about it.

*The Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General signs a letter saying his statement are "urgent and credible".

*Several US Senators talk about it openly to the public, including statements about how several high-ranking US military officials with top clearances have corroborated his claims in close-door briefings, and that they even fear for their lives.

*The senate works and proposes legislation with clear language that all but orders private enterprises and military contractors—in no uncertain terms— to disclose and report any and all pieces of tech and research made around any potential exotic or non-earth origin tech handed to them by the government within six month after approval, and they have do so to the official governmental body tasked to investigate UAPs (AARO).

*Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds reveal a 64 page amendmet to the 2024 defense appropriations bill titled the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2023. The bill is understood to have been worked for months in collaboration with the white house and several high-profile and credible whistleblowers with insider knowledge on the topic. The bill defines things like "Non-human intelligences" and UAP observable capabilities.

*UAP Hearings