Why Didn't School Shootings Happen Before 1999?

 WaPo  | The Washington Post has spent years tracking how many children have been exposed to gun violence during school hours since the Columbine High massacre in 1999.

Beyond the dead and wounded, children who witness the violence or cower behind locked doors to hide from it can be profoundly traumatized.

The federal government does not track school shootings, so The Post pieced together its numbers from news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports and calls to schools and police departments.

While school shootings remain rare, there were more in 2021 — 42 — than in any year since at least 1999. So far this year, there have been at least 24 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during the school day.

The count now stands at more than 311,000 children at 331 schools.

The Post has found that at least 185 children, educators and other people have been killed in assaults, and another 369 have been injured. 

The Post’s search for more shootings will continue, and it’s possible reporters will locate additional incidents from previous years.

Hundreds of outlets cover the deadliest attacks, such as the Feb. 14 rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., where a 19-year-old man with an AR-15 rifle killed 17 people.

Others are covered by a single newspaper, such as a 2001 shooting at Pearl C. Anderson Middle School in Dallas, where a 14-year-old boy held a revolver to a girl’s chest and asked her whether she was “ready to die” before a bullet fired, grazing her hand.

Even as the list of incidents has expanded, however, the trend lines have remained consistent.

Among The Post’s most important findings: the disproportionate impact of school shootings on children of color.

 

The RMVP Couldn't Hold A Candle To This Disinformation Governance Board

wikipedia  |  The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda; RMVP), also known simply as the Ministry of Propaganda (Propagandaministerium), was responsible for controlling the content of the press, literature, visual arts, film, theater, music and radio in Nazi Germany.

The ministry was created as the central institution of Nazi propaganda shortly after the party's national seizure of power in January 1933. In the Hitler cabinet it was headed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who exercised control over all German mass media and creative artists through his ministry and the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer), which was established in the fall of 1933. 

Shortly after the March 1933 Reichstag elections, Adolf Hitler presented his cabinet with a draft resolution to establish the ministry. Despite the skepticism of some non-National Socialist ministers, Hitler pushed the resolution through.^[1] On 13 March 1933 Reich President Paul von Hindenburg issued a decree ordering the establishment of a Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.^[2] It is important to note that at the time the German word ‘Propaganda’ was value neutral. In today's terms, the ministry could be understood to have had a name that meant roughly ‘ministry for culture, media and public relations’.^[3]

The ministry moved into the 18th-century Ordenspalais building across from the Reich Chancellery in Berlin,^[4] then used by the United Press Department of the Reich Government (Vereinigten Presseabteilung der Reichsregierung). It had been responsible for coordinating the Weimar Republic’s official press releases but by then had been incorporated into the Nazi state. On 25 March 1933 Goebbels explained the future function of the Ministry of Propaganda to broadcasting company directors: "The Ministry has the task of carrying out an intellectual mobilization in Germany. In the field of the spirit it is thus the same as the Ministry of Defense in the field of security. [...] Spiritual mobilization [is] just as necessary, perhaps even more necessary, than making the people materially able to defend themselves."^[5]

The ministry was tailored for Joseph Goebbels, who had been the Reich propaganda leader of the Nazi Party since April 1930. By a decree of 30 June 1933, numerous functions of other ministries were transferred under the responsibility of the new ministry. The role of the new ministry was to centralise Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural, mass media and intellectual life for the country.^[4][6]

 

Clinton/Obama Intel Officials Claim That Big Tech Monopolies Are Essential To National Security

greenwald  |  Needless to say, the U.S. security state wants to maintain a stranglehold on political discourse in the U.S. and the world more broadly. They want to be able to impose propagandistic narratives without challenge and advocate for militarism without dissent. To accomplish that, they need a small handful of corporations which are subservient to them to hold in their hands as much concentrated power over the internet as possible.

If a free and fair competitive market were to arise whereby social media platforms more devoted to free speech could fairly compete with Google and Facebook— as the various pending bills in Congress are partially designed to foster — then that new diversity of influence, that diffusion of power, would genuinely threaten the ability of the CIA and the Pentagon and the White House to police political discourse and suppress dissent from their policies and assertions. By contrast, by maintaining all power in the hands of the small coterie of tech monopolies which control the internet and which have long proven their loyalty to the U.S. security state, the ability of the U.S. national security state to maintain a closed propaganda system around questions of war and militarism is guaranteed.

In this new letter, these national security operatives barely bother to hide their intention to exploit the strong animosity toward Russia that they have cultivated, and the accompanying intense emotions from the ubiquitous, unprecedented media coverage of the war in Ukraine, to prop up their goals. Over and over, they cite the grave Russian threat — a theme they have been disseminating and manufacturing since the Russiagate fraud of 2016 — to manipulate Americans to support the preservation of Big Tech's concentrated power, and to imply that anyone seeking to limit Big Tech power or make the market more competitive is a threat to U.S. national security:

This is a pivotal moment in modern history. There is a battle brewing between authoritarianism and democracy, and the former is using all the tools at its disposal, including a broad disinformation campaign and the threat of cyber-attacks, to bring about a change in the global order. We must confront these global challenges. . . . U.S. technology platforms have given the world the chance to see the real story of the Russian military’s horrific human rights abuses in Ukraine. . . . At the same time, President Putin and his regime have sought to twist facts in order to show Russia as a liberator instead of an aggressor. . . .

The Russian government is seeking to alter the information landscape by blocking Russian citizens from receiving content that would show the true facts on the ground. .. . . . Indeed, it is telling that among the Kremlin’s first actions of the war was blocking U.S. platforms in Russia. Putin knows that U.S. digital platforms can provide Russian citizens valuable views and facts about the war that he tries to distort through lies and disinformation. U.S. technology platforms have already taken concrete steps to shine a light on Russia’s actions to brutalize Ukraine. . . . Providing timely and accurate on-the-ground information – and disrupting the scourge of disinformation from Russian state media – is essential for allowing the world (including the Russian people) to see the human toll of Russia’s aggression. . . . [T]he United States is facing an extraordinary threat from Russian cyber-attacks . . .

In the face of these growing threats, U.S. policymakers must not inadvertently hamper the ability of U.S. technology platforms to counter increasing disinformation and cybersecurity risks, particularly as the West continues to rely on the scale and reach of these firms to push back on the Kremlin . . . . Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks the start of a new chapter in global history, one in which the ideals of democracy will be put to the test. The United States will need to rely on the power of its technology sector to ensure that the safety of its citizens and the narrative of events continues to be shaped by facts, not by foreign adversaries.

It is hardly controversial or novel to observe that the U.S. security state always wants and needs a hated foreign enemy precisely because it allows them to claim whatever powers and whatever budgets they want in the name of stopping that foreign villain. And every war and every new enemy ushers in new authoritarian powers and the trampling of civil liberties: both the First War on Terror, justified by 9/11, and the New Domestic War on Terror, justified by 1/6, should have taught us that lesson permanently. Usually, though, U.S. security state propagandists are a bit more subtle about how they manipulate anger and fear of foreign villains to manipulate public opinion for their own authoritarian ends.

Perhaps because of their current desperation about the support these bills have attracted, they are now just nakedly and shamelessly trying to channel the anger and hatred that they have successfully stoked toward Russia to demand that Big Tech not be weakened, regulated or restricted in any way. The cynical exploitation could hardly be more overt: if you hate Putin the way any loyal and patriotic American should, then you must devote yourself to full preservation of the power of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

It should go without saying that these life-long security state operatives do not care in the slightest about the dangers of "disinformation.” Indeed — as evidenced by the fact that most of them generated one Russiagate fraud after the next during...

How Information Slavery Was Imposed On You Beehotches During My Lifetime - Part III.

truthout  |  Wall Street’s sinister influence on the political process has, rightly, been a major topic during this presidential campaign. But, history has taught us that the role that the media industry plays in Washington poses a comparable threat to our democracy. Yet, this is a topic rarely discussed by the dominant media, or on the campaign trail.

But now is a good time to discuss our growing media crises. Twenty years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The act, signed into law on February 8, 1996, was “essentially bought and paid for by corporate media lobbies,” as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) described it, and radically “opened the floodgates on mergers.”

The negative impact of the law cannot be overstated. The law, which was the first major reform of telecommunications policy since 1934, according to media scholar Robert McChesney, “is widely considered to be one of the three or four most important federal laws of this generation.” The act dramatically reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to buy up thousands of media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow of information in the United States and around the world.

“Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few,” said Eduardo Galeano, the Latin American journalist, in response to the act.

Twenty years later the devastating impact of the legislation is undeniable: About 90 percent of the country’s major media companies are owned by six corporations. Bill Clinton’s legacy in empowering the consolidation of corporate media is right up there with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and welfare reform, as being among the most tragic and destructive policies of his administration.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not merely a regrettable part of history. It serves as a stern warning about what is at stake in the future. In a media world that is going through a massive transformation, media companies have dramatically increased efforts to wield influence in Washington, with a massive lobbying presence and a steady dose of campaign donations to politicians in both parties – with the goal of allowing more consolidation, and privatizing and commodifying the internet.

 

How Information Slavery Was Imposed On You Beehotches During My Lifetime - Part II.

foreignpolicy |  For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government’s mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?

Until this month, a vast ocean of U.S. programming produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks could only be viewed or listened to at broadcast quality in foreign countries. The programming varies in tone and quality, but its breadth is vast: It’s viewed in more than 100 countries in 61 languages. The topics covered include human rights abuses in Iran, self-immolation in Tibet, human trafficking across Asia, and on-the-ground reporting in Egypt and Iraq.

The restriction of these broadcasts was due to the Smith-Mundt Act, a long-standing piece of legislation that has been amended numerous times over the years, perhaps most consequentially by Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. In the 1970s, Fulbright was no friend of VOA and Radio Free Europe, and moved to restrict them from domestic distribution, saying they "should be given the opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics." Fulbright’s amendment to Smith-Mundt was bolstered in 1985 by Nebraska Senator Edward Zorinsky, who argued that such "propaganda" should be kept out of America as to distinguish the U.S. "from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government activity."

Zorinsky and Fulbright sold their amendments on sensible rhetoric: American taxpayers shouldn’t be funding propaganda for American audiences. So did Congress just tear down the American public’s last defense against domestic propaganda?

BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil insists BBG is not a propaganda outlet, and its flagship services such as VOA "present fair and accurate news."

"They don’t shy away from stories that don’t shed the best light on the United States," she told The Cable. She pointed to the charters of VOA and RFE: "Our journalists provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible discussion, and open debate."

A former U.S. government source with knowledge of the BBG says the organization is no Pravda, but it does advance U.S. interests in more subtle ways. In Somalia, for instance, VOA serves as counterprogramming to outlets peddling anti-American or jihadist sentiment. "Somalis have three options for news," the source said, "word of mouth, al-Shabab, or VOA Somalia."

This partially explains the push to allow BBG broadcasts on local radio stations in the United States. The agency wants to reach diaspora communities, such as St. Paul, Minnesota’s significant Somali expat community. "Those people can get al-Shabab, they can get Russia Today, but they couldn’t get access to their taxpayer-funded news sources like VOA Somalia," the source said. "It was silly."

Lynne added that the reform has a transparency benefit as well. "Now Americans will be able to know more about what they are paying for with their tax dollars — greater transparency is a win-win for all involved," she said. And so with that we have the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which passed as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect this month.

But if anyone needed a reminder of the dangers of domestic propaganda efforts, the past 12 months provided ample reasons. Last year, two USA Today journalists were ensnared in a propaganda campaign after reporting about millions of dollars in back taxes owed by the Pentagon’s top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan. Eventually, one of the co-owners of the firm confessed to creating phony websites and Twitter accounts to smear the journalists anonymously. Additionally, just this month, the Washington Post exposed a counter-propaganda program by the Pentagon that recommended posting comments on a U.S. website run by a Somali expat with readers opposing al-Shabab. "Today, the military is more focused on manipulating news and commentary on the Internet, especially social media, by posting material and images without necessarily claiming ownership," reported the Post.

How Information Slavery Was Imposed On You Beehotches During My Lifetime - Part I.

reaganlibrary  | The Fairness Doctrine, enforced by the Federal Communications Council, was rooted in the media world of 1949. Lawmakers became concerned that the monopoly audience control of the three main networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, could misuse their broadcast licenses to set a biased public agenda.

The Fairness Doctrine mandated broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. Congress backed the policy in 1954 and by the 1970s the FCC called the doctrine the “single most important requirement of operation in the public interest – the sine qua non for grant of a renewal of license.

The Supreme Court upheld the doctrine. In 1969’s Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, journalist Fred Cook sued a Pennsylvania Christian Crusade radio program after a radio host attacked him on air. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld Cook's right to an on-air response under the Fairness Doctrine, arguing that nothing in the First Amendment gives a broadcast license holder the exclusive right to the airwaves they operate on.

The doctrine stayed in effect, and was enforced until the Reagan Administration. In 1985, under FCC Chairman, Mark S. Fowler, a communications attorney who had served on Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, the FCC released a report stating that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Fowler began rolling the application of the doctrine back during Reagan's second term - despite complaints from some in the Administration that it was all that kept broadcast journalists from thoroughly lambasting Reagan's policies on air. In 1987, the FCC panel, under new chairman Dennis Patrick, repealed the Fairness Doctrine altogether with a 4-0 vote

The FCC vote was opposed by members of Congress who said the FCC had tried to "flout the will of Congress" and the decision was "wrongheaded, misguided and illogical." The decision drew political fire and tangling, where cooperation with Congress was at issue. In June 1987, Congress attempted to preempt the FCC decision and codify the Fairness Doctrine, (Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987 S. 742).

The bill passed but the legislation was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan. Congress was unable to muster enough votes to overturn the President’s veto.

This topic guide contains material on the doctrine itself, the vote on the Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987, the President’s subsequent veto and the aftermath of this vote.

Fat, Ugly, Non-Binary "Chief People Officers" Now Dominate Western Public Discourse...,

yahoo  |  Daniil Medvedev, the Russian player currently sitting at No. 1 in the ATP rankings, may not be allowed to play at Wimbledon unless he denounces Russian president Vladimir Putin.

That was the situation outlined during a meeting at British Parliament on Tuesday, where sports minister Nigel Huddleston confirmed discussions were taking place to prevent supporters of Putin from entering the world's oldest tennis tournament amid Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's tennis teams have already been thrown out of the Davis and Billie Jean King Cup, but Huddleston indicated the government wanted sanctions to go further.

From The Telegraph:

Giving evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media & Sport select committee, Huddleston said: “It needs to go beyond that. We need some potential assurance that they are not supporters of Vladimir Putin and we are considering what requirements we may need to try and get some assurances along those lines.”

Asked whether individual Russian and Belarusian athletes wanting to come to the UK would be required to “denounce” Putin’s invasion, Huddleston said the details were still being discussed, including with other countries.

He added: “It would be better if we can decide some broad global consensus on this.”

Such an action would affect Medvedev and any other Russian and Belarusian tennis players, who are currently not allowed to play under their national flags while the Ukrainian invasion continues. There are currently four Russian players in the ATP top 30, while the WTA has three Russians and two Belarusians in its top 30.

The world of sports has seen an overwhelming and potentially unprecedented wave of bans against Russia's teams and athletes since the country's military made its move across the Ukrainian border. That has included suspensions from international competition in hockey, soccer, figure skating and many more, as well organizations removing events and business from the country and governments freezing Putin allies' assets.

NYTimes Finally Admits "Russian Disinfo" Hunter Biden Laptop Is Authentic....,

greenwald  |  One of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern American electoral history occurred in the weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election. On October 14, 2020 — less than three weeks before Americans were set to vote — the nation's oldest newspaper, The New York Post, began publishing a series of reports about the business dealings of the Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in countries in which Biden, as Vice President, wielded considerable influence (including Ukraine and China) and would again if elected president.

The backlash against this reporting was immediate and intense, leading to suppression of the story by U.S. corporate media outlets and censorship of the story by leading Silicon Valley monopolies. The disinformation campaign against this reporting was led by the CIA's all-but-official spokesperson Natasha Bertrand (then of Politico, now with CNN), whose article on October 19 appeared under this headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

 

These "former intel officials" did not actually say that the “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo." Indeed, they stressed in their letter the opposite: namely, that they had no evidence to suggest the emails were falsified or that Russia had anything to do them, but, instead, they had merely intuited this "suspicion" based on their experience:

We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -- just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.

But a media that was overwhelmingly desperate to ensure Trump's defeat had no time for facts or annoying details such as what these former officials actually said or whether it was in fact true. They had an election to manipulate. As a result, that these emails were "Russian disinformation” — meaning that they were fake and that Russia manufactured them — became an article of faith among the U.S.'s justifiably despised class of media employees.

Very few even included the crucial caveat that the intelligence officials themselves stressed: namely, that they had no evidence at all to corroborate this claim. Instead, as I noted last September, “virtually every media outlet — CNN, NBC News, PBS, Huffington Post, The Intercept, and too many others to count — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.” The Huffington Post even published a must-be-seen-to-be-believed campaign ad for Joe Biden, masquerading as “reporting,” that spread this lie that the emails were "Russian disinformation.”

 

Like Standard-Issue Sheeple, MIT Has Surrendered Its Last Remaining Vestiges Of Testicular Fortitude...,

stevekirsch  |  I tried to give a talk about the science behind the COVID vaccines and mask wearing in the auditorium at MIT that I funded for $2.5M.

No dice. They won’t let me talk there. They suggested I give the talk at a different university.

See my original post: Is science dead? for the full story.

Stephanie Seneff is not an MIT faculty member

After my original posting, a lot of people suggested I ask Stephanie Seneff to sponsor me. In fact, if I had a dime for everyone who suggested Stephanie, I could retire :)

Stephanie and I are good friends (we talk all the time). She would do it if she were an MIT faculty member. But she isn’t.

I can tell you one thing though: it was absolutely stunning to me that she was the only person at MIT people suggested I ask. That in itself is remarkable.

The entire MIT faculty is wrong on this issue

There are over 1,000 faculty members at MIT and not a single one thinks the vaccines might be unsafe? Nobody?!?!?

OK, I can live with that. Apparently, they’ve all drunk the Kool-Aid at MIT.

But what is totally unacceptable is that they refuse to even consider the possibility that they could be wrong.

What ever happened to open-minded scientists?

I know that there are a few faculty members who believe I should be able to speak at MIT, but they are afraid of retribution from their peers. So they avoid the controversy by doing nothing. They won’t even let me publicly reveal who they are.

What’s even worse than that is that there are serious cases of vaccine injury at MIT that are not being reported

More on those stories later. They’ve been covered up.

MIT should be speaking out for what the science says, not actively suppressing scientific discourse. Fist tap Big Don.

Mainstream Media's Ludicrous Joe Rogan Fear Factor Continues....,

mediaite |  Two hundred and seventy “scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators” are requesting Spotify add a misinformation policy for its platform due to Joe Rogan’s massively popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE).

The “Open Letter to Spotify” calling for action against Rogan came as a result of Rogan’s interview with Dr. Robert Malone. The Malone episode has been called out for promoting conspiracy theories regarding the Covid-19 pandemic.

The letter states, “By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals.”

The letter continues to slam Rogan for his stance on Covid-19 treatments. “Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are ‘gene therapy,’ promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.”

“Notably, Dr. Malone is one of two recent JRE guests who has compared pandemic policies to the Holocaust,” the letter charged.

YouTube has removed Rogan’s interview with Malone, and Twitter suspended Malone’s account earlier this month for breaking the platform’s guidelines around the posting Covid-19 misinformation.

You can read the full Open Letter to Spotify here.

We Need Multidimensional Portraits Of Ancient Peoples...,

ineteconomics  |   Napoleon Bonaparte asked, “What is history but a fable agreed upon?” Graeber and Wengrow come in to shake off the spell of prevailing fables — not as armchair theorists snatching ideas from thin air but as reviewers and synthesizers of a plethora of tantalizing recent discoveries, along with the work of neglected thinkers who (hello, feminist scholars) who drew ire for their attention to glaring inconsistencies in the established narratives. In doing so, they recover frameworks for the way ancient peoples experienced their world that help us to see that we could be organizing ourselves – socially, economically, politically — on principles much different from those that seem inevitable today. This is heartening.

Among the propositions of Graeber and Wengrow are these:

• We barely have the language to express what our remote ancestors were up to 95% of the time.
• The Agricultural Revolution wasn’t a revolution at all. The real story is much more complex – and interesting.
• Ancient peoples lived with a rich variety of social and political structures, even varying according to the season. (Very flexible, those folks).
• Humans aren’t just pawns on a chessboard of material conditions. We’ve been actively experimenting from the get-go.
• Inequality in large-scale human communities isn’t inevitable, nor is it a product of farming. Ditto, patriarchy.
• Past societies that valued women were happier places to live. (Duh).
• We can do better. We have done better.

The authors begin by pointing out that eighteenth-century theories of human history were partly a reaction to critiques of European society offered by indigenous observers. Consider Kandiaronk, a Wendat chief so skilled in debate he could easily shut down a Jesuit, who blew the minds of listeners with penetrating insights on authority, decency, social responsibility, and above all, freedom. Kandiaronk’s critiques, presented in a dialogue form by the Baron de Lahontan in 1703, sparked a whole genre of books voicing criticisms from a “primitive” outsider. Graeber and Wengrow illuminate how profoundly these products influenced Enlightenment thought and helped give rise to social and political experiments (including the U.S. Constitution), as well as defensive strategies to discount such perspectives (also including the U.S. Constitution).

Madame de Graffigny’s epistolary novel of 1747, “Letters from a Peruvian Woman” (1747) tells the story of an Incan princess who rails against the inequality she observes in French society – particularly the ill-treatment of women. This volume, in turn, helped shape the thinking of the economist A.R.J. Turgot, who responded by insisting that inequality was inevitable. He outlined a theory of social evolution posited as progress from hunters to pastoralism to farming to urban commercial civilization that placed anybody not at the final stage as a vestigial life form that had better get with the program. Turgot’s scheme of social evolution started popping up in lectures of his buddy Adam Smith over in Glasgow, and eventually worked its way into general theories of human history proposed by several of Smith’s influential colleagues such as Adam Ferguson.

The new default paradigm formed the lens through which Europeans viewed indigenous peoples the world over; namely as childish innocents or brutal savages living in deplorable static conditions. Everybody was to be sorted according to how they acquired food, with egalitarian foraging societies banished to the bottom of the ladder. The Kandiaronks causing anxiety by pointing out the grotesque conditions of so-called civilization — from the large numbers of starving people to the need for two hours for a Frenchman to dress himself — could now be dismissed. This mindset became prevalent in the emerging field of archaeology, where practitioners churned out biased interpretations of ancient societies that rendered them non-threatening to the modern, capitalist way of life.

Teleological history was the name of the game, and scholars played it endlessly.

When Will The Undisputed Facts Of Gobekli Tepe Breakthrough The Myths Of Antiquity?

Quora |  Göbekli Tepe is a phenomenal time capsule of discovery and insight. We are faced with an untouched, and relatively intact window into a culture that has refused to be forgotten. Göbekli Tepe stands as a reminder that there is grand folly in making any final determinations about who we are, how we lived and where we came from. Göbekli Tepe also shows that there is profound arrogance to call any prior culture, a primitive culture, by any measure or standard. History books will need a complete rewrite as well as Wikipedia's various citations on ancient history. Sadly some of this data is 20 years old and is still not cited nor put in the proper context.

I have posted on this subject before: What are the most fascinating known unknowns?. I hope to give more details on this amazing discovery with Some information that is not yet easily available (on the internet) or otherwise Peer Reviewed published (Eg: Beer/Bread production, Written Language/Symbols, Plant domestication). However none of this data is unannounced or otherwise proprietary unreleased data. Please see notes at the end of the paragraphs for more detail.

Most of this data is still being uncovered and thus will be published in Peer Review publications when appropriate. Some of this data comes directly from Professor Klaus Schmidt, the chief Researcher and Archeologist on site, in updates to academics that are following his work. Professor Schmidt came to Turkey in 1978, but it wasn't until 1994 that he felt sure enough of the data he collected to begin to publish. Professor Schmidt is academically quite conservative and faced the undesirable task of putting archaeology on notice that general assumptions held very tightly were, just wrong. It took him many years of checking and then rechecking before he would publish his discoveries as he knew they were highly controversial. Thus it may be a few years before we see some of what I mention here fully published and accepted. This is an early view and have no doubts is very, very controversial.

Warning: I have a clear bias here that I must warn the reader about. I feel very, very strongly that academia has not given proper encomium, citation, commendation and tribute for Professor Schmidt and his 30 years of work at Göbekli Tepe. I feel rather strongly that this position of academia has caused many discoveries of similar magnitude to be stunted by little to no funding. Please forgive a bit of cheerleading for what I believe is one of the most important discoveries in human history.

All Too Human

I must point out that one of the most difficult things about Göbekli Tepe has been the Historians and Archaeologists that have invested so much into a paradigm of human development, that they found it nearly impossible to accept the realities that Göbekli Tepe presented. This has hampered progress, funding and peer review of Göbekli Tepe. This shows how even the most empirical Researchers and Scientists are all too human and fall prey to the fear of a rewriting of history to a more accurate context. It is my profound hope that Göbekli Tepe helps to change this point of view in some material way.

Here are just some of the new insights Göbekli Tepe has produced:

Rogan Also Testing The Limits Of Google's Power To Control Discourse

thefreethoughtproject |  Those paying attention to the current situation regarding the establishment’s control on the narrative around Covid-19, have watched as anyone — including esteemed experts in the field — are censored into oblivion for attempting to put forth information that challenges the status quo. For the first time in recent American history, merely talking about alternative treatments for a disease is met with mass censorship by big tech. This is diametrically opposed to actual “science” and the opposite direction in which a free society should be moving.

One of the people who has been censored the most is Robert W Malone MD, MS who is one of the inventors of mRNA & DNA vaccines. Dr. Malone has been outspoken about the way the establishment system is handling, or rather mishandling, the covid crisis.

His Twitter account had grown to over a half million followers last week before the platform decided that his alternative views on the pandemic were a danger to the narrative. So they banned him.

Instead of standing up for the free exchange of ideas by experts — which is how science works  — the left cheered for Malone’s censorship, calling him a kook while celebrating the tools of tyrants.

Before Donald Trump came into office and caused mass hysteria over Russia, the left used to stand for freedom of speech. However, the flamboyant tyrant in the White House quickly eroded their respect for rights. Then, in 2020, Covid-19 arrived and the censorship campaign switched into overdrive.

The left — armed with their militant “fact checkers” whose opinions are wielded like swords against anyone who challenges the official narrative — became the regime of authoritarian information controllers. After all, if you challenge their messiahs like Dr. Fauci, you challenge science itself — facts be damned.

So what happened? Why did the left go from championing free speech for years — even supporting the speech of neo-nazis — to rabidly demanding the silencing of those who attempt to challenge team doom? Dr. Malone and others have a theory, and it’s called mass formation psychosis.

“When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense, we can’t understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere,” explained Malone on a recent interview with Joe Rogan.

Malone then described how “leaders” can exploit this situation: “And one of the aspects of that phenomenon is that the people that they identify as their leaders, the ones typically that come in and say you have this pain and I can solve it for you. I and I alone. Then they will follow that person. It doesn’t matter whether they lied to them or whatever. The data is irrelevant.”

Jizzlane's Going To Jail, Now We Posed To Pretend Epstein Fscked All That Jailbait By Himself?

 Business Insider

slate |  “It’s all connected,” one woman would say, repeatedly, to no one in particular. “It’s the cabal.” She at one point told me that she suspected it was a Maxwell lookalike sitting at the defense table, while the actual Maxwell was off freely gallivanting somewhere. The fifth-floor types spoke frequently of links between Jeffrey Epstein, the CIA, and Mossad, expecting anyone in earshot to understand the significance without further explanation.

Among the conspiracists, there seemed to be a belief that this trial would unlock the secrets of the universe—that it would lay bare a web touching every rich person in the world, every celebrity, every government agency, implicating them all in some sort of horrific global plot. In the end, of course, it did nothing of the sort.

The prosecution’s case was narrowly focused on the harm done to four teenage girls. It was built on the testimony of those four accusers, now women, who alleged that Maxwell aided, and sometimes participated in, Epstein’s efforts to sexually abuse them. When Epstein’s “little black book” came into evidence, it wasn’t because it included contact information for prominent politicians and businesspeople—it was because the book had phone numbers for those underage girls.

After testimony came to a close, I didn’t think the question of Maxwell’s guilt was much of a question at all. The accusers were, to my eyes and ears, extremely credible. Corroborating evidence affirmed their stories. The prosecutors were polished and effective in their presentation, while defense attorneys often stumbled and looked overmatched. When the defense team got a chance to put on its case, it turned out to be shockingly flimsy. The defense’s lead character witness—Maxwell’s onetime executive assistant—barely even managed to say anything nice about Maxwell. There was zero doubt, in my mind, that Maxwell committed the crimes she was charged with. But this was a jury trial, and with a jury, you just never, ever know.

Day after day, the deliberations went on without a verdict. The jurors requested transcripts of testimony from about a third of the witnesses—just reams of words—which made it seem like maybe they were attempting to rerun the entire trial in their chambers. As time dragged on, and they kept asking for more transcripts, I wondered if they were simply overwhelmed by the case, lost at sea, unable to make heads or tails of what they’d seen and heard in the courtroom. Some trial watchers had earlier complained that the prosecution’s case was too narrow, and that more accusers should have been called to testify, but the jury’s behavior during deliberations suggested that the case was confusing enough as it was. When the jurors requested a whiteboard, highlighters, and colored Post-it notes, I wondered if one among them was attempting to patiently explain to the rest, in a clear and visual way, what actually happened.

 

Corporate Media Spreads Most Disinformation And Squeals Loudest About Disagreement

greenwald  |  The war on "disinformation” is now one of the highest priorities of the political and media establishment. It has become the foundational justification for imposing a regime of online censorship. Around the world, new laws are being enacted in its name to empower the state to regulate discourse. Exploiting this cause, a small handful of billionaires are working in unison with Western security state agencies — under the guise of neutral-sounding names like The Atlantic Council — to set the limits of permissible thought and decree what is true and false. Corporate media outlets are attempting to rehabilitate their shattered image by depicting themselves as the bulwark against the rising tide of disinformation.

It is an understatement to say that this righteous cause is a scam. That its motive is power and control over speech and thought — to eliminate dissent and discredit competition — rather than a noble quest for truth is almost too self-evident to require explanation. No human institutions should be trusted with the inherently tyrannical power they seek to arrogate unto themselves: to decree truth and falsity with such authoritative power that views they have decreed "false” become prohibited, off-limits, even worthy of punishment. 

On December 10, MSNBC aired a segment on Morning Joe — a purported news report featuring its host Joe Scarborough, the former GOP Congressman from Florida, and its regular paid contributor Claire McCaskill, the former two-term Democratic Senator from Missouri — that packed one lie after the next into two short minutes. The duo was purporting to explain to its audience the implications of last week's ruling by a British court approving the Biden DOJ's request to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges in connection with the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks, in partnership with numerous mainstream media outlets, of a cache of secret documents revealing various war crimes, lies and corruptions on the part of the U.S. and UK governments and their allies.

Within the span of two minutes, these NBC personalities told four blatant lies about the Assange case. I do not mean that they asserted dubious opinions or questionable narratives or even misleading claims. I mean that they outright lied about four separate matters that are crucial to understanding the Biden administration's attempted extradition and prosecution of Assange. These lies were not just misleading but pernicious, as they were designed not merely to mislead the public but to provoke them to believe that one of the gravest attacks on press freedom in years — the imprisonment of a journalist for the crime of reporting true and accurate information about the crimes of power centers — is something viewers should applaud rather than denounce.

We took the time to dissect this segment and to amass the dispositive proof of their multiple lies not because we think Scarborough and McCaskill will pay any price or will have to retract any of this. Of course they will not. They are doing their job, which is to lie in a way that flatters the ideological preconceptions of NBC viewers, who hate Assange due to the role his reporting played in harming the Democratic Party during the 2016 election, which Hillary Clinton herself claims was one of the two primary reasons she lost.

We did this video report in order to illustrate how easily and reflexively these corporate outlets lie; to demonstrate that the public's view that these outlets are completely untrustworthy and contemptible is valid and correct; and to set the record straight about the Assange case. We realize that not all subscribers here want to watch a one-hour video, and for that reason — as we do with all of the video reports we produce — we will shortly publish a written transcript of the program for our Substack subscribers. But I really hope people will take the time to watch this particular video: since the lies came in the form of video, we therefore concluded that using video to highlight the severity and intentionality of this lying was the most effective way to demonstrate how noxious it really is.

 

MIT Davos Weasel Dick Misleadership Strikes Again....,

 

MIT | To the members of the MIT community,

 

You may have heard about a situation centered on our Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) regarding an invited speaker, Professor Dorian Abbot.

 

In a recent letter to the faculty, Provost Marty Schmidt lays out the facts, some of which have not come through clearly in the media and on social media. I encourage you to read his letter. You will also find thorough coverage in The Tech.

 

The controversy around this situation has caused great distress for many members of our community, in many quarters. It has also uncovered significant differences within the Institute on several issues.

 

I would like to reflect on what happened and set us on a path forward. But let me address the human questions first.

 

To the members of the EAPS community: I am deeply disturbed that as a direct result of this situation, many of you – students, postdocs, faculty and young alumni – have suffered a tide of online targeting and hate mail from outside MIT. This conduct is reprehensible and utterly unacceptable. For members of the MIT community, where we value treating one another with decency and respect, this feels especially jarring.

 

I encourage anyone who is subjected to harassing or threatening behavior or language to reach out for support and guidance to the Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response (IDHR) office.

 

I also want to express my tremendous respect for Professor Rob van der Hilst, department head in EAPS, who faced a difficult situation. I know Rob as a person of the highest integrity and character. We are fortunate to have his leadership in EAPS. In this case, when Rob concluded, after consulting broadly, that EAPS could not host an effective public outreach event centered around Professor Abbot, he chose to extend instead an invitation for an on-campus lecture; Rob took this step deliberately to preserve the opportunity for free dialogue and open scientific exchange.

 

Professor Abbot is a distinguished scientist who remains welcome to speak on the MIT campus, and he has been working with EAPS to confirm the event details.

 

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this matter has caused many people inside and outside our community to question the Institute’s commitment to free expression. Some report feeling that certain topics are now off limits at MIT. I have heard these concerns directly from faculty colleagues, alumni and others who care deeply about the Institute.

 

Let me say clearly what I have observed through more than 40 years at MIT:

 

Freedom of expression is a fundamental value of the Institute.

 

I believe that, as an institution of higher learning, we must ensure that different points of view – even views that some or all of us may reject – are allowed to be heard and debated at MIT. Open dialogue is how we make each other wiser and smarter.

 

This commitment to free expression can carry a human cost. The speech of those we strongly disagree with can anger us. It can disgust us. It can even make members of our own community feel unwelcome and illegitimate on our campus or in their field of study.

 

I am convinced that, as an institution, we must be prepared to endure such painful outcomes as the price of protecting free expression – the principle is that important.

 

I am equally certain, however, that when members of our community must bear the cost of other people’s free expression, they deserve our understanding and support. We need to ensure that they, too, have the opportunity to express their own views.

White People Can Joke About Things Black People Can't...,

zora |  Dave Chapelle addressed the primarily white attempts to cancel Black celebrities for offending the LGBTQ community, even as White pockets in those communities "punch down" at Black people. That being said, Dave Chapelle made some pretty shocking statements about sex and gender politics. For example, "Sex is assigned at birth" and "Gender refers to how someone self-identifies." So, in that respect, I think it's wrong for the trans community to insist that he is inherently transphobic in identifying these distinctions (which we use in the medical community). It’s not our differences that are problematic — it’s the way people treat us for them that is problematic. These accusations only close the door to a conversation we need to have.

All I ask of your community, with all humility: Will you please stop punching down on my people? (Dave Chapelle)

White people often refer to Black people as racist for talking about race, and it seems that now White people are calling Dave Chapelle transphobic for discussing the trans community. Yet, he never made a statement diminishing their lives, their worth in the community, or their plight. People need to wake up and realize we can't live in a race-neutral society just because folks don't want to talk about race, and we can't live in a gender-neutral society because folks feel uneasy about the conversation. Instead, we need to embrace our differences and fight against the ignorant messaging out there.

I can’t help but see the irony here because as a Millenial, I’m old enough to remember when White people made a movie called “Team America” in which the characters sang the song “Everybody Has Aids.” At the time, no one accused them of being homophobic which is why I raised an eye-brow when DaBaby’s statements about HIV/AIDS were automatically assumed homophobic.

Society is shifting and I believe it’s doing so for the better. But, I’m seeing a lot of ignorance being labeled as cruelty and that actually serves to diminish the point that marginalized folks are making. In other words, “don’t cry wolf because when the real hateful person comes along, everyone will tune out.” They will be effectively desensitized to the violence that we experience for being Black, gay, disabled, or just different.

America is an odd show to watch. Somehow, White people can joke about things Black people can't. When we do it, we're homophobic, and when they do it, everyone laughs. I think that there is a double standard here, and that's what Dave Chapelle was trying to bring to the forefront. Too bad the loudest voices on this issue want us to believe that Dave Chapelle hates gay people.

Chapelle can joke about Whiteness, Blackness, conservativism, progressivism, poverty, crime, but not the gay community. That makes no sense to me. So, while many people are jumping on the bandwagon to cancel or punish Dave Chapelle, I'm not on board because he never said anything hateful about the community. He only exposed his bias towards heteronormativity, which could provide an opportunity for his continued education and growth. Sadly, White folks are just out to cancel him.

Interesting How The MSM Has Ignored State Sanctioned Plans To Assassinate Julian Assange

FAIR  |  It would seem that covert plans for the state-sanctioned murder on British soil of an award-winning journalist should attract sustained, wall-to-wall media coverage.

The news, however, has been met by Western establishment media with ghoulish indifference—a damning indictment of an industry that feverishly condemns attacks on press freedom in Official Enemy states.

BBC News, one of the most-read news outlets in the world, appears to have covered the story just once—in the Somali-language section of the BBC website (Media Lens on Twitter, 9/30/21).

Neither the New York Times or Washington Post, two of the world’s leading corporate news organizations, have published any articles about Assange since July 2021.

To its credit, since the story first broke on September 26, the Guardian has reported twice on the CIA-led conspiracy to kill or kidnap Assange. But to offer perspective, during the week after Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was reported to have been poisoned by the Russian government, the Guardian published 16 separate pieces on the issue, including video reports and opinion pieces.

Similarly, a Nexis search of British newspapers for the word “Navalny” brings up 288 results from August 20–25, 2020. The same search for “Assange” between September 26–October 1, 2021, brings up a meager 29 results—one of which, a notable exception, was a Patrick Cockburn piece in the Independent (10/1/21).

As is typical of stories that embarrass the Western intelligence services, independent media provided crucial relief to the backdrop of chilling indifference, with the Grayzone’s Aaron Maté (YouTube, 9/30/21) conducting a rigorous interview with one of the report’s authors, Michael Isikoff.

Indeed, the Grayzone (5/14/20) was the first outlet to provide evidence of a CIA-linked proposal to “kidnap or poison Assange” in May 2020. The story, however, was almost universally ignored, suggesting that, as Joe Lauria wrote in Consortium News (10/2/21), “until something appears in the mainstream media, it didn’t happen.”

One thing the corporate media cannot be accused of with regards to Assange, however, is inconsistency. After a key witness in the Department of Justice’s case against the publisher admitted to providing the US prosecution with false testimony, a detail that should ordinarily turn a case to dust, the corporate media responded by ignoring the story almost entirely. As Alan MacLeod wrote for FAIR.org (7/2/21):

The complete uniformity with which corporate media have treated this latest bombshell news raises even more concerns about how fundamentally intertwined and aligned they are with the interests of the US government.

Even after it was revealed that the UC Global security firm that targeted Assange had also spied on journalists at the Washington Post and New York Times, neither outlet mounted any protest (Grayzone, 9/18/20).

Perhaps most remarkably, UK judge Vanessa Baraitser relied on a falsified CNN report (7/15/19)  to justify the CIA’s spying operation against Assange (Grayzone, 5/1/21). Now, CNN’s website contains no reports on the agency’s plans to kill or kidnap Assange.

The prevailing silence has extended into the NGO industry. Amnesty International, which refused in 2019 to consider Assange a prisoner of conscience, has said nothing about the latest revelations. Likewise, Index on Censorship, which describes itself as “The Global Voice of Free Expression,” hasn’t responded to the story.

The establishment media’s dismissal of Assange supports Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s framework of “worthy” and “unworthy” political dissidents, with Assange situated firmly in the latter camp.

Government Punishment Of Disinformation Is Fundamentally Antithetical To Democracy

tabletmag  |  The unavoidable problems with censoring disinformation have predictably plagued recent laws, including those touted as restricting pandemic-related disinformation in order to protect public health. As the Economist reported in February 2021, “Censorious governments are abusing ‘fake news’ laws,” invoking the pandemic as “an excuse to gag reporters” and to silence critics of pandemic-era policies. In February 2020, Amnesty International noted that Singapore’s 2019 law against “online falsehoods and manipulation” was “repeatedly used to target critics and political opponents.” The Singaporean government could not deny this, but instead claimed that the law’s consistent enforcement against opposition party members was a “coincidence.” To the contrary, these patterns necessarily result from restrictions on such a vague, broad category of speech, even in democratic regimes.

That is why the American Civil Liberties Union brought a 2020 lawsuit challenging disinformation laws that the government of Puerto Rico had recently passed for the asserted purpose of protecting public health and safety. One such law makes it a crime to share “false information” about the government’s post-pandemic emergency and curfew orders with the intent to cause “confusion, panic, or public hysteria.” Shortly after the law went into effect, the Puerto Rican government charged a prominent clergyman with allegedly disseminating false information on WhatsApp about a rumored executive order to close all businesses. In fact, only a short time later, the governor did issue such an order.

Even beyond the speech that disinformation laws directly stifle, these laws also suppress incalculable amounts of important expression, including information about the pandemic that could literally be a matter of life or death. That’s because the laws deter scientists and other experts from providing information to journalists, and journalists are in turn deterred from conveying information to the public, for fear of transgressing—or being charged with transgressing—the laws’ blurry boundaries. The ACLU’s complaint in the Puerto Rico case was filed on behalf of two prominent investigative journalists, who explained that “developing stories on matters of immense public concern are often complex, contentious, and murky,” and thus “inadvertent inaccuracies are inevitable even in the most thoroughly vetted reporting.”

Throughout the pandemic, we have witnessed constantly evolving and shifting views among expert individuals and agencies, as they steadily gather and analyze additional data. Yesterday’s life-endangering “disinformation” can and has become today’s life-protecting gospel. Recall, to cite only the most obvious example, the CDC’s changing edicts about mask-wearing.

Inherently subjective disinformation restrictions can easily be wielded for ulterior purposes, including to promote partisan interests. Consider, for instance, recent evidence that the Biden administration has been pressuring social media companies to restrict content that purportedly purveys disinformation about COVID, in light of allegations that the actual concerns may well involve politics at least as much as public health. Republican members of Congress have claimed that platforms have restricted “conservative” posts on issues related to the pandemic in response to pressure from administration officials, even though the posts contained no factual misrepresentations and simply conveyed perspectives with which the administration disagreed. Whether or not these claims are factually correct, it is true that the concept of disinformation is so open-ended that it could be deployed against particular communications for partisan reasons.

The inevitable manipulability of restrictions on disinformation is well illustrated by YouTube’s recent removal of a video for violating its “medical misinformation policy.” The video, which had been posted by New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, was of an August 2021 news conference in which she announced a lawsuit challenging New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “vaccine passport” as an invasion of privacy and an unreasonable mandate on small businesses. Although Malliotakis supports vaccination, she believes that the mandate constitutes government overreach—a position that the Supreme Court might well end up sharing. After Malliotakis appealed YouTube’s removal, the company said that it was “taking another look” and ultimately reinstated the video, thus underscoring the inherent elasticity of the misinformation concept. Whether or not YouTube actually had a good-faith health reason for its initial removal of the video, the fact remains that the vague policy can easily be invoked as a pretext, masking other motives.

All the more reason, then, to be suspicious of even sincere attempts by public and private authorities to prevent the harm that disinformation can cause. Recall that Southern officials based their libel lawsuits against activists and journalists during the civil rights movement on the dissemination of inaccurate information. What we learned in that era is that disinformation is unavoidable in any vigorous discussion of fast-breaking public issues, and that making it punishable by law can only inhibit democratic debate. It’s time we relearn that lesson.