Friday, November 20, 2020

Do As You're Told While We Construct A System For Legally Discriminating Against The Non-Compliant

alt-market  |  With the presidential election highly contested and the mainstream media hyping the rising infection numbers, the public is now facing important questions regarding the future of the pandemic response. Some states have decided to unilaterally introduce “executive orders” to restrict citizen movements, business openings and public activities.

Anthony Fauci is on the news constantly, calling for families to cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas and telling Americans to just “do what we are told”. The media is generally trying to drum up fear in the minds of the populace and paint images of plague and death everywhere. If Biden does actually end up in the White House, a federalized and national high level lockdown is on the table starting in January.

In April of this year I published an article titled ‘Waves Of Mutilation: Medical Tyranny And The Cashless Society’, which outlined a social engineering model put forward by globalists at MIT and the Imperial College of London which I called “wave theory”. The model essentially works like this:

Governments must use the pandemic as a rationale for “waves” of restrictive lockdowns, followed by controlled re-openings of the economy and of normal human activity. Globalists claim that this will “slow” the spread of the coronavirus and save lives. However, they also openly admit that these cycles of closures and openings have other uses.

Over time, the citizenry becomes acclimated to governmental intrusion in their everyday lives, and they get used to the idea of bureaucracy telling them what they are not allowed to do when it comes to the simplest activities. The system thus bottlenecks all human interactions to the point that we are constantly asking for permission. We become slaves to the Covid response.

As globalist Gideon Lichfield from MIT stated in his article ‘We’re Not Going Back To Normal’:

Ultimately, however, I predict that we’ll restore the ability to socialize safely by developing more sophisticated ways to identify who is a disease risk and who isn’t, and discriminating—legally—against those who are.

…one can imagine a world in which, to get on a flight, perhaps you’ll have to be signed up to a service that tracks your movements via your phone. The airline wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infected people or disease hot spots. There’d be similar requirements at the entrance to large venues, government buildings, or public transport hubs. There would be temperature scanners everywhere, and your workplace might demand you wear a monitor that tracks your temperature or other vital signs. Where nightclubs ask for proof of age, in future they might ask for proof of immunity—an identity card or some kind of digital verification via your phone, showing you’ve already recovered from or been vaccinated against the latest virus strains.”

Note that Lichfield suggested that in order to participate in the normal economy you might need to show verification that you have been “vaccinated against the latest virus strains”. In other words, the elites expect there to be many more viral events or mutations AFTER Covid 19 has run its course, and the restrictions and controls we see today are meant to continue, possibly FOREVER.

The reality is that the wave model is not a very practical plan for stopping viral spread, but it is a perfect method for conditioning people to submit to a high level of control over their personal lives that they never would have accepted otherwise. The Covid response has also been heralded by elites at the World Economic Forum as a perfect “opportunity” to initiate what they call the “Great Reset”. The reset is a plan to deconstruct what’s left of the free market capitalist system, introduce carbon controls in the name of the global warming fraud, institute a global cashless monetary system, and finally, move humanity into what they call a “shared economy” in which the average person is no longer allowed to own private property of any kind and is completely dependent on the system for their basic necessities.

Of course, such a complex system of “solutions” (dominance) over every individual would need to be managed in a highly centralized way. Meaning, global governance by the elitist establishment would be the end result. Naturally….the globalists would reluctantly take the reins of power for “the greater good”.

Thursday, November 19, 2020

The Covid Data Is Now As Tainted As The 2020 Presidential Election Results

Dr. Roger Hodkinson The doctor said that nothing could be done to stop the spread of the virus besides protecting older more vulnerable people and that the whole situation represented “politics playing medicine, and that’s a very dangerous game.”
 
Hodkinson remarked that “social distancing is useless because COVID is spread by aerosols which travel 30 meters or so before landing,” as he called for society to be re-opened immediately to prevent the debilitating damage being caused by lockdowns.
 
Hodkinson also slammed mandatory mask mandates as completely pointless.
“Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever,” he said.
 
“Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people – I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense – seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.
 

Hodkinson’s credentials are beyond question, with the MedMalDoctors website affirming his credibility.

“He received his general medical degrees from Cambridge University in the UK (M.A., M.B., B. Chir.) where he was a scholar at Corpus Christi College. Following a residency at the University of British Columbia he became a Royal College certified general pathologist (FRCPC) and also a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists (FCAP).”

“He is in good Standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, and has been recognized by the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta as an expert in pathology.”

 

At This Stage 80 Million Americans Know We Were Cheated

How do we know we were cheated?

MSM – Four years of hysterical lies about how our man was controlled by The Kremlin. The entire press corps was allied in unified opposition to the elected president. Good luck arguing this one.
Polls – Blatantly rigged to favor the other side and discourage Trump voters. Given the results good luck arguing this one.
Cyber – Blanket one-sided censorship, Blue Checking, search result games, and deplatforming. Case closed.
Primaries – Show me a single democratic thing about how Bernie was knifed or how the sneering IdPol queen who received zero primary delegates was elevated to vice president.
People – Q: Did former president Obama label Trump voters “racists” in his new book? A: Yes. Q: Did his wife say all Trump voters voted for “lies, hate, and chaos”? A: Yes.
Voting – Q: Can a Secretary of State legally change State laws in a Federal election (GA)? A: No. Q: Can a governor legally change State laws in a Federal election (PA)? A: No. Was the Smartmatic/Dominion software designed from the outset to allow external parties to remotely change vote tallies? A: Yes. Q: Was the software used to change the vote results in places like Venezuela? A: Yes. Q: Did Liz Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Ron Wyden send a letter from Congress expressing deep concerns about Smartmatic/Dominion software security in Dec 2019? A: Yes. Is Smartmatic chairman Peter Neffinger on Biden’s transition team? A: Yes.
Good luck extracting legitimacy from all this. It will not be the fault of Trump voters when you can’t.
 
“In November 2020, Neffenger was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the Department of Homeland Security.[10]
Neffinger is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Smartmatic, a multinational company that specializes in building and implementing electronic voting systems.[11]”

  • The year 2000: Smartmatic was founded by three engineers from Venezuela and officially incorporated in Delaware in 2000 after the hanging chad controversy in the 2000 US presidential election. Smartmatic established its headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida.

  • The Year 2004: Smartmatic expanded rapidly between 2000 and 2004 with offices in Venezuela, London, Florida, and California. Litigations of its connections with the Chávez regime never ended.

  • Smartmatic bought Bizta, in which both Smartmatic and the Venezuelan government had large stakes. “The Miami Herald revealing that the Venezuelan government owned 28 percent of Bizta – a company operated by two of the same people who own Smartmatic. Bizta bought back those shares after the article appeared, and Smartmatic now characterizes the deal as a loan.

  • “Bizta and Smartmatic had partnered with Venezuelan telephone giant CANTV to win a $91 million contract to supply electronic voting machines for Venezuelan elections, including the controversial 2004 referendum Chavez won. Smartmatic categorically denies any link to the Chavez regime.”

  • “Smartmatic was a little-known firm with no experience in voting technology before it was chosen by the Venezuelan authorities to replace the country’s elections machinery ahead of a contentious referendum that confirmed Mr. Chavez as president in August 2004…“

(Source: “U.S. Investigates Voting Machines’ Venezuela Ties,” New York Times – Oct. 29, 2006 https://votingmachines.procon.org/additional-resources/sequoia-alleged-to-have-ties-to-venezuelas-chavez/)
  • The Year 2005: Smartmatic purchased Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the leading US companies in automated voting products.

  • The Year 2006: Sequoia provided technical assistance in the elections held in Chicago and Cook County by sending a number of Venezuelan nationals to support the machines manufactured by Sequoia.
(Source: ABC Local, 7 April 2006, Alderman: Election Day troubles could be part of ‘international conspiracy’)
“Meanwhile, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor recently concluded after two days of testing that vote totals on a Sequoia model, different from those used here, could be manipulated. That prompted Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County to scrap plans to buy the machines.”

  • “The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez… “

(source: https://votingmachines.procon.org/additional-resources/sequoia-alleged-to-have-ties-to-venezuelas-chavez/)
  • Smartmatic Corp sold its U.S. subsidiary Sequoia to end a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. into whether Smartmatic is partially owned by the Venezuelan government.
(Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116674617078557263)
  • Bain Capital purchased Sequoia (Smartmatic-US).

  • The Year 2011: Dominion Voting Systems, a previously little-known Canadian company engaged in manufacturing electronic voting hardware and optical scanners, acquired Sequoia Voting Systems

The Year 2014: Sequoia filed a bankruptcy petition under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.
 

  • Smartmatic buys Sequoia. Then Romney Associates buys Sequoia. Then Dominion buys Sequoia. Dominion made “donations” to the Clinton “Foundation” in 2014. Nancy Pelosi’s former Chief of Staff Nadeam Elshami works for Dominion.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

On Election Corruption MSM Self-Hoists By Its Own Narrative Petard

cbsnews  |  The CEO of the voting technology company Smartmatic said Wednesday that results of Venezuela's election for an all-powerful constituent assembly were off by at least 1 million votes.

Antonio Mugica said results recorded by his systems and those reported by Venezuela's National Electoral Council indicate "without any doubt" that official turnout figures were inflated.

Smartmatic was created by Venezuelans and began providing electronic voting machines in 2004 during the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez.

"Even in moments of deep political conflict and division we have been satisfied with the voting process and the count has been completely accurate," Mugica told reporters in London. "It is, therefore, with the deepest regret that we have to report that the turnout figures on Sunday, 30 July, for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela were tampered with."

President Nicolas Maduro's government announced late Sunday that more than 8 million Venezuelans had participated in the election for constituent assembly that will be granted virtually unlimited powers. His count was put into question by at least one independent exit poll, showing turnout was less than half that number.

The claim is certain to fuel further discord over the assembly, which Maduro has vowed to utilize to target his foes. Opposition leaders boycotted the election, arguing voting terms were rigged to favor the ruling socialist party. Nearly 7.6 million people voted in a symbolic referendum rejecting the assembly two weeks before the vote.

The assembly is expected to be sworn into office Thursday and the opposition is calling on Venezuelans to protest.

 

Hardly Anybody Knows The Election Was "Fixed"

off-guardian |  The echo asks: Do you live inside America’s doll house where a vast tapestry of lies, bad faith, and cheap grace keep you caged in comfort, as you repeat the habits that have been drilled into you?

In this doll’s house of propaganda into which America has been converted, a great many of our basic assumptions are totally illusory.

Americans who voted for either Trump or Biden in the 2020 election are like Torvald clones.  They refuse to open that door so they might close it behind them. 

They live in the doll’s house – all 146+ million of them. Like Torvald, they are comforted. They are programmed and propagandized, embracing the illusion that the electoral system is not structured and controlled to make sure no significant change can occur, no matter who is president. It is a sad reality promoted as democracy.

They will prattle on and give all sorts of reasons why they voted, and for whom, and how if you don’t vote you have no right to bitch, and how it’s this sacred right to vote that makes democracy great, blah blah blah. It’s all sheer nonsense. For the U.S.A. is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy run by the wealthy for the wealthy.

This is not a big secret.  Everybody knows this is true; knows the electoral system is sheer show business with the presidential extravaganza drawing the big money from corporate lobbyists, investment bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, business and hedge fund executives, Silicon Valley honchos, think tanks, Wall Street gamblers, millionaires, billionaires, et. al.  Biden and Trump spent over 3 billion dollars on the election. They are owned by the money people.

Both are old men with long, shameful  histories. A quick inquiry will show how the rich have profited immensely from their tenures in office.  There is not one hint that they could change and have a miraculous conversion while in future office, like JFK.  Neither has the guts or the intelligence.  They are nowhere men who fear the fate that John Kennedy faced squarely when he turned against the CIA and the war machine.  They join the craven company of Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama.  They all got the message that was sent from the streets of Dallas in 1963: You don’t want to die, do you?

Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks, its vast intelligence apparatus, increased or decreased in the past half century? Who is winning the battle, the people or the ruling elites? The answer is obvious.

It matters not at all whether the president has been Trump or Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, Barack Obama or George H. W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter. The power of the national security state has grown under them all and everyone is left to moan and groan and wonder why.

All the while, the doll’s house has become more and more sophisticated and powerful. It is now essentially an electronic prison that is being “Built Back Better.” The new Cold War now being waged against Russia and China is a bi-partisan affair, as is the confidence game played by the secret government intended to create a fractured consciousness in the population through their corporate mass-media stenographers. Trump and his followers on one side of the coin; liberal Democrats on the other.

Folks Been Warning About These Voting Machines For A Minute Now...,

hackingdemocracy |  "Hacking Democracy" has been broadcast many times on HBO, exposing the dangers of the voting machines used in America's mid-term and presidential elections. Electronic voting machines count almost 100% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections. The Diebold voting machines and their hackable software are still used today in twenty eight states. The security holes and complete lack of transparency still pose an extraordinary risk to US elections.

Filmed over three years this daring exposé follows tenacious investigator, Bev Harris, and her team of citizen activists and hackers as they take on the electronic voting industry, targeting the Diebold corporation.

 "Hacking Democracy" uncovers incendiary evidence from the trash cans of Texas to the ballot boxes of Ohio, exposing secrecy, votes in the trash, hackable software and election officials rigging the presidential recount.

"Hacking Democracy" takes a clear eyed, non partisan look at the secrecy, cronyism and privatisation of elections in America as it captures a citizen's movement intent on taking back elections, and democracy itself.

Ultimately proving our votes can be stolen without a trace "Hacking Democracy" culminates in the famous 'Hursti Hack'; a duel between the Diebold voting machines and a computer hacker from Finland – with America's democracy at stake.

"Hacking Democracy" was Executive Produced by Sarah Teale & Sian Edwards of Teale-Edwards Productions LLC

THE HACK

Our expert hacker, Harri Hursti, shocked the nation when he successfully hacked the entire Diebold voting system, in Leon County, Florida. He did it using just one memory card and he changed all the votes, virtually undetectably.

The memory cards are America's electronic ballot boxes – they contain the votes. Diebold Election Systems went on the record, making the claim that there is "no executable program" in their memory cards. Harri Hursti suspected that their claim was false, and we set out to prove it.

Florida's courageous Election Supervisor, Ion Sancho, gave us permission to prove that Diebold was lying about their machine's security. A mini election was held, with our hacker excluded from the county's computer room. Not only did Harri change all the votes, he even made the machine print out a false 'Zero Tape' – the paper safeguard that is supposed to show that there are no votes pre-loaded inside the voting machine.

Following our hack California's Secretary of State ordered an investigation by the top computer scientists at UC Berkeley. Their report confirms that, "Mr Hursti's attack on the AV-OS is definitely real."

Watch Hacking Democracy and see how the 'Hursti Hack' was done.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Sidney Powell For President - Accept No Substitutes....,


In case you missed it...

My favorite person in this fight for America, @SidneyPowell1, was on the @RealRLimbaugh show today hosted by @MarkSteynOnline.

If you didn't hear it live, I've broken down the audio and copied out some highlights just for you.

THREAD 👇🏻


Q :15 – What’s the problem with Dominion Voting Systems?

@SidneyPowell1
A :20 – “The system was specifically created and designed by Venezuelan money and interests to rig elections for Hugo Chavez.”


:40 – “It has been used to rig this election to make it appear the votes were for Mr. Biden when Donald Trump won overwhelmingly, and I am in the process of collecting evidence through a firehose, to the point it feels like a tsunami now.”


1:11 - “100 Dominion employees have even taken any affiliation with Dominion off their LinkedIn account, and Dominion is scrubbing the names of people like crazy.”


1:40 - This all came out because their math experts identified the algorithm that was being run. It was changed to run 67% for Biden – votes were injected by that number in the hundreds of thousands.


2:09 - The exact same number of Biden votes were injected 3 times in Wisconsin and 2 times in Michigan (or vice versa) about 20 minutes apart.

Once Upon A Time American Elites Understood The Importance Of Culture And Conviviality

Curbed |   Dense cities like New York offer many residents a deal: Live in tight, possibly semi-squalid conditions in exchange for a cornucopia of communal experiences. In recent years, developers even turned that exchange into a selling point, offering dorm-like digs and shared amenities like dog spas and in-house breweries. But the bargain goes back far enough to have been woven into the city’s character and architecture. In the early 20th century, the wealthy and powerful understood that if the poor and powerless were going to participate in the city’s civic life, they needed to do it somewhere that wasn’t a tenement or a factory floor. New York filled the city with limestone libraries, airy train stations, religious institutions, parks, and grand public buildings. The Depression (and Robert Moses) brought playgrounds and swimming pools. Fortunes and years were spent shoring up the promise of urban life: that even the most deprived New Yorkers were welcome to join the throngs and partake in the city’s grandeur.

We’re still living off that largesse, just as we continue to rely on the foresight of the past every time we ride the subway or cross a bridge. These days, though, all those third-place locations sit dark, while we stay home and draw on different kinds of reserves: money, memory, and social capital. Isolation makes it hard to make friends, start romances, or have new experiences. Instead, we shut out the whine of wind and sirens and roll the recollections of old trips and meals around in our minds, while a freer future remains an abstraction.

The indoor season will tempt us to cheat — to negotiate with disease in ever more legalistic ways. A few weeks ago, a neighbor stepped onto an already full elevator in my building, ignoring the posted maximum of three passengers at a time. The other elevator was broken, she explained. She’d been waiting a long time. We were all wearing masks. The virus, I pointed out, doesn’t care.

Both Political Parties Ignore The Needs Of The American Precariat

newsclick |  In sharp contrast, Trump may have appeared indifferent to the gravity of the coronavirus, but his persistent calls to reopen the economy addressed the precarity issue, as they appealed to many workers whose livelihoods were being destroyed by the pandemically induced government restrictions placed on economic activity.

Public health care authorities understandably directed their policy responses toward pandemic mitigation, and the Democrats largely embraced their recommendations. But they remained insensitive to the anxieties of tens of millions of Americans, whose jobs were being destroyed for good, whose household debts—rent, mortgage, and utility arrears, as well as interest on education and car loans—were rising inexorably, even allowing for the temporary expedient of stimulus checks from the government until this past August.

Yet the inability of Congress to secure extensions on relief packages did not appear to unduly penalise Republicans, if one is to judge from the congressional results. Equally significantly, it didn’t help the Democrats either. This suggests that lingering fears about COVID-19 are being matched by economic anxiety from the many millions of American workers who are coming to realise that their jobs are simply not essential.

The struggle for the precariat vote will define the transformation of both parties in the next four years, and that’s an excellent thing, as it will force both parties to offer competing policies that begin to address their concerns. Until this group’s longstanding economic grievances—jobs, health, safety, pollution, the public purpose, and above all, relative stability and employment security over long periods of time—are addressed, the United States will remain a profoundly divided and divisive country at war with itself.

Monday, November 16, 2020

Sidney Powell Doesn't Strike Me As A Woman Prone To Empty Conversation....,

americanthinker |  We are learning more by the day about corrupt voting machines and software, and a scheme, as Trump attorney Sidney Powell describes, “organized and conducted with the help of Silicon Valley people, the big tech companies, the social media and even the media companies.”

It was less than a year ago that Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden were concerned about these voting machines, yet today this is all “conspiracy theory.” Was there foreign interference in the election via corrupted voting machines? Were U.S. votes routed through servers in Spain and Germany? Election interference was of great interest to congressional Democrats during Trump’s first term, yet they seem to have no interest in such interference today.

Where are the Republicans? Where are so-called conservatives? Where is the outrage? Where are Trump’s friends? Does he have any these days?

How ironic that George W. Bush was quick to congratulate “president-elect” Joe Biden. Bush barely 'won" his election in 2000, while his opponent Al Gore fought for 37 days before the U.S. Supreme Court forced his concession. But Bush felt it reasonable to fight dimpled and hanging chads in one single state, yet scoffs at Trump fighting multi-state fraud?

Failed former Republican primary candidate Chris Christie suggests it may soon be time for Trump to “move on.” What a show of support. No wonder his candidacy failed.

Another loser, Mitt Romney, joined the chorus. I would not be a bit surprised if Romney had the 2012 election stolen from him in the same way as is happening to Trump today. Yet like most establishment Republicans, Romney prefers to give a “statesman-like” concession speech rather than soil his wingtips in a street fight to claim what is legitimately his. Interestingly, the Romney family has financial ties to voting machines.

World leaders have been quick to call and congratulate the assumed president-elect, the café-au-lait crowd happy to see the America-first president sent packing in exchange for another sap in the White House willing to pay the credit card bills of their freeloading nations. Trump is learning who is friends are.

There are a few exceptions. Leaders from Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Slovenia, and North Korea have not offered Biden their congratulations, prudently waiting to see how this plays out. Perhaps they know more about a recent U.S. raid on a voting machine server facility in Frankfurt, Germany that might reveal an international conspiracy to switch votes in our recent election. Perhaps, as in the case of Mexico's leader, they know the smell of a stolen election when they see it

Great Reset Already Happened: Peasant Consolation Prize WMD Used As A Giant Billboard

charleshughsmith |   The global elites' techno-fantasy of a completely centralized future, The Great Reset, is addressed as a future project. Too bad it already happened in 2008-09. The lackeys and toadies tasked with spewing the PR are 12 years too late, and so are the critics listening to the PR with foreboding.

Simply put, events outran our understanding of them. The future already manifested while we were trying to cram the present arrangement into an obsolete conceptual framework.

In broad-brush, the post-World War II era ended around 1970. The legitimate prosperity of 1946-1970 was based on cheap oil controlled by the U.S. and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar. Everything else was merely decoration.

The Original Sin to hard-money advocates was America's abandonment of the gold standard in 1971, but this was the only way to maintain hegemony. Maintaining the reserve currency is tricky, as the nation issuing the reserve currency has to supply the global economy with enough of the currency to grease commerce and stock central bank reserves around the world.

As the global economy expanded, the only way the U.S. could send enough dollars overseas was to run trade deficits, which in a gold standard meant the gold reserves would go to zero as trading partners holding dollars would exchange the currency for gold.

So the choice was: give up the reserve currency and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar by jacking up the dollar's value so high that imports would collapse, or accept that hegemony was no longer compatible with the gold standard. It wasn't a difficult decision: who would give up global hegemony, and for what?

Many other dynamics changed around the same time: social, cultural, political. These charts reflect the end of the postwar era and the ushering in of a new era.

Again in broad-brush, the key economic dynamic was the decline of labor's share of the economy in favor of capital. Those who had only their labor to sell lost purchasing power, while those who could borrow or access capital benefited enormously. The charts below tell the story: labor's share of the national income has stairstepped lower for 50 years (since 1970) while the super-wealthy's share has outpaced everyone else 15-fold.

The dominance of financial capital is visible in the third chart, as private-sector financial assets are now 6 times the nation's GDP, double the percentage of the postwar era.

Caren An'Em About To Get REAL On The Mask Covidian Compliance Front...,

thefederalist  |  Lockdowns were once called an “unproven” hypothesis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its models of efficacy being unvalidated by “empirical data.” The World Health Organization called forced isolation and quarantine “ineffective and impractical.” Yet despite the devastating effects of banning “nonessential” businesses and social activities, countries around the world locked down.

Groupthink on non-pharmaceutical interventions spurred an uncontrolled drift away from scientific justifications toward hasty generalized rules predicated on an “abundance of caution” and straight-up fear. Fear quickly turned into a tool for maintaining political power and an opportunity for self-righteous snitches to exercise control over their fellow countrymen. Snitch-level devotion to harsh government mandates devolved into a religion in its own right, and now we must suffer oppression not just from authorities, but from private companies and our fellow citizens.

One can draw numerous examples of Covidian jihad from any given week of these hellish past six months, but the progression is obvious. In April, a father was arrested for playing softball with his family in an open field in compliance with state orders. In July, a woman was berated by a fanatical old lady at the superstore for not masking her children, who are a risk approaching zero for spreading the virus.

Now heading into fall, some people are being asked to wear masks alone in their own homes, out in open parks, and while exercising. They’re supposed to strap them onto infants and toddlers, who are essentially at zero risk for spreading the Wuhan virus, and they aren’t ever supposed to complain about dental problems, headaches, or dizziness while mask-wearing — because every good COVID fanatic knows masks are harmless.

This is our world in 2020. Ironically, not even the experts can keep pro-lockdown, pro-mask fanatics from harassing and endangering others. If you want to prevent this reality from becoming permanent, stand up to the bullies and stand firm on the science — including voting out politicians who’ve abandoned science and recalling those who aren’t up for re-election in November.

Defense Strategic Communication Group: Free Society Or Propagandized Society - But Not Both

ottowacitizen |  The Canadian Forces wants to establish a new organization that will use propaganda and other techniques to try to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of Canadians, according to documents obtained by this newspaper.

The plan comes on the heels of the Canadian Forces spending more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behaviour modification techniques of the same sort used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, as well as a controversial and bizarre propaganda training mission in which the military forged letters from the Nova Scotia government to warn the public that wolves were wandering in the province.

The new Defence Strategic Communication group will advance “national interests by using defence activities to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of audiences,” according to the document dated October 2020. Target audiences for such an initiative would be the Canadian public as well as foreign populations in countries where military forces are sent.

The document is the end result of what Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance has called the “weaponization” of the military’s public affairs branch. The document is in a draft form, but work is already underway on some aspects of the plan and some techniques have been already tested on the Canadian public.

But the office of Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Sunday that the plan, at least for now, is not authorized to proceed. Sajjan has raised concerns about some of the activities related to such influence and propaganda operations. “No such plan has been approved, nor will it be,” Floriane Bonneville, Sajjan’s press secretary, said after being asked by this newspaper about the initiative.

But a series of town halls were already conducted last week for a number of military personnel on the strategies contained in the draft plan.

The report quotes Brig.-Gen. Jay Janzen, director general military public affairs, who stated, “The motto ‘who dares, wins’ is as applicable to strategic communication as it is to warfare.”

 

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Highly Educated And STILL Fully Enslaved...,

technologyreview |  In July, Joseph Giaime, a physics professor at Louisiana State University and Caltech, gave me a tour of one of the most complex science experiments in the world. He did it via Zoom on his iPad. He showed me a control room of LIGO, a large physics collaboration based in Louisiana and Washington state. In 2015, LIGO was the first project to directly detect gravitational waves, created by the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years away. 

About 30 large monitors displayed various aspects of LIGO’s status. The system monitors tens of thousands of data channels in real time. Video screens portrayed light scattering off optics, and data charts depicted instrument vibrations from seismic activity and human movement.  

I was visiting this complicated operation, on which hundreds of specialists in discrete scientific subfields work together, to try to answer a seemingly simple question: What does it really mean to know anything? How well can we understand the world when so much of our knowledge relies on evidence and argument provided by others? 

The question matters not only to scientists. Many other fields are becoming more complex, and we have access to far more information and informed opinions than ever before. Yet at the same time, increasing political polarization and misinformation are making it hard to know whom or what to trust. Medical advances, political discourse, management practice, and a good deal of daily life all ride on how we evaluate and distribute knowledge.

We overstate enormously the individual’s ability to amass knowledge, and understate society’s role in possessing it. You may know that diesel fuel is bad for gas engines and that plants use photosynthesis, but can you define diesel or explain photosynthesis, let alone prove photosynthesis happens? Knowledge, as I came to recognize while researching this article, depends as much on trust and relationships as it does on textbooks and observations. 

Thirty-five years ago, the philosopher John Hardwig published a paper on what he called “epistemic dependence,” our reliance on others’ knowledge. The paper—well-cited in some academic circles but largely unknown elsewhere—only grows in relevance as society and knowledge become more complex. 

One common definition of knowledge is “justified true belief”—facts you can support with data and logic. As individuals, though, we rarely have the time or skills to justify our own beliefs. So what do we really mean when we say we know something? Hardwig posed a dilemma: Either much of our knowledge can be held only by a collective, not an individual, or individuals can “know” things they don’t really understand. (He chose the second option.) 

MIT Has Become A World Economic Forum "On Script" Disinformation Source...,

technologyreview  |  Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dead in a pandemic, and one of the infected is the president of the United States. But not even personally contracting covid-19 has stopped him from minimizing the illness in Twitter messages to his supporters. 

Meanwhile, suburban moms steeped in online health propaganda are printing out Facebook memes and showing up maskless to stores, camera in hand and hell-bent on forcing low-paid retail workers to let them shop anyway. Armed right-wing militias are patrolling western towns, embracing online rumors of “antifa” invasions. And then there’s QAnon, the online conspiracy theory that claims Trump is waging a secret war against a ring of satanist pedophiles. 

QAnon drew new energy from the uncertainty and panic caused by the pandemic, growing into an “omniconspiracy theory”: a roaring river fed by dozens of streams of conspiratorial thinking. Researchers have documented how QAnon is amplifying health misinformation about covid-19, and infiltrating other online campaigns by masking outlandish beliefs in a more mainstream-friendly package. “Q,” the anonymous account treated as a prophet by QAnon’s believers, recently instructed followers to “camouflage” themselves online and “drop all references re: ‘Q’ ‘Qanon’ etc. to avoid ban/termination.” Now wellness communities, mothers’ groups, churches, and human rights organizations are trying to deal with the spread of this dangerous conspiracy theory in their midst. 

When Pew Research polled Americans on QAnon in early 2020, just 23% of adults knew a little or a lot about it. When Pew surveyed people again in early September, that number had doubled—and the way they felt about the movement was split down party lines, Pew said: “41% of Republicans who have heard something about it say QAnon is somewhat or very good for the country.” Meanwhile, 77% of Democrats thought it was “very bad.”

Major platforms like Facebook and Twitter have started to take aggressive action against QAnon accounts and disinformation networks. Facebook banned QAnon groups altogether on Tuesday, aiming directly at one of the conspiracy theory’s more powerful distribution networks. But those networks were able to thrive, relatively undisturbed, on social media for years. The QAnon crackdown feels too late, as if the platforms were trying to stop a river from flooding by tossing out water in buckets.

Politics Is Sticking To The Script While Pretending To Fight For Your Base

mises  |   The 2020 election has revealed jaw-dropping levels of "liberal" or progressive bias in the media, from the increasing ascendance of woke language, enforced by the thought police, to deliberately ignored issues and information considered uncongenial to those dominating the agenda. To many, it seems as if the power being exercised against freedom of uncoerced and uncensored expression had metastasized full-blownout of almost nowhere. However, that ignores the fact that the bias extends beyond the media, to think tanks and “research” devoted to creating ammunition for the left/progressive conclusions the media loves to reach, and this bias has been around for a substantial period of time.

An excellent example of the production of the groundwork for the bias infusing media today is “research” published in 2003, in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin. Supported by $1.2 million in federal money, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition” supposedly provided an “elegant and unifying explanation” for political conservatism. If you have been paying attention this year, some of its themes will seem familiar.

The authors found resistance to change and tolerance for inequality at the core of political conservatism. While proclaiming their findings to be nonjudgmental, they also concluded that conservatism was “significantly linked with mental rigidity and close-mindedness, increased dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, decreased cognitive complexity, decreased openness to experience, uncertainty avoidance, personal needs for order and structure, need for cognitive closure, lowered self-esteem; fear, anger, and aggression; pessimism, disgust, and contempt.”

The researchers also equated Hitler and Mussolini with Ronald Reagan as “right-wing conservatives…because they all preached a return to an idealized past and favored or condoned inequality in some form.” And the types of inequality conservatives supposedly favored included the Indian caste system, South African apartheid, and segregation in the US.

Of course, according to the study, that “does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false, irrational, or unprincipled.” But its authors certainly implied it.

Unfortunately, the hit-piece “research” overlooked crucial distinctions.

“Conservative” and “liberal,” as well as “progressive,” are adjectives that have been converted into nouns. But adjectives modify something else. That means the questions that must be addressed if bias is to be avoided include what it is someone is trying to conserve, in what ways whether we are liberal is to be judged, and what is to be considered progress.

Saturday, November 14, 2020

NO ONE Is Above Woke Consensus Restraints On Thought And Speech!!!

slate |  On Thursday night, Justice Sam Alito delivered the keynote address at this year’s all-virtual Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. The Federalist Society, a well-funded network of conservative attorneys, has come under unusual scrutiny after Donald Trump elevated scores of its members to the federal judiciary. Its leaders insist that it is a mere debate club, a nonpartisan forum for the exchange of legal ideas. But Alito abandoned any pretense of impartiality in his speech, a grievance-laden tirade against Democrats, the progressive movement, and the United States’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Alito’s targets included COVID-related restrictions, same-sex marriage, abortion, Plan B, the contraceptive mandate, LGBTQ nondiscrimination laws, and five sitting Democratic senators.

Ironically, Alito began his prerecorded address by condemning an effort by the U.S. Judicial Conference to forbid federal judges from being members of the Federalist Society. He then praised, by name, the four judges who spearheaded a successful effort to defeat the ban—or, as Alito put it, who “stood up to an attempt to hobble the debate that the Federalist Society fosters.” Alito warned that law school students who are members of the Federalist Society tell him they “face harassment and retaliation if they say anything that departs from the law school orthodoxy.”

These comments revealed early on that Alito would not be abiding by the usual ethics rules, which require judges to remain impartial and avoid any appearance of bias. The rest of his speech served as a burn book for many cases he has participated in, particularly those in which he dissented. Remarkably, Alito did not just grouse about the outcome of certain cases, but the political context of those decisions, and the broader cultural and political forces behind them. Although the justice accused several Democratic senators of being unprofessional, he himself defied the basic principles of judicial conduct.

For instance, the justice criticized state governors who’ve issued strict lockdown orders in response to COVID-19, referring to specific cases that came before the court. Alito said these “sweeping” and “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty” have served as a “constitutional stress test,” with ominous results. The government’s response to COVID-19, Alito continued, has “highlighted disturbing trends that were already present before the virus struck.” He complained about lawmaking by an “elite group of appointed experts,” citing not just COVID rules but the entire regulatory framework of the federal government.

Alito also warned of a broader, ongoing assault on religious liberty. “In certain corners,” he alleged, “religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.” Alito condemned the Obama administration’s “ protracted campaign” and “unrelenting attack” against the Little Sisters of the Poor, which refused to submit a form to the federal government opting out of the contraceptive mandate. The group alleged that submitting this notice burdened its religious exercise. Alito also disparaged Washington state for requiring pharmacies to provide emergency contraception—which, he claimed, “destroys an embryo after fertilization.” (That is false.) Finally, Alito rebuked Colorado for attempting to compel Jack Phillips to bake a cake for a same-sex couple.* He noted that the couple was given a free cake and supported by “celebrity chefs.”

 

The Alternative Is Internet Originalism - No Censorship

jonathanturley  |  We have been discussing the calls for top Democrats for increased private censorship on social media and the Internet.  President-elect Joe Biden has himself called for such censorship, including blocking President Donald Trump’s criticism of mail-in voting. Now, shortly after the election, one of Biden’s top aides is ramping up calls for a crackdown on Facebook for allowing Facebook users to read views that he considers misleading — users who signed up to hear from these individuals.  Bill Russo, a deputy communications director on Biden’s campaign press team, tweeted late Monday that Facebook “is shredding the fabric of our democracy” by allowing such views to be shared freely.

Russo tweeted that “If you thought disinformation on Facebook was a problem during our election, just wait until you see how it is shredding the fabric of our democracy in the days after.” Russo objected to the fact that, unlike Twitter, Facebook did not move against statements that he and the campaign viewed as “misleading.” He concluded. “We pleaded with Facebook for over a year to be serious about these problems. They have not. Our democracy is on the line. We need answers.”

For those of us in the free speech community, these threats are chilling. We saw incredible abuses before the election in Twitter barring access to a true story in the New York Post about Hunter Biden and his alleged global influence peddling scheme. Notably, no one in the Biden camp (including Biden himself) thought that it was a threat to our democracy to have Twitter block the story (while later admitting that it was a mistake).

I have previously objected to such regulation of speech. What is most disturbing is how liberals have embraced censorship and even declared that “China was right” on Internet controls.

 

Collectivism Is The Manipulation Of The Many By The Few

outofthecave  |  Never before in history have we seen such fertile ground and incentives toward groupthink and mass histrionics as we have today with total saturation of social media. Once our mobile phones were converted into near Star Trek level tricorders, and WiFi became ubiquitous we found ourselves swimming in “The Spew”, without even realizing that we had become like fish in a digital aquarium.

While I would be loathe to dispute the benefits the advent of the Internet bestowed on humanity, those of us who have watched it evolve over the past few decades or even had a minor hand in shaping and building it can’t help but wonder if somewhere along the way, things took a bad turn.

The great enablers of digitized groupthink are the social media platforms.

All that time you spend on Facebook, arguing politics with people you’ll never meet or care about. It can take over your life and you end up having those same arguments with the  people who truly matter in your own life: your friends and family.

All of that time, all those threads, tweetstorms, pile-ons, trending hashtags, updating your avatar in conformance with the issue de jour, at some point you have to ask yourself why you are expending the bulk of your mental energy chiming in with your opinion on things that are for the most part completely out of your control and that you’ll never be able to impact in any meaningful way.

Whose ends are you serving by participating in that? Certainly not your own. You don’t actually gain anything from going along with this, and if you actually consider the opportunity cost you begin to see the possibilities of what you could accomplish in your own life, for yourself and your family, if you spent your time doing something else.

What is the difference?

Or, how can you tell the difference between participating in some online social movement that you are told benefits the greater good vs. acting in your own rational self interest?

When you click or “like” or share or block or comment  you are generating data for the platform and the platform is not the greater good. It is not the collective will of the people, it is aggregated data that can and will be manipulated by the few to move the many  in the direction that serves the aims of other people, not you.

You see this exposed when the platform overtly signals what it desires to be amplified versus what it seeks to attenuate. In a truly digital collective” the will of the aggregate would simply be expressed in the unfiltered propagation of certain narratives over others.

But that doesn’t happen and in it not happening the veneer of legitimacy is removed from collectivism in totality, revealing it for what it really is.

Collectivism is not community, it is not the greater good, and it is not cooperation. There is only The Collective in the rhetorical or symbolic sense, but in reality Collectivism is the manipulation of the many by the few. That’s it. It’s basically marketing at the level of the psyche except the payload isn’t brand awareness as much as they are incentives for compliance and disincentives for wrongthink.

Friday, November 13, 2020

Epistemological Crisis...,

Propaganda works: As many democrats believe in Russiagate



As Trump supporters believe this election was not conducted fairly...,

Shall We Pretend That Bill Barr Doesn't Understand The Iron Law, The Deep State, Or The PMC?

turcopolier  |  There are a lot of Trump supporters who are very frustrated, even angry, with the silence of Attorney General Bill Barr in the wake of last Tuesday’s attempted Democrat heist of the Presidential election. But there are indications that Barr, who understands what it takes to fight the entrenched bureaucracy that is aligned with a conspiracy that involves the media, tech companies and computer software companies supplying voting machines, is preparing to move in a dramatic, far reaching strike to expose this fraud.

I have a dear friend who knows Barr very well. Rarely does he show this kind of visceral anger. I find it difficult to believe that in the ensuing two months, Barr has decided to curl up into a fetal position and allow the Republic to be eviscerated.

Now look at the actions on Monday. Barr, following DOJ protocol, sent a letter authorizing federal prosecutors across the U.S. to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. That same day, the DOJ official in charge of voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, resigned.

Pilger is a compromised deep stater. I believe his resignation was, at a minimum, encouraged by Barr.

No Indictments Because Durham And His Deputy Dannehy Are Deep State PMC...,

NYMag |  On September 10, Nora Dannehy resigned as the deputy to John Durham, the federal prosecutor investigating the government’s probe into the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. Dannehy left her post and the Justice Department in part because of Attorney General William Barr’s pressure on Durham to release a report on his investigation’s findings before Election Day, according to a person familiar with her thinking. Trump had long been hoping a report out this fall would damage Democrats, including Joe Biden, and help him win reelection. In Trump’s terminology, Durham’s report would reveal an “attempted overthrow” of his administration by Democratic insiders. But Justice Department guidelines restrict prosecutors from taking such actions within 60 days of an election because they might affect the outcome of the election. Both Durham and Dannehy believed that if they complied with Barr’s demands they would be violating this doctrine, according to two people familiar with their thinking.

Durham, who is the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, and Dannehy were also troubled that Barr had purposely misrepresented their work in numerous public comments, the two people said. According to two sources familiar with the probe, there has been no evidence found, after 18 months of investigation, to support Barr’s claims that Trump was targeted by politically biased Obama officials to prevent his election. (The probe remains ongoing.) In fact, the sources said, the Durham investigation has so far uncovered no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or Barack Obama, or that they were even involved with the Russia investigation. There “was no evidence … not even remotely … indicating Obama or Biden did anything wrong,” as one person put it.

Shortly after the resignation of his prized deputy and with the election looming on the horizon, Durham phoned Barr. He forcefully told the attorney general that his office would not be releasing a report or taking any other significant public actions before Election Day, according to a person with knowledge of the phone call. Dannehy’s resignation constituted an implied but unspoken threat to Barr that Durham or others on his team might resign if the attorney general attempted to force the issue, according to a person familiar with Durham’s thinking.

After hearing from Durham in September, Barr informed the president and allies that there would be no October surprise, causing Trump to lash out. “Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes — the greatest political crimes in the history of our country — then we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win,” he told Fox Business last month. “[These] people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes Obama and it includes Biden.”

 

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Pelosi's Professional Managerial Gamesmanship Under The Iron Law Of Institutions

billmoyers  |  This is known as the Iron Law of Institutions: “The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself.” McConnell wants to retain power personally, and is thinking past the upcoming loss of power for the party. (I’ve noted how he’s setting up for a re-run of post-Obama Republican dominance as well.)

What’s been less understood is how the Iron Law of Institutions is affecting Nancy Pelosi’s decision-making as well.

Pelosi’s appearance with Wolf Blitzer was an absolute train wreck, with her blasting him for being a GOP “apologist” when all he said over and over again was “people are hurting, can’t you come to a deal?” When you get in a fight with someone so unintelligent that he broke the record for negative dollar amounts on Celebrity Jeopardy, and you lose that badly, something is wrong with your messaging. Yet Pelosi proudly displayed the transcript on her website anyway.

What was she really doing in that interview? She was defending her committee chairs, who she has put out front and center as objecting to this and that part of the White House’s $1.8 trillion counter-offer. Writ large, your macro-economic pundit might see the objections as pretty trivial. But I guarantee you they’re important to one committee or one sub-caucus or one bloc of Democrats. For example, money for child care, which Pelosi has consistently called to light, is critical for women of color, who make up a near-majority of providers. Things like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit (which Pelosi wants increased and made useful for the pandemic tax year) are pet projects of Ways and Means Committee members. These are things that Pelosi can point to and tell House Democrats that she’s fighting for their objectives.

Underlying that is the fact that this is a purely theoretical exercise. Pelosi taking or not taking the deal will not matter as to whether stimulus reaches the American people. McConnell is the roadblock, and the mission is doomed. So the only thing Pelosi needs to protect is her status among the Democratic caucus.

So far, practically nobody inside the caucus has disagreed with her position. One of the truly terrible after-effects of the pandemic has been the dissolution of Congress as a legislative body. All lawmaking has funneled up to the Speaker; the bulk of the House has been prevented from governing. There’s something darkly comic in progressives fighting so hard to upset incumbents and gain additional members of the Squad, so they can sit around too until Pelosi tells them to vote for something.

But it’s up to the caucus to be mad about that, not me. And all indications are that they’re not mad. Pelosi’s imperiousness may have been a problem at points during the pandemic. But people have short-term memories, and on this negotiation, Pelosi is trying pretty hard to show that the objections are caucus-wide, and picking out little provisions that likely matter to key members.

The other backdrop to all of this is that Pelosi wants one last term as Speaker with a Democratic trifecta, one last chance at a burst of policymaking. She made a deal in 2018 that earned her the Speaker’s gavel in this Congress, but only for two terms. And in that second term, she needs two-thirds support of the caucus to win the Speaker’s race. It took a lot of hustle for Pelosi to secure majority support in 2018. So, in keeping with the Iron Law of Institutions, she’s tending to her caucus as well.

Fuck Robert Kagan And Would He Please Now Just Go Quietly Burn In Hell?

politico | The Washington Post on Friday announced it will no longer endorse presidential candidates, breaking decades of tradition in a...