Showing posts with label peasants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peasants. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

America's Credentialed Class Finds Joy In Making The Masses Obey And Comply

ET  |  Censorship is the cudgel that is out there. Censorship and cancellation are the two cudgels that are being used against us. It’s absolutely remarkable how easily we’ve gone from free speech to asking, “How can I make my way around the censorship that’s here?” We have skipped over the outrage phase, which might have led us to a more vigorous protection. Granted, a lot of boiling frog-type dynamics were built into the censorship regime.

But if you’ve been looking for the last 20 years at our press, September 11th brought a quantum leap in this need to marshal people into categories and to prohibit certain things and certain words and certain positions from entering into the public sphere. In 2001, Susan Sontag, one of the great American intellectuals, wrote about having some questions about the way the new war on terror was being pursued, and she was hooted down.
We’re beginning to see that a lot of this hooting down is not as spontaneous as many of us would like to believe. With the recent Twitter Files, and the case that the attorney generals of Missouri and Louisiana are trying now, we’re finding out that this was anything but spontaneous. There were a number of government actors working in concert with private actors to achieve a censorship that, frankly, for those of us of a certain age, is unimaginable.
You used to be able to say, “I have the First Amendment. Screw you. I’m going to say what I’m going to say.” We’ve gone from that to, “I have to be on guard because someone’s always watching me.” We went down this hole fairly quickly, and it’s very troubling.
Mr. Jekielek:
This is the treason of the experts, I suppose.
Mr. Harrington:
Yes. If you have been lucky enough to have a mentor in your life, what is a mentor? A mentor is someone who leads you along, who suggests, who looks at you and says, “What skills does this young person have that they are not aware of ?” They do an inquiry into that person and suggest and lead along, and then say implicitly, “How can I help this young person be the best version of themselves as I see it?” That is what an expert does. They do not impose a reality on anyone.
They are very aware of the power they have through their social title, but more often through their moral force. They realize that it’s a sacred thing that they have, and that it needs to be treated with the care that you treat treasures in your life, and that you don’t abuse it. They need to be very rigorous and be able to look at and check some of their ego impulses, and then ask, “Am I using this power to satisfy my ego gratification, more than I am to help the people that I say I am helping?”
It seems that that line has been crossed. There’s a lot of ego gratification that is interfering with what should be a real sober taking of responsibility for a gift of power. Power is a gift in a democratic society. It’s not something you own, and it’s not something there to make people obey you. It’s a gift you have that hopefully you can use in constructive ways that preserve the dignity of those who don’t have as much power as you do.
With the term treason of the experts, I’m playing with history a bit here with the title. It’s from a famous book that was written by Julien Benda after the First World War. He was an intellectual. As you know, the First World War was one of the great cataclysms in the history of the world, with violence that few people had ever seen.
When you go back and study it, you can look at what the violence was about, and the cynicism with which the violence was employed. Leaders marched their hundreds of thousands of troops so that they could get a tiny strip of land. It was an open auctioning of soldiers to be fed into the machine.
Benda wrote this book in 1927 called, “La Trahison des Clercs,” the Treason of the Clerisy. What he’s playing with is that in the world after the late 19th century, the church clerisy began to recede as an important element in society, to be superseded by the intellectual. The independent intellectual was made possible through newspapers and the publishing industry. The new clerisy, as he’s suggesting, are the free intellectuals.
He suggests that the role of the free intellectual is to always be rigorous and to always place themselves above their passions to the best extent they can and say, “What’s really going on here?” He wrote a devastating critique in the mid-1920s in which he takes on both the French intellectuals and the German intellectuals. He said, “They betrayed our trust. They acted as cheerleaders. They sent young men off to war to get destroyed, and became cheerleaders of gross propaganda.” He said, “Come on. We’ve got to reassume the responsibility that goes with having been granted a credential or a moment in power.” The first thing I thought about when this began three years ago was World War I.
Mr. Jekielek:
This being Covid?
Mr. Harrington:
Covid. The Covid triennial that we’re in now. In March of 2020, and you’ll see it in the first essay in the book where I say, “What’s going on here?” My mind immediately went to World War I. There were big forces that were pushing us in ways that didn’t add up. There were hidden hands in places making us do things that simply were not justified at the level of pure rational analysis. I was very grateful that I had studied a bit of World War I.
There’s another wonderful book where you can see some of the madness. It’s by Stefan Zweig, who was a wonderful intellectual back in that time. He talks about what happened in 1914 in Vienna. He thought, “We’ve reached the highest civilization that the world has ever seen.” He was a Viennese Jew. His friends had been integrated into Viennese life, and they were leading Viennese life in many ways.
All of a sudden, they were saying, “Don’t you want to go off to the trenches? Shouldn’t you be going off to the trenches? Shouldn’t you be excited? I’m going to go. Isn’t it wonderful?” He began to say, “What’s going on in this world that I thought was civilized?” I had the very same reaction in March of 2020.
Mr. Jekielek:
Some people think that this is being done for their own good. It’s not that there are nefarious forces with their own agendas. A lot of these folks genuinely believe in this incredibly dystopian vision of the world, that this is really the right thing to do, and that it will be good for me and good for you. There is a line that I flagged in the book, “Ever more open disdain for the intelligence of the citizenry.” There’s hubris here. That’s particularly infuriating, isn’t it?
Mr. Harrington:
Absolutely. It’s condescension, and I’ve always had a very thin skin for people being condescending to me. One of the nice things that my parents did in general was they talked to us as sentient beings almost from the beginning. It’s one of the things I’ve sought to do with both my children and with my students.
The condescending idea is that you need to dole it out and say, “If I told you, you might not understand. I’m coming from a place of complexity that you can’t understand. You’ll just have to trust me.” This is very insulting to people, and it’s antidemocratic. That’s just a fact.
The premise of democracy, as we understand it, and as it was formed in this country in the late 18th century, was that the farmer, the worker, and the lawyer were all citizens in the same measure. Granted, there would be a natural pecking order in terms of certain skill sets that would emerge. But in the public space, no one was inherently better or in a place to tell someone else what they need to know and how they need to live. It’s one of the great things about this country.
 

Monday, March 20, 2023

Farming The Poor: The Homeless Industrial Complex

hotair |  This story is duplicated countless times and in countless ways and tells you everything you need to know about how corrupt our welfare state actually is. We often focus on the occasional incidences of welfare fraud committed by recipients, but those incidents pale in comparison to the amount of money that is simply skimmed off the top by the people who run the programs.

It’s not the poor people who are benefiting, but the people who are claiming to help them. Those people are getting rich, cushy government jobs with great pay and benefits, and in many cases kickbacks.

Here in Minnesota, we have an enormous scandal centered on an Ilhan Omar-associated group that stole hundreds of millions of pandemic relief money that was supposed to be spent on providing a substitute for the school lunch program during the school closures. A nonprofit that was essentially a Somali gang set up fake feeding centers that served almost nobody but collected hundreds of millions from the Minnesota government.

The government officials did almost nothing. It took the FBI to shut the scam down. Our Department of Education knew of the graft but was concerned with appearing racist and ticking off our Congresswoman.

This is how the government-to-nonprofit complex works. Politically connected people conspire to use the suffering of others as an excuse to fleece the taxpayers of what is collectively billions of dollars. It is estimated that total fraud from pandemic relief funds alone amounts to hundreds of billions to over a trillion dollars in just 3 years.

And that doesn’t include the billions in yearly payments to nonprofits that accomplish little to nothing.

I call this process “farming the poor,” where poor people are the soil used to grow the billions of dollars that pop out of the ground every time you appeal to people’s compassion or desire for a better quality of life.

Poverty is an industry, not run by or for the poor people themselves, but for the benefit of those whose job it is to solve the problems.

 

 

Sunday, November 06, 2022

Tiffany Cross Unceremoniously Dismissed - Responsible Negroe Lil'Pookie Still On....,

foxnews  |  MSNBC host Joy Reid closed her show Friday night by addressing the abrupt exit of her colleague Tiffany Cross. 

"Before I go, I really do just want to say one quick thing about my friend, colleague and sister Tiffany Cross," an emotional Reid began. "She's not just my friend, she's my sister. I love her, I support her, I was boosting for her to get the show that she created, the Cross Connection, which she put her heart and soul into everyday."

The "ReidOut" host then took aim at Cross's critics on the "far right" who are "attacking her on a social media app that I won't name."

"You don’t understand how sisters move," Reid told critics. "So, watch this space. We will be here, her sisters will be here to support anything Tiffany Cross ever does. Know that. Believe that."

Cross’ team was informed on Friday. The move only affects the namesake host and not her staff. 

Some reports speculated Cross' appearance last week on Comedy Central, where she said Florida should be "castrated" from the rest of the country, may have played a role in her ouster.

MSNBC declined comment when reached by Fox News Digital. 

Cross was previously a fill-in host for Joy Reid's weekend show "AM Joy" and got her own Saturday program in 2020. There, she was known for her vitriolic statements about conservatives, remarking that there is already a "civil war" happening in the U.S., urged liberals to "pick up a weapon" in the fight for democracy, and called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas "Justice Pubic Hair on My Coke Can."

 

It's The "Help" That's All Atwitter About The Goings-On With Twitter

politico |   The mass firing represents the next stage in Musk’s takeover of the social network that remains a mainstay in how political leaders from President Joe Biden to French President Emmanuel Macron to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei communicate with a global audience.

In the hours after acquiring Twitter in late October, Musk fired the company’s board, including its chief executive Parag Agrawal, as well as Vijaya Gadde, who ran the social media company’s legal, policy and trust teams.

In a bid to increase revenue at the social media network that has historically struggled to turn a profit, Musk also wants to charge people $8 a month so that their accounts can be verified via the company’s now-iconic “blue tick” logo. The mass layoffs announced Friday are also part of these efforts to make the company more profitable.

The world’s richest man has become a lightning rod in the battle over free speech and content moderation. He’s tried to reassure advertisers that he wouldn’t let the platform devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape.” But some major advertisers have called for a pause in business with the platform, particularly after Musk shared a false story about an attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

“He specifically said to us that he does not want Twitter to be a hate amplifier,” said Yael Eisenstat, head of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society, who participated in a call with Musk alongside other civil society groups this week. “We will continue to watch to make sure that those actions actually happen.”

 

Friday, September 30, 2022

The American People Want No Part Of The Blob's Failed War On Russia

 
businessinsider | A new poll suggests that many Americans are growing weary as the US government continues its support of Ukraine in its war with Russia and want to see diplomatic efforts to end the war if aid is to continue. 

According to a poll conducted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Data for Progress, 57% of likely voters strongly or somewhat support the US pursuing diplomatic negotiations as soon as possible to end the war in Ukraine, even if it requires Ukraine making compromises with Russia. Just 32% of respondents were strongly or somewhat opposed to this.

And nearly half of the respondents (47%) said they only support the continuation of US military aid to Ukraine if the US is involved in ongoing diplomacy to end the war, while 41% said they support the continuation of US military aid to Ukraine whether the US is involved in ongoing diplomacy or not.

The Biden administration and Congress need to do more diplomatically to help end the war, according to 49% of likely voters, while 37% said they have done enough in this regard, the poll showed.

"Americans recognize what many in Washington don't: Russia's war in Ukraine is more likely to end at the negotiating table than on the battlefield. And there is a brewing skepticism of Washington's approach to this war, which has been heavy on tough talk and military aid, but light on diplomatic strategy and engagement," said Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute. 

"'As long as it takes' isn't a strategy, it's a recipe for years of disastrous and destructive war — conflict that will likely bring us no closer to the goal of securing a prosperous, independent Ukraine. US leaders need to show their work: explain to the American people how you plan to use your considerable diplomatic leverage to bring this war to an end," Parsi added.

The poll found close to half of likely US voters (48%) somewhat or strongly oppose the US providing aid to Ukraine at current levels if long-term global economic hardship, including in the US, occurs. Meanwhile, the poll showed that only four-in-10 Americans somewhat or strongly support the US providing aid to Ukraine at current levels if this occurs. 

The poll also found 58% of Americans somewhat somewhat or strongly oppose the US providing aid to Ukraine at current levels if there are higher gas prices and a higher cost of goods in the US, while just 33% somewhat or strongly support continuing aid if this occurs. 

A majority of poll respondents (57%) also said that they think the Russia-Ukraine war will end with a negotiated peace settlement between the two countries, while 61% said they believe the war has impacted them financially on some level.

President Joe Biden has warned that US sanctions on Russia could hurt the US economy, but he has maintained that supporting and defending Ukraine is worth the cost. He's framed the war as a battle between democracy and autocracy.

"Every day, Ukrainians pay with their lives, and they fight along — and the atrocities that the Russians are engaging in are just beyond the pale. And the cost of the fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is even more costly," Biden said in May. "That's why we're staying in this."

The US has provided over $15 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia launched its unprovoked war in late February. The Ukrainian armed forces have received numerous weapons packages from the US and other partner nations, packages that have included anti-tank missiles, air-defense systems, and long-range rocket artillery that have allowed Ukrainian troops to not only halt Russian advances but even drive Russian forces back.

While Western support has aided Ukraine's war efforts, recent data indicates there are growing concerns about what further support without diplomacy and a continuation of this brutal conflict could mean not just for Russia and Ukraine, but for other countries as well.

"Policymakers are far too sanguine about the risks posed by an indefinite continuation of this war, even minimizing the dangers posed by Vladimir Putin's nuclear threats," said Marcus Stanley, advocacy director at the Quincy Institute.

"Americans largely agree that efforts to strengthen Ukraine's hand on the battlefield need to be accompanied by efforts to secure lasting peace at the negotiating table. However, as Congress approaches another vote to approve military aid to Ukraine this week, there's no sign Washington is exploring opportunities to seek a settlement that preserves and protects Ukraine's independence."

Monday, July 11, 2022

Hunger Makes You Peasants Productive

Globalresearch  |  Hunger must be sustained to exploit manual labor, contends George Kent, a professor at the University of Hawaii’s political science department. who authored the November 2021 UN the document.

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Eat Bugs Muhphukkas!!! (Best B'lee All Kinds Of Bugs Fitna Eat You!!!)

U.N. |  We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people. Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world's economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour.

We in developed countries sometimes see poor people by the roadside holding up signs saying "Will Work for Food". Actually, most people work for food. It is mainly because people need food to survive that they work so hard either in producing food for themselves in subsistence-level production, or by selling their services to others in exchange for money. How many of us would sell our services if it were not for the threat of hunger?
More importantly, how many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger? When we sell our services cheaply, we enrich others, those who own the factories, the machines and the lands, and ultimately own the people who work for them. For those who depend on the availability of cheap labour, hunger is the foundation of their wealth.

The conventional thinking is that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs. For example, an article reports on "Brazil's ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom".1 While it is true that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs, we need to understand that hunger at the same time causes low-paying jobs to be created. Who would have established massive biofuel production operations in Brazil if they did not know there were thousands of hungry people desperate enough to take the awful jobs they would offer? Who would build any sort of factory if they did not know that many people would be available to take the jobs at low-pay rates?

Much of the hunger literature talks about how it is important to assure that people are well fed so that they can be more productive. That is nonsense. No one works harder than hungry people. Yes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.

The non-governmental organization Free the Slaves defines slaves as people who are not allowed to walk away from their jobs. It estimates that there are about 27 million slaves in the world,2 including those who are literally locked into workrooms and held as bonded labourers in South Asia. However, they do not include people who might be described as slaves to hunger, that is, those who are free to walk away from their jobs but have nothing better to go to. Maybe most people who work are slaves to hunger?

For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.

Saturday, July 02, 2022

Remember Lil'Pissants - If They Don't Charge You For The Product - YOU ARE THE PRODUCT!!!

There's only just so much to be said about the latest chapter in the empire of lies' desperate and ultimately futile attempt to hold onto financial and colonial power. That horse is already out of the barn and there isn't a damn thing any of us can do about it except ride it out as best we can.

zeta potential though, well, that's a whole other ball of wax. I'm going to make a simple, direct, and hopefully non-controversial claim. Aging is largely a process of all the fluid circulations in your body shutting down. I hadn't thought about that before. Why, because it falls into the yawning crack of unadvertised behavior. Science and the experts don't consider it, therefore it never trickles down into the consensus hubbub, so, out of sight, out of mind. This work here is purportedly about liminal views of consensus reality - so - back to the practical work at hand.
 
Well, it's not entirely true that I'd completely overlooked the question of fluid circulations, but, the version I had considered for some time, and then put back up on the shelf, was the version taught by taoist alchemy chi kung. According to this systematization, chi or vital energy depends upon the circulation of fluids in and around organ fascia. That's one aspect of zeta potential, and perhaps an oversimplification of chi kung.
 
Just as there was a powerful and clear signal sent concerning the underlying nature, origin, and purpose of the panicdemic - when the administration changed partisan hands - yet, hot-shots of mRNA goo alone remained the single mandated official response - so also - a very clear and powerful signal has been sent to us. Compare and contrast the west's response to coronavirus with China's continued insistence on hard lock-down procedures. What do they know that our misleadership pretends not to know?
 
Further, there's the fact that China's allopathic medical response has been more traditional. They are not administering hot shots of mRNA goo and blatantly and extravagantly fucking around with the future viability of the Middle Kingdom's people. Neither are the Russians.
All subjects of the empire of lies, however, are at risk of yet another mandated round of multiple hot shots of experimental goo, including the little children. 
 
Trust the science you sleeping fools. 
 
Trust deeze-nutz muhphukka...., 
 
WW-III has been declared on the subjects of western corporatocracies by our own psychopathocratic gerontocracy. The western panic-demic governance response  has nothing whatsoever to do with public health. AFAIC - the madness being inflicted upon us - looks much more like an upgraded core tactic in an arsenal of economic and medical warfare on all of us uselessly eating and no longer economically viable pissants. 
 
There may not be much we can do to stop billion$ being squandered and stolen via Ukraine.
 
However, we are far from helpless in the face of this specific medicalized assault.

Sunday, June 26, 2022

If They Don't Charge You For The Product (mRNA Therapeutics) YOU ARE THE PRODUCT!!!

 

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Does Your Government's Clumsy And Conspicuous Lying Make You Feel Like An Abused Child?

caitlinjohnstone |  NBC News has a new report out citing multiple anonymous US officials, humorously titled "In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn't rock solid". 

The officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out "intelligence" about Russia's plans in Ukraine that is "low-confidence" or "based more on analysis than hard evidence", or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.

The report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin's advisors misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.

Excerpt, emphasis mine:

It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.

President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.

It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance.

So they lied. They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true, and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in the western world. 

Another example of the Biden administration releasing a false narrative as part of its "information war":

Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said. 

The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said. 

On the empire's claim last week that Putin is being misled by his advisors because they are afraid of telling him the truth, NBC reports that this assessment "wasn’t conclusive — based more on analysis than hard evidence."

I'd actually made fun of this ridiculous CIA press release when it was uncritically published disguised as a breaking news report by The New York Times

 

Friday, February 11, 2022

American Truckers Too Broke, Disorganized, And Beaten Down To Attempt A Freedom Convoy

foxnews  |  Multiple Capitol Hill sources tell Fox News they are unaware of any plan for truckers to duplicate anything in Washington. Still, Fox is told there have been conversations about what would happen if 18-wheelers and other rigs paralyzed the Capitol.

Don’t call C.W. McCall and Rubber Duck just yet.

For starters, the U.S. Capitol Police have prohibited large trucks from creeping anywhere near the Capitol complex since just after 9/11. There has been increased surveillance around the Capitol for potential "truck bombs" and other threats after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Police routinely divert or pull over trucks that roll onto prohibited streets.

Of course, you can’t really pull over every truck if a convoy of trucks rolled toward Capitol Hill. That was the problem on Jan. 6. The Capitol Police didn’t have the wherewithal to quell thousands of protesters.

That said, there is historic precedent for an over-the-road, over-the-top, motorized demonstration in Washington.

Farmers routinely began jamming up traffic in Washington, D.C., to protest farm prices in the late 1970s. In the winter of 1978, thousands of farmers rode their tractors to Washington, snarling traffic on I-66 in Virginia. Tractors putted along at 15 mph.

A confrontation between seven farmers and police prompted seven arrests. A group of farmers set off on foot, marching along Pennsylvania Avenue. Choruses of "Let’s go get ‘em out" of jail echoed through the D.C. streets.

The farmers then unloaded goats to graze on the Capitol grounds. Officials declared that the farmers created a "monstrous rush-hour traffic jam." The tactics of the farmers were so aggressive that the stunt turned off lawmakers to their plight.

The Washington Post characterized the farmers as "growing more militant" in their approach. Farmers stormed out of a meeting with House Agriculture Committee Chairman and future House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash. Foley told them he favored legislation to help boost prices for agricultural commodities - couldn’t guarantee a bill would turn higher profits for farmers. 

Undaunted, the caravans of tractors returned to Washington in January 1979.

Thousands of farmers lumbered down I-270 and the Beltway toward the heart of the city, driving tractors, combines and hauling everything from planters to balers. Capitol Police brought in extra officers to deal with the farmers and barred their agricultural implements from the Capitol grounds.

 

Thursday, February 03, 2022

Fascism Has BEEN HERE: I Assume You Understand The Reality Of Your Situation?

off-guardian  |  you are not supposed to talk about how money controls social institutions and how our values, beliefs and norms are determined by the interests of the ruling class, and how the economic caste order effectively enforces capitalist imperatives to perpetuate the reign of money and violence.

Believe it or not, today, this sort of understanding is labeled as “conspiracy.” Right, you are a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut case if you happen to call out corporate crimes, their criminal conspiracies and so on and so forth.

How obvious can it get? Rich people dominate corporate politics with the good old righteousness of exceptionalism, and a colonial attitude with the kinder, gentler face of liberal politics, and it is perfectly OK to call a simple Marxist analysis of exploitation a “conspiracy.”

The tendency to obscure the mechanism of capitalism is mirrored exactly among many of those who oppose the overwhelming push for Covid lockdowns, Covid “vaccine” mandates and so on. For many of those who stand on the other side of the virus event, the entire mobilization is described as a “communist takeover.”

That’s right. All those diehard capitalists who have been conspiring to perpetuate their interests through World Economic Forum, IMF, World Bank and so on are communists now. How convenient? You can’t have capitalism without opportunism.

But the whole thing makes perfect sense. Both ends of the capitalist spectrum, fascists and social democrats, have always struggled to perpetuate capitalist hegemony together. At the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to perpetuate the capitalist caste hierarchy and their righteous positions within it.

One step with the left leg goes forward as the right leg moves forward to balance the momentum of the imperial hegemony — just as the hopelessly corrupt Hilary Clinton gives birth to a Donald Trump Presidency, which, in turn, gives the Democratic Party a reason to exist.

Left, right, left, right, the empire moves forward as it gently shifts its weight left to right. As they march the imperial-scape together, they sing derogatory smears against any revolutionary momentum.

Both sides are free to argue and fight as long as they adhere to the imperial imperatives of capitalism. The corporate media ensure that the narratives are told to fit this dynamic. Those who do not belong to the dynamics are portrayed as “others”–fringe extremists to be demonized from multiple angles.

How does the empire gain its mythical aura of authority? Easy. They play a good old protection racket scheme against unsuspecting “good people.”

For example, they tell people that terrorists are coming, while “secretly” funding the killers in ways which are not so secret to the people. People get the idea: “Oh I see. we have to pay the protection fee. Otherwise, we get fucked up.”

Or, for example, they tell people that plague is coming, and force people to get injected with special medicines. If the people refuse, their jobs are taken away, their families are split apart, you can’t eat at a restaurant and so on. They can effectively turn everyone into a dangerous element with an infection until proven “healthy” by the designated means of the authority.

There goes the presumption of innocence along with informed consent out of the door.

This is a big deal. There is a huge reason why an authority must prove someone guilty without a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, people can be arbitrarily accused of committing any crime and then punished for it. And without informed consent, people can be forced to drink Cool Aid just because they are told to do so.

Moreover, as soon as the feudal overloads deal with the life and death of the people, they effectively consecrate themself as gods. A politician would claim that Covid “vaccines” are sent by God. Cultural figures would start accusing those who refuse the medication of “defying the law of nature,” defying “science” and so on, effectively turning Bill Gates and the rest of the snake oil salesmen into gods of our times.

So now it seems that even this pretend “democracy” is being taken away by the acceptance of decrees under an “emergency” just like any other fascist take-over.

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Public Opinion Has Zero-Impact On U.S. Law

upworthy |  Their study took data from nearly 2,000 public-opinion surveys and compared what the people wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America has essentially no impact at all.

Put another way, and I'll just quote the Princeton study directly here:

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

Really think about that for a second.

If you've ever felt like your opinion doesn't matter and that the government doesn't really care what you think, well … you're right.

But, of course, there's a catch.

...unless you're an "economic elite."

If there's one thing that still reliably gets politicians' attention, it's money. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a "statistically non-significant impact," Gilens and Page found that economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence.

How could it be that our government, designed to function as a representative democracy, is only good at representing such a small fraction of the population? Just follow the money.

Why? Because purchasing political influence is 100% legal.

For example: Let's say a big bank wants a law that would force taxpayers to bail them out again if they repeat the exact same reckless behavior that crashed the global economy in 2008.

It's perfectly legal for our bank to hire a team of lobbyists whose entire job is to make sure the government gives the bank what it wants. Then, those lobbyists can track down members of Congress who regulate banks and help raise a ton of money for their re-election campaigns. Its also perfectly legal for those lobbyists to offer those same politicians million-dollar jobs at their lobbying firms.


Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kansas), shown speaking at an event in 2012, recently attached language originally drafted by lobbyists for CitiGroup to a financial services appropriations bill. Members of Congress who voted "yes" on the bill received, on average, 2.8 times more money from the PACs of CitiGroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase than members who voted "no." Image by Information Technology Innovation Foundation/Flickr.

They can also literally write the language of this new bailout law themselves, then hand it off to the politicians they just buttered up with campaign money and lucrative job offers. And it's perfectly legal for those politicians to sneak the lobbyist-written language through Congress at the last second.

If that example sounds oddly specific, that's because it happened in December 2014. And it happens all the time, on almost every single issue, with politicians of both parties.

Monday, September 20, 2021

Masks Are For Peasants...,

washingtontimes |  If you’re among the Hollywood elite at the Emmys, you don’t need a face mask. If you’re a simple school student in most of the rest of America, you better have a face mask. Any questions?

This is the tale of two emerging societies in America: those who have to obey coronavirus restrictions and those who don’t. And guess which category you fit.

Cedric the Entertainer, the host for the evening, tried to quiet criticisms before they had a chance to brew — but was largely unsuccessful.

“No Masks at the #Emmys because rules are for the little people,” one social media poster wrote.

“The Only People Wearing Masks At the Emmys Were Servants,” another wrote.

“Is ‘science’ the reason celebrities don’t need masks at the Emmys but all the hourly employees do?” yet another wrote.

“Emmys = no masks. Our college and high school sons = masks. Where’s the outrage?” yet one more wrote.

It’s not that the Emmys’ attendees should have been forced to wear masks. It’s that everybody else in the country shouldn’t be forced to wear masks, either.

The fact some can skate on the Anthony-Fauci-recommendations-slash-mandates while others cannot shows clearly the growing two-class society in America: the thees — the Democrat voters, the socialist types, the leftist leaners — but not for me’s — the conservatives, the Donald Trump base, the tea party types, the individualists.

It’s the coronavirus version of apartheid.

“Masks are for peasants,” another wrote on Twitter.

And that very succinctly describes the attitudes from the far-left.

What Is France To Do With The Thousands Of Soldiers Expelled From Africa?

SCF  |    Russian President Vladimir Putin was spot-on this week in his observation about why France’s Emmanuel Macron is strutting around ...