We are just a group of retired spooks that discuss things that you’ll not find anywhere else. It makes us unique. Take a look around. Learn a thing or two.
When I was a five year old boy, my father gave me a magnifying glass… set me on the curb near an anthill, and I spent the entire afternoon burning ants.
It was cruel.
But I had no idea about that during that time in my life. I mean, I was only five.
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I wonder how many times that I hurt others though ignorance, and a lack of compassion. I really do wonder.
Look guys, we cannot change the world, but we can alter our little piece of it. Let’s just strive to be a little bit better on a day to day basis. What do you say?
I’ve been teaching nearly 20 years and my favorite lie is still the one that I heard as a brand new teacher.
A student came to class with his hand bandaged, carrying a doctor’s note. He told me “last night, my computer blew up and the shrapnel injured my hand so I couldn’t complete the homework assignment that was due today.”
I took a look at his hand. The bandage was so loose it was falling off. There was no way that any sober doctor had done such a sloppy job. It looked like he had tried to apply it himself and been unable to do it properly one-handed.
Then I took a look at the note. It was from a doctor’s office and it said “[Student’s name] has been seen for a ___ hand procedure.” I took a closer look at the blank space between “a” and “hand”. The word “minor” had been erased (but not well enough that I couldn’t see it if I squinted). I was guessing he had a wart removed or something that morning.
I didn’t need to point out the holes in his story, though. I just told him, “I’m sorry to hear about your injury, but the assignment wasn’t due today. It was due two days ago- the day before your ‘accident’.”
He walked to his seat without a word. He looked like he was going to be sick.
China’s People’s Liberation Army – Navy ship “Longushan” is reportedly ablaze just off the coast of China tonight. The vessel is reported to be “China’s most advanced warship.”
No OFFICIAL word on what caused the fire. (There ARE rumors . . . .)
All mention of this is being rapidly scrubbed from China social media networks, and no official information is coming out of Beijing.
The vessel bears Hull Number 980 and is described as a Type 071 landing ship.
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China’s fifth Type 071 amphibious transport dock (LPD) Longhushan; with hull number 980) was commissioned with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy) on September 12, 2018 in Shanghai.
Originally designed after the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, the Type 071, measuring 210 meters long and 28 meters wide, is capable of carrying an 800-man marine battalion and some 20 amphibious tanks.
During building construction in an Athenian suburb in 2014, a tomb of the classical period was unearthed. It was no big deal, it happens frequently in Athens. Archaeologists took over but the findings in it weren’t of much interest…until they assembled a ceramic wine cup (a skyphos) smashed in 12 pieces, this one:
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The cheap cup belonged to a man named Drapetes (the name, inscribed at the bottom of the cup, indicates a slave) However, the big surprise came from the other six names inscribed on the cup:
Aristides, Diodotos, Desimos, Arrifron, Pericles and Efkritos. Could this Pericles be the famous general?
Archaeologists say yes! This is why:
One of its fragments is engraved with six names, including Arrifron — the moniker of Pericles’s grandfather and brother. “The name Arrifron is very rare,” said A. P. Matthaiou, secretary of the Greek Epigraphic Society
. “The mention of [Arrifron] over that of Pericles on the surface of the vase makes us 99% confident that they are the two brothers.”
The inscription of the name Aristides also points favorably to Pericles having used the cup. Aristides was a politician who acted in Athens between 488 and 478 BCE, while Pericles led the city-state from 460 BCE to his death from the plague in 429 BCE. The cup dates between 480 and 465 BCE when the two might have interacted in a social setting such as a symposium or tavern. As men commonly drank from the same skyphos, it’s possible they would have carved their names onto the cup as a token of their meeting. “[He] certainly was dizzy from the wine as it is clear that whoever wrote the name of Pericles made a mistake initially … and then corrected it,” Matthaiou said.
Drapetes kept the cup. We don’t know why or how, maybe he was flattered by the presence of the noble company in his tavern.
It’s always a little magical when archeologists turn up objects that place such mythic figures in real time and space, breathing the same air and walking the same ground we do today. It seems miraculous that 2,500 years after the orator’s death, an ancient cup just happens to contain six complete names evidencing a life that has evaded archeologists for centuries.
U.S. Army prepares for War with China and Congress is EXCITED about it
Sigh. You all afraid, yet?
Angelina’s Zydeco Creole Jambalaya
Angelinas Zydeco Creole Jambalaya
Ingredients
1/2 pound smoked sausage, cut
1/2 pound ham, diced
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup bell pepper, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1 cup green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
1 can whole tomatoes, drained (reserve liquid)
Pinch thyme
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice
1 1/2 cups stock water
2 pounds fresh shrimp, deveined
Instructions
Place sausage and ham in very heavy Dutch oven and sauté until lightly browned. Remove from pot and set aside.
Sauté onions, bell pepper, celery, green onions and add meat drippings. Cook until tender.
Add tomatoes, thyme, pepper and salt. Cook for five minutes. Stir in rice.
Mix together liquid from tomatoes, stock and Worcestershire sauce equal to 2 cups and add to sautéed vegetables. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and add fresh shrimp, ham and sausage. Cook uncovered, stirring often for about 30 minutes or until rice and shrimp are done.
Loyalty
U.S. Marines shifting focus to China, threat is “real”: top general
The U.S. Marines view deterring China as their key focus and will strive to make sure a conflict in the Indo-Pacific does not “spill over” to Japan, the military branch’s top general Eric Smith said Monday, while warning that Beijing’s missile capabilities are “significant” and “real.”
The Marine Corps’ No. 2 officer, who has been nominated to become the next commandant, also said in an interview in Tokyo that a littoral regiment being formed in Japan for remote island defense is being designed to provide “advanced maritime domain awareness” to allies and partners, in order to better detect events in surrounding waters.
The United States and Japan announced in January that the existing 12th Marine Regiment based in the southern prefecture of Okinawa will be reorganized into the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment by 2025, making it the first MLR to be forward-deployed against China.
The regiments will possess advanced surveillance capabilities and will be armed with long-range fires. Consisting of about 1,800 to 2,000 personnel per unit, they will also be capable of flexibly deploying small groups of marines to remote islands in the South China Sea.
The forming of the regiments comes amid China’s increased military assertiveness around far-flung southwestern Japan islets and Taiwan, which has raised the risk of conflict.
The Commandant of the United States Marine Corps is hospitalized after a serious medical emergency. General Eric M. Smith suffered a medical emergency on the evening of October 29 and was taken to a hospital.
He is now in stable condition.
Per Statute Law 10 U.S.C. §8044, as the senior officer assigned to Headquarters, US Marine Corps, by date of rank, Lt. General Karsten Heckl, the Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration, who is the Commanding General of the Marine Corps Combat Command, is serving as Acting Commandant of the Marine Corps, for the interim.
Wife Cheated On Me With Her Colleagues, so I Snatched Everything She Had – FULL STORY
“You didn’t dodge a bullet. 14 years with her, you got shot.”
I received a resume from someone who had recently graduated from high school. They had one job on the resume and their job title was Director in Charge of Company Morale at a prestigious local law firm.
The resume lacked all the things I was looking for, but the job title listed intrigued me. I set the interview and was waiting to hear a litany of lies.
On the day of the interview this cleancut sharp dressed young man showed up. After brief small talk I asked about the prior job and what it entailed.
Turns out his Director in Charge of Company Morale Position entailed him going out each morning and getting coffee for all the partners. He said without their morning coffee, morale was very low.
Best belly laugh in an interview ever. I hired him. And he worked out well because he found a way to place a positive attitude on everything he did, however menial the task.
Edit: I am honored that so many people like my answer. Thank you all.
Update: I’ve had several people suggest editing the gender from “they” to “he”. At the time I read the resume and set the appointment, I had no idea if the applicant was male or female. Gender was not a decision point in our hiring process. This is why I have left the answer unedited. Thank you all again for the overwhelming response.
I called and the automated machine said it would read back my last five transactions to check for anything weird.
“Video entertainment— $65. California.”
“Video entertainment— $10. Declined. France.”
“Video entertainment— $10. Declined. France.”
“Gas— $30. Colorado.”
“Gas— $30. Wyoming.”
I was pretty sure I hadn’t been to France or California recently, so I checked my account summary and noticed I had -$50 in my account.
I’m taking poor college kid to a whole new level. I’m negative poor right now.
So I called their fraud number and the woman on the other end walked me through securing my account and getting a new card. She asked a few questions, told me my card was on its way, and hung up.
The achievement was not that I got my card number stolen. It wasn’t that I managed to put my account $50 under.
It’s that I made a phone call.
That sounds awfully small and to everyone around me it is, but I have been known to have panic attacks when forced to make phone calls. I hate ‘em. They make me anxious and uncomfortable and incredibly stressed.
I struggle with hearing on the phone (and in general, really), which exacerbates my social anxiety and makes phone calls some of the worst interactions I can have.
But today, I did it. The woman even had an accent and I think I understood her and responded correctly.
It’s a small thing, but when it’s one of your biggest fears, it can feel like the greatest thing in the world.
I was 20 and dating a guy that I met in a 20s chat room. This was the year 2000. We went to a grocery store and was walking down the Easter candy isle when I spotted these malt eggs. I stopped and said, “eww! Do you remember getting these in the bottom of your Easter basket every year?!” He simply said, “No.” Stupid me goes on and on about how I hated them and that he MUST remember getting them… He finally says quietly, “No. I didn’t ever get an Easter basket. My parents didn’t have the money.”
THAT is why I’m an asshole.
FYI, I married that guy that same year and we are still together with 3 amazing kids.
The next Easter morning he woke up to his first Easter basket from the Easter bunny complete with malt eggs. 🪺
I was cleaning the coffee cart when a guest at the soup kitchen walked by me.
“You’re wearing Converse. Do you collect them?”
“No,” I tell her. “I just like my old black pair. They’re comfortable shoes.”
“They are. I have some pink ones that don’t fit me—I’ll bring them and if they fit you, you can have them.”
True to her word, I glanced out of the kitchen door today to see her holding them up, much to my coworkers’ confusion.
At work, I can’t walk two steps without someone stopping to talk to me.
One man spent all day poking fun at me about how sunburned my arms are.
Another gave us all breakfast burritos and promised sopapillas tomorrow.
I spent a good part of an afternoon with one of our volunteers trading fun facts and talking about theatre.
Sometimes strangers stop in the serving line to tell me their story.
I learned about Rainbow Gatherings and how they send positive energy into the world.
About powwows.
About brain injuries and single parenting and the best way to make spaghetti and bonnets purchased in Missouri and what chickens like to eat and how they make decaffeinated coffee.
About cancer and babies and sunburn cures and about how food is one of the greatest gifts known to man.
I took the job at the soup kitchen because it paid and because they called me back first.
But damn, my job fuels my artist’s brain more than anything else.
People. People are all that art is.
And if you can be in a room where veterans and drug addicts and businessmen and hitchhikers all sit at the same table for a meal—
You’ll find no better place to hear someone’s story.
Today, I got new shoes, and I don’t even know that woman’s name.
But I know her. I know them all, even if all I know is that one guy likes the comics in the newspaper and another always waits for his wife before eating.
You ask if I’m happy with my current life situation.
I’m poor. My pay is calculated at pretty much the poverty line for the local community, so I’m making fuckall in money.
I’m tired and I’m sunburned and I’m sore and I’m still excited to go to work every day.
It doesn’t feel like a job. I don’t dread it like I honestly thought I would.
I’ve been sleeping full nights and working full days and while the depression doesn’t just go away, it finds someplace else to be during the work day.
I wish I had the money to do everything I want to do, but I will honestly take full days at the soup kitchen over working fast food any day of the week.
I guess I’m happy.
I don’t know. I’m content. The days are flying by faster than I can count them.
If anything, this work strengthens my desire to work in nonprofits. I don’t think traditional schools are for me.
I’m excited to keep going, and that feels good enough for me.
I was very surprised with American attitude towards (partial) nudity. A couple of real-life examples from when I lived in NJ:
My kids were 2 and 3 years old and during the summer it’s very normal in Europe for small children to run around the house and yard naked. When they did that in the US however, I received several complaints from our neighbours and one of them put up a solid fence between our properties after that.
Two years later we went to a water park in Hope, NJ and our daughter was only wearing bikini bottoms. The top didn’t fit well, would only annoy her and there was nothing there to hide or cover up (so we thought). We received a warning from the park and had to cover her up or leave immediately.
When our daughter was in pre-school we (the parents) had to stop by the principal for a serious discussion: they noticed how our 4-year old daughter started undoing her pants before she got in the rest room with the door closed, which was apparently shocking to the other kids.
After that we started adjusting better to the local norms and didn’t have any incidents anymore. I’ve always wondered though why this was such a big deal and suspect it to be a nutty religious thing.
CHINA, in every respect, I know every yank will say the USA but I don’t think so, not anymore, mainly because of their debt, and growing daily, yes, the US have a very powerful navy, but SO WHAT? Ships can be sunk, and sunk quickly, missiles are the thing these days, and China is way ahead with their hypersonic missiles, double the speed of US ones. According to all reports. Also, they run rings around the US in speed and cost of manufacturing. Which also puts China in front.
Yes! Just recently my husband and I did this. We were visiting NY. Our hotel had a restaurant in it. We went down for breakfast. There was a menu just outside of the restaurant. The continental buffet was $29. The hot buffet was $45. A little steep, but we figured those were just NY prices.
When it was our turn to be seated, they but us at a high communal style table. I’m 5″2 and I HATE high tables! We sat down and looked around. We looked at each other. The kind of silent communication you can do with someone you’ve been with for years. Then we decided that we were not paying $100 for breakfast while we sat at an uncomfortable “display” table. I turned and looked out the window. I saw 53rd St. Grill across the street. We walked past the waiter as he was bringing our waters. The food at the grill was delicious, and cost about $30 for both of us. We ate breakfast there for the remainder of our trip.
I have several female friends that worked hard in school and then got prestigious jobs. But the thing about prestigious jobs is that they’re usually a lot of long hours of tough work. They made fairly good money but after a long, frustrating day at work they would sometimes joke “ugh, I need to find a rich husband so I can be a house wife.”
And then some of did. One of them moved to another country where traditional gender roles are more prevalent and she found herself a really rich husband. Then a few of the other girls moved too and, I kid you not, they also found rich husbands.
I’ve met a lot of girls that have jumped up the socioeconomic ladder through marriage. But guys? I haven’t met a single one. Generally speaking, girls still expect guys to make at least as much as them.
So what sucks about being a guy? The immense pressure to be financially successful. As much as we try to deny it, society is obsessed with financial status and will measure a man’s worth based on his wealth.
The current economic system is full of perverse incentives.
Ever heard of the phrase “identifying your customer’s needs”?
The thing is, creating or maintaining needs so that you know what people need is more profitable than trying to identify new needs every time.
Problems cause need, and so problems are encouraged.
Imagine there is a pothole in the street.
That’s a problem. It’s going to cause issues.
If you identify it, then you could set up a company to fix roads, and try to get paid to fix it.
But what would be even more profitable would be to lobby so that it doesn’t get fixed, and then open a shop next to it to fix people’s suspensions after they break, or to offer towing services.
Because then you have a repeated source of income.
And then anyone trying to fix the pothole becomes a threat to your bottom line.
People benefit from the existence of problems, because then they can be paid to provide a temporary solution.
And this impacts many areas of our lives.
The legal system currently is bloated, and overly complicated. But the lawyers have a job thanks to that, so they don’t want it to change.
Government officials are corrupted by bribes and lobbying, and their perverse incentive is to take the money instead of working for the good of people.
Planned obsolescence leads to people making items that don’t last a long time but break fast, and have to be replaced, because that’s an opportunity for profits.
We are scared of human labor being replaced by machines. A weird incentive to be against progress and automation, because our access to resources depends on our labor being needed.
Health insurance is a business that tries to deny as many claims as possible to increase profits.
The owners and workers of the factories producing bombs and munition rely on constant wars for their income.
Creating emotionally laden clickbait attracts more attention than rational discourse.
If you identify a problem somewhere, fixing it is not the most profitable thing you can do; letting it happen, and then swooping in is.
If you want maximum profits, and know that the housing market will crash, you don’t want to try and avoid that, you want to short the market and make billions. And then use the billions to buy up the low price property from the desperate people in need who just lost their life savings.
There are perverse incentives all around us.
The perverse incentive is to do the easy thing, for short term profits.
Doing the right thing, even when it’s hard, to reap the long term benefits? That’s what we should be aiming for.
I arrived for an interview and was asked to wait a few minutes as the interviewer was held up. A few minutes later he came out, apologised said he’d been called to an urgent problem. He explained that some of the stuff I’d be working on would highly commercially sensitive and while he finished up could I read through the pre-interview contract and sign it.
I read through it and though I’m no lawyer it read like they could sue for everything I owned from my house down to my underwear if I so much as said I’d been within a mile of the building. The I interviewer came back a few minutes later and asked if I was happy and had signed the paperwork.
I replied that I hadn’t signed coz it looked a bit iffy on the conditions and he replied
‘congratulations, you’re the first person out of 8 people who passed the first stage test’.
Apparently everyone else had skimmed through and signed and not bothered really looking at what they were signing off on.
A kid walked in late to my English class in 8th grade.
My teacher was really weird, and would go on these rants about how space doesn’t exist, reality is a figment of our imagination, and one person at google is taking over the world by deciding what search results google gives you.
This kid walks in and says “I’m not late because time doesn’t exist.”
He wasn’t marked late.
FIRST TIME HEARING Simple Minds – Alive & Kicking REACTION
I’m a retired cop, and most people think we are very conservative. My law enforcement friends think I’m a hippie.
I am for the legalization of recreational marijuana. I have never tried it, probably wouldn’t even if it was legalized, but it’s time for us all to grow up and see that Reefer Madness isn’t helping anyone.
I am opposed to the death penalty. I don’t like pedophiles or murderers, I just don’t think our government should be in the business of killing people. And I know first hand how flawed our criminal justice system is.
I support peaceful protests, even if I disagree with their views.
I think we (law enforcement) need to work with the media. Many of my colleagues think I’m nuts. It’s win-win when we do.
I think abortion should be legal. But I wish the last one performed was the last one ever performed.
). We need to put ourselves in each other’s shoes, and the best way to do that is to be around each other.
My grandfather’s first sight of America was the Statue of Liberty. I believe that monument is still relevant.
I vote for democrats. I vote for republicans. I vote for independents and green party and libertarians. I just think we need some good people in charge, and it makes me crazy when people vote straight party tickets.
I am a straight white male, married for 37 years. (Hi, honey.) But I am glad same sex couples can get married. I have 4 grandchildren. If they grow up with different preferences than most, I still want them to find love and happiness.
Trump is a disaster, and I’m going to wear out my rosary beads because of him.
I believe in the Second Amendment (actually am quite fond of them all), but I think it has gotten out of hand. Maybe we are not as self controlled as the Founding Fathers had hoped we would be. I am for reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.
I think everyone should have health insurance (at least as good as what members of congress give themselves), whether they can pay for it or not. Life is an inalienable right. Pretty sure health is too.
Not sure if that makes me liberal or not. I don’t like breaking rules or laws, but there are times when that is necessary. As long as you understand the consequences.
As that great philosopher Popeye once said, “I yam what I yam.”
Psychologist Explains Why MEN CARE about a WOMAN’S SEXUAL HISTORY: what women don’t understand
This is very interesting. I never looked at things this way.
“Paying twice as much for getting something ½ the value.”
…
“Well as a man, it doesn’t matter to me whether they have “grown” or got more wisdom, they still did the deeds, and as rude as it may sound to a woman, a good man will hold you accountable for your actions and your past. No high value man, as they put it, wants to pay new car prices for a used car.”
Management didn’t know what to do with Steven and it was their fault. Steven was a 28-year-old coworker and assistant project manager. We worked at a corporate construction company and project managers were our most important personnel.
Steven was smart and had stellar reviews, but when prompted about promoting to PM, he said, “No, no, I’m good.” It perplexed our CFO and COO, who didn’t know why a good employee wouldn’t want more money and responsibility.
I knew why. I was the budget manager at his division and sat in on many of their meetings. I saw the grueling pressure put on project managers and saw them yelled at on occasion. It wasn’t an easy job. Steven figured, he was young and enjoying his life and didn’t want that kind of pressure. And perhaps he thought he’d be bad at the job — which is wiser than most realize.
The Peter Principle was first proposed by psychologist Laurence J. Peters and was intended as satire. It proposed that competent employees will be continually promoted until they are incompetent in their new role. Then, they remain in that position for the remainder of their career. Consequently, every role is eventually held by an incompetent employee. His concept was unexpectedly hailed by researchers as having relevance and truth. Many firms now actively work to combat it.
I would wager any person reading this, who has been in corporate long enough, can think of at least one manager who was shockingly bad at their job. Yet they seemed untouchable.
It makes intuitive sense that as the demands and competition go up, your shine can easily lose its luster. For example, I was a good swimmer and the captain of my high school team. I felt like a god when I swam in local meets against kids who only swam a few months a year. But as I went up to districts, states, and then regionals, I felt increasingly less special.
Today, I’m a writer who sits on the other side of the corporate fence, living mostly free of hierarchal structures and constantly worrying about mistakes slipping through. I see my own partner, and friends, all angling for promotions and raises. This isn’t bad on its own as I admire ambition. But I’ve watched many of them take a hit to their life satisfaction.
The data reflects this: Employees are the unhappiest they’ve been in years, due to a lack of control, unreasonable workloads and not enough time off. You’d wonder why anyone would want to take on more if they are already drowning, but they do — by the millions.
It seems paradoxical. You work to be good at your job and gain respect, only to be promoted to a position that jeopardizes those perceptions. Being highly competent risks making you incompetent.
If you succeed enough, your high flying incompetence may introduce the Peter Principle’s brother, dubbed Peter’s Pinnacle, where you make a huge mistake and are paid to go away. It happened with the president of Disney, Michael Ovitz, who was fired after 16 months but made off with a $38 million severance.
The art of balancing
A few programmers I’ve known are good at dodging this responsibility paradox. My buddy Brian is a high flying coder, who is stiff-arming attempts by management to bring them into their fold and start managing people. He insists his goal is to be a skilled programmer and contribute to the company.
But beware of letting this mindset drag you to stagnancy. Don’t become the middle aged employee who has been in the same role for 10–20 years, just going through the motion and replying blandly to questions about their day with, “Living the dream.” The difference with Brian is that he is continually refining his programming, and is passionate about coding. There’s still a fire in him.
I’ve seen many falls from grace over the years, employees who were five star performers and thought highly of. Then, months after the company gleefully announced their promotion, the whispers started, “I heard he’s been struggling in his new role.” And, “He’s slipping.”
At a former employer, there was a corner room we called “The Death Trap.” The role for that office fell under a difficult manager and had sky-high expectations. They went through four people in 18 months. The company fired three managers who’d had great reviews in prior roles. One was saved by the skin of his neck by transferring to another department. It was the Peter Principle on full display.
Companies can do better too
Per a study by Dr. Ed Lazear at Stanford University, companies should account for the Peter Principle in any promotion decision because it’s an inevitable consequence. One solution is to inflate the original promotion requirements to smooth the transition. Put another way, ensure the candidate is an absolute star in their current role before leading them to deep waters.
Sometimes, you shouldn’t promote great employees at all. For example, in school, they often took our “Teachers of the Year” and offered them jobs in the administration. It’s tragic because it removed the teacher from working with students and making an impact where they thrived. Why not pay the teacher more to keep being an awesome teacher? To the managers seeing this, think long before hard-capping salaries by job title.
Parting thoughts
Think about your job well beyond compensation. Your motivation and job satisfaction are driven by feelings of competence, relatedness (feeling connected to coworkers), and autonomy. Every move up the ladder impacts those three things in unpredictable ways. If you do take a promotion, use that job to supplement your skills. Hire and surround yourself with smart people, and listen to what they have to say. That alone would save many from the clutches of the Peter Principle.
Everything is a tradeoff. I was keenly aware of that when I quit finance to be a writer. It was a conscious but difficult decision. I resolved I would probably never get wealthy. Upward mobility, outside of me writing a fluke hit book, would be limited. My health benefits would vanish. But I’d be doing something creative and that I loved doing, with minimal oversight and flexibility. Four years out, I’m still happy with this decision, but I am constantly doing status checks. Things can change on a dime.
My point is: Take a long view. Protecting your reputation and integrity gets harder as you carry more responsibility and teams to manage. Make sure the new role aligns well with your skillset, lifestyle, and has the support in place for you to thrive. If you make the decision solely for money, you may fall into an old and dangerous career trap.
For most of my life, my best friend was my sister. Then one day she called me and said that she didn’t want me to be part of her life anymore. I can’t tell you why because she didn’t say. That was five years ago and I haven’t heard from her since.
About two years ago I found out that she had moved to another state without even letting me know. I had some kind of emotional breakdown. Tears streamed down my cheeks for four straight days. I couldn’t sleep. My heart was broken.
The hardest thing about it is not knowing why. I’ve run dozens of scenarios through my mind but nothing seems to make sense. We have completely different political views but had made a pact years before that we just simply would never discuss politics. I had just been diagnosed with cancer for the second time just days before the phone call. She refuses to deal with anything “sad”; so maybe that was it.
After about four years of losing sleep and wondering what had happened, I realized that I don’t care so much about it any more. I guess that was the day that I cancelled our friendship. I consider her to be my ex-sister, now. I have lots of friends who do want me to be a part of their lives. They are my true brothers and sisters.
Blue Bayou Bananas Foster Shortcake
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Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
Biscuits
2 ounces (about 1/3 cup) brie cheese, diced
2 1/2 cups Bisquick
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup water
Sauce
1 tablespoon butter
4 large bananas, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons dark rum
2 tablespoons banana liqueur
Garnish
Whipped cream
Fresh mint sprigs
Instructions
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Biscuits
Add together the diced cheese, Bisquick and sugar, mix well. Add the water and mix thoroughly to make a wet batter. Drop the batter in 4 mounds onto a greased cookie sheet and bake on the top rack for 20 minutes or until cooked through (when wooden pick inserted in middle comes out clean).
Remove from oven and cool on wire rack.
Sauce
Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the bananas for about 3 minutes. Add the sugars and stir until melted. Add the cream and, stirring constantly, cook over high heat until it reaches a boil. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes. Add the rum and banana liqueur.
To serve, cut the cooled biscuits from the top two thirds of the way down, open it up and pour the sauce into the center of the biscuit.
Garnish
Serve with whipped cream and mint sprig.
Promiscuous Women Have The LOWEST Standards | Pearl Daily
This is super interesting.
“My first experience with a woman in a typically male job, was in a campground at age 16. We worked as general labor, building things, cutting trails, planting trees and so on. Once or twice a week we would rotate an “easy day” while we rode the riding lawn mower, basically just sitting on our ass all day long. That ended when a girl started. She did nothing but ride the mower all day, every day. Somehow what was previously 1-2 easy days of work, became a full time job for her. And the rest of us no longer got any “easy days”. She never held a shovel, or a hammer, or an axe. But she got paid the same.”
“Hector, I retired before you were born,” he laughed.
Confused, I asked again, “Be honest, Dad, I mean, when will you stop working?”
His response was simple, “Working? What’s work? I don’t know what work is.”
“OK, Dad, forget about it,” I said as I assumed he wasn’t willing to talk about this.
“Hector,” he said, “what you know as my job is not work for me. I enjoy architecture so much that I could do this 24/7. This is who I am. Architecture is my life.”
So, to answer your question, why do rich people work even after they become rich? Why don’t they play?
My father lived to be 91 and worked until his body gave up on him. He was a passionate architect who found joy in his work. That’s what kept him active and full of joy every day. His passion for architecture was infectious, and it taught me this valuable lesson about work as a lifestyle.
So, if you ask me about retirement or work-life balance, I’d say it’s better to find what you love and make it a part of your life. When you find that, you’ll stop working and start living. We achieve a balance not by separating work from life but by integrating what you love into your lifestyle.
Today, this is how I see it: It’s not about working less; it’s about loving more what you do.
That’s the secret to a fulfilling life. As my father always said, “The day you find what you love is when you will stop working.”
So, go out there and find your passion. Make it your lifestyle.
And remember, it’s not work when you love what you do.
Rage is an emotion, and as such it can be useful or dangerous. It’s up to us to figure out how to use it adequately. Many people would use other techniques to funnel their rage so that it wasn’t destructive.
Some would run, lift weights, or apply themselves in sports.
Others would internalize it, drink, brawl, or jut be an asshole.
Still others funnel that rage into music.
Those of us who are from the United States, or from the Domain, or have survived a broken marriage, a bad boss, or a corrupt government have all experienced real cold rage. I know I have. And I do my best to control it, least my “incredible hulk” comes out.
This post is going to be a tad different.
And it isn’t for everyone. What this post contains is some pretty harsh rock-n-roll music that has often served me (personally) in releasing and dealing with rage.
As such, it’s a bid dangerous and a tad toxic if you are not ready for it.
If you are not ready, then just skip this article and wait for a calmer and gentler post tomorrow. But if you are ready, or willing, or adventuresome, then have some fun…
BUT DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU
Here we go…
Austin Meade – Happier Alone
A Day To Remember: Miracle [OFFICIAL VIDEO]
Zero 9:36 – Adrenaline (Official Video)
Bring Me The Horizon feat. BABYMETAL – Kingslayer
Wolfgang Van Halen – Mammoth WVH: Distance (Official Music Video)
Seether – Bruised And Bloodied (Official Music Video)
AC/DC – Shot In The Dark (Official Video)
Beartooth – Below / Devastation (Live at St. Augustine Amphitheater)
AC/DC – Realize (Official Video)
Papa Roach – The Ending (Remastered)
Greta Van Fleet Candlelight Sessions – Broken Bells (Live)
Greta Van Fleet – Heat Above (Live)
Five Finger Death Punch – Living The Dream (Official Music Video)
Daughtry – Heavy Is The Crown (Official Music Video)
Pop Evil – Breathe Again (Official Music Video)
I Prevail – Every Time You Leave (Official Music Video) ft. Delaney Jane
Rise Against – Nowhere Generation
Architects – “Animals”
The Pretty Reckless – And So It Went (Official Music Video)
The HU – Wolf Totem feat. Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach (Official Music Video)
Bring Me The Horizon – Teardrops (Official Video)
Papa Roach x Jeris Johnson – Last Resort Reloaded (Official Music Video)
Chevelle – Self destructor (Official Music Video)
Five Finger Death Punch – A Little Bit Off (Official Music Video)
This is a Patreon video that I am releasing to the general pubic and MM readership. I hope that it finds you well and that you all obtain some good information from it. This post will interrupt the normal flow of MM postings of latest (cough, cough) “news”.
It’s an easy question, actually. Over the last few weeks, the World has polarized into two halves.
One side “The West” is uni-polar. They want the world ruled by the United States; a “rules based order”; it’s a world where the United States makes the rules and the changes them as it sees fit. Those in this camp consist of North America, Europe, and Australia / Japan.
The other side; “The East” is multi-polar. It follows the rules set forth by the UN; the community of nations. Russia, China, India, and most of Asia, including Africa, and South America fall into this camp. They believe that all nations, and all societies are equal, and that no singular nation, or block of nations, should determine the course of human societal evolution.
This situation could well exist for some time.
The only way for it to end would be for the complete collapse and annihilation of the United States. That’s probably not going to happen. (Well, unless the American leadership are so absolutely incompetent that they allow it to happen. Which is, after all, a realistic possibility.)
So we have a world divided into two halves, and a mighty “cold war” is starting to emerge. This currently includes energy, soon to include currency. but should eventually result in trade as well. And at that, the West, will probably suffer dearly.
As everything that The Westuses and consumes comes from The East.
The West, ruled by the United States, will continue to make and break rules as it deems fit. The fact is that the United States has been flaunting the resolutions by the UN for many decades. And this codification into a formalized “The West” will be the death blow to that organization; the UN. It will become superannuated by the nations of the West. For, after all, all the member states in the West are proxy nations.
Out of practicality, aside from eventual necessity, the UN will need to move in one of the geographical regions of The East. It is, after all, a most logical conclusion. In fact, the 4FEB22 joint declaration of Russia and China during the Winter Olympics precisely alluded to exactly this; a New reborn UN.
This article discusses that.
But before we get too involved here in these details, let’s throw in some contemporaneous pockets of “news”, some pretty girls, some cats, food, and other subjects as well. A fine smorgasbord of topics. They all really do a fine, fine job in messing up the computer algorithms that assign trolls, ‘bots, and attacks on the MM website. I’ve got to tell youse guys, I mean, it drops to ZERO.
My life has never been so easy.
I’ll tell you what.
Peter has some things to say…
Russia has the world’s largest land mass with all the wealth in the ground and all the water they need who can grow more food than they can ever eat and armed to the teeth to repel any brain-f*cked dickweed that thinks they can dictate their will to Mother Russia because of economic sanctions.
What a joke! Why would a country like Russia need paper lies from the Empire of Lies to prove that they have a good economy?
If China had what Russia has, China would have told the Empire to go stick their head up their butt long ago. But that day is coming sooner than later. When the Dollar Hegemony goes, the world will have peace.
By the way, I don’t see any pundits noting that the current geopolitical situation is highly favorable to China.
.
1. China is “hands off”. While the fight with Russia is ongoing, no one wants to start a second front with China, empty threats notwithstanding. Hence, all quiet on the eastern front.
.
2. Lies will be exposed. The lies of the Western politicians and Western mainstream media will be exposed when Putin’s boys burn the Neo-Nazis as an offering to the souls of those who had died in the struggle against the German Nazis. That’s when the lapdogs realize they better not pin their hopes on the Empire of Lies.
.
3. New Economic structures. Any country with a foreign reserve needs to figure out how to protect its assets from being taken by a lawless overlord. People should learn by now if they hadn’t known before that you do not own anything you cannot defend or hide. By this time, almost everyone must realize that the USD will be going down. It’s time to get on a lifeboat. Thanks to the Empire, which is exposing its own lies.
.
4. A lesson for Taiwan. The destruction of Ukraine, as unfortunate as it will be unless a surrender is forthcoming, is an object lesson for the Taiwanese authorities. While China would not want to, nor would it need to take such a drastic military action in Taiwan, the threat of doing so is very potent. Taiwan is also an island; people have nowhere to go. China is in a very advantageous position to press for unification negotiations. There are more and more people in Taiwan wanting to start unification negotiations.
.
5. China and India are together. Wonders of wonders, China and India find themselves on the same front, defending Russia against the Empire of Lies. All those virulently anti-China channels from India have turned around and directed their vitriol against the Empire. Sure is fun to watch.
.
6. China the peacemaker. Eventually, China will have to be a guarantor of peace for the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Empire of Lies and its lapdogs have shot their wad. Why should anyone trust them?
.
7. China will help rebuild Ukraine. The West, seeing that they won’t be selling weapons to Ukraine, will walk away. Good riddance!
.
PM
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Princess Bride – Battle of Wits
This classic scene is from the 1980s movie “The Princess Bride”. It is well worth watching.
Stuffed Peppers
One of my all-time favorites. It’s also something that can only come from the household kitchens. Yum! Stuffed peppers with ground beef and rice are topped with a seasoned tomato sauce. Making classic stuffed bell peppers is easier than you think. You’ll find the full recipe below, but here’s a brief overview of what you can expect:
Stuffed Peppers.
Prepare the Rice and Beef
Cook rice until tender in a covered saucepan. Meanwhile, cook ground beef in a skillet until browned and crumbly.
Stuff the Peppers
Hollow the bell peppers by cutting off the tops and scooping out the seeds and membranes. Arrange the peppers in a single layer in a baking dish. Stuff the peppers with a prepared filling of rice, ground beef, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. Top each filled pepper with a mixture of tomato sauce and Italian seasoning.
Bake
Bake until the peppers are tender, basting with sauce every 15 minutes.
How Long to Cook Stuffed Peppers
These stuffed peppers use cooked ground beef, so they should be fully baked within an hour. You’ll know they’re done when the peppers are tender. The whole recipe, including prep time, should come together in about 90 minutes.
How to Store Stuffed Peppers
Store leftover stuffed peppers in an airtight container in the fridge for three to five days. Make sure they’re completely cooled before storing to slow bacteria growth.
Can You Freeze Stuffed Pepper?
Yes! You can freeze stuffed peppers — and you should if you don’t plan to eat them within five days. Frozen stuffed peppers taste great when thawed and reheated, so this is a great way to meal prep. To freeze baked stuffed peppers: Wrap each completely-cooled stuffed pepper individually in storage wrap, then follow it with a layer of aluminum foil. Store the peppers in the freezer for up to three months.
Thaw frozen stuffed peppers in the fridge overnight. Reheat them in the oven at 350 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes, or until heated through.
2022 04 11 11 30
Japan pushes India to denounce Russia — RT World News
India has come under increased Western pressure to distance itself from Moscow and sever its economic ties, after it abstained from a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia's military action in Ukraine, choosing instead to remain neutral alongside China, Pakistan, South Africa, and 30 other countries.
India is also facing criticism for buying Russian oil, available at discounted prices as some countries have been avoiding it in fear of retaliatory sanctions from the US. The Indian government, however, has reportedly adopted a pragmatic approach and was “exploring all possibilities” to ensure the country's own energy security.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, with a stated goal to “demilitarize and denazify” its government, ensuring that its NATO membership aspirations no longer pose a threat to either Russia or the newly recognized Donbass republics, which have suffered seven years of siege by Kiev forces. The US and its allies have accused Russia of starting an “unprovoked” invasion to occupy Ukraine.
It should be located inside one of the major nations of The East. That goes without saying. If you look at things from this perspective, a number of candidates present themselves…
China (Manufacturing & Technology hub)
Russia (Resource hub)
India (Population and technology hub)
Iran (Oil and Energy hub)
Kazakhstan (BRI hub)
Brazil (South American hub)
South Africa (African hub)
Most people would “knee-jerk response that China would be the location, but I argue “not so fast”. If there was one singular location, then yes, China makes sense. However, the impression that I am getting is that United Nations Part Two might be more “mobile”. Perhaps periodically cycling between hosing nations. Much like the Olympics are today.
Yes. Indeed, it’s a new world that is evolving and manifesting. And the ways of the old are falling away to the wayside like the skin of a dinosaur-sized snake.
How old are you?
limewire laffy taffy kids dont get
TWICE “SCIENTIST” Choreography Video (Moving Ver.)
Yes. The West is undergoing collapse. But the East is doing just fine. Here is the latest video that my little daughter is learning the dance moves to. It’s pretty representative of the mood in Asia these days.
China makes semi-secret delivery of missiles to Serbia
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region.
Media and military experts said Sunday that six Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport planes landed at Belgrade’s civilian airport early Saturday, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military.
The Chinese cargo planes with military markings were pictured at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport. Serbia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment.
The arms delivery over the territory of at least two NATO member states, Turkey and Bulgaria, was seen by experts as a demonstration of China’s growing global reach.
“The Y-20s’ appearance raised eyebrows because they flew en masse as opposed to a series of single-aircraft flights,” wrote The Warzone online magazine. “The Y-20′s presence in Europe in any numbers is also still a fairly new development.”
Serbian military analyst Aleksandar Radic said that “the Chinese carried out their demonstration of force.”
By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted
Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated.
By now it’s abundantly clear that the neo-Orwellian “Two Minute Hate” Russophobic campaign launched by the Empire of Lies after the start of Operation Z is actually “24/7 Hate”.
Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated. The full psyops has de facto upgraded the Empire of Lies to the status of Empire of Hate in a Total War – hybrid and otherwise – to cancel Russia.
Hate, after all, packs way more punch than mere lies, which are now veering into abject ridiculousness, as in U.S. “intelligence” resorting to – what else – lies to fight the info war against Russia.
If the propaganda overdrive has been lethally effective amidst the zombified Western masses – call it a “win” in the P.R. war – in the front where it really matters, inside Russia, it’s a major fail.
Public opinion support for both Operation Z and President Putin is unprecedented. After videos of torture of Russian POWs that caused widespread revulsion, Russian civil society is even bracing for a “Long War” lasting months, not weeks, as long as the targets of the Russian High Command – actually a military secret – are met.
The stated aims are “demilitarization” and “denazification” of a future neutral Ukraine – but geopolitically reach way beyond: the aim is to turn the post-1945 European collective security arrangement upside down, forcing NATO to understand and come to terms with the concept of “indivisible security”. This is an extremely complex process that will reach the next decade.
The NATOstan sphere simply cannot admit in public a series of facts that a military analyst of the caliber of Andrei Martyanov has been explaining for years. And that adds to their collective pain.
Russia can take on NATO and smash it to bits in 48 hours. It may employ advanced strategic deterrence systems unmatched across the West. Its southern axis – from the Caucasus and West Asia to Central Asia – is fully stabilized. And if the going gets really tough, Mr. Zircon can deliver his hypersonic nuclear business card with the other side not even knowing what hit it.
“Europe has chosen its fate”
It may be enlightening to see how these complex processes are interpreted by Russians – whose points of view are now completely blocked across NATOstan.
Let’s take two examples. The first is Lieutenant General L.P. Reshetnikov, in an analytical note examining facts of the ground war.
Some key takeaways:
– “Over Romania and Poland there are airborne early warning aircraft of NATO with experienced crews, there are U.S. intelligence satellites in the sky all the time. I remind you that just in terms of budgets for our Roscosmos we allocated $2.5 billion a year, the civil budget of NASA is $25 billion, the civil budget of SpaceX alone is equal to Roscosmos – and that is not counting the tens of billions of dollars annually for the entire U.S. feverishly unfolding the control system of the entire planet.”
– The war is unfolding according to “NATO’s eyes and brains. The Ukronazis are nothing but free controlled zombies. And the Ukrainian army is a remotely controlled zombie organism.”
– “The tactics and strategy of this war will be the subject of textbooks for military academies around the world. Once again: the Russian army is smashing a Nazi zombie organism, fully integrated with the eyes and brain of NATO.”
Now let’s switch to Oleg Makarenko, who focuses on the Big Picture.
– “The West considers itself ‘the whole world’ only because it has not yet received a sufficiently sensitive punch on the nose. It just so happened that Russia is now giving him this click: with the rear support of Asia, Africa and Latin America. And the West can do absolutely nothing with us, since it also lags behind us in terms of the number of nuclear warheads.”
– “Europe has chosen its fate. And chose fate for Russia. What you are seeing now is the death of Europe. Even if it does not come to nuclear strikes on industrial centers, Europe is doomed. In a situation where European industry is left without cheap Russian energy sources and raw materials – and China will begin to receive these same energy carriers and raw materials at a discount, there can be no talk of any real competition with China from Europe. As a result, literally everything will collapse there – after industry, agriculture will collapse, welfare and social security will collapse, hunger, banditry and chaos will begin.”
It’s fair to consider Reshetnikov and Makarenko as faithfully representing the overall Russian sentiment, which interprets the crude Bucha false flag as a cover to obscure the Ukrainian army torture of Russian POWs.
And, deeper still, Bucha allowed the disappearance of Pentagon bioweapon labs from the Western mediasphere, complete with its ramifications: evidence of a concerted American drive to ultimately deploy real weapons of mass destruction against Russia.
The multi-level Bucha hoax had to include the Brit presidency of the UN Security Council actually blocking a serious discussion, a day before the Russian Ministry of Defense struggled to present to the UN – predictably minus the U.S. and the UK – all the bioweapon facts they have unearthed in Ukraine. The Chinese were horrified by the findings.
The Russian Investigative Committee at least persists in its work, with 100 researchers unearthing evidence of war crimes across Donbass to be presented at a tribunal in the near future, most probably set up in Donetsk.
And that brings us back to the facts on the ground. There’s a lot of analytical discussion on the possible endgame of Operation Z. A fair assessment would include the liberation of all of Novorossiya and total control of the Black Sea coastline that currently is part of Ukraine.
“Ukraine” in fact was never a state; it was always an annex to another state or empire such as Poland, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and crucially Russia.
The landmark Russian state was Kievan Rus. “Ukraine”, in old Russian, means “border region”. In the past, it referred to the westernmost regions of the Russian Empire. When the Empire started expanding south, the new regions annexed mostly from Turkish rule were called Novorossiya (“New Russia”) and the northeastern regions, Malorossiya (“Little Russia”).
It was up to the USSR in the early 1920s to jumble it all together and name it “Ukraine” – adding Galicia in the west, which was historically non-Russian.
Yet the key development is when the USSR broke up in 1991. As the Empire of Lies de facto controlled post-Soviet Russia, they could never have possibly allowed the real Russian regions of the USSR – that is, Novorossiya and Malorossiya – to be again incorporated to the Russian Federation.
Russia is now re-incorporating them – in an “I Did It, My Way” manner.
Vamos a bailar in European Puerto Rico
By now it’s also quite clear to any serious geopolitical analysis that Operation Z opened a Pandora’s box. And the supreme historical victim of all the toxicity finally let loose is bound to be Europe.
The indispensable Michael Hudson, in a new essay on the U.S. dollar devouring the euro, argues half in jest that Europe might as well surrender its currency, and go on like “a somewhat larger version of Puerto Rico.”
After all, Europe “has pretty much ceased to be a politically independent state, it is beginning to look more like Panama and Liberia – ‘flag of convenience’ offshore banking centers that are not real ‘states’ because they don’t issue their own currency, but use the U.S. dollar.”
In synch with quite a few Russian, Chinese and Iranian analysts, Hudson advances that the war in Ukraine – actually in its “full-blown version as the New Cold War” – is likely to last “at least a decade, perhaps two as the U.S. extends the fight between neoliberalism and socialism [meaning the Chinese system] to encompass a worldwide conflict.”
What may be seriously in dispute is whether the U.S., after “the economic conquest of Europe”, will be able to “lock in African, South American and Asian countries”. The Eurasia integration process, rolling in earnest for 10 years now, conducted by the Russia-China strategic partnership and expanding to most of the Global South, will go no holds barred to prevent it.
There’s no question, as Hudson states, that “the world economy is being enflamed” – with the U.S. weaponizing trade. Yet on the Right Side of History we have the Rublegas, the petroyuan, the new monetary/financial system being designed in a partnership between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China.
And that’s something no puny Cancel Culture War can erase.
Let’s see how old you actually are…
cassette tape pen pencil
China calls for ‘objective’ analysis of Russia’s claims about US biolabs in Ukraine
A “fair, objective and professional” assessment is needed for the materials Moscow has provided, the Chinese Foreign Ministry says
The international community should provide a “fair, objective and professional” assessment of Russia’s allegations regarding alleged US military laboratories in Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
In March, Russia shared evidence obtained from laboratories across Ukraine that apparently confirms that Pentagon-funded labs were working on “biological weapons components,” and may have been connected to suspicious outbreaks of dirofilariasis, tuberculosis, and avian flu over the past several years.
According to the latest data revealed by military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov on March 30, Kiev was planning to use drones to deploy pathogens against the Donbass republics, as well as Russia itself.
Speaking at a regular press briefing on Friday, Zhao said the US has still not come up with a “constructive response” to Russia’s statements, and called on the international community to give serious consideration to Moscow’s claims.
He said, as quoted by TASS, that China
“would welcome a fair, objective and professional assessment by the international community of the documents provided by Russia on the basis of the UN mechanisms and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction.”
China has consistently encouraged the US to make public all information about its biolabs. Two weeks ago, China’s permanent representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, told the UN Security Council that following the revelation by Russia of the newly discovered documents,
“the party concerned should respond to questions, and offer timely and comprehensive clarifications to remove the doubts of the international community.”
Several days prior to that, Beijing disclosed for the first time the alleged number of US-controlled biolabs.
Saying that laboratories in Ukraine are just the
“tip of an iceberg,” Zhao revealed that the Pentagon “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.”
Noting that the US
“has been exclusively obstructing”
the establishment of an independent verification mechanism, the Foreign Ministry spokesman called on the US to
“publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out.”
The US has long claimed that allegations about military-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine are ‘Russian disinformation’.
In March, however, US diplomat Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate that
“biological research laboratories in Ukraine”
did exist, and that Washington was working with Kiev
“to ensure that the materials of biological research do not fall into the hands of Russian forces.”
How you know you are getting old…
home alone mortgage kids dont get
John Lear In Memoriam, 1942-2022 (80 yrs)
John Lear died this year. He was an active member of the UFO community, and was instrumental in providing substance to a story, that was up until then, was peopled with Grade B science-fiction fantasies. He got many things wrong, but he was spot on in regards to United States involvement in the extraterrestial “issue”.
Lear passed away in his sleep Tuesday night [March 29, 2022] at his Las Vegas home, according to his daughter Allison. Lear is the son of Bill Lear, who developed the Lear Jet.
Here is an interview that he had that I was able to collect. Please enjoy.
John Lear, a distinguished pilot and ufologist, discusses specific encounters with UFOs in an interview with investigative journalist George Knapp. Lear discusses alleged abductions by UFOs and government coverups of UFO encounters. This is an episode of On The Record, a 30 minute TV show broadcast on KLAS TV in Las Vegas in 1987.
George Knapp: Hello and welcome to On The Record. Flying saucers, extraterrestrials, monsters from outer space. The government has been telling us for years that they’re not real. They’re weather balloons or swamp gas or reflections from the sun or the ravings of lunatics. But serious UFO researchers say a breakthrough may be very close. Some of the government scientists who worked on the top-secret Project Blue Book are ready to talk. What’s more, a series of revealing government documents have trickled out of the federal files, documents that paint a much different picture of the UFO phenomenon. One of the most dedicated UFO researchers lives right here in Las Vegas. His name is John Lear, and he is my guest today. Mr. Lear, thanks for being here.
John Lear: Okay George.
Knapp: To begin with, you’re a pilot, an airline pilot, captain, you have held 17 different world speed records at one time or another. You’re a member of the famous Lear family that all Nevadans are pretty much familiar with, a former State Senate candidate. You don’t sound like the kind of guy who would get hooked up in something that a lot of people would say as a bunch of nonsense.
Lear: No, it’s just by coincidence that I got really interested in this about two years ago. My father saw a UFO and my brother did, and they were very interested, but there was really no proof as far as I was concerned to really look into it until about two years ago.
Knapp: Your father and brother saw them. Can you give details?
Lear: My brother saw one when he was flying a P-38 from Phoenix to Los Angeles at night. It just appeared in front of them. He made two turns, 90 degree turns, it stayed in front of him and then disappeared, and my father was flying at night, I believe over the Arizona desert and saw one too.
Knapp: So you started, you got an interest because of the other members of your family. How did you start out?
Lear: I had an interest but there was really nothing I could put my finger on. And like I say, two years ago, a friend of mine came through town, we had flown in Southeast Asia together and he was retiring from the Air Force. He came over and we started talking about where he had been for the last 15 years and he mentioned that he had been stationed at Bentwaters (Royal Air Force Base) and I said, oh, Bentwaters, that’s where the flying saucer supposedly was in 1980. He said, “No, John, not supposedly. It was,” he said. “I don’t care if you believe me or not, it landed. I didn’t see it because we were confined to quarters. But I know people who did and I’ll give you the names and if you ever see them, tell them you know me, and they’ll tell you the whole story.” Since then, I ran into one of the security police, who was within 10 feet of the saucer and actually saw the three aliens get out and go up to General Gordon Williams, who was the Wing Commander at that time.
Knapp: There was quite a bit of documentation regarding this Bentwater incident. Why don’t you go into that a little bit?
Lear: There’s the Colonel (Charles) Halt memo that came out under the Freedom of Information Act, and it told about the mysterious lights and beaming down and everything that happened in the forest, except the actual alien landings, that wasn’t in the memo. There was also the tape Colonel Halt tape, forest tape, that he made over a period of eight hours. And there’s a 20-minute segment that we’ve been able to get a hold of that you can hear him running through the forest and, and being worried saying the thing’s after us.
Knapp: Now why do you suppose that hasn’t come out? I mean, this particular incident. Why hasn’t it come out if so many people, and you’ve told me about this before, have seen it, or seen these aliens? Why haven’t some of them come forward?
Lear: A lot of them have come forward, but they’re just not getting any press. It’s something that people just don’t want to deal with. The press doesn’t want to deal with and people aren’t going to listen to something unless Dan Rather or any of your big press people are going to tell them about it and they’re just too spooked. The Air Force has made an art form of ridiculing people who have talked about this thing. They’ve done an excellent job of covering it up for the last 40 years. George basically what we’re dealing with here is, I’ll give you the bottom line.
Knapp: Okay, I want to hear your thesis.
Lear: I’m not trying to sell a book and then trying to promote a lecture. This is based on what I’ve come across after intense research in the last year. And I have found out that the government has retrieved between 10 and 15 actual flying saucers, three of which have been in perfect condition, one of which they tried to fly. They have between 30 and 50 alien bodies in cryogenic storage. We even have the name of the person whose job it is to show these bodies to the heads of state and the people who are authorized to see them. They represent at least five different civilizations.
Knapp: I can’t imagine Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw, if that were to come to their attention, a story of that magnitude, that they wouldn’t do something with it.
Lear: Well, I can’t I can’t answer that question. I don’t know why they don’t do it. There certainly is enough evidence based on what I’ve looked at. For instance, the Linda Moulton Howe documentary in Denver for the CBS affiliate there called A Strange Harvest. Since 1975 to 1980 when she made the documentary, there’s at least 9,000 cattle mutilations. Now, the government said that the mutilations were normal, your desert predator did these. But they weren’t. They were mutilations.
Knapp: I think we have a picture of these somewhere. Maybe we can see that as you’re talking. Well, that’s the next picture. There we are.
Lear: This is the mutilation New Mexico State Police did the research, or the investigation on, and they cut out certain parts. The cut was made with a laser beam far sharper than anything we have. As a matter of fact, they were able to determine that they cut between the cells and didn’t cut the cells themselves. We presently don’t have this kind of technology.
Knapp: Well, we don’t know that we have this kind of technology, or you and I don’t know that we don’t, but that doesn’t prove necessarily that it’s ET.
Lear: No, except that there’s usually a visual sighting of a flying saucer or a light, a strange light, at each one of these sightings.
Knapp: Okay, you mentioned the saucers and the bodies. Now what kind of proof do you have that that is true? How do you know that?
Lear: Well, let me take a look. Let me read to your first what the Air Force says about the bodies. First of all, I’m going to read from the introductory space science Volume Two Department of Physics, United States Air Force. This is Chapter 13, Unidentified Flying Objects. Now this is what the Air Force has the students at the Air Force Academy read and it says, “The most commonly described alien is about three and a half feet tall, has a round head, arms reaching to or below his knees and is wearing a silvery spacesuit or coveralls. Other aliens appear to be essentially the same as Earth men, while still others have particularly wide wraparound eyes, and mouths with very thin lips. And there was a rare group reported to be about four feet tall, weight of around 35 pounds and covered with thick hair for clothing. Members of this last group are described as being extremely strong.” Now I’m not making this up. This is an Air Force, you can pick out an Air Force physics book and read this stuff. At the end of the chapter, they go on to say, this leads us to believe in the unpleasant possibility of alien visitors to our planet or at least of alien-controlled UFOs. Now the picture that we have of the big head that the Air Force describes, this picture was drawn by an army surgeon. These are one of the bodies that was recovered in the famous Roswell incident of 1947.
Knapp: Tell us about that.
Lear: It was the first flying saucer that crashed and was recovered by the Army. It was covered up. There have been several books about it, they recovered four beings, and one of the surgeons that was responsible for the autopsy drew that picture and came up with some of these interesting things in the autopsy. I’ll just read a couple lines; three and a half to four and a half feet tall, two round eyes without pupils, no ear lobes, nose is vague, neck described as being thin, arms described long and thin reaching down to the knee section, you can see that there’s a web portion in the hands, no teeth, no apparently reproductive organs. Brain capacity unknown, colorless liquid prevalent in the body without red cells, no lymphocytes. And there’s more in that particular report.
Knapp: This is an autopsy report and you said the government goes to great lengths, the Air Force in particular, to discredit this kind of stuff. Where did this come from? How did you get this?
Lear: That came in the private, that came from the private collection of Leonard Springfield, who was one of the premier researchers. He worked for the Air Force in the early ‘50s in a secret project reporting UFOs, then as a civilian he continued his private research, and this is out of his collection.
Knapp: Why does the government want to hide this? Why doesn’t the Air Force just come forward? What doesn’t, you know, why don’t they level with us if this is all true?
Lear: Well, there’s not really much they can say based on what I’ve been able to find out. George, they’re really … you know, what could they say about it? They’ve been researching it for many, many years. And based on my information, let’s say that the president decided to make an announcement. This is if he made it today, this is what I think that he would say: “My fellow Americans, I come before you tonight with an announcement of great importance. Despite all our denials, flying saucers do, in fact exist, where they come from we do not know, who is in them we do not know, where they are from we do not know, nor do we know how they got here or what they want. We are unable to duplicate any of the metals found on the several craft we have recovered, nor are we able to figure out how they are propelled. We have hidden these facts from you over the past 40 years, in hopes that we could give you more answers. Unfortunately, we are no closer to answers today than we were 40 years ago. God bless you all.”
Knapp: In other words, you find it highly unlikely that the president would ever make a statement anything like that.
Lear: No, it’s just, it’s too big, it’s massive. The problem is not only just the fact that there are five and as many as 10 different civilizations visiting us. Apparently, and this is from the research that I’ve done, at least 90% of them are hostile. And when I say hostile, if not hostile, they have a completely different set of morals than we do.
Knapp: Okay, I’ll tell you what, we’re going to come back to the president and aliens because there have been some statements made by presidents including President Reagan. We’ll be right back.
Knapp: Welcome back. UFOs, are they real? We’re talking with John Lear on the subject. Mr. Lear mentioned a couple of minutes ago about what the president might say about UFOs. Do you believe that various presidents have been informed about what you believe to be the truth on UFOs?
Lear: Each president has been informed up to and including President Reagan. I’m not sure to the extent they are informed. Privately, I don’t believe they are given the full briefing. The people that control this information is an organization that we know of as MJ-12. They’re a top group of military and scientists. I do know that when the president becomes president, it takes at least three or four months before he actually gets the clearance to know everything there is. And that doesn’t mean they tell him, but it does take three or four months to get it. Now talking the president … let’s talk about what the president has actually said, has he mentioned anything about aliens?
Knapp: President Reagan?
Lear: President Reagan on Dec. 4, 1985. This is a copy of the speech from the White House, just before he went over to Iceland. He says, “I couldn’t but one point in our discussions privately with Secretary General Gorbachev, when you stop to think that we’re all God’s children, wherever we may live in this world, I couldn’t help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held, if suddenly there was a threat to this world, from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We’d forget all our local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once for all, that we really are all human beings here on this earth together.”
Knapp: He couldn’t be just making a supposition for purpose of making a point? You’re saying he’s trying to tell us something?
Lear: Well here, one week ago at the 42nd General Assembly in front of the UN, Sept. 21. He says, “In our obsession with the antagonism of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world and yet, I ask you, is not an alien force not already among us?” Now, this is right out of a White House speech. I’m not making this up.
Knapp: What did he mean by this alien force? I mean, does it say, does he go on to say something?
Lear: Yeah, he says, what could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our people than war and the threat of war. But the point is, why would he even bring up aliens? I mean, it’s pretty far out for the president of the United States to mention threats from outer space.
Knapp: Okay, what about President Carter?
Lear: President Carter, we have the quote from Carter when he was during his election campaign. If I become president, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. I am convinced that UFOs exist because I have seen one.
Knapp: Jimmy Carter says he saw one?
Lear: That’s Jimmy Carter. He saw one in 1973
Knapp: But he didn’t, he didn’t tell us, did he?
Lear: He didn’t. The pressure is enormous on these people to cover this stuff up.
Knapp: How can that be? Are they afraid of a panic, that people would panic?
Lear: There’s the panic problem and there’s also the problem that, in fact, in Cro-Magnon Man, there may have been some tinkering to make us what we are today. That’s been borne out by several researchers, that we couldn’t have developed, exactly, there’s the missing link. Something had to happen to get us going. Between 4,000 and 8,000 BC, we had just been going along and for hundreds of thousand years not doing anything. All of a sudden, bang, we started making pottery, invented the wheel, invented fire, and everything took off. What was the key that did that? I don’t know. But it causes one to think.
Knapp: You mentioned a couple of minutes ago before the break that you think 90% of these visitors are hostile. What makes you think that? That doesn’t fit with what we think of as ET, you know.
Lear: If you read some of these books that are on the newsstands, one is called Intruders, one is called Communion. They apparently come down, and when I say apparently, this is taken from 300 hypnosis cases. A friend of mine has done 140 of them. And the people are abducted, they’re taken up into a saucer, usually lasts about an hour. They do all kinds of experiments, they give them shots, they poke them, they cut them, they do all kinds of things and wipe out their memory and send them back. Only after several months of some psychological problems do they end up going to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist on trying to find out what the problem is, in the use of hypnosis, finds out that this person has been abducted.
Knapp: What’s the reason for that? What are they trying to learn?
Lear: There’s three things that they’re trying to do with these abductions. The first thing is they’re trying to monitor us. It started in the early ‘40s and they’d put a little unit, very small bb type object way up in the back side of the brain and they’d leave it there for about 18 years. They’d pick them up and put it in about 4 years old. 12 years old, they would pick them up and monitor it, then about 18, they’d take it out. The second thing they did is they put a post hypnotic suggestion, according to many of the people that have been hypnotized, and we found out what they’ve told them, apparently, within the next two to five years, there is going to be a big event, something enormous is going to happen and these people who have been abducted, and there’s probably over 100,000 of them, have been given some place to go and something to do but under our best hypnotic techniques, we cannot find out what it is.
Knapp: So how do we know that that’s true?
Lear: Because they said where they’re going to do something, they know that they’re going to do something, but under the hypnosis, they can’t find out exactly what it is. The third thing that they do is genetic experiments. They’ve been cross breeding. There’s a very good book out now called Intruders written by Budd Hopkins and it’s about a cross breeding experiment with a girl in Indianapolis. They actually, the big head, which we call the big head in research, the little three and a half foot tall with a big head. They cross breed that with this girl in Indianapolis, and there were seven children. Just last fall, before the book was published, they brought the oldest and the youngest to show to her, and they let her name all seven. Now this book has been thoroughly researched by Budd Hopkins and although it sounds strange, believe me when I tell you, you may not find out in a month, a year, five years or 10 years. But you’ll look back at what I’m telling you now, and you’ll say to yourself, “Oh, my gosh, the son of a gun was right. “
Knapp: Well, where’s this girl? Now, she’s just living?
Lear: She lives in Indianapolis. She lives in town, or just outside of town. She just got married. Budd went to her wedding. We all know who she is. She gets along, you know, just fine. It doesn’t mean just because she was abducted and gave them children doesn’t mean it was the end of the world. It was just a part of her life.
Knapp: Why don’t we see a lot of photographic evidence as many cameras and video gear. Why don’t we see a lot of that?
Lear: There are a lot of …
Knapp: Before you go on, the pictures that we showed in the beginning of this program, you say they’re baloney, they’re phony.
Lear: That’s right. The pictures you showed at the beginning were called the Meiers Incident. It’s called the visitors from Pleiades, and any ufologist worth his salt knows, and who has researched that case, knows that he cannot back it up with the negatives and the essential information to prove that something like that happened, so we look at that as suspect.
Knapp: So in other words, you run into your share phonies as well in your research.
Lear: Absolutely, there’s not that many, but there are a few out there. There are so many people that have real stories to tell that we’re just so busy with those. For instance, let’s take the November 17 Japan Airlines incident.
Knapp: I’ll tell you what, we’re going to take another break and we’ll do that when we come back. Stay with us.
Knapp: Welcome back. We have a few minutes left with John Lear. We’re talking about UFOs. You’re about to tell me about the Japanese Airline Incident. It’s probably something that’s still in the memory of our viewers.
Lear: Yeah, the Japanese Airline Incident was a cargo 747 that had taken off from Iceland flying to Anchorage. And as he passed over the United States border and the northern part of Anchorage, he was intercepted by a UFO that was twice the size of an aircraft carrier. And he was followed about 40 minutes. He made a complete 360-degree right turn, he made a descent of 5,000 feet and the thing stayed with him. Regardless of what you hear, the FAA did have him on radar and so did the Air Force. If you have a picture there. This is a 26-page document made by Bruce Maccabee who’s a physicist employed by the Naval Surface weapons laboratory and one of the most respected figures in ufology.
Knapp: I don’t think we have that picture. So go ahead.
Lear: Okay, I’m just going to hold it up here and you can see the size of the 747 to the UFO. Now the UFO was not brightly lit like that. It’s just made like that for reference. It was dark, but this is what he saw beside him.
Knapp: Whose rendition is this?
Lear: This is the captain’s. This is from the captain’s rendition when he was debriefed by the FAA. Now, certain UFO de-bunkers have said what he saw was the planet Jupiter. Well, this is an insult to all transport category captains around the world. I mean, the guy knows a difference between something that’s twice as big as an aircraft carrier and the planet Jupiter.
Knapp: I’ve also heard that it’s the reflection of his own plane.
Lear: What the, the radar?
Knapp: Yeah.
Lear: That was an attempt to describe it. You can’t imagine what pressure these people are under to cover this stuff. It’s tremendous pressure. It really is.
Knapp: Okay. You’re going to tell me that the church, did you want to go further into the JAL Incident?
Lear: No, that’s it. I just want to say it has a 26-page report, it had the captain and the ATC conversation. It had the radar plots, and it had the Air Force plots and the FAA radar plot. There was no question about it. The thing followed him.
Knapp: The church, what do they think about UFOs?
Lear: Well, here’s a copy from the London Evening News, July 21, 1987, and says, “Prepare to meet thine aliens. Vatican theologians have acknowledged that there could be life on other planets. Now they plan to train missionaries capable of working in space and meeting aliens. Jesuit scientists at the Vatican Observatory in Prescotti near Rome have reported moving lights and other identified phenomena in the sky. Starting in September, the Vatican university will have a special UFO section.”
Knapp: You’ve said before you thought that a lot of their intentions were hostile and you’ve mentioned before that a lot of the sightings around the military bases. Why don’t we see them here? Las Vegas, we’ve got a lot of military bases here.
Lear: Well, the in fact there have been a lot of a lot of reports of UFOs in around Las Vegas, not specifically over the Air Force bases. We have the Test Site and of course, we don’t know what’s going on there, and we have Nellis Air Force Base. But there have not really been a lot of sightings over there. The main Air Force sightings were in 1975. And the UFOs descended on every Strategic Air Command base guarding the perimeter of the northern United States. They hovered over the nuclear weapons storage area and they stayed there with impunity for up to two and three hours over a period of three days.
Knapp: And nobody heard about it?
Lear: Well, there were a few reports, but you really don’t, I have a I have a report 150 pages long of the F-106s that were sent out to chase them. And the helicopters, and notifying the Canadian authorities and the security patrolman that were sent down to actually see what was going on and they’d come up on these things and they’d say, “I’m not going any further.”
Knapp: You think maybe it’s a top-secret area if the Air Force actually does have them, maybe they’ve got them here?
Lear: I’m certain they do. Up at the Test Site there’s a report that of the three that they’ve got in perfectly good condition, at least one is up at the Test Site and has flown and one was being flown as of 1981.
Knapp: By us?
Lear: By us.
Knapp: We mentioned at the top of the show that perhaps a breakthrough might be coming. That some of these people from MJ-12 or from the Project Blue Book who are in on the government’s research and saw some of the stuff might be ready to talk we got about a minute left. Why don’t you tell me about that?
Lear: It’s our information that half of, part of MJ-12 wants to release it, part of it doesn’t. We’re hoping that we can do this but of course, as researchers we’re not aware of all the ramifications, we just know of what we’re looking at, so we would like to see them release it but we really don’t know if they are.
Knapp: Okay. John Lear. It’s been very interesting. You keep us posted.
Lear: Sure will.
Knapp: Thank you. We’ll see you next week with more of On The Record.
Now I know that I am getting old…
floppy disc kids dont get
China ‘Decodes’ An Orbiting US Satellite
To protect its space assets, China has devised a new cyber defense.
China has developed a new cyber defense infrastructure that can automatically detect security flaws in orbiting satellites, according to military experts participating in the project
There are thousands of satellites in orbit, each with hundreds of components that could be vulnerable to hackers due to software or hardware flaws.
As launch prices have decreased, there are now more satellites rotating in low earth orbits in 2022, opening the frontier of space to big private sector launch projects. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, there were 4,852 satellites in orbit at the start of 2022.
We have all felt the pangs of hunger. Going for a few hours or most of a day without food, we are aware of the keen signal that our body gives our mind that we are hungry–a sharp ache or pang that can drive out most other thoughts. But what is severe hunger like over a longer period?
This is really unknown to most of us.
Detailed information about people that have to go without food for long periods due to causes such as conflict and drought is not readily available. Yet it is important to get some idea of what long term hunger is like to help us understand people whose hunger is more acute and gone on much longer than that which we have experienced.
I can tell you that I and my wife experienced severe hunger for weeks at a time, and the longest that we went without food was five weeks.
You all have no idea how desperate and angry a hungry person can get. Do not underestimate this situation.
To help us understand hunger existing not for a day, but many weeks, we present, in abridged form, a description provided by Tony Hall (formerly a Congressman from Dayton, Ohio and ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) in his 2006 book, Changing the Face of Hunger (pp. 74–89). He undertook this fast to protest an action of Congress. He fasted from April 4 to April 26, 1993–three weeks and one day.
Being hungry for three weeks, in Hall’s words:
Physically and psychologically, the first week of the fast was the hardest. I was horribly hungry–I could say ‘in agony’ –and getting weaker by the day. I thought constantly about what I would like to eat–that last meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and Caesar salad; some future meals with some of my favorite foods, such as steak, roast beef, and key lime pie….
Family mealtimes were the worst.
I couldn’t go to the table because the food would be too tempting, and not being able to eat it would be agonizing. Janet, Matt, and Jyl would try to hide from me when they snacked between meals….. I followed Dick Gregory’s advice to fill up on water. I really poured it down. Since it was the only thing I was consuming, I paid a great deal more attention to it than I ever had before. I really noticed the difference in taste when drunk from the tap at home, the office, or someplace else. My sense of smell also heightened throughout the fast. I could tell what people had eaten because their bodies gave off aromas that I had never noticed before….
The hardest day of the fast came on Easter, which was my seventh day without eating. Janet and I had gone on a retreat in Maryland with some friends, and our friends prepared a typical big American holiday dinner–turkey, potatoes, dressing, pie, cake. It drove me nuts. I had to leave them, go outside and take a walk, to get away from those wonderful aromas. I decided that if I could get through this day, I would be over the hump.
I did, and I was.
Just as Dick Gregory said, the sensation of hunger faded in about a week. It’s as if the body gives up on getting food and stops demanding it. From then on, I could join my family at mealtimes and not be bothered a bit . It was a revelation about the poor and the hungry, to whom I came to feel exceptionally close as the fast went on. I now fully understood, in a way I never had before, a strange phenomenon I had witnessed during famines: starving children who refused to eat when food was finally offered to them.
The absence of hunger pangs did not mean I wasn’t feeling the physical effects of the fast, however. I’d wake up in the morning feeling fine. My head would be clear. I would think I had lots of energy.
But after noon, I would fade.
The energy would desert me and weakness would take over. I’d need to nap. Then, when I woke from the nap, I’d feel like I couldn’t get up because I was so tired. Lacking the fuel of food, my body temperature apparently dropped, and I felt cold all the time. It also seemed my brain slowed down in the afternoon; I felt “dull.” I thought of poor children who don’t do well in school, who fall asleep in the afternoon, who become poor students because of poor nutrition. Remarkably, some of my vital signs–blood pressure, the results of blood tests–actually improved.
[On April 26, Hall ended his fast.] Because the fast had been a very public endeavor, I thought the breaking of it should be as well. I invited some reporters to my office…and had a V-8. I hadn’t eaten for twenty-two days, and that thick, salty vegetable juice tasted exceptionally good…Unfortunately I could only sip a little bit. Because my stomach had essentially been shut down for three weeks, I would have to coax it gradually back to use, maybe not being able to enjoy a full meal till the end of the week. I had lost twenty-three pounds–dropping from a robust 180 to a gaunt 157….
Now imagine some very large urban youth with guns and a fierce hunger. How would you be able to deal with them?
Food storage tips: Stock up on foods in gallon buckets
More stuff for my friends in the United States. Now is not the time to buy a new car. Now is the time to change your eating habits, and start being more conservative; grandparent-like in the creation of a larder. -MM
In a long-term survival scenario, storing food in gallon buckets is a good way to stock up on beans and rice, which can be used to make different dishes. These ingredients also pair well with other items you may have in your stockpile, such as canned meat and vegetables.
If you don’t have buckets yet, look for five-gallon buckets that are also food grade. If you can’t find food-grade buckets in stores near your area, line the buckets with Mylar bags instead to keep the food clean.
If you prefer something lighter, ask for four-gallon buckets from the nearest bakery. These buckets will be lighter and easier to carry. As a bonus, four-gallon buckets are often free, or only a couple of bucks.
If you can’t decide between the four- and five-gallon buckets, get whatever’s easier for you to lift and move around your stockpile.
What to store in gallon buckets
While bulk foods go well with gallon buckets, other items suit different storage methods like cans or Mylar bags. These items include more expensive foods that spoil quickly with exposure to air or moisture, or items that you don’t use often.
Keep items like dehydrated and dried foods, freeze-dried foods, milk and powdered eggs in cans or their original packaging.
Foods like beans, flour, pasta, rice, sugar and wheat go well with gallon buckets. Generally, each bucket will hold about 25 pounds of food. This will vary slightly depending on the shape of the food you want to store.
Most buckets are usually 12 inches wide and are HDPE (#2) buckets. You can also use PP (#5), which also have gasketed lids like the HDPE buckets.
When filling buckets, tap the sides to help the contents settle down so that you can fit more in. You need to pack the food compactly and get as much air space out as possible so the oxygen absorbers can work properly.
You can only pack 25 pounds of food in a bucket, even if the bucket isn’t filled completely. However, it’s better to fill the bucket completely before adding the oxygen absorbers so that all the oxygen can be removed once the buckets go into storage.
For optimal long-term storage, line the buckets with Mylar bags. Next, fill the Mylar bags with food, add the appropriate number of oxygen absorbers, then seal.
You can skip the Mylar bags if you regularly rotate your food supplies, you’re using food-grade buckets and if you plan on using up your beans, oats, rice and wheat within five years. (Related: Food supply 101: How to store rice properly.)
Here are some tips on how much food you can store in five-gallon buckets and the oxygen absorber capacity needed. Note that the data below provides estimates for the amount of food that will fit in each bucket.
The actual results may vary depending on how much you are able to tap your buckets and settle the contents.
Black beans – 37 pounds (lbs.) of food, (3,000 oxygen absorber capacity)
Once you have buckets of food, you have to figure out a way to store them in your stockpile. Since the buckets won’t last forever, you need to keep them away from sunlight.
Putting excessive weight on the buckets will deteriorate plastic buckets. Note that 5 gallon buckets should only be stacked three to four buckets high, with the heaviest buckets on the bottom.
You can stack buckets higher only if those on top contain very light items like medical supplies. At most, the buckets on top of your pile should not exceed two pounds.
While there are other ways to store bulk foods, buckets are one of the most efficient methods to use because they can keep out moths and are rodent-resistant. Buckets are also waterproof.
Note that since plastic is not completely impermeable, buckets should not be stored directly on concrete. Just place some 2×4 boards underneath the buckets so they’re above the concrete.
Get food-grade buckets and stock up on bulk foods like beans and grains before SHTF.
So… Beijing’s Dynamic Zero Policy Does Not Work Fighting Omicron Variant? Eh?
A pretty good video. Well worth watching.
High Value kitty
Just another day at the job.
Notice the guy in the orange vest. He is NOT the owner of the ship. he is the community government health official. He employs a “ratter”; a kitty cat, to go forth and secure the premises from rats and mice. China; it does not play.
An oldie, but goodie. Placed here for my friends in the United States. These are 'round out your storage items, and most are extremely cheap. For instance, we bought a load of 100 disposible lighters for under USD $3. -MM
Stockpiling necessary supplies is at the very core of prepping. Most of us start out by trying to build a stockpile of food to see us through an emergency and will probably still be stockpiling food when the SHTF. But stockpiling food isn’t all there is to be ready for a disaster. There are many other things we need and use on a day-to-day basis.
Stockpiling food, without bothering to stockpile these other necessary items might not guarantee our death, but it will sure make our lives more uncomfortable. Too much of that discomfort could lead to death; perhaps not directly, but by permitting weakness and disease to bring us to an end.
There are literally hundreds of things that we could use in a post-disaster world; more than can fit in this list. But the items I’ve listed below are probably the most important things to include in your stockpile, either for your own personal use or to use as barter goods.
Disposable Butane Lighters – Fire is one of the things we use the most in a survival situation. Even though it is not considered one of the top three survival needs, it is useful for all three of them. It’s much easier for people who aren’t skilled at starting fires to start them with a disposable lighter than to try and do it any other way.
Waterproof Matches – The waterproof match is the standard fire starter for use in a survival situation. While many people have switched over to butane lighters, matches are still useful. Be sure to get the strike anywhere kind.
Fire Accelerants – Commonly referred to as “fire starters,” chemical fire accelerants or tinders work to get the fire from your matches or lighter into the larger kindling, so that your fire can keep burning. Make sure you have a good stock, as this is essential with damp wood.
Water Filters – Water purification is essential to survival, as water that has microscopic pathogens can spread disease and even kill us. If you use a filter for purifying water, be sure to have plenty of them.
Firewood – Many preppers are planning on heating their homes and cook with a wood fire in a post-disaster world; but few have enough firewood to do that. It takes four to six cords of firewood to heat a home through the winter.
Salt – Salt is not only essential for survival, it’s nature’s number one food preservative. Yet it can be extremely hard to come by. if you’re going to preserve food in a post-disaster world, you’d a better plan on having plenty of salt on hand.
Canning Jar Lids – I’m assuming you have canning jars; but how many lids do you have? They’re not considered reusable, so you’d better have plenty.
Batteries – Ok, batteries aren’t really a survival necessity; but we’ve got lots of things we use every day, which are battery operated. Stocking batteries, especially AA and AAA sizes, will make your life in a post-disaster world much better.
Toilet Paper – If you want to see something that people will kill for in a post-disaster world, I think this is it… especially women. Do you have any idea how much TP your family goes through?
Personal Hygiene Supplies – While we’re talking about TP, we don’t want to forget things like soap, toothpaste, and shampoo. Cleanliness in a post-disaster world is important as a means to help combat the spread of disease.
Plastic Bags – Nobody is going to be making plastic, let alone plastic bags in a post-disaster world. Yet they are something we use all the time. If you are planning on using a bucket toilet, you’re going to need a lot of bags just for that. But you’re going to need them for a lot of other things too.
Ammunition – This is probably one you’ve already thought of, but it’s so important, it bears mentioning. Make sure you’ve got enough for all the calibers you use, as well as the most common calibers out there. Ammo Storage Tips Every Prepper Should Know
Alcohol – Probably the best barter item there is.
Tobacco –The second-best barter item there is.
Antibiotics – If you want to keep your family healthy, I’d recommend putting in a good stock of the most common antibiotics. You can buy these over the counter in Mexico, without a prescription. Make sure you print out information on dosages and to tell you which antibiotics are the best to use in different situations.
Over the Counter Medicines – Self-diagnosis and treatment is dangerous; but sometimes it’s all we have available to us. Having a good assortment of over the counter medicines will make it possible to treat at least the symptoms of common ailments.
Prescription Medicines – If you have family members that need maintenance doses of prescription medicines for chronic conditions, you need to have a stock of those on hand for them. If you can’t get that stock, then look for natural alternatives which will keep them going.
First-aid Supplies – If you ever want to see an environment ripe for injuries, just look at any place that has been hit by a disaster. You and your family will be doing things you normally wouldn’t do, many of which can lead to serious injuries. Be prepared for more than scraped knees and cut fingers; be prepared for treating major injuries. DIY Dollar Store First Aid Kit
Seed – If the situation continues, you’re going to have to start producing your own food. That means growing a vegetable garden, amongst other things. Have lots of seed on hand, so that you can plant a big garden.
Gardening Chemicals and Fertilizer – There are a number of common chemicals used for gardening, as well as common fertilizers. You’ll need all of that if you’re hoping to get a bountiful harvest.
Fishing Gear – Fishing is probably the easiest way of harvesting food from nature. There’s just one problem with it, I have yet to meet a fisherman who doesn’t lose hooks, lures and other gear on a regular basis. So that means you’d better have plenty, so that you can keep on fishing, even after losing your favorites.
Fuel – Ok, this one is a bit tricky, as gasoline doesn’t store easily. It tends to lose its potency pretty quickly. But then, even less potent gasoline is better than no gasoline. And there are additives you can get, which will help that gasoline to last longer.
Repair Parts – If you’ve got gear that you are going to use to survive, you had better have some way of repairing it. That includes parts for just about anything you are planning on using as part of your survival. For example: If you’ve got some of those old Coleman lamps, which can burn gasoline, you should have rebuilt kits for the air pump.
Hand Tools – We are so used to using power tools for just about everything, that many people don’t have hand tools anymore. Do you have a crosscut saw? How about a hand-crank drill? You’re going to need them, if you can’t connect your power tools.
Honing Stones – To keep knives and other sharp tools sharp.
Rope – Always useful. We tend to stock paracord, which is excellent; but you might want some heavier rope as well.
Sewing Supplies – There probably won’t be any shortage of clothing lying around in a post-disaster world, but there will be of sewing supplies. You’re going to need to be able to fix clothing, as well as taking it in as you lose weight.
Sturdy Shoes – Good shoes are important, and by good I mean something that is rugged and will hold up, giving your ankles support. Most of the shoes we wear today won’t do that; they’re more decorative than anything else.
Rugged Clothing – Rugged jeans, flannel shirts and other work clothing are going to be useful as well. The stuff you wear to the office just isn’t going to make it when you’re chopping wood.
Work Gloves – This is one thing you don’t want to try sewing yourself. Nor do you want cheap work gloves to try and do hard work in. Get several pair for each member of the family, especially those who do the hard physical work of survival.
Vitamins – Your diet probably won’t be well-balanced in a post-disaster world. It will be mostly carbohydrates and fats, with a little bit of protein thrown in. The micronutrients that nutritionists tell us we need will be notoriously absent. Good vitamins can help overcome this problem, helping you to remain healthy.
Reading Glasses – Even if you don’t wear glasses now, that doesn’t mean you never will. Keeping a variety of reading glasses around, in different magnifications, may help you to be able to do things as you age, that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. (You can get a wide selection really cheap at a Dollar Store or other such bargain place.)
Antibacterial Hand Cleaner – This is a good one to help prevent the spread of disease. Clean hands aren’t going to contaminate food or contaminate other people.
Spices – One of the best ways of getting the most out of the food that you do have available to you is to change its flavor. This can be especially good when you have children, who can be notoriously difficult when it comes to unfamiliar foods. Disguising what it is and making it taste similar to something they like is one of your best ways of dealing with this.
Bullion (also known as soup stock) – Anything can be turned into a soup or a casserole, if you have soup stock to go with it. Generally speaking, having beef and chicken flavors is enough, as they go with everything else. (Stock up on lots and lots of chicken bullion.)
Flashlights – There’s no such thing as enough flashlights. They don’t last forever and you really can’t fix them.
Leather and Leather Stitching Supplies – Our ancestors used leather for a wide variety of things, like making shoes and harnesses. We’ll need it for making a variety of repairs, like resoling shoes.
Lime – This is one of those things that people forget about. Lime is used in outhouses to help keep the odors down, as well as reducing the population of insects.
Wicking – If you’re going to make candles, you’re going to need wicks for them. While just about any cotton string can be used for that, a cotton string isn’t all that common anymore. A few yards of wicking doesn’t cost all that much and it will allow you to make your own candles.
Candles – Speaking of that wicking, it would be a good idea to have a bunch of candles, already made, on hand.
Oil-burning Lamps – A good oil-burning lamp will work off of just about any flammable liquid, providing you with light. The best is oil, of any sort; but if you have something else, they’ll burn that too. Just try it outside first, to make sure it’s not going to blow up the lamp.
Insect Repellant – Nobody likes becoming the mosquito’s dinner. Yet there are more of them in the world than there are of us. Good idea to be ready to deal with them and keep them off your body.
Pest Control – Speaking of dealing with insects, it’s a good idea to be able to kill them too, as well as trapping mice and other pests. Don’t skimp, as you won’t be able to run back to the local store for more.
Cleaning Supplies – Yeah, who thinks about stockpiling cleaning supplies? But if you want to keep the cockroaches and ants out of your home, you’re going to want to have the necessary cleaning supplies to keep your home clean. This is important for fighting disease as well.
Aluminum Foil – We talk about using aluminum foil for cooking in a survival situation and most people include it in their survival kit. But how many of us have extra aluminum foil back home, to use for cooking food in the wake of a disaster?
Charcoal or Propane – Whatever fuel your barbecue grille runs on, be sure to have plenty on hand. That grille is going to be your first alternate stove. You may move to a fire pit later; but in the first month of surviving in the post-disaster world, that grille is it. Medicinal Uses for Activated Charcoal
Cast-iron Pots – Okay, this really isn’t a supply; it’s more like gear. But if you’re going to cook on your barbecue grille, it would be a good idea to have cast-iron cookware on hand. That grille is going to be a bit rough on your Teflon cookware.
Wind-up Mechanical Clock – Maybe you won’t care about what time it is in a post-disaster world and maybe you will. Either way, it might be a good idea to have a clock that you can count on running when there aren’t any batteries to run it.
Chlorine Bleach – Not only is bleach good for cleaning, it’s the easiest means of purifying water. Just add 8 drops of standard (non-scented, non-color safe) bleach to a gallon of water, stir it and allow it to sit for 20 minutes. That will kill all the microscopic pathogens, making it safe to drink.
Hard Candy – Everyone likes something sweet; but unless you’re keeping bees, that’s going to be pretty scarce in a post-disaster world. Hard candies will keep for a long time, can be eaten slowly, extending the enjoyment and can also be used to soothe a sore throat.
So, there you have it; my “top 50” list. However, much you think you need, try to stockpile more; lots more. If you don’t use it yourself, you can use it as barter goods, getting things that you need.
Nuclear War Between U.S. and Russia (2019 Simulation)
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Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
This article underlines and underscores a point that I have made time and time again. Which is that the United States isn’t a democracy, and every single item and shred of evidence points to something quite bad, and very sinister. We can parse one item such as the first Amendment being “blown out of the water” by the government funding narratives that it wants….
Like all things USA, good news out of China is suppressed, while bad news is promoted with loud megaphones. Video 7MB
Such activity is banned under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted on December 16, 1966, by UN General Assembly Resolution 2200A (XXI). The first paragraph in Article 20 stipulates: “Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.”
What could be clearer? Still, maintaining a free hand has always been the main guiding principle for Washington and London.
While agreeing to be bound by the Covenant, the United States adopted the following reservation:
“Article 20 does not authorise or require legislation or other action by the United States that would restrict the right of free speech and association protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
What role does the American government play in providing for the civilian population?
… to every evidence that the issues that are important to the civilian population has near zero influence on the elected officials voting records.
In this article we will look at the purposeful dilution of voting-power of the citizenry. For after all, the vast bulk of amendments to the United States constitution has been wholly devoted to watering down the power each individual vote has.
For after all, when the United States came into being, only the male head of households, who were land owners could vote. And they played an active role in governance.
Not so today.
I argue that the voting power has been diluted to such an extend that it is nonexistent. And without voting power direct to the government, democracy does not exist.
Such is the United States today.
Anyways, this here is a great article by Fred. Love his writing style, and his points are poignant.
The Care and Feeding of the Rabble: Democracy its Own Self
Listening to Biden prattling about democracy, democracy, democracy, and how we must save American democracy from swarming threats to democracy, with the insistence and urgency of a starveling aluminum-siding salesman, I am filled with wonder. Convincing people that they live in a democracy is a lot of work, like pumping air into an inner tube with a leak. America is no more a democracy than it is a potted plant.
Functional illiterates cannot fill out a job application, manage a checkbook, read a simple story in a newspaper, or use the social media. Those who can’t read don’t, and another large number who can barely read don’t either. At a low estimate they must amount to a quarter of the population. They vote.
Democracy is best suited to towns of a few hundred people who, however dim of wit in many cases, may understand such questions as should we build a new school which will cost me so many dollars in higher taxes. Even here the more crafty and avaricious will likely prevail.
A problem in democracies—“democracies”—is of course that the dim, the inattentive, and those who are both dim and inattentive, will always outnumber the bright and informed. However, the syndrome worsens as the domain upon which the electorate is to make judgement expands from town to state to country to world. The number of unintelligent is constant. The number who are insufficiently attentive rises with the complexity of things needing attention. A cardiac surgeon is no fool, but has work, medical literature he needs to read, family, and a hobby or two. Little time is left to worry about semiconductor sanctions against China or Washington’s desire for Russia to invade the Ukraine.
“Take your pick from this bouillabaisse of ignorance:
* More than one in three people (37%) could not name a single right protected by the First Amendment. THE FIRST AMENDMENT.
* Only one in four (26%) can name all three branches of the government. (In 2011, 38% could name all three branches.)
* One in three (33%) can’t name any branch of government.“
People so innocent of political grasp can have only the most vaporous notions of pressing political questions. They are either fools with minds best suited for working as gardeners or so little engaged with the surrounding society as to achieve the effect of being fools while still able to find their way home at night. Still others are not unintelligent but not interested. None of these should vote.
“A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the National Science Foundation.”
This is so astonishing that one might suspect it of coming from some crackpot blogger with no girlfriend living in his parents’ basement. But no. The National Science Foundation is about as respectable as they come. A quarter of the population are at the level of an undiscovered tribe living in the rain forests of the Amazon Basin and eating grubs fished from rotting logs. Little prospect exists that people in such darkness know much of anything else. Yet we encourage them to vote.
“Six Baltimore City schools — five high schools and one middle school — were found to have not a single student who scored proficient in math or reading in 2016, Fox News reports.”
Others schools had only a handful of literate students. Math results were as grim. These “students “will be around for another fifty years if they are not shot, virtually unemployable. Yet they can vote.
The schools mentioned are all black, and similar figures would come out of similarly black schools in many other cities. What does this say about “democracy “in America?
Gallup: Forty-six Percent of Americans Believe in Creationism
The distribution of intelligence being symmetric, half of the population are below average. A man with an IQ of 90 is not actually stupid, doesn’t mumble or bump into things, and can successfully raise a family and drive a truck. Yet he is unlikely to grasp the foreign policy of the United States or, really, to have heard of it. If he has any knowledge at all of public affairs, it will be at the level of The Russians are bad, wherever exactly Russia is, so we need to spend more on Our Boys in Uniform.
A lot of people get their news from television, the medium of the illiterate and semiliterate. Obviously, not everybody who watches television is illiterate, but everybody who is illiterate watches television. Many don’t watch the news at all, it being complicated and mysterious and talking about the inexplicable and unknown, such as Kazakhstan and Nordstream Two. The consequence is that if MSNBC and CNN say over and over that the Chinese are doing something terrible, most will believe it. Judging by the intellectual level of much of television, a sentence with a dependent clause will exceed the capacities of many. They vote.
Lincoln famously said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” You don’t have to. Being a politician, he didn’t add that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, and that is enough. This is the basis of American democracy.
77% Of Students At One Baltimore High School Read at Elementary, Kindergarten Level
”In reading, 628 Patterson High School students took the test. Out of those students, 484 of them, or 77%, tested at an elementary school reading level. That includes 71 high school students who were reading at a kindergarten level and 88 students reading at a first-grade level. Another 45 are reading at a second-grade level. Just 12 students tested at Patterson High School, were reading at grade level, which comes out to just 1.9%.”
Democracy? A democracy of fools is no democracy. It allows the very smart, concentrated in New York and Washington, the governing suites of major corporations and, nowadays, the distributed wunderkind of the tech firms, to run the country from behind the scenes. Whether intended or not, the drive to lower the voting age and enfranchise the ghetto populations serve only to further diminish the pitiable competence of the electorate and allow the elites to keep these untermenschen out of the hair of their betters.
“I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” Pelosi said. “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school, when they’re interested in all of this, when they’re learning about government, to be able to vote.”
The less bright, less informed, and less experienced of life are easier to mold and manipulate. Who could be better than children?
If America wanted a functional democracy, which it doesn’t, it would, first, raise the voting age to 25 or 30. The idea that adolescents of eighteen with no experience of life beyond libidinous frat parties, much less sixteen-year-olds, can vote intelligently is silly. (Not that I have anything against libidinous frat parties. They just aren’t qualification for voting)
This would require a recognition that voting should be a privilege, not an entitlement and that government should be done by people able to do it.
Second, a demanding version of the old literacy test would serve wonderfully. This should demonstrate at a minimum a reading fluency of political ideas express in standard English. A reasonable grasp of world geography and American government might profitably be required. Perhaps a measured IQ of 120 or better should be in the mix.
This would make the bamboozlement and competitive shooing of the puzzled much, much harder, which is why it will never fly with the elites who find an electorate of the easily led congenial.
These measures would also screen out various minorities disproportionately. They would also ignite the resentment against the bright and cultivated that forms the bedrock of American society.
Comprehensive ignorance extends to groups many of whom are presumably well educated. Consider the following:
“According to the Washington Post database, regarded by Nature magazine as the “most complete database,” 13 unarmed black men were fatally shot by police in 2019. According to a second database called “Mapping Police Violence”, compiled by data scientists and activists, 27 unarmed black men were killedbypolice (by any means) in 2019.”
This shows that forty-four percent of liberals are incompetent to vote. If the misestimate is reduced to five hundred, many more believe it. Similar numbers could probably be compiled for conservatives on other questions, conspiracy theories being promising candidates.
Race is the most dangerous, destructive, and intractable problem facing America, yet these people are too stupid, lazy, inattentive, emotional, or worm-eaten by ideology to have even a faint grasp of what is happening. But they vote.
If liberals, a category including academia, the media, and a great many of the highly educated believe such wildly erroneous numbers, it is likely that blacks, a group in large part poorly educated, believe these things at a higher rate. Do you suppose convincing them that they are being slaughtered en masse improves race relations?
The very bright will always rule, though not always obviously. An IQ of 140 is said to be entry level for Wall Street. This excludes well over ninety-nine percent of the population. Mike Pompeo, while a wretched human being, was first in class at West Point and editor of the Harvard Law Review, Hillary a National Merit Fninalist, putting her in the upper .5 percent of test-takers in Illinois. Bill was a Rhodes scholar.
Intellectual mediocrities will often be in prominent positions, Joe and Kamala being examples, in Congress and the White House, these being storefronts for the very smart. The brains, and the power, are in the shadows. But, methinks, a genuinely bright electorate would be less likely to anoint freaks and rogues.
Interesting question: What would be the effect of requiring an IQ of 130, the cutoff for Mensa, to vote? The idea will arouse shrieks from an American public famously resentful of excellence except in football. (I am reminded of a fellow fourteen-year-old in Athens, Alabama who, seeing me reading a book on biology, said angrily, “You ain’t no gooder’n me.”) A test for voting of course runs against the current policy of enfranchising the mentally lame and halt. Would the upper two percent of the population do a better job of electing leaders? They would certainly be much more difficult to con.
I will now go to the American Legion in Chapala, which makes really good huevos rancheros, which I will accompany with a double bourbon, and pretend that things aren’t as they are. Sometimes, it works.
Conclusions and some thoughts
Guys, it’s obvious that the United States is a Military Empire.
I mean you have to be a fucking idiot not to know this, and anyone who runs around saying “America has freedom”, and “democracy is the best” really needs their head examined. They are ignorant fools, and thus deserve the life that a military empire will provide for them; serf-servitude or slavery. Take you pick.
Now, I could insert a movie and video that clarifies this point. but I won’t it’s really very obvious.
The point of this article is that the United States is not at all what it claims to be. And that it relies on media and ignorance to maintain.
Media. Tell American how great, special and exceptional they are, while filling their minds with fear.
Ignorance. Dumb down the educational system. Ban all sources of information, and provide only sources that the government controls.
But the world is changing, and this kind of Military Empire is going the way of the Dodo bird. It’s not sustainable, and not practical, and once Asia implement global alternative for SWIFT, will become economically unfeasible.
To understand what Americ is today, we should not look at the tanks, the military aircraft and the people living in tents in the big American cities, but rather see what America used to be like. When there was still hope for a brighter and better future, and where jobs were plentiful, rights still existed, and it was affordable jsut to be alive.
At the time of my parents, one person could work in a job. They would be guranetted never to be laid-off, and obtain reasonable benefits to include free health care for thei family, month off for vacations, bonuses, and holiday parties at least two times a year.
Families could buy and afford a house that would be apid off in ten years, and brand new cars in cash.
Oldsmobile, 1958
They could relax and drink at work, at home, at the restrurants. There were no bans in anything. In fact, an America could even buy tanks, military aircraft and cannons without anyone blinking an eyelash.
The military was a place of honor. It was what you joined to defend your liberty and your freedom, and in those days, American really did have freedom. Americans didn’t need to wear seat belts, speed limits on roads were a rarity, school caferteris served generous helps of foods that included meats, and vegitables, where nothing was instant, pre-processed, or frozen.
USAF, Florida, 1953
While America has it’s own taboos, and traditions, people still were able to enjoy life and buildcompanies, magazines, and other venues without being crushed by the government, and other mega-corporations.
Like the Playboy empire.
Decorating the still furnished wall of the new Playboy Club in New York City are the shapely hostesses. The girls dressed in “Bunnie” costumes, (left to right), Elaine Gallo, Lynn Smith, Bette West, Laura Addams, Virginia Hebel and Morta Andersen had been trained to serve as waitress’ in the key club which had recently opened, ca 1970s.
Try opening a similiar venue today.
Do you think that it would be easy?
Consider what America was like when Playboy started to publish and started prenting “the girl next door” soft-core semi-nudes in it’s pages. Consider what America was like. Yet, still the Playboy empire was able to manifest.
Three young ladies prepare to have their pictures taken in Manhattan photo booths in April 1954.
Different times, and different social norms. Yes. That’s for certain.
But it’s more than just fashion and society. It is the very nature of the fabric of that society has changed. No longer run by talent, and patriots, the United States (as a nation) has been taken over completely by psychopathic personalities and sociopathic individuals who themselves have small armies of revenue-sucking toadies that combined siphon off money from the serf-slave electorate.
Sure, then as now, people are people. They live, and love. They eat food, and they work in various capacities.
Love on the balcony.
But it’s the entire government strucutre has changed.
In the 1950’s America was a “democracy”.
Today, America is a Military Empire, and the actions and behaviors of the citizenry has been absolutely reflected by that change. If you look at history; from the lens of history, you will see that in every case, all military empires develop a strange collection of civilian behaviors domestically, and that is reflected in the laws that that society manifests for it’s people to live by.
Thus it should be no surprise that the American government is so pro-LGBT and so obscessed with everything progressive and novel.
But that was not the case when the American government was healthy, and was an actual functioning democracy.
Boy and his duck, 1953
So what can you do about it?
Well, historically these kinds of government eventually die off. They historical ways are well documented…
Internal revolt.
Defeat in a war.
Or collapse in stages to a much smaller entity.
Most people have very little say in the three above mechanisms. So I advise fleeing to “greener patures” and safer havens.
But…
In any event, the best thing that a person can do is to be a Rufus.
Rufus gives a guy a break. The poor guy cannot pay. So he give him all his food. The Rufus, while upset, puts the food back, and let’s the guy go.
Just say hi. You know, life will pass you buy. So smile more, and don’t over think. Most adults (not so much for teenagers and young people) will appreciate you talkign to them. SO say hi. Thell them what you think. Don’t do it for any other reason than to be nice.
Maybe good things will come out of it. Be the Rufus. Video. 98MB
This is a topical subject. It is something that is going on right now, and the outcome is not determined. The situation is indeterminate.
It is “funny” how the evil regime / military empire operates. Five months of “A war in Taiwan, A war in Taiwan”, followed by three months of non-stop “A war in the Ukraine, A war in the Ukraine”. China didn’t do anything. Russia didn’t do anything. But the facts don’t matter.
Today, the Ukraine started to attack it’s “breakaway” Eastern provinces. The United States fully expects that Russia will get involved, and they are so Hell Bent that Russia would do something, that they can then slap their “sanctions” on Russia and force Germany to abandon the Nordstrom Gas pipeline from Russia.
Why am I so confident that this is what the plan is?
Well, the CIA mouthpiece said so…
Yeah. So this one little article says…
USA LP gas exports will increase in 2022…
Due to the Northstrom gas pipeline from Russia stopped…
Because Germany will adhere to American sanctions…
Against Russia …
Because Russia invaded the Ukraine.
And that Russia will invade because TODAY the Ukranians started to kill their separatist groups in the LDR.
Except that…
Russia is not budging. It’s not making any military moves.
The Ukrainians must sort out their own issues.
Thus, there’s no excuse to sanction Russia.
And thus the entire American plot to seize control of energy into Europe has (so far) failed. I’m sure that they have a “trick or two up their sleeve“, so you cannot say that the situation is fixed in place. It isn’t. The United States evil empire is pushing and pushing and pushing for control of the world. It is flailing and failing everywhere. But it’s still in the ring fighting.
Just after I published my first long article on the likely origins of the Covid outbreak in April 2020, our alternative media website was suddenly deplatformed, being banned from Facebook and with all our pages completely deranked by Google. For almost a decade, my article The Myth of Hispanic Crime had regularly been ranked #2 of some 200 million Google search results on that topic, but it now suddenly disappeared from the public discussion, a development that deeply rankled me.
Being blocked by the two primary gatekeepers of the global Internet has obviously had a serious impact upon our ability to reach potential readers, especially new ones. Nonetheless, our articles do still occasionally strike a spark and go viral, racking up many tens of thousands of pageviews, an encouraging situation. But the massive current media propaganda-bubble promoting an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, which seems to be a ridiculous hoax, has apparently shifted that landscape, creating a huge demand for contrary perspectives.
Last weekend I published Mike Whitney’s piece arguing that the motive behind the sudden war-hysteria was actually to prevent the opening of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, which would have fostered their mutually-beneficial economic cooperation. Such peaceful Eurasian integration might be viewed as a major geopolitical threat by some American strategists, who thereby provoked the sudden war-scare.
The Ukrainian crisis has nothing to do with Ukraine. It’s about Germany and, in particular, a pipeline that connects Germany to Russia called Nord Stream 2.
Washington sees the pipeline as a threat to its primacy in Europe and has tried to sabotage the project at every turn.
Even so, Nord Stream has pushed ahead and is now fully-operational and ready-to-go.
Once German regulators provide the final certification, the gas deliveries will begin.
German homeowners and businesses will have a reliable source of clean and inexpensive energy while Russia will see a significant boost to their gas revenues.
It’s a win-win situation for both parties.The US Foreign Policy establishment is not happy about these developments.
They don’t want Germany to become more dependent on Russian gas because commerce builds trust and trust leads to the expansion of trade.
As relations grow warmer, more trade barriers are lifted, regulations are eased, travel and tourism increase, and a new security architecture evolves.
In a world where Germany and Russia are friends and trading partners, there is no need for US military bases, no need for expensive US-made weapons and missile systems, and no need for NATO.
There’s also no need to transact energy deals in US Dollars or to stockpile US Treasuries to balance accounts.
Transactions between business partners can be conducted in their own currencies which is bound to precipitate a sharp decline in the value of the dollar and a dramatic shift in economic power.
This is why the Biden administration opposes Nord Stream.
It’s not just a pipeline, it’s a window into the future; a future in which Europe and Asia are drawn closer together into a massive free trade zone that increases their mutual power and prosperity while leaving the US on the outside looking in.
Warmer relations between Germany and Russia signal an end to the “unipolar” world order the US has overseen for the last 75 years.
A German-Russo alliance threatens to hasten the decline of the Superpower that is presently inching closer to the abyss.
This is why Washington is determined to do everything it can to sabotage Nord Stream and keep Germany within its orbit. It’s a matter of survival
Strange American actions
It seems so straight forward, right?
Not so fast.
Biden cancelled the US pipeline his first week in office.
Now he’s cancelled the Israeli pipeline.
But he approved the Russia pipeline, through the Ukraine (no less).
Biden Abandons Israeli Pipeline In Favor Of Russian Gas Via Ukraine
President Biden is withdrawing U.S. support for the EastMed pipeline that would bring natural gas from Israel to the European continent.
Europe is currently in an energy crisis with record prices for natural gas and electricity, potential rolling blackouts, low supplies of natural gas, millions of citizens in energy poverty and increasing coal consumption, which the continent has wanted to end.
Increasing reliance on intermittent renewable sources that have not produced to their potential has put pressure on other sources the Europeans have discouraged.
The result of Biden’s most recent decision is making Europe even more dependent on Russia for its natural gas.
Currently, Western Europe gets over 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia via a pipeline that runs through Ukraine.
Russia wants to activate its Nord Stream 2 pipeline that runs under the Baltic so that it can avoid the current route through Ukraine.
Biden gave Russia the go-ahead in July 2021 for the continued construction of Nord Stream 2, which Russia predicted could go on-line by the end of the year. It is now completed.
Rather than helping an ally, Biden is helping Russia dominate Europe’s energy system and gain economic strength in doing so.
The only explanation that Biden’s administration has given to withdrawing support is: “Washington’s interest is now switching to renewable energy sources.”
While the White House is using its dogged support for the switch to renewable energy to justify its decision, the European Commission drafted legal text that pronounces natural gas and nuclear power as “transitional” green energy sources to be used to bridge countries away from coal toward technologies like wind and solar.
EastMed Gas Pipeline
The EastMed Gas pipeline is a 1,180-mile undersea pipeline project from Israel to southern Europe, set to be completed by 2025, which, when completed will ease Europe’s dependence on Russia and Turkey, which serves as a hub for oil and natural gas.
Construction of the pipeline is expected to cost approximately €6 billion ($6.86 billion).
The pipeline is being developed by IGI Poseidon S.A., a 50-50 joint venture between the Greek gas utility DEPA and the Italian gas utility Edison.
The EastMed Pipeline accord was signed in Athens by the leaders of Greece, Cyprus, and Israel on January 2, 2020.
Biden’s Political Decision
Biden is not only catering to Russia regarding the EastMed pipeline decision but also to Turkey, who is offended that it was left out of the EastMed pipeline accord.
Turkey believes that it should be part of the pipeline project amid claims over natural gas in the east Mediterranean.
This business cannot be done without Turkey. Because if [gas] is to be transferred to Europe from here, it will only happen through Turkey.”
According to an expert, the Biden administration is “attributing huge significance to Turkey,” and its future after Erdogan.
Biden’s Inconsistencies
MedEast is the second major pipeline that the Biden administration has put a damper on: the first being the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil from Canada and North Dakota to the Gulf States.
Canadian oil is heavy oil needed for U.S. refineries that retooled decades ago when U.S. light oil production was declining.
Keystone XL would also provide more oil to the United States from an ally rather than being dependent on OPEC and Russia for oil.
For several months since the pandemic began, Russia was the number 2 supplier of oil to the United States, competing with Mexico for that distinction.
When Biden blocked the Keystone XL pipeline by canceling its Presidential permit, he blocked a project that went over and above existing standards to address issues such as carbon emissions, safety standards, and cooperation with indigenous people impacted by the pipeline.
Biden’s Keystone XL and MedEast pronouncements both overturn decisions made by President Trump.
When Joe Biden agreed to set aside U.S. objections to the controversial Russian undersea Nord Stream 2 pipeline, he reversed former President Trump’s policy of opposing the project due to security concerns.
The 760-mile Baltic Sea pipeline allows direct Russian natural gas supply to Germany and other western European countries and allows Russia to dominate the European energy market, making Putin a power player in continental Europe, where Russia already supplies over 40 percent of its natural gas.
Conclusion
President Biden continues to overturn decisions made by President Trump regarding energy policy.
In the most recent case, he has withdrawn U.S. support for the EastMed gas pipeline project, which would transport natural gas from Israel to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea when completed in 2025.
The project would remove some of the continent’s dependency on Russia for natural gas supplies that Russia has used as a geopolitical tool at times in the past. Biden’s announced reasoning is that the focus in Washington is now on renewable energy, despite the European Commission seeing the necessity to allow natural gas to be deemed a “transitional green energy source”.
Biden has shown huge inconsistency on his pipeline decisions, with one major exception—they all overturn decisions made by President Trump.
What’s going on
It appears that Geo-political concerns and domestic green energy concerns are at odds. Alliances are at odds, and there are competing interests all backed by powerful corportations and individuals with competing interests. Thus making the United States a schizophrenic entity.
Oh, Great! A schizophrenic bully with the largest arsenal of nuclear and bioweapons in the world. What could go wrong?
It seems, to me at least, that the United States is desparately trying to control Europe, and Israel by energy. If you control access to energy, you can control them, and by dishing out access in measured doses, you can use them as pawns to do your bidding.
And that is what I think is going on.
An Evil Empire
Though it does seem rather mish-mash. Does the hand on the left know what the hand on the right is doing?
Do you want to know why the rest of the world calls it an evil empire?
The big fear right now is that sanctions against Russia will be ineffective. You slap sanctions on Russia and they will not work. Russia is pretty much autonomus.
So what are the American / UK “experts” saying?
Check out this horror…
Argument
An expert's point of view on a current event.
If Russia Invades Ukraine, Sanction China
Putin has found an economic lifeline in Beijing that only Washington can destroy.
By Aaron Arnold, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies.
.
Faced with the threat of further Western sanctions against Russia if it invades Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been seeking shelter in China.
On Feb. 4, the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a new strategic partnership between their two countries.
A joint statement described the Chinese-Russian relationship as a “friendship” with “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
Putin expressed support for China’s opposition to Taiwanese independence, and Xi seconded Russia’s demand that NATO end its eastward expansion.
They also unveiled plans for broader economic cooperation, particularly in the oil and gas sectors.
The timing is no coincidence: At least in the short term, strengthened Chinese-Russian ties provide Putin an opportunity to lessen the blow from potential Western sanctions.
This puts the United States in a serious bind.
If Washington expects to convey a credible deterrent against a Russian invasion of Ukraine using financial and economic sanctions, it will need to signal its resolve to impose secondary sanctions against China in the same breath.
The problem is that the United Kingdom and the European Union, key U.S. allies, do not have the same legal or regulatory frameworks to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese banks or state-owned enterprises.
U.S. secondary sanctions, which target a third-party entity or country for conducting business with the primary subject of sanctions, rely on broad interpretations of jurisdiction.
To put it nicely; a very broad and liberal interpetation of the law; or to put it better; to make up the rules as you see fit. -MM
Most countries adopt some form of a territorial or nationality standard, meaning that its national borders define its jurisdictional reach.
The United States, however, considers its citizens, companies, and property as falling under its jurisdiction even if located abroad.
The United States considers the world to be it's territory. Not its borders. -MM
Because the U.K. and EU lack this framework to apply secondary sanctions, it leaves Washington alone to flex its extraterritorial muscle against China.
And though the United States is unlikely to suffer any significant domestic economic blowback from imposing broad financial and economic sanctions against Russia, it is a different story with China.
At a Feb. 7 press conference following his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States was coordinating “a strong package of sanctions that are going to clearly demonstrate international resolve and impose swift and severe consequences if Russia violates Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity.”
Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a key architect of the U.S. sanctions regime against Iran, is also working on a bipartisan bill that would apply what he described as the “mother of all sanctions” on Russia.
There are still significant disagreements in Washington on when to apply sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany.
Well, you must realize that this is a project between Russia and Germany. The USA is not involved in it in any way, shape or means. -MM
The pipeline is owned by the Russian state-backed energy corporation Gazprom and has become a focal point among NATO allies because of its role in increasing Germany’s energy dependence on Russia.
Democrats, including Menendez and Biden, prefer to wait for Russia to invade Ukraine before putting sanctions in place, while Republicans are in favor of imposing sanctions on the pipeline immediately.
Republicans want to sanction Russia without reason. The Democrats are waiting for an excuse. -MM
Nevertheless, Menendez’s proposed legislation is sweeping and includes options to target Russia’s energy and finance sectors as well as key Russian government officials and even to boot Russia from SWIFT, the global financial messaging system that connects banks around the world.
The pieces for a broader, multilateral approach to sanctions are finally coming together.
This should scare Putin.
Responding to criticism that Germany was not doing enough to bolster Ukraine’s defenses, Scholz provided reassurances during his visit to Washington that Berlin is committed to imposing costs on Russia if it invades Ukraine.
It remains to be seen, however, whether that includes ditching Nord Stream 2.
That is the plan. Do not fool yourselves. -MM
Although Scholz has been vague about the pipeline’s fate if push comes to shove, he did note that Germany was prepared to take “all necessary steps” in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, noting the need for strategic ambiguity to head off an attempt by Russia to preemptively fortify itself against Western sanctions.
European leaders are fearful that an all-out barrage of sanctions against Russia could result in severe economic pain for their own economies.
Sanctions against Russia, whether with Russia alone or with China, will REALLY harm the EU. But the insane psychopaths in Washington DC do not care. -MM
Unlike the United States, many large European banks have close ties to Russia.
Europe’s energy sector is particularly at risk—relying on Russia for more than 40 percent of its imported natural gas.
The United States is trying to prevent a potential energy crisis in Europe should Putin weaponize Russia’s oil and gas exports. Amid already rising energy prices, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been working to assure European leaders that the Biden administration is committed to easing “any disruptions to Europe’s energy supply.”
And so they believe him? -MM
Specifically, he pointed to discussions with governments and major global suppliers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to shore up supply.
The United States has ramped up its LNG exports to Europe as an alternative to Russian gas.
As of January, some 75 percent of U.S. LNG exports were bound for Europe. Last year, that figure stood at only 23 percent.
The terms of the 30-year contract call for Russia to supply an additional 10 billion cubic meters of gas to China per year via a new pipeline.
The implication is that deepening economic cooperation with China would help Russia absorb some of the shock if the West did impose severe sanctions against its banking and energy sectors. Russia is one of China’s largest oil and gas suppliers.
Russia is nearly and firmly isolated and sanctions of any types will not really affect it. -MM
But although these deepening economic ties might dampen the blow of U.S. sanctions, they are not completely out of reach of secondary U.S. sanctions.
To ensure its threats of sanctions remain credible, Washington needs to pressure Putin’s emerging economic lifelines by signaling that it is prepared to go beyond its standard sanctions package to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese banks and state-owned enterprises if Russia invades Ukraine.
There is precedent for such a move, but times have changed. China has become wise to the reach of U.S. extraterritorial sanctions and developed its own legal frameworks to push back.
In July 2012, the U.S. Treasury Department levied secondary sanctions against China’s Bank of Kunlun for knowingly facilitating transactions on behalf of designated Iranian banks.
This designation caught many experts and industry insiders by surprise, as it was an unprecedented escalation in the use of extraterritorial sanctions against a third party.
Under international UN laws, this action is ILLEGAL. Trust me, the Chinese will not forgive and forget. -MM
A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson chided the United States for “invoking its domestic laws to impose sanctions against the Chinese financial institution” and urged the United States to reverse the sanctions.
The argument is valid. Chinese businesses, citizens, and entities do not full under United States law. Further, neither does their trading partners. -MM
While the designation ruffled Beijing, the two countries avoided any substantial political or economic fallout, with China opting to isolate the small bank from broader financial markets.
Later, in 2017, the United States imposed a $1.19 billion fine against another Chinese entity for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran: China’s largest telecommunications company, ZTE.
In addition to paying the fine, ZTE would also be required to develop internal policies to avoid future sanctions violations and undergo a corporate restructuring, according to a settlement reached with company.
The company settled out of court, even though the pressure was illegally applied. -MM
To force ZTE to comply with the settlement terms, the U.S. Commerce Department threatened to place the company on its Entity List—effectively shutting the company out of U.S. markets.
When ZTE did violate the terms of its settlement, though, the Trump administration opted to issue a waiver despite objections from senior advisors, thereby tossing the company a lifeline and preventing it from going under.
Senior officials means John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. -MM
Although there are differing theories as to why then-President Donald Trump reversed the designation—whether for personal political gain or to entice China to remain engaged in trade negotiations—the cases show the reach of U.S. extraterritorial sanctions policy.
The U.S. dollar accounts for nearly 60 percent of global foreign currency reserves—and the Chinese renminbi does not.
That is true for NOW. And the Chinese realize that. But, as I have reported elsewhere, one day they are going to flick a switch and suddenly a staged withdrawl from the USD will occur and the USD will collapse in value. Like I said, the Chinese do not forget. -MM
China, however, has started to push back against foreign extraterritorial sanctions.
Last year, the country established an anti-sanctions law—similar to the EU’s “blocking statute,” which attempts to curb the extraterritorial application of third-party sanctions by prohibiting compliance with extraterritorial laws.
China’s law notes that the country explicitly opposes “hegemonism and power politics” and “opposes any country’s interference in China’s internal affairs under any pretext and by any means,” giving authorities broad powers to impose penalties against Chinese businesses that adhere to U.S. sanctions policies.
These penalties could include fines and even confiscation of assets.
The Chinese do not play. They could single handly destory the American automotive industry by sanctioning all of their factories inside of China and nationalizing them. Flick of a switch. -MM
Many see the law as putting multinational banks in a quagmire: caught in a legal limbo between violating U.S. sanctions and being held liable for adhering to them.
Large multinational banks comply with U.S. sanctions due to the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in the global financial system.
But that's the only reason. -MM
In 2014, for example, U.S. authorities levied a record $9 billion fine against the French bank BNP Paribas for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, among others.
Although China has yet to use its new anti-sanctions laws against U.S. interests, the opportunity will undoubtedly arise if Washington aims secondary sanctions at China.
In this case, banks may be forced to choose between U.S. fines for violating sanctions and Chinese fines for adhering to them.
So, if Washington is going to impose secondary sanctions against Chinese institutions, it must be prepared for retaliation.
In addition to the potential for putting scores of multinational entities in legal limbo, perhaps even forcing them to choose sides, more than $615 billion worth of bilateral trade will also be put in jeopardy. (China accounts for nearly 19 percent of all U.S. imports.)
By VALUE. Not by volume.
90 - 95% of all medicines come from CHina. Are you ready to live without aspirin or antibiotics? How do you think your parents and grandparents will do when their blood pressure medicine and heart medicine is no longer available? -MM
Thus far, there have been no indications that Washington is considering specific secondary sanctions against China, beyond mere posturing.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price recently told reporters: “We have an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill U.S. export control actions, to evade them, to get around them.”
Deploying these tools against China will have repercussions for U.S. businesses and economic interests—a burden Washington has thus far not had to grapple with and has instead asked its European allies to bear.
Nonetheless, the United States must be prepared to cut off all avenues for Russia to escape Western sanctions.
This includes preparing to wield secondary sanctions against Chinese institutions as well as working to limit blowback to U.S. interests.
The simple truth is that the U.S. dollar accounts for nearly 60 percent of global foreign currency reserves—and the Chinese renminbi does not. That is a big stick to wield.
So what is this “expert” saying?
Well, the USA has its tenticles in just about every country. They are all in debt to the USA.
That gives the United States power.
Just like in prison. If you owe another inmate something, you must pay it back of become indentured. This technique has been used with great effect by the United States in controlling the world.
If the USA sanctions China, the nations will be forced to choose between [1] China or [2] their debt owed to the United States.
Of course, he argues, they would choose the United States over the “Worlds factory”. Right?
Ah.
Don’t be so sure.
The USA is dependent upon China for everything. And what it does not get directly out of China, it gets from countries that are / do.
90% of medicines come from China. What happens when there are no antibiodics? What about heart medicine? Pain killers?
99% of computers come from China. This includes monitors, IC chips (don’t let the Korean / Taiwan medi fool you otherwise), and all preferials.
80% of the world cellphones and much of their inner workings come from China.
95% of all household items, goods, and appliances come from China.
95% of automotive parts come from China. It doesn’t matter what car you are driving. All the spare parts are made in China.
Sanctioning China would be the most stupid blunder, of all the many stupid blunders to choose from, in all of history.
So let’s talk about China.
Now, China is really not like anyone in the “West” thinks. It’s really something different, and as time moves forward, it looks more and more like a sompletely different society that comes from another galaxy.
Let’s start with a few girls.
Chinese girl in a gym
Take a look at the screens on the wall behind her. Yes, this is normal. You can watch media while you exerise and your exercise stats are projected onto the screens as you exercise.
No wonder that the Chinese women are healthy, thin and free of ugly tattoos.
You know, I come from the United States.
Seriously, today, the ideas of beauty in the United States are different than from that inside of China. Darker skin, chubbier and shorter build, bigger asses, and tattoo decorations make for an attractive American woman…
An American beauty.
…or so I have been told.
Personally, I like all women. Short, tall, robust, cute, athletic, big and small. But the ones that I favor all are [1] great talkers with [2] interesting thoughts and opinions, a [3] strong personality, and [4] great personal confidence and a [5] real pride in their actions and apperance.
Which is why, perhaps, I love China so much.
Robust Chinese girl in brown
I do admire a fine “robust” woman. That’s me, and I don’t expect anyone to share my tastes. Here we have a fine woman. This gal is a real “head turner”, and I find her very aluring. Most especially in this dress.
Here’s a clip from the violent anti-China “news” network FOX. They are so very anti-China that they have to preface this report with a disclaimer that they are going to say something positive about China, and that people should not think bad about them for doing so.
The segment is spot on. And yes, China is doing the right thing. Don’t you know.
Women do not realize just how attractive they are when they are calm, comfortable and confident. Look at the expression on this woman. See the confidence? Man, oh man. What a sexy girl.
In many of the upper-class Business KTVs the girls are expected to buy their display uniforms. Many of which are traditional such as what this woman is wearing.
There’s no question about this. She is a stunner. Actually, I really love her neck and shoulders. I almost want to get a pencil and a sketch pad and start sketching it out with a light orange wash and some white inking overlay.
This video shows the front common area / yard in front of the housing complex individual buildings. Many areas a paved like this, while others are manicured trees, shrubs and flowers.
Note how the Huawei camera negates the handheld jitter while jogging and keeps the face and eyes absolutely centered throughout the video. Pretty cool technology.
In the cities, one of the fashion items is to wear a light topper sweater that fits over the tops of the boobies so that when you walk it accentuates the jiggle movement of the breasts. Personally I like it, but it does look a little bit strange to my older gentlemen sensibilities. Check out the style…
Russian FM site inaccessible, hacked or truly overwhelmed by the fact that the reply to the US reply has been published? In any case Cassad has it in Russian.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7446905.html
Posted by: Paco | Feb 17 2022 17:27 utc | 82
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Yandex translation:
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February 17, 17:46
The Russian Foreign Ministry has published a written response to the American written response to Russian claims on security guarantees in Europe.
Response to response
On February 17, 2022, US Ambassador John Sullivan, invited to the Russian Foreign Ministry, was given the following reaction to the previously received American response on the Russian draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees.
TASS publishes the full text of the statement.
General characteristics
We state that the American side did not give a constructive response to the basic elements of the draft security guarantees agreement prepared by the Russian side with the United States.
We are talking about [1] the rejection of further expansion of NATO, [2] the withdrawal of the “Bucharest formula” that [3] “Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO”, and [4] the refusal to create military bases on the territory of states that were previously part of the USSR and are not members of the alliance, including [5] the use of their infrastructure for conducting any military activity, as well as [6] the return of military capabilities, including shock, and NATO infrastructure to the state of 1997, when the Founding Act of Russia — NATO was signed.
These provisions are of fundamental importance for the Russian Federation.
The package nature of Russian proposals has been ignored, from which “convenient” topics have been deliberately chosen, which, in turn, are “twisted” in the direction of creating advantages for the United States and its allies.
This approach, as well as the accompanying rhetoric of American officials, reinforces reasonable doubts that Washington is really committed to correcting the situation in the field of Euro-security.
The growing military activity of the United States and NATO directly at the Russian borders is alarming, while our “red lines” and fundamental security interests, as well as Russia’s sovereign right to protect them, continue to be ignored.
Ultimatum demands to withdraw troops from certain areas on Russian territory, accompanied by threats of tougher sanctions, are unacceptable and undermine the prospects of reaching real agreements.
In the absence of the readiness of the American side to agree on firm, legally binding guarantees of ensuring our security by the United States and its allies, Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of military-technical measures.
In Ukraine
There is no “Russian invasion” of Ukraine, as the United States and its allies have been officially declaring since last autumn, and there are no plans, therefore, statements about “Russia’s responsibility for escalation” cannot be regarded otherwise than as an attempt to exert pressure and devalue Russia’s proposals for security guarantees.
The mention in this context of Russian obligations under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 has nothing to do with the internal Ukrainian conflict and does not apply to the circumstances resulting from the actions of internal factors there.
The loss of territorial integrity by the Ukrainian state is the result of the processes that took place inside it.
The accusations of Russia contained in the American response that it “occupied Crimea” also do not stand up to any criticism.
In 2014, a coup took place in Kiev, the initiators of which, with the support of the United States and their allies, set a course for the creation of a nationalist state that infringes on the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking population, as well as other “non-titular” ethnic groups.
It is not surprising that in such a situation, Crimeans voted for reunification with Russia.
The decision of the people of Crimea and Sevastopol to return to the Russian Federation was made by free expression of will in the exercise of the right to self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter.
Force or threat of force was not used. The question of Crimea’s ownership is closed.
If Ukraine is accepted into NATO, there will be a real threat that the regime in Kiev will try to “return” Crimea by force, dragging the United States and its allies, in accordance with Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, into a direct armed conflict with Russia with all the ensuing consequences.
The thesis repeated in the US response that Russia allegedly “ignited the conflict in the Donbas” is untenable.
Its reasons are purely intra-Ukrainian in nature.
The settlement is possible only through the implementation of the Minsk agreements and a set of measures, the priority and responsibility for the implementation of which are clearly spelled out and unanimously confirmed by UN Security Council resolution 2202, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom.
In paragraph 2 of this resolution, Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk are named as parties.
None of these documents mention Russia’s responsibility for the conflict in the Donbas.
Russia, together with the OSCE, plays the role of mediator in the main negotiating format – the contact group – and together with Berlin and Paris – in the “Normandy format”, which formulates recommendations to the parties to the conflict and monitors their implementation.
To de-escalate the situation around Ukraine, it is fundamentally important to take the following steps.
This is forcing Kiev to implement a set of measures, stopping the supply of weapons to Ukraine, withdrawing all Western advisers and instructors from there, the refusal of NATO countries from any joint exercises with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the withdrawal of all foreign weapons previously supplied to Kiev outside Ukrainian territory.
In this regard, we draw attention to the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a press conference following talks in Moscow with French President Emmanuel Macron on February 7, 2022, stressed that we are open to dialogue and urge “to think about stable security conditions for everyone, equal for all participants in international life.”
Force configuration
We note that in their response to the Russian proposals, the United States insists that progress in improving the situation in the field of European security “can only be achieved in terms of de-escalation in relation to Russia’s threatening actions directed against Ukraine,” which, as we understand, implies the requirement to withdraw Russian troops from the borders of Ukraine.
At the same time, the United States is ready to talk only about “mutual obligations … to refrain from deploying permanent-based forces with combat missions on the territory of Ukraine” and “consider discussing the problem of conventional armed forces.”
For the rest, the American side remains silent about our proposals contained in paragraphs 2 of Article 4 and paragraph 1 of Article 5 of the draft bilateral treaty and declares that “the current configuration of the US and NATO forces is limited, proportional and fully complies with the obligations under the NATO-Russia Founding Act.”
We proceed from the fact that the deployment of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on its territory does not and cannot affect the fundamental interests of the United States. We would like to remind you that there are no our forces on the territory of Ukraine.
At the same time, the United States and its allies were advancing their military infrastructure to the east, deploying contingents in the territories of new members.
They circumvented the limitations of the CFE Treaty and interpreted very loosely the provisions of the Russia—NATO Founding Act on the rejection of “additional permanent deployment of substantial combat forces.”
The situation that has developed as a result of these actions is unacceptable.
We insist on the withdrawal of all US armed forces and weapons stationed in CEE, SEE and the Baltic States.
We are convinced that there are quite enough national potentials in these zones.
We are ready to discuss this topic on the basis of art. 4 and 5 of the Russian draft agreement.
The principle of indivisibility of security
We did not see any evidence in the US response that the American side is fully committed to observing the immutable principle of indivisibility of security.
The general statements about the consideration of this postulate by the American side are in direct contradiction with Washington’s unwillingness to abandon a counterproductive and destabilizing course to create advantages for itself and its allies at the expense of Russia’s security interests.
This is precisely what is happening as a result of the unrestrained implementation by the North Atlantic Alliance, with the leading role of the United States, of the policy of unlimited geostrategic and military development of the post-Soviet space, including the territory of Ukraine, which is particularly sensitive for us.
All this is happening directly on the Russian borders.
Thus, our “red lines” and fundamental security interests are ignored, and Russia’s inalienable right to ensure them is rejected.
For us, of course, this is unacceptable.
Additionally, we remind you that this principle is enshrined in the [1] preamble of the Treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on [2] “Measures for Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms of 2011”, the [3] extension of which for five years [4] without any exceptions was [5] agreed by the parties in February last year, as well as [6] in a number of OSCE and Russia—[7] NATO basic documents adopted at the highest level: [8] in the preamble of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, [9] in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe of 1990, [10] the Founding Act of Russia — [11] NATO of 1997, [12] the Istanbul Charter for European Security of the OSCE of 1999, [13] the Rome Declaration of Russia-[14] NATO of 2002 and the Astana Declaration of the OSCE Summit of 2010.
We note that the response received mentions Washington’s commitment to the concept of indivisibility of security.
But in the text, it boils down to the right of states “to freely choose or change ways to ensure their security, including union treaties.”
This freedom is not absolute and is only half of the well-known formula fixed in the Charter of European Security.
Its second part requires that, when exercising this right, not “… strengthen one’s security at the expense of the security of other States.”
We cannot consider the letter received from NATO dated February 10, 2022 as a response to the message sent by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on January 28, 2022 to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on this issue.
We asked for an answer in a national capacity.
Conclusion
The United States is playing a very dangerous game, and using everything in its power to wrest control of the energy through Europe. The battlefield is the Ukraine, and they are sponsoring the entire fighting and trying and forcing the blame upon Russia.
Russia will not have any of this.
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday endorsed Russia’s nuclear deterrent policy, which allows him to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional strike targeting the nation’s critical government and military infrastructure.By including a non-nuclear attack as a possible trigger for Russian nuclear retaliation, the document appears to send a warning signal to the United States.
The new expanded wording reflects Russian concerns about the development of prospective weapons that could give Washington the capability to knock out key military assets and government facilities without resorting to atomic weapons.In line with Russian military doctrine, the new document reaffirms that the country could use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or an aggression involving conventional weapons that “threatens the very existence of the state.”But the policy document now also offers a detailed description of situations that could trigger the use of nuclear weapons. They include the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies and an enemy attack with conventional weapons that threatens the country's existence.In addition to that, the document now states that Russia could use its nuclear arsenals if it gets “reliable information” about the launch of ballistic missiles targeting its territory or its allies and also in the case of ”enemy impact on critically important government or military facilities of the Russian Federation, the incapacitation of which could result in the failure of retaliatory action of nuclear forces."
-Defense News
As a justification, the minions and toadies, and appratus inside the United States “news” are busily justifying their militaristic actions in order to gain popular and military advantage thought the region and now there are “experts” that are arguing that the United States seize the initative that this time, and take out both Russia and China at the same time.
China has warned the United States that it would “strike back” in response to any “reckless” actions, urging Washington to withdraw its recent passing of sanctions targeting people and entities tied to human rights abuses committed by Beijing.
-MSN
This is extraordinarily DANGEROUS.
All sorts of bad things can come of it. As I have stated earlier, of all the blunder-headed, stupid, ignorant, and dangerous foolhardy actions that the American dying empire could perform, this single action could be it’s worst.
But turhtfully, the “leadership” are so ignorant and stupid that they have no idea what the fuck they are doing nor dealing with.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Truth is that I used to listen to them ALL THE TIME. Starting with Rush Limbaugh, Jay Severn, then Sean Hannity, and then all the others.
But, you know, since I left the United States and experienced what they have been talking about FIRST HAND, I stopped.It’s one thing to hear about the horrible downtrodden Chinese, and the “firm grip of totalitarism”, but it’s another thing to experience it.
Anyways, and now hearing them again, well, I’m stunned. Really.
Seriously.
Stunned.
Anything that any of these people are talking about that relates to somewhere OUTSIDE of the USA is nonsense.
Nonsense.
As in LIES.
You know, like there is no fucking way that anyone with a brain could get the impressions that are spewing forth from these… “people”.
Maybe what they say domstically has validity, but outside of the USA?
All complete bullshit.
Seriously.
All they do is take the mainsteam press “news” and then posit their opinions on it. Not realizing that all the “news”… ALL OF IT… without exception is bullshit.
So…
I’ve got to tell youse guys, these people are fucking lunatics! I don’t mean to bad-mouth anyone, but honestly, and really!
Why do they LIE?
And lie in such a profound manner? Do they have a collective mental illness or what?
Why do I say so, well, here are some examples…
China and Russia are America’s enemies because they are not democracies.
False.
Both are democracies, both Russia and China. You won’t hear this anywhere inside America, but oh well…
Russia is a social democracy, it’s not the former Sovieet Union which was a shade of hard line communism. It’s a completely different government all together.
And… and China is a very strong democracy at the local level. In fact, within China, unlike the USA, selection of election candidates is more personal. It’s more exacting. Truthfully, it’s more like selecting an avitar in a role playing game more than anything else.
What the fuck?
The USA has everyone voting on two preselected candidates by the oligarchy. What’s so fucking great about that?
You and 300 million others get to vote on a pre-vetted oligarch-approved President.
So, Sonny do you want [1] a lard burger with your fried maggots, or [2] reheated road kill. You get to choose. Isn't society wonderful!!!!
So China and Russia are evil?
They are derived from “Communism”. And “Communism” is bad. It’s been banged into our heads since birth! Yah. I know.
But the truth is something really different.
It’s just that they are arranged differently than the United States “democracy”. In fact, the Chinese elections were just held last November. Meritocracy. No one in the United States WILL EVER admit to that truth.
More nonsense that I just heard today. . .
China has begun welding people in their homes again. Common place all over China. So says the guys that DOESN’T have a passport. Never left their county, and I suspect never left their tiny hamlet. I will add, perhaps they have other tiny attributes as well…
Roads are blocked with body bags that going on for miles and miles. Oh my God. China must be super inefficient don’t you know. Body bags at athe side of the roads. For Pete’s sake. The Chinese are covering up their terrible inefficiencies! Their crimes against humanity, and everything else! Don’t you know! Something must be done! NOW!
Ebola’s outbreaks everywhere. Of course! And the poor ignorant and illiterate Chininese don’t know what to do about it!!!!
Chinese people vomiting blood is a sign of another China bio-weapon…
Sigh. It’s so outrageous.
Obviously all false. But it’s everywhere!
The internet is alive with these severely outrageous lies. Gosh! It’s a full-on saturation of complete BULLSHIT.
Bullshit out of the USA.
Duh!
If any MM readers belive this dip-shit, then leave NOW! You all should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously. You should crawl under a rock and die in shame. Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you people!
China is very transparent about deaths.
Unlike the USA, all deaths are public information because that affect the family HuKou. Duh! And if you are simply reguritating the nonsense of China hiding deaths and “covering up” things, but haven’t a clue as to what a HuKou is, then you are a FUCKING MORON.
Sorry.
I present things as they actually are. Not as others would want you to believe.
How the Hell do you think that China was able to have the one-child-policy? Births and deaths are all public knowledge and recorded and monitored with exact precision. China is super efficient in that area.
Hukou. It’s full public notification of family status, health and participation within society.
A HuKou, or the “Household registration” is your internal Chinese passport for everything. From buying a house, to getting medical treatment, to social insurance, to send your kids off to school, to your social scoring. And it’s all PUBLIC.
So it’s just ludicrous that the Chinese are “covering deaths” and what ever else is vomited out of Virgina.
Anyway, long time MM readers will know that I covered this issue extensively in the past. Here’s my post of what it is like during the January 2022 lockdown that they (the radio hosts) were claiming piles and piles of dead bodies alongside the roads. Here we don’t just regurgitate the “news” instead, we go in depth with videos and explanations.
Truth is not as interesting as the delicious lies to make you afraid.
And the media is working overdrive in fear-mongering. Seriously it’s way out of control. It’s almost like they believe that they can change the future by making people think fearful things….
…it doesn’t work that way. VOCALIZED THOUGHTS create individual change. Massive society world-line template changes are something quite different.
Ah…
Anyways…
Well, I’m not going to waste too much time refuting this nonsense. They have got a nice following of fear-induced ignorant masses, and they are bringing in money, so (well), as I shrug my shoulders. Live and let live. You know?
Let them get rich. On paper at least.
In the future when a hamburger costs $100 don’t tell me that I didn’t warn you.
Now, one of the things that is being discussed is why the USA must fight a war in the Ukraine. Some are arguing that it’s a stupid move made by the Democrats, while others argue that America should just keep throwing weapons and equipment there.
Wait for it.
For “democracy”™.
All of it is silly.
Changing the current clown show in Washington, DC won’t make a difference. They are all puppets of the oligarchy. And America NEEDS a war, because without one, it will be a civil war. So the intention to direct attention outwards. And the enemies Du Jour are Russia, China and Iran.
Better them than seeing San Franciso lit up in fires. Supposedly… some people say.
Listen to me.
Putin and Xi Peng are not the fucking idiots everyone thinks they are. They are not. And you all DO NOT WANT to fight either. Both have inherited the military ruthlessness of Genghis Khan, and have fresh hurtful memories of recent massive warfare. They do not want to fight a war, but if you push them…
…they will hurt you really, REALLY bad.
Both China and Russia are very formidable military machines. Russia are ruthless, bloodlust tough guy badasses. China is disciplined, fearless, and capable of delivering simply huge; HUGE quantities of massive hurt.
You do not want to mess with them.
And so, Russia told Biden to “back off” and stop placing nuclear weapons on it’s borders. And China said that any further interference with China’s domestic issues (read: Taiwan) is a “red line” that will have very serious consequences. And the last two weeks we have all been waiting for a reaponse.
Well, it looks like the USA is “doubling down”. Dumb fucks.
Screen shot from Druge Report on 25JAN22 at 10am.
Smog or fog? Hum. Why not have a front page article on the smog in Los Angles? Sheech!
The “news” media is nothing but a lie-generating machine, and right now, it’s all garbage. Like these two Bloomberg “news articles”…
Bloomberg's smearing about the relationship between China and Russia, which was false, was to interfere with the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Monday, adding that the China-Russia relationship is stable and resilient, with both sides maintaining close talks at all levels.Zhao made the remarks at a regular press briefing after Bloomberg reported that China had asked Russia not to invade Ukraine during the Beijing 2022 Games in a recent call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.As a practitioner and supporter of the Olympic spirit, we firmly oppose the politicization of sports and will not be influenced by any international forces, Zhao said.China is confident it will present a successful event to the whole world and guarantees national leaders a safe and successful visit to Beijing, Zhao added.
MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. A Bloomberg report about Chinese President Xi Jinping allegedly asking Russian leader Vladimir Putin not to attack Ukraine during the Beijing Olympics is spectacular fake news, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Ekho Moskvy (or Echo of Moscow) radio station on Monday."Bloomberg has publicized utter jaw-dropping fake news recently, claiming that Xi Jinping had asked Putin not to attack Ukraine during the Olympic Games," she noted. "Frankly speaking, I did not expect this level of disinformation from Bloomberg not because it is an unconfirmed fact but because it is sheer impossibility and unbelievable stupidity. I could have expected it from some US newspaper but not from Bloomberg. They used to be less susceptible to these types of propped-up leaks, but now they seem to have given up on that," Zakharova stated.The Russian diplomat pointed out that while working on the report, Bloomberg did not request any comments from the Russian presidential press service, nor from the Foreign Ministry. "That’s not like Bloomberg, is it? They maintain virtually round-the-clock contact with high-ranking Russian officials on all issues," she emphasized.The Bloomberg agency reported earlier, citing an unidentified diplomat in Beijing, that Chinese President Xi Jinping could have allegedly asked Putin not to attack Ukraine during the Olympics scheduled for February 4-20. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed the report as "an information black op" carried out by the United States. Furthermore, the Chinese Embassy in Russia rejected the report as fake news and a provocation.
Anyways, I’m telling you all. Don’t mess with Asia.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s a review of some of Russia’s more menacing military machines.
.
Bora-class guided-missile hovercraft
This ship is actually a catamaran with a skirt that turns it into a hovercraft. Armed with eight Mosquito missiles and 20 anti-aircraft missiles, the ship has a crew of up to 68 sailors and a cruising speed of 100km per hour.
Drel aerial bomb
This 540 kg glide cluster bomb is intended for hitting targets at a distance of 30 km (20 miles). Infra-red and radar-guided, it is used for destroying enemy armored vehicles, command posts and power units. It operates despite natural and man-made interference.
The Pantsir-S1
A combined short-to-medium range surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft missile system. The system consists of 12 surface-to-air guided missiles and two 30-mm automatic guns effective against planes, helicopters, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles.
Soratnik robot
This is a system for rendering fire support to troops, patrolling and guarding an area. The robot is remotely controlled, with further upgrades (the Kalashnikov concern is now working on these) potentially not requiring any human intervention at all. The tracked chassis robot can be fitted with light firearms. In its basic version, it has an AK-74M assault rifle and a Dragunov sniper rifle.
A virtually invisible submarine
The first of six diesel-electric stealth submarines, the Novorossiysk was launched from a St. Petersburg shipyard last year. Its designers say its stealth technology makes it virtually undetectable when submerged.
Floks self-propelled artillery system
This is Russia’s first self-propelled artillery system with a 120 mm gun. It combines the functions of a long-range weapon, a howitzer and a mortar. It can fire at enemy positions at a distance from 100 meters to 10 km (110 yards to 6 miles). It has a remote combat module with a 12.7-mm Kord machine-gun installed on its roof.
The Mig-35 multirole jet fighter
Effective both in air-to-air combat and precision ground strikes. Capable of reaching speeds of up to 2,400 km per hour despite being 30% larger than its predecessor, the Mig-35 is able both to dogfight and destroy sea and surface targets from long range, as well as conduct air reconnaissance missions.
MIG-35
Uran-9 attack robot
This robot conducts reconnaissance missions and provides fire support for troops; it can also be used in counterterrorist operations. It has a 30 mm automatic gun and a 7.62 mm machine-gun, as well as Ataka anti-tank guided missiles.
The robot can operate at a distance of 3 km (2 miles) from its operator. By the end of 2016, five of these robots will come into service with the Russian armed forces.
Each comprises four combat vehicles: a reconnaissance robot or a fire support robot, a mobile post, and two power tugs.
The BUK-2 missile system
This is the battery that allegedly brought down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in 2014. Its 9M317 missiles can reach 46,000 feet at Mach 3, carrying 154-pound warheads.
Gibka-S air defense vehicle
The system is intended for protecting military units from enemy aircraft at low and super low altitudes (1,600 and 500 feet respectively). It is fitted with the newest portable surface-to-air missile system, the Verba. Eight missiles can be mounted on the vehicle.
The RS-24 Yars
A thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile system that can carry multiple independently targetable nuclear warheads with a range of 10,000 miles.
BANG!
Designed to replace Topol-M ballistic missiles, it has been operationally deployed since 2010. Each missile has the power of 100 “Little Boys” — the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945.
Russian RS-24 Yars
RPK-16 light handheld machine-gun
The new RPK-16 for 5.45 mm cartridges is an upgrade of the Soviet RPP-74 machine-gun.
This model has a Picatinny rail, making it possible to fit it with any type of sights, from night to thermal to collimator to optical sniper sights.
According to its designers, the machine-gun can be used to fire single shots and hit 20-cm-diameter targets from a distance of 300-400 meters (according to its technical and tactical characteristics, the machine-gun can hit enemy personnel at a distance of 800 meters).
The machine-gun has got a lighter 96-round drum magazine. The weapon now weighs just 4.5 kg.
The Tupolev Tu-160
It is the world’s largest supersonic combat aircraft. It was designed by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It boasts the most powerful engines ever on a combat aircraft and can hold 40,000kg of weaponry. There are 16 in service.
Russian Tupolev Tu-160 heavy strategic bomber.
Vikhr reconnaissance robot
The Vikhr reconnaissance and strike robot has been created on the basis of the BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicle. The system, which can operate on a tracked or wheeled chassis, has a 30 mm gun and a 7.62 mm machine-gun as well as Kornet-M guided anti-tank missiles.
In its automated mode, the robot can detect, capture and track targets, with the decision to fire still taken by the module operator. Thanks to an HD camera and a thermal imager, the Vikhr can operate at any time of day or night.
The T-90
The most advanced battle tank used by the Russian armed forces. Its main weapon is a 125mm smoothbore gun with anti-tank capabilities, but it also boasts a remote-controlled anti-aircraft heavy machine gun.
BT-3F amphibious armored personnel carrier
The new amphibious personnel carrier can accommodate up to 12 paratroopers and can withstand fire from the 14.5 mm KPVT large-caliber machine-gun from a distance of 200 meters.
On its roof, the BT-3F has a remote combat module with a 7.62 mm machine-gun fitted with a television and a thermal sight.
In future, the turret will be able to accommodate a 12.7 mm or a 14.5 mm machine-gun as well as a 30 mm or 40 mm grenade-launcher.
Borei-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines.
They are slightly smaller than their predecessors, the massive Typhoon-class. But with a capacity of 16 Bulava ballistic missiles, each carrying six to 10 warheads with a range of 8,300km, they are still a force to be reckoned with.
Borei-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines.
And…
Borei-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines.
And…
Borei-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines.
The Russian Mi-28 Havoc attack helicopter:
This is the go-to attack helicopter for the Russian air force and army. Its basic armament is a 30mm Shipunov underslung auto-cannon and wingstubs that can carry up to four anti-tank missiles, rocket pods, or gun pods.
Russian Mi-28 Havoc.
Conclusion
This chat-chat talk are all fear mongering for profit.
What Russia and China wants are quite simple. They do not want any nuclear weapons blaced on their borders, and the do not want any color revolutions either.
Anything else is bullshit.
Both Russia and China have mapped out a “check mate” strategy. No matter what move the United States does, it will lose, and lose big. The only out is to call the game a draw… accept the “white tent”, and focus on the myrid of American domestic issues that are becoming problematic.
White tent.
Easy out.
I am not convinced at anyone inside of America has any clue as to how serious and dangerous this time is. Maybe him, but even at that, he’s still spouting nonsense.
I do want to be optimistic. I know what I have been told.
Little bads, not big bads.
The Domain is on the side of Asia.
“Old Empire” occupany in leadership roles in the Western Block.
A much better, calmer and nicer world after this contentious period.
You all hang tight, and don’t get too caught up in the fear mongering. Most of it is BULLSHIT.
Look…
Russia posted it’s ultimatum. The USA; President Biden tried to “buy time”. Then presented it. He wanted it to be kept secret.
The response was
"No, but we will potentionally, maybe discuss issues, perhaps, one day, maybe in the future about other minor things as we (the collective West) feel the need to do so."
My guess is that they are trying feverishly to plan a “first strike” senario, or a “protected second strike” military senario. I do not believe that they will be successul in any way.
They HAVE to “switch gears“. They have to change from just another “far away war in the Ukraine” to how to deal with nuclear detonations on American soil.
And, the fools in Washington just don’t “get it.”
America today is not 1940. There is NO signifigant manufacturing presence remaining in the United States today. War…
War!
Are you fucking kidding me?
Let’s talk about the reality. 90% are made in China. The remaining 10% are in the big American cities like Boston, New York and San Franciso. When the bombs come a flying, and cities are destoryed and all trade stops..
…Zero medicines in the USA.
ZERO.
Think about that.
It WILL really turn into zombie apocalypse for real. Do you have any idea what happens when you get off major tranquilizers like Zoloft, Prozac, etc? It’s insanity madness.
No blood pressure pills.
Good bye everyone over 50.
No heart medicine.
What happens when Viagra is not available? A bunch of frustrated American males with guns, that’s what.
What happens when Xantax is a distant memory? Sniffing glue.
What happens when there are no antibiodics and Coronavirus in Omega form is racing thoough the shattered remains of society. Death.
Lots…
And… Lots of death.
The USA hasn’t a FUCKING CHANCE.
60% of Americans are on some kind of prescription drugs. Everyone is going to go “cold turkey“, and without medicines, and an infected cut will be a death sentence.
Check Mate.
Do not fuck around about War. The USA hasn’t a God Damn Chance.
…
Finally…
…keep in mind that global thermonuclear war will have a great liklihood of premature recycling members of the “Lost Battalion” prematurely. This is unacceptable to the Domain. So they will try their best to avoid nuclear war and mass casualities to the best of their ability.
They recognize that the generational turnings are built into the Prison Complex, but they have a plan and a time-table. Keep that in mind.
So relax.
Don’t get so caught up in all the fear-mongering talk.
Follow the basic MM precepts. You will be fine.
Affirmation prayers.
Stable world-line templates and cotnrolled slides.
Fate forecasting.
Be the Rufus.
Participate in your local community.
Be prudent, traditiaonl and have a larder.
You all will be fine.
Finally some word on wine…
An earlier article that I wrote mentioned that an Irish study “proved” that wine was not good for your health and that it should be banned completely.
Any level of drinking can lead to loss of healthy life, the World Heart Federation has said, as it sought to dispel the idea that a daily glass of wine may be good for you.In a new policy briefing, the organisation said it wanted to “challenge the widespread notion” that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol can decrease the risk of heart disease and called for urgent action to tackle the global rise in deaths caused by drinking.
Monika Arora, member of WHF’s advocacy committee and co-author of the briefing, said: “The portrayal of alcohol as necessary for a vibrant social life has diverted attention from the harms of alcohol use, as have the frequent and widely publicised claims that moderate drinking, such as a glass of red wine a day, can offer protection against cardiovascular disease.
It bummed me out.
As I do happen to like wine. It goes great with food.
So, this “Karen” has decided to tell me; and advise me, that wine is bad for me, and my world would be a better place if all drinking ended. then unicorns will prace around under rainbows and the sky would part and everyoen would love each other again.
But you know, today there is a new study..
"...The model decided that whilst wine was good for decreasing the risk of Covid, some other alcoholic drinks were not.The study discovered that those who consume five or more glasses of red wine a week had a 17% lesser risk of catching the virus.Scientists believe that this reduced risk might be because of the drink’s high content of polyphenol, which is known to help with the flu and other respiratory conditions."
Drink wine, or not drink wine. It’s your choice. And don’t believe everything you read in the internet. Most of it is manipulative content designed towards for-profit motives.
So there you have it.
Enjoy life. Eat delicious food with friends and family.
I’m exhausted. Sorry, but I am. This year is entering up to be a mighty funky one, I’ll tell you what. So, I’ve been a day dreaming a tad.
Well, I think that it would be nice to ride in a classic car. Look at this beautiy. Man, wouldn’t you all just love to take it for a spin?
Go for a ride in class.
And then go get a burger, and fries at a non-franchised burger joint. Maybe something like this…
Go ahead and eat a nice burger.
Where there is a picture of the founder over the enterance door. Yum.
Life.
It’s in YOUR hands. Make it great.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Here in this article we will look at the events of mid-January 2022 in Zhuhai, China where a serious outbreak of five people caught the coronavirus. We discuss how it came about, the rules and laws supporting the suppression of the virus, and MM my first-hand account of the entire wiz-bang. I hope you find it interesting and enlightening.
The opinions / scaremongering of the Western media…
The “news” is all filled with nonsense about how terrible the Chinese “social credit scoring system” is. It is presented in such a way that the individual looks upon it in horror. And from a lone, independent individual, it is a horror. It’s a bunch of added (and seemingly) unrealistic restrictions on one’s “freedom”.
All true, but all out of context.
But China is NOT a nation of independent individuals. So you cannot look at the Chinese system from that lens or viewpoint. You must look at things as they actually are. Not as you fear them to be (from your limited point of view).
China is a nation of communities.
There is the large “big” community of the Han race. Then, under that, is the (also big) community of the Mainland China nation. Then, under that, are the regional communities. Such as Guangzhou, Wenzhou, etc. Then within each of those communities are further smaller communities, and so on and so forth. Eventually, drilling down to your local community. Which in my case is my six building housing complex within the JiDa subsection of the Zhuhai city proper.
When you are part of a community, you are special.
You are not alone.
You are surrounded by others like you. Sure, you might be having a hard time, but YOUR community will not allow you to suffer. They will come to your aid. The community is self-serving. This is why you have volunteers, and this is why it’s hard to find beggars and homeless in China. The communities will not allow it to occur.
You must obey the rules of being in that community. Membership has privileges. But, you must obey the rules, and you must participate, and you must be helpful, and you must be a good citizen.
No littering, kids cannot graffiti up the streets. The community self-polices behavior. The community provides you help when you need it. You are not alone. You are never alone, and if you are in trouble and require help, you reach out to YOUR community, and they will do whatever is necessary to help you.
During the United States bioweapon attacks (2018 through 2021), and now the aftermath of the Covid-19 attacks resulting in rampant global coronavirus pandemics, China has maintained a posture of DEFCON ONE / TWO.
It’s a state of military readiness.
It’s a state of civilian readiness.
It’s a mandatory emergency state of affairs. China does not want to be like the clusterfuck that America is, like the UK is, like Australia is. China needs to support and protect its people.
And that means abeyance to rules and laws during a period of emergency.
This is enforced by the social credit scoring system. This system polices behavior and tracks people by AI to identify misfits, malcontents, people with poor social skills, sociopaths and psychopaths, as well as those who think they are being “free” when in reality they are just social misfits.
Why so many people have this negative idea aobut the social credit scoring system…
It is right across the bay from Hong Kong / Shenzhen. (I can actually see Shenzhen from my living room window), and the massive (and famous) HK- Macao -Shenzhen bridge is right at my doorstep.
Map of my local region showing transportation options.
Hong Kong is part of China. Just like Macao and Taiwan are. Only it is administered at the local level differently. It is more than that. It “feels” different. It doesn’t feel “Chinese”.
It feels “Western”, which can mean many things.
The airline “Cathay Pacific” has routine flights in and out of Hong Kong. It’s a great airline, and it is (perhaps) my favorite airline to fly in. Second only to the Australian Qantas airline.
Cathay Pacific
Due to Chinese law, all crew must either stay on board their planes, or disembark to a quarantine area when landed. They are not permitted to exit that quarantine area as they are considered to be potential carriers of the Covid-19 virus.
They left their hotels in defiance of the rules. They then went out and visited the sights of Hong Kong. They traveled in the subways, visited the many, many malls, ate at a restaurant and returned. Their absence was recorded, date stamped, observed and traced.
They were found out.
But not until afterwards. But by then the damage had already been done.
They lost their jobs. Obviously.
They were also arrested. They are both in jail now. They not only defied the rules. They broke the law during a time of emergency.
Maybe the Western press will not report it as such, but China has been at a state of military readiness at DEFCON ever since John Bolton / Donald Trump carpet bombed China with bioweapons in 2019 CNY. It’s a military emergency inside of China. It’s not “just another Vaxx scare”.
It’s a military state of readiness.
It’s serious, serious business.
How big their fees will be, and whether they will be charged with manslaughter, reckless endangerment, terrorism, and military sabotage has yet to be determined.
But, you can be guaranteed that they are facing some SERIOUS charges…
If one person gets Covid-19 and goes into ICU the former stewardesses can be expected to be hit with terrorism charges.
If someone dies, it will also include manslaughter charges.
If one of the sick people are a member of the government or military, it will ratchet up to sabotage charges.
So...
At best case, they are looking at the loss of their jobs, fines and fees, jail time, and destruction of their careers, as well as perma-banning ever to visit China ever again.
At worst case, they could spend years in a hard-labor mainland Chinese labor camp to include mandatory organ harvesting.
And, yeah, sure enough, they were carrying the virus, and they spread it all over Hong Kong.
Two women, with their three children, caught the virus and brought it back to their homes in Zhuhai.
How do we know?
The women and their children were all in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is popular with the mainland Chinese, and many make frequent trips back and forth. Even now, in this period of pandemic.
The women weren’t feeling well about two weeks after they left quarantine. (You have a two-week quarantine period going back and forth from HK, unless you have a special residency permit.) Neither were their children.
Anyway, they ordered some throat medicine through the internet.
But you know, all medicine purchases (in China) are tracked.
The AI tracked their medicines, and their movements, and their actions and their behaviors over the last few months. It crunched the numbers. And so it then identified them as possible carriers.
Within hours of placing that order in Taobao (a popular Chinese app for purchases. Sort of like Amazon.com on steroids.) a medical team was dispatched to their homes, and they were tested in their living rooms on the spot.
Taobao.
How the local city reacted
They were told to stay in their homes until the results were cleared. They didn’t have to wait long. They found out hours later.
At the SAME TIME…
Their entire section of the city was shut down. Everything went into lock down, and everyone started to get their tests. Road blocks were set up. No entry or egress to stores, restaurants, or businesses. Everyone was in lock down and tested.
There were no “discussions”. Nor were there any back and forth calls and meetings to figure out what to do. It was simple and straight forward.
An outbreak had occurred.
Full lock-down protocols were engaged.
And, just like that (image of MM snapping his fingers) everyone’s QR went orange.
Snapping fingers.
How do I know this is what happened?
China is 100% transparent on it’s domestic issues.
The people and the government believe that the way to confront problems directly is to look them in the eye and deal with facts. Not what you want to see or present but as they actually are.
They do not have to lie.
There are no citizens to maniplate. No polls to jive up. There are no reasons to hide facts. They don’t need to look better, or present a better face to the public. They just tell you how things are and that’s that. (MM slapping his hands together as if washing them.)
Notification
So when the individuals were discovered, everyone inside of Zhuhai was alerted in real time.
Zhuhai, China alert notice.
And here is the translation of the above. Part 1…
And, part 2…
What is a QR code scan?
First of all, a QR code is common inside of China. It’s everywhere. It’s a funny little box of pixilated dots that you scan with your phone. It can open up apps, webpages, download things, and do all sorts of “neat-o” things.
QR codes to apply.
When I refer to a QR, I am actually using slang. I am referring to one of the multiple “Medical access QR applications”. You scan them to get into buildings, to use taxis, or DD (the Chinese version of Uber), to go into stores or malls or to enter and leave various complexes.
When you scan, it will compute and connect your movements and your interactions with the rest of society. It will see if you are up-to-date with your testing, injections and so on and so forth.
If you have been inoculated, and up to the regional testing protocols, it will be green.
My green QR.
Consequences of an orange QR
If your QR is not green, but rather orange, you are a potential virus carrier. You will need to immediately bypass any testing clinics and go straight to the hospital. Each hospital has set up a separate (and isolated) “orange” wing. You go there and get tested or inoculated.
Until you do so, you cannot go anywhere, visit any place, or do anything. You are disabled and disbarred from entry.
Consequences of a red QR
Red is not good.
You report to the hospital and follow their instructions.
What happens if you break quarantine inside of China…
What happens?
Bad things happen. That’s what.
Well, aside from the fines, fees, code red listing, and jail time… you get to be paraded in your community to show the entire world what a fucking selfish dipshit you actually are. Video 4.3MB
Enter my Chief Engineer
So I get a call from my Chief Engineer.
He tells me that he is under lock-down. He is confined to his house, and cannot go outside except to get tested in the front of his building. He tells me that he gets five tests a day. And that this will continue for the duration of the lockdown.
Uh. Oh.
Initially he told me that it would be for ten days, but now that number has been revised to three weeks, possibly longer.
Since this is right before CNY, just like in 2019, it looks like there will not be any Chinese New Year celebrations this year.
MM is drinking wine, and getting ready for bed
One day later…
I’m drinking wine, typing some. Listening to a show in the background (Two broke girls.) while my daughter is playing with legos, (a selection of) dolls, and an abacus. We get a knock at the door.
It’s 9:30 at night.
Who would be knocking on our door? We’re the only family on the floor.
Well, there were two volunteers from the local community and they told us to go downstairs and get tested for the virus.
But, you know, we were drinking and in our bed clothes. My wife told them that we had already been tested, and we went to bed.
Snooze sounds. Z z z z z z
The next day; Uh oh!
Phones are orange. QR code is orange. Apps won’t respond.
Uh oh!
So we go downstairs and there’s a tent in front of our complex.
Some details...
Testing tents are set up on every block. These are blue tents manned by volunteers all in full hazmat attire.
It goes without saying that everyone is wearing a mask. Everyone. There are no exceptions.
So we go and get tested.
Well… Off to the hospital
But…
But…
We do not have a green QR. So we cannot use the regular testing qiosk. Instead, we need to go to the hospital.
One of the volunteers in hazmat garb flags down a taxi and we get in, and are whisked off to the hospital.
Zoom…
Of course, in front of the hospital are all those testing qiosks as well. But we cannot go and use them. No sir. Instead, we have to go to the “orange wing” of the hospital.
Once we found it…
..I mean, it was way off and around the back of the hospital and far away from everyone. And it was deserted. There were scores of chairs set up and long weaiting roped off lines, but no one was there.
We jsut walked in as the only ones to get tested.
So we QR scanned, Were assigned a number and nasal swabbed, and off we went…
We went home.
By the way. It’s all 100% volunteers.
They are not being paid to do this. They are volunteering their time and their efforts. And it is appreciated. video 30MB
Later on, everything is green
Phew! It took about five hours.
But now we are all “green”.
Sure the resturants and stroes and malls are all closed, but we are no longer shunned “orange people” we are now fully green!
Woo woo!
Some videos
Here’s some that I took of the testing in front of my home… video 22.7MB
So now you can understand the meme’s used in China
And thus you all can well understand these memes that’s been floating around the internet. Maybe not in the United States.
Most of the USA videos seems to be about massive urban mob-take-downs of trains, police shootings, fat black women in tights shaking their enormous posteriors, and Blinkedin and Biden discussing their 3.5 trillion dollar domestic spending bill (on top of the 2 trillion dollar military spending bill). Plus a few notible funny cat videos and some “ow my balls!” videos. It’s a real mix. But nothing at all about actually dealing with the virus.
Here’s two of the Chinese memes regarding the terror of the orange QR…
Meme 1.
And…
Meme 2.
Compare all this to America
That’s what I do. After all, I’m still an American. Here’s what the equivent American line up looks for getting a Covid-19 swab. video 34MB
This next video is a line up to get checked for Covid-19 at a clinic. In the USA they don’t have free testing centers on every block staffed with volunteers. You have to go to a clinic and get tested instead.
Obviously one of those people (who made the video) who believe that Covid is a “hoax” is yelling at them.
Hoax, eh?
Well, my brother Daniel in Boulder, CO had this “hoax” for four weeks. He lost 34 pounds and hallucinated the entire time. And my first cousin died from it. She was five years younger than myself.
Life will go on. We won’t have emuch of a celebration this year unfortunately. Already I have canceled the Company CNY dinner. Half my staff are in quarantine, and all public areas are shut down.
It’s gonna be one heck of a strange year it seems…
Conclusion
And that is my first hand account of what happens when someone gets Covid-19 inside of China. This is it. The real deal. I hope that you see what is going on, how China handles it and what it is like for us experiencing it first hand.
No. We are not being welded shut in our homes.
No, we are not pining away for “freedom” and “democracy”, and no we are not starving with empty and bare shelves. It’s all pretty normal, just really mellow and calm. It’s sort of like how after 9-11 all the New Yorkers walked in silence towards the outside of the city.
Calm and peaceful.
That’s us.
The longer that I am in China, the longer I have come to embrace the fact that we are all part of something bigger than ourselves. And that we must all work together in our own little, tiny ways, so that our world… our bubble of existence… our streets… and our friends are all better, cleaner, healthier, and happier. The future does belong to the Rufus.
Be that kind of person. Be that Rufus. Video. 20MB
Above image. Nothing quite captures the rot inside the United States today than the very foundations of New York City.
Calm cool, accurate, and easy to read. Here’s the reality as we move forward in January 2022.
From Strategic Culture…
Eamon McKinney
January 8, 2022
.
In a world of chronic shortages China has realized that commodities hold more value than cash.
The current trade war with China began at the very outset of the Trump administration. Apparently alarmed at America’s dependence on Chinese goods, particularly the extent to which its defense industries are reliant on Chinese components and rare earths, Trump had a point but may have better served to speak softly about this vulnerability. He mentioned only two dependencies, there are thousands of products that America relies on China exclusively for.
In moves that were simply anti-competitive practices he then launched in a “tech war” with China. Banning the sale of chips and semi-conductors, along with bans on Chinese 5G and Huawei the global leader in particular. Not content with that the U.S. launched a global push to pressure its “allies’ to also ban Huawei and its state of the art 5G technology. Not to be taken in isolation, the tech war was just part of an overall strategy to damage and restrain China’s economy. “Decoupling” had arrived into the general lexicon.
To an extent the measures worked, the chip shortage caused a slowdown among many tech dependent sectors, but not for long. China has developed its domestic production at a pace not possible anywhere else. It has also convinced China that it needed to greatly accelerate its self-sufficiency across all sectors.
As it stands today, America has nothing that China needs that it can’t make or buy elsewhere. America conversely needs China desperately, without China’s goods the American economy grinds to a halt. The extent of that dependency has been highlighted by Americaэs ongoing supply chain chaos. Manufacturing, retail, construction and countless other industry sectors have stalled without Chinese goods. No country in the world is as dependent on imports as the U.S. Attempts to find alternatives to China are fruitless, no other country can match the efficiency, infrastructure, economies of scale and cost that China can. American manufacturing only accounts for 20% of the American economy, self-sufficiency for Americans is a fantasy, even in the best case scenario, it is generations away.
Long spoken of is “China’s nuclear option”, dumping its dollar holdings and rendering the dollar worthless. China doesn’t want to do that. Firstly the loss of a trillion of its own dollar holdings is not to be taken lightly, and it would also damage the holdings and economies of its other trading partners around the world. Such a move would be an absolute last resort. China’s real nuclear option is the withholding of essential goods to America.
China has all but monopolised the rare earth industries, now accounting for more than 85% of global production. Without rare earths Americas tech and defence sectors would be paralysed.
Curious how President Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, makgin American purchases of anything out of Xinjiang illegal.
Funny thing though... all of the Chiense "rare earth" minerals come from Xinjiang and are mostly mined by Uighurs.
Uh oh! (Head slap!)
All the seventeen critical rare earths are mined and refined in China in high volume. Some are mined in other countries in smaller volumes: developing alternative sources to China would a very lengthy process. For the foreseeable future, China decides who gets rare earths, and who doesn’t.
Unknown to many Americans the pharmaceutical industry is among the most heavily dependent of China. 80-85% of its products and precursors come from China, and there are currently few alternatives. I leave it to the reader’s imagination to visualize an America without medications, think Zombie apocalypse.
Some recent developments in China have given us a glimpse of the future. China is stockpiling food and other commodities at unprecedented levels. It is believed to hold more than half the world’s grain and maize already, other essential food stuffs are also being stockpiled at similar levels.
Iron ore, steel and other industrial raw materials are also being hoarded in previously unforeseen quantities. In a world of chronic shortages China has realised that commodities hold more value than cash.
More significantly, China just published a Governmental “White Paper.” It emphasises the need to conserve natural, finite resources (again think rare earths.) It also addresses the paradox that Trump was concerned about, why is China supplying parts to the U.S. military contractors? These among many other sectors will now require a “special export licence”. Read between the lines. China can apply these principles across any exported product it chooses. If they don’t like where it is headed, or what it will be used for, it isn’t going. Fertilisers, for which China accounts for about 30% of the world’s production are already banned from export. This is already forcing American many American farmers to switch from wheat to less fertiliser-intensive crops like soybeans.
China didn’t start or want this trade war, to date it is has been a one-sided assault on the Chinese economy by an increasingly desperate American government. China has not retaliated or employed any of the measures it could have in response, until now.
America now truly has its trade war, and more decoupling will follow, but from here on in, it will be on China’s terms.
Re–shoringmakesgoodeconomicsense,becauseitispossiblethatinthenearfuture,theonlypeoplewhowillacceptthe US dollararelikelyto only beotherAmericancompanies.
…
Conclusion
You will not read about the collapse, the SHTF, or the various wars and brush fights in the American Government controlled media. But they are still going on. Here’s an insight as to what is going on.
Finance folk, bankers, accountants, and other FIRE industries have looted the United States, and gutted American society. It’s a big boated crusty shell with nothing but dust on the inside. Soon, very soon, there is going to be a mass realization of this reality.
It could be harsh, brash and catastrophic.
Or, it could be a serious of controlled implosions.
But it WILL HAPPEN.
There is no way out of this mess. None. The only thing that a person can do is hunker down in a smaller community away from the larger clusters of dependent citizenry, become active and involved in your respective communities, and be the Rufus; help others will no concern for personal profit.
I will advise you all to use all of the techniques provided on MM here to center your consciousness, and prepare.
Here’s a quick review…
Affirmation prayer campaigns.
Perform your Fate Forecasting, and monitor it closely.
Center your consciousness using Hemi-sync.
Conduct world-line travel and slides as necessary.
Be part of your community.
Be able to provide a service, or volunteer in your community.
Tune out the bullshit propaganda off the “news”.
Stock up your food larder. Have a garden.
Trade and barter with neighbors.
Ride a bicycle more often. Use the car less.
Surround yourself with cats, or dogs, or other animals.
Be kind. Be calm. Be neighborly.
Make your little area a bubble of kind softness. That way, no matter what changes hits your world, your little area will be mostly immune to them. Be great; be the Rufus.
I believe in you.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Jeeze! There sure are a lot of big changes going on right now. I just cannot keep up with it all. I tell you what; I will need to start mega releasing clusters of articles before they get stale and outdated.
Ok. Perhaps one of the safe “outs” for the United States is to fracture. Get rid of the Federal government and revert to states, clusters of states or communities. The Federal government is a big fucking mess, ruled by technocrats, oligarchs and insane psychopaths. Get rid of them all, or America will die.
It’s pretty obvious. And you know what? That is exactly what is starting to happen…
‘The Constitution is not a suicide pact’ – but it is nearing that deadly threshold in a number of ways: federal debt, unchecked immigration, but most existentially in a lunatic foreign policy.
In its relations with Russia and China especially, but also with regard to Iran, North Korea, and others, the diplomatic/military/intelligence apparatus in Washington City seems driven to ignite dangerous international conflagrations.
‘NATO officials have thumbed their noses at Putin’s concern with Russia’s security. Trump’s National Security Advisor and neocon warmonger John Bolton encourages more provocation of Russia, which as Putin has made clear will result in war.‘Clearly as 2021 comes to an end, there is no intelligence to be found anywhere in the Western World as all vie to show how tough they are with Russia.‘When Putin says Russia has nowhere left to which to retreat, he is telling the idiot West that Russia has reached the extent of its ability to avoid war. “We simply have no room to retreat” means Russia has done all she can do to avoid war and now the Americans must get off Russia’s doorstep.‘Putin is relying on Biden to show awareness and responsibility and to work for peace by acknowledging Russia’s legitimate security concern. But what if Biden is just a figurehead, and the shots are called by the military/security complex who will go for profits despite the risk that Putin will not back down?‘What if Washington’s concern is limited to destabilizing Russia in the interest of US hegemony and Russia’s security is precisely what Washington intends to undermine, not secure.
‘ . . .
‘2022 could . . . be the year the Western world comes to an end in nuclear war.’
…
Is it any wonder why so many countries in the world now despise the US?
But this could not be further from the traditional Southern approach to foreign policy.
US Senator Fulbright of Arkansas gave expression to it in some remarks of his during the Vietnam War:
‘If America has a service to perform in the world and I believe it has it is in large part the service of its own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said: “Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” . . .‘There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the all-around advantages of minding one’s own business in our relations with everybody. Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all” but “the champion and vindicator only of her own.” …
‘If we can bring ourselves so to act, we will have overcome the dangers of the arrogance of power. It will involve, no doubt, the loss of certain glories, but that seems a price worth paying for the probable rewards, which are the happiness of America and the peace of the world.’
US foreign policy for the last several decades bears little resemblance to the Southern ideal of prudent restraint and peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with other countries. Southrons need to ask themselves just how they are benefiting from the policies being promoted by both Republicans and Democrats:
From sanctions that impoverish the innocent populations of various countries;
From drone strikes that kill hundreds of non-combatants;
From non-governmental organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy that serve as front groups for the CIA causing revolutions in northern Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, etc.;
From the promotion of the LGBT ideology in socially conservative countries like Uganda and Poland where Christianity still has some hold on the public consciousness;
From bellicose language from scalawags like Sens Cotton and Wicker who never miss a chance to stoke war fever with other countries.
What benefit is the Federal Government Insanity?
Southerners do not benefit one iota from any of that. Yet because of the Yankee propaganda pumped into the South through school textbooks, talk radio, the Heritage Foundation, etc., that the US is the City on a Hill, the indispensable nation chosen and anointed by God to rule the world, she does not object too loudly (if at all) and actually serves in numbers disproportionately higher than her percentage of the total population in the US military.
Prospects for reforming Washington do not look too good. Typically, anyone who tries is either killed (like JFK) or beaten into submission (like Trump). The best option for the South is to leave Washington and its Deep State bureaucrats to their own devices and to develop a foreign policy that serves the people of Dixieland and represents her tradition-friendly culture, one that is not in service to the cartels of Big Ag, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, and so on.
The insanity that has gripped Washington, one that does not rule out a first-strike using nuclear weapons, is a danger to the South in the most basic sense of that word – a threat to life itself.
The great need…
The South needs to separate herself from Washington’s madness, expel lunatics like Sen Wicker from office, and send out diplomats who exude both Southern friendliness and trustworthiness, but also hard resolve, to the countries of the world, whether friendly or unfriendly to us at the moment, to cultivate productive relationships, to secure us from the ill-will that the Yankee mindset has attracted to all 50 States.
Whether it is countries with a Southern diaspora like Brazil or a more isolated, insular place like Japan, the South would be far better off with a President, diplomats, etc., who truly reflect the best of Southern culture.
They with their humility and common sense would hopefully be able to gain back the goodwill of many of those whom Yankee arrogance has alienated, allowing Southerners to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and honesty (I Timothy 2:2).
There will be an endless stream of news stories about the 2022 federal elections in the months ahead. But rather than marching dutifully to the polls in November, wouldn’t it make more sense to channel that fervor in a different, more productive direction – for the State Legislatures of the South to hold special sessions in their chambers, hold a vote of no confidence in the federal government, and begin negotiations with that entity so the South will be able to free herself from the fanatical Deep State ‘reign of witches’ permanently?
The breakup is in process…
The breakup is already underway, though it is going so slowly that few seem to recognize it. A few recent examples:
US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has suggested a ‘national divorce’ of the States;
Gov DeSantis of Florida has reinstituted the Florida State Guard that would operate completely independently of the federal government;
Gov Abbott of Texas has recently told the Texas National Guard that he, not Pres Biden, is their commander-in-chief;
Gov Newsom of California has made it known that he will make his State a safe haven for abortion providers should the federal Supreme Court overturn Roe v Wade.
This kind of absurd, contradictory, ‘disunited union’ cannot last, nor should it. Better for the South and for any other sane section of the US to get out now before the madmen in Washington start a nuclear war that will get them incinerated in a retaliatory strike.
Opinion and conclusions.
If this happens, then World War III can be avoided.
There are no official results from the meeting in Geneva yet. The US has promised to give the Russians an official answer in writing within a week. The Russians have declared that they have explained the Russian position to their US counterparts in minute details leaving no ambiguity. According to Russian sources, the US position was a “diehard/stubborn” one.Clearly, the War Party in the USA is, at least so far, prevailing. When I listen to the delusional statements of the likes of Blinken, Psaki, Kirby & Co I get the strong feeling that for these people everything is a zero-sum game and that to them an agreement with Russia, any agreement, is simply unthinkable.
A united Asia is ready to flatten the USA. It’s a very tense time.
Now is when American need to stand up and wrest control of the nation from the evil psychopaths in charge. NOW is the time.
NOW.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning 2. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Do you know what I could use right now? Yup. I could use a nice hot bowl of Chili, with thick globs of cheese on top, and a side of crunchy garlic bread. That’s what.
A delicious bowl of chili with Cheese.
And…
What I most like about this chili is substituting nice loaves of garlic bread to eat instead of the standard fare of crackers, goldfish crackers, or Doritos chips. I like nice garlic bread. Call me strange, but that’s what I like.
Delicious garlic bread.
I like to eat it with a nice piping HOT cup of coffee, myself. But you know a icy cold beer, or a nice wine in a normal everyday glass is fine as well.
The point of this is to eat and enjoy.
And what ever you do, turn off the “news”. It’s all lies.
As the United States collapses it is IMPERATIVE that the inmate / serfs are kept ignorant and unaware of the life in the rest of the world. They must still believe that American “democracy” is the best!
Don’t you know!
The Western elites have so successfully numbed their populations, so instilled deep apathy within the masses that even their glibly constructed propaganda has lost all potency.
Their propaganda is so far removed from the lives and concerns of ordinary people that it is only the elites who care about it.
Like the orobouros, the elites produce, consume and finally become their own propaganda.
Regardless, the world moves on ...
Posted by: Arch Bungle
A Comparison
Here’s Image Search for “China”.
Bing search for “China”.
Here’s an image search for “China BBC”
Image search for “China BBC”.
Why…
bottom line - stereotyping china in the worst possible way in the western media is the name of the game.. if people can't pick up this much, we're all in trouble... we went thru this with the msm doing the same with russia, iran and venezuala for how long? now china.. who whudda thunk it? lol..
Posted by: james | Dec 20 2021 18:24 utc | 7
Why so out of touch. Why so focused on discord?
It’s an American government directive.
The West must look to be the leader, and the enemies of the West must be painted in the most horrible images imaginable, and any one who shows the reality MUST be silenced.
In a way, and for what is a rather small and inconsequential event after all, this story is a very nice illustration of the entire western narrative building system in action. Lie, exaggerate the lie, when called on it double down on the lie from another angle, attack strawmen, and then perhaps, months later, admit some version of the facts buried in an inside page with no correction of the original story.
In the meantime, of course, the concept of China as this authoritarian boogieman continues to be implanted and nurtured in the western mind, which is the primary target of all this, to the effect that majorities now view China as the new and forever enemy, against whom we obviously need to spend trillions of dollars preparing for Armageddon, which was the objective all along.
And so, once again, the Times and the rest of the approved media have earned their keep.
Posted by: Caliman | Dec 20 2021
Funding for articles, media and “news” to counter the Chinese positive good stuff…
$7.1b use in Asia include funding a lot of “news” agencies, “dissidents”…. etc. etc. etc.
Your life in Shanghai sucks, okay?!: The West’s push to ban good news about China online
By Andy Boreham
I bet you never knew, before this week, that your life here in China is so miserable.
This week, The New York Times and an Australian think tank released their coordinated reports on foreign “influencers” and the supposed threat they pose.
Their verdict: Any positive news from China must necessarily be fake, funded by the Communist Party of China, and therefore should be labeled as “misinformation.”
The New York Times released a story titled “How Beijing Influences the Influencers,” which was created and strategically released in coordination with a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think tank that is largely funded by the arms industry (no, seriously).
Both reports posit foreign influencers in China posting positive and happy content online as agents of the state who need to be stopped at all costs.
Their crimes, according to The New York Times: painting
"...cheery portraits of life as foreigners in China."
They go on:
"Most of the YouTubers have lived in China for years and say their aim is to counter the West's increasingly negative perceptions of the country."
Evil stuff.
The ASPI report mainly focused on foreign influencers who have created content on Xinjiang. I happened to be included in their list because of some videos I made in Xinjiang exploring the ancient city of Kashgar and Urumqi, the regional capital.
They argued that content like mine aims to
"reframe international narratives by displaying a wholly positive image of life in Xinjiang."
But here’s the thing: Neither Xinjiang nor any other part of China deserves to be framed in an overwhelmingly negative light just because the West says so, regardless of all the hideous accusations they make about mass murder, genocide or whatever else.
And just for the record, as someone who has visited Xinjiang, works for Chinese state media and has read all the reports under the sun, I wholeheartedly believe there is no systemic mass murder or genocide going on in Xinjiang.
If I came across anything to make me believe otherwise I wouldn’t be here doing what I do.
If you don't find that attempt by the West to monopolize the "truth" about China, from outside China, to be absolutely terrifying, then you clearly haven't read "1984."
-Andy Boreham
The New York Times particularly took aim at videos like mine that portrayed Xinjiang without couching the entire content in politics, mass murder and genocide.
They attacked videos from a YouTube travel channel called The China Traveler because the videos were fun and colorful, and not covered in blood and filmed using the infamous “BBC gray” filter.
The "BBC Gray filter" is a real thing. They take stills from blogger's you-tube videos and turn the skies grey, turning the green trees grey, and turn the flowers ugly red grey.
In the videos, the host
"raves about the cuisine and interviews locals about how their lives have improved."
Great, sounds just like any other travel video on YouTube.
Oh, but they go on:
"Topics like re-education camps do not come up."
Wow.
Let me re-package what they are expecting of China travel vlogs and put the same requirements on US content, just to show you the level of ludicrous we’re dealing with here.
There's a consistent drum beat here from the U$A's propaganda driven MSM; Try to destroy the reputation of any nation who's seen as a competitor in commerce, or political system.Posted by: vetinLA | Dec 20 2021 19:19 utc | 17
Most average people would concede that the US total messed up their response to COVID-19. Already around 800,000 people have died because of the pandemic. That’s nearly 1 million people – a tragedy in anyone’s eyes.
Using ASPI’s logic, no YouTube travel vlogs about the US should be posted without first detailing the 800,000 who have died unnecessarily from COVID-19.
China, China
Regime, regime.
Tennis player, rape, rape
China, China, regime, regime
This is the narrative tinnitus miracle and it is all that really matters.
Posted by: robin | Dec 20 2021 20:25 utc | 23
Chicago is, in many people’s estimations, a dangerous and lawless place. Innocent people are gunned down on the streets there every single week. Does that mean US travel vloggers visiting the city and profiling its amazing nightlife, art scene, food and people are spreading propaganda and “attempting to change the narrative” if they don’t also talk about the hideous crime rate there? Of course not!
So why do they expect the same from China content?
Basically what The New York Times, ASPI and other Western organs are suggesting with their reports is that any positive news or content coming from China is fake and that it is propaganda.
They want content like mine – which simply showed two beautiful cities in Xinjiang in order to entice other foreigners to go and see the place with their own eyes – to be labeled as “misinformation” and flagged by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the like.
"Platforms could explore the introduction of specific policies about misleading information,"
the Aussie think tank suggests.
"Such policies could include enforcement measures against violations similar to those that Twitter has implemented for sharing false or misleading information about COVID-19."
If you don’t find that attempt by the West to monopolize the “truth” about China, from outside China, to be absolutely terrifying, then you clearly haven’t read “1984.”
A well funded effort
Just came across this 1.5-minute clip of China’s former ambassador to the US talking about China’s need to pick a careful path in the face of US hostility.
Guess they see that the US is stopping at nothing, sparing no effort, to demonize China at every opportunity, and seem to be aware that this will likely get worse over the next few years.
After all, earlier this year, the US openly announced $1.2 billion for anti-China narrative efforts over the next four years (2022-2026) by the US Agency for Global Media …
The New York Times is one of the media herd leaders, and the establishment news media across the West – including here in Canada – all obediently follow the NYT/WaPo/CNN lead with no questions asked …
Orwell’s Ministry of Truth is well-funded and well-staffed. We will likely be getting even more Two Minutes Hate sessions over the next few years.
Posted by: Canadian Cents | Dec 21 2021 3:42 utc | 49
It is purposeful distortions to keep Americans (the West) ignorant.
Here’s an interview with a VOA journalist. VOA is the US governments main propaganda arm that oversees most all “news”. It is funded by the NED, which is turn is funded out of the CIA. Listen and learn. video 60MB
America is a military empire
Toivos | Dec 20 2021 18:09 utc | 5
". . . both of those US national propaganda rags are whipping up support for war against both China and Russia. I do hope that they begin to realize that the US will lose those wars as well before it is too late."
Actually it has nothing to do with winning or losing. The US oligarchy simply demands that millions of working taxpayers continue shoveling their little bits of money to the billionaires, and the fastest and easiest way to get that done is to start wars. They don't care who wins or loses.
Posted by: AntiSpin | Dec 20 2021 20:53 utc | 26
And it is very dangerous and at all levels. Domestically and internationally. This keeps the wealthy in control while the rabble all fight amongst themselves. video 5MB
Anti China or not. You judge.
Face the realities of the world today. Not what you want to see, but what actually exists now today. video 3MB
Americans view war as normal
It is not. No. No. No. It is not normal, it should never be considered normal. video 8MB
I posted a take via The Guardian ( the cross Atlantic NYP) in the open thread.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/12/the-moa-week-in-review-ot-2021-099.html?cid=6a00d8341c640e53ef02942f8f2cb4200c#comment-6a00d8341c640e53ef02942f8f2cb4200c
What is revealing about this ‘pushback’ against western propaganda is that it is part of a full spectrum attack on western/nato hagemony that has been well advertised by the Empire killers Russia and China for many months now.
From the initial meetings with the new ‘sane’ Biden administration with the latest NSA and State department apparatchiks to the now very public documents of surrender which have been presented to them.
Of course it is couched in a manner that doesn’t expect an unconditional surrender but it does require it.
What I perceive is that over the last decade the Chinese and Russians played the whipping boys to the economic onslaught from some obscure department of the US state that arbitrarily imposed sanctions and stole money from sovereign states because they could.
It has been Imperial hubris.
The smart humans chose to use that hubris against the perpetrators.
Now as they pretended to cower under that onslaught they not only firmed up their collective military spine but have enrolled many other countries who have been subjected to similar economic actions.
They have set up alternative world banking!
They have also invested heavily and long term without onerous terms that the Workd Bank imposes.
They have given vaccines for pretty much free.
Now they are taking on the major force the West/nato Empire has built into what they believe is a dominant weapon - the power of the ‘blag’ the news & cultural hagemony.
The West/Nato have been allowed to lull into a false sense of that power of Narrative control over populations.
Unfortunately it only works on the West/nato populations who all consume the same monopoly media guff.
Many alternative platforms have been set up and largely free of control.
Except for interference by the Western platforms and their controllers.
It is now moving to a open full spectrum, all frontal counter attack.
The last time it stopped in Berlin by pre agreement. This time ...with a modern China economic and human superpower and all the allies they are daily accumulating it is a done deal.
History may yet still record the Peng Shuai moment as a momentous point in this war of Empires.
Posted by: D.G. | Dec 21 2021 1:23 utc | 43
The BOTTOM LINE
Yes, he spells it out completely. This is the reality. Pure and simple. China has a political system that is determined by real practical results. Not on some nebulous ideal that can never be obtained, measured or implemented.
Enough of this bullshit. Within a few years any accurate reporting of China will be effectively squashed, and zero free press will be permitted. It’s all in the pipe and going to happen.
The methodology for getting around the First Amendment (In the Bill of Rights) is to have all the Social Media Platforms suppress any bloggers reporting on China unless it meets the Government approved narrative.
It’s all the lead up to war, don’t you know.
Of course, by then either [1] the Second civil war will be a raging, or [2] a nuclear exchange will take place. In which even there won’t be much of anyone reading the “news”.
Shee-it!
As I have said earlier in other posts, there are adults “in the room” who have the entire situation at hand. Let the USA isolate itself. Let it try to start a war. let it trash about and thrash, and squirm.
It’s not going to make a difference. It really won’t.
History is clear.
There just isn’t any way to escape the fated programmed obsolesce. There is no escape.
It’s time for me to chill and smunch. I’ll tell you what. Enjoy where you are right now. Enjoy who you are with right now. Enjoy what you have right now. Enjoy the weather, no matter what it is right now.
Right now.
Food, movie, chat with a friend, a coffee, a bike ride, a workout, a park adventure, a beer in a pub, some sex, hanging out with your beloved pet, and a good book. What ever you do, do it right now.
Eat well.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
"I didn't graduate from the 7th grade to put up with this shit!"
-Chef, "Apocalypse Now"
When I was growing up, my parents raised me on a steady diet of television. Back then in the early 1960’s my favorite shows were “Diver Dan”, “The Jetsons”, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, “Get Smart” and “I dream of Genie”. These shows influenced me as I grew up. It was all about adventure, space and fighting those dastardly communists. Yikes!
Watching TV with mom.
I used to love Saturday mornings.
it would be a morning full of cartoons. I would go get a bowl of sugary cereal, add milk and even more sugar, and sit there in front of the television screen absorbing all the great child entertainment. My favorite cereals from those years were “Froot Loops”, “Coco puffs”, and “Rice Krispies”. I was, I tell youse guys, just a normal kid.
Watching the shows.
In those days, mind control via electronic media was unheard of. It had to be introduced and perfected, which it was indeed, over the next two to three decades.
Now we have very advanced systems to control the minds of people, and they do work. But every now and then, the absurdity of it all becomes so glaringly obvious. And it’s laughable. Really.
If it wasn’t so absolutely sad.
From MoA. Classic.
There seem to be general meme directives for ‘western’ outlets with regards to official enemies.
Russia is said to weaponize everything. The position of China is not (yet) seen as in military terms. The emphasis is on economic competition. Any undeniable Chinese achievement must be declared to have been a bad investment. The directive thus reads:
"When writing about China's achievements - question their costs."
China’s Experimental Cure for Cancer China’s curing cancer faster and cheaper than anywhere else. But some worry they may be going too fast.
– Bloomberg, Dec 12th 2019
I read a few articles on China’s high speed train system, and in the most recent the cost versus revenue was a worry/criticism, even though it would be easy to argue or at least discuss about positive externalities worthy of subsidies.
Similar cost related criticism was laid on the huge program to develop new gas fields in Eastern Siberia and connect them with pipelines to China. It seems to be true that the long term contracts signed with China when the natural gas prices were very depressed were not best possible, but since those projects have to be considered in 20-50 year time frame, it was silly even then. Now the concerns about profitability of delivering natural gas to China in the future look hilarious.
There is an objective aspect in some “cost/global” articles. China is dominating so many commodity markets that decisions impacting import and export of China have tremendous impact on importers and exporters alike.
Most glaring is the lack of “at what cost” questions concerning the West. EU delays approval of North Stream II, but at what cost? Technocrats decreased investments in fossil fuels in EU and reliance on so-called clean fuels, but at what cost?
Both are phenomenal.
Madam Baerbock speaks her mind, but at what cost? This girl sends markets to panic which is not a part of her job description.
Ukraine “decreases reliance on Russia”, but at what cost?
Some estimate that the resulting losses are many times larger than gains from “western orientation”, western commentators do not attempt any such calculations. Freedom is worth every price if someone else pays for it (USA likes when the cost is born by EU, and EU likes when Ukrainians hold the short end of the stick).
Some thoughts…
Now I know to read any title that contains ‘China’ and ‘at what cost’ because it threatens the cult of U.S. hegemony.
1. Articles about environment: After skimming these articles, I agree, the ‘at what cost’ was so inappropriate for the content, it does look like it was planted, ‘will they succeed’ would have been more natural for these articles. Air quality has previously been notoriously bad in China, ongoing efforts to improve it was a very good thing.
2. articles about AI: ‘threatened by U.S.’ would be most accurate or some suitable alternative. This group of headlines says that China is vulnerable in the chip area. There is a condescending tone because it says, ML (Machine Learning) is data sets and processing power, and not so much about innovation, this is true. But I would not discount China’s ability to innovate. In using AI to implement a police state, ‘at what cost’, is appropriate here, as it conjures up everyone’s worst fears, even for our own govt. Pointing out how ML can be abused by a govt is a good thing. But even better is pointing out how it has eliminated rapes, kidnapping, child abductions, and fraud by leaderships inside of China is a great thing.
3. I can see how ‘at what cost’ can be used for the other categories but agree that the repetitious use wreaks of information war.
Infographic
Global Times provides this excellent infographic aimed directly at BigLie media’s propaganda meme as it’s titled, “China’s commitment to the world in 2021.”
Number two…
Number three…
Number four…
I am “chomping at the bit” in anticipation to see the United States versions of these meme’s.
Here’s an article out of Laos…
Laos.
‘The country that bombed you is your friend. The one that built your new railway is your enemy’
Major bridge across the Yuanjiang River along the China-Laos railway in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Xinhua
Tom Fowdy / RT
This is the Western media’s bizarre messaging to the people of Laos, a nation that was carpet bombed by America, and which is now being vilified for accepting a new $6 billion railway line paid for by China.
Thursday was National Day in Laos, a celebration marking 46 years since the landlocked Southeast Asian nation deposed its monarchy and became a revolutionary communist state, an effort which was supported by Vietnam.
This year, the anniversary had added significance, as it saw the opening of a major new project, an electrified high-speed and freight railway system connecting the capital city, Vientiane with its northern neighbour, China.
The $6 billion project is part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and has been hailed as one of its flagship achievements. It is the first commercial and industrial railway in Laos, which, given its geography and the fact it is surrounded by mountainous terrain, has not previously had many options to expand its exports and generate economic growth.
Now, though, it has a direct rapid link into the world’s second largest economy and the world’s largest consumer market by population, and a connection to the booming ports of Guangdong. In terms of what it will bring to Laos, it is a game changer. So, what’s not to like about it?
To nobody’s surprise, the mainstream media have responded to the railway with the usual anti-China negativity. A plethora of articles sought to paint the project as a ‘debt trap’, promoting the accusation that Beijing loans countries money for projects they cannot afford and then exerts political leverage over it.
The Financial Times, for one, ran with a cynical article headlined ‘Laos to open Chinese-built railway amid fears of Beijing’s influence’. It implied that somehow Laos feels threatened or fears the construction of this very pioneering railway project (which the country’s own leader made sure he was the first to travel on). This suggestion of ‘fears of Chinese influence’ has become a common feature on such stories, which seek to cast doubt over anything positive China may be achieving or doing.
A common Twitter meme among pro-China users which has followed from stories like this asks: “but at what cost?” highlighting the frequency of such negative coverage.
And if you Google “China, but at what cost?” you can find a great many examples of articles published in major outlets. In producing such pieces, the broader intention is to depict Beijing’s actions as unwanted, threatening and constantly facing opposition. In the case of the Laos railway project, the ‘problem’ is it was financed by debt, and therefore it is not a positive step.
Yet this argument is as insulting as it is outright insensitive to Laos’ contemporary history. Anyone who knows anything about Laos’ relatively recent past will be well aware that China is not the country to fear, but the United States – the nation that dropped over 260 million cluster bombs on Laos and completely devastated the country as an extension of the Vietnam War, making it the most single bombed nation in history and claiming over 50,000 lives.
Many of these bombs remain unexploded and litter the countryside of Laos, continuing to kill civilians. In constructing the new railway, workers first had to clear the unexploded ordnance. How is it that the world and the mainstream media remain indifferent to this atrocity? And how, by any stretch of the imagination, can they claim that China is the true threat to Laos, and that the US and its allies act in the true interests of the country?
Herein lies the problem. Such a mindset symbolizes the elitism, chauvinism and self-righteousness of the countries of the West, which are ideologically inclined to believe that they stand for the ‘true interests’ of the ordinary people in the countries they profess to liberate.
Western politics peddles the assumption that through countries’ adherence to liberal democracy, they exclusively hold a single, universal, impartial and moralistic truth, derived from the ontological legacy of Christianity, and they have an obligation to introduce it to others. The West always acts truthfully and in good faith, while its enemies do not. And therefore, so the logic goes, any policy the US or its allies direct towards Laos is motivated by sincere intent and goodwill for its interests, and in turn, anything that China does is bad-faith, expansionist and power-hungry behaviour motivated by a desire to influence or control the country.
This creates the bizarre scenario whereby Beijing is depicted as evil and sinister for building a railway to connect to its neighbour – but we should forget America dropping millions of bombs on the country because it was done in the name of ‘freedom’. I’m sure you can imagine how the media would react if China did the latter.
Those who push this narrative predictably omit any insight into how Laos itself thinks about the situation. Another piece which took a similar stance, published in The Diplomat, was titled ‘Laos-China Railway inaugurated amid mounting debt concerns’.
But like the ‘fears of Beijing influence’ expressed in the FT, who are these ‘concerns’ from? The report cites the “Washington-based Center for Global Development” and what it merely describes as a “US based analyst” as sources who push the ‘debt trap’ narrative. But nowhere in any of these articles is there an actual voice direct from Laos who raises any fear of China, or objects to the railway’s existence.
Instead, they simply talk on the country’s behalf, obscuring the reality that a communist state which suffered from extreme levels of aggression from the US probably does not see its northern neighbour – and its most important economic partner – as a threat to its regime. With many more articles running variations of the same theme, there is minimal effort given to the consideration that the railway will help the country rapidly expand its exports, sustain greater growth and help Laos pay for the project.
The Laos-China railway has provided a textbook example of how the media can distort a story in order to fortify an incriminating narrative, while brushing aside brutal realities. We are shown a lopsided world, where the travesty of a country being bombed into oblivion with consequences lasting decades is ignored, and the preference is to try to convince us how that same country’s first commercial railway line is, in fact, what it should really be scared of.
It is a demonstration of how the power of the English-language, pro-US media distorts reality itself and how they can blow up an issue, yet hide the truth, by professing to care dearly about the wellbeing and interests of a country which the West poured death, destruction and carnage upon in the name of freedom.
Here’s an article out of Cambodia…
Cambodia
Cambodia-US Relations: Cambodia is not the enemy of the US
Two U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52D Stratofortress bombers over Cambodia, 1970. Original description: “Aerial bombing of Cambodia: Operation Menu”. Wikipedia
America believes that Cambodia is China’s vassal state. And it does everything to solidify that belief. At the end, they justify their sanctions against Cambodia for being too friendly with China whom the US considers as the “malign actor” and “revisionist state” to the hegemonic order with the US at the top.
But then how much is called overdependent? How much sanction is considered enough against the alleged malign actor?
Americans warn Cambodians to beware of lucrative interactions with China. But Cambodia’s trade and investment with China is less than 10% of the whole of Southeast Asia. Statistically speaking, countries that are close with the US such as Singapore and Vietnam are in fact the highest beneficiaries from trade and investments with China.
Media that are anti-China can lie about Cambodia’s overdependence on China but numbers don’t lie. Impartial academics should look into those number by themselves and make comparison to the whole region to verify and question their established prejudice. The so-called independent minds should not become the trash collectors of all bad press about Cambodia with many hyperlinks to the anti-Cambodia puppet media and organizations.
Cambodia is currently the most sanctioned country in Southeast Asia, even more than the military junta in Myanmar, and the fact is that there is no sanction at all against communist Vietnam, who has no freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression. What does anyone say to these? None at all.
What does democracy mean to America when Cambodia is being treated this way by the American government and congress on the aspect of democracy and human rights?
Cambodia is among the few countries in Southeast Asia that has regular multi-parties election.
Cambodia is among the few countries where press, both domestic and foreign, operate freely, and some of the US’ affiliates like the Voice of America, the Voice of Democracy, and Radio Free Asia, bombards daily with verbal diarrhea against Cambodia as if Cambodian people are living in hell. Nothing can be seen positive from the point of view. And they still say that Cambodia has no freedom of expression.
Facebook operates freely in Cambodia. Internet freedom is among the fullest compared to countries in the region. Cambodian people are addicted to Facebook freedom. They really enjoy it. So long as they don’t defame, libel, slander, promote uprising, treason and the toppling of government, they are free to say anything.
Cambodia is hosting more than 5,000 civil society organisations but human right groups in Cambodia, funded by foreign governments, still has liberty to say that Cambodia lacks freedom of association as compared to Viet Nam which has only one state union. In the US, these organisations would have been banned or classified as “foreign agents”. According to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), passed in 1938, it is required that agents representing the interests of foreign powers in a “political or quasi-political capacity” disclose their relationship with the foreign government and information about related activities and finances.
But such kind of civil society organisations in Cambodia are hiding behind protection of their foreign embassies crying foul that Cambodia’s Law on NGO (LANGO) is too restrictive because they simply cannot disclose their finance and activities that are fundamentally foreign-owned, foreign-initiated and foreign-led.
What does America want from Cambodia? Does it want Cambodia to become the enemy of China and to fight China on America’s behalf? Where does Cambodia’s national interest stand in supporting the US and in making China its enemy? Where is the right to self-determination of Cambodia that the US often says that it respects fully? Does the US want Cambodia to commit suicide to express its sincerity in wanting friendship with the US?
Cambodia is considered as “gold-standard” in terms of cooperation with the US in area such as POW/MIA. Cambodia even accepted 300 Afghan refugees when only a few countries in the region are willing to do so.
But what does Cambodia receive in return? The US cut off scholarship for military students who are already in the US. The US imposed visa sanctions against high-ranking officials in the whole Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
They are sanctioning the very individuals that act as the main bridge of friendship and relations between Cambodia and the US.
This is too cruel a treatment from a friend. The US is treating Cambodia like an enemy.
While the US says that it stands with Cambodian people for its independence and march towards stable and peaceful democracy, Cambodia is in fact one of the most sanctioned countries in Southeast Asia, even worst than the so-called US enemies.
People might probably say sometimes, frankness is needed among sincere friends. But a friend should not express solidarity through piles of sanctions like what the US is doing towards Cambodia right now.
How could a friend be so cruel to treat another friend that way? What does friendship mean for the American government and congressmen?
Is this the best treatment that the American government can afford to Cambodia, which is the last beacon of hope of democracy in the Mekong region? Which country in the Mekong region that fares better than Cambodia in terms of democracy and human rights?
Cambodian people like America; they like American democracy; they aspire to have American democracy.
It is totally unfair for Cambodia that it needs to sacrifice its national interest to befriend with the US. Why is it so hard to befriend with the US?
The US should reconsider its relations with Cambodia from the heart, not from the brain of geopolitical strategy. The brightest brain like Henry Kissinger that was behind the dropping of millions of bombs on Cambodian people is not a friend of Cambodia. He is nothing but a war criminal. He should not be the one to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What does peace prize mean for an individual that was behind the killings of hundreds of thousands of Cambodian people?
Which US congressman and policy-maker want to become the next Henry Kissinger, the war criminal that won a Nobel Peace Prize?
An American B-52 aircraft is not smart to distinguish between the Viet Cong and Cambodian civilians. The fact is that they killed more civilians than the Viet Cong that the US considered as US’ enemies.
There is no better definition than “war crime” and “crime against humanity” considering the US’ acts against Cambodia during the 1970s. America should never forget that. American government, American people, American policy-makers, American congressmen should never forget that. America should remember their atrocity against Cambodian people during the 1970s. Cambodian civilians and government are not US’ enemy.
And another article…
China’s Belt and Road rail services booming despite Covid-19
A train carrying 33 refrigerated containers departs from the Tengjun International Land Port in Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, for Laos. Xinhua
Beijing has inked more than 200 cooperation documents for the joint construction of the Belt and Road with 145 countries and 32 international organizations
Xinhua – Though the world remains haunted by the still ravaging COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2021, the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has seen a boom in promoting world connectivity.
Under the BRI framework, railway construction is expanding across the global landscape. The iconic China-Europe Railway Express, the China-Laos railway and the railway line in Tanzania have all recorded milestone achievements over the past year.
These important railway projects provide important pillars for the BRI, and also contribute their due share to improving the global supply chain and the COVID-19 fight.
LINE OF HEALTH AND GIFTS
During days just before Christmas, when people in Western countries are worrying that they may not be able to receive their Christmas gifts on time due to clogged shipping lanes, China-Europe trains from different regions were sending products to Europe without delay.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of China-Europe freight trains. By the end of October, the China-Europe freight trains plying along 73 routes have reached 175 cities in 23 European countries with more than 50,000 kinds of goods.
Amid the pandemic, the number of China-Europe express trains as well as the volume of freight have continued to break new records.
Data from China’s National Development and Reform Commission shows that during the January-November period, the railway service linking the two sides operated 13,817 trains, carrying 1.332 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), an increase of 23 percent and 30 percent respectively compared with the year 2020.
At the end of November, the cumulative number of anti-epidemic equipment transported by the China-Europe freight trains reached 13.43 million pieces and 103,000 tons.
“China is very important for the global supply chain. And in most cases it’s faster (than the ocean shipping). Therefore, it’s a useful alternative to use the train, and it’s reliable,” said Axel Mattern, joint chief executive officer of Port of Hamburg Marketing.
According to global logistics company MEDILINK, the initial freight rate of the China-Europe rail network is often two-thirds higher than that of sea freight, but the current price is very competitive.
The current freight rates of the China-Europe freight trains are basically the same as those of sea freight, but it only takes nearly half the time, said Logistics industry insiders.
KEY FOR TRANS-ASIAN CONNECTIVITY
On Dec. 3, the China-Laos Railway officially started operation. It marks a crucial step for the trans-Asian railway network, which has been brewing for more than half a century. Since then, the journey from Vientiane to the border with China has been reduced from 2 days to 3 hours, and the journey to Kunming, capital of China’s Yunnan Province, can be made in a day.
“The China-Laos railway is conducive to promoting the development of areas that are located along the line. Countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion, including Thailand, Laos and China, will benefit from trade, agricultural products, consumer products, investment and tourism,” said Pichet Kunadhamraks, deputy director-general of the Department of Rail Transport under the Thai Ministry of Transport, in an interview with Xinhua.
The railway is expected to reduce transport costs between Vientiane and Kunming by 40 to 50 percent, said a World Bank report, noting transport costs from Thailand’s Laem Chabang port to Kunming are expected to fall by at least 32 percent.
It is estimated that by 2030, the annual volume of commercial goods in transit through the Laos section of the China-Laos Railway will reach 3.9 million tons, it added.
This year coincides with the 30th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue relations, and the two sides are advancing the BRI and the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025.
On Jan. 1, 2022, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will officially enter into force. Experts believe that the BRI will lead to the construction of the trans-Asian rail network and promote regional connectivity.
ROAD OF DEVELOPMENT
In mid-June this year, a ceremony was held to launch the Ithaca-Mwanza section of the Standard Gauge Railway of Tanzania’s Central Line, the construction of which is undertaken by a Chinese company.
After the completion of this project, it will become an important route connecting Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and other countries, providing a pathway to the Indian Ocean. It is of great importance for promoting the economic development of the countries in the region and improving the living conditions of the people.
From the Tanzania-Zambia railway built in the 1970s, to the Djibouti-Ethiopia and Mombasa-Nairobi railways, and the Standard Gauge Railway of Tanzania’s Central Line, the joint efforts of China and Africa have created jobs, trade opportunities and a better investment environment, thereby contributing to local prosperity as well as to the improvement of the living conditions of the local residents.
As of Dec. 16, China has signed more than 200 cooperation documents for the joint construction of the Belt and Road with 145 countries and 32 international organizations, and financial institutions such as China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Silk Road Fund have expanded financing channels for infrastructure construction.
According to Bambang Suryono, chairman of Indonesian think tank Asia Innovation Study Center, for many countries, a major obstacle to escape poverty is the weakness of transport infrastructure, and in this regard, China’s success can set an example.
Conclusion
When you measure everything against the cost structure imposed by western capitalism, everything China does inevitably looks costly.
Totally absent from the analysis is the question of benefits.
The west thinks only of profits. China thinks of the benefits not only to China and the Chinese people, but to the countries and peoples with whom they do business.
The West = Personal Profit
China = Benefits for Groups of People
The long term superiority of such a strategy is blindingly obvious to any open minded observer. It’s the reason why China and Russia will eventually pass through this contentious period of change, and prevail in a new better world.
Many other nations see this, and they do remember how the United States treated / treats them. When the shit hits the fan, and it will, the United States will be broke, penniless, scorned and friendless.
No matter how you spin it, it will not a good situation to be in.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
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Sometimes when something is too good to be true, it actually is.
In the tenth year of the Trojan War, despairing at their inability to take the city by storm, the Greeks resorted to a cunning little stratagem.
Truth be told, “little” may not be the proper word for it, because the central part of the plan – devised by who else but Odysseus – included the construction of an enormous wooden horse.
Almost everybody knows why it had been built and who lay hidden inside the hollow belly of the statue.
However, the whole story is a bit more complicated than that; and it includes several memorable episodes you can find out more about below.
The Stratagem
Epeius and the Construction of the Horse
Now, for Odysseus’ plan to work, the Greeks needed a master-engineer; fortunately, they did have one in their ranks: Epeius.
True, he had the reputation of being a coward, but as far as architecture was considered, there weren’t many people on the planet who could rival him both in knowledge and vision.
He needed no more than three days and just a few helpers to build a huge hollow horse of fir planks, felled on Mount Ida.
Following the advice of Odysseus, Epeius also installed a trap-door on one side of the wooden horse, and engraved large letters on the other:
“For their return home, the Greeks dedicate this thank-offering to Athena.”
The Heroes in the Horse
Once the Wooden Horse had been built, Odysseus proceeded to persuade the bravest and the most skillful of the Greek warriors present at Troy to climb, fully armed, into its belly. Some say that there were 23 of them, while others speculate with numbers between 30 and 50.
Either way, we know for sure that, in addition to Odysseus, Menelaus, Diomedes, Neoptolemus, Acamas, Sthenelus, and Thoas were also there.
Even though hesitant and scared stiff, Epeius joined the party as well: he was, after all, the only one who knew how to operate the trap-door.
The Rest of the Plan
Once the night had fallen, the remaining Greeks burned their tents and, led by Agamemnon, sailed off to the nearby island of Tenedos.
The plan was to stay there for a night and then go back to Troy. Odysseus’s first cousin, Sinon, was the only one left behind; and for a reason: he was supposed to signal them the appropriate moment for their return.
At break of day, the Trojan scouts were met with a sight that must have been beyond joyful: the camp of the Greeks lay in ashes, deserted and all but empty. Priam and his sons immediately went out to witness this miracle with their own eyes; and, of course, the only thing they could find there was a giant wooden horse dedicated to Athens.
They stood in wonder for some time, before Thymoetes suggested that they should take the horse into Troy and pull it up to Athens’ citadel. Capys, however, had other ideas.
“We should hurl into the sea this false Greek gift, or underneath it thrust a kindling flame, or pierce the hollow ambush of its womb with probing spear! Athene favored the Greeks for far too long...”
Priam was in favor of Thymoetes’ proposal: since the horse was an offering to a goddess, desecrating it didn’t seem to the king of Troy as such a great idea.
Laocoon’s Warning
At that very moment, hurrying down from the citadel and followed by a large crowd, the Trojan priest Laocoon started shouting from afar:
“O unhappy men! What madness this? Who deems our foemen fled?
Think ye the gifts of Greece can lack for guile? Have ye not known Ulysses?...
This is all a trap.
Trust not this horse, o countrymen, whatever it may bring!
I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.” Saying that, Laocoon whirled a spear in the direction of the Horse. Numerous cheers followed this fearsome act:
“Burn it!”
“Pierce it!”
“Hurl it over the walls!”
Sinon Clarifies His Presence
This argument was interrupted by the arrival of Sinon, brought in chained by a couple of Trojan soldiers.
Now, it is difficult to say whether Odysseus had planned for this part as well, or whether the Greeks merely had a stroke of luck; be that as it may, it was Sinon who eventually convinced the Trojans to roll the horse through the Gates of Troy.
He explained to Priam that the Greeks, weary of warring and downcast after the death of Achilles, had deliberated leaving Troy for a couple of months, and they would have done that much earlier if not for the bad weather.
Calchas, the most famous Achaean prophet, announced that the only way for the winds to be appeased was through human sacrifice; the scapegoat he pointed his finger at (in a nice touch to the story, supposedly “bribed by Odysseus”) was none other than Sinon himself.
However, the favorable winds sprang up before the ceremony took place, and Sinon managed to make his escape in the confusion.
Sinon’s Explanation of the Wooden Horse
“Let’s say that we believe you, Sinon,”
Replied Priam.
“But what’s with the horse?”
“Oh, that! It is merely a placatory gift to Athene, who stopped helping the Greeks after Odysseus and Diomedes stole a statue from her temple.”
…
“Nonetheless,”
Priam had a good follow-up question;
"Why make it so huge?”
But Sinon had an even better answer:
“So that you are unable to bring it into the city.
For Calchas had prophesized that If you defile it, a horrible ruin – o, may the gods bring it on Calchas rather!
– would come on your throne; however, if you manage to wheel it to your own citadel, then you will become a ruler of all Asia and invade Greece.”
The Death of Laocoon
“Lies, all lies,”
Cried Laocoon.
“Every word he uttered sounds as if invented by Odysseus! Believe him not, Priam!”
However, it is difficult for one to blame the king of Troy for not taking the Trojan priest seriously when, just as he was saying this, two serpents swam out of the sea and strangled Laocoon and his twin sons.
In reality, the snakes were sent by Apollo in punishment for when Laocoon once slept with his wife in front of Apollo’s image; to the eyes of the Trojans, however, they were a sign of the gods: Sinon had obviously spoken the truth, and Laocoon was punished for lying and throwing a spear at the Horse.
The Bloody Celebration
Helen and Deiphobus
With much effort, the Trojans dragged the Wooden Horse inside their Gates, consecrated it to Athene, and started wildly celebrating their victory.
During the festivities, Helen and Priam’s son Deiphobos sneaked to the wooden statue.
As Deiphobus was observing it in marvel and patting its planks, Helen amused him by calling out the names of the Greek heroes in the voice of their wives. It is not known whether Helen was a part of the plan as well, and this was a whim of overconfidence, or whether she was merely joyful, but, owing to either displeasure or eagerness, many Greeks were tempted to leap out of the horse at this point – especially Menelaus and Diomedes.
However, Odysseus restrained them all, patiently waiting for the proper moment for him to enact the final act of his devious plan.
The Attack
At midnight, just before the seventh full moon of that year had risen, Sinon slipped through the Gates of Troy and kindled a beacon – the signal Agamemnon had waited for to return with the Achaean fleet to shore.
An hour or so later, in the dead silence of the night, Odysseus raised his sword and ordered Epeius to unlock the trap-door.
Echion was the first one to jump out of the horse; being too eager and reckless, he fell and broke his neck; the rest used Epeius’ rope-ladder.
Soon enough, Agamemnon’s army stormed through the open gates.
Not even the gods could save Troy now.
The Trojan Horse Sources
Most of this story is told by Virgil in the second book of the Aeneid, which you can read here in Dryden’s rhymed version, and here in Theodore C. Williams blank verse translation; for a summary of the same events, consult the epitome of Apollodorus’ Library.
Throughout the West, people are using the “hook” of financial gain to manipulate others. We all know that this is a trick, but what kind of a trick? I argue that it is a hidden (potential) crime wearing the outer skin of respectability. Like the Trojan Horse.
You expect one thing, and then (once the strap is sprung) something else manifests.
Whether a wooden horse, a business proposition, an email promising to send you millions of dollars, or some other otherwise unusual benefit or arrangement.
Often the vices are used to spring the trap, with greed, lust and vanity being the most common.
Be very careful when anyone tries to appeal to one of your vices. It could very well end up being very dangerous.
So what do you do?
If something is unusual, like finding out you had a great uncle Metallicman that left you 50 million dollars, or to give a copy of your passport and bank information so that you can get a loan at 3%, or anything related, stop… just stop.
Go for a nice long walk.
Go all by your self into a lone cafe, or coffee house.
An American Diner.
Sit down.
Look up at the menu.
See if there is a special, or maybe a daily special that you can eat. I tend to go for the specials, and the soups. But that is just me. Don’t you know.
Place an order.
Place your order with the waitress.
And forget about everything.
Eat a nice sandwich (maybe a blue plate special) wash it down with a cup of coffee, and forget about the “news” or anything else.
Typical diner fare; Three sunny-side-up eggs, buttered whole-wheat toast, hash brown potatoes, and country-style chicken-fried pork.
Then just go for a walk down the lane.
Most traps disguise themselves as “unusual events promising enormous profit“.
Ignore it all.
Move on.
A cup of “Joe” in an American diner.
Remember, the reason why Athens moved the Trojan Horse into it’s gates was because they believed that in doing so they would have the benefits provided by the God’s themselves.
Don’t allow others to hurt your by manipulating your mind by your propensity toward vices.
Finally…
One day after I wrote this article, I got this…
Liewe Gelukkige Wenner!
Dit is vir ons aangenaam om u in te lig oor die uitslag van die
Internasionale Aanlyn Loteryprogram op 1 Desember 2021, wat 'n poging
is om geesteswetenskappe te help van die ernstige globale ekonomiese
krisis as gevolg van (Coivd-19). Nommer: SMLL / 2021 / -968091 / 21,
wat die 1ste kategorie gewen het. U is dus geregtig op 'n enkelbedrag
van $2,000,000.00 (Twee miljoen Amerikaanse dollars). Ons moedig jou
aan om jou trustee te kontak deur die inligting hieronder te gebruik
vir bekragtiging en meer inligting oor die gebruik van jou prys.
Mnr Brian Luke
E-pos: usalotery2@gmail.com
Groete,
Mnr Williams Poker.
Internasionale Lotery (Koördineerder).
Dear Lucky Winner!
We are pleased to inform you about the outcome of the International
Online Lottery Program on December 1st, 2021 which is a bid to help
humanities from the severe global economic crunch as a result of
(Coivd-19). Number: SMLL / 2021 / -968091 / 21, which won the 1st
category. You are therefore entitled to a lump sum of $2,000,000.00
(Two million United States dollars). We encourage you to contact your
trustee using the information below for validation and more
information on redeeming your prize.
Mr. Brian Luke
Email: usalotery2@gmail.com
Regards,
Mr. Williams Poker.
International Lottery (Coordinator).
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my Happiness Index.
I have discussed this before. if you make those people around you smile, feel good about themselves, and happy, it will drench your local quanta field with positive and constructive energy charge.
Here is a simple video that illustrates this effect.
Make the people around you happy, and your quanta field will strengthen and your verbal affirmations will be energized. As each thought packet needs energy to manifest. Make other happy. Even if it is a lie. Generate an enormous positive, happy and hopeful series of thoughts that surround you.
Listen to me!
This will *BANG* things into being so much quicker. You have no idea!
Keep in mind that everything we do has an accumulated characteristic that color and alters the prayer campaign. For you to advance forward you need to be of clear mind and purpose, and control any negative and counter active thoughts and actions that might have developed into habitual problems within your life. And, as this article illustrated, inject positive power and energy into the field that surrounds you.
The “thought packets” associated with each singular verbal affirmation NEED *energy* and good-will to manifest. Spread the love around, and your dreams and goals will manifest.
If you do, you can be guaranteed of speedier implementation of all your desires.
Best Regards.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my Intention Prayer Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
This article is about the creation of a mechanical / electrical device that will help you conduct affirmation prayer campaigns. What it will do is [1] scrub your mind form the electromagnetic waves trying to manipulate you and [2] replace it with affirmations, direction and MWI navigation channels of your own design. Huh? What am I talking about?
“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”
— They Live
We are living in an age of mayhem, madness and monsters. Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government. What we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.
You will conform.
Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
We have let the government’s evil-doing and abuses go on for too long. We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth. We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality. We’re living in two worlds: the world we see (or are made to see) and the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.
Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing; pandemic lockdowns (both mental and physical), real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation; and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.
The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers, disease, etc.). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats. Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.
Obey. Resistance is futile.
Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: the moneyed elite who rule us view us as expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.
In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
They live.
In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
As CBS News reports, “Once in office, members of Congress enjoy access to connections and information they can use to increase their wealth, in ways that are unparalleled in the private sector. And once politicians leave office, their connections allow them to profit even further.”
In denouncing this blatant corruption of America’s political system, former president Jimmy Carter blasted the process of getting elected—to the White House, governor’s mansion, Congress or state legislatures—as “unlimited political bribery… a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over.”
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia.
Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply.
Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes. Sound familiar?
Our Rulers
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests. We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism. Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests—not elected by the citizenry—rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be.
It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?
Fear
The answer is the same in every age: fear. Fear makes people stupid. Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on. The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.
Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power. As the Bearded Man warns in John Carpenter’s film They Live:
“They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”
We are living the movie
In this regard, we’re not so different from the oppressed citizens in They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age or Carpenter’s other dystopian films.
Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.
Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.
In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.
In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.
In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.
In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”
And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.
It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.
The true power
When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.
A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”
When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.
They Live.
This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.
A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.
In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”
From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good.
The truth is far different. Despite the truth staring us in the face, we have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.
We are manipulated zombies
We live in a perpetual state of denial, insulated from the painful reality of the American police state by wall-to-wall entertainment news and screen devices.
They Live.
Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street.
Families sit in restaurants with their heads down, separated by their screen devices and unaware of what’s going on around them.
Young people especially seem dominated by the devices they hold in their hands, oblivious to the fact that they can simply push a button, turn the thing off and walk away.
Indeed, there is no larger group activity than that connected with those who watch screens—that is, television, lap tops, personal computers, cell phones and so on.
Psychologically it is similar to drug addiction. Researchers found that “almost immediately after turning on the TV, subjects reported feeling more relaxed, and because this occurs so quickly and the tension returns so rapidly after the TV is turned off, people are conditioned to associate TV viewing with a lack of tension.”
Research also shows that regardless of the programming, viewers’ brain waves slow down, thus transforming them into a more passive, nonresistant state. Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. “
Given that the majority of what Americans watch on television is provided through channels controlled by six mega corporations, what we watch is now controlled by a corporate elite and, if that elite needs to foster a particular viewpoint or pacify its viewers, it can do so on a large scale.
If we’re watching, we’re not doing. The powers-that-be understand this. As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech:
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.
They live.
When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent.
They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness.
We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”
We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. Human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.
They live.
Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.
So where does that leave us?
The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight. Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.
When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hyno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares,
“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum.”
In other words: we need to get active. Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.
The real battle between freedom and tyranny is taking place right in front of our eyes, if we would only open them. All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight. Wake up, America. If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.
The solution
Yah. You can’t change the world. But you change your little part of it.
This article describes the theory and the schematics for a device that will be useful in assisting people to control their mind.
It is based on mind control patents released to the public in the 1970’s. It is not for casual use, and nor should it ever be used to control others without their knowledge.
It will scrub your mind of the programming of others, and it will enable you to self program your mind, for your own purposes. This particular device is based on “Silent Sound” technology. You might be aware of this by the very well passed around graphic meme…
Silent Sound.
It’s an interesting technology.
Silent Sound
TheSound of Silence is a military-intelligence code word for certain psychotronicweapons of mass mind-control tested in the mid-1950s, perfected during the 70s, and used extensively by the “modern” US military in theearly 90s, despite the oppositionandwarnings issued by men such as DwightDavid Eisenhower.
-Digital TV, H.A.A.R.P., GWEN Towers, SilentSound & Mind
And of course, being so influential, the government would use it to control people…
…and they do.
And they have. And it is everywhere, and being implemented by every other person, company, media or government. Americans, and those in many nations of the West are terribly irradiated and manipulated.
This is one of those subjects that once you get involved in it, it sucks you in and takes you down, down, down into a morass of misdirection, emotionally charged literature, and technical papers. Ugh! Such as this…
Yeah. More and more and more. It’s no wonder that everyone in the ‘States feel stressed. They are constantly being manipulated and beamed at with all sorts of manipulative wave forms…
U.S. Patent, #5,123,899. June 23, 1992
DESCRIPTION: A system for stimulating the brain to exhibit specific brain wave rhythms and thereby altering the subjects’ state of consciousness.
U.S. Patent, #5,289,438. February 22, 1994DESCRIPTION: A system for the simultaneous application of multiple stimuli (usually aural) with different frequencies and waveforms. Electro Magnetic Field (EMF) monitoring / interference is one of the most insidious and secretive of all methods used by the agencies. Similarly, EEG cloning feeds back the results of EMF monitoring in an attempt to induce emotional responses (e.g. fear, anger, even sleep, etc.)
US Patent # 4,777,529 (October 11, 1988)
Auditory Subliminal Programming System, Schultz, Richard M., et al.
Abstract --- An auditory subliminal programming system includes a subliminal message encoder that generates fixed frequency security tones and combines them with a subliminal message signal to produce an encoded subliminal message signal which is recorded on audio tape or the like. A corresponding subliminal decoder/mixer is connected as part of a user's conventional stereo system and receives as inputs an audio program selected by the user and the encoded subliminal message. The decoder/mixer filters the security tones, if present, from the subliminal message and combines the message signals with selected low frequency signals associated with enhanced relaxation and concentration to produce a composite auditory subliminal signal. The decoder/mixer combines the composite subliminal signal with the selected audio program signals to form composite signals only if it detects the presence of the security tones in the subliminal message signal. The decoder/mixer outputs the composite signal to the audio inputs of a conventional audio amplifier where it is amplified and broadcast by conventional audio speakers.
US Patent # 4,858,612 (August 22, 1989)
Hearing Device,Stocklin, Philip L.
Abstract --- A method and apparatus for stimulation of hearing in mammals by introduction of a plurality of microwaves into the region of the auditory cortex is shown and described. A microphone is used to transform sound signals into electrical signals which are in turn analyzed and processed to provide controls for generating a plurality of microwave signals at different frequencies. The multi-frequency microwaves are then applied to the brain in the region of the auditory cortex. By this method sounds are perceived by the mammals which are representative of the original sound received by the microphone.
US Patent # 4,877,027 (October 31, 1989)
Hearing System, Brunkan, Wayne B.
Abstract --- Sound is induced in the head of a person by radiating the head with microwaves in the range of 100 megahertz to 10,000 megahertz that are modulated with a particular waveform. The waveform consists of frequency modulated bursts. Each burst is made up of 10 to 20 uniformly spaced pulses grouped tightly together. The burst width is between 500 nanoseconds and 100 microseconds. The pulse width is in the range of 10 nanoseconds to 1 microsecond. The bursts are frequency modulated by the audio input to create the sensation of hearing in the person whose head is irradiated.
US Patent # 3,393,279 (July 16, 1968)
Nervous System Excitation Device, Flanagan, Giles P.
Abstract --- A method of transmitting audio information via a radio frequency signal modulated with the audio info through electrodes placed on the subject's skin, causing the sensation of hearing the audio information in the brain.
US Patent # 3,629,521 (January 8, 1970)
Hearing Systems, Puharich, Henry K.
Abstract --- The present invention relates to the stimulation of the sensation of hearing in persons of impaired hearing abilities or in certain cases persons totally deaf utilizing RF energy. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for imparting synchronous AF or "acoustic" signals and so-called "transdermal" or RF signals. Hearing and improved speech discrimination, in accordance with one aspect of the present invention, is stimulated by the application of an AF acoustical signal to the "ear system" conventional bio-mechanism of hearing, which is delivered to the brain through the "normal" channels of hearing and a separate transdermal RF electrical signal which is applied to the "facial nerve system" and is detectable as a sensation of hearing. Vastly improved and enhanced hearing may be achieved.
PSYCHO Acoustic Projector U.S. Patent, #3,566,347, February 23, 1971DESCRIPTION: A high directional beam radiated from a number of transducers and modulated by a speech, code, or noise beat signal. It may take the form of a radiator mounted on a vehicle, aircraft or satellite. PURPOSE: To produce aural/psychological disturbances and partial deafness.
US Patent # 3,576,185 (April 27, 1971)
Sleep-Inducing Method & Arrangement using Modulated Sound & Light, Meseck, Oscar & Schulz, Hans R.
Abstract --- N/A
US Patent # 3,568,347 (February 23, 1971)
Psycho-Acoustic Projector, Flanders, Andrew
Abstract --- A system for producing aural psychological disturbances and partial deafness in the enemy during combat situations.
US Patent # 3,647,970 (March 7, 1972) Method and System for Simplifying Speech Waveforms, Flanagan, G. Patrick
Abstract --- A complex speech waveform is simplified so that it can be transmitted directly through earth or water as a waveform and understood directly or after amplification.
US Patent # 3,773,049 (November 20, 1973)
Apparatus for Treatment of Neuropsychic & Somatic Diseases with Heat, Light, Sound & VHF Electromagnetic Radiation, L. Y. Rabichev, et al.
Abstract --- N/A
US Patent # 3,766,331 (October 16, 1973)
Hearing Aid for Producing Sensations in the Brain, Zink, Henry R.
Abstract --- A pulsed oscillator or transmitter supplies energy to a pair of insulated electrodes mounted on a person's neck. The transmitter produces pulses of intensity greater than a predetermined threshold value and of a width and rate so as to produce the sensation of hearing without the use of the auditory canal, thereby producing a hearing system enabling otherwise deaf people to hear.
US Patent # 3,727,616 (March 17, 1973)
Electronic System for Stimulation of Biological Systems, Lenskes, H.
Abstract --- A receiver totally implanted within a living body is inductively coupled by two associated receiving coils to a physically unattached external transmitter which transmits two signals of different frequencies to the receiver via two associated transmitting coils. One of the signals from the transmitter provides the implanted receiver with precise control or stimulating signals which are demodulated and processed in a signal processor network in the receiver and then used by the body for stimulation of a nerve, for example, while the other signal provides the receiver with a continuous wave power signal which is rectified in the receiver to provide a source of electrical operating power for the receiver circuitry without need for an implanted battery.
US Patent # 3,712,292 (January 23, 1973)
Method & Apparatus for Producing Swept FM Audio Signal Patterns for Inducing Sleep, Zentmeyer, J.
Abstract --- A method of producing sound signals for inducing sleep in a human being, and apparatus therefor together with representations thereof in recorded form, wherein an audio signal is generated representing a familiar, pleasing, repetitive sound, modulated by continuously sweeping frequencies in two selected frequency ranges having the dominant frequencies which occur in electrical wave patterns of the human brain during certain states of sleep. The volume of the audio signal is adjusted to mask the ambient noise and the subject can select any of several familiar, repetitive sounds most pleasing to him.
US Patent # 3,837,331 (September 24, 1974)System & Method for Controlling the Nervous System of a Living Organism, Ross, S.
Abstract --- A novel method for controlling the nervous system of a living organism for therapeutic and research purposes, among other applications, and an electronic system utilized in, and enabling the practice of the invented method. Bioelectrical signals generated in specific topological areas of the organism's nervous system, typically areas of the brain, are processed by the invented system so as to produce an output signal which is in some way an analog of selected characteristics detected in the bioelectrical signal. The output of the system, typically an audio or visual signal, is fed back to the organism as a stimulus. Responding to the stimulus, the organism can be trained to control the waveform pattern of the bioelectrical signal generated in its own nervous system.
US Patent # 3,835,833 (September 17, 1974)
Method for ObtainingNeurophysiological Effects, Limoge, A.
Abstract --- A method and apparatus for obtaining neurophysiological effects on the central and/or peripheral systems of a patient. Electrodes are suitably positioned on the body of the patient and a composite electric signal is applied at the electrodes. The composite signal is formed by the super positioning of two signals: a first signal which is a rectified high-frequency carrier modulated in amplitude to about 100 percent by substantially square-shaped pulses whose duration, amplitude and frequency are chosen according to the neurophysiological effects desired, and a second signal which has a relatively white noise spectrum. The mean value of the first electric signal has a predetermined sign which is opposite the sign of the mean value of the second electric signal.
US Patent # 3,884,218 (May 20, 1975)Method of Inducing& Maintaining Various Stages of Sleep in the Human Being, Monroe, Robert A.
Abstract --- A method of inducing sleepin a human being wherein an audio signal is generated comprising a familiar pleasing repetitive sound modulated by an EEG sleep pattern. The volume of the audio signal is adjusted to overcome the ambient noise and a subject can select a familiar repetitive sound most pleasing to himself.
Malech's Remote Brainwave-Altering Machine
US Patent Number 3,951,134 (April, 1976) - Represents an invention by Robert G. Malech Apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves
Abstract -- Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.
The Demo device
The electronics and the functional board layout isn’t all that difficult. ANy one with the most basic soldering skills can make their own device. As this image clearly shows…
But do not freak out.
Technology is a tool. It can be used for good purposes or bad. In this case we will use this technology for our own purposes which would be to improve and enhance our ability to navigate the MWI.
Other systems
And this…
What we are going to do…
Now, where this technology was promoted, and used to control others. We are going to take this technology to construct a machine that we can use on ourselves to help us reprogram our own minds away from other influences. And so let’s look at the basic outline of our intentions. What we will do is…
Create a steady tone
We will create a steady tone on the high end of the hearing range. The normal human hearing range of a healthy individual is usually in-between 20Hz and 20KHz with the higher frequencies gradually fading during a lifetime. Below 20Hz are called infrasounds and above 20000Hz are called ultrasounds. This is easily done. You take a cheap 555 IC chip, add some resistors and capacitors and attach it to a battery and you have a tone.
Create a custom affirmation campaign
We will create a custom affirmation campaign or document just for this device, and record the audio track in MP3 format. In so doing we will read it from the FIRST PERSON perspective.
I am calm, cool and collected.
I have a great life and I am very satisfied with it.
I am healthy and eat good, healthy and delicious food often.
Etc. Etc. We will then record this as an MP3 file format.
Construct a voice modulator circuit
We will construct a voice modulator circuit. With it, the two signals would be merged together as one singular signal. Thus the reading of the affirmations would be overlaid over the carrier tone. It’s a common and normal well-used circuit. Here’s one with transistors… Here’s one with ICs…
The overlaid signal
From that voice modulator circuit will be an overlay of the steady carrier tone and the affirmation campaign. This is the signal that will be the primary driver for the system.
Compress the signal
[5] We will then compress that signal. Then we will pulse it at a target frequency. There are multiple brainwave frequencies or patterns of brain activity. Most of the recorded information the the brain is received through the senses and is encoded in electrical impulses. All parts of the brain communicate with each other, and this is done through a vast array of nerve cells – the neurons – which work like small “electrical” stations. Their membrane presents an electrochemical charge on the external surface, releasing it again and again in the form of what is called cyclical electrical potential. This is what is commonly known as brain waves. These waves then travel along neural protrusions called axons and dendrites to other neurons. The nerve cells act in unison to generate thoughts, movements, and information that spread through very fine networks, between the various parts of the brain and the organs of action.
Target Frequencies
With the following be the different target frequencies that we can utilize; Alpha Waves: 8 Hz – 12 Hz In the alpha wave state, you’ll most likely feel awake but also simultaneously quite relaxed and without a loss of brain function like you would if you were very tired. When you get up in the morning and just before you fall asleep, you are naturally in this state. It’s interesting to note that when you close your eyes your brain naturally starts producing more alpha waves, however there are varying degrees of the alpha wave state and when you really drop in deep it’s far more powerful and profound than what you might feel or experience just from closing your eyes. Deep alpha wave states are frequently seen in and experienced by meditators. Alpha activity also heightens your imagination, visualization, memory, learning and concentration and is correlated with a decrease in stress and anxiety. Beta Waves: 12 Hz – 27 Hz In the beta state you are essentially wide awake. Beta brainwaves are associated with normal waking consciousness and a heightened state of alertness, logic and critical reasoning. This is the dominant mental state most people are in during the day and the majority of their waking lives. Although this state tends to be uneventful, don’t underestimate its importance. Many people who lack sufficient beta activity may experience mental or emotional disorders such as depression or ADHD, and low SMR production (a sub-range of beta at 12-15 Hz) may be related to insomnia. While Beta brainwaves are important for effective functioning throughout the day, they also can translate into stress, anxiety and restlessness. The voice of beta can be described as being that nagging little inner critic that gets louder the higher you go into the range. On the other hand, stimulating beta waves in under active individuals can improve energy levels, concentration, attentiveness and emotional stability, however, most people notice more benefit from shifting their brainwaves into other less frequently experienced states such as alpha, delta, theta and gamma. Delta Waves: 0.2 Hz – 3 Hz Delta is the slowest band of brainwaves and is experienced in deep, Stage 4, dreamless sleep. When your brain is in a full delta wave state, your body is healing and repairing itself and resetting its internal clocks. You don’t actually dream in this state and are more or less completely unconscious. Delta has also been seen in very deep states of meditation as well. Gamma Waves: 27 Hz and up The Gamma wave state is associated with expanded awareness, creativity, activation of the pineal gland, heightened intuition, enhanced mental clarity and focus, deep feelings of peace, joy and oneness, formation of ideas, language and memory processing, and various types of learning. As such, this is generally a highly desirable state to be in. Unsurprisingly, Gamma waves have been identified as a characteristic brainwave pattern of regular meditators and monks and are present when we are dreaming, although they can arise in normal waking consciousness as well. However, research has shown that by practicing forms of meditation and mindfulness regularly, you can literally rewire your brain to experience Gamma waves more frequently. Theta Waves: 3 Hz – 8 Hz Theta brainwaves are present during deep meditation, relaxation and light sleep, including the dream state. Theta has been shown to be a very receptive brainwave state that has proven useful for hypnotherapy, as well as self-hypnosis using recorded affirmations and suggestions. They are also strongly correlated with bursts of creativity, inspiration and vivid daydreams and visualizations. According to brainwave experts, it is at the Alpha-Theta border, from 7 Hz to 8 Hz, where the optimal range for visualization, mind programming and using the creative power of your mind begins. Clearly there are great benefits to be had by shifting your brainwaves into highly specific states, allowing your consciousness to experience reality through different ‘lenses’ that help it focus in positive, expansive and often times deeply healing ways. The exercises, technologies and nutraceuticals below have all been proven to shift brainwave patterns and improve trans-hemispheric communication in the brain, allowing for an expanded experience of consciousness.
Using the target frequencies.
The pulse of the “message” carrier wave must match that of the target frequencies of the person listening. For instance if you know that you will be awake and alert, mowing the grass or washing dishes, then your target wave would be in the Alpha range. If, however, you were meditating or resting, it would be in the beta wave range.
Guarantee of hitting the precise target range
There are two techniques to guarantee that the target frequencies are matching that of the “message” carrier wave. [A] Broadcast the signal in all target frequencies simultaneously. or, [B] Have a bio-feedback loop that measures your brain frequencies and then adjusts the pulse width of your message carrier wave.
Down slope control of the voice wave
We process the signal so that the pulse width is controlled by the down-wave trigger.
We utilize calming music to overlay over the system
Instead of simply having what amounts to “white noise” beamed into your headphones, we will add a soundtrack of calming and soothing sounds. Perhaps hemi-sync.
Output is a set of headphones
The output would ideally be a set of headphones, but a set of speakers can be employed as well. However, if you use speakers, anyone who hears the sounds form the speakers will be influenced by the embedded carrier waves and affirmation pulses.
Conclusion
I know that the vast bulk of the readership doesn’t even understand the schematics. But don’t worry about that. This is just a preliminary introduction article. This is a rudimentary discussion on the creation of a device that will automatically program your mind based upon whatever you want it to be programmed to. It relies on the beaming of audio frequencies that will reprogram your brain. In future articles, I [1] will prove a DIY do-it-yourself instructions on how to make one. Further, [2] I will also provide a kit with all the parts, and later on still, [3] I will provide already assembled devices for purchase. I hope that this all will be beneficial to you all.
Do you want more?
I have more posts related to this in my Affirmation Campaign index here… Intention Campaigns
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
The American news feeds are talking all about how President called Xi Peng of China. And that is all buried in the seemingly endless muck and grime that amounts to “news” in the West. But something else actually occurred. A United States Naval guided missile destroyer violated China’s 12 mile border and started conducting missile drills at one of the Chinese island Naval bases.
If you look at the time stamps, we see the following train of events;
US Naval Destroyer violates the Chinese border.
The Chinese military goes into full alert and “chases” the Destroyer away.
The American “news” media denies that the entire event happened.
The Chinese Navy then sends a flotilla between Taiwan and Japan.
President Biden calls Xi Peng
Now you are NEVER going to see these events displayed in sequential order like I have presented here. Nor are you ever going to see any link between the actions of the US Navy off the Chinese coast, and President Biden.
But war is brewing, and America is becoming more and more provocative. It’s only a matter of time before missiles start flying.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command on Wednesday 8 September 2021 vowed to stay on high alert and safeguard China’s sovereignty and security, and protect peace and stability in the South China Sea, after it warned off a US destroyer that trespassed into Chinese sovereign waters in the region on the day, a few days after a US aircraft carrier entered the region for a provocative deployment.
On Wednesday, the US guided missile destroyer USS Benfold trespassed into areas adjacent to the Meiji Reef in the South China Sea without China’s permission, and the naval and aerial forces of the PLA Southern Theater Command conducted whole-process tracking and monitoring of the US destroyer and warned it off, said a PLA Southern Theater Command spokesperson in a written statement.
Chinese military base on the reef.
The spokesperson, Air Force Senior Colonel Tian Junli, pointed out that the US move seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security. It was the latest ironclad proof of US’ navigation hegemony and militarization of the South China Sea.
“More and more facts have proved that the US is the biggest risk maker and the biggest breaker of stability and peace in the region,” Tian said.
Tian stressed in the statement that China has sovereignty over the islands and nearby waters, and the troops of the PLA Southern Theater Command will stay on high alert. The troops will firmly perform their duties and missions to safeguard China’s sovereignty and security, and protect peace and stability in the South China Sea.
According to monitoring by the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Beijing-based think tank, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier entered the South China Sea via the Bashi Channel on Monday. The carrier’s deployment was confirmed by the US Pacific Fleet later on Tuesday in a tweet.
USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier.
It was the sixth time a US aircraft carrier entered the region this year, the SCSPI said.
Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the US destroyer’s trespassing into Chinese sovereign waters and the US aircraft carrier’s deployment in the South China Sea are provocative moves aimed at China, and they could be coordinated with the UK’s HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, which was operating near Japan.
UK’s HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier.
The USS Carl Vinson carried the US Navy’s first fully integrated air wing to deploy overseas with both the F-35C fighter and the new CMV-22B tiltrotor, according to a report published on August 2 on the website of the US Naval Institute.
As the first carrier to get the F-35C, the USS Carl Vinson went straight to the South China Sea with the aim of deterring China, but China has already developed a number of anti-stealth radar systems, so the F-35C can be detected, Fu said, noting that China also has countermeasures against the vertical take-off and landing-capable CMV-22Bs, which could land on islands and reefs in the region.
F-35C.
China is fully capable of and confident in dealing with such provocations, Fu said. “The PLA cannot be defeated within the second island chain.”
The American excuse…
Sep 08, 2021 · Sept. 8 (UPI) --USS Benfold conducted a freedom of operation exercise near the Spratly Islands in theSouthChinaSeatoupholdthe rights, freedoms and lawful uses …USS Benfold asserts freedom of operation in South China
And…
The U.S. Navy is disputing a claim from China that it chased an American warship out of the South China Sea after the U.S. vessel performed a freedom of navigation exercise.
USS Benfold (DDG-65) on Wednesday sailed near the Spratly Islands – which China has staked a claim to – according to a news release from U.S. 7th Fleet.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) quickly criticized the FONOP and claimed it chased the U.S. guided-missile destroyer out of the waters, according to a report in state-owned media outlet CGTN.
Tian Junli, a spokesman for the PLA’s Southern Theater Command, said it “remain[s] on high alert,” CGTN reported.
The U.S. Navy denied China’s claim and maintained it performed the FONOP within the constructs of international law.
“The PRC’s statement about this mission is false. USS Benfold conducted this FONOP in accordance with international law and then continued on to conduct normal operations in international waters. The operation reflects our commitment to uphold freedom of navigation and lawful uses of the sea as a principle. The United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as USS Benfold did here. Nothing PRC says otherwise will deter us,” 7th Fleet said in a statement.
“The PLA(N)’s statement is the latest in a long string of PRC actions to misrepresent lawful U.S. maritime operations and assert its excessive and illegitimate maritime claims at the expense of its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea. The PRC’s behavior stands in contrast to the United States’ adherence to international law and our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region. All nations, large and small, should be secure in their sovereignty, free from coercion, and able to pursue economic growth consistent with accepted international rules and norms.”
Benfold’s FONOP comes shortly after a new Chinese law that calls for ships carrying certain materials to provide specific information, like their call signs, went into effect, according to a recent report in CNN.
-Destroyer Performs FONOP, U.S. Navy Disputes Chinese Claim That It Ousted Warship
Ah. It sounds so reasonable…
“The PLA(N)’s statement is the latest in a long string of PRC actions to misrepresent lawful U.S. maritime operations and assert its excessive and illegitimate maritime claims at the expense of its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea. The PRC’s behavior stands in contrast to the United States’ adherence to international law and our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region. All nations, large and small, should be secure in their sovereignty, free from coercion, and able to pursue economic growth consistent with accepted international rules and norms.”
But it is a lie.
The United States REFUSED to sign the international maritime agreements. As well as recognizing the sovereignty of the 12 mile limit around Chinese land.
The USA government requires a dumbed-down population to exist
As we used to say in the ‘States, “Don’t piss on my legs and tell me that it is raining”. Let’s take a look at a globe to see what is going on.
The excuse is that the United States is conducting “freedom of navigation” exercises near major shipping lanes. Granted you can’t get any closer than outside the Chinese port of Qingdao. But that is why the Chinese have their own Coast Guard. They don’t need American military warships sailing up and down the Chinese coastline.
Chinese coast guard vessel.
Then China sent their flotilla to Japan
A flotilla of destroyers, of the same equivalency of the American destroyer that violated Chinese national borders sailed to Japan from Taiwan.
A destroyer flotilla of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reportedly sailed in the waters between the island of Taiwan and some islands of Japan in the past week. Chinese analysts said the move sent a warning to Japanese right-wing forces and Taiwan secessionists, at a time when the two have been colluding to sabotage peace and stability in the region.
A Chinese flotilla.
The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force spotted a PLA Navy flotilla consisting of the Type 052D destroyer Zibo and the Sovremenny-class destroyer Hangzhou, as they sailed through the Miyako Strait, which is between Okinawa Island and Miyako Island, and then headed south into the Pacific Ocean on September 3, according to a press release from Japan’s Ministry of Defense Joint Staff on Wednesday.
On Sunday, these warships joined up with the Type 052C destroyer Zhengzhou and sailed north through the waters between Island of Taiwan and Yonaguni Island, returning to the East China Sea, the Japanese press release said.
While Japan claimed to have deployed forces to monitor the Chinese naval movements, the Japanese forces failed to obtain a photo of the Hangzhou or the Zhengzhou.
On August 24, another PLA naval flotilla sailed through the Miyako Strait, but it returned by the same route on August 26, according to press releases by Japan’s Ministry of Defense Joint Staff at the time.
Miyako Strait.
Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi claimed in an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun on Tuesday that Japan could not stay outside developments in Taiwan as both shared universal values such as freedom and democracy, Taiwan News reported on the day.
Japan’s latest defense white paper, released in July, for the first time mentioned stability in the Taiwan Straits, claiming it is “threatened by increasing military pressure from the Chinese mainland.” The white paper also said that “stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community.”
Analysts said that Japan is using the Taiwan question to normalize its military deregulation and break its pacifist constitution, while also sending a wrong signal to Taiwan secessionists who are encouraged to make more provocative moves.
The PLA warships displayed China’s determination and capability to countries like Japan and the US, which attempt to interfere in the Taiwan question, Xu Guangyu, a senior adviser to the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told the Global Times on Thursday.
The moves will help safeguard peace and stability in the region by deterring Japanese right-wing forces and Taiwan secessionists, Xu said.
In the meantime, China does not need to regard Japan as so important that it reacts to every provocation militarily, since Japanese authorities have their own agenda like the election, Xu said, noting that the PLA should develop at its own pace.
On Sunday, the day that the three PLA warships returned to the East China Sea from the east of the island of Taiwan, 19 PLA aircraft, most of them fighter jets and bombers, entered Taiwan’s self-proclaimed southwest air defense identification zone, the island’s defense authorities said in a press release that day.
Chinese J-20 fighter jet.
Why is this event important?
The destroyer committed an act of war. Violation of Chinese air, land or sea borders is one of the “Red Lines” that must not be violated or China will react in the HARSHEST MANNER POSSIBLE.
China established “red lines” that if crossed will initiate a full scale war.
The United States military sailed all the way to the other end of the globe to cross one of those red lines.
Then…
Chinese Navy chased the American destroyer out of China.
The Chinese Navy sailed a flotilla of destroyers to Japan.
Then…
President Biden scrambled to the “Hot Line” and talked to the Chinese president Xi Peng immediately.
Why did President call Xi Peng immediately afterwards?
It wasn’t for global warming, lifting of trade tariffs or any of the other excuses that you read about in the American “news”. The timing of the call betrays it’s function.
President Biden called Xi Peng to diffuse a crisis.
Xi holds extensive strategic communication with Biden
From HERE. It differs substantially from the narrative in the American “news”.
BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday morning took a phone call from his U.S. counterpart, Joseph R. Biden, and the two leaders had candid, in-depth and extensive strategic communication and exchanges on China-U.S. relations and relevant issues of mutual interest.
Noting that China and the United States are respectively the biggest developing country and the biggest developed country, Xi pointed out that whether they can handle their relationship well bears on the future of the world, and it is a question of the century to which the two countries must provide a good answer.
With the international community facing many common challenges, China and the United States need to show broad vision and shoulder great responsibilities, he said, adding that the two countries should look ahead and press forward, demonstrate strategic courage and political resolve, and bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track of stable development as soon as possible for the good of the people in both countries and around the world.
On the basis of respecting each other’s core concerns and properly managing differences, the relevant departments of the two countries may continue their engagement and dialogue to advance coordination and cooperation on climate change, COVID-19 response and economic recovery as well as on major international and regional issues, Xi said.
In the meantime, the two sides may tap more potential of cooperation to inject more positive dynamics into the relationship, he added.
For his part, Biden said that the two countries have no interest in letting competition veer into conflict, and that the U.S. side has no intention to change the one-China policy.
The U.S. side, he added, is prepared to have more candid exchanges and constructive discussions with China to identify key and priority areas where cooperation is possible, avoid miscommunication, miscalculation and unintended conflict, and get U.S.-China relations back on track.
Why is this entire event serious?
With the entire US Navy making aggressive incursions all over the South China Sea, it’s only a matter of time before a serious and dangerous incident will occur. This event tells us what is going on, and only two (viable) answers are available to us.
Biden ordered the Naval Destroyer to intentionally provoke China.
The Captain of the US Naval Destroyer took his own initiative to engage China.
If the event was planned by Biden to begin with, then why did he call Xi Peng immediately afterwords? It’s very hard to come up with an answer. What it means is that Present Biden intentionally is poking China to push a lethal response.
However, if the Captain of the Naval Destroyer took it on his own initiative, then this means that the US Military are operating autonomously, and dangerously.
Both scenarios are terribly dangerous and alarming.
There is a third possibility.
The United States Naval Vessel got lost and almost rammed into a Chinese island by accident. But that scenario is disturbingly upsetting, and so I have already discounted it.
US Guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold trespassed in waters near the Meiji Reef in the South China Sea Wednesday without permission from China.
The Chinese side mobilized aircraft and ships to warn off and expel the ship from the waters.
In a 7th Fleet news release, the US side acknowledged that USS Benfold sailed within 12 nautical miles of Meiji Reef.
But it said the warship was asserting “navigational rights” and “freedoms”.
It claimed the Meiji reef “is not entitled to a territorial sea under international law,” and “the land reclamation efforts, installations, and structures” built on the reef “do not change this characterization under international law.”
China and the US don’t agree on the nature of the 12 nautical miles of Meiji Reef. Other different views exist worldwide. But international law doesn’t empower any country to challenge others’ sovereign claim with an intrusion by a warship.
The US in particular has no right to do so given the fact that it has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
What the US has done is a naked provocation, and this is obvious to all.
There are many Chinese people and facilities on Meiji Reef, and the US warship that sailed so close to it apparently posed a threat. The Chinese side cannot remain indifferent, but must take countermeasures.
This is common sense.
The US policy to make waves in the South China Sea and instigate Vietnam and the Philippines to confront China has failed. It has become so exasperated that it crazily dispatched a warship to assert so-called freedom of navigation and trespass within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese reef.
The US warship came from afar to make provocations nearby the Chinese reef.
It was in fact a declaration of the US hegemony. The conditions for such an action are that only Washington has the strength to do so, and even if other countries are upset, they can do nothing but bear the US’ abuse of its hegemony. However, China has become stronger, which has undermined the above mentioned conditions.
Therefore, the US provocations in the South China Sea are not only a hegemony declaration but also aim at strategically suppressing China. With China’s approaches and abilities to resist such pressure growing, the risks that such US provocations will spark a maritime friction between China and the US will become higher and higher.
If Chinese warships go to US military bases in the Asia-Pacific and the US allies’ coastlines to conduct close-in reconnaissance operations and declare freedom of navigation, and if South China Sea claimant countries also conduct such operations around islands and reefs occupied by other parties, will the world’s maritime order be better or more chaotic?
Simply telling the truth to the US is not enough for China.
China needs to take active actions and speed up the establishment of its ability to conduct close-in reconnaissance operations on the above-mentioned bases and coastlines. The rapid development of China’s blue-water navy has made this possible.
Only by making the US have a taste of its own medicine can we touch the nerves of the US and its allies, and reshape the Western world’s understanding of US bullying in the South China Sea.
The US has deliberately provoked disputes in the South China Sea, and it must in turn endure the PLA’s increasingly strong countermeasures against it.
The game between the two sides will continue to go to an extreme.
The US will definitely see the PLA show up at its doorstep in the not-too-distant future. And together with China, the US will face the uncertainty which is increasingly difficult to control – the two sides’ warships and aircraft on the seas will carry huge mutual strategic hostility, and the two countries will not yield to each other.
If the situation goes on like this, there will sooner or later be an incident between China and the US in the South China Sea.
The US is the greatest threat to peace in the South China Sea, and it may eventually ruin the peace in the region. This is not just alarmist talk.
While China is competing with the US at sea, it must also make preparations for military frictions when the two sides fail to control their disputes, as well as the possible large-scale military conflicts afterwards. Once the situation gets out of control and triggers military clash between China and the US, we must give full play to our home field advantage. China will definitely win once there is a war.
According to British newspaper the Financial Times on Saturday, Washington is seriously considering a request from the island of Taiwan to change the name of its mission in the US capital from “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office” to “Taiwan Representative Office.” It is also reported that White House Asia adviser Kurt Campbell has backed the request. Washington is assessing the risks such a change would bring. The report has caused strong repercussions in the island, but neither the US government nor the Taiwan authorities have commented on the report.
Reports also said senior “national security” officials from the US and the island of Taiwan held face-to-face talks on Friday in Annapolis, Maryland, which is less than an hour’s drive from Washington DC. The two pieces of news were revealed immediately following reports about a phone conversation between the Chinese and the US heads of state.
It must be pointed out that if the US and the island of Taiwan do make the name change, it will mean Washington’s basic abandonment of its “one-China policy,” which will constitute a significant change surrounding the Taiwan question. Lithuania previously said it would set up an office in the Taiwan island with the name “Taiwan Representative Office” and the island also announced its plan to set up an office in Lithuania using the same name. This has met strong resistance from the Chinese mainland. If the US does the same, without doubt it will have a widespread demonstration effect on its allies and bring about a wave of name changes of the island’s mission in these countries.
The US knows well it’s a significant and serious matter. It is leaking certain information to test the Chinese mainland’s response. But, is there really anything to test? The Chinese mainland has no other choice but take the challenge and prepare for a showdown with the US if it pushes the matter to the tipping point of a showdown. Should the US rename the island’s mission in Washington as “Taiwan Representative Office,” the Chinese mainland should respond to it in a punitive way no lighter than it did with Lithuania. At that time, it’s anticipated that China will recall its ambassador to the US and it is likely the “lowest diplomatic reaction.” Otherwise, China cannot set up its prestige on the one-China principle it has always been upholding.
Due to US incitement and instigation, some Western countries are itching to play the “Taiwan card.” Punishing only small countries while ignoring the major powers won’t work. Safeguarding the bottom line of the one-China principle means we have to deter the US attempt to cross the line. Otherwise, we will have to face the possibility of more “Taiwan Representative Offices” emerging in a batch of capital cities.
Diplomatic measures alone are obviously not enough. If the US and the Taiwan island change the names, they are suspected of touching the red line of China’s Anti-Secession Law, and the Chinese mainland will have to take severe economic and military measures to combat the arrogance of the US and the island of Taiwan. At that time, the mainland should impose severe economic sanctions on the island and even carry out an economic blockade on the island, depending on the circumstances.
Militarily, Chinese mainland’s fighter jets should fly over the island of Taiwan and place the island’s airspace into the patrol area of the PLA. This is a step that the mainland must take sooner or later. The name change provides the Chinese mainland with sufficient reason to strengthen our sovereign claim over the island of Taiwan. It is anticipated that the Taiwan army will not dare to stop the PLA fighter jets from flying over the island. If the Taiwan side dares open fire, the Chinese mainland will not hesitate to give “Taiwan independence” forces a decisive and destructive blow.
More importantly, if the Chinese mainland turns a blind eye to the US and the Taiwan island this time, they will definitely go further in the next step. According to reports, Joseph Wu, leader of the external affairs of the Taiwan island, participated in the talks between senior security officials from the US and the island in Annapolis on Friday. Next time, they may publicly hold the meeting even in the US State Department in Washington DC. As the US will hold the “Summit for Democracy” by the end of this year, if we do not contain the insolence of the US and the Taiwan island, Washington might even really invite Tsai Ing-wen to participate in the summit. It will be much worse in nature than former Taiwan regional leader Lee Teng-hui’s visit to the US as an “alumnus” in 1995.
Will peace come if the Chinese mainland puts up with all this and swallows its anger for the sake of peace? If the mainland doesn’t strike back decisively, US warships will dock at the island of Taiwan, its fighter aircraft will land on the island and its troops may be stationed in the island again. At that time, where will be China’s prestige as a great power? How can the country maintain its system of defending its interests on the international stage?
The fact is that a contest of will has been formed regarding the Taiwan question Since China has declared that the Taiwan question is a matter of our core interests, we must take resolute actions to protect the bottom line of this exact national interest at any cost. If the Democratic Progress Party authority really dares to take the risk of triggering a war to push for a name change, and the US, which just suffered a debacle in Afghanistan, is not afraid of being involved in a new war, then what is there for the mainland to be scared of?
It seems that sooner or later, the Taiwan Straits will be plunged into a storm that will change the situation there drastically. And judging from the current actions of the US and the island of Taiwan, we can be sure that even if they will have to take this step back, they will step forth again soon. Thus, right now we need to be fully prepared to blow them out of the water in the Taiwan Straits.
The US has been engaging in phrase mongering, hoping that the “competition” between China and the US will not evolve into a “conflict.” We have to tell them clearly with our actions that “competition” with the Chinese mainland on the Taiwan question is bound to turn into a serious conflict, and there is absolutely no room for maneuver.
History tells us what’s next…
Remember, world war III, and inter Washington DC coups, will not be televised.
The fall of the Soviet Union occurred when the Military generals tried to take control of the government. From HERE.
Failed Coup in the Soviet Union.
Just on the morning of August 22, 1991, an Aeroflot plane carrying Mikhail Gorbachev landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. The Soviet president, confused after three days of captivity in his Crimean country house, appeared from the main exit, photographed by the press in what would become the iconic image of the time. However, out of sight of the lenses, there was a second ladder at the rear of the plane. This was where Vladimir Kryuchkov, leader of the “gang of eight” coup plotters, would come out.
Valentin Stepankov, the attorney general of Russia, a state that does not yet formally exist, was waiting at the foot of the stairs to arrest the head of the KGB. He had written the order himself in the previous hours, nervous if his intentions would leak, and unsure how a man who still formally controlled the elite Soviet special forces would receive it. The chief prosecutor had arrived in Vnukovo supported solely by a motley gang from Ladas, police minivans, and a bus of young recruits that he had assembled at a loyal police academy.
“I formally introduced myself to Kryuchkov and asked him to accompany me to a room at the airport,” says Stepankov. “His response was to ask why it was not the Soviet prosecutor who made the arrests.”
The events of the previous three days, where a group of extremists tried to wrest control from reformist Gorbachev, only to see his beloved Soviet Union collapse in the process, are among the most studied of all time. But the failure of the coup attempt is also one of the greatest enigmas in history. Along the timeline from Swan Lake appearing on Soviet televisions on the morning of August 19 to Gorbachev’s return on August 22, there are a set of unlikely combinations, inexplicable non-decisions, and more than a few. shots of strong things.
Rodric Braithwaite, the UK ambassador to Moscow at the time, was aware of intelligence reports predicting a hardline plot. But like the Soviet leader himself, he was surprised by his eventual moment. Only a few weeks earlier, Gorbachev had faced a call to impose a state of emergency; that, most people thought, had emboldened his authority. “Gorbachev has gone on vacation, and so have we,” recalls Braithwaite telling guests at a luncheon on August 18, that he left for a tour of Russian churches later that night. When the Braithwaites hurried back to Moscow the next morning, the tanks were already in the streets.
Sandbags piled up at the KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square suggested that the coup plotters had prepared for a fight. But already early in the morning, it was clear that something was not quite right. In the conspirators’ first attempt to explain their actions at a press conference on August 19, at least some of them appeared drunk. A young journalist named Tatyana Malkina asked if they understood that they had attempted a coup. Gennady Yanayev, Gorbachev’s recently appointed deputy, who declared himself president after his betrayal, muttered a reply. But it was his shaking hands that people noticed.
My wife said they looked like something from the Muppet show,” recalls Ambassador Braithwaite. “I wrote a memo to London later that night saying that the coup seemed very strange.”
Lev Gudkov, then a 44-year-old researcher working in the novel field of opinion polls, learned of the coup in a 7 a.m. phone call from his boss, the revered sociologist Yuri Levada. The two men feared for what it meant – “we had a feeling we were going back to 1918 and the red terror” – but their mood improved after the unconvincing press conference. At night, Levada and Gudkov were broadcasting the results of their first union-wide opinion polls via Echo of Moscow, the only News Logics radio station that managed to stay on the air. “We were able to show that a majority opposed the coup in all but two cities: Minsk and Tbilisi,” says Gudkov. “Minds had changed.”
With Gorbachev still interned in the Crimea, the man available to channel popular energy against the conspirators was his main democratic rival, Boris Yeltsin. In another inexplicable oversight by the conspirators, the expressive Russian president was never detained, despite the fact that a warrant was drawn up for his arrest. Heavy drinking seems to be at least part of the explanation why they never took it. By lunchtime, Yeltsin was at the White House, the seat of Russia’s parliament in central Moscow. From here, the populist lyricist would stage his most courageous political performance, climbing to the top of a tank to declare the conspirators’ orders illegal.
Things remained tense and finely balanced until August 20. On the one hand, most of the most capable forces in the Soviet Union were formally subordinate to the coup leaders. In another, there were increasing signs of sabotage and paralysis. As rumors of an anticipated attack on the White House mounted, tens of thousands of protesters flocked to central Moscow. Many of them helped build makeshift barricades with trolley buses and whatever they could find. “None of them could have withstood a tank attack for more than a few seconds, of course,” recalls Braithwaite. “But the atmosphere was exhilarating, kind of like a music festival, with people playing guitar, sitting down and getting drunk.”
In confessions given to Chief Prosecutor Stepankov, which were never officially made public, the conspirators admitted that they had resolved to order the assault on the White House on the night of August 20-21. “The coup leaders had a detailed scheme to neutralize Yeltsin and the Russian government, with maps and instructions for the use of special forces, etc.”, says Stepankov. “A unit of Alfa’s special forces and OMON’s special police were supposed to take positions at one in the morning on August 21, and they were supposed to start the operation two hours later.”
But the plan was derailed due to the tragedy. At approximately 11 p.m., news broke of the deaths of three protesters in an underpass approximately half a mile from the White House. The men were killed when the tanks tried to break through the trolley bus barricades. Dmitry Komar, 23, and Vladimir Usov, 38, were crushed under the tracks of the tanks. Ilya Krichevsky, 28, was shot in the head. Witnesses said the men believed the tanks were headed for the White House. In reality, the divisions in question had nothing to do with the planned operation and the soldiers appeared to be acting out of fear of falling into the hands of the mob.
The deaths had a profound impact on at least one of the gang of eight. Scared by the reality of the deaths on the streets of Moscow, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov gathered his staff for a conversation. I was stunned by what they had to say. Never mind accepting a potentially bloody assault on the seat of parliament, with tens of thousands of protesters surrounding it, why were you involved in such a plot in the first place? Realizing that he could not depend on the support of his generals, Yazov gave the order to hold and then withdraw positions.
“The KGB guys who had gathered at their headquarters in Lubyanka at this point apparently went hysterical,” says Stepankov.
Yazov’s U-turn and subsequent decision to fly to the Crimea later on the 21st to free Gorbachev, with the other gang members behind him, relegated the coup attempt to history. However, the three days in August would have lasting repercussions, not only for the Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev, who were terminally damaged by the affair, but also for Russia itself. On December 25, 1991, after months of humiliation, Gorbachev resigned. The dissolution of the Soviet Union followed a day later.
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That cascade of events had the most profound impact on one Vladimir Putin, who described it as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” At the time, he was an insignia Democrat on the team of the reformist mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, and thus formally took the opposite side of the Putschists. But he seems to have learned a lot from his mistakes. Much of the internal politics of the Kremlin in recent years seems to be geared towards avoiding the kind of freedom that allowed the Russian people and News Logics politicians to face a military coup.
The public assessment of the events of August 1991 has changed over time, hit by the difficulties unleashed by Yeltsin’s unstable reforms during the 1990s. Unpublished polls produced by the Levada Center (Lev Gudkov now heads the research institute named after his former boss) suggest that support for Yeltsin shares has fallen to 10 percent from a high of 57 percent immediately after the blow aborted. Furthermore, more than half now mourn the fall of the Soviet Union.
The fate of the eight men who had fought hard to preserve the Soviet Union is equally complicated. Interior Minister Boris Pugo hanged himself shortly after his arrest. But others played a successful long game. By paralyzing the Stepankov investigation for years until public opinion turned against Yeltsin and the market forces he unleashed, the remaining seven conspirators were able to obtain amnesty and escape trial. The last of them, Oleg Baklanov, died in late July after a successful career in state industry.
To this day, Stepankov says he regrets not seeing the men he arrested at Vnukovo airport on trial. It was a “bad precedent” for Russian history and politics, he said. That was exposed only two years later, when Yeltsin ordered the tanks to return to the White House to resolve a constitutional dispute with his rogue parliament.
“If there had been adequate censorship, perhaps he would not have given the order to shoot,” says Stepankov, “and perhaps 150 people would not have been sent to their graves.”
What precisely am I saying?
You might love him or hate him, but all this anti-China bashing seems to be really out of place with the Biden Presidency. We know that the Trump Presidency was rabid anti-China, and when Trump lost the election, all the “news” media kept on pumping out the narrative that that anti-China crusade will continue…
And continue it did. All of which is being driven and put in place by the neocons on K-street in Washington DC.
Aside from all the howling and screeching, what I am actually seeing is President Biden trying to glue the United States together, while trying to focus things inwardly domestically. Certainly Congress wants a war, as do the neocons, but that would end up being a real fiasco, and I do believe the Biden realizes this.
Most Senators, Congressmen and media oligarchs, not to mention all the neocons have never set foot inside of China. They no nothing about what it is, or what it is capable of, and they are all “sleepwalking” towards a fiasco of enormous consequence.
Biden, on the other hand, has been in China. He does know what China is like, and he doesn’t want the USA to fight China…
…because the USA would lose. And lose badly.
As I see things, I see a massive out of control US government, and a president at the helm that is trying to hold things together while the nation is crumbling all around him.
This situation lays the state for aggressive individuals desirous of power and control. It is entirely possible that the entire government apparatus has been wholly co-opted by the neocon war lovers. And it is only a matter of time before the “red button” gets pushed and all Hell breaks out.
President Biden successfully diffused this latest event, but will he be able to undo the next one, or the one after that?
I’m not so sure.
A disturbing video
This video is so very disturbing if you consider everything…
The security pact between the US, UK and Australia is a troubling reminder that these Anglo-Saxon powers are stuck in a Cold War mindset.
Earlier this month, the US, UK and Australia entered into a security pact to support Australia’s development and deployment of nuclear-powered submarines in the Pacific Ocean. The Australia-UK-US agreement (AUKUS) has been widely touted as an attempt to counter China’s ostensibly rising influence in the region and has been met with significant criticism from core players in the West, including France and Germany. More importantly, it has sent troubling reminders across Asian capitals of the outdated and imperial mindsets of its three partners.
There are two reasons that Asian nations are concerned. The first is the fear that this will lead to a creeping NATO-ization — a growing militarization and transformation of the region, especially South-East Asia, into a theatre of proxy conflicts. Second, it is led by an Anglo-Saxon alliance that appears stuck in a Cold War mentality that seeks to reinstate a Western imperial order in a region that fought long and hard to defeat it.
AUKUS is a slap in the face to Japan and India, which previously joined the US and Australia to counter China in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad. To them and other Asian nations, it should hopefully be the final reminder that there is no power-sharing with old imperial Western powers, who see themselves as masters of the universe, wrapped in a cloak of superiority to preserve their historical privileges. The generic statements from the US and Australia coming out of the Quad meeting in Washington last week point to the dialogue’s newfound uselessness.
AUKUS is not united, and it is not conducive to the preservation of peace in Asia and beyond. Instead, it is a haphazard assembly of disjointed, internally conflicting and externally expansionist Anglo-American interests. It must be rejected by Asian nations, who in the 21st century should no longer be seduced by disingenuous arguments about the need for security pacts led by non-regional players. Such pacts — designed to shore up and restore imperial objectives — belong to a different era.
From the Indo-Pacific to the Quad
Both AUKUS and its closely related counterpart, the Quad, have been viewed as a means of strengthening US regional ties and capacity to supposedly contain China’s maritime presence. In making sense of American strategy in the Indo-Pacific region, we must turn, briefly, to history.
The term “Indo-Pacific” was first coined in the 1920s by Karl Haushofer, a German army officer, intellectual and writer who sought to frame India and China as anti-colonial partners to Germany in its resistance efforts against Western Europe and the U.S. Despite occupying a significant share of the planet’s population, India and China were portrayed largely as passive instruments in the struggle for global domination between Germany and the rest of Europe. One should not forget, given the historical origins of these terms, the racist nature of the sentiments they embody.
The term was subsequently picked up by senior leaders in Japan and the US as a discursive motif highlighting the alleged stakes and interests these respective countries have in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Through amalgamating the Indian and Pacific geopolitical spheres, “Indo-Pacific” subtly provides the legitimation basis for proposals that seek to constrain China’s actions in the region, while lending a veneer of natural credibility to alliances such as the Quad.
The past decade has seen a precipitous increase in the frequency of references to the “Indo-Pacific” in Western geopolitical discourse. Indeed, under President Donald Trump’s recent tenure, the term was brandished as both a threat and signal of the US commitment to marginalizing and excluding China from the global stage. China is portrayed as the natural enemy that binds together non-Chinese countries in the Indo-Pacific, even though the reality is far more complex.
This was where the Quad came in, first proposed in 2007 by Japan’s then-prime minister Shinzo Abe as a strategic dialogue between Japan, the US, India and Australia. The loose alliance among these four Indo-Pacific stakeholders was matched by significant joint military exercises, with the aim of exhibiting the joint strength of these states in the face of an ascendant China. Notably excluding China, the Quad was halted upon Kevin Rudd’s ascent to premiership of Australia. Rudd advocated a more pragmatic, savvy and moderate approach to Sino-Australian relations. He speaks Chinese and understands China better than many of his counterparts. He uniquely recognised that the alliance, despite amounting to little more than sound and fury, would serve to aggravate China and play into the hands of ultranationalist, militaristic hawks in the country.
The détente, unfortunately, did not last. Rudd’s multi-pronged and ends-driven engagement with China was discontinued after his tenure. Since then, a string of Sino-skeptic and pro-US prime ministers have been driving Australian foreign policy. Tensions between Beijing and Canberra, coupled with American geopolitical maneuvering in the region, culminated with the revival of the Quad in March 2021. Quad members called for “a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific” and a “rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas.”
Australia — a country that, if not for its shared Anglo-Saxon settler history with Britain and the US, would be an insignificant player in global geopolitics — has used the Quad and the need for the US to have a Western ally in the Asia-Pacific region to stay relevant. In what will inevitably be a post-Western century, this is a big gamble, and it has only served to raise tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.
Seeking to counter and negate China’s claims over the South China Sea, the Quad resumed its mantle as an anti-China coalition. Beyond their shared partial skepticism toward China, the four member states have vastly disparate interests. India and Japan would be particularly vulnerable if tensions escalated with China, given their proximity to and economic interdependence with it.
As the only Quad nation to share a land border with China, India is keen to avoid a repeat of the Galwan Valley clashes in 2020 — the deadliest in 45 years along the Sino-Indian border. Indeed, the US and Australia’s clandestine turning to the UK as an additional partner should offer ample cause for alarm among India and Japan, given that there appears to have been little consultation with them beforehand. The AUKUS slap in the face will hopefully get these two Asian giants to walk away from the Quad, allowing it to be swept into the dustbin of history.
Why AUKUS was a grave misstep for its members
AUKUS also emerged out of the anxieties of a post-Brexit UK — one that had been decoupled (plausibly against its interest) from the umbrella and collective that is the European Union. In constructing a cogent foreign policy, Boris Johnson had a plethora of options. He could have engaged constructively with the US and China alike, playing the role of a savvy middleman and intermediary. He could have formed new ties with Latin America and South-East Asia, driving forth a flexible and multi-continental trade strategy. But though the imperial era is long over, Johnson opted to stick with a tribe of Western powers. In exchange for what he presumably viewed as the safest option — one that would yield the least resistance given the zeitgeist in Britain today — he abandoned whatever was left of Britain’s credibility among European nations. One can see shades of the decision to partner with the US in the illegal invasion of Iraq, another moment when Australia was there by their side.
In practice, Britain gains little from joining AUKUS. The UK not only aggravated China by solidifying the impression that it was pivoting away from constructive and open engagement — it also committed to a defensive pact in a region where the British navy has relatively limited comparative advantage. And the costs of this venture will be significant: stationing two navy patrol vessels in the region for five years poses a sizeable military undertaking, with rather unspecified end results.
For Australia’s part, in its desperation to be globally relevant by seeking American backing over pre-existing arrangements with France, it has substantially undercut its credibility and standing. Furthermore, given the pre-existing nuclear umbrella and sizable US navy presence in the region, it remains highly improbable that the additional nuclear submarines would offer Australian defensive capacities a measurable and substantial boost. As for the optical argument — that Australia may appear to be stronger — much of this would be easily parsed and dismissed by anyone who was in the know. For these submarines to pose an effective deterrent against expansionist or militaristic behaviours from any state, Australia must be demonstrably willing to deploy them in achieving its own military ends. The past six decades of Australian foreign policy offer few grounds for confidence that it would indeed take the initiative of doing so. At best, such submarines would be deployed as a proxy for American interests in the region. Yet, is that truly what the antipodean nation wants — to become a subservient vassal in the imperialist project of another country?
The US does not benefit much from this nascent alliance either. The unilateralist approach adopted by Washington has proven to be both jarring and alienating for core European players. Biden had largely banked upon what he believed was adequate goodwill between the US, France and Germany to cushion the blow — but his calculus was proven wrong. In a single stroke, Biden completely undermined his promise to the UN General Assembly last week that the US does not want another Cold War. But, ironically, he gave meaning to his statement that “America is back”.
France views Australia’s participation in the agreement as a de facto reneging upon the prior partnerships it has held with France throughout the years. And France took a dim view of the self-interestedness of American foreign policy. Indeed, the French foreign affairs minister called the new pact a “stab in the back”. (Let us also be clear, though, that, for France, this has nothing to do with geopolitics — this was all about billions of dollars in military sales.)
Germany raised concerns that the agreement, brokered in secret, has frayed the relationship between the US and Europe. That kind of discord will likely hamper the prospects for normalisation and de-escalation between China and the West. And the fact that the agreement covers so much ground — from underwater technologies and long-range strike capabilities to cyber anti-espionage and intelligence sharing — could also send a misleading signal that provokes China. The establishment of AUKUS has taken the US further away from — not closer to — calibrating a sensible US-China relationship.
Why AUKUS has opened a Pandora’s box for Asia
While much commentary has focused on reactions of countries in Europe and the Anglosphere, it is well worth noting that the population of the three member states in the AUKUS remains a distinct minority compared to the billions living in countries who are neither a part of AUKUS, nor, indeed, its intended beneficiaries. The largest state in India, Uttar Pradesh, has a population of more than 220 million — about nine times that of Australia, three times that of the entire UK.
First, while Washington has gone to painstaking lengths to emphasize that AUKUS and the Quad are mutually complementary, it can’t have its cake and eat it, too. Words pale in the face of truth — and the truth is that India and Japan have been largely caught off-guard by the US and Australia’s engagement of this nascent strategic alliance, which sits awkwardly in parallel to the Quad. For one, would Japan or India be compelled to take to the defense of British interests in the region, given the US and Australia straddle both? Alternatively, how should states seeking potentially deepened ties in geopolitical terms with Australia and the US — like Myanmar and Bangladesh — navigate the prospective tensions between Indian and British interests in the region? These questions remain heavily underexplored, yet require urgent addressing.
Secondly, South-East Asian countries have been kept largely in the dark about AUKUS’s plans, despite the recent visits paid by Vice President Kamala Harris to Vietnam and Singapore. The region’s largest country, Indonesia, has already expressed its displeasure. With a population more than 10 times that of Australia’s, Indonesia is a regional power Australia should reckon with and not dismiss as it seeks to curry favour with the U.S.
To say the least, it is clear that a vast majority of South-East Asian states neither benefit from, nor would they prefer, a world where they are compelled to take sides between the US and China. South-East Asia has been transformed into a proxy battlefield between these two powers, unwittingly and involuntarily. AUKUS will only serve to bolster the motivations on the part of both parties to seek and establish regional hegemony — which will be to the detriment of smaller and medium-sized states that must bear the brunt of the potential economic and military fallout.
The road to peace, and the roadblocks
At the core of American moves in the region lies a belief so conspicuous, it’s impossible to miss: that China’s rise poses a threat to American interests in Asia.
This statement is only true if America sees its interests in Asia as equivalent to American hegemony and imperialist dominance. China does offer a viable alternative to many regional stakeholders, both in terms of its economic multilateralism and its military and geopolitical support. Yet, it would be absurd to conclude, prematurely, that China’s ascent would completely thwart American interests. Waning American influence should not be viewed as being to the detriment of the country and the world alike.
This is not to say that South-East Asian states should thereby accede to the demands and whims of China. Smaller and medium-sized powers are right to hedge — to delicately strike the balance between embracing a rising China and capitulating to the entirety of China’s vision for the region. Yet, AUKUS does very little to ensure that China’s influence is rightfully managed. Instead, its moves would only instigate and provoke, thereby engendering far greater uncertainty.
The US, UK and Australia could learn something from the recently unveiled EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, a plan that seeks to combine a strengthened presence in the region with the maintenance of broadly amicable relations with China. The European Union has refrained from explicitly or rhetorically confronting China. While the fruits of that approach remain to be seen, there is at least one point of relative certainty: It grants China and the EU alike more leeway and manoeuvring room to navigate the increasingly complicated quagmire that is Asia and the west Pacific.
The major submarine deal between the USA, UK and Australia has been set in motion. This makes nuclear confrontation between the USA and both Russia and China very dangerously close. And amazingly… President Biden is unaware that it occurred.
Which has everyone trying to figure out what is going on.
Let me tell you what is going on. There is no President. The Neocons on K-street are “running the country”. It’s going to get a shit-load of people killed.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
BEIJING -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia-China relations have reached an unprecedentedly high level and the two sides have extensive shared interests.
Russia is willing to deepen cooperation with China in more areas, Putin said via video link when he took a question from He Ping, president and editor-in-chief of Xinhua News Agency, on China-Russia relations, in a meeting with heads of major international news agencies, held in St Petersburg on Friday local time.
The media event was organized by Russia's TASS news agency on the sidelines of the 2021 St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Putin recalled his close interactions with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the past few years, and said they recently witnessed the launch of four nuclear power units of a bilateral nuclear energy cooperation project, a very important part of high-tech cooperation between the two countries.
Russia and China have extensive shared interests, which is an important foundation of deepened bilateral cooperation, Putin said.
Stressing the importance of economic cooperation, Putin said Russia and China managed to keep bilateral trade at levels above $100 billion for several years in a row, particularly in 2020 despite the impacts brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Putin said the two sides are expected to boost bilateral trade to $200 billion by 2024.
Russia and China are also closely cooperating in a variety of fields such as aircraft manufacturing, lunar research, energy, environmental protection, and people-to-people exchanges, Putin said, adding that Russia stands ready to work with China to further synergize the Eurasian Economic Union with the Belt and Road Initiative.
Putin said Russia and China will undoubtedly strengthen their coordination and collaboration in the international community and safeguard common interests, noting that this Russia-China strategic coordination is certainly conducive to international strategic stability.
China military leaders are now full-time in Russian bases, as is Russian leaders on Chinese bases. Their military cross train on all operating systems and equipment, and now Russia is selling their latest and most advanced weapons systems to China.
The BRI is worth billions of dollars (every year) to both nations, and I can tell you that all over Chinese social media is a great deal of pro-Russia videos, comments and the like. None of which is reported in the least in Western, and especially American media. Check out the video here.
Chinese social media has large numbers of Russian followers and participants.
While on his visit to Moscow, Yang also co-chaired the annual bilateral strategic security consultations with Russian security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev, a continuation of a series of meetings the two countries have been holding since 2005. During his conference with Yang, Patrushev also noted that Russia has always strove to furthering its strategic partnership of coordination with China.
The Global Times, a paper controlled by the Chinese government, published an editorial on Wednesday which stated that China and Russia keep a strong bond because of "the U.S. and its main allies' suppression of the two countries."
Putin and Xi have made similar comments in recent weeks that echoed the sentiment that the two leaders and their countries enjoy a beneficial and close relationship. During a video ceremony on May 19 to officially launch a project to build nuclear reactors in China using Russian technology, Putin remarked, "It can be said that Russia-China relations have reached their highest level in history."
During the same virtual ceremony, Xi also spoke of how diplomatic ties between Beijing and Moscow had strengthened. The Chinese leader said, "In the face of the epidemic and changes unseen in a century, China and Russia have firmly supported each other and cooperated closely and effectively."
Yes, on American media the report is the absolute opposite.
Someone, or some organization is trying to keep alive the narrative that China is alone in the world, and that Russia would turn it’s back on China. And thus leave it “swaying in the wind” so that the strong and mighty American military (along with their anti-China surrogates*) would be able to devastate China completely.
*Namely Australia, the UK, Canada, and Japan.
So, the narrative. China is alone. China is isolated. China has no friends.
Check out these screen shots. This first one is so humorous that you have to live in China today to see how absolutely absurd it is. Xi Peng, with 98% approval has “betrayed” China.
Give me a break.
Only the most brain-dead zombie could possibly believe this…
And again those “buzzwords” of “betrayal to the Chinese people“.
A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes very popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used to impress others. Some "buzzwords" retain their true technical meaning when used inthecorrect contexts, for example artificial intelligence. Buzzwords often originate in jargon, acronyms, or neologisms. Examples of overworked business buzzwordsinclude synergy, vertical, dynamic, cyber and strategy. A common buzzword phrase is "think outside the box".
Where the fuck do they come up with these bullshit “talking points”? Langley, Virginia? Or, maybe on “K-street” in Washington DC. Who ever the fuck thinks them up hasn’t a clue as to what China is today.
And again those “buzzwords” of “betrayal to the Chinese people“.
And… this piece of bullshit nonsense…
Xi Peng is naive? Sounds like another talking point.
China has “benefited” from the decline of Russia. How? Tell me how? Please give me specific examples. Jeeze! How dumbed down does the American media think the people are?
My guess is moronic, IQ at an imbecilic level.
Both are “unaccountable” “regimes”.
And the USA isn’t?
And somehow they are NOT allies? How? Please define what your criteria is…
Are you convinced? 100% of the American-based search engine says that Russia and China are not friends. Which is astounding as it is the exact opposite of the truth.
Where is all this nonsense coming from?
At this point, it is pretty safe to say that basically anything the mainstream media is pushing as a narrative is a lie. I don’t know of any narrative I’ve seen on the media recently that wasn’t some kind of hoax. But just because something is different than what the media says does not mean it is automatically true, and a lot of what gets labeled a “false conspiracy theory” actually is that.A more useful tool is to look at what they censor. For a while, everything they were censoring was true. Despite the fact that they claimed to be “fighting disinformation,” they wouldn’t really bother to censor dumb conspiracy theories, which they actually often seem to be trying to direct people towards. However, censorship is so massive at this point, that I don’t think you can assume that just because something is censored it is true.
-UNZ
A quick scan of the articles show a concerted effort by known American neocon publications and organizations, such as the “NationalInterest”, and “independent” non-American publications that have been happily accepting anti-China funding through the NED.
The National Interest is an American bimonthly conservative international relations magazine edited by American journalist Jacob Heilbrunn and published by the Center for the National Interest, a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. that was established by former U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1994 as the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom.
-Wikipedia
So, yeah. The situation is that (for some reason) it is important for the war-mongering wing of the US government to convince Americans that China can be isolated and fought.
It’s a very dangerous move, and trend.
What’s the truth?
China and Russia are more than simply allies. They are tied together in such a profound way that you cannot remove one without harming the other. Together they are a mighty formidable force. Not just militarily, but economically as well.
Chinese search engines are full of articles praising the close associations.
Well, we all know that the Internet is controlled by the US government, and the “news” media is also controlled. But this little discovery shows and tells me that the control of the media is all now complete. America is one big echo chamber wholly controlled out of Washington DC.
And that means that life (inside of America) is going to go downhill much faster.
Anyways, here’s a piece of news that is nowhere to be found on Western press…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed an agreement to build a new city to be named Sputnik, the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East said on Friday.
Putin inked the plan while attending an economic forum in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok.
Under the plans, Sputnik will be built some 30 kilometres outside Vladivostok, relatively close to the Chinese border, and is intended to be an industrial centre that will one day be home to 300,000 people.
Sputnik, which means companion in Russian, was the name of the world’s first satellite, launched into space by the Soviet Union in 1957, causing an upset for the US amid the Cold War space race.
Then, last summer, Russia became the first country to release a Covid-19 vaccine, dubbed Sputnik V in honour of its space race victory. The vaccine is now approved in about 70 countries.
Make Siberia more attractive
The agreement to build the new city follows earlier suggestions by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu for the construction of several new cities in eastern Siberia to make the remote region more attractive.
Russians are increasingly drawn to the capital, Moscow, however, which has better infrastructure than any other city in Russia, as well as far more opportunities for employment.
But you know, the neocons won’t let it go…
They are unable to think about cooperation and mutual benefit. They think in terms of a 1800’s static war mentality. Such as this article…
It’s a non-stop aggressive narrative of isolation and competition. When in absolute truth the exact opposite is what is going on. Did you know that the Russians no longer supply the S-400 to China, and the orders stopped mid-way though payment.
TheS-400Triumf, NATO reporting name SA-21 Growler, is a mobile, surface-to-air missile system (SAM) designed byRussia. It is capable of engaging aircraft, UAVs, cruisemissiles, and has a terminal ballistic missile defense capability. It represents the fourth generation of long-range Russian SAMs, and the successor to the S-200 andS-300.
-TheS-400 Triumf
Instead the rest of the orders are now the super advanced S-500 systems. State of the art anti-American and western aircraft systems.
RussianAir and Missile Defense The S-500Prometheus is a mobile, surface-to-airmissile system (SAM) currently under development developed by Russia. Itisdesigned to counteraircraftandballistic and cruise missiles, and reportedly can target low-orbit satellites. S-500Prometheusat a Glance.
-The S-500 Prometey
.
You would never know this by reading Western media.
Kurk at China Lake
I used to train with a fellow named Kurk when I was at NAS China Lake NWC. He came from Colorado and was hustling and making his way through a host of projects on the base, and that is how I met him. He was quite a character. Anyways, he was really into martial arts, and he was pretty good, as he possessed multiple “black belts” showing his capabilities and abilities.
He once told me a story that he experienced.
He said that he was traveling in the Western Rocky Mountains, and pulled over to get gasoline. It was one of those little family run gas stations / mini-supermarket located on one of those secondary roads that serviced the many minor towns and communities in the west.
There he met, or maybe somehow got into an altercation with, the local bully. He was big and mean, and drove a pickup truck and was an arrogant son of a bitch. And for what ever reason, he started to pick a fight with Kirk.
I do not know all the details, but Kirk related how the local bully was surprised that someone would hit back, that someone would fight back. And being so surprised he didn’t know what to do. And so after being completely and thoroughly beaten, he picked himself up off the ground and went forth for round two.
And then for round three.
And finally for round four.
You see, he was too arrogant to understand that he has met his match and the the situation that he had now found himself in was not what he wanted to be involved in. Eventually, Kirk was forced to beat him senseless until he was knocked out and unable to move.
This little story reminds me what is currently going on between the United States and the Asian Block today. America is the big clueless bully, and Asia is the martial art master that looks like a guy a little down on his luck.
The following is from Strategic Culture, all credit to the author. Reprinted as found with minor editing to fit this venue.
April 2, 2021
The United States and its allies are behaving in a reckless, illegal way by invoking unilateral sanctions based on subjective accusations.
A growing, solid alliance between Russia and China is a necessary stabilizing factor against the United States and its allies who are recklessly firing off unilateral sanctions and inflaming international tensions and insecurity.
Hardly a week goes by when Washington and its allies announce sanctions against Russia or China based on spurious claims. Dozens of smaller nations are also under the lash of Western strictures, all of which are unilateral breaches of international law.
This week, both Canada and Australia gave notice of financial and diplomatic penalties on Russia over its alleged annexation of Crimea in 2014. (The remoteness of Ottawa and Canberra in such a matter speaks of a tortuous, disingenuous agenda. What and why are they doing this?)
Moscow vowed to take counter-measures.
The U.S. and European Union have already imposed sanctions on Russia over similar claims. As Russia’s foreign ministry pointed out, such Western interventions are a futile denial of the historic reality that the Crimean people voted in a legally constituted referendum to join the Russian Federation, following the NATO-backed coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014.
Last week, the United States, Canada, Britain and the EU coordinated punitive measures against China citing accusations of human rights violations.
But then…
Surprise and SURPRISE. Beijing stood with Russia.
Beijing caused a shock when it hit back immediately with counter-sanctions, saying the Western accusations were baseless and represented a gross interference in its sovereign affairs.
China and Russia stood together “shoulder to shoulder”.
Sure enough, the West’s provocative claims about “genocide” against the Uyghur ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang region have been exposed as fabrication and distortion.
Britain’s state-owned BBC has also been outed for running blatant disinformation campaigns regarding Xinjiang, as well as Hong Kong and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that any Western sanctions will be reciprocated. He indicated that Russia and China had consolidated a policy of returning Western measures with counter-measures.
They work TOGETHER.
This is an important line in the sand. The United States and its allies are behaving in a reckless, illegal way by invoking unilateral sanctions based on subjective accusations. Such behavior is a violation of the United Nations Charter, the bedrock of foreign relations.
What Washington and its allies are doing is trampling over international law and kicking it to the curb. Their conduct is that of rogue states who perceive themselves to be above the law, entitled to act in whatever way they please with no accountability.
Ironically, and sickeningly, the Americans, Europeans, Canadians, Australians and other partners, talk loftily about respecting “values” and “rules-based international order”. They are the ones who are trashing any semblance of order.
It is these NATO powers that have launched numerous criminal wars of aggression without any mandate from the UN Security Council.
They have carried out covert regime-change operations which have unleashed mayhem and terrorism.
Western powers are deluded in their vanity and pretensions of virtue. Their self-regarding rhetoric about upholding rule of law and human rights is hallucinatory hyperventilation.
Russia and China are not going to let Western states get away with their dangerous games of making up the rules to suit their orders. That way leads to perdition, as history has shown us in former periods of lawlessness with catastrophic consequences.
It is Moscow and Beijing who are upholding the UN Charter and the rule of law that all nations are obliged to abide by. Central to that framework is mutual respect for the sovereignty of all nations. Unilateral actions are impermissible as enshrined in the UN Charter. They undermine global security and inevitably lead to a law-of-the-jungle scenario where strong powers presume predatory privileges over weaker ones.
Earlier this year, on March 22, 2021 Russia’s top diplomat Lavrov held a landmark summit with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in China’s southern city of Guilin.
Both statesmen reiterated the paramount, inviolable principles of the UN Charter. They condemned bullying and hegemonic ambitions of the United States and its partners. And they declared that any unilateral violations will be held to account by Russia and China upholding international law and guaranteeing justice.
This is an historic moment in international relations. The world either embraces principles of equality and sovereign mutualism, dialogue and diplomacy – or the alternative is barbarism, conflict and ultimately war.
Absurdly, Russia’s Lavrov was obliged to explain that such warning to Western states of adhering to international law is not a threat from Moscow. It is simply a statement of fact and of their legal, moral duty. It shows how deranged these powers have become whenever they have to be reminded to obey the law.
The United States and its allies seem to think that “diplomacy” means “diktat”.
Diktat - definition of diktat by The Free Dictionaryhttps://www.thefreedictionary.com/diktat
A harsh settlement or decree imposed unilaterally, esp. on a defeated nation. 2. any decree or authoritative statement:
Their arrogance and deluded self-entitlement has made them blind to the reality of their own degeneracy. Fortunately, Russia and China are formidable enough to remind others of reality.
We may conclude with a quirky news story this week that serves as an allegory of a bigger picture. One of President Joe Biden’s pet dogs reportedly went rogue and took a dump inside the White House. The mess was inflicted on a carpet outside the Diplomat Room – of all places. The story sort of sums up how the conduct of America and its lackeys has lost all sense of decency and restraint these days.
They’re going to have be re-trained.
America needs to be retrained so that it can live with the rest of the world without conflict or chaos.
So the world is a mess!
Well it appears that way, but it really is not.
The USA is a mess. The UK is a mess. The South Africa is a mess. Israel is a mess. And the degree of how much of a mess it is is directly tied to how closely that nation is connected to the United States.
The nations closest to the United States in culture, society, and financial ties are the ones suffering the greatest levels of discord.
So Australia wants to be connect to the United States hip to hip, then you can expect Australia to collapse just like America is collapsing. Iceland, which isn’t, is not collapsing. Sweden which is following the EU led American directives, is a mixed bag. Like I said. The closer the nation is tied to America, the more of a fucked up mess it is today.
So what?
Well, to see what is actually going on, you have to take a couple of steps back and look at the Big BIG picture.
And how can you deal with this?
Well, you really don’t need to get into the details. You just need to concentrate on your life, and your family life selfishly. The only things that you have any control over is your immediate reality.
Guys, guys, guys. It seems like the world is coming apart at the seams. So what can you do?
You turn off the “news”. You walk outside. You listen to the birds. You go into a restaurant and have a delicious meal. You smell the air. You hop on a bicycle and ride. You play with your kitties, or romp with your dog.
After a few days of this, then you take in MEASURED “news”.
If you live in Idaho, what the Hell is going on in New York should be of no concern to you. If you read anything about China, but haven’t been there in the last two years, then discard it as noise. Who gives a fuck of Mr. XXXXX says YYYYY that will do ZZZZZ? It’s all just a blimp on the big picture.
People! The ONLY way for you all to get through this period of strife is to be a Rufus.
That’s the ONLY way.
How do you control your reality?
You be a Rufus.
Listen to me.
You center your mind. You shut down the “news”. You kick away all the negative influences in your life. You stop eating processed food and replace it with good delicious home cooked fresh foods. You perform meditations. You operate your affirmation campaigns. You spend time with loved ones and pets. You smile. You help people in your community. You make friends and associations in your community and you cultivate them. Be the best you can be. And you be a Rufus.
Or in an easier to read format…
You center your mind.
You shut down the “news”.
You kick away all the negative influences in your life.
You stop eating processed food and replace it with good delicious home cooked fresh foods.
You perform meditations.
You operate your affirmation campaigns.
You spend time with loved ones and pets.
You smile.
You help people in your community.
You make friends and associations in your community and you cultivate them.
Be the best that you can be.
And you be a Rufus.
Be the Rufus?
Be the Rufus. This is what I mean when I say that you must be part of something larger; be part of your community. Be a giver. Not a taker. Lord knows there are far too many money-grubbing taker in this world. Contribute. Help. Make the day of someone just a little bit better. Buy a coffee for a coworker. Smile.
Be the Rufus.
Yes. We must be the Rufus. Sure this guy would probably get in trouble for being late. Maybe his boss will dock his pay. If it was America, he might even lose his job. But not here. Not now. He’s a Rufus, and he “felt” that something was amiss. He did not wait. he did not call the police. He took action.
He selflessly helped others in need.
Be the Rufus.
In a world that is seemingly “off the rails”, with a terribly inefficient, corrupt and moronic government, where everything is going wrong and you are being pinched by all sides with a crazy media shouting at you “it’s China’s fault!”…
Be part of something bigger than yourself. Be the Rufus.
It doesn’t take much. All it takes is to be aware and contribute to the general well being of your community. If there is trash on the road in front of your house, you clean it up. You don’t wait for the government to do so. If your grass needs cut, you cut it. If your neighbor needs a hand you give it to him. If your mailbox is an eyesore, then spruce it up.
When an emergency happens, you as the Rufus, spring into action.
Be the Rufus.
A Rufus is helpful.
Be the Rufus!
When an emergency happens, you take part and be helpful.
Be the Rufus.
Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s hard. Like preventing an infant from having seizures. But a Rufus does what ever is necessary. Be that Rufus. Be the best you can be.
A Rufus does what ever it takes.
So yeah, the United States is collapsing. The leadership are a group of self-centered ignoramuses. And you might be stuck, trapped and inside this massive cesspool on fire. What can you do?
Again.
Focus on you. Be part of your community. Smile. Make other feel good about themselves and want to see you. Be helpful. Devote good efforts to make your house good, calm, strong and cohesive. Spend time with pets and loved ones. Eat healthy food. Do your affirmation campaigns. Be the Rufus.
Just being helpful is all it takes.
Just be helpful.
Sometimes you have to take extraordinary measures.
Here’s a military soldier abandoning his post to rescue a three year old from getting squashed by an income horde or cars and trucks. Yikes!
Save the baby!
A Rufus is there to help others.
A Rufus is part of the community. They are appreciated. They are loved. They are the organized person that everyone know that they can count on. They are the guiding light that everyone in need turns to.
A Rufus is there.
You see, once you change your mind and decide to participate within a community, and be helpful to others you change. Your mind; and then your entire being, becomes a service to others sentience. STO.
Do not fear the insanity.
Just focus on you, your family and friends, and your community. Stick to the basics, and play the “long game”. Everything will be quite different one decade from now. All you all want to do is “ride it out” unscathed. To do this, just follow MM advice and Be The Rufus.
You don’t have to rescue anyone. You just need to be extra considerate. You need to be more humane and understanding. You need to be sensitive to the needs of those around you and be helpful to them.
Be the helpful Rufus.
A Rufus makes it his job to help others. To keep his community clean, and patrolled and away from crime.
Be the Rufus! As in this video below…
Be the Rufus.
A Rufus holds his society responsible for what ever happens to it, and works to correct wrongs, and punish those who are selfish or corrupt at all levels. A Rufus participates…
A Rufus contributes.
A Rufus lends a hand to those in need.
When there is an emergency, the Rufus comes a-running as shown in this video…
Be the Rufus.
A Rufus goes and visits a dying friend, no matter what the law says, and comforts him as only a meat-pie lady could A Rufus cares about the feeling of others. A Rufus helps the children; the animals; the cats; and the dogs. A Rufus is always there to make the community a better place to live in.
A Rufus helps others.
A Rufus doesn’t drive past an gawk at a car accident. They get out of their car and help. They do what ever they can. They are the people that make the community and their actions are attractive and contagious. All it takes is a few Rufus’s in the community and soon, others will start acting that way too.
Be the Rufus.
Make the world a better place.
Help others. Be the Rufus.
A Rufus volunteers.
When there is a need in the community, the Rufus doesn’t complain. They don’t bitch and moan, they go out and work. They volunteer, and if there isn’t any kind of organization to correct the problems, they set one up themselves.
A Rufus makes a difference.
Even if it is hot, and you are suffering from heat exhaustion. A Rufus “takes it on the chin”. A Rufus makes a difference in their community.
A Rufus is the person that you can count on.
A Rufus is not perfect, and is jut a human. But the Rufus strives to be more than just a user; a complainer, a parasite on society. A Rufus contributes.
A Rufus contributes.
Here’s some unpaid volunteers in China. They are working long, long days, and then collapse in the public areas to get some sleep before they begin again. A Rufus makes the world a better place.
Be the Rufus.
You can make the world a better place.
..
Be the Rufus.
Rufus– Saving a child from a crazy man.
Sometimes you have to get hurt saving people. While all the other people run away, the child is begging for you to help her. She is looking at you, and begging for YOU to save her. What would you do. What would YOU do?
He has a knife and a hammer and he is belligerent as all fuck. What would you do?
Rufus – Here’s to all the workers that take shit with a smile.
This is a tribute to all the workers who take shit as part of their job. You are not alone, many of us has had the exact same situation.
Rufus – Bus driver emergency detour to the hospital.
Here’s a bus driver that sees and emergency and then takes a detour from his regular bus route to save someone. Be the Rufus. Even if it might cost you your job.
Rufus– Man robs a woman in a bank and then changes his mind when he sees how little she has in her account.
This kind of thing has happened more than once in China, and I am at a loss to understand why. Maybe the Chinese have a understanding of things that are different than what you have in America.
Rufus – Help with an overturned wheelchair.
Talk about bad luck. This poor sap is stranded in the middle of a busy intersection and is unable to do anything. Would you go forth and help him?
Conclusion
The world is filled with lies, deceit and deception. It is all designed to fill your minds with fear and to control you. There’s only one way out. Be the Rufus.
Be the Rufus.
We do not know when the calling will come.
However, when it calls, you must take action. It will not make you wealthy, rich, famous, or attractive. But, it will make a difference when you are judged upon death. Be the Rufus. Make a difference.
Help others. It’s our highest calling.
And the answer for crawling out of this mess that we find ourselves in right now.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Hum… Have you noticed that Americans are so very serious when compared to others from the rest of the world?
Well, I’ve been monitoring the Afghanistan situation in the “news”. It looks pretty calm and collected. Mostly it’s people going about their business, shops open, trade going on, food markets selling produce and the like. Apparently the new government has retained all the public servants and are not making any radical changes, instead trying to establish a solid and decent enough government.
Afghanistan.
But, Christ All-mighty! If you read what the “news” out of America and the UK has to say, it’s all screeching bat-shit crazy hysterics!
My Lordy!
Someone needs to give these folks some Quaaludes and get them strapped to a gurney and carted off to the rubber-padded room.
It seems and appears to me that most of the people in both the USA and the UK are way-way-way too “high strung”.
What’s going on?
Why are they so “out there” and “in orbit”?
Well, that’s what this article is all about.
Most Americans really need to calm down.
Don’t freak out folks. But this article is going to take you into uncomfortable spaces.
Lately a number of MM participants have commented that they seem to “feel” electrified or odd in regards to being inside the United States. (Let’s call this Observation “A”.) It is like there is a very uncomfortable “wave going through everyone” simultaneously with this feeling of impending doom.
Meanwhile, there’s observation “B”, where others have commented that maybe the debacle in Afghanistan was not a sign of collapse, but was actually an intentional event concocted by those that control the United States for Geo-political and domestic advantage. Bo Chen offered a compelling argument for this, and I will post it later on.
I cannot say one way of other other related to observations “A” and “B” above. However, I will like to release this article that (again) I am being “lightly” pestered to write and release.
“Lightly” pestered.
Not hysterically pestered like the Deagel article from last week. The mere fact that I am suddenly getting “pestered” tells me that “something is afoot“.
So let’s try to consider Observation A and B in light of this article.
Again. Take what you read in an easy relaxed format. Don't get too caught up in the information. I'm going to talk about something very uncomfortable for most people to grasp. Ok?
The use of electronic mechanisms to broadcast thoughts, influence actions, alter the operation of the human body, or interact with it remotely is mature technology.It’s well known, well used, with decades of experience and operation.
Just because it is not common knowledge, or dismissed as “tin foil hat” fringe conspiracy science is meaningless. Those that control nations and societies have been using this technology for decades.
The United States is (almost) wholly controlled using these kinds of technologies. Not only on the mass scale for the intentional herding of American society, but for the control of specific people, and the obtainment of specific social-economic and Geo-political objectives.
The MetallicMan Experience
I can personally vouch that multiple personalities came out from MM during my “retirement” within the secure ADC Pine Bluff facility.
I can tell you that I was unaware that I had these personalities, abilities, skills or behaviors. I lived with them, and they laid dormant for much of my career within MAJestic.
I can also tell you that when my brain was unlocked, they had to absolutely make sure that I was in a very secure “padded room” when I “un-wound”.
For those of you who haven't read my MAJestic Index, there are multiple instances in my narrative that included...
[1] Physical cranial implants of three specific types (EBP, ELF1, ELF2),
[2] a shut-down sequence of the ELF implants,
[3] activation of memories, skills and personalities that I was unaware of, and
[4] behavior variations that can only be associated by radiative induction.
The technologies that was used on me personally were developed and were quite mature in 1981.
For me, personally, the technologies were developed in the sub-project 119 of Project MKUltra.
There are a myriad of technologies that can do this, and there are all sorts of tangential sciences and operations regarding them.
This article will just cover a few that I personally consider to be “main-stream” in continuous daily operation by those with the ability and the interest in using them.
Behavioral Control Background
American interest in the hypnosis – EMR [electromagnetic radiation] interaction was still strong as of 1974, when a research plan was filed to develop useful techniques in human volunteers.
The experimenter, J.F. Schapitz, stated:
“In this investigation it will be shown that the spoken word of the hypnotist may also be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into the subconscious parts of the human brain.
That is, without employing any technical devices for receiving or transcoding the messages.
And without the person exposed to such influence having a chance to control the information input consciously”.
Although our modern electronic age has been in existence only since the turn of this century, individuals have claimed that their minds were being remotely influenced and controlled by machines for at least two centuries.
Recorded way back in 1810 is the case of James Tilly Matthews, a London tea broker.
He claimed his mind was being controlled by a gang operating a machine he called an “Air Loom” which sent out invisible, magnetic rays from a London cellar.
Matthews believed machines like the Air Loom were also controlling the minds of members of the British Parliament.
He wrote letters to the MPs warning them about the machines and the conspiracy behind it.
This kind of information, was not taken seriously at all. Instead,it was treated as delusional. And Matthews was committed to Bethlem Hospital as being insane.
It might be easy to dismiss Matthews’ claims of a machine that can control one’s mind because of the early date. However, his is by no means an isolated case.
In 1994 Ronald K. Siegel, a Associate Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Bio-behavioral Sciences at UCLA, wrote “Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia.”
Whispers
Whispers is a collection of case histories of mind control, (or ‘paranoia’ as he calls it) that he studied and compiled.
One case concerned a man named Tolman.
He believed his mind was being controlled by computers via a satellite system named POSSE (Personal Orbiting Satellite for Surveillance and Enforcement).
Interestingly, author Dorothy Burdick, in her 1982 book Such Things Are Known described what she claimed was her mind control harassment by computers via satellites.
She names Siegel as being the inventor of a device named FOCUS (Flexible Optical Control Unit Simulator) which can project hallucinations directly onto the retina so the subjects can’t distinguish the images from reality.
In Siegel’s book Tolman claims images are being directly transmitted into his brain.
Siegel says,
“You mean to tell me that here are machines capable of sending visual images directly into the brain?”
In 1968 Siegel published a professional paper titled “A Device for Chronically Controlled Visual Input”. This paper was a very detailed description of a device he developed to project images directly into the brain. He developed the techniques and system on experimental animals via their optic nerves.
He suggests further experimentation be
“conducted on neonates (kittens) which have their total visual stimulation controlled from the time they open their eyes.”
Thirty years later a team of US scientists wired a computer to a cat’s brain and created videos of what the cat was seeing.
One of the scientists working on the project, Garret Stanley of Harvard University, predicted machines with brain interfaces. We can only imagine how far such technology has advanced in the secret research laboratories of the US government and the military/industrial complex.
Today there is a wealth of documentation confirming how government agencies and research centers have been developing these technologies and methods.
These technologies involve elements of psychology, hypnosis, political conspiracies, and even devices that emit “rays” to control the behavior of others without their knowledge or consent.
Project MKUltra
Project MKUltra is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, some of which were illegal.
.
Experiments on humans were intended to develop procedures and identify drugs such as LSD to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.
.
The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Other code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke.
.
MKULTRA, as well as projects BLUEBIRD, ARTI-CHOKE, CHATTER, CASTI-GATE, MKDELTA, MKNAOMI, THIRD CHANCE, MKSEARCH, MKOFTEN, etc., were covert CIA projects involving many prominent members and institutions of the medical and scientific communities to investigate and experiment with various forms of behavior modification and control using, in many cases, unwitting human subjects.
In was in operation from the late 1940’s until the early 1970’s, they delved into everything from drugs to hypnosis to electronics.
Then, when Congress began to investigate the activity, the head of the program (illegally) destroyed all records. He gathered up every single record, and burned all of them. He did this in direct defiance of the law. Obviously, there were some very damning things in those records that the public should never be exposed to.
And the few that remain are just minor evidence of the full extent of a very invasive program conducted without Congressional oversight against the American people.
Sigh.
Trying to bring up this subject in any forums would get your canned, scoffed at or perma-banned. It’s “tin foil hat” conspiracy shit. Don’t you know…
…And then, one day, a bunch of boxes of Project MKUltra documents were discovered…
Our recent discovery of seven boxes of documents related to Project MKULTRA, a closely held CIA project ... conducted from 1953-1964.
As you may recall, MKULTRA was an "umbrella project" under which certain ...
MKULTRA prepared by the Inspector General's- office in. 1963. Asa result of that report's ...
New Vistas
In 1996, the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board published a 14-volume study of future developments in weapons called “New World Vistas.”
Tucked away on page 89 of an ancillary 15th volume are some hair-raising insights into the future ‘coupling’ of man and machine in a section dealing with ‘Biological Process Control’. The author refers to an ‘explosion’ of knowledge in the field of neuroscience, adding, ominously:
One can envision the development of electromagnetic energy sources, the output of which can be pulsed, shaped, and focused, that can couple with the human body in a fashion that will allow one to prevent voluntary muscular movements, control emotions (and thus actions), produce sleep, transmit suggestions, interfere with both short-term and long-term memory, produce an experience set, and delete an experience set.
Translating the words ‘experience set’ from military jargon into plain English, this means, simply, that they envisage the ability to erase your life’s memories and substitute a new, fictitious set.
Imagine that.
Oh, what fun.
By projecting such developments into the future, the authors of “New Vistas” are camouflaging present day capabilities.
The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War
A similar futuristic scenario with many references to mind manipulation is described in “The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War (US Army War College, 1994)”.
Authors Steven Metz and James Kievit declare:
“Behavior modification is a key component of peace enforcement”
and
“The advantage of [using] directed energy systems is deniability.”
The authors ask:
“Against whom is such deniability aimed?” The direct answer is “the American people”.
Set in the year 2010, Metz and Kievit write of “perception molding” and “advanced psycho-technologies” to avoid irksome public protest, but that is just the beginning.
The major obstacle, they believe, is that “traditional American ethics [are] a major hindrance.”
My goodness!
And thus they continue to point out that
“old-fashioned notions of personal privacy and national sovereignty [are to be] changed.”
The future presented by Metz and Kievit sounds like a mixture of George Orwell’s 1984 and the movie “The Matrix”.
Individuals unwilling to go along with the revolutionary changes are…
“identified using comprehensive inter-agency integrated databases.”
They will then be “categorized.”
And “sophisticated computerized personality simulations” will be used “to develop, tailor and focus psychological campaigns for each.”
Jeeze Louise!
Other techniques to be used in association with these new mind weapons include ‘morphing’, a present-day ability that controls the distortion of TV images.
So, if you are lucky enough not to have your brain electronically scrambled or erased, the electronic news media will be manipulated especially for you!
And such, it will be presenting convincing near-real-life visual images through your combined TV set-cum-internet interface. Woo! Woo!
Silent Sounds
The Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS) technology, also known as “S-quad”, was developed by Dr. Oliver Lowery of Georgia, USA, and is described in US Patent #5,159,703 as “Silent Subliminal Presentation System.”
The abstract for the patent reads:
A silent communications system in which nonaural carriers, in the very low or very high audio-frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum are amplitude-or frequency-modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain, typically through the use of loudspeakers, earphones, or piezoelectric transducers.
The modulated carriers may be transmitted directly in real time or may be conveniently recorded and stored on mechanical, magnetic or optical media for delayed or repeated transmission to the listener.
According to literature by Silent Sounds, Inc., it is now possible, using supercomputers, to analyze human emotional EEG patterns and replicate them.
Then store these“emotion signature clusters” on another computer.
Thus, afterwards, one can, at will,
“silently induce and change the emotional state in a human being.”
Judy Wall, writing in Nexus (October-November 1990, says
“Silent Sounds, Inc. states that it is interested only in positive emotions, but the military is not so limited. That this is a US Department of Defense project is obvious.”
Edward Tilton, President of Silent Sounds Inc., says this about S-quad in a letter dated 13 December, 1996:
All schematics, however,have been classified by the US Government and we are not allowed to reveal the exact details…
We make tapes and CDs for the German Government, even the former Soviet Union countries! All with the permission of the US State Department, of course…
The system was used throughout Operation Desert Storm (Iraq) quite successfully.
By using these computer-enhanced EEGs, scientists can identify and isolate the brain’s low-amplitude “emotion signature clusters”, synthesize them and store them on another computer.
In other words, by studying the subtle characteristic brainwave patterns that occur when a subject experiences a particular emotion, scientists have been able to identify the concomitant brainwave pattern and can now duplicate it.
“These clusters are then placed on the Silent Sound carrier frequencies and will silently trigger the occurrence of the same basic emotion in another human being!”
So, let’s suppose that you are holding your beloved pet and stoking them. You feel relaxed and content. Well, your brain could be imaged and a “snap shot” of your feelings can be recorded. This is known as an “emotion signature cluster”. And the United States have an entire library of these that they can identify, and impose on others.
Some examples…
Blind uncontrollable rage and anger.
Hunger.
Soothing comfort and calmness.
Love.
Attraction and interest.
Organism / ejaculation.
Infatuation with another.
OCD behaviors.
Stomach pain / bowel movements.
Being terribly horny and desiring of sex.
Missing something or someone.
Headache.
Loss and grief.
This technology was used on me during my MAJestic operations, and I can tell you that they were able to use it on me because my entire “emotion signature cluster” for me personally was imaged and recorded at NAMI at NAS, NASC Pensacola, Florida in 1981.
This technology could also be applied to the public at large, but I do not believe that to be the case. It wouldn’t be that effective for large groups of people.
Unless things have changed (and they actually could, don’t you know) there are better technologies to induce corralling of herds of humans via electromagnetic means.
This “Silent Sounds” technology is most useful for specifically targeted persons.
Now, there does seem to be elements of human crowd control taking place all over the United States. Instead of the Silent-Sounds technology, there are other, better suited candidates for these kinds of indiscriminate herding activities…
Synthetic Telepathy
Synthetic telepathy is a term used to describe the beaming of words, thoughts, or ideas into a person’s mind.
This is done by a type of electromagnetic transmitter, similar to a radio or television broadcast, operating in the microwave frequency band.
In recent years thousands of people have come forward claiming to be victims of this technology. However, the first officially reported scientific experiment documenting a case of synthetic telepathy cannot be found in any of the academic literature because of the highly secretive nature of the research.
In 1961 Allen Frey, a freelance biophysicist and engineering psychologist, reported that a human can hear microwaves.
However, this discovery was dismissed by most United States scientists as being the result of artifact (outside noise). The more technical description of the experiment is described by James C. Linn.
It turns out that Frey discovered that human subjects exposed to 1310 MHz and 2982 MHz microwaves at average power densities of 0.4 to 2 mW/cm2 perceived auditory sensations described as buzzing or knocking sounds (also described as clicks or chirps).
The peak power densities were on the order of 200 to 300 mW/cm2 and the pulse repetition frequencies varied from 200 to 400 Hz.
Frey referred to this auditory phenomenon as the RF (radio frequency) sound.
The sensation occurred instantaneously at average incident power densities well below that necessary for known biological damage and appeared to originate from within or near the back of the head.
Further testing revealed that two requirements were necessary for the subject to hear the microwave induced sound:
“...good bone conduction and the ability to hear acoustic energy above 5 kHz...”
By 1975 the introduction to a paper by A.W. Guy and others begins,
“One of the most widely observed and accepted biologic effects of low average power electromagnetic (EM) energy is the auditory sensation evoked in man when exposed to pulsed microwaves.”
Today, the US Government use of synthetic telepathy was described in the October-November 1994 issue of Nexus:
Directed-energy weapons currently being deployed include, for example, a micro-wave weapon manufactured by Lockheed-Sanders and used for a process known as ‘Voice Synthesis’ which is remote beaming of audio (i.e., voices or other audible signals) directly into the brain of any selected human target. This process is also known within the US Government as ‘Synthetic Telepathy’.
Microwave “Zapping”
Much of the work done with microwaves was developed by Project Pandora.
This project was put into place by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
It was initially set up to study the effects of microwaves that were being beamed into the American Embassy in Moscow by the Soviet Union.
Some of the findings of the scientists involved with Pandora are quite disturbing.
Dr. Joseph C. Sharp and engineer Mark Grove were able to hear and distinguish one-syllable words by pulse-modulated microwaves.
Microwaves can also alter the permeability of the body’s blood-brain barrier. This characteristic can synergistically increase the effects of drugs.
“Using relatively low-level RFR, it may be possible to sensitize large military groups to extremely dispersed amounts of biological or chemical agents to which the unirradiated population would be immune.”
Sound can be transmitted even easier through the use of implants.
As fans of Rush Limbaugh can attest to, cochlear implants, implants that send electrical signals into the fluid of the inner ear can effectively transmit sounds.
Additionally implants that transmit sound vibrations via bone conduction, such as the cases of dental fillings picking up audible radio signals.
Implanted Stimoceiver
The stimoceiver, invented by Dr. Jose Delgado, consists of wires running from strategic points in the brain to a radio receiver/transmitter located entirely under the skin.
Through this device, Delgado was able to stimulate raw emotions such as sexual arousal, anxiety, and aggression with the turn of a knob.
Of course, secret research by the US Government into microwaves and synthetic telepathy has moved on considerably since the 1980’s.
McVeigh: Manchurian Candidate?
Among the many telemetry instruments being used today, are miniature radio transmitters that can be swallowed, carried externally, or surgically implanted.... They permit the simultaneous study of behavior and physiological functioning.
—Dr. Stuart Mackay, Bio-Medical Telemetry (textbook), 1968
While visiting friends in Decker, Michigan, Timothy McVeigh complained that the Army had implanted him with a microchip. He said that it was a miniature subcutaneous transponder, so that they could keep track of him.
He complained that it left an unexplained scar on his buttocks and was painful to sit on.
Of course, we all know that McVeigh was convicted of the 1995 bombing of a US Government building in Oklahoma City.
Miniaturized telemetrics have been part of an ongoing project by the military and the various intelligence agencies to test the effectiveness of tracking soldiers on the battlefield.
The miniature implantable telemetric device was declassified long ago.
According to Dr. Carl Sanders, the developer of the Intelligence Manned Interface (IMI) biochip,
“We used this with military personnel in the Iraq War where they were actually tracked using this particular type of device.”
It is also interesting to note that the Calspan Advanced Technology Center in Buffalo, NY (Calspan ATC), where McVeigh worked, is engaged in microscopic electronic engineering of the kind applicable to telemetrics.
Calspan was founded in 1946 as Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.
And funded in part by the “Fund for the Study of Human Ecology,” a CIA financing conduit for mind control experiments.
This operation was set up by emigre Nazi scientists and others under the direction of CIA doctors Sidney Gottlieb, Ewen Cameron, and Louis Jolyn West.
According to mind control researcher Alex Constantine,
“Calspan places much research emphasis on bioengineering and artificial intelligence (Calspan pioneered the field in the 1950s).”
Human tracking and monitoring technology are well within Calspan’s sphere of pursuits.
The company is instrumental in REDCAP, an Air Force electronic warfare system that winds through every Department of Defense facility in the country.
A Pentagon release explains that REDCAP…
“is used to evaluate the effectiveness of electronic-combat hardware, techniques, tactics and concepts.”
The system …
“includes closed-loop radar and datalinks at RF manned data fusion and weapons control posts.”
One computer news board reported that a disembodied, rumbling, low-frequency hum had been heard across the country the week of the [Oklahoma] bombing.
Similiar hums in Taos, New Mexico, Eugene and Medford, Oregon, Timmons, Ontario and Bristol, England were most definitely (despite specious official denials) attuned to the brain’s auditory pathways.
The Air Force is among Calspan’s leading clients, and Eglin AFB has farmed key personnel to the company.
The grating irony (recalling McVeigh’s contention he’d been implanted with a telemetry chip) is that the Instrumentation Technology Branch of Eglin Air Force Base is currently engaged in the tracking of mammals with subminiature telemetry devices.
According to an Air Force press release, the biotelemetry chip transmits on the upper S-band (2318 to 2398 MHz), with up to 120 digital channels.
There is nothing secret about the biotelemetry chip.
Ads for commercial versions of the device have appeared in national publications. Time magazine ran an ad for an implantable pet transponder in its 26 June, 1995 issue—ironically enough—opposite an article about a militia leader who was warning about the coming New World Order.
While monitoring animals has been an unclassified scientific pursuit for decades, the monitoring of humans has been a highly classified project that is but a subset of the Pentagon’s “nonlethal” arsenal.
Future battles could be waged with genetically engineered organisms, such as rodents, whose minds are controlled by computer chips engineered with living brain cells….
The research, called Hippo-campal Neuron Patterning, grows live neurons on computer chips.
“This technology that alters neurons could potentially be used on people to create zombie armies,”
Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said.
“It’s conceivable given the current state of the electronic mind control art, a biocybernetic Oz over the black budget rainbow, that McVeigh had been drawn into an experimental project, that the device was the real McCoy.”
Timothy McVeigh may have unknowningly been an Army/CIA guinea pig involved in a classified telemetric/mind-control project—a “Manchurian Candidate.”
Or not.
Whatever, the technology does exist, and it is mature. Only a fool would think that it is not being used.
But I don’t think that it is being used on a large scale.
If you wanted to do this on a large scale you would to alter one’s DNA or mRNA for person-to-person Hippo-campal neural patterning. But, again, unless large segments of the population are being injected with small mind-control devices, this technique isn’t very useful to corral large numbers of people
Other systems must be employed…
Soviet Research
A highly secretive battle was being waged behind the scenes during the Cold War in the area of EM weapons (sometimes described as psychotronics) to control and influence the minds of people.
It’s only now that some of this research has emerged, but much of it remains hidden and classified. In fact, we know more about Soviet research into this area because it was the Soviet Union that collapsed.
A 1975 issue of the Soviet publication International Life, discussing electronic mind control developments, stated that atmospheric electricity can be used “to suppress the mental activity” of large groups of people.
The Soviet journal said that a sonic generator, tuned to an infrasound (below the hearing level) frequency, could create “feelings of depression, fear, panic, terror, and despair.”
In 1977, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) declassified a report describing how advances in Soviet psychotronic technology can create the ultimate big brother society.
The DIA stated that by using electronic mind control against populations to implant ideas and thoughts into the heads of unsuspecting victims:
“Sounds and possibly even words, which appear to be originating intracranially (within one’s own head), can be induced by signal modification at very low average power densities.”
The DIA report also said that the Soviets discovered that secret microwave radiation can be used to induce in unsuspecting victims:
“Headache, fatigue, perspiring, dizziness, menstrual disorders, irritability, agitation, tension, drowsiness, sleeplessness, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and the lack of concentration.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union (in a maneuver identical to Operation Paperclip in World War II) Western intelligence agencies obtained all the Soviet research and recruited key personnel working in this sensitive area.
Russian research has now all but stopped due to economic crises.
A report in Defense Electronics in the early 1990s said that a Richmond, Virginia firm, Psychotechnologies (believed to be closely tied to the CIA and the FBI) purchased the American rights to Soviet mind control devices.
Defense Electronics described a spring, 1993 meeting between Clinton Administration officials and Soviet psychotronics experts, including Dr. Igor Smirnov.
Amongst the US agencies represented at the meetings with Smirnov were the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Advance Research Projects Research Agency.
Clinton Administration officials wanted…
“...to determine whether psycho-correction... programs could be undertaken by the US Government. These devices could be used to affect judgment or opinion of decision-makers, key personnel or populaces.”
Clinton defense officials expressed interest that the psychotronic devices could be used “in non-violently” clearing areas of potential enemies, snipers, etc.
On the domestic front, psychotronic devices could be used to suppress political dissidents, and any other potential threats to the government.
Also meeting with the Soviet experts were officials from giant international corporations, such as General Motors, and researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health.
The 22 August, 1994 Newsweek magazine reported on a secret Arlington, Virginia meeting between experts from the FBI’s Counter-Terrorism Centre and Dr. Smirnov, whose work was described in the publication:
...Using electroencephalographs, Smirnov measures brain waves, then uses computers to create a map of the subconscious and various human impulses, such as anger or the sex drive.
Then through taped subliminal messages, he claims to physically alter the landscape with the power of suggestion.
Psychotronic Weapons Research
One man’s name has become synonymous with the field of non-lethal weapons development.
Col. John Alexander first became known to the public through his December, 1980 Military Review article titled, “The New Mental Battlefield.”
This article clearly describes the lethal nature of many of the so-called “non-lethal” weapons now being developed to control civilian populations.
Alexander noted:
Psychotronics may be described as the interaction of mind and matter… The possibility for employment as weaponry has been explored. To be more specific, there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated.
Describing Soviet development of psychotronic weapons, Alexander stated:
“The ability to... cause death can be transmitted over distances, thus inducing illness or death for no apparent reason.”
These…
“weapons would be able to induce illness or death at little or no risk to the operator... The psychotronic weapon would be silent (and) difficult to detect...”
Powerful elite insiders have long known how electromagnetic weapons can be effectively utilized to wage mind control against the population, specifically targeting political dissidents and troublemakers.
What of the numerous political activists and investigative journalists who died under mysterious circumstances, many from rare forms of cancer?
Could they have been ‘taken out’ by psychotronic weapons? We can only imagine how advanced this technology is today.
President Lyndon Johnson’s Science Adviser, Dr. Gordon J.F. MacDonald wrote the 1968 book, “Unless Peace Comes, A Scientific Forecast Of New Weapons.”
MacDonald described how man-made changes in the electrical earth ionosphere can be used for mass behavior control.
He said that low frequency electromagnetic oscillations can attack the low frequency electromagnetic brain waves in human beings.
He stated,
“Perturbation of the environment (by geophysical warfare) can produce changes in behavioral patterns.”
In his 1970 book, Between Two Ages, Zbigniew Brezezinski (a long-time Establishment strategist) described “weather control” as a “new weapon” that is a “key element of strategy.”
He added:
Technology will make available, to leaders of major nations, a variety of techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need to be appraised.
Brzezinski predicted the exact types of electromagnetic psychotronic weapons that the US Administration now has for the mass behavior control of citizens.
He stated:
It is possible—and tempting—to exploit, for strategic-political purposes, the fruits of research on the brain and on human behavior...
Accurately timed, artificially excited electronic strokes could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth...
In this way, one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of a very large population in selected regions, over an extended period.
Available Electronic Harassment Technologies:
Five Available Electronic Harassment Technologies.
There are five older technologies capable of extreme destruction of the ability to earn a living, and the quality of life of a target, listed below.
None of these technologies require implants, and all can be transmitted silently, through walls, and leave no trace evidence.
All have been available for decades.
Since few targets will acquire the correct detection equipment, destruction of a target’s life even using these older technologies is a perfect crime under the American “justice system”.
Here is the list:
[1] Weaponized microwave oven weapon
A simple microwave oven, door removed, with the door interlock switch bypassed, and held against the bedroom wall of a target in an apartment building or semi-detached house. This device can cause a variety of disabling medical symptoms. (Google “Dr. Reinhard Munzert”.)
[2] Dr. James C. Lin’s pulsed microwave transmitter
Joseph Sharp’s voice to skull success was replicated with Dr. James C. Lin’s pulsed microwave transmitter.
This was publicly announced in 1974 at the University of Utah.
This device produces audible sound transmitted directly into a target’s skull, through a target’s wall.
Of course, this can drive the through-the-wall target crazy, and if the target complains, the target will be immediately diagnosed as mentally ill.
U.S. patent 6,587,729 was issued based on Dr. Joseph Sharp’s voice to skull success.
[3] Silent Sound
Lowery’s “Silent Sound,” patent 5,159,703, has been used for self-help subliminal hypnosis tapes and CDs.
It has also used by the U.S. Army in Gulf War One (1991).
It is currently used for shoplifting prevention in some countries.
Together with Sharp’s voice to skull technology, Silent Sound projected through a bedroom wall can hypnotize a target in their bed with the target being unaware.
Unaware hypnosis is CLEARLY extreme electronic harassment.
A target’s personality can be severely interfered with, and the target will not know why this is happening.
Concept diagram, combined voice to skull and Silent Sound
[4] Lida Signal
This is a half-century-old medical device, the Russian-built Lida machine, a pulsed 40 watt, 40 MHz radio transmitter.
Russian-built Lida machine.
It can be used to make a target exhausted on the job when pulsing at the rate consistent with sleep.
If you perform a pulse rate increase, it will deprive the target of sleep as well.
Certain ham radio transmitters can be configured so as to duplicate the Lida signal.
U.S. Patent 3,773,049 describes the Lida operating principle. And you can buy one here below…
[5] EPIC
Named EPIC, a through wall coordination/balance disruption weapon is an active technology being used today.
Electronic harassment targets have reported suddenly having their balance and coordination disrupted.
Here’s a quote from a May 21, 2007 article about the EPIC weapon:
http://www.myfoxhouston.com
Local Company Developing 'Less than Lethal' Weapon 'EPIC' by Invocon is being developed as a 'Less than Lethal' Weapon.
How do you disable bad guys in a crowd without killing them or causing permanent damage?
It’s a problem faced by troops in urban combat and by local law enforcement.
Now, a local company called Invocon may have the answer, and the solution may be a weapon code named "Epic."
The company is developing a weapon they hope someday will be able to shoot through a wall and stun people on the other side of the wall. ...
Conclusion
In the United States today, the official unemployment rate is supposed to be a wonderful 3.68%.
U.S. unemployment rate for 2019 was 3.68%, a 0.21% decline from 2018.
U.S. unemployment rate for 2018 was 3.90%, a 0.46% decline from 2017.
Declining every year. Getting better and better. Wonderful right?
How can [1] most Americans be working AND [2] being so poor that they are not being able to pay their taxes?
So? What the reasoning? If both numbers are correct, then what is going on is frightening. For either…
The American government has failed everyone on a grand scale.
The United States system of “exceptional democracy” has failed everyone on a grand scale.
Or, if one of figures is a fabrication or manipulation, then the government is lying to cover-up something very serious and very bad.
I argue that no matter how you look at this situation, something inside of the American society and the American government is severely “off the rails”.
Off the rails - IdiomIn an abnormal or malfunctioning condition, as in Her political campaign has been off the rails for months. The phrase occurs commonly with go, as in Once the superintendent resigned, the effort to reform the schoolsystem went off the rails .
This idiom alludes to the rails on which trains run; if a train goes off the rails, it stops or crashes.
The ONLY way that the government can control the situation is to control the people.
Which is why…
[1] American people and population is being irradiated constantly and covertly with narratives and control algorithms to corral their behaviors. This is non-stop all over America.
[2] Manipulation of Social Media and other avenues are used to herd the people into balkanized enclaves of thought; “echo chambers”.
[3] Vault 7 clearly states that Operating Systems out of the United States are designed to control the minds of those using it.
So if you feel that the world seems to be spinning out of control, and that there is a overriding feeling of dread and terror, perhaps it is the ongoing operation and a side effect for decades of intentional mind control. Rather than it “just being you”.
Air China plane.
I can tell you that once I left the United States, and got on board the Air China flight that I felt an absolute calmness and safety. Initially, I believed that it was that I was finally putting that nightmare of the last few decades behind me.
No more prison.
My “retirement” ended.
No more bullshit and reporting nonsense.
No more life as a slave in a gulag.
However, now (in hindsight) it appears that I (along with everyone else) was living inside an irradiated torture chamber, and it was only once I left that I could experience the kinds of freedom and feelings that I grew up with in the 1960’s.
And make no mistake…
…you can absolutely FEEL the calmness once you leave the United States.
What leaving the United States is like.
And I want to remind everyone that there are options out there; places that DO NOT irradiate you with radiation to control your thoughts, monitor your actions, and arrest you if you get out of line. You have REAL freedom. Not the kind of faux “freedom” that what most Americans suffer though.
The rest of the world is just great. Really, really great.
The ten rules of war propaganda were set forth by the historian Anne Morelli in her book The Principles of War Propaganda. Well, let’s look at these rules.
In doing so, we will see that our mainstream media follow them exactly.
Anyone who follows the media reports in the West must realize that our German media, free, objective, and critical, are engaged in war propaganda.
There are 10 fundamental well-known rules of American war propaganda that are easy to verify.
Rule 1: We don’t want war
Fun fact: Every war that American has been in for the last seventy five years involved a discussion with the (eventual) enemy where the United States made the statement (word for word) exactly stated "We don't want war".
It's so obvious that it has become the "Calling Card of America".
The West supposedly never wants wars. Even so, the West wages more wars than all other states put together. Germany is fighting in Mali to supply the French nuclear power plants with uranium (officially against terrorists, of course). Germany fought in Afghanistan for 20 years, so long that most have already forgotten what it was all about. Germany has been militarily active in Kosovo for over 20 years to build democracy, but the Albanian mafia still rules there under the protection of the Bundeswehr. And so on.
All of these – and also the other – wars of the US-dominated West in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and on, all have one thing in common: Of course, the West did not want them at all, but was forced to war by the evil rulers. This is the official reading every time, and none of the “rulers” has ever attacked a country in the West.
It was always the other way around, the West attacked.
“We don’t want war”
If you want a fun activity, read the transcript of the March 2021 meeting in Anchorage Alaska between the United States and China. Look for the announcement statement “We don’t want war” coming from the American side.
That is how the rest of the world knows that American has decided to wage a hot war, soon to become world war III, nuclear style with China.
Look for the specific wording.
That’s exactly how you know that America plans to attack China under some kind of excuse and that a propaganda barrage to justify that attack is being conducted.
Rule 2: The opposing camp is solely responsible for the war
It's all their fault.
See point one.
Assad is allegedly responsible for the war in Syria, although the media in the West consistently keep silent about the CIA operation “Timber Sycamore” with which the CIA started the war. If this is new to you, it’s no wonder. Der Spiegel, for example, has never reported on how you can find the term “Timber Sycamore” when you search the Spiegel archive. The relevant documents of the CIA were published in Washington years ago. If this is new to you, check it out.
It is always done that way. So it was with Iraq, Libya and all other wars in which the West is fighting. The blame was placed on the other side, concealing that the West started the wars itself.
Rule 3: The leader of the opposing camp has the face of the devil
This is the classic. The choice of words is crucial. Putin, Assad and whoever are “potentates”, “autocrats”, “dictators” who commit all the deadly sins of the world. When a war is imminent, the media bring – in order to make the population ready for war – the inevitable formulations of the “Second Hitler”, from whom the world must be saved.
Of course, the enemies do not have “governments”, they are “regimes”. With all these formulations the “enemy” is dehumanized, the public should feel hatred and be ready to overthrow such an evil person, even at the cost of thousands of lives.
Anti-China bullshit from the American media.
This is what is called “hatespeech” in modern German and what the same media, that use this hate propaganda against unloved heads of government, always find very bad.
.
"America doesn't hate the Chinese people, just the Chinese government."
Rule 4: We defend a good cause and not special interests
Of course, the US wanted to bring human rights, democracy and prosperity to Iraq. Of course, it wasn’t about the oil wells that US corporations have secured for themselves. Not even in Libya, where France (one of the driving forces in the war) has secured many oil wells. And Mali is about the fight against terrorism, not the uranium on which the French nuclear industry depends. And of course Syria is not about oil or the only Russian naval base in the Mediterranean, it is only about democracy, human rights and prosperity.
Wherever a government is critical of the West and where there are also natural resources (or where one of the main enemies China and Russia can be harmed), the West finds democracy and human rights very important. But if a government is pro-Western and allows the West access to natural resources, such as the absolutist Saudi dictatorship, then democracy and human rights are not so important.
Regime change in China The last major policy shift in China caught many off guard; we are at another such turning point. For the past ten years or so, bad newsin China was usually good news. Growth shocks triggered sizable stimuli, leading to asset price rebounds in China, emerging markets and the world more broadly.-Chinaregimechange
Incidentally, this is the key to understanding why Russia, which was a political friend under Yeltsin, has become enemy number one again under Putin: Under Yeltsin, Western corporations had secured control of Russian oil and gas. Putin ended that by 2003, and suddenly he was the number one villain. It doesn’t say that in the “quality media”, but it was actually so banal.
Rule 5: The enemy commits atrocities deliberately; on the other hand, when we cross the line, it is unintentional
We experience this one all the time. If the US is undoubtedly bombing a hospital in Afghanistan, then that is “collateral damage” and it was an accident. Nobody is punished, the “quality media” quickly forget it and do not ask for clarification.
On the other hand, it is enough if someone claims without evidence that Russia or Syria bombed a hospital and the media in the West are reporting not only for days, but also afterwards, so that the public does not forget who it must hate.
.
Rule 6: The enemy uses illegal weapons
That is also a classic.
We have all heard many times that Assad uses “barrel bombs”. Nobody really knows what that actually is, but it sounds pretty nasty. The USA constantly uses barrel bombs, except they are called “cluster bombs” and the “quality media” are almost always shyly silent about them, because these weapons are internationally banned.
Whether Assad uses this weapon has not been proven at all, but as a precaution the media have come up with a separate word for it so that the readers don’t even get the idea that the West could also use such weapons. ‘But he does that all the time.
Rule 7: We suffer only slight losses; the enemy’s losses are enormous
This rule only applies when the war has entered its critical phase. Before the war it was the other way around. Before the war it was reported that the enemy was aggressive and, for example, had killed so many of “our” soldiers again when violating a ceasefire. This is to prepare the public for a war.
We have been seeing this in Ukraine for years. The “quality media” always report when it gets “hotter” there that the rebels have killed so many Ukrainian soldiers. In doing so, they keep silent about the fact that the mostly Ukrainian shelling of residential areas preceded them, in which civilians were killed.
But you don’t find out about that from the “quality media”, you have to read the reports of the OSCE. The “quality media” did not consider the fact that the OSCE presented a report in November 2020 in which it stated that almost 75 percent of civilian casualties in Donbass were due to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Rule 8: The artists and intellectuals support our cause
Notice how often celebrities have their say in the media who think the Western wars are good for moral reasons. Celebs have spoken out against Assad, Gaddafi, and Saddam in recent years. This is particularly evident in the American media.
John Wayne fights the demon heathen communists in Vietnam in the movie The Green Berets.
In 2019 a prominent “benefit concert” for Venezuela took place in the Colombian border town of Cucuta. Famous artists appeared in the middle of the jungle to sing against Maduro. Conveniently right next to the US military base there.
And for Navalny, for example, Western celebrities wrote an open letter to Putin in April 2021. It did not contain any truths and probably hardly anyone has read it. It was just important to be able to name the celebrities in the headlines of the media who are against Putin.
There are innumerable examples of this method of war propaganda.
But none of this has anything to do with politics, after all, what politician is interested in a singer’s opinion? These reports only have the purpose of giving the public the feeling that the position of the West is morally correct and thus the fans of the stars are to be influenced accordingly and to follow their idol. It’s all about emotions, not the actuality.
Rule 9: Our concern is something sacred
Of course, after all, it is supposedly about the “holy” values of the West, that is to say about democracy and human rights. You can also kill people for this.
This is probably the oldest means of war propaganda in world history. In ancient Rome one had to bring civilization to the barbarians, of course it was not about the enrichment of the generals. Caesar moved to Gaul as a practically bankrupt man and came back very rich.
Later the Spaniards had to bring the “savages” in America the right faith so that they would not burn in the hell to which the Spaniards sent them on the occasion. It wasn’t about the gold, of course. And the British Empire wanted to bring civilization back to the “backward” colonies, because the poor, backward people in the colonies couldn’t rule themselves.
What I am writing here so ironically is true. You can read it in the documents from the corresponding periods. There was always a “sacred” reason for urgently going to war.
And today the “holy” concerns are democracy, human rights, women’s rights and so on. It’s still the same principle as in antiquity, only the “sacred” concern changes every now and then.
Rule 10: Anyone who questions our propaganda is a traitor
Today the word “traitor” is out of date.
Today you can choose to say “Putin understanders”, “Kremlin trolls”, “conspiracy theorists”, “anti-Americans” and whatever other names are currently circulating.
Anyone who disagrees is demonized and marginalized.
But all of these terms have one thing in common: They identify the named person as an opponent of “Western values” or democracy.
Ergo: it’s a traitor.
It’s shocking, but the German media is actually doing war propaganda like in the darkest times in history. And not just since yesterday, it happened in 1991 in the First Gulf War with the incubator lie and has not been less since then, on the contrary, it has become more, and the techniques have been refined more and more.
Do you think it is a coincidence that the media works exactly according to the propaganda textbook?
The Conclusion
The United States has already decided to wage war with China.
The initial attempts, have all failed, resulting in (as best as I can determine) five HOT-level Assaults…
Carpet bombing using 8 bio-weapons to destroy livestock 2016 through 2020.
A hard attack using the COVID19 B-strain “death by brain seizure” during CNY 2020, with herd immunity for US allies using the inoculation A-strain . The “three day sniffles” variant.
A follow up (two punch) “desperation” (vindictive) bio-weapon attack(s) targeted on Beijing using the “death by vomiting” virus known as the Jingmen tick virus (JMTV), and the “death by diarrhea” virus. Which is itself being a human version of (ASF version of the H1N1) people transmittable Swine-flu 2020 virus. Also (curiously) disseminated by “criminal elements” using drones to spray the virus all over China. Good thing for China that the CIA assets turned themselves into the authorities.
The “tit-for-tat” minor assault carrier fires. China’s first big-deck amphibious assault ship, a type 075; a huge vessel that was built in a miraculously short amount of time, mysteriously caught fire on Saturday, April 11th, 2020. And then the gutting of the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard.
And the enormous late Summer US Navy armada that sailed to the South China Sea in 2020. And the return back to the USA with their “tail between their legs”. The USA was unprepared to to deal with the kinds of defensive capabilities that the Chinese had arrayed in the South China Sea.
Additionally, there are failures in collapse of particular cities, and Chinese efforts…
Color Revolution in Hong Kong.
Color Revolution in Tibet.
Turn XinJIang and the Uighur Muslims into a Syria-like battlefield.
The attempts to destabilize Chinese allies are a mixed bag…
Myanmar “regime change” to a pro-American anti-China nation.
Thailand “regime change” to a pro-American anti-China nation.
Chinese BRI construction in the Beirut port (destroyed by missiles).
And so on and so forth.
It’s a big effort, with the blocking the Suez canal, and mysterious fires in IC factories, and the like…
The propaganda is still in full active attack mode.
Which pretty much means that more, and worse events are scheduled to occur.
I think that the United States should realize that China is NOT a nation that is an easy target and that it would be in the best interests for America to work with China rather than try to destroy it. But what else can I say? America is run by idiots.
That’s the only thing that you can conclude.
They are all maniacs you see. Maniacs. Pure maniacs.
Do you want more?
This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.
This is a wonderful rant by a girl currently in the United States. She is absolutely “fed up” with the anti-China news, attitude, and general opinions of American regarding China. And she want’s it all to end. She is shouting loud and clear “Shut Up!”
The Chinese people are getting fed up with the lies that come out of the American, and Western “news”. They are tired of it. They are starting to get angry about it. And it must stop.
I've got a bunch of small and short embedded videos in this article. You really need to watch them to get the full impact of this article. -MM
Again, here is a dialog rant by a Chinese-America who lives inside of America, but well knows the reality of her home nation; China. And so, being sick and tired of the endless lies, and bullshit from the American “news”, she lashes out…
I Want To Talk About China
China is nothing like the fake version that exists only in imagination, that is painted in the media and absorbed into the minds of the people who gape at me when I tell them, "You know, life in China wasn't really all that different."
By Lily Chang
“Where are you from?”
“China,” my mom says, with audible pride.
“Oh,” said the lady at the thrift store, her eyebrows disappearing into her thick brown hair. “Was it scary over there? Were you not allowed to say things or use the internet?”
…
“China is a repressive dictatorship where the government exercises total control over people’s lives. The citizens have very few human rights compared to in the US.”
“That’s not true,” my sister blurts out. “I lived there and it wasn’t like that at all.”
“Don’t talk out of turn,” said her fourth grade teacher.
…
“You know, life in China wasn’t really all that different,” I say.
I watch the shock in my friends’ eyes. Feeling awkward, I continue on.
“I went to school in the morning and came home at night. I had a lot of homework. On the weekend, I would go out with my friends, and we would go to the park, or go window shopping, and gossip about our teachers and classmates.”
They gape at me, and I change the subject.
…
I want to talk about China.
I want to talk about my country and the many years I lived there, the laughter and the tears and everything in between. I want to share the experiences that shaped me and the people that changed me and the places where it happened.
But I can’t.
I cannot because the China in their eyes, in their minds, is not the China I come from, where I lived for most of my life.
It’s a sick, distorted version.
It is like what you see through a funhouse mirror, except there’s no fun in this house, only propaganda and racism and lies.
From those materials they built this diabolical interpretation of China that exists only in fantasy, and put me in it like a doll in a dollhouse.
And thus I was expected to play my part…
…as (some kind of) liberated victim of horrific oppression, grateful for my salvation, for my new life in the “enlightened” west.
I refused.
I’m going off script.
…
We, the Chinese people, are spoken of like birds in locked cages…
(Being) afraid to sing, the keys held by a brutal totalitarian government that cares nothing for our welfare.
We are huddled together, suffering, waiting for civilized countries to swoop in and rescue us…
To rescue us from our awful plights, to unlock our cages and heal our wounds and set us free.
We are dehumanized, reduced to objects of pity and victims in need of deliverance.
And thus they cry, “I love the Chinese people! I only hate the Chinese government!”
…
But they cannot love us, because to them, we are NOT human.
We are things.
The citizens are not humans, but caged birds desperate for a fairy tale hero to save them.
The government and those who compose it, are not humans, but blood-sucking demons.
Yes. demons. Demons who are bent on surveilling, controlling, destroying the citizens for their own gain.
But all this is just a fantasy; a lie. It’s a make-believe world that doesn’t exist, and one that never existed.
The people of China are not caged birds, and the government of China is not a group of cartoonishly evil demons.
…
But, this is the China they built in their minds, that they project onto me when I stand in front of them with my yellow skin, black hair, brown eyes.
And I want to tell them, that’s not the real China.
The real China is neither a paradise, but nor is it a hell.
The people of China are not helpless caged birds, but human beings.
Human beings with hopes and dreams and interests and opinions and stories. And yes, human rights.
We can travel, and many do.
More than 100 million Chinese go abroad every year, for school, work, tourism, and other reasons.
We can practice religion.
Religion is not allowed to influence politics.
And it is especially not allowed to promote separatism, terrorism, or other types of extremist thought.
We can criticize the government.
We can even hold protests.
But we cannot humiliate or slander our leaders, we cannot spread lies, and again, we cannot promote separatism or incite mass unrest.
Maybe that seems like a lot of conditions.
But swearing at our leaders isn't productive engagement. It doesn't lead to problems being fixed.
We can vote.
There are elections in China, but not for the president.
The people directly elect district representatives to the People's Congress, who then elect representatives at the city and province level.
These representatives, just like Congresspeople in the US, are responsible for expressing their constituents' suggestions and grievances.
They provide oversight for politicians. And if they don't do their job, they can be fired via petition from the people.
All citizens of China are entitled to these rights. All fifty-six ethnicities.
The people of China are not caged birds, and the government of China is not a group of cartoonishly evil demons.
In fact, China enjoys high levels of support among the people – not because there are no other options, as often claimed, and not because we are brainwashed. To say so takes away our agency, puts us back in the cage. We are supportive because the government serves the people.
…they lifted 850 million people out of absolute poverty in 40 years (100 million just since 2013),
…built them free homes,
…provided them with jobs and healthcare and education.
(The government) invested into infrastructure to ensure people in the most distant areas can live a better and more convenient life.
(And they) traversed deep into dangerous mountains to find those in need of help.
Chinese people respect their government…
…because they made enormous financial sacrifices made to combat the COVID-19 pandemic…
… from the initial lock-down of Wuhan…
… to implementing the massive contact tracing infrastructure, to free treatment for all patients.
They built hospitals in ten days, then mobilized of doctors and medical equipment from all over the country to the center of the epidemic.
It’s been stunning.
Increased life expectancy.
Increased quality of life.
Unparalleled safety.
Absolute happiness.
That is what the Chinese government does for the people.
That is not to say things are perfect.
Corruption exists.
Incompetence exists.
Dissatisfaction with the government exists. And the people express it. They make their voices heard.
The government is constantly monitoring public opinion on social media. Vocal criticism, of which there is much, is noted and taken into account.
Government agencies have open comment boards online where people can leave complaints.
Responses are then published online.
Unpopular policies get changed.
Unpopular politicians get replaced.
Whether you believe this is because they want the best for the people, or because they’re afraid of being violently overthrown by angry mobs, the result is the same.
They want to know what’s working and what’s not working. The needs and desires of the population are heard.
In the end, the Chinese people and the Chinese government are one, and cannot be separated.
Together, they are not oppressors and the oppressed, or even the rulers and the ruled, but two sides of the same coin, working together for a better China and better lives for all her citizens.
China is like a “bee hive”…
And America and the rest of the West, govern like “herding kittens”. The only solution is to divide up everyone so that everyone is fighting and the wealthy get wealthier…
China is not a paradise.
There are problems and unhappy people and bad decisions and things that fall through the cracks.
But it’s nothing like “that” China; The fake version of China that exists only in imagination, that is painted in the media and absorbed into the minds of the people who gape at me when I tell them…
… “You know, life in China wasn’t really all that different.”
And no one believes.
Because everyone is living within this fake world image that does not exist.
I want to talk to them about China, but I can’t.
Not until they tear down that twisted caricature in their minds; that fake world that they have been taught to believe.
Not until they see China for how she really is, good and bad.
I don’t wish for everyone to love China, or worship China. I want them to know China, understand China. The real China.
And when they do, then we can work together, learn from each other. Become better. That is what I hope to see.
…
Conclusion
It’s a great impassioned rant. And the thing is, that it could be written by just about any of the 120 million Chinese people who visit the the United States and return back to China. To put this number in perspective…
Population figures;
Some perspectives on WHY this is going on…
…it’s to create an evil villain. One that the people can point their fingers at and say [1] It’s another Nazi Germany!, and [2] We must do something to free the poor people! It tends to unite people against a common cause so they don’t get their torches, and pitchforks on the way to lynch the assholes in Washington DC.
It’s called “atrocity propaganda”…
Atrocity propaganda
Atrocity propaganda is the spreading of information about the crimes committed by an enemy, which can be factual, but often includes or features deliberate fabrications or exaggerations. This can involve photographs, videos, illustrations, interviews, and other forms of information presentation or reporting.
Why this demonization is going on; it’s because the USA must be the biggest, largest and most powerful nation in the world. If it isn’t, then all of it’s faults, it’s history of evil deeds, and the massive flaws within it’s system, and the economic crimes will come to light… to an angry world that is just now waking up to the reality of what the Hell the United States has been doing for much of the last century….
Indeed, for certain…
A time has come…
But that is not what is happening,
What is happening.
The United States is a terribly corrupt and flailing military empire and it is sinking, going down the drain in so many ways that everyone can watch and understand what is going on. The only people that do not understand this fact are those who are so absolutely blinded by the American propaganda of “exceptional greatness”, and intentional censorship of the reality outside of America.
We call them “sheeple”.
They are people that are emotionally entangled about things that they have NEVER physical experienced first hand. Only by what they read or watched on the internet.
Comedians joke about it, but it is a real problem.
And here…
The Bottom Line
As the United States collapses there are a host of options available to prevent the collapse.
America could…
Convene an emergency Constitutional Convention. And though it, seriously reorganize the government to be more efficient and more focused on serving the needs of the people.
Redirect spending. Control the terrible fiscal irresponsibility. And set up policing organizations for fraud and waste.
Work on Win-win solutions. Work with other nations to improve positive international relations on the basis of a win-win philosophy.
Shut down the Military Empire. Seriously reduce the global military empire and redirect it’s task to domestic needs.
But that is not what it is doing. Instead it is picking fights with both Russia and China. In both cases trying to provoke an “incident” so that America has an excuse to unify America against a common enemy. It doesn’t matter who, at this point in time, and stage in the game. It just needs some kind of big, fierce enemy.
Note what is actually happening…
The Military Empire is expanding.
Provocative actions are proceeding and it’s only a matter of time when one will trigger a serious war.
The debt is getting larger, not smaller.
And an enormous budget (by Biden) to correct infrastructure problems has been proposed with zero changes to the already corrupted and inefficient system that is supposed to support it.
America is trying to provoke military engagements.
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Unknown in the rest of the world, but commonplace in China are these little robots that are seemingly everywhere. They scan you when you go into public buildings, and they help deliver food to you. They ask you if you need help or directions, and they help sweep the sidewalks and perform basic maintenance tasks. And here I am in a second tier city. Not even a first tier city. It’s all really cool.
According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), China has had the most industrial robotsin operation globally since 2016. By 2020, China is expected to produce 150,000 industrial robot units and have 950,300 industrial robots in operation.
A few years back was when I first noticed them. I think that my first exposure to the public robots was around 2013. There I saw my first one patrolling the immigration walkways of Shenzhen.
Then a few years ago, I bought my infant her first baby robot. This is a cute little egg about the size of barbie doll that sang and talked. It would pulse in this kind of pale yellowish light and it’s eyes would twinkle blue and green. She loved her little baby robot.
Since then I really haven’t paid the robot developments too closely. Most of my concern were in the industrial aspects of AI and robotics. Not so much regarding the commercial and public aspects.
Then 2020 Coronavirus hit.
Ouch! Then suddenly the skies were filled with thermal imaging drones, and police robots making sure that people are kept off the streets and maintaining good citizenship behaviors. The first were nothing more than a nice shiny white cylinder with a pair of eyes, a television screen and a nice voice.
Now they are getting more sophisticated. they all seem to have either a female voice or a cute little girls voice. It’s actually quite charming.
Here’s some videos. Check out the little girly voice on this delivery robot…
Factory Robots
And they have been in factories for decades now.
China made robotics a focal point of its recent “Made in China 2025” plan, and has set nationalgoals of producing 100,000 industrial robots a year and having 150 robots in operationforevery 10,000 employees by 2020, a figure known as robot density.
-Robots are key in China'sstrategytosurpassrivals
Service Robots
A service robot operates semi or fully autonomously to provide services for human health or the maintenance of equipment, excluding industrial operations.
Healthcare/medical devices, finance, warehousing/logistics, and customer service/catering are the hottest industries for service robots. Service robots have also increasingly been appearing in households as home-cleaning robots, accompanying robots, entertainment robots, and education robots.
In 2017, the market for service robots was worth an estimated US$1.32 billion in China. But with a rapidly aging population, the continuous demand for healthcare and education, and the rapid development of parking robots and supermarket robots, the market size of service robots in China is expected to exceed US$2.9 billion by 2020.
Here’s an example of a video performing warehouse activities…
Some fun pictures
Themainapplications of industrial robots in China are in the following sectors: automobile manufacturing, electrical and electronics, rubber plastics, metallurgy, food, chemical engineering, and medicineandcosmetics.
-The Robotics Industry in China - China Briefing News
Here’s a police robot that connects to your cell phone. It enables you to chat with it via your cell phone, exchange pictures, get directions and offers the entire host of government APPs that are available within China.
Robots come in many sizes and shapes. the smaller ones are just as capable as the larger ones and can provide translation services, guide, help and directions. This one is Wechat enabled and enables you to connect to it directly for information access and data.
Hospital Robots
Here’s a couple of police robots that assist in hospitals, airports, rail stations and other public venues. Like all police robots they provide ready access to a Police hot line, and immediate help in any distress situation.
Specialized service robots
Specialized service robots in China are generally considered those used for military applications, extreme operations, and emergency rescue.
Specialized service robots in China are increasingly being used in response to earthquakes, floods, extreme weather, fire, security, and other public safety incidents. With Chinese enterprises’ increasing safety awareness, specialized service robots will be used in dangerous environments to perform a wide variety of tasks.
In 2017, China’s market for specialized service robots was worth an estimated US$740 million. By 2020, it is expected to reach US$1.24 billion.
Here’s a robust all-terrain police robot for crowd control and assistance to people. It monitors the environment and responds to issues just like a normal policeman would.
In addition to regional clusters, China has more than 40 robotics-focused industrial parks throughout the country. Robotics-focused industrial parks benefit from government resources and incentives to promote the industry. At the 2017 World Robot Conferencein Beijing, CIE released the Report on the Development of China’s Robot Industry (2017).
-TheRobotics Industry in China - ChinaBriefingNews
AI advancements in Manufacturing
China has been the world’s largest industrial robot market for four consecutive years. In 2016, China had a total sales volume of almost 90,000 units – a 27 percent increase compared to 2015 and representing 30 percent of the global market.
The Chinese government has ambitious plans for the country’s robotics industry.
MIC 2025 starts by listing the robotics industry, along with artificial intelligence and automation, as one of the priority sectors for high-end development to push forward the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. This push sees the government aiming to raise the global market share of Chinese-made robots from 31 percent in 2016 to over 50 percent by 2020.
Further, in 2016, the government launched the Robotics Industry Development Plan (2016-2020) to promote robot applications to a wider range of fields and to attract foreign investment, aiming to make 100,000 industrial robots produced by domestic technology annually by 2020.
To attain these goals, the government supports companies that implement robotics-enabled automation in key industries, including automobile manufacturing, electronics, household electrical appliances, and logistics. The government has several programs and incentives to encourage R&D development and innovation, such as offering robot manufacturers and automation businesses subsidies, low-interest loans, tax relief, and land rental incentives.
Furthermore, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently announced at a news conference in anticipation of the 2018 World Robot Conference that China has “approved a plan to build a national robotics innovation center, which will focus on tackling common bottlenecks such as human-machine interaction technologies and compliant control.”
During the 2017 Boao Forum, Chinese officials also restated the importance of domestic and foreign companies to be “treated equally in terms of qualification licenses, government procurement, and enjoying preferential policies of MIC 2025.” Nevertheless, many foreign governments and tech companies fear that MIC 2025 gives Chinese companies an unfair advantage.
-China Briefing
Police Robots
Here’s a police robot that answers your queries. Can provide directions, answer questions, respond to distress and show you where to go, including taking you to the police office or exit if you need help.
To date, the government’s efforts to develop the industry appear largely successful: China is the fastest growing robot market in the world. Analysts attribute China’s rising robotics industry to its scale, growth momentum, and capital.
As of March 2017, more than 800 companies in China were directly involved in robot manufacturing, and by the end of 2017, there were over 6,500 companies relating to robotics. Major Chinese robotics players include SIASUN and DJI Innovations.
Development primarily focuses on servo control, motor, and reducer, human-machine interaction techniques, robot vision and intelligent speech, and underwater robots, among other technologies.
The rapid growth in China’s robotics industry is not limited to domestic companies. Foreign companies such as Nachi-Fujikoshi and FANUC have franchised with KUKA, Reis Robotics, Staubli, and ABB to establish production facilities in China – not only sales or integrated offices. The Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn is another major robotics player in China.
Government incentives have also allowed Chinese companies to acquire Western robotics technology companies. For example, in 2016, Midea Group acquired KUKA, one of the world’s largest robot manufacturers, to advance its home appliance production.
With strong government interest in the robotics industry, a large and growing number of Chinese companies, and foreign companies that often hold the most advanced technology, there are a number of different actors involved in the industry.
According to Martin Kefer, founder of Motus Operandi, a robotics software company based in Shanghai, foreign robotics companies entering the Chinese market must be prepared to deal with a large number of stakeholders.
Kefer noted that many of the manufacturers that are adopting robots operate in Sino-foreign joint ventures, such as in the auto industry, where foreign ownership is still capped.
“Getting the foot in the door with JV manufacturers can be difficult,” Kefer noted. “Every car company partnering with a local factory in a mandatory JV agreement can make negotiations among stakeholders more complicated.”
Furthermore, investors must be prepared for the government to be another key stakeholder in the industry. “[The] government is an actor on all levels,” Kefer said.
-China Briefing
Software for robots
Besides the current two traditional robotics businesses in China – hardware and system integration – foreign companies such as Motus Operandi are investing in a third solution: software designed for robots.
For example, Motus Operandi provides software for installation in robots that finds the most energy efficient way for a robot to carry out a given task, which can save companies millions annually.
“We focus on smart motion for robotics arms in manufacturing industries. We bring something new, which is reducing the energy consumption and improving the speed of the robot system, based on the data from the robot system.”
- Martin Kefer, founder of Motus Operandi, a robotics software company based in Shanghai
Robotics companies such as Motus Operandi benefit from the Chinese government’s support for the industry.
“Electricity is subsidized in China, which means the government pays the final bill,”
Yet, Kefer cautioned against over-reliance on subsidies and incentives.
“Avoid relying on government for growth,” “Support for startups in China are mostly for Chinese startups – securing government funding is harder for foreign startups.”
Motus Operandi’s experience is demonstrative of opportunities in China’s robotics industry. Aided by government support, producers of robots and related software and services are finding substantial room for growth.
However, these same government initiatives can also create competition and hurdles for foreign players in the long run. Such policies make the robotics industry an alluring but challenging area for foreign investment.
Everyday Robots
Here’s a police robot. It’s going around and helping people and monitoring crowd control and providing situational awareness.
According to the Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE), east China’s Yangtze River Delta region has the most solid foundation for robotics development.
The Yangtze River Delta region has formed an agglomeration effect in Shanghai, Kunshan, Changzhou, Xuzhou, and Nanjing.
Many global robotics giants establish headquarters or offices in the Yangtze River Delta, especially in Shanghai, where Kefer noted that the startup environment is very supportive.
The robotics industry in the Pearl River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji) regions are also gradually growing.
The number of robotics-related companies in the Pearl River Delta region is over 700, second only to the Yangtze River Delta region, with a total output value of RMB 75 billion (US$11.80 billion).
However, the industry’s overall innovative capabilities in the northeastern region – China’s rust belt – have been limited in recent years.
In China’s central and western regions, the foundation of robot production is relatively weak. However, these generally fast-growing regions still show potential for development.
In addition to regional clusters, China has more than 40 robotics-focused industrial parks throughout the country. Robotics-focused industrial parks benefit from government resources and incentives to promote the industry.
-China Briefing
Human appearing Robots
The world of robots is very interesting. From what I have shown so are, which are the norm inside of China, to the stuff that you don’t see often…
…like military robots.
…like sex robots.
I would say that about 99% of the sex robots are manufactured within China. It's a big industry and many Americans and people from the Middle East don't hesitate to pay a couple of thousand US dollars for a model of their choice.
And one of the most interesting are the human appearing life-like robots. Such as this…
Everyday Robots
These are some pictures of scenes that are not uncommon within China…
Or, this… which was all over Chinese television back in 2016 during the Chinese New Year. These little guys all danced up a storm, and five thousand or so.
Or, this little guy which is being exported to Japan…
Or, this… even this is becoming more common in the larger cities such as Shenzhen.
Some Chinese military robots
It’s a new world out there.
These are currently fielded. There are many more in development.
And an interesting write up on Chinese robots in 2016 (five years ago) on Global Security…
Some published science fiction a long time ago imagined battle scenes of robot soldiers in the future. Now this fantasy is becoming a reality due to the rapid development of automation technology in recent years. Military robots replace individual soldiers on the battlefield, which can greatly reduce the casualty rate of military personnel on the battlefield. Robots can return to the battlefield by mechanically repairing and replacing parts. The machine can be mass produced and hardly needs any training.
Military robots have stronger battlefield awareness than individual soldiers, and can detect potential dangers on the battlefield through sensors. Compared with individual soldiers, the machine has a stronger load capacity and can be equipped with various heavy weapons, which greatly improves the combat capability. The machine can perform round-the-clock tasks with guaranteed energy. Machines are more adaptable than individual soldiers and can adapt to different battlefield environments. Robots will not have emotions, making military tasks go more smoothly.
Unmanned technology has broad application prospects in the military field, will profoundly change the form and style of future warfare, and is the strategic frontier of the development of army equipment. Just as the invention of gunpowder sent modern warfare into the era of hot weapons, some scholars have asserted that artificial intelligence will be the key to detonating future warfare changes. Future wars will be wars on chips. This is not just a contest of human wisdom, but also a confrontation between unmanned systems. Unmanned systems will gradually free human soldiers from heavy physical work and extreme danger and let them focus on making combat decisions and carrying out technical and tactical movements. If such killer robots are put into battle on a large scale, it is very difficult for the human army to win.
The equipment of unmanned combat vehicles has greatly improved the technical and informatization level of Chinese troops. It gives infantry units stronger battlefield reconnaissance, situational awareness and support firepower. How to achieve perfect tactical coordination with unmanned combat vehicles and give full play to the combat capabilities of unmanned combat vehicles has become a very important issue facing the Chinese military.
The Chinese military is developing and testing autonomous / remote control large (over one ton) UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles), which include tanks based on the transformation of the equipment with a lot of artificial intelligence. With the ability to fight autonomously, soldiers can control it remotely. According to military experts of China, the program of robotization of the armed forces in the period from 2014 to 2022 and meeting the needs of the PLA with various types must be accompanied by a 15 percent annual increase in expenditures for these purposes from 570 million. USA in 2013 to 2 billion in 2022.
China is trying to catch up and intends to become the first in this field. UGVs can be traced back to the 1990s , when the U.S. Department of Defense developed a four-wheeled, 1.6- ton MDARS (Motion Detection Evaluation and Response System) robotic vehicle for security tasks. This robot is equipped with radar and three-dimensional vision sensors. It can avoid obstacles and recognize any objects encountered. Since 2001, Americans have equipped thousands of robots of this type. Chinese military experts have concluded that the design and creation of fully Autonomous weapons systems is possible only in the long term. The unresolved question is to determine the volume of tasks, operation and the role of Autonomous robotic systems on the battlefield.
The People’s Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF) recently announced that the Sharp Claw I unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), manufactured by China North Industries Corporation (Norinco), entered service on April 13. This was first reported by China Central Television 7 and was subsequently confirmed by the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command. Jane’s, the UK-based military news site, was among the first to report the development in the West.
According to Jane’s, Sharp Claw I is a tracked combat and reconnaissance robot weighing 120 kg. (265 lbs.) and measuring 70 cm (28 inches) in length, with an operational range of 1 kilometer (0.6 miles). It can be carried in the cargo bay of the much larger Sharp Claw II UGV, and is designed primarily for use in remote areas unaccessible to human infantry. Sharp Claw II is a 6' x 6' wheeled, unmanned ground vehicle designed to execute combat reconnaissance, patrol, assault and transport duties.
Sharp Claw I is capable of detecting and attacking targets “in all weather conditions during the day and at night,” according to Norinco. It is armed with a light machine gun firing 7.62mm rounds. Norinco says the killer robot can operate autonomously.
First displayed as a prototype in air shows in 2014 and 2018, the operational Sharp Claw I has been fitted with numerous upgrades designed to improve its reconnaissance and killing abilities. These include an improved short-range electro-optical payload, machine vision, lighting suite and a refined magazine box and ammunition feed mechanism.
The Sharp Claw 1 can walk autonomously, or it can be carried in the cabin of a larger "pointed claw 2" transport unmanned combat vehicle. When marching, they will be transported by the "Jianclaw" 2, and when they reach the combat area, they will march down from the back panel placed behind the cab of the Jianclaw 2 wheeled unmanned combat vehicle for combat. Four years later, at the Zhuhai Air Show in 2018, North Company once again demonstrated an upgraded version of the "Jianclaw" 1 unmanned fighter. The new version has many upgrades, including improved short-range photoelectric loads, machine vision and lighting components, and a newly designed remote weapon station. The weapon station uses ammunition boxes to load ammunition, which can improve the continuous firing ability of unmanned combat vehicles.
Unmanned ground systems (UGVs) are a priority in China’s defense plans, but their deployment appeared limited. UGVs encompass numerous vehicles that operate on land with a human operator or autonomously. They can execute military missions including combat, ordnance disposal, and transport. Numerous Chinese civilian and defense companies, universities, and research institutes are developing UGVs and other unmanned ground systems. R&D on intelligent guidance for unmanned ground platforms is reported to receive support from China’s 973 and 863 programs for high-technology development, as well as the Twelfth FYP of the General Armament Department (GAD).
To spur these systems’ development, in 2014 the former GAD hosted the first robot competition, which featured 21 vehicles from over ten research institutes. Teams from NUDT came in first and second place, a team from BIT came in third place, and a team from the PLA’s Military Transportation University came in fourth place.
In September 2016 the Chinese military hosted the “2016 Leap Over Treacherous Paths” contest. The contest hosted five competitions for unmanned ground systems to simulate battle operations in different terrains and missions. The competition areas are rough terrain battlefield reconnaissance, rough terrain battlefield marching in formation, urban battlefield reconnaissance and search, transport in mountainous regions by bionic unmanned platforms, and transport in mountainous regions by non-bionic unmanned platforms.
The “Overcoming Dangers 2016” Ground Unmanned System Challenge took the form of socialized public release. Since its release on June 7, a total of 56 units, 116 platforms (times), and 557 people signed up to participate in the competition. Research institutes, state-owned enterprises, private enterprises and many other fields of research forces signed up to participate.
On the morning of September 6, the preliminary round of the “Overcoming Dangers 2016” Ground Unmanned System Challenge was grandly held in Tahe, Heilongjiang. After review by the expert group, a total of 40 leading units, 44 cooperating units, 73 teams, and 99 vehicles. Equipment participated in the preliminary round of this challenge. Lasted for 8 days, the preliminary round was successfully concluded on September 13, and 22 of the 73 participating teams advanced to the final.
The finals focused on strengthening the leadership of military requirements in the setting of missions and drove the development of unmanned systems related technology. There were three types of competitions, divided into five competition groups, namely: field battlefield missions, urban battlefield reconnaissance and There are three types of competitions, search and mountain transportation, which are divided into five groups according to the tonnage of the participating platforms and the features of functional structure.
After fierce competition, the Lions Intelligent No. 1 fleet of the Military Transportation Academy, the live-fire robot fleet of Inner Mongolia Zhongyi Electric Instrument Automation Company, the Run No. 1 fleet of the China North Vehicle Research Institute, and the Sunward Intelligent Fleet of Sunward Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd. Champion of each participating project group.
More robot warriors are entering the arsenal of the Chinese military, with the latest additions being a small model that's equipped with a machine gun and a crane-like missile-loading robot, and experts said on Tuesday that robots will free human soldiers from heavy physical work and unnecessary danger.
The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) is in possession of the small ground robot, which can traverse complicated terrains, accurately observe battlefield situations and provide ferocious firepower, the PLA Eastern Theater Command said on Sina Weibo on Monday when reposting a China Central Television (CCTV) report on the robot. In an announcement made on 13 April via its Sina Weibo account the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command confirmed an 11 April report by the China Central Television 7 (CCTV 7) channel stating that the tracked, combat, and reconnaissance UGV was now in service with the Chinese military.
The thigh-high robot looks like a small assault vehicle. It walks on tracks similar to a tank, allowing it to adapt to complicated terrains in open field combat, move quickly and climb stairs, CCTV reported. Equipped with a machine gun, and observation and detection equipment including night vision devices, the robot can replace a human soldier in dangerous reconnaissance missions, the report said. Target practice results showed the robot has acceptable accuracy, and the use of weapons still requires human control.
This last picture looks like a ripoff of the Boston Dynamics robot, eh?
Well, you all do know that the leading scientists, engineers and designers for Boston Dynamics are all Chinese nationals. And when Trump told them to leave the country, they left and tried to find other work in China. Lucky for them that China is an engineering-friendly and manufacturing-friendly nation.
Robots are not just science fiction anymore. They left the industrial applications and have entered the realms of consumer appliances, government services, and are providing new avenues and opportunities for the Chinese citizenry.
I wrote this post because I am seeing them slide into my life effortlessly. And now I’ve got a baby robot for my child and health and police robots at my local malls and police stations. It’s become normal.
So what do you suppose is next?
Here’s an army of “attack robots” made in China that are designed to fight in packs and coordinate their movements.
I guess that it is the new “wave of the future”.
And speaking of waves… how about some mechanical sharks. Maybe with death lasers for eyes…
Fearsome life-size ‘bionic machine shark’ robot unveiled at Chinese military tech show. It can be a bomb or can provide intel via sensory system. It can jam radar, communications and mess up sensors. Pretty cool. Especially as it is the size of a baby shark.
Oh, heck.
Forget about ships. How about entire navy of robot craft…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
The soaring contempt and smug exceptionalism made me almost gag on my weetbix as I read this. I've never met an empire more in dire need of a slap down...
-Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 14 2021 19:50 utc | 6
For shits and giggle, I often read some of the policy papers that are generated out of Washington DC. They are fantastical and outlandish and shows that either [1] America is a nation run by herd-mentality idiots, or [2] that they are so enraptured in their own echo chamber that they don’t realize what fresh-air is. Here is one such policy paper.
It is from RAND.
Which is a big “Think Tank” out in Washington DC that loves war, like I love sex, pizza and wine.
I love sex, pizza and wine.
It’s a hoot. I’ll tell you what.
Here’s access to the document yourself, and a nice summary with my MM comments thrown in for some points of stability.
Russia Is a Rogue, Not a Peer; China Is a Peer, Not a Rogue
How do Russia and China challenge U.S. national security and global influence?
How can the United States meet those challenges?
Russia and China represent distinct challenges to U.S. national security.
Russia is not a peer or near-peer competitor but rather a well-armed rogue state that seeks to subvert an international order it can never hope to dominate.
So Russia; enormous Russia with a population larger than the United States is a "well armed" rogue state.I can agree that it is well-armed. But, a rogue state?Arogue state otherwise known as an outlaw state, is a term appliedby some international theorists to states that they consider threatening to "the world's peace".
This means being seen to meet certain criteria, such as [1] being ruled by authoritarian or totalitarian governments. [2] That severely restrict human rights. That [3] sponsors terrorism and [4] seeking to proliferate weapons of mass destruction.
By these criteria, it is America that is a rogue state.
Yet, the term is used most by the United States, and in his speech at the United Nations in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated this phrase.
In contrast, China is a peer competitor that wants to shape an international order that it can aspire to dominate.
Yes. China is a peer competitor with the Untied States, and in many areas it has surpassed the Untied States.
But this idea that it wants to "shape an international order" that it can dominate is flat-out false.
It wants to follow confucianism values in cooperation and harmony so that all can benefit. Of course China wants to put the Chinese people first. This is the function of all governments. But to call a peaceful nation that hasn't been involve din a war for over 50 years desirous of dominating others is really outlandish.
4 Confucian principles that are integral to a moral life and a moral society[1] Development of the self. The development of the self and the cultivation of virtue and morality are crucial to Confucius’ vision of a harmonised world.[2] Filial Piety. Filial piety is a love and respect for one’s parents. ...[3] Theimportanceof tradition. ...[4] We must behumane. ...
No wonder that RAND and those psychopathic personalities in Washington DC are confused with China. these values are completely alien to them.
Both countries seek to alter the status quo.
But only Russia has attacked neighboring states, annexed conquered territory, and supported insurgent forces seeking to detach yet more territory.
Russia assassinates its opponents at home and abroad.
Russia interferes in foreign elections.
Russia subverts foreign democracies.
Russia works to undermine European and Atlantic institutions.
And so does the United States. Historically this is known as spy-craft, international politics, and intrigue. It's not a reason to go to war over.
In contrast, China’s growing influence is based largely on more-positive measures: trade, investment, and development assistance. These attributes make China a less immediate threat but a much greater long-term challenge.
True. China is not an immediate military threat.
But the only challenge here is whether the Untied States is able to compete with it. After throwing away it's scientists and engineers, it's going to be a hard slog trying to compete with "diversity directors" and "accountants".
In the military realm, Russia can be contained, but China cannot.
Its military predominance in east Asia will grow over time, compelling the United States to accept greater costs and risks just to secure existing commitments.
But it is geoeconomics, rather than geopolitics, in which the contest for world leadership will play out.
It is in the domain of geoeconomics that the balance of global influence between the United States and China has begun shifting in China’s favor.
Key Findings
China presents a greater geoeconomic challenge to the United States than Russia does
China’s per capita GDP approaches Russia’s; its population is eight times Russia’s, and its growth rate three times.
As of 2017, China’s economy was the second largest in the world, behind only that of the United States. Russia’s was 11th.
Russia’s military expenditure is lower than China’s, and that gap is likely to grow.
Russia is far smaller, has poorer economic prospects, and is less likely to dramatically increase its military power in the long term.
You can tell just how out of sync this entire paper is when they start using GDP instead of PPP for comparison values. I argue, rather convincingly I must add, that if you remove the top 0.1% of the super-billionaires out of America in your GDP calculations, the GDP slides way down to a value that is half of China's GDP.
Also the level of crime and corruption is far lower than what you see in America. Thus you can make and create things with far, far less effort and money.
Thus you really cannot make the comparisons that are being made here.
It truly is like comparing apples with bananas.
Russia is a more immediate and more proximate military threat to U.S. national security than China is but can be countered
Russia will probably remain militarily superior to all its immediate neighbors other than China.
Russia is vulnerable to a range of nonmilitary deterrents, such as sanctions on the Russian economy and limiting Russian income from exports of fossil fuels; multilateral efforts would be more effective than U.S.-only operations, however.
China presents a regional military challenge and a global economic one
Militarily, China can be contained for a while longer; economically, it has already broken free of regional constraints.
Russia backs far-right and far-left political movements with a view to disrupting the politics of adversarial societies and, if possible, installing friendlier regimes. China, in contrast, seems basically indifferent to the types of government of the states with which it interacts, increasing its attractiveness as an economic partner.
Recommendations
In the security sphere, the United States should continue to hold the line in east and southeast Asia, accepting the larger costs and risks involved in counterbalancing growing Chinese military capabilities. Meanwhile, Washington should help its regional allies and partners to field their own antiaccess and area denial systems. Finally, the United States should take advantage of any opportunities to resolve issues and remove points of Sino-American tension, recognizing that its bargaining position will gradually deteriorate over time.
In the economic realm, the United States needs to compete more effectively in foreign markets, persevere and strengthen international norms for trade and investment, and incentivize China to operate within those norms. Given China’s efforts to take technological leadership in the long term and the potential advantages that such leadership brings, the United States also needs to improve its innovation environment. Measures could include greater funding for research, retention of U.S.-educated foreign scientists and technologists, and regulatory reforms that ease the introduction of product and process improvements into businesses and the market.
In responding to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the United States should move to secure its own preferential access to the world’s largest markets, the industrialized countries of Europe and Asia; assist nations in increasing connectivity with the world economy; work with partners to ensure more transparency in China’s Belt and Road projects; and increase support to U.S. exporters and investors.
In all these challenges, the United States will be more successful coordinating action with allies and trading partners.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation perspective series. RAND perspectives present informed perspective on a timely topic that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND perspectives undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
There is a lot of changes that are set in motion. Many long-overdue changes are coming to America, and those that have been doing quite well do not want change. They want to fight change, and they will go as far as to start a nuclear World War III to guarantee that their lives never change.
Here we are going to chat a little bit about the root, and the source of much of the problems in America today…
… the American system that permits people, and companies to become fantastically wealthy while all the time making everyone around them much poorer.
…
The American Promise
In America, the media narrative is that this is a good thing. A “lone wolf”, “hard working” person can “pull himself up by his bootstraps” and become successful. Look at Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. See! Normal people. Everyone can do it.
Ah. The American promise…
The American Reality
Nope.
That’s not how it works. Maybe it used to be that way some two hundred years ago, and maybe as recent as seventy five years ago. But today, it’s a hopeless proposition. There are too many layers of government regulation. Too many powerful companies. The “little guy” has too many hurtles to overcome.
Leaving only the existing wealth structures in control and in power.
It’s the American reality.
The problem with America
This situation where only the wealthy have the vast bulk of the money has created far too many problems. And if left unchecked will generate many more to come. Including, eventually, the potential end of the world as we know it today.
For instance, to keep the people from rising up in revolution, you need [1] propaganda and [2] control of the media, you need [3] armed and strong militarized domestic police forces, you need [4] distractions which tend to mean [5] wars and chaos, and you need to [6] constantly decrease the standard of life of the rabble so that you can maintain your own power.
And isn’t that what we have been observing?
American income distribution
The chart of the income distribution for America today greatly resembles what it must have been in France before the French revolution, and in Russia before the Russian revolution.
The poor got much poorer.
The middle class disappeared.
The super-duper wealthy become stratospheric wealthy.
Which brings me to an article. It was written back in 2014, and back then the alarms were a ringing and the sirens were screaming, and the lights were flashing, but few paid attention…
In a new Pew poll, more than three quarters of self-described conservatives believe…
“poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything.”
In reality, most of America’s poor work hard, often in two or more jobs.
The real non-workers are the wealthy who inherit their fortunes. And their ranks are growing.
In fact, we’re on the cusp of the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history.
MM Comment
This was written in 2014. The cusp has passed and now America is at this state, firmly entrenched within this condition; firmly put in place. Rock solid and immovable.
The wealth is coming from those who over the last three decades earned huge amounts on Wall Street, in corporate boardrooms, or as high-tech entrepreneurs.
It’s going to their children, who did nothing except be born into the right family.
The “self-made” man or woman, the symbol of American meritocracy, is disappearing. Six of today’s ten wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. Just six Walmart heirs have more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined (up from 30 percent in 2007).
The U.S. Trust bank just released a poll of Americans with more than $3 million of investable assets.
Nearly three-quarters of those over age 69, and 61 per cent of boomers (between the ages of 50 and 68), were the first in their generation to accumulate significant wealth.
But the bank found inherited wealth far more common among rich millennials under age 35.
This is the dynastic form of wealth French economist Thomas Piketty warns about. It’s been the major source of wealth in Europe for centuries. It’s about to become the major source in America – unless, that is, we do something about it.
As income from work has become more concentrated in America, the super rich have invested in businesses, real estate, art, and other assets. The income from these assets is now concentrating even faster than income from work.
In 1979, the richest 1 percent of households accounted for 17 percent of business income. By 2007 they were getting 43 percent. They were also taking in 75 percent of capital gains. Today, with the stock market significantly higher than where it was before the crash, the top is raking even more from their investments.
Both political parties have encouraged this great wealth transfer, as beneficiaries provide a growing share of campaign contributions.
MM Comment
The reader is asked to put a clothespin to their noses as some politics is bantered about. It's the same nauseatingly "Wonderful Democrats", and "terrible Republicans". Ugh.
Both are members of the Uni-party. They are identical.
But Republicans have been even more ardent than Democrats.
For example, family trusts used to be limited to about 90 years. Legal changes implemented under Ronald Reagan extended them in perpetuity. So-called “dynasty trusts” now allow super-rich families to pass on to their heirs money and property largely free from taxes, and to do so for generations.
George W. Bush’s biggest tax breaks helped high earners but they provided even more help to people living off accumulated wealth. While the top tax rate on income from work dropped from 39.6% to 35 percent, the top rate on dividends went from 39.6% (taxed as ordinary income) to 15 percent, and the estate tax was completely eliminated. (Conservatives called it the “death tax” even though it only applied to the richest two-tenths of one percent.)
Barack Obama rolled back some of these cuts, but many remain.
Before George W. Bush, the estate tax kicked in at $2 million of assets per couple, and then applied a 55 percent rate. Now it kicks in at $10 million per couple, with a 40 percent rate.
House Republicans want to go even further than Bush did.
Rep. Paul Ryan’s “road map,” which continues to be the bible of Republican economic policy, eliminates all taxes on interest, dividends, capital gains, and estates.
Yet the specter of an entire generation who do nothing for their money other than speed-dial their wealth management advisors isn’t particularly attractive.
It’s also dangerous to our democracy, as dynastic wealth inevitably accumulates political influence.
MM Comment
America is not a democracy. It is a military empire that is run by a global oligarchy.
What to do? First, restore the estate tax in full.
MM Comment
His solution; the same-old, same-old. More taxes. More regulation. Bigger government.
Not what is needed; a complete structural overhaul on the entire American government-society system.
Second, eliminate the “stepped-up-basis on death” rule. This obscure tax provision allows heirs to avoid paying capital gains taxes on the increased value of assets accumulated during the life of the deceased. Such untaxed gains account for more than half of the value of estates worth more than $100 million, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Third, institute a wealth tax. We already have an annual wealth tax on homes, the major asset of the middle class. It’s called the property tax. Why not a small annual tax on the value of stocks and bonds, the major assets of the wealthy?
MM Comment
All the solutions are the same-old, same-old. More taxes to go to government. Not any systematic changes to the entire way the system operates.
We don’t have to sit by and watch our “meritocracy” be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth. We can and must take action – before it’s too late.
MM Comment
It is too late. America has a permanent aristocracy where the vast wealth is either concocted out of thin air, or by dynastic wealth.
But you know…
China is taking notes…
Let’s open up the dialog with this comment that I found in my e-mailbox…
In China, the CCP draw from the experience of the first 30 years of opening up, and [has] concluded that:
1) China endorsed the part of the free market logic that encourage individual innovation and that rewards hardwork.
2) However, China will not allow the ultimate outcome of a free market economy. As it is one where a handful of billionaires will eventually take control of the market, killing competition, and dictate the price and distribution chain of supply and demand.
The world has been controlled by the Western set of rules for far too long. These rules were set up at the time they are working towards Western advantages.
The collapse of the USSR and the drop in standard of living and life expectancy in Russia is widely studied in China and experienced is learned.
Now, China will open up further to counter US strategy to form a war alliance against China.
Instead, China is strategically beginning a dual circle economy build on food security, financial security, economic security, and national security. As well as a discussion on the evil doing of privatized capital and western capital across the world.
The CCP armed with Mao theories of how to run a country with serving the people as the party motto is far more down to earth than the capitalists who control western politicians.
When Xi came to power, he openly pledged that the SOEs sector has to become larger, and stronger.
In contemporaneous China, any large scale businesses are require to sell to the government 1% of their share. Now with this 1%, the government representatives will sit in a broad of director meeting, and have the power to stop any plan that threaten the security of any sector of the Chinese economy or society.
Therefore, if it only involved expanding product ranges, improve services, opening a few more outlets, they are totally free to do so.
...
Cheers
<redacted>
And perhaps that will give you all some perspective why America must DESTROY China, and why there is no-room for co-habitation. It’s all or nothing with America. For once the rest of the world sees that the American emperor has “no clothes”, the fall of the empire will only be minutes away.
And it’s all pretty depressing. Anyways, I’m tossing this idea out to you all. That the idea of “what America stands for” is wealth accumulation by the super-rich, for themselves, and everyone else is just a herd animal to service them. Being so fantastically wealthy they not only own most of what you eat, use, and read, but they also control your government, and as a result you have zero influence on what your government is doing.
Pot-holes need fixing? No problem, your government is going to bomb the shit out of Yemen! Now, don’t you feel better?
Taxes too high? No problem, the government is going to reclassify the taxes in a fee, and then make it mandatory for you to pay that fee or else you will go to prison. There! Don’t you feel better?
Can’t find work? No problem. You can enlist in the military, get on welfare, or donate blood. The news says that the economy is roaring and that everything is just “hunky-dory”. So you must be lazy. Don’t you know!
Conclusion
This exhausts me. This situation is not sustainable. The question and the big unknown is when will it all fall down?
I have no answers.
I think that I need to go out, eat some fine delicious food, quaff some brews, and go a whoring. Life is too short not to have fun.
And that is my definitive opinion on this subject.
Do you want more?
I have more posts elsewhere. I don’t know what this will file under. But you can probably find others like it here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Here is another law from the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene. This is Law 7. Get others to do the work for you. We can see how this law is practiced throughout the United States. Steve Jobs. Bill Gates. Jeff Bezos. Eric Schmidt. Donald Trump. Can you name their “right hand men”? I’ll bet you cannot. For they are the figurehead and they get all the credit for the system that they are part of.
LAW 7
GET OTHERS TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU, BUT ALWAYS TAKE THE CREDIT
JUDGMENT
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.
TRANSGRESSION AND OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
In 1883 a young Serbian scientist named Nikola Tesla was working for the European division of the Continental Edison Company. He was a brilliant inventor, and Charles Batchelor, a plant manager and a personal friend of Thomas Edison, persuaded him he should seek his fortune in America, giving him a letter of introduction to Edison himself. So began a life of woe and tribulation that lasted until Tesla’s death.
IIII TORTOISE THE LELP AND THE HIPPOPOI
One day the tortoise met the elephant, who trumpeted, “Out of my way, you weakling—I might step on you!” The tortoise was not afraid and stayed where he was, so the elephant stepped on him, but could not crush him. “Do not boast, Mr. Elephant, I am as strong as you are!” said the tortoise, but the elephant just laughed. So the tortoise asked him to come to his hill the next morning. The next day, before sunrise, the tortoise ran down the hill to the river, where he met the hippopotamus, who was just on his way back into the water after his nocturnal feeding. “Mr Hippo! Shall we have a tug-of-war? I bet I’m as strong as you are!” said the tortoise. The hippopotamus laughed at this ridiculous idea, but agreed. The tortoise produced a long rope and told the hippo to hold it in his mouth until the tortoise shouted “Hey!” Then the tortoise ran back up the hill where he found the elephant, who was getting impatient. He gave the elephant the other end of the rope and said, “When I say ‘Hey!’ pull, and you’ll see which of us is the strongest. ”Then he ran halfway back down the hill, to a place where he couldn’t be seen, and shouted, “Hey!” The elephant and the hippopotamus pulled and pulled, but neither could budge the other-they were of equal strength. They both agreed that the tortoise was as strong as they were. Never do what others can do for you. The tortoise let others do the work for him while he got the credit.
-ZAIREAN FABLE
When Tesla met Edison in New York, the famous inventor hired him on the spot. Tesla worked eighteen-hour days, finding ways to improve the primitive Edison dynamos. Finally he offered to redesign them completely.
To Edison this seemed a monumental task that could last years without paying off, but he told Tesla, “There’s fifty thousand dollars in it for you— if you can do it.”
Tesla labored day and night on the project and after only a year he produced a greatly improved version of the dynamo, complete with automatic controls. He went to Edison to break the good news and receive his $50,000.
Edison was pleased with the improvement, for which he and his company would take credit, but when it came to the issue of the money he told the young Serb, “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor!,” and offered a small raise instead.
Tesla’s obsession was to create an alternating-current system (AC) of electricity. Edison believed in the direct-current system (DC), and not only refused to support Tesla’s research but later did all he could to sabotage him.
Tesla turned to the great Pittsburgh magnate George Westinghouse, who had started his own electricity company.
Westinghouse completely funded Tesla’s research and offered him a generous royalty agreement on future profits. The AC system Tesla developed is still the standard today— but after patents were filed in his name, other scientists came forward to take credit for the invention, claiming that they had laid the groundwork for him. His name was lost in the shuffle, and the public came to associate the invention with Westinghouse himself.
A year later, Westinghouse was caught in a takeover bid from J. Pierpont Morgan, who made him rescind the generous royalty contract he had signed with Tesla.
Westinghouse explained to the scientist that his company would not survive if it had to pay him his full royalties; he persuaded Tesla to accept a buyout of his patents for $216,000—a large sum, no doubt, but far less than the $12 million they were worth at the time.
The financiers had divested Tesla of the riches, the patents, and essentially the credit for the greatest invention of his career.
The name of Guglielmo Marconi is forever linked with the invention of radio. But few know that in producing his invention—he broadcast a signal across the English Channel in 1899—Marconi made use of a patent Tesla had filed in 1897, and that his work depended on Tesla’s research.
Once again Tesla received no money and no credit. Tesla invented an induction motor as well as the AC power system, and he is the real “father of radio.” Yet none of these discoveries bear his name.
As an old man, he lived in poverty.
In 1917, during his later impoverished years, Tesla was told he was to receive the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. He turned the medal down. “You propose,” he said, “to honor me with a medal which I could pin upon my coat and strut for a vain hour before the members of your Institute.
You would decorate my body and continue to let starve, for failure to supply recognition, my mind and its creative products, which have supplied the foundation upon which the major portion of your Institute exists.”
Interpretation
Many harbor the illusion that science, dealing with facts as it does, is beyond the petty rivalries that trouble the rest of the world.
Nikola Tesla was one of those.
He believed science had nothing to do with politics, and claimed not to care for fame and riches. As he grew older, though, this ruined his scientific work. Not associated with any particular discovery, he could attract no investors to his many ideas. While he pondered great inventions for the future, others stole the patents he had already developed and got the glory for themselves.
He wanted to do everything on his own, but merely exhausted and impoverished himself in the process.
Edison was Tesla’s polar opposite.
He wasn’t actually much of a scientific thinker or inventor; he once said that he had no need to be a mathematician because he could always hire one. That was Edison’s main method.
He was really a businessman and publicist, spotting the trends and the opportunities that were out there, then hiring the best in the field to do the work for him. If he had to he would steal from his competitors. Yet his name is much better known than Tesla’s, and is associated with more inventions.
To be sure, if the hunter relies on the security of the carriage, utilizes the legs of the six horses, and makes Wang Liang hold their reins, then he will not tire himself and will find it easy to overtake swift animals. Now supposing he discarded the advantage of the carriage, gave up the useful legs of the horses and the skill of Wang Liang, and alighted to run after the animals, then even though his legs were as quick as Lou Chi’s, he would not be in time to overtake the animals. In fact, if good horses and strong carriages are taken into use, then mere bond-men and bondwomen will be good enough to catch the animals.
-HAN-FEI-TZU, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER, THIRD CENTURY B.C.
The lesson is twofold:
First, the credit for an invention or creation is as important, if not more important, than the invention itself. You must secure the credit for yourself and keep others from stealing it away, or from piggy- backing on your hard work. To accomplish this you must always be vigilant and ruthless, keeping your creation quiet until you can be sure there are no vultures circling overhead.
Second, learn to take advantage of other people’s work to further your own cause. Time is precious and life is short. If you try to do it all on your own, you run yourself ragged, waste energy, and burn yourself out. It is far better to conserve your forces, pounce on the work others have done, and find a way to make it your own.
Everybody steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot myself. But I know how to steal.
-Thomas Edison, 1847-1931
KEYS TO POWER
The world of power has the dynamics of the jungle:
There are those who live by hunting and killing, and there are also vast numbers of creatures (hyenas, vultures) who live off the hunting of others. These latter, less imaginative types are often incapable of doing the work that is essential for the creation of power.
They understand early on, though, that if they wait long enough, they can always find another animal to do the work for them.
Do not be naive: At this very moment, while you are slaving away on some project, there are vultures circling above trying to figure out a way to survive and even thrive off your creativity. It is useless to complain about this, or to wear yourself ragged with bitterness, as Tesla did.
Better to protect yourself and join the game. Once you have established a power base, become a vulture yourself, and save yourself a lot of time and energy.
A hen who had lost her sight, and was accustomed to scratching up the earth in search of food, although blind, still continued to scratch away most diligently. Of what use was it to the industriuus fool? Another sharp-sighted hen who spared her tender feet never moved from her side, and enjoyed, without scratching, the fruit of the other’s labor. For as often as the blind hen scratched up a barley-corn, her watchful companion devoured it.
-FABLES, GOITCHOLD LESSING, 1729-1781
Of the two poles of this game, one can be illustrated by the example of the explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa. Balboa had an obsession—the discovery of El Dorado, a legendary city of vast riches.
Early in the sixteenth century, after countless hardships and brushes with death, he found evidence of a great and wealthy empire to the south of Mexico, in present-day Peru.
By conquering this empire, the Incan, and seizing its gold, he would make himself the next Cortés. The problem was that even as he made this discovery, word of it spread among hundreds of other conquistadors. He did not understand that half the game was keeping it quiet, and carefully watching those around him.
A few years after he discovered the location of the Incan empire, a soldier in his own army, Francisco Pizarro, helped to get him beheaded for treason. Pizarro went on to take what Balboa had spent so many years trying to find.
The other pole is that of the artist Peter Paul Rubens, who, late in his career, found himself deluged with requests for paintings.
He created a system: In his large studio he employed dozens of outstanding painters, one specializing in robes, another in backgrounds, and so on. He created a vast production line in which a large number of canvases would be worked on at the same time. When an important client visited the studio, Rubens would shoo his hired painters out for the day. While the client watched from a balcony, Rubens would work at an incredible pace, with unbelievable energy. The client would leave in awe of this prodigious man, who could paint so many masterpieces in so short a time.
This is the essence of the Law: Learn to get others to do the work for you while you take the credit, and you appear to be of godlike strength and power.
If you think it important to do all the work yourself, you will never get far, and you will suffer the fate of the Balboas and Teslas of the world.
Find people with the skills and creativity you lack.
Either hire them, while putting your own name on top of theirs, or find a way to take their work and make it your own. Their creativity thus becomes yours, and you seem a genius to the world.
There is another application of this law that does not require the parasitic use of your contemporaries’ labor: Use the past, a vast storehouse of knowledge and wisdom.
Isaac Newton called this “standing on the shoulders of giants.”
He meant that in making his discoveries he had built on the achievements of others. A great part of his aura of genius, he knew, was attributable to his shrewd ability to make the most of the insights of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance scientists.
Shakespeare borrowed plots, characterizations, and even dialogue from Plutarch, among other writers, for he knew that nobody surpassed Plutarch in the writing of subtle psychology and witty quotes. How many later writers have in their turn borrowed from—plagiarized—Shakespeare ?
We all know how few of today’s politicians write their own speeches.
Their own words would not win them a single vote; their eloquence and wit, whatever there is of it, they owe to a speech writer. Other people do the work, they take the credit. The upside of this is that it is a kind of power that is available to everyone. Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will look like a genius, even when you are really just a clever borrower.
Writers who have delved into human nature, ancient masters of strategy, historians of human stupidity and folly, kings and queens who have learned the hard way how to handle the burdens of power—their knowledge is gathering dust, waiting for you to come and stand on their shoulders.
Their wit can be your wit, their skill can be your skill, and they will never come around to tell people how unoriginal you really are.
You can slog through life, making endless mistakes, wasting time and energy trying to do things from your own experience. Or you can use the armies of the past. As Bismarck once said, “Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.”
Image: The Vulture. Of all the creatures in the jungle, he has it the easiest. The hard work of others becomes his work; their failure to survive becomes his nourishment. Keep an eye on the Vulture—while you are hard at work, he is cir cling above. Do not fight him, join him.
Authority: There is much to be known, life is short, and life is not life without knowledge. It is therefore an excellent device to acquire knowledge from everybody. Thus, by the sweat of another’s brow, you win the reputation of being an oracle. (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)
REVERSAL
There are times when taking the credit for work that others have done is not the wise course: If your power is not firmly enough established, you will seem to be pushing people out of the limelight. To be a brilliant ex ploiter of talent your position must be unshakable, or you will be accused of deception.
Be sure you know when letting other people share the credit serves your purpose. It is especially important to not be greedy when you have a master above you. President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China was originally his idea, but it might never have come off but for the deft diplomacy of Henry Kissinger. Nor would it have been as successful without Kissinger’s skills. Still, when the time came to take credit, Kissinger adroitly let Nixon take the lion’s share. Knowing that the truth would come out later, he was careful not to jeopardize his standing in the short term by hogging the limelight. Kissinger played the game expertly: He took credit for the work of those below him while graciously giving credit for his own labors to those above. That is the way to play the game.
Do you want more?
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This is probably my worst article / post on MM. But it is something that I have to get off my system, and preserve. Thus I present it as is, all in it's own terrible ratty configuration.
If life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
This post / article discusses what my deactivation procedure was like from my point of view. To an outside observer, I was either lying on the bed thrashing about, or just acting strangely. I will do my best to give the reader a full understanding and the full scope of the experience.
These fuckers had to be shut off. You just don’t deactivate a MAJestic operative without shutting them down. That’s a fact jack.
It’s a difficult thing to relate, and even harder to describe. It also tends to get rather strange at times. But this is what happened. And it is here, recorded for prosperity.
Time to change your switch to "off".
.
My deactivation absolutely required that my probes be mothballed.
This was not an easy task, and it required that I be placed in a secure facility, and treated in a special manner .
This section discusses this procedure in the only way that I know how; from the point of view of the person being deactivated. Because of that, it is confusing and can be misunderstood easily. The reader is reminded that everything that happened is as described from my point of view.
To an outside observer, I was bat-shit crazy.
“Some are born mad, some achieve madness, and some have madness thrust upon 'em.” ― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
From what I know now, this procedure is very straight forward from the point of view of an outside observer. As such, I will try my best to describe it as such. But in truth, it was anything but easy. This was my mind that they were dealing with. And my perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories were involved. Our experiences are colored by all these things, and thus when they are being tampered with, we have a tendency to become disoriented and confused.
Some basic clarification
I was implanted with three groups / clusters of probes.. As a reminder, I was injected with two (x2) “kits” of devices at NAS NASC Pensacola, Florida. And then afterwards I went through a dimensional portal to another place. It was another location and involved another species. That is where I obtained my EBP device.
In total;
EBP – Alien manufacture, and installation.
ELF Kit #1 – MAJestic “kit”. Basic.
ELF Kit #2 – MAJestic “kit”. Advanced with special functions.
Core Kit I probes activated
This process was akin to “waking me up from a long slumber”. Because while I was actively aware of my role during the operation of the Core Core Kit #2 probes, I had forgotten everything related to and concerning the Core Core Kit #1 probes.
I knew, but didn't know. My memories were all very remote and empty. It was like when you opened the door to your house two days before Easter ten years ago. You remember it, but it isn't an "active" memory
To shut me off, and deactivate me, the core Core Kit #1 probes had to be reactivated, and from there, shut down manually, once the Core #2 kit was reset.
There was no easy way to do it.
For over 30 years had passed since I was last active under the probes effects. The physical probes had naturally migrated out of their initial set locations, and I needed to be re-calibrated, and engaged for the new locations of the probes. (In other words, what was once located at the far left of the upper part of my brain, has now moved diagonally towards the back and a little bit to the mid-center.) How to do this was not clean or pleasant.
For me it was hell.
“She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes…She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes…She’ll be riding six white horses.She’ll be riding six white horses.When she comes…”-Old Susanna
It began at lights out.
It began with “lights out”.
The lights usually shut down at 11:00 pm, but for some reason, the lights out period started at 9:00 pm. And we all settled down to rest. I tried to rest. As I settled down, everything got still and quiet. I started to drift off to sleep. My brain waves went from Alpha waves, to beta waves. My mind started to quiet down. It was quiet, and peaceful. But just as I began to drift into sleep; into theta waves, I was suddenly jerked up wide awake.
Someone, another inmate perhaps, started singing. This singing was loud and garish. He sang one old song from the days of the California Gold Rush. He sang “Old Susanna”. He wouldn’t let up. After a full five minutes of this, I was wide awake. And, he mercifully stopped.
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California.
"Oh! Susanna" is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864), first published in 1848. It is among the most popular American songs ever written.
I began to rest again.
And again, as soon as I started to rest and drift off into theta brain wave activity, I was suddenly shaken wide awake. It was the other man singing “Old Susanna”. Again this singing continued for about ten more minutes and then stopped. I was now wide awake. Tired. Grouchy, and irritable. I tried to go back to sleep.
I began to rest again.
And again, no sooner as I started to rest and drift off into theta brain wave activity, I was suddenly shaken wide awake. Again, I listened to the crisp old tune of “Old Susanna”. Again this singing continued for about ten more minutes and then stopped. I stayed wide awake. I stayed tired. I continued to be grouchy, and irritable. Yet, still, I tried to go back to sleep.
The entire night continued like this.
Each time, as the night wore on, I got angrier and angrier.
Now, what one must understand is that I was chosen for the program for my ability to control my emotions. Though my wife might disagree with this appraisal, it was true that I could take a large amount of abuse before I would lash out. So even though I was terribly tired and exhausted, I didn’t do anything about it. I just took the abuse in silence.
Until about at around 4:00 am something snapped.
I snapped into a “state”
I cannot relate the exact mechanics of what transpired.
It reached a point of emotional turmoil, and mental confusion through the accumulation of pressure and the lack of sleep. In any event, at some point in time, my body and mind just snapped. That is the best way that I can describe it.
A feeling of warmth came over me, and I became lucid. I was no longer sleepy, but alert, calm, and entirely pissed.
Pissed, as in "pissed off" and absolutely furiously angry.
I was frosty calm and pissed off in a way that defies description.
I did not at all have a full recall of my Core Core Kit #1 memories. But I did have a recall of specialized training that I picked up somewhere (?).
And that came out in a flood of reactive autonomous movements and gestures. I found myself exercising and limbering up. I immediately went into some old martial arts training that I had taken years ago, and I started to organize all my gear. I made a mental count of everything I owned and this inventory was used for an automatic survival, evasion and escape routine that somehow I had access to.
(How and where did I get this training? I do not recall.)
Now, in case the reader gets confused, it needs to be clearly pointed out that I did not have any kind of formalized military combat training aside from what I experienced in the Navy at NAS NASC Pensacola.
Well, mostly that is…
Aside from one or two specialized para-military training camps in Louisiana. But I put this information here as a full disclosure of my apparent skill sets.I was there because of a"project" that I was involved in. <redacted>
Just because I had cursory training as a “Swamp Rat” did not make me a professional military fighter or combat soldier. I only had the most rudimentary training in these fields.
I was a technical nerd who’s experiences, for the most part, were devoid of any such experiences.
This was a meager amount.
When you watch television and movies, the heroes all have a great deal of skill and experience with knife fighting, martial arts, weaponry and high duration endurance. That is fine for the movies, but I was not trained as a navy SEAL, or a member of DELTA team.
I was more or less a highly technical individual, who through an array of events ended up in this program. I was not, am not, nor will I ever be a combat fighter. Yet, for some reason, this persona; a persona of just such a swarthy fellow, took hold of my very being.
I became that person.
How, and why, I have no idea.
I started to act… peculiarly.
All of this was not my personality.
At least nothing that I would associate with myself for the last three decades.
What was most astounding was that I started yelling in Chinese. Now, today, my Chinese linguistic skills are much better than then. But one must understand that, at that time, I couldn’t tell the difference from between a pair of shoes from a carrot in Chinese. I possessed absolutely zero Chinese linguistic skill.
But yet, I found myself shouting in Chinese. I started to implore the guards for information. I started to ask them what was going on. I did so in Mandarin Chinese!
你为什么这样做呢？我在哪里？做了什么我做错了？
Not that anyone else knew what I was saying. But, for some reason, my automatic reaction; one that I am loathe to recall here, kicked in. It involved a number of automatic behaviors that I automatically started to adopt.
These included a [1] calm composure, [2] the ability to think and reason in certain defined patterns, [3] the ability to speak in Chinese, and [4] the knowledge of what to do and how to handle the circumstances that came before me. It was almost like I was programmed to react in a certain manner under a certain series of events or circumstances.
This concluded until about 6:00 am.
When I finally was able to rest. At that time, the staff surrounding my cell and barracks also shut down and left for home. As they gathered their papers, books and possessions, they commented about the night. They complained about the costs, but also commented as to how unique the experience was.
They were curious about me, and they wanted to find out more as to what I was involved in. They joked about the event, saying to the effect that that was certainly strange and weird. That it was unexpected that I would know and speak Chinese, but that proved that something that they were told was correct. They stated that they would keep me under special care and evaluation until the team arrived from Washington to finish the work.
For me, however, everything was different.
I turned into someone different.
Now, I was someone else. I was like a robot. In truth, I was in-between activation’s. Neither my core Core Kit #1 nor my Core Core Kit #2 probes were apparently activated. But somehow, through stress and situations they were able to induce upon me some kind of repressed reactive persona.
This was unexpected by everyone.
It was certainly unexpected by me.
I had no idea that this stuff was locked away inside my head. It was surprising to the staff at the prison as well. While the doctor and the authorities were apparently told that I would have to be handled in a certain special way, they didn’t believe that anything would actually, really occur. They thought that it would be just nonsense. But sure as the day is bright, the manuals were correct and I snapped into a secondary persona. One that was not to be trifled with.
At this point in time, I was in a “survival” and “protective” persona. (I found myself walking with “direct registering” and operating in a most observant manner. )
Direct Registering
Walking like a feline in a specific prescribed manner designed for silence and readiness. Felines walk in a stalking silent mode where their hind paws fall inside the place of their forepaws, minimizing noise and visible tracks, while ensuring more stable footing.
A different personality.
This was something that I was unaware I possessed, and the only way and place that I could of obtained these skills was during the week-long absence through the dimensional portal on the base years ago. In hindsight, I actually now possessed a total of four modes of operation.
They were;
Normal human
“Survival” and “Protective” Persona
Core Core Kit #1 Activation
Core Core Kit #2 Entanglement with the drone
Lord only knows how many personas I have locked away in my brain.
What did the fucking government do to me? Are there still other personas that are lying dormant ready to be released under a series of aggressive external stimuli? I do not know.
I simply do NOT know.
At this time, I was still quite confused as to what was going on. While I understood where I was and what I was doing there. All my subsequent history related to the US Navy was still a complete blank.
I had no idea about the connection between my incarceration and that of my involvement in the MAJestic USAP program. At that point, I was convinced that it was due to an overly zealous DA, and an unfortunate series of personal events on my behalf.
Turning on the probes
“Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.”― Shannon L. Alder
I spent the entire day in the cell.
.
I spent the entire day in the cell.
A fore-taste of things to come. Eh?
When it came time for me to eat, I was lead out of my cell by following a special procedure. In this procedure, six guards came to my cell, they opened the door with an elaborate call out procedure, and each one took up a special role. One would call out “Prepare to blow the door”, while another would say “On my count, blow the door”, and another would count “3, 2, 1”. Then they would unlock the door while saying “Blowing the door”. I think all of this was completely unnecessary. But they weren’t taking any chances. When the door was opened, two guards got on both sides of me and grabbed my arms and back collar. Then they led / carried me out of the cell.
They would line up on both sides of the port and formalize the egress procedure so that I would be more easily controlled when they took me from my cell.
.
While I told them this wasn’t necessary, they told me that this procedure was necessary for everyone’s safety and I had just get along with the program. So I shrugged my shoulders and said OK. And thus, I was led to chow hall this way, and returned back to my cell in this matter for reasons of safety for myself and for other inmates.
For most of my evaluation I was brought to mess hall and from it in this manner. But that is not all that was done.
When I arrived in the mess hall, I was placed at a table along the wall, and there, standing along the wall was about fifteen guards. I couldn’t do anything without them subduing me.
But of course, I did nothing. I was not crazy, unwise or stupid. I knew the odds, and why should I do anything anyways? There was no benefit for me. The wisest thing for me to do was to follow the program and track that was established for me to its conclusion.
They also heavily sedated me.
I alone, of all the inmates, was given a glass of orange juice. And that liquid was severely laced with a medicine known as Chlorpromazine.
Thioridazine (Mellaril (DE, BD, ET, ID, BR), Melleril.
It is used in the treatment of schizophrenia.
But it is also used to control people with behavioral problems because of the way it causes the body to react to external stimuli.
It works on a variety of receptors in the central nervous system, producing potent anticholinergic, antidopaminergic, antihistaminic, and antiadrenergic effects. Both the clinical indications and side effect profile of CPZ are determined by the broadness of its action: its anticholinergic properties cause constipation, sedation, and hypotension but also help relieve nausea.
It also has anxiolytic (anxiety-relieving) properties.
Its antidopaminergic properties can cause extrapyramidal symptoms, such as akathisia (restlessness, aka the 'Thorazine shuffle' where the patient walks almost constantly, despite having nowhere to go due to mandatory confinement, and takes small, shuffling steps) and dystonia.
From the moment I drank this orange juice to all subsequent servings, I knew exactly what was going on.
My speech became slurred, and while my mind remained sharp and clear, the ability for me to move my body was severely retarded. For instance, I would want to stand up, but the ability for me to move my legs was severely repressed. Instead, I would just sit there trying to move, but unable to do so.
Chlorpromazine
.
It was not at all a pleasant experience. But rather uncomfortable. I believe that they gave me a rather high dosage of this chemical, and they kept me sedated throughout my evaluation period.
Since I was under an ELF field, I could easily see the cavitation effects while laying on the bed in my cell.
This period of waiting while under the effects of the drug, and being sedated was short lived. After two days, the team of experts arrived from Washington, and my deactivation procedure began.
The truth is that I assumed that they were from Washington, D.C. They could have been from anywhere. What I did know was that they were not local to the state where I was, and thus they had to be flown in from out of state. Their names, and point of origin, as well as their backgrounds are all unknown to me.
Retirement Team flown in
"[UFOs are] considered top secret by intelligence officers of both the Army and the Air Forces." --From a declassified 1949 FBI document from the San Antonio FBI office, to J. Edgar Hoover.
I knew something was “afoot” when I was moved from my upper tier cell, to a (special) first floor cell.
This refers to the knowledge that something is occurring behind the observed scenery, which might directly affect someone or something.
This was cell number 7.
It was a “special” cell.
To an outside observer it was a cell like any other. But this one was quite different. For starters, the wall graffiti was different. In most cells, and wall graffiti involved curse words, stick figures showing genital areas and perhaps a statement about prison life. Like “I’ll be back!”, and “The food here blows”. However, this cell was different.
The graffiti in this cell was unique. Instead of curse words, there were words related to thoughts and actions. For instance, next to the rack was the phrase “Be careful what you say.” And, over the door, were the words that stated “Do nothing stupid.” And near the sink, and the air vent, and the foot of the bed were drawings of three triangles. The drawings showed the triangles lined up in a row.
Three triangles with a line drawn through them.
.
They had kept me heavily sedated on Chlorpromazine because I was apparently unpredictable and dangerous. It was a safety precaution, though I told them repeatedly that I wasn’t going to do anything. The purpose of this cell was to put me into a specially constructed cell that was functionally intended for the ELF decommissioning procedure.
The cell was on the first floor and it was a little different than the others.
One of the problems that I had while the ELF filed was turned on was the heat that was being generated by my body. So this cell had an extra high capacity fan that was used to exhaust the air quickly. It was also grounded as a kind of faraday cage. However, the sink was not properly grounded, and was disconnected from the metal supports due to corrosion. Therefore whenever I went near it I would get a most terrible shock.
Also in this cell were some graffiti and doodles that you would find in any cell. Except this cell had the three triangle nomenclature that I recognized so well. It also had graffiti specifically pointing the locations of the microphone and the closed circuit camera.
Though I didn’t need the graffiti to show me these items.
Perhaps the most notable thing about this particular cell was outside of it. Directly outside the cell was the three embedded triangular feducial markings. If I were to stand up straight at the door to the cell, I would be able to focus directly at the feducials.
When looking out of the door to my cell I could see two individuals discussing things with the Captain of the guards, and the head of the Prison System’s Psychiatric Unit. They were wearing suits and ties, which is quite different from that of most white color employees local to the region. Due to the heat, most local white collar employees tended to wear collared short sleeve polo shirts. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but they would occasionally look over my way and continue talking like I was a slab of beef or some other object of little importance.
I could talk directly to the ELF team
With my probes now fully engaged and my cell irradiated with ELF radiation everything that I would say was heard directly to the ELF control station (in Minnesota) I could talk and they would answer me. Not only that, but I could whisper and they would be able to talk back to me.
It’s all pretty odd. And no we did not get “chummy”.
For instance, I told the on-site staff at the prison facility to adjust the amplitude of the gain on the ELF waves, and I was able to tell them it’s “size” relative to my cell. They had the gain really high and I took it down about six steps and then one step up. (For personal comfort.)
The Deactivation Procedure
It was around 6:00pm when the deactivation procedure began. I had been given an extremely large dose of medication during dinner and it was just then beginning to affect me.
I was sitting on my rack, wanting to lie down, but being unable to do so easily. Eventually I was able to collapse onto the bed, but I did not lie down comfortably, but rather laid on my bed in a half-on, half-off manner. My legs were still in a sitting position, but my head was on the pillow. I laid on my side with my arm extended half off the bed.
I was in a near comatose state. The Thorazine was hitting me hard.
Cell #7 in the Evaluation Barracks.
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I immediately knew that there was “something going on” whenever I felt an electric wave travel through my body and when I looked up at the ceiling, I “saw” cavitation effects.
Cavitation is the visual effect inside my visual cortex that indicates harmonics formed by the ELF waves in a confined space. In the test chamber at China Lake NWC I could see the effects though they were obscured by the confusing array of the grey triangles that dotted the walls.
But here in the white cinderblock cell, they were obvious. They appeared to me as waves and rows of grey worm like distortions.
While I still didn’t remember anything of my relevant past, it seemed quite familiar and strikingly disturbing. Losing control of one’s mind, and the observation of what could be hallucinations, is not something that you want to experience in prison.
That evening, as I relaxed on my rack, I suddenly saw the sudden bright flashes of light in my head. Just as quickly, in a short span of time, numbering in the milliseconds, a new vision flooded my visual cortex.
With it…
… came an awareness.
But it wasn’t long before I really and truly and completely knew what was truly going on.
For in a short period of time I lost all external vision and the ELF calibration screen flooded my visual cortex. And, while I am kind of ashamed to admit it, again I was intrigued by the red edges of the pastel landscape.
The ELF calibration screen filled my eyesight and consisted of "hills" and "valleys" upon an undulating terrain map that I would be able to navigate a reticle upon.
Without thinking too deeply about it, I started to look and peer intently into the imagery. Without thinking, I said out loud, “I wonder what those red cracks are”, and was equally surprised when a loud voice flooded my mind.
An unknown man sternly replied “Shut up! Concentrate on centering the reticle like you were trained to do!”
Ah, such reminders.
Unknown to my handler, this was an exact duplicate of the same event decades earlier. There, I also made inquiries of the reddish edges. And then, they also told me to ignore those colors and concentrate on the task before me.
All of this became evident. The true and actual awareness flooded my mind when the pastel map appeared. This is a map that I hadn’t seen for over 30 years. It was so long ago I forgot all about it. While the life with the interaction of the drone was known to me and understood, the life of the ELF core kit was forgotten.
The last time I had used it was for some minor tasks back in the 1990’s, when I was recalled for some domestic activities. At that time, I was temporarily tasked to <redacted>.
The reticle on the map was terribly out of place. It was way out to the left of where it should have been, and, I used the time to put it back where it belonged. As soon as the reticle went back in place, my normal eyesight returned. But, I could easily tell that I was in the presence of the ELF field. I knew, somewhat, what was going on. Indeed, I could see the cavitation effects in the cell all around me. And, to my amazement, but not without some concern, dolefully centered the reticle in the proper area. And the pastel map disappeared and I was back in my evaluation cell.
I looked up at the ceiling and saw the cavitation effects clearly. Now, the reader might think that I would have full and immediate recall of everything that I had ever experienced at this point. And that I would also understand what I was going through and why. But the truth was that I did not. I was confused, a bit scared, and completely in a quandary over this entire situation.
It truthfully took me at least two days to fully recall what was going on and why. In the meantime, I had a deactivation procedure to endure, and at this state, the hell was only just starting. As I recall, I was only finally to put all the pieces together when I looked outside the door to my cell. For there, directly opposite to my door, was the triangle shaped feducials embedded in the cinder-block wall of the intake facility!
What it sort of looked like.
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Was I actually a Sex Offender?
“The greatest prison that people live in is the fear of what other people think.”—Unknown
Actually, the first task, once the deactivation team arrived, was to meet the qualifications and expectations of the facility itself. Those expectations were as I discussed earlier. It was, after all, why I signed the waiver of my Constitutional rights.
Our founders set up a brilliant system which has served the country well for over two centuries. What people seem to forget is our system of government wasn’t set up to create a new set of parental authority figures for the public.
The entire intent behind the Constitution was to create a series of checks and balances to restrain government from becoming too powerful and working against the interests of the public.
Government’s primary role in America is supposed to be to protect the Constitution and defend the cherished civil liberties defined within it.
Today, it does precisely opposite.
Our government isn’t just corrupt though. Indeed, the primary function of government at the moment is to protect status quo criminals from the public, not the other way around. This is why the rich and powerful are never held to account, which is in turn why it continues to get worse and worse.
Was a danger to the community as a Sexual Offender? Was I a [1] pedophile or a [2] predator that would prey on people or little children? Did I have a [3] secret history that others need to be told about? Have I [4] hurt someone in my deep, dark, remote past? They needed to know just how [5] licentious I actually was. These questions needed to be answered.
From the point of view of everyone there, with the exception of the two “experts” that were flowing in to supervise this procedure, no one knew the answer.
So they had to run the necessary tests to determine this. But, unlike many other inmates, this would be much easier for them to find out, because, here (in my case) they have a hard-wired conduit direct to my brain and they could actively monitor how my brain would react to thoughts, and images placed there.
Not to mention that the Navy, or the MAJestic arm of the Navy, had a complete record of everything that I did. From phone records for the last thirty years, candid photographs of me and my wife in hotel rooms (!) and in our house (!), a completely compiled dossier of my medical history and a listing of every (MAJestic) operation that I had ever participated in.
Though, I am sure that that dossier would not of been shared with anyone outside of the MAJestic organization.
MAJestic knew EVERYTHING about me.
But, the State where I was incarcerated did not.
The team had to follow the law, [1] determine how severe a “Sex Offender” I actually was, while at the same time [2] permitting MAJestic to “disable my lethalness” and render me “inoperable” as an agent.
Most people are not aware of this, but not all "sexual offenders" are the same. While everyone gets classified as a Sexual offender, they have a secondary rating that is used to determine their frequency of monitoring and their restrictions.
The scale goes from a 1, which is a minor level offender, up to a 3 / 4 (depending on the state where you live) as the worst of the worst.
While, I am sure, the State officials did not have the clearances to know everything that I was involved in, they did have the right to know my medical, mental and criminal histories as compiled by MAJestic. And that, it was certain, was enough to dispel any doubts about my threat level assessment. Though, since they did contact the MAJestic authorities (somehow, maybe they were notified by triggering an access query for my records), they realized that I was “somehow” connected to the US government in some high capacity level.
What they thought it was is anyone’s guess. However, they probably envisioned something that Hollywood would dream up.
CIA scene from one of the Jason Bourne movies.
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That’s the way it works you know. We can only envision what we have been exposed to. For most unusual events, the exposure experience is “Hollywood”.
Again, while the procedure was complicated in actual implementation, the core basic theory behind it was quite simple. My visual cortex would be flooded with an image or series of images, or video movie routines. How my body reacted to those images would be noticed and recorded. If my penis would become erect that, for instance, would show the possible potential for interest in that picture or image.
Good luck with that. Once a man gets older, spontaneous erections are very rare. In fact, any kind of erection is a rare event.
Though in truth, they did not need to observe me get erections by. looking at pictures. All they needed to do is to monitor my brainwaves. The Thorazine reduced my body to “sluggish jello” while keeping my mind clear and focused. Yet at the same time, by emotions were all very calm. Thus, any reaction to images that I would see (and after all they had a complete pathway to my visual cortex through the ELF Kit #1 probes) could be observed by the monitoring of my brainwaves.
But since they now had the probes inside my head they could actually determine is the image was pleasurable or disgusting to me. And it was that by which they measured my interest.
There was no running away from it. They could tell, through the reactions in my brain, what interest that I had in sex, children, and images and whether or not I had any tendencies to harm, hurt or bother others in pursuit of said interests.
“If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.”-Robert Heinlein in The Door into Summer.
In hindsight, it is interesting that I was arrested for the unproven potential for having an image on a computer that I owned, but whether this was an indicator of my threat to society was another matter entirely.
Actually the mere presence of a file on a computer, by itself, does not mean that it was used or accessed by a person. That has to be determined by computer forensics. There, an IT professional can determine when the file was last accessed, what program accessed it, and for how long it was accessed. A longer period of forensic study can identify how the file got onto the computer, and when. But the mere presence of an illegal photo does not imply that the owner of the computer used, viewed or even knew that that file existed.
The same is true for a farmer who owns 1000 acres of land. The presence of two or three marijuana plants on this property does not imply that he was aware of them, cultivated them, or had any interest in growing them.
But it is easy for a Congressman to make a law saying that if a marijuana plant was on your property, you were De Facto a cultivator of that drug.
The criminal and legal systems must be specifically worded and carefully followed specifically with neutral intent towards obtainment of the truth, and whether true criminal intent was present.
But all that is meaningless.
A direct interpretation of the law simply states that if you possess an item that is illegal, you have broken the law. The old saying that “Intent is 9/10’s of the law” is an obsolete phrase that has no place in modern American law.
This entire theory is disgusting and disturbing to me. Does that mean that if I watched a movie about Hitler that I was a follower of his policies? Or that if someone flashed a picture to me in a mere fraction of a second that I would treasure that image and cultivate it in my mind over and over again, eventually becoming a dangerous maniac?
Most human brains operate at 4 Hz. Most computers operate at 3 GHz. Or in other words, flashing an image on the computer screen at 3Gz cannot be seen by the human brain.
The only way that it would be seen is if the picture froze in place for 4 x 1024,000,000 Hz. (1GHz = 1024 MHz). That is a real long time for a computer.
That is why computer forensics is so important. To watch and look at a picture, humans tend to look, or gawk at it for substantially longer than their brains work. Suppose it would take 30 seconds, or in this case 30x4x1024,000,000 computer cycles at least.
A true prosecutor should need to show that the image was OBSERVED rather than just a file on a computer. In any event, this is all academic. The law says one thing, and if you have a file on your computer, it doesn’t matter how it got there or whether you looked at it or not.
You become guilty.
Obviously the laws and the system behind them were more akin to a huge dragnet rather than a surgical investigative attack on dangerous community predators. But that is how the state dealt with these issues, and I was caught in the system. My place was not to wonder why, but rather to survive the ordeal as they “investigated” me.
This is an interesting subject, and one that I have spent many years considering. That is because the systems in place currently in the United States, on both the State and the Federal level seem to violate the core principles of common law.
In those principles, a law is something that protects the rights and privileges of another.
For instance, you can’t steal someone’s horse because it is a violation of another’s property ownership rights. Or you cannot kill someone because it is a violation of their God-given right of existence.
So, this being said, what property right, personal right, or sovereign right of a nation is being enforced by those laws related to possession of a banned substance or article?
As it stands, the law is contorted into something else entirely. In this convolution, it is the [1] premise of the potential for wrongdoing that is [2] evidenced by the suggestion of improper thought, through [3] possession of a banned object that is the driving force behind the laws as written.
Scene from “A Clockwork Orange”.
When a person is revolted, or shocked, or experiences emotion, the body chemistry changes. If you are in love, your body becomes filled with emotion. If you are in fear, your body is also filled with different chemicals. And dogs can sense this. With the proper equipment it can also be measured remotely.
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In any event, a period of time was devoted to determining whether I was a threat to society based on my body’s reactions to injected visual imagery into my cerebral cortex.
Actually by measuring the activity in my anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region that is involved in suppressing emotional responses, and the inferior frontal gyrus, an area responsible for evaluating social behavior and cooperation, the investigators could get a much better understanding of my individual motivations than only just relying on my more primitive cerebral functions. Luckily for me, I have over thirty years of ELF monitoring of this, but I don’t think that anyone told the medical staff at the diagnostic facility about that.
While I lay there on the rack, images started to flood my mind. Each image enveloped my entire visual cortex and paused there for five seconds. Apparently, it took from three to five seconds to determine how my body would react to these images.
It began easily enough with “soft” images. There were pictures of trees, plants, zoo animals, ocean scenes, fish, clouds and other nice and pleasant imagery. Then, they slowly started to insert pictures of girls. Some clothed, some in bathing suits, and some nude.
In short order the pictures started to diversify.
Some were pictures of thin girls, some were girls with large mammary breasts, and some were pictures of girls with long legs. Some pictures included children, while other pictures included animals.
Over a short period of time, the pictures became more diversified. There were pictures of piles of shit, urine and feces. There were pictures depicting torture, rotting things, and pictures of extreme violence.
There were totally repugnant pictures and pictures of absolute pleasantry. All of my reactions to each of these pictures were then assigned a series of values and were mapped out on a grid.
The grid was a graphical display of my overall sexual interests.
In it, various characteristics, regarding my heartbeat, electro-biological chemistry, and physical reactions were mapped and put down upon the display. For me, as I lay there listening in on the discussions surrounding me, was rather plain and boring. I had a sharp “drop off”, as most normal humans would, regarding death, violence, feces, and odd sexual acts.
I also had a normal transition of interest from beautiful, to cute, to attractive, to stimulating. This gradient needed to be present, for that defines discernment. This is a characteristic of a normal childhood, and thankfully I had a solid grounding in that area.
I had no sexual interest in children, but rather a kind of parental protectiveness seemed to emerge during the evaluation. I had no interest in pursuing anything or a desire to “still” or “hold” the image. This was indicative of a general apathy towards possession and possessiveness. That was certainly not a trait of a sexual predator.
I held strong emphatic reactions that clearly showed that I was not a sociopath, nor did I exhibit odd thinking or reasoning patterns in my brain that were indicative of mental instability in one form or the other. I was surprisingly normal, perhaps a little bit sexually conservative (maybe even embarrassingly puritan in some ways), but aside from that rather normal.
Anyways, that what they said, and I heard them say that. How would you like to be classified as “Puritan” in your sexual interests?
Furthermore, the graph most certainly showed areas in which I had a great deal of sexual attractiveness towards. Not every man is the same, and for me, it appeared, that I had a strong preference in curvy woman with large chests and long legs. I was also fond of wide shoulders (?) for some unknown reason.
My tests showed a predilection towards woman who would be able to have these physical features, which involved girls as young as in their early 20’s, and as old as I was. But there was a rather severe drop off as they approached the age that I would consider to be my daughter. At that point, a different series of emotions came into play with were of a parental protective nature.
All in all, my tests were normal.
In comparison with others who went through this evaluation with me, (apparently) my graph was smaller and more limiting. Others were not so disturbed by certain kinds of sexual positions, or actions. They also tended to be “more open minded” about same-sex fetishes than I was.
They said that I was “bland” and “boring”. How would you like to be considered to be “plan vanilla”, “bland and boring” regarding sex?
My graph was indicative of a rather defined line that separates repulsion, neutrality, and attraction. For me, my graph was indicative of “traditionally oriented sexual attractiveness”. In no way was there any hint of an interest in child porn, sex with a child, voyeurism, necrophilia, bondage, S &M, observing violent sexual fantasies, nor anything related to sex outside of a more or less male to female orientation. I was just conventional; plain and ordinary.
This test lasted approximately five hours. And the conclusions were final, and without question. I was [1] not a threat to society, nor was [2] I at all interested in any kind of sexual activity with a child. It also showed that [3] I was not violent or enjoyed violence in any way.
Upon conclusion of this part of the test, there was an apparent break, and I was able to lay back and relax. I just listen to them discuss my brain and interests. Apparently, somehow they were able to see the images that they placed in my visual cortex. And they commented on them. Some would say that the picture was funny, or disgusting, or really attractive. It was an interesting dialog, but I didn’t care. I was tired, as it took a lot of work to endure the test, and I was very tired, as well as very hot. During the test, the probes in my brain generate heat, and unless I am able to cool down, it could kill me. So I just laid back, and drifted off to sleep with my head buried into my soaking-wet pillow.
What did I recall?
Since it was now determined that I was not a danger to anyone, and thus the sole remaining procedure remaining was to retire my probes.
This should have been rather easy, you would think.
You would just turn the “on” switch to “off”. But that isn’t the way it worked, and for me, it was neither simple, nor easy.
In order to first shut down the probes, there had to be a [1] complete reawakening of brain, followed by a [2] downloading (of sorts) of what I knew and experienced, followed by a [3] re-compartmentalization of memories. This was to be conducted in a certain way, because if not done so properly, certain memories would persist, while others would be erased.
Thus a dangerous condition could inadvertently be created.
It could possibly create a person with patches of memories, and skill sets, all completely out of their proper context. And that is a dangerous precedent. Just like “Nomad” in the Star Trek series…
The Changeling (1968)
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Ye Gods! I might relive the “The Changeling (1967)” episode from Star Trek. Where some memories that I should of forgotten be remembered, and others that I should of remembered be forgotten. The reality of a bastardized memory stack was a frightening possibility.
A malfunctioning space probe, Nomad, comes aboard the Enterprise, mistaking Kirk for its creator. The half-earth, half-alien probe thinks it has orders to sterilize imperfect life-forms, and the crew has to find a way to keep it under control before it kills them.
Its original orders were to find life-forms, but it had merged with another probe whose orders were to sterilize imperfect minerals.
When combined, and placed out of the proper context, a hybrid creature; Nomad, was created. Whose goal and objective was the perverted “Find life-forms, and sterilize all imperfect life-forms”.
-https://www.hulu.com/watch/283817
The second task took all day, and began right after breakfast the next day. Again, like I had been all week, I was provided a large dose of medication to control me, and I just went to my rack and lay down.
This was an important exercise, as all my core Core Kit #1 interlocks were removed, and all my memories were made accessible to me.
From an observer in the barracks, nothing at all was going on, but that was completely illusionary. To everyone else, I was alone, lying down on my rack. But in my mind a pure cascade of thoughts and images flooded my mind.
Not only that, but the activation protocol was engaged. That meant a full power ELF field, and a constant and steady background cadence was present to my ears.
A steady and constant cadence was played in my head. It was constant and it lasted for the ten days or so that I was being evaluated.
While I understood the purpose of the pastel map and the movement of the reticle, I still did not have any recollection of my memories about the ELF Core Kit. That would only come about once my memories were unlocked.
To unlock my memories a sequence of commands must be issued from the control booth external to my body. I cannot do that myself.
The diagnostic screen appeared briefly. In a flash I could see the screen overlaid in my field of sight. I watched as the icons were clicked and activated in quick succession. Whomever was doing this was quite skilled in doing so. This overlay and the resultant operation passed away quickly, perhaps under three minutes, and then the screen disappeared. Then everything went calm again.
And then, slowly, one by one, (all the rest of) my memories returned.
Unlike the memory retrieval at NAS China Lake, this was a much more arduous process. The reasons for this, perhaps, were many. For one, a much larger period of time had elapsed. When I was at China Lake, a period of around three years had elapsed.
But at this time, a far larger period of time had elapsed and this period of time was over thirty years.
As time wears on, the memories become embedded deeper and deeper in the records of one’s past. As such, it becomes comparatively more difficult to retrieve them. Additionally, other memories, not repressed, crowd out the significance of the repressed memories. Thus, a sorting and prioritizing technique must be employed by the agent to figure out exactly what was transpiring, what had transpired, and why. This was not easy, and as the pieces to the huge puzzle of my life started to come together, I was at times amazed, shocked, and disgusted as to the kind of life that I had lived.
Pieces fell into place. Connections were made, and mysteries that I wondered about (Like “why did I do that?) all started to make sense.
As these memories flooded my consciousness, somehow the operators were able to observe the snatches that would flutter by in my visual cortex. I was being monitored, and as these memories arose others would view them, and at times comment on them.
From my perspective
At this time, the world that I was involved is was quite unique and unusual. What I was experiencing; what I was seeing and hearing was oblivious to the outside world. I was trapped inside a world of my own.
My brain saw and heard sounds and visions that only I could see and experience.
In my mind, I could [1] hear the chatter from the ELF control staff. I could [2] listen to my handlers, the [3] program managers and the [4] operators at their stations. It was like I was on speaker-phone and I could (judging from the volume and the echoes in the room) determine their relative positions within the ELF control room.
I could also [5] overhear the local medical staff in the diagnostic facility talking about me to the [6] “experts” flown in to evaluate me.
I could also [7] hear the rest of the barracks, which was now just beginning to be repopulated with other inmates. All of this confusion passed through my senses with an [8] underlying “awakening” cadence that was put in place by my handlers.
Reactions of the others
Of course, to everyone else in the barracks I was a raving loon. I was talking to myself, conducting focusing exercises to center upon the feducials. I looked like a complete nut. But something else was also happening. Others were listening to me. The doctors and the guards were listening in on the chatter with my handlers. Some of the inmates were also listening in.
It was because of these alert few that directed the attention of the other inmates to what was going on and to whom I really was. In a short period of time, almost the entire barracks knew who I really was, and why I was truly and actually there.
This was absolutely unexpected. No, not everyone knew. But there was a significant number of both guards, and inmates that knew that I was a “special” inmate and that I had a “special” background.
They also knew that I was there for reasons other than why I was there “officially”.
To show their respect for me they would honor me. To be honest, the method of showing honor to me was alien to my experiences. They were obvious respectful gestures, but I had never experienced them before.
Respect and other strange observances
All through the day, various inmates, and guards as well, would come near to my cell. They would stand next to the door.
Everyone (in the barracks) knew what was going on. They all knew that I was being “retired” or in prison for some kind of special government operation. As such, they all showed me respect.
They wouldn’t salute or anything like that, but they would stand tall with their back straight. They would hold a small torn piece of paper in their palm. In that paper were three letters. The initials of the person honoring me. They then folded the small ½ inch long sized scrap of paper into a butterfly shape and softly blow it towards my cell.
This went on all day. And when I returned back from dinner at the chow hall, I found that someone had taken all the tiny slips of paper, now numbering 60 or 70 and put them in the grill vent in my cell. I can tell you that while it was certainly an uncomfortable experience being in prison, and getting accused like I was, to have this level of respect and support was meaningful and import to me.
It touched me.
(I do not know the origins of this ritual. I have never seen it before, and it was not part of my training in the Navy. But the standardization of it was suggestive of some kind of military ritual, of which I knew nothing of. To this day it remains a mystery to me. How could dozens of strangers all act uniformly towards me in this way? I do not know.)
During this entire time period, as long as the cadence was on, and they were reviewing my experiences, I tended to act, talk, and walk differently. It was as if I was still in training in the Navy. It was like I was a drill instructor or some other kind of military automation. I couldn’t help it. I automatically took on that persona, and that is who I was and what I was during this period of time.
Scrolling through my memories
I am sure that there were a lot of interesting memories tucked away inside my brain. After all, I not only operated as a normal human, but I also shared my experiences with an entangled drone.
All of my memories for the over thirty years that I was entangled are now shared experiences and shared memories.
But, what they wanted to do was look for specific memory sets, isolate them, and sever my access to them.
When the command to unlock it was received, the memories came back in a flood. Apparently, the longer the memories lie dormant within the brain the more painful they are to extract them.
Correction. It is not necessarily a painful experience, than it is a jarring one.
For with each memories comes with its own associated emotions. The memories of what it was like in flight school, as well as the time of being a newlywed at China Lake all flooded my body.
To handle this flood of memories the beat tempo was broadcast to my auditory center. This helped me to handle the memories and emotions. There were different kinds of tempos. This was a military march beat with underlining references towards the song that I selected as my favorite song back when I first signed up into the program.
This tempo caused me to maintain a military bearing just like I maintained it at NAS NASC Pensacola, Florida. Of course, the rest of the inmates thought that I was a little bonkers. But the team who was deprogramming me knew exactly what was going on at the time.
Reviewing the “Discovery” paperwork
In Law, “discovery” is the exchange of legal information and known facts of a case. Think of discovery as obtaining and disclosing the evidence and position of each side of a case so that all parties involved can decide what their best options are – move forward toward trial or negotiate an early settlement.
-What Is Discovery? – Legal Meaning
Critical to the identification of whether I was a criminal or not, was a reviewing of the “Discovery” documentation that was used by the DA and prosecutor to convict me.
Correction. They did not use it to convict me. They threatened me with 80 years in Prison that would be determined by a panel of Jurists from rural Arkansas.
They offered me a plea bargain of 6-9 months in home detention and my record expunged if I agreed to possession of two images. I did so. And the DA used sign language to raise the sentence with the Judge.
The purpose of the prosecutor is to prosecute and to win a conviction. He has no motivation or concern about the real truth or the causes of any given crime event.
His job and the ability to rise within his career is based solely in his ability to convict others.
A “Discovery” is a document listing the findings by the detective on the case.
Like the prosecutor, the detective has no real stake in finding out the relative truth in a crime. Their purpose is only to support the conviction by the prosecutor. The detective generates a document called a “Discovery” that lists the findings. My “Discovery” was about 60 pages long. In it was a boiler plate background on how most Child Predators were loners and who had antisocial tendencies, but could adequately fit into society.
My “discovery” consisted of two cover pages directly concerning my findings, and 58 pages of “boiler plate” data regarding sexual predatory behaviors. There was nothing about my mental history, or background at all in it.
Only the first two pages in the 60 page document listed anything directly relating to me. In that there were [1] the references to the two pictures that a doctor, working for the Arkansas Police, claimed was a person that could be under the age of 18. It also discussed [2] that I had thousands of porn pictures on the CDROMS in the storage box. But they were not illegal. They also (curiously) made note that I had [3] pictures of German military tanks and weapons from World War II, and that this was indicative of the possibility that I had neo-Nazi leaning tendencies.
Compared my known histories
They compared my known histories and reviewed my training. To my surprise I also had memory blackout of various paramilitary course, and education.
This was certainly curious. As even while I was entangled I had completely forgot about all subsequent training.
One was involved in the “Louisiana Swamp Rats”. This was, at one time, a hard-core para-military training center.
Others discussed my advanced education, and still others related some of the various minor tasks that I was called upon to do, that weren’t so minor after all. My favorite quote was when one of the observers said that I was part mountain man, part bear, and part Einstein. That comment, well, it made my day.
They made many such statements; but I am afraid that I cannot remember all of them.
Because of the inadequacies in the Discovery, the team went inside my memories to extract what I had actually done. This was an interesting experience, where they probed the innermost workings of my mind.
They compared my physical reactions to ELF generated pulses. Trying to trigger any sort of aggressive or antisocial tendencies. Of course, since I was previously vetted, none could be found, so my case was closed.
And I was assigned a low threat level.
I was assigned a level #1 threat level.
Running the software routines
“I'm lonely, he thought.Distantly he heard soft, high voices.He turned his eyes in upon a vision. There was a group of hills from which flowed a clear river, and in the shallows of that river, sending up spray, their faces shimmering, were the beautiful women. They played like children on the shore. And it came to Forester to know about them and their life. They were nomads, roaming the face of this world as was their desire. There were no highways or cities, there were only hills and plains and winds to carry them like white feathers where they wished. As Forester shaped the questions, some invisible answerer whispered the answers. There were no men. These women, alone, produced their race. The men had vanished fifty thousand years ago. And where were these women now? A mile down from the green forest, a mile over on the wine stream by the six white stones, and a third mile to the large river. There, in the shallows, were the women who would make fine wives, and raise beautiful children.Forester opened his eyes. The other men were sitting up."I had a dream."They had all dreamed."A mile flown from the green forest a mile over on the wine stream . . . ."". . . by the six white stones," said Koestler.". . . and a third mile to the large river," said Driscoll, sitting there.Nobody spoke again for at moment. They looked at the silver rocket standing there in the starlight"Do we walk or fly, Captain?"
Things were very weird for me.
I cannot express how unusual this situation was for me. Not only from the environment surrounding me, but also from what my mind and emotions were experiencing. It is hard to describe, but when a person’s mind, memories and thoughts are being accessed what one experiences (at that time) becomes “outside the normal”.
What happens, is that the mind tries to piece together, in a logical fashion, what is occurring. It does this even if what is occurring is illogical. The end result becomes a confused jumble of events, sequences of events, emotions, sensory impressions and memories that are all entangled in a huge mess of confusion.
I had amazingly vivid dreams, and a convoluted mixture of past memories, shared drone experiences, current events, and embedded program “movies” or “subroutines” all flooded my mind.
Trying to piece them all together was rather impossible and difficult.
I will not relate here what I experienced. For, as far as I am concerned, they are nothing less than visual hallucinations. And, thus have no useful purpose in this extracted dialog. Because of this, I will refrain from relating the fantastical impressions that I experienced during this time.
They serve no benefit to the reader.
That being stated, there are other aspects of this period that are truly significant. These are themselves worthy of discussion. What is interesting are a number of events that are special “retirement” programs.
These routines ran in my mind with [1] audio, [2] visual, and [3] tactile impressions.
The senses of taste and smell were absent from these experiences.
That means that I was living or reliving these experiences as if they were actually happening. When, I knew that they were not real at all, but rather programs that ran inside my brain.
So…
Once the “on” switch was set to “off”, a set number of closure routines rain inside my brain. These routines were amazing as it was as if I were experiencing them physically. Not that I was reliving a memory, or watching a television show.
I have speculated that these routines ran from a source outside of my human consciousness and that their operation was directed through the controllers at the ELF facility that was decommissioning me. But this is speculation only. I say this because I do not believe that the probes had any kind of software that met these stated capabilities.
There were a number of such programs.
I can recall about 12 in total. I will relate three of the most significant. One must keep in mind that these are the retirement events based upon what responses that I gave on the questionnaire before I entered the dimensional field. A person with different answers would of experienced different software programs.
Or, alternatively, the same program, but with different variables and emotional content. This is all speculation on my part.
The programs that I shall relate here are;
The gathering of the retirement programs
The promise of a new life awaits me upon retirement.
The retirement of the “spirit of a Marine” (within the hilt of a sword).
Needless to explain, all these experiences are extremely personal and private.
As such, it will be very difficult for me to relate the emotional impact running these confusing program events were to me. But I will do my best to relate them.
The names and titles that I provide here are my own.
Please understand that these programs are designed to evoke mental and emotional responses used to satiate the need for curiosity and to add full and complete closure to my experiences in a friendly and caring way.
Even though those Fuckers turned me into a sex offender and gave me five years at hard labor.
The closure subroutines are not meant to hurt, harm, or belittle me in any way. But rather, are intended to close out my role comfortably and with compassion, all the time meeting the overall goal of maintaining program secrecy.
The reader must keep in mind that someone had to write these programs that did these things. Someone had to conceive of them, and someone had to design and implement them. They did not just “pop up” out of nowhere.
Shutting off system access, memories, and communication links.
The gathering of the retirement programs
It was going to be a long night.
I knew it, you know. It was one of those feelings that one gets when they watch a darkness brewing out off in the ocean. It was eerie. It was a kind of gathering of clouds, metaphorically speaking. Soft but ultimately a foreboding of impending doom.
During this entire two week period the field was never turned off. It remained on, and I was under the constant onslaught of its effects. It affected me in various ways. But I could certainly tell when an individual program ran. This is because the implanted probes would switch on various parts of my brain and interact with them in clearly unnatural, and often uncomfortable, ways.
What is explained at this point might be a bit confusing. I describe what my visual cortex “saw” and how I felt during this period. To everyone else in the prison facility, I was lying alone on my rack in the tiny cell. (Mumbling, perhaps yelling… certainly trembling and sweating.) One needs to keep this in mind. As all the events that are now described happened only in my mind and were oblivious to everyone except those handlers who were monitoring my mind and watching the programs interact with my brain.
Thus, I knew that I was entering a program when suddenly my visual cortex switched on and my audio and tactile responses became noticeably different.
In this case, what would best be described as a lucid dream, with full auditory, tactile and visual stimulation flooded my mind.
It was, from my point of view, nearly indistinguishable from reality.
Nearly, does not mean totally, and to this end I want to convey to the reader that from my point of view it was like participating in a 6D movie. It was real enough, but easily distinguishable from reality.
The best way to describe this was as if I was inside a “holodeck” much like was in the Star-Trek series. It was just a large dark chamber that seemed real enough to me.
A holodeck, in the fictional Star Trek universe, is a simulated reality facility located on star-ships and star-bases. Most holodeck programs shown in the episodes run in first person "subjective mode", in which the user actively interacts with the program and its characters. The user may also employ third-person "objective mode", in which he or she is "apart" from the actual running of the program and does not interact with it.
A holodeck, in the fictional Star Trek universe, is a simulated reality facility located on star-ships and star-bases.
.
I found myself standing inside a large dark chamber.
I couldn’t see the extent of the chamber as everything was dark and black. Where I was standing was illuminated in some way and showed the presence of twelve individuals or life-size Figures.
These figures stood frozen without moving. Like large chess pieces.
Everything was in breath-taking full color and absolutely sparking clear and crisp. The twelve figures stood in two rows of six individuals. One row of six stood in mute silence facing the other row of six. I stood in the middle between both of the rows. I looked forward at them. The row to my right held six individuals and the row to my left held six individuals.
I was able to walk around them and look at them.
One was a Marine. He had my face, but stood taller than I did, and was stronger than I was. He had the wrinkles and scars of many a battle and of nights of restless vigilance. He reminded me a little bit of the gunnery sergeant (played by Clint Eastwood) from the movie “Heartbreak Ridge”.
Gunny Highway.
.
Across from him was a large Mantid. It was easily seven feet tall, and reminded me of the alien from the movie series Aliens. It was not (at all) representative of the Mantids that I worked with as a drone commander. This one was much larger and tended to be a bit more terrifying. It also had a larger caprice than what I was familiar with. It had a triangular head with two large eyes.
The Alien film franchise (also known as Aliens) is a science fiction horror film series consisting of four installments, focusing on Lieutenant Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) and her battles with an extraterrestrial life form, commonly referred to as the "Alien". Produced by 20th Century Fox, the series started with the 1979 film Alien, which led to three movie sequels, as well as numerous books, comics and video game spin-offs.
There was a naval officer in dress whites. He had my face, was clean shaven, and held the rank of Commander. He had an impressive array of ribbons, and had signs of greying at the temples. He seemed to be calm and quiet with an easy smile and friendly demeanor.
This version of “me” was different than the Marine version of “me”. They indicated different lives that they lead. And how they both turned out after living those lives.
The Dress White uniform consists of a stand-collar white tunic, white trousers, and white dress shoes. Rank for officers is displayed on shoulder boards for males and on the sleeve cuffs for females, while CPO rank insignia is worn on the collar for both sexes. Service dress white includes ribbons, whereas full dress white includes ribbons and medals. This uniform is informally called "Chokers", due to the stand-collar.
"Greying at the temples" means; had white hair around the front near the ears.
Well, he looked something like this. Only with a different rank.
.
There was a scientist / intellectual version of “me”. He wore a tattered button-down sweater with elbow patches, and pockets. He had bifocal wire-rim glasses on, and was balding. He had a white beard and stood there petting a large beautiful Maine-coon cat. Strangely, he wore a pair of slippers and was smoking a pipe.
I wonder if these characters were all composed of images that I have collected in my subconscious (such as Albert Einstein) and then juxtaposed into my image stream.
Frayed. Comfortably worn and a little frayed; as what one would expect from a favorite item of clothing that has been worn extensively.
Scientist.
.
There was an archaeologist version of myself. He was quite stereotypical; attired in a pith helmet, dirty khaki shirt and riding britches with a pair or brown long (horse riding) boots. He was thin, and looked a little gaunt. He was well tanned, and had a week’s stubble of hair on his chin.
An archaeologist wearing a pith helmet on a “dig”.
.
There was a Type-II gray drone. It was slightly transparent. And it looked like it was composed of <redacted>. Which were somewhat similar to the lines of futuristic code shown on the movie “The Matrix”. It was taller than I remembered it to be. The color was also a <redacted> complexion that I was accustomed to. (Odd. I do not know why this was so.)
This was the strangest figurine in the line-up.
There was a beautiful Asian girl. She was deeply tanned, and looked like Polynesian mix of part Polynesian and part Japanese. She was, perhaps, Indonesian or Malaysian in racial makeup. She was short with an hourglass shape, shapely legs and dark liquid eyes set deep with a cute nose and deep black hair. She wore a simple sarong with bare feet, and holding a basket of fruit. The fruit was of a tropical bent, being mostly durian, dragon fruit, pineapples, bananas, guava, and coconuts. She had a red passion flower in her hair.
(So stereotypical, but also so lovely….)
Yeah. She sort of looked a little like this lass.
.
I won’t go into the full range of figures that stood there before me. Each one represented a different series of memories and had a special role in my life.
While most of what we were involved in was related to closure and suppression of the memories, other programs served different functions and purposes. (They were but the representations of various programs. As such they maintained a purposeful stereotypical significance that somehow “plugged into” or connected to my sub-consciousness.)
You all will see the various roles that they held in part 2. Each special subroutine had a role and it was used to “condition” me properly so that I can exist MAJestic in a healthy way, and not be scared for life due to an abrupt and improperly conducted ELF shut-down sequence.
In truth, I endured the entire software routines. But, for purposes of simplification, as well as to avoid reliving the entire strenuous event, I have decided to limit recalling this event. Instead I am just going to relate only two of the twelve programs.
The first [1] is the program concerning the Asian female. I call this subroutine promise, the “promise of a new life after retirement”.
The second [2] is the complete closure ceremony. I call this the “retirement of the spirit of a Marine”.
I will ignore the other ten programs, as they would probably devote an entire book in their own right to relate.Maybe I’ll write another post on them later on. But for now, it’s way too much.
This is the end of part one
To see the rest of this section you need to go off to the MAJestic index here…
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Throughout history, nations rise when there is righteous leadership that cared for its citizens' welfare and do the greater good. When they are corrupt and self-serving, those nations fall. Learn from history because we live in a world governed by cause and effect. History will repeat itself.
-Tom Tan
But no one is addressing this enormous “elephant in the room”. They are all off in some la-la-land of finger pointing outside of America. The Liberal Democrats point their fingers at Russia and blame them for the mess that America is today. The Conservative Republicans point their fingers to China, and blame them. Looked from the outside inwards, you all look like crazed maniacs.
Republicans have been gushing hatred over China, especially since Trump lost the election.
Yes, there are the obvious reasons this board has mentioned many times but it seems even more deep seated. It's as if people like Laura Ingraham are addicted to their hatred. She's obsessed w/China and uses China like a Club to try to discredit anyone to the left of Adolf Hitler. I love it when she then screams about the 'Cancel Culture'.
I look at her twitter feed and she's totally unhinged. She talks about China like a deprived drug addict who finally found their stash. I feel like I'm missing something.
-Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Feb 11 2021 20:04 utc | 8
Oh, but you all know all of that, don’t you?
Why is “democracy” so valuable?
It’s heavily promoted (don’t you know) that one-person, one-vote system is the pinnacle of “freedom” and “liberty” in the world. Which is rather strange as the founders of the United States said the absolute opposite.
And people are looking at these various systems of governance with a keen eye. Maybe there needs to be some changes they wonder…
Daniel Bell has put forward his views in favor of China's political meritocracy... against the one person one vote (Western Democracy model) as a mode of selection for political leaders.
He has done this in two books.
The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy
Princeton University Press, 2015. ISBN 9781400865505.Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University and professor at Tsinghua University (Schwarzman College and Department of Philosophy). He was born in Montreal, educated at McGill and Oxford, has taught in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and has held research fellowships at Princeton's University Center for Human Values, Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences and Hebrew University's Department of Political Science.
Here:
https://youtu.be/e63ro_suARA
Crazy, Crazy Government
The war machine is still at full throttle and has been for more than two decades. Do you realize there are now adults who have never lived during a time when the United States was not at war with a Middle Eastern nation? We are at war with Eurasia, or is it Eastasia?
It’s both, and it projects to continue for decades.
When Bill Kristol watches Star Wars movies, he roots for the Galactic Empire. The leading neocon recently caused a social media disturbance in the Force when he tweeted this predilection for the Dark Side following the debut of the final trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Kristol sees the Empire as basically a galaxy-wide extrapolation of what he has long wanted the US to have over the Earth: what he has termed "benevolent global hegemony."
Kristol, founder and editor of neocon flagship magazine The Weekly Standard, responded to scandalized critics by linking to a 2002 essay from the Standard's blog that justifies even the worst of Darth Vader's atrocities. In "The Case for the Empire," Jonathan V. Last made a Kristolian argument that you can't make a "benevolent hegemony" omelet without breaking a few eggs.
-SOTT
The elected elites love war at home, too. They are fomenting war among the American people, and it is breaking out. As surely as class warfare is behind the riots in the Netherlands, it is on the cusp of erupting here. It’s a strategy of divide the people into little groups. Then have the groups fight each other.
Americans are intentionally divided into groups to attack each other.
.
The elites play classes off one another. They denounce the rich as evil, and the media and the inured play along, hating all “billionaires,” as if Capitalism didn’t afford them the opportunity to have the very platforms upon which they complain.
The elites stealthily promote their lie in this way, lumping into a group both hard-working and innovative entrepreneurs who made it by the sweat of their brow and the crony capitalists they created themselves, and then call them all “rich” as if it’s an epithet.
Among the many misperceptions of the American Revolution and the resulting constitutional order is the belief that these admittedly monumental achievements created a self-sustaining system of governance. Even in times of chaos and upheaval such as those we are living through today, we have always at some level convinced ourselves that ours is a system that can withstand most any assault, foreign or domestic. We lean on a legend – that the bundle of constitutional rights guaranteed us and our revolutionary system of checks and balances will be enough by themselves to sustain liberty over the fullness of time.
It’s been said, regarding any memorable occurrence, that if there’s truth and legend, go with the legend because it’s always a better story. But the truth is, while we expect that our institutions will hold under duress, Thomas Jefferson himself – among others in the founding generation – was doubtful the great experiment in liberty attained through blood, sweat, and tears would last more than a generation. He was skeptical of the sustainability of a system in which 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%. Jefferson was expanding on the sentiments of fellow founder Benjamin Franklin, who when asked what form of government the framers of the Constitution had settled on, famously replied, “a republic – if you can keep it.”
-Liberty Nation
They take an arbitrary monetary figure, pulled out of thin air, and set it as the Rubicon. Cross it and somehow you were luckier than most, got a break someone else never got. Yachts and airplanes are demonized, while the elected elites vacation on yachts bought by others and are ferried about in private jets paid for by others.
They accept “campaign contributions” from Wall Street, then, with a wink and nod, demonize Wall Street. Then, they print billions of dollars to prop up Wall Street; rewarding it for bringing down the economy. This keeps the contributions flowing and themselves in power.
And when people get angry about it, and march on Washington, an example is made of them. As an effigy and as a warning to others…
America 2021.
.
It’s all a racket.
They demonize Big Oil, Big Medicine, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco (which deserve to be demonized, surely) yet they enrich those industries with special subsidies and tax breaks and laws passed to their benefit. Their puppets in office who create those privileges are rewarded with more campaign cash and, when their time on Capitol Hill is done, cushy jobs lobbying their replacements.
Their policies destroy the middle class.
The middle class no longer exists.
.
They preach fairness and set their pawns up as the arbiters of fairness. They create a parasite class with an entitlement mentality. Then they work to grow the parasite class to keep themselves in power by taking more and more from the wages of the middle class.
Let’s look at America, the nation of an “untouchable” oligarchy that treats the American citizenry as the sheep that serve them. Let’s remind ourselves just what we wave our “red, white, and blue” flags up high for…
Lace the air with LSD
This article was contributed by Mike Jay. It is reprinted as found. All credit to the author, and note that any editing involved went towards fitting this into the MM format.
It was during the fallout from Watergate that the American public first heard of MK-Ultra, the most notorious of the secret mind control programmes that the CIA ran through the 1950s and 1960s.
After Nixon’s men were caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in June 1972, Richard Helms, then director of the CIA, refused to help with the cover-up. In February 1973, after his re-election, Nixon fired Helms and replaced him with James Schlesinger. In an initiative to regain public trust as the crisis escalated, Schlesinger announced he was ‘determined that the law shall be respected’ and that anyone aware of illegal CIA activities was obliged to report them.
Nixon was finally forced to resign in August 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, made Nelson Rockefeller, a reliable intelligence insider, his vice president, and asked him to produce a report on the CIA’s alleged historical abuses.
Rockefeller’s report was issued in June 1975. For the most part it was vague and non-incriminating, but it did conclude that the CIA had in the past conducted ‘plainly unlawful’ investigations, including the testing of ‘potentially dangerous drugs on unsuspecting United States citizens’.
There were references to secret sites and experiments on prison inmates, and some passages that begged explanation; in one incident, ‘an employee of the Department of the Army’ had crashed to his death through a 13th-storey hotel window after being dosed with LSD. But the commission had apparently reached a dead end. All records had been destroyed, and ‘all persons directly involved … were either out of the country and not available for interview or were deceased.’
Seymour Hersh, who had already written a front-page story for the New York Times about the CIA’s illegal domestic surveillance programme, determined that the man who had fallen from the window was Frank Olson, a chemist employed by the CIA. Hersh disclosed his findings to Olson’s family, who convened a press conference and announced that they would be suing the agency.
Ford’s chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, was alerted to the danger by his deputy, Dick Cheney. The Olsons received a settlement of $750,000 in exchange for dropping their legal action, and were invited to the White House, where Ford made them a public apology.
As the Rockefeller report foundered, a Senate commission under the Idaho member Frank Church dredged deeper in the CIA’s records. The files were heavily redacted but one name surfaced repeatedly: Sidney Gottlieb, who appeared to have been the director of a secret chemical division within the agency.
Gottlieb, it turned out, was now in India, where he and his wife were spending their retirement working as volunteers at a leprosy hospital. The Church Committee summoned him to testify, which he did in camera, under an alias and with a guarantee of legal immunity; the press was told that no photographs of him existed.
It was the Church Committee’s report in April 1976 that brought MK-Ultra to public attention. The programme, which ran from the early 1950s through to the mid-1960s, had investigated forms of mind control that might be deployed on civilian populations.
A particular interest had been taken in LSD, which was tested on such ‘expendable’ populations as prisoners and refugees, on the general public and, extensively, on the programme’s own agents.
Many of the subjects were dosed without their knowledge or consent – including Frank Olson, who had ‘leaped to his death’ in ‘what appeared to be a serious depression’ after his Cointreau was spiked with LSD at a CIA retreat. The Church Committee concluded that the full extent of MK-Ultra’s work, especially outside the US, would never be known, since records of it had been destroyed.
As it turned out, however, there was much more to come. In the late 1970s, John Marks, a journalist who specialised in intelligence matters, filed a Freedom of Information request that uncovered a trove of 16,000 documents, most of which hadn’t been sent for shredding because they were filed as financial records. In the course of examining thousands of invoices and bills of sale, Marks and his team of researchers unearthed some unexpected gems.
The diary of George Hunter White, a dead Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent, was particularly startling. White had worked as Gottlieb’s fixer in the underworlds of New York and San Francisco, conducting drug experiments on unknowing subjects in brothels or at parties he held in CIA safehouses.
In his diary, White wrote frankly about the corruption, drugs, sex and violence in which he happily participated: ‘Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, cheat, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All Highest?’
This was not the CIA as the American public was encouraged to imagine it: a dapper Ivy League fraternity coolly dedicated to safeguarding the nation. The picture that emerged was of a game without rules, played recklessly and with impunity by, as Stephen Kinzer characterises it, a ‘cast of obsessed chemists, cold-hearted spymasters, grim torturers, hypnotists, electr0-shockers and Nazi doctors’.
With the publication in 1978 of Marks’s The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control, the story took up the position it has occupied ever since at the intersection of politics, conspiracy theory, psychology, drug culture, science fiction and espionage. Kinzer retells many of Marks’s stories, but organizes them around the fuller, though still partial, biographical picture of Gottlieb that has emerged since his death in 1999. The result is a bustling narrative that sets MK-Ultra in its institutional framework of federal government, the military and the intelligence services, swerving all the while between madcap farce and grim atrocity.
The story begins during the occupation of Germany at the end of the Second World War, when agents of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA, discovered that the Nazis had been designing biological weapons such as anthrax bombs, and subjecting prisoners at Dachau and Buchenwald to experiments involving drugs, lethal pathogens, toxic gases and extremes of temperature. Some of this was exposed at the Nuremberg trials; OSS officers, meanwhile, were discreetly gathering research materials for their own purposes.
Nazi Party members were officially prohibited from entering the US, but arrangements were made under a secret programme codenamed Operation Paperclip to ‘bleach’ episodes involving slavery, torture and murder from the records of scientists who might be useful to US intelligence. More than seven hundred such scientists and engineers were quietly recruited to work at Camp Detrick, Maryland, headquarters of the US Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.
The OSS was abolished by Truman in 1945, the president having decided that the US didn’t need a secret intelligence agency in peacetime. But by 1947 he had changed his mind, and the CIA was formed.
The new agency began to undertake covert operations in Eastern Europe and paid close attention to the dramatic 1949 Soviet show trial of the Hungarian priest Cardinal József Mindszenty, in which Mindszenty confessed to absurd conspiracies such as attempting to steal the crown jewels and to re-establish the Austro-Hungarian empire, while swaying, staring blankly and reciting his testimony as if by rote. To those who knew him, it seemed as if Mindszenty had become a different person.
To the CIA, it was evidence that the Soviet Union had developed new techniques for personality modification and mind control. There were similar reports from China, where the Communist Party allegedly referred to such techniques as hsi nao, ‘washing the brain’.
In 1951, Allen Dulles, a former OSS officer, was appointed the CIA’s deputy director for plans. Dulles, who was convinced that the future would belong to the world power that could master the new ‘brainwashing’ technologies, was instrumental in shifting the agency’s research priorities from chemical and biological warfare to the inner battlefield of the mind. He had been one of the men responsible for drafting the National Security Act, the law that brought the CIA into being, permitting it to use ‘all appropriate methods’ in its operations. In 1950 the CIA had launched Project Bluebird to investigate the use of chemical and biological agents to control the minds of individuals.
When Dulles got hold of the programme, he renamed it Artichoke, and it was expanded to study the effects of exposure to gases, irradiation by infrared or ultraviolet light, high and low pressure environments, sonic torture, alteration of diet, electric shocks and a variety of psychological techniques, hypnosis chief among them.
The experiments were carried out on defectors, refugees and prisoners of war. These were the ‘expendables’ – people whose disappearance wouldn’t draw attention. The work was carried out at what would now be called ‘black sites’; it is in this period, as Kinzer points out, that the CIA began the habit of detaining people in other countries, beyond the reach of US law.
By early 1952 there were Artichoke teams in France, occupied Germany, Japan and South Korea; more were added later. Directives were issued specifying that interrogations be carried out in a ‘safe house or safe area’, with an adjoining room for recording equipment, and a bathroom, which might be found necessary thanks to the effects that ‘Artichoke techniques’ could have on subjects.
Kinzer tells the story of one site in particular, at Oberursel, a ‘sleepy German town’ north of Frankfurt. During the war the Nazis had used it as a transit camp for captured enemy pilots. The US army took it over in 1946, renamed it Camp King and used it for ‘special interrogations’, involving torture, beatings and drug injections, carried out by Counterintelligence Corps officers known as ‘rough boys’. The disposal of bodies was, one CIA officer recalled, ‘no problem’.
The ‘rough boys’ were too unrefined for Bluebird and Artichoke work. And the work was so secret that even Camp King wouldn’t do. In 1951 the CIA acquired a large house just a few miles away – Villa Schuster, named for the Jewish family that had lived there until the 1930s – and converted it for use by specialist teams flown over from the US to carry out their experiments without external supervision.
They did, however, benefit from the guidance of Camp King’s staff doctor, Walter Schreiber, the former surgeon general of the Nazi army, who had overseen research at concentration camps in which prisoners were frozen, injected with hallucinogens, and cut open to chart the progress of gangrene.
When he was given a contract to work in the US under Operation Paperclip (it didn’t work out, and after a scandal he ended up in Argentina), Schreiber was replaced at Camp King by another war criminal, Kurt Blome, the Nazis’ director of research into biological warfare, who had tested nerve gases and viruses on concentration camp inmates.
Sidney Gottlieb had been working for nearly ten years in government laboratories, and was a research chemist at Camp Detrick, when Dulles chose him to lead the CIA’s mind control research programme.
Gottlieb was born with a club foot, and had been rejected for war service; Kinzer writes that this had left him with a ‘store of pent-up patriotic fervour’. In other respects, he was a conspicuous outsider in the patrician ranks of the CIA: a Jewish immigrant from the Bronx who had made his way via City College, ‘the Harvard of the proletariat’, to a doctorate in biochemistry.
In private he was a nonconformist, living in a cabin in the Virginia backwoods with his wife, Margaret, who had grown up among Presbyterian missionaries.
As chief of the newly constituted Chemical Division of the Technical Services Staff, Gottlieb set about expanding and refining Dulles’s programme. The trials on ‘expendables’, in his estimation, had thus far produced nothing of value.
He set up new experiments to test the effects of electrical shocks, neurosurgery, sensory distortion and hypnosis, but his attention was increasingly taken up with mind-altering drugs.
His team tested cocaine on mental patients, heroin on students and cannabis on themselves; they also investigated amphetamines, mescaline, barbiturates and sodium pentothal, variously to disinhibit, disorientate, act as a ‘truth serum’, wipe memories or induce states of terror.
The experiments were carried out at Artichoke sites around the world. Kinzer quotes an earlier study which recorded Gottlieb’s trips to Tokyo, where four Japanese suspected of working for the Russians were injected with ‘a variety of depressants and stimulants’, then shot and dumped at sea; to Seoul, where 25 North Korean prisoners of war were given the same treatment; and to Munich, where ‘scores of “expendables”’ were given massive amounts of drugs in a series of failed experiments, after which they were ‘killed and their bodies burned’.
On becoming president in 1953, Eisenhower made Dulles director of the CIA. In a memo written at the time and since declassified, Dulles’s newly appointed chief of operations at the Directorate of Plans, Richard Helms, set out the terms of a new programme of research into ‘covert chemical and biological warfare’.
One aim in particular was singled out: ‘the development of a chemical material which causes a non-toxic aberrant mental state, the specific nature of which can be reasonably well predicted for each individual. This material could potentially aid in discrediting individuals, eliciting information, implanting suggestion and other forms of mental control.’ The programme was given a new codename: MK-Ultra.
Gottlieb’s budget was freed from the usual financial constraints, his research from external clearance or oversight. From time to time there were attempts to bring the CIA to heel. In 1953, for example, the US secretary of defence, Charles Wilson, issued a memo stating that all experiments involving volunteers required their consent, in compliance with the Nuremberg Code.
But this clearly wasn’t going to fly with the men in charge of finding ways to force individuals to provide information against their will, erase their memories or change their personalities.
In 1956 a proposal that Congress monitor CIA activities was firmly quashed by the White House. The assumption, as one CIA officer expressed it later, was: ‘We’re at war, so anything is justified. We’re smarter than most people, we operate in secret, we have access to intelligence, and we know what the real threats are. No one else does.’
From April 1953, when Dulles formally approved MK-Ultra, Gottlieb operated with impunity and on a much larger scale. Each of the programme’s many elements was called a ‘subproject’ and given a number.
Subproject 5 contracted a researcher at the University of Minnesota to test the use of hypnosis to induce anxiety, thwart lie detectors and increase cognitive capacity;
subproject 124 tested the use of carbon dioxide to induce trances;
subproject 63 studied the ‘use of alcohol as a social phenomenon’;
subproject 140, conducted at a hospital in San Francisco, tested the potential psychoactive effects of thyroid-related hormones. Scores of subprojects were devoted to investigating the use of drugs, alone or in combination with other techniques, to manipulate behaviour.
Kinzer has fun describing subproject 4: the use of a celebrity stage magician, John Mulholland, to teach CIA agents the techniques of misdirection and sleight of hand, the better to distract targets while drugging them. The manual Mulholland produced resurfaced in 2007, the ‘only full-length MK-Ultra document known to have survived intact’.
Artichoke work had been carried out in CIA safehouses abroad. Under MK-Ultra, the work was brought home. Two adjoining apartments were purchased at 81 Bedford Street in New York (subproject 3). George Hunter White was recruited by Gottlieb in June 1953 to trawl Greenwich Village posing ‘alternately as a merchant seaman or a bohemian artist’ and gathering up ‘drug users, petty criminals and others who could be relied on not to complain about what had happened to them’.
At one of the apartments in Bedford Street, White would serve his guests drinks surreptitiously laced with drugs, while in the other Gottlieb’s men filmed the effects through a mirror.
Two years later, in Operation Midnight Climax (subproject 42), White set up another safehouse in San Francisco, this time as a brothel, so that Gottlieb could gather evidence of ‘how people behave during and after sex’.
Gottlieb’s particular preoccupation was with a new psychoactive drug, LSD. (In 1951 he had asked Harold Abramson, a physician on his team, to supervise him in a self-experiment with the drug. Gottlieb reported ‘an out-of-bodyness … a sense of well-being and euphoria’.)
Some of his colleagues were interested in the potential effects of dispersing it on the battlefield, but Gottlieb believed LSD was the drug most likely, as Kinzer puts it, ‘to give initiates a way to control other human beings’ – a doomsday weapon in the new field of ‘brain warfare’. At first, there was a problem getting hold of it in sufficient quantities. A Swiss company, Sandoz, held the patent, and was said to be sitting on a stockpile of ten kilograms, a ‘fantastically large amount’.
In an attempt to corner the world’s supply of the drug, Dulles signed off on the $240,000 it would cost to buy everything Sandoz had, and sent two of his officers to Switzerland to bring it back. But when they arrived, it turned out the intelligence was wrong; the ten kilograms, they discovered, was actually ten grams. So Gottlieb still had a supply problem. He paid an American pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly, to devise a way of synthesising LSD from scratch.
That was part of subproject 6.
It took longer than a year, but by the end of 1954 Eli Lilly was in a position to produce the drug in ‘tonnage quantities’. The CIA, Kinzer writes, ‘was its main customer’.
The research into the effects of LSD extended way beyond observations at 81 Bedford Street. Gottlieb found a willing partner in Harris Isbell, the director of research at the Addiction Research Centre in Lexington, Kentucky.
The hospital ‘functioned more like a prison’, Kinzer writes, with a cohort of mostly African American inmates – a new group of ‘expendables’ – on whom Isbell could experiment at will. Gottlieb was interested in how much LSD was needed to ‘shatter the mind …
…leaving a void into which new impulses or even a new personality could be implanted’.
Isbell’s patients were fed escalating doses, some of them for days and weeks on end. Another enthusiastic collaborator, Carl Pfeiffer at Emory University, as part of his work on subproject 47, administered LSD to twenty inmates of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary nearly every day for 15 months. Robert Hyde at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital paid hundreds of students from Emerson, Harvard and MIT $15 each to drink a vial of liquid that might induce an ‘altered state’; in the aftermath, one of the subjects hanged herself in a clinic bathroom.
As well as these knowing allies – and thanks to sympathizers at the National Institute of Mental Health and a network of philanthropic foundations willing to act as fronts for the dispersal of agency money – Gottlieb was also able to recruit scientists who had no idea they were working for the CIA. Kinzer gives a list of more than thirty universities, institutes and hospitals, many of them among the most renowned in America, that received funding to carry out Gottlieb’s research programme.
In the late 1950s, MK-Ultra entered its most baroque phase, as Gottlieb was tasked with coming up with ways to dispose of foreign leaders. His Heath Robinson schemes included using an aerosol to lace the air with LSD in the Havana studio where Fidel Castro made his radio broadcasts, sprinkling Castro’s boots with thallium salts to make his beard fall out and contaminating his cigars with botulinum. At one point Gottlieb turned up in Congo with a poison kit, ready for use in a CIA plot to kill Patrice Lumumba. None of these plans came to fruition. They resembled the popular fiction with which they had always been in dialogue.
Kinzer points out that the CIA’s belief, in the late 1940s, that the communists had discovered the key to mind control, was conditioned by the ‘ubiquitous fantasy’ of this possibility in American popular culture, movies in particular, from film representations of Svengali, Dracula and Frankenstein, to George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944), the Sherlock Holmes movie The Woman in Green (1945) and Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956). The border between fiction and reality in the early years of the Cold War was blurred further as novelists began to mine the seam of science and skulduggery.
A pulp thriller from 1955, The Splintered Man, featured a CIA agent subjected to a nightmarish interrogation under LSD in East Berlin; it ended with an exhortation to US intelligence not to be left playing catch-up in the battle for the mind. The Bond movies led CIA officers to investigate the real-life feasibility of Q’s gadgets.
Richard Condon’s book The Manchurian Candidate (1959), in which a brainwashed sleeper agent is triggered by post-hypnotic suggestion to make an attempt on the life of an American presidential candidate, caught the zeitgeist best of all.
John Frankenheimer’s film adaptation came out in 1962; a year later it was seen as an eerie prefiguring of the Kennedy assassination. In fiction, the reality of covert mind control was taken for granted: if it wasn’t real, where was the story? Yet even as mind control technologies became a staple of popular culture in the 1960s, the faith of Gottlieb and his team in their potential was fading.
As the CIA psychologist John Gittinger later recalled, by 1963 ‘it was at least proven to my satisfaction that “brainwashing” so-called – as some kind of esoteric device where drugs or mind-altering kinds of conditions and so forth were used – did not exist … The Manchurian Candidate, as a movie, really set us back a long time, because it made something impossible look plausible.’
Privately, Gottlieb was at last coming to the same conclusion. He had abundantly demonstrated something that nobody had ever seriously doubted: that drugs, electroshock and other mental tortures could shatter minds and wipe memories. But he had been unable to put new personalities or memories in their place.
As Kinzer says, when Gottlieb started out on MK-Ultra, there were only two possibilities: ‘Either there is no such thing as a mind control drug or there is indeed such a thing and it is waiting to be discovered.’ The first was unthinkable: Gottlieb ‘had been hired to explore, not to give up’. So he pressed on through the 1950s with seemingly unshakeable conviction.
But ‘as of 1960,’ he later admitted in a memo, ‘no effective knockout pill, truth serum, aphrodisiac or recruitment pill was known to exist.’ Gottlieb’s master weapon, LSD, made subjects highly suggestible, but their beliefs and behaviors had proved impossible to control.
Yet his operations continued to expand. By the late 1960s he was running more behavioral laboratories than ever and his experiments were just as ambitious, not to say horrifying. In Saigon in 1968 a CIA team implanted electrodes in the brains of three Vietcong prisoners.
They were given knives and locked together in a room for a week, while the agents tried to rouse them to violence with radio signals from their remote-control handsets. They didn’t succeed. The team returned to Washington and, just as in Project Artichoke twenty years earlier, the prisoners were shot and burned.
Then came Watergate, the loss of Richard Helms’s protection, and John Schlesinger’s initiatives to detoxify the CIA. Before his departure in 1973, Helms ordered that all MK-Ultra’s records be destroyed. Gottlieb retired quietly later that year, first to his cabin in Virginia, then to India with Margaret to take up voluntary work. By 1977 the tide had turned decisively against him. During the Church Committee hearings the new director of the CIA, Stansfield Turner, assured Senator Edward Kennedy that ‘it is totally abhorrent to me to think of using a human being as a guinea pig …
I am not here to pass judgment on any of my predecessors, but I can assure you that this is totally beyond the pale.’ Summoned back to give evidence to the committee, Gottlieb testified that MK-Ultra had been a project ‘of the utmost urgency … to investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual’s behaviour by covert means’. Under cross-examination he displayed a vagueness that for some recalled Jozsef Mindszenty’s show trial, shot through with a streak of paranoia: ‘I feel victimised … My name is selectively left on released documents where all or most others are deleted.’
Gottlieb retreated to a large eco-home of his own design in the Blue Ridge mountains, where he died in 1999. He was harried by lawsuits to the end, and the cause of his death was never confirmed; many suspected suicide. There was no consensus about how, ultimately, he judged himself. To his neighbours, he seemed at peace: ‘an old hippie’, as one recalled, who rose early to meditate, wore sandals and cycled into town to collect his mail.
Others thought he must be in denial: it was as if he had ‘lost his former self’, the Washington Post reported, ‘walking backwards, sweeping his trail clean with a branch’. ‘Gottlieb was living as if he was in an ashram in India,’ wrote Seymour Hersh, who visited him in retirement. ‘He was trying to absolve himself, to expiate. If he’d been Catholic, he would have gone to a monastery.’ John Marks wasn’t so sure that Gottlieb was troubled by his conscience. ‘He was unquestionably a patriot,’ Marks told an obituarist. Gottlieb ‘never did what he did for inhumane reasons.
He thought he was doing exactly what was needed. And in the context of the time, who could argue?’ Kinzer wonders whether the contrast between his folksy lifestyle and his CIA work was as jarring as it seemed: both could be seen as expressions of a desire to live unconstrained by the usual rules and limits. Gottlieb, he concludes, ‘was not a sadist, but he might as well have been’.
Kinzer floats the argument, as others have before him, that MK-Ultra inadvertently gave rise to the psychedelic counterculture, as LSD ‘escaped from the CIA’s control’. The dots are there for all to join: Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg first took LSD in CIA-funded experiments; a covert CIA operative was present on the trip to Mexico in 1957 when Gordon Wasson encountered the ‘magic mushroom’; Gottlieb’s physician, Harold Abramson, became an early proponent of LSD psychotherapy. But there are other ways of telling the story that don’t involve the CIA at all. The most conspicuous influence on the emerging psychedelic culture was Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, published to great acclaim in 1954. Ginsberg, like many of his generation, had previously taken psychedelics on his own initiative.
From its base in Switzerland, Sandoz, as well as supplying the CIA with LSD, was at the same time giving it away free to interested psychiatrists; one such was the Hollywood therapist Oscar Janiger, whose celebrity clientele, including Cary Grant, Anaïs Nin and Jack Nicholson, spread the word enthusiastically in magazine interviews, essays and movie scripts. Timothy Leary was turned on to LSD by maverick enthusiasts who acquired the drug directly from Sandoz, as Leary himself did for his experiments at Harvard.
What seems remarkable today is not how much influence MK-Ultra had, but how little. The methods of coercive interrogation used more recently, such as those at Abu Ghraib or Bagram, haven’t owed much to the scientific techniques Gottlieb was investigating. Instead, they have more in common with what the ‘rough boys’ were up to at black sites in postwar Germany before Gottlieb’s men arrived.
MK-Ultra’s enduring influence is in popular fiction, where many of its ideas came from in the first place. Covert mind control programmes, usually run by the CIA, are a familiar plot device across the spectrum, from literary fiction (Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace) to mass-market movies (The Ipcress File, The Parallax View, Jacob’s Ladder, the Bourne franchise) and TV (The X-Files, Stranger Things).
The story is always the same: mind control is real, and those who know its secrets operate with impunity. The second assumption reflects historical truth, and resonates still in a post-Watergate world. The first was a chimera, and by the time the Cold War reached its apex, Gottlieb and his colleagues no longer believed it themselves.
Some thoughts
Aren’t you proud to be an American!
Look here, if this is how the government treats the citizenry, and it’s “not really bad“, then what happens when things get bad?
Lacing the citizens with LSD and other mind altering chemicals are only the things that we KNOW ABOUT. What about the things that we don’t know?
You know, America IS GOING to pick a fight…
Whether it is Russia or China, most Americans haven’t an idea. But here, I will tell you all the “secret” that the American “news” is hiding from you; it’s BOTH simultaneously.
Thursday, February 04, 2021, 22:52
China, Russia stress adherence to non-interference
By Xinhua
China and Russia said Thursday that the principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, one of the basic norms governing international relations, should be upheld.
In a phone conversation between Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the two sides also pledged to jointly preserve global and regional strategic stability.
...
The two heads of state have also agreed to celebrate this year the 20th anniversary of the signing of the China-Russia Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, pointing out the direction for deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between the two countries, Wang said.
Both sides should take this opportunity to add new dimensions to this important treaty and send a clear message to the world that the two countries will safeguard the security of themselves and along their peripheries, he added.
http://www.chinadailyhk.com/article/156995
-Posted by: Mao | Feb 11 2021 21:38 utc | 20
Yupper.
It’s not gonna be “goat herders” and “mud huts” getting blown up. It’s not going to be some American marines or SEAL’s taking HELO jumps into Chinese territory or an amphibious landing on one of the atolls surrounding China. It’s not going to be “US Navy sitting off the coast of China and launching cruse missile and plinking at targets”.
It’s gonna be on a completely different level. And if you all think that China is all blue-clad bicycle-riding peasants, you are going to be in for a big shock.
Chinese J-20 fighter. It is roughly equivalent to the F-22 Rapor fielded by the USA.
.
And, let’s have another look. You all aren’t gonna see these images on Rush Limbaugh, Hal Turner, Drudge Report, CNN, or FOX news. You will not see them on the BBC, the ABC, or on “60 minutes”.
Americans need to believe that they are invincible. They need to believe that they are the strongest, the best, and that no one would dare fight back.
That is the only way that the American citizenry won’t revolt at the prospect of another global war. Especially one that involved biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
…don’t you know.
Chinese J-20 Jet Fighters.
Conclusion
Any nation that poisons it’s people with LSD or forces them to take chemical injections, while picking fights with very powerful, nuclear armed, nations is not a place where you want to live. And while the “news” make a lot of “noise” about all these people wanting to come to America for “freedom” and “democracy”, the ones that are actually coming are the illiterate, the destitute and the impoverished. In their minds, ANYTHING is better than the lives that they are leaving.
The illiterate arrive in America to help make it great.
.
I cannot predict the future.
However, the behaviors of the United States elite (the ruler class) are indicative of some severe faults. Faults, mind you, that are not easily corrected. And thus you all can expect some “fallout” to come your way from their failures in governance.
America is not a strong nation any longer. It is a “ripe” nation. It is a tree heavy with juicy fruit, and just waiting to be harvested.
This reminds me of the cities that thought that they could fight off Genghis Khan with their knights in shining armor. Nope. It’s did not work out good for them. And it worked out even worse for their families back in the cities. Women and children suffered a fate that no one should endure.
Rather than submit, the Abbasid caliph challenged the Mongols to attempt to storm his city, if they dared. The nomadic army from Asia—led by Hulagu Khan, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons—did indeed dare.
Doing what they are most famous for, the Mongols thrashed Baghdad.
In 10 days of unremitting violence and destruction, Baghdad and its inhabitants were completely and utterly vanquished. Almost without exception, the population was either put to the sword or sold into slavery. The River Tigris ran red—to cite one of the most over-quoted, and overwrought phrases in history—with the blood of slaughtered men, women, and children.
After this, every building of note in Baghdad—including mosques, palaces, and markets—was utterly destroyed, among them the world-famous House of Wisdom. Hundreds of thousands of priceless manuscripts and books were tossed into the river, clogging the arterial waterway with so many texts, according to eyewitnesses, that soldiers could ride on horseback from one side to the other. Of course, the river turned from red to black with ink.
-Great courses daily
America and Americans have never suffered defeat. The closest was the Southern States during the “Reconstruction Period”. But even that, many still kept their language, were able to keep their records and heirlooms, and build up a life for themselves. They never suffered a complete SACK of their cities, their societies, their cultures and their identity. They do not realize what a real defeat looks like.
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The American Revolution was built on a foundation of booze, led by tavern addicted Founding Fathers who could drink any frat boy under the table.
Yes, and we will explain it right here.
Throughout history, nations rise when there is righteous leadership that cared for its citizens' welfare and do the greater good. When they are corrupt and self-serving, those nations fall. Learn from history because we live in a world governed by cause and effect. History will repeat itself.
-Tom Tan
I’ve discussed this all before. You need to have a responsible government. One that decides to work FOR the people it is supposed to represent. And then, once that government gets it’s internal affairs in order, it makes alignments and agreements with other nations to build up trust. And that meas no CIA-style, NED-style, or NID-style interference and American-style “color-revolutions”.
Don’t you know.
Thursday, February 04, 2021, 22:52
China, Russia stress adherence to non-interference
By Xinhua
China and Russia said Thursday that the principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, one of the basic norms governing international relations, should be upheld.
In a phone conversation between Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the two sides also pledged to jointly preserve global and regional strategic stability.
...
The two heads of state have also agreed to celebrate this year the 20th anniversary of the signing of the China-Russia Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, pointing out the direction for deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between the two countries, Wang said.
Both sides should take this opportunity to add new dimensions to this important treaty and send a clear message to the world that the two countries will safeguard the security of themselves and along their peripheries, he added.
http://www.chinadailyhk.com/article/156995
-Posted by: Mao | Feb 11 2021 21:38 utc | 20
Indeed.
As a direct consequence of Donald Trump wanting to throw the entire world into an enormous bonfire (global nuclear winter), the rest of the world reacted…
New and strong alliances have formed.
America has become severely isolated.
People are questioning the value and worth of having a “democracy“
But America isn’t giving up. The neocons are (seriously and really) “foaming at the mouth for a fight with China, or Russia (as the fall-back” default). Phew! It makes me want to hurl.
Caught In The Act - New York Times "Selectively Misquotes" Scientists To Fit Its "Prescribed Narrative"
The New York Times continues Trump's anti-China campaign by claiming that China hindered a WHO investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and is withholding data.
On W.H.O. Trip, China Refused to Hand Over Important DataThe information could be key to determining how and when the outbreak started, and to learning how to prevent future pandemics.
Chinese scientists refused to share raw data that might bring the world closer to understanding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, independent investigators for the W.H.O. said on Friday. The investigators, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the Chinese city of Wuhan, said disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides.
China’s continued resistance to revealing information about the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, the scientists say, makes it difficult for them to uncover important clues that could help stop future outbreaks of such dangerous diseases.
“If you are data focused, and if you are a professional,” said Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the team, then obtaining data is “like for a clinical doctor looking at the patient and seeing them by your own eyes.”
...
Peter Daszak, a member of the W.H.O. team and the president of EcoHealth Alliance in New York, said the trip was emotionally draining, as he and the team came to terms with the trauma of the early days of the pandemic. The team interviewed some of the first people to fall ill with Covid-19 in Wuhan, as well as medical workers.
“The world doesn’t realize, you know, that they were the first to get this thing,” Dr. Daszak said, “and they didn’t know how bad it was.”
While the Times claims that the Chinese have more data than they provided (they don't) and insinuates that they have something to hide, the researchers quoted in its piece reject both as nonsense.
Linking the NYT propaganda piece Peter Daszak refuted its basic tone:
Peter Daszak @PeterDaszak - 11:27 UTC · Feb 13, 2021 This was NOT my experience on @WHO mission. As lead of animal/environment working group I found trust & openness w/ my China counterparts. We DID get access to critical new data throughout. We DID increase our understanding of likely spillover pathways.
New data included env. & animal carcass testing, names of suppliers to Huanan Market, analyses of excess mortality in Hubei, range of covid-like symptoms for months prior, sequence data linked to early cases & site visits w/ unvetted live Q&A etc. All in report coming soon!
Quoting Daszak's tweet Thea Fischer pitched in:
Cont. reading: Caught In The Act - New York Times "Selectively Misquotes" Scientists To Fit Its "Prescribed Narrative"
Posted by b at 17:23 UTC | Comments (69)
The neocons are still living in their fantasy world, and the reality is starting to peer through the veil. America looks like a real ignorant, and stupid, piece of evil elephant shit.
The New York Times told blatant lies there including quoting Dominic Dywer whom they claimed was part of the WHO team.
Here Dwyer admits he was never on the team but part of a group of "independent experts".
"We go there as an international group and we're not part of the WHO, we're just independent experts."
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/13140456?__twitter_impression=true
Thea Fischer who was actually on the WHO covid origins team said the quoting of her out of context to convey a message exactly opposite to her experience was intentional (also known as lying).
NYT usually are subtle and crafty with their lies. With some countries like China they are bald faced liars.
Posted by: Doryphore | Feb 13 2021 20:20 utc | 29
It’s heavily promoted (don’t you know) that one-person, one-vote system is the pinnacle of “freedom” and “liberty” in the world. Which is rather strange as the founders of the United States said the absolute opposite.
And people are looking at these various systems of governance with a keen eye. Maybe there needs to be some changes they wonder…
Daniel Bell has put forward his views in favor of China's political meritocracy... against the one person one vote (Western Democracy model) as a mode of selection for political leaders. He has done this in two books.
The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy
Princeton University Press, 2015. ISBN 9781400865505.Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University and professor at Tsinghua University (Schwarzman College and Department of Philosophy). He was born in Montreal, educated at McGill and Oxford, has taught in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and has held research fellowships at Princeton's University Center for Human Values, Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences and Hebrew University's Department of Political Science.
Here:
https://youtu.be/e63ro_suARA
Ah. The founders of America were terrified of democracies. They wanted the United States to be a Republic.
You must be swimming in that great delicious "democracy". How's it working out for ya?
The Founders explicitly stated that democracies are dangerous and they always devolve into oligarchies, and if they still don't collapse from the corruption within, they become military empire that all tend to be consumed in great wars that pretty much destroy the nation irrevocably. That's why they made the United States into a Republic. You know, like China is today.
But don't my word for it. Read the Federalist Papers. Read what they had to say in their own words. It's on-line and it's free. great stuff, too. It discusses in great detail things that are important.
https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text
Beer is necessary.
"The idiocy of believing supposed democracy meaning each individual vote is equal in an economy of staggering wealth inequality where politcal power ... blah blah"
Everyone's vote in U.S. democracy is absolutely equal, the same as every spectator's cheer is equal at a football match. It doesn't matter whether you're cheering for the home team or the visitors, everyone's voice in the stadium has equal validity and value. Of course, it doesn't determine the outcome of the game, but the crowd gets to feel it participated in the victory or defeat.
Maybe there's idiocy to be mined in conflating process with outcome.
John Rachel
Now for some perspective…
How did America move from a “freedom loving (and living) Republic” to a tyrannical military empire controlled by a minority of ultra-wealthy oligarchs? It all started off right. They were saying the right things, and drinking the right beverages…
Saying the right things and drinking the right beverages.
Images of our Colonial forefathers usually involve powdered wigs, petticoats, and the thrill of throwing tons of tea into the Boston Harbor.
Woo, woo!
Although we often think of their era as proper and civilized, it turns out that the people who led the American Revolution knew how to party.
They were party animals! You bet-ya.
Beer powered revolution.
.
In fact, the American Revolution was built on a foundation of booze, led by tavern addicted Founding Fathers who could drink any college frat boy under the table.
Now…
Don’t you all just LOVE history?
Beer saved the Mayflower
The first settlers brought with them the English tradition of beer drinking.
Even during the famous 1620 voyage of Pilgrims on board the Mayflower, beer saved the voyage. The water aboard ship reportedly become brackish and potentially deadly while the beer on board remained drinkable.
The latter part of the voyage kept sailors and passengers alike happy with a good supply of beer. We tend to think of the Pilgrims as sober-faced, upright people who avoided fun at all times, but they obviously packed a lot of beer on board before embarking on a lengthy trip aboard the very crowded 110-foot Mayflower.
The Pilgrims were planning to go to Virginia but ended up in Massachusetts, landing on a cold, snowy, wind-blown coast on December 19, 1620. A minor inconvenience, you’d think.
The change in plans apparently was caused by the lack of water and the dwindling supply of beer on board the ship. Captain Christopher Jones recognized the need to preserve the dwindling stocks for his sailors on the return journey (which would be far too dangerous to undertake until the following spring), and so the passengers were encouraged to land near the top of Cape Cod.
Everyone loves beer.
.
Jones knew that the fresh water found in Massachusetts would be insufficient for the return voyage. First, the water might go bad on the return voyage; secondly, he and his sailors were not accustomed to drinking water.
His crew were not accustomed to drinking... water.
These instructions to keep beer on board the Mayflower for the return trip did not go down well with the Pilgrims. William Bradford complained that he and his companions “were hastened ashore and made to drink water, that the seamen might have the more beer.”
Pilgrim William Wood complained that he did not dare drink the water in the wilderness, preferring beer.
He wrote his opinion of fresh water: “I dare not prefere it before good beere.” (Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters by Frank Chapelle).
Used to beer, the Pilgrims were quite upset that they had to drink water instead.
The Pilgrims in Massachusetts were not the first Europeans in North America to enjoy alcohol.
The Dutch also had a functioning brewery in what is now Lower Manhattan by 1613, beating the Mayflower immigrants, who would not have anything resembling a formal brewhouse until at least 1621. Even before that, the Roanoke colony tried brewing with corn as early as 1584 (obviously before going missing).
The Pilgrims’ first encounter was an order for beer
A Native American startled the Pilgrims on March 16, 1621, by walking into Plymouth Colony and greeting them in English.
His name was Samoset, and soon it became clear that he was just looking to fill his mug, specifically with beer.
"Hi dudes! My name is Sam, but you can call me Sam-o-set. Hey, I don't hope that you would mind having a few brewskies with me? I'm awfully tired and really thirsty."
Samoset knew European ways and the taste of a cold one because he was a sagamore (lower-level chief) hailing from an Eastern Abenaki tribe in Maine, where European fishermen had already established some trade routes.
He had picked up some English, as well as a hankering for the fishermen’s beer.
Everyone loves beer.
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Native Americans produced their own alcoholic beverages before settlement, but these were often weaker drinks used mainly for ceremonial purposes.
And yes, Samoset was the guy that introduced the Pilgrims to Squanto, one of the primary translators who helped arrange the first Thanksgiving with the local chief.
Eight ounces a day
“Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy.”
– Benjamin Franklin
Oh baby!
A look into the daily drinking habits of our forefathers will explain how integral alcohol was to our history. Consider this: it is estimated that there were more taverns per capita than any other business in colonial America. In fact, the Colonial Williamsburg web site says:
Colonial Americans, at least many of them, believed alcohol could cure the sick, strengthen the weak, enliven the aged, and generally make the world a better place. They tippled, toasted, sipped, slurped, quaffed, and guzzled from dawn to dark.
Many started the day with a pick-me-up and ended it with a put-me-down. Between those liquid milestones, they also might enjoy a midmorning whistle wetter, a luncheon libation, an afternoon accompaniment, and a supper snort. If circumstances allowed, they could ease the day with several rounds at a tavern.
Gals love beer.
Alcohol lubricated such social events as christenings, weddings, funerals, trials, and election-day gatherings, where aspiring candidates tempted voters with free drinks. Craftsmen drank at work, as did hired hands in the fields, shoppers in stores, sailors at sea, and soldiers in camp. Then, as now, college students enjoyed malted beverages, which explains why Harvard had its own brewery. In 1639, when the school did not supply sufficient beer, President Nathaniel Eaton lost his job.
Colonial Americans drank more alcohol that in any other era, and certainly more than the national average today. It is estimated that the average American at the time drank eight ounces of alcohol a day.
A typical day started with a few shots of rum — coined an “Antifogmatic”— which would combat the morning fog. Back-breaking physical labor was a daily reality for the working class citizens of Colonial America, and this often led to another shot of rum by mid-morning, which was called a “cooler.” A little before lunch, our ancestors would enjoy a hard cider or two, and this would continue until it was time to visit the local tavern.
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Upon dinnertime, they would enjoy a hearty meal and some brews with friends; claret, ratafias (a fortified wine or a fruit-based beverage), creams, punches, and other concoctions were also standard.
Before they went to bed?
The day would not be complete without a glass of wine to ease hardworking Americans into blissful sleep.
It’s no wonder that the rest of the world looked upon America as “bright and shining star” to emulate.
The American Revolution was fueled by spirits
“Wine is necessary for life.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Although there were endless meetings and debates that paved the way for America during colonial times, our forefathers’ love for a good drink was just as vital. Indulging in a cold lager was not only embraced — it was pretty much expected.
Some of the most revered men of the American Revolution professed their love for a refreshing, relaxing beverage.
Thomas Jefferson planted vineyards at Monticello and encouraged others to take up the practice; he was also known to import thousands upon thousands of bottles of his favorite wine.
As for Washington, he operated his own whiskey distillery and it was said that he could dance the night away with four bottles of wine under his belt. His Revolutionary War personal expense account for alcohol from September 1775 to March 1776 amounted to over six thousand dollars (Washington & Kitman, 1970).
Franklin’s Return to Philadelphia, 1785, painted by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930) — with some, uh, later enhancements.
“My manner of living is plain…a glass of wine and a bit of mutton.”
– George Washington
Beer is good for you.
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Not only did alcohol provide a good time, it also caused some serious controversy — to the point of a war breaking out.
Wine almost sank ships — the Liberty Affair
American patriot John Hancock caused quite the stir when he smuggled Portuguese Madeira into the American colonies and things didn’t go exactly as smoothly as he had intended. The seizure of his ship sparked a riot and the burning of a British customs boat.
Asked to name the key events that led to the American Revolution, many will bring up the Boston Massacre of 1770 or the Boston Tea Party of 1773. But another incident that proved to be just as critical in fostering the revolution was the Liberty Affair—an important turning point in American history during which Madeira played a central role.
Before John Hancock became famous for his signature, he was a Boston merchant and alleged smuggler who constantly thumbed his nose in the face of British tax collectors. On May 9, 1768 however, his sloop Liberty arrived with 25 pipes (large wooden barrels) of “the best sterling Madeira,” just one quarter of the vessel’s carrying capacity.
Believing that he had unloaded the rest without paying the required duties, the ship was seized and Hancock was charged with smuggling. This resulted in one of the worst riots in Boston’s history when colonists, already infuriated with the Royal Navy for impressing them [the taking of men into a military or naval force by compulsion], violently revolted in the defense of Hancock and his supposedly smuggled wine. Call it the Boston Madeira Party!
Cheers to that!
Conclusions
Did you know that America is trying to ban alcohol again? Yup it’s true.
I had to read that twice. Then what the fuck are you supposed to drink at bars? Coke-cola? Sometimes I just read the American “news” and just shake my head. Is this all that delicious “democracy” that I keep hearing about? Is this what “freedom” is all about?
Don’t even think about flying to PA or FL to have a good time. It ain’t gonna happen. No way. No how.
“Democracy” it’s finger lickin’ good!
Well, drinking white wine (I am drinking 53 degree hard grain right now (also known as “white wine”) makes me want to say “phooey” to all this stuff about “saving” America and recovering it to something worthwhile. As I drink I see the wisdom of the forefathers.
If it is working, you did good.
If it is broken, it is up to the people in-charge of running it, to fix it.
If that does NOT happen, then your system (that you put in place) is a failure. And you know what? You need to start again, all over.
I know, I know. Drinking is “taboo” in the United States.
But outside of it, it’s part of life. It makes and helps you see the insanity that the Untied States has become.
Doing things right.
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The forefathers of the United States were smart.
Drunk, but smart.
But their wisdom is lost. It’s all off in dusty unread volumes in the back of old libraries. No one pays what they said, and give it any attention. For goodness gracious, people talk about how great “democracy” is!
That is so amazing. That is the LAST THING that they wanted to happen to the Untied States that they created. They warned about it. They pleaded. They wrote; “what ever you do… DON’T ever, ever establish a “democracy”. Because if you do you will create an oligarchy. And if you don’t stop it, it will evolve into a military empire and everyone’s lives will become “toast”.
Be toast - Idioms by The Free Dictionary
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/be+toast
toast, to be. To be doomed or unworthy of further consideration. This slangy usage dates from the twentieth century. It can be applied to a person, a group, an idea, a project, and so on. It must be distinguished from being the toast of something, such as “the toast of the Academy Awards,” which means a person receiving much acclaim.
The “last thing”.
They also smoked weed” don’t you know…
…(have you) ever watched the movie “Dazed and Confused”?
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Or maybe the MM audience are all too “high brow”.
But they were correct.
Do your best, and show the way. If others abuse it, it’s not your role to change them. Let them learn from their mistakes. Let them make them and suffer the consequences. And while all this is going on, you all just go off to your nice “safe place”, cavort with pretty girls (or guys if that is your desire), sing a few songs, try to dance a jig or two, and eat some delicious food with some fine, fine libations.
Oh…
And please, make sure that you have some pet pals (dogs, cats, and horses) would be really nice. Make sure that you have some treats on hand. And let those “fuck ups” that are running your nation into the ground… suffer the consequences of their ignorance.
It’s time for some cheese and crackers, and some nice frothy cold beer. (Hey! Doesn’t that green lamp base to the right look like a 1960’s style bong to you all?) Ah. Remember the days when couch end tables were filled with magazines… Oh, those were the days.
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I’ll tell you what.
Go be with others that share your appraisal of the current state of “fuck up”, and just enjoy life. You all will be gone soon enough. Don’t you know…
Obama,love him or hate him, at least he drank beer.
And you know, the Chinese love to have fun too…
And yes they really do. Anyone that drinks beer and alcohol can’t be all bad. In fact, I argue that all of the disruption during 2020 was due to the non-drinking teetotalers of the American neocon administration. And that’s my strong opinion.
You all need to have a good time.
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We all need to have a good time. It’s what humans do.
But there are people who have evolved past the basic needs of being human. Instead, they have become a different kind of creature. And I have discussed this at length elsewhere, don’t you know. We as humans need to get a little crazy and a little silly at times. I strongly believe this.
We as humans need to get a little crazy and a little silly at times. I strongly believe this.
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But on a much more serious note. Take care of whom is running the nation. There are many, many psychopaths out there, and they all seem to evolve towards positions of power and control. You know, if you continue to let sociopaths and psychopaths run the United States Government, then this is what you all can look forward to…
Change the uniforms, and change the name of the targeted group. It’s coming to America you all. If you are port of the “undesirable group” this will be your fate. Sure as shit. Who’s gonna be the objects of this assault? Oh, you know. You know.
.
You know.
Don’t you?
Lately
Lately I have been researching my family history. Ah. It’s a long story. I’m West Prussian and Irish. A mutt. An American mutt living in China. But still, looking at my history shows some things that put a real smile on my face, and some perspective.
It also explains my love of beer, whiskey, and pretzels. Glorious, hot, fresh, steamy horseradish-covered pretzels.
Pretzel, hot, with mustard and horseradish. Yum!
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Oh and don’t forget the kelbassa.
Kielbasa
Food
Kielbasa is any type of meat sausage from Poland, and a staple of Polish cuisine. In American English the word typically refers to a coarse, U-shaped smoked sausage of any kind of …Wikipedia
Oh, and I do love a good strudel, some fine Polish sausages, and some big-chested beer girls. Not to mention a tad bit of accordion music, and some jig dancing. Those Lederhosen also helps me get into the mood.
Lederhosen
Costume
Lederhosen are short or knee-length leather breeches that are worn as traditional garments in some regions of German-speaking countries. The longer ones are generally called Bundhosen or Kniebundhosen. Once common workwear across Central Europe, these clothes—or Tracht—are particularly associated with Bavaria and the Tyrol region.Wikipedia
Beer Girls. Germany.
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And some Beer People.
Beer People. Germany.
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Beer people having fun. Here’s some more beer girls.
More beer girls. Why do they all look like my sisters and cousins?
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Beer.
This was a post about beer, and some nonsense about America thrown in for things to talk about while drinking beer. I hope that you enjoyed my daily rant.
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This is going to be another one of my great ramblings; a post about absence, and about family and about life. I know that you all want a nice short article that you can skim read, but that’s just not me. Sorry.
“- Mr. Snelgrove: What's the meaning of this, Peggy Sue?
- Peggy Sue: Well, Mr Snelgrove, I happen to know that in the future I will not have the slightest use for algebra, and I speak from experience.”
Here we are going to mix a few things up.
It’s gonna be a little bit of Robert Greene making an educated point, some Metallicman history, and stories. It’s a little bit about food and time travel, and a movie titled “Peggy Sue got Married”. Um. Not your everyday internet fare.
“- Michael Fitzsimmons: So are you going to marry Mr. Blue Impala and graze around with all the other sheep for the rest of your life?
- Peggy Sue: No... I already did that.”
We will begin with this thought…
How do you judge your importance?
I’ve noted that many artists and book authors did their “great works” while impoverished. And it was until they were dead and gone that they were recognized. And maybe that is the key. Perhaps it’s human nature to only appreciate what we cannot have.
Many “Don Juan’s” in the MM audience can relate to the story that the girls that they liked the most were impossible to get, while those that he didn’t like were relatively easy to obtain. Of course, I do not advocate their methods, or desire for relentless sexual adventures, no matter how exciting and interesting. Nor do I advocate their idea of conquest. All that actually rather irritates me.
I am talking about what our value is.
Many men in the MM audience would respond. They would say “That is easy. It is what you do and how much money you make.” And I would argue that this is a shallow technique that is easily discarded at your first lay off. Is it really possible for you to go from being a “most valued employee” to “worthless” in a matter of a few minutes?
Now the ladies in the audience might retort that it’s your appearance in the eyes of society that measures your worth. And even with that, I have to pause and reflect. So if this is true, then one late payment on a bill, or the gossip by someone down the street would be a measure of your value.
I do not think so either.
I think that it has to do with the degree of your accessibility. Or, in other words, how accessible you are to those around you.
“- Peggy Sue: We had one glorious night together, someday you'll remember and write about it.
- Michael Fitzsimmons: Yeah, I can dig that. Bittersweet perfection. Dogs of lust on leashes of memory.”
Hold that thought…
This is a complete reprint of the Law #16 from the fine Robert Greene book titled “The 48 Laws of Power”. This particular law states that a person can use absence to increase respect and honor. It is fully reproduced here for free. It is in glorious HTML with translation buttons to fit your home language, and there are no fees, memberships, or costs to do so. Nor are there any advertisements. Enjoy.
Now, this is a technique that truly works, and sad to say, it took me a while to understand it.
LAW 16
USE ABSENCE TO INCREASE RESPECT AND HONOR
JUDGMENT
Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.
Value arises from scarcity. The things that we miss, those that hold value to us are the exactly the same things that are missing in our lives today. They are now valuable instead of commonplace.
TRANSGRESSION AND OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
Sir Guillaume de Balaun was a troubadour who roamed the South of France in the Middle Ages, going from castle to castle, reciting poetry, and playing the perfect knight. At the castle of Javiac he met and fell in love with the beautiful lady of the house, Madame Guillelma de Javiac. He sang her his songs, recited his poetry, played chess with her, and little by little she in turn fell in love with him. Guillaume had a friend, Sir Pierre de Barjac, who traveled with him and who was also received at the castle. And Pierre too fell in love with a lady in Javiac, the gracious but temperamental Viernetta.
THE CAMEL AND THE FLOATING STICKS
The first man who saw a camel fled; The second ventured within distance; The third dared slip a halter round its head. Familiarity in this existence Makes all things tame, for what may seem Terrible or bizarre, when once our eyes Have had time to acclimatize, Becomes quite commonplace. Since I’m on this theme, I’ve heard of sentinels posted by the shore Who, spottingsomething far-away afloat, Couldn’t resist the shout: “A sail! A sail! A mighty man-of-war!” Five minutes later it’s a packet boat, And then a skiff, and then a bale, And finally some sticks bobbing about. I know of plenty such To whom this story applies—People whom distance magnifies, Who, close to, don’t amount to much.
-SELECTED FABLES, JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, 1621-1695
Then one day Pierre and Viernetta had a violent quarrel. The lady dismissed him, and he sought out his friend Guillaume to help heal the breach and get him back in her good graces. Guillaume was about to leave the castle for a while, but on his return, several weeks later, he worked his magic, and Pierre and the lady were reconciled. Pierre felt that his love had increased tenfold—that there was no stronger love, in fact, than the love that follows reconciliation. The stronger and longer the disagreement, he told Guillaume, the sweeter the feeling that comes with peace and rapprochement.
As a troubadour, Sir Guillaume prided himself on experiencing all the joys and sorrows of love. On hearing his friend’s talk, he too wanted know the bliss of reconciliation after a quarrel. He therefore feigned great anger with Lady Guillelma, stopped sending her love letters, and abruptly left the castle and stayed away, even during the festivals and hunts. This drove the young lady wild.
Guillelma sent messengers to Guillaume to find out what had happened, but he turned the messengers away. He thought all this would make her angry, forcing him to plead for reconciliation as Pierre had. Instead, however, his absence had the opposite effect: It made Guillelma love him all the more. Now the lady pursued her knight, sending messengers and love notes of her own. This was almost unheard of—a lady never pursued her troubadour. And Guillaume did not like it. Guillelma’s forwardness made him feel she had lost some of her dignity. Not only was he no longer sure of his plan, he was no longer sure of his lady.
Finally, after several months of not hearing from Guillaume, Guillelma gave up. She sent him no more messengers, and he began to wonder— perhaps she was angry? Perhaps the plan had worked after all? So much the better if she was. He would wait no more—it was time to reconcile. So he put on his best robe, decked the horse in its fanciest caparison, chose a magnificent helmet, and rode off to Javiac.
On hearing that her beloved had returned, Guillelma rushed to see him, knelt before him, dropped her veil to kiss him, and begged forgiveness for whatever slight had caused his anger. Imagine his confusion and despair— his plan had failed abysmally. She was not angry, she had never been angry, she was only deeper in love, and he would never experience the joy of reconciliation after a quarrel. Seeing her now, and still desperate to taste that joy, he decided to try one more time: He drove her away with harsh words and threatening gestures. She left, this time vowing never to see him again.
The next morning the troubadour regretted what he had done. He rode back to Javiac, but the lady would not receive him, and ordered her servants to chase him away, across the drawbridge and over the hill. Guillaume fled. Back in his chamber he collapsed and started to cry: He had made a terrible mistake. Over the next year, unable to see his lady, he experienced the absence, the terrible absence, that can only inflame love. He wrote one of his most beautiful poems, “My song ascends for mercy praying.” And he sent many letters to Guillelma, explaining what he had done, and begging forgiveness.
After a great deal of this, Lady Guillelma, remembering his beautiful songs, his handsome figure, and his skills in dancing and falconry, found herself yearning to have him back. As penance for his cruelty, she ordered him to remove the nail from the little finger of his right hand, and to send it to her along with a poem describing his miseries.
He did as she asked. Finally Guillaume de Balaun was able to taste the ultimate sensation—a reconciliation even surpassing that of his friend Pierre.
IIII MROSON IIII. COCK
While serving under the Duke Ai of Lu, T‘ien Jao, resenting his obscure position, said to his master, “I am going to wander far away like a snow goose.
” “What do you mean by that?” inquired the Duke. “Do you see the cock?” said T’ien Jao in reply. “Its crest is a symbol of civility; its powerful talons suggest strength; its daring to fight any enemy denotes courage; itsinstinct to invite others whenever food is obtained shows benevolence; and, last but not least, its punctuality in keeping the time through the night gives us an example of veracity. In spite. however, of these five virtues, the cock is daily killed to fill a dish on your table. Why? The reason is that it is found within our reach. On the other hand, the snow goose traverses in one flight a thousand li (kilometers). Resting in your garden, it preys on your fishes and turtles and pecks your millet. Though devoid of any of the cock’s five virtues, yet you prize this bird for the sake of its scarcity. This being so, I shall fly far like a snow goose.”
-ANCIENT CHINESE PARABLES, YU HSIU SEN, ED., 1974
Interpretation
Trying to discover the joys of reconciliation, Guillaume de Balaun inadvertently experienced the truth of the law of absence and presence. At the start of an affair, you need to heighten your presence in the eyes of the other. If you absent yourself too early, you may be forgotten. But once your lover’s emotions are engaged, and the feeling of love has crystallized, absence inflames and excites. Giving no reason for your absence excites even more: The other person assumes he or she is at fault. While you are away, the lover’s imagination takes flight, and a stimulated imagination cannot help but make love grow stronger. Conversely, the more Guillelma pursued Guillaume, the less he loved her—she had become too present, too accessible, leaving no room for his imagination and fancy, so that his feelings were suffocating. When she finally stopped sending messengers, he was able to breathe again, and to return to his plan.
What withdraws, what becomes scarce, suddenly seems to deserve our respect and honor. What stays too long, inundating us with its presence, makes us disdain it. In the Middle Ages, ladies were constantly putting their knights through trials of love, sending them on some long and arduous quest—all to create a pattern of absence and presence. Indeed, had Guillaume not left his lady in the first place, she might have been forced to send him away, creating an absence of her own.
Absence diminishes minor passions and inflames great ones, as the wind douses a candle and fans a fire.
-La Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
For many centuries the Assyrians ruled upper Asia with an iron fist. In the eighth century B.C., however, the people of Medea (now northwestern Iran) revolted against them, and finally broke free.
Now the Medes had to establish a new government. Determined to avoid any form of despotism, they refused to give ultimate power to any one man, or to establish a monarchy. Without a leader, however, the country soon fell into chaos, and fractured into small kingdoms, with village fighting against village.
In one such village lived a man named Deioces, who began to make a name for himself for fair dealing and the ability to settle disputes.
He did this so successfully, in fact, that soon any legal conflict in the area was brought to him, and his power increased. Throughout the land, the law had fallen into disrepute—the judges were corrupt, and no one entrusted their cases to the courts any more, resorting to violence instead. When news spread of Deioces’ wisdom, incorruptibility, and unshakable impartiality, Medean villages far and wide turned to him to settle all manner of cases. Soon he became the sole arbiter of justice in the land.
At the height of his power, Deioces suddenly decided he had had enough. He would no longer sit in the chair of judgment, would hear no more suits, settle no more disputes between brother and brother, village and village.
Complaining that he was spending so much time dealing with other people’s problems that he had neglected his own affairs, he retired. The country once again descended into chaos. With the sudden withdrawal of a powerful arbiter like Deioces, crime increased, and contempt for the law was never greater. The Medes held a meeting of all the villages to decide how to get out of their predicament. “We cannot continue to live in this country under these conditions,” said one tribal leader. “Let us appoint one of our number to rule so that we can live under orderly government, rather than losing our homes altogether in the present chaos.”
And so, despite all that the Medes had suffered under the Assyrian despotism, they decided to set up a monarchy and name a king. And the man they most wanted to rule, of course, was the fair-minded Deioces. He was hard to convince, for he wanted nothing more to do with the villages’ in-fighting and bickering, but the Medes begged and pleaded—without him the country had descended into a state of lawlessness. Deioces finally agreed.
Yet he also imposed conditions. An enormous palace was to be constructed for him, he was to be provided with bodyguards, and a capital city was to be built from which he could rule. All of this was done, and Deioces settled into his palace. In the center of the capital, the palace was surrounded by walls, and completely inaccessible to ordinary people. Deioces then established the terms of his rule: Admission to his presence was forbidden. Communication with the king was only possible through messengers. No one in the royal court could see him more than once a week, and then only by permission.
Deioces ruled for fifty-three years, extended the Medean empire, and established the foundation for what would later be the Persian empire, under his great-great-grandson Cyrus. During Deioces’ reign, the people’s respect for him gradually turned into a form of worship: He was not a mere mortal, they believed, but the son of a god.
Interpretation
Deioces was a man of great ambition. He determined early on that the country needed a strong ruler, and that he was the man for the job.
In a land plagued with anarchy, the most powerful man is the judge and arbiter. So Deioces began his career by making his reputation as a man of impeccable fairness.
At the height of his power as a judge, however, Deioces realized the truth of the law of absence and presence: By serving so many clients, he had become too noticeable, too available, and had lost the respect he had earlier enjoyed. People were taking his services for granted. The only way to regain the veneration and power he wanted was to withdraw completely, and let the Medes taste what life was like without him. As he expected, they came begging for him to rule.
Once Deioces had discovered the truth of this law, he carried it to its ultimate realization. In the palace his people had built for him, none could see him except a few courtiers, and those only rarely. As Herodotus wrote, “There was a risk that if they saw him habitually, it might lead to jealousy and resentment, and plots would follow; but if nobody saw him, the legend would grow that he was a being of a different order from mere men.”
A man said to a Dervish: “Why do I not see you more often?” The Dervish replied, “Because the words ‘Why have you not been to see me?’ are sweeter to my ear than the words ‘Why have you come again?”’
-Mulla jami, quoted in ldries Shah’s Caravan of Dreams, 1968
KEYS TO POWER
Everything in the world depends on absence and presence. A strong presence will draw power and attention to you—you shine more brightly than those around you. But a point is inevitably reached where too much presence creates the opposite effect: The more you are seen and heard from, the more your value degrades. You become a habit. No matter how hard you try to be different, subtly, without your knowing why, people respect you less and less. At the right moment you must learn to withdraw yourself before they unconsciously push you away. It is a game of hide-and-seek.
The truth of this law can most easily be appreciated in matters of love and seduction. In the beginning stages of an affair, the lover’s absence stimulates your imagination, forming a sort of aura around him or her. But this aura fades when you know too much—when your imagination no longer has room to roam. The loved one becomes a person like anyone else, a person whose presence is taken for granted. This is why the seventeenth- century French courtesan Ninon de Lenclos advised constant feints at withdrawal from one’s lover. “Love never dies of starvation,” she wrote, “but often of indigestion.”
The moment you allow yourself to be treated like anyone else, it is too late—you are swallowed and digested. To prevent this you need to starve the other person of your presence. Force their respect by threatening them with the possibility that they will lose you for good; create a pattern of presence and absence.
Once you die, everything about you will seem different. You will be surrounded by an instant aura of respect. People will remember their criticisms of you, their arguments with you, and will be filled with regret and guilt. They are missing a presence that will never return. But you do not have to wait until you die: By completely withdrawing for a while, you create a kind of death before death. And when you come back, it will be as if you had come back from the dead—an air of resurrection will cling to you, and people will be relieved at your return. This is how Deioces made himself king.
Napoleon was recognizing the law of absence and presence when he said, “If I am often seen at the theater, people will cease to notice me.” Today, in a world inundated with presence through the flood of images, the game of withdrawal is all the more powerful. We rarely know when to withdraw anymore, and nothing seems private, so we are awed by anyone who is able to disappear by choice. Novelists J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon have created cultlike followings by knowing when to disappear.
Another, more everyday side of this law, but one that demonstrates its truth even further, is the law of scarcity in the science of economics. By withdrawing something from the market, you create instant value. In seventeenth-century Holland, the upper classes wanted to make the tulip more than just a beautiful flower—they wanted it to be a kind of status symbol.
Making the flower scarce, indeed almost impossible to obtain, they sparked what was later called tulipomania. A single flower was now worth more than its weight in gold. In our own century, similarly, the art dealer Joseph Duveen insisted on making the paintings he sold as scarce and rare as possible. To keep their prices elevated and their status high, he bought up whole collections and stored them in his basement. The paintings that he sold became more than just paintings—they were fetish objects, their value increased by their rarity. “You can get all the pictures you want at fifty thousand dollars apiece—that’s easy,” he once said. “But to get pictures at a quarter of a million apiece—that wants doing!”
Image:
The Sun. It can only be appreciated by its absence.
The longer the days of rain, the more the sun is craved. But too many hot days and the sun overwhelms. Learn to keep yourself obscure and make people demand your return.
Extend the law of scarcity to your own skills. Make what you are offering the world rare and hard to find, and you instantly increase its value.
There always comes a moment when those in power overstay their welcome. We have grown tired of them, lost respect for them; we see them as no different from the rest of mankind, which is to say that we see them as rather worse, since we inevitably compare their current status in our eyes to their former one. There is an art to knowing when to retire. If it is done right, you regain the respect you had lost, and retain a part of your power.
The greatest ruler of the sixteenth century was Charles V. King of Spain, Hapsburg emperor, he governed an empire that at one point included much of Europe and the New World. Yet at the height of his power, in 1557, he retired to the monastery of Yuste.
All of Europe was captivated by his sudden withdrawal; people who had hated and feared him suddenly called him great, and he came to be seen as a saint. In more recent times, the film actress Greta Garbo was never more admired than when she retired, in 1941.
For some her absence came too soon—she was in her mid-thirties— but she wisely preferred to leave on her own terms, rather than waiting for her audience to grow tired of her.
Make yourself too available and the aura of power you have created around yourself will wear away. Turn the game around: Make yourself less accessible and you increase the value of your presence.
Authority:
Use absence to create respect and esteem. If presence diminishes fame, absence augments it.
A man who when absent is regarded as a lion becomes when present something common and ridiculous. Talents lose their luster if we become too familiar with them, for the outer shell of the mind is more readily seen than its rich inner kernel. Even the outstanding genius makes use of retirement so that men may honor him and so that the yearning aroused by his absence may cause him to be esteemed.
-(Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)
REVERSAL
This law only applies once a certain level of power has been attained.
The need to withdraw only comes after you have established your presence; leave too early and you do not increase your respect, you are simply forgotten. When you are first entering onto the world’s stage, create an image that is recognizable, reproducible, and is seen everywhere. Until that status is attained, absence is dangerous—instead of fanning the flames, it will extinguish them.
In love and seduction, similarly, absence is only effective once you have surrounded the other with your image, been seen by him or her everywhere. Everything must remind your lover of your presence, so that when you do choose to be away, the lover will always be thinking of you, will always be seeing you in his or her mind’s eye.
Remember: In the beginning, make yourself not scarce but omnipresent. Only what is seen, appreciated, and loved will be missed in its absence.
It took me a while to appreciate this law. I think that we came to take for granted what we have, and then when it is gone, we are often left surprised and disoriented. Imagine what the you today would act, if you went back in time to meet your family, and friends when you were just a teenage. What would it be like?
There is an old 1980’s movie titled “Peggy Sue Got Married”. In it, the main character goes back in time and relives her high school years. And there she meets people who are now long dead, and forgotten…
Peggy Sue Got Married
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I think that this movie resonates with many people simply because once we age, those familial associations are no longer there. It’s not just that time changes you, and that everything is different, it’s that all the old associations, and family are simply gone.
My father once took me to a funeral wake when I was about 17 years old. It was his cousin. He was a man who I may have met once or twice and who I would see in my grandparents house from time to time.
What is the difference between a wake and funeral?The key difference between a wake and a funeral is that a wake is a time for visitation and commemoration of the dead, while a funeral is a formal ceremony which is conducted by an officiant. In many cases, both a wake and a funeral are held as part of a series of rituals.
We went inside and saw all these people who I did not know.
I ran into my Auntie and her children, my cousins. We said a few words and then that was it, but there was an event during the wake that I will never, ever forget.
He said…
“Look around. Look at all these people. In a few more years, they will all be dead. I will be dead. You will never see them again, and you will never see their families or visit with them. These people, these connections will all disappear. And life will go on, and you will make new families and new connections to take their place.
Polish Hill showing our church in the distance.
"Oh, Ma...Chanel No.5 Always Makes Me Think Of Home" - Peggy Sue Blooeyz200111 August 2002
What a great movie! Originally intended for Debra Winger, but Kathleen Turner is wonderful as the title character Peggy Sue. It's a time-travel movie about a 42 year old woman who gets transported back in time to high school (circa early 1960's). Who wouldn't love an opportunity like that, not to mention being 18 again??
My favorite scene is when she walks back into her house, & sees her mom young again, while that beautiful music plays on the soundtrack.
It's so touching & heartfelt.
This movie has it all. Great acting, comedy, drama, fantasy, & a good story. Nicholas Cage can get annoying at times, but he felt this was the best way to portray his character (Charlie). He gets to "sing" in this movie too ("He Don't Love You"). Look for a very early performance by Jim Carrey. The cast also includes Helen Hunt & Catherine Hicks (the mom on the TV show "7th Heaven").
Now…
At the time, I didn’t really understand what my father was trying to say. I thought that he meant that over time everyone will die. I will never see them again.
Well, he said that, but he meant something deeper.
He was trying to say that once your relatives die, you will no longer have those family connections ever again. They will sever, and your little family will start to shrink. It will get smaller and smaller over time.
Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)One of my favorite movies of all time!
6 February 2003 | by chrisuab
This movie is definitely in my top ten.
One reason is Kathleen Turner's acting. She does a wonderful job throughout the movie, even though she may look older than a teenager when she goes back in time. (However, have you noticed how teenagers in high school through the years look younger and younger? My mom's high school yearbook appears to be filled with 30 year olds.)
Another reason I love the movie is that it makes my brain ponder on what I would do if I could go back to high school.
Peggy revisiting her young mother, seeing her baby sister, and being able to see her grandparents again one last time is just a beautiful thing in itself.
I guess I just like reminiscing about my childhood, which is probably why I like this movie. (Even though I'm a child of the 80's.) Very few things bother me in this movie. And no, it's not Nicolas Cage's accent! That didn't bother me that much. :)
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I recommend this to anyone who thinks about going to a high school reunion or wishes they could go back in time to do some things differently.
The big thing about aging and watching people die isn’t about the end of their lives. But rather instead, how the loss of that relationship and all the associated family relations will affect your life.
“- Peggy Sue: I think I had a heart attack and died at the reunion!
- Richard Norvik: Well, you look great for a corpse.”
Oh, we see the elements of this.
We see the disappearance of special family or ethnic foods that we just cannot get at McDonald’s or Pantera Bread. And we don’t think about it. Years go by. And the years turn into decades. We don’t realize the value and importance that it held for us in our lives.
Polish Stuffed Cabbage (Golomki)
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Maybe you all chuckle at this.
“- Peggy Sue:Grandpa, if you had a chance to go back and do it all differently, what would you have changed?
- Barney Alvorg: Well, I would have taken better care of my teeth.”
You say… “Well, you miss it, you can go ahead and make it yourself. Nothing is stopping you.” Yeah. It’s sort-of-true.
I can get a recipe off the internet. I can go order the special ingredients off the internet, and in a few weeks I can try my hand at making the dish myself. And I can go ahead and it it myself, or present my “creation” to my friends and family. Perhaps.
But this is the REAL WORLD.
Not a would-of, could-of, should-of what-if world of possibilities. Sure I can run for the President of the United States. Sure, I can try to swim the Pacific ocean and arrive in San Francisco. I can go ahead and make these dishes.
But it’s not the same.
There are entire branches of my family that I haven’t seen since High School. I have no idea who my relatives are, where they are or what they are doing. Time has severed my connections and let me drift and float in the wind.
Scene from the movie Peggie Sue Got Married (1986).
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There was a time where I was pretty much related to everyone on “Polish Hill” in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I could walk down the street and complete strangers would tell me to say “hi” to my one Uncle, or give me a message to take to my grandmother (my Busia). I could walk down a side road and then be pulled inside some distant relative’s house and given a bowl of soup and a sandwich with the family chatted in the kitchen.
I have come to miss that.
Polish Hill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA.
It’s hard.
We all grow up. We all get married. We all get established and are busy with our jobs, our work and our careers. Life moves on.
But our past…
Over time gets buried under the “news” and the “new” events of the day.
Typical Polish Hill. This view is about one block from my Busia’s house.
And today…
…How many MM readers remember something like that? Is that what you have today? Is that still a part of our life, or is it all gone away?
Is it gone away?
Never to return.
Inside a local bar on Polish Hill in Pittsburgh.
Delightful Romance About Reevaluation of Life claudio_carvalho12 June 2005
In the reunion of the twentieth-fifth anniversary of high school, the former popular student Peggy Sue, who is facing a divorce of her husband Charlie Bodell (Nicolas Cage), faints and wakes up in 1960.
The experienced Peggy Sue decides to change and improve her life in this new opportunity.
"Peggy Sue Got Married" is a delightful and charming fantasy about reevaluation and a second chance in life.
The story is very beautiful, the production is very careful and I am really surprised how underrated this movie is in IMDb. I do not get tired of this film, and it is among my favorite romances. Kathleen Turner is extremely beautiful in the lead role, and watching this movie in 2005, it is a great chance to see names like Jim Carrey, Joan Allen and Sofia Coppola twenty years ago in the beginning of their careers.
Povitica Polish Holiday bread. Polish cuisine is a style of cooking and food preparation originating in or widely popular in Poland. Polish cuisine has evolved over the centuries to become very eclectic due to Poland’s history and it shares many similarities with neighbouring German, Czech, Slovak and Silesian as well as Jewish culinary traditions. Polish-styled cooking in other cultures is often referred to as à la polonaise.
People take you for granted.
By going away, you make yourself indispensable.
Remember what it is like…
Peggy Sue Got Married
"The girl's gone, let's play poker!" BumpyRide9 November 2004
I'm surprised by the number of people on here who don't like this movie. Like a few of the positive reviewers I'd have to say this is one of my favorite, "contemporary classics."
The story is exquisite, who wouldn't want to go back to a time when things were a bit simpler and someone was there to take care of you and make you feel safe? Whenever I stumble upon it, I end up watching it. Too many scenes start the old water works for me.
Peggy seeing her little sister for the first time, going into her old bedroom, and hearing her grandmother's voice on the phone are all quite touching.
Call me crazy but I just love the moment where Charlie takes Peggy down into the basement and confronts her about what is going on. When he leaves, Peggy opens a music box, pulls out a cigarette and lights it.
Another special moment happens when Peggy smokes a joint and talks about what she'd like to be when she grows up, as she turns around and around under a starry sky.
This is quite a good movie, filled with many special performances and scenes along the way.
While the movie is about other things. Take notice in how the main character Peggy Sue reacts to meeting the family and friends who are now long gone.
People do not appreciate things until they are gone.
Comfortable as an old shoe... BeafyBear18 September 2003
This movie is definitely on my Top 20 list of all time favorite movies. Whenever I come across it while channel surfing, I end up watching it again-and I hate watching movies that are edited for TV!
As others have pointed out, it showcases so many talented actors. Joan Allen is great here, as is Catherine Hicks. And the amazing Barbara Harris, whom I adore for her work on the stage, is excellent and dead-on as Peggy's mother. Jim Carrey is here as well and surprise, he's overacting in most of his scenes! While I've never completely figured out why Nicholas Cage was encouraged to employ the weird-ass voice that he did, his performance winds up being very likeable. Barry Miller is also great as Richard.
The premise is cool. Who among us wouldn't want to have such and opportunity (OK, maybe not the passing out in public part)? As a person that grew up in the 60s, I'd love to return and see some of the sights and sounds that filled my innocent, pre-Internet world.
And the scene when Peggy hears her Grandmother's voice on the phone makes me cry every time.
I likey!
Last comment…
Handles time travel movie in a very compelling and emotional way squirrel_burst28 February 2015
There's something about "Peggy Sue Got Married" that really stuck with me. It's like when the premise and way the movie was made is written on paper, you think "There's no way this is going to work" but then it does.
I was really surprised with how much this picture affected me emotionally.
Kathleen Turner plays Peggy Sue Bodell, who is attending her 25-year high school reunion with her daughter Beth (Helen Hunt). Peggy Sue married right out of high school but now she and her husband, Charlie (Nicolas Cage) have separated.
It's awkward enough answering the same questions over and over to the people that haven't seen you in decades but then her husband shows up and things go from bad to worse.
She is nevertheless named "Prom Queen" and accepts the award, but when on stage, she faints.
When she wakes up, she discovers that it's once again the spring of 1960. With her memories of the future, she tries to alter her past for the better. The film follows her as she rediscovers who she was at the time and tries to find a way to return to the present.
There's something about this movie that really hits home.
Traveling back in time and altering the past is a desire that in a way, everyone has.
Sure people tell you that they wouldn't go back and fix their past mistakes because "those mistakes made them who they are" but come on, we all know the day you wake up in your high-schooler's body, the first thing you're doing is buying Baseball cards to stash away, warning people about 9/11 and meeting Elvis in person, before he gets fat.
Peggy Sue seizes the opportunity to do that stuff right away, but then gets side-tracked when she realizes that this trip back in time can be a very emotional experience.
With the body of a teenager and the mind of a mother, she reacts very differently to her own parents and realizes how much she missed being a teenager, or being in the same house as her mother, father and sister, or her grandparents (who have in present day been dead for some time).
There's something really touching about that and it makes you think back at your own teenage years; if you could go back, who would you be nicer to, who would you appreciate more, who would you stand up to?
Yes it would be awesome to return to a time where you could amass money and power, or change history for the better, but there is also something uniquely appealing about just being able to interact with the people from your own past and get a new perspective on what the world was like back then.
One of my favorite moments in the film is when Peggy is talking to her then-boyfriend Charlie (Nicholas Cage).
This isn't the same guy as he is years later. He's a nervous kid who is doing everything to impress her and is completely in love with the woman. He's anxious and vulnerable too.
Check out the scene when Peggy, who now knows the man better than he does finds that she is once again, falling in love with him. She tries to initiate sex with him in his car, but the guy is so taken aback that he refuses and kicks her out. Isn't that what would really happen if you were confronted with someone that was 25 years older than you are, but was disguised as someone your own age?
It's little moments like that that really make the movie because it doesn't feel contrived despite the outlandish premise, it feels absolutely genuine.
Another element that really helps make you buy into this whole situation are the performances. With excellent costumes and makeup, we have Jim Carrey, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Catherine Hicks and others playing both adults and teenagers and the effect isn't perfect, but the performances sell them. Some of the people I was watching with found that Nicolas Cage as Charlie had a pretty irritating voice when he was 18, but I found that it was very believable that he would have a goofy, nervous voice when he was younger.
I'm pretty sure if I looked at any recordings of myself at that age, I would have been pretty annoying too. The actor that really needs to have the spotlight on her is Kathleen Turner, who does a fantastic job. There's almost an implication that while inside the body of her 18-year old self, her mind goes back and forth between the maturity of her older and younger self. She pulls it off not with words, but with subtle changes in her face.
Any scene where Peggy Sue is interacting with her mother contains many subtle nuances and although it seems impossible, the 32-year old actress convincingly plays a teenager. It's a spectacular performance and you're an aspiring actor/actress you need to check it out and study this film so get yourself a good DVD and start wearing out that fast forward and rewind button.
This movie “Peggy Sue got Married” has scene after scene of “family mysteries” that you were completely oblivious to as a teenager, but recognize immediately as an adult.
Like when her mother is selling her jewellery …
Or when she sees that her boyfriend was trying really hard to audition to a talent scout and fails…
…all things that she had no knowledge of.
A typical Polish Hill shop.
And now that my family is mostly dead and gone, the familial relationships are broken and the survivors are scattered all over the place, I too wish that I appreciated the treasures that the family bonds held. i too miss the past. Not so much the rotary telephones, the rabbit-eared television set, the crank-windows in the car, the free air hose for the tires int he gas station, or really, really, REALLY low price for a cup of coffee…
…I miss the people and the relationships that they represented to me. I miss that feeling of belonging. I miss that feeling of community. I miss that “membership” that being alone, in a far away land denies me.
We don’t appreciate things until we lose them.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my 48 Laws of Power Index here…
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This post is a little tad boring in that it relates to money and how money is used to generate more money. I find that boring. I also find it trivial.
However, this mechanism is ingrained in the United States and the West as the ONLY way for people to move upward in the class-caste structure that has been constructed.
The "big news" is that "the little guy" (people who live outside the oligarchy class) have devised a way to "get even" with the wealthy oligarchy that has been "sticking it to the rest of us" for decades now. And this "get even" event is well... it's fucking awesome.
Game Stop Corp
Late in January 2021, a few amateur stock trading nerds decided to promote a stock that was heavily shortened by certain hedge funds. The idea was to raise the stock price of Game Stop Corp., a vendor for computer games, by having lots of small stock traders to buy into it. The hedge fund that shortened the stock, and thereby bet on a dropping stock price, would then make huge losses while the many small buyers would potentially profit.
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These people, who had joined up in the sub-reddit /r/WallStreetBets, were not driven by greed but by rage against the financial machine:
Instead of greed, this latest bout of speculation, and especially the extraordinary excitement at GameStop, has a different emotional driver: anger. The people investing today are driven by righteous anger, about generational injustice, about what they see as the corruption and unfairness of the way banks were bailed out in 2008 without having to pay legal penalties later, and about lacerating poverty and inequality. This makes it unlike any of the speculative rallies and crashes that have preceded it.
1990’s portrayal of teenage hackers.
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The movement was successful. The stock price of Game Stop Corp. rose from some $10 to over $400 within just a few days. The short seller had to take cover under a larger firm:
Hedge fund Melvin Capital closed out its short position in GameStop on Tuesday after taking huge losses as a target of the army of retail investors. Citadel and Point72 have infused close to $3 billion into Gabe Plotkin's hedge fund to shore up its finances.
Then the system hit back.
Discord, the company which hosted the server for the sub-reddit /r/WallStreetBets suddenly found that there was ‘hate-speech’ in the threads. It unplugged the server. (Discord had previously unplugged the sub-reddit /r/The_Donald.)
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald - 0:53 UTC · Jan 28, 2021
What an absolutely extraordinary coincidence of timing that Discord happened to decide the r/Wall Streetbets sub-reddit had too much “hate speech” to tolerate on the same day hedge fund billionaires declared them a huge threat for the crime of winning at their expense!
Next the trading app Robinhood, which many of the amateur traders use, blocked further buys into the stock:
Robinhood, the fee-free investment app that has helped Redditors and other retail investors pump dark horse stocks like GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and Nokia, has stopped allowing users to buy those stocks and others YOLO picks.
According to screenshots shared on social media, on Thursday morning a notification appeared on Robinhood telling users that they could close their position on GameStop's stock, but not buy any additional shares.
Redditors are currently panicking, looking for ways to transfer their shares of GameStop off of Robinhood to other platforms, and are generally furious at the platform.
In a blog post, Robinhood confirmed that it has placed restrictions on several stocks due to volatility.
“Volatility” = the prols are messing up Wall Street by doing legal stock transactions our overlords do not like. What an irony that a company named Robin Hood is protecting the rich from the poor.
The many people who use Robinhood can now only sell their shares and not buy additional ones:
This is likely to have a massive impact on Robinhood users and ultimately the company. According to a popup on the app's homepage, 56 percent of all Robinhood users own at least some GameStop stock. They are now unable to freely trade it; the app is only allowing users to close out their positions, meaning they can sell it but not buy more. This is potentially devastating for novice investors or those who simply want to follow the general marching orders of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, which is to hold (and buy more) GameStop stock until further notice.
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That outright manipulation of the stock markets was noticed and may even have consequences. Unlike Joe Biden it united legislators across the aisle.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC - 16:36 UTC · Jan 28, 2021
This is unacceptable.
We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.
As a member of the Financial Services Cmte, I’d support a hearing if necessary.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will take care that nothing will comes from it. The system has proven again and again that it is rigged. No change to it will be condoned.
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As Glenn Greenwald noted yesterday:
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald - 13:49 UTC · Jan 27, 2021
To review:
- Politics is to be manipulated only by K Street.
- The stock market is to be manipulated only by Wall St.
- Dissemination of information is to be manipulated only by corporate media outlets.
Those are the rules.
The lesson they want us to learn: Don't even think of ever breaking those rules.
Posted by b on January 28, 2021 at 18:05 UTC | Permalink
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It’s all been brutal.
Furthermore, everybody “understands” what happened with GameStop. Unlike some other Wall Street stories, this one isn’t complicated. The entire tale, in a nutshell, goes like this. One group of gamblers announced, “Fuck you!” Another group announced back: “No, fuck YOU!” That’s it. Or, as one market analyst put it to me this morning, “A bunch of guys made a bet, got killed, then doubled and tripled down and got killed even more.”
-Suck It, Wall Street by Matt Taibbi
Why?
Well, because the oligarchy believe that they and their system were untouchable. That it was unassailable, and that they were forever free of the consequences of their actions. Does “Too big to fail” ring a bell.
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Guess that the response from Joe Average and Suzi Average has been a little brutal. But can you blame them?
A best-selling fiction author could not have spun a more ironic tale so completely representative of our time.
Just as an unprecedented situation—COVID and lockdowns—unfolded over the past year and led to massive gains for corporate titans like Walmart and Amazon. Meanwhile governments have crushed small businesses and individuals…
And a new, unprecedented situation has unfolded.
Spilling off the pages of Reddit to become a substantial threat to the stock market’s stability Is amazing.
It is a microcosm of this tale of big business quashing the little guy.
It is a tale of Wall Street profiting despite the best, most subversive efforts of the underdogs.
In short, what started out as a long stock play in a subreddit full of rocketship and “diamond hand” emojis and anti-elitist snark has fueled a form of class warfare that extends well beyond rhetoric.
Big Tech and Wall Street are fighting back, and right now it appears they’re winning.
But in the long run, you do know, you can only tread water only for so long.
The subreddit has shown us the way forward.
You Do Need Some Background
The background of this story may seem dry to some, but as with “The Big Short” of ’08, the full extent of malfeasance and recklessness by big Wall Street players can’t be understood without some working knowledge.
Reddit user “u/DeepF*ckingValue” has been touting the potential of GameStop (GME) for months.
Seen as a dying retail breed, its stock price had hovered around $5 per share for several years as people move away from brick and mortar for video games and more towards digital copies of games and online purchases of consoles.
Enter Ryan Cohen.
He is the founder of Chewy, which he sold for a cool $3 billion back in 2018. This was after successfully competing with Amazon for the e-commerce dog food market.
Then, after stepping away from dog food domination, he turned his sights towards GameStop. Where he endedup buying a 13 percent share in the company and joining its board of directors in mid-January.
This move boosted the stock price, but it was still trading under $20.
While a visionary joining a failing company has brought about spikes in stock price in the past, GameStop had another unique factor against it.
Its stock, GME, was shorted at an astronomical rate by several hedge funds, including Melvin Capital.
A short position is taken when a person or fund believes the stock price will go down. They borrow against the current market price with the intention of paying it back when the market price is lower.
For example;
Stock A is trading at $3.
Bob believes it will drop to $1 and shorts 100 shares of stock. Meaning he "borrows" the 100 shares.
He “sells” those "shorted" (borrowed) stocks immediately for $300.
In a week, if the stock price goes to $1 he can close his stock position and buy the 100 shares he “borrowed” for only $100.
At the end of it all, Bob makes $200.
However, if a week later the price rises to $5 per share, he could close out his short position by paying $500 for 100 shares at $5 per share. In the end, he’d lose $200 on his bet.
Yikes.
But…
Bob has another option.
He can hold on to it longer.
If his short position isn’t looking too hot with a current price of $5 per share. He could stick with his short position and hope it drops back down to $3 or less sometime in the future to cover his current paper loss. The risk with this is that his loss potential is theoretically unlimited. If he holds onto his short position for another week and the stock price rises to $10, he’s even more in the red.
The longer you wait; and hold on to the stock, the greater the risk or gain.
Well, this is only one of the ways you can short a stock.
The bigger you or your fund is, the more complicated a short position can become, all the way into “naked” short (selling a stock you haven’t even borrowed yet, akin to listing and selling a home you don’t even own), which are illegal but hard to track and therefore rarely prosecuted.
SEC.gov | Naked Short Saleshttps://www.sec.gov/answers/nakedshortsale.htm
2010-7-23 · In a "naked" short sale, the seller does not borrow or arrange to borrow the securities in time to make delivery to the buyer within the standard three-day settlement period.As a result, the seller fails to deliver securities to the buyer when delivery is due; this is known as a "failure to deliver" or "fail."
Back to GameStop
GameStop was shorted at 140 percent of all the shares available to purchase, meaning it is likely more shares were shorted than there were to buy back to cover those short positions.
140 %.
140%
Think about it. 100% is all you have to work with.
This should never happen.
It suggests the types of shorts that were used were questionable at best and illegal at worst.
And the US government, and SEC looked the other way. They always “look the other way”.
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So “u/DeepF*ckingValue” and a group of redditors saw an opportunity: take advantage of those who are taking advantage.
What has unfolded over the past couple weeks has been a run on purchasing GME stock to try and buy up as much shares as possible to take advantage of this short position.
Buying all those shares naturally drove up the stock price, but it also did something else.
Every time the price went a little bit higher, hedge funds that had massive short positions took more and more of a loss as they were forced to buy an ever-increasing stock to cover their short positions.
[Hedge funds] short-sold AT LEAST 40% more shares than ever existed.
They’re obliged to buy back more shares than is possible.
The only way out of that self-made trap is a complicated mess of desperately buying, returning, rebuying from the people you borrowed them from, and returning them with losses at every step.
Imagine if I sold you 10 cars, but only delivered 6.
You’re standing there with your WTF face and I say ‘Hey! how much would you sell those 4 cars for?’
You can name your price at this point.
I pay it. Then I ‘finish’ my ‘10 car delivery.’
At this point, some fund managers and individuals exited their short position realizing that as long as people who were long GME held their position, the stock price would continue to go up and there was nothing they could do about it.
This is known as a short squeeze.
As short positions become due and shorters have to cover these positions, they’re forced to buy at the price set by the shareholder.
Since these same shorters shorted more stock than was available to buy to try and make an extra buck, they’re now at the mercy of those holding the shares, leading to exponentially increasing prices.
Uh oh!
Punishing Hedge Funds for Cheating
While some shorters realized the potential losses could be catastrophic, others decided to double down on their position.
Melvin Capital lost 30 percent of their portfolio value by Jan. 25, or close to $4 billion. On that day, Citadel and Steven Cohen gifted Melvin Capital $2.75 billion to help cover their losses. They then doubled down on their shorts and their losses have skyrocketed.
On Jan. 25, they announced they finally exited their short positions.
This is when the war with individual retail investors started.
While it cannot be technically proven that Melvin didn’t exit their short positions, short positions on GME as a percentage of available float were still at the same 140 percent.
Statistically, this should’ve fallen off hard if Melvin really did sell their short positions. Thousands of retail investors thus doubted this news and continued to hold onto their stocks.
GME stock had continued to skyrocket.
On Friday 22JAN21, it closed at $65 per share.
One week later it closed at $345 per share.
Last night, u/DeepF*ckingValue’s initial $50,000 position grew to $50,000,000, and he’s continuing to hold.
Now, a lot of short positions will become due by the end of the week, and that’s when the much-anticipated short squeeze is expected to kick in.
We might see GME share prices above $1,000. With this attention on targeting heavily shorted stocks, other stocks have seen massive gains as well, including AMC, BB, and NOSS.
Recent aftermarket trading pushed GME close to $500 and bankruptcy for funds with heavy short positions seemed to become more and more probable.
It appeared that the underdog small-time investors betting against the big hedge fund pessimists successfully dealt a blow to Wall Street know-it-alls.
Of course, you still can sell these shares, you just can’t buy them.
And what happens to a stock when you can only sell it or hold it? People sell it and losses start to pile up.
Within an hour, GME dropped from $469 to $132 and AMC dropped from $12 to $7. Several traders reported orders being cancelled.
This may seem like a responsible reaction to slow volatility, but one doesn’t need to look that deeply to see what’s really going on.
Mega hedge fund Citadel gave Melvin Capital, the company with the most to lose the higher these prices go, a $2.75 billion bailout. According to Yahoo News, “Citadel’s founder is Ken Griffin, who also founded Citadel Securities, a big investor in Robinhood that also works with TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab.”
Citadel’s founder is Ken Griffin.
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The company that touts “democratizing finance for all,” that many redditors have relied on to foil the fat cats’ plan to short a beloved videogame store, is really stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
Within an hour, billions have been transferred from individual retail investors to hedge fund managers in the name of Robinhood.
Its app store rating plummeted from 5 to 1.
This is a blatant act of market manipulation, and lovers of freedom on both sides of the aisle should be outraged.
In a free market, stocks should be able to be bought or sold at any time and foolish actions should reap negative consequences—even if those consequences come via spiteful “average joe” investors. Investors who’ve likely gone through a hellish year where they’ve felt squeezed and short-changed by establishment elites in government and big business.
You’re probably wondering what’s next.
That depends on the constitution of retail investors. The subredditors of r/wallstreetbets have received an overwhelming amount of support for the hold position as trade volumes indicate the price crash was caused by very few sellers but high-frequency small trades that artificially crashed the price.
This is Melvin’s/Robinhood’s/Citadel’s/Cohen’s last battle effort before the inevitable short squeeze.
As long as retail investors hold, they should see their position skyrocket.
But do they have the strength to do so as prices artificially tanked? Considering GME has recovered to $246, it appears they might. This is a once in a decade spectacle that has pitted retail investors against hedge fund managers, with irony off-the-charts: a platform called Robinhood screwing small-time investors?
Really?
Whether the trend of Big Business succeeding while the average American suffers continues through 2021 is anyone’s guess.
But we deserve a better ending than bitter irony.
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The key point in this, and the actions of the government, clearly demonstrate in clear and unambiguous terms that there are no absolute laws. There are just what they can do, and lip service about what YOU can do.
Laws? Only For You. Bend Over
Let’s start with the law:
It is illegal to "manipulate" a stock or other security -- that is, it is unlawful to express an intent to sell or buy for any other reason than to actually sell or buy, and it is also illegal to intentionally mislead others about your reasons for doing so.
This is why “spoofing” (although almost-never prosecuted) is against the law.
“Spoofing” is the practice of laying in a bid or offer you have no intention of being filled on for the express reason of making other people think you want to sell or buy something, when in fact you want to do the opposite.
They attempt to follow your claimed “expression of intent” only to find your offer or bid has disappeared, the price moves and they come in on the other side.
It sounds like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller and it is, but it can be very profitable especially if your connection to the exchange is fast enough that the risk of getting filled is extremely low in that you can cancel your order before anyone can hit it.
This could be prevented on a trivial basis by the exchanges through a simple rule:
All orders must remain valid for enough time for the signal to travel around the globe twice (once there and once back) or until executed and you may not have more open orders at any given instant than you can clear (e.g. margin capacity.)
Now if you try to “spoof” you will get filledand the scheme fails.
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But note that despite this being blatantly obvious not one exchange has implemented such a rule and neither has the SEC demanded it.
Gee, I wonder why not? Might it be that they really don't give a rats ass so long as only the "right" people cheat?
Spoofing is an extremely common practice, a practice that especially screws small retail traders because we are nowhere near as fast with our fingers as a computer and also not sitting next to the exchange either…
… and a number of years ago one particular idiot was dumb enough to do it when the futures market was open over a holiday weekend.
It was caught on video and put on Youtube, which got the CME very pissed off.
Oh by the way, they never have gone after the “big guys” doing the same thing nor changed the rules on order validity.
Just the “little guys”.
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Given how simple it would be to instantly stop this crap does that tell you everything you need to know?
But there is nothing illegal about bidding up (or shorting) a stock for a transparent and truthful reason that has nothing to do with its underlying value. The only requirement is that you not lie; witness firms like Tesla that have crazy valuations for which there is no rational justification, or Amazon, or similar.
They’re everywhere and always on the exchanges and always have been.
Fundamentally a company that pays no dividend has no value beyond the liquidation value of its assets in the free market when it comes to common stock. Therefore, if you want to get down to it every single stock that pays no dividend trades on nothing more than hype since there is no discounted cash flow to you as a holder, ever, and no expectation there will be.
That’s the dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about when it comes to the stock market.
And that is why you can have a market that trades at 666 one year and a few years later trades at 3,700. Did the economy expand by a factor of five over that period? Did it even double? Not even close.
The sort of short squeeze that we’ve seen occurred due to fraud — but not by the people causing the squeeze.
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And don’t get your panties in a wad about this either; yes, the “at home” trading cadre has materially expanded with the pandemic lockdowns and such, and we’re sending “stimulus checks” to a lot of young adults with nothing to do with their time, so staring at a trading terminal attempting to make money sounds pretty good, especially if you win a few times. But that’s not the whole story — not even close.
If you want to short a stock you are supposed to first borrow it.
That is, ordinary people cannot sell what they don’t have, so if you wish to short you must first borrow that which you want to sell. This is one of the ways brokers make money; they keep all the stock their customers have in “street name” and keep track of who has what.
They can (and if supply is limited do) charge you to borrow that stock.
There’s nothing wrong with this, provided the stock borrowed is real.
It’s one of the things you agree to allow if you have a margin account; as part of the “price” of that privilege the broker can loan your stock to others for the purpose of shorting it. However, since you own it if you demand it back because you wish to sell it the broker either has to find some other set of shares to replace what he lent out of yours or the short-seller is forcibly bought-in at the market because they have to return your shares.
If that causes to take a loss, tough crap.
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There is an exception to this rule:
If you are a market maker then you can short naked, that is, without borrowing first.
Why? Because a market maker’s job is, as the name implies, to make the market — that is, to take the other side of whatever the customer wants to do. If I want to be long something in order to do it someone else has to sell it. Now in the physical security market this is easy; there either is or is not what I want to buy out there on the sheet offered by someone else.
But in the options market there is no physical security; the entirety of it is synthetic. This means if someone wishes to buy a CALL someone else has to sell one.
Well, that’s dangerous because naked short options positions are obligations to deliver.
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Specifically if you are short an IBM CALL @ $100 (for example) then you are obligated to deliver 100 shares of IBM stock on demand at any time before expiration for $100 each.
It does not matter what IBM’s stock is worth; if the holder of the CALL exercises their option you must deliver them. If the shares cost $500 at that time you’re fucked.
Likewise I can buy a $20 PUT on some stock. This gives me the right to PUT that stock on the other person for $20/share up until expiration.
IF the price is under $20 I of course have every reason to do that -- I can buy the shares for $10 and make you pay me $20!
Who doesn't like that deal?
Likewise, the market maker never wants that directional bet either since on the short side of an options trade you're obligated to perform if demanded by the long side.
Nobody would stay in business being a market maker if this sort of thing could happen to them, so as soon as they take the opposing side they execute a balancing trade on the other side.
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In short if you’re a market maker you always want to be neutral on every security you make a market in; you make a (very) small profit on each transaction but you never, ever want to be exposed directionally because the amount you get paid is tiny compared to the risk, and one mistake will bankrupt you.
Therefore if you’re a market maker you can short without locating first for this explicit reason. This doesn’t lead to a problem generally because nobody in their right mind as a market maker wants a directional exposure, ever. As a result the failure to locate is transient and does not accumulate; you will lay that risk off and remove the imbalance if you have to since you can construct synthetic positions that perform financially the same as real ones.
So how do you get 140% of the available shares short?
It would seem impossible and is…
…. unless someone cheats.
There are some players in the market who have “market maker” status but also trade their own books or have cross-interests with those who do.
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Allegedly there are “Chinese walls” between those pieces (or interconnected entities.) Quite obviously that is a load of crap because otherwise what you’ve seen would be impossible but it clearly not only has happened before but is still happening to this day.
These entities are how you wind up with short sales where the locate and borrow hasn’t happened first and the position remains open across time. This is supposed to be illegal but other than a few hand-slaps in the futures markets for physical commodities I’m not aware of any criminal prosecution for doing it.
And let’s be clear here: This practice is counterfeiting.
There is nothing wrong with borrowing a share of stock from someone and selling it, provided that if the person who you borrowed it from wants it back you are forced to deliver it. That is, if there are 100 shares of stock in the world the only entity who have the right to control how many total shares there are is the company itself. Provided there are 100 shares who loans them and on what terms is nobody’s business; that’s a private transaction and it’s perfectly legal. If I own something I have the right to lend or sell it to someone on whatever terms I choose.
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But if you sell something without locating it first you are counterfeiting because you are now representing that there are 110 shares in the marketplace but the company never authorized the other 10.
You thus are in fact diluting every one of the existing and real shares by 10% and pocketing the money from those sales. In short you are stealing by partially destroying the value of everyone else's holdings in that stock.
Counterfeiting is a criminal offense — always and everywhere.
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So now you have some folks who have discerned that in fact there is more than 100% of the public float out short. This cannot happen through lawful trading activity, but it leads to an interesting conundrum: If you drive the price up you force those who committed that offense to cover their bets and there aren’t enough shares to do it. Oh, someone will eventually fork up their shares at ever-increasing prices to unwind the fraud but in the process the people who shorted naked get a telephone pole up their ass in terms of losses.
There is nothing illegal about targeting people who do this; you are not lying about your intentions and ramming someone’s criminal conduct up their ass is not only legal it’s what they deserve to have happen to them. Remember that no company stock is actually worth anything beyond liquidation value at any instant in time when it comes to hard valuation; the entire remainder of the price is speculative premium — that is, the expression of belief in future prospects.
Further, the folks on Reddit aren’t the whole story of the pressure either.
There appears to be a "gentleman's agreement" among hedgies that they don't go after this when done by their "friends." The practice would never survive a day otherwise; competition is like that if it's honest competition. The reason we ban collusion generally is because it destroys honest competition and that is bad.
But as with any thieves guild breaking ranks can make you a lot of money and when something like this gets going you can bet there are folks with lots of money happy to jump on the bandwagon and add a few telephone poles — or a few hundred — to the pile being shoved up the short side’s ass. Why not if they can profit from it especially if they don’t get identified to the other guild members as the ones who broke ranks?
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So cry me a river, hedge fund mavens and screamers like Cramer — who, by the way, admitted on video many years ago how he used to manipulate markets before he had his own TV show. He never went to jail for that, did he?
What’s the difference?
These folks on WSB are telling you exactly why they're doing what they're doing -- they intend to shove a telephone pole up some cheater's asses and break it off, making a profit at the same time, which is the truth. That's legal. There's no deception at all; every one of their "buy" orders is in fact a bona-fide intent to purchase and they're being entirely transparent as to why.
That their intent has nothing to do with their view of the underlying company’s value in its present state means nothing; basically zero of the stock and option trades on the market, ever, are about today’s state of a given firm — they’re all about tomorrow’s beliefs which by the very nature of that being tomorrow are speculative.
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Now one more thing: Why would Robinhood and others halt buys in a stock?
Not crank margin to 100% (or some multiple of it for a short), stop it entirely irrespective of cash in your account?The broker does not care what the buyer and seller transact at and further, if there is no margin involved the broker also does not care if you grossly overpay and wind up with zero. He loses nothing and this was your own self-directed decision, not his recommendation. All an actual broker does is match buyers and sellers; they are not involved directionally. Well, not legally anyway.....Further, there are claims that people not on margin were force-liquidated. On what basis? Legally, maybe you signed something saying they could liquidate you "if they believed you were placing at risk" or even "if they're at risk" (without you being the cause.) However the question still stands: Why did they liquidate the accounts if in fact they did?
Robinhood makes money by routing trades from its platform to large brokers, who compensate the company for its order flow. The larger the trading volume, the better for Robinhood. But Robinhood also makes money through various forms of lending, primarily margin lending to customers.
Which is immaterial, as they had already set margin to 100%. In other words, there were no margin loans on GME stock. You put up cash before you buy, or you don’t buy. If you have an existing position you can’t borrow against it. That’s perfectly legit and brokers do that all the time when things get volatile.
That generates no exposure for the brokerage.
From Robinhood’s perspective, the GameStop rally is beneficial insofar as it generates revenue from increased trading activity, but it is also extremely risky, because the brokerage platform is lending millions of dollars to retail investors buying a world-historically volatile stock. As more and more buyers have flocked to GameStop, Robinhood has lent out more and more money.
That’s a lie since they had already set margin to 100%. They’re not lending money against those positions; those are cash transactions and, allegedly and if nobody is cheating, all Robinhood is doing is matching buyers and sellers.
It’s unclear how much GameStop stock Robinhood has lent to hedge funds, but whatever the amount, they’ve been lucrative, commanding as much as 80 percent in interest due to the massive amount of money betting against the stock.
Ah…. now we’re getting somewhere.
You see, brokers do that; they lend out stock and, in cases of hard to borrow shares there is often a fee that can get quite steep.
The brokerage would lose that income stream if the short was closed.
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But….
…so what? There’s no existential risk here — just lost opportunity. Which doesn’t explain the clamp-down, does it?
NR goes on to try to excuse this as being the “adults in the room.”
Nope. Once you have margin set to 100% of a long position (and, I remind you, if there is no available float then you can’t short without breaking the law) then there is no risk to the brokerage. If the bubble pops, it pops. Your job is to match buyers and sellers and so long as you’re doing that and not doing something you shouldn’t be there is no problem. The customer may lose his or her shirt but in a self-directed account with no margin loan outstanding against the position there is no risk to the firm provided everything you’re doing on the up and up.
THERE ARE ANSWERS TO THE “WHY” QUESTION and I’d love to hear one that doesn’t implicate criminal activity. National Review is, to be blunt, playing cover for people; their “explanation” makes no sense. So why publish it at all until and unless they can get the answer to the actual question: Why?
So why did certain platforms do what they did?
I’ll bet there’s a common thread in all of this, and you won’t like it if and when it comes out into public view….
Um. Maybe. More than likely, however, nothing is going to happen.
A little review.
But so what?
Some teenagers found a missing clink in Smaug’s armor.
Smaug is portrayed as being psychopathic, extremely sadistic, confident, violent, cruel, arrogant, intelligent and greedy, possessing an unquenchable desire for gold.
His most distinguishing characteristic (aside from his greed) is his arrogance, as Smaug proudly boasts of his superiority and impregnability to Bilbo during their encounter.
However, this proves to be his downfall, as he unwittingly reveals the weak spot in his chest to Bilbo when showing the Hobbit how he had willfully coated…
-Smaug | The One Wiki to Rule Them All
Smaug roared back, and burnt them all to a dark crisp. A lesson will be made of them, and business will continue as normal. Right?
…
Perhaps a little review about what we have been dealing with is in order.
Let’s consider the fantastic “stimulus” check that the US government ave Americans. This stimulus check per person was $600 dollars. And was intended to “help” Americans deal with being unemployed for nine months. The cost of this stimulus was $900 billion and it was labeled the ” coronavirus relief package“. The United States population is 329.45 million people. Thus, the actual and real amount that should have gone to each American should have been $2,735,000.
So, if you simply take the total amount of money allocated to helping Americans out, and divide it by the number of Americans...
...each American should get a check for $2.7 million dollars.
But truthfully, an stimulus should go to each family. Not to each individual. THis was, after all, how the United States was first intended to operate.
So, if you simply take the total amount of money allocated to helping Americans out, and divide it by the number of American families...
...each American family should get a check for $10.8 million dollars.
So why do Americans only get a fraction of that amount?
$600.
What. The. Fuck.
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Well, it’s all fun and games.
Now, heads up, when historians write about the collapse of the United States, you can be quite sure that they will list this event as one of the signs of the eventual downfall. The sign of the pathetic attempts of the “little guys” to “take down” the massive fraud and corruption that runs rampant inside of America today.
No matter what…
Keep in mind that everyone is rooting for the little “normal” people, and enjoy seeing the oligarchy hurt. That is, everyone except the oligarchy themselves. Depending on how the government reacts, you can see this as either…
A minor skirmish of class warfare.
A pivot point that enacts some much needed change.
Or, a spark that contributes to a major event to follow.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my Front Row Seat Index here…
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It’s difficult to measure the damage that an ideology can do on a society. Often you don’t realize what a mess things are until long after the great looting, and destruction. But you can notice events. Often singular events, and often whispered about quietly. And one such event is the purging of art in favor of the formless and meaningless.
Look at the painting above. It is titled “Consulting the Oracle” and was painted by John William Waterhouse. It’s great right? It’s large. It would occupy the wall in a nice sized living room. It’s 77 inches long and 46 inches high. And it’s beautiful. Right?
This painting was very quietly sold by the museum that held it for £5 ($7.50) to a private individual.
I’ve seen cups of coffee that cost more.
The excuse is that the museum needed the money. Bills needed to be paid, and new works of art needed to be purchased to “keep the museum alive and vibrant”. Of course that old “song and dance”. The excuse, a progressive excuse, that you must destroy the old to make room for the new.
Ok.
I’ll bite.
What “new” art was worthy of purchase. How about millions of dollars for this magnificent piece…
Willem de Kooning’s Woman III
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This undeniably strange-looking painting of a woman made Willem de Kooning and his estate a few millions richer. The painting recently changed hands to the tune of $137.5 million. This abstract painting was finished by Kooning in 1953. The painting became rather controversial in the 1970s, because it was refused for exhibit at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. This painting is currently privately owned. It spans 68 inches in height and 48.5 inches in width.
Yes. I cannot believe it. Can you?
And we are not alone either…
This painting is awful.
I get that it’s an abstract expressionist painting, but it is so hideous to look at. You honestly couldn’t convince me to take it if I was walking down the street and saw that laying on the grass. Clearly that means I have no taste because it sold for a ridiculous $137.5 million in 2006. This made it the 4th most expensive painting ever sold.
It was created by painter Williem de Kooning in 1953.
The buyer, David Geffen, is worth $6.5 billion, so nobody is going to step in and tell him how to spend his money… but are you kidding me?
-10 Ugly Pieces Of Art You Won't Believe Sold For Millions
Who in their right mind made this decision?
The Art Renewal Center chimes in…
From the Art Renewal Center…
Works of art worth tens of millions of pounds today have been sold off quietly by museums over the past 50 years for a few pounds. British art institutions such as the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the Exeter City Museum have disposed of pictures by masters such as Van Dyck and Henri Fantin Latour . They were sold without public notice, dismissed as too unimportant to keep. Among the most serious cases is a painting by the 19th-century master, John William Waterhouse . In 1965, the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro sold it for £200 ($300) to a private collector; today it is worth more than £5 million ($7.5 million).
"Most of the works were sold off as they were deemed to be artistically worthless", Christopher Wright, a leading Old Masters scholar, said. He discovered evidence of the sales while preparing a nationwide study of British art for Yale University Press. "They have been sold off without public notice," he said. "Many of the museums didn't dare make it public. They've all been proved wrong."
Mr Wright expressed disbelief at the decision of the Exeter museum to "rape" its collection of 160 works - "there is no other word to describe the destruction of an entire museum collection". The auctions, which involved selling works for as little as £5 ($7.50), included Waterhouse's Consulting the Oracle, four paintings by Fantin-Latour and one by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema . Caroline Worthington, fine art curator at Exeter, said that the sale took place at Christie's in 1954, "when High Victorian art was deeply unfashionable ... We would like them back, most definitely." "We're talking household names", Mr Wright said, adding that many were bought by the heavyweight dealers Agnews and Colnaghi, who clearly appreciated the importance of the artists, even if the museums did not.
Tamsin Daniel, Truro's curator of art and exhibitions, said that the museum had needed money for storage and a lift. She conceded that the loss was painful. The Waterhouse went to a private collector bidding at Christie's. The £200 ($300) it cost him, she said, was "a bit different to what Andrew Lloyd Webber paid recently for a Waterhouse": £6.6 million ($9.9 million).
Leeds City Art Gallery and Museum, Mr Wright was told by an insider, actually disguised the provenance of works when selling them through an auction house. "They were described as property of Madame X," he said. "The sales were clandestine. They didn't say Leeds was de-accessioning. They were all Victorian pictures purchased from the Royal Academy. They got rid of dozens." Nigel Walsh, curator of exhibitions, expressed surprise at the news, denying that the gallery had sold anything. Nor did Evelyn Silber, its director, know anything about it until contacted by The Times. She later discovered that 37 paintings (nearly all Victorian) had been sold in 1939 under the then director, Philip Hendey, who went on to head the National Gallery in London. The Fitzwilliam in Cambridge sold more than 200 works in the 1950s. Although they were marked "property of the Fitzwilliam" in the catalogs, they were mixed up with hundreds of other lots, Mr Wright said. "They put them through the salerooms in dribs and drabs."
Mr Wright said that the Fortune-teller with Soldiers "was sold off as a copy, but it has since been published as the real thing worth millions".
Craig Hartley, a Fitzwilliam curator, said: "In retrospect, this seems a horrific thing to have done." Among other institutions to have sold off paintings, Mr Wright said, were the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich; the Cooper Art Gallery in Barnsley; the Holbourne Museum of Art in Bath; and the Birmingham City Art Gallery.
-Art Renewal Center article by Dalya Alberge
I am horrified.
Just beyond my self.
So who ended up getting these magnificent works of art?
"They were described as property of Madame X," he said. "The sales were clandestine. They didn't say Leeds was de-accessioning. They were all Victorian pictures purchased from the Royal Academy. They got rid of dozens."
Well, you must understand that a museum collects works of art for pubic display and enjoyment. If they no longer wants to display that art to the public, they take if off display and put it in storage. Apparently these works took up too much space, so they sold them to “Art Dealers”. And these art dealers held auctions and auctioned them off to wealthy attendees.
Yes.
That’s right. The art was taken away from public display and sold off to the oligarchy for their own personal use.
Ladies and Gentlemen ... Artists,
The art of painting, one of the greatest traditions in all of human history has been under a merciless and relentless assault for the last one hundred years. I'm referring to the accumulated knowledge of over 2500 hundred years, spanning from Ancient Greece to the early Renaissance and through to the extraordinary pinnacles of artistic achievement seen in the High Renaissance, 17th century Dutch, and the great 19th century Academies of Europe and America. These traditions, just when they were at their absolute zenith, at a peak of achievement, seemingly unbeatable and unstoppable, hit the twentieth century at full stride, and then ... fell off a cliff, and smashed to pieces on the rocks below. Since World War I the contemporary visual arts as represented in Museum exhibitions, University Art Departments, and journalistic art criticism became little more than juvenile, repetitive exercises at proving to the former adult world that they could do whatever they damn well wanted ... sadly devolving ever downwards into a distorted, contrived and contorted notion of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression? Ironically, this so-called "freedom" as embodied in Modernism, rather than a form of "expression" in truth became a form of "suppression" and "oppression." Modernism as we know it, ultimately became the most oppressive and restrictive system of thought in all of art history.
Every reasonable shred of order and any standards with which it was possible to identify, understand and to create great paintings and sculpture, was degraded ... detested ... desecrated and eviscerated. The backbone of the painters' craft, namely drawing, was thrown into the trash along with modeling, perspective, illusion, recognizable objects or elements from the real world, and with it the ability to capture, exhibit, and poetically express subjects and themes about mankind and the human condition and about man's trials on this speck of stardust called Earth ... Earth, hurtling through infinity with all of us along on board, along with everything we know and everything we hold dear.
Reason ... philosophy ... religion ... literature ... fantasy ... dreams, and all of the feelings, emotions and pathos of our every day lives ... all of it was no longer worthy of the painter's craft. Any hint by the artist at trying to portray such things was branded as banal, maudlin, photographic, illustration, or petty sentimentality.
Our children, going supposedly to the finest universities in the world, being taught by professors with Bachelors or Arts, Masters of Arts, Masters of Fine Arts, Masters of Art Education ... even Doctoral degrees, our children instead have been subjected to methodical brain-washing and taught to deny the evidence of their own senses. Taught that Mattisse, Cézanne, and Picasso, along with their followers, were the most brilliant artists in all of history. Why? Because they weren't telling us lies like the traditional painters, of course. They weren't trying to make us believe that we were looking at scenes in reality, or at scenes from the imagination, from fantasy or from dreams. They were telling us the truth. They were telling it like it is. They spent their lives and careers on something that was not banal, and not silly, insipid or inane. They in fact provided the world with the most ingenious of all breakthroughs in the history of artistic thought. Even the great scientific achievements of the industrial revolution paled before their brilliant discovery. And what was that discovery for which they have been raised above Bouguereau , exalted over Gérôme , and celebrated beyond Ingres , David , Constable , Fragonard , Van Dyck , and Gainsborough or Poussin ? Why in fact were they heralded to the absolute zenith ... the tiptop of human achievement ... being worthy even of placement shoulder to shoulder on pedestals right beside Rembrandt , Michelangelo , Leonardo , Caravaggio , Vermeer and Raphael ? What did they do? Why were they glorified practically above all others that ever went before them? Ladies and gentleman, they proved ... amazing, incredible, and fantastic as it may seem, they proved that the canvas was flat ... flat and very thin ... skinny ... indeed, not even shallow, lacking any depth or meaning whatsoever.
And the flatter that they proved it to be the greater they were exalted. Cézanne collapsed the landscape, Matisse flattened our homes and our families, and Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning placed it all in a blender and splattered it against the wall. They made even pancakes look fat and chunky by comparison. But this was only part of the breathtaking breakthroughs of modernism ... and their offshoots flourished. Abstract expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, minimalism, ColorField, Conceptual, op-art, pop-art and post modernism ... and to understand it all ... to understand, took very special people indeed, since the mass of humanity was too ignorant and stupid to understand. Like that famous advertisement in the NY Times said so many years ago ... Bad art ... or Good art? You be the judge, indeed.
Of course, to justify this whole theoretical paradigm, all the artists that painted recognizable scenes with depth and illusion had to be discredited ... and discredited they were, with a virulence and vituperation so scathing and merciless that one would think they must have been messengers of the devil himself to deserve such abuse. And to put the final nail in their coffins, all of their art was banished and their names and accomplishments written right out of history. I graduated with a Master's in art education from Columbia University, and I'd never heard of Bouguereau , much less that he was President of the Academy and head of the Salon ... the most celebrated artist of his time who single handedly, using all of his influence as the most respected leader of art world, opened up L'Ecole Des Beaux Arts and the Salons to women artists for the first time in history.
During most of the 20th century, the type of propaganda that has been hurled at academic artists is so insidious that people have been literally trained to discredit, out-of-hand, any work containing well-crafted figures or elements, or any other evidence of technical mastery. All the beauty and subtlety of emotions, — interplay of composition, design and theme, — the interlacing of color, tone and mood, — are never seen. The viewer has been taught that academic painting on a prima facie basis is bad by definition — bad by virtue of its resorting to the use of human figures, themes or stories and objects from the real world.
Prestige suggestion causes them to automatically assume that a work must be great if it's by any of the "big names" of modern art, so they at once start looking for reasons why it must be proclaimed great. Any failing to find greatness is not considered a failing in the art but in the intelligence and sensibilities of the viewer. Students operating under that kind of intimidating pressure, you can be sure, will find greatness - no matter what they are looking at.
The reverse of this has been trained into them when they view academic paintings. They have been taught that works exhibiting realistic rendering are "bad art" and therefore any good that is seen is not due to qualities inherent in their artistic accomplishments, but are rather due to a lack of intelligence and taste in the viewer. The same intimidating pressure works in reverse to ensure that a work by Bouguereau , Lord Leighton , Burne-Jones , Gérôme , Frederick Hart , or any of the rest of you here, will not be seen as anything other than bad by definition.
No student in a school with this kind of dictatorial brain-washing will ever risk exploring or even listening to opposing views, for fear of being stigmatized from that point on, with some undesirable label and being universally despised ... sadly, a very effective deterrent to independent thought. Thus the visual experience of well-drawn representational elements is perceived as a negative, ad hominem, that proves with knee-jerk automaticity the presumed "badness" of the art and its creator.
It is especially ironic that these are the same people who trumpet the virtues and inalienable right to freedom of speech, while they surreptitiously and steadfastly conspire to remove that freedom from those with whom they disagree.
Equally ironic is the charge that academic painting is "uninspired," a proclamation issued by critics who are unable to see beyond the technical virtuosity for which they condemn it, to see what is being said. This rich visual language is wasted on eyes that will not see. It would be no different than dismissing out-of-hand a piece of music as soon as it was determined that notes, chords and keys were used, or dismissing any work of literature upon noticing words arranged in grammatically correct sentences.
That is not to say that all academic art is great, or above criticism - certainly, it is not. It would be no less fallacious to issue blanket praise to an entire category than to condemn it. Academic painting ranges from brilliantly conceived and deeply inspired, to trite and silly, depending on the subject and the artist.
That being said, I find even the worst of it more meaningful than art based on the ridiculous notion that it is somehow important to prove the canvas is flat, and/or that one needs no skill or technique to be an artist - views generally embraced by those who condemn the entire category of academic art. Their point seems to be to elevate to legitimacy that which has removed all standards and prior defining characteristics of art. In other words, by defining non-art as art, the logical conclusion is that art is non-art.
Modern artists are told that they must create something totally original. Nothing about what they do can ever have been done before in any way shape or form, otherwise they risk being called "derivative". How utterly absurd.
These critics like to say Bouguereau's work is really only derivative, harking back to earlier artists. Only in the 20th century has such a thing ever been scorned. To this I have one thing to say:
What, dear friends, is wrong with being derivative?
That's one of the core beliefs of modernism that must be soundly vanquished by common sense and logical analysis. Nobody can accomplish anything of merit if they are in fact not derivative. Only by mastering the accomplishments of the past and then adding to it can we go still further. Every other field of endeavor recognizes this truth. Without the knowledge of the past we are doomed to everlasting primitivism.
And, as far as holding our works up to the old masters, that's what we want to have happen. If we are to accomplish things of true merit and excellence, we must germinate and nurture great masters in the next millennium, too. Bouguereau was quite aware that his work would be compared on the altar of past accomplishments, as did his contemporaries. It was precisely because they mastered the techniques of the past, built upon them and then opened them up to an avalanche of new subject matter and Enlightenment ideals, that they accomplished the greatest half-century of painting in art history.
And when we talk about the basic criteria and parameters of the academic tradition that built from the 14th through 19th centuries, Bouguereau , Lord Leighton and Alma-Tadema were second to none.
Could Bach and Beethoven and Mozart have achieved their masterpieces if someone before had not discovered scales and the circle of fifths? Does that mean these musical giants were nothing but derivative too? In fact all great literature exists due to the existence of advanced language. This upside down thought process would make Dosteovsky, Balzac, Chekhov, Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters derivative as well. If you think about it a bit you will see that these are exact analogies. There is nothing any more derivative about these 19th century Traditional-Humanist-Academic masters.
Being derivative is entirely different from copying. Copying itself can have value, but only for the purposes of instruction. Obviously, a copied work is not original art. But modernist ideologues have disingenuously dismissed all realist art as "derivative" as if that were the same as copying.
Additionally, students today are taught that every parameter upon which any standard for quality and excellence can be deduced is improper, because it's "limiting to freedom of expression."
There can be no story, for then you have to stay within the "tight boundaries" of the tale.
There can be no illusion, for then you are "chained" by the need to recreate a sense of three dimensions.
There can be no drawing, as that can be "limiting" to objects or people or things taken from the real world.
They want to remove the "shackles" of modeling, perspective, or subject matter of any sort.
There certainly can be no attempt at harmonizing of the above parameters with composition, color and tonality, for that would "restrict" one to making everything work together.
On the contrary, they have been propagandized by modernism into believing that only those works that break boundaries, ignore standards, and show no interest in skill or technique can be truly "original" or "inspired." In fact originality of methods take precedence over all else. If something has been done before, or is derivative in any way of anything that was done before, it thereby loses value proportionate to those similarities. In such a "Through the looking glass" world, every would-be "artist" is placed in the untenable position of trying to create an entirely new art form in order to be considered relevant. The sheer glaring reality is that nothing could be more imprisoning, binding, restricting, chaining and shackling than the impossible limitations of modernism and post-modernism, that remove from the would-be artist every tool (including training) that could give him or her the ability to create great works of art. The simple truth is that each and every one of us (and I mean nearly every human being), is capable of thinking of something that has never been done before. Does that make it worth doing and the work of genius?
For example:
(1) I could carefully (with enough money) dig up an old bombed out tenement building in the Bronx, and have it transported to a special slab built for it in Central Park. Rope off the structure and aim lights at it at night and give it a title, and with enough pomp and circumstance think of twenty reasons why this is sheer brilliance and genius.
(2) I could boil the entrails of several different animals and then preserve them by imbedding them in clear plastic. I could then hang them from a mobile with similarly preserved body parts of cadavers, and have critics claim that this is the greatest artistic statement about the horrors of war since Guernica
(3) I could imbed into the walls, ceiling and floors of a small room, pieces of neon lights, parts from broken machines and engines, and broken pieces of structural building materials like bricks, beams and cinder blocks. Then I could glue between everything millions of nails, nuts and bolts, and have clever writers and critics point out how this room (which could be installed at MOMA or the Guggenheim) is the quintessential statement of the effects of the industrial age on human psychology.
Well, those three ideas took all of 3 minutes to think of. MY GOD! This must mean I'm three geniuses rolled into one. Why, at this rate I could come up with more brilliant ideas for Modernism than all of the modernist geniuses put together, if I just would put aside a week or two.
The thing here that really is interesting is not their art at all, but the statement it makes about the nature of our species — that so many seemingly intelligent people have been so easily snookered by the tongue-twisting, convoluted illogic of modernist rhetoric. Clearly for many people it is more important to feel that they are some part of an elitist in-group that is endowed with the special ability to see brilliance where the bulk of humanity sees nothing and is afraid to say so.
Since most people aren't devoted to or educated in fine art, they have successfully intimidated the bulk of humanity into cowering away in silence, feeling foolish for their inability to understand. The average person shrinks away from believing the reality of his or her own senses in the face of seemingly overwhelming numbers of people in this 20th century "establishment" who authoritatively dictate what is great art and what everyone should be seeing.
Modern and Post-modern Art is nihilistic and anti-human. It denigrates humanity along with our hopes, dreams, desires and the real world in which we live. All reference to any of these things is forbidden in the canonistic halls of modernist ideology. We can see that their hallowed halls are a hollow shell, a vacuous, vacant vault that locks their devotees away from life and humanity. It ultimately bores the overwhelming bulk of its would-be audience, who can find nothing with which to relate.
It has been called exciting and cutting-edge, but the sad truth is that it is incredibly humdrum and monotonous. Whether you glue together pieces of plastic or shards of glass, assemble metal scraps or piles of feathers. Whether you dribble little dollops of colors or drag fat uneven slashes of black. Whether you compile a mountain of paper or wrap the Statue of Liberty. The effect is always the same. MEANINGLESS PRIMITIVISM.
Modernism is art about art. It endlessly asks the question, ad nauseam: What is art? What is art? Only those things that expand the boundaries of art are good; all else is bad. It is art about art. Whereas all the great art in history, my friends, is ART ABOUT LIFE.
Of course, this isn't exactly the first time in history that ideas which were complete shams managed to engulf the belief systems of entire cultures and civilizations. In many of those in the past, the lunacy was enforced by the severest of punishments for anyone who would dare to speak out.
At least we live in a time and place where it's possible to speak against this consummate con that has been perpetrated against the greatest period of artistic development and achievement in the history of Western Civilization and culture over the last 500 years.
Three-quarters of the 20th century will go down in art history as a great wasteland of insanity — a nightmarish blip in the long road of the development of human logic and reason and art, from which we are only just starting to awake.
The artists of the 19th century exhibited a deep, abiding respect for humanity and human feelings. A respect for our minds, our spirits and our reason, and a love of beauty, grace and true excellence and accomplishment. Bouguereau , Lord Leighton , Waterhouse , Burne-Jones and the other giants of the 19th C. tried to capture those things that are good and decent in our species. Their accomplishments are the quintessential high point of hundreds of years of human study and development in the art of painting. They are arguably the greatest painters that history has ever produced. Bouguereau especially fits this description. How fitting and sadly obvious that he should be characterized as the chief villain by those who would destroy rather than build — who celebrate chaos rather than order and beauty.
He continues…
Recently, a contributor to an on-line art forum I subscribe to made the following comments about Picasso,
I love the way Picasso did that woman all shards and angles. I don't recall the name of the work. But, he painted the woman in her turmoil how she tore herself apart within, and how he saw what her turmoil did to her. He painted the way he saw her, as fragmented as he saw her. She was a beauty on the outside. Yet, he painted the ugly face of her turmoil, and in so doing painted his turmoil as well.
Picasso worked in a turbulent time. I think it's why some of his works appeared to be reflections in a broken mirror. Shards, impressions all cut up and each with a voice about his subjects and of Spain. His work shows a deeply sensitive artist and was a pivotal point for the Russian avant garde school that said it was okay to feel in paint, to get all the chaos out in paint ... I didn't love him until I studied him ...
- Laurie
And he continues…
I thought it fitting to read here my response to her.
Laurie and Goodart subscribers,
I really need to address these ebullient expressions of praise for Picasso a bit more precisely.
Laurie, this is not to fault you at all, but to analyze the description you have made which reflects the gospel that is taught about him in most art history courses. His name and "achievements" have become so "untouchable" within the sacrosanct walls of modernist cathedrals, that to do any other than you have stated here would be like criticizing the cross or the bible in the College of Cardinals.
Let's look at this one idea at a time.
You said that, "He painted the woman in her turmoil how she tore herself apart within, and how he saw what her turmoil did to her".
I
n fact, all that he painted was a messy characterization of a woman in which the forms and shapes don't align or create any cohesive form. The drawing is virtually non-existent, and the disintegration of all artistic elements are self-consciously laid out for the express purpose of rejecting prior artistic standards.
There is no beauty in her face, or for that matter, ugliness. There isn't even a face ... but elements thrown together with just enough evidence to let the viewer know that it was meant to suggest a face.
Everything about the finished product is utterly awful and would be beneath the capabilities of a talented 12 year old.
Now, what if you are a theorist who needs to justify this hodge-podge of sloppy color and form? What can you creatively think of to place value and meaning, where none exists ... especially, if you are being paid to do just that?
It's simple: you need but approach the work as you would a Rorschach inkblot test, where anyone can use creative ability to make up a story, suggested by little, if any, information. If you want this man's work to be valued highly, you must create a tale of great importance, with meaning, which, when discussed or analyzed in intellectual circles, will be considered profound and meaningful.
The idea of a lady being ugly on the inside is a concept from literature, psychology, and in fact all of human history. Ugliness, mean-spiritedness, and turmoil are major concepts that tint all of human experience. So you simply say that the messiness represents that, and look how brilliant he is to have captured it.
But in truth he has done nothing of the kind. The writers who said that was what it means were the one who did it, and not the artist. Inner turmoil and ugliness on the inside is far more difficult to capture, and takes intense, subtle handling of story telling, composition, drawing, and realistic rendering to successfully convey so that it can be recognized without any words. Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott and Bouguereau's Divideuse both capture beautiful women loaded with inner turmoil, and Cabanel's Cleopatra testing poisons on slaves portrays intense inner ugliness within a beautiful face and figure infinitely better than these broken blotchy messes on canvas by Picasso.
But when the modernist professors say that's what it means, then implicit in their words is that if you don't see it too you're stupid and tasteless. Also to not see it becomes associated with not seeing how wonderful that subject matter would be. And it is after all truly wonderful subject matter. Only one problem; Picasso didn't paint it.
You say, "his work shows a deeply sensitive artist," but I don't conclude any sensitivity whatsoever. What is there is the sensitivity of a bull in a china shop, who stomps around breaking all the beautiful porcelain, and then with an army of critics lined up with their nostrils flaring dares anyone to criticize the dump he just left in the your living room.
"Either you love my turds or you are against freedom of expression."
If you don't want it in your museum, you're the enemy of freedom of speech. Faced with such intimidation surely many would rather line up in support. But there is truly nothing there. It's a trick of words and intimidation. An Illusion of social pressure and fearful conformity.
His school, "... said it was okay to feel in paint, to get all the chaos out in paint ... I didn't love him until I studied him."
Of course you didn't love him until you studied him. What you learned to love was all the explanations about worthwhile concepts and subjects. And with a training right out of Pavlov, you were taught to salivate when you were shown things that caused associations to those worthwhile ideas.
But Laurie, WHERE'S the BEEF? You're salivating at a symbol much the way people react to their country's flag. The flag comes to be seen as beautiful because it represents family, home and hearth, friends, loyalty, and the things we love. You've been taught to react to symbols instead of responding with the freedom of independent thought to works of art that are not supposed to be flag-like-symbols of great artistic ideas, but the great works of art themselves, which communicate, through a readily discernable visual language, some aspect of the human condition.
You had to be taught to love Picasso, because nobody would love him otherwise. But people don't need to be taught to love Rembrandt , Michelangelo , Bouguereau , or for that matter Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, or Tom Sawyer, The Grapes of Wrath, Alice in Wonderland, or The Christmas Carol.
Teaching and information can add to the depth of understanding of great works of art, but they are great initially by their ability to capture the soul and imagination of the viewer, without thousands of words to instruct us on how to deny the evidence of our own senses and to deny our innate sense of truth and reason.
Of course, what tends to happen to people who have allowed themselves to be convinced that the emperor is wearing beautiful clothes, is that they have become "ego invested" due to years of having parroted the same falsehoods ... and the associated humiliation that goes with acknowledging that one has been had. The more years, and the more said in support of Modernism, the greater the difficulty in breaking through the gestalts, and taking off the iconic blinders, shedding all the preconceptions and looking again with "innocent eyes" and describing what is really there (at least to yourself), and then comparing it to the maligned academics like Waterhouse , Bouguereau , Lord Leighton , Burne-Jones , Gérôme , and Alma-Tadema , and deciding with freedom of thought and an honest wish to find the truth, which of them indeed are works of art, and which are snake oil salesmen."
He continues…
And so I ended that letter.
The change in people's perceptions about this is happening now very quickly. Even this austere institution, probably the greatest museum in the Western Hemisphere, just a couple of summers ago had a major retrospective of one of these maligned 19th century masters, Edward Coley Burne-Jones.
And in their literature on the show declared him one of the three greatest English artists of the last century, along with Constable and Turner. In fact, the Metropolitan Museum deserves great credit for being one of the first great institutions to once again hang their Bouguereaus and Gérômes, Meissonnier and Burne-Jones, on permanent exhibit in the face of scathing criticism from the press back in 1980.
Soon after, Laurie followed this with a good-natured post saying that although she felt that I may have insulted her intelligence, she loved me all the same. To which I responded:
And …
Laurie,
It was not my wish to insult your intelligence. The very brightest of people are just as vulnerable. It is in human nature to go along to get along. I certainly did it too when I was in college and grad school in fine art. Even when I was finally willing to speak my mind about Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko and Warhol .... Picasso was somehow sacrosanct, and I would pay lip service to his brilliance while the works of the other modernists I allowed myself to see as they were.
It wasn't until I hit about 40 years old that I started to more fully recognize the power of prestige suggestion and social intimidation in forming opinions.
To truly judge your own feelings and opinion about a work of art, you need to look at it as if it were painted by a complete unknown, perhaps some student in another town, and then ask yourself what your opinion of that work would be then. Would you think it was one of the greatest works in the history of civilization, would it even be great ... or good ... or mediocre .... or just plain bad?
So true.
He continues further…
I know now absolutely that nearly all the works by most of the famous Modernists are truly awful on all fronts.
I also know that the best works by Bouguereau and Waterhouse would thrill me to my bones even if they had been painted by complete unknowns. When I saw a Bouguereau for the first time, I had never heard of him, but my response was immediate unambiguous and self-validating. I needed no books or texts or convoluted explanations. The strength of the work was powerful, unique, immediate and overwhelming.
It was exactly as I had felt in the presence of Michelangelo's David. Ah, but when I saw the David I was already predisposed to see what history considered one of humanity's greatest masterpieces. However, it was that seminal experience at 18 that excited my interest in art. The Bouguereau that I saw, Nymphs and Satyr, was when I was 32 years old, and it's effect was equally profound, changing the course of my life, ultimately leading me to this podium here today.
Don't let pride get involved here. Don't even answer me. Just ask yourselves and answer honestly.
One common claim that you hear repeatedly is that the proof that some abstract expressionists were great artists, can be found in their high quality academic student drawings. My answer to this is that it's really irrelevant whether or not they could do a decent student drawing. If anything it only makes it sadder that promising young talent was wasted. The quality and value of their "mature" work is not helped a bit by showing that they could draw decently when young.
The best way to prove that is to consider the inverse.
Would Raphael or Bouguereau's mature work be somehow made the worse if their student drawings from decades earlier had been of poor quality? Their great paintings would still be just as great, and de Kooning's hideous smears for which he is so famous are still just as awful.
I am quite certain that every artist in this audience paints better than all of the famous modernists and post modernists, and is more deserving of societal attention and praise. Yet still, so-called "major works" of theirs can sell for between 2 and 25,000,000 dollars at auction. The dirty little secret, however, that the modernist establishment and the press has been hiding, is that those same works sold for two to three times those prices back in 1988 and 1989. While the prices of all the icons of modernism peaked at that time, and any money invested then has declined a whopping 50 to 80%, the market for Gérôme , Waterhouse , Bouguereau , Alma-Tadema , Burne-Jones , Rossetti , Millais and Lord Leighton , has increased between 2000 and 10,000 percent since 1975.
Every year, records are being broken again and again.
In 1977, the world record price for a Bouguereau was $17,000. Now, in the past 3 years, the world records for his work first topped a million dollars in 1997, then a million and a half in 1998, two and a half million in 1999, and last May, Charity sold for over $3,500,000. Additionally, last June the world record for any Victorian painting was completely trampled when Saint Cecilia, by John William Waterhouse, sold for just over $10,000,000 in London to Andrew Lloyd Weber.
There are only 826 Bouguereaus and about 465 Tademas in the world. Do you know how many Picassos there are? Can anybody here guess? There are 80,000 of them, and the balance between supply and demand has faltered, and like the dot com stocks of last year they will soon come crashing down along with hundreds of billions of paper profits lost in the dust of history. Like the tulip bulbs in the 17th century, or Tokyo Real estate in the 1980's, investors will be decimated. If I owned a work by any of those "Abstract artists" I would be racing to cash it in before the fall, and that has been my recommendation to dozens who have asked me.
Many of my friends in and out of ARC have told me that I shouldn't talk so much about the modernists. One of them recently wrote to me saying, "I really don't think we help our cause by helping talentless modernists get press coverage." Another fearfully said, "Don't criticize the modernists, just focus on what's good."
I replied as follows:
His reply…
When have the modernists ever held back from criticizing traditional and academic art? The problem with this attitude, while I also find it very appealing, is that our not talking about the modernists doesn't really mean much.
The fact is that they are being talked about with high praise, in nearly every university art department and art history course in the western world ... parroting the same things that they were taught. They are also being constantly celebrated and exhibited by the biggest and most prestigious museums and getting rave reviews in the newspapers as often as not.
If somebody doesn't explain to everybody why they're not really any good, and why they're not really even artists, and how the whole thing is a hoax, then they will continue their propaganda and continue brainwashing our children and intimidating them into feeling stupid if they don't go along to get along ... and they'll do it unopposed.
If we don't speak up and tell the world that the Emperor's naked, nobody else will. We may not want to talk about them, but we have to if we are going to have any chance of turning things around. We have to provide a theoretical and philosophical context for the feelings of the tens of millions of people out there who are disgusted and feel an aversion for Modernism ... but feel afraid to say so. They need to know that they are not alone and they need to have their feelings validated. And at the same time, we need to provide alternatives ... rich alternatives with great traditional art and with countless images of the greatest paintings in history.
So well put…
And now ladies and gentlemen ... artists ... portrait artists ... I come at this point ... to you. Who are you? Who do you think yourselves to be? Well let me tell you how I see you. You are beyond doubt, the true artistic heroes and heroines of the 20th century.
Many of you know that I am the chairman of the Art Renewal Center, which you can find at http://www.artrenewal.org. The Art Renewal Center is building the largest on-line museum on the internet, and is completely devoted to the return of standards, training and human themes and subjects in the visual arts. Modern Art is about expanding the definition of art.
They believe that "everything is art", or, "Whatever the artist says is art, is art."
Well, if everything is art, then nothing is art.
Any definition that includes everything is not a definition at all. As I said, Modern art is "art about art", while all the great art and literature and theatre throughout history is "Art about life."
I wrote about all of you, and your teachers, in the published Philosophy of the Art Renewal Center. Here's what I said:
Against all odds, and in the face of the worst kind of ridicule and personal and editorial assault, only a small handful of well-trained artists managed to stay true to their beliefs. Then, like the heroes and heroines who protected a few rare manuscripts during inquisitional book-burnings of the past, these 20th Century art world heroes managed to protect and preserve the core technical knowledge of western art. Somehow, they succeeded in training a few dozen determined disciples. Today, many of those former students, have established their own schools or ateliers, and are currently training many hundreds more. This movement is now expanding exponentially. They are regaining the traditions of the past, so that art may once again move forward on a solid footing. We are committed in every way possible to record, preserve and perpetuate this priceless knowledge.
That's who you are. So if some of you are having trouble selling your work, or haven't been able to command the prices you deserve ... if you feel infuriated at piles of bricks and elephant dung filling museum galleries, while you can only pay to have space allotted to you for an evening in a great museum like this ... don't despair.
Your time is coming. You have done humanity a service of such magnitude, that sadly you will never be properly repaid. Keep painting your great portraits, and when you can find the time, paint what your heart tells you to paint, too.
The modern world is a boiling cauldron of all sorts of great and absurd ideas, feelings, pathos, pathologies, psycho pathologies, humiliation, and dehumanizing ideas ... and yet ... yet even beauty, too, is still here amongst us, here in this hall and throughout the world, and her manifestations in modern times have been insufficiently expressed. So, find her in your homes, find her in the streets, find her in your communities and in nature, and especially, find her in each other ... and save her ... save her ... protect and cherish her ... and exalt her back to her rightful place ... a place of supreme prominence, and bring her back into these our greatest institutions and our highest citadels of society and culture.
Thank you.
So inspiring.
Here’s one of my lost paintings. Destroyed by the “new” America that exists for the few; the oligarchy that controls all.
I am not a master, but I like to believe that I could have been one. The idea that the oligarchy controlled government can destroy your life’s work, your purposes, and everything that you have created so that they can implement some kind of selfish utopia is distrubing. It show that they are, and the systems that they have created, are pure psychopaths and psychopathic in nature.
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Psychopathic systems do not lend longevity to society. Instead they offer a means of destruction.
I aruge that the oligarchy can only continue upon this path that they tred upon by converting everyone to adopt their methodology, or to convert everyone into mindless, emotionless followers.
How about other examples…
"In retrospect, this seems a horrific thing to have done."
Ya. Think?
There are so many examples of great works of art that used to be owned by museums for public enjoyment, but that have been sold off to private collectors. And while some have been repurchased by other museums and are now available for viewing, the battle to obtain these “lost works” was contentious in many cases. We are , and should consider ourselves, to be lucky. Lucky that the oligarchy has allowed us to be able to view these works on the internet. Lucky to be able to recognize that they existed and still exist, and lucky that they were not burned in bonfires of progressive revisionism and fashion.
Examples of artworks that have been sold off…
Let’s look at just some of the art; the paintings that the museums around the world has sold off for the price of a cup of coffee…
Constant Afternoon Langour by Jean-Joseph Constant (Benjamin-Constant) (1845-1902, France)
And…
Bramley Frank – A Hopeless Dawn
And…
Herbert Draper – Lament for Icarus
Draper's vision of Icarus, crashed and dead on the rocks, stays true to the myth and yet has a drama to it that is definitely the making of a more contemporary mind. Nearly 50% of the canvas is covered by the image of Icarus' gigantic, broken, dark wings. The wings are so huge they are cut off at the top left of the canvas and at the middle right.
This makes the image seem even larger than life. It is as if we look through a window that is not large enough to hold the view. It is possible that the advent of the camera influenced the artist's eye in choosing this unusual perspective.
But the impact is successful, dramatic and highly emotional because of the skill in which the wings are painted.
They are so huge, in fact, that they make shadows on much of what remains of the canvas. They are so immense and yet they have failed poor Icarus so completely.
Icarus lies dead; a darkening figure still strapped to the useless wings, as a sorrowful and sensual nymph pulls his upper torso gentle towards her. Two other nymphs look on woefully. The canvas creates a heart breaking darkness with small splashes of gold light falling on the nymphs and the far rock wall. The golden light is reminiscent of the hope for freedom that Dadelus had once had for his son Icarus.
All life, beautiful or not, comes to an end, and all our grand strivings lead us to the same end. The power in this work of art is the sense of loss it projects. If you read the text in the catalogue, it mentions other layers of possible meaning. Simon Toll makes note that Draper's father died shortly before this painting was executed and he suggests that this painting "may also be a private statement of loss." The text also suggests that the painting may be a tribute to the artist Leighton, who died two years earlier.
-ARC
And…
Lady Godiva by Lefevbre Claude Gheerbrant – Musée de Picardie
Examples of “art” that have been purchased by museums afterwards…
Let’s have a look at the kinds of art that the museums (all over the world) purchased once they discarded the “old” and “outmoded” art…
White Fire I by Barnett Newman
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Would you believe that this ridiculous-looking canvas was sold for $3.8 million? This abstract painting, which is comprised of two straight lines, was created in 1954. Barnett is an American artist who is a strong follower of abstract expressionism.
Abstract Expressionism, broad movement in American painting that became a dominant trend in Western painting during the 1950s. The movement comprised many styles varying in both technique and quality of expression. Artists include Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler.
-Abstract Expressionism | Definition
This painting, which follows the color field painting style, is one of the few pieces that he has created during his lifetime. Barnett is considered the greatest color field painters of his time. That is the reason why this expensive painting is very popular now.
Or how about a museum considering this to be a worthwhile addition…
Royal Red and Blue
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This is one of the most basic paintings to date but don’t let its simplicity fool you. It was sold for a whopping $75.1 million during a Sotheby’s auction in November of 2012.
The painter, Mark Rothko, is a known abstract expressionist.
This painting date back 1954 and basically has three blocks of color – and that’s it. Rothko is an American painter with Russian and Jewish Roots. He is known for the color field method style of painting which was popular in New York during the 50’s.
Summary of Color Field Painting
Color Field Painting is a tendency within Abstract Expressionism, distinct from gestural abstraction, or Action Painting. It was pioneered in the late 1940s by Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still, who were all independently searching for a style of abstraction that might provide a modern, mythic art and express a yearning for transcendence and the infinite.
To achieve this they abandoned all suggestions of figuration and instead exploited the expressive power of color by deploying it in large fields that might envelope the viewer when seen at close quarters. Their work inspired much Post-painterly abstraction, particularly that of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski, though for later color field painters, matters of form tended to be more important than mythic content.
-The Art Story
The idea is to paint the canvas with large blocks of solid colors giving off an impression of an uneven surface and a flat plane. This painting pretty much depicts that, although very simplistic that you can imagine a toddler painting this art piece, it has a surprisingly outrageous value.
Interchange
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To a lot of people, this can be viewed as a real abstract painting with a lot of character in it. There is no doubt about it- but to be valued at $300 million sparks a different kind of conversation.
As with all abstract art, most people can claim they can paint something similar, but in fact, there is more to this painting that meets the eye.
William de Kooning is a New York painter, but is originally from Netherlands. This artwork is an example of ‘action painting’ which is a technique where the artist spontaneously splash paint on canvas versus the traditional painting style that is meticulous and takes time to complete.
Action painting, direct, instinctual, and highly dynamic kind of art that involves the spontaneous application of vigorous, sweeping brushstrokes and the chance effects of dripping and spilling paint onto the canvas. The term was coined by the American art critic Harold Rosenberg to characterize the work of a group of American Abstract Expressionists who utilized the method from about 1950.
-Action painting | art | Britannica
It is somehow a form of physical art.
This technique is made popular during the 40’s to 60’s and has coined the concept of abstract expressionism. This painting was made in 1955 and is now housed in the private collection of Kenneth C. Griffin.
Onement VI
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This is one of the most boring paintings that you will ever see but you will be surprised to know that this blue colored canvas sold for over $43 million in 2013. It is one of the works of Barnett Newman, a known abstract expressionist. He has done a number of similar paintings such as this and has an entire “Onement” collection, which is basically composed of one dominant color and a division (what he calls a ‘zip’) right smacked in the middle. The zip is used to define the space of his paintings. This New York artist was born in 1905 and has made a following because of his color field art.
Birthday by Paul Klee
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If you don’t know better, you might mistake this for a preschooler’s art project. This is actually a painting from the famed painter Paul Klee. It starts off with an odd old maroon color with asymmetrical and disorganized images of triangles and squares, and oh yes, an odd orange circle in off center. One can maybe make this out as a series of houses or even a castle- but, hey, what do we know. Paul Klee is a Swiss-German painter born in 1879. Most of his works are now housed in varied museums all over the globe.
Blue Rectangle Over The Red Beam
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If you hear the word ‘painting’ you might be imagining something with a lot of imagination, color gradients and creative imagery. This painting from Kazimir Malevich is far from being complicated or deep but it is one of the most significant work of art to date.
Malevich is actually the pioneer of geometric abstraction- that is pretty obvious with his love of squares and rectangles.
Geometric abstraction, through the Cubist process of purifying art of the vestiges of visual reality, focused on the inherent two-dimensional features of painting. This process of evolving a purely pictorial reality built of elemental geometric forms assumed different stylistic expressions in various European countries and in Russia.
-Geometric Abstraction | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of ...
This artwork was sold in Sotheby’s auction for a staggering $60 million and is the most expensive piece of Russian artwork of all time.
No. 5, 1948
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To the naked eye, this painting may simply look like a piece of stringy lines splashed around using a yarn, just like those kindergarten art projects kids use to make. This is an artwork done by Jackson Pollock in the year 1948. It is quite a large piece of artwork measuring 8 ft by 4 ft. He is a known abstract expressionist.
This painting in fibreboard uses brown, yellow, white and grey paint. It is often tagged as a dense bird’s nest because of the way the strips of paint overlap each other. This artwork was reported to be sold for over $140 million to a private collector.
Black Square
This oil painting was done in oil on linen and is now housed at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. As you would have realized by now, the painting is a mere black square. But there is a lot of philosophy and history behind this seemingly plain and dull painting. This piece is dubbed as the ‘zero point of painting’ and a combination of various art methods including futurism and constructivism. This is one of the prime works of Kazimir Malevich, who is the leader in Russian avant-garde art and has several pieces of similar works under this collection. He described this artwork as ‘liberated nothing’.
Conclusion(s)
One afternoon I toured an art museum while waiting for my husband to finish a business meeting.I was looking forward to a quiet view of the art works.
A young couple viewing the paintings ahead of me chatted nonstop between themselves.I watched them a moment and decided the wife was doing all the talk.I admired the husband's patience for putting up with her continuous talk.Distracted by their noise,I moved on.
I met with them several times as I moved through the different rooms of art.Each time I heard her constant burst of words,I moved away quickly.
I was standing at the counter of the museum gift shop making a purchase when the couple came near to the exit.Before they left,the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a white object.He extended it into a long stick and then tapped his way into the coatroom to get his wife's jacket.
"He's a brave man."The clerk at the counter said,"Most of us would give up if wewere blinded at such a young age.During his recovery he made a promise that his life wouldn't change.So ,as before,he and his wife come in whenever there's a new art show."
"But what dose he get out of the art?"I asked,"He can't see."
"Can't see?You're wrong.He sees a lot.More than you or I do."The clerk said,"His wife describes each painting so he can see it in his head."
I learned something about patience,courage and love that day.I saw the patience of a young wife describing paintings to a person without sight and the courage of a husband who would not allow blindness to change his life.And I saw the love shared by two people as I watched this couple walk away hand in hand.
-MoFanGe
If you were in the role of the wife (as described above – explaining each painting to her husband), how would you go about describing the more traditional artworks that the museums have sold off? How long would each painting take to describe?
Likewise, how would you describe the new progressive artworks? How long do you think it would take to describe them?
Perhaps this simple measurement, this idea in how to describe the impressions of art that is presented to you, is an element of it’s value and worth. Not that of the amount of currency that is used to purchase it, but rather the emotions and feelings that are generated upon viewing it.
I have argued HERE that the oligarchy is populated with psychopathic individuals that not only are unable to emote, but are unable to feel or express real emotions. Instead they only mimic actions and facial expressions to manipulat others to follow and believe them. As such, these psychopathic individuals see no value in art. Their only value is how they can be used as an element in financial exchange and commerce.
And thus, the study of art, is the study of the oligarchy that rules us.
The oligarchy that rules 99.9% of humans have evolved into a new KIND of human.
They are in possession of a service-for-self sentience, and are extremely good at manipulation, creation and generation of money and currency, as well as the accusition of power as well as the control over others. They are weak in the ability to express emotions and cannot emote. Medically they are known as psychopathic personalities and a healthy society cannot afford to have individuals of this disposition near any positions of power.
As they see no value in the art like “normal” people, they have subverted the institutions that they control; the libraries, the museums, and the art world into something that they understand. They understand money and using objects as trade mediums. They do not conderstand or emote the value of art.
And finally…
This movement towards progressive revisionism can only originate from those that are unable to understand art. They have no idea or concept of evoked emotion via visual stimulation. It is alien to them. They couldn’t understand it in any of it’s myrid forms. Thus…
Indeed, thus…
The entire progressive revisionism movement from art, to culture to society is driven from the oligarchy downward. It is their efforts to redraw the world into a “utopia” that they can understand and embrace.
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Phew! Another title that you will not find anywhere else in your “Google” searches.
"Everything has an end, so do empires, both the United States and the Soviet Union. Washington has outrageously favoured a small camarilla of ultra-billionaires. Now it has to face its old demons, prepare for secession and civil war..."
"...Part of the power has already tipped democratic institutions into the hands of a few ultra-billionaires. The United States that we knew no longer exists. Their agony has begun."
-https://www.voltairenet.org/article211982.html
The following is a most excellent article. And the commentary by MM is just pure gold, if I must say so myself. It’s a long read, but well worth it. In it, it compares the two forms of capitalism; [1] a Chinese form, and [2] an American form. Then argues that the American form is at an advanced state of development, whereas the Chinese form is in an infantile stage.
According to the thought process, industrial capitalism – earning money through making things is an early step that growing nations adopt. While earning money through taxation, rent, regulation and interest is a late-stage step that advanced nations evolve into.
The discussion behind all this is interesting. It starts off great and then kind of meanders about, but the content is very curious. And we provide this article here for people to consider. In all of it’s imperfections and curiosities.
Personally, I find the late-stage step; capitalism through non-physical activities to be a wasteful endeavor and a cancer upon society. As such, it is the major driver behind all the problems that the United States is currently dealing with at this moment. Please kindly read the article below. It is a full reprint, with little editing and all credit to the author.
The Consequences of Moving from Industrial to Financial Capitalism
By Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar
January 17, 2021 “Information Clearing House” – Michael Hudson: Well, I’m honored to be here on the same show with Pepe and discuss our mutual concern. And I think you have to frame the whole issue that China is thriving, and the West has reached the end of the whole 75-year expansion it had since 1945.
So, there was an illusion that America is de-industrializing because of competition from China. And the reality is there is no way that America can re-industrialize and regain its export markets with the way that it’s organized today, financialized and privatized and if China didn’t exist. You’d still have the Rust Belt rusting out. You’d still have American industry not being able to compete abroad simply because the cost structure is so high in the United States.
The wealth is no longer made here by industrializing. It’s made financially, mainly by making capital gains. Rising prices for real estate or for stocks and for bonds. In the last nine months, since the coronavirus came here, the top 1 percent of the U.S. economy grew by $1 trillion. It’s been a windfall for the 1 percent. The stock market is way up, the bond market is up, the real estate market is up while the rest of the economy is going down. Despite the tariffs that Trump put on, Chinese imports, trade with China is going up because we’re just not producing materials.
America doesn’t make its own shoes. It doesn’t make some nuts and bolts or fasteners, it doesn’t make industrial things anymore because if money is to be made off an industrial company it’s to buy and sell the company, not to make loans to increase the company’s production. New York City, where I live, used to be an industrial city and, the industrial buildings, the mercantile buildings have all been gentrified into high-priced real estate and the result is that Americans have to pay so much money on education, rent, medical care that if they got all of their physical needs, their food, their clothing, all the goods and services for nothing, they still couldn’t compete with foreign labor because of all of the costs that they have to pay that are essentially called rent-seeking.
America
Housing in the United States now absorbs about 40 percent of the average worker’s paycheck. There’s 15 percent taken off the top of paychecks for pensions, Social Security and for Medicare. Further medical insurance adds more to the paycheck, income taxes and sales taxes add about another 10 percent. Then you have student loans and bank debt. So basically, the American worker can only spend about one third of his or her income on buying the goods and services they produce. All the rest goes into the FIRE sector — the finance, insurance and real estate sector — and other monopolies.
And essentially, we became what’s called a rent-seeking economy, not a productive economy. So, when people in Washington talk about American capitalism versus Chinese socialism this is confusing the issue. What kind of capitalism are we talking about?
America used to have industrial capitalism in the 19th century. That’s how it got richer originally but now it’s moved away from industrial capitalism towards finance capitalism. And what that means is that essentially the mixed economy that made America rich — where the government would invest in education and infrastructure and transportation and provide these at low costs so that the employers didn’t have to pay labor to afford high costs — all of this has been transformed over the last hundred years.
And we’ve moved away from the whole ethic of what was industrial capitalism. Before, the idea of capitalism in the 19th century from Adam Smith to Ricardo, to John Stuart Mill to Marx was very clear and Marx stated it quite clearly; capitalism was revolutionary. It was to get rid of the landlord class. It was to get rid of the rentier class. It was to get rid of the banking class essentially, and just bear all the costs that were unnecessary for production, because how did England and America and Germany gain their markets?
They gained their markets basically by the government picking up a lot of the costs of the economy. The government in America provided low-cost education, not student debt. It provided transportation at subsidized prices. It provided basic infrastructure at low cost. And so, government infrastructure was considered a fourth factor of production.
And if you read what the business schools in the late 19th century taught like Simon Patten at the Wharton School, it’s very much like socialism. In fact, it’s very much like what China is doing. And in fact, China is following in the last 30 or 40 years pretty much the same way of getting rich that America followed.
It had its government fund basic infrastructure. It provides low-cost education. It invests in high-speed railroads and airports, in the building of cities. So, the government bears most of the costs and, that means that employers don’t have to pay workers enough to pay a student loan debt. They don’t have to pay workers enough to pay enormous rent such as you have in the United States. They don’t have to pay workers to save for a pension fund, to pay the pension later on. And most of all the Chinese economy doesn’t really have to pay a banking class because banking is the most important public utility of all. Banking is what China has kept in the hands of government and Chinese banks don’t lend for the same reasons that American banks lend.
(When I said that China can pay lower wages than the U.S., what I meant was that China provides as public services many things that American workers have to pay out of their own pockets – such as health care, free education, subsidized education, and above all, much lower debt service.
When workers have to go into debt in order to live, they need much higher wages to keep solvent. When they have to pay for their own health insurance, they have to earn more. The same is true of education and student debt. So much of what Americans seem to be earning — more than workers in other countries — goes right through their hands to the FIRE sector. So, what seems to be “low wages” in China go a lot further than higher wages in the United States.)
Eighty percent of American bank loans are mortgage loans to real estate and the effect of loosening loan standards and increasing the market for real estate is to push up the cost of living, push up the cost of housing. So, Americans have to pay more and more money for their housing whether they’re renters or they’re buyers, in which case the rent is for paying mortgage interest.
They only lend against collateral that’s already in place because they won’t make a loan if it’s not backed by collateral. Well, China creates money through its public banks to create capital, to create the means of production. So, you have a diametric opposite philosophy of how to develop between the United States and China.
The United States has decided not to gain wealth by actually investing in means of production and producing goods and services, but in financial ways. China is gaining wealth the old-fashioned way, by producing it. And whether you call this, industrial capitalism or a state capitalism or a state socialism or Marxism, it basically follows the same logic of real economics, the real economy, not the financial overhead. So, you have China operating as a real economy, increasing its production, becoming the workshop of the world as England used to be called and America trying to draw in foreign resources, live off of foreign resources, live by trying to make money by investing in the Chinese stock market or now, moving investment banks into China and making loans to China not actual industrial capitalism ways.
So, you could say that America has gone beyond industrial capitalism, and they call it the post-industrial society, but you could call it the neo-feudal society. You could call it the neo-rentier society, or you could call it debt peonage but it’s not industrial capitalism.
And in that sense, there’s no rivalry between China and America. These are different systems going their own way and I better let Pepe pick it up from there.
Pepe Escobar: Okay. Thank you, Michael, this is brilliant. And you did it in less than 15 minutes. You told the whole story in 15 minutes. Well, my journalistic instinct is immediately to start questions to Michael. So, this is exactly what I’m gonna do now. I think it is much better to basically illustrate some points of what Michael just said, comparing the American system, which is finance capitalism essentially, with industrial capitalism that is in effect in China. Let me try to start with a very concrete and straight to the point question, Michael.
Okay. let’s says that more or less, if we want to summarize it, basically they try to tax the nonproductive rentier class. So, this would be the Chinese way to distribute wealth, right? Sifting through the Chinese economic literature, there is a very interesting concept, which is relatively new (correct me if I am wrong, Michael) in China, which they call stable investment. So stable investment, according to the Chinese would be to issue special bonds as extra capital in fact, to be invested in infrastructure building all across China, and they choose these projects in what they call weak areas and weak links. So probably in some of the inner provinces, or probably in some parts of Tibet or Xinjiang for instance. So, this is a way to invest in the real economy and in real government investment projects.
Right? So, my question in fact, is does this system create extra local debt, coming directly from this financing from Beijing? Is this a good recipe for sustainable development, the Chinese way and the recipe that they could expand to other parts of the Global South?
Michael: Well, this is a big problem that they’re discussing right now. The localities, especially rural China, (and China is still largely rural) only cover about half of their working budget from taxation. So, they have a problem. How are they going to get the balance of the money? Well, there is no official revenue sharing between the federal government and its state banks and the localities.
So, the localities can’t simply go to central government and say, give us more money. The government lets the localities be very independent. And it is sort of the “let a hundred flowers bloom” concept. And so, they’ve let each locality just go the long way, but the localities have run a big deficit.
What do they do? Well in the United States they would issue bonds on which New York is about to default. But in China, the easiest way for the localities to make money, is unfortunately they will do something like Chicago did. They will sell their tax rights for the next 75 years for current money now.
So, a real estate developer will come in and say; look we will give you the next 75 years of tax on this land, because we want to build projects on this (a set of buildings). So, what this means is that now the cities have given away all their source of rent.
Let me show you the problem by what Indiana and Chicago did. Chicago also was very much like China’s countryside cities. So, it sold parking meters and its sidewalks to a whole series of Wall Street investors, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Fund for seventy-five years. And that meant that for 75 years, this Wall Street consortium got to control the parking meters.
So, they put up the parking meters all over Chicago, raised the price of parking, raised the cost of driving to Chicago. And if Chicago would have a parade and interrupt parking, then Chicago has to pay the Abu Dhabi fund and Wall Street company what it would have made anyway. And this became such an awful disaster that finally Wall Street had to reverse the deal and undo it because it was giving privatization a bad name here. The same thing happened in Indiana.
Indiana was running a deficit and it decided to sell its roads to a Wall Street investment firm to make a toll road. The toll on the Indiana turnpike was so high that drivers began to take over the side roads. That’s the problem if you sell future tax revenues in advance.
Now what China and the localities there are discussing is that we’ve already given the real estate tax at very low estimates to the commercial developers, so what do we do? Well, I’ve given them my advice. I’m a professor of economics at the Peking University, School of Marxist studies and I’ve had discussions with the Central Committee. I also have an official position at Wuhan University. There, we’re discussing how China can put an added tax for all of the valuable land, that’s gone up. How can it be done to let the cities collect this tax? Our claim is that the cities, in selling these tax rights for 75 years, have sold what in Britain would be called ground rent (i.e. what’s paid to the landed aristocracy).
Over and above that there’s the market rent. So, China should pass a market-rent tax over and above the ground rent tax to reflect the current value. And there they’re thinking of, well, do we say that this is a capital gain on the land? Well, it’s not really a capital gain until you sell the land, but it’s value. It’s the valuation of the capital. And they’re looking at whether they should just say this is the market rent tax over and above the flat tax that has been paid in advance, or it’s a land tax on the capital gain for land.
Now, all of this requires that there be a land map of the whole country. And they are just beginning to create such a land map as a basis for how you calculate how much the rent there is.
What I found in China is something very strange. A few years ago, in Beijing, they had the first, International Marxist conference where I was the main speaker and I was talking about Marx’s discussion of the history of rent theory in Volume II and Volume III of Capital where Marx discusses all of the classical economics that led up to his view; Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, John Stuart Mill, and Marx’s theory of surplus value was really the first history of economic thought that was written, although it wasn’t published until after he died. Well, you could see that there was a little bit of discomfort with some of the Marxists at the conference. And so, they invited for the next time my colleague David Harvey to come and talk about Marxism in the West.
Well, David gave both the leading and the closing speech of the conference and said, you’ve got to go beyond volume I of Capital. Volume I was what Marx wrote as his addition to classical economics, saying that there was exploitation in industrial employment of labor as well as rent seeking and then he said, now that I’ve done my introduction here, let me talk about how capitalism works in Volumes II and III. Volumes II and III are all about rent and finance and David Harvey has published a book on Volume III of Capital and his message to Peking University and the second Marxist conference was – you’ve got to read Volume II, and III.
Well, you can see that, there’s a discussion now over what is Marxism and a friend and colleague at PKU said Marxism is a Chinese word; It’s the Chinese word for politics. That made everything clear to me. Now I get it! I’ve been asked by the Academy of Social Sciences in China to create a syllabus of the history of rent theory and value theory. And essentially in order to have an idea of how you calculate rent, how do you make a national income analysis where you show rent, you have to have a theory of value and price and rent is the excess of price over the actual cost value. Well, for that you need a concept of cost of production and that’s what classical economics is all about. Post-classical economics denied all of this. The whole idea of classical economics is that not all income is earned.
Landlords don’t earn their income for making rent in their sleep as John Stuart Mill said. Banks don’t earn their income by just sitting there and letting debts accrue and interest compounding and doubling. The classical economists separated actual unearned income from the production and consumption economy.
Well, around the late 19th century in America, you had economists fighting against not only Marx, but also even against Henry George, who at that time, was urging a land tax in New York. And so, at Columbia University, John Bates Clark developed a whole theory that everybody earns whatever they can get. That there was no such thing as unearned income and that has become the basis for American national income statistics and thought ever since. So, if you look at today’s GDP figures for the United States, they have a figure for 8 percent of the GDP for the homeowners’ rent. But homeowners wouldn’t pay themselves if they had to rent the apartment to themselves, then you’ll have interest at about 12 percent of GDP.
And I thought, well how can interest be so steady? What happens to all of the late fees; that 29 percent that credit card companies charge? I called up the national income people in Washington, when I was there. And they said well, late fees and penalties are considered financial services.
And so, this is what you call a service economy. Well, there’s no service in charging a late fee, but they add all of the late fees. When people can’t pay their debts and they owe more and more, all of that is considered an addition to GDP. When housing becomes more expensive and prices American labor out of the market, that’s called an increase in GDP.
This is not how a country that wants to develop is going to create a national income account. So, there’s a long discussion in China about, just to answer your question, how do you create an account to distinguish between what’s the necessary cost to production and what’s an unnecessary production cost and how do we avoid doing what the United States did.
So again, no rivalry.
The United States is an object lesson for China on what to avoid, not only in industrializing the economy, but in creating a picture of the economy as if everybody earns everything and there’s no exploitation, no earned income, nobody makes money in their sleep and there’s no 1 percent.
Well, that’s what’s really at issue and why the whole world is splitting apart as you and I are discussing in what we’re writing.
Pepe: Thank you, Michael. Thank you very much. So just to sum it all up, can we say that Beijing’s strategy is to save especially provincial areas from leasing their land, their infrastructure for 60 years or 75 years? As you just mentioned, can we say that the fulcrum of their national strategy is what you define as the market rent tax? Is this the No. 1 mechanism that they are developing?
Michael: Ideally, they want to keep rents as low as possible because rent is a cost of living and a cost of doing business. They don’t have banks that are lending to inflate the real estate market.
However, in almost every Western country — the U.S., Germany England — the value of stocks and bonds and the value of real estate is just about exactly the same. But for China, the value of real estate is way, way larger than the value of stocks.
And the reason is not because the Chinese Central bank, the Bank of China lends for real estate; it’s because they lend to intermediaries and the intermediaries have financed a lot of housing purchases in China. And, this is really the problem for if they levy a land tax, then you’re going to make a lot of these financial intermediaries go bust.
That’s what I’m advocating, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. These financial intermediaries shouldn’t exist, and this same issue came up in 2009 in the United States. You had the leading American bank being the most crooked and internally corrupt bank in the country, Citibank making junk mortgage, and it was broke.
Its entire net worth was wiped out as a result of its fraudulent junk mortgages.
Well, Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) wanted to close it down and take it over. Essentially that would have made it into a public bank and that would be a wonderful thing. She said, look Citibank shouldn’t be doing what it’s doing. And she wrote all this up in an autobiography. And, she was overruled by President Obama and Tim Geithner saying, but wait a minute, those are our campaign contributors. So, they were loyal to the campaign contributors, but not the voters; and they didn’t close Citibank down.
And the result is that the Federal Reserve ended up creating about $7 trillion of quantitative easing to bail out the banks. The homeowners weren’t bailed out. Ten million American families lost their homes as a result of junk mortgages in excess of what the property was actually worth.
All of this was left on the books, foreclosed and sold to a private capital companies like Blackstone. And the result is that home ownership in America declined from 68 percent of the population down to about 61 percent. Well, right where the Obama administration left off, you’re about to have the Biden administration begin in January with an estimated 5 million Americans losing their homes.
Decline in home ownership in the United States prior to the Coronavirus.
They’re going to be evicted because they’ve been unemployed during the pandemic. They’ve been working in restaurants or gyms or other industries that have been shut down because of the pandemic. They’re going to be evicted and many homeowners and, low-income homeowners have been unable to pay their mortgages.
There’s going to be a wave of foreclosures. The question is, who’s going to bear the cost? Should it be 15 million American families who lose their homes just so the banks won’t lose money? Or should we let the banks that have made all of the growth since 2008? Ninety five percent of American GDP of the population has seen its wealth go down. All the wealth has been accumulating for the 5 percent in statistics. Now the question is should this 5 percent that’s got all the wealth lose or should the 95 percent lose?
The Biden administration says the 95 percent should lose basically. And you’re going to see a wave of closures so that the question in China should be that, these intermediate banks (they’re not really banks they are sort of like payday loan lenders), should they come in and, bear the loss or should Chinese localities and the people bear the loss?
Somebody has to lose when you’re charging, you’re collecting the land’s rent that was paid to the creditors, and either the creditors have to lose or, the tax collector loses and that’s the conflict that exists in every society of the world today. And, in the West, the idea is the tax collectors should lose and whatever the tax collector relinquishes should be free for the banks to collect.
In China obviously, they don’t want that to happen and they don’t want to see a financial class developing along US lines.
Pepe: Michael, there’s a quick question in all this, which is the official position by Beijing in terms of helping the localities. Their official position is that there won’t be any bailouts of local debt. How do they plan to do that?
Michael: What they’re discussing, how are you not going to do it? They think they sort of let localities go their own way. And they think, well you know which ones are going to succeed, and which ones aren’t, they didn’t want to have a one-size-fits all central planning. They wanted to have flexibility. Well, now they have flexibility. And when you have many different “let a hundred flowers bloom,” not all the flowers are going to bloom at the same rate.
And the question is, if they don’t bail out the cities, how are the cities going to operate? Certainly, China has never let markets steer the economy, the government steers the markets. That’s what socialism is as opposed to finance capitalism. So, the question is, you can let localities go broke and yet you’re not going to destroy any of the physical assets of the localities, and all of this is going to be in place. The question is how are you going to arrange the flow of income to all of these roads and buildings and land that’s in place? How do you create a system?
Essentially, they’re saying well, if we’re industrial engineers, how do we just plan things? Forget credit, forget property claims, forget the rentier claims. How are we just going to design an economy that operates most efficiently? And that’s what they’re working on now to resolve this situation because it’s gotten fairly critical.
Pepe: Yes, especially in the countryside. Well, I think, a very good metaphor in terms of comparing both systems are investment in infrastructure. You travel to China a lot so, you’ve seen. You’ll travel through high-speed rail. You’ll see those fantastic airports, in Pudong or the new airport in Beijing. And then you’ll take the Acela to go from Washington to New York City, which is something that I used to do years ago. And the comparison is striking. Isn’t it?
Chinese high speed rail.
Or if you go to France, for instance, when France started development of the TGV, which in terms of a national infrastructure network, is one of the best networks on the planet. And the French started doing this 30 years ago, even more. Is there……, it’s not in terms of way out, but if we analyze the minutia, it’s obvious that following the American finance utilization system, we could never have something remotely similar happening in United States in terms of building infrastructure.
So, do you see any realistic bypass mechanism in terms of improving American infrastructure, especially in the big cities?
Michael: No, and there are two reasons for that. No. 1, let’s take a look at the long-term railroads. The railroads go through the center of town or even in the countryside, all along the railroads, the railroads brought business and all the businesses had been located as close to the railroad tracks as they could. Factories with sightings off the railroad, hotels and especially right through the middle of town where you have the railway gates going up and down. In order to make a high-speed rail as in China, you need a dedicated roadway without trucks and cars, imagine a car going through a railway gate at 350 miles an hour.
Railroad station in China.
So, when I would go from Beijing to Tianjin, here’s the high-speed rail, there’s one highway on one side, one highway on the other side. There’ll be underpasses. But there it goes straight now.
How can you suppose you would have a straight Acela line from Washington up to Boston when all along the line, there’s all this real estate right along the line that has been built up? There’s no way you can get a dedicated roadway without having to tear down all of this real estate that’s on either side and the cost of making the current owners whole would be prohibitive. And anywhere you would go, that’s not in the center of the city, you would also have to have the problem that there’s already private property there.
And there’s no legal, constitutional way for such a physical investment to be made. China was able to make this investment because it was still largely rural. It wasn’t as built up along the railways. It didn’t have any particular area that was built up right where the railroad already was.
So certainly, any high-speed rail could not go where the current railways would be, and they’d have to go on somebody’s land. And, there’s also, what do you do if you want to get to New York and Long Island from New Jersey?
Sixty years ago, when I went into Wall Street, the cost of getting and transporting goods from California to Newark, New Jersey, was as large as from Newark right across the Hudson River to New York, not only because of the mafia and control of the local labor unions, but because of the tunnels.
Right now, the tunnels from New Jersey to New York are broke, they are leaking, the subways in New York City, which continually break down because there was a hurricane a few years ago and the switches were made in the 1940s. The switches are 80 years old. They had water damage and the trains have to go at a crawl. But the city and state, because it is not collecting the real estate tax and other taxes and because ridership fell on the subways to about 20 percent, the city’s broke. They’re talking about 70 percent of city services being cut back. They’re talking about cutting back the subways to 40 percent capacity, meaning everybody will have to get in — when there’s still a virus and not many people are wearing masks, and there was no means of enforcing masks here.
So, there’s no way that you can rebuild the infrastructure because, for one thing the banking system here has subsidized for a hundred years junk economics saying you have to balance the budget. If the government creates credit it’s inflationary as if when banks create credit, it’s not inflationary. Well, the monetary effect is the same, no matter who creates the money. And so, Biden has already said that President Trump ran a big deficit, we’re going to run a bunch of surpluses or a budget balance. And he was advocating that all along.
Essentially Biden is saying we have to increase unemployment by 20 percent, lower wages by 20 percent, shrink the economy by about 10 percent in order to, in order for the banks not to lose money.
And, we’re going to privatize but we are going to do it by selling the hospitals, the schools, the parks, the transportation to finance, to Wall Street finance capital groups. And so, you can imagine what’s going to happen if the Wall Street groups buy the infrastructure.
They’ll do what happened to Chicago when it sold all the parking meters, they’ll say, OK, instead of 25 cents an hour, it’s now charged $3 an hour. Instead of a $2 for the subway, let’s make it $8.
You’re going to price the American economy even further out of business because they say that public investment is socialism. Well, it’s not socialism. It’s industrial capitalism. It’s industrialization, that’s basic economics. The idea of what, and how an economy works is so twisted academically that it’s the antithesis of what Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill and Marx all talked about. For them a free- market economy was an economy free of rentiers. Free of rent, it didn’t have any rent seeking. But now for the Americans, a free-market economy is free for the rentiers, free for the landlord, free for the banks to make a killing. And that is basically the class war back in business with a vengeance. That blocks and is preventing any kind infrastructure recovery. I don’t see how it can possibly take place.
Pepe: Well, based on what you just described, there is a process of turning the United States into a giant Brazil. In fact, this is what the Brazilian Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Pinochetista, as you know Michael, has been doing with the Brazilian economy for the past two years, privatizing everything and selling everything to big Brazilian interests and with lots of Wall Street interests involved as well. So, this is a recipe that goes all across the Global South as well. And it’s fully copied all across the Global South with no way out now.
Michael: Yes, and this is promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And when I was brought down to Brazil to meet with the council of economic advisers under Lula, [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil], they said, well the whole problem is that Lula’s been obliged to let the banks do the planning.
So, basically free markets and libertarianism is adopting central planning, but with central planning by the banks. America is a much more centrally planned economy than China. China is letting a hundred flowers bloom; America has concentrated the planning and the resource allocation in Wall Street. And that’s the central planning that is much more corrosive than any government planning, could be. Now the irony is that China’s sending its students to America to study economics. And, most of the Chinese I had talked to say, well we went to America to take economics courses because that gives us a prestige here in China.
I’m working now, with Chinese groups trying to develop a “reality economics” to be taught in China as different from American economics.
Pepe: Exactly, because of what they study at Beijing University, Renmin or Tsinghua
is not exactly what they would study in big American universities. Probably what they study in the U.S. is what not to do in China. When they go back to China, what they won’t be doing. It’s an object lesson for what to avoid.
Michael, I’d like to go back to what the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] had been discussing in the 2000s when Lula was still president of Brazil and many of his ideas deeply impressed, especially Hu Jintao at the time, which is bypassing the U.S. dollar. Well, at the moment obviously we’re still at 87 percent of international transactions still in U.S. dollars. So, we are very far away from it, but if you have a truly sovereign economy, which is the case of China, which we can say is the case of Russia to a certain extent and obviously in a completely different framework, Iran. Iran is a completely sovereign, independent economy from the West. The only way to try to develop different mechanisms to not fall into the rentier mind space would be to bypass the U.S. dollar.
Michael: Yes, for many reasons. For one thing the United States can simply print the dollars and lend to other countries and then say, now you have to pay us interest.
Well, Russia doesn’t need American dollars. It can print its own rubles to provide labor. There’s no need for a foreign currency at all for domestic spending, the only reason you would have to borrow a foreign currency is to balance your exchange rate, or to finance a trade deficit.
But China doesn’t have a trade deficit. And in fact, if China were to work to accept more dollars, Americans would love to buy into the Chinese market and make a profit there, but that would push up China’s exchange rate and that would make it more difficult for her to make its exports because the exchange rate would come up not because it’s exporting more but because it’s letting American dollars come in and push it up.
Well, fortunately, President Trump as if he works for the Chinese National Committee, said, look, we don’t want to really hurt China by pushing up its currency and we want to keep it competitive. So, I’m going to prevent American companies from lending money to China, I’m going to isolate it and so he’s helping them protect their economy. And in Russia he said, look Russia really needs to feed itself. And, there’s a real danger that when the Democrats come in, there are a lot of anti-Russians in the Biden administration.
They may go to war.
They may do to Russia what they tried to do to China in the ‘50s. Stop exporting food and grain. And only Canada was able to break the embargo. So, we’re going to impose sanctions on Russia. So immediately, what happened is Russia very quickly became the largest grain exporter in the world.
And instead of importing cheese from the Baltics, it created its own cheese industry.
So, Trump said look, I know that Russians followed the American idea of not having protective tariffs, they need protective tariffs. They’re not doing it. We’re going to help them out by just not importing from them and really helping them.
Pepe: Yeah. Michael, what do you think Black Rock wants from the Chinese? You know that they are making a few inroads at the highest levels? Of course, I’m sure you’re aware of that. And also, JP Morgan, Citybank, etc. What do they really want?
Michael: They’d like to be able to create dollars to begin to buy and make loans to real estate; let companies grow, let the real estate market grow and make capital gains.
The way people get wealthy today isn’t by making an income, it’s been by making a capital gain. Total returns are current income plus the capital gains. As for capital gains each year; the land value gains alone are larger than the whole GDP growth from year to year. So that’s where the money is, that’s where the wealth is. So, they are after speculative capital gains, they would like to push money into the Chinese stock market and real estate market. See the prices go up and then inflate the prices by buying in and then sell out at the high price. Pull the money out, get a capital gain and let the economy crash, I mean that’s the business plan.
Pepe: Exactly. But Beijing will never allow that.
Michael: Well, here’s the problem right now, they know that Biden is pushing militarily aggressive people in his cabinet. There’s one kind of overhead that China is really trying to avoid and that’s the military overhead because if you spend money on the military, you can’t spend it on the real economy.
They’re very worried about the military and they say, how do we deter the Biden administration from actually trying a military adventure in the South China Sea or elsewhere? They said well, fortunately America is multi-layered. They don’t think of America as a group. They realize there’s a layer and they say, who’s going to represent our interests?
Well, Blackstone and Wall Street are going to represent their interests.
Then I think one of the, Chinese officials last week gave a big speech on this very thing, saying look, our best hope in stopping America’s military adventurism in China is to have Wall Street acting as our support because after all, Wall Street is the main campaign contributor and the president works for the campaign contributors.
The politician works for the campaign contributors. They’re in it for the money! So fortunately, we have Wall Street on our side, we’ve got control of the political system and they’re not there to go to war so that helps explain why a month ago they let wholly-owned U.S. banks and bankers in. On the one hand, they don’t like the idea of somebody outside the government creating credit for reasons that the economy doesn’t need. If they needed it, the Bank of China would do it. They have no need for foreign currency to come in to make loans in domestic currency, out of China.
The only reason that they could do it is No. 1, it helps meet the World Trade Organization’s principles and, No. 2, especially during this formative few months of the Biden administration, it helps to have Wall Street saying; we can make a fortune in China, go easy on them and that essentially counters the military hawks in Washington.
Pepe: So, do you foresee a scenario when Black Rock starts wreaking havoc in the Shanghai stock exchange for instance?
Michael: It would love to do that. It would love to move things up and down. The money’s made by companies with the stock market going up and down; the zigzag. So of course, it wants to do a predatory zigzag. The question is whether China will impose a tax to stop this, all sorts of financial transactions. That’s what’s under discussion now. They know exactly what Black Rock wants to do because they have some very savvy billionaire Chinese advisers that are quite good. I can tell you stories, but I better not.
Pepe: Okay. If it’s not okay to tell it all, tell us part of the story then.
Michael: The American banks have been cultivating leading Chinese people by providing them enough money to make money here, that they think that, okay they will now try to make money in the same way in China and we can join in. It’s a conflict of systems again, between the finance capital system and industrial socialism. You don’t get any of this discussion in the U.S. press, which is why I read what you write because in the U.S. press, the neocons talk about the fake idea of Greek history and fake idea of the Thucydides’ problem of a country jealous of another country’s development.
There’s no jealousy between America and China.
They’re different, they have their own way. We are going to destroy them. And if you look at the analogy that the Americans draw —and this is how the Pentagon thinks — with the war between Athens and Sparta.
It’s hard to tell, which is which. Here you have Athens, a democracy backing other democracies and having the military support of the democracies and the military in these democracies all had to pay Athens protection money for the military support and that’s the money that Athens got to ostensibly support its navy and protection that built up all of the Athenian public buildings and everything else.
So, that’s a democracy exploiting its allies, to enrich itself via the military.
Then you have Sparta, which was funding all of the oligarchies, and it was helping the oligarchies overthrow democracies. Well, that was America too. So, America is both sides of the Thucydides war if the democracy is exploiting the fellow democracies and is the supporter of oligarchies in Brazil, Latin America, Africa and everyone else.
So, you could say the Thucydides problem was between two sides, two aspects of America and has nothing to do with China at all except, for the fact that the whole war was a war between economic systems. They’re acting as if somehow if only China did not export to us, we could be re-industrialized and somehow export to Europe and the Third World.
And as you and I have described, it’s over.
We painted ourselves into such a debt corner that without writing down the debts, we’re in the same position that the Eurozone is in. There’s so much money that goes to the creditors to the top 1 percent or 5 percent that there is no money for capital investment, there is no money for growth. And, since 1980 as you know, real wages in America have been stable. All the growth has been in property owners and predators and the FIRE sector, the rest of the economy is in stagnation.
And now the coronavirus has simply acted as a catalyst to make it very clear that the game is over; it’s time to move away from the homeowner economy to rentier economy, time for Blackstone to be the landlord. America wants to recreate the British landlord class and essentially what we’re seeing now is like the Norman invasion of England taking over the land and the infrastructure.
That’s what Blackstone would love to do in China.
Pepe: Wow. I’m afraid that they may have a lot of leeway by some members of the Beijing leadership now, because as you know very well, it’s not a consensus in the political arena.
Michael: We’re talking about Volume II and III of Capital.
Pepe: Exactly. But you know, you were talking about debt. Coming back to that, in fact I just checked this morning, apparently global debt as it stands today is $277 trillion, which is something like 365 percent of global GDP. What does that mean in practice?
Michael: Yeah, well fortunately this is discussed in the 19th century and there was a word for that — fictitious capital — it’s a debt that can’t be paid, but you’ll keep it on the books anyway. And every country has this. You could say the question now, and The Financial Times just had an article a few days ago that China’s claims on Third World countries on the Belt and Road Initiative is fictitious capital, because how can it collect?
Well, China’s already thought of that. It doesn’t want money. It wants the raw materials. It wants to be paid in real things. But a debt that can’t be paid, can only be paid either by foreclosing on the debtors or by writing down the debts and obviously a debt that can’t be paid won’t be paid.
And so, you have not only Marx using the word fictitious capital. At the other end of the spectrum, you had Henry George talking about fictive capital. In other words, these are property claims that have no real capital behind them. There’s no capital that makes profit. That’s just a property claim for payment or a rentier claim for payment.
So, the question is, can you make money somehow without having any production at all, without having wages, without having profits, without any capital? Can you just have asset grabbing and buying-and-selling assets? And as long as you have the Federal Reserve in America, come in, Trump’s $10 trillion Covid program gave $2 trillion to the population at large with these $1,200 checks, that my wife and I got, and $8 trillion all just to buy stocks and bonds.
None of this was to build infrastructure. None of this $8 trillion was to build a single factory. None of this 8 trillion was to employee a single worker. It was all just to support the prices of stocks and bonds, and to keep the illusion that the economy had not stopped growing. Well, it’s growing for the 5 percent. So, it’s all become fictitious. And if you look at the GDP as I said, it’s fictitious.
Pepe: And the most extraordinary thing is none of that is discussed in American media. There’s not a single word about what you would have been describing.
Michael: It’s not even discussed in academia. Our graduates at the university of Missouri at Kansas City, we’re all trained in Modern Monetary Theory. And as hired professors they have to be able to publish in the refereed journals and the refereed journals are all essentially controlled by the Chicago School. So, you have a censorship of the kind of ideas that we’re talking about. You can’t get it into the economic journals, so you can’t get it into the economics curriculum. So, where on earth are you going to get it? If you didn’t have the internet you wouldn’t be discussing at all. Most of my books sell mainly in China, more than in all the other countries put together so I can discuss these things there. I stopped publishing in orthodox journals so many years ago because it’s talking to the deaf.
Pepe: Absolutely. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about Russia, Michael? There is a raging, debate in Russia for many years now between let’s say the Eurasianists and the Atlanticists. It involves of course, economic policy under Putin, industrial capitalism Russian style. The Eurasianists basically say that the central problem with Russia is how the Russian central bank is basically affiliated with all the mechanisms that you know so well, that it is an Atlanticist Trojan Horse inside the Russian economy. How do you see it?
Michael: Russia was brainwashed by the West when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. First of all, the IMF announced in advance that there was a big meeting in Houston with the IMF and the World Bank. And the IMF published all of its report saying, first you don’t want inflation in Russia so let’s wipe out all of the Russian savings with hyperinflation, which they did. They then said, well now to cure the hyperinflation the Russian central bank needs a stable currency and you need a backup for the currency. You will need to back it with U.S. dollars.
So, from the early 1990s, as you know, labor was going unpaid. The Russian central bank could have created the rubles to pay the domestic labor and to keep the factories in place. But, the IMF advisers from Harvard said, no you’ll have to borrow U.S. dollars. I met with people from the Hermitage Fund and the Renaissance Fund and others.
We had meetings and I met with the investors. Russia was paying 100 percent interest for years to leading American financial institutions for money that it didn’t need and could have created itself. Russia was so dispirited with Stalinism that, essentially, it thought the opposite of Stalinism must be what they have in America.
They thought that America was going to tell it how America got rich, but America didn’t want to tell Russia how it got rich, but instead wanted to make money off Russia. They didn’t get it. They trusted the Americans. They really didn’t understand that, industrial capitalism that Marx described had metamorphosized into finance capitalism and was completely different.
Finance capitalismFinance capitalism or financial capitalism is the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system. Financial capitalism is thus a form of capitalism where the intermediation of saving to investment becomes a dominant function in the economy, with wider implications for the political process and social evolution. Since the late 20th century, in a process sometimes called financialization, it has become the predominant force in the global economy, whether in neoliberal or other form.Wikipedia
And that’s because Russia didn’t charge rent, it didn’t charge interest. I gave three speeches before the Duma, urging it to impose a land tax. Some of the people I noticed, Ed Dodson was there with us and we were all trying to convince Russia, don’t let this land be privatized. If you let it be privatized, then you’re going to have such high rents and housing costs in Russia that you’re not going to be able to essentially compete for an industrial growth. Well, the politician who brought us there, Viatcheslav Zolensky was sort of maneuvered out of the election by the American advisers.
The Americans put billions of dollars in to essentially finance American propagandists to destroy Russia, mainly from the Harvard Institute of International Development. And essentially, they were a bunch of gangsters and the prosecutors in Boston were about to prosecute them.
The attorney general of Boston was going to bring a big case for Harvard against the looting of Russia and the corruption of Russia. And I was asked to organize and to bring a number of Russian politicians and industrialists over to say how this destroyed everything. Well, Harvard settled out of court and essentially that made the perpetrators the leading university people up there. (I’m associated with Harvard Anthropology Department, not the Economics Department.)
So, we never had a chance to bring my witnesses, and have our report on what happened, but I published for the Russian Academy of Sciences a long study of how all of this destruction of Russia was laid out in advance at the Houston meetings by the IMF. America went to the leading bureaucrats and said; look, we can make you rich why don’t you register the factories in your own name, and if you’re registered in your own name, you know, then you’ll own it. And then you can cash out. You can essentially sell, but obviously you can’t sell to the Russians because the IMF has just wiped out all of their savings.
You can only cash out by selling to the West. And so, the Russian stock market became the leading stock market in the world from 1994 with the Norilsk Nickel and the seven bankers in the bank loans for shares deal through 1997. And, I had worked for a firm Scutter Stevens and, the head adviser, a former student of mine didn’t want to invest in Russia because she said, this is just a rip off, it’s going to crash. She was fired for not investing. They said look, we know that’s going to crash. That’s the whole idea it’s going to crash. We can make a mint off it before the crash. And then when it crashes, we can make another mint by selling short and then all over again. Well, the problem is that the system that was put in with the privatization that’s occurred, how do you have Russia’s wealth used to develop its own industry and its own economy like China was doing. Well, China has rules for all of this, but Russia doesn’t have rules, it’s really all centralized, it’s President Putin that keeps it this way.
Well, this was the great fear of the West. When you had Mikhail Gorbachev beginning to plan to do pretty much what is done today, to restrain private capital, the IMF said hold off. We’re not going to make any loans to stabilize the Russian currency until you remove Mr. Primakov.
The U.S. said we won’t deal with Russia until you remove him. So, he was pushed out and he was probably the smartest guy at the time there. So, they thought [President Vladimir] Putin was going to be sort of the patsy. And he almost single-handedly, holding the oligarchs in and saying, look, you can keep your money as long as you do exactly what the government would do. You can keep the gains as long as you’re serving the public interest.
But none of this resulted into a legal system, a tax system, and a system where the government actually does get most of the benefits. Russia could have emerged in 1990 as one the most competitive economies in Eurasia by giving all of the houses to its people instead of giving Norilsk Nickel and the oil companies to Yukos. It could have given everybody their own house and their own apartment, the same thing in the Baltics. And instead it didn’t give the land out to the people. And Russians were paying 3 percent of their income for housing in 1990. And rent is the largest element in every household’s budget.
So, Russia could have had low-price labor. It could have financed all of its capital investment for the government by taxing, collecting the rising rental value. Instead, Russian real estate was privatized on credit and it was even worse in the Baltics.
In Latvia, where I was research director for the Riga Graduate School of Law, Latvia borrowed primarily from Swedish banks. And so, in order to buy a house, you had to borrow from Swedish banks. And they said, well, we’re not going to lend in the Latvian currency because it can go down. So, you have a choice; Swiss Francs or German Marks or U.S. Dollars. And so, all of this rent was paid in foreign currency. There came an outflow that essentially drained all the Baltic economies. Latvia lost 20 percent of its population. Estonia and Lithuania followed suit.
And of course, the worst hit by neo-liberalism was Russia. As you know, President Putin said that neo-liberalism cost Russia more of its population than World War II.
And you know that to destroy a country, you don’t need an army anymore. All you have to do is teach it American economics.
Pepe: Yes, I remember well, I arrived in Russia in the winter of 91 coming from China. So, I transited from the Chinese miracle. In fact, a few days after Deng Xiaoping’s famous Southern tour when he went to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And that was the kick for the 1990s boom, in fact a few years before the handover, and then I took the Trans-Siberian and I arrived in Moscow a few days after the end, in fact, a few weeks after the end of the Soviet Union.
But yeah, I remember the Americans arrived almost at the exact minute, wasn’t it, Michael? I think they already were there in the spring of 1992. If I’m not mistaken.
Michael: The Houston meeting was in 1990. But all before that already in, 1988 and 1989, there was a huge outflow of embezzlement money via Latvia. The assistant dean of the university who ended up creating Nordex, essentially the money was all flying out because Ventspils in Latvia, was where Russian oil was exported and it was all fake invoicing. So, the Russian kleptocrats basically made their money off false export invoicing, ostensibly selling it for one price and having the rest paid abroad and, this was all organized through Latvia and the man who did it later moved to Israel and finally gave a billion dollars back to Russia so that he went on to live safely for the rest of his life in Israel.
Pepe: Well, the crash of the ruble in 1998 was what, roughly one year after the crash of the baht and the whole Asian financial crisis, no? It was interlinked of course, but let me see if I have a question for you, in fact, I’m just thinking out loud now. If the economies of Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, the case of South Korea and Russia, were more integrated at the time as they are trying to integrate now, do you think that the Asian financial crisis would have been preventable in 1997?
Michael: Well, look at what happened in Malaysia with Mohammad Mahathir. Malaysia avoided it. So of course, it was preventable, and they had the capital controls. All you would have needed was to do what Malaysia did. But you needed an economic theory for that.
And essentially the current mode of warfare is to conquer the brains of a country to shape how people think and how they perceive the economy.
And if you can twist their view into an unreality economics, where they think that you’re there to help them not to take money out of them, then you’ve got them hooked. That was what happened in Asia. Asia thought it was getting rich off the dollars inflows and then the IMF and all the creditors pulled the plug, crash the industry. And now that all of a sudden you had a crash, they bought up Korean industry and other South Asian industries at giveaway prices.
That’s what you do. You lend the money; you pull the plug. You then let them go under and you pick up the pieces. That’s what Blackstone did after the Obama depression began, when Obama saved the banks, not the constituency, the mortgage borrowers. Essentially that’s Blackstone’s modus operandi to pick up distressed prices at a bankruptcy sale, but you need to lend money and then crash it in order to make that work.
Pepe: Michael, I think we have only five minutes left. So, I would expect you to go on a relatively long answer and I’m really dying for it. It’s about debt, it about the debt trap. And it’s about the New Silk Roads, the Belt and Road Initiative, because I think rounding up our discussion and coming back to the theme of debt and global debt.
The No. 1 criticism apart from the demonization of China that you hear from American media and a few American academics as well against the Belt and Road is that it’s creating a debt trap for Southeast Asian nations, Central Asian nations and nations in Africa, etc…. Obviously, I expect you to debunk that, but the framework is there is no other global development project as extensive and as complex as Belt and Road, which as you know very well was initially dreamed up by the Ministry of Commerce. Then they sold it more or less to Xi Jinping who got the geopolitical stamp on it, announcing it, simultaneously, (which was a stroke of genius) in Central Asia in Astana and then in Southeast Asia in Jakarta. So, he was announcing the overland corridors through the heartland and the Maritime Silk Road at the same time.
At the time people didn’t see the reach and depth of all that. And now of course, finally the Trump administration woke up and saw what was in play, not only across Eurasia but reaching Africa and even selected parts of Latin America as well. And obviously the only sort of criticism, and it’s not even a fact-based criticism, that I’ve seen about the Belt and Road is it’s creating a debt trap because as you know Laos is indebted, Sri Lanka is indebted, Kyrgyzstan is indebted etc. So, how do you view Belt and Road within the large framework of the West and China, East Asia and Eurasia relations? And how would you debunk misconceptions created, especially in the U S that this is a debt trap.
Michael: There are two points to answer there. The first is how the Belt and Road began. And as you pointed out, the Belt and Road began, when China said, what is it we need to grow and how do we grow within our neighboring countries so we don’t have to depend upon the West, and we don’t have to depend on sea trade that can be shut down? How do we get to roads instead of seas in a way that we can integrate our economy with the neighboring economies so that there can be mutual growth?
So, this was done pretty much on industrial engineering grounds. Here’s where you need the roads and the railroads. And then how do we finance it? Well, The Financial Times article, last week, said didn’t the Chinese know that [with past] railroad development, they’ve all gone broke? The Panama Canal went broke, you know, the first few times there were European railway investment in Latin America in the 19th century, that all went broke.
Well, what they don’t get is China’s aim was not to make a profit off the railroads. The railroads were built to be part of the economy. They don’t want to make profit. It was to make the real economy grow, not to make profits for the owners of the railroad stocks. The Western press can’t imagine that you’re building a railroad without trying to make money out of it.
Then you get to the debt issue. Countries only have a debt crisis if their debt is in a foreign currency. The first way that the United States gained power was to fight against its allies. The great enemy of America was England and it made the British block their currency in the 1940s. And so, India and other countries, that had all these currencies holdings in sterling, were able to convert it all into dollars.
The whole move of the U.S. was to denominate world debt in dollars. So that No. 1, U.S. banks would end up with the interest in financing the debt. And No. 2, the United States could, by using the debt leverage, control domestic politics.
National debt as a function of GDP.
Well, as you’re seeing right now in Argentina, for instance, Argentina is broke because it owes foreign-dollar debt. When I started the first Third World bond fund in 1990 at Scutter Stevens, Brazil and China and Argentina were paying 45 percent interest per year, 45 percent per year in dollars debt.
Yet we tried to sell them in America. No American would buy. We went to Europe, no European buy this debt. And so, we worked with Merrill Lynch and Merrill Lynch was able to make an offshore fund in the Dutch West Indies and all of the debt was sold to the Brazilian ruling class in the central bank and the Argentinian bankers in the ruling class, we thought oh, that’s wonderful.
We know that they’re going to pay the foreign Yankee Dollars debt because the Yankee Dollars debt is owed to themselves. They’re the Yankees! They’re the client oligarchy. And you know, from Brazil client oligarchy is, you know, they’re cosmopolitan, that’s the word. So, the problem is that on the Belt and Road, how did these other countries pay the debt to China?
Well, the key there again is the de-dollarization, and one way to solve it is since we’re trying to get finance out of the picture, we’re doing something very much like, Japan did with Canada in the 1960s. It made loans to develop Canadian copper mines taking its payment, not in Canadian dollars, that would have pushed up the yen’s exchange rate, but in copper.
So, China says, you know you don’t have to pay currency for this debt. We didn’t build a railroad to make a profit and you want, we can print all the currency we want. We don’t need to make a profit.
We made the Belt and Road because it’s part of our geopolitical attempt to create what we need to be prosperous and have a prosperous region. So, these are self-reinforcing mutual gain. Well, so that’s what the West doesn’t get — mutual gain? Are we talking anthropology? What do you mean mutual? This is capitalism!
So, the West doesn’t understand what the original aim of the Belt and Road was, and it wasn’t to make a profitable railroad to enable people to buy and sell railway stocks. And it wasn’t to make toll roads to sell off to Goldman Sachs, you know.
We’re dealing with two different economic systems, and it’s very hard for one system to understand the other system because of the tunnel vision that you get when you get a degree in economics.
Pepe: Belt and Road loans are long-term and at very low interest and they are renegotiable. They are renegotiating with the Pakistanis all the time for instance.
Michael: China’s intention is not to repeat an Asia crisis of 1997. It doesn’t gain anything by forcing a crisis because it’s not trying to come in and buying property at a discount at a distressed sale. It has no desire to create a distressed sale. So obviously, the idea is the capacity to pay. Now, this whole argument occurred in the 1920s, between [John Maynard] Keynes and his opponents that wanted to collect German reparations and, Keynes made it very clear. What is the capacity to pay? It’s the ability to export and the ability to obtain foreign currency. Well, China’s not looking for foreign currency. It is looking for economic returns but the return is to the whole society, the return isn’t from a railroad. The return is for the entire economy because it’s looking at the economy as a system.
The way that neoliberalism works, it divides the economy in parts, and it makes every part trying to make a gain, and if you do that, then you don’t have any infrastructure that’s lowering the cost for the other parts. You have every part fighting for itself. You don’t look at in terms of a system the way China’s looking at it. That’s the great advantage of Marxism, you’ll look at the system, not just the parts.
Pepe: Exactly and this is at the heart of the Chinese concept of a community with a shared future for mankind, which is the approximate translation from Mandarin. So, we compare community with a shared future for mankind, which is, let’s say the driving force between the idea of Belt and Road, expanded across Eurasia, Africa and Latin America as well with our good old friends’, “greed is good” concept from the eighties, which is still ruling America apparently.
Michael: And the corollary is that non-greed is bad.
Pepe: Exactly and non-greed is evil.
Michael: I see. I think we ran out of time. I do. I don’t know if Alanna wants to step in to wrap it up.
Michael: There may be somebody who has a question.
Pepe: Somebody has a question? That’ll be fantastic.
Alanna: There is a question from Ed Dodson. He wanted to know why there are these ghost cities in China? And who’s financing all this real estate that’s developed, but nobody’s living there? We’ve all been hearing about that. So, what is happening with that?
Michael: Okay. China had most of its population living in the countryside and it made many deals with Chinese landholders who have land rights, and they said, if you will give up your land right to the community, we will give you free apartment in the city that you could rent out.
So, China has been building apartments in cities and trading these basically in exchange to support what used to be called a rural exodus. China doesn’t need as many farmers on the land as it now has, and the question is how are you going to get them into cities? So, China began building these cities and many of these apartments are owned by people who’ve got them in exchange for trading their land rights. The deals are part of the rural reconstruction program.
Alanna: Do you think it was a good deal? Vacant apartments everywhere.
Pepe: You don’t have ghost cities in Xinjiang for instance, Xinjiang is under-populated, it’s mostly desert. And it’s extremely sensitive to relocate people to Xinjiang. So basically, they concentrated on expanding Urumqi. When you arrive in Urumqi it is like almost like arriving in, Guangzhou. It’s enormous. It’s a huge generic city in the middle of the desert. And it’s also a high-tech Mecca, which is something that very few people in the West know. And is the direct link between the eastern seaboard via Belt and Road to Central Asia.
Urumqi, China.
Last year I was on an amazing trip. I went to the three borders, the Tajik-Xinjiang border, Kyrgiz-Xinjiang border and the Kazakh-Xinjiang border, which is three borders in one. It’s a fascinating area to explore and specially to talk to the local populations, the Kyrgiz, the Kazakhs and the Tajiks.
How do they see the Belt and Road directly affecting their lives from now on? So, you don’t see something spectacular for instance, in the Xinjiang – Kazakh boarder, there is one border for the trucks, lots of them like in Europe, crossing from all points, from Central Asia to China and bringing Chinese merchandise to Central Asia.
There’s the train border, which is a very simple two tracks and the pedestrian border, which is very funny because you have people arriving in buses from all parts of Central Asia. They stop on the Kazakh border. They take a shuttle, they clear customs for one day, they go to a series of shopping malls on the Chinese side of the border. They buy like crazy, shop till it drops, I don’t know for 12 hours? And then they cross back the same day because the visa is for one day. They step on their buses and they go back.
So, for the moment it’s sort of a pedestrian form of Belt and Road, but in the future, we’re going to have high-speed rail. We’re going to have, well the pipelines are already there as Michael knows, but it’s fascinating to see on the spot. You see the closer integration; you see for instance Uyghurs traveling back and forth.
You know, Uyghurs that have families in Kyrgizstan for instance, I met some Uyghurs in Kyrgyzstan who do the back-and-forth all the time. And they said, there’s no problem. They are seen as businessmen so there’s no interference. There are no concentration camps involved, you know, but you have to go to these places to see how it works on the ground and with Covid, that’s the problem for us journalists who travel, because for one year we cannot go anywhere and Xinjiang was on my travel list this year, Afghanistan as well, Mongolia.
Urumqi, China.
These are all parts of Belt and Road or future parts of Belt and Road, like Afghanistan. The Chinese and the Russians as well; they want to bring Afghanistan in a peace process organized by Asians themselves without the United States, within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, because they want Afghanistan to be part of the intersection of Belt and Road and Eurasian Economic Union. This is something Michael knows very well. You don’t see this kind of discussions in the American media for instance, integration of Eurasia on the ground, how it’s actually happening.
Michael: That’s called cognitive dissonance.
Alanna: To try to understand it gets you cognitive dissonance.
Pepe: Oh yeah, of course. And obviously you are a Chinese agent, a Russian agent. And so, I hear that all the time. Well, in our jobs we hear that all the time. Especially, unfortunately from our American friends.
Alanna: Okay. I know you have other things to do. This has been fabulous. I want to thank you so much, both of you, uh, with so easy to get attendance for this webinar. There were 20 people in five minutes enrolled and in two days we were at capacity. So, I know there are many more people who would love to hear you talk another time, whenever you two are so willing. And I think you both got much out of your first conversation in person. Everybody listening knows these two wonderful gentlemen, they have written more than 10 books, and they have traveled all over the world. They are on the top of geopolitical and geoeconomic analysis, and they are caring, loving people. So, you can see that these are the people we need to be listening to and understanding all around the world.
So, thank you so much. Ibrahima Drame from the Henry George School is now going to say goodbye to you and will wrap this up. Thank you again.
Pepe: Michael it was a huge pleasure. Really, it was fantastic. Really nice, we’re on the same website. So, let’s have a second version of this.
Ibrahima: So, let’s have a second version of this two months from now. Thank you very much for participating and I really hope you liked this event. And, we also want to ask for your support by making a tax-deductible donation to the Henry George School. I believe I shared the link on the chat. Thank you. And see you soon.
Pepe: Thank you very much. Thanks Michael. Bye!
Attributions
Michael Hudson is an American economist professor of economics at the university of Missouri Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. He’s a former Wall Street analyst political consultant commentator and journalist. He identifies himself as a classical economist. Michael is the author of J is for Junk Economics,Killing the Host, The Bubble and Beyond, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, Trade Development and Foreign Debtand The Myth of Aid, among others. His books have been published translated into Japanese, Chinese, German, Spanish and Russian.
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War;Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor toThe Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.
Just a couple of guys chatting away about America and China and the theories behind capitalism; meaning …
CapitalismCapitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, a price system, private property and the recognition of property rights, voluntary exchange and wage labor. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by every owner of wealth, property or production ability in capital and financial markets whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.Wikipedia
Ugh.
No. No. No.
Meaning;
Using money as a medium of exchange for products or services. And the idea of private ownership of the things that you can exchange it for.
I found the discussion interesting in that it validated my belief. Which is a belief that China is growing and is successful today, while the USA is apparently collapsing upon itself.
They came at it from a very interesting angle.
In their mind, the state of America today (and other leading Western nations) is because the medium of exchange differs.
China – exchanges – products & services for money.
USA – exchanges – interest on debt to generate money.
Looking at the world from this lens, or with this set of crystal-clear glasses you can see that no matter what the USA does, China will overtake it.
Not by it’s enormous size, or the great number of STEM graduates, or it’s philosophical drivers or social engineering advances…
…but rather through the nature of the capitalism that it employs.
The United States debt is over 20 trillion dollars and climbing. Those that enjoy this debt, those that make money off of it are bankers, and speculators such as the Stock Market. They are a small minority of people. A very, very, very tiny group of people.
According to this article, half the world's wealth (!) was controlled by 62 individuals in 2016. In 2017 (see here) this number drops substantially. From only these two articles, these are the numbers.
2011 - 388 people
2012/13 - 177 people
2014 - 80 people
2015/16 - 62 people
2017 - 8 people!
Meanwhile, China not only makes products and provides services, but also has a philosophy where the community REQUIRES everyone to participate making products, and providing services.
The United States has a different philosophy. Be the best, capture all the money, sit at the top. Let the rest of the world flounder.
…
Where I am getting to on all this is simple…
Imagine three hundred years in the future.
China
Everyone is either making things or providing services for others. Milk is being delivered; new gizmos and gadgets are being designed and sold. People are learning and striving. Extreme poverty is gone. But so is extreme wealth. All people have a comfortable life. But extremes in poverty and wealth do not exist.
And the United States…
United States
There is only one oligarchy running things. It is a family where the oldest member is tremendously old and is on advanced life support. He is fawned over by his family.
The rest of the world lives in extreme poverty with electronic tracking of actions and behaviors. Few own anything. They rent it all to others who funnel the money to this lone individual. These poorer people, the vast majority of them provide maintenance and protection services. No one is skilled at reason or fabrication. The most skilled are those that count the money that the wealthy own.
Oh for certain, the “citizens” of the United States will loudly and most vociferously proclaim their “freedom”! And you know what, they will probably still be able to own guns too. They will proudly take the bullets out of the display case and shine then up every Fourth of July as a symbol of how exceptional they are.
…
As I see it, the American system is not sustainable. It is not healthy and it is a waste of time. It is one that converts the citizens of the United States into a caste system of two types of people; the Rulers and the Servants.
This is a battle for the potential future of the sentience of the human species;
Service to Self society with a two-tiered caste system This is the American / Western model.
While the Chinese model, is sustainable. It is doable, and it is workable, and it will provide advantage to the vast bulk of society, not just one singular family and their psychopathic leeches.
Service to Others society, with no class distinction, only individual merit.
I strongly believe that anyone in support of the current way that the United States is and how it operates and who is desirous of continuing this path is either evil, not thinking properly, or has some kind of selfish agenda.
And this, boys and girls, is what the big “sentience selection” event(s) are all about. Our benefactors want us humans to select the pathways for our species. And you can rest assured that there are individuals on both sides of this issue that are willing to fight to the death for their vision of utopia.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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If you enjoy what you see, it would be helpful if you could assist in hosting this forum. A donation would be appreciated.
And it’s not going to be available for long. You can bet on that.
Nothing on the site is password protected. It’s all gone.
Call it a “dump” if you like…
Wikileaks just dumped all of their files online. Everything from Hillary Clinton’s emails, McCain’s being guilty, Vegas shooting done by an FBI sniper, Steve Jobs HIV letter, PedoPodesta, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Bilderberg, CIA agents arrested for rape, WHO pandemic. Happy Digging!
No doubt about it: 2020—a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom—was the culmination of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decade for freedom.
Government corruption, tyranny, and abuse coupled with a Big Brother-knows-best mindset and the COVID-19 pandemic propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which nationwide lockdowns, egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, and pay-to-play politicians were accepted as the norm.
Here’s just a small sampling of the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government over the past two decades and in the past year, in particular.
The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.
The American President became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers that have been amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.
Militarized police became a power unto themselves, 911 calls turned deadly, and traffic stops took a turn for the worse. Lacking in transparency and accountability, protected by the courts and legislators, and rife with misconduct, America’s police forces continued to be a menace to the citizenry and the rule of law. Despite concerns about the government’s steady transformation of local police into a standing military army, local police agencies acquired even more weaponry, training and equipment suited for the battlefield. Police officers were also given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons and subject them to forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases.
The courts failed to uphold justice. With every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts more concerned with protecting government agents than upholding the rights of “we the people.” This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution. A review of critical court rulings over the past two decades, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
COVID-19 allowed the Emergency State to expand its powers. What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) became yet another means by which world governments (including our own) could expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents. While COVID-19 took a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, it also allowed the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, with talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports, forced vaccinations, snitch tip lines and onerous lockdowns.
The Surveillance State rendered Americans vulnerable to threats from government spies, police, hackers and power failures. Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Americans have become sitting ducks for hackers and government spies alike. Billions of people have been affected by data breaches and cyberattacks. On a daily basis, Americans have been made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.
America became a red flag nation. Red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws generally push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless. Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention. In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States. Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.
The cost of policing the globe drove the nation deeper into debt.America’s war spending has already bankrupted the nation to the tune of more than $20 trillion dollars. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense. The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Yet America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world. This is how a military empire occupies the globe. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is falling apart.
Free speech was dealt one knock-out punch after another.Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, shadow banning on the Internet, and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good. On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow. The reasons for such censorship varied widely from political correctness, so-called safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of free speech.
The Deep State took over. The American system of representative government has been overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military/corporate industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished. In its place is a shadow government, a corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House. Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry. This shadow government, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.
The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America. “We the people” have been saddled with a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.
So how do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels, sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs, and then locked down and stripped of any semblance of personal freedom?
No matter who sits in the White House, politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.
For that matter, protests and populist movements also haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.
So how do you not only push back against the government’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?
You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.
Take your cue from the Tenth Amendment and nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded. If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
In an age in which government officials accused of wrongdoing—police officers, elected officials, etc.—are treated with general leniency, while the average citizen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.
What really needs to happen
The folk running the government are all really blatant with their criminal actions. They perform the crimes and do it openly and brazenly, while the rest of us do hard time for the slightest offense. This needs to end.
A Saudi execution.
Other opinions
Most websites that have the term “opin” in the title, like “Opinion watcher”, and “Opinion tracker”, and Opinseach says it NOT TRUE, or overly hyped and questionable …
Pah! At most, there will be some token legislation that will be directed at innocent civilians, and none of the oligarchy or upper class will be affected.
America today. You are fucked.
And the sheeple yawn.
The signs are all there.
An out of control oligarchy class, a nation of mind-numbed serf/slave sheeple, high technology weapons and 70 years without fighting a peer-capable nation. What the fuck do you think is gonna happen?
I’m just an old tired, pissed off grouch. So hear me out…
Random thoughts of a pissed-off citizen
Let me start with this…
America today.
.
Today, Americas are the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water. And the frog is truly cooked.
But that really doesn’t do America justice. I think the Norma Desmond does…
America today.
.
America is truly at that uncomfortable stage when [1] it’s past the time when any realistic solutions to the problems of America can be remedied, and [2] too early to shoot and hang the bastards.
Come on!
Just look at your life now, compared to what it was just a few years ago. It is different because your matured and got older? Or is it because of society? Or is it because of the government making laws, and rules, one after another like a “tommygun”…?
Remember when?
Why is this important?
Because there just isn’t any “free press” left in America.
There simply isn’t anyone doing anything to police the crooks that run the nation.
Zilch.
And as a result the nation is wholly out of control, and careening wildly down the tracks.
The “news” is a for-profit mechanism. It is owned by the government. Alternatives to the “news” are also bought out and owned by the government. Trying to find “news” on the internet is like trying to go to the desert to find a pool to swim in. You might be lucky, but most of the time you will not.
You tell ’em George.
So.
So what is going to happen? Do you seriously think that this Wikileak is going to make a difference?
Metallicman Comments
It’s like the scene from the movie “Aliens”, when they discover this little girl named Newt. And they tell her not to worry. The Imperial Space marines are there to protect her and save the say. And she looks up at Ripley and replies “it won’t make any difference”.
Ripley: These people are here to protect you. They're soldiers.
Newt: It won't make any difference.
Newt.
.
I think that the scene is very apt.
Personally, my take on this is that it’s all too late, and at this stage in the game, it’s all just theater. It’s just spin and “bread and circuses” for the sheeple. So what if the rich and famous get caught with “their hand in the cookie jar“, or their “dirty linen is aired“, or that the “skeletons in the closet” are brought out into the open. Ain’t nothing gonna happen.
So what?
So what if everyone sees all the dirty laundry of the people who run the government. Nothing is going to happen to them.
There won’t be any big uprisings. There won’t be any outcries or public shows of remorse or hearings. There won’t even be any “blue panel” investigative committees. Nothing is going to happen. And nothing is going to change. The vector; the trajectory that the USA is on right now is not going to slow down, alter course or change direction. No brakes will be applied.
The USA is fucked.
The USA today is like an old commode that is just full of shit.
It is a thick stew of brown shit that should have been flushed away centuries ago, and not, the weight of that shit is starting to go down the pipe. You know, you can only hold just so much water before the commode just automatically flushes.
America today.
.
And it’s starting to move. With a shudder…
But it’s gonna be a long drawn out flush.
Maybe, and probably, take years….
And then the fat pig-like crapper is going to sit on it one last time, and lay a big fat load directed at some external villain or threat, and the entire commode is going to crack and explode.
Yah. That’s what’s going to happen.
There are no citizen-soldiers or patriots in the USA any longer. Just sheeple, and pretend wanna-be Rambos.
Soon. Very soon.
.
How do we know?
Just look at what Americans have become. Google “People of walmart“.
Perhaps a renaming is in order…
Maybe the United States should be renamed. I suggest “commode” might be the most appropriate. Because that is what it resembles today. One giant, filthy, full of shit, old, broken down commode.
People! Do you actually believe that this kind of news represents a healthy nation? Do you believe that the news in the rest of the world looks like this, but only in a different language? No.
No.
Hell… NO!
People, the oligarchy that runs the USA are all playing you for fools. And you are all standing around and taking it.
Grumblings continue but nothing ever happens.
The grumblings have been going on for a long, long time. It certainly pre-dates Metallicman, and everything it looked like people were going to rise up and overthrow the bastards, suddenly a war would crop up.
…
The deep-state murdered John F. Kennedy…
People started to grumble and get concerned, and stockpiles of weapons were purchased…
…and the Vietnam war happened.
You know.
For “democracy”.
…
When Bill Clinton started to break every law in the book and get away with it, numerous prepping sites discussed using code on beepers to communicate their plans. In those days it was believed that the people would rise up against a tyrannical government.
In fact, Bill Clinton clamped down on many freedoms and liberties that the conservatives held dearly. The ban on “assault guns” really upset many conservatives. So when Bush came to office…
… a war in the Middle East against Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc…
…
Wars are the big distraction that the oligarchy class uses to control the mob. And as time moves on, and their crimes get larger, more “in your face”, more obvious and outrageous, then the larger the war of distraction must be…
…before the grumblings become overt and dangerous.
Oh such short memories
There was a time when “preppers” readied for the “big uprising” by contemplating communicating using pagers to send messages back and forth. Of course nothing came of this, but the point is, that maybe it should have.
…
.
When you look at the bigger picture, one that spans decades, you can see that the parallels between slave and owner, between serf and overseer, and between king and subjects all exist in America today.
Of course nothing ever came of this potential revolt, but the disgust and upset runs long and deep in certain elements of American social strata. I’ve lived long enough to know that if you let the roast in the oven too long that it gets burnt to a crisp and becomes uneatable.
Let’s see just what the flash point will be.
Right now it looks like America has the flash point of water instead of kerosene.
But, you know, most Americans are too dumbed down to know or care what lies ahead…
Yah! If you think it is bad now, just keep in mind that this is just the beginning.
There is no telling what evil plans the oligarchy in Washington has planned for their slave / serf minions.
So many times, when I devote posts like this, I feel that my fellow Americans believe that I really should be talking in a language that they can understand. You know, like Dr. Lexus here…
Dr. Lexus.
The USA cannot continue like this for much longer.
Not for much longer. No it cannot.
It has gotten this far by being the sole world reserve currency, and as such, it has been printing money like crazy. Just look at the American debt today.
Meanwhile the rest of the world sees this debt with a look of horror and are taking steps to avoid the trap of the looming USD collapse…
Do you actually believe that you are insulated and won’t feel the effects of this?
Ah. Lisa.
She makes some good points.
Here’s another one of hers…
She’s good, but think about this all.
The whole, entire picture.
There is a reason why that big invasion fleet that Trump sent to China in the Summer of 2020 steamed home. And no, it wasn’t because of it completed it’s mission of intimidation” either. You have three enormous, expensive carriers with nuclear power supplies and suddenly all the electronics goes hay-wire and the nuclear systems start to SCRAM. And they just cannot. Three expensive carriers and the nuclear piles start to go into meltdown.
Not one shot being fired.
All three carriers were heading towards a Chernobyl moment.
CHINA. DOES. NOT. PLAY.
Well. Do you think that the Oligarchy learned anything…?
Not likely.
Soon it will be Russia! Russia! Russia!. .
My bet is that it’s going to get really ugly at about that time.
An observant reader…
The following is from an observant reader…
I just looked in to some of the wiki leaks on MM website. At first, I was looking as fast as I could thinking the pages would be erased. Then, it got me wondering.... if they ARE leaking top secret hush hush info, surely the US would know and act accordingly.
The more I look at them I see something off. They are all archived on the same date. The year they are archived sticks out only because it’s the year I was born, 1984. My first thought was, maybe this is how delicate info is stores and coded. But, why 1984? Then it hit me.... George Orwell’s 1984. Is this Just another political agenda-ed pawn movement?
Trump is exclaiming this was apart of his plan to expose our corrupt government. He wanted to make sure it was done while he’s still in office. If this was his shadiwork, at this point idk if he did it for the American people or he’s salty he lost. (Funny but true, Geminis are sore losers)
Observation and discernment are the keys to understanding MM. Not everything is permitted to be said, and not everything is understood.
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What is “welfare”? It is “free stuff” from the government, as long as you meet their criteria. And since it is important to “them” to maintain their budgets, the natural inclination for the welfare system is to grow. To grow larger, and larger, and even larger. All the while, those on welfare are becoming dependent upon the government.
Fun Fact: China doesn't have "welfare". You either work or die.
Their system is free work for anyone. You join the work collective, and you are given free food, free housing, free clothes, and a modest stipend to live off of. If you cannot do the bare minimum work requirements, the collective will kick you out, and you will either beg or starve.
And the end result of decades of this behavior, and this system, is to create a class of people that act as pawns for those that dish out the benefits.
Let’s look at the techniques that criminal masterminds use to keep people dependent upon them, and have them doing things that they naturally would be abhorrent towards.
LAW 11
LEARN TO KEEP PEOPLE DEPENDENT ON YOU
JUDGMENT
To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW
Sometime in the Middle Ages, a mercenary soldier (a condottiere), whose name has not been recorded, saved the town of Siena from a foreign aggressor. How could the good citizens of Siena reward him? No amount of money or honor could possibly compare in value to the preservation of a city’s liberty. The citizens thought of making the mercenary the lord of the city, but even that, they decided, wasn’t recompense enough. At last one of them stood before the assembly called to debate this matter and said, “Let us kill him and then worship him as our patron saint.” And so they did.
The Count of Carmagnola was one of the bravest and most successful of all the condottieri. In 1442, late in his life, he was in the employ of the city of Venice, which was in the midst of a long war with Florence. The count was suddenly recalled to Venice. A favorite of the people, he was received there with all kinds of honor and splendor. That evening he was to dine with the doge himself, in the doge’s palace. On the way into the palace, however, he noticed that the guard was leading him in a different direction from usual. Crossing the famous Bridge of Sighs, he suddenly realized where they were taking him—to the dungeon. He was convicted on a trumped-up charge and the next day in the Piazza San Marco, before a horrified crowd who could not understand how his fate had changed so drastically, he was beheaded.
THE TWO HORSES
Two horses were carrying two loads. The front Horse went well, but the rear Horse was lazy. The men began to pile the rear Horse’s load on the front Horse; when they had transferred it all, the rear Horse found it easy going, and he said to the front Horse: “Toil and sraeat! The more you try,the more you have to suffer.” When they reached the tavern, the owner said; “Why should I fodder two horses when I carry all on one? I had better give the one all the food it wants, and cut the throat of the other; at least I shall have the hide.” And so he did.
FABLES. LEO TOLSIOY, 1828-1910
Interpretation
Many of the great condottieri of Renaissance Italy suffered the same fate as the patron saint of Siena and the Count of Carmagnola: They won battle after battle for their employers only to find themselves banished, imprisoned, or executed. The problem was not ingratitude; it was that there were so many other condottieri as able and valiant as they were.
They were replaceable.
Nothing was lost by killing them. Meanwhile, the older among them had grown powerful themselves, and wanted more and more money for their services. How much better, then, to do away with them and hire a younger, cheaper mercenary. That was the fate of the Count of Carmagnola, who had started to act impudently and independently. He had taken his power for granted without making sure that he was truly indispensable.
Such is the fate (to a less violent degree, one hopes) of those who do not make others dependent on them. Sooner or later someone comes along who can do the job as well as they can—someone younger, fresher, less expensive, less threatening.
Be the only one who can do what you do, and make the fate of those who hire you so entwined with yours that they cannot possibly get rid of you. Otherwise you will someday be forced to cross your own Bridge of Sighs.
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
When Otto von Bismarck became a deputy in the Prussian parliament in 1847, he was thirty-two years old and without an ally or friend. Looking around him, he decided that the side to ally himself with was not the parliament’s liberals or conservatives, not any particular minister, and certainly not the people. It was with the king, Frederick William IV. This was an odd choice to say the least, for Frederick was at a low point of his power. A weak, indecisive man, he consistently gave in to the liberals in parliament; in fact he was spineless, and stood for much that Bismarck disliked, personally and politically. Yet Bismarck courted Frederick night and day. When other deputies attacked the king for his many inept moves, only Bismarck stood by him.
THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF
Then the Woman laughed and set the Cat a bowl of the warm white milk and said, “0 Cat, you are as clever as a man, but remember that your bargain was not made with the Man or the Dog, and I do not know whatthey will do when they come home.” “What is that to me?” said the Cat. “If I have my place in the Cave by the fire and my warm white milk three times a day, I do not care what the Man or the Dog can do.”
... And from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always throw things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree. But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain too. He will kill mice, and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and the night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet WildWoods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.
-JUST SO STORIES, RUDYARD KIPLING, 1865-1936
Finally, it all paid off: In 1851 Bismarck was made a minister in the king’s cabinet. Now he went to work. Time and again he forced the king’s hand, getting him to build up the military, to stand up to the liberals, to do exactly as Bismarck wished. He worked on Frederick’s insecurity about his manliness, challenging him to be firm and to rule with pride. And he slowly restored the king’s powers until the monarchy was once again the most powerful force in Prussia.
When Frederick died, in 1861, his brother William assumed the throne. William disliked Bismarck intensely and had no intention of keeping him around. But he also inherited the same situation his brother had: enemies galore, who wanted to nibble his power away. He actually considered abdicating, feeling he lacked the strength to deal with this dangerous and precarious position. But Bismarck insinuated himself once again. He stood by the new king, gave him strength, and urged him into firm and decisive action. The king grew dependent on Bismarck’s strong-arm tactics to keep his enemies at bay, and despite his antipathy toward the man, he soon made him his prime minister. The two quarreled often over policy—Bismarck was much more conservative—but the king understood his own dependency. Whenever the prime minister threatened to resign, the king gave in to him, time after time. It was in fact Bismarck who set state policy.
Years later, Bismarck’s actions as Prussia’s prime minister led the various German states to be united into one country. Now Bismarck finagled the king into letting himself be crowned emperor of Germany. Yet it was really Bismarck who had reached the heights of power. As right-hand man to the emperor, and as imperial chancellor and knighted prince, he pulled all the levers.
Interpretation
Most young and ambitious politicians looking out on the political landscape of 1840s Germany would have tried to build a power base among those with the most power. Bismarck saw different. Joining forces with the powerful can be foolish: They will swallow you up, just as the doge of Venice swallowed up the Count of Carmagnola. No one will come to depend on you if they are already strong. If you are ambitious, it is much wiser to seek out weak rulers or masters with whom you can create a relationship of dependency. You become their strength, their intelligence, their spine. What power you hold! If they got rid of you the whole edifice would collapse.
Necessity rules the world. People rarely act unless compelled to. If you create no need for yourself, then you will be done away with at first opportunity. If, on the other hand, you understand the Laws of Power and make others depend on you for their welfare, if you can counteract their weakness with your own “iron and blood,” in Bismarck’s phrase, then you will survive your masters as Bismarck did. You will have all the benefits of power without the thorns that come from being a master.
Thus a wise prince will think of ways to keep his citizens of every sort and under every circumstance dependent on the state and on him; and then they will always be trustworthy.
-Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527
THE I I.M-IRI I AND THE AND
An extravagant young Vine, vainly ambitious of independence, and fond of rambling at large, despised the alliance of a slately elm that grew near, and courted her embraces. Having risen to some small height without any kind of support, she shot forth her flimsy branches to a very uncommon and superfluous length; calling on her neighbor to take notice how little she wanted his assistance. “Poor infatuated shrub,” replied the elm, “how inconsistent is thy conduct! Wouldst thou be truly independent, thou shouldst carefully apply those juices to the enlargement of thy stem. which thou lavishest in vain upon unnecessary foliage. I shortly shall behold thee grovelling on the ground; yet countenanced, indeed, by many of the human race, who, intoxicated with vanity, have despised economy; and who, to support for a moment their empty boast of independence, have exhausted the very source of it in frivolous expenses.”
-FABLES, ROBERT DODSLFY, 1703-1764
KEYS TO POWER
The ultimate power is the power to get people to do as you wish. When you can do this without having to force people or hurt them, when they willingly grant you what you desire, then your power is untouchable. The best way to achieve this position is to create a relationship of dependence.
The master requires your services; he is weak, or unable to function without you; you have enmeshed yourself in his work so deeply that doing away with you would bring him great difficulty, or at least would mean valuable time lost in training another to replace you. Once such a relationship is established you have the upper hand, the leverage to make the master do as you wish. It is the classic case of the man behind the throne, the servant of the king who actually controls the king. Bismarck did not have to bully either Frederick or William into doing his bidding. He simply made it clear that unless he got what he wanted he would walk away, leaving the king to twist in the wind. Both kings soon danced to Bismarck’s tune.
Do not be one of the many who mistakenly believe that the ultimate form of power is independence. Power involves a relationship between people; you will always need others as allies, pawns, or even as weak masters who serve as your front. The completely independent man would live in a cabin in the woods—he would have the freedom to come and go as he pleased, but he would have no power. The best you can hope for is that others will grow so dependent on you that you enjoy a kind of reverse independence: Their need for you frees you.
Louis XI (1423-1483), the great Spider King of France, had a weakness for astrology. He kept a court astrologer whom he admired, until one day the man predicted that a lady of the court would die within eight days. When the prophecy came true, Louis was terrified, thinking that either the man had murdered the woman to prove his accuracy or that he was so versed in his science that his powers threatened Louis himself. In either case he had to be killed.
One evening Louis summoned the astrologer to his room, high in the castle. Before the man arrived, the king told his servants that when he gave the signal they were to pick the astrologer up, carry him to the window, and hurl him to the ground, hundreds of feet below.
The astrologer soon arrived, but before giving the signal, Louis decided to ask him one last question: “You claim to understand astrology and to know the fate of others, so tell me what your fate will be and how long you have to live.”
“I shall die just three days before Your Majesty,” the astrologer replied.
The king’s signal was never given. The man’s life was spared. The Spider King not only protected his astrologer for as long as he was alive, he lavished him with gifts and had him tended by the finest court doctors.
The astrologer survived Louis by several years, disproving his power of prophecy but proving his mastery of power.
This is the model: Make others dependent on you. To get rid of you might spell disaster, even death, and your master dares not tempt fate by finding out. There are many ways to obtain such a position. Foremost among them is to possess a talent and creative skill that simply cannot be replaced.
During the Renaissance, the major obstacle to a painter’s success was finding the right patron. Michelangelo did this better than anyone else: His patron was Pope Julius II. But he and the pope quarreled over the building of the pope’s marble tomb, and Michelangelo left Rome in disgust. To the amazement of those in the pope’s circle, not only did the pope not fire him, he sought him out and in his own haughty way begged the artist to stay. Michelangelo, he knew, could find another patron, but he could never find another Michelangelo.
You do not have to have the talent of a Michelangelo; you do have to have a skill that sets you apart from the crowd. You should create a situation in which you can always latch on to another master or patron but your master cannot easily ,find another servant with your particular talent. And if, in reality, you are not actually indispensable, you must find a way to make it look as if you are. Having the appearance of specialized knowledge and skill gives you leeway in your ability to deceive those above you into thinking they cannot do without you. Real dependence on your master’s part, however, leaves him more vulnerable to you than the faked variety, and it is always within your power to make your skill indispensable.
This is what is meant by the intertwining of fates: Like creeping ivy, you have wrapped yourself around the source of power, so that it would cause great trauma to cut you away. And you do not necessarily have to entwine yourself around the master; another person will do, as long as he or she too is indispensable in the chain.
One day Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures, was visited in his office by a gloomy group of his executives. It was 1951, when the witch- hunt against Communists in Hollywood, carried on by the U.S. Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee, was at its height. The executives had bad news: One of their employees, the screenwriter John Howard Lawson, had been singled out as a Communist. They had to get rid of him right away or suffer the wrath of the committee.
Harry Cohn was no bleeding-heart liberal; in fact, he had always been a die-hard Republican.
His favorite politician was Benito Mussolini, whom he had once visited, and whose framed photo hung on his wall. If there was someone he hated Cohn would call him a “Communist bastard.” But to the executives’ amazement Cohn told them he would not fire Lawson. He did not keep the screenwriter on because he was a good writer—there were many good writers in Hollywood. He kept him because of a chain of dependence: Lawson was Humphrey Bogart’s writer and Bogart was Columbia’s star. If Cohn messed with Lawson he would ruin an immensely profitable relationship. That was worth more than the terrible publicity brought to him by his defiance of the committee.
Henry Kissinger managed to survive the many bloodlettings that went on in the Nixon White House not because he was the best diplomat Nixon could find—there were other fine negotiators—and not because the two men got along so well: They did not. Nor did they share their beliefs and politics. Kissinger survived because he entrenched himself in so many areas of the political structure that to do away with him would lead to chaos. Michelangelo’s power was intensive, depending on one skill, his ability as an artist; Kissinger’s was extensive.
He got himself involved in so many aspects and departments of the administration that his involvement became a card in his hand. It also made him many allies. If you can arrange such a position for yourself, getting rid of you becomes dangerous—all sorts of interdependencies will unravel. Still, the intensive form of power provides more freedom than the extensive, because those who have it depend on no particular master, or particular position of power, for their security.
To make others dependent on you, one route to take is the secret- intelligence tactic. By knowing other people’s secrets, by holding information that they wouldn’t want broadcast, you seal your fate with theirs. You are untouchable. Ministers of secret police have held this position throughout the ages: They can make or break a king, or, as in the case of J. Edgar Hoover, a president. But the role is so full of insecurities and paranoia that the power it provides almost cancels itself out. You cannot rest at ease, and what good is power if it brings you no peace?
One last warning: Do not imagine that your master’s dependence on you will make him love you. In fact, he may resent and fear you. But, as Machiavelli said, it is better to be feared than loved. Fear you can control; love, never. Depending on an emotion as subtle and changeable as love or friendship will only make you insecure. Better to have others depend on you out of fear of the consequences of losing you than out of love of your company.
Image: Vines with Many Thorns. Below, the roots grow deep and wide. Above, the vines push through bushes, entwine themselves around trees and poles and window ledges. To get rid of them would cost such toil and blood, it is easier to let them climb.
Authority: Make people depend on you. More is to be gained from such dependence than courtesy. He who has slaked his thirst, immediately turns his back on the well, no longer needing it. When dependence disappears, so does civility and decency, and then respect. The first lesson which experience should teach you is to keep hope alive but never satisfied, keeping even a royal patron ever in need of you. (Baltasar Gracián, 1601- 1658)
REVERSAL
The weakness of making others depend on you is that you are in some measure dependent on them. But trying to move beyond that point means getting rid of those above you—it means standing alone, depending on no one. Such is the monopolistic drive of a J. P. Morgan or a John D.
Rockefeller—to drive out all competition, to be in complete control. If you can corner the market, so much the better.
No such independence comes without a price. You are forced to isolate yourself. Monopolies often turn inward and destroy themselves from the internal pressure. They also stir up powerful resentment, making their enemies bond together to fight them. The drive for complete control is often ruinous and fruitless. Interdependence remains the law, independence a rare and often fatal exception. Better to place yourself in a position of mutual dependence, then, and to follow this critical law rather than look for its reversal. You will not have the unbearable pressure of being on top, and the master above you will in essence be your slave, for he will depend on you.
Conclusion
Powerful people; those with near limitless pools of money, can easily make others dependent upon them. By using this dependence, they can use them as an army; or as a resource to achieve far greater deeds than what thy can attempt alone. We must realize that EVERYONE who has money in America uses this technique.
Whether it is Progressive Marxists that have the welfare of the poor in their hands, or whether it is the Conservative Republicans that have the Social Security incomes of the elderly. All the wealthy use this technique.
How manipulated are you?
What are you willing to do to maintain the status quo? That is the truest measure of your enslavement.
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After a solid year of [1] hate-China spewing from all my feeds, [2] comments that I have made mysteriously being erased, and [3] the most contentious articles being flooded with “likes”… you have to wonder if you are in some kind of fake-mirror world.
It really seems that way.
We, as humans, have feelings and thoughts, ideas, and relationships. We have emotions, both good and bad, and we have desires, goals and yearnings. Yet, if we try to participate in any of the American forums… our opinions are often scrubbed and erased.
I’m not talking about swearing. Nor am I talking about being racist or making threats. I am talking about saying something innocuous like “I like hamburgers”, and then finding that you offended a vegan, who immediately pressed the “alert” button.
Yes, “safe” areas have sprung up all over the internet where people of “like minds” can communicate and put forth their opinions. Such as “Gab”. But even there, you risk banishment if your comments do not fit the appropriate target audience in the associated “news” venue.
Venue Example
Association
Non-compliance result
salon.com
Alt-Left
Ban
Yahoo.com
Mainstream
Ban
freerepublic.com
Alt-Right
Ban
Table of the three major venues for American discussion.
It’s pretty much evidence that people are being put into nice tidy boxes based upon their thoughts.
And this, boys and girls, are how governments isolate, control and manipulate people. Which should give everyone reason to pause and think.
Historically, this has resulted in people's names going onto lists. And then later on, the police and military rounding up people on those lists, and doing very, very bad things to them.
Now, I know it’s hard to absorb if you are right now sitting in the middle of all this. So, instead of looking at the American media reality, maybe take a gander at another nation.
Like India…
If you read (for example) the Indian news media, you would be convinced that India is ready to invade China, and walk straight into Shanghai and no one can stop them. If you read Alex Jones or Hall Turner, you will be convinced that Donald Trump will win next weeks election in a landslide, and if you read CNN you will be convinced of the absolute opposite. Nothing is moderate or neutral. It’s all just nonsense.
Or is it really?
Are we really reading “news articles” and listening to the “comments” by others like ourselves? Or, as I believe, we are reading “fake news” which are really articles designed to manipulate, with comments and opinions and “likes” generated by ‘bots and software algorithms.
No longer “news”; a reporting of events.
Let’s look at the morning Drudge Headliners.
Drudge Report 29OCT20
Instead, of “news”, we now see the generation of “articles of manipulation”. These articles are fully intended to change how the reader thinks. They are not designed to inform. You know, like these…
Oh, every six months of so, someone writes a book, draws a cartoon, makes a statement, writes a poem, and fundamentalist islamic's are enraged and demand death! Is this news?
Oh yeah. This debit clock thingy has been in the read for decades now. Why keep track? No one really cares, at least those who have the power to do anything about it.
The police shoot and kill a black man, and the black folk in ghettos riot. Black folk riot. It's what they do.
It's sort of a cause and effect kind of thing. But is this news? You all ever been to a black ghetto in Philly? Do you know him? Is Pennsylvania on your radar screen?
Seriously?
I think that the real interest in an article like this is how any one can train monkeys to do anything. Than how to create a for-profit model around it.
Of course Drudge must have the obligatory anti-China article. It's a thing in America, don't you know.
So any-day-now Beijing is gonna invade Taiwan! Taiwan is a state of China. Just like Texas is a state within America. The Taiwanese all have Chinese passports, speak the Chinese language, learn Chinese history, and so forth.
It's sort of like "any day now, Washington DC will invade Texas." Silly, I know. But the American audience has been so enormously dumbed-down that they just are not able to discern how ignorant they are.
To me, it looks a lot like a science fiction horror flick where the people haven’t a clue as to how badly they are being manipulated.
America today.
Let’s look at this.
Let’s look at (what I like to call) Internet Forum Manipulation…
Internet Forum Manipulation
Wouldn’t it be great if we could all innocently comment on articles that we read on the Internet, and then our thoughts can be read by others. Others could read our thoughts and there would be a free exchange of ideas and thoughts. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice…
Not so. It turns out that the control of thoughts and ideas is one of the most important tools in the arsenal of power and control. (Not to mention world-line alteration and redirection.)
As such, those in power, whether rich, wealthy, powerful or in government are totally desirous of harnessing this avenue to serve their own purposes.
It’s a horrible reality.
There are several techniques for the control and manipulation of an internet forum no matter what, or who is on it. We will go over each technique and demonstrate that only a minimal number of operatives can be used to eventually and effectively gain a control of a ‘uncontrolled forum.’
Professor identifies “moderate” websites. The only thing is that the websites that he lists are all “Alt-Left” websites. Which is, of course, propaganda. Is this what is being taught in schools today? White is black. Happy is sad. Good is bad. Right is wrong?
.
Let’s look at some of the techniques that those in power use to control us.
PTB - The Powers that Be.
The Oligarchy - The top 1% of the richest in a society.
The deep state - The long-employed unelected government employees.
The elected - The visible face of the government farce.
The caretakers - Actually, they are not involved at this level.
Forum Sliding
If a very sensitive posting of a critical nature has been posted on a forum – it can be quickly removed from public view by ‘forum sliding.’
A very popular technique on Freerepublic.com.
In this technique a number of unrelated posts are quietly prepositioned on the forum and allowed to ‘age.’ Each of these misdirectional forum postings can then be called upon at will to trigger a ‘forum slide.’ The second requirement is that several fake accounts exist, which can be called upon, to ensure that this technique is not exposed to the public.
To trigger a ‘forum slide’ and ‘flush’ the critical post out of public view it is simply a matter of logging into each account both real and fake and then ‘replying’ to prepositined postings with a simple 1 or 2 line comment. This brings the unrelated postings to the top of the forum list (“bump to the top” or BTTT), and the critical posting ‘slides’ down the front page, and quickly out of public view. Although it is difficult or impossible to censor the posting it is now lost in a sea of unrelated and unuseful postings.
By this means it becomes effective to keep the readers of the forum reading unrelated and non-issue items.
Altering Opinion & Reviews
Your opinion does not matter. If it did, then you would be able to speak freely and without fear.
There would be no such thing as “freedom of speech zones”, and “no hate” campuses.
The days of the first amendment protections are over. The first amendment only applies to those who regurgitate the narrative as defined by the government, or their owners; the oligarchy.
Here, in this section we discuss just some of the techniques that those in power use to suppress your thoughts, opinions and activities. The reader should be well advised that it is terribly out of date and obsolete. Such is the situation in the United States today.
Who is really in control? Are you?
“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes.
They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country.
They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.
It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.”
– John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925
It is common knowledge that businesses and even individuals can alter the behavior of those on the Internet. But what is not so well known is that the Government takes this kind of manipulation very seriously and is doing their best to replicate it.
Consider these examples that have somehow become public knowledge.
Facebook Manipulation
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
-George Orwell
Facebook Quietly Admits to Censoring information regarding the WikiLeaks DNC Links, but doesn’t say why.
Well, we know why.
Facebook and the DNC are partners in the collection of raw data of American citizens. I am sure that their efforts are quite extensive, and because of this, I shall only offer one or two examples of their efforts. If the reader chooses to disbelieve my conclusions in this matter, it will make no difference to me. So believe what you want.
Previously, Facebook was discovered to have removed a Live video of Philando Castille dying, and posts of the Bastille Day aftermath were scrubbed from the newswire.
Its news bar has also come under fire for being biased.
Facebook can call the issues disparate, but they’re not — not to users. At some point, the ignorance and blind claims of ‘damn that algorithm’ have to end. If Facebook wants us to turn to it for news and treat it seriously, then it has to be much more open.
Afterall, no one want’s to be spoon fed censored material.
The WikiLeaks link issue has reportedly been fixed, which is great — but also not really the point.
The fact links to the archive was blocked at all suggests there’s a very tight reign on what’s allowed on Facebook across the board, and that’s a problem.
Americans are both figuratively and physically tethered to a unified way of thinking. As time progresses, this system becomes stronger, more invasive and all encompassing.
.
Not to mention, that this manipulation can be directed from outside the organization as well, such as from government agencies.
“More than 1,800 requests were so-called “emergency disclosures,” which are granted to law enforcement on a case-by-case basis, and are a subject of some controversy. They include, for instance, requests to suspend someone’s account, as was the case with Korryn Gaines, a 23-year-old mother who was shot and killed by police in 2016, after she reportedly threatened officers with a weapon. She was broadcasting her confrontation on Facebook, and police asked the company to shut down her account, saying that other users were egging her on.”
-Hanna Kozlowska in the article titled “Facebook is giving the US government more and more data” (I guess that the First Amendment no longer has any validity.)
Google Manipulation
Google could influence who voters pick to be America’s next president. This is the conclusion that research psychologist Robert Epstein came to after studying the demographics and algorisms used by the software firm. Writing for Politico Magazine, Epstein, contends the Google search engine behemoth (as well as others) has;
"…amassed far more power to control elections … to control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs … than any company in history has ever had."
He continues;
"America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and no one — except for me and perhaps a few other obscure researchers — would know how this was accomplished,"
According to Epstein, Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more and even up to 80 percent in some demographic groups.
Even if we ignore that voting is the imposition of a majority’s will on a minority, facilitated by wielding the violence of the state. Even if we disregard that voting only allows its participants the choice between two entrenched, corrupt, archaic political parties (while third party and independent voices are intentionally blocked, ridiculed and plowed under.)
We must then begin to confront the fact that electronic voting is such an openly obvious fraud to any “democracy” that would insanely choose to use it.
To have an unverifiable invisible counting mechanism, a proprietary, secret software and hardware platform, a meaningless archiving and recount system, a closed-source software system that cannot be audited and inspected is essentially and deliberately the worst possible implementation.
Not only does our country have the obvious electronic voting problems to deal with, but we have also implemented electronic voting in the most counter-intuitive, corrupt and problematically designed manner that it can possibly be implemented.
Epstein points to one telling experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups in which search rankings favored either Candidate A, Candidate B or neither candidate.
In the experiment, the participants were given brief descriptions of each candidate and then asked how much they liked and trusted each candidate and whom they would vote for.
Then they were allowed up to 15 minutes to conduct online research on the candidates using a Google-like search engine. Each group had access to the same 30 search results, but the ordering of the results differed among the three groups.
When our participants were done searching, “opinions shifted in the direction of the candidate who was favored in the rankings,” he writes. “Trust, liking and voting preferences all shifted predictably.”
"Perhaps the most effective way to wield political influence in today’s high-tech world is to donate money to a candidate and then to use technology to make sure he or she wins…"
- Robert Epstein
It is interesting to note that while Google had been extremely active in attempting to manipulate the 2016 election in favor of their preferred candidate Hillary Clinton, they ultimately failed.
It was not because of their techniques however, but rather due to their expectation that the race would be close with Hillary leading by five points. Their manipulations did not take into account other scenarios.
Google is facing new scrutiny in the wake of revelations that it stores users’ location data even when “Location History” is turned off.
In the past, Google quietly edited its description of the practice on its own website—while continuing said practice—to clarify that “some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps.”
As a result of the previously unknown practice, which was first exposed by the Associated Press, Google was sued by a man in San Diego. Simultaneously, activists in Washington, DC urged the Federal Trade Commission to examine whether the company is in breach of its 2011 consent decree with the agency.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in San Francisco, attorneys representing a man named Napoleon Patacsil argued that Google is violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the state’s constitutional right to privacy.
The lawsuit seeked class-action status, and it would include both an “Android Class” and “iPhone Class” for the potential millions of people in the United States with such phones who turned off their Location History and nonetheless had it recorded by Google.
Further Reading
Google’s new scheme to connect online to offline shopping scrutinized
Also on August 17, attorneys from the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote in a sternly worded three-page letter to the FTC that Google’s practices are in clear violation of the 2011 settlement with the agency.
In that settlement, Google agreed that it would not misrepresent anything related to "(1) the purposes for which it collects and uses covered information, and (2) the extent to which consumers may exercise control over the collection, use, or disclosure of covered information.
"Until the Associated Press story on August 13, Google's policy simply stated: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."
This turns out to not be true.
Amazon Manipulation
Sorry, but I am going to use an example from politics. Hopefully this one (being so dated) will not be offensive to my readership. Just remember people, politics in America is just a big game of "bread and circuses for the masses". All the participants work together.
Amazon can and will change and manipulate reviews for political reasons. With the proper amount of money, they will do so for ANY reason. (And, we all know, that the United States government has a bottomless supply of money…)
Let’s go back to later 2016, early 2017…
Hillary 2016 Book – Stronger Together
Here’s a funny story that wasn’t reported in the mainstream media. It took place during the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald trump. Both had written books to promote their causes and beliefs. However, Hillary Clinton’s book tanked and was poorly received. Here’s a screen shot;
Hillary Clinton’s book was just not selling.
.
As The New York Times reported at the time, the book was a disaster. Both Mrs. Clinton and her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, have promoted the book on the campaign trail, but the sales figure, which tallies about 80 percent of booksellers nationwide and does not include e-books, firmly makes the book what the publishing industry would consider a flop.
“Stronger Together,” whose cover shows Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kaine waving, arrived closer to Election Day than most of these types of books. Named after the campaign’s slogan, “Stronger Together” offers readers, according to the book jacket,
“specific and practical solutions, while also articulating a bold and expansive vision of change and renewal.”
Its roughly 250 pages intersperse bullet-point policy ideas, like “launch a national initiative for suicide prevention” and “humanely address the Central American migrant crisis,” with photographs of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kaine on the campaign trail, charts in the campaign’s signature chunky font and highlights from Mrs. Clinton’s speeches.
Unfortunately the book was a flop.
No one wanted it, and the one’s whom actually bought the book gave it negative reviews. So, as with everything else in this ‘new normal rigged’ world, something had to be done and (Washington Post) WaPo-owner Jeff Bezos’ Amazon reviews appear to have been ‘tweaked’.
They apparently changed the reviews and the stats to reflect a much more favorable view of the book.
Indeed, more than doubling Hillary’s top reviews.
But, as WND.com explains, Amazon’s steps to ‘fix’ Hillary’s book reviews has resulted in 5-star ratings with scathingly negative comments. (I guess that is what happens with the literate masses object to such blatant manipulation.)
If you can’t even win when the rules are changed in your favor, things must be REALLY bad.
That’s how it looks for Hillary Clinton’s new 2016 campaign book, “Stronger Together,” co-authored with running mate Tim Kaine. WND reported this strange turn of events when the book was being savaged on Amazon.com with negative reviews, with 81 percent one-star ratings and an average of only 1.7.
Of course denials were everywhere, and the Clinton organized shrills quickly lashed out at “trolls” they said were criticizing the book only because they oppose the Democrat’s presidential candidacy.
It’s really quite funny.
Once it became news what Amazon was doing, other purchasers of the book had to chime in. WND previously reported there were more than 1,200 reviews, and the number grew to than 2,000.
Zero Public interest did not fit the Public Narrative.
.
However, that just couldn’t possibly stand, and by Thursday afternoon, the amount was yet again culled (again!) until there were only 255 reviews, with many of the most critical reviews removed by Amazon, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post, which created an army of 20 reporters and researchers to investigate the life of Donald Trump.
Victory for the Clinton book, however, remains out of grasp, with the negative, one-star responses, outnumbering positive, five-star responses nearly 2-1. The one-star ratings Thursday were 62 percent, to 35 percent for five-star ratings.
And, of course, knowing the DNC manipulation of all their reviews, the book reviewers simply punched the five-star button then made harshly critical condemnations of the book and Hillary Clinton.
That way their opinions were still posted…
"I didn’t buy this book or read this book, but I have read the reviews, and enjoyed hours of entertaining, fun filled reading, expressing the TRUTH, about a crooked, lying, corrupt, terminally ill Presidential candidate, who stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, and who is about the steal the Presidency with the use of election fraud. 10 Stars to the authors of these reviews. Proof that not only are Amazon.com shoppers of superior intelligence, but thye call it like they see it…. Amazon shows this as a verified purchase, when I didn’t buy the book … how fun!”
- From suz702, who posted a five-star ranking
On and on, there’s pages of this stuff…
“the book confirms the hrc is a racist. every matter in her mind is about racies (sic). but reality is she does not care about the black people. just look at the ever increasing trend of black population that are relying on welfare since the obama rule. the fundermental (sic) cause of this result is the fact that lefties of the country favor the riches by allowing outsourcing jobs to other countries. black people should wake up, stop supporting dnc and hrc, who is effectively a puppet of the elite class. the book is simply a propaganda.”
- Ian alexander, another five-star reviewer said.
Just two days earlier, out of 1,244 reviews, 81 percent were one-star and 16 percent five-star. The book plunged from No. 840 earlier this week to No. 1,538 on Thursday. It was No. 5 in the subcategory “Books-Politics & Social Sciences-Politics & Government-Elections & Political Process-Leadership.”
The reviews dripped sarcasm, both before the Amazon edits to the reviews and after.
“I bought this thinking it would be a how-to book. I wanted ‘How to set up your own Foundation for fun and profit.’ Also, would like to have seen a chapter on ‘Ten easy steps to setting up your own secure server in a bathroom,'”
-Elaine.
And, here’s another…
“Not only no but hell no. I’d rather read Mein Kampf,”
- Anthony Messina.
Chjhores said:
“Pre-ordered an autographed copy but had to return it after this week’s announcement as I was worried it was contaminated with pneumonia bacteria. I didn’t want to end up exposed to the illness like her grandkids in Chelsea’s apartment she was playing with on 9/11 after she collapsed, or the little girl she was hugging in the street afterwards. Thought about ordering the Kindle version but I thought it might open my device up to being hacked by communist countries. I wasn’t too surprised to see Tim Kaine on the front cover giving the traditional National Socialist salute (“Heil Hitler!”), I felt it fitting.
Strongly recommended for those who believe the USA isn’t anything special and should be more like the peaceful utopias of North Korea, Iran, or Cuba.”
And kpm said,
“Imagine my dismay when key parts of her life were omitted, would have made for far better reading if she had included all of the below starting with flunking the D.C. Bar Exam to:
Was removed from her House Judiciary Committee staffer job because of incompetence and lying.
The Whitewater scandal.
Married a serial liar and cheater, who occasionally had sexual encounters with nonconsenting partners.
Lied about “sniper fire” in an attempt to simulate exposure to danger in a war zone.
The subject of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” that led to the impeachment and disbarment of her husband
Took crockery, furniture, artwork and other items from the White House — had to return and/or pay for them.
Said “what difference, at this point, does it make” about four brave people killed in Libya as a direct result of her failure to protect them on the anniversary of 9/11.
Totally ignored the structure and rules for the handling of sensitive national security information.
Amassed a personal fortune with “speaking fees” and payments from private sector political donors and foreign governments into transparent “foundations” in obvious exchange for future political favor.”
Nearly 1,500 people found that review “helpful.”
But more than 3,400 found helpful the comments from Daniel B.:
“I was going to read this book … I really was. But just as I got started, I found myself under sniper fire, passed out, and fell and hit my head. After that I got double vision and had to wear glasses that were so damn thick I couldn’t even see to read. As if that wasn’t enough, I then had an allergic reaction to something and started coughing so hard I spit out what looked like a couple of lizard’s eyeballs, my limbs locked up, and I passed out and fell down again, waking up only to find out I had been diagnosed with pneumonia 2 days earlier. Somehow I managed to power through it all, but it’s a good thing I was able to make a small fortune on this random small trade in the commodities market (cattle futures or some such thing) and then, miracle of all miracles, a few banks offered me a few million to just talk to their employees for a few minutes – and all that really helped out because I swear I was dead broke and couldn’t figure out how I was gonna come up with the 6 bucks to pay for this book, let alone pay the $1,500 for my health insurance this month. I still want to read it, but, honestly, what difference at this point does it make? I hear it sucks anyway.”
Clinton’s 2015 book, “Hard Choices,” received an average of only three stars despite garnering 2,460 customer reviews.
Here’s some screen captures of the “Stronger Together” reviews, because by the time this manuscript is released all of these reviews will be erased to fit the new narrative.
Of course Bezo would manipulate the data his company controls. It is in his own best interests. WND also has documented Bezos’ interest in the election outcome, with the Post’s army of investigators looking into Trump’s life.
As WND reported this summer, Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward told the National Association of Realtors Convention in Washington Wednesday:
“There’s a lot we don’t know. We have 20 people working on Trump. We’re going to do a book. We’re doing articles about every phase of his life.”
Woodward said he has been investigating Trump’s real-estate deals in New York. Why a book on Trump and not Hillary and her 22 biggest scandals?
“[W]e have years and years of reporting on Hillary Clinton to draw from, including her last presidential campaign, her time as secretary of state, and her position as U.S. senator, Because Trump’s involvement in political life is far more limited, the Post newsroom decided to embark on a book as a special project. In order to complete the book in a timely fashion, reporters from throughout the newsroom have been assigned to work for a brief period on particular aspects of his life and career.”
Coratti explained.
The one-star reviews for the Clinton book also continued. All were dripping with sarcasm. Just Thursday afternoon, Jimsdun wrote:
“Well I’m disappointed. This doesn’t tell me how to create a faux charitable foundation and then use it for money laundering.”
Hillary 2017 Book – What Happened
You would think that Amazon would know better than to repeat their manipulative techniques, but obviously they do not read alternative media. They are still drinking off the teat of mainstream media and are completely unaware of the public knowledge of their actions.
In what many have dubbed a flagrant intervention by Amazon itself to seemingly boost the rating of Hillary Clinton’s new book “What Happened“, the Telegraph first reported, and subsequently many others observed first hand, that Amazon has been monitoring and deleting 1-star reviews of Hillary Clinton’s new book “which was greeted with a torrent of criticism on the day it was released.”
Reviews of What Happened have been mixed, with some accusing Clinton of using it as an opportunity to blame others, such as former FBI head James Comey, Bernie Sanders, Vladimir Putin, social media and pretty much everything else, for her failure, rather than herself.
Even The New York Times, which supported Clinton’s campaign, wrote that the book is “a score-settling jubilee”.
What is fascinating, is how few one-star reviews have remained on the website amid reports and screen-grabs showing that reviewers used the space to criticize the former First Lady. One 1-star review, which remained on the website earlier, read:
"Read all the promotional excerpts, which combined come close to book length – pretty good novel. It is fiction, isn't it? Surely, someone is playing a joke."
"Picked this book up at Wal-Mart out of sheer morbid curiosity. Returned it, claiming I bought the wrong book"
While this is not the first time Amazon has intervened to “adjust” the ratings of its products, in November negative comments under a book by anti-Trump broadcaster Megyn Kelly appeared to be removed by the retailer, it has rarely “adjusted” reviews of such a prominent product so publicly.
"In the case of a memoir, the subject of the book is the author and their views. It’s not our role to decide what a customer would view as helpful or unhelpful in making their decision. We do however have mechanisms in place to ensure that the voices of many do not drown out the voices of a few and we remove customer reviews that violate our community guidelines."
So how does this change reality….
Well just look though the lens of a clock.
And then seven hours later…
What Amazon.com shows as of today 29OCT20;
A best seller!
Yes, it’s a best seller!
Man! If only my writings could become a best seller. What’s her secret? Are her ghost writers all that great. Truthfully, I am terribly jealous.
Hillary Clinton is obviously a well-beloved and liked person, who is an excellent writer and who has made the world a better place for everyone.
Twitter Manipulation
Perhaps one of the most manipulated social media platforms is Twitter. I don’t use it. I signed up for it when it first came out, and then lost interest after two days. That is the sum total of my twitter experience. However, I am an outlier. Others, such as Donald Trump, use it quite frequently.
Let’s look at some of the ways it is manipulated to serve the needs of those in power.
Twitter Manipulation – Shadowbanned
Following the permanent banning of [1] conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos from using its service; the [2] suspension of the account of Glenn Reynolds, aka @instapundit and creator of the Instapundit blog, a University of Tennessee law professor and a conservative columnist for USA TODAY; and [3] blocking veteran reporter Mahir Zeynalov after bowing to pressure from Turkish president Erdogan; October 2016 saw the [4] ‘shadowbanning’ of thoughtful – non-violent – twitter-er Scott Adams – the creator of the Dilbert cartoon character.
Scott Adams asked his followers for examples of Clinton supporters being violent against peaceful Trump supports in public… which seems to have ‘triggered’ some people and got Adams “Shadowbanned” from Twitter…
“This weekend I got “shadowbanned” on Twitter. It lasted until my followers noticed and protested. Shadowbanning prevents my followers from seeing my tweets and replies, but in a way that is not obvious until you do some digging.
Why did I get shadowbanned?
Beats me.
But it was probably because I asked people to tweet me examples of Clinton supporters being violent against peaceful Trump supporters in public. I got a lot of them. It was chilling.
Late last week my Twitter feed was invaded by an army of Clinton trolls (it’s a real thing) leaving sarcastic insults and not much else on my feed. There was an obvious similarity to them, meaning it was organized.
At around the same time, a bottom-feeder at Slate wrote a hit piece on me that had nothing to do with anything.
Except obviously it was politically motivated.
It was so lame that I retweeted it myself. The timing of the hit piece might be a coincidence, but I stopped believing in coincidences this year.
All things considered, I had a great week. I didn’t realize I was having enough impact to get on the Clinton enemies list. I don’t think I’m supposed to be happy about any of this, but that’s not how I’m wired.”
Twitter Manipulation – Bots
“Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege.
In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty.
Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.”
-Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World Revisited (1958)
In a 2014 report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the social networking site Twitter estimated that more than 23 million of its active user accounts were being run by “bots” — software agents or bits of code that act on their own to respond to news and world events. They interact with real users, never revealing their true nature.
Bots of this kind have been used in efforts to sway public opinion in Central America already for a decade. The hacker and political operative Andrés Sepúlveda claims to have employed armies of bots to influence at least a half-dozen major election results in Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua and elsewhere.
Could the same happen in the U.S. and Europe?
Probably so, given findings on bot activity ahead of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. As part of the Computational Propaganda Research Project at Oxford University researchers looked at some 300,000 Twitter accounts and found that a mere 1 percent of them generated about one third of all tweets relevant to the Brexit debate.
1/3 of all Brexit debate were generated by 1% of accounts.
They believe that many of those accounts were run by bots, because human users could not have sustained such a level of activity without the help of automation. It’s not clear whether the activity swayed the result, though the Leave campaign did generate more automated tweets.
This issue is far bigger than Brexit: The disturbing reality is that computational propaganda is already with us.
In the 2016 U.S. presidential race, Twitter bots support both Trump and Clinton. Bots of various kinds live on cloud servers and operate 24 hours a day, and account for about 50 percent of all activity on the web.
According to the Central American hacker, Sepúlveda, peoples’ opinions tend to be swayed more by views they see as coming spontaneously from real people than by views expressed on television or in newspapers.
Twitter Exposed by the NY Times
Most of the reports regarding the manipulation by the media are buried deep down in the lower nooks and crannies of the mainstream media. Obviously they do not want people to know how they manipulate and conspire to alter viewpoints and opinions. Yet, occasionally an excellent article comes out that just “kicks the door down” regarding just this type of activity.
The New York Times wrote just this kind of article regarding Twitter. It’s worthy of a read. Here is what political commentator Rush Limbaugh (The New York Times Exposes the Fakery of Twitter, on 29JAN18.) has to say about this article;
Folks, I have to tell you something. The New York Times put on their website late Saturday and published in their newspaper on Sunday one of the most phenomenal stories. Now, I know. I am on record as having lost respect for the New York Times, and I am on record as having said many times that my instinctive reaction to anything in the New York Times is not to believe it. However, this story I happen to know is true — and it is phenomenal.
It is a very, very long story. I would recommend that you read this story on your computer so that you can benefit and experience the amazing graphics that they use to illustrate the point. The point of the story is that you, anybody, can buy followers on Twitter and Facebook. You can buy retweets. In other words, you can buy fake human beings and have them reported as following you. The names of people who have done this are listed in the story. They run from actors, to athletes, to pundits, to journalists.
These are bots. You know, I’ve found a lot of people — when I say a Twitter bot or a Facebook bot — say, “What is that?” Well, the easiest way to explain it is it’s just an automatic script. It’s just a little piece of code that is triggered by anything the creator wants it to be triggered by. It’s called a robot or a bot because there’s no real person behind it. It’s a fake. It’s made to look like an actual human being with a Twitter account but no human being exists.
It’s totally fake, made up. Some of these bots are actually based on real people whose identities are stolen and modified ever so slightly so that you wouldn’t notice it to the naked eye. And others are just manufactured out of whole cloth. There’s an actor mentioned here in this story that has 975,000 followers with the vast majority of them unreal. They have been purchased. The number one company selling these bots is right here in West Palm Beach, above Rocco’s Tacos on Clematis Street!
Not to be confused with the Rocco’s Tacos on PGA Boulevard. The Rocco’s Tacos on Clematis Street is where this little guy’s office is. He’s 27 years old. He makes people think that his office is in Manhattan. It’s exceedingly cheap. You can buy 100,000 followers for 10 bucks. The guy has earned six to $7 million selling fake followers. My friends, what this means is that very little is real on Twitter, ditto Facebook when you can buy followers.
Ray Lewis, future Hall of Fame linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens is listed as one who has purchased followers. Now, some of these people are gonna say, “I — I didn’t know! My agent must have done that.” But the bottom line is, you can create bots to do anything. The reason I know this is true is because — as I have shared with you on countless occasions — we have run up against this procedure, this technique trying to damage our business here. And we have found out in our investigational research, it is exactly what happened.
In our case it was 10 people who were flooding our advertisers with massive amounts of emails made to look like it was coming from tens of thousands of people, and it was 10 people creating fake Twitter users, fake customers, fake everything. So it’s one thing to create bots to bombard your enemies. It’s another thing for you to knowingly go out and purchase followers. So what it means is that when you’re on Twitter and you’re looking at somebody that is somewhat known, not the well-known at all, a YouTube star that has millions of followers, the likelihood it is it is nowhere near true.
But look at the influence that it has had. This is why followers are purchased. Look at how often the Drive-By Media quotes Twitter in every story they do. How many times have you heard in reaction to a story “Twitter is melting down”? And you are being led to believe that a story happens, whatever it is, and on Twitter there is this massive reaction to it, either positive or negative — and then you are further led to believe that that story is huge and that millions of Americans have an opinion on it.
And the likelihood is that very little of that is even true. Now, you might be asking, “Why would the New York Times be doing this?” It’s very clear to me. The New York Times had to weigh a couple of things here. On the one hand, these bots can be used to really damage your enemies — business enemies, business opponents, political opponents, political enemies, personal enemies — because you can create fake bots, and you can make it look like a person is literally despised and hated when that person isn’t.
And you can turn it around. You can make it look like a person is universally loved and adored and renowned by gazillions, and that isn’t true. It’s a way to earn fake popularity. Everything is fake on this social media. Not everything. So much of what social media is is fake. So much of it is unearned. So much of it is the result of shortcuts. I’m certain the New York Times did this because they’re fed up with Twitter having more influence than they do. “The New York Times is the paper of record!
“The New York Times is the media of record. Who the hell, what the hell is this Twitter business?” they have probably been saying themselves. I mean, it is a long story. It has many different writers and reporters on it. The evidence is pretty clear. As I say, if I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of this, then I would be highly suspicious of the reporting, of the agenda, the whole narrative. But since I know that this stuff happens. Now, by the way, I have to tell you, I did not know — and I’m happy admitting this.
It makes me sound like I’m a bit naive. I did not know you could buy followers. I didn’t know that. But a lot of people have found out you can buy followers. Do you realize the power of that, folks? Let’s say you’re a B actor or a B pundit, you’re a YouTube star. In reality, you don’t have millions of people watching. Ridiculous! Streaming hasn’t grown that much yet. But yet there’s all these “YouTube stars.” Can I give you some evidence of this? There was some YouTube guy. I forget his name.
I don’t mean this to be critical of the YouTube guy. Please do not misunderstand. But some YouTube guy was creating very clever videos. I don’t even know what the genre was. His first name was Casey. So CNN thought this guy had this massive Millennial audience. And they signed this guy up to start producing videos for them. And they got zilch. The guy finally had to admit that he didn’t know how to do what CNN wanted. He didn’t know how to… So… Well, what the real problem was, the guy didn’t have anywhere near the number of followers and audience that it was made to appear that he did.
See, when did you live by the fake sword, you die by it. When you want fame but it isn’t real, it’s gonna come back and bite you. When you want wealth but that isn’t real — you’ve stolen it, you’ve cheated it, you haven’t earned it — that’s gonna come back and bite you. You want popularity. And everybody on social media does. And this is just one side of social media that’s bad. The other side is just the absolute sewer that it is with the cultural-destroying language and behavior that is used on these social networks, the discourse and all of that.
And then the third element of this is all the lying about what great lives people have and how exciting their lives are. And people read this and think their lives are miserable and they get depressed. I mean, this is… It’s bad all the way around, and now adding this buying followers to it. So how many people have now comfortably gotten a false, totally incorrect opinion of the popularity of certain issues, of the popularity of certain people, when you can go buy it all? And I’m telling you, it’s cheap.
You can buy 100,000 followers for 20 bucks, folks. All you have to do is know where to go do it. Some of these bots are actual real people who do not realize they’re being used. Their e-mail address is changed with one letter. A capital I might become a small I so that nobody would notice it. The user photo might be compressed a little bit so that it looks slight different color but not enough so you wouldn’t notice it without a side-by-side comparison. They make up people and they take actual people and steal their identities, ’cause you have to have some legitimate feel of the follower scam to work.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This Twitter debauchery is even worse. You can kill a stock. You can drive a company’s stock down or the other way with some of these fake bots, the followers and so forth. I’ll tell you what. James O’Keefe, folks, his latest book involving his expose on the political nature Twitter and how they literally ban conservative thought is called American Pravda. It’s been outs a couple of weeks. If you read books, and if you want to learn — at least get a primer on what Twitter really is and how it operates — James O’Keefe, American Pravda.”
Altering Product Reviews
Talk about a glowing review: one five-star review given to a light-up USB cable for sale on Amazon had a headline claiming that this product “has lit up my life.” That review was not only glowing, it was steaming, Amazon says.
In today’s world, anything can be bought for the right price.
This includes written opinions about products and services. One particularly worrisome example is with the book reviews on the website Amazon.com. It turns out that there is a high percentage of them (relatively) that are fake; fabricated and simply made up to deceive either one way or the other.
In the case of the glowing review of the light-up USB cable; The review was fake, purchased by a third-party Amazon seller, the online retailer claims, and probably cost the manufacturer between $19 and $22 (£13 and £15) to write it and have it listed on the Internet for (assumingly) forever. Those are the accusations Amazon has made in its first-ever lawsuit against sites that sell reviews.
The suit, filed Wednesday in Seattle’s King County Superior Court, accuses Jay Gentile, a California resident, and the websites [1] buyamazonreviews.com, [2] buyazonreviews.com, [3] bayreviews.net and [4] buyreviewsnow.com, of trademark infringement, false advertising and violations of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act.
The sites sell packages of reviews, from as few as 3 to as many as 100. Promises include “drip-feed delivery” that won’t raise Amazon’s suspicions and a “100 percent stick guarantee” for reviews, promising to replace any that Amazon deletes or filters out.
One of the sites Gentile is accused of running, buyazonreviews.com, sounds like it’s on the up-and-up:
“We use real people that are sourced from all around the world to deliver high quality unbiased reviews on your products.”
The fine print sounds just as legit:
“We are not receiving any money for your reviews nor are we paying reviewers. Your payment goes towards review sourcing, database management, and operation costs. “
But Amazon says that the reality “is far different.”
In this, its first ever crackdown on fake reviews since it debuted the review platform 20 years ago (with its first review of Dr. Seuss’s “The Butter Battle Book”), Amazon accuses Gentile of promising to “provide as many five-star reviews as the purchaser wanted” and to “slow drip” them onto Amazon’s product pages so that the company would have a “more difficult time detecting them”.
In the complaint, Amazon also accuses Gentile of advising his customers to “do a few verified purchase reviews … so as not to raise any eyebrows with Amazon.
"The reviewers don't actually have to receive the products, Gentile allegedly told customers. Rather, his clients could just send empty boxes to try to fool Amazon into thinking that the reviewer was a "verified purchaser."
The complaint quotes the advice Gentile allegedly gave:
Note: You do not have to actually ship the item unless you want to. We suggest that for tracking purposes is that you just ship out an empty box or envelope, this will show [A]mazon that the item was actually shipped.
When one clueless reviewer working for buyazonreviews.com complained about not having actually received a product, Gentile allegedly reassured his client that she’d be brought in line:
“All our reviewers know of the process and I am not sure as to why she sent this to you but I will ensure it does not happen in the future.”
Amazon gave a number of examples of what it says are phony reviews, such as the USB cable five-star review:
This has lit up my life
By j9 on March 31, 2015
Verified Purchase“Review: I was kinda doubtful about the "electroluminescent technology" of this USB cable. That it actually would work. But it actually did. Not only did the blue light function as they should, they were clear and bright, plus they turned off when the charge was finished. It's rad. They should make them in other colors too. Let's just say we're really impressed and are going to order a few more...”
Amazon is bringing claims of [1] trademark infringement, saying the websites are using the company’s name and logo without authorization. It’s also accusing the websites of [2] cybersquatting by hosting sites with names “identical to or confusingly similar to” Amazon’s own site. Amazon has asked the court to force the various websites to stop using its name and trademarks and to stop selling Amazon reviews. It’s also seeking triple damages and attorney’s fees.
Imagine a world where if individuals can set up a cheap website and system to do this, what powerful and well-funded governments can do.
It should not be believed that they would do nothing, for the maintenance of those in power (regardless of where they reside) are all heavily dependent upon securing the mass opinions of the populace. The reader should view everything on the Internet with suspicion, from news reports, to product reviews. The Internet is a wonderful tool, and it’s use in shaping your opinion on various matters is a well-honed and well-sharpened skill.
Flooding the Forum with “Likes”
In most forums, those posts with the greatest number of “likes” are presented first (or at the top of the forum). By controlling and altering the number of “likes” by various computer bots, one can effectively control the postings on a given internet forum.
This is a very common practice, and is common at Facebook, and Google where the actual software companies takes control of the forums in this manner. However, outside entities can also manipulate the forum using this technique.
Bangladesh “Click Farm”
The idea behind a click-farm is simple, but it takes a little explanation to understand how they came to be.
In the old days, when social media likes and website views were incredibly valuable, many webmasters turned to the dark side of the Internet to find ways to inflate them. Earning 1,000 likes or 1,000 website hits was a tough process, but it could be made a lot easier by setting up a program to refresh the page over and over. For Facebook, those bots would register accounts and use them to like the page.
Robots are easy to detect.
Facebook fan page likes could easily find these fraudulent accounts and remove them. Something needed to be done to make those number-inflating accounts less visible. Something to make them look more legitimate.
The answer, as it turned out, was just to make them legitimate – or as legitimate as it was possible to make them, anyways.
Bangladesh “Click Farm”
.
Webmasters pay people in developing nations like Bangladesh, where an annual income of $120 is acceptable, to create Facebook accounts. Or, more likely, webmasters pay a company that in turn pays these people.
These people register accounts, sometimes dozens, and sit idle until the money comes in. They receive a payment and a target Facebook account, and they relentlessly like the page with their accounts.
Even this was fairly easy to detect.
After all, if 10,000 accounts all mobilize in the span of a week and they all like the same selection of 10 pages, those ten pages very obviously purchased likes from a click farm.
At one point, Facebook purged so many fraudulent accounts it totaled nearly 10% of their entire user base. Unlike YouTube wiping views, however, Facebook’s deletions didn’t remove fake likes.
The modern version of a clickfarm still works the same way, only the people running the accounts take steps to obfuscate their traffic.
In addition to liking the pages they’re paid to like, they also click through ads and related pages on Facebook and like pages they aren’t paid to follow. This is how your page, running legitimate Facebook ads, can run afoul of a click-farm. The flurry of “organic” likes makes it much harder to pick out the mobilization of a click-farm for purchased likes.
The Chinese “Click Farm”
In 14MAY17, an unnamed person disclosed the operational details of a Chinese “click farm” used to manipulate the number of “likes” on a given Internet forum[i]. Photos were provided and some details were presented. From the article;
Chinese “Click Farm”
The bizarre ‘click farm’ of 10,000 phones that give FAKE ‘likes’ to our most-loved apps
Pages on social media websites are given fake ‘likes’ to make them look more popular by thousands of phones
“Footage has emerged of a giant "click farm" that uses more than 10,000 mobile phones to give product ratings and pages on social media websites phoney "likes".
Companies reportedly pay thousands to get their apps more likes by using services like this massive plant offers.
This covert clip in China shows rows and rows of like-making machines all wired to other devices in a factory. And there are said to be thousands more phones in the same building all made for the same purpose.”
The reader should note some details regarding all of the cell phones. They are all smart phones, typically generic or “off make” brands (probably due to cost considerations).
Note that the camera is covered by tape so that if any agency wanted to turn on the camera, it would not be able to record any video. Notice the screens, all of them are slightly different, but the forum that they are posing on is identical. The computer software provides a kind of software personality that automates the clicking algorithm.
A Russian man took video footage of the like-making machines and shared it online. But social media users reacted angrily to this clip. One viewer wrote: “Is everything in the modern world ‘fake’?” While, a third furious user shared: “Is anything actually real anymore?”
To which I must educate the reader.
Yes. Everything on the Internet is fake.
The Thailand “Click Farm”
Three Chinese men arrested in Thailand have acknowledged that they were operating a “click farm,” using hundreds of cellphones and several hundred thousand SIM cards to run up “likes” and views on WeChat, a Chinese social media mobile application, Thai police reported on 13JUN17.
Immigration Police Capt. Itthikorn Atthanark said the men explained they were paid according to how many likes and views they generated, each earning 100,000-150,000 baht ($2,950-$4,400) per month. Click farms are hired to inflate an online site’s viewership for prestige and profit.
Thailand click farm.
Some politicians boast of how many followers they have on social media, while clicks can generate ad revenue.
WeChat is China’s most prominent online social media platform, incorporating a text-messaging service as well as marketing for online stores.
Police seized 476 cellphones and around 347,200 SIM cards during the arrests Sunday at a house in Sa Kaeo province, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) east of Bangkok. The men, identified as Wang Dong, Niu Bang and Ni Wenjin, were charged with working without a permit and importing the phones without paying taxes.
Itthikorn said the arrests followed a police stakeout at the Sa Kaeo house after receiving reports of suspicious activity. He said a police search Monday at another residence believed to be engaged in the same activity came up empty-handed, though police believe others connected with the business are still at large.
Russian “troll farm”
Not only can you find “click farms” in Russia, but they are also used with ‘bots to flood the social media with trolls and other denizens of internet discussion. These farms park themselves and place ‘bots fully intended to disrupt the discussion on social media sites.
And what’s more, they are open for hire, and will do so for any social media. Apparently some of their biggest clients reside in the United States where they make princely amounts disrupting discussion as tolls on social media. So in Russia, not only do you have click-farms, but they also double as ’bout farms, and bit-mining operations.
A second highly effective technique (which you can see in operation all the time at www.abovetopsecret.com) is ‘consensus cracking.’
Pig Farts are destroying the Ozone Layer
Posted by Trustworthy Joe Average
Everyone knows that XXXXXX. It has been proven that XXXXXXX. And since XXXXX is a Y-chromosome, and Brando is good for plants, that DNA is great with JAVA, and the study clearly indicates that bovine farts are safe, while pig farts are dangerous.
To develop a consensus crack, the following technique is used. Under the guise of a fake account a posting is made which looks legitimate and is towards the truth is made – but the critical point is that it has a VERY WEAK PREMISE without substantive proof to back the posting.
Once this is done then under alternative fake accounts a very strong position in your favor is slowly introduced over the life of the posting. It is IMPERATIVE that both sides are initially presented, so the uninformed reader cannot determine which side is the truth. As postings and replies are made the stronger ‘evidence’ or disinformation in your favour is slowly ‘seeded in.’ Thus the uninformed reader will most like develop the same position as you, and if their position is against you their opposition to your posting will be most likely dropped.
This works on most websites, such as Facebook.
However in some cases where the forum members are highly educated and can counter your disinformation with real facts and linked postings, you can then ‘abort’ the consensus cracking by initiating a ‘forum slide.’
In April 2020, my LinkedIN feed was filled with articles stating that the Italian government was being overwhelmed with lawsuits against China for "mishandling" of the Coronavirus.
The only thing was, all of Italy was in lock-down at that time, and mail, servers and the Judicial apparatus were not functioning. They didn't even begin to resume operation until July.
Obviously it was a big lie.
No legal actions were taken inside of Italy against China at all, but you would never realize that if you were not aware of the situation within both Italy and China, and how the legal systems works. Things that most Americans are unaware of, which is why this technique is so prevalent in America today.
Topic Dilution
Topic dilution is not only effective in forum sliding it is also very useful in keeping the forum readers on unrelated and non-productive issues.
This is a critical and useful technique to cause a ‘RESOURCE BURN.’ By implementing continual and non-related postings that distract and disrupt (trolling ) the forum readers they are more effectively stopped from anything of any real productivity. If the intensity of gradual dilution is intense enough, the readers will effectively stop researching and simply slip into a ‘gossip mode.’ Which is the ideal outcome.
In this state they can be more easily misdirected away from facts towards uninformed conjecture and opinion.
The less informed they are the more effective and easy it becomes to control the entire group in the direction that you would desire the group to go in.
Caution is often warranted. It must be stressed that a proper assessment of the psychological capabilities and levels of education is first determined of the group to determine at what level to ‘drive in the wedge.’ By being too far off topic too quickly it may trigger censorship by a forum moderator.
Information Collection
Information collection is also a very effective method to determine the psychological level of the forum members, and to gather intelligence that can be used against them.
In this technique in a light and positive environment a ‘show you mine so me yours’ posting is initiated.
From the number of replies and the answers that are provided much statistical information can be gathered. An example is to post your ‘favorite weapon’ and then encourage other members of the forum to showcase what they have. In this matter it can be determined by reverse proration what percentage of the forum community owns a firearm, and or a illegal weapon. This same method can be used by posing as one of the form members and posting your favorite ‘technique of operation.’ From the replies various methods that the group utilizes can be studied and effective methods developed to stop them from their activities.
This method has become famous by various anti-gun groups who intentionally collected information on gun owners in selected cities in anticipation of a anti-gun government.
Anger Trolling
This technique is known as anger trolling.
Statistically, there is always a percentage of the forum posters who are more inclined to violence. In order to determine who these individuals are, it is a requirement to present a image to the forum to deliberately incite a strong psychological reaction.
From this the most violent in the group can be effectively singled out for reverse IP location and possibly local enforcement tracking.
To accomplish this only requires posting a link to a video depicting a local police officer massively abusing his power against a very innocent individual. Statistically of the million or so police officers in America there is always one or two being caught abusing there powers and the taping of the activity can be then used for intelligence gathering purposes – without the requirement to ‘stage’ a fake abuse video.
This method is extremely effective, and the more so the more abusive the video can be made to look. Sometimes it is useful to ‘lead’ the forum by replying to your own posting with your own statement of violent intent, and that you ‘do not care what the authorities think!!’ inflammation.
By doing this and showing no fear it may be more effective in getting the more silent and self-disciplined violent intent members of the forum to slip and post their real intentions. This can be used later in a court of law during prosecution.
JTRIG
One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.
Over a period of several weeks, NBC News published a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance.
As of 2015, another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.” Was published with goes into great detail how the United States government intentionally smears and destroys the reputation and credibility of anyone whom it wants to. It does this through pure application of honed Nazi and KGB techniques.
By publishing these stories one by one, NBC reports highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: [1] the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, [2] the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, [3] the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and [4] destructive viruses. But, here, specifically, lets focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.
Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two primary tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: [1] “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), [2] fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and [3] posting “negative information” on various forums.
Gaining Full Control
It is important to also be harvesting and continually maneuvering for a forum moderator position. Once this position is obtained, the forum can then be effectively and quietly controlled by deleting unfavorable postings – and one can eventually steer the forum into complete failure and lack of interest by the general public.
The goal is to only have forum postings favorable to your desired point of view present.
This is the ‘ultimate victory’ as the forum is no longer participated with by the general public and no longer useful in maintaining their freedoms. Depending on the level of control you can obtain, you can deliberately steer a forum into defeat by censoring postings, deleting memberships, flooding, and or accidentally taking the forum offline. By this method the forum can be quickly killed.
However it is not always in the interest to kill a forum as it can be converted into a ‘honey pot’ gathering center to collect and misdirect newcomers and from this point be completely used for your control for your agenda purposes. The object is to gain full control.
Prohibit Non Approved Opinion
The powers-that-be understand that if the government can control speech, it controls thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry. In fact, some of this past century’s greatest dystopian authors warned of this very danger.
In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, reading is banned and books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, serious literature, scientific thinking and experimentation are banned as subversive, while critical thinking is discouraged through the use of conditioning, social taboos and inferior education. Likewise, expressions of individuality, independence and morality are viewed as vulgar and abnormal.
In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”
And in almost every episode of Twilight Zone, Rod Serling urged viewers to unlock their minds and free themselves of prejudice, hate, violence and fear. “We’re developing a new citizenry,” Serling declared. “One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”
Conclusion
Yes, the manipulation of speech is an important tool for the control of people.
And we see a lot of this in regards to politics. Specifically in politics related to “democracies”, which pretty much rely upon “mob rule” to select the leadership. Thus we see that data in democracies are subject to popular opinion and thus must also be manipulated.
So, we see that in a “democracy”…
Leadership and politics are heavily involved in censorship and manipulation.
And in data sets and metrics of success, leadership also manipulates heavily.
But this is not the case in other forms of governance.
In totalitarian, and Republic forms of governance, there is no need to appease the population, thus there really isn’t a need to manipulate or censor. You can use China as a good example.
China
There was an outbreak of COVID-XXX in ZhangXin on March XXXX. 2,338 were infected, 388 died, and 78 were arrested for non-compliance with the mask law.
The Chinese don’t need to lie about these figures, or the presentation of them. They are facts. And whether you like them or not, agree with them or not, or anything else has no bearing on the issue. They do not CARE about your opinion.
Compare that to America, where mob opinion is very important and can result in positive or negative opinions of the leadership. Eventually resulting in their termination if things go bad.
USA
COVID-XXXX hits Boston. 456 infected, 34 deaths. But these figures are not verified by a secondary source and there are indications that they might be artificially enlarged by confusing it with the influenza. A government spokesperson admitted that there were a "few" deaths, but that everything was under control and a vaccine is under production right now to prevent further infections. Further, the vast majority of those that died had prior conditions, were old and feeble, or had other complication.
Sound familiar?
Remember these techniques are only effective if the forum participants DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM.
Remember these techniques are only effective if the forum participants DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM.
.
Once they are aware of these techniques the operation can completely fail, and the forum can become uncontrolled. At this point other avenues must be considered such as initiating a false legal precedence to simply have the forum shut down and taken offline. This is not desirable as it then leaves the enforcement agencies unable to track the percentage of those in the population who always resist attempts for control against them.
Do you want more?
I have more posts along these lines in my Functional and practical notes section of my SHTF Index…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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One of the things that I truly appreciate is how we all somehow come up with solutions to problems. Some of those solutions are truly amazing and noteworthy. As (for example) what Eddie Van Halen did to his guitar when he couldn’t afford a wah-wah petal. And as a tinkerer, and inventor, I just cannot help but be attracted to DIY articles and stories of making… stuff and things.
Here’s an interesting article about narco-submarines. These are miniature submarines that are used to transport contraband (illegal to own objects) to a hungry clientele behind the United States grand wall of isolation. We read about these vehicles and objects from time to time, but this is the first article that I have come across that had some real depth to it.
The following article is titled “Ghost Gliders: Spanish Narco-Submarines” written by H I Sutton, on Mon, 08/31/2020 – 7:38pm. It came from the Small Wars Journal. All credit to the author. Please note that it was reproduced pretty much intact with only minor editing to fit this venue.
Ghost Gliders: Spanish Narco-Submarines
By H I Sutton
We tend to think of (so-called) narco-submarines as a Latin American phenomenon.
Properly speaking they are LPVs (Low Profile Vessels); alternatively SPSS (Self-Propelled Semi-Submersible—I do not use this term).
Locally in Latin America they are known as ‘narcosubmarinos’ or ‘semisumergibles.’ Now we have another Spanish name to add to the list, ‘planeadora fantasma,’ meaning ‘Ghost Glider.’
This is because narco-submarines are not confined to the Americas. Similar methods being used elsewhere, most noticeably in Spain.
The most widely reported Spanish narco-submarine (and I use this colloquial term unapologetically), was found on 24 November 2019 on the Galician coast. The 72 feet long craft was large and carried over 3 tons of narcotics, but it was otherwise like the ones found in the Pacific or Caribbean.
In contrast, the one found in the same area on 13 August 2006 was completely unique. And the same can be said of the latest ‘Ghost Glider,’ found on 27 August 2020. The basic difference is that the November 2019 boat was built in Latin America while the other two were built in Spain.
Different ideas, conditions and modus operandi have led to different approaches in design.
Ghost Glider designs.
Three ‘Types’ of Spanish Narco-Submaries: ‘Vigo’ FSV, ‘Transatlantic’ and LPV, ‘Ghost Glider’ LPV/GFV. Source: H I Sutton, 2020.
2006 Vigo Narco-submarine
An elaborate artisan submarine was found abandoned off Spain’s Galician coast near Vigo on 13 August 2006…
2006 Vigo Narco-submarine
This is about the time that narco-submarines, as we would recognize them today, were beginning to be interdicted in Latin America.
It was a FSV (fully submersible vessel), 36ft (11 meters) long and 6.5ft (2 meters) across. And unlike LPVs, was able to fully submerge, down to a depth of about 10ft (3 meters).
Underwater it was powered by batteries driving two electric motors.
And it had over 1,000 gallons of fuel for surface running. It was estimated to be capable to carrying about 1 ton of cargo. Other aspects were also relatively advanced, including a folding snorkel mast and radar antenna.
Despite its sophistication there is no suggestion that this tiny craft was suitable for transatlantic voyages. More likely it was intended to rendezvous with another ship offshore, pick up the drugs and transport them back to the Spanish shore.
2019 Narco-Submarine
A regular LPV of the style we see in Latin America.
There is compelling evidence that this was designed by the same master boat builder who is responsible for several others. Design details, such as a small splitter plate ahead of the cockpit windows and the V-shaped hull, create a ‘designer’s fingerprint’. This allows us to tie together multiple incidents.
2019 Narco-Submarine
The first LPV from this designer was interdicted by the Colombian Navy on 3 January 2019. Since then at least four more have been found, the most recent being found in its jungle boat yard on 6 August 2020. This last one was unusually large, being about 100 feet (30 meters) long. In fact all of the LPVs attributed to this unknown master boat builder stand out against their peers.
But we should not make too much of the particular designer. If the 2019 narco-submarine could cross the Atlantic, virtually any large LPV could. In overall terms it was not remarkable. This should be more alarming to Law Enforcement than if it was in some way special.
Current thinking, based on publicly available information, is that it was built in the Colombian jungle near the inland border with Brazil. It then sailed all the way down the Amazon to the coast before setting off across the Atlantic. It went via the Azores before heading towards Galicia.
planeadora fantasma
This latest craft sits between the go-fast vessel (GFV) category and LPVs.
Again, it is a unique design unlike those seen in Latin America. It takes a power boat hull, adds a hard RIB collar and then a built-up covered superstructure. It is not currently—based on public sources—possible to say how low it sat in the water. Possibly the collar was part of a ballast system. However we can say that it was intended to avoid detection, hence ‘ghost glider’. It was painted in a way that appears intended to deceive any observers.
Ghost Glider; planeadora fantasma.
The term ‘planeadora’ refers to a speed boat, and ‘planeadora fantasma’ has previously been used to describe the custom go-fast vessels also used off Spain. These craft are often RIBs and several have been specially modified for the task. Most famously the massive 59ft (18 m) seven engine ‘Monstruo’ stopped in 2009.
This latest vessel is about 39 ft (12 meters) long and could possibly carry a few tons of cocaine. The extensive grab rails and aft-sloping cargo hatch suggest that it is designed to be loaded at sea, which makes sense. So like the 2006 Vigo submarine, it is likely intended to meet other ships offshore and then bring the drugs ashore.
It could easy be put into the GFV category instead. But its elaborate construction and emphasis on deception (as opposed to raw speed) makes a strong case for it being a narco-submarine. It is certainly not just a typical GFV.
Going Transatlantic
The Spanish narco-submarine traffic appears to be centered, on Galician drug gangs. This may be skewed by reported incidents, but all three have been discovered in Galicia in the North of Spain. Portugal, Ireland, France and the United Kingdom also appear to be logical landing points.
Narco Sub.
My suggestion is that the Cape Verde Islands and Azores are stopping off points for transatlantic narco-submarines. They likely meet supply vessels in the area.
ACK 3, a Spanish company specializing in defense, intelligence and security consulting which advises European and Latin American military and law enforcement units suggests that language may be a factor. Brazilian crews can communicate with the local population on these islands using Portuguese.
Some of the transatlantic narco-subs may transship their cargo to other vessels along the way. Trawlers operating out of Spain seem the most obvious candidates. But I have not seen any information in the public domain to substantiate this theory. Another possibility is that the drugs are transferred to large cargo vessels heading to Northern Europe or even to North America.
These vessels may be coming from a low-risk port so not be tainted in the way that a cargo ship crossing from Latin America might be.
Interception of a smuggling vessel.
So we can speculate that a Latin American built LPV could set off from Brazil (or Venezuela, Suriname or Guyana) and rendezvouses with a cargo ship off Cape Verde or the Azores. The cargo would be transshipped and the cargo vessel (or fishing vessel) heads north towards Europe. Off the Portuguese or Spanish coast, while still out at sea, it is met by a ‘ghost glider’ like the one seized in August 2020. The transshipping can occur at night, and the drugs are landed in a remote beach in Galicia. Local drugs gangs may only be able to control access to the landing point for a few hours. So some of the drugs may be dropped in pre-determined lurks awaiting retrieval by scuba divers at a later time.
Outlook
It seems that it is now a case of when, rather than if, another transatlantic narco- submarine appears. And even if none are interdicted, it seems a sure bet that they are out there. And together with ‘ghost gliders’ and less exotic means, drugs trafficking organizations are still able to land their products on European shores.
The narco-submarine model for cocaine trafficking presents European law enforcement with a number of challenges. Detection, tracking and interdiction may all be different compared to the Pacific and Caribbean. And the vast expanse of ocean, often in harsh weather, may stretch existing patrol forces; however, SIGINT, UAVs and new satellite technology such as the Hawkeye 360 constellation may prove powerful tools.
Conclusion
Nations and governments use “vices” to control the population. When they ban or tax, or regulate things, people find ways to engage in their vices without government interference. While dug abuse is a big problem in America, it’s not a problem in areas that don’t ban the drugs.
Mexico doesn’t have half the drug problem that America has, but it doesn’t have the same laws either. The same is true for China. Yes, smoking marijuana is seriously against the law, but that is pretty much the only thing that is. You can get just about any medication over the counter without a doctor’s prescription and there just isn’t a serious drug abuse problem there.
Anyways…
I am not advocating the use of drugs.
What I am saying is that governments use up a ton load of money, personnel and resources trying to ban things. While, instead they should be dealing with those individuals who have a physiological problem with drugs. You go after the problem. Not the symptoms.
The world needs to start looking at things in new ways with new “eyes”.
The old ways are failing left and right. The solution to the problems that ails the world isn’t more bans, regulations and restrictions, but rather a complete loss of control by the few at the PTB level.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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"The US federal budget is on an unsustainable path, has been for some time. But this is not the time to give priority to those concerns."
- Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell
The world is changing. As I have covered in other posts, the technology that mankind is adopting is causing a great deal of social change. But not like one would expect. It’s not just using a smart phone instead of a rotary dial up phone. It’s not just using a Car Ride APP instead of hailing a taxi. It’s more than that…
It is disrupting many “imprisonment” and “stratification” schemes. Schemes that have become so ingrained into society that we (mistakenly) believe that they are a fundamental part of what our society is.
A stratification scheme is one in which a sentience (or a way of thinking and acting) forces upon society a special system of control. It is a system where they have advantage over other groups of people. And they control the access to this system. They let some people in, and leave others out. It's an exclusive system. As the saying goes in America "they control what will happen, and you ain't a part of it".
The caste system in India is a good example of this. But there are many others.
Most especially in America.
Think of any system where you need to go through a "gauntlet of approvals" to get something done. And then discover that the ones who "had it easy", and did not need to fight through that gauntlet (such as the wealthy and the "well connected") were sitting here smug when you finally (after many hoop jumps) arrived. These systems have saturated America today.
It is at a point that a "diversity" movement has organized to give others (who normally are restricted from entering these stratified societies) a chance to "break through" those invisible "glass walls".
These schemes…
… such as the Banking System, and the University System, and the Media System are all under stress and being replaced. (There are many others, such as the Judicial system, the Professional Registration System, and the Internet Paywall systems.) These schemes developed over time as a way for one group of people to have benefit over others. It was a way to control others (not overtly) but through quiet manipulation.
However, they point to some other nation. A nation that they read about in the “news”, and repeat loudly “America is the best nation on the earth!”. “America has problems” they retort, but it is not as bad as the rest of the world.
How do they know this mantra?
The American “news” media told them. That’s how.
Just stay in your little prison you mindless, deplorable debit serfs. Be content with your pathetic way of life. And work! Work! Work! If not, then the system will keep you so drugged up that you will be incapable of rising up and rebelling.
True, to some degree, more or less, the rest of the world engages in petty corruption. A cup of tea here, a few dollars there. However, in America, it is institutionalized and legalized at an enormous wholesale level. All by serious long-time crooks and con-artists.
The Presidential election of 2016 was a choice between two "mafia" bosses;
[1] Democrat - The Clinton Crime Syndicate. Hillary Clinton.
[2] Republican - A New York Casino Owner - Donald Trump.
But, people fought back…
The control of the media was the first battle.
Seemingly overnight, in the 1990’s, all sorts of alternatives to the mainstream media popped up. And the PTB were ending up exhausted trying to fright this “wack a mole” phenomenon. But they eventually won. The alternative media tended to cluster in groups by political extremes. So the PTB, and their government bodies, just simply ended up controlling the multiple media outlets. They now control the narratives for all Alt-Left, Alt-Right, and Mainstream media. And, the battle is not over. They are tightening their control over this medium in all sorts of ways.
The control over who works and who doesn’t is controlled by “the University System”. Over time, now a days, almost all positions except for semi-skilled and unskilled work requires a university degree. It’s pretty bad when a receptionist position needs to have a four year college education to work.
Well, that system is starting to fracture and crash.
And as I see it, it is going down in flames, and very little in the way of alternatives (in America) are replacing it. Overseas, in Europe and China, it’s a completely different matter. I think that I will cover this issue later on in another post, as it is interesting, and very complex.
And the control of the money / Banks is what I just talked about in my latest post. The systems have been set up to permit a small number of people great control over the lives of the rest of us, and it has resulted in ridiculous levels of wealth and poverty. And other nations (better run, stronger, and more capable) are coming up with solutions. Solutions complete with armed police to prevent corruption and abuse of the system.
Key to these new replacements for the paper-backed (not gold backed) banking industry is something called Cryptocurrency.
The following is a complete reprint of the article titled “What is Cryptocurrency?” written by Adam Levy (TMFnCaffeine) on Mar 11, 2018. It was edited to fit this venue. All credit to the author.
What Is Cryptocurrency?
Everything you need to know about this new form of electronic cash.
Cryptocurrency went mainstream in 2017 as the price of bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, soared over 13-fold during the year.
It’s often called “digital gold,” as some of the characteristics of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are similar to the precious metal often used as a store of value. But that comparison doesn’t do it justice.
Cryptocurrency is an electronic cash system that doesn’t rely on central banks or trusted third parties to verify transactions and create new units. Instead, it uses cryptography to confirm transactions on a publicly distributed ledger called the blockchain, enabling direct peer-to-peer payments.
That definition might seem downright cryptographic right now, but by the end of this overview, you won’t need a decryption key to understand crypto.
Today we’ll cover:
The creation of bitcoin and the blockchain, the underlying technology of all decentralized cryptocurrency.
How the blockchain solves the problems associated with prior virtual currencies.
How cryptocurrency transactions work without central banks.
The function of cryptocurrency “miners.”
How to buy cryptocurrency.
The early history of cryptocurrency
In 2009, a programmer using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto created bitcoin, the first ever cryptocurrency. Satoshi also created the blockchain technology, which makes all decentralized cryptocurrencies possible.
The blockchain was created as a solution to the “double-spending problem,” which arises in virtual currencies because it’s easy to duplicate digital information. A person could make a copy of his or her digital currency information and send both the original and the copy to separate parties.
Sort of like using a Xerox machine to make extra stacks of dollar bills.
Before bitcoin and blockchain, virtual currency relied on trusted third parties to prevent double spending. But Satoshi wanted to develop a decentralized currency, which meant finding a way for the network of bitcoin users to verify transactions.
“The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work,” Satoshi wrote in the abstract of the white paper announcing bitcoin.
This was the earliest description of the blockchain.
Why is it called a blockchain?
A block is a collection of transaction data on the cryptocurrency network.
It basically says Person A sent this much to Person B.
The Block-Chain Process.
As well as saying Person X sent this much to Person Y.
In a way, it is like the sales receipt that the chick at Burger King gives you when you buy a #1 Whopper Meal.
It also includes important information that allows the rest of the network to verify the validity of the block — such as the solution to a complex math problem — called a proof-of-work. While the math problem is hard to solve, it’s very easy for others to verify a valid solution. New blocks cannot be amended to the blockchain without a valid solution.
A block also includes a reference to the block that immediately precedes it. Thus, the blocks create a chain linking one to another through those references.
A “block chain” is created by linking all the blocks together.
The reference to the preceding block is accomplished through something called a cryptographic hash function. A hash function takes a set of data and maps it to a string of letters and numbers called a digest. If anything in the data changes, the resulting hash digest will change as well.
Chaining blocks together by using a hash function to reference the preceding block adds a great level of security to the system. To change a block in the ledger, a hacker would have to reproduce the entire chain of blocks following it, since it would create a chain of invalid hash values referencing the previous block.
It is sort of like making Xerox copies of your Burger King receipt and sending the copies (marked "copy") to everyone in your city.
How block-chain works.
How does a cryptocurrency transaction work?
Cryptocurrency is used for direct peer-to-peer payments anywhere in the world.
The speed of transactions varies based on currency and confirmation requirements, but it’s generally very fast compared with traditional banking systems. Where banks can take days to transfer money, cryptocurrency transfers happen in minutes.
Bank transactions = days.
Cryptocurrency transactions = minutes.
In general, cryptocurrency transactions go through the following steps before they get added to the blockchain.
A person requests a transaction, and the request is sent to the entire network.
Each computer on the network collects all concurrent transactions into a block, along with a timestamp for each transaction.
Each computer works on solving the difficult math problem to add the block to the blockchain. This process is called “mining.”
Once a computer finds a valid solution, it broadcasts the block to the rest of the network.
The network checks the solution as well as compares transactions in the block against the current blockchain to prevent double spending.
The block is added to the chain, showing the transaction was completed.
Once a block is added to the chain, that block gets hashed and is used to create the next block. The process continually repeats itself.
As such, transactions are practically irreversible, much the same way as if you give someone cash (hence calling it an electronic cash system). As mentioned, the chaining of one block to another means someone would have to edit the entire chain of blocks to change a transaction.
How the blockchain process works.
Since blocks are continually added to a chain, it’s extremely unlikely someone will be able to propagate an updated chain of blocks to the network before the rest of the network produces the next block and extends the chain further.
Every transaction needs a signature
Just as credit cards use your signature to verify you authorized a purchase, cryptocurrency uses a signature as well …
… a digital signature.
Transactions are secured through a cryptography system called public key encryption. Each user has both a public key and a private key associated with his or her account.
To authorize a transaction, users must prove they know their private key by using it as an input into a cryptographic hash function similar to the one used to link blocks together in the blockchain. That’s called signing the digest. The private key is used to write that “digital signature,” so it’s very important that the private key remains private.
Public Key = Each person in the transaction gets a copy.
Private Key = One (and only one) for each person involved.
What do miners do?
With no central banks deciding when to print more money, a cryptocurrency needs to define how to create new units of the currency. Many cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin, distribute new units to miners as an incentive for verifying transactions on the blockchain.
“Cryptominers” verify transactions on the blockchain.
They are paid in bitcoin for their labors.
Miners work to solve the difficult math problem or other proof-of-work systems within every block of the blockchain. They also work to verify the solutions. Running all these calculations have real-world costs, including buying hardware and using electricity.
The difficulty of the math problem for bitcoin blocks is automatically adjusted such that the combined processing power of the network takes about 10 minutes to solve the problem on average.
When a miner successfully adds a block to the bitcoin blockchain, that miner also earns the right to take a reward. The winning miner’s bitcoin address is recorded in the block.
For instance…
The reward started at 50 bitcoins per block.
That number is halved every 210,000 blocks (or about every four years).
The current reward for adding a block is now 12.5 bitcoins, and that number will fall to 6.25 around June 2020.
At some point, the reward for solving a block in the bitcoin blockchain will become extremely small. By 2140, miners will have mined all 21 million bitcoins that will ever be in circulation. At that point, the incentive for miners to update and verify the blockchain will come from transaction fees. Some cryptocurrencies already rely on relatively high transaction fees to offer miners incentive.
Bitcoin miners (cryptominers) used to make their money in bitcoin for mining. Now, their primary source of income is in (high) transaction fees.
Transaction fees are currently relatively small for bitcoin, but if transaction volume doesn’t climb to compensate for the decrease in block rewards, transaction fees will have to increase to compensate miners.
How to buy cryptocurrency
It’s no longer practical to use your home computer, or even a custom-built bitcoin mining computer, to mine bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies.
Most people will get a better return by buying it through a cryptocurrency exchange.
A cryptocurrency exchange allows consumers to change their fiat currency, like U.S. dollars, into cryptocurrency like bitcoin.
Cryptocurrency trading process.
A cryptocurrency exchange works just like any other exchange, such as a stock exchange. It matches buyers and sellers based on a book of orders. As orders are added to the book, the exchange matches buyers willing to pay the same amount (or more) than sellers are requesting.
“What is cryptocurrency” revisited
To recap, I defined cryptocurrency as …
"an electronic cash system that doesn't rely on central banks or trusted third parties to verify transactions and create new units. Instead, it uses cryptography to confirm transactions on a publicly distributed ledger called the blockchain, enabling direct peer-to-peer payments."
Let’s break that down.
“An electronic cash system“: Cryptocurrency has no physical form. Ownership is determined by the digital record found in the blockchain.
“Uses cryptography“: Transaction requests are authorized and confirmed through public key encryption. The blockchain also uses encryption to link blocks to one another.
“Confirm transactions“: The chain of transaction data in the blocks allows the network to verify that a transaction hasn’t already occurred — the double spending problem — and to add new transactions to the ledger.
“A publicly distributed ledger“: The blockchain ledger is available to all the computers on the network. In fact, its publicity is essential to making the entire system work. By keeping an updated transaction ledger on every computer on the network, the system is able to protect against changes to the blockchain and verify transactions and ownership.
“Direct peer-to-peer payments“: Payments never go through a central banking system or trusted third party but instead simply move from payer to payee. This process increases the speed of transactions and reduces the fees associated with transferring money.
Cryptocurrency is a complex new form of electronic cash. With no reliance on central banks to confirm transactions or authorize the creation of new units, it can dramatically reduce the fees and time associated with moving money around the world.
Conclusion
People are still coming up with new applications for blockchain technology and new cryptocurrencies every day. With this basic overview of what cryptocurrency is, you can start developing a deeper understanding of the various currencies available.
"The only stable and viable solution for the species to survive is a new eco-civilisation, based on a global non-market economic system, in which the private tyranny of the market – a global plutocratic elite of profit mongers – and anti-democratic oligarchic political systems do no longer rule the destiny of the people,"
-Dieterich
Make no mistake, banking systems, and the way they operate is changing. Whether it will happen soon (with the e-yuan system currently in use) or in the distant future,(if the PTB that control America has their way), it will happen.
I think that it is important to understand that things are changing and the old way of doing things are being supplanted with better, fairer and more complete systems. And those that lived off the corruption of the old systems are not going to go away peacefully in the night. Instead they will fight. They will fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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After 75 years of non-stop narrative that “fighting is the last resort of fools”, and that a “kinder and gentler nation” is at hand, what has America turned into? Instead of being a male-driven patriarchal society, what has the feminization movement brought America to? Is it actually a well-behaved, respectful and fair place?
No.
No it isn’t.
It’s a non-stop sequences of cat-fights, and verbal assaults with regulations on just about every action that you could think of.
It’s true. Have you ever wondered about Social Media? Doesn’t it more resemble two teenage girls fighting in eighth grade than two grown adults having a conversation?
Well. Guess what? It’s a Western phenomenon. It is something that has occurred in nations that have adopted a progressive social structure, the r/K society has developed and all discourse has degenerated to that level. While other nations, more traditional in nature, really doesn’t have this problem.
Guess what else this “improvement” on society has created?
The Karen.
My mom is a Karen whose name is actually Karen. Simply put, I haven’t seen her in over a year because I couldn’t take it anymore. Living with her was just an exhausting nightmare.
Karen’s world revolves around Karen. Nobody else’s issues matter. If you tell her that you had a bad day, she’ll give you 20 reasons why her day was worse. You worked 60 hours this week? Well, when she was your age, she would work 80. You’re in the hospital after having major surgery? She has a pinched nerve in her arm, which is somehow worse. Your boyfriend cheated on you? She couldn’t even begin to tell you about all the heartbreak she’s experienced in her life.
She complains left and right about anything and everything. If you’re taking a week break after just getting back from college, she’ll ask why you haven’t gotten a job yet and claim you’re lazy. If you’re out to eat at a restaurant the food is always too cold or too burnt or too salty. You can only ever go to the places SHE wants to go to, because everything else is crap. My entire graduation dinner she complained about how cold the food was.
She THRIVES in getting attention and constantly seeks it, but she has very few ACTUAL friends. Facebook is her lifeblood and she’s always looking to start something on there. She’s the queen of sharing uninformed, misguided, conservative propaganda, which always starts fights in her comments. Also, if a tragedy happens in the family (like the passing of my teenage cousin), she’ll make a big scene on Facebook and expect condolences from anyone and everyone, and makes note of the people who don’t give her what she wants.
Don’t even get me started on the blatant racism. I’ve heard everything from, “watch out for black people on the subway. They’ll try to take your purse” to “It should be illegal for those Muslims to cover their faces. You should be able to see someone’s face.” One of my best friends is black and she once told me, “He’s one of the good ones. They should all be like him.”
-12 People Reveal What’s It Like To Be Related To A ‘Karen’
So, in nations that have not adopted the progressive societal structure, they are able to have more or less pretty inoffensive comment sections on social media. The people tend to be more respectful and much more polite.
Like…
Poland.
Brazil.
Russia.
China.
Japan.
Ah. America. Home of the pussy-ants pansies beta clucks.
I argue that traditional management of society from the personal level through to the government level is a very important element of the success of that nation. When you try to “improve” it by implementing change, you need to set forth a sequence of trials, and monitor their results carefully. You just don’t set up some kind of movement and force the rest of the world to conform to your madness.
America changed.
And today everything that you see around you is a consequence of that change.
And I, for one, do not like it.
I like family units where everyone has a role. I like polite discussion and discourse. I like to be able to buy something and not pay hidden fees, taxes, or read down a long list of warnings and advisement. I like a world where I can shake someones hand, look him in the eye, and make a lasting contract. I like a world where mothers are respected, and grandparents live in your house with you. I like a world where you are respected as a person.
Sigh.
Ah. There is nothing wrong with human nature, and if you all want to be passive, beta clucks. Fine. But you all will be eaten alive by very vicious, hungry wolves.
This is a great article worth a read. It’s about one of the aspects of what a man is. He’s a person who is not afraid to kick up a little bit of dust from time to time.
Just some guys talking. Right? But you know, don’t you, you know not to cross them or mess with them. Why? Is is because they are going to say things that will hurt your feelings? Is that why you don’t want to mess with them.
Everybody knows the benefits of lifting weights but it isn’t the only game in town that can build your body and mind. Learning how to fight also has a place as one of the key things all men (and wo
men) should do to get the most out of their life experience. Sound like an exaggeration? It’s really not, especially when you consider learning how to fight has been a rite of passage since the beginning of time in many dominant cultures. It is only in recent times that the practice of channeled aggression has been given a bad rap.
The practice of fighting, or learning a martial art, is especially valuable for men, for whom the acting out of aggression, the desire to dominate, the ability to look after ones’ family or tribe, as well as having the camaraderie of like-minded males, is a huge factor in wellbeing and something that modern society constantly deprives them of.
The ability to challenge others, to endure pain, and the knowledge that you can look after yourself physically, are very underrated factors that contribute to high levels of functioning in other areas of life. Learning how to fight doesn’t mean you have to go around bashing heads in but, knowing you could if you had to, can make all the difference between a timid boy and a dominant man.
If you are still not sure how learning how to fight can benefit you, the 12 reasons below should clear up any confusion.
1) Learning how to fight builds unbreakable confidence
Have you ever seen a fighter who looks timid and scared of the world?
Didn’t think so.
The knowledge of knowing you can take anyone on and, in all probability, defeat them in a physical contest can do wonders for self-confidence. You may think this is crude or uncivilized. Nevertheless, we are fighting animals that have survived because of our ability to think and defeat enemies.
Most of the giant ancient civilizations that we know were masters of violence and war, and this is still true today.
Being able to fight gives us the assurance we can take care of ourselves and the people who are dear to us. It also ensures that our confidence is not based on anything external, like possessions or material goods.
Our confidence, therefore, cannot be taken away and is literally unbreakable.
2) Learning how to fight teaches persistence
If you hadn’t already guessed, learning how to fight is tough.
Training to get into fighting shape is brutal.
The actual fighting is dangerous and extremely violent.
Even sparring is rough if you underestimate what you are up against. All of this combines over time to build your mental and physical toughness.
As you go forward and resist the urge to quit, you learn persistence and why it is so valued as the secret of success. It takes persistence to get up when you keep getting your ass kicked. It takes persistence to throw another kick when it feels as though your leg is about to drop off.
Learning to take action anyway will deeply affect your success in other areas of life.
3) Learning how to fight teaches us how to control our emotions
When we are first learning how to fight, things are not going to be rosy.
Our bodies (and, quite possibly, our faces) are going to get beaten up.
We are going to be tired beyond our wildest dreams.
One thing that fighting does during this process is teach us how to control our emotions.
We will no doubt come up against a lot of fear, anger and frustration as we master techniques and get knocked down by more experienced challengers. We may encounter some negative emotions that we have stuffed down since childhood that fighting is finally allowing us to let go of. Though this process is bumpy at best, it is cathartic. Over time, we will learn to do what we have to do to achieve our goals, regardless of how we are feeling.
This mastery of thoughts and emotions is priceless, for lasting confidence and well being.
4) Learning how to fight is a great way to relieve stress
As we mentioned above, the process of learning how to fight can be physically exhausting. Keeping your mental edge during a fight so you don’t get knocked the hell out is exhausting.
There is natural satisfaction that comes from good, honest physical work – however violent – and when we are done for the day we will feel good.
After a few hours you will be soaked in sweat, with muscles shaking, and all you will want to do is eat something and go to sleep. Over time, this routine of hard work and pushing through the pain will eliminate a huge amount of stress from your life.
5) Learning how to fight takes you a long way from your comfort zone
There is nothing more uncomfortable than being thrown into our situation you are not familiar with.
Learning how to fight is no exception in this case.
It is unlikely, upon first entering the gym you wish to train in, you will be met by big smiles and fireworks. Instead, you are going to have to earn the respect of the more experienced people in there.
You will have to work hard and show you are not another person who is going to come for two weeks and then not show up again.
Voluntarily sailing away from you comfort zone like this is courageous act and, in overcoming what you were afraid of in the first place (new people, no experience etc.), you will be rewarded with a level of self-esteem that can never be taken away from you.
Experience stepping out of your comfort zone more and more often and it will rapidly start to expand.
6) Learning how to fight will get you in the best shape of your life
It doesn’t matter how much weight lifting you do or how many miles you run during the week – training to fight is another ballgame entirely.
For one, you will need to work for many hours before you are competent at certain skills, and even then you will be nowhere near mastering all of the nuances that come with real fighting.
The training fighters do to be able to withstand punishment and dish it back out is brutal and your conditioning is going to level up as a result. Sparring or grappling for 3-5 minute rounds is no joke, even for an elite athlete. One huge bonus of all this punishment? You will actually look as tough as you are for once, rather than looking hard but running scared like a lot of bodybuilders.
With the right set of rules governing your training and nutrition, you should be able to stay in shape all year with no extra effort needed.
7) Learning how to fight teaches you discipline
The skill and sport of fighting shares this with all other types of physical competition.
Its takes prolonged discipline to see the fruits of your labor.
This means getting up early to fit in a training session, eating right, living right, foregoing too much alcohol and getting a good night’s sleep.
Having the mental discipline to stick to this routine, despite all of the obvious temptations of instant gratification around you, will set you apart from others as time goes by.
Success is not an overnight thing but, with continuous discipline, it will come to you just as sure as the hands on the clock will continue going around.
8) Learning how to fight will force you to get out of your own head
Too many of us spend days feeling self-conscious and disempowered because we spend too long in our own heads.
From birth and childhood, we have been implanted with a lot of negative beliefs that don’t serve us, all of which are going around in a continual loop in our subconscious minds.
To sit and listen to them for too long is tantamount to throwing all of our hard-earned confidence and self-esteem out of the window.
Aside from consciously practicing positivity, we also need to spend time out of our heads, doing something physical. Hitting the gym can be good. Having sex is good. Learning how to fight is a great way to do this. We have no choice but to be totally present in our bodies and to reject intruding thoughts, or else we might catch a sharp right to the jaw.
Forcing ourselves to be in the moment – rather than withdrawing mentally and emotionally – is great practice for other pressure situations that may occur in our lives, including business meetings or family emergencies.
9) Learning how to fight allows you to express yourself physically
Despite what modern thinking will tell you, men are inherently physical and prone to violence.
The great majority of the victims of this violence will be men. The physical expression of aggression and the thrill of war have long been swept under the rug as the dark side of the human psyche.
In today’s world, our violence is played out in movies, in computer games, in the board room, or in politics.
As entertaining as this, it leaves a lot of men feeling repressed and emasculated.
Learning how to fight remedies this need for challenge and violence completely. Through training and sparring you can express yourself physically in a relative safe, socially-condoned environment, which will make you finally feel like the dominant person that you are.
Don’t believe it?
Go and find out for yourself and report back.
10) Learning how to fight gives you the opportunity to compete for something
Just as men inherently crave confrontation and violence, they also crave competition for something.
In this day and age, most major competition is relegated to professional sports or business.
When you learn how to fight, and decide to fight against others in competition, you unleash that latent part of you. You will learn the reward of real competition and putting it all out there, willing and finding a way to win.
Make no mistake – we all want to win.
This is not ‘bad’ or to be punished.
It is just natural.
Fighting in proper environment can give us the buzz of competition without any unfavorable repercussions.
11) Learning how to fight forces us to take action and master ourselves
We aren’t all born with the action habit.
Some of us are never taught that no-hesitation killer instinct that sets the super-achievers apart from the crowds.
Many of us procrastinate and put things off, mostly because we fear being rejected by those who are close to us.
When we learn how to fight, we have to tackle this inability to take action head on. We have to learn to act, regardless of how we feel, otherwise we are going to get our lights turned out.
This ability to do things when we don’t feel like it is one of the secrets of really productive people that always seem to be achieving something.
Master yourself and cultivate the habit of taking action and you will see huge changes in the direction of your life. All of a sudden, you will be in control.
12) Learning how to fight puts us into contact with more dominant, like-minded individuals
There is a famous quote that states we are a combination of the 5 people we hang out with the most.
Whether this is true or not, the people we spend a lot of time have a huge influence on our thoughts and behavior. Prolonged interaction will make certain traits ‘rub off on you’, whether you are aware of it at the time or not.
Hanging out with others who are learning how to fight then, in an MMA gym or dojo or whatever, ensures you are interacting with like-minded individuals who are aware of who they are inside. Think about the people who fight – dominant, powerful, alpha individuals who set goals and get what they want.
Having that camaraderie, as well as that mindset rub off on you, is never going to hurt anything.
13) Learning how to fight makes you far more attractive
As much as women (and men) protest that they don’t like violence and hate people who fight, its mostly all lies fed by society.
The fact is, people (especially women) are attracted to those who can hold their own physically and win a fight.
This shows in many ways that they are a dominant individual who is more than capable of looking after a family – a very attractive trait.
Most fighters are also very at ease in their own skin and super-confident in themselves, which comes through in their body language and the way they interact with people. This is a far-cry from some weightlifters who compensate for their inner anxieties by building large muscles.
The fact is, women don’t care all that much about big muscles.
They want a strong, confident man who can take care of things and keep them safe.
Want to be more attractive?
Learn how to fight.
14) Learning how to fight supplies us with a powerful, positive philosophy of life that we can carry with us always
Acquiring the will, skill and attitude of the warrior is not all about physical ability.
Most fighting schools, and in particular martial arts, are brilliant for instilling a philosophy of respect, discipline and hard work upon their students.
These ancient philosophies help us keep things in perspective, keep our egos from running wild, and ensure we treat our newfound powers with great respect and responsibility.
This code of honor is not just applicable on the training mats, in the ring or in the octagon – it can be applied to all areas of life and absolutely should be.
Internalizing this philosophy gives us confidence and purpose – a mission that was perhaps not there before. This is the one thing that all mentally strong people have in common – without exception – and will serve you well for the rest of your life.
“Prize fighting is short. You get in, get rich and get out. But martial arts are for life. It’s for life.”
– Conor McGregor
Conclusion
It’s an outstanding article and very true.
Men need to be able to fight. We need that feeling of control and power. We need to feel that we are in control of our life. And when we get that feeling, it reflects upon us, and as a result…
…big changes in our life takes place.
Tony Soprano Enjoying life.
We start to eat better, we find the house tidy at the end of the day, and people tend to respect us more. No. It’s not because we threaten everyone with a punched nose. It’s because we have a self-confidence that we carry with us everywhere.
Men are not women.
Yet we are the same.
I am immensely attracted to a self-confident woman. It’s something that I just cannot control myself about. It’s like Sharon Stone in the movie Casino. Self Confidence is addictive.
For men…
…we can get this through learning how to fight and the discipline that comes with it.
And maybe, just maybe, those “Karens” in our lives would be a tad more respectful to the rest of us.
My sister AND sister in law are both Karen’s. I will show up to restaurants 15 min early to warn them. I tell them if it’s not done to their liking they WILL hear about it and they will make your shift hell. I’m just there as a warning.
I used to work in restaurants and those people made life hell. I do what I can to help. Generally my drinks are better and we get a free appetizer as soon as those two tornados walk in all hell breaks loose. Not enough ice, table is too cold, it’s too loud, etc. I also tip really big because I DON’T want to be associated with the two tornados.
I live overseas so I only see them 2 weeks out of the year. So it’s manageable. I only put up with their attitude because they could take my nieces and nephews away from me. I pick my battles. I need my nieces and nephews to know I’m always here for them and they can talk to me about anything. I can’t risk our relationship being tampered with, especially since I only see them 2 weeks a year.
Remember, being able to fight is not the same thing as fighting. It is a simple thing really.
It makes for a polite society.
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America is following the same sort of evolution that all nations experience. And as the United States sunsets into the mire of folly and corruption, I find myself musing about the past and other historical precedents. I’ve looked at Germany, and Rome. I’ve looked at some of the more promising nations in South America, and I’ve looked at some of the amazing stories from China. From what I can tell, stability in a nation requires a combination of skills. Some of which might include intelligence, but it certainly includes both emotional / social skills and a degree of ruthlessness in use.
Here we look at Empress CiXi.
She is a well-known historical figure, well at least by the Chinese. She is virtually unknown in the West, and if you were to ask any of the Portland Protestors about her, they wouldn’t have a clue as to what you were talking about.
This is a reprint of the article titled “Empress Cixi Brought China Into The Modern Age — And Wasn’t Afraid To Kill Her Enemies” written by James Burch and published on October 14, 2019. It has been reformatted to fit this venue and all credit to the original author.
Empress Cixi Brought China Into The Modern Age — And Wasn’t Afraid To Kill Her Enemies
Some suspect that Cixi killed her dead son’s pregnant wife so she wouldn’t have to compete for power with a legitimate heir.
Within
Beijing’s Forbidden City, beyond the imposing gates and the great
halls, lie the buildings that once housed the emperor’s harem, an
institution that evokes a time of oppression. But it was out of these
quarters that a woman born in obscurity and confined as a concubine came
to transform the world’s most populous empire.
History long depicted the Empress Dowager Cixi as a scheming despot
who brought her country to ruin. But this scapegoating is not only
simplistic, it’s inaccurate, as the flawed but skilled de facto ruler
brought China into the modern age.
Wikimedia Commons; Cixi in c. 1890, when she was around 55 years old. This photo was taken by court photographer Yu Xunling and colorized by Imperial Court painters.
Cixi: Teenage Concubine
The girl who would one day be called Cixi was born in 1835 to the
Yehenara clan. Her father seems to have been a regional administrator,
although reliable details about her family and early life are lacking.
The Yehenara, like the Qing dynasty rulers, were ethnically Manchu,
which afforded them special status above the Han Chinese majority.
At age 16, she stood before the Xianfeng Emperor and was chosen for
his harem, assigned to the lowest rank. In the Qing Empire, life as an
imperial courtesan carried more prestige than you might imagine. It
certainly offered more security than most people had during her
lifetime. As concubine, she received the title “Noble Lady Lan.”
Wikimedia Commons – The Xianfeng Emperor was without a son until Cixi came along as a concubine.
Two years into his reign, the emperor had inherited a country in
crisis. The Taiping Rebellion, a civil war on an apocalyptic scale, had
begun across China and would ultimately leave at least 20 million dead —
twice the death toll of World War I.
Capital Of A Suffering Empire
In 1856, Cixi ensured her influence in the emperor’s court after
giving birth to his only son and heir. Soon enough, she was the second
highest ranking woman in the palace. Nonetheless, her son would
officially belong to her superior, the Empress Zhen.
The Xianfeng era was not going well. In addition to the endless civil wars, Great Britain continued to push back against Qing Dynasty isolationism. In 1856, allied with France, the British again went to war with China.
In 1858, the imperial court fled from the Anglo-French forces, who took the capital and looted and burned the emperor’s Summer Palaces.
Wikimedia Commons – China suffered a defeat to the Anglo-French forces in this battle of the Second Opium War, 1860.
The Xianfeng Emperor died in 1861, leaving the empire in a precarious
position. In this context, during the royal court’s exile in Rehe
province, the newly titled Empress Dowager Cixi, began her consolidation
of power.
Filling The Power Vacuum
According to the dying wishes of the Xianfeng Emperor, eight high
ministers would form a Grand Council to advise his five-year-old
successor, the Tongzhi Emperor. Cixi, meanwhile, had formed an alliance
with a higher-ranking colleague, now the Empress Dowager Ci’an. They
maintained that they were to be the boy emperor’s official co-regents,
with the power to approve or reject any edict.
The empresses dowager went ahead to Beijing ahead of the funeral
cortege. They received the cooperation of Prince Gong, one of the late
emperor’s brothers and a believer in modernization. Cixi, Ci’an, and
Prince Gong staged a coup and led charges of disloyalty by three
ministers they deemed to be hostile to their own power base.
Cixi intervened on behalf of the condemned, reducing their sentences
from death by slow cutting, to decapitation for one, and suicide by
strangulation for the others.
Prince Gong in 1860, as photographed by Felice Beato.
Three Rulers And A Puppet
The senior Empress Dowager Ci’an would oversee the palace, while Cixi
took the lead in affairs of state and politics. Prince Gong was the
visible face of the trio, since decorum required that Cixi listen to
meetings from out of sight. The young Tongzhi Emperor retreated from
public affairs during his upbringing.
The young Tongzhi Emperor disliked studies.
The terms of peace after the Second Opium War punished China. Western
countries now could establish enclaves along China’s coast. But the
Qing court could enlist the help of the French and British in fighting
the Taiping rebels. Cixi encouraged the adoption of foreign military
technology and guidance.
A new school, the Tongwen Guan, taught international languages and
science. Cixi favored many proposals for industrialization and
modernization, collectively known as the Self-Strengthening Movement,
although she opposed railroads, saying the noise disturbed the dead.
Cixi had developed a close, and perhaps romantic, friendship with An
Dehai, one of her eunuch attendants. The favor she showed him did not
sit well with Prince Gong and court officials. In 1869, they had the man
beheaded.
The Tongzhi Emperor came to rule in his own right at age 17, but had
less interest in governing than in sheer entertainment. When he
dismissed Prince Gong from his court, he received a stern,
protocol-breaking lecture from Cixi and Ci’an, and their ally was
reinstated.
An Dehai, the Empress Dowager Cixi’s favorite eunuch, was beheaded by Prince Gong and his allies. Cixi apparently did nothing to stop them.
The Tongzhi Emperor died at age 18, and rumors suggested syphilis as
the cause, given his multiple affairs with prostitutes. Modern review
has ruled that out, but the gossip is a measure of his public image.
Surprising Reversals
Cixi hadn’t gotten along with her son’s wife, the Empress Xiaozheyi,
who regarded the former concubine as an inferior. Suspiciously,
Xiaozheyi died very soon after her husband, along with her unborn child.
Cixi then adopted her three-year-old nephew, who became the Guangxu Emperor. Oddly, she ordered
him to call her his “royal father.” Ci’an emerged as the principal
regent of the period, as Cixi was suffering bad health. But in 1881,
Ci’an herself died of a stroke. Cixi was again in command.
The Guangxu Emperor assumed power at age 18 in 1889, and Cixi
nominally went into retirement on the outskirts of Beijing, though
foreign governments sometimes wrote to Cixi directly, bypassing the
emperor.
The Empress Dowager (center) with courtiers in 1902, the year following the Boxer Rebellion. Empress Xiaodingjing stands second from left. Yu Xunling, photographer.
In 1898, Cixi opposed a rapid modernization program, called the Hundred Days’ Reform. Advocated by the emperor and his advisors, the plan proposed a constitutional monarchy.
Cixi worked to block the reforms, and to remove the reformers, executing those who didn’t manage to escape first. The Guangxu Emperor was placed under house arrest on an island adjacent to the Forbidden City, and would never again wield power.
Anti-foreign sentiment in China coalesced into the Boxer Rebellion,
named for its organization’s martial arts practices. In another turn,
Cixi expressed sympathy with the movement. In 1900, militias attacked
the coastal mini-colonies. Following the defeat of the Boxer Rebellion,
Cixi publicly apologized for supporting it, and China made restitution
payments to the countries affected.
Cixi now changed course again, advocating for a limited monarchy. She
stood for photographs and painted portraits in a kind of charm
offensive, offering prints to palace visitors.
But as her health failed, Cixi arranged that yet another child would
be next in line for the throne, a declaration she made from her deathbed
before her death on Nov. 15, 1908. Just the previous day, the Guangxu
Emperor had himself died of arsenic poisoning. Cixi was buried in a
palatial tomb east of the capital.
Upon hearing the news of the deaths, anarchist Wu Zhihui referred to
Cixi and her nephew as a “vermin empress and vermin emperor” whose
“lingering stench makes me vomit.”
This portrait of the Empress Dowager Cixi was painted in 1905 by Dutch artist Hubert Vos.
Self-Serving Usurper Or Brilliant Leader?
In the Republic of China, Cixi was a target for contempt. Her image in the English-speaking world was colored by the book China Under the Empress Dowager,
written by John Otway Percy Bland, a journalist, and Edmund Backhouse,
an utter fraud, whose fantastical stories Bland chose not to question.
The early Chinese Communist Party had no love for any “feudal”
tyrants. Only in the 1970s did anyone question the melodramatic
caricature of Cixi as a “Dragon Lady,” an unfortunate nickname that
remains.
Modern historians credit the Empress Dowager Cixi for pulling China through difficult times, while others vilify her for her numerous executions and opposition to crucial reforms that would have risked her own hold on power. It’s remarkable that she held onto power for 45 years — but at what cost?
Conclusion
You have just learned about the life of those in power.
Do you actually believe that things are different today?
Oh you might call the type of governance different, and you might have different technologies, and different societal constructs, but the fact remains that the lifestyles of the wealthy, the famous, the rulers and their first tier actuators do not resemble ANYTHING like the subjects that they rule over.
It doesn’t matter if the year is 1908…
Or 2008.
There is a fundamental change in the personality of a person who obtains power. We say that they are “corrupted”, but that’s not really accurate. They change.
They change.
They become something different.
This different “thing” can be monstrous or glorious or something in-between, but they do and actually change.
As such…
You cannot expect them to think as you do. You cannot expect them to experience life as you do. You cannot expect them to understand you, your needs or the relationships that you have with your friends, or your industry or your pastimes. For that all is alien to them.
They might as well be from another planet.
If mankind is going to advance in any way, we have to recognize that power changes humans into something else. And that once a person in put in charge of the reigns of power they can NEVER return back to a “normal” state of life. And for the world to be a better place; one where humanity interacts peacefully and coexists with the environment, we must recognize that power is too dangerous to entrust to individual humans. And that for proper and safe governance, some other system must be put in place that differs SUBSTANTIALLY from any other system already implemented on the planet.
Ponder a spell about the implications of that.
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find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
Yeah. Trump is really pushing this. But we all know what is going on. If it is Chinese, it is bad. It’s a all-hands-on-deck assault on China, short of nuclear war. And the ONLY reason why America is not invading China, and blasting the living fuck out of it’s cities is because Trump knows that America will become completely destroyed and radioactive in the process. China does not play.
So he’s going all-out against everything Chinese. And part of that is the software applications that are Chinese, and being used all over the world. We have read about Huawei, and wechat, which most Americans know nothing about. So they just go with the flow and say Yah! China Bad!
China Bad!
Well, there’s a lot of articles on this. Most are propaganda justifying banning software and technology.
Little thought is whether the President of the United States actually has the power to ban anything. After all, it took a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol back in 1913. Since when did the President become a King?
But I digress.
The excuse is “National Security”. It’s a catch-all phrase which means “I can do what I want and not give any reasons or justification for it”.
Anyways, this article is a pretty decent overview on this subject and is well worth a look. It is titled “Huawei, Tik-Tok and WeChat” written by Larry Romanoff on August 8, 2020 it has 201 Comments . It was found on the UNZ website and all credit to the author. It was edited to fit this venue.
Huawei, Tik-Tok and WeChat
First, let’s dispel the combined notion that China spies on everyone and the US spies on no one. There is so much public evidence to destroy both these assertions that I won’t bother repeating them here. I will however remind readers that a few years ago China more or less banned Windows 8 from the country because it was discovered that the O/S had a built-in NSA back door.[1]
It seems that Germany reported on this first, but the devastating proof was at an IT conference where a Microsoft executive was interrupted during a speech with precisely this accusation.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
He did not deny it because the person making the accusation was the person who discovered it and had with him the proof, but refused to discuss it and changed the subject.
But this is hardly news. Forty years ago it was proven that all Xerox copy machines delivered to foreign embassies and consulates in the US were “espionage-ready”.[10][11]
Also, for at least 20 years, and perhaps much more, it was common knowledge that when any foreign embassies, consulates, banks and other corporations ordered computers and similar hardware from US suppliers, those shipments were intercepted by UPS, delivered to the CIA and/or NSA for installation of “extra” hardware and software before delivery to their destinations. This was one of the confirmations by Edward Snowden.[12][13][14][15]
Any search on this will give you millions of hits unless Google chooses that moment to lose its memory.
Huawei
Trump’s problems with Huawei are twofold.
The most obvious is that China is eating America’s lunch when it comes to innovation and invention and Trump would like to slow this down by destroying Huawei and is clearly making every possible effort in this regard, including bullying and threatening half the known world against using Huawei’s products. But this is the small part of the problem; the real issue is espionage.
There is no practical value in disputing the assertion that Cisco and other American hardware and software firms install back doors to all their equipment for the convenience of CIA and NSA access. But suddenly Huawei is replacing Cisco and those other American firms with its better and less expensive equipment.
That part is okay, but how can the CIA and NSA approach Huawei and ask the company to build back doors into its equipment so the US can spy on China – among all other countries?
There is no solution to this problem other than to trash Huawei’s reputation by accusing it of being an espionage threat and having the company’s equipment banned. And this applies not only to the US, but to the entire Five Eyes Espionage Network, involving the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.[16]
Briefly, this was set up to break laws while pretending no laws were being broken.
It is generally against the law for a government to spy on its own citizens, but that law doesn’t apply to a foreign government. So Canada spies on Australian citizens and sends the information to the Australian spooks who can claim they did nothing wrong.
Rinse and repeat.
The sad part is that the “intelligence” received is usually of little interest to the four minor participants but all of it is shared with the US who are frothing to spy on the entire world and to take possession of “every communication” of every kind in the entire world. Thus, it isn’t sufficient to ban Huawei only from the US because this company’s equipment would castrate the NSA’s effort in the other four nations. Thus, US bullying to ensure each of its five eyes is Huawei-free.
And that’s the entire story, like it or not.
Tik-Tok
Tik-Tok is nothing of consequence, except that it is in direct competition with similar American platforms and has proven too popular and too competitive to be permitted to survive.
This is just a cheap, below-the-belt and illegal-as-hell shot at China.
No threat, no nothing.
However, as with all similar IT products and platforms it contains much personal information especially useful for marketing, which has so far been the private property of people like Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Thus, Trump kills two birds with one stone: either simply kill Tik-Tok on some trumped-up accusation (if you’ll excuse the expression) of espionage, or force a sale to an American company.
Either way, China loses massively while the political oppression and marketing value of that personal information remains safely in trusted American hands.
WeChat
Since few Americans are familiar with WeChat, let me give you a description. Many of these functions are available in the West through various platforms, but not always to the same extent nor with the same convenience.
With WeChat we can transmit text and voice messages, photos and videos, and other files of any description even of many Mb in size.
FOR FREE.
We can send and receive both text and voice messages in any language because WeChat has an excellent translation function in combination with one of its partners which translates not only text and voice, but will extract and translate all text contained in photos, handy for restaurant menus if you can’t read Chinese.
FOR FREE
We can place not only voice calls but video calls to anyone anywhere that transmit over the internet.
FOR FREE
It is so convenient that WeChat is the default communication choice for a great many people for most purposes. WeChat also has a Moments platform where we can post text, photos, videos, that are visible to those on our contact lists while selecting those who can view and who cannot, reserving some posts for close friends and others more generally public.
In China we have two primary online payment systems, one operated by Alibaba (called Alipay) and the other by WeChat. Its use is nearly universal in China and both are free to the user. Unlike PayPal…
ITS FREE
During the past several years I cannot recall a single instance where I had cash in my pocket (even small change) when I went anywhere or was shopping for anything. Even to purchase a small bunch of green onions at a street market, the vendor has a QR code which my phone scans and the payment into their bank account is automatic.
With WeChat, we can send money to each other.
FOR FREE
If we want to share the cost of lunch, you can pay the entire bill and I transfer my share to you through WeChat. If I ever need cash, I could go to any shop or even approach a complete stranger and ask for 1,000 RMB and instantly repay him into his WeChat account.
It is frequently used to transfer money internationally this way, sending dollars to a friend in one country and receiving RMB into a WeChat account in China.
Instant, secure, and free of all fees.
FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE
It all happens within a second, with a concurrent text message confirmation from the bank of both sides of the transaction. WeChat is the main reason people can travel anywhere in China with only a mobile phone and passport (and a change of clothing). Through WeChat, people can purchase plane or train tickets, pay taxi fares and hotel bills, restaurant tabs, in the same way.
FOR FREE
Another useful WeChat function is real-time GPS location sharing. If a group is traveling to a destination in several cars, WeChat displays an active GPS map showing all locations in real space and time. If I am meeting a friend at a shopping mall or park or other large location, with this GPS function we can see each other’s location in real time and I know which way to walk to encounter my friend.
We have WeChat groups which we can create with any number of participants for any convenient purpose. During the COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai we had a temporary WeChat group for the purchase of meat and vegetables that functioned better than any supermarket and with much less trouble. If I want to have a Christmas party I form a group of those I plan to invite, and all our discussions and planning take place within that platform. Most communities (small portions of residential districts) have a WeChat group for notification of community events and sharing important information.
The point with Trump’s “sanction” of WeChat is first that it will terminally disrupt international communications between China and the US for students, scientists, diplomats, media reporters, for all those in the US who have frequent communications with China, effects felt more seriously by those in China, which is a plus for Trump.
Second, Trump’s administration is uncomfortable with the extent to which WeChat is encroaching on the American turf of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and more, with already around 100 million downloads in the US, and his actions are partially to reclaim that turf by simply banning a competing medium that is threatening to take over and seriously downgrade the popularity of similar American platforms.
But most important is the espionage and censorship role of Trump’s initiative.
As the censorship noose tightens around Facebook and Twitter, Americans are naturally moving to WeChat. The real issue is not that WeChat poses any danger to the US in any sense but, as with Huawei, the CIA and NSA cannot very well approach WeChat and ask for automatic sharing of all that personal relationship data.
Therefore, under the guise of China being untrustworthy, the US government simply bans WeChat and thus no one in the US can send or receive any message without the NSA having a copy.
A huge plus is that any news not fitting the official narrative will then be strangled at birth, as Google, Facebook and Twitter are now doing.
If Microsoft or another American firm were to buy WeChat, then of course all is well since it is US firms, not Chinese, who automatically share all personal contact data with their government.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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Well, if you want to be technical it is that he used nuclear weapons via proxy against a Chinese BRI installation within Beirut, Lebanon.
Most people are unaware that the United States has been waging a full-on “hybrid war” against China since late 2016. They see bits and pieces, and conclude that it is just more media nonsense. They do not see the “big picture” of how everything fits together. Well, as frightening as the “big picture” is, you need to see the historical context to see what the fuck we are marching forward. And, people (!) if you are not squirreled away in some safe hiding-hole by now, you had best start making preparations this afternoon.
First off, I covered the “Big Picture” regarding the United States and China here in this long and detailed post;
Thirdly, I covered the details about the use of a (micro) nuclear weapon to destroy the BRI gateway in Lebanon, with a post on the destruction of the Bruit Port in Lebanon here…
Fourthly, I had a warning to the oligarchy. This “Great Reset” will hit everyone everywhere, and you cannot hide alone in your hidy-hole and avoid it. You need to show your true colors and live and work as part of a community…
Of course, you won’t be able to find any of this in the mainstream or alternative media. Their links (internally to the articles) are flagged as “dangerous” and are scrubbed from common viewing. (Man! I never thought that it would happen to me, but it has.)
In any event, let it be well understood that…
World War III is engaged.
It is not being televised.
All of this stuff—the beautiful and the ugly—is really happening and really matters, but you have to be extremely careful in using news reports to develop a sense of how much of what is happening where.
-Resist the Crazy
What now?
No one is going to believe you.
Most people feed at the trough of “news” and they believe what they are told to believe. The “free thinkers” have been successfully funneled into what ever exists in Alt-Right and Alt-Left media. They all are being led like the sheep they are.
"...this idiocy is on a par with the "q-anon" facebook extravaganza which, with
equal scientific and religious fanaticism, identifies a secret plan, only
known to several million with access to top secret conspiratorial websites,
to get rid of trump…who knew?"
You cannot change a sheep. You cannot change a cow. Just give it grass to graze upon and lead it into the proper field so that you can get the wool or milk from them.
And does it matter that you are alone with this knowledge?
"...while the U.S. and Israel represent a threat to humanity, humanity is the
even greater loser when things like this nonsense about a nuclear attack in Beirut take hold among otherwise thoughtful people..."
What benefit could you possibly derive from telling everyone what is actually going on? None. That is what. In fact, you are more aptly and likely to be ridiculed.
So do not even bother.
What to do now, is to take care of you and your loved ones.
That’s what you need to do.
When I walked away from New York City and Wall Street ten years ago it was clear what sort of trajectory the country was on, and it’s only gotten worse since. We’re now in the crucial period spanning 2020-2025 that will decide what the next several decades look like. The big battle for the future is here. Right now. If there’s ever been a time in your life to step up, this is it.
-It's time to step into the arena
The way of the world
At this point, I want to impress to everyone the yin-yang philosophy of the Chinese. For they are the ones that are going to survive all these global changes. And make no mistake, they ARE going to survive. And they ARE going to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and prosper.
And it goes something like this…
The yin-yang philosophy says that the universe is composed of competing and complementary forces of dark and light, sun and moon, male and female. The philosophy is at least 3,500 years old, discussed in the ninth-century BCE text known as I Ching or Book of Changes , and influences the philosophies of Taoism and Confucianism.
And, what I want to do is apply it to what is going on, but at a deeper level.
You see, if you really are paying attention, you will note that the Chinese are trying very desperately NOT to react to any of the United States (Donald Trump) aggravations. They are trying to move like water around them.
And there are very good reasons for this.
One of which is that whatever the Chinese do, it comes back to them. And what ever the United States does, it comes back to them…
So the USA clamps down on every things Chinese. Students no longer attend American schools, Billions of dollars lost.
So the USA clamps down on the use of Chinese APPs. iPhone and GM sales are way down inside of China. Billions of dollars lost.
So the USA launches COVID-19 to suppress China, and the USA gets crushed in the process. Death rate in the hundreds of thousands.
So the USA launches a nuclear warhead to obliterate a city port and…
…
…
What you can do
People(!) if you are in a major city, I would strongly advise you to move. I do not want to announce that MAD-level nuclear destruction is imminent, but I will say that the forces are arrayed in that direction. Only the wise man listens and takes action.
.
My guess is that you have three years before things get dicey.
This will occur regardless of who is in the office of Presidency. Trump, Biden, Harris, Peter Pan. It will not matter.
This will occur whether the villain-of-the-day is China, or Russia, or Iran, or North Korea. It will still occur.
The systems are all in place, the slow grinding of the stone gears are a turning, and there is nothing that mice, or men can do at this point in time. The juncture has been passed, and its a long slow slide into the abyss.
I’m sensing a very dark and vicious energy out there which seems to be affecting all sorts of people who normally wouldn’t be sucked into it. I need to make a conscious effort to not have it influence me or my thoughts. If you’re feeling the same, try to retain sanity.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 4, 2020
But live life
Life must go on. You must work, buy food, and have some semblance of life. Your children must attend school and you must disentangle yourself from all the worries of the world.
Don’t let my warnings get to you.
There is really nothing you can do about anything. Your hands are tied. The systems are all in motion. The things are moving. The chess pieces are on the board, and like the automatons that we are, we are all slowly walking to death’s door.
You just have awareness.
What’s happening in America right now is what happens in a failed state.
The U.S. is a failed state. Now the imperial national security state is going to flex at home like never before.
I spent the last decade of my life trying to spread the word to avoid this, but here we are.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 31, 2020
The mad elephant
The United States right now is like a mad elephant inside of a cargo jet aircraft.
The United States is collapsing and thrashing about like a crazed, mad elephant, trumpeting and stomping, and snarling and biting. Those near it are trying like the dickens to hold on to the ropes that are tying this beast in place. The straps are straining and they are breaking. They are beyond unraveling. A number of the ropes are disengaged and whipping about dangerously.
But it’s only a matter of time, don’t you know.
The elephant must be put down.
It is doing more than just stomping and crushing things. It is shitting all over the place, it is using it’s trunk to pick up the handlers and smash them against the inside of the plane fuselage. Windows are getting cracked. Inside of the plane the metal sides are getting dented and chairs are being smashed.
And the pilot is opening the rear door…
As a cold gust of air floods the inside of the chamber…
And you?
Well, you are that little beetle that is riding on the elephant’s tail. And it is really, really uncomfortable.
What are you going to do? What are your options?
Stay on the tail?
Jump off the tail now?
Wait until the very last minute before you jump off… maybe while the elephant is outside the plane perhaps?
Move to a better vantage point on the elephant?
Jump onto one of the handlers next to the elephant?
Jump onto one of the ropes that are flinging about wildly?
The longer you wait, the less options you will have.
The clueless leadership
The neocons that are all involved in this haven’t a real clue as to what they are doing. They do not see this as opening Pandora’s box that will remake America, and distort the world. They see it as their God-Given Right to reshape the world in “the way of the Lord”.
America today.
In truth, they are like Nero Playing the fiddle while Rome burns.
In July of 64 A.D., a great fire ravaged Rome for six days, destroying 70 percent of the city and leaving half its population homeless. According to a well-known expression, Rome’s emperor at the time, the decadent and unpopular Nero, “fiddled while Rome burned.” The expression has a double meaning: Not only did Nero play music while his people suffered, but he was an ineffectual leader in a time of crisis. It’s been pretty easy to cast blame on Nero, who had many enemies and is remembered as one of history’s most sadistic and cruelest leaders—but there are a couple of problems with this story.
For one thing, the fiddle didn’t exist in ancient Rome. Music historians believe the viol class of instruments (to which the fiddle belongs) was not developed until the 11th century. If Nero played anything, it would probably have been the cithara, a heavy wooden instrument with four to seven strings—but there is still no solid evidence that he played one during the Great Fire. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that Nero was rumored to have sung about the destruction of Troy while watching the city burn; however, he stated clearly that this was unconfirmed by eyewitness accounts.
When the Great Fire broke out, Nero was at his villa at Antium, some 35 miles from Rome. Though he immediately returned and began relief measures, people still didn’t trust him. Some even believed he had ordered the fire started, especially after he used land cleared by the fire to build his Golden Palace and its surrounding pleasure gardens. Nero himself blamed the Christians (then an obscure religious sect) for the fire, and had many arrested and executed. But while Nero may have been guilty of many things, the story of him fiddling while Rome burned belongs firmly in the category of popular legend rather than established truth.
-History.com
The idea behind this is that most people see their lives turned upside down by the action of the leadership. They see the fire. They see the destruction. They see the ruin. But the leadership remains the leadership. They still live in their nice palaces, eat their fine food and drink their fine wines.
Here’s Trump and his oligarchy buddies at a fund raiser event at one of his golf clubs…
President Trump talking to his peers.
Cops and protesters banging heads while bankers sit at home drinking wine with their newly printed Federal Reserve dollars. Same as it ever was.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 30, 2020
The God-Given Right to Reshape the World
When I make this statement, many “normals” think I am a loon. But you must understand that there are people who believe that they themselves ARE the the mouth-piece of God. As such, they can do no wrong, because everything that they do is blessed by God, and that they will be rewarded in Heaven when they die.
Nothing is more dangerous than a narcissist that believes that he is the “hand of God” and is in charge of the vast array of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the American military arsenal.
In the 21st century alone, I’ve been given good reason to distrust all sorts of things around me, including the U.S. government (all governments really), intelligence agencies, politicians, mass media, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, to name a few. These power centers make up “society” as we know it in 2020, which is really just massive concentrations of lawless financial and political power obfuscating rampant criminality behind the cover of various ostensibly venerable institutions. What’s most remarkable is how many people still maintain trust in so many of these provably untrustworthy organizations and industries, which speaks to the power of propaganda as well as the comfort of denial.
-Trust No One
And what does all this mean?
Well, using weapons of mass destruction against other large and power nations, all in the name of God, is opening up Pandora’s box…
Pandora’s Box
A “Pandora’s box” is a metaphor. It refers to a source of endless complications or trouble arising from a single, simple miscalculation.
Pandora’s story comes to us from ancient Greek mythology.
Or, more specifically, a set of epic poems by Hesiod, called the Theogony and Works and Days.
These poems were written during the 7th century BC in Greece.
These poems relate how the gods came to create Pandora and how the gift Zeus gave her ultimately ends the Golden Age of humankind.
The Story of Pandora’s Box
According to Hesiod, Pandora was a curse on mankind as retribution after the Titan Prometheus stole fire and gave it to humans.
Pandora was to be the first of a race of women.
She was the first bride and a great misery who would live with mortal men.
The women would be wonderful companions, but only in times of plenty. And they would quickly leave them when times became difficult.
Her name means both “she who gives all gifts” and “she who was given all gifts”.
All the Ills of the World
Then Zeus sent this beautiful treachery as a gift to Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus, who ignored Prometheus’s advice to never accept gifts from Zeus. In the house of Epimetheus, there was a jar—in some versions, it too was a gift from Zeus—and because of her insatiable greedy woman’s curiosity, Pandora lifted the lid on it.
Out from the jar flew every trouble known to humanity.
Strife, sickness, toil and myriad other ills escaped from the jar to afflict men and women forever more.
Pandora managed to keep one spirit in the jar as she shut the lid, a timid sprite named Elpis, usually translated as “hope.”
Hurwit (1995) says that the myth explains why humans must work to survive, that Pandora represents the beautiful figure of dread, something for which men can find no device or remedy. The quintessential woman was created to beguile men with her beauty and uncontrollable sexuality, to introduce falsehood and treachery and disobedience into their lives. Her task was to let loose all the evils upon the world while trapping hope, unavailable to mortal men. Pandora is a trick gift, a punishment for the good of Promethean fire, she is, in fact, Zeus's price of fire.
- Thought Company
Putting it all together
The world is heading to a “Great Reset”.
The leadership of the greatest nation on the earth, in economy and weapons, believes that he was empowered by GOD to remake the earth.
He has used both biological weapons and nuclear weapons in this quest.
Once used, it will be much easier to use them again, and again, and again as he seems fit.
And the rest of the world is watching with a great deal of consternation. Most do not want to believe it. But the leadership of the other powerful nations are aware of what is going on, and making preparations.
What do you think they are doing? What if you were Xi Peng, or Alexander Putin, what would you be doing right now? Would you be reading CNN, MSNBC, or listening to Alex Jones? What would you be doing, and how would you be acting?
…
…
And you. What are you doing?
Some History
It’s been a long time for many in America to know what total war is. They never experienced it. Aside from an attack on Hawaii for an hour, the last real fighting was the American Civil War, and much of the nation remained unscathed. So let me tell you all something…
Real war is ruthless.
The historical “normal” is returning. Buckle up. You and yours are all in the cross hairs.
Greek authors rarely go into any detail when describing the fall of a city, so if we want to know what this really means, we are to some extent forced to use our imagination. However, it's clear from what little we hear that Xenophon's 'universal law' usually meant 3 things:
All movable property was taken
All adult men were killed
All women, children and elderly men were sold into slavery.
The first of these points is least well attested, but probably most widespread. Every warrior who was sent against an enemy settlement would hope to come away with a profit.
Homes could be stripped of furniture and metal objects; temples could be robbed of their dedications and temple treasuries emptied. If there was time, even the rooftiles and wooden fittings of houses could be torn off and carried away.
The simple fact that large amounts of ancient coinage and jewellry was preserved in its hiding place (buried, thrown into wells, etc.) shows that people were quite concerned to keep their valuables out of the hands of greedy invaders.
The second point is better known, because it was a matter of justice and pride. When a city was attacked, it could choose to surrender; if it did not, it forfeited any claim to mercy. Those who had decided to resist their enemies would get what they deserved. The most explicit example of this is the fate Agamemnon desired for Troy:
Not a single one of them must escape sheer destruction at our hands. Not even if a mother carries one in her belly and he is male, not even he should escape. All together they must be exterminated from Troy, their bodies untended and invisible.
-- Iliad 6.57-62
There are loads of examples from Greek history of sieges ending with the slaughter of all adult men. These massacres removed the defeated community's ability to fight and ensured that there would be no further resistance.
The third point arises from the fact that the Greeks seem to have considered it barbaric to kill captured women and children as well as men. The few examples of this in Greek history were condemned as savage. Once the needs of revenge had been satisfied, the remaining population was instead considered a potential source of profit:
When they were delivered to her by the Persians, Pheretime took the most guilty of the Barkaians and set them impaled around the top of the wall; the breasts of their women she cut off and planted around the wall in like manner. As for the rest of the Barkaians, she told the Persians to take them as plunder.
-- Herodotos 4.202
There was substantial money to be made from this, which is why commanders sometimes tried to restrain the bloodlust of their victorious troops. Even if it was just, as well as satisfying, to kill the defenders, it still amounted to the destruction of a source of income:
Dionysios' entire army burst into the city (...) and now every spot was a scene of mass slaughter; for the Sicilian Greeks, eager to return cruelty for cruelty, slew everyone they encountered, sparing without distinction not a child, not a woman, not an elder. Dionysios, wishing to sell the inhabitants into slavery for the money he could gather, at first attempted to restrain the soldiers from murdering the captives, but when no one paid any attention to him and he saw that the fury of the Sicilian Greeks was not to be controlled, he stationed heralds to cry aloud and tell the Motyans to take refuge in the temples which were revered by the Greeks. When this was done, the soldiers ceased their slaughter and turned to looting the property.
-- Diodoros of Sicily 14.53.1-3
The beginning of this passage is unique in actually describing a scene that must have been typical when a city fell to a Greek army. Most successful siege assaults were not the result of elaborate circumvallation, but of a surprise assault or betrayal.
As a result, rather than bottling up the helpless enemy from all sides, the attackers usually entered the city from one point and began their rampage from there.
Those left in the city therefore had two choices: either to resist or to flee. The former would result in the brutal fate sketched above - but the latter explains how Greek communities often seem to have survived a lost siege despite the genocidal intent of their attackers. It was often possible for a substantial part of the population to get away.
Their ultimate fate would then depend on what the victorious enemy intended to do with the settlement. Sometimes (especially in the Archaic period) their intent was to seize the territory for themselves; in these cases the town would be razed, and the fugitive population cast adrift. Fear of this outcome was supposed to keep the Spartans in the fight against the Messenians early in their history:
The most wretched of all things is for a man to leave his city and its fertile fields, reduced to the life of a beggar, wandering with his mother and aged father, his little children and wedded wife. Wherever he ends up, he will be as an enemy dwelling among them. He will succumb to need and detestable poverty, bring shame upon his family, disgrace his splendid looks. All forms of dishonour and misery will dog him. Since this is how it is and no one cares for or respects a wanderer or his offspring at all, let us fight hard for our land and die for our children without sparing our lives.
-- Tyrtaios fr. 10.3-14
If they had friends elsewhere, they might be able to obtain a temporary home, or even gain resident status and a home away from home, as the Plataians did at Athens when the Spartans razed their settlement in 427 BC.
In the Classical period, the intention was often rather to plant settlers on the conquered territory in order to expand the victorious city's number of land-owning citizens. This is what Athens did with the land of most of its defeated enemies from 506 BC onward. In such cases, the captured city might be reinhabited - at times by the new settlers along with the old population of women and children, whom they took as wives or slaves.
Alternatively, once due vengeance had been exacted, the remnants of the city's population could simply be allowed to return to it, often subjected to tribute and an imposed political regime. When the Athenians finally lost their fleet at Aigospotamoi in 405 BC, fear washed through the city, because the Athenians fully expected to meet the same fate that they had inflicted upon other Greeks throughout the decades of their Empire - the eradication of their community, the death of their men, and the sale of their women into slavery. However, for reasons that are still debated today, the Spartans decided to spare them. They got away with "only" a sack, the destruction of their walls, and the imposition of the tyrannical yoke of the Thirty.
- What actually happens when a city is sacked?
You should have paid attention to history class. The historical normal is one where no one is ever safe. It is always a short bubble of time, no more than one or two generations in length where people can live together in some sort of sanity.
But that bubble always pops, and the people living their nice safe lives are often overtaken by the shock and brutality of the reality that will overwhelm them.
We know what will happen. It has been well documented. People will be collected. They will be rounded up into urban areas, or centers. The men will be separated out from the group. They will be led to an isolated area, a cellar, a warehouse, a cluster of tree, an area behind a bulldozer. They will then be held down by two people and shot dead.
We are coming for you.
It’s going to be historical. It will be Biblical, and it will consist of many elements that are not at all “enlightened” and “progressive”. It will be raw and unbridled.
It will be historical
Prepare for a resurgence in the “old ways”.
Pandora has opened up the box.
Large Urban Cities…
Worse was to come in 1221 — ‘a year to live in infamy’. While Genghis’s other armies had been busy in the east, threatening Tbilisi in Georgia and terrifying the Christian world, Tolui, one of Genghis’s equally reprehensible sons, took Merv (in modern-day Turkmenistan), one of the largest cities in the world.
Promised safety, the citizens surrendered and emerged from behind their walls. Tolui ‘surveyed the masses dolefully gathered with their possessions, mounted a golden chair and ordered mass executions to commence’.
They took four days and nights to complete.
Genghis’s rotten fruit did not fall far from the tree. Terror — and the certainty of its visitation — was a major weapon in Genghis’s arsenal: decapitated women, children and even cats and dogs were reputedly displayed.
- Was Genghis Khan the cruellest man who ever lived?
Complete devastation…
Incursions into Southeast Asia were largely successful, most factions agreed to pay tribute, and only the Invasions into Vietnam and Java failed.
Europe was devastated by the Mongols.
They destroyed near enough every major Russian city, and invaded Volga Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Poland, and Hungary.
If rumours spread that the Mongols were coming, then it would cause a mass panic, and some would run to safety.
There was no guaranteed way to defeat the Mongol hordes, they continuously defeated much larger armies, so numerical strength couldn’t protect you.
Mongol conquests would leave once populous and flourishing areas as wastelands, with little to no people, those remaining would be slaves.
-ESKify
Everyone thinks that change will never come to them.
The Women…
Genghis Khan had so much power that he could do whatever he wanted.
For instance, when Genghis occupied some new area, he would kill or enslave all the men and share all the women amongst his tribe.
Genghis Khan would even make beauty contests of captured women to decide which woman is the most beautiful one.
Yeah, he was having his Miss Universe competition before it was cool. So, the queen of those beauty competitions would win the privilege to become one of many Genghis Khan's women.
Rest of the Mongolian army would share all the other contestants.
-The Richest
The Wealthy…
Genghis Khan was the most feared human of the 13th century, who could destroy dynasties just by moving his little finger. He created the Mongol Empire all by himself and earned his eternal spot in the history books.
However, a lot of people had to suffer for Genghis Khan to succeed. Oh yes, the Mongolians were known for their horrendous torturing techniques.
One of the most popular was pouring molten silver down the throat and ears of a victim. Genghis Khan also liked bending his enemy's back until the backbone snapped. If that sounds barbaric, skip this next part.
So, the Mongols once celebrated victory over Russians in a very bizarre way. They picked all the Russian survivors, dropped them on the ground and put a heavy wooden gate on top of them.
Then, Genghis Khan and the entire Mongol army had a huge banquet on that wooden gate. They ate, drank, and watched how Russians were dying one by one from the suffocation, pressure, and wounds.
-The Richest
A return to the old ways…
“The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.”
-Genghis Khan.
Do you want more?
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I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
This is a very simple post that will layout a fundamental template for your prayer affirmations. These affirmations are things that you read aloud (to yourself) everyday during a campaign. Prayer campaigns happen over a period of time, and are interrupted by periods of inaction. In other words, you conduct a campaign and then stop completely. Then after a period of rest, you start a new campaign. The affirmations are a list of your desires laid out in a prayer format.
Structuring is a term that I use to describe the organization of your prayer list. You do not need to have it organized, but it will really help you out when the time comes to run a campaign.
The Structuring of a prayer campaign
Most people put together perhaps ten lines of prayers and call it their verbal affirmations. They repeat them once a day in their private moments. Some put them on a laminated sheet in the shower and read them aloud while taking a shower. Some put them in a notebook and read them when they are alone in their home office. While others have them on a list in their wallet and they read it in their car in the company parking lot.
When I conduct a prayer affirmation campaign, my list is long. It is very long and very detailed. I do this because I know that if I am not that detailed, what will manifest might not be what I want. So I tend to be very descriptive and very exacting in my campaign.
I learned the importance of this the hard way.
It's almost like that "contract that you sign with the devil", you will indeed get exactly what you wish for. But you must be very careful in defining your wishes.
So there are really only two recommended techniques (for the newbe and novice) that you can employ. Either have [1] very simple and broad affirmations, or [2] a very complex detailed affirmation campaign.
You do not need to be like me.
In fact, I strongly recommend that people new to intention campaigns start out slowly and simply, and then modify the affirmations over time to find our what works for them. For certainly, what works for one person might not work for others.
I will repeat.
We are all different. So what works for one person might not work for others. Which is why, pretty much, I tell everyone to stick to plain and simple affirmation campaigns and keep things basic. And then, after you have seen how things manifest for you, you can alter and grow your affirmation campaigns into great complexity with more intense results.
My suggested campaign template
Here, I am going to lay out the elements of a very detailed affirmation campaign. One that I use personally (with my personal prayers omitted, of course) and leaving the general affirmations for you all to use and alter as you see fit.
Now, I have mentioned how to conduct these kinds of prayer campaigns in other posts. So none of this should be a real surprise. What might be different here is that the campaign that I am listing here is an “advanced” campaign. It is one that is intentionally modified for “expert” use.
Yes.
This is what I use, and it is what any one who has been doing affirmation campaigns for a couple of years can use. It is not for newbe use.
What is different here, and why I warn NOT to use if you are new to affirmation campaigns, is that it contains certain elements that you must agree to that will completely and totally alter your campaign implementation.
The advanced techniques
This affirmation campaign is full of affirmations that will fundamentally alter and change how your campaign actually runs. This campaign includes “code” that will rewrite the “source code” behind the normal working procedure of an affirmation campaign. And thus it is dangerous for newbe use.
The advanced coding…
[1] Permits the application of world-line slides in your life.
[2] Discards your “initial world-line template” or base-line world-line map for others that will achieve your goals.
[3] Dramatically decreases the time for implementation of your affirmations by permitting and allowance for periods of “phased out discomfort”.
[4] Places guarantees that discomfort will be kept to a minimum.
To use these advanced techniques would result in some rather impressive changes in your life, but it will come at a cost.
[1] Using slides
The cost is that once you have allowed a campaign to slide you out of your birth-world-line map, you will never be able to return back to it. Which means that [1] you will forever be forced to conduct prayer affirmation campaigns until you die, and [2] that you must still obtain experiences and lessons as part of your soul charter. This will result in [3] some level of potential discomfort.
What does this mean?
Well, it might be like the character “Earl” from the show “My name is Earl”, who wins a lottery ticket for millions of dollars, but gets hit by a car and loses the ticket. Because he owes a karmic debt that exceeds the value of the lottery ticket.
My name is Earl television show.
Well…
… it might appear to be like that.
[2] Changing the template world-line map
In reality, it’s not really so much about karma as it is that your consciousness NEEDS to obtain experiences during this life.
The at-birth-world-line template was provided to you to use as a map to make those experiences occur. Good or bad, right or wrong, you were corralled or lead to make decisions that would cause events that would manifest due to your thoughts.
So yes, in a way, our world-line template that was allocated to us at pre-birth pretty much set up a corralled, and fated life.
Now, you are purposely leaving that template map, and permitting yourself to slide out on to other world-line maps.
World-lines can be grouped into clusters of similarly, and by other means.
When I refer to a world-line "map", I am referring to cluster of world-lines that evolve (over "time" as viewed by the consciousness) in such a way that the HIGHEST PROBABILITY of events are presented in a three dimensional format. The most probable world-lines are shown in a two dimensional plane, and the relative "difficulty" or "discomfort" to the person is presented in the third dimensional axis.
If you do not use this kind of "map", then you have no structure. Just a big furry and fuzzy ball of all probabilities all superimposed over each other. So use of this map greatly simulates how a person can make decisions, be corralled into certain actions, and learn from experiences and events.
If you want to get off this "fated" or "corralled" map that you were assigned with at birth, then you need to slide off of it. You would slide onto another map.
These other maps might be radically different, or might not. They might be violently disturbing, or quietly comforting. They might be anything. And that is the point. You elect to leave the experience-kindergarten and step into the elementary school hallway. It’s a big step.
Normal thoughts, and a normal simple affirmation campaign works within a pre-birth template map. There is a fixed number of world-lines that you must pass through (on the x-y axis) to obtain your goal.
To speed things up, or achieve other advantages, you need to slide off that map in a z-prime axis onto another map. This other map would have other issues and an entire set of highest probability pathways.
[3] Quick(er) response to your campaign
In this “heavyweight” affirmation campaign template, you would agree to sacrifice comfort and convenience for achieving your goals.
So, for example, if your normal campaign would normally take six years to manifest some long-term goal, this technique would reduce it to a third of the time. Say two years.
Also, as a side effect of this methodology, you will discover that the “pause” between campaigns will be abbreviated as well. Rather than taking a three month long pause between campaigns you might have the strong feeling that you could start a new subsequent campaign shortly afterwards, say in two months instead of three.
[4] Fail safes
Of course, this campaign would include fail-safes or else it would be very, very dangerous.
The idea behind this is that the world-line map that your experiences would lie upon in this incarnation would be within a set of boundary limits. You would have a high probability of experiencing “A”, and “B”, and while you could us your free will to avoid experiencing those things, the probability of you doing so would be very small.
People ask what is fate?
A child drops an ice cream cone on a hot pavement in the Summer and runs away crying.
You watch that event.
The highest probability would be that you watch, and then continue on your way as if nothing happened. This would be your fated pre-birth template, and you would be proceeding on the x-y axis. This is the most common and highest probability of behavior.
But there are actually a near infinite things that you can do. Such as...
[1] Buy the strange kid a new ice cream cone.
[2] Go after the kid and taunt her / him making fun of them.
[3] Pick up the cone and throw it in the trash.
[4] Pick up the cone and eat it.
[5] Pick up the cone and throw it at a passing car.
The most common and highest probability reactions and events are on the world-line map.
For instance, you would accept a job at “ACME Widgets”, not knowing that in three years they would lay you off. This would be a scenario that you would pretty much be fated to experience.
Now, it is true that you do not have to accept the job at “ACME Widgets”, but the situation on this world-line template would be such that not taking it might mean going without food for a while, or other uncomfortable things.
So in other words, the world-line template map is a fated life that you as soul selects for your consciousness to experience.
But, by accepting and allowing to slide off this birth-assigned template map, you can use your thoughts to navigate to new and different world-lines off that template.
On this new world-line template, you have a set of new opportunities and new events that were NOT present on the old pre-birth world-line template.
So, while the option for “ACME Widgets” might still be open to you, so will an opportunity at “Headbook Software”.
Now taking that opportunity would give you much better salary, and a host of other benefits. More so than “ACME Widgets”, but also would provide a different mapped “terrain” that you would need to navigate.
Instead of just worrying about a pay check at “ACME Widgets”, you now have to contend with a host of other issues that was not in your pre-birth charter. You would experience far more, and do far more, and live a much more active life… but it would be at a level of compression. In other words, more experiences, and thus a greater risk of discomfort.
To mitigate and control this additional and new discomfort, you would need to add text to your affirmations to control and mange it. Thus this technique…
Advanced Technique
I call this an advanced technique because you are “taking the training wheels off”.
The idea of training wheels is to teach balance with a “safety” system to catch the child when their balance is off. In reality, most kids simply rely on the training wheels and never practice balance at all. Some children even find that it is easier to fall with training wheels – particularly while maneuvering around a corner.
-Time to Take Off the Training Wheels? Parents Families.com
So once you implement advanced intention campaigns…
… you are awarded “full spectrum” control…
… with all the benefits and the inherent dangers that come with it.
THIS IS NOT FOR THOSE NEW TO AFFIRMATION CAMPAIGNS.
You need to have been conducting an affirmation campaign for at least a year before you try these techniques. I don’t want to advocate people to dive into the deep end of a pool until they learned how to “doggie paddle” first.
The affirmation campaign template
Here I am going to give you, the reader, elements of my very own personal affirmation campaign. I have omitted my personal information so as not to confuse this template. (And besides, it’s personal, don’t you know.)
General
I am calm, cool, collected and confident.
I , and my family, are all happy, healthy, and relaxed.
I live a calm, stress-free, comfortable life.
I feel calm and halcyon most of the time.
I have no worries, concerns, or stress. [1]
I am the water that flows under the earth in strength and power. [2]
I am navigating my reality towards my goals. [3]
In general, my reality is one that is a controlled improvement over what I already have. [4]
I am happy, healthy, and successful.
I fill my body with good delicious and healthy food and drink.
I have money, savings, and investments. [5]
Negative people are always repelled away from me in such a way that they do not affect my reality.
These affirmations manifest in the near future, and maintain existence for the remainder of my life.
All of these events as specified manifest as quickly as possible. [6]
Notes;
This is the "general" category at the top of my affirmation list. It contains phrases and general assumptions that will occur not matter what else manifests.
[1] The first five items refer to my level of stress and comfort. Now, if you do not want a relaxed and comfortable life, you can omit these items. I, myself, have lived in stressful situations. I do not want any part of them to manifest. So I make sure that no matter what, my life is calm, and good.
[2] My personality is one of adaptation. Some people have fixed personalities. You can alter this to read something like "I am a rock and stable in all things", or perhaps if you are of a flighty and wispy countenance "I move like the air and master my environment". It's all up to you. This phrase defines your general placement within the mapped terrain.
[3] You must vocalize what you are doing.
[4] You want to improve in what you have. You want to keep the good things going on in your life and add more good things to them. You do not want to throw away everything and start from scratch, do you? If you do, you can omit this phrase.
[5] If you do not include money in your affirmations, no matter how well intentioned, you could easily end up being poor and destitute; happy, but poor and destitute.
[6] These last two statement phrases are critical. By specifying a time limit, you allow the navigation to take you off the pre-birth intention canvas. You drop off the map and are permitted to slide to what ever new map will provide you quicker and more immediate results.
Now the world around us is seemingly going crazy. Pockets of discomfort, strife and alarm are all around us. We don’t want any of that to impact our life. We do not want any part of that in our life and we most certainly do not want to obtain experiences that are associated with strife.
However, if you slide off the pre-birth template you can end up (easily) within a world-line that is full of stress and discomfort. You do not want that. Not in the least. So in order to prevent that, you will need to place some affirmations in regards to safety and security.
Like this…
Safety
My family is safe and secure and protected from all efforts to attack it. [1]
I am safe and protected where I live, and my life is stable and isolated from any attacks of any type.
No matter what the news says, none of the disturbing things actually happens to me or my family. [2]
I and my family are safe and secure. Any battles, wars, conflicts or social upheavals occur far away from us.
My family and I are safe and isolated away from conflict, strife, and danger. We are always safe.
The people around me love me, protects me, nurtures me, and supports me. [3]
Notes;
If the world was stable this section in your affirmation campaign might not be necessary. But the world is not stable. Right now there are three carrier battle assault groups off the coast of China 15 miles from where I live. Maybe Donald Trump thinks that it makes great news headlines. For me, well it is very stressful and ugly.
[1] This might be the only phrase you might need.
[2] If the "news" is promoting something dangerous, this phrase will act like a shield and cause the event (or something similar) to "bounce off" and hit some other target. You know, like the fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard, or the massive explosion known as the Beirut explosion. This phrase will deflect events away from your area.
This is a complicated matter and I could devote an entire post on it alone. When huge groups of people start thinking things, they create a buildup of quanta. That buildup must be released. If it is being directed at something, and you use an affirmation to conduct a world-line switch, the build-up still needs to be released. And thus you will see other examples of where the "bullets ricocheted to".
[3] You need to tie yourself to a friendly and supportive community.
Now, let’s get into the content…
Content
Here is where you would put your “regular” intentions. This is where the vast bulk of your intentions would go. And it might look something like this…
The affirmations are for example only.
They are not my personal affirmations. My very own intentions are a little shy on objects and things, and rather dense when it comes to personal relationships, adventure, and lifestyle. But here are some illustrative examples.
I have a lawn with “Centipede grass”.
My front door is painted a high gloss PANTONE Bright Red C, with a nice real shiny brass door knocker.
I own a John Deer Cub Cadet Ultima ZT1 50-in. 23-hp Kawasaki Zero Turn lawn mower.
I own a beautiful white Nissan Titan XD Pro 4X.
You can add anything here that you want. In this example, I have placed things. But you can describe relationships, or situations, or events.
Events like…
I am able to travel the world in a sailboat.
I am part of a local group of businessmen and attending gatherings.
I have box seats at the local stadium.
Relationships like…
I am dating a girl that has the personality of Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead actress).
I am dating a girl that has the body of Kelly Brook (English model, actress and television presenter best known for her roles in the 2010 horror comedy remake Piranha 3D).
My father and I have resolved our differences and spend time together on the weekends.
Situations like…
I have part ownership in a golf club.
My house is filled with happy dogs and relaxed cats.
I live next to the mountains and have a fresh water spring in the back.
In short, you can put anything here that is is desire. You can be vague or specific. Just note that the more specific you are, the longer it will take to manifest. So only add specificity when actually necessary. Otherwise, it’s wisest to keep things flexible.
Non Physical Entities & Forces
Our world, for the most part, is populated with the things that we see and experience around us. Therefore, since that is all that we know, that is all that we wish to alter. But the truth is that there are a host of other things, and other elements of our reality that exists around us. This includes things and entities.
By placement of specific affirmations you can protect yourself from malevolent entities (if they exist) or enlist the help of other non-physical entities, were it your prerogative.
I ask for help to achieve my intention targets; and I do get help from all the non-physical beings that can assist me.
I also get help from any physical beings that can assist making my dreams and wishes come true and manifest.
Other entities, not limited to but including, XXX, YYY, ZZZ, guardian angels, friendly sprites, and other entities are permitted to assist me obtaining my goals as defined here. [1]
In no way can these other entities hurt, harm, or mess up my life and intentions. They may only help, and are welcome to help gladly.
I know how to embrace opportunities as they manifest around me, and implement those necessary changes and actions promptly. [2]
Notes;
[1] You might not believe that non-physical intelligence's and animals exist. That's fine. But it wouldn't hurt to have this line in your affirmations, now would it?
[2] This affirmation can go anywhere, but the placement herein associates it with a knowledge associated with specific actions associated with non-physical, or physical entities.
Control of emotions and thoughts
We are constantly under manipulation. Where it is the embedded code within the websites and the APPs that we use, to the movies we watch and the news that we subscribe to. Everything is trying to twist and control our emotions. Yet, in order for our affirmations to actually work, these influences must be zeroed out.
Now there are two ways to zero out these influences. Firstly [1], you can get rid of those influences directly. You can stop using the media, using the computer and using the cell-phones. Or [2] you can add affirmations that control your reactions to those influences.
This section follows route #2. You have affirmations that control the way that the external influences influence your behaviors and action.
I am able to control my emotions and thoughts.
I prevent any angry, dangerous, or terrible thoughts from occurring. [1]
I prevent the manifestation of any reality that might result from bad, negative or dangerous thoughts. [2]
I avoid getting into arguments on the internet.
Everything surrounding me is positive and good.
Notes;
[1] The first two affirmations are seemingly redundant. But, they are not. One specifies that I am in control of what I think, not outside influences. The other prevents the manifestation and generation of bad or negative thoughts.
[2] Prevents the generation of "bad" reality generation resulting from my thoughts.
MWI Routing
This section adds a strong degree of control on how you add, alter, modify or implement your intention campaign. I am a strong believer that each one of us runs our very own unique campaign, and thus what works for one person, might not work for a different person. So in order to control that aspect of variance, you need to specify how the affirmation campaign works within your MWI reality.
These affirmations serve that purpose…
I understand how this universe works, and how to alter, improve and change my reality. [1]
I use this knowledge to generate a perfect life for myself and for my family.
As such, I am the Captain of my Consciousness. [2]
I move in and out of the world-line realities as necessary to achieve my thought-destination(s).
I do achieve my ultimate goals and I do so efficiently, and quickly while avoiding bad or undesirable world-lines. [3]
I am alert on what to say and do in order to achieve my desires.
I know what affirmations to make to manifest the life that I wish to participate within.
I know, positively, when to stop, change, alter or revise my affirmations in accordance with my needs and desires. [4]
I am aware of opportunities as they arise, and I know exactly what actions to take to maximize my desired intentions.
I am aware of the world-line routing as it occurs and do not panic or worry about how things will manifest. [5]
I recognize that world-line realities that I inhabit might be calm and relaxed, but that substantial positive and proactive events are unfolding for my benefit that might be hidden from me.
Notes;
[1] This phrase helps you rapidly learn what affirmations to use, and which ones not to use. You also better understand why and how they work. I think that this sentence along helps tie the affirmation campaign into a mechanism for soul experience growth.
[2] These two commands place your verbal affirmation campaign firmly into the realm of "navigation console". By using these phrases you convert an intention campaign from a "lifestyle enhancement method", to a "world-line navigation console".
[3] These two lines explicitly state what the purpose of the affirmation campaign is, and how it works.
[4] These four affirmations enable you to have insight on how to improve your affirmations, and add or subtract from them. While this is seemingly a more or less natural consequence of performing a campaign, this little statement guarantees that whatever alterations you make will be in accordance with your direct wishes, and not what was laid out in the pre-birth reality template map.
[5] These two affirmations cover cognizant awareness of the physical reality and what to do to alter, reroute or modify your intention campaign.
Intention Canvas
I urge everyone to have “dream board” or “intention canvas”. This contains images and pictures used to complement your affirmation campaign.
As opposed to "sharpening" your intention focus, it make it more "fuzzy". (Which is counter intuitive. Not what you would think, eh?)
In other words, instead of a small, hard, absolute point on the world-line terrain map, it becomes a bigger, fuzzier, and softer ball. What this does is provide a larger group of avenues or paths for you to reach to your goal.
The key words or text herein is to “complement”, and not to “replace” your affirmation campaign.
As I have discussed previously, the canvas can be a “dream board”, a rotating image display on your computer, or a folder containing a stack of pictures. It can also include a computer folder in your PC that contains images that you can use (and one that you don’t visit often either.)
In all cases you MUST tie this “intention canvas” to your affirmation campaign. These affirmation commands do just that. In my case, I have a folder that contains picture collages that represent my intended desires. And that is what I will suggest in these examples…
I utilize the images in my “XXXXX” folder (and all subfolders) to help make the manifestation of my lifestyle manifest.
I also utilize the photos in my PC (found in the YYYYYY directory) and used as my rotating background display to help cultivate the reality that my world line is.
The following commands specify exactly how the images will manifest and what they represent within my life…
In which case, then you go into great detail what general terms that each image represents. Such as these examples…
Males shown in photos
In all cases, the dominant male figure portrayed in the image(s) represent myself. [1]
Images that portray mafia figures, or “bad people” portray myself in similar roles of power. They do NOT, however, manifest these kinds of people against me. [2]
Images that portray powerful people represent my role as it manifests.
In images showing actors, it is the character, personality and role that they play that manifests in my life, not that of the actual actor. [3]
Notes;
[1] Do not assume that just because a male figure is in a photo residing inside your intention canvas, that it automatically represents you. If you want that to happen, then you will need to either use this affirmation, or photoshop your image into that photo.
[2] So, you've got a picture of Tony Soprano enjoying some wine, with his underlings nearby and a girl on each arm. Do not assume that you would intend this role to materialize. Instead, the local mafia don in your neighborhood might end up getting the intention instead of yourself.
[3] Likewise, you want the role that the actor plays. Not the life of the actor him or herself. If you want the actors person life, then you need to specify it. You need to specify exactly what elements the images represent or else you might have the wrong things manifest. You might (for example) want the life of Captain Jack Sparrow, and have a photo of a carefree run-infused pirate. While in reality you might end up with Johnny Depp's life and an embroiled divorce. Yikes!
Objects shown in photos
In images related to gold, money, currency and wealth, the intention is broadly associated with large sums of money, wealth and success that I possess.
In images relating to objects, they represent the things that I own or possess as property.
Women shown in photos
In images that have females, they represent the situation that I am participating in.
In images that only contain females, the appearance and body shapes, and the situation of the female, their body and actions are what manifests per my intention direction.
In images showing females, with a dominant physical attribute (as determined by myself), that attribute manifests within my reality.
Notes;
Since I am a male, I do not want to confuse any images with women and children. I want to specify that they are different and perform roles that are situational.
Blocking and Protections
We live inside a reality that has both physical and non-physical components. Thoughts alter and change our reality. Both our thoughts, and the thoughts of those around us. Good people can give us good wishes and pleasant thoughts. However, most of the world today is not good, and thus bad people can thrust bad wishes upon us.
We don’t want to suffer through hexes, malevolent intentions or bad events sent in motion by individuals who have a grudge against us. So we must utilize protections. Here are the protection affirmations that I use…
I have awareness on how to avoid the manifestation of problems. I follow that advise immediately without question automatically.
I purposely avoid negative, dangerous, bad, or problematic reality world-lines to achieve my goals
I have broken apart any barriers to controlling my reality. These are barriers that are either self-created, or those created by others.
I define my reality, and undo any spells, magick or alterations imposed upon me, or the reality around me by anyone or anything.
I block and shut out all negative, de-constructive, and dangerous thoughts from manifesting and altering my intentions listed herein.
Notes;
Do not assume that everyone thinks like you. There are many "closet" occultists, and "home-grown" priests that will throw some unwanted thoughts and beliefs your way. You must put up protections.
You would be surprised at how many there are. Seriously.
Personal Health
We can have an affirmation campaign that is all great and full of details, but if you ignore you health, it will all be for naught. If there is one thing that we should learn from this coronavirus situation, it is that if you don’t have your healthy, all the riches and “stuff” in the universe become meaningless. You absolutely need to protect your health and general well-being in your affirmation campaign.
Do not neglect this most important aspect of a prayer / affirmation campaign.
I am in top physical shape. I am healthy and happy.
My body operates, functions and behaves like when I was in my late 20’s and into my early 30’s. [1]
My wardrobe is professionally matched, and my body is clean, pleasant and attractive.
My heart is strong and healthy. My internal organs are all in top shape. [2]
Nothing is permitted to cause me harm, damage or physical discomfort.
I know what minerals, vitamins and foods that I must eat to achieve my intention targets. [3]
Notes:
[1] Obviously this applies to folk older than this age. LOL.
[2] Old men can have all kinds of problems and issues, and to prevent and control that, we tend to watch our diets and take vitamins. Exercise is important, and I don't need any affirmations to support what I already do naturally.
[3] Shortly after adding this affirmation line, the number of business luncheons and dinners that I would normally have dropped considerably. My wife started to make a lot of vegetables, and fish. I began to find myself eating this kind of nut and fruit oatmeal just about every morning. Ugh! Yet, after a few months I discovered that my over all body health did actually improve dramatically.
Household
The biggest influence on your life are those in your immediate family. Thus, you need to cherish, and protect them. For without them, you are just a lonely speck floating upon a most turbulent sea.
My family is happy, healthy, and well-taken cared for emotionally, physically, and financially. There isn’t any stress at all.
My family life is very calm, happy and positive. [1]
My family is happy and I have a very calm and happy domestic life at home.
I and my family are healthy, happy, relaxed and doing what we love.
Notes;
[1] My idea of what constitutes a happy family household might not be what you would. I think a calm and happy household is best for my temperament. I however, know others that love a chaotic household with all sorts of happy noise and activity. You need to customize this affirmation to fit your own personal lifestyle.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle is a “catch-all” that really describes the overall desire that you hope to accomplish from this affirmation campaign. Thus, it is critically important. It is the difference between having a “wealthy” life as opposed to a “rich” life. And if you don’t know what I am talking about, watch the movie “Bronco Billy”.
I love my life, and I love everything about my life.
I love the colors, the air, the weather, the people, the location, everything.
I improve upon what I have, not change it drastically.
The improvements are all what is listed here or better.
The improvements are glorious additions to what I already possess.
I live in a beautiful area, with great colors, fresh air, roomy spaces, and a calm and relaxed neighborhood.
I am very comfortable, safe, secure, happy, relaxed and live a nice fun and carefree life.
Everyone sees me as how I desire to be seen. [1]
I know what actions to take to secure my privacy and personal life. [2]
I have the strength (emotional and physical) to break through any barriers to achieve my goals.
Notes;
[1] I control what people think about me. Not others.
[2] Privacy is a fundamental human need. Yet governments, family members, and society pretty much has obliterated this belief. Which is why that I often go without a cell phone on me, and do things on my own personal schedule and not on the schedules that others use. Now, if you do not secure your privacy, the chances are that you will lose it.
Opportunity
The thing about affirmation campaigns is that they rely on you (the person making the affirmations) on taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to you. Thus, it makes no difference if you have an opportunity manifest in front of your eyes, but refuse to take advantage of it. You need to act to manifest that situation.
I am aware of opportunities when they arise, and I am led onto which ones to take and follow up with.
I have physical, spiritual and non-physical entities assisting me in making the opportunities listed herein into personally profitable ventures.
Opportunities come my way and I always profit handsomely from them.
I am aware of the trends going on in my life, behind the scenes, and on tactical, and strategic levels.
Affirmation techniques
Here we specify and “hammer out” the way that these affirmations will operate. You do not need to do this, but by doing so you can control the implementation of the affirmations onto your world-line.
I know of, and use, the specialized techniques to improve the actionablity of my verbal affirmations listed herein.
I know what things to say in my affirmations to make my reality happen safely and quickly.
I am dismissive of those that are not worthy of my time, or effort.
Speed of implementation
By specifying the speed of implementation, you create a slide event. This moves your world-line adventures, and your life off the pre-determined template and direct and straight into your own hands.
All these affirmations occur as quickly as is comfortably and as safely as possible. At no time is my family, health or safety at risk.
These changes are being implemented now, and will manifest soon. Really, really soon.
The normal rules of affirmation manifestation has now been advanced to this direct and immediate application without hesitation.
All these affirmations happen quickly, provided that dangers are avoided and I (and my family) are protected.
Death
Here, it seems really morbid, but a few moments a day to make sure that your transition out of the physical reality would be calm and complete is really a good thing. Don’t you think?
Death will occur late in my life.
I will outlive my father, yet be healthy and functional up until death.
When the time comes for my death, it will be smooth and easy.
Those left behind will be well taken cared for.
Important Navigation Notes
Here we get involved in the aspects that make this affirmation campaign “advanced”. It lays out the use of slide and how they will manifest and under what conditions. You will notice that they permit “minor imperfections” to occur as long as my baseline affirmations manifest.
This affirmation campaign is set up to engage the obtainment of objectives early on, with whatever minor imperfections that they might have.
I use world-line slides to accelerate the implementation of these affirmations.
The slides only come into use whenever they can [1] reduce the time to obtain the affirmation realization within my physical reality, and [2] they do not cause me any discomfort or trouble.
As time moves on, the imperfections drop away, and the true and idealized intention manifests.
This rule enables a quick near-immediate manifestation of my desires herein without having to wait for a long time to obtain the “perfect” intention reality.
Conclusion
This post describes an “advanced” affirmation campaign. It uses slides to accelerate the manifestation of the campaign objectives. As such, it is highly detailed and involves long lines of affirmation code.
It is only for advanced users to use.
As an example, I used elements of my very own affirmation campaign and I urge the reader to use and discard what they wish to make a similar campaign for themselves.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my affirmation campaign index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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OK, I know that I have been posting too many of these kinds of posts lately, but have some patience, will ya? I’ve got a long, long, LONG list of things to post. Just let me round out my posts with some more stuff from Robert Greene. I promise that I get back to some other stuff soon.
In my queue are some more posts on [1] intention campaigns, [2] all sorts of articles on the USA disinformation techniques and [3] control of electronic media, [4] SHTF postings and the [5] death of what ever remains of liberty, some [6] great works by Heinlein, and [7] some OOPART stuff that is tied to [8] MAJestic. In particular, I have a [7a] “mysterious” aluminum pawl write up, [7b] a rectangular structure on (the surface of) a comet, and [7c] a “space station facility” near the Sun. I will get to them. I promise. My queue lists over 150 drafts pending, and a shitload in my notebook as well.
Anyways…
This little technique got me through the ADC (prison). It enabled me to survive in a “dog-eat-dog” environment. It disguised me as a dull uninspired oaf. Heck! There were potatoes more interesting than me. Now, survival in a harsh environment, especially at the notorious Brickeys (North Arkansas Regional Unit) involved many facets, this little gem of advice got me through some of the worst.
Listen to me. No one wants to pick on a boring, dull witted, uninspired oaf. There are better things to do and “fish to fry”. And as such, you would just be left alone. Which was all I wanted. I wanted to do my time, sleep as much of it off, and get the Hell out of there post-haste.
Now, please keep in mind that even when you are isolated, and alone in a very harsh place, it is your ability to forge friendships and relationships that will help you. No matter how tough the world seems or appears, if you are part of a group… YOU WILL SURVIVE. So, please everyone, remember to be good, be just and be kind to others, no matter how bad your personal situation may appear.
You will never be considered a threat if you seem to be dull and harmless. If you are able to convince others that they are much smarter than you are, then they will apt to leave you alone. For everyone dislikes feeling more foolish than their neighbors or counterparts. Therefore, it is unlikely for anyone else to consider you faking your dull-wittiness. It’s a survival strategy as well as strategy of control.
LAW 21
PLAY A SUCKER TO CATCH A SUCKER—SEEM DUMBER THAN YOUR MARK
JUDGMENT
No one likes feeling stupider than the next person. The trick, then, is to make your victims feel smart—and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.
In the winter of 1872, the U.S. financier Asbury Harpending was visiting London when he received a cable: A diamond mine had been discovered in the American West.
The cable came from a reliable source—William Ralston, owner of the Bank of California—but Harpending nevertheless took it as a practical joke, probably inspired by the recent discovery of huge diamond mines in South Africa.
True, when reports had first come in of gold being discovered in the western United States, everyone had been skeptical, and those had turned out to be true.
But a diamond mine in the West!
Harpending showed the cable to his fellow financier Baron Rothschild (one of the richest men in the world), saying it must be a joke. The baron, however, replied, “Don’t be too sure about that. America is a very large country. It has furnished the world with many surprises already. Perhaps it has others in store.”
Harpending promptly took the first ship back to the States.
Now, there is nothing of which a man is prouder than of intellectual ability, for it is this that gives him his commanding place in the animal world. It is an exceedingly rash thing to let anyone see that you are decidedly superior to him in this respect, and to let other people see it too.... hence, white rank and riches may always reckon upon deferential treatment in society, that is something which intellectual ability can never expect.
To be ignorant is the greatest favor shown to it; And if people notice it at all, it is because they regard it us a piece of impertinence, or else as something to which its possessor has no legitimate right, and upon which he dares to pride himself; And in retaliation and revenge for his conduct, people secretly try and humiliate him in some other way; when if they wait to do this, it is only for a fitting opportunity.
A man may be as humble as possible in his demeanor and yet hardly ever get people to overlook his crime in standing intellectually above them. In the Garden of Roses, Sadi makes the remark: “You should know that foolish people are a hundredfold more averse to meeting the wise than the wise are indisposed for the company of the foolish. ”
On the other hand, it is a real recommendation to be stupid. For just as warmth is agreeable to the body, so it does the mind good to feel its superiority; and a man will seek company likely to give him this feeling, as instinctively as he will approach the fireplace or walk in the sun if he wants to get warm. But this means that he will be disliked on account of his superiority; and if a man is to be liked, he must really be inferior in point of intellect.-ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, 1788-1860
When Harpending reached San Francisco, there was an excitement in the air recalling the Gold Rush days of the late 1840s.
Two crusty prospectors named Philip Arnold and John Slack had been the ones to find the diamond mine. They had not divulged its location, in Wyoming, but had led a highly respected mining expert to it several weeks back, taking a circular route so he could not guess his whereabouts.
Once there, the expert had watched as the miners dug up diamonds.
Back in San Francisco the expert had taken the gems to various jewelers, one of whom had estimated their worth at $1.5 million.
Harpending and Ralston now asked Arnold and Slack to accompany them back to New York, where the jeweler Charles Tiffany would verify the original estimates.
The prospectors responded uneasily—they smelled a trap: How could they trust these city slickers? What if Tiffany and the financiers managed to steal the whole mine out from under them?
Ralston tried to allay their fears by giving them $100,000 and placing another $300,000 in escrow for them. If the deal went through, they would be paid an additional $300,000.
The miners agreed.
The little group traveled to New York, where a meeting was held at the mansion of Samuel L. Barlow.
The cream of the city’s aristocracy was in attendance—General George Brinton McClellan, commander of the Union forces in the Civil War; General Benjamin Butler; Horace Greeley, editor of the newspaper the New York Tribune; Harpending; Ralston; and Tiffany.
Only Slack and Arnold were missing—as tourists in the city, they had decided to go sight-seeing.
When Tiffany announced that the gems were real and worth a fortune, the financiers could barely control their excitement.
They wired Rothschild and other tycoons to tell them about the diamond mine and inviting them to share in the investment.
At the same time, they also told the prospectors that they wanted one more test: They insisted that a mining expert of their choosing accompany Slack and Arnold to the site to verify its wealth.
The prospectors reluctantly agreed.
In the meantime, they said, they had to return to San Francisco. The jewels that Tiffany had examined they left with Harpending for safekeeping.
Several weeks later, a man named Louis Janin, the best mining expert in the country, met the prospectors in San Francisco. Janin was a born skeptic who was determined to make sure that the mine was not a fraud.
Accompanying Janin were Harpending, and several other interested financiers.
As with the previous expert, the prospectors led the team through a complex series of canyons, completely confusing them as to their whereabouts.
Arriving at the site, the financiers watched in amazement as Janin dug the area up, leveling anthills, turning over boulders, and finding emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and most of all diamonds.
The dig lasted eight days, and by the end, Janin was convinced: He told the investors that they now possessed the richest field in mining history.
“With a hundred men and proper machinery,” he told them, “I would guarantee to send out one million dollars in diamonds every thirty days.”
Returning to San Francisco a few days later, Ralston, Harpending, and company acted fast to form a $10 million corporation of private investors.
First, however, they had to get rid of Arnold and Slack.
That meant hiding their excitement—they certainly did not want to reveal the field’s real value. So they played possum.
Who knows if Janin is right, they told the prospectors, the mine may not be as rich as we think.
This just made the prospectors angry.
Trying a different tactic, the financiers told the two men that if they insisted on having shares in the mine, they would end up being fleeced by the unscrupulous tycoons and investors who would run the corporation; better, they said, to take the $700,000 already offered—an enormous sum at the time—and put their greed aside.
This the prospectors seemed to understand, and they finally agreed to take the money, in return signing the rights to the site over to the financiers, and leaving maps to it.
News of the mine spread like wildfire.
Prospectors fanned out across Wyoming. Meanwhile Harpending and group began spending the millions they had collected from their investors, buying equipment, hiring the best men in the business, and furnishing luxurious offices in New York and San Francisco.
A few weeks later, on their first trip back to the site, they learned the hard truth: Not a single diamond or ruby was to be found.
It was all a fake.
They were ruined. Harpending had unwittingly lured the richest men in the world into the biggest scam of the century.
Interpretation
Arnold and Slack pulled off their stupendous con not by using a fake engineer or bribing Tiffany: All of the experts had been real. All of them honestly believed in the existence of the mine and in the value of the gems.
What had fooled them all was nothing else than Arnold and Slack themselves. The two men seemed to be such rubes, such hayseeds, so naive, that no one for an instant had believed them capable of an audacious scam.
The prospectors had simply observed the law of appearing more stupid than the mark—the deceiver’s First Commandment.
The logistics of the con were quite simple.
Months before Arnold and Slack announced the “discovery” of the diamond mine, they traveled to Europe, where they purchased some real gems for around $12,000 (part of the money they had saved from their days as gold miners).
They then salted the “mine” with these gems, which the first expert dug up and brought to San Francisco.
The jewelers who had appraised these stones, including Tiffany himself, had gotten caught up in the fever and had grossly overestimated their value.
Then Ralston gave the prospectors $100,000 as security, and immediately after their trip to New York they simply went to Amsterdam, where they bought sacks of uncut gems, before returning to San Francisco. The second time they salted the mine, there were many more jewels to be found.
The effectiveness of the scheme, however, rested not on tricks like these but on the fact that Arnold and Slack played their parts to perfection.
On their trip to New York, where they mingled with millionaires and tycoons, they played up their clodhopper image, wearing pants and coats a size or two too small and acting incredulous at everything they saw in the big city.
No one believed that these country simpletons could possibly be conning the most devious, unscrupulous financiers of the time.
And once Harpending, Ralston, and even Rothschild accepted the mine’s existence, anyone who doubted it was questioning the intelligence of the world’s most successful businessmen.
In the end, Harpending’s reputation was ruined and he never recovered;
Rothschild learned his lesson and never fell for another con;
Slack took his money and disappeared from view, never to be found.
Arnold simply went home to Kentucky. After all, his sale of his mining rights had been legitimate; the buyers had taken the best advice, and if the mine had run out of diamonds, that was their problem. Arnold used the money to greatly enlarge his farm and open up a bank of his own.
KEYS TO POWER
The feeling that someone else is more intelligent than we are is almost intolerable.
We usually try to justify it in different ways:
“He only has book knowledge, whereas I have real knowledge.”
“Her parents paid for her to get a good education. If my parents had had as much money, if I had been as privileged….”
“He’s not as smart as he thinks.”
Last but not least: “She may know her narrow little field better than I do, but beyond that she’s really not smart at all. Even Einstein was a boob outside physics.”
Given how important the idea of intelligence is to most people’s vanity, it is critical never inadvertently to insult or impugn a person’s brain power.
That is an unforgivable sin.
But if you can make this iron rule work for you, it opens up all sorts of avenues of deception. Subliminally reassure people that they are more intelligent than you are, or even that you are a bit of a moron, and you can run rings around them.
The feeling of intellectual superiority you give them will disarm their suspicion-muscles.
In 1865 the Prussian Councillor Otto von Bismarck wanted Austria to sign a certain treaty. The treaty was totally in the interests of Prussia and against the interests of Austria, and Bismarck would have to strategize to get the Austrians to agree to it.
But the Austrian negotiator, Count Blome, was an avid cardplayer. His particular game was quinze, and he often said that he could judge a man’s character by the way he played quinze.
Bismarck knew of this saying of Blome’s.
The night before the negotiations were to begin, Bismarck innocently engaged Blome in a game of quinze.
The Prussian would later write, “That was the very last time I ever played quinze. I played so recklessly that everyone was astonished. I lost several thousand talers [the currency of the time], but I succeeded in fooling [Blome], for he believed me to be more venturesome than I am and I gave way.”
Besides appearing reckless, Bismarck also played the witless fool, saying ridiculous things and bumbling about with a surplus of nervous energy.
All this made Blome feel he had gathered valuable information.
He knew that Bismarck was aggressive—the Prussian already had that reputation, and the way he played had confirmed it. And aggressive men, Blome knew, can be foolish and rash.
Accordingly, when the time came to sign the treaty, Blome thought he had the advantage.
A heedless fool like Bismarck, he thought, is incapable of cold-blooded calculation and deception, so he only glanced at the treaty before signing it—he failed to read the fine print.
As soon as the ink was dry, a joyous Bismarck exclaimed in his face, “Well, I could never have believed that I should find an Austrian diplomat willing to sign that document!”
The Chinese have a phrase, “Masquerading as a swine to kill the tiger.”
This refers to an ancient hunting technique in which the hunter clothes himself in the hide and snout of a pig, and mimics its grunting. The mighty tiger thinks a pig is coming his way, and lets it get close, savoring the prospect of an easy meal. But it is the hunter who has the last laugh.
Masquerading as a swine works wonders on those who, like tigers, are arrogant and overconfident: The easier they think it is to prey on you, the more easily you can turn the tables. This trick is also useful if you are ambitious yet find yourself low in the hierarchy: Appearing less intelligent than you are, even a bit of a fool, is the perfect disguise.
Look like a harmless pig and no one will believe you harbor dangerous ambitions.
They may even promote you since you seem so likable, and subservient.
Claudius before he became emperor of Rome, and the prince of France who later became Louis XIII, used this tactic when those above them suspected they might have designs on the throne. By playing the fool as young men, they were left alone. When the time came for them to strike, and to act with vigor and decisiveness, they caught everyone off-guard.
His tall figure and bony beak of a face serve perfectly both as the languid Sir Percy, setting off a series of immaculately-fitting ‘unmentionables’, and as the commanding, quick-thinking Pimpernel; and the scene in which he drops from one persona to the other almost in mid-sentence upon the entry of the irate Colonel Winterbottom is a joy to watch. He is absolutely convincing as the “spineless, brainless and useless” fop, and yet he can shade intelligence and feeling back into his features at the drop of a hat in unconcealed moments that never let the audience forget the man behind the mask.
Intelligence is the obvious quality to downplay, but why stop there? Taste and sophistication rank close to intelligence on the vanity scale; make people feel they are more sophisticated than you are and their guard will come down.
As Arnold and Slack knew, an air of complete naivete can work wonders.
Those fancy financiers were laughing at them behind their backs, but who laughed loudest in the end? In general, then, always make people believe they are smarter and more sophisticated than you are. They will keep you around because you make them feel better about themselves, and the longer you are around, the more opportunities you will have to deceive them.
Image: The Opossum. In playing dead, the opossum plays stupid. Many a predator has therefore left it alone. Who could believe that such an ugly, unintelligent, nervous little creature could be capable of such deception?
Authority:Know how to make use of stupidity: The wisest man plays this card at times. There are occasions when the highest wisdom consists in appearing not to know—you must not be ignorant but capable of playing it. It is not much good being wise among fools and sane among lunatics. He who poses as a fool is not a fool. The best way to be well received by all is to clothe yourself in the skin of the dumbest of brutes.
-(Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)
REVERSAL
To reveal the true nature of your intelligence rarely pays; you should get in the habit of downplaying it at all times. If people inadvertently learn the truth—that you are actually much smarter than you look—they will admire you more for being discreet than for making your brilliance show.
At the start of your climb to the top, of course, you cannot play too stupid: You may want to let your bosses know, in a subtle way, that you are smarter than the competition around you. As you climb the ladder, however, you should to some degree try to dampen your brilliance.
There is, however, one situation where it pays to do the opposite—when you can cover up a deception with a show of intelligence. In matters of smarts as in most things, appearances are what count. If you seem to have authority and knowledge, people will believe what you say. This can be very useful in getting you out of a scrape…
The art dealer Joseph Duveen was once attending a soiree at the New York home of a tycoon to whom he had recently sold a Dürer painting for a high price.
Among the guests was a young French art critic who seemed extremely knowledgeable and confident. Wanting to impress this man, the tycoon’s daughter showed him the Dürer, which had not yet been hung.
The critic studied it for a time, then finally said, “You know, I don’t think this Dürer is right.” He followed the young woman as she hurried to tell her father what he had said, and listened as the magnate, deeply unsettled, turned to Duveen for reassurance.
Duveen just laughed. “How very amusing,” he said. “Do you realize, young man, that at least twenty other art experts here and in Europe have been taken in too, and have said that painting isn’t genuine? And now you’ve made the same mistake.”
His confident tone and air of authority intimidated the Frenchman, who apologized for his mistake.
Duveen knew that the art market was flooded with fakes, and that many paintings had been falsely ascribed to old masters. He tried his best to distinguish the real from the fake, but in his zeal to sell he often overplayed a work’s authenticity.
What mattered to him was that the buyer believed he had bought a Dürer, and that Duveen himself convinced everyone of his “expertness” through his air of irreproachable authority. Thus, it is important to be able to play the professor when necessary and never impose such an attitude for its own sake.
Conclusion
Sure you can use this method if you want to scam or manipulate others. But more useful, is to use this method to survive.
When the world seems to be falling apart, and that there are hunters out looking for prey…
…to loot, to rape, to steal from, to swindle, to seize property from…
…it’s in your best interests to be as dull, uninteresting, and non-descript as possible. Let others be the “lightening rod” that attracts the dangerous. All you want to do is survive. And survive you will, if only by playing the part of the dull, and uninteresting.
When people are out looting, they will attack the pharmacies, the department stores, the grocery stores and the homes of the wealthy. They will pretty much ignore the junk-yards, the electrical sub-stations, and the old empty barns.
Do you want more?
I have more posts along this vein in my Life and Happiness Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
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The following is an outstanding article that was originally published on UNZ. It is pretty much “spot on” and tells you who is behind all the issues, the turmoil and the stress that the world is going through right now. It it good? I don’t know. Is it bad? I don’t know. But it should be worth your while to understand what is going on in this world and why.
Let me explain. We’re going on a voyage through sight and sound and mind, unlocking that door with that key of imagination (it’s still around), crossing over into Twilight Zone 2020. When we’re done, you’ll have seen the world through the eyes of a globalist. Which one? It doesn’t matter. Not all are the same, ‘tis true. But we’re interested in what they share, not where they differ. What they share is a plan — for total control. Whether it’s called world government or the “softer” global governance, you’ll see it as an inevitable result of technology and modernity. For the past three centuries, things have gotten more centralized and consolidated. The process is now accelerating. For you and your fellow globalists, many your superiors in a vast treelike hierarchy, the world is like a game of Risk. You know the rules, you have the skills, and you’re playing to win. It is a game, after all. Populations are like pieces on a board, to be moved around or removed at will or whim, as you challenge other global players and bring everyone into your fold.
Our voyage has begun. I should warn you, gentle reader, before we go all the way through that door. When we return you may feel queasy, with an urge to take a bath. Do not be alarmed. This comes with the territory.
So you are a globalist. You were born to wealth and real privilege, educated at Harvard (or Yale or Columbia). You came of age assuming that as one of the blue bloods, your destiny is to help shape the new world order to come. Your name may be unknown. This doesn’t bother you. If visibility should come your way, you’ll accept it. But you’re not preoccupied with it. You see no reason to seek it out. More gets from behind the curtain, anyway.
You’re in awe, admittedly, of the wealth accumulated by such dynasties as the Rothschilds, how they managed to drop from sight over a century ago and remain hidden — not on lists of the rich such as Forbes publishes — despite their absolute lock on trillions through the central banks they control and hundreds of “shell” corporations whose managers have no idea, because many in the dynasty don’t use that name.
You are properly disdainful of the masses. Like your fellow globalists you don’t see them as more than cattle, fit to be caged in work cubicles and ruled. But you’ve noticed, even from their inferior genes come, every so often, intelligent men and a few women with the right attitude. Such individuals can be plucked from the mass environment, tested for their reaction when they learn how the world really works, and if they pass the test, trained. The rest — with their gleeful mass consumption, their addictions to screens, their adulation of celebrities and sports icons, their blind adherence to religion or ideology whether “left” or “right” — leave you singularly unimpressed. Most you can barely tell apart since they dress, wear their hair, and talk the same, as members of various tribes. Tribalism, you were told as a child, is our natural state, and you’ve no cause to doubt it. A few idealistic intellectuals once thought they could transcend tribes with their god Reason. They called this the Enlightenment, which had its uses. But here we are back again. You look at society and you see tribes.
If you’re anything, you’re a realist. Since the masses act like cattle, why not treat them like cattle? At some point, you might be one of the people who gets to decide who lives and who dies, as the crisis your superiors did so much to engineer and then to hide inside continues to unfold: the genetically-engineered coronavirus, the planned-emic, the fomented racial unrest, the cancellation of history through programmed destruction of monuments to it. Fairytales like “white privilege.” Whatever divides, helps, because when groups are at each other’s throats over “microaggressions” and “racism” or trans-confusion or whatever, they’re not watching you.
Are you a sociopath? You don’t know. You understand the question, but you don’t think it has much meaning. You were raised as you were, you know what you know, and you do what you have to. You can empathize with your own, you think, but who knows? You tell your wife you love her, and she was picked for you because she’s good stock, too, but should she make the slightest wrong move, or show too much curiosity about what you do during the day, she’s gone in less time than it takes to say divorce. And without the niceties of a division of assets.
You have superiors who’ll cut you out in the same way if you display weakness or remorse or guilt, especially for the fate of the cattle. This you also know. Superior breeding, intelligence, and strength of will got them where they are, and yours hasn’t hurt you any. If anything, you think those some call sociopaths might be a superior breed of human. To your superiors, emotional cravings after ethics are signs of weakness and stupidity. The cattle are as they are because they believe that stuff.
You believe in Hegelian dialectic because you’ve seen it used. Crisis Reaction Response. Foment a crisis, or through inaction at the right time, allow one to develop. The crisis prompts a predictable reaction. As things come to a head, your political groupies move in with the response that was wanted all along, and it usually comes hassle-free. Your media mouthpieces praise it. The cattle lap it up like warm milk. The crisis could be a planned terror attack or a threat of war or an economic downturn or the planned-emic. What you hear from the cattle is that collective cry, “Do something!”
So you and your fellows do something, and what you do brings you greater control. It could be funneling money to support a policy decision that will lead to more centralization and dominance. Or supporting a candidate who will do your bidding because he’s afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t.
Or it could be going to war against a designated target, someone in the way of globalist goals. If the masses are told they’re in danger, and that destroying your enemy will restore their safety, they’ll go along, because as you and your fellow globalists have understood from the start, they want safety more than freedom. That was the core failing of those who founded the country you grew up in but no longer recognize, so completely have its founding principles been dismantled. They believed more than a tiny minority of the human race are suited for freedom. Several of those ideals once presented the greatest potential roadblock to you and your superiors’ goals for the world. But that was long ago. Now things are falling apart, and you’re satisfied as you watch the mayhem in the streets.
What strikes you as funny is how the few who notice what you do are so easily labeled “conspiracy theorists” and how this totally shuts discussion down. If it’s on CNN or in the Washington Post, it has to be true, after all. Would these outlets lie to their readers? Even more amusing is how some kool-aid drinkers among the cattle police the herd without your help. You’ve seen this over and over on Internet forums, especially those attached to city newspapers. There’s usually some cyberbully, usually more liberal than thou, with fake superiority who calls out the “conspiracy nuts,” and he keeps the rabble in line without having the slightest idea whose interests he’s serving.
Sometimes you can’t stop laughing.
Because conspiracies by definition are hidden. You and your superiors aren’t hiding. You haven’t been hiding for decades. Some of your predecessors wrote books about globalist proposals for the world. They had major publishers with regular distribution networks. Visibility in financial media. Part of you wants to ask, is the World Economic Forum hidden from anyone? Or this, about the Great Reset, as they call the purpose of this crisis, right there on YouTube with all those links to more information?
You understand that the way to control the minds of the masses is to control the information that reaches them. This, too, was discovered long ago. Hence sending their children to public schools to learn “subjects” crafted to specification while they acquired habits of regimentation and attitudes of subservience to authority.
The way to control their bodies is through economics, which is based on incentives. Everything in this world follows its food supply, and secondarily, the need for warmth and safety and sex. The masses need to buy food and pay for shelter, and they can be led by their noses with sex appeal. Corporate machinations determine what jobs are available and in what quantities. It wasn’t hard to drive the bulk of the public into employment of one sort of another, because employment meant dependence. Advertising drives them to consume, so the economic engine keeps humming.
Schools tell them they are free, of course, because they can vote every two and four years for candidates you and your fellows have approved, at least in most cases. Trump was an odd case, but your superiors have partially bent him to their will.
All this said, you and your fellow globalists are not gods, and you don’t view yourselves as gods. There are no gods any more than there are ghosts, goblins, ghouls, poltergeists, or space aliens. You’re just a superior breed of human, that’s all. You blue bloods tamed emotions the masses can’t tame, while focusing on long-term goals, developing the right technological tools, and getting everyone and everything into alignment.
Speaking of Trump, he and a few others monkeywrenched things a little. Fortunately, most of what Trump has actually done benefited the very corporations serving your superiors — as if he actually knew who had been buttering his bread all along (his commerce secretary, Wilber Ross, who helped him out of a financial jam years ago, is a Rothschild agent, after all). And it’s not like he was going to Drain the Swamp. If he truly thought he was going to oppose globalism, he was opposing something 90 percent finished.
But getting back to the godhood question….
You’re not gods because God if He really existed wouldn’t make mistakes, and you globalists have made some epic blunders over the years. You made basically the same mistake twice, in fact! Letting a technology get away from you.
Back in the 1960s, your predecessors let television get away. Television, that new and potentially fantastic panacea for bored housewives and sports fans, that instrument for communicating propaganda passed off as news, and a source of revenue for companies great and small who threw millions into commercial ads that supported programming that would condition viewers to what your predecessors wanted them to think. But they let parts of it get away from them. It’s a cultural cesspool now, but back then, the ship had sailed.
The mistake was permitting boots-on-the-ground coverage of what was really going on in Vietnam. Kids saw the bodybags and were horrified. A critical mass of a generation came of age telling each other, “We’re not doing this anymore!” They would have sent a man to the White House to stop that war, which your predecessors wanted badly. A couple of their jackals took him out, just like a different group took out his brother five years earlier, but it was too late. The movement survived and ended that war prematurely. It wasn’t economically feasible to continue fighting it. It took a long time to build the war machine back to where it had been. Globalism lost valuable time!
Then, more recently, your fellows let the Internet slip through their fingers! Originally a DARPA creation, this work of genius programmed computers to “talk to one another” within the burgeoning communications grid. It migrated from government to computer science labs in universities and from there, slow but sure, to dissident voices who hadn’t had such platforms before. It also made its way to the masses. Some turned it into the same cesspool television had become, but for others — refuseniks, you call them — it was an oasis of “free speech” and they made full use of it. Some were clever and gathered a lot of essentially truthful information about what you and your fellows have been up to all these years and decades. The “conspiracy” meme worked somewhat but didn’t carry the same weight it once had.
So your minions seeded it with all manner of bogus information and confusion and false rabbit trails. Sometimes — proving they have a sense of humor, you suppose — they pushed stuff that was outright idiotic, such as the Earth being flat and this being science’s darkest secret and the devil’s greatest triumph after convincing the world he doesn’t exist. Here your generation came in. Part of your work involves creating content that distracts and confuses. You love your work. Because you can endlessly play mind games with truthseekers. Even if there isn’t any way to prevent some truth from getting out (such as the role of a certain powerful Middle Eastern nation with Washington’s most powerful lobby in 9/11), you and your fellows can see to it that even intelligent and discerning researchers have a hard time telling what is true from what isn’t. Helping your cause is the sheer quantity of information, whether about historical events or more recent ones such as the 9/11 attacks, or even the 2008 financial crisis where you could confuse and misdirect to so people would look at unqualified loan recipients instead of manipulative Wall Streeters and their instruments. It was easy to ensure that discussions of the latter were so complex and technical, as well as written in extremely dry language, so the average reader would quickly get bored and give up.
But when all is said and done, even though you helped create the post-truth world we live in now, it wasn’t enough.
Some of the refuseniks got organized! A Global Populist Revolt was at hand!
It started slow and fractured and ultimately compromised, like Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring. But with Brexit and the rise of Trump, the Revolt grew sharper teeth, since even if Trump was basically an asshole and had all kinds of vulnerabilities, his command of all the major media was so superior and his opponents so weak that no one really stood a chance against him back in 2016. It would have been too risky to just take him out, like your predecessors did those two brothers all those years ago. Hotheads among his supporters would have blown the lid off. So you made the best of it, you and your fellow globalists. Then Hillary Clinton self-sabotaged with her idiotic “baskets of deplorables” remark and blew the election! Clinton, who had destroyed two countries almost singlehandedly (Libya and Honduras), would have been perfect at blending the drums of war with fanning the flames of black vs white, male vs female, straight vs gay, all helping distract from the looming financial catastrophe your fellows’ central bankers were busy engineering behind the scenes to prepare for the Great Reset.
Now you had a problem on your hands!
And by 2017 too many people were awake (not “woke”). They didn’t buy “Russia-gate” (God, how you hate such terms!). Nor did they buy “Ukraine-gate” which would be your Democrat Party servants’ last straightforward gambit for getting Trump out of office.
Nor were they buying into the man-made climate change narrative.
But you globalists are nothing if not smart, and with tremendous foresight. Some of you had been anticipating just such possibilities, having funneled millions into coronavirus research in places like Wuhan, China, where nobody in the West would notice.
It would be necessary to crush the Populists and refuseniks!
Enter the “novel” coronavirus. And how the Chinese Communist Party also played it smart doing your bidding keeping the lid on until global travel ensured that the virus would spread and start infecting vulnerable populations, laying the groundwork for a broader panic: your planned-emic. Your servants in governments closes borders, locked down economies forcibly closing thousands of small businesses, while slamming corporate media viewers with 24/7 coverage of COVID-19, letting them watch death numbers rack up.
The start of the greatest redistribution of wealth upwards in world history!
Then came the George Floyd riots, which some of you helped orchestrate — brilliant moves to increase the general level of mayhem and distraction.
Through the wrecked businesses and ruined lives you hear the cries of “do something!” You are your superiors are counting on this.
What a perfect opportunity for a Great Reset!
A few of you are saying almost visibly that only a world government can address this pandemic — which has certainly caused more fear than climate change and soft-minded phrases like “global problems call for global solutions.”
They weren’t personally threatened by climate change like they are getting sick and dying, and that’s the key. The object lesson is that the masses have to feel fear personally. They have to believe they or those they care about or things they care about are in danger, otherwise they won’t get with the program.
Now it’s appropriate to use TV to show bodybags and rows of graves!
This will also be the best opportunity you and your fellow globalists have to get rid of physical cash and digitize everything. Tell the masses that cash could spread the virus, not just that drug dealers, child traffickers, and other forms of lowlife scum use physical cash. Since most people have never seen a child trafficker or drug lord, again that’s not personal enough.
Eventually you’ll criminalize cash transactions that aren’t recorded digitally and can’t be monitored. Once your financial grid is set, you’ll know every detail of who has what, where they are getting it and how, what they are doing with it, and whether there’s anything suspicious going on. Your ideal is for the masses to have credit chips implanted in them, perhaps between the thumb and index finger of their left hand. A global ID. Everybody’s birth and parentage records, educational records, employment records, health records, and financial transactions, all in one place! Nothing will any more get lost, nothing will be stolen. You’ll tell the people that identity theft is a thing of the past.
Some still won’t go along, of course. Refuseniks, ideological descendants of those who rejected modernity, don’t trust authority, and would live like savages rather than enjoy the benefits of the new world order you globalists offer.
This is not a choice, though. Your superiors’ offer isn’t coming with an opt-out button.
You’re not sure what’s in the offing, because such things are on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know.
You realize there are things you don’t know. You know your immediate superiors who brought you to where you are, and you know the higher-ups past them reach up through Wall Street corporations and City of London enclaves past central banks and Bank of International Settlements and Davos culture, past even Those You Can’t Criticize to still higher “alchemists” of power. And they might be answering to someone above them. There may be curtains you can’t see, much less peer behind. Maybe someday you’ll be invited to gatherings in the “grove” if you perform well. But where does this go? You’ve had a few uneasy thoughts you’ve always been able to push away.
One thing you know: no one leaves this life except in a box. A few tried. They regretted it. A handful tried to tell their tale. They discovered the truth: no one believed them. They became laughingstocks, like those glassy-eyed, disheveled loons on sidewalks bearing signs and wailing through bad teeth that the end of the world is at hand.
As to what’s planned for the refusenik brigades, it’s sure to be something nastier than this planned-emic was.
This coronavirus wasn’t lethal except for certain groups like the elderly that can’t contribute to the global economy anyway and might as well be eliminated. Some 80 percent of everyone else infected got over it. Rough estimate.
You’ve heard rumors, though — Bill Gates mentioned one in passing, like he was talking about a mere possibility — of something waiting in the wings that will be lethal. Something able to wipe out not a few million but a few billion. Maybe reduce the world’s population by well over half, given that many who survive the plague will die in food riots, croak from heart attacks, OD on drugs, or commit suicide. Many may simply starve to death. You remember reading back in 2005 that Terry Schiavo, the disabled brain damaged woman, lived without food and water for 13 days after she was unplugged from life support. You wince a little as you imagine someone mostly healthy and with normal cognition going maybe longer without food, wandering to find it anywhere he can, failing because there isn’t any food, then collapsing and doubling up in agony because his stomach and small intestines are starting to digest themselves—
Sometimes you think you can empathize after all, and you’re deathly afraid it will show at some point….
You’re a globalist, a blue blood, and above such things.
Less population is a good thing. As the Georgia Guidestones say, no more than 500 million is the ideal. With more and more robotics coming, there’s going to be less work for people to do. Are your servants in governments really supposed to pay Universal Basic Income to masses who will lay around and play video games all day for the rest of their lives?
You’re thinking: supply them with Huxleyan soma. Eventually, as your co-opted scientists learn more about how to integrate technology into the developing fetal brain (or the brain into the technosphere!), you’ll be able to go well beyond what Huxley envisioned. You’ll be able to program whole populations so they’re born to the status you want for them, and be both physically and mentally unable to question it.
Transhumanism at its finest! Eternally!
Resistance is futile, and all that….
So there you are. This is your world — and the world to come. A world with a single governing structure about to pull everyone in, willingly or not; a single world marketplace dominated by corporations some of your superiors own and control, with employment for those who got with the program; maybe a single religion of humanity (something one of your heroes, sociology-founder Auguste Comte, promoted) and whatever spiritualism and woo the masses want to mix into it (you and your superiors don’t care just so it isn’t Christianity).
Things are going well enough that your superiors think they’ll have the basics in place by 2030, and given how many people actually did fall in line behind the COVID-19 scare, you’re thinking this as well. There’s a document out there in plain view citing that year, with silly stuff about things like eradicating poverty. You know your superiors don’t care about eradicating poverty, but such sentiments play to the emotions of those you want to influence. Even the more intelligent of the masses are still, after all, creatures of emotion. Their primary emotions being fear, greed, and lust, you, your superiors, and their predecessors have known for decades how to incentivize most of them.
As for the refuseniks? In time, they’ll be dealt with—
Well, gentle reader, we’ve looked at the world — your world — through the eyes of a globalist. It is time to return you back from this journey of sight and sound and mind. Back from Twilight Zone 2020. Back through that door to the familiarity of home and hearth. The bathroom is still the first room on your left.
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
The United States was set up as a Republic way back in 1776, and over the years “improved” into other things. First it was a “democracy”, then into an “oligarchy”, followed by “empire” in the 1960’s and now exists as a military Empire controlled via oligarchy. It’s a real mess. It’s ungainly, corrupt and dysfunctional.
And, it is handling this COVID-19 emergency outrageously bad.
In fact, the handling of it is so incompetent, and unfathomably bizarre, that it would probably be best not to have a government at all. Just let the sheeple graze on the “fruited plains” freely without any “assistance” from Big Brother Government.
Seriously, it’s time to demolish the old, and look towards new horizons.
Is It Time for a New Direction?
This article was written by Jacob G. Hornberger on April 10, 2020. Edited to fit this venue and all credit to the author.
If Americans are not doing some serious soul-searching in the midst of this crisis, they need to start. Where America goes from here is not some sort of esoteric debate. What we do at this point has life or death consequences. Get it wrong, and suffer more death, suffering, and impoverishment. Get it right, and America moves toward life, health, liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony.
What everyone needs to recognize is that they are facing a choice of systems, not a choice of people. Either stick with the same systems or switch over to new systems. That’s the choice now facing the American people.
Let’s examine four systems under which we currently live and have lived for decades.
America’s economic system
This is a centrally planned and centrally managed system run by the federal government. Its central aim is to “wage war on poverty” by forcibly taking money from everyone and redistributing it to people in need, such as the elderly and the poor. It is based on massive confiscation of income and wealth by the Internal Revenue Service, in the form of income taxes and payroll taxes.
America’s healthcare system
This too is a centrally planned and centrally managed system run by the federal government. It is based on big, powerful central planning agencies like as the Centers for Disease Control and the FDA, as well as massive socialist programs like Medicare and Medicaid, both of which are responsible for foisting a never-ending healthcare crisis onto the American people consisting of ever-increasing healthcare costs that have bankrupted people or sent them into deep debt.
America’s monetary system
This too is a centrally planned and centrally managed system run by the federal government, specifically the Federal Reserve. From its beginning in 1913, its job has been to print up ever-increasing quantities of paper money to enable the federal government to fund the ever-increasing expenditures of the welfare-warfare state way of life.
America’s system of empire and foreign intervention
This too is a centrally planned and centrally managed system by the national-security branch of the federal government. Its job is to wreak death and destruction among foreigners and, in the process, bring ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer-funded largess to its army of well-heeled “defense” contractors, which are composed of former members of the national-security establishment.
Consequences of central planning
How are all these systems working out? Most, if not all, people would agree that they are not working out well at all. Together, they have either bankrupted people through taxes or debts or left millions of people without even enough savings to get them through a couple of months of unemployment.
And guess who is now paying the biggest price for the coronavirus crisis — seniors and the poor. That’s because the FDA, in all its central planning wisdom, prohibited the private sector from producing test kits that would have, without any doubt, significantly reduced the coronavirus infection rate.
How can they lower the infection rate if they don’t know who has the virus, especially since people who have the virus are infecting people for about a week before they show any symptoms? A massive number of cheap testing kits would have enabled people to ferret out quickly and early who was infected, enabling everyone else to continue working.
Given that their dysfunctional healthcare system has totally failed to stem the crisis, they have resorted to tyranny and oppression through a mandatory shutdown of the economy, sending millions of people into unemployment and even bankruptcy.
To relieve the financial distress from their destruction of people’s livelihoods, they are resorting to their dysfunctional monetary system. The Federal Reserve is now printing money like it was going out of style. Does anyone really believe that printing trillions of dollars is a way to relieve economic distress? It’s just another form of taxation, one that plunders and loots people, specially the elderly and the poor, through the massive devaluation of their money.
Meanwhile, their fourth dysfunctional system is ensuring that the national-security establishment will suffer no budget cuts whatsoever in order to enable to maintain its oversees machinery of empire and intervention.
Isn’t that ironic? Their four systems of central planning and management are responsible for massive death, suffering, and impoverishment not only here at home but also abroad.
A different direction
If you like how all these dysfunctional systems have worked out, are working out, and will continue to work out into the future, just continue supporting their existence.
But make no mistake: There is a choice to be made here because there are four systems that are opposite to the four systems under which we are are suffering. These four systems are as follows:
A free-market economic system
Under this system, everyone keeps everything he earns — 100 percent, which enables everyone to save lots of money. No income taxation and no IRS. It’s a system based on 100 percent voluntary charity. This was America’s founding economic system for more than 100 years. It produced the wealthiest and most charitable society in history.
A free-market healthcare system
Under this system, the private sector and the free market are entirely responsive for healthcare. No more having to get permission from federal bureaucrats to produce test kits or anything else because the federal government will play no role whatsoever in healthcare. A total separation of healthcare and the state, just as our ancestors had the wisdom to separate church and state. This was America’s founding healthcare system and last for more than 100 years. It produced the finest healthcare system in history, one in which healthcare costs were cheap and affordable and in which doctors and hospitals treated the poor for free on a purely voluntary basis.
A free-market monetary system
Under this system, the free market determines the currency that is going to be used. No more Federal Reserve and no more legal-tender laws. For more than 100 years, America had the finest monetary system in history, one based on gold coins and silver coins. A free-market monetary system would improve upon that concept.
A limited-government republic with a small, basic military force.
No more national-security state and no more foreign military bases and foreign interventionism. No more sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, torture, state-sponsored assassinations, secret mass surveillance, and other destruction of civil liberties. America was founded as a limited-government republic, which lasted for more than 100 years.
The same old direction versus a new direction
So there you have it: Four completely different systems from which to choose. Americans should choose wisely. Your lives, health, and financial well-being and those of your loved ones, friends, and neighbors depend on it.
Do you want to see similar posts?
I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
Well, America is in the middle of the COVID-19 viral emergency. Due to incompetence at all levels of the various American governments, there has been a complete failure of handling this event and it has manifested into an outright fiasco. With things as they stand today, and what we know about the corrupt American government, what is next?
Already States, and local governments are placing restrictions on liberty and behaviors. Stores are being ordered to close and assembly can get you arrested.
No one stated it better than Remus in the Woodpile Report…
These are your choices. They always were and they always will be.
Prepare when no one else is preparing.
Panic when everyone else is panicking.
Got food? Ammo? Meds?
It's too late now to prepare adequately for the pandemic much less the impending derailment of civilization itself. Preppers were calmly topping off their stashes in early January, at regular prices, in any quantity with lots-o'-choices. They saw the foreshadow of this emergency and acted appropriately. Prepping always looks crazy until the rug gets pulled. Paranoia is a survival tool, panic is not.
Systems are visibly collapsing.
The stock market is out-crashing the 1929 debacle in both speed and depth. "No Admittance" signs are posted at hospitals and needed surgeries are being cancelled. Police aren't responding to anything less then a murder in progress. Cities are opening the prison doors and chasing off the inmates. Food wholesalers were cleaned out in a fortnight and many can't restock enough to matter. Others have stopped answering their phones.
Guns and ammo are selling at a record rate.
Dealers say even anti-gun leftists are buying 'em. No one will say it, but it won't take much scarcity for the perpetual EBT Diversity to go where the food and supplies are. It's just there they'll meet real resistance for the first time in their lives. The suburbs have learned their family freezers are worth more than social posing. Unlike the stock market, price discovery will be utterly reliable when it comes to fried chicken and a six pack.
Emergency Rooms
Our Open Borders Diversities already clog the ER and get it all for free because you're paying their bills. Activists will choose the most deserving victims and it won't be the Deplorables. Compulsory charity can't be any other way. Tribal loyalty or redemption will be served. Either way, traditional Americans are a problem to be solved and inaction leaves no fingerprints.
The Center for Disease Control
The CDC had one job. Virology. Other countries had reliable test kits ready to go, in sufficient quantity to be useful. The technology is decades old yet the "renowned" CDC managed to botch it. The CDC distributed excuses and promises. N95 masks? Ventilators? Um, no. Maybe eventually, their Top Men are working on it. Somehow they always have plenty of everything to "fight the epidemic of obesity and racism" but not enough to perform their mandate. The CDC is useless and incompetent, an 11 billion dollar scam, benefiting no one except otherwise unemployable social activists.
Meanwhile, Russia is shipping nine planeloads of medics and surplus equipment and supplies to Italy, including ventilators.
Natural News reports:The battle for Los Angeles is lost. LA County announces no more testing for coronavirus, containment now impossible, 100,000+ may die in LA, prepare for chaos
The tipping point of containment has long since passed. That’s not even the goal anymore, and the number of infections being reported out of LA will no longer even come close to describing the real situation on the ground there...
Expect chaos. Expect looting and violence. It's LA, after all, and the gangs are barely kept in check even during good times.
America is right now in the midst of a full-scale SHTF event.
This is the thing that preppers have been readying for all these many, many years. And as all preppers know, there is a point in time when you are in the middle of “it”…
When you are in the middle of “it”.
With all this in mind, lets take a look at what will follow next…
A need for “violent” change.
For the oligarchy (PTB) have well prepared for this. And make no mistake, they will use this event to consolidate their power and implement sweeping changes to America… to your families and… your way of life.
Let’s dust off this document of horror…
The following is an article titled “The Next American Revolution? Anticipated Civil Unrest”By Larry Romanoff in Global Research, November 27, 2019. Edited to fit this venue and all credit tot he author.
The Next American Revolution? Anticipated Civil Unrest
Preparing For Civil War?
US authorities have for decades become increasingly prepared for mass civil disturbances resulting from government and corporate attacks on American society. We can recall that in the early 1980s the Hidden State launched its open war on the middle class by the savage FED-induced recession and the unilateral revocation of the social contract that had existed since 1946.At that time, the US government had already anticipated widespread public unrest, fully expecting mass protests and riots, and had made preparations to deal with them in the form of internment camps. In a real sense, the government had prepared for another civil war.
REX-84
Like most of the “Great Transformation”, it began during Reagan’s reign with what was called “Rex 84”, an abbreviation for Readiness Exercise 1984.
It is a plan by the US government to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest.
This master plan involved the FBI, Department of Defense, the Emergency Measures group, the Secret Service, the CIA and altogether 34 government agencies.
It was presented as an exercise to test military assistance in civil defense in times of national emergency, but in fact the plan was anticipating civil disturbances, major demonstrations and labor strikes that would affect continuity of government.
The anticipated civil unrest from the FED-induced financial crisis that devastated the middle class was considered “subversive”.
And, REX-84 is an authorization for the US military to implement government-controlled movements of civilian populations at both state and regional levels. Including the arrest of many segments of the American population, and the imposition of martial law. (1) (2)
Federal Police in America have been training alongside the American military to best be able to deal with Americans within the individual states.
Initially, the Rex-84 program was created under the pretense of a possible mass exodus of illegal aliens attempting to cross into the US from Mexico.
However, when the program accidentally became public during the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings in 1987, it was revealed that it was in fact a secret federal government program…
“to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, assign military commanders to take over state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens determined by the government to be ‘national security threats’.”
Ah. That good ‘ol “National Security” reason.
An Actual Program.
This was part of a master contingency plan.
It is a plan for which the FBI today has a primary list of more than 100,000 Americans, and a secondary list ten times larger, who are targeted to be rounded up as subversives.
Scene from the 1980’s movie “Red Dawn”.
This list includes labor leaders, scholars and public figures. With the incarceration designed to isolate political dissidents and to contain civil unrest.
And these are prison camps, ringed with fences, barbed wire and armed
guards, not places from which escape would be likely, and they were
designed to hold Americans, not Mexicans. (3)
“Avenge Me” Scene from the 1980’s movie “Red Dawn”.
There is no question the US government is prepared for the possibility of widespread and uncontrollable domestic disorder.
This program in place and building for years was encouraged by fears of a massive public uprising in the wake of the 2008 banking fraud.
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said some years ago that [1] concentration camps were a likely future reality for Americans and [2] that the Supreme Court would not do anything about the tyranny should the executive branch think it necessary.
“Avenge Me” Scene from the 1980’s movie “Red Dawn”.
He mentioned the World War II internment of Japanese in the US and said of these camps,
“you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again”. (4) (5)
“Internment specialists”
In 2009, as the US financial crisis deepened and concern about public unrest was increasing, the US National Guard was posting job opportunities for “Internment/Resettlement Specialists” to work in “civilian internee camps”. These camps were within the United States. With Halliburton subsidiary KBR actively seeking subcontractors to staff “emergency environment” camps located in five regions of the US.
KBR, outsourced Americanized Gestapo forces.
Earlier, in 2006, KBR was contracted by Homeland Security to build detention centers designed to deal with “the rapid development of unspecified “new programs” that would require large numbers of people to be interned.” (6) (7)
The US has for many years been dangerously close to a situation where, if the American people take to the streets in protest, these internments can be easily carried out.
By 2004, there were more than 800 of these internment camps in the US, all empty, but all fully operational, staffed, and surrounded by full-time guards, ready to receive prisoners.
I have seen photos.
State of the art American patrol car.
As well, many military bases are slated to be closed down and used as extra civilian prisons if the need arises, all intended for the internment of dissidents and others deemed “potentially harmful to the state”.
Some camps can each hold 20,000 or more prisoners, a massive effort at civilian population control, and the program is still expanding.
America is at this point today.
The US is very near the point today where political dissidents questioning the actions of their government will risk being rounded up. And then forced into these prison camps,. This is essentially a government plan to forcibly suppress political dissent under the guise of rooting out domestic “terrorism”.
State of the art American patrol car.
The US government defines many Americans as having become “pre-revolutionary” from their outrage at the 2008 government-approved housing collapse. They have increasing concern that massive civil unrest would emerge from both the poverty-stricken lower classes and the eviscerated middle class. They believe that this would lead to what would become an internal civil war.
This is the reason that the FBI and DHS increasingly focus their “anti-terror” apparatus on white middle-class Americans like the Occupy Wall Street protestors who were categorized as “low-level terrorists”.
State of the art American patrol car.
“Domestic Security”
In 2008, the Washington Post reported government plans to station many tens of thousands of troops inside the country for purposes referred to as “domestic security”. They did this in the light of massive civil unrest that would follow an economic collapse or serious financial crisis, perhaps stemming from 2008.
According to the government document,
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security”,
stating that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance”.
State of the art American patrol car.
To prepare for this quelling of resistance, the US has resorted to demonizing its own citizens.
A recent study funded by DHS conveniently identifying those Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority” and who exhibit signs of being “reverent of individual liberty”, and re-categorizing them as “extreme right-wing” terrorists. (8) (9) (10)
The program is designed to “reduce and eliminate” all domestic resistance to the US government.
“Crowd control agents” will be used for this purpose, and government agencies will be involved in “gathering information on dissidents” to identify all those who have either “threatened or are creating disturbances”.
American police forces today.
Manuals and Policies.
The US military produced a manual on what it termed “Civil Disturbance Operations” that outlines how military assets will be used to “help local and state authorities to restore and maintain law and order” in the event of mass riots and civil unrest.
Military and other law-enforcement will be tasked with “breaking up unauthorized gatherings” and restoring order by
“presenting a show of force, establishing roadblocks, breaking up crowds, employing crowd control agents, and other operations as required”.
American police forces today.
The same government manual describes how prisoners will be processed through these internment camps, and outlines how these internees would be “re-educated” while detained in prison camps inside their own country by their own government.
FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations
A leaked military document titled ‘FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations’, outlined a program for “re-education camps” in the US which contained plans for “political activists” to be “pacified” by various psychological officers.
They would be re-programmed into “sympathizing” with the government and into “developing an appreciation of US policies” while detained in prison camps inside the US.
American police are fully equipped to suppress a well-controlled American populace.
The document was restricted to Department of Defense personnel but was been leaked and posted online.
It outlined policies for “processing detainees into internment camps” and made clear these operations would be used for domestic civilian situations. (11) (12) The full document is available here: (13)
“Once the detainees have been processed into the internment camp, the manual explains how they will be “indoctrinated”, with a particular focus on coercing political dissidents into expressing support for U.S. policies.”
The American police are trained to control, and suppress Americans who refuse to obey Federal laws.
Part of the stated role of the psychological officers would be to
identify political activists, political leaders, ‘malcontents’, and
other agitators, and to develop and execute appropriate
“indoctrination programs to reduce or remove antagonistic attitudes”.
However, their first task would be to “pacify and acclimate detainees
to accept the internment facility’s authority and regulations”.
Americans have become accustomed to the new face of Authoritarian government control.
Approved use of violence against Americans.
There are also disturbing insights into the government’s intention to use brutal force to violently quell any civil political unrest.
The manual includes a long list of weapons meant to be used against protesting American civilians, including anti-riot grenades.
All over America, from Hawaii to Alaska, from California to Maine, the police are armed with military weapons and equipment for use against American citizens.
Page 20 of the manual authorities the use of “deadly force” in confronting these peaceful political “dissidents”, the murderous intent made disturbingly clear with the directive that “Warning shots will not be fired” first.
Northcom itself, in a September 8, 2008 Army Times article, said the first wave of the deployment, which was put in place on October 1st at Fort Stewart and at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, would be aimed at tackling “civil unrest and crowd control”.
All sorts of high precision, and lethal weapons are deployed with American police and Federal police today.
In November of 2013, Forbes Magazine ran an article based on the AP newswire, detailing that DHS had been assembling a massive weapons arsenal since 2011 or 2012. (14)
The AP reported that Homeland Security had been stockpiling ammunition by buying more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in addition to a prior purchase of 1.5 billion rounds, for a staggering total of more than three billion rounds.
Depending on the state and the local police force, all manner of high-technology and state-of-the-art weapons are issued to police forces. These weapons are not for the military to use against an enemy. They are for American police to use against American people.
This is more ammunition than the US military used collectively in all its wars in the last decade, and represents about ten shots for every man, woman and child in America.
There were also confirmed purchases by various government agencies, of hundreds of millions of hollow-point rounds to be delivered to dozens of locations around the US.
These bullets are so lethal they are banned for battlefield use during wars because they mushroom and fragment on impact, their only purpose being to cause the maximum possible damage to internal organs.
The reader must ask themselves why suppression firearms, like machine-guns, and grenade launchers are being issued to American police forces. The Constitution has been quite explicit and exact that standing armies are forbidden to exist upon American soil.
Also purchased were large numbers of magnum rounds with the power to penetrate walls, and a frightening hundreds of millions more rounds of specialty sniper ammunition.
Friendly Weapons
Even more, it was reported in early 2015 that DHS had placed orders for massive amounts of other kinds of anti-civilian weaponry termed “Less Lethal Specialty Munitions”, which were described as “an arsenal of specialized weaponry for training and deployment against crowds”.
Why are American regional police forces issued and trained to us the M134 GAU-17 Gatling Gun?
These included flash grenades, light bursts, gas and chemical grenades, riot rounds, rubber bullets, and much more.
These are all heavy-duty crowd control and civilian intimidation weapons.
They have no other purpose and, in the volume in which they are being purchased, it is clear the US government is expecting some very serious civil disturbances, possibly a revolution, and soon.
One such non-lethal weapon is the 500-vold shotgun.
As recently as 2018, Forbes was reporting more of the same, that these purchases have reached an astonishing ubiquity.
It isn’t only Homeland Security who is arming to the teeth. Thousands of agents at the IRS now have tactical assault rifles and heavy weaponry.
The Small Business Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs have purchased thousands of Glock handguns.
The Health Services agencies purchased millions of dollars worth of Glock handguns – equipped with silencers.
The US Geological Survey, which is a weather bureau, purchased millions of dollars worth of Winchester Black Shadow shotguns with large bulk ammunition orders in addition to Glock handguns.
Even the Department of Education purchased millions of dollars worth of Glock handguns, shotguns and body armor.
I am unaware of any nation in the world where the income tax department or the departments of education and health care require huge amounts of military-grade weapons, much less body armor and gun silencers.
Non-lethal microwave cannon to use to fry the living daylights out of protesters and mobs.
Armed to the teeth
In June of 2016, RT reported that non-military federal agencies had more firepower than the entire US Marine Corps.
This including agencies like education, health and income tax. (15) RT documented, a new report where 67 non-military federal US agencies spent $1.50 billion purchasing guns, ammunition and military-style equipment.
Tazer pistols are quite common all over America and are used with far less restraint than normal pistols.
The details came from the Militarization of America: non-military federal agencies purchases of guns, ammo, and military-style equipment, published by the non-profit good government group OpentheBooks.com. (16) (17)
In addition to the massive purchase of ammunition, DHS was showing off its acquisition of heavily armored and mine-resistant personnel carriers.
Sticky foam is one such non-lethal weapon that is deployed inside America.
These have been seen on streets all across America and verified with photos and video.
Forbes noted that these vehicles are equipped with gun ports and are “designed to withstand IEDs, mine blasts and 50 caliber hits to bullet-proof glass”, and asked why they would be necessary on American streets.
The “Thunder Generator” was originally developed by Israeli farmers to scare away crop-eating birds. However, it has now grown to become a viable weapon against humans. In good conditions, the Thunder Generator can hurl a series of super-short shockwaves up to 100 meters (328 ft) away. In general, these shockwaves serve to only knock down and stun individuals. Any closer than 10 meters (33 ft), however, and the waves can result in permanent damage or death.
The DHS also purchased large amounts of riot gear and bullet-proof checkpoint booths, as well as a purchase of 7000 automatic rifles, and 2700 armored vehicles, and the deployment of drones with allowance for their use on US citizens.
The DHS is becoming a massive domestic army to handle domestic conflict. In the words of Ellen Brown,
“somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest …”
American police have taken a page out of the Communist Chinese civilian suppression manual and have adopted drones for surveillance, crowd control and suppression purposes.
False Claims of utility.
DHS chief Janet Napolitano claimed this was to prepare for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States that would require the “shelter and processing” of large numbers of people, but this is nonsense.
By whom will the US be attacked that Homeland Security would be responsible for defense, and from where would arise a mass of peaceful immigrants so large as to require more than three billion bullets to repel them?
America has spent millions of dollars, if not billions, on prisons and internment facilities to deal with emergencies and large scale unrest.
This is the same government that recently shut down many of its operations including most of the National Parks, for lack of funds, yet had sufficient money to purchase billions of bullets for a non-existent civilian army.
A spokesperson was quoted as justifying this massive purchase to “help the government get a low price for a big purchase”, and claimed DHS used “as many as 15 million rounds every year in training exercises”.
Someone should ask DHS to divide 3 billion by 15 million, which tells us the ammunition purchase will supply DHS needs for the next 200 years.
America has spent millions of dollars, if not billions, on prisons and internment facilities to deal with emergencies and large scale unrest.
The authorities naturally attribute criticism and hard questions to mentally-unbalanced ‘conspiracy theorists’, but this is one more instance where actions appear irrational and the official story is so full of holes that it makes no sense.
‘Unconventional’ paper targets.
Another DHS purchase that produced a firestorm of anger when its news went viral, was the supply of what we might call ‘unconventional’ paper targets which were used as practice shooting targets in ‘training exercises’.
This could very well be the future for many Americans who are not “with the program”.
These targets consisted of figures of American civilians in residential settings. They included small children. They include a young pregnant mother, and old women in robes. They include grandmothers and grandfathers in their kitchens and front yards. They include teenagers in parks, little girls and more.
Perhaps the most frightening part being that all these were termed “no hesitation targets”, meaning to fire without hesitation at the sight of these enemies.
American protestors are the exact type of people that these weapons are targeting.
What could possibly justify the supply of such targets to a military force, with such an instruction? The US fedbiz.op website took down the solicitation after Infowars broke the story, and eventually apologized publicly for creating these targets of small children.
A Fake City
In early 2014 it was reported that the US military had built a $100 million fake city of about 300 acres in Virginia, for use in training.
The Federal government has created these fake cities and towns from which to train warriors to fight American patriots on American soil with.
This was for the training of troops for the occupation of cities, complete with a sports stadium, bank, school, and an underground subway in order to train for future combat scenarios in American urban areas.
The subway carriages even carry the same logo as those in Washington DC. More disturbingly, it was reported that
“soldiers are being taught that Christians, Tea Party supporters and anti-abortion activists represent a radical terror threat, mirroring rhetoric backed by the Department of Homeland Security which frames “liberty lovers” as domestic extremists.”
The DHS is also building a 176-acre secure compound in the
lowest-income area of Washington, DC, which seems almost certainly a
preparation for civil war. (18) (19)
American soldiers, train alongside the DHS, in these American sized towns wearing full spectrum bio-warfare gear.
The Trigger Event
The trigger could be an economic collapse that causes angry Americans to flood the streets similar to the Occupy Wall Street and other scenes witnessed across both the US and Europe during the last FED-induced economic crisis.
Or it could be COVID-19.
It is worth noting that the Occupy Wall Street protest had the right idea but the wrong target.
A military urban training center, which is a mock 30-acre town located on Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, has been recently upgraded to look more American than the ‘international city’ it once did, adding a Baptist church, a police station and several farmhouses. Just last February we posted a story of another fake “American looking” city, equipped with our street signs, a church and an underground subway system nearly identical to one in Washington DC.
Wall Street is just an idea, and a bit player. The ultimate cause is the FED, and that should have been their focus. But the FED, the bankers and the FBI saw this coming and infiltrated and financed the protest groups as a way to take control and deflect them from any useful action or focus.
The “top secret” exercises
In the middle of 2013 several US local media reported the DHS was conducting widely public but still “top secret” exercises categorized as “full scale terrorism drills” across the entire nation.
All of this was with the stated purpose of making citizens “feel safe”, but which resulted in thousands of terrified people not knowing how to respond to what appeared as a domestic invasion by the US military.
The military has a very long history of training and using aerosols that they would spray over regions. They have done this for cloud seeding, insect control, and to practice germ and chemical warfare operations in simulated battle conditions.
People were capriciously apprehended and released after having their belongings searched, but nevertheless urged to celebrate their “independence” from tyranny.
These drills were presented as readiness training for potential terrorist incursions, though DHS failed to mention the New York Times observation that all the domestic terror plots in the United States over the last decade were “hatched by the FBI”.
One other worrying development …
One other worrying development was the appearance of US military C-130 cargo planes apparently spraying “mosquitoes” over various Florida cities at an altitude of less than 50 meters.
An American Air Force C-130 spraying pesticides over a target area.
Pest control is hardly a military duty, these events immediately reminding me of the US military spraying bacterial and other pathogens over many parts of the US in various CIA-related experiments on the domestic population.
These low-altitude overflights are almost certainly practice runs for potential crowd control in the future, for dispensing tear gas or other non-lethal (or lethal) material that would disperse or disorient protestors.
A spraying and aerosol mixing assembly system being installed and loaded into a C-130 cargo plane for undisclosed purposes.
I cannot imagine all the possibilities, but the US military most certainly is not going into the mosquito-spraying business. (19) (20)
US Major General Curry was quoted as stating,
“We have local police, backed up by each state’s National Guard, backed up by the Department of Defense. So in addition to all these forces why does Homeland Security need its own private army? Why do the SSA, NOAA and other government agencies need to create their own civilian security forces armed with hollow nose bullets?”
Some may want to dismiss this as just another conspiracy theory, but we might recall the words of Senator Daniel Inouye in 1987,
“There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.”
The threats to civil liberties
The threats to civil liberties go much farther and are much more ominous than I’ve related so far.
Another factor is the spate of secret Executive Orders that Obama signed without Congressional approval, observers claiming those orders violated existing laws and were therefore illegal, but that the powers behind the White House considered themselves above all law.
Militarized police can go and conduct military operations, using the same sort of tactics, in America against Americans at will.
One of the most sinister was Executive Order 13603 which granted authorization to seize possession of every possible resource, including property and “all food storage facilities”.
One author wrote that…
“This extremist, maniacal edict is designed to enforce our submission, rendering us totally dependent on Big Brother government or face the obvious – starvation and extermination.”
What could possibly have instigated such an order, unless the government is preparing for an all-out war against the American people?
What possible excuse, during peace-time, would a “democratic” government have, for the initiation of a program to seize all the “food, water and food storage facilities” of a nation?
The various American government(s) at all levels have been training on how to control, herd and disarm normal American civilians.
If we add these to the internment camps and the bullets, what conclusions are possible?
Another Threat
Another ominous threat is that much of the NSA’s illegal intelligence-gathering activities were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security.
This is the same people with the 800 internment camps and the 3 billion bullets.
The apparent reason is that the NSA can collect information on domestic political dissidents but has no police powers to act on them, whereas DHS has legislative authority to gather, arrest and incarcerate anyone on their watch lists.
American police today more resembles a military army that operates on American soil, in complete defiance of the United States Constitution.
DHS is apparently creating a “graded list” of these targeted so-called “security threats”. Those at the top of this list assessed according to how widely disseminated are their anti-establishment views, the followers they appear to have. These will be the first to disappear into the internment maze.
This new policy gives Homeland Security full authority to effectively terrorize the American people under a pretense of controlling domestic terrorism. When we consider these two items, Executive Order 13603 and the new powers granted to DHS, the only possible response can be fear.
When the militarized police come into your communities they will first sweep it of guns, making absolutely sure that the civilians are disarmed properly and completely.
Secret Procedures
If all this isn’t enough, DHS was revealed to have a secret procedure for the instant shutting down of all private communications in America. This includes mobile phone networks. It is a program that was accidentally revealed when government officials in San Francisco disabled all mobile phone calls during a peaceful protest.
The administration insisted it had the legal authority to control these communications “during times of national crisis”, and “for the purpose of ensuring public safety”. It has also given DHS the power to actually “seize” all privately-owned communications facilities in order to prevent any civilian communications occurring.
It is quite common to find militarized police in America conducting “no knock” raids on innocent American civilians. People! Not even Communist China does this.
Some individuals applied to the courts for further information on these new procedures and policies, but DHS claimed it was “unable to locate or identify any records” in relation to the matter.
Nothing more to be said, but it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the US government is quickly becoming fully prepared for war against its civilian population.
No Fourth Amendment.
With the NSA revelations by Edward Snowdon, there is no longer any question that many US government agencies have been monitoring and gathering information on large numbers of known American political dissidents.
These many agencies include the NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, various military groups and another 70 or 80 so-called “public-private fusion centers” scattered around the US.
Americans are monitored -, then they will be disarmed, as they are all on “lists” where the government will use to secure them into “camps” for their own safety.
Former NSA Technical Director William Binney claimed in an interview that the NSA had a list of 500,000 to one million people in the US who were closely watched and whose every communication and bit of personal data were recorded.
These are not terrorists in any sense, but potential leaders of political dissension and therefore potential suspects in the event of civil disturbances.
Americans are on “lists”…
There also exists a database known as “Main Core”, containing names of Americans who might be considered troublesome.
Knowledgeable sources claim these lists contains the names and communication information of more than eight million Americans who would be potential suspects of political activism.
“Political Activism” would include “national opposition to US military invasion abroad”.
It includes political dissidents, environmental and other activists, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, and many more who are most likely harmless, average people.
Average, everyday Americans, are the targets for the PTB; the oligarchy that plans to totally transform America into their vision of utopia.
The database apparently contains all to and from email addresses, all email content, all in and out phone numbers plus duration of calls, the amounts and locations of ATM withdrawals, all credit card purchases and much more.
It appears that this dissident surveillance program dates back to the early 1980s, the time of our Great Transformation.
When it was revealed that Oliver North, operating from a secure White House site, had been using a database called PROMIS which was part of the REX-84 plan, to track dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States.
This database was meant to identify and immediately locate perceived “enemies of the state” if mass civil disturbances were to break out. (21) (22)
The perceived “enemies of the state” are average people like you and I, who might not agree with the % who rule America.
The Middle-Class Revolt
In late 2008 a leaked internal memo from Tom Fitzpatrick, Citibank’s chief technical strategist, contained ominous predictions for American civil society after the vicious financial crisis. He wrote,
“The world is not going back to normal ‘after the magnitude of what they have done'”.
Fitzpatrick claimed that [1] the massive destruction of the middle class, [2] the draining of all the wealth from the population, and [3] the QE money creation by the FED would either bring about a resurgence of inflation…
… or that the US would fall into “depression, civil disorder and possibly war”.
Occupy Wall Street protest.
He claimed that with the passing of each week and month there was a growing danger that could lead to political instability, a risk of domestic unrest because people were becoming increasingly disenfranchised and impoverished.
Lest we succumb to the temptation of accepting the 2008 financial
crisis and the resulting loss of homes as an accident of fate, it would
be wise to consider these quotes by Montagu Norman, Governor of The Bank
of England prior to the crash of 1929, addressing the United States
Bankers’ Association, New York, Idaho Leader, 26 August 1924.
“Capital must protect itself in every possible way, both by combination and legislation. Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through process of law, the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of the government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers. These truths are well known among our principal men, who are now engaged in forming an imperialism to govern the world.”
And his thoughts on democracy:
“By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance.”
“It is thus, by discrete action, we can secure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.”
The US government has developed an increasing fear of its own middle class.
The PTB Oligarchy should not need to fear Average Americans unless…
Armed Citizens
A middle class that is wide awake to the protests and uprisings in other nations where governments have colluded with the international bankers.
And where large multi-nationals to gut their middle classes and effect the same transfer of wealth to the top 1% as occurred in America.
People in many Western societies have become disgruntled and bitter at the increasing evidence that their vaunted democracies have been usurped by the unrestrained capitalists, creating intolerable situations where the people are sacrificed for the increasing wealth of that same top 1%.
While the coronavirus continues to spread throughout the world some people are stockpiling toilet paper and food, while Americans are flocking to buy guns. Images and videos of people lining up outside gun stores in the United States are emerging on social media. Amelia Adams, the US correspondent for Nine News tweeted a video of people lining up outside a gun shop in Los Angeles, with the queue trailing some 10 meters from the shop’s door down the sidewalk.
At first, the US government exhibited a grim and rather reprehensible kind of satisfaction at watching the misery in other nations where the FED and IMF and the International Bankers had succeeded in their aims of wealth transference, but it also realized that the same boiling rage existed in America and perhaps much less controllable.
US citizens were protesting against a government that was no longer democratic in any sense…
… and was both unwilling and unable to repair a hopelessly corrupt and inefficient system.
They finally awoke en masse and objected to ingrained corruption, shoddy public services, high taxes, homelessness, unemployment, rising inflation, the development of a police state, and more.
Public Rage
It is public rage at the realization of having been betrayed by a “democratic” government that converts civil unrest into political activism and revolution…
… and it is this that lies at the heart of the FBI’s categorization of US political dissent as “domestic terrorism”.
The number of American militias form with each encroachment on freedom and liberty. Today, many such militias exist throughout the United States.
This terminology is important because the US, in all its hypocrisy for democracy, free speech and freedom of assembly, cannot face the world with open and apparent suppression of political dissent.
Therefore, US citizens protesting against their own government cannot be exercising free speech but rather anarchy and terrorism, thereby justifying the use of deadly force to control dissension.
The powers that control America (PTB) have no interest in fairy-tales of freedom. They are interested in wealth and control, and the people in any country are irrelevant – including those in the US.
The number of American militias form with each encroachment on freedom and liberty. Today, many such militias exist throughout the United States.
Americans have experienced first-hand the destruction of their quality of life; they see clearly the disappearance of future opportunity for their children, and they recognize better than most the loss of their freedom of expression which they have so valued.
And they know it is precisely the retraction of that expression that is necessary for their no-longer-democratic government to maintain control.
The number of American militias form with each encroachment on freedom and liberty. Today, many such militias exist throughout the United States.
This is where their economic and social dissatisfaction mutate into political activism – revolution, in fact – and it is this realization among the authorities that has spawned the internship camps, the billions of bullets purchased, and the “shoot to kill” orders.
Revolution – The Struggle for Class Power
Buried in the litany of troubles the US is facing today is the primary fact that the nation is engaged in a brutal class war, a struggle for class power that the bottom 99% are losing.
This war was declared in the late 1970s, gained great momentum in the 1980s and 1990s, and is still accelerating toward its final desperate conclusion.
There are few signs on the horizon that cause hope for a change in direction, and I fear it may be too late.
The number of American militias form with each encroachment on freedom and liberty. Today, many such militias exist throughout the United States.
There is still power with the people themselves, and indeed without the both active cooperation and silent complicity of the people, none of the pathological descent into despair would have been possible.
Probably the only force in America that can change what is happening is the combined force of labor.
This isn’t so easy today, since the government killed most labor organizations and there is now little if any leadership.
A total withdrawal of labor succeeded in forcing a new social contract in 1946 and may be the only power remaining today, but times have changed and tactics must change too. If all unions withdrew their services with the full cooperation of unorganized labor, change might be possible.
Socialist Antifa shock-troops lining u to overthrow the government in favor of a social utopia.
But realistically, there is no hope that such a mass protest could be organized even though it is the only possible way to get the attention of whatever remains of a conscientious government and force through a reversal of the tide.
In any case, taking to the streets is unlikely to produce pleasant results. If the police don’t have enough bodies to beat up and arrest everyone, DHS has its internment camps, its 3 billion bullets, its years of practice with “no-hesitation” human targets, and it will use all of them.
BLM – Black Lives Matter forces demanding “social and racial change”.
The only safe way for Americans to go on strike today is to stay at home. On this topic, one internet commenter wrote,
“Just don’t go to work. There is no need to picket in the streets to be on strike, and the factories and offices will be just as quiet and empty, and the profits just as non-existent. The police cannot possibly conduct home-by-home visits to beat up strikers one by one, and no military, even the DHS, is efficient when trying to blow up houses scattered all over the county, one by one. Strikers are probably safe if they stay at home and lock their door.”
Another wrote,
“Another tactic is for Americans to simply quit shopping. They don’t have the money anyway, and don’t need all that useless junk. Don’t buy anything you don’t actually need, and delay even those purchases as long as possible, especially the big-ticket items like cars and furniture. If at all possible, delay every purchase for at least one year. As much as is practicable, stop driving your car. Cancel your cable TV and read a book.” Your grandmother gave you advice 100 years ago that is still valid today: “Use it up, wear it out. Make it do. Do without.”
A third commenter gave this advice:
“One thing you can do to get their attention is to stop paying your bills. VISA and MasterCard can’t cancel 800 million credit cards at the same time, and no bank can process 100 million mortgage defaults. No system can cope with massive non-payment of debt. You are their only source of money and you can ensure they don’t get any of it. That will wake them up. Tell them you’ll begin paying when the overseas corporate tax holiday is over, when high income taxes are reinstated for the rich, when the individual bankers are in prison and when the lost jobs begin returning. This isn’t foolproof, but it’s the best I can do.”
And finally, a more ambitious poster offered these comments:
“Today, the US State Department, the CIA and the FBI pride themselves on their ability to use Twitter and Facebook to cause civil unrest, chaos, violence, and even revolutions, in other countries. It may not have occurred to them that the same tools they use against everyone else can be just as easily used against them. The CIA used Gene Sharp and his Einstein Institute to prepare the Otpor civil disobedience manuals that our government used as the gunpowder to destroy Jugoslavia, and as the template for a dozen other “color revolutions” of which it was so proud. Copies are freely available on the internet.”
William Blum again:
“As I’ve said before: Inasmuch as I can’t see violent revolution succeeding in the United States (something deep inside tells me that we couldn’t quite match the government’s firepower, not to mention its viciousness), I can offer no solution to stopping the imperial beast other than this: Educate yourself and as many others as you can, raising their political and ideological consciousness, providing them with the factual ammunition and arguments needed to sway others, increasing the number of those in the opposition until it raises the political price for those in power, until it reaches a critical mass, at which point … I can’t predict the form the explosion will take or what might be the trigger … But you have to have faith. And courage.”
Isn’t this exactly what is happening today?
Isn’t all these suggestions what is occurring today? People are staying inside. They are not buying anything. They are sheltering in place, and cowering in fear.
This translates into one of two things.
Advantage for the PTB to implement drastic change.
Advantage for the grassroots American citizenry to implement drastic change.
Both of which are truly frightening in the “powder keg” that America is today.
Author
Larry Romanoff is a
retired management consultant and businessman. He has held executive
positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international
import-export business. He lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a
series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be
contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
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We like to think that we are independent thinkers. We like to believe that we really know what is going on in the world. We know that the American government controls the press, and that the rich oligarchy controls the Big Government Deep State. And we think of everyone else that believes them as “sheeple”.
But perhaps, the government controls ALL of the media, both the left-wing and the right-wing.
And that perhaps you are being led to believe that you are thinking independently, when you are actually just following the programmed narrative that the PTB (the Powers That Be) desire.
I see this in the narratives that are almost always easy to categorize by political affiliation. It's become simplistic and frightening.
Here we discuss this mechanism.
The following is an article titled:”Social Media Is A Polarization Machine” by FMPadmin6120 written on December 31, 2019. It is edited to fit this venue, but aside from that left intact. All credit to the author; Paul Rosenberg at www.freemansperspective.com .
Sure, we’ve all seen this in practice and people have developed catchy terms for it, like echo chamber, but the polarization effect of social media has been demonstrated scientifically. In fact, some of us were warning about it more than a decade ago. And while I can no longer find my original documentation on the subject, I can tell you precisely how it works.
The One-Room Phenomenon
What researchers discovered about twenty years ago was that putting people of the same opinion into a single room had a striking effect: The opinion in the room moved, inevitably, to the extreme. And this effect was the same no matter what the original opinion may have been.
So, then:
If you put a bunch of right-wingers in a room, the shared opinion in the room will become stridently right-wing.
If you put a bunch of left-wingers in a room, the shared opinion in the room will become stridently left-wing.
If you put a bunch of save-the-planet advocates in a room, their opinion will become all the more adamantly save-the-planet.
If you put in a bunch of the-planet-is-just-fine advocates, their opinion will become all the more adamantly the-planet-is-just-fine.
This happens because of human insecurity and status-seeking: Anyone taking a contrary opinion (advocating “right-wing” economics in the left-wing room, for example) is instantly branded as a traitor and suffers heavy shaming within the group.
Gaining social status in the closed room, however, is simple and obvious: You just adopt a stronger, more polarized, version of the original opinion.
Because of this, the opinion in a closed group becomes more and more severe. That is, it becomes increasingly polarized.
Yeah, They Know
Like I said at the open, if you’ve observed people at all, you’ve seen them polarized by Facebook. They climb into their groups, block discordant voices, and end up in a (partly) self-created echo chamber.
I say “partly” self-created because Facebook knows all too well what they’re doing. They want people who are emotionally tied to their groups. It’s called addiction, and it’s what makes Facebook rich.
Being polarized also makes people cold and cruel. Anyone who’s on the other side of what their group thinks is not just wrong, but evil. And whoever fails to agree with them is their opponent… an object of disgust.
In that condition, people will advocate all sorts of stupid and even abominable positions, assured that the members of their group will support them tooth and nail. It’s now common, after all, for such groups to lump ten million people together and slap a negative verdict on them all. If you’re the wrong skin color, or too old, or too young, or a dozen other things, you’re “privileged,” or “don’t get it,” or something else. That is, you are declared evil. After that, whoever hurts you is a hero.
This serves Facebook, you understand. Once your opinions are polarized, you are dependent on your group and you’ll be unable to leave.
This addiction is also crucial for political causes. Facebook provides hard believers: addicts with claims to righteousness. And that means that politicians need Facebook, and deeply. Politicians get ahead by making their opponents into monsters, after all, and social media may be the best tool ever for creating polar opposites. (Or at least the illusion thereof.)
The Awakening Has Begun
Little by little, people are waking up to the evils of group dynamics and the devolutionary effects they generate.
Twitter, in my opinion, is the least bad of the centralized social media platforms, and will hopefully be decentralizing at some point. They have, at least, a team working on that.
There are decentralized social media experiments coming along, and I hope they succeed, but the closed group problem will remain, even if it isn’t stoked to the limit by political and financial mercenaries((I was ready to write “whores,” rather than “mercenaries,” but I can’t equate sex workers, even metaphorically, with willful and purposeful abusers of mankind.)).
Thoughtful, observant and intelligent people are noticing that social media makes humans hateful, as well as lonely, insecure and miserable. I hope that knowledge spreads. I further hope that people will realize the past ten years of their life have been polluted by social media.
No, there’s nothing wrong with talking to friends and sharing ideas, but Facebook and other social media companies have weaponized this. They are intentionally abusing human instincts.
So, don’t get angry and hateful in response; just stop rewarding them. People who addict and polarize you are precisely the wrong ones to empower.
Social media is a polarization machine. Separating from it would be a very good idea.
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Or, don’t allow the flying chunks and pieces to wack you in the eye.
The USA is in a long and slow death spasm. It began about two hundred years ago when the Republic was turned into a Democracy. But things went really to dog-shit when the oligarchy took control of American finances with the 16th amendment. The last seventy years has been one of a dying Empire. Now, it’s in complete free fall. And everyone is scrambling to get their “little piece of the action” before it’s all gone. That being prefaced, let’s spend some time and talk about what is going on.
The election of Donald Trump was a “last gasp” in a near vain attempt to thwart the up-coming train-wreck. But opposition forces has, for all practical purposes, deprived him of his Presidential powers. His team, has back-stabbed him, thwarted his efforts, and conducted sabotage.
Yet he remains. A shining star for conservatives to lay their hopes upon.
The opposition party is vacillating between hard-core Marxism (with a friendly face) and a totalitarian dictatorship. They are idealistic uni-mind elitists. They are dangerous and they will be lethal if they ever get a chance to regain the formal reins of power again.
Americans like to dismiss this reality as “politics”, but it is more than that. It is battle between rats fighting over a scrap of pizza while the ship that they are on, sinks under the cool, cool icy calmness of the ocean.
America today. The rats are fights for the scraps of a once great nation. It’s every rat for himself.
This is a reprint of the article titled The Empire: Now or Never by Fred Reed it was written almost exactly a year ago, on February 20, 2019. Nothing has changed. Instead, things have gotten worse. All credit to the author.
Many people I talk to seem to think American foreign policy has something to do with democracy, human rights, national security, or maybe terrorism or freedom, or niceness, or something…
It is a curious belief, Washington being interested in all of them. Other people are simply puzzled, seeing no pattern in America’s international behavior.
But, really, the explanation is simple.
The reason of course is Empire.
American Empire
Empire; that desire for which is an ancient and innate part of mankind’s cerebral package. Parthian, Roman, Aztec, Hapsburg, British. It never stops.
America is an Empire. It utilizes all of the resources under it’s control to maintain that Empire. It is run as an Empire, and aside from the stereotypical images of what a ruthless Empire leader might look like, behaves exactly like a nefarious global evil Empire.
When the Soviet Empire collapsed, America appeared poised to establish the first truly world empire. The developed countries were American vassals in effect if not in name, many of them occupied by American troops: Among others, Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Latin America, Saudi Arabia, and Australia.
The US had by far the dominant economy and the biggest military, controlled the IMF, NATO, the dollar, SWIFT, and enjoyed technological superiority…
…Russia was in chaos, China a distant smudge on the horizon.
Powerful groups in Washington, such as PNAC, began angling towed aggrandizement, but the real lunge came with the attack on Iraq.
Current foreign policy openly focuses on dominating the planet.
American foreign policy is one of an global Empire dominating the planet economically, militarily and socially.
The astonishing thing is that some people don’t notice this.
Oil and Petroleum Dominance
The world runs on oil.
Controlling the supply conveys almost absolute power over those countries that do not have their own. (For example, the Japanese would soon be eating each other if their oil were cut off.) Saudi Arabia is an American protectorate,and, having seen what happened to Iraq, knows that it can be conquered in short order if it gets out of line.
The U. S. Navy could easily block tanker traffic from Hormuz to any or all countries.
From the central control stations within America, talented people within the deep state bureaucracy are working diligently to make sure that the Empire, and it’s objectives are being met.
A major purpose of the destruction of Iraq was to get control of its oil and put American forces on the border of Iran, another oil power. The current attempt to starve the Iranians aims at installing a American puppet government.
The ongoing coup in Venezuela seeks control of another vast oil reserve.
It will also serve to intimidate the rest of Latin America by showing what can happen to any country that defies Washington.
Why are American troops in Nigeria? Guess what Nigeria has.
Note that Iraq and Iran, in addition to their oil, are geo-strategically vital to a world empire. Further, the immensely powerful Jewish presence in the US supports the Mid-East wars for its own purposes. So, of course, does the arms industry.
All God’s children love the Empire.
China and Russia are the Threats
For the Greater Empire to prevail, Russia and China, the latter a surprise contender, must be neutralized. Thus the campaign to crush Russia by economic sanctions.
All threats to the American Empire must be neutralized. They must be vanquished by whatever means possible, and secretly. Were an outright and overt war to occur, the United States would not fare well.
At the same time Washington pushes NATO, its deployed militia, ever eastward…
Wants to station US forces in Poland…
Plans a Space Command whose only purpose is to intimidate or bankrupt Russia…
Drops out of the INF Treaty for the same reasons…
And seeks to prevent commercial relations between Russia and the European vassals (e.g., Nordstream II).
China of course is the key obstacle to expanding the Empire.
Thus… the trade war.
America has to stop China’s economic and technological progress, and stop it now, as it will not get another chance.
For the American Empire to remain firmly and fixed in control, China must be stopped by any methods possible. With biological germ warfare being the present preferred method.
The present moment is an Imperial crunch point.
America cannot compete with China commercially or, increasingly, in technology. Washington knows it. Beijing’s advantages are too great:
A huge and growing domestic market…
A far larger population of very bright people…
A for-profit economy that allows heavy investment both internally and abroad…
A stable government that can plan well into the future.
And America’s Strengths…
America?
It’s power is more fragile than it may seem. The United States once dominated economically by making better products at better prices, ran a large trade surplus, and barely had competitors.
Today it has deindustrialized…
Runs a trade deficit with almost everybody…
Carries an astronomical and uncontrolled national debt…
And makes few things that the world can’t get elsewhere, often at lower cost.
Increasingly America’s commercial power is as a consumer, not a producer.
Washington tells other countries;
“If you don’t do as we say, we won’t buy your stuff.”
The indispensable country is an indispensable market.
With few and diminishing (though important) exceptions, if it stopped selling things to China, China would barely notice, but if it stopped buying, the Chinese economy would wither.
Tariffs, please take note, are just a way of not buying China’s stuff.
Since
the profligate American market is vital to other countries, they often
do as ordered. But Asian markets grow. So do Asian industries.
“Strong-Arm” Tactics
As America’s competitiveness declines, Washington resorts to strong-arm tactics.
It has no choice.
A prime example is the 5G internet, a Very Big Deal, in which Huawei holds the lead. Unable to provide a better product at a better price, Washington forbids the vassals to deal with Huawei–on pain of not buying their stuff. In what appears to be desperation, the Exceptional Nation has actually made a servile Canada arrest the daughter of Huawei’s founder.
The tide runs against the Empire.
A couple of decades ago, the idea that China could compete technologically with America would have seemed preposterous. Today China advances at startling speed.
It is neck and neck with the US in supercomputers…
Launches moon-landers…
Leads in 5G internet…
Does leading work in genetics…
Designs world-class chipsets (e.g., the Kirin 980 and 920) and smartphones.
Another decade or two of this and America will be at the trailing edge.
The big “elephant in the room” is the American use of biological germ warfare against China. First the destruction of the chicken industry, then the destruction of the pork industry (by using custom made drones) and latest is the attempt to wipe out a significant portion of the Chinese population using the COVID-19 coronavirus at Wuhan.
America’s damage is self-inflicted.
The American decline is largely self-inflicted.
The US chooses its government by popularity contests among provincial lawyers rather than by competence.
American education deteriorates under assault by social-justice faddists.
Washington spends on the military instead of infrastructure and the economy.
It is politically chaotic, its policies changing with every new administration.
The first rule of empire is, “Don’t let your enemies unite.” Instead, Washington has pushed Russia, China, and Iran into a coalition against the Empire.
It might have been brighter to have integrated Iran tightly into the Euro-American econosphere, but Israel would not have let America do this. The same approach would have worked with Russia, racially closer to Europe than China and acutely aware of having vast empty Siberia bordering an overpopulated China. By imposing sanctions of adversaries and allies alike, Washington promotes de-dollarization and recognition that America is not an ally but a master.
It is now or never.
If America’s great but declining power does not subjugate the rest of the world quickly, the rising powers of Asia will swamp it. Even India grows. Either sanctions subdue the world…
Or Washington starts a world war.
Or America becomes just another country.
To paraphrase a great political thinker, “It’s the Empire, Stupid.”
Conclusion
You do not need to believe me. Just look at how Russia, China and India are handing things today. Turn off the American propaganda bubble, and listen to what other nations think, and how they are handling things.
This COVID-19 coronavirus event is being treated by China as a DEFCON ONE military event against a biological weapons attack.
Just because CNN is not report it, does not mean that it is not happening. It is just that you, and your fellow countrymen, are unaware of it.
The American mainstream, left-ALT, and Alt-Right media are propaganda channels that the American government utilizes to control the population. They do not, and NEVER reflect, the true and real reality.
The United States is pushing, pushing, and pushing. The anti-Russia and the anti-China propaganda war is at a fever pitch. The last time we saw such media pro-war intensity was World War II.
I personally think that the “Genie is out of the bottle”, and unless something radical will happen, American neocons will drive America straight into Nuclear Armageddon. And do not be under the misguided impression that America will win. No one wins with Global Nuclear Annihilation. Especially when it will be full-spectrum with nuclear, germ, biological and chemical war.
No one.
No one wins with Global Nuclear Annihilation.
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Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few decades, you should be aware that most Americans are quite unhappy. The progressive liberals hate the nation, the country and what it stands for. They want it to burn, be destroyed and replaced with a social utopia. The conservatives hate what the nation has become. They want a full return to the original intended government, and a leadership that obeys it. Meanwhile, the wealthy and the powerful, in full control of the government, is playing both sides against each other.
A conflict is inevitable.
There should be no question at all that our nation is at an impasse. There is a serious question of direction. As in what direction should the nation follow?
Embrace a Marxist paradise with the genocide of deplorables.
Scrap all the progressive “improvements” and return the government back to the original intent.
The Conflict.
Basically, there are those who see America as a thing to be preserved and another who see it as a thing needing to be destroyed.
Patriots want a return to the original principles of the founding.
Progressives want everything torn down and replaced with a Marxist utopia.
The Marxist Plan.
It was said by a number of Marxist thinkers over the decades and most notably William Ayers, that for America to be destroyed, it was a thing to be destroyed first from within, then by getting help from the outside.
William Ayers.
And while Marxist and Anarchist apologists will be quick to minimize those statements through saying its simply from a man caught in the winds of his time, its incredibly important to note that this is the prevailing thought among higher-level academia. An academia which has groomed the brokers of power in all of our nation’s ruling agencies.
Ayers is but one man with a relatively small group, an incredibly high percentage of academics in this nation not only sided with him but not-so-quietly cheered such abhorrent actions on, shaping higher education for the decades to come.
Which brings us to the present day.
William Ayers was behind the Antifa riots in Berkley, California.
In every sociology program in America, undergrads are taught Max Weber’s theories on authority in a society and, perhaps more importantly, his theories on Bureaucracy. Normally juxtaposed to Gramsci’s theory of the superstructure, it is stressed in lectures that in order to control a society, control over the bureaucracy must first be established.
The American Government today.
Once that control is slowly implemented, there is no need for a sudden revolution. Control is already obtained. Crime becomes a tool of political power rather than a question of morality. Through this power the ability to define one’s enemies- and thus eliminate them- is simple.
Where we find ourselves today is the veil of objectivity in such a bureaucracy having been ripped away.
The corporate mass-media has recently discovered a “deep state” that they claim to be not some evil group of assassins who work for the super-rich owners of the country and murder their own president (JFK) and other unpatriotic dissidents (Malcom X, MLK, RK, among others) and undermine democracy home and abroad, but are now said to be just fine upstanding American citizens who work within the government bureaucracies and are patriotic believers in democracy intent on doing the right thing.
The ongoing impeachment farce has brought a vibrant highlight to that power wield upon anyone or anything they deem a worthy target. If the denizens of the ‘interagency group’, an unelected, unaccountable group of ring-knockers who apparently view themselves outside the authority of anyone but they, who decided to target the President for literally nothing at all, what will they do to you?
Indeed, all this political posturing is a war that is raging all around us.
When the dust clears, how will it affect you?
The Fourth Amendment.
I don’t believe its far-fetched to say the Fourth Amendment is finished.
There are no Fourth Amendment protections for Americans.
There is no such thing as privacy when so many freely chose to live their lives online. Where they are always volunteering an incredibly high amount of data on themselves. Which is a data set known as patterns of life in the intelligence world…
And when such a time occurs as say, a threatening of a mass disarmament and criminalization of firearms ownership and the right to organize and train under arms…
… that without protections against the machine, armed networks of potential guerrillas may very well be unknowingly compromised before such a thing can even get off the ground.
Revolt is fated to end before it’s even vocalized.
America is a full-on police state in the very definition of what a police state actually is.
The process behind this is known as the Target-Centric Intelligence Cycle.
It follows five steps.
Find
Fix
Finish
Exploit
Assess.
It begins with a target of interest. All data is collected on the potential target with the aim of creating a plan of attack. Finishing the target is the actions-on stage. The target is either apprehended or neutralized, depending on the desired result, giving way to exploitation and assessment- whatever effects were felt in the larger targeted community, while resetting the cycle based on new targets of interest.
Military Targeting Process.
With the tools at their disposal, this process can be done almost entirely remotely with the only physical surveillance necessary is to confirm the data on the targets, and usually just before conducting the actions-on raid of the cycle.
Think about that one for a second.
The interesting thing about collective action and social movements is
that once it gathers a fever pitch, its far too much of a risk for the
superstructure to wield collective force. Some would argue that the use
of force even reveals the waning influence of the superstructure. Right
or wrong, the optics of such a move are never good and in my personal
experience, only galvanizes a people against that power.
So the question remains then- what happens when a government decides on a dirty war against those it deems a threat?
They hate us.
We know without a doubt at this stage that the real power structure in this nation absolutely hates you and I.
By their own words they have nothing but contempt for us, for our points of view, for our way of life.
They hate us. They all have come from “privilege”, and have come to despise us common people.
Indoctrinated by the very same America-hating academics who serve on advisory committees…
… to the very agencies which created the powers for themselves…
… the communist revolution of gaining control of Gramsci’s superstructure has been applied to the principles of bureaucracy outlined by Weber.
Your future home – if you are lucky.
Now, with the tools they have at their disposal, how would such an organization commit itself to a dirty war- not risking overt action but rather simply eliminating voices of dissent quietly?
Simple implementation.
So-called ‘martial law’ doesn’t have to be declared nor would it be desirable. Ties between government agencies and elements of underground criminal organizations are very real- and will be used.
Rather than risk their own officers, target packets will be handed off to the local gang and a robbery gone wrong just might happen. Do not forget that they’ve imported millions of undocumented- and thus disposable- people for more than just votes.
And while all of this looks like a pattern to the folks who are awake, but being covert in nature, its an entirely deniable way to wage a war on anyone deemed a threat.
Maybe outright killing a target is too dramatic.
Maybe you’ll get caught on false charges and given a draconian sentence, while career offenders are released for ‘processing errors’.
You could be taken into custody for jay-walking, having a photo on your computer, or driving while talking on a cell-phone. Then, you could spend five or ten years in prison.
Maybe your bank accounts will get frozen or assets seized. Without hard proof (or even with it), naysayers are opening the door to lawsuits you can’t afford to fight while the rest continue their normalcy bias.
Thenormalcybias, ornormalitybias, isabeliefpeopleholdwhenthereisapossibilityofadisaster. Itcausespeopletounderestimateboththelikelihoodofadisasteranditspossibleeffects, becausepeoplebelievethatthingswillalwaysfunctionthewaythingsnormallyhavefunctioned. Thismayresultinsituationswherepeoplefailtoadequatelypreparethemselvesfordisasters, andonalargerscale, thefailureofgovernmentstoincludethepopulaceinitsdisasterpreparations. About 70% ofpeoplereportedlydisplaynormalcybiasindisasters.
- Normalcy bias - Wikipedia
They’ve been waging a dirty war, and its about to get even worse as more people wake up to the totality of the situation.
Break the Cycle.
Break the cycle. Its way more than just about firearms, the President, or your so-called rights.
Its a fight for survival.
The weight of an unaccountable class of people are bearing down on the rest of us, and its high time to shrug them off.
Recognize that we are an enemy to them. They are at war with you and I.
We are a threat to the “deep state” oligarchy and their “swamp”. This is a fact that will not go away. We can never coexist peacefully.
One thing is absolutely certain- they won’t back off any of this and they have no interest in stopping.
The bureaucracy which wholly serves the Leftist cause in the United States wants voices like ours gone and they’ve propagandized us as no longer being human.
And when they fail to yield to protests and non-violent demonstrations, you must be prepared for what comes next.
Genocide.
Conclusion & Takeways
What is the point of this aimless and wandering post?
Peaceful coexistence between Marxists and deplorables is impossible.
The oligarchy owns the “Deep State”.
The vast numbers of the “Deep State” are Marxists.
Therefore…
Deplorables are going to be silenced, firstly. (Already in process.)
Then they will be treated as second or third class citizens. (Also already in process.)
Then they will be disarmed. (Already in process.)
Finally they will be exterminated.
Gear up. You have to be an idiot not to see the “writing on the wall”.
If you enjoyed this little rant, you can read more here…
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any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
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because I just don’t care to.
Now that President Trump has released almost all of the documentation related to the President Kennedy murder, a full picture surfaces. It’s an ugly one, indeed. We now know in full detail how the President was assassinated, who the people were who participated in it, who covered it up, and the motivations behind it. It’s very interesting, but a very long study because it touches on a number of principles that Americans are uncomfortable with…
The wealthy guard their money and power ruthlessly.
They have complete control of the American media.
They have complete control of the American police.
They have complete control of the American military.
They treat Americans as farm animals (cash cows).
They kill anyone that stands in their way.
The following video is a long one, but is very complete. Watch it.
We can now see the entire state of affairs about what our nation is, what is actually stands for and how it actually operates. So when I speak about the “oligarchy”, it should be taken to mean…
Oligarchy = Secret American Government
And, as such… it has affected everything. From technology acquisition (MAJestic), to geopolitical interactions, to society. Our world, our nation, the life that we live is what has been created for us by this oligarchy.
Yupper.
Let that sink in.
There will be a reset of sorts within America, but how it will “play out” and evolve is anyone’s guess. What you can expect is that the oligarchy will not relinquish their control or power easily. That a return to a more democratic representative, or republican form of government is impossible without serious conflict. And, that there will be a period of discomfort during this adjustment period.
I do NOT know how it will evolve. Certainly there are both human and “other” elements that favor the status quo, and they will permit an enormous amount of strife, as long as they can control it’s outcome and utility.
Those that control the United States are far too powerful, too dangerous, and too ruthless for removal. As such, the individual must plan accordingly.
If you enjoyed this post, I have others that can be found in various links such as this…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Globalists Wanted to Exploit Asia, but China Surprised Them.
So, here I am, checking out my various social media feeds and see all sorts of chaos and tumult. And, as I get past the sensationalism, and the horror, I see a common thread. Some how and in some way, the United States, through various agents, agencies, or funding venues, lie at the root of all the unrest.
Is this what it seems to be?
The kicking, thrashing, and screaming of a dying empire? Or is it something else? In my mind, it seems an awful lot like the American empire is dying, and it is NOT going away quietly in the night. It is going down, and thrashing about everywhere in shrieking pain.
Thus…
This post.
This post is about an ingenious plan that went awry and altered the trajectory of history. And we, well, we are living during this fourth most Tumultuous period in American history.
The previous three periods were…
The Revolutionary War
The American Civil War
World War II
This plan was doomed to fail from the get-go, simply because it relied on far to many assumptions about non-Americans. And now, well, we are starting to witness that failure in all it’s ugly glory.
What do all these presidents have in common? They all believed that they could take control of China and annex it just like they did to Japan in the 1980’s.
The plan was conceived and implemented over a century by many of my colleagues and (or course) their predecessors. These people were, collectively, the smartest and the most visionary people in the world.
A mere 25 years ago, the plan seemed to have come to fruition, and western intellectuals talked not only about the end of the Cold War, but the “end of history.”
The first stage implementation of the NWO – The New World Order, where the Earth would be divided into shared “estates”.
We were all so excited about the imminent New World Order (which is now referred to as the “international rules-based order”). Everything was lining up and falling into place.
Then Asia happened.
The Big Grand Plan
After WWII, we Americans, established an unprecedented system to control half the world. As such by 1992, we were confident about bringing in the other half.
We were so close to total global control and domination.
So close…
After WWII, we Americans, established an unprecedented system to control half the world. As such by 1992, we were confident about bringing in the other half.
In the early 1990s, China and India represented not only 40% of world’s population but also a vast pool of consumers and diligent workers. At the same time, my colleagues also appreciated the opportunity to make trillions of dollars.
It was win-win.
Unlike the average westerner who saw Asia only as a land of poor and
uneducated people, we understood its potential. After all, for the first
1800 years of the last 2000 years, the two largest economies in the
world were … China and India.
The gross world product (GWP) is the combined gross national product of all the countries in the world. Because imports and exports balance exactly when considering the whole world, this also equals the total global gross domestic product (GDP). According to the World Bank, the 2013 nominal GWP was approximately US$75.59 trillion.
Of course, bringing more than 2 billion people into our system would also mean sudden loss of jobs, drastic reduction in wages, and a painful drop in the standard of living for many Americans and Europeans.
No matter, however.
We deliberately ignored or downplayed these inevitable ramifications. We all figured that we would deal with the complexities of these issues later on… down the road.
So, how did our plan turn out? Let’s look.
First, the original plan for the New Global Order. This is the blueprint that was established and how it was intended to be set up as.
This is the original plan for the New Global Order. It was drawn up in the 1940’s. 1942 to be exact.
India
India worked out splendidly, just as we planned. Although India was hesitant about opening up their economy — understandable, given their experiences with British colonialism — we gained their trust by helping millions of Indians emigrate to the West.
In return, India privatized most of their major industries, including their media, and allowed us to become major shareholders. Now, India is tightly integrated into our system.
China
But then there’s China.
The biggest prize slipped away from our fingers. Most people don’t realize that the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989 was actually a “color revolution”. It was manufactured by the CIA, MI6 and social engineering experts, Gene Sharp and George Soros. Indeed, we even had recruited China’s Gorbachev – Zhao Ziyang, the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
Alas, the strategy failed, and Zhao Ziyang ended up spending the rest of his life in house arrest.
After that, we decided to pursue a patient approach, since we didn’t
want to lose China’s efficient and cheap factories. Furthermore, we
assumed that:
As China got richer, its people will NATURALLY get rid of the communist party, and replace it with “democracy”.
Western products will ALWAYS dominate the Chinese consumer market
Chinese manufacturing will FOREVER remain stuck in the low/medium-end of the value chain, since (everyone knows) innovation is impossible in an authoritarian society
China will become, at the best, only a regional power. After all, throughout its history, China had never demonstrated much desire in foreign relations.
Americans are seemingly looking more and more like a parody of idiocracy.”
Well, guess what?
Yup. Every one of our assumptions turned out to be wrong. China’s GDP grew 27-fold from 1989 to 2017, and yet 84% of Chinese are happy with their socialist government. Also, what was supposed to be just a factory for the West, became the largest trading partner for more than 130 countries.
Confounding our expectations, China has become #1 or #2 in many areas of hi-tech industries including solar energy, electric vehicles, smartphones, supercomputers, Artificial Intelligence and mobile payments. 9 out of the top 20 most valuable internet companies are now Chinese.
Most Americans have no idea that there is prosperity in China. China’s GDP grew 27-fold from 1989 to 2017, and yet 84% of Chinese are happy with their socialist government.
The fact that a Chinese company, ZTE, made the world’s first 5G phone call earlier this year should be a “Sputnik Moment” for us.
Worst of all, China has proved the benefits of public banking.
Without the government getting into debt, Chinese public banks give massive long-term loans for infrastructure at extremely low interest rates. This has enabled China to build 25,000 Km of high-speed railway systems, modern cities and other infrastructure projects that benefit the Chinese people.
Such socialistic model makes our private banking system look bad!
America is trying to grapple with a changing global power base. In order for us to control the rest of the world, we need to invest that money in military might around the world to control others, other nations, and obtain advantage for the American way of life! Yessur! We shouldn’t spend tax money on Americans in America. No! The money should be spread out all over the globe to fight for Democracy! Yessur!
Finally, we never thought that China would develop a grand vision such as the Belt and Road Initiative (the modern Silk Road).
While we build military bases around the world, China is building high-speed railways, highways, seaports, airports, power plants and pipelines in 65 different countries. If this continues, there’s no doubt who’s going to have more global influence in the near future.
The biggest threat to western dominance is the Made in China 2025 plan. If they achieve expertise in semiconductor chips and a few other industries, we Americans will lose our global hegemony.
“China must be stopped” is the rallying cry of the oligarchy elite.
Hows Stuff Works is for fags. Electrolytes are what plants crave. Duh.
Rest of Asia
Something remarkable has been happening all over Asia (I will narrowly use the word here to refer to only Asia Pacific. Technically, Asia extends all the way from Russia to the Middle East).
After WWII, Japan succeeded in a brilliant way, which inspired the Asian Tigers – South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. However, the wild fire of enthusiasm really caught on when China lifted 700 million people out of extreme poverty and created the world’s largest middle class.
No. 66 Middle School in Urumqi, northwest China is home to 2,400 children from 13 different ethnic groups. They are all part of a Chinese government programme helping ethnically diverse students in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to receive higher quality of education.
Known as the Xinjiang Class, the programme was introduced in 2000 to offer children living in the region’s remote areas the possibility to attend a top junior high school (ages 12-15), preparing students to then attend a senior high school in one of 17 cities across the country.
Now, every country from India to Indonesia to Vietnam feels optimistic and confident that they can succeed as well, and many of them are consistently growing at breakneck rates of 6-7% per year. Economists say that 88% of the next 1 billion people to enter the global middle class will be from Asia. Thus it’s no wonder that Asians are now far more optimistic than westerners about the direction of their countries.
Asian countries – including even North Korea – have realized that
wars and conflicts only get in the way of prosperity. This is, of
course, very bad for our divide-and-rule strategy — we were hoping to
use Taiwan, Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and India to contain China.
Map of China and Japan. Showing the location of the “contested” Senkaku / Diaoyu islands. If Japan can control these islands, then the United States can place a military base there, right next to China. Therefore it is a critically important location from which America can control China.
If Asia continues to enjoy peace and cooperation, the geopolitical
center of gravity will shift dramatically. Many people don’t realize
that, in terms of purchasing power, China is already larger than the US.
In nominal GDP, by 2030, China will be bigger than the US, India will
be bigger than Germany, and Asia will account for 40% of global GDP.
By 2050, the top five world economies might consist of four Asian countries.
While the rising Asian middle class is a lucrative consumer market for our corporations, we dread the rise of multi-national Asian corporations in a decade or two.
In other words, we want Asians to be rich enough to buy Colgate and Pampers, but not too rich to mass produce toothpaste and diapers; we don’t mind Asians becoming the CEOs of Google and Microsoft, we just don’t want them to develop their own search engines and operating systems. We want to be in control. Us, and us alone.
Who knows what this will lead towards, if the rest of the world is prosperous?
For this reason, China must be stopped. The New Silk road must be thwarted. China needs to be put back into it’s rightful place as a servant to the American consumer and puppet to the global leadership.
Steps are being taken.
We have Hong Kong “fifth column” actions in progress.
We also have radical Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Both of these efforts will stymie the development of the Silk Road and enable the United States to maintain a global leadership role.
Conclusion
In the early 1970s, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger convinced the Chinese elites to open up their economy.
Then we created the WTO in 1995 and enlisted 128 countries, knowing very well what it would do to American/European manufacturing.
Letting China into the WTO in 2001 accelerated the outsourcing of jobs from Europe and the US. To hide the devastation, we created the housing bubble on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, we’re also effectively using mass immigration and other social engineering tools to keep people distracted.
I will admit that, blinded by hubris and greed, we misjudged the rise of Asia, especially China.
America will still be able to control the world, it’s just a slight setback while the superior knowledge and skills of the American leadership arrange the globe to fit our needs.
However, let me remind you that we have brought down many empires over the last 250 years. We’re not going to simply sit back and let revisionist powers rewrite the world order. This is why the next decade will be both fascinating and dangerous.
China’s Silk Road.
A Final Note
I wrote this “tongue in cheek” from the point of view of someone in favor of the United States maintaining global control. But, this is not the 1960’s and the world is indeed a dangerous place. The United States is going through “death spasms” and if we are all not careful, it could bring the rest of us down with it.
I do not like this situation. I am fearful of it. If there is anything that I could advise, it would be for people to calm down, have a few beers and stop trying to control other people. Let everyone else prosper. If they are doing well, good for them. It’s not your problem. Stop trying to fight, fight, fight.
There’s enough to go around for everyone.
This is what New York City will look like if America tries to initiate another proxy war with a major nuclear-armed superpower. They are a serious, serious nation. They DO NOT PLAY.
Links about China
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Some Fun Videos
Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While
there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
At a press conference held by the government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Saturday, Elijan Anayit, a spokesperson for the Information Office of the Xinjiang government, condemned the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which in September published a report titled "Documenting Xinjiang's Detention System," falsely claiming that China is persecuting ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
Anayit said the claims are totally fabricated and don't hold water. He explained that from 2010 till the end of 2018, the Uygur population in Xinjiang increased by 25.04 percent, rising from 10.1715 million to 12.7184 million, whereas the Han population increased by just 2.0 percent, rising from 8.8299 million to 9.0068 million.
-Former Xinjiang trainees share their training center experiences
news.cgtn.com
This article takes a comprehensive and serious look at the abuse of the Uyghur Muslims at the hands of the dastardly Chinese Communists. We look at who this group of people are, and their culture, and what is going on regarding their relationship with the Chinese central government in Beijing. We also take a good hard look at how they are being used as pawns in a global wide game of geopolitical politics.
“1 million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps!” ...
“Ethnic Cleansing and Cultural Genocide!” ...
PBS NewsHour: Inside China's brutal persecution of Uighur Muslims - Season 2019 Episode
Yikes! These emotional phrases are very effective in geopolitical arguments. Often they are used as excuses to acquire money and funding out of the United States Congress towards one or more "efforts at spreading democracy".
You know, just like the (so called) "successful" pro-democracy movements in Libya, Iran, Cuba, Syria, Iran, and now Venezuela. Look at just how successful American tax-dollars are promoting democracy around the world!
It's a better way to spend the money, don't you know, than rebuilding Baltimore... Right?
Why rebuild Baltimore?
We shouldn’t spend tax money on Americans in America. No! The money should be spread out all over the globe to fight for Democracy! Yessur!
So what’s the real story about the Chinese Uyghur Muslims? Let’s look at this issue in detail. Let’s go beyond exaggeration, distortion and sensationalism.
But let’s first review the propaganda.
You know. The propaganda that is directly aimed at YOU, the American reader. It’s all that propaganda to justify your Congressman throwing lavish parties, and hauling pallet-loads of “Benjamins” to far-away shadowy entities to spend as they see fit.
You know… for “democracy“.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born. Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time. The only thing is that once the money was handed over to the American military forces for “safe-keeping” it disappeared.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.
This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.
-Long War Journal
The Uyghur propaganda serves a purpose.
It is to support regional CIA activities within China. Create a war where allocated funds can be easily diverted. And, in so doing, channel the allocated tax dollars back to Washington and into the pockets of the oligarchy. That is why the neocons love war so much. The war zone is all confused and it is very easy to siphon money into their wallets.
It’s an enormous racket.
The Uyghur propaganda serves a purpose. It is to support regional CIA activities within China. Create a war where allocated funds can be easily diverted. And, in so doing, channel the allocated tax dollars back to Washington and into the pockets of the oligarchy. That is why the neocons love war so much. The war zone is all confused and it is very easy to siphon money into their wallets.
I recall, as probably most people don’t, that the Central Intelligence Agency, with assistance from some of China’s neighbors, put $30 million into the destabilization of Tibet and basically financed and trained the participants in the Khampa rebellion and ultimately sought to remove the Dalai Lama from Tibet–which they did.
They escorted him out of Tibet to Dharamsala.
There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which, of course, is anathema to any state.
- US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman.
Anti-China propaganda focusing on the Uyghur Muslims
The propaganda can get pretty ridiculous, and it often is…
Role Reversal:
Washington is reportedly sending white men to sleep in the same beds as black Detroit women while their husbands are serving time in prison. It's a racist racket against women of color.
Yes. It is that ridiculous.
You’ve got to be shitting me. That people actually believe this nonsense. But there you have it. American press reporting on a statement made by…
Yup, the United States funded propaganda mouth piece for Asia.
Radio Free Asia is a CIA front organization.
Nah, you might say. It just can’t be CIA! There must be a mistake, you argue. The CIA doesn’t get involved in these kinds of things. Right? But…
The International Broadcasting Independent Grantee Organization grant program provides funding for projects that support freedom and democracy by enhancing an understanding about America and the world to overseas audiences. Grant funding is limited to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
-United States Grants for Radio
And the connections are everywhere. All you need to do is a mere five minutes of research to connect the dots.
The CIA and all this meddling is friggin’ everywhere. And, it’s not the only one…
"Eminent scholar Jerry Cohen likens to the situation in Xinjiang to that of Nazi Germany, where dozens of his relatives were detained, tortured and killed under a similarly totalitarian regime. The connection between the totalitarian ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and modern-day surveillance technology has resulted in a terrible degradation of human rights for the Uyghur people."
- China’s Escalating Repression of the Uyghurs
My goodness!
Who is this “expert” who is equating China with Nazi’s? Well, a quick search on the internet identifies him as a “venerable expert on Chinese affairs“. Where he is found working and writing for the American publication “National Review”. (A Conservative “Hawkish” Neocon Publication.) He is considered to be “a skilled and talented advocate for world-wide “democracy””.
This organization is a true war-mongering alliance, that uses the cover of “American Conservatism”, for substantive reputation.
But, you know, this no longer flies true in the latest iteration of American Conservative thought. Since 2016, the American conservative movement has had a major shake-up. Americans are sick and tired of Democrats calling themselves Conservatives, just because they love to fight proxy wars.
"Their unceasing agitation against a compromise peace in the Middle East, coupled with their lobbying for America to endorse to Sharon’s ongoing humiliation of the Palestinians, has managed to make America hated in parts of the world where it used to be admired, even loved.
Some of that hatred has been turned—should we be surprised?—into anti-American terror.
Now, as it prepares to occupy Iraq against the will of much of the Middle East while facing a rejuvenated al-Qaeda, America has fewer real friends and more ill-wishers than ever in its history.
This is in considerable part the “accomplishment” of America’s neocons..."
- Among the Neocons
So what is going on, eh?
Since the start of the Iraq War, the United States has sent tens of billions of dollars in assistance to Iraq, a large portion of which has been squandered or simply disappeared.
So we know [1] that a major United States publication that supports Conservative Neocon ambitions; global proxy wars, is writing the anti-China Uyghur Muslim narratives.
We also know that they [2] have an “expert” that writes about the Muslims in China.
Further, [3] by “connecting the dots”, we know that the CIA, via the NED and NID funds this effort; the author and the publication.
Finally, we can see [4] the target is CIA directed to use the Uyghur Muslims as pawns in America-instigated revolution within China.
And as such…
[5] American tax-payer funds can be rerouted to other destinations. Destinations where the neocon sponsors can extract enormous profits.
They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time. The only thing is that once the money was handed over to the American military forces for “safe-keeping” it disappeared. All 21 plane-loads.
Who is this “expert” who reports these issues?
"Eminent scholar Jerry Cohen likens to the situation in Xinjiang to that of Nazi Germany..."
OK. Fine. We have a name rather than “sources”, or “it was reported”… We have someone that we can investigate.
Then, as such an “expert“, he should have lived in China for a few years, and should travel back and forth between China and the United States quite often. Right? He’s an expert… right? He has first-hand information that has affected his thoughts, emotions and attitudes. He must have tons of experience to ignite the (apparent) rage inside of him to write such a flood of articles about the Muslims in China. Right?
Nope.
Jerome A. Cohen has never lived in China.
NEVER.
N-E-V-E-R.
Never, as in doesn’t even speak Chinese. Never, as in doesn’t know what a Chinese license plate looks like. Never, as in has zero Chinese friends. Never, as in does not know the difference between Tianjin, and Dangguang.
Never.
Never, as in “knows Jack-shit.”
Never.
Yet… Yet, here he is instructing and “educating” Americans on how to think, and getting their emotions all riled up. Eh.
Out of the spotlight, active U.S. interference takes place through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The NED is bankrolling Hong Kong "pro-democracy" and anti-Beijing groups such as the Solidarity Center (SC), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor to the tune of millions. In 2018 alone the NED reports giving 155,000 U.S. dollars to the SC and 200,000 U.S. dollars to the NDI.
The NED is a sham NGO founded in 1983 to replace functions previously carried out by the CIA.
Philip Agee, a former CIA agent and author of "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" details how the CIA would set up front organizations and funnel money into destabilization campaigns.
After destabilization would come the coup-d'etat. The Brazilian 1964 coup that overthrew President João Goulart and the Chilean 1973 coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende were both backed by the CIA. In both instances, left-wing parties were deposed and replaced by right-wing military forces compliant to U.S. interests.
- Why is the National Endowment for Democracy fueling Hong Kong protests?
In particular, he (used to be) a member of the Uyghur Human Rights Project. Which enjoys full generous (taxpayer) funding out of the United States to institute regime changing efforts inside of China.
From 1984 to 1990 the NED received $15–18 million of congressional funding annually, and $25–$30m from 1991 to 1993. At the time the funding came via the United States Information Agency (USIA).
- National Endowment for Democracy - Wikipedia
That is CIA meddling to a “T”.
Since the start of the Iraq War, the United States has sent tens of billions of dollars in assistance to Iraq, a large portion of which has been squandered or simply disappeared.
Government auditors say some $61 billion was spent on reconstruction projects in Iraq from 2003 to 2012. At least 10 percent of the money cannot be accounted for. Some 15 percent of the money spent, or roughly $8 billion, was wasted.
-Fiscal Times
How about the Slave message inside Christmas cards?
A British girl discovered a message inside of a box of charity Christmas cards bought from British grocery giant Tesco saying it had been packed by inmates. (Screenshot from CBS News)
China on Monday denied accusations of forced labor at a Shanghai prison after media reported that a British girl found a message hidden in a Christmas card saying it had been packed by inmates, a piece of news later proved to be a “prank”.
Yeah. Sure.
“A prank”
The allegations came to light when The Sunday Times reported that six-year-old Florence Widdicombe from Tooting, south London, discovered a message inside of a box of charity Christmas cards bought from British grocery giant Tesco, reading…
“We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu Prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us, notify human rights organization and contact Mr. Peter Humphrey.”
The news suddenly captured worldwide attention, while many doubt its authenticity.
Coincidently, or maybe not, Peter Humphrey mentioned in the message is exactly the writer of the article, a British former journalist who was imprisoned in Qingpu Prison in Shanghai for over two years for trafficking personal data.
Peter Humphrey is a British former journalist who was imprisoned in Qingpu Prison in China. (Screenshot from The Globe and Mail)
In his report, Humphrey said he contacted several members of
ex-prisoners in Qingpu Prison, who confirmed they had been packing
Christmas cards for Tesco for at least two years, and were “being forced
into mundane manual assembly or packaging tasks” for other Western
companies. However, he didn’t mention the identity of these prisoners
and the names of those Western companies.
On Monday, Zhejiang Yunguang Printing, the Chinese firm that supplies greeting cards to Tesco, slammed these “unfounded claims”, adding that they don’t have labor from Shanghai Qingpu Prison, according to Global Times.
This relationsip would be well documented and easy to prove,
China’s Foreign Ministry also dismissed the allegations, saying it was “just a drama choreographed by Mr. Peter Humphrey”. “After verifying with relevant departments, we know for sure that there is no forced labor of foreign prisoners in Qingpu Prison in Shanghai,” noted Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang.
The news has also received wide attention from netizens, many of whom questioned whether it was credible. (Screenshot from comments under BBC News’ official Facebook account)
The news has also received wide attention from netizens, many of whom questioned whether it was credible.
Something fishy out of the UK.
“There is so much misinformation, it’s almost impossible to say with any certainty where it came from,” reads a Facebook user’s comment.
The news has also received wide attention from netizens, many of whom questioned whether it was credible. (Screenshot from comments under BBC News’ official Facebook account)
This is not the first time that Humphrey has popped out into the spotlight with a headline or two.
In 2018, after he confessed to charges he illegally bought and sold the personal information to clients, he asked Britain’s media regulator to revoke the broadcast license of China’s state television for helping to stage his allegedly forced confession and subsequent jailing in China.
In response to Humphrey’s accusations, China’s Foreign Ministry
spokesman Geng said in a regular press briefing in November 2018 that
China hoped Britain can support and facilitate the reporting work of
international media in the UK. “China’s judicial departments handle
cases according to the law, and safeguard the legal rights and interests
of foreigners in China,” he added.
Fake stories concerning China stitched up by Western media is not unusual over these last few years.
Last month (November 2019), a piece of seemingly explosive news was reported by Australian media about a self-proclaimed spy Wang Liqiang who sought asylum in Australia, claiming to have reportedly given authorities information about operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia, which incurred heavy criticism from Australian media and politicians that China has interfered in the country’s politics and universities.
Ironically, Wang later confessed to fraud, making the story into a farce that put Australian media to shame.
Similarly, it is not surprising that Humphrey came back to the spotlight after one year of silence with a fake story, to which spokesman Geng replied by providing him with the advice that “if you want to grab more eyeballs, at least come up with some new tricks.”
Complete and absolute nonsense! Remember, boys and girls, any pronouncements (such as this) comes out of Beijing and is super-dooper well-documented.
I used to post on FreeRepublic. Then they sold out, just like Matt Drudge did. Now FR is something else. It is a mouth-piece for the oligarchy.
Now FR is something else. It is a mouth-piece for the oligarchy.
The CIA regime changing apparatus.
People! A recitation of the “talking points” of any CIA directive and regime changing apparatus should always be suspect.
No matter how much of a patriotic person you might be, the CIA, and the NED / NID have a terrible track-record of regime change. In almost every case resulting in death, bloodshed, and the implementation of an American-friendly dictatorship at the loss of freedom for the nations so targeted. As well as a mysterious loss of the allocated billions of dollars that was their charge.
Here’s some articles in case you don’t know what I am talking about…
America is currently fighting 8 simultaneous wars today. We have been in Afghanistan for almost 20 years. That is obscene.
World War II American involvement was three years.
World War I was four years.
The American Civil War was four years.
The first gulf war was one year.
What’s with all the wars?
In the past three years, over $3 billion in CASH was flown out of Kabul reports the Wall Street Journal. Officials don’t know exactly who got what, but have a general idea: “U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad.” That’s still $9 billion less than what was lost in Iraq.
Why are Americans dying in far-away third-world nations? Why are we paying for it? Why is America trying to fight everyone?
Why are we the policeman for the world, and what’s all this nonsense about spreading “democracy“…?
Why are we flying pallet loads of untraceable cash to the regions and not using (observable) bank transfers? Why are the billions of dollars vanishing? Why is it all being done so surreptitiously?
American money began to disappear almost as soon as the Iraq War began. In 2004, $19 billion in reconstruction assistance was provided to Iraq. From 2005 to 2009, $26 billion was sent to Iraq for the same purpose.
A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published in 2009 said much of this money was lost to waste, fraud and abuse. Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., then Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), testified to Congress in 2009 that 15 to 20 percent of this money was wasted.
-Fiscal Times
On top of that, consider that the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are not living in a third world shit hole. The “proxy-war model for personal financial gain” can have dire consequences!
Picking a fight with nuclear-armed, merit-ruled China is like dancing on top of a fuel-soaked mattress while sparking the flint on a lighter. It’s idiotic!
Meanwhile, Detroit, San Francisco and Baltimore are absolute "shit holes". There is something seriously wrong when Americans are willing to throw money away on nonsensical regime change, while ignoring the festering rot in their very own backyard.
Really! What is America today?
It is crazy and absolutely NOT sustainable.
What does China think about all this?
China is fully aware of what is going on.
Though the American (manipulated) public might not be. As such, they are proceeding cautiously with a smile on their faces. We should not ever be under the illusion that they are oblivious to the Neocon interest in regime change within China.
Most Americans haven’t a clue about China. Many think that it is a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. I am not at all kidding.
I remember talking to a woman at the checkout line in Conway, Arkansas. We ended up talking about China and how different it was. She sincerely thought that it was a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee.
Arkansas…
Most Americans do not know where China is located at relative to their hometown. In fact, polls have indicated that is is actually some confusion whether it is a separate nation, or another state residing within the United States. This extreme level of ignorance allows those in Washington D.C. to manipulate and control the thoughts and decisions of the average American citizen.
And when you talk about a subject specific to China, they act like a radical progressive democrat and shout loudly back at you. Often it is a canned phrase that they acquired off FOX news, or CNN. You know what I mean.
Canned phrases that can be repeated without thinking…
Communist!
Concentration camps.
Mind-control.
Religious prosecution!
Pretty amazing.
Brawndo – The Thirst Mutilator.
Knowledge Test
So one of the first things that I do when I end up getting sucked into a subject like this, is to pull out a map and ask the person which whom the discussion revolves, to point out where Xinjiang is.
If they are unable to locate it on a map, then I know that they are just a member of the mindless, manipulated American (and British) public.
You try. Give it a spin.
Where is Xinjiang on this map? Can you find it?
Blank simple map of China, no labels.
So, do you know where Xinjiang is? Point to it.
When I have run this little exercise… using a printer, and not allowing anyone to cheat using the internet, I am always surprised by the ignorance. (In fact, I actually carried up a folded printout in my backpack, for a spell.)
Initially, the person shrugs it off.
They won’t do it, and are insulted that you are trying to get them to show how ignorant they are. They do not like to be shown to be a fool. No one does, and so I cannot blame them. Can you?
I can't blame them. Most Americans can't point out Nebraska on a map, either.
It’s human nature, you know. We all want to think that we are brighter, smarter, and more intelligent than other people. So when we get into arguments, and it is pointed out that we are ignorant and manipulated, we resent it, and revolt against it.
OK.
Well, here is where Xinjiang is…
Map of China showing Xinjiang.
BRAWNDO’S GOT WHAT PLANTS CRAVE!Brawndo’s got electrolytes. And that’s what plants crave. They crave electrolytes. Which plants crave. they crave electrolytes. Which is what Brawndo has. And that’s why plants crave Brawndo. Not water, like from the toilet.
Don’t try to make sense of it, because you can’t. Just take note of the fact that Brawndo has electrolytes and does not come out of the toilet, I guess.
Brawndo’s got electrolytes. And that’s what plants crave.
What is Xinjiang like.
First of all, the media will never show the peaceful, prosperous parts of Xinjiang. Heck. They won’t show much of anything. It is extremely important for those in power to keep Americans ignorant of life outside of America.
An April 2005 audit concluded that CPA managers of [reconstruction] funds distributed in the South-Central region of Iraq could not account for more than $96.6 million in cash and receipts. An October 2005 audit found that South-Central personnel could not account for more than $20.5 million in Rapid Regional Response Program funds and made $2.6 million in excessive payments.”
Waste was not limited to mismanagement, however. Sometimes it was criminal, the report found.
“In late 2005, several U.S. citizens were criminally charged with respect to the handling of these funds—and have since pled guilty. In February 2007, five more were indicted, of whom four were convicted and one pled guilty,” CRS reported.
-Fiscal Times
American media is just one lie after the other. It’s all manipulation propaganda. Take heed.
So this is the kind of images that the media uses when discussing the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang…
Human rights observers and independent experts said Tuesday that China seems to start massive DNA collection work from residents of a volatile region, where most Muslims are under strong security crackdowns.
What they omit is that everyone in China has their DNA collected. I have my DNA collected in China, and I’m not even a citizen. Such selective reporting, and then presented with a negative spin is common in Western reporting of the Uyghurs.
The NGO reported that, while the government was not confiscating passports, however, acquiring a passport as an ethnic minority was near impossible. Beijing has dedicated significant effort in the past five years to curbing the freedoms of Xinjiang’s majority Uighur population, who are largely Muslim and whose state is home to a major separatist movement, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) .
This article comes on the heels of reports that China was confiscating passports. Which was proven false, and China demanded an apology.
Now, rather than retract the narrative, they rewrote it as “difficult to obtain a passport“. Not true either. But the march of propaganda must roll. Couple that with picture of army soldiers and you have an effective propaganda onslaught.
Here’s another example…
The Uighur Muslim community in China’s Xinjiang region are facing arbitrary detentions, daily restrictions on religious practice, and “forced political indoctrination” in a mass security crackdown, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.
“The Chinese government is committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang on a scale unseen in the country in decades,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “The campaign of repression in Xinjiang is a key test of whether the United Nations and concerned governments will sanction an increasingly powerful China to end this abuse.” In its 117-page report, “‘Eradicating Ideological Viruses’: China’s Campaign of Repression Against Xinjiang’s Muslims,” Human Rights Watch presents new evidence of the Chinese government’s mass arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment, and the increasingly pervasive controls on daily life.
The way it reads sounds like the Muslims are being arrested and imprisoned because of their religion. That’s not the case. They are being imprisoned because they are [1] residents of Xinjiang and [2] they have committed crimes. Crimes like theft, murder, rape, and abductions.
Criminals exist all over the world.
That’s how propaganda works. It never provides the entire full and true situation. But, rather, it provides selected reports presented in a way to arouse emotions.
You know what? This is what Xinjiang really looks like…
Grand Bazaar in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang
Yeah. This is what it is really like, you all.
And Western media won’t talk about the billions of dollars that China has invested in Xinjiang, modernizing the cities, building 21 airports, linking with region with bullet trains etc.
This is hardly ever reported, but when it is, it is reported in a negative way. As if investing in things, buildings, constructions and hiring people is bad, terrible and unhealthy…
Having eliminated poverty and solved basic subsistence problems, the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang have now set their eyes on more prosperous lives, along with marked improvement in their standard of living.
In 2008, the per-capita net income of farmers in Xinjiang was 3,503 yuan, which is 28 times more than that of 1978, and 1.2 times more than that of 2000 when the western development campaign was launched; the per-capita disposable income of urban residents reached 11,432 yuan, which is 35 times more than that of 1978, and double that of 2001. The per-capita deposited savings of urban and rural residents averaged 14 yuan in 1955, 52 yuan in 1978, 4,913 yuan in 2000, and 11,972 yuan in 2008. Per-capita consumption was 122 yuan in 1952, 181 yuan in 1978, 2,662 yuan in 2000, and 4,890 yuan in 2007.
- Development and Progress in Xinjiang
Let’s compare the Chinese investment in Xinjiang with similar investments that the United States makes in America…
Uyghur High-Speed Rail in Xiajiang, China.
I’d try to compare it with the United States High Speed Rail, but I cannot. America doesn’t have high speed rail. Nor is America investing time and money to improve cultural minority enclaves. It is instead throwing money elsewhere.
Meanwhile, China is investing in Uyghur.
High-Speed Railway in Xinjiang
Ugyhur State-of-the-art Airports
I’d also like to compare the Uyghur airports with American airports, but I cannot do this either.
The latest international airport in the United States was built decades ago. At that time, people were still wearing bell-bottoms and wore afros.
The latest international airport in the United States was built decades ago. At that time, people were still wearing bell-bottoms and wore afros.
Anyways, the amount of monetary investment in Xinjiang is astounding, and the Uyghur workers who are all involved in building these projects are all making a decent life for themselves and their families. The Chinese, as a traditional conservative society, believes that people need a “hand up” to improve their social mobility. That means jobs for the men, opportunities for the children and community for the women.
Thus all the new and modern airports and public works.
International airport in Xinjiang, China.
In 2018, the 21 airports in Xinjiang handled 33 million passengers
And there are also thousands of mosques in Xinjiang, whose recorded
history goes back more than 2000 years when the ancient Silk Road linked
China to Italy and Greece. In China, there are mosques that were built
in the 10th century, which demonstrates the tolerance and respect for
religious rights in Chinese society.
Uyghur Religious Freedom in Xinjiang
If you read the American and British media, you would think that China is terribly repressive. Squashing free thought, and religious beliefs at will. It’s not true, not even remotely true. In fact, it’s absolute and complete nonsense.
You need to understand what is actually going on.
Xinjiang is the largest autonomous region in China, located in the Northwestern zone of the country. It is also where you will find the largest population of Muslims in China. Although the Hui Muslims make up the majority of Muslims in all of China, it is the Uyghur Muslims that are the largest in number when it comes to Xinjiang.
The Uyghurs are a Turkic Ethnic Group living in East and Central Asia, specifically the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. They are a group of racially diverse people, including a variety of ethnicities ranging from Caucasians to Mongoloids. As the area with the largest concentration of Muslims in China, there is no need to worry about finding nearby mosques and prayer places in Xinjiang.
This is the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China.
There are about 20,000 mosques in Xinjiang
Also to remember are two nuggets of information: [1] Xinjiang is a really vast region — it’s four times as large as California(!); and [2] Uyghurs make up only about 40% of Xinjiang’s population. It is the truth and is not something that all the anti-Chinese propaganda broadcasts.
Learn something for a change instead of accepting the mindless manipulations…
Since ancient times, Xinjiang has always been a region with a number of religions existing side by side. The major religions in Xinjiang today are Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Catholicism and Daoism. The Chinese government enacts a policy of freedom of religious belief, which the government of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has thoroughly implemented. It protects citizens' rights of freedom of religious belief in accordance with the law, safeguards the legitimate rights and interests of religious circles, and promotes healthy and orderly development of religion.
Freedom of religious belief is a basic right bestowed by the PRC Constitution on all its citizens. It is stipulated in the Constitution as follows: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities." In addition, the State Council promulgated "Regulations on Religious Affairs," which stipulates: "Citizens enjoy freedom of religious belief. No organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in any religion or citizens who do not believe in any religion. Citizens who believe in religions and those who don't shall respect each other and coexist in harmony, as shall citizens who believe in different religions." Other relevant laws and regulations have specific provisions on the protection of citizens' freedom of religious belief. The state emphasizes that all citizens are equal before the law; that the citizens have the freedom to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; that the citizens enjoy the rights of freedom of religious belief and at the same time must carry out corresponding responsibilities; that anyone who violates others' rights of freedom of religious belief shall bear the legal liability; and that both religious citizens and non-religious citizens shall bear the same legal liability for breaking the law.
In Xinjiang, people of all ethnic groups fully enjoy the right of freedom in religious belief. The people's freedom to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion is protected by the law, and no state organ, public organization or individual may interfere with their choice. By the end of 2008, the autonomous region had 24,800 venues for religious activities, including mosques, churches and temples, in addition to over 29,000 clerical personnel, 91 religious organizations and two religious colleges. Since the 1980s, more than 50,000 people from Xinjiang have made pilgrimages to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. In recent years, the number of people from Xinjiang who make the pilgrimage each year has been around 2,700. By 2008, over 1,800 religious personages in Xinjiang had been elected to posts in people's congresses and committees of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at all levels. They have actively participated in deliberation and administration of state affairs on behalf of religious believers, and in exercising supervision over the government in respect to the implementation of the policy of freedom of religious belief.
The state and the government of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region administer religious affairs and protect the legal rights and interests of believers, religious organizations and venues for religious activities in accordance with the laws. The State Council promulgated the "Regulations on Religious Affairs." The Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region formulated and promulgated the "Regulations for the Administration of Religious Affairs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region." The government of the autonomous region formulated the "Provisional Regulations for the Administration of Religious Activity Venues in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," "Provisional Regulations for the Administration of Clergy in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region" and "Provisional Regulations for the Administration of Religious Activities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region." These regulations further clarify that the citizens enjoy the right of freedom in religious belief, and the country protects normal religious activities, as well as the legal rights and interests of believers, religious organizations and venues for religious activities in accordance with the law; that believers, religious organizations and venues for religious activities should abide by the Constitution and related laws and regulations, and safeguard national unification, ethnic unity and social stability; that no organization or individual may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the state educational system, or in activities that harm state and public interests, as well as citizens' legal rights and interests; and that no one should use religion to interfere in the performing of administrative and judicial functions by the state.
According to corresponding laws and regulations, the autonomous region protects all normal religious activities held either at venues for religious activities or in believers' own homes in accordance with customary religious practices, such as worshipping Buddha, reciting scriptures, burning incense, worshipping, praying, preaching, attending Mass, being baptized or ordained, celebrating religious festivals, observing extreme unction, and holding memorial ceremonies, which are all protected by law as the affairs of religious bodies or believers themselves and may not be interfered with. However, the autonomous region shall ban, in accordance with the law, activities that make use of religion to intervene in the performing of administrative and judicial functions of the state, as well as education, marriage or civil lawsuits.
Religious affairs are developing in a normal and orderly manner in Xinjiang. Religious classics and books and magazines have been published, including the Koran, Selections from Al-Sahih Muhammad Ibn-Ismail al-Bukhari, Koran with Annotations and Selected Works of Waez, in Uyghur, Han, Kazak and Kirgiz languages, as well as the New Collection of Waez's Speeches series and the magazine China's Muslims in Uyghur and Han languages, the later with a circulation of over one million. Large numbers of mosques in Xinjiang have been designated as key cultural relics sites under the protection of the state, the autonomous region and the various counties. In 1999, the central government allocated 7.6 million yuan for the reconstruction of the Yanghang Mosque in Urumqi, the Baytulla Mosque in Yining and the Jamae Mosque in Hotan. The government has also, on several occasions, allocated special funds for the maintenance and repair of the Idkah Mosque in Kashi and Tomb of the Fragrant Imperial Concubine (Apak Hoja Mazzar), and Sulayman's Minaret in Turpan. In 2008 alone, 33 million yuan was allocated by the state for the maintenance and repair of Idkah Mosque and the Tomb of the Fragrant Imperial Concubine.
Now, most people of Xinjiang's 10 major ethnic minority groups, with a total population of over 11.3 million, believe in Islam. The number of Islamic mosques has soared from 2,000 in the early days of the reform and opening-up drive to 24,300 now, and the body of clergy from 3,000 to over 28,000. Since its founding, the Xinjiang Islamic Institute gives lessons in Uyghur and other minority languages and has trained 489 Imams, Hatips or other teachers for religious schools in the autonomous region. It currently has 161 students. From 2001 to 2008, the Xinjiang Islamic School trained more than 20,000 clerics. In addition, 3,133 Talips were trained by religious personages, in Islamic schools and classes operated by Islamic associations in the various prefectures and prefecture-level cities. Among them, 1,518 have graduated and 803 taken up clerical posts. In an attempt to cultivate high-caliber clerical personnel of Islam, since 2001, the regional government has sent 47 clerics for training in colleges and universities in Egypt and Pakistan.
Historically, the region witnessed many conflicts between different religions and between different sects of the same religion. In the mid-10th century, the Islamic Karahan Kingdom waged a religious war against the Buddhist kingdom of Yutian, lasting for more than 40 years. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, religious battles continued for several hundred years within Islamic circles. These wars between and within religions seriously jeopardized the unity between different religions and between different sects, as well as general social harmony and stability. Since the founding of the PRC, the implementation of the policy of freedom in religious belief and administration of religious affairs in accordance with the law have promoted peace and harmony between different religions in Xinjiang, as well as mutual respect and understanding between religious and non-religious citizens and between citizens believing in different religions. There have been no modern conflicts or clashes caused by differences in religion or religious sect.
- Development and Progress in Xinjiang
The American reaction…
Hows Stuff Works is for fags. Electrolytes are what plants crave. Duh.
Hows Stuff Works is for fags. Electrolytes are what plants crave. Duh.
Types of Uyghur Muslims
Now, let’s break down the facts. There are four types of Uyghur Muslims:
Well-educated Uyghurs who are moderate/secular Muslims
Poor and lower middle-class Uyghurs
Nomads
Separatists and terrorists
And let’s talk about them one by one. OK?
Moderate/Secular Uyghurs
These are middle or upper middle-class Muslims who enjoy normal lives, have good jobs, and integrate easily with the mainstream Chinese culture. There are even popular Uyghur musicians, TV hosts, rappers (!) etc. in China.
Here are two famous Uyghur actresses — Guli Nazha and Dilraba Dilmurat.
Guli Nazha’s Fashion Look on Instagram on May 2, 2019.
The beauty of the Uyghur Muslims is stunning.
Dilraba Dilmurat is a famous Uyghur Xinjiang, Chinese actress that is beloved all over China.
Uyghur kids from educated families go to schools, live normal lives and have a lot of fun on social media like Tik Tok (“Douyin” in China). Women post selfies and have followings. Many of which are wealthy Chinese elites from the East Coast.
A not-famous young Uyghur woman who posts on Chinese media and who has a rather large following of Chinese followers. You go Girl!
All through China, whether it is in Xingjiang or in Dongguang, the Chinese government supports education, and harmony though peaceful pursuits. Yes, I know, I sound like a propagandist. But, it is true.
The raising of children in a happy and secure world is the goal of the Chinese government, and the last four decades has proven this to be their objective.
Chinese football may have long been mostly known for its underachieving national team and their dismal record against rivals South Korea and Japan, but there is a football team in China that is without doubt the best in Asia, if not the whole world. Known as Wuxiao in Chinese, the team were crowned champions at the National Youth Campus Football Championship Finals four times in a row from 2012 to 2015, the only four years the national tournament has been held. On the continental stage, they won all four under-13 titles at the international Weifang Cup in Weifang, East China’s Shandong Province since they were invited to play in 2011. And they repeatedly beat teams from South Korea and Japan with a winning margin of nearly 10 goals during their run of success at the tournament.
Most Americans have no idea that there is prosperity in Xinjiang. All that they know is that China is bad and eats dogs. China is communist and represses everyone, and the Muslims in Xinjiang want “freedom” and “democracy” most urgently.
And Brawndo is what plant’s crave. It’s got electrolytes.
Most Americans have no idea that there is prosperity in Xinjiang. All that they know is that China is bad and eats dogs. China is communist and represses everyone, and the Muslims in Xinjiang want “freedom” and “democracy” most urgently. Oh, and Brando is good for you. It has electrolytes.
Working Class Uyghurs
There are also many working class Uyghurs who may own restaurants and gift shops or work as artists and craftsmen in touristy places. Their lives aren’t bad and most of them don’t get into trouble with the government.
Like anywhere in China, the families try to be upwardly mobile. That means, in China, through achievement and scholarship. The best students are granted the ability to move to the best schools and doors of opportunity open up for them and their families.
Thousands of kilometers from home, in a strange city with a sometimes loose grasp of the language, teenagers from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region find themselves homesick, lonely and struggling to communicate.
But their dreams of a better education help them to persevere through the tough beginnings at one of the pilot schools in Beijing that have been recruiting Xinjiang students since 2000, when the central government started a program to help improve their education.
"Although the school is 3,000 kilometers away from home, it's still worth studying here," said Dilara, a senior from Hami, who is now studying at Luhe High School in eastern Beijing's Tongzhou district.
Students apply for the program and those who pass entrance exams organized by local governments are admitted to 93 inland city schools in Beijing, Shanghai and 43 other cities. So far, 80,200 students have participated. They study for free and receive a 650 yuan ($100) monthly living allowance.
"It's really attractive to me that the included schools are located in developed cities like Beijing and Shanghai," said Dilara, a Uygur student who had lived with her grandmother since she was a child.
"We don't have to pay any tuition and even get monthly subsidy. That's quite a relief for me and my grandma."
Arriving in Beijing at the age of 14, Dilara initially was bothered by homesickness and the challenge of communicating." I felt ashamed to communicate with teachers here because of my poor Mandarin," she said.
The school provides one year of training to help the Xinjiang students improve their language skills and offers psychological advice before they start their high school curriculum.
Early on, Dilara turned to Ayturan, a teacher from Ili who joined the students at the Beijing school, but she soon adapted and made friends with local students.
Sometimes she and other students from Xinjiang are invited home by local students, especially during winter vacations, when most of them would rather stay at school than take the 30-hour train ride back home.
Dilara recalled a recent visit to the home of her classmate Cui Xi.
"His mother cooked mutton chops for us, which is exactly what I missed so much, and his father encouraged me, just like my own father does," she recalled.
Cui Xi said daily life became more fun after the Xinjiang students joined the class.
"We celebrate Eid al-Adha, the traditional festival, usually celebrated by the Uygur in September, a fancy day filled with the aroma of roast lamb and the ecstasy of carnival," Cui said.
Now an 18-year-old senior, Dilara plans to further her education at Beijing International Studies University. "I always hoped to study tourism and promote my hometown to the world one day," she said.
Li Tongshu, director of students at Luhe, said the success of the graduates over the past 16 years gives her confidence that Dilara's dream－and the dreams of the other students－will come true.
"Nearly 1,400 Xinjiang graduates have been admitted by universities at home and abroad, and among those, 800 have devoted themselves to further building their hometowns," Li proudly said.
-China Daily
Really Poor Uyghurs
Then there are really poor Uyghurs who live in slums.
Like anywhere else in the world, these are prime targets for recruitment by jihadists. Many of these Uyghur kids work on the streets and shine shoes or help their families with menial jobs like taking care of donkeys or other animals.
Like anywhere else in the world, these are prime targets for recruitment by jihadists. The promise of meaning, value and worth and a bigger plan that includes spiritual involvement is very alluring.
When the Chinese government mandates that these children go to school, the Western media scream bloody murder…
If these Uyghurs come to the US, the children will be forced to attend schools as well. In fact, in America the parents would be arrested if they tried to home-school their children.
Here is a school that the “evil Communists” forces the Uyghur kids to attend:
No. 66 Middle School in Urumqi, northwest China is home to 2,400 children from 13 different ethnic groups. They are all part of a Chinese government programme helping ethnically diverse students in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to receive higher quality of education.
Known as the Xinjiang Class, the programme was introduced in 2000 to offer children living in the region’s remote areas the possibility to attend a top junior high school (ages 12-15), preparing students to then attend a senior high school in one of 17 cities across the country.
The state is committed to the cultivation of high-caliber professionals from minority backgrounds, sending promising students for overseas studies and through programs such as Specialized Training for Xinjiang Minority Sci-Tech Personnel and the High-Level Minority Talents Program.
To develop education for ethnic minorities, it encourages the use of minority languages in classroom teaching. For ethnic groups with their own written languages in Xinjiang, school education is conducted in their own languages.
Over the years, special state funds have been earmarked for the compilation and printing of textbooks in Uyghur, Kazak, Mongolian, Xibe and Kirgiz languages, satisfying the needs of minority students for textbooks of major courses.
In Xinjiang, test papers for the annual national college entrance examinations are printed in Uyghur, Han, Kazak and Mongolian languages.
- Development and Progress in Xinjiang
Some of these kids don’t even speak Chinese, which greatly limits their abilities to find jobs later on as adults. So when they learn Chinese in school, the western propaganda screams, “cultural genocide.”
Sheer idiocy!
The BBC admits that the “communist” (gasp!) government has spent $1.2 billion in the last five years on upgrading and building new schools for children in Xinjiang. How many billions of USD has the American government spent on schools lately?
Oh, yes, the Department of Education is funded lavishly.
But I am not talking about salaries for bureaucratic cronies of whatever administration is in power. I am talking about the brick and mortar schools. Not being funded properly, and certainly not being managed well. Or haven’t you noticed?
This should be applauded, not demonized!
The Chinese government has done a phenomenal job by lifting 1.85 million Uyghur Muslims out of poverty between 2014 and 2017. Of course, the western media will never talk about it.
Before the founding of the PRC in 1949, Xinjiang had but one college, nine secondary schools and 1,355 primary schools. Only 19.8% of school-age children attended primary school, and the overall illiteracy rate was a shocking 90%.
Unprecedented changes have taken place in education in Xinjiang after 1949.
At present, Xinjiang has basically made the nine-year compulsory education universal and eliminated illiteracy in the young and middle-aged population. Adult and vocational education started from scratch, and has been developing steadily.
Since 2006, with the introduction of a new mechanism that guarantees rural education funding, Xinjiang's primary and secondary school students have enjoyed free compulsory education.
In 2008, the government granted living subsidies to all underprivileged students who live at school and exempted urban students from tuition fees during their compulsory education period. Since 2007, the state has initiated an annual budget of 129 million yuan for the education of 51,000 very poor university students and 95,000 secondary and higher vocational school students, 70% of whom come from ethnic minorities.
In 2008, the Xinjiang autonomous region government invested a total of 18.77 billion yuan in the region's education system, representing a year-on-year increase of 32.3%. Statistics from that year show that Xinjiang had 4,159 primary schools with 2,012,000 students, and a 99.6% enrollment rate for school-age children. There were 1,973 secondary schools with 1,722,000 students, and 32 institutions of higher learning with 241,000 undergraduate and 10,300 graduate students in total.
- Development and Progress in Xinjiang
Nomadic Uighurs
Then there are Uyghurs who are herders and nomads in the vast Xinjiang region.
The Changing World of the Yugur Nomads. Chinese scholars say both the Uighurs and the Yugurs (sometimes called the Yellow Uighurs) are descendants of an ethnic group called the Huihu, a Turkic-speaking nomadic people who had an empire in the eighth to ninth centuries on the steppes of present-day Mongolia. Western scholars use the term Uighur or Uyghur to describe that earlier group.
-New York Times
Although it seems romantic, their lives are not compatible with modern days. Most of them are stuck in extreme poverty and their kids also grow up completely illiterate. Sometimes the Chinese government relocates tens of thousands of these people into the cities and gives them jobs, free housing, health care etc.
Of course, US media will spin this as “ethnic cleansing.” (The government has helped millions of Chinese people in other areas get out of extreme poverty by similar relocation projects as well).
Relocation of nomads into cities = “Ethnic Cleansing”.
Many of these nomads appreciate the new life:
“With central heating, gas, running water, Internet and cable TV, we no
longer need to worry about things that troubled us in the past.”
Many of these nomads appreciate the new life: “With central heating, gas, running water, Internet and cable TV, we no longer need to worry about things that troubled us in the past.”
Sometimes, if the parents don’t want to give up their nomadic lives, the government may move the children to boarding schools, where they get free lodging, meals and education.
The primary concern of the government is that unless the nomadic Uyghurs are educated, they will be stuck within a terrible cycle of poverty. And poverty breeds crime and social unrest.
Separatists and Terrorists
What is not mentioned in the mainstream media is that the West has been stroking separatism in Xinjiang since the 1950s!
Addressing the National Press Club in Australia's capital Canberra on Tuesday, the chairwoman of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) lied again, right to the reporters' faces.
Kadeer accused Chinese authorities of removing Uyghur-language lessons from schools and forcing the Uighurs to learn Chinese.
"I think the Chinese government should stop its invasive policy of single-language (Chinese) education and allow students and their parents to choose whatever language they aspire to learn," she said through an interpreter.
Interestingly though, Kadeer made her remarks in Uyghur, the language she would not have been able to speak should the Chinese government have deprived her of her right to learn it.
China, Kadeer said, has adopted "biased policies towards ethnic minorities" in the past 60 years, exploited the Uyghurs and pushed all of them into a "state of extreme poverty."
But she herself was once a "millionairess" in Xinjiang and stood as a strong testament to China's preferential policies toward ethnic minorities there.
Starting from a small business in the 1980s, Kadeer worked her way up to become the richest woman in Xinjiang before she broke Chinese law and was sentenced to jail.
Still, during her appearance at the press club, Kadeer continued to tell lies in a vain attempt to cover the bare facts and her separatist intentions.
Throughout her "speech," Kadeer called China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region "East Turkistan," and publicly proclaimed that Xinjiang was an "independent country" before 1949 and that Chinese troops "invaded" and "annexed" the region.
Books compiled by Western historians never said Xinjiang was an independent country before 1949, not to mention that there was no such ridiculous record of it in Chinese history.
- Rebiya Kadeer lies again
When the Chinese communists won in 1949 (by defeating US-supported faction, which went on to establish Taiwan), the US started arming/funding separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Notice the signs. Who do you think the signs are directed towards? The Chinese government? Or, Americans? And why are they in American English, and not (say) British English. Who wrote the signs, when they are supposedly illiterate? Why aren’t the signs in Chinese, the national language? Who are the signs directed towards?
The US brought in a lot of these extremists into Germany in the 1970s and helped them foment a movement for “East Turkestan.”
Currently, the so-called “World Uyghur Congress” (WUC) is funded and glorified by the US government through NGOs such as National Endowment of Democracy (NED) — which also played a major role in the Tiananmen Square clashes in 1989 (see this article).
By the way, the story of “1 million Muslims in concentration camps” (sometimes it’s 2 or 3 million!) comes from testimonies of WUC members.
However, to the dismay of propagandists, no Muslim country is buying the “concentration camps” narrative. They are ALL on the side of China.
In 2005, Rebiya fled to the US after being released on bail for medical treatment and now lives in Fairfax, Virginia, south of Washington DC. Before going abroad, she had repeatedly promised the Chinese government that she would never participate in any activity that might jeopardize national security.
Once she arrived in the US however, she has been committed to "Xinjiang independence" activities. In the same year, she founded the US-based International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation (IUHRDF). In 2006, she became president of the Uyghur American Association (UAA) and was elected as president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) at its Second General Assembly in the same year.
As soon as Rebiya arrived in the US, the "renowned" National Endowment for Democracy (NED) came to visit her, expressing a willingness to offer financial support. The sponsor behind the foundation is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
It has been disclosed that the NED annually grants 200,000 USD to the UAA. In 2007, East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) organizations, including the WUC and IUHRDF led by Rebiya, received a total of 520,000 USD of financial support from the NED.
In addition, some anti-China US congressmen have become guests of honor for Rebiya, and frequently invited her to deliver speeches at the so-called "Congressional Human Rights Caucus Meeting."
Even former president George W. Bush met with Rebiya twice in 2007 and 2008 prior to the Beijing Olympics, calling her a freedom warrior. Members of the CIA often disguised as reporters and non-government organization (NGO) volunteers expressed their concerns to her, keeping close touch with her on the issue of ETIM prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Since the beginning of 2009, the WUC had prepared for its third General Assembly, which also received support from American congressmen and the NED.
Rebiya once said they would plan some penetration and sabotage activities at the third General Assembly targeting the grand celebration for the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China; and formulate a plan of "three phases for Xinjiang independence in 50 years."
The WUC website impressively showed that the WUC Third General Assembly was unexpectedly held in the South Congressional Meeting Room with the participation of nearly 10 US congressmen. Most of these congressmen are veteran anti-China politicians.
On the second day following the July 5 incident, Rebiya made a speech at a press conference held at the National Press Club, saying that the Chinese government's accusations were "completely false." However, the club is an institution under the US Department of State.
Some US-based media have also become a "megaphone" for Rebiya. On June 1, US-based WPFW Pacifica radio interviewed Rebiya, in which she even claimed that historically, Tibet and Xinjiang were not part of China, and stated that "repression, imprisonment, and executions" in Xinjiang "had actually increased dramatically since 9/11."
She claimed that the best way to make the outside world understand the situation in Xijiang was to inform foreign officials, especially those of the US, "Because they had always been very concerned with the human rights situation in China. The Uyghur people always have this strong faith in the United States."
The New York Times disclosed on April 23 that Rebiya had said, "Politicians and human rights organizations from all over the world were active on behalf of Tibet. The conditions in the Uyghur nation were much the same. But interest from abroad in the two...could not have been more dissimilar." Rebiya also tried to smear China by writing articles for the Washington Post, attempting to gain sympathy from the West by means of the so-called pursuit of democracy and human rights.
- Rebiya Kadeer's funding sources
Turkey is the closest to Uyghurs, who are of Turkic origin. Turkish leader Erdogan was in China few days ago and said that the Uyghur re-education centers won’t affect China-Turkey relations.
Turkish leader Erdogan was in China few days ago and said that the Uyghur re-education centers won’t affect China-Turkey relations.
Indonesia — the largest Muslim country in the world —has also said that it understands China’s predicament of dealing with separatists.
Similarly Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and even Saudi Arabia have dismissed the sensational stories. Many diplomats and reporters have visited these camps and have come out reassured.
One more historical perspective: After the Mujahideen war in Afghanistan ended in 1989, many of those fighters went to Central Asia. And the disease of Wahhabism spread to Xinjiang as well.
One more historical perspective: After the Mujahideen war in Afghanistan ended in 1989, many of those fighters went to Central Asia. And the disease of Wahhabism spread to Xinjiang as well.
From 2009 to 2015, there was a significant number of terrorist attacks by the Uyghur jihadists (here’s an example). That’s when China decided to really crack down.
In the 1980’s, when China first opened up to the West, the two points of entry were Taiwan and Hong Kong. Of that, Hong Kong was the primary entry point to the Chinese resources and market. Thus, from the 1980’s to today, Hong Kong grew exponentially. It went from a small, forgotten, British back-water colony to the major financial and banking center that it is today.
You can attribute it’s rise to the role that it had as the entry port for trade with the mainland.
In a like way, the Chinese government is planning a similar role for their “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). Those people who now live in Xinjiang are completely poised to become the next generation super-wealthy of China. It will benefit the local Xinjiang people, the neighboring nations, and the Chinese nation as whole.
To this end, the existing global structure is being bypassed, and they do not like that
Thus, the future of Xinjiang also has a lot of economic implications.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has 1000s of freight trains and trucks carrying goods between China and Europe every year; and most of these trains and trucks go through Xinjiang. There are also many oil/gas pipelines from Central Asia that go through Xinjiang to power China’s industrial economy.
The Uyghur people are expected to become “Dubai Wealthy” in the next few decades. Provided of course, that the United States stands aside and let’s them live in peace and prosperity.
An unstable Xinjiang will wreak havoc on the Chinese economy.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has 1000s of freight trains and trucks carrying goods between China and Europe every year; and most of these trains and trucks go through Xinjiang. There are also many oil/gas pipelines from Central Asia that go through Xinjiang to power China’s industrial economy.
The Chinese government is trying to help the poor people and fight the jihadists at the same time.
The US really needs to fix its foreign policy, which is now based on chaos, confrontation, wars, Machiavellian divide-and-conquer strategies, and endless propaganda. The US needs a positive approach that’s based on cooperation, friendly competition and ethical policies.
Statement that the UN supports China on Xinjiang
Valentin Rybakov, center, permanent representative of Belarus to the UN, makes a joint statement on behalf of 54 countries in firm support of China’s counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures in Xinjiang during the discussion on human rights at the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday at the UN headquarters in New York. Liao Pan/CNS
Belarus made a joint statement Tuesday on behalf of 54 countries in
firm support of China’s counterterrorism and de-radicalization measures
in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
During a discussion on human rights at the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, Belarus made the statement on behalf of countries including Pakistan, Russia, Egypt, Bolivia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Serbia. It praised China’s people-centered development philosophy and development achievements.
The statement spoke positively of the results of counterterrorism and de-radicalization measures in Xinjiang, noting that these measures have effectively safeguarded the basic human rights of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.
The statement said that terrorism, separatism and religious extremism have caused enormous damage to all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, which has seriously infringed upon human rights, including the right to life, health and development.
“China has undertaken a series of counterterrorism and de-radicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers,” the statement said, adding that safety and security have returned to Xinjiang now and “the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded”.
The statement also supported China’s commitment to openness and transparency, mentioning it has invited a number of diplomats, international organizations, officials and journalists to Xinjiang to witness the progress of the human rights cause and the outcomes of counterterrorism and de-radicalization.
“What they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely contradicted what was reported in the (Western) media,” it wrote.
The statement expressed opposition to relevant countries politicizing the human rights issue and called on them to stop baseless accusations against China.
“We express our firm opposition to relevant countries’ practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries,” it wrote.
“We call on relevant countries to refrain from employing unfounded charges against China based on unconfirmed information before they visit Xinjiang,” it wrote.
At the meeting, more than 30 countries, including Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Cuba and Nicaragua, voiced support for China’s position and measures on human rights.
The Kyrgyzstan representative said the Kyrgyzstan Republic considers Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region affairs to be purely an internal affair of China and “appreciates the efforts of the government of China to preserve the Uygur culture and religious freedom and freedom of nationalities of Xinjiang and supports the measures taken by the Chinese side to ensure Xinjiang’s security, stability and development”.
“The measures taken by China to address the situation and continue the economic development in Xinjiang are fundamental for the people of China, which is supported and appreciated by the international community,” said the Cambodia representative.
“We commend China’s efforts to combat terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang in accordance with the laws. We would like to reiterate our opposition to any countries to use human rights as an excuse to interfere any country’s internal affairs and attempts to put pressure in the name of human rights should be avoided,” said the representative from Myanmar.
Zhang Jun, permanent representative of China to the UN, refuted the “baseless” comments on Xinjiang made by the United States and some other countries.
Zhang said that the US and a few other countries made “groundless accusations” against China, which is “gross interference in China’s internal affairs and a deliberate provocation of confrontation”.
“China firmly opposes and rejects it,” he said.
He reiterated that Xinjiang’s preventive measures of counterterrorism and de-radicalization are based on law and consistent with the will of the people.
“This is not about human rights and has nothing to do with racial discrimination,” he said. “China wants to tell the United States and other countries not to confront the international community and not to go any further on the wrong path.”
“This is not about human rights and has nothing to do with racial discrimination,” he said. “China wants to tell the United States (and other countries) NOT to confront the international community and NOT to go any further on the wrong path.”
The CIA declined to comment.
Godfree Roberts Study
Here is the complete write up on this issue by Godfree Roberts. It’s terribly long, but full of outstanding details. All credit to the author…
Many
Chinese consider Uyghurs the descendants of a marooned, white
imperialist army living on land that was China’s long before they
arrived. Edgar Snow[1]
visited Xinjiang in 1937 and reported, “Especially in the ninth
century, when vast hordes of Ouigour Turks (whose great leader Seljuk
had not yet been born) were summoned to the aid of the T’ang Court to
suppress rebellion, Islamism entrenched itself in China. Following their
success, many of the Ouigours were rewarded with titles and great
estates and settled in the Northwest and in Szechuan and Yunnan. Over a
period of centuries the Mohammedans stoutly resisted Chinese absorption
but gradually lost their Turkish culture, adopted much that was Chinese,
and became more or less submissive to Chinese law. Yet in the
nineteenth century they were still powerful enough to make two great
bids for power: one when Tu Wei-hsiu for a time set up a kingdom in
Yunnan and proclaimed himself Sultan Suleiman; and the last, in 1864,
when Mohammedans seized control of all the Northwest and even invaded
Hupeh.”
Islam
is neither the Uyghurs’ native religion nor their only one but, in its
Wahabbi form, it has caused problems around the world, for which we can
thank to two fervent Christians, Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski,[2] who considered a united Eurasia, “The only possible challenge to American hegemony.”
In
1979, months before the Soviet entry into Afghanistan, Brzezinski
drafted and Carter signed a top-secret Presidential Order authorizing
the CIA to train fundamentalist Muslims to wage Jihad against the Soviet
Communist infidels and all unbelievers of conservative Sunni Islam and
the Mujahideen terror war against Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan became
the largest covert action in CIA history.[2]
Brzezinski’s ‘Arc of Crisis’ strategy inflamed Muslims in Central Asia
to destabilize the USSR during its economic crisis and, when Le Nouvel Observateur
later asked if he had any regrets, Brzezinski snapped, “What is most
important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Muslims or the
liberation of Central Europe?”
The
Uyghurs had collaborated with the Japanese in WWII and Rebiya Kadeer,
‘Mother of the Uyghurs’ and a US Government client, after kissing the
ground at Yasukuni Shrine, called Xinjiang’s postwar reversion to
Chinese administration a ‘reconquest.’ Ms Kadeer’s connections are
interesting. In the late 1990s Hasan Mahsum, founder of the East
Turkestan Islamic Movement, ETIM, moved its headquarters to Kabul and
met with Osama bin Laden and the CIA-trained Taliban to coordinate
action across Central Asia. In 1995 Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
then mayor of Istanbul declared, “Eastern Turkestan [Xinjiang] is not
only the home of the Turkic peoples but also the cradle of Turkic
history, civilization and culture. To forget that would lead to the
ignorance of our own history, civilizati on and culture. The martyrs of Eastern Turkestan are our martyrs.” Under Erdogan Turkey became the transit point for international terrorists destined for Syria and Turkish airports were filled with Uyghurs traveling on Turkish passports.
Twenty
years later, in 1999, the CIA’s Islam strategist, Graham E. Fuller,
announced, “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping
them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan
against the Russians. The same doctrines can still be used to
destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the
Chinese influence in Central Asia.”[3]
We will return to Mr. Fuller anon but, first, some background from F. William Engdahl,
“Today the West–and especially Washington–is engaged in full-scale
irregular war against the stability of China. In recent months Western
media and the Washington Administration have begun to raise a hue and
cry over alleged mass internment camps in China’s northwestern Xinjiang
where supposedly up to one million ethnic Uyghur Chinese are being
detained and submitted to various forms of ‘re-education.’ Several
things about the charges are notable, not the least that all originate
from Western media and ‘democracy’ NGOs like Human Rights Watch, whose
record for veracity leaves something to be desired.”
Tarring
China with the brush of intolerance will be hard work. The colophon of
the earliest dated, printed book in existence–a ninth century Chinese
translation of the Diamond Sutra–reads, ‘For universal free
distribution.’ Though two-thirds of Chinese are atheists in the Western
sense and one-fourth are non-religious Taoists, their Constitution
guarantees freedom of worship in government-sanctioned religious
organizations and their government supports seventy-four seminaries, one
thousand seven hundred Tibetan monasteries, three thousand religious
organizations, 85,000 religious sites and 300,000 full time Catholic,
Protestant, Buddhist, Ancient Chinese, Taoist and Muslim clergy. The
2000 census recorded 20.3 million Muslims: 1.25 million Kazakhs, 8.4
million Uyghurs and 9.8 million Hui. Neither the Kazakh nor the Hui
Muslims have caused trouble.
Mr.
Fuller is on a first name basis with Uyghur leaders. Ruslan Tsarni,
uncle of the Boston Marathon Tsarnaev brothers, was married to Fuller’s
daughter Samantha in the 1990s and was an employee of the CIA-contracted
RAND Corporation. In media interviews in the aftermath of the 2013
Boston bombing, ‘Uncle Ruslan’ gave an overdone performance condemning
his two nephews while verifying the FBI’s portrayal of them. The media
ignored the fact that Tsarni not only worked as a consultant for CIA
fronts like RAND and USAID and as a contractor for Halliburton but even
established an entity called the Congress of Chechen International
Organizations which supported Islamic separatist militants in the
Caucasus, using Fuller’s Maryland home as its registered address.
After deploying
Islamists in Pakistan in the 2000s to disrupt Chinese infrastructure,
in Myanmar to disrupt the China-Myanmar energy assets and across Sudan,
Libya and Syria to choke off China’s oil and gas Fuller said, “Uyghurs
are indeed in touch with Muslim groups outside Xinjiang, some of them
have been radicalized into broader jihadist politics in the process, a
handful were earlier involved in guerrilla or terrorist training in
Afghanistan, and some are in touch with international Muslim mujahideen
struggling for Muslim causes of independence worldwide.” Fuller assigned
them to capitalize on the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, weaken trust in
China’s government and provoke repression that Western media could
condemn as ‘human rights crimes.’ Three weeks before the Games he
sponsored a conference, “East Turkestan: 60 Years under Communist
Chinese Rule” and the National Endowment for Democracy, NED,[4] handled PR for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) the emigré group headed by billionaire Rebiya Kadeer[5] and her husband, Sidiq Rouzi, a Voice of America employee. Their ideology[6] is familiar.
On
the eve of the Olympics an attempted suicide bombing on a China Southern
Airlines flight was thwarted but terrorists in Kashgar, Southern
Xinjiang, killed sixteen police officers four days before the opening.
The next year Uighur extremists murdered another two hundred in Urumqi
but Western media refused to characterize the attacks as acts of
terrorism and the violence continued:
October 2013: ETIM attack at Tiananmen Square in Beijing killed five.
February 2014: A knife attack at a train station in Kunming killed 30.
April 2014: A knife and bomb attack in Urumqi killed three and wounded 79.
May 2014: Two cars crashed into a market in Urumqi and the attackers lobbed explosives, killing 31 people.
September 2014: Suicide bombers and clashes left 50 people dead and 50 injured.
October 2015: A knife attack on a coalmine killed 50.
Then
came the Syrian War and, on the sidelines of a May 2017 meeting between
Syrian and Chinese businessmen in Beijing, Syria’s ambassador[7]
to China startled reporters with a surprising number, 5000, the number
of Uighurs he claimed were fighting in Syria for various jihadist
groups. Many have since returned to China and 12,900 (Uyghur families
insist on traveling and staying together, even in prison) have been
sentenced to up to two years, mostly for illegally entering the country
and are held in re-education camps. The NED is not hiding its
involvement:
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY
China (Xinjiang/East Turkistan). ASIA China [Xinjiang/East Turkistan] Advocacy and Outreach for Uyghur Human Rights Project. $310,000.
To raise awareness about Uyghur human rights issues and to bring such issues to prominence globally. The grantee will research, document, and provide independent and accurate information about human rights violations affecting Uyghurs in China. It will also conduct outreach to Chinese citizens in an effort to improve the human rights conditions for Uyghurs. The grantee will organize leadership and advocacy training seminars for Uyghur youth; monitor, document, and highlight human rights violations in East Turkestan/Xinjiang; and strengthen advocacy on Uyghur issues at the United Nations and the European Parliament.
Faced
with an armed insurrection, most states impose martial law or a state
of emergency, as Britain did in Malaya from 1945 to 1957 and the US did
with the Patriot Act, but China decided–despite popular outrage–to write
off its losses and play the long game.
China founded The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO),[1]
a political, economic, and security alliance, with Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, who stopped funneling
money and providing corridors for Uyghur terrorists to move into and out
of China. The SCO has since expanded to include India and Pakistan and
Iran has begun the accession process, making it world’s largest security
pact in both area and population and the only one whose membership
includes four nuclear powers.
Forming
the SCO was easier than assuaging public outrage. An unheard-of lawsuit
by victims’ relatives accused the government of reverse discrimination
so they stepped up security and published their objectives:
restore law and order
prevent terrorists from inflicting more violence
use ‘high-intensity regulation’
contain the spread of terrorism beyond Xinjiang
purge extremists and separatists from society.
Neighborhood
community centres–labelled ‘concentration camps’ in the western
press–educate rural Uyghurs about the perils of religious extremism and
train them for urban jobs.
In
2013 President Xi toured Eurasia and proposed the Belt and Road
Initiative for three billion people, designed to create the biggest
market in the world with unparalleled development potential, and built a
gas pipeline to China from Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
and Kyrgyzstan which, like China’s other western pipelines, power lines,
and rail and road networks, runs through the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region.
Beijing
then moved jobs to Xinjiang and opened vocational schools to train
rural youth in literacy and job skills and swore to protect its
neighbors from terrorism in exchange for their pledge to reciprocate. To
create jobs in the province Xi directed investment from forty-five of
China’s top companies and eighty Fortune 500 manufacturers to Urumqi.
Corporate investment increased from $10 billion in 2015 to $15 billion
in 2017 and infrastructure investments of $70 billion in both 2017 and
2018 lifted the annual goods shipments past 100 million tons with a goal
of hourly departures to fifteen European capitals. Half a million
Uyghurs have relocated from remote villages to cities and, as a reult,
600,000 Uighurs were lifted out of poverty in 2016, 312,000 in 2017 and
400,000 in 2018. The last poor Uyghurs will join the cash economy in mid-2020.
The
real war is being fought in our media and an engineer encountered a
classic example in the heartbreaking tale of savage destruction of
historic Kashgar Old Town, which The Washington Post called, “An Ancient Culture, Bulldozed Away,” The New York Times, “To Protect an Ancient City, China Moves to Raze It,” TIME, “Tearing Down Old Kashgar: Another Blow to the Uighurs.” Professor Patrik Meyer takes up the story:
As a tourist, those headlines resonate with me, too. I wish to keep the Kashgar Old Town untouched and to be able to wander along its narrow, shaded alleys lined by adobe houses. However, if I were responsible for the living conditions and safety of its residents, as well as for the modernization of Kashgar writ large, then I would see Beijing’s transformation in a more positive light. Given the almost unprecedented access I was granted between 2010 and 2013 to conduct ethno-political research in Xinjiang and my robust background in civil engineering, I consider myself well positioned to provide a broader perspective on the issues raised by Western journalists when criticizing the KOT renewal project. A simple survey of Western media outlets shows that harsh criticism of Beijing’s renewal of the KOT is built on four central arguments: demolition of Uyghur’s historical heritage, destruction of Uyghur’s social fabric, absence of Uyghurs’ voices in the project, and the sufficient seismic performance of existing houses. Moreover, Western journalists often argue that the goal of Beijing’s works in Kashgar is to weaken, or even erase, Uyghur identity, not to improve their living conditions.
KOT’s historical value is indisputable, but it is not as significant as assumed by the Western critics. While some houses are centennial, with charismatic courtyards and beautifully decorated wooden frames, the majority are a poorly built patchwork of old and new mud and masonry walls. Hence, while the old town as whole has significant historical value, many of its houses are not historically valuable. Kashgar is one of the few Chinese cities where the old town is being partly preserved and remodeled following traditional standards. There is indeed some damage being caused to the Uyghurs’ historical heritage, but it is far less significant than the Western critics claim and it is intended to modernize Kashgar, not to “Demolish the Uyghur History” as argued by the Smithsonian. The second dominant argument, the tearing apart the Uyghur identity, is also happening, but again, not to the extent or for the purpose that it is being reported in the West. China’s fast modernization results in numerous communities being reshaped and displaced, including the one in the KOT. However, when asked for their view about Beijing’s renewal of the KOT, most of its dwellers welcome it. And for good reasons. Their houses are often very small, poorly ventilated, dusty and dark, have no toilets, and are unpractical. It is those who do not live in the old town–Uyghurs, tourist, and Western journalists–who are most critical of the renewal project. Hence, I believe that the KOT project is causing Uyghur identity change, not its destruction, as argued by the West.
As for the third argument, that the Uyghurs have no say in the project, it is again only partially correct. Their voice is indeed absent from the upper levels of the project’s decision making process. However, the majority of homeowners decide whether to stay or leave the KOT and how to proceed with the repair of their houses. They are offered three options, the first being to permanently move to a free, new apartment larger their old house. Second, they can opt to let the government tear down the old house and replace it with a new structure for free, which does not included finishing works such as flooring, windows, and decoration. During the time that this work is being done, the families can rent an apartment subsidized by the government at about $900 per year. In case the house is deemed to be structurally sound, the homeowners are given a subsidy (about US$90/m2) to upgrade the house themselves. Additional subsidies are also offered for those willing to finish the façade using traditional Uyghur style. While there might be some irregularities within this system, most homeowners affected by the renewal of the KOT have the choice to stay or leave, which the Western critics seems to ignore.
Finally, a fourth dominant argument against Beijing’s KOT project is that the old town must be seismically safe because it has survived hundreds of years without being destroyed. Again, this is only partly true. There are a number of houses that were built properly over a hundred years ago, but the majority have been either poorly built or structurally modified in the last 30-50 years, making them prone to structural damage in case of a significant seismic event. Based on my expertise in seismic performance of adobe structures and my countless visits to the KOT, I can confirm that it is not feasible to retrofit most of its houses because of their deficient structural condition.
But
the destruction of KOT was small beer compared to the onslaught that
began in August, 2018, at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination, then conducting its regular review of China’s compliance
with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination. Gay McDougall, an American lay member of an
independent UN body, claimed that China was interning one million
Muslims. The OHCHR’s official news release
showed that its sole American member made the only mention of alleged
re-education camps and said she was “deeply concerned” about “credible
reports” alleging mass detentions of millions of Uighurs Muslim
minorities in “internment camps.” AP
reported that McDougall ‘did not specify a source for that information
in her remarks at the hearing’ and video from the session confirms that
McDougall provided no source for her claim. Though she failed to name a
single source Reuters reported, “UN SAYS IT HAS CREDIBLE REPORTS THAT CHINA HOLDS A MILLION UIGHURS IN SECRET CAMPS.”
China
then invited the UN, the EU and the World Muslim Congress to send
inspectors to for independent investigations. Eleven muslim nations
accepted while the EU and Turkey declined. The Muslim Council’s report commended China for its treatment of Muslims and one inspector, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, gave an interview to The Times of India:
“During this visit, I did not find any instances of forced labour or cultural and religious repression,” Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the Charge d‘affaires, Pakistan‘s Embassy in China, told the state-run Global Times on Thursday.
“The imams we met at the mosques and the students and teachers at the Xinjiang Islamic Institute told us that they enjoy freedom in practicing Islam and that the Chinese government extends support for maintenance of mosques all over Xinjiang,” said Baloch, who visited Xinjiang as part of delegation of diplomats.
“Similarly, I did not see any sign of cultural repression. The Uighur culture as demonstrated by their language, music and dance is very much part of the life of the people of Xinjiang,” she said.
Asked about the security situation in Xinjiang, which has been “beset by terrorism”, Baloch said, “We learned that the recent measures have resulted in improvement of the security situation in Xinjiang and there have been no incidents of terrorism in recent months.”
“The counter-terrorism measures being taken are multidimensional and do not simply focus on law enforcement aspects. Education, poverty alleviation and development are key to the counter-terrorism strategy of the Chinese government,” she said.
Xinjiang‘s regional government invited diplomatic envoys as well as representatives from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Thailand, and Kuwait following reports about detention of thousands of Uighur and other Muslims in massive education camps.
The UN‘s Geneva-based Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last year said that it was alarmed by “numerous reports of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities” being detained in Xinjiang region and called for their immediate release.
Estimates about them “range from tens of thousands to upwards of a million,” it had said.
China defended the camps, saying they are re-education camps aimed at de-radicalising sections of the Uighur population from extremism and separatism.
The US and several other countries besides UN officials have expressed concern over the camps.
China has been carrying out massive crackdown on the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in Xinjiang province, where Uyghurs who formed majority in the region were restive over the increasing settlements of Han community.
Pakistan and several other Muslim countries faced criticism about their silence over China‘s crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang.
China has about 20 million Muslims who are mostly Uighurs, an ethnic group of Turkic origin, and Hui Muslims, who are of the Chinese ethnic origin. While Uighurs lived in Xinjiang, bordering Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Hui Muslims resided in Ningxia province.
A recent report in the Global Times said China passed a five-year plan to ‘sinicize Islam‘ in a bid to make it compatible with its version of socialism.
“This is China‘s important act to explore ways of governing religion in modern countries,” the report said.
Baloch said the delegation was given full and open access to the three centres that they visited in Kashgar and Hotan.
“The training program includes teaching of national common language (Chinese), law and constitution and vocational skills. The students also participate in recreational activities like sports, music and dance. We witnessed several skill classes being offered in these centres,” she said.
“During the visits to these centres, we had the opportunity to interact with both the management and the students. We observed the students to be in good physical health. The living facilities are fairly modern and comfortable with separate dormitories for men and women. They are being served halal food,” she said.
She said the Uighur language is being used in official establishments, airports, subway stations, police stations or hotels.
“Even the copies of the Koran that we saw in the mosques and the Islamic centre were translated into the Uighur language. The most visible sign of protection of Uighur culture by the government is the government-run bilingual kindergarten schools where children learn Putonghua as well as Uighur language and culture from a very young age,” she said.
A Chinese friend, Xiao Zhang, writes,
“I have a friend who just came back from Xinjiang and he has visited some of the re-education camps and talked with people there. He told me that Uighurs really received vocational education inside, not kidding, and cannot get out until completion of courses. The government in Xinjiang simply kept all the potential “trouble makers” they could find in detention based on the reports they received from various sources, among which reports from communities make up a major part. The government has known for years that poorly-educated, unemployed people are more easily radicalized. Now they take actions to ensure they won’t make trouble. This is another example of Chinese style of government behaviour, just like one-child policy.”
Another wrote,
“I have personally been to Xinjiang for around 20 days this summer. I went totally on my own. I did not sign up in any travel agencies for any travel groups. I did not drive but took the train, the bus, or the car, or the horse. From my personal experience, firstly, the Uyghurs are not the only minority in Xinjiang. I saw Mongols, Kazakhs, Hui Muslims and many other minorities. Here I mean Xinjiang is not a place that is dominated by Uyghurs, even if we don’t take the Han Chinese into consideration. It is a far more diverse place. Secondly, Uyghurs keep their different habits, traditions, language, and religions that are exotic to most Chinese. But they also face westernisation in clothing and habits just like people in other areas of China. People worry about the preservation of their cultures across China.
Interestingly, people in Urumqi were hardly dressed in a very religious way, although there were a great number of Muslims. I was told that the local government regarded some of the religious clothing as extremism, for they were not consistent with the local tradition. Maybe what they meant was that the local Muslims should not be dressed like extremists following strict religious laws, since there was no such law in China. People were mostly dressed in a quite modern look, or in their traditional clothing, yet no women will cover their face with black silk.
Thirdly, there is distrust between different ethnic groups. I have to admit that, because I feel that even people of the same ethnicity do not trust each other, let alone the distrust between ethnic groups. In Urumqi, the security check is very strict and almost everywhere. At the gate of a park in the city, I passed the checkpoint within seconds, but a Uyghur-looking man after me took much longer time to pass. Even though the security guard herself also seems to be Uyghur, she still checked the man’s ID cards and computer profiles very carefully. In many other places, I also feel the ‘privilege’ of being a Han Chinese. In Ili, where the East Turkestan Republic is located, I was told that Uyghur police officers were killed in an ATM nearby a year ago by the Uyghur terrorists with long swords. The terrorists were hoping to acquire guns from the officer. So the city restricted all activity in late night. Anyone who are out after midnight will be considered suspicious and the police can check their ID in the street or in the office. Here I want to make further explanation, for in most Chinese cities, it is totally safe to hang out at night at any time you want, and the police won’t patrol in the street checking your ID unless someone complains about noise and etc.
Surely there is racism arising in the distrust. In Urumqi, I asked why ethnic minorities were treated in an unfriendly way and they tried to tell me that it was because of the very unique situations in Xinjiang. Sounds like the discrimination is natural but I cannot judge based on what I learnt. A taxi driver told me that it was the Islam belief that makes the Uyghur not in harmony with the recent society led by the Communist Party and that the religion was toxic. I thought he was referring to Islamic extremism but in a seemingly biased way.
Fourth, I tried to learn about people’s attitudes towards the 2009 riots and got similar responses from Uyghurs and Han. They both feared the riots and tried to tell me how horrible that day was. Some Uyghurs who were Urumqi locals claimed that all those terrorists were not local to the city and tried to kill all the citizens with regardless of ethnicity which made them dreadful. In my journey, most of the Uyghurs I met were friendly farmers, some of whom were even willing to accommodate me for free. On one time, I was taking a 6-hour bus, I talked with a Uyghur guy sitting next to me. We almost talked about everything, including our hometowns, our families and so on. The guy was very talkative and friendly, leaving me a very good impression towards the Uyghur.
Lastly, I mean, I never heard of the re-education camp. So I guess this was not related to normal people’s life. The minorities I met were usually very talkative and complained to me about many things including the policies, the government, the relation between the Han and the minorities, except the camp. I think most Chinese people just want to live a peaceful life no matter in Xinjiang or outside Xinjiang. I was so lucky to travel in Xinjiang, because the scenery I spotted was so great that I would probably pay another visit in the future.
“Xinjiang appears to have no criminality whatsoever and the police in the streets are unarmed. The checkpoints aren’t too time consuming if you have a Chinese ID card and know the security guards from daily contact. At the checkpoints we visited, on the other hand, annoyed police or security guards struggled with the protocol on how to handle foreigners. We all drank until late and went home without the slightest issue. Our group was coming from many places in the West where stumbling out of a bar late at night can often be quite dangerous. We had to admit that you feel safe at night in Xinjiang. Completely safe. Most places just asked for our passports, took a look, and let us through, sometimes asking which country we came from. A few guards didn’t want to deal with the hassle and just told us to bypass the metal scanner and get out of their sight. As everything in China, enforcement is sometimes spotty. But those were the exceptions; discipline in the surveillance apparatus was generally quite high. We walked leisurely through the city, and while we attracted some attention, we were neither stopped, nor stared at, nor (I think) followed. As I mentioned, there are police everywhere; standing, walking, and driving. They’re not aggressive, or intimidating, or stopping people at random. They’re just there making themselves present.
One big difference between Turpan and Urumqi was that, again, most people were Uyghur. But the police were Uyghur, too. The people manning the checkpoints and the “convenience police stations,” and driving the patrol cars were all Uyghur. It’s worth emphasizing that whatever is happening in Xinjiang is not just an invasion by a foreign army hell-bent on annoying the locals. The locals are quite annoyed, indeed, but it’s their fellow tribesmen doing the grunt work. Or most of it, anyway. I must say that the Uyghur police we saw were more easy-going than the Han police we saw in Urumqi. More chill. Less zealous, you could say. At any rate, they never gave us a hard time, and we got plenty of smiles and easy treatment. Meanwhile France has soldiers, not police, patrolling the streets of Paris. Considering his post-resignation declaration about radical Islam replacing the Republic, I have to wonder what the former French Minister of the Interior, Gérard Collomb, would make of Xinjiang?
China’s Ambassador to Kazakhstan talked to local journalists:
Since the 1990s, the three evil forces – terrorism, religious extremism and separatism– have been a scourge in China’s Xinjiang and implemented a series of appalling terrorist attacks, including the incident in Urumqi on July 5, 2009. What should we do? Aside from taking strong measures, we also need to remove the soil for the three evil forces. All these measures aim to help people who were instigated by the three evil forces or influenced by extremism to come back to reason and to return to society to live a normal life. In order to achieve this purpose, China set up the training centers in accordance with China’s Constitution, the Counterterrorism Law and the Regulations of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on De-radicalization and by referring to the successful experience on counterterrorism from other countries.
The training centers in Xinjiang do not target any ethnic group or certain religion and all people there are treated equally without discrimination. There are two criteria for whether an individual should be in the centers – whether they participated in illegal activities of the three evil forces and whether they pose a threat to the society.
For example, some individuals used social media, such as WhatsApp to promote jihad online or spread videos on violence in circumstances that were not serious enough to constitute a crime. These people go to the training centers. Some people, who received prison sentence for participating in terrorist or extremist activities but refuse to abandon extremism and plan to take revenge, also need to go to the training centers.
To put it simply, people who obey laws and regulations and commit no wrong deeds do not need to worry about “going to the training centers” no matter which ethnic group they are from and whatever their religion is. The training center is not prison, but a school for the public. There is only one goal for the school – to educate people and to stop good people becoming bad. What do people learn in the center? They learn Putonghua to make sure that all Chinese citizens can understand, can speak and can write the national common language. This is the basic requirement and responsibility for a citizen from any civilized country.
Trainees learn knowledge on laws so that all Chinese citizens understand that they live in the 21st Century where laws are put in place and strictly enforced and anyone who violates the laws will be held accountable. The trainees should have the basic awareness of laws so they are not so easily tempted by extremism. They also learn vocational skills at the centers, including pastry making, weaving and textile printing, shoes-making and fixing machinery, hairdressing and make-up and e-commerce. Trainees can choose one to two skills to learn based on their interests. There will be more chance for them to get employment and less risk of becoming involving with the three evil forces.
With the work of these training centers being implemented in order, more and more trainees have graduated from the centers and returned to society and earned a better life. There is no torture in these training centers but only protection and respect for human rights. In contrast to the fake news, trainees’ religions and traditions are fully respected – all the centers offer various kinds of food, including halal food for them to choose. There are different entertainment activities, including singing songs, dancing, chanting or playing basketball for their physical health. Speaking of human rights, let me ask a question, if a modern person could not understand or write the country’s common language, has no idea about modern marriage or zero vocational skills and only enslaves his wife at home or is mistreated by her arranged husband and are used or brainwashed by the three evil forces, how could you say he or she understands human rights?
All the facts have told that the work of training centers has been effective and helpful. For now, the stability and situation in China’s Xinjiang has been improved and there have been no violent incidents in the region for more than two years. It is not only a positive influence on Xinjiang’s work on maintaining security but also makes a great contribution to safeguarding the stability of the adjacent Central Asia area.
Shohrat Zakir, Chairman of the Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region:
Xinjiang has established a training model with professional vocational training institutions as the platform: learning the country’s common language, legal knowledge, vocational skills, along with de-extremization education as the main content, with achieving employment as the key direction. The vocational training institutions have set up departments of teaching, management, medical care, logistics and security, and allocated a corresponding number of faculty, class advisors, medical, catering, logistics and security staff. In the process of learning and training, the trainees will advance from learning the country’s common language to learning legal knowledge and vocational skills. Firstly, the trainees will take learning the country’s common language as the basis to improve their communication abilities, gain modern science knowledge and enhance their understanding of Chinese history, culture and national conditions. The teaching follows standardized plans, textbooks, materials and systems. The trainees are taught in various methods suited to their literacy to raise their abilities to use the country’s common language as soon as possible. Secondly, the learning of legal knowledge is taken as a key part of cultivating the trainees’ awareness of the nation, citizenship and rule of law. Legal experts are hired to lecture on the Constitution, the criminal law and the civil law, etc., and judges, prosecutors and lawyers are invited to teach the criminal law, the law on public security administration, the anti-terrorism law, the marriage law, the education law and Xinjiang’s de-extremization regulations. Thirdly, vocational learning is taken as a key way to help trainees find employment. Courses on clothing and footwear making, food processing, electronic product assembly, typesetting and printing, hairdressing and e-commerce have been set up to suit local social needs and job market. Multi-skill training is provided to trainees who have the desire and capability to learn, so that they acquire one to two vocational skills upon graduation. Businesses in garment making, mobile phone assembly and ethnic cuisine catering are arranged to offer trainees practical opportunities. In the meantime, they are paid basic incomes and a bonus. The mechanism has taken shape in which the trainees can ‘learn, practice and earn money.
In daily life, vocational institutions and schools strictly implement the spirit of laws and regulations, including the Constitution and religious affairs regulations, and respect and protect the customs and habits of various ethnic groups and their beliefs in diet and daily life. Faculties of the institutions and schools also try their best to ensure and meet the trainees’ needs in study, life, and entertainment on the basis of free education. The cafeteria prepares nutritious free diets, and the dormitories are fully equipped with radio, TV, air conditioning, bathroom and shower. Indoor and outdoor sports venues for basketball, volleyball and table tennis have been built, along with reading rooms, computer labs, film screening rooms, as well as performance venues such as small auditoriums and open-air stages. Various activities such as contests on speech, writing, dancing, singing and sports are organized. Many trainees have said that they were previously affected by extremist thought and had never participated in such kinds of art and sports activities, and now they have realized that life can be so colorful.
Moreover, the vocational institutions and schools pay high attention to the trainees’ mental health and helped them solve problems in life. They not only provide professional psychological counseling services, but also duly deal with complaints from the trainees and their families. All this shows that the management of the vocational institutions and schools are people-oriented.
China’s censor banned
the use of ‘anti-Islamic’ words on social media after a clash that
involved Muslims fighting at a toll booth went viral. Weibo blocked
phrases disrespectful to Muslims and search engines block insults,
mockery and defamatory terms, “It’s time to remove radical phrases that
discriminate against Islam and are biased against Muslims to prevent
worsening online hatred towards them. Those phrases severely undermine
religious harmony and ethnic unity,” said Xiong Kunxin, a professor at
Beijing’s Minzu University of China in Beijing. “China closes streets
for Eid prayers, pays for Muslim Chinese to make the hajj and
censors the internet and social media to prevent criticisms of Islam
that might inflame social tensions. The idea that they should suddenly
demand that the Muslims turn over their Qurans and Prayer mats is
classic fake news and state propaganda. As a result, peace may break out
and the recent deluge of fake news from Western corporate media paints
the Chinese government as a gross violator of human rights while the
Empire has droned, bombed, starved and killed millions of Muslim
children, women from Afghanistan to Yemen and displaced millions more.”
Translation: “The center provides professional training in clothing making, food preparation and IT. The guy named Ailijiang Masaidi said he received RMB 2800/month and sending RM2600 home. His family is very happy. The 2nd guy named Ahbulaihaidi is now working in a shoe making factory. He said he has mastered most skills and would get RMB 4000-5000/month soon, that would means RMB 60-70k a year. His technical manager says his company fully supports the factory’s effort in Hetian. The 2nd guy says that clothing factory has been set up in Yutian. The lady named Humakuli says she now work in a factory near her home Kashgar. She is working and learning at the same time. Training includes cultural learning about history about Xinjiang and about Zhonghua civilization. The narratives then says the center provides cultural and sports activities including painting, dance and Peking opera etc. The guy who dress as consort Yang is Abdula. He said every one admires him now because he is the best singer. Before he attend the center he was told that all sort of entertainment including singing and dancing is sinful. He said his life used to be gray and now is colorful. Then Kashgar National Congress Deputy Chairman Mijidi said he wants the people to learn about the traditional culture of the Uighur people. Singing and dancing are all acceptable.” The program was implemented in 2014, and since then no terrorist attack has happened in China. So it was considered a major success and was expanded greatly.
Notes
[1] Red Star Over China. Edgar Snow. 1937. Atlantic Books.
[4]
In 2017 the American government funded 48 anti-China groups and
organizations through the National Endowment for Democracy, NED, to
oppose and harm China’s reputation and to create social and ethnic
tensions and conflicts within China. https://www.ned.org.
[5]
A Chinese friend provided her background: She had 11 children, which
confirms that Uighurs were not subject to China’s One Child Policy.. She
was born to a family with no background. She started her business with a
roadside convenience store and worked her way to be THE richest person
in the province of Xinjiang. This proved Uighurs can earn their business
success through hard work. She was a senior member of the People’s
Congress of Xinjiang, and a senior member of the National People’s
Congress of China. This shows Uighurs were not excluded from political
life in China. She was arrested because she provided funding to Eastern
Turkestan Independence Movement, labeled as terrorist organization by
the US.
[6]
“We have to conquer our own country and purify it of all infidels.
Then we should conquer the infidels’ countries and spread Islam. The
infidels who are usurping our countries have announced war against Islam
and Muslims, forcing Muslims to abandon Islam and change their
beliefs.” Abdullah Mansour, leader of the Uyghur ETIM. “The Duty of
Faith and Support,” Voice of Islam/al-Fajr Media Center, August 26,
2009.
[7] “ISIS militants from China’s Muslim minority group vow to return home and ‘shed blood like rivers’ in the terror group’s first video to target the country By GARETH DAVIES FOR Daily Mail Online PUBLISHED 08:39 BST, 1 March 2017.
Conclusion
The Uyghur “situation” in the Xinjiang state of China is a “red Herring” designed to create friction in that area to destabilize China. It is a way to interfere in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative that is creating a strong and unified Asia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping six years ago launched New Silk Roads, now better known as the Belt and Road Initiative, the largest, most ambitious, pan-Eurasian infrastructure project of the 21st century.
Under the Trump administration, Belt and Road has been utterly demonized 24/7: a toxic cocktail of fear and doubt, with Beijing blamed for everything from plunging poor nations into a “debt trap” to evil designs of world domination.
Now finally comes what might be described as the institutional American response to Belt and Road: the Blue Dot Network.
Blue Dot is described, officially, as promoting global, multi-stakeholder “sustainable infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.”
It is a joint project of the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, in partnership with Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
Now compare it with what just happened this same week at the inauguration of the China International Import Expo in Shanghai.
As Xi stressed:
“To date, China has signed 197 documents on Belt and Road cooperation with 137 countries and 30 international organizations.”
This is what Blue Dot is up against – especially across the Global South. Well, not really. Global South diplomats, informally contacted, are not exactly impressed. They might see Blue Dot as an aspiring competitor to BRI, but one that’s moved by private finance – mostly, in theory, American.
They scoff at the prospect that Blue Dot will include some sort of ratings mechanism that will be positioned to vet and downgrade Belt and Road projects. Washington will spin it as a “certification” process setting “international standards” – implying Belt and Road is sub-standard. Whether Global South nations will pay attention to these new ratings is an open question.
- A “Blue Dot” Barely Visible from China’s “New Silk Roads”
As China’s only threat to the current global power-balance is economic, the United States is threatened by China’s rise. Thus there are numerous efforts made to create strife and destabilize Asia.
Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Millennial youth in Hong Kong.
Pork producers in Guangdong.
Western markets for Huawei products.
Taiwan “independence”.
To this end, neocons have been active with the CIA and NED / NID to create strife in the region. This includes a full-on propaganda onslaught, where most Americans are becoming conditioned for yet another proxy war in a far-off land.
This is welcomed by the neocons as [1] a magnificent source of personal (tax free) revenue, and [2] it’s “just” another in a long series of proxy wars. The thing is, China is not a third-world country and they will only accept CIA “pro-democracy” regime change activities only for so long.
It is possible that continued CIA psyops within China could result in a backlash of Nuclear Armageddon on American soil.
This is what New York City will look like if America tries to initiate another proxy war with a major nuclear-armed superpower. They are a serious, serious nation. They DO NOT PLAY. Do not be under the misguided impression that an American nuclear armed cruiser could sit off the coast of Taiwan and lob nuclear tipped missiles into China. China and Russia would both team up to bitch-slap America into the stone age. Take heed.
Another great link showing just who is behind this CIA narrative…
Claims that China has detained millions of Uyghur Muslims are based largely on two studies. A closer look at these papers reveals US government backing, absurdly shoddy methodologies, and a rapture-ready evangelical researcher named Adrian Zenz.
By Ajit Singh and Max Blumenthal
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Some Fun Videos
Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While
there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
I believe that it is time for all Americans to take a serious re-look at what America stands for; our “democracy”, and our way of life as it exists today. Is it really all that great?
Is America living up to the grand ideals set forth in the “Great Experiment of 1776”?
Or, it is just going to be yet another big mistake heading towards the “great collapse” of society?
I think that a serious reappraisal of [1] what America is, [2] what notions it is founded upon, and [3] how it is structured needs to be re-thought out. It is time to take a good long hard look at [4] what America has become, and [5] how we got here. And [6] what needs to change once [7] corrective measures have been put in place.
I ask this.
Really, is democracy; “rule by popularity” ideal for Americans?
A typical American, inappropriately dressed (obviously), shopping at Wal-Mart. Really, is democracy; “rule by popularity” ideal for Americans? Or should America be run by talented people who earned their role through merit rather than popularity? Think about it.
Can the Constitution be protected from “well meaning”, or “the greedy”, or “evil” such as President Wilson, or FDR, or Obama from rewriting and re-interpreting it to fit their various nefarious ends?
Well, can it?
Because if we cannot, using the current governmental structure, then we must change it into something different.
Indeed, simply hoping that our progeny will be “ever vigilant” is just wishful thinking, and history has proven, for certain, that it does not work. And at that, we must well understand that it will NEVER WORK in the future.
Can the Constitution be protected from “well meaning”, or “the greedy”, or “evil” such as President Wilson, or FDR, or Obama from rewriting and re-interpreting it to fit their various nefarious ends?
What’s going to stop another Wilson, another FDR, another Obama, another Bush from rewriting the Constitution, or reinterpreting it to fit their nefarious ends? What’s it going to take?
What is it going to take?
But my thoughts are this matter are perhaps a little too harsh to the general American public. No one wants to hear that a democracy is flawed, or rather so flawed that America will collapse upon itself within a decade. No one wants to hear this.
Americans have a Pavlovian response to the phrase “freedom and democracy,” and it’s no surprise that so many of them are rooting for the protesters in Hong Kong.
-World Affairs Blog
Well, others, better word-smiths than myself have some things to say about this subject. One of the best comes from Mr. Noonan in his article titled “A Clean Break“. He wrote this article on 29 September 2019, and I personally think that it is brilliant. He isn’t so prone to offending people as I am.
For I earnestly believe that America has neither "democracy" nor "freedom". We just parrot the words without talking a good look around us at what America has devolved into.
Here I present it for your viewing pleasure.
This article is copied as written without much editing aside from some paragraph formatting and the fonts used in this template.
I added some "pull away" text for highlighting and maybe interjected on or two personal comments along the way (though you will be able to easily see that they are from your's truly.)
I have added my own pictures to help illustrate some of his fine points.
After reading the article, I would suggest the reader go to his original article and read some of his other works. This fellow is brilliant and a word-smith.
All credit to the author Mr. Noonan writing in Blogs for Victory.
As the last few weeks have played out in politics, it has forced me to do a complete re-assessment of how I’ve looked at the world for my entire adult life.
To be sure, this reconsideration has been ongoing for about a decade, or maybe a little more, but it has really crystalized out recently. It is time for a complete, clean break with what went before and to chart a new path forward.
As the last few weeks have played out in politics, it has forced me to do a complete re-assessment of how I’ve looked at the world for my entire adult life. It is time for a complete, clean break with what went before and to chart a new path forward. Maybe the American Constitution is flawed in some very serious ways, and it is up to use to seek out those flaws and eliminate them completely.
What Hunter Biden did is nothing new; it isn’t in the least remarkable.
He was merely the recipient of what people in his position routinely receive: a special deal which allows him to be very rich for little or no effort.
Hunter Biden was merely the recipient of what people in his position routinely receive: a special deal which allows him to be very rich for little or no effort.
This way his life can be devoted to what really matters: hanging around with other rich people, attending conferences and galas and generally having a swell time.
And if he decided to follow in Daddy’s political footsteps, the way would be cleared for him in some safe (Congressional) seat.
If you start looking into it – as Matt and I did in our 2007 book, Caucus of Corruption – you just see that it is everywhere. In that book, for political reasons, we concentrated on the Democrat side of the aisle (given that our goal was to show the absurdity of the Democrats 2006 campaign against a so-called “GOP culture of corruption”), but we could easily have written it about politics, in general.
If you start looking into it – as Matt and I did in our 2007 book, Caucus of Corruption – you just see that it is everywhere. In that book, for political reasons, we concentrated on the Democrat side of the aisle (given that our goal was to show the absurdity of the Democrats 2006 campaign against a so-called “GOP culture of corruption”), but we could easily have written it about politics, in general.
Corruption is everywhere in the United States.
What it really shows is that people who go into politics – with a few very rare exceptions – are in it for themselves.
The advent of legalized corruption launched by the Supreme Court empowers the superrich to fund their own presidential and congressional campaigns as pet projects, to foster pet policies, and to represent pet political enclaves. You have a billion, or even several hundred million, then purchase a candidate from the endless reserve bench of minor politicians and make him or her a star, a mouthpiece for any cause or purpose however questionable, and that candidate will mouth your script in endless political debates and through as many television spots as you are willing to pay for. All legal now.To compound the political felony, much, if not most, campaign financing is now carried out in secret, so that everyday citizens have a decreasing ability to determine to whom their elected officials are beholden and to whom they must now give special access. As recently as the 2014 election, the facts documented this government of influence by secrecy: “More than half of the general election advertising aired by outside groups in the battle for control of Congress,” according to the New York Times, “has come from organizations that disclose little or nothing about their donors, a flood of secret money that is now at the center of a debate over the line between free speech and corruption.”Of this handful, the largest by far is WPP (originally called Wire and Plastic Products; is there a metaphor here?), which has its headquarters in London and more than 150,000 employees in 2,500 offices spread around 107 countries. It, together with one or two conglomerating competitors, represents a fourth branch of government, vacuuming up former senators and House members and their spouses and families, key committee staff, former senior administration officials of both parties and several administrations, and ambassadors, diplomats, and retired senior military officers.WPP has swallowed giant public relations, advertising, and lobbying outfits such as Hill & Knowlton and BursonMarsteller, along with dozens of smaller members of the highly lucrative special interest and influence-manipulation world. Close behind WPP is the Orwellian-named Omnicom Group and another converger vaguely called the Interpublic Group of Companies. According to Mr. Edsall, WPP had billings last year of $72.3 billion, larger than the budgets of quite a number of countries.
– From the Gary Hart article, Gary Hart: America’s Founding Principles Are in Danger of Corruption
Corruption is part of democracy.
They want power and money and attention and fame and praise and so they go into politics – and almost invariably, if they are even modestly successful at winning office, wind up richer than they did when they started.
And it has been going on for a long time, folks; throughout all the Western democracies.
When you study the motivations of those in politics, you discover what drives them. They want power and money and attention and fame and praise and so they go into politics – and almost invariably, if they are even modestly successful at winning office, wind up richer than they did when they started. And it has been going on for a long time, folks; throughout all the Western democracies.
There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy.
It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day’s newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people.
In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland.
In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland.
If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine what it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences.
…extraordinary democratic coincidences.
Funny, huh? How people from the same family can keep winding up on top. Either they are families of geniuses, or someone is making things happen.
What are the odds that the son of an American Senator would be just the person an oil company needs to pay $50,000.00 a month to?
But, it just keeps happening and happening because, well, that’s just the way it is. And it wouldn’t be so bad if they were at least any good at being an oligarchy!
But they aren’t.
After you study this issue, you discover that it just keeps happening and happening. And the reason why, is because, well, that’s just the way it is. And it wouldn’t be so bad if they were at least any good at being an oligarchy!
Back in Chesterton’s day, there was the cold, hard reality that Winston Churchill was at least as talented as his father, Randolph. There was something there – there was, that is, a justification for Winston getting a leg up (and he did) to enter politics based on his father’s previous efforts.
These days, you get to benefit even if the previous person in line was a complete, rotten failure. And rotten failure is all we’ve gotten – and I’m getting very ecumenical in that, by the way. I’m not excusing anyone on partisan grounds any longer.
To be sure, the Republicans I voted for in the past were at least better than the Democrats I voted against (with the exception of McCain: knowing that I’m the co-author of Worst President, please understand that I believe McCain would have been even worse than Obama proved to be).
But they were only better in degree, not in kind.
Republicans are corrupt.
I mean, let’s face some cold, hard facts here: President Bush the Younger was re-elected with 51% of the vote in 2004 and came into his second term with high approval ratings and a Republican Congress.
With all this, he couldn’t even manage to de-fund Planned Parenthood or NPR!
I mean, let’s face some cold, hard facts here: President Bush the Younger was re-elected with 51% of the vote in 2004 and came into his second term with high approval ratings and a Republican Congress. With all this, he couldn’t even manage to de-fund Planned Parenthood or NPR! He did not care for the conservative cause(s), he only campaigned on them to hood-wink all of us for voting for him. He knew which levers to push, and which buttons to push.
It could have been done, easily, in a budget reconciliation between House and Senate and there would have been nothing the Democrats could have done about it.
On a more personal level, how can public service be promoted as an ideal to young people when this sewer corrupts our Republic? At this point in early twenty-first-century America, the greatest service our nation’s young people could provide is to lead an army of outraged young Americans armed with brooms on a crusade to sweep out the rascals and rid our capital of the money changers, rent seekers, revolving door dancers, and special interest deal makers and power brokers and send them back home to make an honest living, that is, if they still remember how to do so.Our ancestors did not depart Europe and elsewhere to seek freedom and self-government alone. They came to these shores to escape social and political systems that were corrosive and corrupt. Two and a quarter centuries later, we are returning to those European practices. We are in danger of becoming a different kind of nation, one our founders would not recognize and would deplore.In addition to the rise of the national security state, and the concentration of wealth and power in America, no development in modern times sets us apart more from the nation originally bequeathed to us than the rise of the special interest state.There is a Gresham’s law related to the republican ideal. Bad politics drives out good politics. Legalized corruption drives men and women of stature, honor, and dignity out of the halls of government. Self-respecting individuals cannot long tolerate a system of election and reelection so dependent on cultivating the favor of those known to expect access in return. Such a system is corrosive to the soul.
– From the Gary Hart article, Gary Hart: America’s Founding Principles Are in Danger of Corruption
This was “better” than a President Kerry who probably would have increased PP funding, but not really better in that the taxes of pro-life Americans were still going to fund something they consider abhorrent…and which Bush and the entire GOP campaigned on getting rid of.
I know some will say that this is just our GOP screwing it’s base and that the Democrats don’t do that. But, they do.
Both the republicans and the democrats are corrupt to the core. They only care about themselves and their little tribe of corrupt underlings. No one else.
Democrats are corrupt.
Obama was elected in 2008 with 53% of the vote and came into office with a Democrat Congress and a filibuster-proof Senate majority…and he couldn’t even get the single payer health system Democrats say they want.
It would have been easy.
The GOP could have done nothing to stop it. Enact a 10% payroll tax to fund it and just start passing out the cash to people who need health care.
A former senator from Colorado, Gary Hart, has written an extremely powerful and accurate critique of the unfathomably corrupt and crony state of the U.S. government in 2015. It covers several very important angles, including how appalled and disgusted our founders would be at the current state of affairs. How a once great republic has devolved into a thieving oligarchy in which the pursuit of money at power at the expense of the public good has been elevated into something that’s not just tolerated, but actually celebrated and encouraged amongst an ethics deprived status quo.
-Liberty Blitzkreig
That you and I know it would have been a disaster is neither here nor there – our side had lost the election and the Democrats won all the power they could possibly need to make all Democrat dreams come true…and they couldn’t do something like that.
Once you are in politics, it’s all on for party-on good times. You swindle and funnel money left and right and no one gives a damn about the American people. This includes both sides of the Congress, and all their cronies from the war-mongering generals to the intellectuals pushing climate change, and radical social change down our collective throats.
They instead wound up with the abomination known as Obamacare which even if it had worked as planned would still have left millions out in the cold and cost like the devil – but they couldn’t even write something that worked!
Meanwhile, not only did Obama not end the wars they campaigned against in 2008, he started new one’s…
droning the living sh** out of every poor, brown skinned person they could target (well, those they weren’t letting in as unvetted refugees, that is).
A public works bonanza that didn’t create any public works.
A slew of new spending which improved nothing.
This is what the Democrat voters get for investing their time and effort? Yep – in other words, nothing: but lots and lots for whomever is the crony. Democrat cronies made out like bandits. But your average purple-haired Democrat wanting more safe spaces? Not much.
This is what the Democrat voters get for investing their time and effort? Yep – in other words, nothing: but lots and lots for whomever is the crony. Democrat cronies made out like bandits. But your average purple-haired Democrat wanting more safe spaces? Not much.
By that standard, can anyone seriously doubt that our republic, our government, is corrupt? There have been Teapot Domes and financial scandals of one kind or another throughout our nation’s history. There has never been a time, however, when the government of the United States was so perversely and systematically dedicated to special interests, earmarks, side deals, log-rolling, vote-trading, and sweetheart deals of one kind or another.What brought us to this? A sinister system combining staggering campaign costs, political contributions, political action committees, special interest payments for access, and, most of all, the rise of the lobbying class.Worst of all, the army of lobbyists that started relatively small in the mid-twentieth century has now grown to big battalions of law firms and lobbying firms of the right, left, and an amalgam of both. And that gargantuan, if not reptilian, industry now takes on board former members of the House and the Senate and their personal and committee staffs. And they are all getting fabulously rich.Frustrated, irate discussions of this legalized corruption are met in the Washington media with a shrug. So what? Didn’t we just have dinner with that lobbyist for the banking industry, or the teachers’ union, or the airline industry at that well-known journalist’s house only two nights ago? Fine lady, and she used to be the chairman of one of those powerful committees. I gather she is using her Rolodex rather skillfully on behalf of her new clients. Illegal? Not at all. Just smart . . . and so charming.There is little wonder that Americans of the right and many in the middle are apoplectic at their government and absolutely, and rightly, convinced that the game of government is rigged in favor of the elite and the powerful. Occupiers see even more wealth rising to the top at the expense of the poor and the middle class. And Tea Partiers believe their tax dollars are going to well-organized welfare parasites and government bureaucrats.
– From the Gary Hart article, Gary Hart: America’s Founding Principles Are in Danger of Corruption
And as far as the social disintegration we’ve seen over the past 60 years – we’ve been blinded by the Democrats pushing the disintegration that we haven’t noticed the Republicans letting them do it.
And when they have power to roll it back, doing nothing of the sort.
And as far as the social disintegration we’ve seen over the past 60 years – we’ve been blinded by the Democrats pushing the disintegration that we haven’t noticed the Republicans letting them do it. And when they have power to roll it back, doing nothing of the sort. They just smile for the cameras, enjoy their high-priced meals in fancy restaurants, free hookers, and retire for their closed “boys clubs”.
The Administrative state and its regulators, a creation of previous congress’s, have grown into a bureaucracy so entrenched that worker’s can’t even be fired. They lurk in the darkness of their own regulations and use their powers to punish those who fail to comply. Regulators are great for making and executing rules and regulations, and taxing, but not so good at designing those regulations to advance unproven political theories, that most often come undone.
The unrealized dangers of delegating rules and regulations making, is that Congress removes itself from accountability. Legislators govern by theory, proposing ideas that are then delegated to an agency charged to “make” it work. To ensure their schemes work, Congress politicized the Federal judicial benches, including the Supreme Court, to support their legislative agenda regardless of the unconstitutionality, through judicial activism. Judges don’t make laws!
- Why Should We Accept Corrupt Government?
Their actions are disgusting.
And now we see in the Epstein case the reason why it might have all been allowed to happen: Lord only knows how many of the high and mighty are caught in that web…
…but what better way to get out from under that rock than by making the rock legal?
Hey, Paul Ryan, you’re the guy in charge of the House. You’re the Speaker of the House. [1] You had half a decade to figure out what to REPLACE Obamacare with and you came up with … bupkis? [2]. Hey, Paul Ryan, you had more than a hundred days to fashion a piece of legislation after you knew President Trump won — even with all the “budget resolution”, three tranche, inside baseball baloney and it came as a surprise that the Freedom Caucus wasn’t on board? [Pro tip: Check with your own caucus first. OK, that’s better.] Hello, America, Paul, babe — that was your job. We gave you one stinking job — to fashion a clean repeal and replacement of Obamacare — and you were surprised the Freedom Caucus wasn’t genuflecting and kissing your ring? A week out, you tell the President you “have the votes” and the day of the vote you come to the White House and say, “Uhhh, maybe not. Maybe not, Mr. President. Poorly played, Paulie. Very poorly played. [3]. Hey, Paul Ryan, this shit is on you not the President. You suck at your job.
By making you, a normal person, the bad guy if you point out some of the disgusting actions?
Illegal immigration to provide votes for Democrats and cheap labor for Republicans.
Wars which don’t end in victory or defeat.
Enforcing immorality against popular wishes.
Providing government sinecures to anyone who will toe the line – and who won’t be got rid of no matter how corrupt or stupid they prove.
Accepting money from foreign entities who want the United States destroyed.
Will you fucking Republicans stop criticizing President Trump for following through on his campaign promises?
He ran on them. He told you what they were. He won on them. He is delivering on them and you snowflakes act like you just discovered them.
Both sides, all the time – and on top of being this stupidly destructive, raking it in for themselves, their families and their friends. It is time to bring an end to all that. By peaceful means if possible but, ultimately, by any means necessary.
Our peaceful means are “President Trump”.
President Trump is the hero of the common man.
Trump isn’t part of the system, you see.
Dimwits look at his billions and go, “he must be one of them”. But, the bottom line is that he’s not.
He’ll hang out with them. Be friends with them. But he never was of them. He made his own way and got his pile of money…and then looked around and saw, from the 1980’s, what was happening to his country and started to wonder why, and if there were anything he could do about it?
He essentially first let Bill Clinton have his chance.
Then Bush the Younger.
Then even Obama.
But he found out something – it didn’t matter who was in charge, they were all in on it, together. That is, regardless of stated political philosophy, the primary goal of nearly everyone in politics was personal enrichment and making sure no outsider pushed his or her way in.
Trump found out something – it didn’t matter who was in charge, they were all in on it, together. That is, regardless of stated political philosophy, the primary goal of nearly everyone in politics was personal enrichment and making sure no outsider pushed his or her way in.
Trump decided to push his way in.
And now he’s there – and outside of a precious few (Cruz, Paul…and, oddly, McConnell), he’s nearly alone fighting for one thing: us.
The United States of America.
We, the people.
And everyone inside is furious and terrified and so are lashing back as much as they can hoping that something, anything will turn up to get rid of Trump.
And, make no mistake about it, they are already planning on punishing us for electing Trump. They don’t propose to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
And, make no mistake about it, they are already planning on punishing us for electing Trump. They don’t propose to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
And everyone inside is furious and terrified and so are lashing back as much as they can hoping that something, anything will turn up to get rid of Trump. And, make no mistake about it, they are already planning on punishing us for electing Trump. They don’t propose to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
The “big con game” is up.
I’ve mostly stopped arguing with liberals these days – first off, it is pointless but, secondly, I’m starting to pity them; nearly as much as I pity that shrinking number on the right who still stand aloof from Trump: they simply can’t shake free from the line they’ve been fed.
And none of us can get high and mighty about that: to one degree or another, all of us were suckered at one time or another.
No other government is as corrupt as the United States government.
All of us believed in some aspect of the con being used to keep us confused, frightened and divided while the Ruling Class stays fat and happy.
All of us. Including myself.
But for those of us who have awakened from the con, it is time for a clean break – a refusal to accept that anything over the past 60 years was any good…a desire, that is, to move forward in an entirely new way, unshackled to whatever we might have said or done in the past.
We have learned all about the great con game, and we are fed up. We know know what is going on and we are pissed, and desire real, substantive change. Now, for those of us who have awakened from the con, it is time for a clean break – a refusal to accept that anything over the past 60 years was any good…a desire, that is, to move forward in an entirely new way, unshackled to whatever we might have said or done in the past.
We can see what happened; we can see what needs to be done – we can’t trip ourselves up (nor allow our opponents to slow us down) by fussing over what views we might have expressed previously.
Our desire is a Constitutional Republic of free people – our means of getting there must be “whatever works”, not adherence to a dogma which might, upon review, only have been a means whereby the con artists kept us in line in the past.
I, for one, will only defend what I find defensible and will attack whatever I see as wrong.
Republicans Are Terrified Because Their Candidates Are So Fucking Lazy. As a number of Democrats win high-profile special election victories in deep red districts, fewer and fewer safe Republican strongholds seem to be off limits.
We still have a magnificent window to win this thing and fix our nation – naturally, the first requirement is protecting President Trump.
We need a complete review of EVERYTHING and ask “is it good”
But the next step is just as important: a complete review of everything and asking the question, “Is this good?”.
We’ve already learned that so-called “Free Trade” wasn’t what many of us thought it was – take that as your template and ask yourself, “is this thing I’ve adhered to really in the interests of a free people? Or is it something which only serves the well-connected?”.
As Lincoln once said, it is time to think anew and act anew: not to create something different (nothing can be more magnificent than the United States, as far as human effort allows), but to recreate what we had, but even better than before.
It is time to think anew and act anew: not to create something different, but to recreate what we had, but even better than before.
And if that mission requires us to knock a few off their pedestals, then that’s just what will have to happen.
The problems of government are systemic. The reason for government should be a primary concern of anyone wanting a better government but this cannot be accomplished with people of socialist persuasion who scream, yell and interrupt other speakers in an effort to kill free speech.
Trump has thrown a wrench into the gears of socialisms advancement. Socialists are reeling in confusion but don’t count on them staying there. A revolution is coming. The question is, who’s going to lead it, them or us?
- Why Should We Accept Corrupt Government?
SHTF Related Index
This is a collection of my posts related to prepping, SHTF (Shit Hit The Fan), CWII (American Civil War 2), Fourth Turning (Strauss–Howe generational theory)
and other posts related to the very sad and sorry tatters that America
is today. Actually, I am a little stunned that I have written so much
about these matters. But America today is very ill and there are things
that really should be said.
Here are the posts.
SHTF and Related Index
Some prepper humor…
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Sunday had a call with President Donald Trump about gun control legislation. According to a statement from Democratic leadership, universal background checks are a non negotiable that must be included in any proposal Trump moves forward with.
People! A “universal background check” is a violation of the 4th amendment. Yeah, I know. It’s already violated left and right and every which way that you can think of. Indeed, the entire 16th amendment is a blatant violation of the 4th amendment on it’s face.
Fourth Amendment - Search and Seizure
Amendment Text | Annotations
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
And for all of you who are confused about the second amendment…
Second Amendment - Bearing Arms
Amendment Text | Annotations
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
All of this is silly.
The United States stopped being the land of the free the moment the 12th amendment was ratified. Good-by Republic. Hello to mob rule and manipulation by oligarchs. It’s just dying a long, slow death. That’s the way it is, and any protests from myself or others just fall on deaf ears. No one wants to hear all this. They want their feudal society, and us rabble had just better accept our place within that model.
From what I see, they are not giving up on this. They will push and push and push until something snaps. Though, I think that they have no fucking idea just how bad the snap will be. You have over three decades of rage built up inside of conservative patriots. They will not give any quarter.
And that, boys and girls, is the way it is.
About the picture, splash above…
Cambodian troops before they were disarmed by Pol Pot in 1970. Socialist Marxist Communist Pol Pot came to power in Cambodia in 1970. These troops were government military forces who were told by their leadership to hand in their weapons to the new government. They complied. They listened. They turned in their weapons. Every one of them were then systematically killed. Not one survived.
Not one person survived once they turned in their firearms to the new government. Not. One.
SHTF Related Index
This is a collection of my posts related to prepping, SHTF (Shit Hit The Fan), CWII (American Civil War 2), Fourth Turning (Strauss–Howe generational theory)
and other posts related to the very sad and sorry tatters that America
is today. Actually, I am a little stunned that I have written so much
about these matters. But America today is very ill and there are things
that really should be said.
Here are the posts.
SHTF and Related Index
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
Here are
some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you
might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up
in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society
within communist China. As there are some really stark differences
between the two.
More Posts about Life
I have
broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones
actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little
different, in subtle ways.
Funny Pictures
Be the Rufus – Tales of Everyday Heroism.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Contrary to what the reader might be aware, “prepping” for a national disaster or upheaval is not a wholly American phenomenon. It is a global one, and it is something that has been practiced by various people time and time again, over the years. Here, in this article, we look at examples of what happened to other “preppers” when their nation underwent a period of upheaval.
Here we discuss how prepping (historically) helped out these people to avoid or reduce the amount of stress and turmoil during national turmoil.
Specifically, we will concentrate on political, social, and genocidal upheavals. Prepping to prepare for natural emergencies is pretty much well understood, and accepted, as a desirable and important part and responsibly of the family elders.
Thus, this article focuses on prepping for societal change.
The classifications of “political” prepping
For our purposes, we will refer to any prepping associated with a government, or a social upheaval as “political prepping”. You can refer to it by other names as you wish. You can call it “prepping as a hedge against an aggressive government outreach”, or perhaps “defensive prepping”.
Which means, in short, that the need to prepare for societal change is directly related your government’s behavior. Or, in other words, to the actions of one’s government or the members in the local society where you may live.
Here, we look at the purposes of prepping in this situation, and what the likelihood of success and survival may be. The purposes, or the reasons why someone may set up a prepper situation can be classified as…
“Buying time” to enable one’s family to escape from a conflict zone. These preppers “bug out” with the objective of moving to a safer place or a safer region. This is also known as a”safe house”. These preppers cling on to the “normalcy” vector. They hope that they can keep working on their day to day lifestyle, without interruption.
“Ride out the storm“. Long duration defense of one’s property and family in a fixed, stable location. This is the “traditional prepper” lifestyle, and the one most people associate with prepping.
“Fluidic survival“. The ability to float with your family in a general region in safety, but not be tied down to any fixed hard defensive location.
“Militia Membership“. Being part of a much larger group that in cooperation, defends a community, farms and region from outsiders.
“Hobbyist prepper” . A person who thinks that they are prepared for a SHTF event solely by reading, setting aside some provisions, and the purchase of some land in an isolated geographic location.
“Life Boat prepper“. This is what I did. Long before the start of any SHTF event, I figured to locating a safe haven way outside the USA. Then I relocated my entire life there. The key here is that this type of prepping occurs long before the rest of society catches on that “storm clouds” might be a brewing.
We will look at each one and compare the historical chances of success and endurance.
Buying Time
Firstly, let's look at the "buying time" option. Here, the prepper waits until the last possible moment and then bugs out.
I argue that if there is any possibility of a SHTF event, then you should immediately scram. Do not wait until your being shot at by some militia in your company parking lot.
Factory
workers, with their company name badges, in the parking lot of their
employer. Two dead and one dying with his legs shot off. He and his
co-workers had no idea that “world war III” would break out while they
were trying to clock in at work. When one group of people identify
another group, and target them with hate, and violence, it only
escalates. It gets worse. Eventually there is whole-scale blood shed. Do
not be under the illusion that it will never happen in America. There
are enormous groups of people just chomping at the bit to attack
conservatives and traditionalists. All in the name of a progressive
utopia.
Here, the prepper family realizes that SHTF and a situation is taking place. They may or may not have prepared a “safe house” or secure location outside of the conflict zone. What they need to do, and the sole and entire purpose of all their prepping activity is to create a safe avenue for egress outside of the conflict “hot zone”.
Truthfully, their personal use of situational intelligence caused them to be in the “hot seat”. They ignored the signs. They relied on everything continuing to be “normal”, instead of getting ready for abnormal events.
Often the father, or family head, would be slapping his forehead asking “why didn’t I leave earlier, I should have known better”!
Yeah, yeah. But that’s not really true. Genocides, democides and Policides, are always sprung on an unsuspecting populace. There are few things that a person can do to prepare, short of leaving the country and setting up a second home in a peaceful and tranquil country.
The living room with it’s new occupants after the Bosnian war was over. This is what the owners of the house found when they returned after bugging out at the start of the conflict.
These kinds of preppers should have a [1] bug-out bag, [2] a “safe house”, and [3] escape plan to leave their normal home and make it to the safe house in safety, avoiding crowds, the police, and opposition forces.
The "bug out bag" could very well be a backpack, or bag. But, it just as well be a large roomy trunk in a vehicle with extra cans of gasoline. The "bug out bag" must be specifically tailored for the mission; going from point "A" to your "safe house" destination.
They should also have studied the most basic prepping skills.
Not for a nuclear exchange or zombie attack, but for basic survival in a “scram and bug out” situation. Again, you need to be trained and ready to specifically the situation and scenario that you are prepping for.
The lesson: you have more to fear and are more likely to die from common, localized events than massive, spectacular catastrophes. Train and prepare accordingly.
First-aid skills, driving skills, empty hand-based self-defense. Those should be your trifecta starting out, considering you are far more likely to need to heal than harm, you are far more likely to need to dodge a drunk driver than a zombie, and you are far more likely to need to go hands on with someone than shoot them.
- 3 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started to Prep
The biggest problems that these “bug-out preppers” have to deal with are [1] crowds, [2] lack of reliable routes and transportation, and [3] roving bands of opposition forces. In a social upheaval situation, your biggest problem will be other people.
Also, please note. It is always assumed that they did their proper homework and the “safe house” is truly safe and secure.
During civil wars, and genocides, the local government will go house to house and collect people. They will separate the men from the women, and often they would be taken to bad situations. With rape and sexual slavery for the women, and death for the men. Do not allow yourself to be collected and taken to a “safe area”. Photo is from the Bosnian genocide. Collected men being led to a “holding area”. Most of them died there.
Remember; A "safe area" is one that is "safe" for your captors. Not "safe" for you.
In this prepping scenario, there is a direct link between knowing that the situation is actually SHTF, and when to actually “Bug Out”. The smarter preppers would scram as soon as the “trip wires” of SHTF are activated.
Some “trip wires”;
Roving bands of militia.
Outsiders investigating your property.
Police conducting house to house searches.
The sight of a dead person.
A house or building on fire with no firemen responding to it.
Open looting.
Favorite or often used websites down or seized.
Police standing down, or retreating to defense positions.
Blocked roads – due to accidents, natural events, or erosion.
Blocked roads – due to police check points.
Blocked roads – due to militia or armed groups, or bandits.
Sounds of gun fire, especially full automatic fire.
Bombings of buildings in the local region.
Internet, cell phone, or electricity outages.
Supermarkets and stores running out of food.
Farms not being harvested in time.
Friends, associates, and family all confused.
Local hospitals being short on staff.
Airport closed or protected by armed forces.
Organized convoys of any type.
Advice from loved ones.
Activation of the National Guard.
Close friends and families leaving the area.
Implementation of “special protection measures”, laws, or executive orders.
People in the open carrying firearms.
Groups of roving youth / young adults with firearms.
The sight of someone hung.
A state of “emergency” declared.
Being instructed to move to a FEMA camp.
Rumors of bad things happening.
Phone calls, emails of messages from concerned loved ones.
Everyone is different, and every region and situation is different.
However, the “bug-out prepper” should know what “trip wires” to watch out for, and to pack up and scram when the situation goes “hot”. I would suggest any three within a one week time period and you should recognize that you need to scram big time.
The “bug out prepper” will avoid crowds and main roads. They will take the well planned “safe route” to their destination, the “safe house”.
The “bug out” prepper would take the safe and secure back roads, and avoid people and crowds as much as possible. They would travel in isolation. Hide as much as possible. Keep fires and noise to a minimum. As well as be on the alert to any strangers or situations that they might encounter along the way.
This kind of prepper is one who fully expects to be a refugee.
The only difference between the prepper and the refugee is that the prepper would be far better prepared. They would avoid large groups of people. They wouldn’t trust the government or officials. They would avoid refugee camps, and “safe areas”, and they would have a set destination in mind that they were heading towards.
Refugees fleeing the ISIS in Syria. They gathered up their possessions and flee the battle and conflict zones.
Historically, the well prepared “bug out prepper” is also the successful refugee.
While there are, I am sure, instances of personal catastrophe for these individuals, in general, these preppers have perhaps one of the greatest chances of survival. (Provided they arrive to their “safe house” and not be directed to any FEMA camp or staging area.) Never the less, they do need to constantly be on the alert. Things can go dangerously wrong.
Provided, of course, that their “safe house” is truly out of the conflict zone.
As a quick reminder, whether you are in the rural areas, a small
town, or on the road. Avoid the cities. This is where your enemies want
you to stream towards. It’s a trap. It’s a snare.
The idea is to herd people into places where they are trapped and can
be easily controlled. There will be urban youth terrorizing the rural
areas, small towns and communities, and this will create a situation
where everyone will start to stream into the “safe” cities.
It won’t be safe.
Passport found in the remains of a Bosnian civilian who was trying to escape the genocide, but instead got caught up in a firefight and ended up getting shot and killed. Do not wait until the last minute.
Some lessons from history;
In the 1930's Hitler came to power in Germany.
During that decade he openly and politically declared war on Jews and other "undesirables". Many Jews chose to sit tight. They believed that things would go back to normal... some day. All they needed to do was stay out of the way of the Nazi Germans.
Other Jews; those that I call "bug out prepper" Jews, left Germany. They stayed as long as they could, but at some point in time, the "trip wires" were triggered, and they fled to "safe houses" in neighboring countries. One of which was Poland. There, they were able to live their lives in peace and free from the prosecution by the Nazi Germans.
These "bug out preppers" were successful. All except up to one point. They assumed that their "safe house(s)" would all be safe from the Nazi Germans.
But that is not what happened.
Germany invaded Poland in 1939. And once they obtained control of the nation, they continued their prosecution of the Jews there. Those that bugged-out from Germany discovered that their "safe house(s)" were not really safe at all.
This remained true for all those "bug out prepper" Jews that went elsewhere in Europe. The only ones that were truly safe were those that went to England, the Americas, and Africa.
Of course, it goes without saying that the “bug out prepper” would avoid conflict. They would be the rabbit and run and hide rather than engage any potential enemies or get entwined in any kind of situation. That being said, of course, were the need manifest itself, they would be fully capable of taking on anyone that came their way.
All preppers should be prepared to make the hard decisions if the need manifests to protect themselves and to defend their family.
Ride out the storm
In this scenario, the prepper believes that any SHTF event will be short-lived. Certainly no more than three to four years. They believe that they are isolated enough, equipped enough, and camouflaged enough to avoid the vast bulk of conflict during a SHTF scenario.
They just simply “hunker down” and ride the SHTF storm out.
An isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, and in the mountains. It’s a nice location to bug out to, and better if that is your home, and it is fully stocked with a few years worth of supplies. However, all preppers should realize that there might be strangers of friends that might be desirous of sharing your safe haven with you, uninvited. In fact, your “safe house” might already be on the bug-out list for others. You do need to be aware and secure in your domicile.
This prepper is more often than not, located in a rural or isolated location. Has supplies, a survivalist mindset, and is ready to defend his family aggressively. He does not feel that he would be considered in any way to be a threat to anyone, and so is ready to ride out the SHTF event, and defend his family where necessary.
This kind of prepper is perhaps the best prepared.
They have a lifestyle, and a way of living that is conducive to hiding out and surviving in one place. However, this kind of lifestyle does not happen overnight. Nope. You have to develop it over years.
Depending on the person, and their family, the “ride out the storm” prepper might have anything from a tiny isolated cabin on top of a rocky mountain, to a large farm nestled in an isolated valley. The prepper should keep in mind the importance in simplicity and in self reliance.
Thinking that you can just “jump in” and survive in a cabin that you purchased and stocked up with seeds is unrealistic. You are not prepared to live in that situation. You are not trained. You are not ready, and you are not prepared. You just think you are.
Also take heed. Just because you bought and stocked a home in the middle of the country somewhere does not preclude others from seizing it while you are away. Neglected "bug out safe zones" are always at the risk of use by others.
It would be a grand disappointment to discover that the pristine lake cabin that you bought for a SHTF scenario, and all the effort that you went into the solar cells, and provisioning it, was all for naught when a tribe of 100 Hell's Angels bikers took it over.
In this scenario, “ride out the storm” preppers are ones that not only [1] have an isolated “safe house” in [2] an isolated geographical region, BUT they also [3] have been practicing the “ride out the storm” lifestyle for [4] a minimum of three years or longer. Therefore, just owning property, a storm cellar, and reading a few books will not qualify you as a “ride out the storm” Prepper.
Instead you are a qualified “hobbyist prepper”.
In all cases, the “ride out the storm” prepper should be prepared for visitors, no matter how isolated they are. They should have secret rooms, and hideouts. They should have weapons available and other hidden and buried. They should have food supplies and others well hidden from roving bands of militia and “government” search expeditions.
Door to door searching in America with a blanket “search order” to search everyone, and everything. All “ride out the storm” preppers would expect visits from both government officials, military, as well as roving bands of militia, and opposition forces. These preppers should have a plan(s) on how to deal with each situation as it manifests.
Historically, the “ride out the storm” prepper has a mixed bag of success. It all depends on the type and duration of the societal conflict, as well as how absolutely fanatical the opposition forces are.
At one time Armenia was an independent nation. At that time, Armenia was a Christian majority nation. Then over time, their borders changed, swapped hands, and the majority of Armenians found themselves located within Turkey.
The first widely studied modern democide occurred in Turkey between 1915 and 1923, when the Turkish government decided to eliminate the country’s Christian minority. This group consisted primarily of ethnic Armenians and Greeks.
We do know that Turkey disarmed the populace in 1911, and for around three and a half years went door to door collecting the firearms and ammo from the entire civilian population. Then in 1914, they began rounding up all the disarmed Christians. They tortured them, they abused them, they marched them into the desert where they all died.
I am quite confident that there would be "ride out the storm" preppers who, by geographic location, luck, or fawning being a Muslim managed to escape the democide and purge of Christians. But we will never know how many of these people existed, nor their own individual stories.
What we do know is that Albania went from a 100% Christian majority nation to a 97% Muslim nation in a few very short decades.
"Christianity in Turkey has had a long history dating back to the 1st-century AD. In modern times the percentage of Christians in Turkey has declined from 20-25 percent in 1914 to 3-5.5 percent in 1927, to 0.3-0.4% today roughly translating to 200,000-320,000 devotees."
While it is indeed possible that "ride out the storm" preppers comprise this tiny, tiny minority, one has to wonder if they truly feel safe living in a nation that exterminated an entire society identical to what they believe in. Or in other words, was it worth it?
Raped
and killed. You need to either prepare to fight, or flee. What ever you
do, do not get snared into a collection area for your own safety. It is
not going to be safe. As this young lass learned. Do not trust refugee
camps. Do not trust the government. Do not trust ANYONE. And, finally,
do not allow yourself or your family to be disarmed. Learn to fight both
with guns and blades. Hide and protect yourselves, and take special
note where the progressive liberals live in your neighborhood. They have
the lists that your name will be on.
Fluidic Survival
In this prepping scheme, the prepper would not count on any fixed homestead, nor would they plan on “bugging out”. Instead, they would maintain a migratory movement within the hills, countryside and mountains of their familial “stomping ground”.
They would have advantage in knowing the terrain, knowing the people, and at the same time, being mobile.
Being mobile enables the prepper to inherently evade military, militia, and the government. As they rely on fixed homes, roads and geographical landmarks from which to work upon. Mobility is the fluidic preppers most important asset. They rely on isolation, movement and isolation for their protection.
The walking dead has various scenes that are suggestive of Fluidic prepping. In fluidic prepping the person tends to migrate within a specific and fixed geographic area and avoids people at all costs.
This kind of prepping requires a well-established knowledge of local geography. Obviously county-sized. It would require a well-established knowledge of friends, family friends, and relationships. For it to work, the prepper would be elusive and maybe visit friends as needed but tell them nothing.
The prepper would locate stashes of gear, supplies and equipment at various well-hidden locations for their periodic use. They would visit these sites on a rotating basis and would never stay at one for longer than a week at a time.
Christopher Knight was arrested, charged with burglary and theft, and transported to the Kennebec County jail in Augusta, the state capital. For the first time in nearly 10,000 days, he slept indoors.
News of the capture stunned the citizens of North Pond. For decades, they’d felt haunted by…something. It was hard to say what. At first, in the late 1980s, there were strange occurrences. Flashlights were missing their batteries. Steaks disappeared from the fridge. New propane tanks on the grill had been replaced by old ones. "My grandkids thought I was losing my mind," said David Proulx, whose vacation cabin was broken into at least fifty times.
Then people began noticing other things. Wood shavings near window locks; scratches on doorframes. Was it a neighbor? A gang of teenagers? The robberies continued—boat batteries, frying pans, winter jackets. Fear took hold. "We always felt like he was watching us," one resident said.
The police were called, repeatedly, but were unable to help.
Locks were changed, alarm systems installed. Nothing seemed to stop him. Or her. Or them. No one knew. A few desperate residents even left notes on their doors: "Please don’t break in. Tell me what you need and I’ll leave it out for you." There was never a reply.
Incidents mounted, and the phantom morphed into legend. Eventually he was given a name: the North Pond Hermit. At a homeowners’ meeting in 2002, the hundred people present were asked who had suffered break-ins. Seventy-five raised their hands. Campfire hermit stories were swapped. One kid recalled that when he was 10 years old, all his Halloween candy was stolen. That kid is now 34.
Knight’s arrest, rather than eliminating disbelief, only enhanced it. The truth was stranger than the myth. One man had actually lived in the woods of Maine for twenty-seven years, in an unheated nylon tent. Winters in Maine are long and intensely cold: a wet, windy cold, the worst kind of cold. A week of winter camping is an impressive achievement. An entire season is practically unheard of.
Though hermits have been documented for thousands of years, Knight’s feat appears to exist in a category of its own. He engaged in zero communication with the outside world. He never snapped a photo. He did not keep a journal. His camp was undisclosed to everyone.
There may have been others like Knight, whose commitment to isolation was absolute—he planned to live his entire life in secret—but if so, they were never found. Capturing Knight was the human equivalent of netting a giant squid. He was an uncontacted tribe of one.
-The Last True Hermit
“Fluidic prepping” is very similar to living like Christopher Knight. You live “on the move” in an isolated area. You avoid contact with people. You hide and you live like a rabbit.
This is the most successful prepping techniques, but it is also the hardest to prepare for and the most difficult to train for. The television character Daryl Dixon from the “Walking Dead” best embodies this kind of “Fluidic” prepping.
This is the most successful prepping techniques, but it is also the hardest to prepare for and the most difficult to train for. The television character Daryl Dixon from the “Walking Dead” best embodies this kind of prepping.
Militia Prepping
In militia prepping you are not prepping alone and for the survival of your family. Instead, you are part of a group that encourages prepping as a group. You share resources, you share defensive strategy, and you share intelligence.
In militia prepping, you join forces with others in your area and form a civilian militia for defensive purposes. You train together. You defend shared resources, and operate as a combat force.
This sort of prepping is the “bedrock” of American society. As such, the progressive liberal Marxists have declared war on these kinds of organizations and their membership.
Former President Obama was very active in having the DHS, the FBI, ATF, IRS, and the DOJ investigate and prosecute these groups and their membership. Often going as far as to spy on them, and consider them threats and arrest them long before they did anything wrong. Sort of like the science fiction movie “The Minority Report”.
The United States Constitution relies on the “citizen soldiers” to defend his local region, his family and his geography. This is the basis of militia prepping. It is a way for locals to defend their families, resources, and life from others.
Members, and the organizations should be expected to “be on the radar screens” of any government and Marxist organization when SHTF events occur. They can expect to have all their electronic media monitored, and to have paid informants within their ranks.
They should expect this.
Local militia defending their village and region from the movie “Blood Diamonds”. When the government broke down in Sierra Leone, it was up to the local villages and towns to defend themselves. This scene depicts one such intervention.
Historically, local militia groups from Syria, Bosnia, to the Ukraine have survived and thwarted combat, social upheavals and genocide. In general, radicalized armed youth riding technicals are loathe to risk organized civilian resistance. They prefer unarmed civilians.
This type of prepping is best suited against thugs, criminals, roving bands of ideologically motivated youth, and techinicals. They are not really all that effective against modern military forces using tanks and APC weaponry. Their strength lies at the local level and as such they can hold off large assaults by organized forces for organized retreats.
Not only were they effective against the British during the American independence in 1776, but against the Nazi Germans in the Ukraine and Poland.
Armed militia in the Bosnian conflict. The news media want to say that the conflict was over religion. That one side was against Muslims. But that is not wholly true. It was complicated. In some ways it was an ideological war, one that pitted the urban areas against the rural areas. A decade long period of ideological rhetoric predated the first attacks, and the mastermind of all the genocide was from an urban area.
While membership in a militia has a much higher incidence of conflict with others, and a higher risk of injury factor, it is also one of the safer options that one can have as a prepper. For in this way, the individual becomes part of a larger and thus stronger group. His support network increases, as does his ability to be fed, and support his family during tense times of crisis.
Hobbyist Prepping
Hobbyist prepping is “wanna-be” prepping. You study, you read, you dream, you purchase things. But, you don’t really prepare yourself for a serious SHTF event. You just simply believe that you are ready. You want to take on some zombies, and are ready to live in a bunker during a nuclear winter.
Many Americans are hobbyist preppers. They watch zombie movies, the read the news, and consume books on prepping, but take no serious actions towards actual prepping.
But it’s all Hollywood inspired dreams.
A true and real SHTF event is one where you are cold, and hungry. You itch, and you have been betrayed, and witnessed friends and family killed. Your world is upside down, and everything that you have of value is gone.
The
people, isolated and undefended, in the rural regions were dangerously
exposed. Large packs of armed “militia”, actually ideological youth
armed with military arms and on drugs and in an frenzy against perceived
slights (“privilege” and “advantage”) as promoted by the media prior to
the SHTF event. This is a scene in front of a “road block” that was set
up by local residents to slow down the roving bands of armed urban
youth. Their hope was that it would give them enough time to stream into
the nearby cities for protection. The only thing was that the cities
were all controlled by the very same people who set all the attacks in
motion.
Seriously, if you are not ready to pick up a knife and shove it with all your might into the skull of an enemy, you are not ready for the gritty and harsh reality of a true and real SHTF event. A real SHTF event is one with pools of black congealed blood, flies buzzing and the horrible smell of rotting human flesh. It’s one where you are constantly afraid of everything. Your body is hyper sensitive, and all you want to do is get the fu@k out of there.
Many hobbyists like to imagine a world where they are exploring ruins, and scavenging supplies from the ruins. They imagine themselves shooting others with extreme accuracy using a trusty AK-47 (as if that’s gonna happen), and carrying a large bore .357 magnum revolver on their hip. Yeah. It’s all Hollywood. Hollywood.
People, the bullets won’t magically hit a person. If you cannot aim, you cannot hit. Not only that, but one bullet might not do the job. You might have to open an entire clip into a person, and they will still be lunging towards you. No. Television is not real life.
America
will start to look something like this once the ideological “hounds of
war”; those armed packs of thugs from the urban strongholds are let
loose on the rural, undefended communities.
In sort, hobbyists concentrate on the tools and not on their abilities during SHTF situations.
Believe me, scavenging in wartime does not look anything like what Hollywood presents. The world is in ruin, and everything of value is gone. People who look like you, speak like you, dress like you, and act like you will turn on you in a heartbeat. They would steal from you, rape your wife and kids, and then kill you as if you were nothing more than an insect.
Rural Bosnia. No, CWII will not be anything like Hollywood is trying to portray. You won’t go scavenging for materials or hot-wire a car to drive. Things will be destroyed, dead, rusted and useless. War is very, very ugly. Note the un-harvested corn going to fallow in the background (to the Right).
Look, it is better to be a hobbyist prepper than a “caught by surprise sheeple”. But not by much.
The good news, is that the jump from hobbyist prepper to serious prepping is not a hard leap. It doesn’t take much. Some some steely resolve and a good hard look at the most likely scenarios that lie before you.
Hobbyist prepping has about the same survival rate as an unarmed civilian with two-days warning of an impending assault. It's not much, but it is an edge. It is up to the person to see how far they can take that edge and make some kind of real advantage out of it.
Lifeboat Prepping
Finally, we hit “lifeboat” prepping. This is what I did.
It is called "lifeboat" prepping because what the individual is actually doing is climbing on a lifeboat and sailing away from a sinking ship. As long as you leave early enough, the chaos and confusion of the final minutes of the ship will be completely avoided.
Lifeboat. Also known as Lifeboat Prepping.
You know that sooner or later there will be a SHTF event. You do not know when it will occur or at what kind of severity it would take on. You do not know it’s duration, or any of the particulars.
You just know that there is a likelihood of some kind of event occurring in the future.
As such you decide, often years in advance, to scram and “bug out” of the potential conflict area(s). You do not want to endure the strife, the horror and all the conflict escalations that goes with a sinking ship.
Many “lifeboat preppers” view the United States as a ship that is seriously in trouble. It is on fire, taking on water and sinking fast. These preppers believe that the most responsible thing that they can do in this situation is to scram and bail on to a lifeboat and row, row, row far away from the sinking American ship.
Of course, you wish that it would not happen. You wish that life would normalize. But, you know that wishful thinking is not going to help you if things go “belly up”. What’s going to help you is having a place to go to outside of the United States.
A big help in this matter is having a second passport.
In my case, I have been watching the encroaching progressive Marxism in the United States for decades. I learned a long time ago that that there is absolutely nothing that I could do to stem the tide and the tidal wave that will eventually engulf the United States.
I did not like it. In fact, I hated it. But, the America I was living in was an inherited one. Other Americans, long before I was born, gave me the IRS, the Federal Reserve, the CIA, the FBI, the DOJ, the FDA, and the ATF. And while it was obvious to me that their mere existence was an affront to the fourth, second and ninth amendments, there was nothing I could do about it.
To me, the United States was on an express elevator to Hell. As the situation around me deteriorated, and I began to see how seriously corrupt, inefficient and evil the government was, I realized that I need to bail and scam.
America used to stand for personal liberties, freedom, and self sufficiency. However, there is a very large and powerful group in the United States today that wants to go full-on Pol Pot. The evidence is that the Freedom-Fighter caucus are not fighting back. Therefore, progressive Marxism is destined to become the law of the land.
So I did.
I don’t want to hurt or harm anyone. I just want to live my life in peace. If the vast bulk of Americans want to live in a Marxist oligarchy, it’s not going to be me to dissuade them. It’s their life. Not mine. They can have that life. Not me.
So I bailed.
Being in another country has a lot of trade-offs. One of which is many things that we have taken for granted are no longer available to us. Things that I miss.
A well-made BLT might no longer be available to you.
There are all sort of trade-offs of moving out of the United States in this manner. It’s a new society and a new culture. You need to learn a new language and a new way of doing things. There will be things that you will miss, and new things that you will embrace. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a serious option for those of your preppers that don’t want to wait until the last minute to get out of the line of fire.
The overall success rate for this type of "lifeboat" prepping, is near 100%. But it does come at a cost.
Conclusion
If you are going to something… anything, then it is in your best interests to do it well. Otherwise don’t even bother.
If you believe, seriously believe in your heart that America is up for a major reset, then you need to start taking steps to deal with it. This is known as prepping.
Faced with a chance to move, be first. Nothing is worse than being in line for, well, anything. To avoid the rush, see threats before anyone else and take decisive action. If that means packing up and heading out of town based on knowledge of a specific threat, don’t waste valuable time reconsidering. Start moving.
You can always turn back if information changes. In the meantime, in the event of an actual emergency, being first out means lots of benefits. Stores will still have food, there won’t be lines at the gas station, water is still available.
- George Ure at Urban Survival talks about Continuous Escape Plans.
Depending on you, and your circumstance(s), there are different prepping options open to you. I would suggest that you plan on taking one of the options and prepare for it to the best of your ability. Best Regards.
SHTF Related Index
This is a collection of my posts related to prepping, SHTF (Shit Hit The Fan), CWII (American Civil War 2), Fourth Turning (Strauss–Howe generational theory)
and other posts related to the very sad and sorry tatters that America
is today. Actually, I am a little stunned that I have written so much
about these matters. But America today is very ill and there are things
that really should be said.
Here are the posts.
SHTF and Related Index
Other Blogs that you all should visit.
These blogs and sites have better information than I every could
compile. These people are experts in personal survival and preparedness.
I recommend them wholeheartedly.
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Here are some free Intention / Dream boards for your use. I would suggest that you copy the (presented image) photos to your computer and alter and customize it to fit your own personalized intentions. As such, please feel free to download and use to your heart’s content.
A dreamboard is a collage of images, pictures and written affirmations of the intentions and desires you wish to achieve. It helps you through visualization, thus activating the Universal Law of Attraction, or “likes attract like.”
- 6 Tips for Making a Dream Board - Fit Bottomed Girls
The so called “Law of Attraction” is an element of the quantum physics law known as the “observer effect“. It has been repeatedly proven that a person’s thoughts alter the reality that they experience.
Though many people outside of MAJestic haven’t a clue as to the mechanism for this behavior.
Here are some attempts to explain this curious effect, and how a person can utilize it for their own personal use. If you are the kind of person that wants to know what all this is all about, and why it is important, these following links might be of help.
Now of course, us in MAJestic (well, at least those in my particular program) actually know how the universe works. We know how to manipulate it, and we do know the dangers of thought imposition.
How it works
Ah, I covered this subject in great detail in other posts.
However, for now, let’s just keep it simple. The universe is nothing like we think it is. Seriously. It does not resemble anything that is being taught in universities, or being promoted in any of the world’s religions.
Time is the movement of consciousness in and out of adjacent world-line variations.
The thoughts generated by the consciousness navigate the movement through these realities.
By controlling your thoughts, you can set destination realities for you to inhabit.
Which, by the way, means that you must be the pilot for your consciousness. You must keep your destination in mind, and your objectives clear. You have to avoid the “rocky shores” or disruptive thoughts. Thus you need to stay away from discordant news, and toxic people.
Dream Boards
I often go on the Internet and see examples of Intention / Dream boards. Their heart is in the right place but they are going about it wrong.
Firstly, a “Dream Board” is one element of “Intention Projection”.
Secondly, a “Dream Board” is useless without an associated prayer.
Also the theory behind how it works, as promoted on the internet, is really not accurate. To fully understand how an Intention / Dream board works, you need to understand just how our universe works. And, you know what, everyone has it wrong.
Prayer
Unless you are backing up your vision board with prayer, you will not derive full benefit from your dream board. It is your thoughts that define your reality. To navigate in and out of the realities that are constantly evolving and shifting around us, you must pilot your consciousness. You need to be the Captain of your consciousness.
To navigate, you need to control and master your thoughts. You need to do the following…
Pray. These are thoughts that show your intentions, and desires.
Create a vision board, or vision “splash screen” on your electronic media.
Isolate yourself from negative media; news, music or movies.
Isolate yourself from negative or disruptive people.
Use of the Vision Board / Splash Screen
You use the sample image as a desktop background. When ever you see the desktop image in the background you say your prayer associated with it. Thus is you want to use multiple backgrounds on a rotating basis, it becomes helpful to have a nice list of intention prayers that you read once a day.
In the Windows control panel, this is the setting that will enable you to control your desktop splash screen.
Remember, that in order the intention board to work, you must recite your prayers out loud. (This is can be in a whisper, don’t you know.)
The longer you do this, the more “stable” your destination reality will become. However, there will come a point in time when you will “tire” of the prayers and dream boards. When this occurs, let it go and forget about it all. (It’s an important evolution that is established by your consciousness.)
You can do a different prayer and dream board, if you want. Just know that your intention will most certainly manifest.
The Things people wish for
I went on the handy dandy internet, and researched the things that most people wish for. Then I compiled them into a list and I am presenting intentions splash screens for each item on the list. Please consider these splash screens as an idea from which you can base your very own intention splash photos off of. Or use them raw as shown. It’s all up to you.
The Samples
The samples provided are just that. Samples. If you want to use them, feel free, but you MUST include an associated daily prayer with them.
Also note, that providing the samples here does not mean that I agree with the thought projections. Some of the samples offer vices, and other elements that do not fit my personal preferences. They are offered as suggestions for you the reader to base your own dream boards on.
Please take note that all these images and dream board splashes are made using the Microsoft Visio application. It is amazingly easy to use and simple. You just create a picture and add other pictures and text to your desired image.
Further, please take note that there is a trade off between a singular image with prayer, and a collage of images. A group of images will offer the person a greater degree of latitude and versatility in how the intention manifests. This latitude enables the manifestation to occur quicker. A singular image properly prayed for with strong intentions take much longer to manifest, but the results are more exacting.
Here we provide (mostly) singular images for your study and enjoyment.
Power
This intention desktop “splash” is related to POWER.
If you are desirous of increasing your apparent power within the reality that you inherit, then this image is for you. You are free to use it as is, or make your own along these lines. Alternatively, you can fill the entire image screen with smaller images that illustrate the kinds of power that you might wish to evoke.
This is the image that you can use if you want to use the power of intention to manifest power for yourself. Feel free to “left click” and save the image to your “Pictures” folder. Then set the desktop background on your computer to this image.
Please note that you must use the following dialog in your prayers associated with this image…
I utilize the desktop image display on my computer to help cultivate the reality that my world-line is.
In all cases, the dominant male figure portrayed in the image(s) represent myself.
Images that portray mafia figures, or "bad people" portray myself in similar roles of power. They do NOT, however, manifest these kinds of people arrayed against me.
If you do not take care in your prayers, and in the application of the desktop display intention splash, it could easily “backfire” against you. Therefore, it is critically important for you to have a very clear and well defined image intention with an associated prayer.
After all, unless you are careful on how your thoughts manifest, you might end up having this crew come a knockin’ at your door…
Chinese triad gangsters. If you are not careful and try to use the power of intention to alter your reality towards one of power, you could just as easily invoke the more negative manifestations that come with that territory. This could include Chinese Triad gangsters.
Success in business
Again, here is a a different intention desktop splash. This is for people who are desirous of having a very successful business, and the rewards that come with it.
Success in Business. This is a fine intention (PC) desktop dream splash canvas if you are desirous of being very successful in business… financially. As before, please right click on the image and save to your Pictures folder. Then set your background image display to this image.
Again, it’s not enough just to use this image as a desktop background display. You need to associate it with a prayer. I would suggest that what ever prayer that you utilize, that you incorporate the following prayers / affirmations…
I utilize the desktop image display on my computer to help cultivate the reality that my world-line is.
In all cases, the dominant male figure portrayed in the image(s) represent myself.
Images that portray "bad people" portray myself in similar roles of power. They do NOT, however, manifest these kinds of people arrayed against me.
Suave
This is for you men who desire to be considered charming, confident, and elegant by others. Whether that is members of the other sex (women) or men, it does not matter.
Here is the intention dream splash image for a person who would like to be suave within their reality. Always remember that we cannot change others, all that we can do is alter the reality that surrounds our souls. In so doing the perceptions that others have for us can change in alignment with our desires.
And again, you must associate this image display with your prayers…
I utilize the desktop image display on my computer to help cultivate the reality that my world-line is.
In all cases, the dominant male figure portrayed in the image(s) represent myself.
The manifestation of this reality is gradual and safe and is in alignment with my deepest desires.
Good Health
Good health is something that we take for granted, and it isn’t until we get older when we start to panic at how our bodies age. There are things that we can do, of course. We can eat better, stay away from bad people and negative thoughts, and do some moderate exercise.
Also we must not neglect the role that good, directed thoughts play in shaping our life.
While you cannot simply wish or pray to be healthy, it can help assist in the movement of world-line selection towards the manifestation of your desires. The formula works a little like this…
Here is a nice splash image for your desktop. In all cases laid out here, from the Power to the Fame, you MUST provides some kind of minimum physical action from which the desired world-lines can manifest.
Wishing for something to happen = nothing will happen.
Physically working for things = maybe might happen.
Directed thoughts for things = a possibility can happen.
But… you should take careful note…
Physically working towards things + Directed thoughts = cause your desires to manifest.
Please kindly keep that in mind when you utilize these desktop displays and splash screens. These intention boards are only part of a much more inclusive system that requires your participation to work.
You can manifest the world-lines that will be favorable to your intentions, and thus they will appear to manifest for you.
To put it in another way, laying on a couch / sofa eating potato chips and just leaving a intention dream canvas splash display rotate passively on the computer will result in NOTHING.
You must pump your thoughts full of directed thoughts, you must use the desktop display and view it from time to time to refresh your imagery, and you must do a moderate amount of physical action to generate a baseline from which your thoughts can manifest upon.
I have generated two splash intention dream canvas. One is for a man and the other is for a woman. Those of you who are of confused gender, you can follow the guidelines to create your very own specialized splash screen.
Men
Desktop splash screen for a man for good health.
Woman
Desktop splash screen for a woman to be in good physical health.
And do not forget to add this prayer…
I utilize the desktop image display on my computer to help cultivate the reality that my world-line is.
In all cases, the dominant figure portrayed in the image(s) represent myself.
Fame
The desire for fame is one of the most popular desires that people have. Yet, it’s perplexing why this is. Personally, I think that it is rather silly. Why do you want fame? To have followers, groupies or get offered free sex on demand?
People, if that is what you want, then you just go ahead and ask for it directly. If you want to have loads of sex with strangers who are enraptured with you, then ask for that in your intention prayers. You don’t need to ask for “fame”.
The problem with fame is “thought imposition”. The associated thoughts and quantum environment associated with others will severely influence your life. Trust me, you DO NOT want large groups of people thinking negatively about you. Or, even if it is positive, these thoughts can severely impact your ability to direct your own thoughts.
Never the less, I am placing the free desktop splash photo for those desirous of “Fame” here. In every case, you absolutely MUST associate it with the following affirmation / prayer.
I utilize the desktop image display on my computer to help cultivate the reality that my world-line is.
In all cases, the dominant male figure portrayed in the image(s) represent myself.
The manifestation of this reality is gradual and safe and is in alignment with my deepest desires. However, at any event, the manifestation of fame as pictured will be positive in every way, and will not have any negative connotations or spawn negative associated events.
Here’s my suggested image desktop splash intention photo;
Desktop splash for Fame intention.
Sex
Sex. It’s a biological driven human attribute. If you do not have the desire to reproduce, or at least go through the motions of reproducing, then you are not living life. All humans desire sex.
It might not be politically correct, but that is the way it is.
Which is one of the reasons why tyrannical governments ban vices, such as sex out of marriage in order to control people. It is a very common and human element that is very easy to use to control others with.
As are other things, like mind altering substances (alcohol) and things that are fun. It's a way of controlling people.
“Everything I love is illegal, banned or dangerous.”
When constructing you very own dream splash canvas, you can be very generous with the images used. However, take most special attention to their selection.
Improperly selected images, and splash screens without a detailed prayer / intention affirmation can easily result in conditions, situations and environments that you might find undesirable. Be very careful, precise and exact when selecting the images that you wish to use.
Desktop splash image for generating an intention prayer of Sex to manifest. Be very careful in your selection of images to use. If you are not careful, the more undesirable elements of thought generation can manifest with negative consequences. Be careful.
Happiness
The reader will notice that all of the images depict people and are representative of situations that people are in. That’s the way a dream / intention canvas works.
Picture and image the situations.
Do not image things.
You cannot display pictures of money and expect that it is to be associated with you having lots of money in your wallet. Instead, it is just a picture of an item. And you, constantly seeing that item, turns it into a kind of world-line scenery; Something that might lie around you, but not anything that you are associated with.
Not exactly what you want.
You see this all the time. People set up dream intention boards with nice expensive cars, pictures of houses, and images of a lot of nice things. They will include words that describe what they want to accomplish in their life.
While it will contribute to the world-line direction that the creator intended, it will be done so inefficiently. You need to explicitly map out your desires and intentions and navigate properly in a very careful manner.
After all, you don’t want to make the same kinds of mistakes that our hero Elliot made in the movie “Bedazzled“, do you?
Elliot Richards (Brendan) would give anything to have Allison Gardner (Frances O'Connor) in his life, or so he says. Who should overhear? The devil (Elizabeth Hurley) of course. She offers him "seven absolutely fabulous wishes for one piddling little soul". Only Elliot finds out that you don't always get what you wish for.
Elliot as a basketball star. He’s a great star, bigger in life in so many ways… well every way except for one teeny, tiny thing. Just a small thing, really.
The image you use, or the images you select MUST have a special meaning and association with you personally. Which is why many intention / dream splash screen canvases must be made intentionally for your own wishes and desires, as well as to have a prayer dialog that you must recite daily that will reset your thought direction, for world-line navigation, properly.
Here is a sample splash screen for a Happiness directed intention.
The most effective intention splash screens are those that represent people, and actions. However, you the reader should note that there are other techniques that can be used in a dream splash canvas. Here we explore one such concept.
Here is a splash screen for a person who wants a life filled with wine and plenty of kitty-cat friends…
Wine & cats intention splash image for the desktop.
There are no limits
There are really no limits to the direction that you want your life to evolve into. You simply think about your goals and dreams, all the time, while also removing all the nonsense from others, the news, and other’s manufactured problems. Stay pure, and you will walk the path to your deepest desires.
You can use many clusters of pictures
Many people create an Intention / Dream board that they place on their wall. This is often filled with photographs and images that were cut out of magazines. Every time they see this board, they are instantly reminded of their goals and dreams, and thus it serves it’s most exacting purpose.
In today’s computerized age, I suggest using the computer to do the same thing, and while my examples have one singular photo on it, in my own personal case, I use multiple images myself, creating a collage.
Here is an example of a “fairly decent” dream board. They use imagery that is important to them, and use words to specify the purpose and utility for the images.
A example dream board found on the internet. It describes possessions, lifestyle, and other aspects of the desired world-line goals that are intended to manifest.
You see, everyone is different.
We all have different desires, goals, needs, wants and interests. So each dream splash screen will be different for different people. And, while I argue that you need to let the intention splash screen be a part of a tool kit for manifesting your reality, how you use the tools will depend on your own experiences, lifestyle and needs.
Here’s another example.
Another example of an inspiration / dream / intention board. This one is better than most as the use of images tie together to describe an overall theme or lifestyle.
Warnings
When you get on the internet, you will see all kinds of examples of people describing their intention / dream boards. You will also find many that monetize this effort.
Do not fall for that trap. The United States has become one great big vending machine and the people are the commodity.
Keep this most important fact in mind. You do not need to pay anyone for anything regarding how you think.
Also… Your thoughts are private.
We have come to accept the idea that you can police discourse on the internet, that the government agencies can extract history, reasoning, and behaviors from you at will, and that your thoughts are subject to scrutiny.
That is false.
Not only is it all against the 1st, 4th and 9th amendments to the United States Constitution, but it is a fundamental nature of yourself as a human. Privacy is a human need.
No. The "elected" officials in the United States are NOT doing their job, nor have they been since the last 150 years or so. But that is a subject for another time.
You need NEVER justify why you desire something to manifest in your life. It is secret and only between you and your God.
Everyone’s mind works differently
When I use the term “mind” I am referring to HOW the consciousness implants thoughts into the brain. It also includes how the brain reacts to the physical stimulus that surrounds it in this reality (that it inhabits).
Everyone’s mind works differently.
Oh we are often under the impression that while there might be deviance in thoughts from the baseline “normal”. That is all false. Really, really false. We all think differently. Do not assume that others will understand you or accept your thought processes. They won’t. It’s a foregone conclusion and do not even bother trying to explain anything.
It’s funny because it is so very true. Girls and guns. So very funny.
Do not assume anything. Live your own life to the best of your ability. Do not care, or give any consideration to what others think of you, your actions or your thoughts.
Conclusion
Creating an inspiration or dream board is a fundamental technique for a person to pilot their life to manifest their desires.
It works on the quantum physics principle of the observer effect.
Why it works is not well understood outside of MAJestic. That is because the vast bulk of the world has absolutely zero concept of how the universe works. However, we in MAJestic (well at least those in my sub-project) know quite well the mechanism involved.
It’s simple really.
There is no singular fixed reality. Instead there are a near infinite number of realities.
Our consciousness moves through each one, forming a path.
This path is called time.
We travel at a rate, more or less, around 4Hz.
The selection of the next reality for us to inhabit is determined by our thoughts. Typically, we migrate to realities that are defined by our thoughts that are influenced by the world around us. This can be dangerous and evil people use media to manipulate, and thus cause our travel path to bend and twist towards realities that we might not want to participate in.
Therefore, to manifest the life that we desire to live, we need to do three things…
Turn off all negative, distracting, and disruptive thoughts that surround us.
Stay away from people with strong thoughts and personalities that are contrary to our desires.
Focus our thoughts on our ultimate goals.
A vision dream (intention) splash desktop will help accomplish this. Provided that it is linked to a daily prayer that includes the subject matter listed.
Related Links
Here’s some other related links for the interested fellow or chick.
A little bit more background for the more scientifically inclined…
Ah, and why I ended up learning the utility of all this as part of MAJestic. Here is the end ball game…
Final Note
This is how it works people. And, at that, perhaps this is my MAJestic gift to the world.
The things we did with our extraterrestrial benefactors was intended to help sort out the sentience selection for the human species. It seems to me that it is still in flux, but that need not concern you all. What you should be concerned with is how you can truly embrace the life that we live and customize it to fit your ultimate desires.
Being able to control our thoughts is the FIRST step in mastery of our life. You can do this through [1] prayer, and [2] visualization.
There is a reason why ritual is important. For ritual permits proper direct visualization so that prayer can be conducted without distraction.
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
Here are
some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you
might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up
in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society
within communist China. As there are some really stark differences
between the two.
More Posts about Life
I have
broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones
actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little
different, in subtle ways.
Funny Pictures
Be the Rufus – Tales of Everyday Heroism.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
This story was copyrighted in 1951 by Ray Bradbury, and presented here under Article 22 of China’s Copyright Law. Ray Bradbury is one of my personal heroes and his writings greatly influenced me in ways that I am only just now beginning to understand.
Introduction
For years I had amassed a well worn, and dusty collection of Ray Bradbury paperbacks that I would pick up and read for pleasure and inspiration. Later, when I left the United States, and moved to China, I had to leave my treasured books behind. Sigh.
It is very difficult to come across Ray Bradbury books in China. When ever I find one, I certainly snatch it up. Cost is no object when it comes to these masterpieces. At one time, I must have had five books containing this story.
Credit to the wonderful people at Mother Earth News for posting it where a smuck like myself can read it within China. And, of course, credit to the great master; Ray Bradbury for providing this work of art for our inspiration and pleasure.
Full Text
Here is the full text of the masterpiece. I will let the reader read it and enjoy it.
The Pedestrian
To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do.
He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.
Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows.
Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike building was still open.
Mr. Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no noise on the lumpy walk.
For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.
On this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, toward the hidden sea.
There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow.
He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.
“Hello, in there,” he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. “What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?”
The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in midcountry.
If he closed his eyes and stood very still, frozen, he could imagine himself upon the center of a plain, a wintry, windless Arizona desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry river beds, the streets, for company.
“What is it now?” he asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch.
“Eight-thirty P.M.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?”
Was that a murmur of laughter from within a moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when nothing more happened.
He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of sidewalk.
The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass.
In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.
He came to a cloverleaf intersection which stood silent where two main highways crossed the town.
During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the gas stations open, a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarabbeetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far directions.
But now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry season, all stone and bed and moon radiance.
He turned back on a side street, circling around toward his home.
He was within a block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him.
He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.
A metallic voice called to him: “Stand still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!” He halted. “Put up your hands!”
“But-” he said.
“Your hands up! Or we’ll Shoot!”
The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left, wasn’t that correct?
Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one.
Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty streets.
“Your name?” said the police car in a metallic whisper.
He couldn’t see the men in it for the bright light in his eyes.
“Leonard Mead,” he said.
“Speak up!”
“Leonard Mead!”
“Business or profession?”
“I guess you’d call me a writer.”
“No profession,” said the police car, as if talking to itself.
The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.
“You might say that, ” said Mr. Mead.
He hadn’t written in years. Magazines and books didn’t sell any more.
Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy.
The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.
“No profession,” said the phonograph voice, hissing. “What are you doing out?”
“Walking,” said Leonard Mead.
“Walking!”
“Just walking,” he said simply, but his face felt cold.
“Walking, just walking, walking?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Walking where? For what?”
“Walking for air. Walking to see.”
“Your address!”
“Eleven South Saint James Street.”
“And there is air in your house, you have an air conditioner, Mr. Mead?”
“Yes.”
“And you have a viewing screen in your house to see with?”
“No.”
“No?” There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.
“Are you married, Mr. Mead?”
“No.”
“Not married,” said the police voice behind the fiery beam, The moon was high and clear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent.
“Nobody wanted me,” said Leonard Mead with a smile.
“Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to!”
Leonard Mead waited in the cold night.
“Just walking, Mr. Mead?”
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t explained for what purpose.”
“I explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk.”
“Have you done this often?”
“Every night for years.”
The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.
“Well, Mr. Mead,” it said.
“Is that all?” he asked politely.
“Yes,” said the voice. “Here.” There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang wide. “Get in.”
“Wait a minute, I haven’t done anything!”
“Get in.”
“I protest!”
“Mr. Mead.”
He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all.
“Get in.”
He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there.
“Now if you had a wife to give you an alibi,” said the iron voice.
“But-“
“Where are you taking me?”
The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. “To the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.”
He got in. The door shut with a soft thud.
The police car rolled through the night avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead. They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.
“That’s my house,” said Leonard Mead.
No one answered him.
The car moved down the empty river-bed streets and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty side-walks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
Here are some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society within communist China. As there are some really stark differences between the two.
Posts about the Changes in America
America is going through a period of change. Change is good… that is, after it occurs. Often however, there are large periods of discomfort as the period of adjustment takes place. Here are some posts that discuss this issue.
More Posts about Life
I have broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little different, in subtle ways.
Stories that Inspired Me
Here are reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that are nearly impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a personal library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome to come and enjoy a read or two as well.
Articles & Links
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
"The Philippines press enjoys all the freedoms of the US system but fails the people: a wildly partisan press helped Philippines politicians flood the marketplace of ideas with junk and confuse and befuddle the people so that they could not see what their vital interests were in a developing country. And, because vital issues like economic growth and equitable distribution were seldom discussed, they were never tackled and the democratic system malfunctioned. Look at Taiwan and South Korea: their free press runs rampant and corruption runs riot. The critic itself is corrupt yet the theory is, if you have a free press, corruption disappears. Now I'm telling you, that's not true. Freedom of the press, freedom of news critics, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.
“Singapore’s domestic debate is a matter for Singaporeans. We allow American journalists in Singapore in order to report Singapore to their fellow countrymen. We allow their papers to sell in Singapore so that we can know what foreigners are reading about us. But we cannot allow them to assume a role in Singapore that the American media play in America, that of invigilator, adversary and inquisitor of the administration. If allowed to do so, they will radically change the nature of Singapore society, and I doubt if our social glue is strong enough to withstand such treatment."
-A Third World Perspective on the Press. RH Lee Kwan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore. C-SPAN, APRIL 14, 1988
Every day I take my dog out for a walk. I actually do it twice a day. It is first thing in the morning and at the end of the day after the evening meal. We live on the beach, and there is a nice long park right in front of the house (it is a boardwalk) with an absolutely magnificent view of the ocean and the skyscrapers of Macao in the distance. While we are out there enjoying the morning air and watching the joggers on the beach, our dog is nose-to-the-ground and smelling everything like a canine vacuum cleaner. He really enjoys it. He cannot wait to smell the latest news on the road, and contribute a post or two of his own.
Every morning, I too much check out the latest news. However, as of late it is so boring and predictable that I just simply scan the headlines. It’s always the same old news, just repackaged. Buy more stuff! Support a war! Be afraid! Hate Trump! Pay higher taxes! Oh, and don’t forget Global Warming! Russia! Russia! Russia!
Are we any different? Humans are just as bad as canines. This has gotten me thinking…
About Dogs
I personally like dogs. While I am, I suppose, a “cat person”, dogs are very special to me personally. There is nothing better than coming home from work, and my loyal buddy (Shao PiPi) is lying down at the door waiting for me. (I know, my wife takes photos to show me. He gets in position about a half an hour before I arrive home. Cat’s too. But my little buddy is special.) Then he gets so excited, grabs his little toy (an old sewed up sock ball), and wants to play with me with it. Then he is all over me in happiness. It’s the best!
Here is a scene from a great movie about a dog in Japan. The dog’s name is Hachiko, and it is a true story. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to.
Animal haters won’t understand.
Dogs are wonderful creatures. From when they are puppies to their old and grizzly old age, they are wonderful, loyal and quite compassionate. However, you and I both know, they are not human. No matter how much we may want to dress them up in clothing, teach them to “speak”, take them out and tell them not to eat out of the trashcan, the fact remains, dogs are dogs. For them, poop is wonderful, trash (the smellier, the better) is an adventure, and there is nothing better than smelling another dog’s ass.
(BTW, someone had best describe this to the folks in China. They don’t treat dogs as dogs. They treat them as little children. They just love to dress up their dogs in clothing including underwear, hats, socks, and shoes. Well yeah, even my dog has socks and shoes. But, really, it does tend to be a little strange, especially with all those ever-changing doggie hairstyles that seem to come and go with the local doggie fashions of the day. Indeed, China can sure be weird at times. The Chinese, for the most part treat their pets as family members. Oh, one more thing… Dog lovers far outnumber the dog eaters in China. Don’t fall for all the anti-China propaganda.)
Anyways, dogs are dogs. That is neither good nor bad. It is a statement of reality. Dogs, regardless of the breed, are members of the canine family. They have certain individual differences depending on which breed, but overall they will all act like dogs. You can dye their hair fashionable colors, and dress them up in outfits. You can put socks and shoes on them, and give them eyeglasses and a LV handbag, but you can’t change who they are. Dogs are dogs.
Dogs can do things that humans cannot. We might not want to recognize this fact, but it is (after all) a fact.
Dogs can Smell
Duh!
What I know about dogs come from personal experience. I never studied anything about our canine friends. What I have learned about dogs comes from the Internet. (In addition, perhaps an odd television program or two as well.) So the reader can take my opinions however, they want. I am decidedly not an expert. I am at best a generalist who has the ability to put various “puzzle pieces” together in very interesting ways.
I’m just an average dog lover. Maybe like you? Eh?
You (the reader) should realize this, but many people do not. Dogs can smell much better than humans can. Whoa… let’s replace “much better”, with “unbelievably, superbly, and stunningly better”. It is really true, and I am not at all exaggerating in the least. In fact, a dog’s brain is specialized for identifying scents.
While we need room in our brains to think, and work, dogs use a huge portion to analyze scents. We use our brain to help us think and reason. They use their brain to smell. We use our brain to better understand the universe. They use their brain to smell better. We use our brain to try to fix and repair things. They use their brain to best understand the ways of smelling.
Dogs can pretty much smell anything. They can be trained to find scents that represent danger and serious medical conditions. Photo is from a National Geographic article published in 2014 (Go here to read a report on the article.)
There are all kinds of reports and studies on just about how much better a dog’s sense of smell is than ours. The problem is that there are so many variables that it’s nearly impossible to quantify or perform comparisons. In a true sense, it is like comparing a black and white photo of an apple, with a freshly baked pizza hot out of the oven. There just isn’t really any good and real way to compare the two.
Real Estate
A dog’s sense of smell may be much better than over 1000 times better than ours, making it the most sensitive (and vulnerable) part of its body. (Other reports place this figure much higher.) Comparatively, if you look at the mechanism of smell between humans and dogs, you can see a striking difference. The human nose has only three-square centimeters of olfactory membrane. While, compared to dogs such as Bloodhounds, can have as much as 150 square centimeters of scent-sensing material in their noses. So that means, we have three (3x), and (some) dogs has one hundred and fifty (150x) cm squared of area to smell with. More is better, right?
A small parabolic dish might be able to pick up a satellite signal with come careful positioning, but a larger one will have a much better change in getting the signal and locking on to it. The same is true with dogs. Their snozes give them ability.
Brain Power to Process the Scents
Dogs also have forty times more scent processing cells in their brains than humans. They need this computation power to be able to handle the enormous sensory input from their huge snoozes. It’s never just an issue with size, it’s an issue about what you can do with the larger members and capacities. (No sexual references, here please.)
“Dogs can smell 100,000 times better than humans. In tests, dogs have been able to detect a chemical in a solution diluted to 1 to 2 parts per trillion. The human brain has a large area devoted to vision, while dogs have a large portion dedicated to olfaction, in fact, 40% more of a dog’s brain than a human’s is committed to smell. The average person has 5 million smell receptors, while the average dog, depending on breed, has 125 to 250 million smell receptors. The Bloodhound has an incredible 300 million smell receptors! Dogs can smell things up to 40 feet underground. Dogs can even smell human fingerprints that are a week old!”- The Incredible Sense of Smell in the Dog
We who hang around dogs, know that they can “feel” or sense our emotions. If you are around dogs (or cats) and haven’t noticed this, I would be truly surprised. It’s a very common thing. Not only is it common, but research seemingly proves this as well. Indeed, it’s quite likely that dogs can actually smell emotions. (I would say that it is a given, but you know there are always exceptions to the rule.) Dogs can smell fear, anxiety, even sadness. The flight-or-fight hormone, adrenaline, is undetectable by our noses, but dogs can apparently smell it. In addition, fear or anxiety is often accompanied by increased heart rate and blood flow, which sends telltale body chemicals more quickly to the skin surface. Oh yeah, your dog will most certainly know your feelings. Not only that, but there are indications that dogs can even smell if you have cancer.
“Dogs read about the world through their noses, and they write their messages, at least to other dogs, in their urine.” - Stanley Coren
Doggie Facebook
I know, I know, the dog is spending way too much time smelling a fence post, or a pile of shit. You are getting impatient, and want him to get a move on. But, he is just there, oblivious to the world around him, just totally absorbed in what he has just “discovered”. I know that it’s tempting to drag your dog away from that pile of shit. I have actually done so myself (when we used to walk him out on a leash).
But… even though he’s sniffing everything with an annoying slowness, maybe we should give him a break and let him spend some time at that post (get the pun?). Let him have some time to smell the local neighborhood gossip. And, if he is satisfied with it, let him give a “like” to it. Let him do a posting on his own.
Dog urine is the “ink” of the dog social-network. Think of it as an exciting blog post on Facebook or your favorite social networking platform. Instead of “Face-book”, it’s “Doggie-ass” and just as important.
Information is Hidden within Scents
When dogs start sniffing each other’s asses, the chances are that they’re really learning a lot. It’s far, far more than what we can comprehend. Indeed, it is obviously much more than just simple idle chitchat. The ability to smell given the geometry of the nose, and the ability to interpret that information in the brain can lead us to some interesting conclusions.
Exactly what the dogs are learning, and what they do with that information, is unknown. As of this writing, no one has figured it out yet. (No one is even studying this, as far as I know.) Many people claim that it is “simply” just “marking their territory”. However, it’s probably much more than that. In fact, it’s very likely far beyond “this is my territory, keep out!”
I really don’t know. But, I would guess that it’s probably more along the lines of, “Oh, you’re a nice male dog, 3.26 years old. You are a collie and beagle mix. And… I notice that you’ve been hanging around the park on Dixon Avenue again, you had some baked chicken wings recently (that you found on 8th street), and you like to sleep on your left side.”
Links
Here’s some great links on dog’s ability to smell;
Stanley Coren on Understanding a Dog’s Sense of Smell
While dogs communicate through the sense of smell, humans communicate through the written word. (Yes, I know that there are other mediums. Let’s not get off track here.) We communicate through writing our thoughts down in printed media. This can be electronics or on paper.
It wasn’t always that way. It used to be carved in stone, but that is rarely done these days.
In the “old days” people would chisel their writings into stone for everyone to know and remember. These records would spell out major events, and accomplishments. They would tell stories and help us understand our relationships with the Gods of Heaven. It was written and carved to be everlasting.
Kings and rulers used to carve their deeds, rulings, laws, and pronouncements into stone so that no one could misinterpret them, or rewrite them. The only way that the history could be forgotten was if the stone or writing was physically destroyed. (Image Source.)
Ah, but you know, Humans are a mercurial lot.
When individuals come to power, they want something that is easily erased and written over. In the old days, they would have to chisel off the names of their predecessors on all the temples and government buildings. It took a while, and left garish scars on otherwise beautiful structures.
For what ever it is worth, let it be well understood that the Egyptians were pretty bad at this.
OzymandiasPercy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Now, let it be known; the printing press really rocked our world. Not only could things be printed on paper and mass produced, but governments and individuals in power can host periodic burning of books and records. They could rewrite history to fit their new narrative. (Maybe sort of, like how a dog will try to over pee another dog’s urine.)
Ah. Yah don’t say…
Book burnings are very common. They go by many names. Progressive liberals and their established socialist governments always have book burnings. It’s their thing. It’s kind of like how they like to wear white sheets, hate Catholics, and use masks to cover their faces.
The progressive socialist nationalists of Germany (Nazi for you under-educated folk) held massive book burnings. They really took the time to make them impressive. They would have uniforms, orchestrated dance and march movements, flags and special effects. It must have been impressive. Huge barn fires rising up into the Heavens. People dancing around in uniforms with crazed people throwing books into the fires.
The Nazi’s really loved to use school kids to do it. They would organize these rallies and allow the school children to leave the school. The kids were, of course, happy to do so. There, the kids would gleefully destroy their own history.
Progressive Socialist Democrats in Germany (Known as NAZI.) having one of their many book burnings. These were often festive affairs with music, speeches, and youth that gleefully toss their collective histories into the fire. Book burnings are ALWAYS associated with power struggles. (That and other things such as statue desecration, and politically correct types of speech.) When one movement ascends to power they start to rewrite history. (Image Source.)
The Chinese which is also a progressive liberal government structure (officially socialist with Chinese characteristics ) held massive book burnings during the Cultural Revolution. They also used children to promote their agendas. This included the full range from gun control to destruction of history, to (of course) book burnings. Unlike the Germans, who able to recover about two decades later after a global war, the Chinese took around four decades to recover, and in many ways the cuts and destruction were too deep. Various aspects of the Chinese culture never really recovered.
Darn those progressive democrat socialists. Always trying to mess up everyone else’s lives!
In many ways, the Antifa movement is a cross between the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the German Socialists of the 1930’s. (I do cover this in another writing elsewhere.) You know, you don’t really need to be a student to history to know any of this.
You just need to be awake and listening.
Which, I am sad to say is a real rarity today. For the record, book burnings occurred in the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, and Argentina as well as just about any other nation in the world.
One of the best books to describe how history, rules and laws are rewritten is the book by George Orwell titled “Animal Farm“. As history is always being rewritten in order to manipulate people into doing things that go against their well being.
Now that everything is migrating to the internet, the ability to erase and rewrite history has never been easier. Indeed, the internet is like one large “white board”. You erase what you don’t like, and rewrite it to fit your new revised narrative. There are all kinds of examples. I have covered one myself on the subject of Calexit and the American Civil War by President Obama.
It is the way that it is done. There isn’t too much that we can do about it. Except change our behaviors and be skeptical of all the news. Especially to take notice to avoid any kind of pre-approved or “fact checked” news deemed worthy by others. Indeed, that is the most dangerous.
News in America in 2018 has completely gone full-on Orwell. George Orwell well predicted the American media in his book “Animal Farm”. Good is bad. Happy is sad. White is black. American media in 2018 is absolutely off the charts in insanity.
Have you noticed any trends? Man, I’ll tell you it seems like everyone is writing on and on just how bad Russia is, and that there will eventually be a world war between the great powers. How can that be? Bill Clinton was paying Russia to keep it’s military intact through most of the 1990’s. Now why would they want to nuke us now? Didn’t Hillary Clinton just give them 25% of our nuclear stockpiles? It just doesn’t make too much sense.
We’d make a far better trading partner than an enemy. But, anyways… Now what do you all think is gonna happen once, the USA and Russia nukes each other? It’s a great question. It’s one that deserves some thought. What do you think is going to happen once the USA gets involved in a nuclear war?
Nuclear war is terrible and it is nothing to take lightly. If a nuclear war were to break out, there would be many things that would be nearly impossible in a post nuclear-exchange United States. Things such as easy cell phone access, nope the War Powers act will limit that. Things such as your Starbucks coffee are also going to be changed as the headquarters would be reduced to radioactive glass. Nope, a nuclear exchange will impact YOUR life in ways that you are unaware of.
Do you believe that the world will be over? Is that what you really think will happen? Do you believe that since the USA is number one, that the rest of the world will just scurry under rocks or something? Is that what you think? Ha!
Not. Going. To. Happen.
What do you think China will do while both Russia, Europe (of course the EU, as they are driving this war narrative), with the USA are in ruins with radioactive rubble for cities?
Do you think that the rest of the world will continue to live like a scene from a “Save the Children” commercial? Do you think that it will make a big difference in the lives of other people in Sydney, Australia? How about Osaka, Japan? What about Sao Paulo Brazil?
Hong Kong is a very western Chinese city. It is very modern and very crowded. I like it, but I can only take it in small doses as they use Western pricing and it tends to be too expensive for my tastes.
Do you think that they will care…?
The rest of the world has a vibrant middle class. There are factories, farms, subways, tollbooths, ATM machines, and McDonalds all over the world. They have toothpaste, football, cars, cable television, and the internet. If American shuts itself off from the rest of the world… the rest of the world will go on as if nothing happened. America will just be a footnote in the latest Wikipedia entries as maintained from Beijing servers…
So…
Do you think that the USA will still be able to project “it’s interests” globally? Do you think that the domestic issues, internally, will be just the same-old same-old script? Nope, boys and girls, it is going to be awfully hard for most Americans. Especially those from the cities.
Most especially for those urban or suburban folk.
What are they going to do when Starbucks runs out of coffee? When Wi-Fi has zero hot spots, or when girls will need to “put out” for a half-bowl of pea soup? Know your history people. How do you think that the young lasses of Germany survived when the Russians moved in through the devastated countryside? How do you think the people of Cambodia, and Burma survived? I cannot predict the future, but I can report on what happened in the past when this situation raised it’s ugly head.
Nuclear tipped ICBM’s are nothing to take lightly. Yet, here we are with the media promoting war as if it was just “another” issue like “racist peanut butter and jelly sandwiches”. Ugh!
Oh sure, the surviving Americans will try to leave the glassed rubble of their cities. Though, I doubt that they will make it very far into “deplorable land”. You know with all those squads of “good ol’ boys” hunting down all the urban folk escaping from all that glassed wreckage.
Oh, their Prius or Tesla might make it a few hundred miles into “flyover country”. They might even get some militia assistance. Oh, some will make it to FEMA camps. There, of course they will be pre-screened and set to work.
Ain’t nothing for free in this world. We all will have to pay the tolls. The tolls will, or course, be guarded by men with guns.
While the USA is all busy straightening out it’s house, the rest of the world will continue as if nothing happened. Since the exports to the United States account for around 11% of what China makes, there will certainly be an impact.
However, it won’t be life-threatening. China will survive. The nuclear exchange between the USA and Russia will be noted. Maps will be redrawn with huge “Forbidden to Enter” areas marked in red. But that will be about it.
If the United States were to get involved in a hot nuclear war, those nations that do not participate in the war would benefit. Many of these nations, such as China, South Africa, Europe, Dubai, Tokyo and many others are just as advanced as the United States is and would thrive if competition from Los Angles, San Francisco and New York were to end.
China will take over. Not a bad thing. I’ll tell you what.
War with the President
Oh but not all the news is about trying to get people to go to war. Jeeze! This is not 1960 people! While America might be populated with half-asleep sheep, they do know when they are being manipulated. At least the older ones do. The news is really pretty obvious. The only way that you wouldn’t notice the obvious propaganda is if you were on some kind of drug like a painkiller, or an anti-depressant…
Anyways, the other news concerns president Trump.
It’s a non-stop hate fest. I have never seen such vitriol and hate from the American propaganda mills. These idiots actually believed that Hillary the Horrible could actually be elected. They thought that the game was rigged in her favor, and even if she did manage to become President that no one would bat an eye and it would be accepted. Hah! I’ll tell you, these people are absolutely delusional.
So, when I see the “Russia, Russia, Russia!” anti-Trump narrative, it just bores me. It’s not news. There just isn’t any news there.
It’s just a bunch of attractive actors reading scripted lines, and being paid large bucks to make up news.
I’m beyond bored with it. I will honestly say that I haven’t seen ABC, NBC or a CBS newscast in over a decade. It’s all just junk. CNN? Give me a break. I was turned off from them way back in the 1990’s when they were caught staging a protest.
CNN staging a fake protest. In this case they reported that a huge groundswell of Muslims were protesting Islamic terror. Those individuals weren’t even’t actual Muslims. They were paid actors. Jeeze!
It’s all propaganda with a set agenda that benefits the richest people in the world.
That is why it is important to read grass-root reporting. Read from small-time bloggers, and get your news from other sources. Of course, the powers-that-be don’t want you to do that. No sir ree! You can bet that those in the oligarchy want their control over all thought, ideas and media. You will follow their directions or not at all. The Bill of Rights, and the first Amendment can just go to hell as far as they are concerned.
Here is Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein on her attack on people who have a “five dollar blog”…
Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein making a formal statement that the Bill of Rights does not apply to American Citizens. She makes the case that it ONLY applies to elected officials. Therfore, it is important to prevent citizens from writing or blogging on the Internet using their “five dollar blog”.
Diane Feinstein talking about the need to only allow properly vetted, government “approved”, people to have “Free Speech”. Doesn’t she look like the teacher from Hell? (Image Source.)
I wonder why there are no progressive liberal attacks. I guess that it is just ok to take away freedoms… how about we start with Facebook, then Tumblr, Pinterest, Google, Snapchat, for starters.
Unless you have lived under a rock for the last ten years, what constitutes news out of the United States today is anything but news. It has become a complete political propaganda machine that is populated by highly paid actors and actresses reading scripted lines. There is a science to this, and there is a feedback loop that dictates what propaganda that should be dished out to the American population at which specific times.
American media is just propaganda. Nothing that you see is real and truthful. It is all distorted lies and partial-truths.
Real news would tell us details about the hidden cavity in the Great Pyramid, or a review of NASA funding for the next fiscal year. It would cover topical news; a protest here, a murder there, and a car crash there in brief one or two sentence bites. When a President speaks, they would play his entire speech, not show him speaking with the audio off and then translate for us what he is saying.
They would not have “panels of experts” who are just actors with nice titles (not nice titties, or… um I take that back), farmed out by rich organizations for propagandized purposes. They would provide balance of different viewpoints (if they wanted a broad viewership base). Or not have any dissent on the editorial sections if they wanted to become the foremost expert in their political narrative.
This reminds me of an incident in my own house with my own dog…
Our floor is mostly hardwood and tiled marble. It’s the Chinese way. That is unlike the States, where the floor is carpeted (wall to wall) over a plywood floor if the house was built after the 1980’s. In China, most houses have a stone floor. The stone is typically cut at a ¼ inch thick sliced tile, polished, and provided into two feet square sections. Most floors use a light colored granite or marble. In upper-scale homes, wood floors are provided in the bedrooms. Cheaper flooring methods such as linoleum or carpeting are never used.
As such, we have a few throw rugs to lie down and make the house a home.
Now our dog knows, absolutely knows, that peeing in the house if forbidden. We have a rule that he must pee and crap in the bathroom (if not outside). We have trained him to use a blue mat (Indoor/outdoor carpeting that is blue instead of green.) just for this purpose.
In fact, the reader should know, that the way we trained him was that we got a really large mat, and put it in the shower. (In China, the showers do not have a tub. Therefore, the shower goes straight down to the floor.) Once the dog knew that he could do all the peeing and crapping he needed to do, on the shower, that is where he went. Over time, we cut the mat down smaller and smaller. It was one yard by one yard, then it became two feet by two feet. Then one foot by two feet, then one foot by one foot. We kept cutting it down. Finally it was one square inch, and you should have seen him trying to aim and hit that tiny little mat.
Anyways, long story short, he knew that he could only pee in the shower.
Well, we also have a few throw rugs. We decided to not use them when he took up the (terrible) habit on peeing on them.
Now, I really don’t know why he would pee on them. Maybe it was because he was trained to pee on mats due to his bathroom training. Or, perhaps, maybe he wanted to make the house feel more lived in and “doggie friendly”.
Whatever.
One day, we decided to lay down this black and white shag rug that we have. (Yeah, I know that it is shag, but it fits with our modern Asian décor.) We wanted to make the living room area more comfortable, and that would include a rug nested in between the sofas and the various chairs. However, we were very concerned because our dog had a propensity to pee on the rugs.
So we laid the rug down. We told him, in no uncertain ways, that it was “off limits” to pee upon. We then watched him like a hawk.
I can tell the reader that he knew not to do anything. He would walk near the rug with a hunched back look, and with tail down. He was afraid to do anything with that rug. Indeed, he would walk around it rather than walk on it.
All was well. Then one day, the wife saw him do a “dryless pee” on the rug. That I mean to say is that he pretended to pee for a split second, but no pee came out. She chalked it up to him getting old, and let it fly. Of course, the reader might say, “Hey, why don’t you simply lift up the rug, you moron?”. Well, we couldn’t. The rug was under this massive marble coffee table. It is an enormously heavy sheet of brown veined marble (Also known as Adobe Granite, Golden Brown Marble, Canadian Mahogany, or Deer Brown granite.) that is at least one inch thick, with beveled sides. It weighs a ton. It is far too heavy for me to move alone, or even to have two people move it. You actually need four strong men to move this friggin’ coffee table.
Well, the design (with the cold gold metal sides, and the glass bottom) looks a lot like a KTV table. Which wasn’t our intention, but hey the wife picked it out and now we have it. Anyways, the other ends of the rug are buried under large sofas and leather chairs. So for us to move everything about, would take a lot of effort. It wouldn’t be something that we would ever do casually. So, we just let it slide.
A few days later, I thought that I smelled pee, but the rug was dry. It must have been my imagination, I reasoned.
A few weeks later, my wife too smelled something. It was driving us crazy. The rug was dry, but the smell of urine was unbearably strong. We had been watching him carefully but he wasn’t doing anything. When it looked like he would pee, nothing came out, and so we took no action. So, to us, it was very perplexing.
Finally, around six o’clock on a Saturday, we couldn’t stand it any longer. We moved the sofas out, and the (enormously heavy) coffee table away. Then we lifted up the rug.
My God! The entire underside was wet and saturated with dog urine! Somehow, the shag carpet stayed dry on top, no matter how wet it got. But the underside acted like a massive sponge. It absorbed the urine and just collected it there. It was absolutely horrid and disgusting. Weeks of moldy pee saturated the matting making it look and smell like an outdoor shithouse in the middle of August.
Apparently what had happened was that our dog knew that it was wrong to pee on the rug. However, when it wasn’t punished for tiny efforts to pee, it thought that it could pee at will as long as it wasn’t caught. We were delusional in thinking that the dog would not do this. The end result was that our intention (of a pee-less rug) never materialized. Our dog thought it could pee away… as long as it could not be caught.
I guess that is what happens when we let people get away with things that are wrong. Unless we stop them in the early stages, their behavior will get worse and worse over time.
I have seen that this is true, and I am sure that the reader knows examples of this. Perhaps with children. Maybe with criminals. With classmates, and with other things as well. It just seems that if you do not have limits, it is within our nature to treat things as without limits. As such, we tend to keep pushing and pushing until we start to hit some roadblocks.
News and Politics
Which of course, brings us back to the Democratic Senator from California, Diane Feinstein and her attempt(s) to ban the first amendment. (Now, she like any other “good” Democrat is off trying to ban everything from ice cream to baby pacifiers. It’s in their nature. However, for now, let’s just focus on this one particular instance, and not get sidetracked.)
You know, she (and others of her ilk) believes that they can get away with their actions simply because no one is stepping up and stopping them. Like our dog, who needed a good hard paddle after his first attempted pee, this woman needed to spend five years at hard labor when she first started to suggest banning a Right. It would have stopped her dead in her tracks, and served as a notice to others who might try to follow in her footsteps.
Newsflash to everyone; Senators are just like everyone else. The only thing that they have that you (the reader) do not have is a title, and a good PR firm. They must follow the rules. It doesn’t work that way of course. But it should.
Ah…
The young millennial asks “what rules, and what laws are you referring to?”
To this, I must teach the reader something that is a very well-kept secret. Yes, it is. Why it is the “Preamble to the Bill of Rights” of course. This is one of the most secretive documents in the entire United States. Everyone tries to hide it, because it clearly and plainly says what a Right is, and what the purpose of a Right is. Hey! Surprise! Here it is so you can read it for yourself.
THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.
And, for those of you who only have a public education, let me translate for you.
The Bill of Rights is a special set of rules inside, yet set apart from the Constitution. It is designed to prevent the Constitution to be used to harm the citizens of the United States. It offered protections in that it clearly stated that no elected official, nor anyone appointed by them, could influence, takeaway or disparage any of the RIGHTS listed in the Bill of Rights.
That’s correct.
No one, let alone a Senator can even consider taking or limiting a right. That means ANY right, for those of you who are confused out there. Now there are ten Rights. The first group of Rights is in a collection known as the first amendment. One of these rights is, of course, the Right of freedom of speech. Which means that you can say anything, or write anything, or even think anything NO MATTER WHAT. You offend someone… tough cookies. You swear or use profanity…meh. You call a person a bad name, or say something that someone doesn’t like… no problem.
The RIGHT to speak your mind; America used to stand for this freedom. Not anymore apparently.
Ah… but I digress yet again.
Bad Behaviors
Wouldn’t you think that being a Senator, and not following the Constitution is wrong? Wouldn’t you think that it is a “bad behavior”? I would.
But, you know, defining what “bad behavior” is and what isn’t is really meaningless unless there is an enforcement arm.
When we were all children, we knew that there were things that we were not permitted to do. If we crossed the line, and did those “naughty” things, our parents would get angry and punish us. Now, we all had friends who could seemingly get away with anything. Their parents apparently didn’t care in the least. They were always on our case, acting like bullies or worse. Their parents were either oblivious, or defensive of their actions. It was truly frustrating. However, now that I am much older I see where the lack of discipline and parental guidance led the kids. It wasn’t pretty.
I would guess that perhaps one of the reasons why the United States is in such a mess today is partially because there just hasn’t been any enforcement to follow the Constitution. People could seemingly get away with anything. As such, they never would get in trouble. Look at Louis Learner, and the rest of her ilk, and how they were never punished.
This all reminds me of my dog, and when he’s acting poorly.
Being in the Dog House
Here in China, it is very crowded. As such, there is a necessity in making sure that everyone follows certain basic rules. Because, one or two odd balls behaving badly can cause all kinds of trouble in a crowded environment. Now, that is not to say that China has their act together, as there are many things about China that could use some improvement. However, there are things that they do right.
One of the things that they have in China that just isn’t so popular in the United States is security guards in every building for the purposes of keeping order. That differs from the United States, where security is used to enforce laws. In China, while laws might be enforced or not, the primary purpose of a baoan (security guard) is to keep order.
In a crowded place, especially a residential building, excessive noise is not tolerated. If you think that you can jam with your stereo up all night long and not have the rest of the building lynch you, you are sorely mistaken. You will have a baoan knock on your door, and if you are not corporative, they will pick up your stereo and toss it of the 65th floor below. If you complain, they will arrest you and in China, this is decidedly NOT a good thing.
Anyways, back to my dog.
For a while we had two dogs. Our current dog (Pipi) and a younger dog named “Super”. Super was a beautiful dog. The problem with him is that he hated my guts. He just could not stand me. When I would come home, he would bark at me all night long. It would continue hour after hour. He would be bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and his voice would be hoarse, but he would keep it up like it was his duty. He would bark like there was no tomorrow. You could hear his voice getting hoarser and hoarser. It would crackle and dry up, yet still he barked. Then when I would leave the house, he would collapse in his bed from exhaustion. I know, as my wife would show me pictures of him collapsed from exhaustive barking. He would lay there on his back, his mouth open and his tongue out exhausted.
For my wife, she loved the loyalty of the dog. However, she saw that it was a problem. On more than just a few instances, we would have the guards knock on our doors to get the dog quiet. One time they were going to toss him off the 63rd floor, if we didn’t get him quiet. Indeed, for a long time it was a real problem. That is… until we consulted a vet about what to do.
When confronted with this problem, many Chinese simply cut the vocal cords of the dog. That way, they can live their life normally, but they will no longer be able to bark. Now, before any reader has a heart attack, please relax. We didn’t do any such thing. Instead we turned to technology for an answer.
We put on a barking shock collar on him.
Whenever there was a loud sound the dog would get a three second beep. If the barking continued, there would be a shock. The collar would then wait for five minutes. If there were additional loud sounds in those five minutes, there would be four louder beeps and a louder shock. This continued up the scale to ten. If the dog were still barking after fifty minutes (10 x 5 minutes = fifty minutes) of barking, a very loud shock would be released.
Super was a smart dog, and quickly discovered how the system worked.
Anti-barking training device used to train dogs to stop barking. This particular model is available in the United States. Chinese models are (ahem) more efficient.
Anti-barking shock training collar for dogs. (Image Source.)
Problem solved. Right?
Now Super whispered his barks. Instead of BARK! BARK! BARK!, it was bark… um, bark, … bark. (Timidly.) It was cute, and it did work. Our dog had figured out how it worked and realized that he could no longer bark in the house. There weren’t any more visits from the building guards. Great right? Of course it wouldn’t work if the dog were not bright or slow. But Super was smart, so it worked.
But then, again our other dog (Pipi) was smart as well.
And he too discovered how it worked. He discovered that he could shock Super by barking at him. Super could be sleeping, and our dog would walk up to him and bark right into his collar. What a shocking way to wake up! Oh, my goodness! What hath we wrought?
One day we came home to barking and howls of pain from Super. Our other dog Pipi was pacing around Super barking crazily, and watching him get shocked. Then he gleefully would start up again, to watch it all over again.
We had to put an end to this mess.
We initially didn’t know what to do. We were afraid that if we removed the collar that Super would start barking again. There was a real and serious risk that he would find out the hard way how to fly. We needed to do something. We discussed it back and forth, over wine (as was our preference) and decided a solution. We put shock collars on both of them.
That’s right. Now it wasn’t fair. But it was the best thing to do.
We had a small cage for both of them, and put them both in it with shock collars. We then put on a camera and watched them from our cellphones, and left the house for dinner.
Sure enough, our one dog would start barking and Super would start to cower in fear. The only difference now was that both collars started to beep. Now, both dogs got a shock. Our dog didn’t know what was going on, so he started to bark and attack Super. Then off goes the stage-two beeps…then shock. It continued, and then Super started to fight back. He started to bark back. There was a mess of fighting, howling, beeping and electric shocks. It took maybe two hours before they all collapsed from exhaustion.
Neither dog would bark after that.
After that one massive battle, everything went quiet and peaceful. Neither dog barked. Though, they didn’t look at each other either. They would take turns eating and they would stay in separate rooms in the house. The good news is that Super wasn’t thrown out the window, no dog had a operation to stop barking, and the Baoan never visited us again. Mission accomplished.
That makes me think…
I must admit that I am pretty sick and tired of Congress. Not one of them are acting the interests of their constituents. Not one of them. They are self-serving and evil.
It makes me think that maybe we should have shock-collars for everyone in Congress. The moment they start to put restrictions on people and any of their Rights, that they get graduated electric shocks. Maybe that would teach them that they couldn’t violate the Constitution no matter what their excuses are. Try to ban free speech, get a shock. Try to ban guns, get a shock. Try to ban religion… get a shock. Try to ban large sodas… get a shock. Try to ban straws… get a shock. Try to ban bikini’s… get a shock. Try to ban chewing gum… get a shock. Try to ban bacon…get a shock. Try to ban knives and forks… get a shock.
It’s a win-win situation!
When does information stop and propaganda begin
Well, isn’t that the way life works. You start talking about dog shit and end up talking about putting shock collars on American Senators. Ah, my goodness, life as an American.
People say that we live in an “information age”. I disagree. We live in an “age of manipulation”. I say this because never before have we ever been so assaulted upon by propagandized media, and surveilled so severely. Face the facts.
All, the totality of, American media is owned by only six people.
Everything that you see on the “mainstream” media is directed and spoon fed to you by the desires of six people.
Why use propaganda unless you want to manipulate, and why utilize surveillance if you have no intention about using the information you obtain. The answers to both questions point squarely towards manipulation.
This being stated…
How does the news benefit you?
Really, how does the “news” benefit you? If you were to go without watching, reading, or listening to the news for a week, would your life collapse? Would your quality of life decrease? Would your income drop?
Do you like being afraid of the latest pandemic being shoved right before your morning coffee?
I am willing to bet that your quality of life would increase. Your stress level would definitely decrease, and your levels of happiness would increase. I think that maybe we have become so addicted to the news that we have forgotten it’s relative importance in our lives. Since most of the news is used to manipulate and alter your way of thinking, it is refreshing to ignore it.
People who ignore the news, and the warnings about all the wars and troubles in other nations, go out and are happy outside of the USA. They are not afraid.
Those who ignore the news, don’t know that they cannot do certain things, so they do them anyways. They survive and succeed. News in many cases, is like a big weight around your neck that weighs you down and holds you back. It holds you back.
So, like a dog, I would suggest that you ignore that big pile of shit on the sidewalk. Let other dogs smell it. There are other trees to pee on. Other places to run and play. Don’t let anyone tell you that you must smell that pile of shit and no others. You can choose your very own pile of shit and do with it as you may.
You, yes YOU, can choose your own pile of shit to smell. Don’t let anyone tell you what shit to smell.
What you can do
To steal a quote from the movie “Forrest Gump”, life is like a box of chocolates, you don’t know what you are going to get. But, my dear friends, you can most certainly choose the box. Don’t listen to the propaganda.
"Ben Rhodes from Obama’s national security apparatus made the comment that your average journalist today is 27. They don’t know anything; they believe everything we tell ’em. It was a snap.
It was right out of the page of Jonathan Gruber, who was the architect of Obamacare, who after it was signed into law, ran around the country bragging about how easy it was to lie to the American people about it because the American people are essentially ignoramuses."-Rush Limbaugh
Likewise, don’t do what all the other dogs do. Don’t go towards the biggest and most popular pile of shit. Be different, be selective in which shit that you smell. Only pee where you want to be.
Don’t go from tree to tree peeing indiscriminately. Use some thought and planning. I am sure that your life would benefit from some judicial peeing responsibility.
We cannot change the world, and maybe we shouldn’t even try. All that we can change is ourselves.
If there are something’s that I urge the reader to do, I would suggest the following;
Stop watching, reading, and viewing all the “major” media outlets. (CNN,MSNBC, ABC, CBS, etc.)
Replace the time with something involving food, fresh air, friendships, or animals. (Oh, sex and pizza with wine would be a good thing also.)
Now, that should take care of most of your need to take medication (if you are an American). Now, in addition I would also suggest a phased approach of the following suggestions;
When you go on the internet, do not visit any of the “minor” news sites. (Drudge, Huffington Post, Forbes, WaPo etc.) Give yourself a break.
Avoid sites that promise to tell you “the truth”. Or “fact check”, they will just inform you of what the truth is relative to the person who paid them. They are always lying for financial gain. While Snopes is perhaps one of the most famous, all of them utilize a financial model that promotes one version of the truth over others for financial gain. There is nothing free out there. You have to pay a price for everything. Being “educated” so you are manipulated is the price that you must often pay as an American.
Avoid “Social media”, like Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, or any of the others. If you need to go on it, pledge to stop using “likes”, and responding to posts.
Go there, do your task, and leave. A kitchen timer helps too.
The goal to all of this is to simplify your life by removing the anxiety and excitement of the internet from your life. You don’t need it. It hasn’t helped you at all, and it has only made your life miserable. Forgetaboutit.
I’ve noticed that in my rush to check out Tumblr, that I ended up acting like my dog anticipating a great pile of stinky poop. I just couldn’t wait to what was on my feed. But you know what? It’s just another addiction. It doesn’t really matter. Don’t be like my dog that just cannot wait to smell the freshest pile of shit in the park. Then he just has to pee on top of it. You don’t need it. It’s addictive, and other people know that you are addicted to it, and use that to control you.
Other people control you this way.
Some Final Comments
This being my opinions, and with the world populated with others, there will be some disagreements. Maybe some readers won’t like my comparisons between American news and dog shit. But, you know, that is exactly how most of America views the media, reporters, and those who are on the news shows. We think that they all stink.
Idea: 689,003 Facebook users participated in a social experiment during which researchers wanted to see what would happen if people started reading bad news every day. For an entire week, some users had to view news posts which had negative information, some of which were incredibly stressful emotionally. The opposite was also tested out by using positive news instead of negative posts.
Result: Like a lot of us instinctively predicted, reading lots of negative news over 7 days changed Facebook users' behavior online. Not only were they more prone to posting similar information as in the negative news more often, they were also more likely to emphasize negative emotions. Meanwhile, positive news stories made people feel happier, act more compassionately and kindly towards others. In other words, the news that we consume on social media shapes how we react because, on some level, we feel that what we see and read happens to us in reality.
Maybe some readers will take offense on what I have to say about Nazi’s, Liberal Progressives, and similar organizations like the Antifa and the KKK. Well, heck, that is what the First Amendment is for; the ability to speak your mind. Or to paraphrase the good Democrat Senator, “to express non-approved ideas on my five dollar blog”. Well, there is a solution that will prevent you from getting upset. Don’t read any of my opinions. Leave. Thank you.
This entire article is based on one thing; the musing that I had while I was walking my dog along the beach in front of my house. I noticed how excited he was smelling crap and his urgency to pee everywhere. In turn, I too wanted to see what the latest feed was on the news. And then, for a brief second of clarity, it became totally clear to me. Dogs and humans are the same.
We are the same, and you cannot convince me otherwise.
In my desire to keep my dog focused, and to keep him from getting hit by a car, I would often need to direct him. He cannot crap in the middle of a road, and not run blindly across a road to smell a fire hydrant. It is dangerous in many ways. As such, I need to help him and to protect him.
Isn’t that the same with us humans?
If we blindly react to the canned news that is fed to us, and the manipulative narratives that tug at our hearts and souls, we can get ourselves into a great deal of danger and hurt. I suggested the Russian narrative that is really being pushed by CNN, MSNBC, and Drudge. But other narratives are just as dangerous. America has been at war for over two hundred years. Don’t you think we all ought to give it up and chill out some? Really!
Take Aways
Well, there are some take aways from this dialog;
Dog poop is stinky.
Dogs like to smell things, and what they smell is more than we humans can understand.
News can be compared to dog crap.
There is no reason for us to be so interested in the news, as MOST news does not affect us personally.
News or Social Media is addictive to humans. It is like stinky shit to a dog.
Addiction to news can be dangerous, and it MIGHT be a contributor to the opioid problem in America today.
Manipulation of the news is equally dangerous, and could result in a most terrible turn of events.
I think that it might be a good idea to have Senators wear shock collars
FAQ
Q: Do you think that all news is bad? A: No. I am just concerned that all news is used to manipulate. Our addition to news and Social Media might be harmful to us.
Q: Do you hate dogs? A: No. I actually love them. I also think that they should be permitted to smell all the stinky stuff they want. They just need to be careful so that they don’t get hurt in the process.
Q: Do you hate Senator Feinstein? A: No. I think that she is more than a little confused.
Old age does that, you know. You forget things and your sense of judgment tends to be distorted. She came to Congress when telephones had dials and hung on walls. There was no such thing as computers, and people wrote letters with “Bic banana” pens. Everyone was saying “Groovy”, and the movie Jaws just came out. I think she should have retired three or four decades ago. Like when Microsoft DOS first came out.
Q: Do you read the news and listen to it? A: Yes I do. However, I have been actively trying to reduce the impact of it in my life. I think that I have been far too involved in it in the past. Looking back, I can see how silly it has been.
Posted On Free Republic
This article was posted on Free Republic in the chat section on 31JUL18. It was edited as the language was deemed improper. It used the word “shit”. The comments can be read HERE.
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
Here are some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society within communist China. As there are some really stark differences between the two.
More Posts about Life
I have broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little different, in subtle ways.
Stories that Inspired Me
Here are reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that are nearly impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a personal library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome to come and enjoy a read or two as well.
The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.
Here’s one with ICs… 
or, [B] Have a bio-feedback loop that measures your brain frequencies and then adjusts the pulse width of your message carrier wave.
First displayed as a prototype in air shows in 2014 and 2018, the operational Sharp Claw I has been fitted with numerous upgrades designed to improve its reconnaissance and killing abilities. These include an improved short-range electro-optical payload, machine vision, lighting suite and a refined magazine box and ammunition feed mechanism.
The Sharp Claw 1 can walk autonomously, or it can be carried in the cabin of a larger "pointed claw 2" transport unmanned combat vehicle. When marching, they will be transported by the "Jianclaw" 2, and when they reach the combat area, they will march down from the back panel placed behind the cab of the Jianclaw 2 wheeled unmanned combat vehicle for combat. Four years later, at the Zhuhai Air Show in 2018, North Company once again demonstrated an upgraded version of the "Jianclaw" 1 unmanned fighter. The new version has many upgrades, including improved short-range photoelectric loads, machine vision and lighting components, and a newly designed remote weapon station. The weapon station uses ammunition boxes to load ammunition, which can improve the continuous firing ability of unmanned combat vehicles.
Unmanned ground systems (UGVs) are a priority in China’s defense plans, but their deployment appeared limited. UGVs encompass numerous vehicles that operate on land with a human operator or autonomously. They can execute military missions including combat, ordnance disposal, and transport. Numerous Chinese civilian and defense companies, universities, and research institutes are developing UGVs and other unmanned ground systems. R&D on intelligent guidance for unmanned ground platforms is reported to receive support from China’s 973 and 863 programs for high-technology development, as well as the Twelfth FYP of the General Armament Department (GAD).
