Thursday, September 27, 2018
this writer is one of several you'll see regularly posted here as often as i encounter them on the www. in this posting he explores how we are a rising fascist monster who isn't noticed much because most 'consumers' believe the lies they're told more often than should be the case;
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, “we the people” have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse, all the while convincing ourselves that the prison walls enclosing us within the American police state are there for our protection.
Call it doublespeak, call it hypocrisy, call it delusion, call it whatever you like, but the fact remains that while we claim to value freedom, privacy, individuality, equality, diversity, accountability, and government transparency, our actions and those of our government rulers contradict these much-vaunted principles at every turn.
For instance, we claim to disdain the jaded mindset of the Washington elite, and yet we continue to re-elect politicians who lie, cheat and steal.
We claim to disapprove of the endless wars that drain our resources and spread thin our military, and yet we repeatedly buy into the idea that patriotism equals supporting the military.
We claim to chafe at taxpayer-funded pork barrel legislation for roads to nowhere, documentaries on food fights, and studies of mountain lions running on treadmills, and yet we pay our taxes meekly and without raising a fuss of any kind.
We claim to object to the militarization of our local police forces and their increasingly battlefield mindset, and yet we do little more than shrug our shoulders over SWAT team raids and police shootings of unarmed citizens.
And then there’s our supposed love-hate affair with technology, which sees us bristling at the government’s efforts to monitor our internet activities, listen in on our phone calls, read our emails, track our every movement, and punish us for what we say on social media, and yet we keep using these very same technologies all the while doing nothing about the government’s encroachments on our rights.
This contradiction is backed up by a Pew Research Center study, which finds that “Americans say they are deeply concerned about privacy on the web and their cellphones. They say they do not trust Internet companies or the government to protect it. Yet they keep using the services and handing over their personal information.”
Let me get this straight: the government continues to betray our trust, invade our privacy, and abuse our rights, and we keep going back for more?
Sure we do.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-26/empire-lies-are-we-people-useful-idiots-digital-age
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union, a phrase evolved to describe gullible western intellectuals who came to visit Russia and failed to notice the human and other costs of building a communist utopia. The phrase was “useful idiots” and it applied to a good many people who should have known better. I now propose a new, analogous term more appropriate for the age in which we live: useful hypocrites. That’s you and me, folks, and it’s how the masters of the digital universe see us. And they have pretty good reasons for seeing us that way. They hear us whingeing about privacy, security, surveillance, etc., but notice that despite our complaints and suspicions, we appear to do nothing about it. In other words, we say one thing and do another, which is as good a working definition of hypocrisy as one could hope for.”—John Naughton, The Guardian“Who needs direct repression,” asked philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “when one can convince the chicken to walk freely into the slaughterhouse?”
In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, “we the people” have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse, all the while convincing ourselves that the prison walls enclosing us within the American police state are there for our protection.
Call it doublespeak, call it hypocrisy, call it delusion, call it whatever you like, but the fact remains that while we claim to value freedom, privacy, individuality, equality, diversity, accountability, and government transparency, our actions and those of our government rulers contradict these much-vaunted principles at every turn.
For instance, we claim to disdain the jaded mindset of the Washington elite, and yet we continue to re-elect politicians who lie, cheat and steal.
We claim to disapprove of the endless wars that drain our resources and spread thin our military, and yet we repeatedly buy into the idea that patriotism equals supporting the military.
We claim to chafe at taxpayer-funded pork barrel legislation for roads to nowhere, documentaries on food fights, and studies of mountain lions running on treadmills, and yet we pay our taxes meekly and without raising a fuss of any kind.
We claim to object to the militarization of our local police forces and their increasingly battlefield mindset, and yet we do little more than shrug our shoulders over SWAT team raids and police shootings of unarmed citizens.
And then there’s our supposed love-hate affair with technology, which sees us bristling at the government’s efforts to monitor our internet activities, listen in on our phone calls, read our emails, track our every movement, and punish us for what we say on social media, and yet we keep using these very same technologies all the while doing nothing about the government’s encroachments on our rights.
This contradiction is backed up by a Pew Research Center study, which finds that “Americans say they are deeply concerned about privacy on the web and their cellphones. They say they do not trust Internet companies or the government to protect it. Yet they keep using the services and handing over their personal information.”
Let me get this straight: the government continues to betray our trust, invade our privacy, and abuse our rights, and we keep going back for more?
Sure we do.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-26/empire-lies-are-we-people-useful-idiots-digital-age
pcr herein writes about the crimes of the empire and hurricane trump's part in this game, and then he adds an article by chuck baldwin who among other items speaks of chris bollyn's efforts to get the truth out about 911;
Chuck Baldwin Sums It Up: Trump Blew It
Paul Craig Roberts
As further evidence for Chuck Baldwin’s view, I add Trump’s UN speech yesterday.
There was Trump patting Washington on the back for its good deeds and humanitarian and democratic concerns for other countries, which apparently includes Washington’s destruction in whole or part of eight countries in the last 20 years, leaving ruin in place of once well organized and well functioning countries. What really stood out was Trump’s commiseration with the Iranian and Venezuelan peoples as he piled on more sanctions. Washington’s arrogance is astounding. Here was Trump telling the world that Washington has decided the best governments for Iran and Venezuela and intends to use force to put Washington’s choice of government in office.
Washington has been trying to overthrow Iran ever since the Iranian Revolution in 1978-79 when the Iranian people overthrew the ruling American vassal and established a government responsible to them instead of to Washington.
Washington has been trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution since 1999 when Chavez took control of Venezuela’s economy away from the foreign interests that had dominated the country. Washington’s response to democracy has been to do everything in its power to wreck the Venezuelan economy and to threaten military invasion in order to recover control over Venezuelan assets.
The lies that Trump told yesterday about Iran and Venezuela are like the lies that Washington told about Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria, lies that were used to justify military actions that have destroyed the lives and prospects of millions of peoples. Trump, like his predecessors, sees these crimes against humanity as good deeds because they advance Washington and Israeli interests.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/09/26/chuck-baldwin-sums-it-up-trump-blew-it/
Chuck Baldwin Sums It Up: Trump Blew It
Paul Craig Roberts
As further evidence for Chuck Baldwin’s view, I add Trump’s UN speech yesterday.
There was Trump patting Washington on the back for its good deeds and humanitarian and democratic concerns for other countries, which apparently includes Washington’s destruction in whole or part of eight countries in the last 20 years, leaving ruin in place of once well organized and well functioning countries. What really stood out was Trump’s commiseration with the Iranian and Venezuelan peoples as he piled on more sanctions. Washington’s arrogance is astounding. Here was Trump telling the world that Washington has decided the best governments for Iran and Venezuela and intends to use force to put Washington’s choice of government in office.
Washington has been trying to overthrow Iran ever since the Iranian Revolution in 1978-79 when the Iranian people overthrew the ruling American vassal and established a government responsible to them instead of to Washington.
Washington has been trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution since 1999 when Chavez took control of Venezuela’s economy away from the foreign interests that had dominated the country. Washington’s response to democracy has been to do everything in its power to wreck the Venezuelan economy and to threaten military invasion in order to recover control over Venezuelan assets.
The lies that Trump told yesterday about Iran and Venezuela are like the lies that Washington told about Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria, lies that were used to justify military actions that have destroyed the lives and prospects of millions of peoples. Trump, like his predecessors, sees these crimes against humanity as good deeds because they advance Washington and Israeli interests.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/09/26/chuck-baldwin-sums-it-up-trump-blew-it/
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
in this article you will discover how facebook is protecting you from 'hateful ideas' that 'our' government doesn't approve of, and how that will make you a much better citizen and able to support more death and destruction worldwide on behalf of said empire;
Facebook has lately announced a series of major steps it would take to combat fake news and the global spread of misinformation that it says could influence elections, but the more we learn about just who it is Facebook is partnering with in this endeavor, the clearer it becomes that these initiatives are not at all designed to foster independent thought and discourse, but to ultimately ensure that public online discourse doesn't stray too far from official state narratives.
Mark Weisbrot, a co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently slammed Facebook’s decision to work with US government-funded organizations as "Orwellian" — especially given the fact these organizations themselves "specialize in overseas propaganda."
Thus while claiming to fight Russian, Iranian, and other propaganda these very groups will strictly enforce an official establishment Washington and NATO view of world events.
Here are 3 extremely worrisome Facebook initiatives to which the public should pay close attention, and which suggest the social media giant is increasingly becoming a censorship arm of the US government and its allies...
* * *
Facebook's Partnership with US state-funded think tanks
Last Wednesday Facebook announced it would work with two US government-funded think tanks in order bolster the social media giant’s “election integrity efforts” around the globe.
The new partnership with the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has been described by Reuters as an initiative to "slow the global spread of misinformation that could influence elections, acknowledging that fake news sites were still read by millions".
But both the IRI and NDI are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has since its late Cold War era founding defined itself as a "soft power" wing of the US government abroad focused on "democracy promotion".
Journalist Max Blumenthal recently described the NDI as "a taxpayer funded organization that has interfered in elections, mobilized coups, and orchestrated public relations campaigns against nations that resist Washington's agenda."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-24/5-orwellian-facebook-initiatives-you-should-be-worried-about
Facebook has lately announced a series of major steps it would take to combat fake news and the global spread of misinformation that it says could influence elections, but the more we learn about just who it is Facebook is partnering with in this endeavor, the clearer it becomes that these initiatives are not at all designed to foster independent thought and discourse, but to ultimately ensure that public online discourse doesn't stray too far from official state narratives.
Mark Weisbrot, a co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently slammed Facebook’s decision to work with US government-funded organizations as "Orwellian" — especially given the fact these organizations themselves "specialize in overseas propaganda."
Thus while claiming to fight Russian, Iranian, and other propaganda these very groups will strictly enforce an official establishment Washington and NATO view of world events.
Here are 3 extremely worrisome Facebook initiatives to which the public should pay close attention, and which suggest the social media giant is increasingly becoming a censorship arm of the US government and its allies...
* * *
Facebook's Partnership with US state-funded think tanks
Last Wednesday Facebook announced it would work with two US government-funded think tanks in order bolster the social media giant’s “election integrity efforts” around the globe.
The new partnership with the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has been described by Reuters as an initiative to "slow the global spread of misinformation that could influence elections, acknowledging that fake news sites were still read by millions".
But both the IRI and NDI are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has since its late Cold War era founding defined itself as a "soft power" wing of the US government abroad focused on "democracy promotion".
Journalist Max Blumenthal recently described the NDI as "a taxpayer funded organization that has interfered in elections, mobilized coups, and orchestrated public relations campaigns against nations that resist Washington's agenda."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-24/5-orwellian-facebook-initiatives-you-should-be-worried-about
talking the other night with the wife about things and i brought up the movie version of 1984. i thought she'd seen it but i was wrong. so, i attempted to get it from netflix, but, surprise: netflix doesn't have that movie available. then i thought: why would they as it would only make clear to the newly awakening that they live in a growing version of the movie.
caitlin goes from cosby to bolton in this exploration of who, how and why american culture isn't what we're told it is;
After being publicly accused of sexual assault by more than fifty women stretching back decades, serial rapist Bill Cosby has finally been sentenced to three to ten years in state prison for drugging and sexually assaulting a female acquaintance at his Philadelphia home in 2004. The judge rejected Cosby’s requests for house arrest and for being released on bail while his attorneys appealed the conviction, designating him a “sexually violent predator” after hearing testimony from Cosby’s victims during the trial.
So that’s settled now. Anyone who was still in denial that America’s favorite dad likes to rape women can go ahead and place that flag in the fireplace once and for all, which honestly they should have done back in 2014 when a viral Hannibal Buress video got people researching the fact that Google is full of stories lost at the bottom of the news churn barrel in which women have accused Cosby of rape over the years. People should have seen Cosby for what he is then, not just for the sheer number of accusations, but for the fact that they were being leveled at a man who has been openly joking about drugging women to get sex since the 1960s.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/09/26/if-society-understood-sovereignty-it-would-end-rape-culture-imperialism-and-propaganda/
After being publicly accused of sexual assault by more than fifty women stretching back decades, serial rapist Bill Cosby has finally been sentenced to three to ten years in state prison for drugging and sexually assaulting a female acquaintance at his Philadelphia home in 2004. The judge rejected Cosby’s requests for house arrest and for being released on bail while his attorneys appealed the conviction, designating him a “sexually violent predator” after hearing testimony from Cosby’s victims during the trial.
So that’s settled now. Anyone who was still in denial that America’s favorite dad likes to rape women can go ahead and place that flag in the fireplace once and for all, which honestly they should have done back in 2014 when a viral Hannibal Buress video got people researching the fact that Google is full of stories lost at the bottom of the news churn barrel in which women have accused Cosby of rape over the years. People should have seen Cosby for what he is then, not just for the sheer number of accusations, but for the fact that they were being leveled at a man who has been openly joking about drugging women to get sex since the 1960s.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/09/26/if-society-understood-sovereignty-it-would-end-rape-culture-imperialism-and-propaganda/
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