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New Article on Major Free Speech Threat

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2023

Many nations seem poised to abandon the core lesson of the Enlightenment: no human institution can or should be trusted to decree Absolute Truth and punish dissent from it

As we report, the implications for this law are serious and extend far beyond Brazil. Brazil is being used as a test case by both the EU and various sectors in the U.S. to see how far states can go in seizing new powers to censors the internet in the name of stopping what the state decrees is “fake news and disinformation.”

Glenn Greenwald

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/new-article-on-major-free-speech?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Two weeks ago, I wrote to you to inform you of several changes we had adopted with the primary purpose of creating more time for me to publish more written journalism and analysis, of the kind you have come to expect from my work at the Intercept and then at Substack. Launching our live nightly SYSTEM UPDATE program on Rumble has been very gratifying and a great success in terms of our ability to quickly build a large audience, but it left me with little time to work on the written journalism that I have always considered, and still do consider, to be the anchor of my work.

Those changes have indeed resulted in my having more time to write. We are happy to notify today of a new article we just published on a news story I regard as extremely important. Brazil, under its new government led President Lula da Silva, is poised to become the first nation in the democratic world to implement a law empowering the government to ban “fake news and disinformation,” and to punish those it claims are guilty of authoring and disseminating such “false” ideas.

As we report, the implications for this law are serious and extend far beyond Brazil. Brazil is being used as a test case by both the EU and various sectors in the U.S. to see how far states can go in seizing new powers to censors the internet in the name of stopping what the state decrees is “fake news and disinformation.”

The article is published here on our Locals platform. As was true for almost every article I wrote at Substack, it is free and publicly available to subscribers and non–subscribers alike. Your subscriptions is what enables us to make our journalism available to the widest possible audience, without having to hide it behind a paywall. There are exclusive benefits for Locals subscribers – including access to our twice-a-week interactive after-show, transcripts of each episode of our program in article form, and other community-based content – but we intend for my news articles and analysis to continue to be freely available to ensure the widest possible distribution and impact.

You can read the new article at this link.

Remember: Those who are paid Substack subscribers are entitled to free Locals membership. You simply go to our Locals page (here), enter the same email you used for your Substack membership, click “forgot password,” and Locals will then email you a password for full access.

For now, we hope you enjoy our new article, and we look forward to returning more or less to what had been our regular schedule of publishing new written reporting.

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Dailywire Article-Erin Brockovich Torches Biden Over East Palestine Debacle: ‘You’re Not Gonna Gaslight Me!’

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2023

“So, so in the schools, so the children can’t drink the fountains, and then on private wells around here, they’ve got locks on them. So they obviously — aw, come on. Wha– if there’s no problem, you don’t need to lock up a drinking fountain. You don’t need to be aerating the system. And you can explain away all day long to me that nothing’s wrong. But I, I see what’s going on here,” she concluded. “You’re not gonna gaslight me.”

Just image East Palestines (or your towns) plight if they suffered a nuke strike in the much awaited dual war with China and Russia. I am from the government and am here to help.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/erin-brockovich-torches-biden-over-east-palestine-debacle-youre-not-gonna-gaslight-me

By  Virginia Kruta

EDMOND, OK - FEBRUARY 23: Erin Brockovich speaks during an Oklahoma Earthquake Town Hall Meeting at the University of Central Oklahoma February 23, 2016 in Edmond, Oklahoma. The state is now the earthquake capital of the world and the quakes are believed to be caused by oil field waste water injections into the earth. In 1993, the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board began to restore abandoned oil well sites. Since the program's inception more than $90 million has been spent to restore more than 14,500 abandoned well sites. Officials report the old wells have leaked oil, natural gas and brine into the soil. (Photo by J Pat Carter/Getty Images)
J Pat Carter/Getty Images

Famed activist Erin Brockovich has joined the throng of people investigating the train derailment-turned environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, and she said she believes President Joe Biden’s administration is hiding something from the American people.

Brockovich, who has also spoken to CNN and MSNBC about her experience interviewing the people who were directly affected by the derailment and subsequent fires and explosion, told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Friday that Biden’s response to the disaster has fallen far short of what it should be. And to make matters worse, she said, the people there believe that the president has left them to fend for themselves.

“We’re pushing a month now and they still don’t have any answers. It’s very obvious something’s really gone wrong out here,” Brockovich began. “And I’ve been out here down on the ground and they’re really frustrated, why they don’t feel that their agencies or their administration cares about what’s happened to the community. So it is very apparent they are, are concerned and not being seen or heard.”

Carlson pressed Brockovich to elaborate, asking whether she believed there was specific information that the Biden administration was hiding from the people — and she seemed to confirm that she did.

“Yeah, there is. And I mean, it’s like, Oh my gosh, come on. Oh, we’re out here. What, 44,000 fish are dead? We’ve seen them. We’ve seen them out here today aerating the creeks. They’re removing stuff. That, the wellheads are locked. What’s up?” Brockovich continued, arguing that it was no different than coal miners keeping a “canary in the mine shaft” to determine whether the air was safe to breathe.

“Send the canary down there, it dies: Might not be good for humans. You have dead fish: might not be good for humans. You have dead animals: might not be good for humans. You’ve sent a horrible mixed message to this community. Drink the water. Don’t drink the water. Safe. Not safe,” she added. “It’s — It’s horribly confusing and extremely frustrating to them. And something actually has gone wrong here. And there’s information that has yet to come forward, and the story will continue to unfold.”

See the rest here

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CIA Chief: Iran Not Resuming Nuclear Weapons Program – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2023

In a CBS interview over the weekend, CIA Director William Burns offered an assessment which, coming from US officials, would be a huge admission and potentially of much consequence. Burns reported Iran is “not resuming” its nuclear weapons program, which it ended decades ago, and has made no decisions on even attempting to.

The opposite to what government has been telling US since “decades ago”.

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/02/26/cia-chief-iran-not-resuming-nuclear-weapons-program/

by Jason Ditz

In a CBS interview over the weekend, CIA Director William Burns offered an assessment which, coming from US officials, would be a huge admission and potentially of much consequence. Burns reported Iran is “not resuming” its nuclear weapons program, which it ended decades ago, and has made no decisions on even attempting to.

The US has long been vague on whether or not Iran is really trying to make arms. Iran says they aren’t, and has ruled out ever doing so on religious grounds. Analysts have also been concluding for years that Iran is not actively trying to make atomic weapons.

Having the US spy chief make such a public admission should portend a policy shift back toward diplomacy with Iran. It may also lead to a backlash from nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia who want spurious allegations against Iran to continue being treated as impediments to such diplomacy.

Such nations accuse Iran of things left and right, and strongly prefer the US endorsing their accusations. Accusing Iran of nuclear arms development is the life blood of Israel’s aid demands, and now the US CIA chief is contradicting those allegations.

US ambiguity often depends on misinterpreting the facts of Iran’s civilian program, and Burns continues to struggle with facts, falsely claiming Iran is now enriching uranium to 84%.

In reality, Iran’s enrichment maxes out at 60%, and the production of a few 84% enriched particles was an accidental result of configuring enrichment centrifuges. Even there the production was well-short of weapons grade, and not a proliferation risk, so even being mistaken on that fact it was possible for the CIA to conclude that there is no active weapons program.

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The End Of The Arms Control Era – by Joe Shanley

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2023

https://openbookreport.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-arms-control-era

Joe Shanley

In his state of the union address on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the suspension of the New START Treaty, which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads. “The Defense Ministry and Rosatom must make everything ready for Russia to conduct nuclear tests. We will not be the first to proceed with these tests, but if the United States goes ahead with them, we will as well.” The suspension is not a termination, and the choice to suspend rather than withdraw opens up the possibility for future reinstatement.

What is most significant is this marks the end of the last remaining arms control treaty between Russia and the United States.

As it stands, there are no existing written agreements between the two largest nuclear powers to limit their arms build up, launch time, and magnitude of destruction.

Below is a brief overview of the advent and demise of arms control.

Before The Treaties

Ever since the first atom bombs were dropped on Japan there were discussions of arms control in the new age of atomic weapons. The Baruch Plan of 1946 was an attempt to get an international coalition to regulate atomic energy and its failure resulted in the first arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Soviets obtaining the bomb in 1949 solidified the danger of the new rivalry.

We’ve come a long way from the “duck and cover drills” that were popular in the 50’s, where the fear was instilled in every child’s head as they all shot under their school desks at a moment’s notice in preparation for an atom bomb attack. That fear was not entirely unwarranted—the real threat of a nuclear war with Russia wasn’t just possible, it defined the cold war.

Mutually assured destruction was coined by Donald Brennan with the acronym M.A.D. to ironically describe the reality of complete annihilation by the attacker and defender in a nuclear war. But it wasn’t a joke—with the advent of ballistic missile submarines, it became a doctrine of our national security policy.

1

Duck and Cover: How one desk could save your life – Diefenbunker Museum %
A “Duck and Cover” drill in a public school, 1950’s

See the rest here

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Deconstruction: Why Leftist Movements Cannot Coexist With People That Value Freedom – Alt-Market.us

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2023

The deconstruction mindset views nothing as sacred and this includes moral compass. While arguing from a position of moral superiority, the political left will often rationalize highly immoral practices. For example, this is why we now see aggressive attempts by leftists to normalize the indoctrination of very young children into trans activism. This is why we are seeing hundreds of gender affirmation clinics with procedures for children springing up all over the country. This is why we are seeing numerous sexualized drag shows for kids, and why highly sexualized reading materials are being planted in school libraries.

https://alt-market.us/deconstruction-why-leftist-movements-cannot-coexist-with-people-that-value-freedom/

By Brandon Smith

It should be clear to anyone paying attention during this current stage of instability in our modern era that something is very wrong in terms of American society. I’m not talking about ongoing issues of political corruption and economic mismanagement, I’m talking about something much more dangerous. I’m talking about the systematic derailment of our culture, heritage, principals, history and moral compass. I’m talking about the vicious devouring of the very sinews that hold our civilization together.

There is a cancer eating away at America, a concerted and organized effort to destabilize. For anyone who is familiar with the Conjuring movies, it’s a bit like a demonic invasion. As Ed Warren cautions, the three stages of attack are infestation, oppression and finally, possession. The little demon we are dealing with, though, comes with Antifa patches, rainbow flags and special pronouns.

This week I came across a statement by Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in which she called for a “national divorce”, a separation of conservative red states and far left blue states, a parting of ways due to our obvious irreconcilable differences. Leftists within the corporate media, of course, flipped out, accusing Greene of inciting treason and the destruction of the US.

While I don’t generally put much stock in the comments of politicians I think it’s important to address this particular sentiment because it echos the arguments made by the Liberty Movement and the alternative media for many years. It’s just surprising to hear a prominent public figure say what we have been saying for so long.

The frantic upheaval expressed by the political left in reaction to Greene is something I have written about in the past. In my article ‘Separation Or Purge? Sharing A Society With The Political Left Is Impossible’ published in February last year, I noted that leftists take a communistic approach to civil disagreement. They see the populace as chattel to be managed in the name of the greater good of the collective, not as individuals with the right to disassociate. From my article:

“Why not carry this process forward to its natural conclusion? Red states break from blue states and red counties break from blue state control and we live our lives the way we see fit. Let the leftists continue with their draconian economic and political models and see how well that goes for them. I guarantee they will be in financial ruins within a decade (the list of most indebted places in the country is dominated by blue states) and they will be begging to return to a union with red states (except for the zealots, which would lose influence as they continue to fail).

But this will not happen peacefully because, again, leftists cannot tolerate free activity. Their OCD will not allow them to be content with living in a collectivist state of their own; ALL states must be collectivist before they are satisfied. People are property to them; property of the collective, and people who are property cannot be allowed to make decisions without oversight.”

See the rest here

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There Has Never In History Been A Greater Need For A Large Anti-War Movement

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2023

But we’re not going to turn away from this trajectory unless the masses start using the power of our numbers to force a change from warmongering, militarism and continual escalation toward diplomacy, de-escalation and detente.

Caitlin Johnstone

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/there-has-never-in-history-been-a?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Things are escalating more and more rapidly between the US-centralized power structure and the few remaining nations with the will and the means to stand against its demands for total obedience, namely China, Russia, and Iran. The world is becoming increasingly split between two groups of governments who are becoming increasingly hostile toward each other, and you don’t have to be a historian to know it’s probably a bad sign when that happens. Especially in the age of nuclear weapons.

The US State Department’s Victoria Nuland is now saying that the US is supporting Ukrainian strikes on Crimea, drawing sharp rebukes from Moscow with a stern reminder that the peninsula is a “red line” for the Kremlin which will result in escalations in the conflict if crossed. On Friday, Ukraine’s President Zelensky told the press that Kyiv is preparing a large offensive for the “de-occupation” of Crimea, which Moscow has considered a part of the Russian Federation since its annexation in 2014.

As Anatol Lieven explained for Jacobin earlier this month, this exact scenario is currently the one most likely to lead to a sequence of escalations ending in nuclear war. In light of the aforementioned recent revelations, the opening paragraph of Lieven’s article is even more chilling to read now than it was when it came out a couple of weeks ago:

The greatest threat of nuclear catastrophe that humanity has ever faced is now centered on the Crimean peninsula. In recent months, the Ukrainian government and army have repeatedly vowed to reconquer this territory, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014. The Russian establishment, and most ordinary Russians, for their part believe that holding Crimea is vital to Russian identity and Russia’s position as a great power. As a Russian liberal acquaintance (and no admirer of Putin) told me, “In the last resort, America would use nuclear weapons to save Hawaii and Pearl Harbor, and if we have to, we should use them to save Crimea.”

Jacobin @jacobin

Whether the Ukraine war brings on a global catastrophe will hinge in large part on whether Washington decides to back a Ukrainian effort to retake the Crimean peninsula. jacobin.comCrimea Is a Powder KegWhether the Ukraine war brings on a global catastrophe will hinge in large part on whether Washington decides to back a Ukrainian effort to retake the Crimean peninsula.7:00 AM ∙ Feb 11, 202318Likes6Retweets

And that’s just Russia. The war in Ukraine is being used to escalate against all powers not aligned with the US-centralized alliance, with recent developments including drone attacks on an Iranian weapons factory which reportedly arms Russian soldiers in Ukraine, and Chinese companies being sanctioned for “backfill activities in support of Russia’s defence sector” following US accusations that the Chinese government is preparing to arm Russia in the war.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been holding multiple meetings with top military officials regarding potential future attacks on Iran to neutralize the alleged threat of Iran developing a nuclear arsenal, a “threat” that Netanyahu has personally been lying about for years. 

If you’ve been reading Antiwar.com (and if you care about this stuff you probably should be), you’ve been seeing new articles about the latest imperial escalations against China on a near-daily basis now. Sometimes they come out multiple times per day; this past Thursday Dave DeCamp put out two completely separate news stories titled “US Plans to Expand Military Presence in Taiwan, a Move That Risks Provoking China” and “Philippines in Talks With US, Australia on Joint South China Sea Patrols“. Taiwan and the South China Sea are two powderkeg flashpoints where war could quickly erupt at any time in a number of different ways.

If you know where to look for good updates on the behavior of the US-centralized empire and you follow them from day to day, it’s clear that things are accelerating toward a global conflict of unimaginable horror.

See the rest here

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Changes

Posted by M. C. on February 26, 2023

Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.

Marshal McLuhan, “Laws of Media”

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Mike

Posted by M. C. on February 26, 2023

The season is starting soon.

Note the tape on the boot

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What Westerners Don’t Know About Yoko Ono – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 25, 2023

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/02/mike-in-tokyo-rogers/what-westerners-dont-know-about-yoko-ono/

By Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers

Yoko was born in 1933 in Japan. She was an only child born into an extremely wealthy Aristocratic family. Yoko was born into the class of women who may have married the emperor of Japan. In fact, she was enrolled in such an elitist school, that she was a classmate of Prince Akihito, the future emperor of Japan.

Her father was the first Japanese to open a Japanese bank in the USA during the Economic Miracle of Japan. Yoko’s parents chastised her often for befriending people that they felt were beneath her.

Yoko’s family were one of the richest families in Japan. And as an only child, it stands to reason that Yoko was the heir to the family wealth. So to think that Yoko “broke up the Beatles” or “wanted to marry John Lennon for money” is just simply laughable.

John Lennon was just a musician (considered a low class job in Japan) and did not even graduate from college and dropped out. I would imagine that any Japanese family, including Yoko Ono’s family, would be completely against their only child marrying a musician or someone like Lennon.

The marriage to Lennon happened after Yoko Ono and one of Japan’s most famous Classical Pianist’s, Toshi Ichiyanagi, marriage had failed by 1962.

What is the book, “Grapefruit?”

“Grapefruit is one of the monuments of conceptual art of the early 1960s. She has a lyrical, poetic dimension that sets her apart from the other conceptual artists. Her approach to art was only made acceptable when [people] like Kosuth and Weiner came in and did virtually the same thing as Yoko, but made them respectable and collectible.” — David Bourdon

Grapefruit is an artist’s book written by Yoko Ono, originally published in 1964. Two years before Yoko met John Lennon.

Yoko Ono has often been associated with the art group known as “the Fluxus group.” The Fluxus group was a loose association of Dada-inspired avant-garde artists which was founded in the early 1960s by Lithuanian-American artist George Maciunas. Maciunas admired and enthusiastically promoted Yoko’s work, and gave Yoko Ono her first solo exhibition at his AG Gallery in New York in 1961.

Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus is known for experimental contributions to different artistic media and disciplines and for generating new art forms. Fluxus also was called, “Anti-art” and many artists destroyed their art by fire as part of the exhibition of said art.

What is the movie “Grapefruit”?

Grapefruit the book, has become famous as an early example of conceptual art, containing a series of “event scores” that replace the physical work of art – the traditional stock-in-trade of artists – with instructions that an individual may, or may not, wish to enact. Including the destruction of the art.

“Grapefruit” the movie is an attempt to encapsulate the entirety of the book in a sixteen minute film. It is a very difficult subject to whittle down. The movie by words and images, seeks to capture the essence on Yoko Ono’s life in 1964 and present it in a way that allows the veiwer to decide if this is “art or not,” and “is this good or not.”

Like the book, the film isn’t for everybody. Those who enjoy comic book movies or space war movies will most probably not like the film. People who are against war, against commercialism, and pro-freedom for everyone to live their lives as they choose, will most probably love this film.

The film strives to present Yoko Ono as she is and allows to viewer to draw their own conclusions.

There are no Beatles and nothing about the Beatles in this film. This is a expose about an artist who had principles and beliefs.

What the viewer takes away after watching this film is 100% completely up to them.

As with most Fluxus art, this film will be destroyed after screening.

See the rest here

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Who Are Those Guys? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 25, 2023

Cloward-Piven Strategy – The Devil’s handiwork

Don’t presume the C-P strategy can’t – or doesn’t – work both ways. What if the internals of the bureaucratic Deep Swamp work in harmony with the overwhelming external pressures by slow-walking the very administrative solutions to the problem?

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/02/brian-wilson/who-are-those-guys/

By Brian Wilson

Remember that famous recurring line from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”?

Worse than the Pinkerton agents to Butch and Sundance, Cloward and Piven are to the stability and future of America.

If the Cloward-Piven Strategy is new to you, Fred Elbel’s  “Cloward–Piven strategy – fundamentally transforming America” does an outstanding job breaking it down into bite-size pieces.

Basically:

“…developed in 1966 by Americans Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven – both sociologists and political activists…[t]he strategy focused on overloading the United States public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis, which would ultimately lead to replacing the welfare system with a national system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty”.

It worked pretty well. So well, in fact, the outline has been applied in many instances to bring about the disruption of public programs, policies and systems:

1965 Immigration Act

2008 Financial Crisis

2014 Border crisis – Unaccompanied Alien Children

2015 Syrian refugees – importing terrorism

Time marches on and the Cloward–Piven strategy “remains an active instrument of change in America. Ultimately, it is the tool by which multicultural elites aim to “fundamentally transform America.” – Fred Elbel

To fully appreciate the genius of the strategy, just look around at the other pressure points of American society being clogged and hamstrung by the non-stop avalanche of C-P red tape.

The southern – and now northern – borders are beyond overwhelmed. Border Patrol agents are taken away from the flood of illegals and reassigned to paper pushing, babysitting and chauffeuring gigs. And the flood continues unabated even a little bit.

As the immigrant invasion continues – over 5 million by current estimates – local support structures and systems are overwhelmed: schools, housing, law enforcement, retail outlets are unable to cope at all, much less efficiently. The damage is not reserved to the systems. Visit a local hospital ER. And not just in towns in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma and California. Identical issues around the country are similarly effected as ‘get-aways’ and exported immigrants make their way to Chicago, New York, Miami, LA, San Francisco. All those cities already had overcrowding problems left over from the Covid 19 “epidemic”. Crime stats are skyrocketing, primarily in democratically governed cities and Blue states.

Food shortages are ubiquitous. Baby formula to Brussels sprouts to ground meat to eggs continue to run in short supply as prices rise. Suspicious fires, bombings and ‘accidents’ at food processing plants are blamed without explanation along with droughts, avian flu and the dreaded (supposed) C19 super-duper ‘sub variants’ . Government regulations reducing the application of certain fertilizers on farms in Holland, Spain, France are proliferating, forcing crop, flock and herd reductions. Results: farms closing creating more food shortages, unemployment and increasing welfare rolls.

See the rest here

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