Was the whole coronavirus panic set off by a faulty understanding of the difference between infection fatality rate and case fatality rate? One doctor in the UK makes a strong case that the mania was set off by a math mistake. Also today, more mainstream outlets concluding that lockdowns were a terrible mistake. SF government gyms remain open while commercial gyms driven out of business. Baseball madness, as Nationals general manager ejected from game…for no mask in his own private booth in an empty stadium! Link to article mentioned in first segment: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500000-covid…
What makes the Orthodox and Catholic leaders position on COVID untenable to me is that as LewRockwell.com recently posted, Pastor Chuck Baldwin, who is not Orthodox or Catholic, knows the truth and discussed it:
“From this point forward, anyone who submits to this phony, fraudulent corona narrative is a willing participant in tyranny. Those who continue to go along with this masquerade need to stop waving the flag and stop singing God Bless America, because they are volitionally submitting to their own subjugation. THEY ARE WILLING SLAVES.”
And I would ask are Pope Francis and Metropolitan Hilarion thus willing slaves?
I have written on Christian topics for LewRockwell.com previously, but I want to address a disturbing trend that is affecting Christians of many denominations, and this is that both the leadership and individual pastors and priests have at best surrendered and at worse profaned their faith in supplication to the edicts of the state and the ruling Western Oligarchy, as they appear if not indifferent to the truth they are at least hostile to learning it (regarding the COVID-1984 pandemic), or have engaged in what I believe is both obvious anti-Christian and heretical conduct in supporting agendas that include Black Lives Matter.
Now I am very much aware of the teachings of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for He said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Yet in the recent reprinting of the English language translation of a Byzantine Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Matthew by Bl. Theophylact, which was written in approximately in 1090 AD and until relatively recently this work was unknown in the English language (the translator used the King James text, with minor clarifications that are documented, for the extensive New Testament quotations in all the commentaries); these four books use the teachings of the Church Fathers accepted by both Catholic and Orthodox denominations, as I’ve discussed in the past here, Church Fathers who include Saint John Chrysostom. Regarding the commandment, “Judge not,” Bl. Theophylact writes simply:
“[Jesus Christ] forbids condemning others, but not reproving others. A reproof is for another’s benefit, but condemnation expresses only derision and scorn. You may also understand that the Lord is speaking of one who, despite his own great sins, condemns others who have lesser sins of which God will be the Judge.”
In that spirit, highly aware and attempting to correct my own sins and sinful nature, and as translator of the commentaries Fr. Christopher Stade wrote in his 1992 introduction to the text on Matthew, “I beg God’s forgiveness for sin, ignorance, and negligence on my part, and I beg you, the reader, your prayers and forbearance.” Thus, I hope as I reprove the questionable conduct I will highlight in the spirit of helping Christians, and those who condemn Christians for hypocrisy who are not Christians, to understand that these “authorities” do not speak for all of us who believe.
Pope Francis, who is much discussed in LewRockwell.com, was revealed in a Huffington Post piece that he opined,“Let us look in the mirror before judging before a Mass.” I rather suspect that Pope Francis is using this most quoted portion of the New Testament, “Judge not,” in the same manner unbelievers use it as a weapon against Christian believers, who most certainly are cognizant of its true meaning, as I have cited above.
“We live in a culture of extreme atheistic relativism, where the only dogma tolerated is that we should be intolerant of those who actually believe that there are dogmas reflecting absolute truth. Combine this with popular attitudes reflecting sensitivity to ‘multi-cultural diversity’ and ‘politically correct language,’ and the terms ‘heretic’ and ‘heresy’ end up seeming harsh and ‘unloving.’ Yet these traditional terms, found often in the writings of the Fathers, should not be viewed by informed and soberminded people in such an emotionally negative way.”
And then quoting from “What Is Heresy?,” St. Nectarios Education Series No. 63, he cites the following statement:
“[T]hese words [that is, heretic and heresy] have been in the theological glossary of the Orthodox Church from the beginning.
“A ‘heretic’ is simply one who maintains a ‘heretical doctrine.’ The sincerity and
good will of the ‘heretic’ is not in question. Nevertheless, ‘heresy’ is evil, because it is
a powerful means by which the devil seeks to ‘prevail’ against the Church…”
On the other hand, as recently posted on Political Theater linking to this site, “Heroic Priest Fr. Daniel Nolan, FSSP: ‘I encourage everybody not to wear a mask,’” the author writes, “Note: I was told by a parishioner of Fr. Nolan’s parish whom I trust there that ‘Catholic News Agency’ is the one who created this alleged ‘controversy’ by calling to report the priest to the Diocese and to his superiors…I have posted his homilies here before. This one is a must-hear: Latin Mass Priest on COVID: ‘Our republic has become a phobiocracy—ruled by fear. No virus is worse than an out-of-control government!’”
Fr. Nolan shows that he is challenging the heretical Christian authority of his superiors and might suffer adverse consequences for doing so; we Christians of every denomination should pray for him in gratitude for his courage and for his strength to defy authority and speak truth, which I believe is sacred to God.
“Unfortunately, we also hear of sorrowful instances of insubordination not only to local authorities, but also to the ruling bishops. Such behavior on the part of the clergy and lay parish officers is completely irresponsible and involves risk not only to the physical health of our neighbors, but also to our relationships with these communities and to parish property. Tempting God and man, their actions can result in insurmountable fines and other measures from law enforcement. In so doing, they irreparably damage their relationships with those around them, sowing in them doubts toward Christ’s Church, whose members must serve as an example. As a result of their disobedience and so-called ‘zeal not according to knowledge’ (Romans 10:2), there can even develop divisions and conflicts within the parish communities themselves.
“‘Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God,’ writes the Apostle Peter, ‘That He may exalt you in due time; casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you’ (I Peter 5:6-7).”
So is Metropolitan Hilarion, when he states those who dissent from the totalitarian measures out of “Zeal, not according to knowledge,” when as readers of this site know from writings from Bill Sardi, Jon Rappoport and numerous others that they are not acting out “zeal” but are acting based on the truth. The latest announcement regarding COVID posted on the site was in May and stated in part that, “In a letter to campers, counselors, and families (the full text of which is available here), the Administrative and Advisory Committee members of St. Seraphim Camp announced that camp this year will be suspended, in light of ongoing concerns relating to the Coronavirus pandemic.” Again, there is nothing that supports this position using the facts obtained and discussed by others who have experience and have researched COVID.
I will also provide this relatively short video by Spiro Skouras, whom I learned about from Lew Rockwell’s posting of his writing and videos, an investigative reporter and who has not posted another new video, even on BitChute (the source, from his channel there) since its publication on August 24, and he expressed concerns about YouTube deleting his channel as well: Read the rest of this entry »
TWO: The New York Times stated the result of a broad study, which showed that up to 90 percent of all COVID cases, based on a positive PCR test, were false positives. Non-cases.
Combining these two developments, the implication is quite clear: we’re in the middle of a less-than-average “flu season.”
The news media are accusing Trump of trying to rush a COVID vaccine into use by November 1, just before the election: “The president is playing politics.”
Suddenly, the press is expressing “deep concern” about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. Experts are being trotted out to issue warnings.
The White House is saying they would never compromise the safety of the public.
The FDA is strenuously insisting their decision to authorize a COVID vaccine will be undertaken with extreme care, and will not bow to pressure.
Of course, if Obama or Hillary were in the White House now, the press would be praising them for their efforts to move “full speed ahead.”
If Trump were now talking about a need to delay the vaccine, in order to “get it right,” the press would be screaming about the necessity of approving a vaccine quickly “to save lives.”
As I’ve been writing, the media definition of science is now “the opposite of whatever Trump says.”
The White House definition is whatever the White House says.
The public is caught in the middle.
There are three leading corporate competitors vying for an upcoming COVID vaccine. One of them is Moderna. This is a small US company that has never brought a product of any kind to market. In other words, their credibility is zero. Yet they’ve garnered half a billion dollars of federal money for research. The press isn’t screaming about that.
The Labor Day starting-gun kicks off the high campaign season and Ol’ White Joe wobbles forth from his lair under a rock somewhere to dazzle audiences of six or eight sympathetic journos posed in “social distancing” formation while the party’s Antifa and BLM shock troops soften up voters elsewhere across the land with vote-winning riots, arson, and looting. There’s a recipe for political success!
The abiding mystery of the 2020 election is how come the Democratic Party, wishing so zealously to win back power, took pains to nominate a candidate weaker than the ghost of Millard Fillmore. Resorting to Occam’s Razor, one might have to conclude that Joe Biden was simply the best they had — a surefire case for the party’s necessary extinction.
The Labor Day starting-gun kicks off the high campaign season and Ol’ White Joe wobbles forth from his lair under a rock somewhere to dazzle audiences of six or eight sympathetic journos posed in “social distancing” formation while the party’s Antifa and BLM shock troops soften up voters elsewhere across the land with vote-winning riots, arson, and looting. There’s a recipe for political success!
You have to wonder how the claque of DC deep state players behind this fiasco could come up with a game-plan so stupidly inept… but there it is! Apparently, they’re laying further plans now to bum-rush Ol’ Joe into the White House by main force with a “color revolution” — that is, an orchestrated fake popular revolt as in the Ukraine Maidan regime change operation of 2014. In fact, as Revolver News reports, the same wrecking crew of US State Department officials, intel spooks, contract insurrectionists, and George Soros-sponsored NGO intriguers is behind the US 2020 “Transition Integrity Project” aimed at launching a US post-election coup against Mr. Trump, no matter how the election actually goes.
The plan was all over the web wires this holiday weekend. Everybody knows exactly what to expect now: a November 3 Trump election victory followed by a king-tide of post-election write-in votes for Ol’ Joe… a long, drawn-out, and surely inconclusive battle trying to validate scores of millions of postmarks and signatures… and a skein of Lawfare-managed shenanigans conducted in battleground state legislatures to change-out electoral college slates. And any objections by Mr. Trump and his party will be labeled as Putin-backed fascist treason.
Will that result in Mr. Biden actually gliding into the oval office? No, it will bring on a years’ long quasi civil war sure to finish off the institutions of a federal republic and also whatever remains of the US economy. Is that what y’all really want, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary & Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Adam Schiff, Bill Kristol, David Frum, Dean Baquet, and five hundred other seditious political degenerates out there?
A centerpiece of the operation is the planned 50-day protest beginning mid-month in Lafayette Square, across the way from the White House. We’re supposed to expect the usual Hieronymus Bosch spectacle of Antifa / BLM antics: fireworks, bullhorns, lasers, flying water bottles, tranny dances, toppled statues, smashed fences. That ragtag mob and their Democratic Party “allies” have been trying their goshdarndest for half a year to produce a crop of Kent State style martyrs at the hands of police to horrify the conscience of the nation…but so far, no luck.
Instead they have to settle for a succession of thugs-on-drugs resisting arrest violently, and getting themselves shot or killed in the process. The latest ringer, one Daniel Prude of Rochester, New York, is actually a catch-up case from last March, sort of a bench player for “the Resistance,” put into the game to counter the bad publicity from the Sept. 3 murder in Portland, OR, of Aaron Danielson by “100-percent Antifa” Michael Forest Reinoehl.
In the Rochester case, the police were initially contacted by the victim’s brother after Mr. Prude “acted erratically,” including diving down a flight of stairs head-first. After an evaluation in a Rochester hospital, Mr. Prude came home, freaked out again, and took off his clothing in the street. Police returned to the scene. During his arrest, Mr. Prude raved, “Give me that gun,” and spat at the officers. Since the Covid-19 outbreak had started weeks earlier, the cops put a hood on Mr. Prude to avoid his projected body fluids and physically subdued him. In the process, he went unconscious and eight days later was pronounced dead. Of course, his death was declared “a homicide,” with “excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP (aka “angel dust”) listed as “a contributing factor.” Now, months later, BLM and Antifa forces are mobilized and procede to riot, trashing another Democratic Party-governed city.
Quite a clever election strategy: to wreak as much destruction as possible in cities they control so that voters naturally will blame it on the other party, led by its candidate, the wicked president Trump. Is it possible that plan is not working? That voters are perhaps drawing different conclusions — like maybe they’re getting wise to the seditious hustle being run on them, and maybe a little sick and tired of it?
The upcoming Lafayette Square “protest” will be interesting. The US government transferred management of Washington DC to a chartered city council and mayor with the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973. The US retains certain prerogatives for safeguarding federal buildings, monuments, and other installations. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser demonstrated a lack of initiative for controlling mob violence during the June riots. Will she let it happen again during the election season?
So far this year, Mr. Trump has allowed the Democratic Party to disgrace itself in acquiescing to mobs and riots around the country. In DC, they’ll be daring him to draw the line, perhaps hoping for federal peace officers to step in and finally produce that crop of useful martyrs “the Resistance” longs for. Personally, I don’t think the voters are liable to blame the president for taking action against additional violent anarchy in the nation’s capital. Do you remember those words from the oath of office, by any chance: preserve, protect and defend? Meanwhile, Ol’ White Joe will be standing by, doing as much for his country as the ghost of Millard Fillmore.
What’s more, Victoria’s lockdown measures really do need protesting. If you leave your house after 8pm, you will be fined. If you stray more than five kilometres from your house, you will be fined. If you visit your father on Father’s Day, you will be fined. If you go outside with more than one other person for exercise, you will be fined. And if you protest against any of this, you will be arrested.
Last week’s arrest of Zoe Buhler by Australian police, the video of which swept the world, should terrify every person who believes in liberal democracy.
Buhler, a 28-year-old pregnant mother, was arrested at her home near Ballarat, Victoria, on Wednesday. She was handcuffed in front of her family, had her computer and phones confiscated, and was led out of her house by the police.
What had she done that was deserving of such heavy-handed treatment? What had she done that made it worth subjecting her family to the sight of seeing her in handcuffs?
Very little. She had attempted, through a posting on Facebook, to organise a peaceful anti-lockdown gathering in Ballarat – a town with just four active cases of coronavirus.
Look at the exact words of Buhler’s Facebook post, and ask yourself whether it warrants police intervention:
This is an astonishing change of attitude from Cornelius. Victorians remember in June when he said of the then imminent Black Lives Matter protests that he and the police ‘absolutely understand the sentiment and the anger that lies behind that and we are very keen to support the community in giving a voice to their concerns’. The authorities promptly allowed over 10,000 Victorians to march in Melbourne without being fined.
It seems it was okay for BLM supporters to voice their concerns, but not for anti-lockdown protesters like Buhler. The message is clear. If you are going to protest, it better be for a cause the elites support.
For his part, Victoria premier Daniel Andrews claimed not to have seen the footage of the arrest, even though it was featured on the websites of every paper in Australia, and, among others, in the New York Post, the Daily Mail and on CNN. But no, the premier of Victoria just missed it. Other things occupied his mind. It’s not a good look – he seems unconcerned with the state of democratic society, even as it crumbles around him.
Buhler is not the only person to have been arrested in Victoria in relation to lockdown protests this week. Another man had his house broken into by police for saying he would go to an anti-lockdown protest. He was tackled to the ground and handcuffed in his living room.
Victoria is now a police state. That is the simple and depressing truth of all this. If the government feels that you are standing in the way of its goals, then your freedoms are forfeited and you will be arrested.
What’s more, Victoria’s lockdown measures really do need protesting. If you leave your house after 8pm, you will be fined. If you stray more than five kilometres from your house, you will be fined. If you visit your father on Father’s Day, you will be fined. If you go outside with more than one other person for exercise, you will be fined. And if you protest against any of this, you will be arrested.
Victorians are living in a battered state. We have been cut off from our friends, our family and our work. Cut off from so many things that make life worth living – our culture, our sport, our cafes, our restaurants, our museums, our nightlife. And we have been bullied by a government that tolerates no opposition to what is going on.
Daniel Andrews speaks of bringing Victoria to a Covid-normal. That’s what we’re all adjusting to as well. Because no Victorian sees the state ever returning to actual normal.
James Bolt is co-host of the Young IPA Podcast with the Institute of Public Affairs.
The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its founder. Page after page revealed a coming war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and democracy.
The imperial shock troops would be those who called themselves journalists: the big hitters of the so-called mainstream, especially the “liberals” who mark and patrol the perimeters of dissent.
When I first met Julian Assange more than ten years ago, I asked him why he had started WikiLeaks. He replied: “Transparency and accountability are moral issues that must be the essence of public life and journalism.”
I had never heard a publisher or an editor invoke morality in this way. Assange believes that journalists are the agents of people, not power: that we, the people, have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who claim to act in our name.
If the powerful lie to us, we have the right to know. If they say one thing in private and the opposite in public, we have the right to know. If they conspire against us, as Bush and Blair did over Iraq, then pretend to be democrats, we have the right to know.
It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian alive in Trumps fascist America.
In 2008, a top secret US State Department report described in detail how the United States would combat this new moral threat. A secretly-directed personal smear campaign against Julian Assange would lead to “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.
The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its founder. Page after page revealed a coming war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and democracy.
The imperial shock troops would be those who called themselves journalists: the big hitters of the so-called mainstream, especially the “liberals” who mark and patrol the perimeters of dissent.
And that is what happened. I have been a reporter for more than 50 years and I have never known a smear campaign like it: the fabricated character assassination of a man who refused to join the club: who believed journalism was a service to the public, never to those above.
Assange shamed his persecutors. He produced scoop after scoop. He exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America’s wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo.
He forced us in the West to look in the mirror. He exposed the official truth-tellers in the media as collaborators: those I would call Vichy journalists. None of these imposters believed Assange when he warned that his life was in danger: that the “sex scandal” in Sweden was a set up and an American hellhole was the ultimate destination. And he was right, and repeatedly right.
The extradition hearing in London this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is due revenge. The American indictment is clearly rigged, a demonstrable sham. So far, the hearings have been reminiscent of their Stalinist equivalents during the Cold War.
Today, the land that gave us Magna Carta, Great Britain, is distinguished by the abandonment of its own sovereignty in allowing a malign foreign power to manipulate justice and by the vicious psychological torture of Julian – a form of torture, as Nils Melzer, the UN expert has pointed out, that was refined by the Nazis because it was most effective in breaking its victims.
Every time I have visited Assange in Belmarsh prison, I have seen the effects of this torture. When I last saw him, he had lost more than 10 kilos in weight; his arms had no muscle. Incredibly, his wicked sense of humour was intact.
As for Assange’s homeland, Australia has displayed only a cringeing cowardice as its government has secretly conspired against its own citizen who ought to be celebrated as a national hero. Not for nothing did George W. Bush anoint the Australian prime minister his “deputy sheriff”.
It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks will diminish if not destroy freedom of the press in the West. But which press? The Guardian? The BBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post?
No, the journalists in these organisations can breathe freely. The Judases on the Guardian who flirted with Julian, exploited his landmark work, made their pile then betrayed him, have nothing to fear. They are safe because they are needed.
Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism – those like Julian Assange.
Meanwhile, it is our responsibility to stand by a true journalist whose sheer courage ought to be inspiration to all of us who still believe that freedom is possible. I salute him.
The most effective way to change the world is to raise your children properly. Everything could change in one generation if there were a radical shift in parenting.
The most concerning thing about this is that these incidents tend to be concentrated at certain times of the year. One of the most likely times for a child or young adult to need hospitalization because of suicidal tendencies or attempts is in the fall when school starts.
There are a few likely reasons for this.
One, being ridiculed and bullied by their peers makes students feel like social outcasts. Evolution has programmed the human mind to want acceptance of the group for survival reasons. So being ostracized can make you literally feel like you are going to die because if this was 10,000 years ago, you probably would.
And then there are the drugs. You know, the legalized forms of meth that we give to kids to make them alert and focused, or calm and manageable. There are all sorts of side effects to the drugs, and based on the spiking and dropping levels of dopamine and other chemicals in the brain, this can cause erratic behavior.
Finally being forced into an institution against your will, having to ask permission to speak and use the bathroom, and being told when to eat, sit, walk is a deeply frustrating situation to be in. This lack of control, and desperation to be free causes psychological damage.
The school system is definitely the root of the problem– where it begins. But this is only preparing them for an equally coercive society after graduation.
Coercion is Ruining Society
It turns out coercion is a serious problem that can lead to mental health issues. Coercion might even cause most of the ills we see in society today. The same thing that makes a teenager lash out and rebel in opposition to strict rules is what makes people do crazy things in a society dominated by arbitrary and oppressive governments.
Coercion—the use of physical, legal, chemical, psychological, financial, and other forces to gain compliance—is intrinsic to our society’s employment, schooling, and parenting. However, coercion results in fear and resentment, which are fuels for miserable marriages, unhappy families, and what we today call mental illness.
It Starts With Your Kids
Most parents have their kids’ best interests at heart when parenting. Yet some still treat their child like a wild animal that must be broken. So many people in our society would have no idea what to do with freedom if they got it, because all they have ever known is oppression.
It starts in childhood, and evidence suggests that a freer child leads to a happier adult.
Levin points out that some cultures see very little mental illness, and he suggests it is because of the way the children are raised.
For many indigenous peoples, even the majority rule that most Americans call democracy is problematically coercive, as it results in the minority feeling resentful. Roland Chrisjohn, member of the Oneida Nation of the Confederacy of the Haudenausaunee (Iroquois) and author of The Circle Game, points out that for his people, it is deemed valuable to spend whatever time necessary to achieve consensus so as to prevent such resentment. By the standards of Western civilization, this is highly inefficient. “Achieving consensus could take forever!” exclaimed an attendee of a talk that I heard given by Chrisjohn, who responded, “What else is there more important to do?”
Among indigenous societies, there are many accounts of a lack of mental illness, a minimum of coercion, and wisdom that coercion creates resentment which fractures relationships.
All interaction should be voluntary and consensual.
Let kids be who they want to be, with the steady hand of your guidance, not an iron fist. Clearly, a child cannot always get what they want, that would create a spoiled brat. But that doesn’t negate how important freedom is for children in order to grow and learn.
This is why the public school system is horribly damaging to a large percentage of children. That is not the only or the best way to learn. And in fact it really just teaches obedience to authority.
Public schooling sets children up to be mindless drones in the work world, where they will be used to the coercion, but not happy about it.
[Jared] Diamond, in TheWorld Until Yesterday (2012), reports how laissez-faire parenting is “not unusual by the standards of the world’s hunter-gatherer societies, many of which consider young children to be autonomous individuals whose desires should not be thwarted.” Diamond concludes that by our society’s attempt to control children for what we believe is their own good, we discourage those traits we admire:
“Other Westerners and I are struck by the emotional security, self-confidence, curiosity, and autonomy of members of small-scale societies, not only as adults but already as children. We see that people in small-scale societies spend far more time talking to each other than we do, and they spend no time at all on passive entertainment supplied by outsiders, such as television, videogames, and books. We are struck by the precocious development of social skills in their children. These are qualities that most of us admire, and would like to see in our own children, but we discourage development of those qualities by ranking and grading our children and constantly telling them what to do.”
Quick not about Jared Diamond: some of you may have a problem with some his views. But even if the conclusions he draws are sometimes flawed, I think he has a lot to contribute in terms of his data. We don’t have to agree with everything he says in order to derive some benefit from his writings. It’s really just a matter of being able to separate the science from his opinion or spin.
Then It’s Your Job…
I don’t believe the reason so many hate going to work is the work itself, but the fact that we cannot act like ourselves when at work.
Leading a life of “quiet desperation” as Thoreau (and later Pink Floyd) put it, of a 9-5 you hate–saving for retirement, but probably drinking yourself to death before you get to enjoy it– is that really the way to live?
Critics of schooling—from Henry David Thoreau, to Paul Goodman, to John Holt, to John Taylor Gatto—have understood that coercive and unengaging schooling is necessary to ensure that young people more readily accept coercive and unengaging employment. And as I also reported in that same article, a June 2013 Gallup poll revealed that 70% of Americans hate their jobs or have checked out of them.
Unengaging employment and schooling require all kinds of coercions for participation, and human beings pay a psychological price for this. In nearly three decades of clinical practice, I have found that coercion is often the source of suffering…
In all societies, there are coercions to behave in culturally agreed-upon ways. For example, in many indigenous cultures, there is peer pressure to be courageous and honest. However, in modernity, we have institutional coercions that compel us to behave in ways that we do not respect or value. Parents, afraid their children will lack credentials necessary for employment, routinely coerce their children to comply with coercive schooling that was unpleasant for these parents as children. And though 70% of us hate or are disengaged from our jobs, we are coerced by the fear of poverty and homelessness to seek and maintain employment.
In our society, we are taught that accepting institutional coercion is required for survival. We discover a variety of ways—including drugs and alcohol—to deny resentment.
And the government is perfectly happy with the arrangement because it is easier to control–and tax–“normal” people who just go to work every day.
How the Government Exacerbates the Problem
We cannot even simply live on a piece of land without being coerced by government to earn some money in order to pay the property taxes. But we have to earn more than the amount owed in property taxes because we are taxed on our earnings as well. We are taxed on the vehicle and gas that gets us to work– in a vicious cycle which forces us to earn more, only to be taxes on that too.
Governments have piled so many laws, regulations, and statutes on top of each other that you can’t go through life without being told perfectly normal, non-violent behavior is wrong,
I think this highlights the root cause of mass shootings for example– a last desperate act of retaliation by an oppressed man. Of course, their response is insane, and often related to the drugs they take– drugs which are also a response to the quiet desperation of a coercive society.
The hopelessness felt when being forced, is one of those deep gut wrenching feelings of despair that grow inside some people until they burst.
But now imagine that the government has taken everything from you. They take your car with civil asset forfeiture. They take 50% of your income. They prevent you from starting a business, building your dream job, or pursing happiness.
The government takes people’s kids, and shoots people’s dogs for no reason.
Sadly, all these things happen relatively regularly, in the Land of the Free.
And even those of us who never face such extreme oppression are inundated daily with the burdens and restrictions of government. They tell us what we cannot or must put into our bodies. They tell us we have to ask permission to earn a living, or trade goods and services.
They never tire of thinking of new rules, new regulations, new laws, all hoops to jump through just to live a normal life. One false move, and the government brings crushing blows down culminating in physically kidnapping you, and caging you– often for victimless crimes no less, when you haven’t hurt anyone.
And the Covid-19 pandemic has only emboldened politicians to take all the more power to micro-manage every facet of our daily lives– permission just to leave your home, or open up your business.
Many of us are baffled by why someone would become a terrorist, especially a suicide bomber.
Again, this is the coercion the Middle East is smothered in by the US foreign policy.
Imagine losing your childhood because you could not go outside because of the American drones.
Imagine family members having been murdered by laughing soldiers.
Imagine all your hopes and dreams bombed away in the blink of an eye.
Again, this is the unfortunate reality for many people today.
And now we are seeing US military equipment and tactics coming home to be used against the American people.
Bruce Levin finishes his essay, writing:
In the 1970s, prior to the domination of the biopsychiatry-Big Pharma partnership, many mental health professionals took seriously the impact of coercion and resentful relationships on mental health. And in a cultural climate more favorable than our current one for critical reflection of society, authors such as Erich Fromm, who addressed the relationship between society and mental health, were taken seriously even within popular culture. But then psychiatry went to bed with Big Pharma and its Big Money, and their partnership has helped bury the commonsense reality that an extremely coercive society creates enormous fear and resentment, which results in miserable marriages, unhappy families, and severe emotional and behavioral problems.
The vast majority of Americans are too insouciant to know or care what is happening to them.Consequently, there is nothing in the way of the anti-white revolution.
As a matter of journalistic ethics any organization engaging in systematic dishonesty like this has provided a very good reason to blacklist them. Failing to do so will encourage other foreign interests to do the same in the future, so conservative publishers should decline all content and interviews from the MEK in the future. This is not a matter of foreign policy differences: if you wish to see the U.S. pursue regime change in Iran, the MEK does not help make that case. Any publishers or think tanks who are aware of this dishonesty and still treat them like a legitimate opposition group should be considered part of a campaign not wholly different from the last time we were lied into a Mideast war.
Another Opinion Columnist Pushing War With Iran Who Doesn’t Actually Exist
The MEK’s disinformation primarily targeted right-of-center outlets receptive to a hawkish line against Iran
Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) holds a statement signed by 31 U.S. dignitaries and former officials in support of the NCRI and its fight for freedom in Iran on July 17, 2020, in Ashraf-3, Albania. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (LED screen) one of the signatories, presents it to Ms. Rajavi. (Photo by Siavosh Hosseini/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
There is at least one more foreign policy opinion writer from the Mujahideen-eKhalq (MEK) whose existence is dubious, based on a study by a social media analyst and statements from a defector from the group. Amir Basiri, who contributed to Forbes 9 times, the Washington Examiner 52 times, OpenDemocracy, Algemeiner, and The Hill once also appears to be a fabrication.
The MEK is an Iranian exile group for which John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and other foreign policy luminaries have given paid speeches. Dems like Joe Lieberman and Howard Dean have also spoken on their behalf. But the group has American blood on its hands, has been accused of practicing forced sterilization, and their belief system has been described as a mixture of Marxism and Islamism. Its supporters claim they, and their front group the National Council of Resistance of Iran, are a sort of government-in-exile, despite nearly nonexistent support for the group within Iran. They also have waged a substantial disinformation campaign in the Western press, in particular targeting conservative media.
“Amir Basiri and Heshmat Alavi are two fake accounts,” Hassan Heyrani, an MEK defector told TAC. “At Camp Liberty, near the BIAP airport in Iraq, I was in the political unit of the organization with some of the persons who grew up in America and Canada. We worked as a team to write the articles analyzing the Iranian regime. The MEK put them in The Washington Post and all the newspapers in Western countries.”
Basiri’s op-eds focus on the need for regime change in Iran which he claimed is “within reach.” The thrust of Basiri’s writing – last placed at the Examiner in October of 2018 – is to encourage American readers to take an interest and sympathize with the plight of Iranian protesters and dissidents. Basiri consistently argued against the Iran nuclear deal, downplayed terrorism against Iran, called for tougher sanctions as a method of regime change and highlighted the necessity of Trump working with the Iranian opposition.
“We are currently looking into the matter, so I won’t comment on this specific byline,” Philip Klein, Executive Editor and Commentary Editor of the Washington Examiner told TAC. “But I will say that we have recently instituted more rigorous vetting of outside contributors, including but not limited to asking for photo identification if necessary. We are especially on guard when it comes to unsolicited foreign policy commentary.”
A request for comment from OpenDemocracy, a site greatly concerned about disinformation campaigns, has not been returned as of press time. Basiri’s articles on Forbes are no longer online. (Update: Julian Richards, managing editor of OpenDemocracy, writes, “This article was submitted to us through our normal process and our editor corresponded with Amir Basiri about the text. In light of the allegations you have made, we have removed the article text from our site for the time being and I have written to the email address that Amir Basiri used to ask for confirmation of his identity.”)
The list of MEK disinformation tactics also includes fake online since-deleted sites such as PersiaNow and ArabEye and questionable sites such as Iran Focus whose domain was formerly registered under the name of an NCRI spokesperson and is now anonymously held.
MEK’s recent influence campaign on Facebook spearheaded by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) was recently reported on last year by Lachlan Markey at the Daily Beast. Markey explained how NCRI lobbyist Soheila Aligholi Mayelzadeh has helped place paid ads on Facebook reaching between 500,000 to 1.4 million users as part of the campaign to sway US public opinion in favor of MEK and intervention in Iran.
The list of outright fakes recently in the realm of foreign policy analysis is significant: there is the apparent Emirati fabrication Raphael Badani to MEK sock puppet Alavi, first revealed by The Intercept, to deepfake non-existent anti-Palestinian activist Oliver Taylor, whose work was placed at highly-respected publications in the United States and Israel.
As Adam Rawnsley wrote for the Daily Beast, “Badani is part of a network of at least 19 fake personas that has spent the past year placing more than 90 opinion pieces in 46 different publications. The articles heaped praise on the United Arab Emirates and advocated for a tougher approach to Qatar, Turkey, Iran and its proxy groups in Iraq and Lebanon.”
Geoff Golberg is the founder of Social Forensics, which tracks and monitors online social media networks and disinformation campaigns. Golberg’s run-in and exposure of various pro-MEK personas, sock puppets and boosters came just prior to his Twitter suspension in July of 2019, the official reason for which was calling an account he believed to be fake and interfering in Canada’s elections a “moron.”
“Rather than suspending accounts that blatantly violate Twitter Rules, Dorsey instead opted to silence my voice. Specific to Iranian-focused platform manipulation, along with The Intercept, I helped out ‘Heshmat Alavi’ as a sockpuppet propaganda operation run by the MEK. Remarkably, despite initially suspending the fake account, ‘Heshmat Alavi’ has been reinstated by Twitter and continues to disseminate propaganda,” Golberg said, adding that Basiri – whose account is currently suspended by Twitter – is another fake persona which has been on his radar for some time. He produced the following graphic demonstrating the interconnectedness of the two accounts:
Golberg said he knows little of geopolitics or political aspects and was led to investigate sock puppet accounts fomenting war with Iran because he noticed many oddities about their networks, followers and tweeting patterns. His further research and analysis led him down a rabbit hole of connections and resulted in death threats, mass reporting of his account and accusations that he sympathized with the Ayatollah’s regime.
Rather than the hype over Russian bots, the real danger on platforms like Twitter is fake accounts and troll farm accounts which amplify hashtags, spread lies and bolster the desired propaganda of their paymaster, Golberg says.
“Despite media coverage that tends to focus on ‘bots,’ which simply means fully-automated accounts, Twitter’s much larger problem is actually fake accounts. There are more than 100K fake accounts that exist solely to create the illusion of widespread sentiment that the US should go to war with Iran,” Golberg told TAC, adding, “Take ‘Sheldon,’ @patrick_jane77, for example, an account that reflects having nearly 120K Followers. Very few of the account’s Followers are authentic accounts, yet given Twitter refuses to enforce their own rules, it is easy to mistake “Sheldon” for being a popular account. Twitter’s entire platform is propped up by misleading or inflated Followers/Following counts. Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, has built a house of cards and continues to commit ad fraud at a massive scale.”
Golberg sued Twitter earlier this year, alleging that the platform engaged in “deceptive practices” and hasn’t stood by its own terms of service.
Accusations from MEK supporter Hanif Jazayeri that The American Conservative itself and senior editor Daniel Larison act as a mouthpiece for the mullahs are part of a broader campaign aimed at maligning the reputation and integrity of anyone who opposes regime change in Iran. Tweets calling for investigations of TAC also came from noted MEK sock puppet Alavi, MEK spokesman Shahin Gobadi and NCRI’s Ali Safavi.
A barrage of accounts retweeted Jazayeri’s accusations, many with only a few followers and which solely tweet boosting the MEK and supporting regime change in Iran.
It’s worth noting that Heshmat Alavi was following Amir Basiri prior to his suspension, as were others closely connected to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies such as Jerusalem Post Iran hawk Seth Frantzman, @sfrantzman, Jazayeri and a number of other pro-MEK shills. It is a hall of mirrors amplifying the case for war with Iran, and the ad money from NCRI and pro-MEK accounts seems to have dampened Twitter’s desire to crack down. A request for comment from Twitter was not returned as of press time.
As a matter of journalistic ethics any organization engaging in systematic dishonesty like this has provided a very good reason to blacklist them. Failing to do so will encourage other foreign interests to do the same in the future, so conservative publishers should decline all content and interviews from the MEK in the future. This is not a matter of foreign policy differences: if you wish to see the U.S. pursue regime change in Iran, the MEK does not help make that case. Any publishers or think tanks who are aware of this dishonesty and still treat them like a legitimate opposition group should be considered part of a campaign not wholly different from the last time we were lied into a Mideast war.
Arthur Bloom is the managing editor of TAC.
Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for the BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to The Week, The Federalist, and others. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com.
Arthur Bloom is editor of The American Conservative online.
“Think about it dear reader.Is it white supremacists who have been looting and burning 400 American cities?Have you ever seen a white supremacist?Where are their organizations, their political representation, their media shills?Are CNN and the New York Times propagandists for them?You have seen them nowhere.They don’t exist.
President Trump needs to get on this immediately.If this report in The Hill is correct, the head of the US Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, is either anti-white, a moron, perhaps both, or simply unaware of what the DHS anti-white bureaucrats are up to.While Antifa and Black Lives Matter burn and loot American cities, destroy property, attack and murder people in restaurants and on street corners, and declare their revolutionary intent, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, reportedly, is declaring a hypothetical group that is not involved in any violence to be a “lethal threat to the US.”The mythical group is labeled “white supremacy,” and thus easily declared a “lethal threat” as the declaration of white threat is consistent with critical race theory used to brainwash students in American schools and universities and in mandatory sensitivity indoctrination for whites in state, local, and federal government and in corporations.
The question immediately arises: What good is Homeland Security when it focuses on mythical instead of real threats? Why should Americans, hard-pressed as they are, pay for worthless “homeland security?”
Is the Homeland Security bureaucracy’s real worry thatwhite Americans might organize to protect themselves against Antifa and Black Lives Matter?Is the threat perceived by Homeland Security that white Americans will not permit themselves to be dispossessed?Is Homeland Security setting the stage to use federal force to prevent white people from protecting their lives, families, and property?That is what it sounds like.
Where does Trump get the people he appoints to office?Here is Trump trying to demonstratethe difference between himself and anti-white Kamala Harris when there seems to be no difference between Homeland Security under Chad Wolf and Kamala.Trump’s own administration is so anti-white that Trump has had to issue an executive order to stop the use of anti-white indoctrination sessions in the Trump administration—https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/09/05/president-trump-orders-a-halt-to-the-anti-white-racial-discrimination-practiced-throughout-the-us-government/As Trump is staffed up with Kamalas, what changes if she is elected?Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security is doing exactly what the anti-white racist Kamala would do.
White supremacists are like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.They are like Iranian nuclear weapons.They are like Assad’s use of chemical weapons. They are like Russian invasion of Ukraine. They are like Russiagate. They are like Trump badmouthing American war dead.They are an orchestrated fiction.
Think about it dear reader.Is it white supremacists who have been looting and burning 400 American cities?Have you ever seen a white supremacist?Where are their organizations, their political representation, their media shills?Are CNN and the New York Times propagandists for them?You have seen them nowhere.They don’t exist.
But here is Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security declaring a fiction to be the greatest lethal threat to the US.
If The Hill report is true, Chad Wolf should be immediately fired, or we might as well vote for Kamala.
