MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

CIA Project MK-ULTRA, by Larry Romanoff – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on July 31, 2020

https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/cia-project-mk-ultra/

Note to readers:

This essay is an edited and abridged version, with content reformatted, of that originally posted here. It is updated with some new material and full references. A list of the most important references is at the end of the essay, before the notes. I deleted the small portion on P. W. Botha because I was unable to locate my primary reference which was text extracted from the Truth and Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa. The content was testimony by one of Botha’s underlings at a hearing that Botha refused to attend. Rather than leave questions about the validity of statements, I deleted that section.

CIA Project MK-ULTRA

The United States government funded and performed countless psychological experiments on unwitting humans, especially during the Cold War era, perhaps partially to help develop more effective torture and interrogation techniques for the US military and the CIA, but the almost unbelievable extent, range and duration of these activities far surpassed possible interrogation applications and appear to have been performed from a fundamental monstrous inhumanity. To simply read summaries of these, even without the details, is almost traumatising in itself.

In studies that began in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the US Military began identifying and testing truth serums like mescaline and scopolamine on human subjects, which they claimed might be useful during interrogations of Soviet spies. These programs eventually expanded to a project of vast scope and enormous ambition, centralised under the CIA in what would come to be called Project MK-ULTRA, a major collection of interrogation and mind-control projects. Inspired initially by delusions of a brainwashing program, the CIA began thousands of experiments using both American and foreign subjects often without their knowledge or against their will, destroying countless tens of thousands of lives and causing many deaths and suicides. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations and jointly operated by the CIA, the FBI and the intelligence divisions of all military groups, this decades-long CIA research constituted an immense collection of some of the most cold-blooded and callous atrocities conceivable, in a determined effort to develop reliable techniques of controlling the human mind.

MK-ULTRA was an umbrella for a large number of clandestine activities that formed part of the CIA’s psychological warfare research and development, consisting of about 150 projects and sub-projects, many of them very large in their own right, with research and human experimentation occurring at more than 80 institutions that included about 50 of America’s best-known colleges and universities, 15 or 20 major research Foundations including Rockefeller, dozens of major hospitals, a great many prisons and mental institutions, and many chemical and pharmaceutical companies. At least 200 well-known private scientific researchers were part of this program, as were many thousands of physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and other similar. Many of these institutions and individuals received their funding through so-called “grants” from what were clearly CIA front companies. In 1994 a Congressional subcommittee revealed that up to 500,000 unwitting Americans were endangered, damaged or destroyed by secret CIA and military tests between 1940 and 1974. Given the deliberate destruction of all the records, the full truth of the MK-ULTRA victims will never be known, and certainly not the death toll. As the inspector general of the US Army later stated in a report to a Senate committee: “In universities, hospitals and research institutions, an unknown number of chemical tests and experiments … were carried out with healthy adults, with mentally ill and with prison inmates.” According to one government report, “In 149 separate mind-control experiments on thousands of people, CIA researchers used hypnosis, electroshock treatments, LSD, marijuana, morphine, Benzedrine, mescaline, seconal, atropine and other drugs.” Test subjects were usually people who could not easily object – prisoners, mental patients and members of minority groups – but the agency also performed many experiments on normal, healthy civilians without their knowledge or consent.

There were 149 subprojects listed under the umbrella of MKULTRA. Project MONARCH has not been officially identified by any government documentation as one of the corresponding subprojects, but is used rather, as a descriptive “catch phrase” by survivors, therapists, and possible “insiders”. MONARCH may in fact, have culminated from MKSEARCH subprojects such as operation SPELLBINDER, which was set up to create “sleeper” assassins (i.e. “Manchurian candidates”) who could be activated upon receiving a key word or phrase while in a post-hypnotic trance. Operation OFTEN, a study which attempted to harness the power of occult forces was possibly one of several cover programs to hide the insidious reality of Project MONARCH. There were also operations BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKNAOMI, and MKDELTA.

Another CIA Operation called Midnight Climax consisted of a network of CIA locations to which prostitutes on the CIA payroll would lure clients where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass.[1][2]Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations. In the 1970s, as another part of its mind control program, the CIA conspired with Eli Lilly and Company to produce one hundred million doses of the illegal drug LSD, enough to send almost everyone in the United States on a trip. No explanation was ever given as to what the CIA did with a hundred million doses of acid but, since much of this activity was exported, reviewing international political events during this period may bring interesting possibilities to mind.

Frank Olson Project

See the rest here

Be seeing you

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Nock and Mencken on Democracy and Equality | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 31, 2020

The government “is a separate, independent and often hostile power.” Mencken perceived “the deep sense of antagonism between the government and the people it governs. It is…a separate and autonomous corporation mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefits of their own members…, oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain.” The best kind of government, he writes, “is one which lets the individual alone, one which barely escapes being no government at all.”

If one of the main purposes of civilized governments is to preserve and augment liberty of the individual, then surely democracy accomplishes it less efficiently than any other form of government, since “the aim of democracy is to break all free spirits.”

https://mises.org/wire/nock-and-mencken-democracy-and-equality

[Adapted from “The Libertarian Legacy of the Old Right: Democracy and Representative Government,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 23 (2019): 5–21.]

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) and Henry L. Mencken (1880–1956) were the two leading libertarian intellectuals of the Old Right, during the thirties of the twentieth century. Both defended laissez-faire but opposed the New Deal, any connections between big government and big business, the First World War and the American policy of imperialism. They were also very polemical against various movements for cultural and moral elevation of the people, such as Prohibition and the battle for public education.

With Myth of a Guilty Nation, published in 1922, Nock influenced an entire generation of classical liberals, opposing Wilsonian internationalism and arguing for anti-militarism. From 1920 to 1924 he was editor of the weekly journal The Freeman. His writings are mostly elitist, based as they are on the fundamental role of the individual capable of elevating himself over the mass of the people. His thought is anchored in a strong individualism, explicitly critical of any forms of statism. Nock has a disenchanted approach to democracy, mainly based on the idea that the lowering of the level of culture and education is related to the democratic ideology. Enlarging the suffrage would not do any better and its only result would be the destruction of the highest ranks of culture. The policy, decided on by the government, of universal education is based on the theory that everyone is equally educable and that education has to be extended to the largest possible group. But, for Nock, this does not make sense, since we are not all equals in attitudes and capacities. The only true kind of equality is the equality of liberty and before the law. But the education system is based on a perversion of the idea of equality and on democracy. First of all, Nock clarifies, the Founding Fathers chose the republican system as the best way to secure the free expression of the individual in politics. A republic where everybody votes is considered ipso facto a democracy, but considering republican and democratic as synonymous is simply a confusion of terms. Actually, strictly speaking, democracy is simply a matter of counting the ballots, but it became an ideology. “Republicanism”—Nock writes—“does not…of itself even imply democracy….Democracy is not a matter of an extension of the suffrage….It is a matter of the diffusion of ownership; a true doctrine of democracy is a doctrine of public property.” And this because we are “aware that it is not, never was and never will be, those who vote that rule, but those who own.” So democracy, being an economic status, is animated by a strong resentment toward the élite, the socially, economically and intellectually superior persons. The democratic ideology rejects the simple reality that some achievements and experiences are open only to some people and not to all. Democracy postulates that everybody has to enjoy the same things.

The whole institutional life organized under the popular idea of democracy, then, must reflect this resentment. It must aim at no ideals above those of the average man, that is to say, it must regulate itself by the lowest common denominator of intelligence, taste and character in the society which it represents.

In a democratic system, therefore, education would be “common property” and so what is not manageable by everybody must be disregarded. This leads to a low and poor level of education and to the destruction of the higher ranks of culture, art, taste and life itself. Moreover, Nock’s theory of the state, as an enemy institution, founded on exploitation and robbery, sheds further light on his ideas about democracy. The doctrine of popular sovereignty was a structural alteration to the state, necessary to make people believe that the state was literally the expression of the popular will. Democratic representation has been an expedient in order to submit the subjects to a state they believed was legitimate. The most important expedient

was that of bringing in the so called representative or parliamentary system, which Puritanism introduced into the modern world, and which has received a great deal of praise as an advance towards democracy. This praise, however, is exaggerated. The change was one of form only, and its bearing on democracy has been inconsiderable.

Henry Louis Mencken was a leading protagonist of the American Old Right. In the weekly journal American Mercury, he and his colleagues bitterly criticized moral crusaders and the entire Wilsonian politics that considered the United States as the guardian of the world. Although he was a literary figure and did not elaborate a systematic system of political thought, he can rightly be considered a libertarian. Both Murray N. Rothbard and [Justin] Raimondo are convinced that there are many good reasons to place Mencken in the libertarian tradition. Rothbard defined him as “the joyous libertarian” for his witty and satirical prose. Mencken was, in Rothbard’s words, “a serene and confident individualist, dedicated to competence and excellence and deeply devoted to liberty, but convinced that the bulk of his fellows were beyond repair.” Mencken had a great influence on the Old Right during the twenties, rejecting the idea of a world war for peace and democracy, and defending laissez-faire in economics and in private life. His liberating force and his writings were not for the masses, but for the intelligent few who could understand and appreciate his message. Mencken believed that

government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man; its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him….One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regards to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.

The government “is a separate, independent and often hostile power.” Mencken perceived “the deep sense of antagonism between the government and the people it governs. It is…a separate and autonomous corporation mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefits of their own members…, oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain.” The best kind of government, he writes, “is one which lets the individual alone, one which barely escapes being no government at all.”

Mencken’s individualist perspective gives great consistency to his views on many topics, among the most important of which is democracy. Notes on Democracy, published in 1926, contains one of the most scathing critiques of the idea that the great masses of the people have an inalienable right to govern themselves and that they are competent to do it. A government is considered a good one if it can satisfy quickly the desires and ideas of the masses, that is to say of the inferior men. A good and democratic government is based on the idea of the omnipotence and omniscience of the masses. But, Mencken states, “that there is actually no more evidence for the wisdom of the inferior man, nor for his virtue, than there is for the notion that Friday is an unlucky day.” Mencken begins his analysis of democracy examining the psychology of the democratic man and clarifying that “in an aristocratic society government is a function of those who have got relatively far up the poles….In a democratic society it is the function of all, and hence mainly of those who have got only a few spans from the ground.” The democratic man contemplates with bitterness and admiration those who are above him. Bitterness and admiration form a complex of prejudices that, in a democracy, is called public opinion, which, under democracy, is regarded as something sacred. But, asks Mencken:

What does the mob think? It thinks, obviously, what its individual members think. And what is that? It is, in brief, what somewhat sharp-nosed and unpleasant children think. The mob, being composed, in the overwhelming main, of men and women who have not got beyond the ideas and emotions of childhood, hovers, in mental age, around the time of puberty, and chiefly below it. If we would get at its thoughts and feelings we must look for light to the thoughts and feelings of adolescents.

The main sentiment of humanity is fear and the main sentiment of the democratic man is envy. The “democratic man hates the fellow who is having a better time in this world” (Mencken 1926, 45), this is why, according to Mencken, envy is the origin of democracy. Politicians are well aware of the psychology of the masses, and those who know how to use the fears of the mob are the most successful. “Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter”; in fact “the plain people, under democracy, never vote for anything, but always against something.” Actually politics are not determined by the will of the people, but by small groups with special interests able to use the fears and to excite the envy of the masses. “Public policies are determined and laws are made by small minorities playing upon the fears and imbecilities of the mob.” Those who succeed in the realm of politics are not the best and most intelligent men, but are the ablest and cunning demagogues. Anticipating Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Mencken states that except for a miracle it would be very difficult for a man of value to be elected to office in a democratic state. The problem is that people believe that “the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy” or something closer to direct democracy. The great masses of men, though free in theory, submit to oppression and exploitation. In fact, according to Mencken, the popular will remains purely theoretical in every form of democracy. Moreover, there is no reason for believing that its realization would change the main outlines of the democratic process, considering the low level of intelligence and knowledge of the mob.

Mencken examines the relationship between democracy and liberty and notes that the democratic man does not fight to gain more liberty but for more security and protection. “The fact,” he writes, is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man’s mind….Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means enterprise, it means the capacity for doing without.” But these are not the characteristics of the democratic masses. Actually, the masses’ longing for material goods can only be satisfied at the expense of liberty and property rights. It cannot be denied that freedom is an indispensable condition for the development of the personality of the individual, but if we look at the propensities of the masses we discover that frequently they prefer to sacrifice freedom in order to enjoy material or psychological advantages. The average man wants to feel protected even from himself. Writes Mencken:

The truth is that the common’s man love of liberty…is almost wholly imaginary….He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed….He longs for the warm, reassuring smell of the herd, and is willing to take the herdsman with it. Liberty is not a thing for such as he….The average man doesn’t want to be free. He simply wants to be safe….What the common man longs for…is the simplest and most ignominious sort of peace—the peace of a trusty in a well-managed penitentiary. He is willing to sacrifice everything else to it. He puts it above his dignity and he puts it above his pride. Above all, he puts it above his liberty.

The average man tends to consider liberty as a weapon used against him in the hands of superior men but, recalling Edmund Burke, Mencken writes that

the heritage of freedom belongs to a small minority of men….It is my contention that such a heritage is necessary in order that the concept of liberty…may be so much as grasped—that such ideas cannot be implanted in the mind of man at will, but must be bred in as all other ideas are bred in….It takes quite as long to breed a libertarian as it takes to breed a racehorse.

If one of the main purposes of civilized governments is to preserve and augment liberty of the individual, then surely democracy accomplishes it less efficiently than any other form of government, since “the aim of democracy is to break all free spirits.” Mencken describes the tyrannical consequences of the cultural levelling tendencies of democracy. Like Alexis de Tocqueville he realizes that the pressure of a mass society of men all alike and equal leads to ostracism of those superior individuals “merely thinking unpopular thoughts.” “Once” a man “is accused of such heresy, the subsequent proceedings take on the character of a lynching.” The democratic, egalitarian society is pledged to common cultural values resulting in a rigorous homogeneity of way of thinking and of life. So “a man who stands in contempt of the prevailing ideology has no rights under the law.” By the mid-thirties the influence of Nock and Mencken had begun to decline. The Old Right, after playing an important role opposing the New Deal and in the crucible of the First World War, almost disappeared. During the years of World War II, government banned any opposition to war, Roosevelt and the New Deal. “The Old Right went underground for the duration” of the war and when America emerged from the war a new generation of old style libertarians appeared. They believed in laissez-faire and nonintervention in foreign policy.

 

Author:

Contact Roberta A. Modugno

Roberta Modugno is professor history of political thought at the University of Roma TRE (Rome – Italy). A scholar of American libertarianism, she is the author of several works on Murray N. Rothbard and edited the collection of Rothbard’s papers, Rothbard versus the Philosophers: Unpublished Writings on Hayek, Mises,

 

Be seeing you

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Trump Can Ensure a V-shaped Economic Recovery by Heeding Lessons of 1921 – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 31, 2020

Happily, during the 1921 depression, the government of president Warren G. Harding did not intervene with monetary stimulus, and the entire episode was over not in a matter of weeks (the V) or years (a fattish U), but months (a narrow U).

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/walter-e-block/donald-trump-can-ensure-a-v-shaped-economic-recovery-by-heeding-lessons-of-1921/

By

South China Morning Post

A “U” or a “V”? That is the question – whether the economic recovery from the Covid-19 shutdown will be a long drawn-out process, a wide, flattish “U”, or a sharp, upward-bound one, a “V”.

To best wrestle with this question, let us look back a bit at some economic history regarding recessions and depressions, focusing on the US. Is this of interest to those following the course of the Chinese economy? Of course. When the US sneezes, China catches a cold. And, of course, the opposite is true as well.

Right now, the political relationship between these two countries has soured. But this will not, hopefully, always be true. In any case, economic law still operates, no matter what are the diplomatic relationships between nations.

The depression in 1921 was short-lived – maybe not a V, but at least a very narrow U. It was created by prior governmental monetary mismanagement, which led investors, as if by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” to engage in more long-term capital goods investments than the voluntary saving investment decisions of the populace would warrant, based on their time preference between present and future consumption.

Happily, during the 1921 depression, the government of president Warren G. Harding did not intervene with monetary stimulus, and the entire episode was over not in a matter of weeks (the V) or years (a fattish U), but months (a narrow U).

The Great Depression, which stretched from 1929-1941 (a morbidly obese U) stemmed from identical causes. Here, I am subscribing to the Austrian analysis of Ludvig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, not the Milton Friedman monetarist explanation of a lowered stock of money in the 1930s.

But presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt “fixed” this by propping up heavy industries whose extent was overblown by the previous artificially lowered interest rates, in an early “too big to fail” paroxysm. The Smoot-Hawley tariff  added insult to injury, and put the kibosh on any early recovery.

The blunder of 2008 also stemmed from unwise governmental policy. In 1992, the geniuses at the Boston Federal Reserve implied that the banking system was racist, since banks were more likely to reject mortgage applications by blacks and Hispanics compared to whites.

Rather, in my view, their favourite colour was green: the ranking in terms of credit reliability and collateral determined lending practices.

But the US Department of Housing and Urban Development contributed to the eventual crisis by diverting mortgages; billions of dollars were improperly diverted into the housing market. Only when bankruptcies were finally allowed did we escape from that debacle. Call that a fattish, but not an obese, U.

This brings us to present considerations. As an Austro-libertarian, I see government failure as the cause of virtually all depressions, and we are certainly in one now. However, I am forced to admit an exception to this general rule. The depression of 2020 is a product of some very vicious little virus critters, not the state apparatus.

I now predict the sharpest of Vs, but if and only if, all other things being equal, the Trump administration cleaves to market principles. First, and perhaps most important, stop paying people more to stay home from work than the salaries they can garner from their employers.

It is beyond me why US President Donald Trump ever agreed to any such a scheme in the first place.

Does he not want to win the election  in November? Does he not realise that a fast recovery, a V, will help him inordinately in that regard? Does he not realise that if people do not get back to work, there will be no recovery at all?

Second, do not commit the same error as the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Trump should beware this error, because he has a natural protectionist instinct in his intellectual armamentarium. He should mightily resist it.

Third, do not give in to our friends on the left who wish to boost the federal minimum wage level to US$15, or to raise it at all. This is an unemployment creator par excellence, particularly for unskilled workers.

Does Trump not realise that a large part of his success in battening down the unemployment rate for the black community, and particularly for younger, less skilled, African Americans, stems from his holding the line on this matter? The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security programme already has provisions in this direction and they should be strongly resisted.

Fourth, in no particular order, Trump should use all his good offices to stop the maniacal US Federal Reserve from furiously pumping money into the economy. These are the seeds for the next business cycle downturn, and risk another bout of inflation, which we certainly do not need to compound our economic difficulties.

So, Mr President, embrace the free enterprise system, attain a V, a very narrow and sharp one, and the prognostication for November will be significantly boosted.

Dr. Block [send him mail] is a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, and a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Defending the Undefendable, The Case for Discrimination, Labor Economics From A Free Market Perspective, Building Blocks for Liberty, Differing Worldviews in Higher Education, and The Privatization of Roads and Highways. His latest book is Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty.

Be seeing you

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Forever Masks

Posted by M. C. on July 30, 2020

Dr. Fauci is back in the limelight where he likes to be. In a recent ABC interview he informs Americans that if they “really want 100 percent protection” they should not only wear masks, but also goggles on their eyes. Will he be recommending space suits next week? Also in today’s Liberty Report: With the latest Depression-level drop in US GDP, the real costs of the lockdown are becoming evident. Poverty, hunger, and more death will continue the foolish policy of shutting down the US economy instead of protecting the vulnerable. Plus, Are The Netherlands, Sweden, Mumbai, and Afghanistan all on the right track?

 

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Daily Caller Experienced Google Suppression, Says Editor in Chief

Posted by M. C. on July 30, 2020

Tip of the iceberg.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/30/daily-caller-experienced-google-suppression-says-editor-in-chief/

Allum Bokhari

Daily Caller editor-in-chief Geoffrey Ingersoll has said that the conservative news website has experienced Google search suppression similar to that reported by Breitbart News yesterday. Based on Google’s defense that it manually blacklists “violent extremism,” Ingersoll pointed out: “We are not ISIS.”

“Specifically we struggled with search slowly dwindling until May 4 exactly. We broke down the analytics. The May 4 flat line is clearly the result of the human hand in the process,” said Ingersoll in a series of tweets.

Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai was grilled about Google’s search bias at the antitrust committee earlier today, with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) pressing the CEO to explain leaks revealing that the Daily Caller and other sites were added to search blacklists…

Be seeing you

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Pennsylvania’s Contribution to the Wars On Cash and Your Liberty

Posted by M. C. on July 30, 2020

OMG! There is a coin shortage in the PA Liquor Control Board system!
Yes, PA still has “state stores”.
The sign in my local state Wine and Spirits shop tells us due to the coin shortage the cashier will accept only exact change, credit or debit cards. Exact change is not likely, so we are limited to plastic.
Do you ever wonder what happens when you buy with plastic?
There is a digital record of that purchase that is potentially available to anyone. The credit card company certainly maintains a record. Probably the PA LCB also.
Who else might have access to your (liquor) purchasing history? The state insurance commissioner, police agencies, IRS (you betcha!)?
Who could possibly request or purchase this information? Your medical and auto insurance company, your local police, a prospective employer, your employer, the lawyer you are facing in a court case?
A credit card is like having On Star in your pocket. It tells everyone where you have been, whether you were with someone and how you spent your money.
You have no cash on hand and…ATM goes down. Bank had a run and went cafluey. A faceless bureaucrat doesn’t like what you are doing. You crossed a state line with a packet of Sudafed. Your digital money can be shut off with a flick of a switch.
It is all about control.
Think about that when you are putting that Pink Catawba or ammo purchase on a card.
Be seeing you…from Pennsylvania

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

The Narrative Is Crumbling – Consortiumnews

Posted by M. C. on July 30, 2020

The powerful use their control over mainstream narratives to ensure that enough members of the public believe they live in a free democracy where things aren’t perfect but it’s the best you could ask for, instead of in a corporatist oligarchy wherein the powerful exploit, oppress, rob, cheat and deceive them while destroying the ecosystem, stockpiling weapons of Armageddon and waging endless wars.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/27/the-narrative-is-crumbling/]

Caitlin Johnstone asks how far humanity’s relationship with propaganda can be stretched before it snaps and forces a completely new way of being.

By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com

Narrative is Crumbling.

It’s difficult to understand what’s going on in the world.

It’s difficult to understand what’s going on in the world because powerful people actively manipulate public understanding of what’s going on in the world.

Powerful people actively manipulate public understanding of what’s going on in the world because if the public understood what’s going on in the world, they would rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful.

The public would rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful if they understood what’s going on in their world because then they would understand that the powerful have been exploiting, oppressing, robbing, cheating and deceiving them while destroying the ecosystem, stockpiling weapons of Armageddon and waging endless wars, for no other reason than so that they can maintain and expand their power.

The public do not rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful because they have been successfully manipulated into not wanting to.

Narrative is Crumbling.

The public have been successfully manipulated into not wanting to rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful due to the way the powerful have been able to shore up mainstream narrative control in the form of purchasing mass media outlets, funding think tanks, buying politicians, implementing government opacity, pushing internet censorship, and other forms of perception management.

The powerful use their control over mainstream narratives to ensure that enough members of the public believe they live in a free democracy where things aren’t perfect but it’s the best you could ask for, instead of in a corporatist oligarchy wherein the powerful exploit, oppress, rob, cheat and deceive them while destroying the ecosystem, stockpiling weapons of Armageddon and waging endless wars.

As long as the powerful are able to exert control over mainstream narratives, there will never be enough members of the public willing to use their strength of numbers to shake off the powerful and create a healthy society.

The powerful will remain capable of exerting control over mainstream narratives for as long as the public maintains its current unhealthy relationship with mental narrative.

Narrative is Crumbling.

A collective shift into a healthy relationship with mental narrative would mean thought becomes the useful tool we evolved it to be rather than this noisy, compulsive head-chatter which dominates our lives where we are driven by fear and attachment to imbue an endless string of mental stories with the power of belief.

If we had a healthy relationship with mental narrative we would naturally view stories about what’s going on in the world far more objectively, because rather than glomming onto them out of fear and attachment we would have psychological space enough to look at them and critically examine whether or not they are useful tools for us to use in the present moment.

If humanity collectively made such a transition on a mass scale — a transition which sages across the millennia assure us humans are fully capable of — then humanity would become impossible to propagandize effectively.

If humanity becomes impossible to propagandize effectively, the lies will be impossible to conceal via mainstream narrative control, and humanity using the strength of its numbers to create a healthy society will become an inevitability.

And the funny thing is, in a weird way from way out of left field that nobody could possibly have anticipated, humanity’s current relationship with mental narrative appears to be drawing to a close.

Narrative is Crumbling.

The narratives are breaking down.

People’s old ways of understanding what’s going on in the world just aren’t holding together anymore.

Trust in the mass media is at an all-time low, and it’s only getting lower.

People are more aware than ever that anything they see can be propaganda or disinformation.

Deepfake technology will soon be so advanced and so accessible that nobody will even trust video anymore.

The leader of the most powerful country on earth speaks in a way that has no real relationship with facts or reality in any way, and people have just learned to roll with it.

Ordinary people are hurting financially but Wall Street is booming, a glaring plot hole in the story of the economy that’s only getting more pronounced.

The entire media class will now spend years leading the public on a wild goose chase for Russian collusion and then act like it’s no big deal when the whole thing turned out to be completely baseless.

There’s a virus causing a massive disturbance in the entirety of human civilization with two wildly different narratives about it running simultaneously, and both sides are 100 percent convinced that all the facts have fully vindicated their position.

There are protests where people are becoming more and more aware that they are being fed empty narratives of approval and understanding while their core demands are going completely unaddressed.

There’s a presidential election between two obvious dementia patients and the mass media are all pretending that’s fine and normal despite what people can see with their own eyes.

New Cold War escalations between the U.S.-centralized empire and the unabsorbed governments of China and Russia are going to cause the media airwaves around the planet to become saturated in ever-intensifying propaganda narratives which favor one side or the other and have no interest in honestly telling people the truth about what’s going on.

Now they’re even babbling about UFOs.

Narrative is Crumbling.

"Last Day" visual interpretation of fragility of financial markets and unpredictable nature of consumer habits. Displayed June 2016 in a derelict shopping unit the City Arcade in Coventry. (Antonio Roberts via Flickr)

It’s all accelerating toward a white noise saturation point.

How long do you think we can go on like this?

How far do you think humanity’s relationship with narrative can be stretched before it snaps completely and forces a completely new way of being?

How long before it becomes more and more common for people to begin looking to themselves as individuals to determine which narratives are useful to them instead of looking to establishment narrative managers like they used to?

How long before people find themselves more and more often asking the question “Is this true?”

How long before people find themselves more and more often asking the question “What is truth?”

How long before people find themselves more and more often asking the question “What else have I been deceived about?”

How long before people find themselves more and more often asking the question “How else have I been deceiving myself?”

The current strain that is being placed on our collective relationship with narrative is completely unsustainable.

This would be a bad thing if we’d had a healthy relationship with mental narrative, but we don’t; we have a profoundly unhealthy relationship with mental narrative which has left us susceptible to terrible abuses on a mass scale.

We are now, as a species, collectively squeezing ourselves out of our old unhealthy relationship with narrative.

Narrative is Crumbling.

It’s all crumbling to the ground.

This cannot be a bad thing.

It could end up being very, very good.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium.   Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following her on Steemit, throwing some money into her tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her books “Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone” and “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Presumptuous Pompeo Pushes Preposterous ‘Peking’ Policy – Consortiumnews

Posted by M. C. on July 30, 2020

As a first-hand witness to much of this history, Freeman provided highly interesting and not so well-known detail mostly from the Chinese side. I chipped in with observations from my experience as CIA’s principal analyst for Sino-Soviet and broader Soviet foreign policy issues during the 1960s and early 1970s.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/28/presumptuous-pompeo-pushes-preposterous-peking-policy/

By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News

Quick. Somebody tell Mike Pompeo. The secretary of state is not supposed to play the role of court jester — the laughing stock to the world. There was no sign that any of those listening to his “major China policy statement” last Thursday at the Nixon Library turned to their neighbor and said, “He’s kidding, right? Richard Nixon meant well but failed miserably to change China’s behavior? And now Pompeo is going to put them in their place?”

Yes, that was Pompeo’s message. The torch has now fallen to him and the free world. Here’s a sample of his rhetoric:

“Changing the behavior of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] cannot be the mission of the Chinese people alone. Free nations have to work to defend freedom. …

“Beijing is more dependent on us than we are on them (sic). Look, I reject the notion … that CCP supremacy is the future … the free world is still winning. … It’s time for free nations to act … Every nation must protect its ideals from the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party. … If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free world. …

“We have the tools. I know we can do it. Now we need the will. To quote scripture, I ask is ‘our spirit willing but our flesh weak?’ … Securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time, and America is perfectly positioned to lead it because … our nation was founded on the premise that all human beings possess certain rights that are unalienable. And it’s our government’s job to secure those rights. It’s a simple and powerful truth. It’s made us a beacon of freedom for people all around the world, including people inside of China.

“Indeed, Richard Nixon was right when he wrote in 1967 that “the world cannot be safe until China changes.” Now it’s up to us to heed his words. … Today the free world must respond. …”

Trying to Make Sense of It

Over the weekend an informal colloquium-by-email took pace, spurred initially by an op-ed article by Richard Haass critiquing Pompeo’s speech. Haass has the dubious distinction of having been director of policy planning for the State Department from 2001 to 2003, during the lead-up to the attack on Iraq. Four months after the invasion he became president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a position he still holds. Despite that pedigree, the points Haass makes in “What Mike Pompeo doesn’t understand about China, Richard Nixon and U.S. foreign policy” are, for the most part, well taken.

Haass’s views served as a springboard over the weekend to an unusual discussion of Sino-Soviet and Sino-Russian relations I had with Ambassador Chas Freeman, the main interpreter for Nixon during his 1972 visit to China and who then served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992.

As a first-hand witness to much of this history, Freeman provided highly interesting and not so well-known detail mostly from the Chinese side. I chipped in with observations from my experience as CIA’s principal analyst for Sino-Soviet and broader Soviet foreign policy issues during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Ambassador Freeman: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Now Americans Are Rioting Over Mini-Golf And Bagels

Posted by M. C. on July 30, 2020

The mainstream media deserves a lot of the blame for this. Over and over they keep telling us that the riots that are happening in our major cities each night are “peaceful”, but everyone can see that they are not. In Portland, protesters have been regularly firing projectiles, vandalizing buildings and setting fires, and they keep getting away with it. Other than Fox News, the major news outlets in this country have put their full stamp of approval on what these rioters are doing, and that sends a very dangerous signal to everyone else.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/now-americans-are-rioting-over-mini-golf-and-bagels

Have you noticed that people all over the country are starting to completely flip out for little to no reason?  People are becoming violently angry even over very trivial matters, and you never know when someone might erupt.  One moment you could be talking to a seemingly mild-mannered middle-aged woman, and the next moment she could transform into a raging “Karen”.  And of course I am not singling out women in particular, because most of the people that have been involved in the violent riots that we have seen around the nation in recent weeks have been men.  People of all ages and backgrounds are suddenly going completely nuts, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

The mainstream media deserves a lot of the blame for this.  Over and over they keep telling us that the riots that are happening in our major cities each night are “peaceful”, but everyone can see that they are not.  In Portland, protesters have been regularly firing projectiles, vandalizing buildings and setting fires, and they keep getting away with it.  Other than Fox News, the major news outlets in this country have put their full stamp of approval on what these rioters are doing, and that sends a very dangerous signal to everyone else.

If it is perfectly acceptable for rioters to attack police officers, destroy buildings and commit other acts of violence because they are “offended” by the system, then a lot of other young people out there are going to give themselves permission to violently erupt when they are “offended” by something as well.

For example, there was just an incident in Tennessee where hundreds of teens started going on a violent rampage at a mini-golf center because “the game machines ate their cash”…

A Tennessee mini-golf center erupted in chaos Saturday night when 300 to 400 teenagers began terrorizing staffers and smashing up the premises because the game machines ate their cash, Jam Press reported.

The riotous scene at Putt-Putt Fun Center, at Golf and Games Family Park in Memphis, was caught on camera by an alarmed bystander and shows the violent teens go berserk and throw various heavy objects at staff because they didn’t issue the kids a refund.

To really get a feel for this incident you need to see some video footage, and someone posted a short clip of the chaos on Twitter right here.

100 years ago, young people in America never would have conducted themselves in such a manner, and this is yet more evidence of how dramatically our culture has decayed.

Over on the east coast, three male “Karens” completely freaked out and caused 13,000 dollars in damage to a bagel shop when they were told that they had arrived too late to get food…

Footage released by police shows the suspects smashing up The Brothers Deli & Bagel in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn at around 5.30pm on Friday after workers had packed up and were waiting for their deliver man to bring the bikes inside.

The video shared Tuesday shows the would-be customers knocking drinks off a shelf, flipping over snacks, and turning tables after seemingly realizing they were too late to buy food.

In a civilized society, people resolve their differences calmly and peacefully, but the truth is that we are becoming less civilized with each passing day.

For many people, resorting to violence is becoming option number one and talking things out rationally is way down the list.

Down in South Florida, nobody is quite sure why a bunch of people in bathing suits started “pummeling each other” at a local casino, but it ended up making headlines all over the globe…

Three people were arrested and several more were banned from a South Florida casino after they were filmed in a violent brawl.

Video on social media shows several individuals, wearing bathing suits, while pummeling each other inside the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood on Friday.

At this point, video of the brawl has been seen more than four million times, and I suppose that should not come as a surprise to any of us.

As I was writing this article, several lines penned by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament came to mind…

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Everywhere you look, people are exceedingly angry, and we are starting to see Americans take out their anger on one another with frightening regularity.

And if things are this bad already, what is the U.S. going to look like when events really start to spiral out of control?

The way that we raise and educate our children really matters.  For decades, most of the country has completely thrown out all traditional forms of morality, and we have raised our children to believe that they can define “right” and “wrong” however they wish.

Our education system is a complete and total joke, most children have been raised without any real moral foundation, and our culture relentlessly pounds a “victim mentality” into the heads of our young people.

A society is only as strong as the sum of the individuals that make up that society, and right now the lack of character in the United States is absolutely frightening.

Yes, there are certainly lots of exceptions.  I know some truly wonderful people, but I just wish that there were a whole lot more of them.

Unfortunately, the social decay that is eating away at our society like a cancer is getting worse with each passing year.  Decades of incredibly bad decisions have brought us to this point, and there are no indications that our nation is going to choose a different course any time soon.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

Be seeing you

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Doug Casey on the Cultural Revolution in the US…

Posted by M. C. on July 30, 2020

Just to be clear, I’m opposed to any kind of identity politics, regardless of the group. The point is that there’s been a sea change in mass psychology.

There’s also the case of the Black Lives Matter sign painted in yellow on 5th Avenue. A couple of white people only got as far as painting over a couple of letters before they were arrested. They’re being prosecuted for defacing public property. But the people who recently destroyed statues are not being prosecuted.

It’s a matter of psychology. Whites and conservatives no longer believe in themselves. When that’s true, it’s game over. Yes, I know it’s not true of all of them—but I believe it’s a fair generalization.

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-the-cultural-revolution-in-the-us/

by Doug Casey

International Man: In 2016, you accurately predicted that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States.

It came as a complete shock for most people. What do you think of his chances of winning a second term?

Doug Casey: I’m not a fan of Trump, per se. He has no philosophical center, no core beliefs. He’s an opportunist who flies by the seat of his pants.

His economic policies are disjointed and inconsistent. Many are idiotic. It’s true he wants to deregulate the economy, and he deserves kudos for that.

But he’s encouraging reckless monetary policies—zero-percent interest rates, gigantic increases in debt, massive public-works projects, and the creation of trillions of new dollars. He’s just building the house of cards higher while enriching the Deep State and corrupting the 30 million Americans making more not working than they made working.

Almost as bad as that is the way he slaps on import duties, embargoes, and quotas at whim. He devastated American farmers by provoking China into a trade war, then spent billions in subsidies to keep them from bankruptcy.

His foreign policies are dangerous. Provoking the Iranians and the Russians is counterproductive. What’s worse, he’s started a cold war with China that could easily spin out of control and turn into a hot war.

But on the bright side, he’s a cultural conservative. And that’s why people support him. He wants to see the US return to the golden days of yesteryear, the world of Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best. We’d all like to see domestic tranquility and rising prosperity. But that’s not the world we’re going to be living in, not just for 2020, but the whole decade.

For years, I’ve joked that I planned on watching riots on my widescreen from a secure location, not out my front window. Things have now become so predictable that when I turn on the news, I kill the audio and just put the Stone’s “Street Fighting Man” on a continuous loop.

Given a choice between Trump and the Democrats, if you like what’s left of the US, you have to be a Trump supporter. But since we’ll be in the midst of a gigantic political, economic, and social crisis in November, people will want a radical change. That’s what the Democrats are promising, so they’re likely to win. But there are other factors.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »