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The Criminality of the Democratic Party. DNC Maneuvers to Derail Bernie Sanders – Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

Posted by M. C. on March 19, 2020

The other side of the same dirty coin that stole Ron Paul votes.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/criminality-democratic-party/5705869

By Donald Monaco

The utter and complete corruption of the Democratic Party is on full display as the DNC desperately maneuvers to derail the insurgent candidacy of Bernie Sanders by denying him a majority of delegates to the July convention in Minneapolis.  Winning a mere plurality of votes in primary elections will deny Sanders a first ballot nomination and allow the DNC to use their super-delegates to support the conventional candidate, Joe Biden, on a second ballot.

Hillary Clinton and the DNC already conspired to successfully deny Sanders the nomination in 2016.  The mere fact that the party installed super-delegates after the factious anti-war candidacy of George McGovern in 1972 should sufficiently illustrate the party hierarchy’s contempt for democracy.

The opposition of the political establishment to the Sanders’ campaign stems from its programmatic support for a rabid neoliberal agenda against the Senator’s proposed New Deal liberal reforms.  The Democrats have been moving to the right in American politics for the past three decades and have no desire to reverse course.

Beginning with the Clinton presidency and continuing throughout the Obama regime, the Democratic Party initiated a new Cold War with Russia, imposed neoliberal economics globally, abandoned class politics for identity politics, deregulated the financial industry and the media, bailed out Wall Street at the expense of main street and presided along with the Republicans, over the greatest transfer of wealth to the top 1% of the population in American history.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Party is viewed by many of its supporters as a ‘lesser evil’ than the Republicans. Furthermore, in this election season, Trump and the Republicans are so terrible, the thinking goes, that anybody the Democrats nominate will be a better president than the orange billionaire.

Prior to evaluating these assumptions, a little lesson in political history is in order.  To begin, it is important to identify the class nature of the Democratic Party and to illustrate its principal functions in American and international affairs.

The Democratic Party is one of the two partner parties of American capitalism.  As with the Republicans, it is primarily financed by the corporate rich and represents their class interests.  The policies it implements are cohered within a vast policy formulation network of foundations, think tanks and policy discussion groups that have been set up for the purpose of legitimizing the policy choices of the corporate community and its military industrial security complex.

Since the Great Depression, one of the major functions of the Democratic Party has been to diffuse popular discontent by advocating concessionary policies in times of social unrest.

Exaggerated wealth concentration and financial speculation during the 1920’s led straight away to the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  Worker militancy, mass industry wide unionization, sit-down strikes, secondary boycotts, factory occupations and pitched battles with the police brought Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of 1935 along with the Wagner Act, the Magna Carta of the labor movement that same year.

Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr

Institutional racism, legal segregation, violent social repression, urban ghettoization and systemic police brutality resulted in the emergence of a civil rights movement and black liberation struggle that organized bus boycotts, sit-ins, civil disobedience, pickets, urban rebellions, armed self-defense and a mass march on Washington that produced Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Fair Housing Act of 1968 and War on Poverty in 1965.

A genocidal war in Vietnam, a compulsory military draft and staggering American casualties in that war generated an anti-war movement whose tactics included the burning of draft cards, mass marches on the Pentagon, campus rebellion, student strikes and a radical resistance that involved the bombing of government targets undertaken in solidarity with the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people.  These struggles brought forth the anti-war candidacies of Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.  Their entry into the presidential race of 1968 led to the decision of the war’s chief proponent, Lyndon Johnson, not to seek a second term as president.  Johnson’s decision signaled the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement in the war as his successor, Richard Nixon, was compelled to promise an end to the war so he could secure his election victory over Johnson’s Vice-President and war advocate, Hubert Humphrey.  Nixon subsequently began troop withdraws and ‘Vietnamization” of a conflict that was subsequently abandoned along with the military draft in 1973.

In short, the Democrats operate as the shock absorber of American capitalism whose main function is to diffuse, absorb and co-opt social opposition and political dissent during times of upheaval caused by economic and social crisis.

A corollary function of the Democratic Party is to periodically impose domestic political repression on various sectors of the American population that refuse to be co-opted in defense of a persistently rapacious capitalistic and virulently racist social order.  In this respect, the Democrats alternate with the Republicans when it becomes necessary to quash incipient rebellion.

Woodrow Wilson’s administration produced the Sedition Act of 1917, Espionage Act of 1918 and Palmer Raids of 1919, 1920 initiating the first Red Scare; Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated FBI investigations of the Communist Party for domestic subversion in 1936 and ordered the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942;

Harry Truman mandated loyalty oaths, signed the National Security Act creating the National Security Council and the CIA, signed the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act and began the second Red Scare in 1947;

John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson continued the murderous FBI COINTELPRO program begun in 1956 during their tenure in office from 1961-1968; Johnson declared a ‘War on Crime’ in 1965 integrating the federal government with local law enforcement;

Bill Clinton’s administration produced the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 resulting in the exponential growth of mass incarceration, a militarized police force, accelerated executions on death row and the evisceration of civil liberties;

Clinton’s Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno organized the deadly ATF/FBI/military raid on the compound of Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas in 1993;

Barak Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act in 2012, section 1021 of which effectively terminated habeas corpus, defended the NSA’s Prism program of mass surveillance in 2013 and used the Espionage Act to indict whistleblowers from 2010-2012; the majority of Congressional Democrats supported the Patriot Act from 2001-2020 further eroding civil liberties.

Internationally, the Democrats along with their Republican cohorts have conducted wars, instigated covert interventions and imposed political repression in countries around the world as part of their defense of global capitalism and corporate hegemony under the pretexts of fighting communism, interdicting terrorism and making the world safe for democracy and human rights.

Wilson invaded Haiti in 1915 and brought the United States into World War I in 1916; FDR entered World War II in 1941;

Truman dropped Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, intervened in Greece thus beginning the Cold War in 1947, recognized Israel in 1948 and started the Korean War in 1950;

Kennedy unleashed the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion and Operation Mongoose in Cuba along with implementing the doctrine of counter-insurgency in Asia and Latin America in 1961;

Johnson backed a coup d’état in Brazil in 1964, escalated the Vietnam War and invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965; Carter endorsed the CIA’s Operation Cyclone that armed the Islamic Mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1979 and supported repressive governments in Zaire, Angola, East Timor, Guatemala and El Salvador from 1977-1980;

Clinton enforced sanctions on Iraq from 1993-2001 killing one and a half million Iraqi civilians, bombed Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 and bombed Yugoslavia in 1999;

Obama presided over coup d’états in Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2014, bombed Libya in 2011, waged proxy war in Syria in 2012, imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 and conducted drone warfare across the Middle East and North Africa.

A cursory examination of the foregoing political history reveals that the Democratic Party, no less so than its Republican counterpart, represents the interests of the American corporate plutocracy not the American people.

The idea that the Democrats are a ‘lesser evil’ is pure fiction.  The belief that a ‘political revolution’ can be waged from within the Democratic Party is an illusion.

The Democrats are a party of criminals.  They are a war party.  They serve Wall Street.  A vote for the Democrats is a vote for American imperialism, an empire that has committed crimes against humanity too vast to comprehend.

Likewise for the Republicans.  The American political class should not be supported or respected.  It should be imprisoned.  But that would take a genuine ‘political revolution’ to accomplish.

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Coronavirus COVID-19: “Made in China” or “Made in America”? – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

Posted by M. C. on March 19, 2020

https://www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-covid-19-made-in-china-or-made-in-america/5706272

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Trump contends that the coronavirus was “Made in China”.  And that China threatens America.

The president of the US wants Americans to believe that the coronavirus pandemic carries the “Made in China” label.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refers to it as the “Wuhan coronavirus.” 

“The Big Lie” started on January 30th when the WHO Director General pressured by powerful US economic interests declared a global public health emergency with only 150 “confirmed cases” (by the WHO) outside China with only six cases in the USA. And it was called a pandemic. 

“Fake media” immediately went into high gear. China was held responsible for “spreading infection” Worldwide.

On the following day (January 31, 2020), Trump announced that he would deny entry to the US of both Chinese and foreign nationals “who have traveled in China in the last 14 days”. This immediately triggered a crisis in air travel,  transportation, US-China business relations as well as freight and shipping transactions.

While the “Made in China” coronavirus label served as a pretext, the unspoken objective was to bring the Chinese economy to its knees.

It was an act of “economic warfare”, which has contributed to undermining both China’s  economy as well as that of  most Western countries (allies of the US), leading to a wave of bankruptcies, not to mention unemployment, collapse of the tourist industry,  etc.

Moreover, Trump’s “Made in China” coronavirus label almost immediately as of early February triggered a campaign against ethnic Chinese throughout the Western World.

Stage 2.0: “Infections Transmitted by Europeans”? 

On March 11, a new phase was launched. The Trump administration imposed a 30-day ban on Europeans entering the United States through the suspension of air-travel with the EU (with the exception of Britain).

America is now waging its “economic  war” against Western Europe, while using COVID-19 as a justification.

European governments have been co-opted. In Italy a lockdown prevails, ordered by the Prime Minister, large cities in Northern Italy including Milano and Torino have literally closed down.

Confusion, Fear and intimidation prevail.

It’s “Damage Made in America”.

Late February: Financial manipulation characterizes stock market transactions Worldwide.

The stock value of airlines companies collapses overnight. Those who had  “foreknowledge” of Trump’s March 11 decision to ban transatlantic flights from EU countries made a bundle of money. It’s called “short-selling” in the derivative market among other speculative ops. Institutional speculators including hedge funds with “inside info” had already placed their bets.

More generally, a massive transfer of money wealth has occurred, among the largest in World history, leading to countless bankruptcies, not to mention the loss of lifelong savings engineered through the collapse of financial markets.

This process is ongoing. It would be naive to believe that these occurrences are spontaneous, based on market forces. They are deliberate. They are part of a carefully designed plan involving powerful financial interests.

COVID-19: “Made in China” or “Made in America”? 

And now a new bombshell has emerged: The White House rhetoric of accusing China of spreading the “Wuhan virus” Worldwide has been refuted by both Japanese and Chinese reports. Scientific analysis revealed by Larry Romanoff  suggests that the virus was “Made in America”:

“it appears that the virus did not originate in China and, according to reports in Japanese and other media, may have originated in the US.  …

In February, the Japanese Asahi news report (print and TV) claimed the coronavirus originated in the US, not in China, and that some (or many) of the 14,000 American deaths attributed to influenza may have in fact have resulted from the coronavirus.

And on March 12, in a statement to the US Congress (House Oversight Committee), CDC Director Robert Redfield unwittingly “spilled the beans”. He candidly admitted, yes, some cases diagnosed as seasonal flu could have been coronavirus.

When did this occur? In October, November? What is the chronology.  It is worth noting that Redfield’s statement is corroborated by both Japanese and Taiwanese virologists.  Two countries which are staunch allies of the USA.

It is worth noting that the Taiwan virologist (referred to above)

“stated that the US has recently [?] had more than 200 “pulmonary fibrosis” cases that resulted in death due to patients’ inability to breathe, … He said he .. informed the US health authorities to consider seriously those deaths as resulting from the coronavirus, … [He] then stated the virus outbreak may have begun earlier than assumed, suggesting  “We must look to September of 2019”. (quoted in Larry Romanoff, op cit)

China’s Foreign Ministry has reacted to CDC Robert Redfield’s statements intimating that the virus could have originated in the US.

“When Did “Patient Zero” Begin in the US?” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.

Of course “WHEN” is the fundamental question.

“How many people are infected, what are the names of the hospitals, It might be US Army that brought epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent, US owe us an explanation”

See below

The World is at the Crossroads of the Most Serious Social and Economic Crisis in Modern History

People Worldwide are being misled. They are told: “It’s going to get worse”. Angela Merkel has stated without a shred of evidence that “70% of the German population could contract coronavirus if more isn’t done to stop its spread.”

In several countries, the economy has closed down. Supermarkets, shopping malls, offices, factories, schools, universities are at a standstill. People are confined to their homes. Fear and intimidation prevail.

In the meantime, coinciding with the coronavirus lockdown in Italy, 30,000 US troops have been dispatched to the EU, under US-NATO’s  “Defend Europe 2020” war games against Russia, in the largest military deployment since World War II. “Could the Defender become the Invader…?”

Let’s be clear: The coronavirus pandemic is not the “cause” of this unfolding economic and social crisis. It is the “pretext” for the implementation of a carefully designed “operation” (supported by media disinformation) which destabilizes national economies, impoverishes large sectors of the World population and literally undermines the lives of millions of people. What we are dealing with is “An Act of War”.

While COVID-19 is an important Public Health concern, the lockdown coupled with an ongoing fear campaign does not constitute an effective means to combating the virus, i.e. by providing target medical assistance and health services to those affected.


For further details see:

COVID-19 Coronavirus “Fake” Pandemic: Timeline and Analysis 


What Happens Next: The Potential Impacts of a Continued Freeze of US Trade with China

The geopolitics are complex. How will economic events unfold? We will essentially focus briefly on US-China relations.

Those who formulated America’s “undeclared economic war” against China, failed to envisage the potential backlash on the US economy.

It’s an “Economic Harakiri” i.e. “Suicide American Style”

In a matter of  months, if normal US-China trade relations and transportation are not resumed, the impacts on the national economies of Western countries could be devastating.

A large share of goods displayed in America’s shopping malls, including major brands are  “Made in China”.

“Made in China” is the backbone of retail trade in the USA which indelibly sustains household consumption in virtually all major commodity categories from clothing, footwear, hardware, electronics, toys, jewellery, household fixtures, medical supplies, medicine and prescription drugs,,  TV sets, cell phones, etc.

“Made in China” also dominates the production of a wide range of industrial inputs, advanced technology, machinery, building materials, automotive, parts and accessories, etc. not to mention the extensive sub-contracting of Chinese companies on behalf of US conglomerates.

While the US has a powerful and sophisticated financial apparatus (which has the ability to manipulate trade and stock markets Worldwide), America’s Real Economy is in a shambles.

Production does not take place in the USA. The producers have given up production.

The US trade deficit with China is instrumental in fuelling the profit driven consumer economy which relies on “Made in China” consumer goods. Meanwhile China holds a large part of the US public debt which they can readily convert into real assets overnight.

http://www.Made-In-China.com

At this juncture of the coronavirus crisis, Beijing policy makers are fully aware that the US economy is fragile and heavily dependent on “Made in China”.  Moreover, China has overtaken the US in several high tech areas including 5G.

And with an internal market of 1.4 billion people, coupled with a global export market under the “Belt and Road” initiative, the Chinese economy will have the upper hand.

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The Only Pandemic in America Is Unbridled Fear and a Total Lack of Intelligent Thought – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 19, 2020

Coronavirus, according to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, is a part of all viruses, and 8% to 15% of viruses are coronavirus, so that will show up in testing

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/gary-d-barnett/the-only-pandemic-in-america-is-that-of-unbridled-fear-and-a-total-lack-of-intelligent-thought/

By

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” ~ Frank Herbert, Dune

Can the common flu cause people in America and worldwide to lose their minds, and lose all ability to think? Apparently, that is the case, as Americans have gone insane over a new monster created out of thin air called coronavirus. I have anticipated a scenario such as this, and written about it for the past decade or more, but the response by the people of this country is more ridiculous than even I could have imagined. It is the most pathetic sight I have seen in my life.

Without any initial testing, without any proof, without any certainty as to what this new fake threat to all mankind actually is, the world is now in lockdown, and therefore very easy to control. A better plan for the globalists could not have been imagined, as the sheep get into line for sheering without any resistance or question. I have watched this take place, and it was structured incrementally, all along testing the gullibility and fear of the populace, and as it progressed, it became obvious to those perpetrating this lie that taking over the entire country was going to be a cakewalk.

What is happening now is exactly as Bill Gates previewed it in his idiocy called Event 201, which seems to have been the initial test and propaganda piece set in place to start this engine. This was no coincidence, regardless of what the mainstream media and globalists’ claim, but was an active exercise for what was to come. And yes, this is real conspiracy, not “conspiracy theory.”

I will not relent in my efforts to expose the fact that the U.S. economy has been decimated due to spending, debt, and money creation for many years. Considering the situation in 2008, when all markets should have failed, the current economic picture is not only far worse, but has reached the pinnacle of disaster. This economy cannot be saved by money printing, QE, or sending checks out to those that have been forcibly relieved of their jobs by government fiat. I firmly believe that a major factor in why this so-called pandemic was created is to shift blame for the impending economic collapse on this virus, and hide the fact that the Fed and central banks around the world completely destroyed the economy. Had the markets and economy been allowed to fail without any fake pandemic, the government and banking system would have been exposed for the criminal thieves they are. This could not be allowed to happen by the ruling elites. Hence, the flu will kill us all!

As I wrote yesterday here:

“It is my belief that the regular flu is being used as a cover for this fake virus, and will serve to hide fault of a state-created economic collapse. In the process, all will become slaves to the state, and this is not a temporary tyranny, as it will last long after this current non-risk is over. Today, Trump and his entourage of idiots stood before the cameras and said now we can do this next spring to help stop the flu! That is basically an announcement that these measures can be used for any excuse deemed “necessary” by the ruling class. They are actually preparing the sheep for ongoing martial law.”

Coronavirus, according to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, is a part of all viruses, and 8% to 15% of viruses are coronavirus, so that will show up in testing. This is especially the case when testing the already sick and dying, the old and infirmed, and this kind of testing would be far different than random population tests. In other words, if testing is set up to test sick people, up to 15% will show coronavirus. It is a natural part of flu, and will always show up, so it would be easy to use to fool the dumbed-down and dependent herd. They are easily frightened, and expect government to take care of them from cradle to grave, so this test has been successful for those intending to take control of populations around the world.

Today, we all face horrendous consequences of this staged pandemic. The economic collapse alone will devastate much of the population. This will cause unheard of disaster, and will bankrupt many around the country. This will be life-changing for all Americans, and will change forever the landscape of what is falsely considered a “free” country. Voluntary lockdowns will quickly become mandatory lockdowns, which requires martial law and certainly medical martial law. Police will patrol not for real crime, but to force all to stay in a home prison. National guard units have been deployed in many states already, and that will continue to expand, and then the military will take to the streets to enforce government mandates once full martial law is implemented. In cities, gun sweeps will begin soon, as many areas have already banned gun and ammunition sales.

One of the saddest and most pathetic behaviors that have emerged in this chaos is that most all citizens are accepting everything they are fed, are monitoring their neighbors and anyone showing signs of dissent, and reporting them to authorities. They are helping to enslave themselves without any concept of the stupidity of their actions.

Get prepared for total chaos, economic destruction, martial law, forced vaccinations, permanent job loss, lockdowns, panic, riots, and state violence against dissenters and regular citizens that has never been seen in this country before now. Isolation will be universal, and many more will die from these tyrannical measures than any flu could ever cause.

The governing bodies are calling this a war, and they are correct, but this war is an aggressive war against Americans, not against any virus or outside foreign threat. The enemy now is us, and the aggressor forces will include full military power, with the sole objective of total control. The only solution available is mass disobedience and mass dissent. Numbers matter, and without numbers, any individual dissenter will be quickly taken out!

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Pentagon Warns They Aren’t Set Up to Fight Coronavirus – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2020

The only disease the military will be brought in to control is the one reading this.

https://news.antiwar.com/2020/03/16/pentagon-warns-they-arent-set-up-to-fight-coronavirus/

With many politicians long seeing the military as an all-purpose problem solver with a bottomless budget, it is unsurprising that the outbreak of coronavirus has many, particularly high-ranking Democrats, angling for a declaration of war and an outright militarization of the domestic issue.

“I would call out the military now,” Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden said on Sunday. He said it’s an emergency and the US needs to treat it like a war. He suggested that the military could provide a “surge” for US hospitals, building more beds and tents that are secure. “We’re at war with the virus,” Biden added.

They all think that sounds like a great idea, except for the US military itself. Pentagon officials are warning that fighting a virus really isn’t their thing, and that those tent hospitals are designed to treat combat casualties, not respiratory illness.

Gen. Paul Friedrichs, the top medical adviser to the Joint Chiefs, said that the US military simply doesn’t have any 500-bed hospitals designed for infectious disease. Even more of a problem, they don’t have a bunch of idle doctors and nurses to man them if they did.

If the military was expected to set up such tent hospitals, they’d have to call in reserves and the National Guard to staff them, and many of them would be taken away from civilian facilities, meaning they’re just shifting people from a building to a tent.

Friedrichs added that the military is eager to help, but that he thinks the Pentagon needs to be transparent about its limitations before starting this huge “war” for the sake of public health. Whether that will deter anyone remains to be seen.

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As an Iraq War Veteran, I’m Furious U.S. Troops Are Still Dying There 17 Years Later | Opinion

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2020

I believe the Iraq War was a mistake with catastrophic implications for the country we swore to defend. Now, 17 years after the war began, it’s time to finally correct this mistake and bring our troops home.

https://www.newsweek.com/iraq-war-veteran-im-furious-us-troops-are-still-dying-there-17-years-later-opinion-1492724

Dan Caldwell

On the night of January 7, my phone buzzed with news alerts that Americans in Iraq were under attack by Iranian missiles at Ain al-Asad air base—where I served as a Marine over 11 years ago. My stomach turned as I thought about what those on the receiving end of the barrage were experiencing. At first, I prayed the troops at the air base were able to take cover prior to the missiles hitting. But then I became angry—angry we still had Americans in harm’s way as a result of an unnecessary war that began 17 years ago.

Those Americans at al-Asad were needlessly in danger because of our leaders’ refusal to reckon with the fact the Iraq War was lost long ago and it is past time for the United States to withdraw from the country.

One of the many terrible results of U.S. troops being in Iraq is the over 100 service members at al-Asad who suffered traumatic brain injury during the missile attack. Thankfully, no one was killed, but some will likely suffer side effects from their serious injuries for many years. They join the more than 32,000 Americans wounded and 4,500 killed—including four U.S. service members who died last week—in a conflict that has cost the U.S. nearly $2 trillion.

The Iraq War was lost when the Marines pulled down Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad in April 2003. The overthrow of Saddam’s regime, as ghoulish as it was, removed a check against Islamic radicalism and was a clear victory for Iran, Iraq’s chief rival at the time.

The political realities of the region were ignored in favor of a misguided idealism imbued with the certainty the removal of Saddam would inspire democracy to flourish in the Middle East. As a result, everything we have done since 2003 has been an attempt to mitigate the consequences of the invasion.

While most foreign policy leaders and elected officials at least grudgingly acknowledge the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was a mistake, some still try to defend the war by making dubious historical claims. For example, there is the prevalent myth that we “won” in Iraq during the surge of American forces from 2007 to 2009 but squandered that victory when President Barack Obama withdrew American military forces in 2011.

This narrative ignores that while the surge yielded some tactical victories, it did not end the sectarian conflict unleashed by the invasion that empowered Sunni jihadis and Iran-backed Shiite militias. The deeply rooted tensions among different groups in Iraq, along with the civil war in neighboring Syria—not the withdrawal of American forces—enabled the rise of ISIS.

The “Obama lost” narrative also glosses over the fact that our withdrawal in 2011 was mandated by the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Bush administration and Iraqi government in 2008. Keeping military forces in Iraq after December 2011 could have put us into conflict with the Iraqi government, which the United States created and supported. The Iraqi government agreed to let large numbers of American troops return to Iraq only after the rise of ISIS in 2014.

Today, American troops remain in Iraq with no clear purpose. ISIS’ territorial caliphate is destroyed, and the remaining ISIS fighters pose a greater threat to Iranian interests than American ones. The Iraqi parliament recently called for our withdrawal. Our continued support of Iraqi security forces could lead to Iranian-aligned groups receiving American arms and equipment, including ones likely responsible for recent attacks against Americans.

Leaving our troops in Iraq only makes them easy targets for Sunni jihadis or Iranian proxies seeking to harm American forces. President Donald Trump should withdraw all our forces from the country, a move supported by nearly 70 percent of Americans.

I am proud of my service in Iraq, and regardless of the necessity of the war, we should honor the sacrifice of those who served admirably under difficult circumstances. But like most veterans of the conflict, I believe the Iraq War was a mistake with catastrophic implications for the country we swore to defend. Now, 17 years after the war began, it’s time to finally correct this mistake and bring our troops home.

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The luxury of apocalypticism – spiked

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2020

Resisting the apocalypticism of the comfortable doom-mongers who rule over us is unquestionably the first step to challenging Covid-19 and preserving society for the decades after this illness has wreaked its disgraceful impact.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/17/the-luxury-of-apocalypticism/

The elites want us to panic about Covid-19 – we must absolutely refuse to do so.

Brendan O’Neill Editor

People’s refusal to panic has been a great source of frustration for the establishment in recent years. ‘The planet is burning’, they lie, in relation to climate change, and yet we do not weep or wail or even pay very much attention. ‘I want you to panic’, instructs the newest mouthpiece of green apocalypticism, Greta Thunberg, and yet most of us refuse to do so. A No Deal Brexit would unleash economic mayhem, racist pogroms and even a pandemic of super-gonorrhoea, they squealed, incessantly, like millenarian preachers balking at the imminent arrival of the lightning bolt of final judgement, and yet we didn’t flinch. We went to work. We went home. We still supported Brexit.

Our skittish elites have been so baffled, infuriated in fact, by our calm response to their hysterical warnings that they have invented pathologies to explain our unacceptable behaviour. The therapeutic language of ‘denialism’ is used to explain the masses’ refusal to fret over climate change. Environmentalists write articles on ‘the psychology of climate-change denial’, on ‘the self-deception and mass denial’ coursing through this society that refuses to flatter or engage with the hysteria of the eco-elites. Likewise, the refusal of voters to succumb to the dire, hollow warnings of the ferociously anti-Brexit wing of the establishment was interpreted by self-styled experts as a psychological disorder. ‘[This is] people taking action for essentially psychological reasons, irrespective of the economic cost’, said one professor.

How curious. In the past it was hysteria that was seen as a malady of the mind. Now it is the reluctance to kowtow to hysteria, the preference for calm discussion over panic and dread, that is treated as a malady. Today, it is those who prefer reason over rashness, whether on climate change or Brexit, who are judged to be disordered. According to the new elites, their apocalypticism is normal, while our calm democratic commitment to a political project, such as Brexit, or our desire to treat pollution as a practical problem rather than as a swirling, cloudy hint of nature’s coming fury with man’s hubris and destructiveness, is mad, deranged, in need of treatment. Their End Times nervousness is good; our faith in moral reason is bad.

This strange, fascinating tension between the apocalypticism of the intellectual and cultural elites and the scepticism of ordinary people is coming into play in the Covid-19 crisis. Of course, Covid-19 is very different to both No Deal Brexit and climate change. It is a serious medical and social crisis. In contrast, the idea that leaving the EU without a deal would be the greatest crisis to befall Britain since the Luftwaffe dropped its deadly cargo on us was nothing more than political propaganda invented from pure cloth. And the notion that climate change is an End Times event, rather than a practical problem that can be solved with tech, especially the rollout of nuclear power, is little more than the prejudice of Malthusian elites who view the very project of modernity as an intemperate expression of speciesist supremacy by mankind.

Covid-19, on the other hand, is a real and pressing crisis. It poses a profound challenge to humankind. It requires seriousness and action to limit the number of deaths and to mitigate the economic and social costs of both the disease itself and of our strategies for dealing with it. But what ties Covid-19 to the other fashionable apocalypses of our nervous elites, including the green apocalypse and the Brexit apocalypse, is the interpretation of it through the language and ideology of the elites’ pre-existing dread, their pre-existing cultural skittishness and moral disarray. Predictably, and depressingly, Covid-19 has been folded into their narrative of horror, into their permanent state of cultural distress, and this is making the task of facing it down even harder.

The media are at the forefront of stirring up apocalyptic dread over Covid-19. In Europe, there is also a performative apocalypticism in some of the more extreme clampdowns on everyday life and social engagement by the political authorities, in particular in Italy, Spain and France. Many governments seem to be driven less by a reasoned, evidence-fuelled strategy of limiting both the spread of the disease and the disorganisation of economic life, than by an urge to be seen to be taking action. They seem motivated more by an instinct to perform the role of worriers about apocalypse, for the benefit of the dread-ridden cultural elites, rather than by the responsibility to behave as true moral leaders who might galvanise the public in a collective mission against illness and a concerted effort to protect economic life.

A key problem with this performative apocalypticism is that it fails to think through the consequences of its actions. So obsessed are today’s fashionable doom-predictors with offsetting what they see as the horrendous consequences of human behaviour – whether it’s our polluting activities or our wrong-headed voting habits – that they fail to factor in the consequences of their own agenda of fear. Greens rarely think about the devastating consequences of their anti-growth agenda on under-developed parts of the world. The Remainer elite seemed utterly impervious to warnings that their irrational contempt for the Leave vote threatened the standing of democracy itself. And likewise, the performative warriors against Covid-19 seem far too cavalier about the longer-term economic, social and political consequences of what they are doing.

First, there is the potential health consequences. Is suppression of the disease really better than mitigation? The suppression of disease preferred by China, in very authoritarian terms, or by Italy and France, in less authoritarian terms, may look successful in the short term, but the possibility of the disease’s return, in an even more virulent form, is very real. Likewise, entire economies of everyday life have been devastated already by the severity of government action in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people in Italy and Ireland have lost their jobs already, in the night-time, hotel and entertainment sectors in particular. That is a social and health cost, too: job loss can lead to the loss of one’s home, the breakdown of one’s marriage, and to a palpable and destructive feeling of social expediency. As to keeping elderly people indoors for months on end, as is now being proposed in the UK, it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether this poses an even greater threat to our older citizens’ sense of personal and social wellbeing than their taking their chances with a disease that is not a death sentence for older people (though it impacts on them harder than it does on the young).

The point is, there is such a thing as doing too little and also such a thing as doing too much. Doing too little against Covid-19 would be perverse and nihilistic. Society ought to devote a huge amount of resources, even if they must be commandeered from the private sector, to the protection of human life. But doing too much, or acting under the pressure to act rather than under the aim of coherently fighting disease and protecting people’s livelihoods, is potentially destructive, too. People need jobs, security, meaning, connection. They need a sense of worth, a sense of social solidarity, a sense of belonging. To threaten those things as part of a performative ‘war’ against what ought to be treated as a health challenge rather than as an End Times event would be self-defeating and utterly antithetical to the broader aim of protecting our societies from this novel new threat. To decimate the stuff of human life in the name of saving human life is a questionable moral approach.

 

That the practical challenge posed by this new sickness has been collapsed into the elites’ pre-existing culture of misanthropic dread is clear from some of the commentary on Covid-19. The language of ‘war’ gives Covid-19 a sentience it of course does not deserve, accentuating the idea that this is not just an illness but a fin-de-siècle menace. This illness is being interpreted as a warning. It has been speedily refashioned as a metaphor for our weakness in the face of nature. It ‘has come to tell us that we are not the kings of the world’, says one headline. This malady is blowback for ‘our foolishness, our rapacity’, says Fintan O’Toole. We must now ‘learn the humility of survivors’, he says, cynically using this crisis to seek to diminish the presumed specialness of humankind. ‘Coronavirus is an indictment of our way of life’, says a headline in the Washington Post, echoing the way that natural phenomena are constantly weaponised by apocalyptic greens to serve as judgements against the temerity of the modernising human race.

Here, we cut to the heart of the apocalyptic mindset of the modern elites. Their dread over natural calamities or novel new illnesses is not driven by the actual facts about these things, far less by the desire to overcome them through the deployment of human expertise and scientific discovery. Rather, it speaks to their pre-existing moral disorientation, their deep loss of faith in the human project itself. It is their downbeat cultural convictions that draws them to apocalypticism as surely as a light draws in moths. In her essay on the AIDS panic of the late 1980s, when that sexually transmitted disease was likewise imagined as a portent of civiliational doom, Susan Sontag talked about the West’s widespread ‘sense of cultural distress or failure’ that leads it to search incessantly for an ‘apocalyptic scenario’ and for ‘fantasies of doom’. There is a ‘striking readiness of so many to envisage the most far-reaching of catastrophes’, she wrote. It wasn’t so much ‘Apocalypse Now’, said Sontag, as ‘Apocalypse From Now On’.

How perspicacious that was. From AIDS to climate change, from swine flu to Covid-19, it has been one apocalyptic scenario after another. The irony is that the elites who readily envisage catastrophe think they are showing how seriously they take genuine social and medical challenges, such as Covid-19. In truth, they demonstrate the opposite. They confirm that they have absolved themselves of the reason and focus required for confronting threats to our society. It isn’t their apocalypticism that captures the human urge to solve genuine problems – it is our anti-apocalypticism, our calmness, our insistence that resources and attention be devoted to genuine challenges without disrupting people’s lives or the economic health of our societies.

‘I want you to panic’, they say. But we don’t. And we shouldn’t. Apocalypticism is a luxury of the new elites for whom crises are often little more than opportunities for the expression of their decadent disdain for modern society. To the rest of us, apocalypticism is a profound problem. It threatens to spread fear in our communities, it causes us to lose our jobs, it mitigates against economic growth, and it harms democracy itself. Resisting the apocalypticism of the comfortable doom-mongers who rule over us is unquestionably the first step to challenging Covid-19 and preserving society for the decades after this illness has wreaked its disgraceful impact.

 

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In the Pandemic, It’s Every Nation for Itself – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2020

But what governments in Europe are saying by closing their borders, what Americans are saying by banning travel from Europe, is that while all men may be created equal, we will always put our own people first, ahead of the rest.

When a crisis comes, be it a war in which the survival of the nation is at stake or an epidemic where the health and survival of our people is at stake, we take care of our own first.

This is human nature. This is the way the world works.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/patrick-j-buchanan/in-the-pandemic-its-every-nation-for-itself/

By

“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time,” said Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey to a friend on the eve of Britain’s entry into the First World War.

Observing from afar as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the Old Continent, Grey’s words return to mind. And as the Great War changed Europe forever, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be changing the way European peoples see each other.

“All for one and one for all!” These were the words by which “The Three Musketeers” of Alexandre Dumas lived their lives.

This was the ideal upon which the EU and NATO were built. An attack against one is an attack against all. The Schengen Agreement by which citizens of Europe are as free to travel through the countries of their continent as Americans are to travel from Maryland to Virginia is rooted in that ideal.

Yet, suddenly, all that seems to belong to yesterday.

How the EU’s nation-states are reacting to the coronavirus crisis brings to mind another phrase, a French phrase, “Sauve qui peut,” a rough translation of which is, “Every man for himself.”

The New York Times has written of the new reality. In Sunday’s top story, “Europe Locks Up and Faces Crisis as Virus Spread,” the Times wrote:

“While some European leaders, like President Emmanuel Macron of France, have called for intensifying cooperation across nations, others are trying to close their countries off.

“From Denmark to Slovakia, governments went into aggressive virus-fighting mode with border closings.”

Describing a host of countries heeding the call of tribalism and nationalism, the Times laments Monday:

“Today, Europeans are… erecting borders between countries, inside their cities and neighborhoods, around their homes — to protect themselves from their neighbors, even from their own grandchildren.”

“Confronting a virus that knows no borders, this modern Europe without borders is building them everywhere.”

In a few days, the Europe of open borders has become history.

“As the pandemic spreads from Italy to Spain, France, Germany,” reports the Times, “there is a growing sense of the need for harsh, even authoritarian methods, many of them taken from China.

“Europe has been terrified by Italy. Suddenly, many of the continent’s countries are trying to lock down, to protect themselves and their citizens. The idea of European solidarity, and of a borderless Europe where citizens are free to travel and work, seems very far away.”

Italy, hardest-hit country after China, is on lockdown. Germany is closing its borders with Austria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia have announced they will close borders to all foreigners. President Donald Trump has expanded his travel ban on Europe to include two of America’s oldest friends, Britain and Ireland.

Slovenia has closed its border with Italy. Norway is on lockdown. International travelers who arrive in Norway risk a mandatory 14-day quarantine, regardless of their health.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that Canada is barring entry to all travelers who are not citizens or permanent residents. The only exceptions are air crews, diplomats, and, “at this time,” U.S. citizens.

What we are witnessing is the clash of the claims of human nature and of ideology.

Through history, most men have put attachments of family, tribe, faith, country, race and nation above the claims of liberal ideology.

But while all citizens may have the same God-given right to life and constitutional right to “equal protection of the laws,” all people do not have equal rights to our affections or concerns.

For most men, the claims of the heart are superior to those of the mind. Foreign folks do not have the same claims upon us as our own. In a crisis, people put families, friends and country first.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson declares that, “all men are created equal.” Yet, what truly seems to enrage him and to justify the rebellion against George III are the crimes the king had committed and that he had been “deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

The king had violated the claims of our common blood while we Americans had not been “wanting in attentions to our British brethren.”

Closing borders is a grievous offense against liberalism that is supposedly rooted in the sin of xenophobia. But what governments in Europe are saying by closing their borders, what Americans are saying by banning travel from Europe, is that while all men may be created equal, we will always put our own people first, ahead of the rest.

When a crisis comes, be it a war in which the survival of the nation is at stake or an epidemic where the health and survival of our people is at stake, we take care of our own first.

This is human nature. This is the way the world works.

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Recalling George Orwell’s 1984 and Allan Moore’s V for Vendetta: Demystifying – and Stopping – Creeping Totalitarianism – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2020

“I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like ‘collateral’ and ‘rendition’ became frightening. While things like…The Articles of Allegiance became powerful, I remember how ‘different’ became dangerous. I still don’t understand it, why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I’ve never cried so hard in my life. It wasn’t long till they came for me.” — Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“… no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/gary-g-kohls/recalling-george-orwells-1984-and-allan-moores-v-for-vendetta-de-mystifying-and-stopping-creeping-totalitarianism/

Examining the Role of America’s Un-elected, Globalist, Oligarchic, Sociopathic, Robber Baron, Multimillionaire Elites that are Perennially in Power

By

“Every year America’s oligarchs take three trillion dollars out of America’s economy. This is how the rich have rigged the system – so that it benefits them at the expense of everyone else all of the time. To keep this fraud going, the public must be convinced of the need for military expenditure, and this is where all of the phony terror attacks come in. Here is Orwell’s definition of totalitarianism: ‘ A society living by and for continuous warfare in which the ruling caste have ceased to have any real function but succeed in clinging to power through force and fraud.” – From JFK to 9/11: Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick

Please, please, please take a step back, take a deep breath and watch the four short videos below (about 30 minutes total). Then later, when you have time – watch the equally important 3+ hour long “Rich Man’s Trick” video that will help any interested person de-mystify the current chaos of the planet’s manufactured Zombie Apocalypse and the inevitable world-wide economic Depression that is designed to enable the Oligarchic, Multi-billionaire Robber Barons to make massive investments and buy up as many of the struggling and/or bankrupt companies that couldn’t pay their mortgages because of the artificially-imposed Recession/Depression (a la the Cheney/Bush Big Bank Crisis/Stock Market Crash of 2008).

But – be mindful that the current planned social and economic catastrophes could possibly still be prevented or at least alleviated.

But how? Besides organizing resistance movements per the V for Vendetta video (perhaps without the violence), several points need to be made – among a number of others that I have described in other articles:

1] By thoroughly understanding – and therefore logically refusing, to fully comply with the standard overuse of Big Pharma’s dangerous, non-curative, often addictive synthetic drugs that are all potentially toxic because these drugs have never been thoroughly tested for safety or efficacy long-term (especially when prescribed in combinations).

Shame on Big Pharma for pushing their dangerous and addictive synthetic drugs up everybody that they can fool into accepting another prescription.

2] By thoroughly understanding – and therefore logically refusing to fully comply with – the standard overuse of allegedly “preventive”, universally neurotoxic vaccines that are intra-muscularly-injected (in un-tested-for-safety combinations) with disease-inducing, autoimmune disorder-inducing aluminum adjuvants that only provide partial, short-term infectious disease protection but never results in life-long immunity (as occurs with natural-occurring infections).

The “normality” of the widespread uses of Big Pharma’s unaffordable synthetic substances has been consistently promoted by corporate-controlled Big Medicine, corporate-subsidized (and therefore controlled) federal government agencies like the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, the HHS (and their subsidiaries) and then endorsed – 24/7 – by corporate-controlled Big Media outlets, whose ubiquitous Big Pharma advertisers DO NOT allow any mention of the multitude of safe, non-synthetic, curative, nutritionally-based, disease-preventive alternatives.

Shame on Big Vaccine and their lapdogs at the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, the HHS and Big Media for continuing to try to fool the people into trusting the neurotoxic substances in their vaccines and allowing their children to continue to be over-vaccinated..

3] By acknowledging that there are known mitochondrial-, white blood cell- and chromosomal-disabling-effects from any massive exposure of cities like Wuhan to 5G Electromagnetic Radiation (not to mention many other cities in China, South Korea, Japan, Italy and even Iran). Big Technology corporations don’t want any negative news broadcast about 5G, their “Next Big Things”. After all, self-driving cars and the Internet of things (IoT) absolutely need their risky 5G networks.

Shame on Big Technology, the Federal Communications Commission and the US Department of Energy for the propaganda they are using to push 5G’s toxic products.

4) By acknowledging that cheap Vitamin C, either intravenously or orally, has been highly successful in China in both treating and preventing viral infections (not to mention some cancers). Big Pharma and the CDC prefer to do research on unaffordable and much more dangerous drugs than admit that there are cheaper, safer and more curative alternatives than what they have to offer.

Shame on Big Pharma and Big Media and every other entity that discredits alternative approaches to health care.

5] By acknowledging that the sunlight-blocking effect of toxic smog and hazy polluted skies above Wuhan and other industrial cities drops the blood and body levels of Vitamin D in everybody. Big Corporations and the Big Media outlets that accept their advertising money) don’t want to admit that many sicknesses are their fault, and therefore many epidemics and pandemics are theoretically preventable. Big Corporations therefore remain in denial and would rather crash the economy than admit their guilt.

Shame on all Big Corporations that produce smog-and smoke-inducing, air pollution and the Air Forces that are spraying chemicals in the atmosphere in a futile attempt to block the sun’s rays

It must be understood that these safe, holistic, disease-preventive approaches to viral infections (and an assortment of many other medical disorders) are affordable and don’t necessarily require costly clinic visits or unaffordable and consistently dangerous prescription drugs – especially when used chronically.

And there is the rub.

Such non-drug, non-vaccine, non-prescription approaches are seen as dangerously un-profitable for the corrupt crony capitalist Oligarchs that own Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Government, Big Media and Big Technology. Therefore, the existence and usefulness of such non-drug alternatives are always un-mentioned by the talking heads and their editors each of whom are not above demonizing the competitors of their clients.

Today, with the suggestions of several internet acquaintances of mine, I watched the videos whose links are listed below, which include excerpts from or summaries of the films V for Vendetta and 1984 that should help de-mystify the chaos that is happening all around the world.

A bunch of the credit for the chaos goes to a gathering called Event 201 that was presented –  invitation only – and hosted by the World Economic Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security. The event occurred on October 18, 2019, just a couple of months before the Wuhan incident became public. (Learn more about it at here.)

Below is just some of the information that needs to be considered when deciding how far to go in complying with the draconian Medical Martial Law clamp-down which was proposed by the elites at the Event 201 gathering.

Hopefully readers of this article will be able to decide what to do if and when the police or US soldiers knock on your door or beat it down in order to force you to submit to an un-tested for safety or efficacy vaccine or vaccines, which contain toxins that even the public health authorities don’t understand – except that they are made in China or India.

Medical Martial Law – a la 1984 – has been on the books for generations – just waiting for an opportunity to be launched. Nobody should think that “it couldn’t happen here”.

Please cross-post this essay to your local, state and national political leaders, physicians, public health officials, media types, family and friends. The future of our planet – and the future of the children – is at stake.

Below are a short explanations of a handful of short videos that are essential viewing that will help folks comprehend what is happening in the halls of power and in the dens of the secret societies like Skull and Bones, whose members have supplied so many political and corporate elites over the last 150+ years – ever since the slave system that their ancestors established in America and which allowed them to accrue their obscene levels of wealth and power.

One of the several reasons for my writing this particular column is that I recently (finally!) got around to watching a DVD that had been on my bookshelf for several years. This video-documentary is actually still watchable on YouTube.

The title of the video is “JFK to 9/11: Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick”, and it deserves to be made required viewing for every person that wants to vote or even express an opinion in any discussion that concerns American history or politics. I highly recommend it.

The following much shorter videos should be considered as required viewing as well:

1] A 4-minute excerpt from “V for Vendetta”. This is a short sequence from the powerful film that describes a global crisis that was planned and executed by a “pharmaceutical company” that released pathogenic viruses into the entire world, which created a viral pandemic – and panic – among the increasingly fearful, desperate and therefore increasingly obedient public.

2] This 7 minute clip is a short summary of “V for Vendetta” which gives a recipe for how any ruling class of Oligarchs can easily orchestrate the unquestioning cooperation of the “ruled” with their rulers orders and thus enable the smooth introduction of profitable, fast-tracked, allegedly “curative”, but unproven-for-safety-or-efficacy vaccinations that likely contain dangerous, but invisible ingredients in them.

3] This 12-minute video is a powerful summary of George Orwell’s novel “1984” that tells the story of a post-WWII, right-wing, totalitarian, proto-fascist nation-state that is similar to the ones that regularly pass through the White House to receive Trump’s counsel, blessings and promises of collaboration.

The exploited “useless eaters” in those poor, war-ravaged foreign countries are being ruthlessly exploited in their native countries and looking for a place where they can escape the violence and hunger. Tyranny seems to be confronting the working people almost everywhere in the world with the help of the brain-washing, the “double-think”, the alteration of historical facts, the corporate/”One Party” control of governments, the corporate control of information (“Newspeak”), the constant technological surveillance, perpetual war, etc.

For extra credit (from “Alternate History Hub”) in understanding more thoroughly the message of George Orwell’s “1984”, click on the 15-minute video here.

And here are a number of pertinent quotes from 1984 (except for the final one)

“… no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

 “The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering—a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons—a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face.”

 “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

“Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.”

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” 

 “To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone—to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink—greetings!”

 “There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”

Addendum: Note that the quote below from the movie V for Vendetta seems to accurately refer to “Extraordinary Rendition”, the euphemistic term for “Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment” when they are performed by the CIA, Mi5 or the Mossad in “dark sites” outside the borders of the US and the term “collateral” seemingly refers to “Collateral Damage”, the euphemism that refers to unintended civilian war crime killings and casualties caused by the soldiers doing the shooting.

Incidentally the term “Collateral Damage” doesn’t apply to the civilian killings as portrayed in the video of the episode that occurred on July 12, 2007. The 24-minute video of the event was titled “Collateral Murder” and released by Julian Assange on his website WikiLeaks. The video has been repeatedly banned on the internet but is still viewable here and especially the video at here to listen to the testimony of one of the Army rescuers.

The US Air Force perpetrators of the war crimes committed by those airmen in the Apache helicopter were never punished, but one wonders how many of them either committed suicide later or perhaps “just” suffer life-long combat-induced PTSD and “just” become depressed, angry, sociopathic, addicted to prescription drugs, alcohol, illicit drugs or emotionally violent or neglectful to family members or friends in the decade since. The same question could apply to the US soldier-rescurers – usually referred to as “our heroic defenders of our democracy” when they get back home – who had to deal with the carnage of the dead and dying unarmed civilians on the ground.

And one needs to wonder how forgiving of America are any of the tens of millions of Muslim Middle Easterners who have become aware of the atrocity.

And, of course, it goes without saying that this exposure of a war crime perpetrated by the US, would make Assange an enemy of the state. With the way the establishment is treating Julian Assange and Bradley/Chelsea Manning, one must conclude that “Exposing War Crimes in America is a Crime”.

“I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like ‘collateral’ and ‘rendition’ became frightening. While things like…The Articles of Allegiance became powerful, I remember how ‘different’ became dangerous. I still don’t understand it, why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I’ve never cried so hard in my life. It wasn’t long till they came for me.” — Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

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Is the global pandemic a product of the elite’s Malthusian agenda and U.S. biowarfare?, by Max Parry – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2020

If the outbreak has led many to be suspicious of the official story, it is exactly because of the history of U.S. biological warfare and the elite’s potentially genocidal and pessimistic worldview that the only way to prevent the demise of humanity is by thinning the herd.

https://www.unz.com/article/is-the-global-pandemic-a-product-of-the-elites-malthusian-agenda-and-u-s-biowarfare/

On March 11th, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the ongoing outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to be a global pandemic, the first since the H1N1 swine flu in 2009. Initially reported in the city of Wuhan in Central China in December, just four months later there are now over 150,000 cases in more than 130 countries which has put many on total lockdown while the world economy has been brought to a virtual standstill. While the People’s Republic of China was the first country to report COVID-19, there has been a widespread presumption that the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) must have emerged in the capital of Hubei province that has not been held under sufficient scrutiny by Western corporate media.

The question of whether the COVID-19 coronavirus could have come from the U.S. army was controversially raised by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liljian Zhao, who tweeted an article from the Center for Research on Globalization website which subsequently went viral. Feigning concern over the spread of “disinformation”, Western media coverage uniformly avoided sourcing the article Zhao had shared on social media while predictably dismissing the claim as a “conspiracy theory.” Meanwhile, Iran’s Civil Defense Chief also said the coronavirus could be a biological attack on China and Iran, as the Islamic Republic has been the third-most impacted nation with more than 12,000 cases including many at the highest levels of its government with multiple senior officials infected. Contrary to such mainstream media scaremongering, it is completely reasonable and should be permitted to speculate about the origins of the virus. That Zhao’s posing of the theory received such a hostile response from the U.S. establishment is telling of how delicate their propaganda echo chamber is.

‬Although the disease is widely assumed to have been first transmitted through zoonosis because the earliest grouping of cases were linked to a Wuhan seafood market trading exotic wildlife in late December, the actual first known case was traced to the beginning of the month and may not have been originally passed through an animal. Many on the political right have even suggested the coronavirus is an effect of Chinese biological warfare which unexpectedly leaked from a lab in Wuhan, a theory disseminated in the pages of propaganda rags like The Washington Times, a newspaper owned by the founder of the right-wing Korean Unification Church cult, Sun Myung Moon, as well as The Epoch Times of the similarly fascistic religious sect of Chinese expatriates, the CIA-linked Falun Gong. In spite of that, it is true that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has close ties to the Galveston National Laboratory in the University of Texas, one of the Pentagon’s largest biological defense lab programs. Whereas no evidence exists that the Chinese government is responsible for COVID-19, nor does the PRC have a history of engaging in bio-warfare, there is an abundance of proof that the U.S. government has long been involved in the manufacturing and use of biological weapons since the Korean war.

When the accusations were first made by North Korea and China that the U.S. was using biological and germ warfare in the 1950–1953 Korean War, they were rejected outright by Washington as a hoax and rebuffed by the Western-biased WHO. In the decades since, the U.S. has maintained its denial while scholarly debate on the subject is divided. However, an unredacted report from 1952 from an investigation sponsored by the World Peace Council and conducted by an International Scientific Commission headed by Sir Joseph Needham, a highly reputable British biochemist of his era, was unearthed in 2018 and presents ample substantiation of the allegations, including eyewitness testimony, photographic evidence and documented confessions by American POWs. More disturbingly, the investigation indicates direct links between the U.S. biological warfare program and the germ warfare program of Unit 731, a clandestine bio and chemical warfare unit of Imperial Japan during World War II. During the Cold War, the Japanese researchers were secretly given immunity and recruited by the U.S. in exchange for their knowledge in human experimentation, along with many “former” Nazi scientists in Operation Paperclip.

Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army collected data not only through performing deadly experiments on humans but environmentally testing “plague bombs” by dropping them on Chinese cities to see whether they could start disease outbreaks. Many of these tactics were continued by the U.S. in the Korean War. According to Stephen Kinzer, journalist and author of Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, the CIA’s Project MK-ULTRA which was coordinated with the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories was:

“…Essentially a continuation of work that began in Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. Not only was it roughly based on those experiments, but the CIA actually hired the vivisectionists and the torturers who had worked in Japan and in Nazi concentration camps to come and explain what they had found out so that we could build on their research.”

Frank Olson , one of the biowarfare scientists and CIA employees in the program who died under mysterious circumstances in 1953, is the subject of the Netflix docu-drama series Wormwood, directed by Errol Morris and featuring renowned journalist Seymour Hersh, which reveals Olson may have been a potential government whistleblower on the CIA’s activities and U.S. bio-war crimes. It is worth noting that the usage of such agents in the Korean War included Chinese targets, the last and only major armed conflict between the U.S. and China, so if the COVID-19 pandemic were proven to be a product of U.S. biowarfare against Beijing, it would not be the first time.

Officially, the U.S. is said to have abandoned its bioweapons program in 1969, but its installation in Fort Detrick, Maryland, has continued conducting research into deadly pathogens and viruses on the stated purpose of bio-defense, as well as fighting disease outbreaks, developing vaccines, and other public health concerns. Yet just last year, research into fatal viruses and bioweapons were suspended amid concerns they could be accidentally be released. The last time Fort Detrick’s germ warfare research was suspended was in 2009 after the Pentagon found discrepancies in the inventory of its infectious agents, the same year as the last pandemic of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak.

Fort Detrick has been under tighter restrictions since the 2001 anthrax attacks were traced to Bruce Ivins, a senior biodefense researcher at the facility. The suspected perpetrator and army biologist committed suicide in 2008 after learning the FBI was going to charge him with terrorism, which if proven to be true would mean that the Pentagon’s own biodefense research itself had led to rather than protected the American public from bioterrorism — though there is plenty of evidence suggesting Ivins was framed by the feds. As journalist Whitney Webb uncovered, the U.S. Army’s Medical Research branch headquartered in Maryland has cooperated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology mentioned previously for decades.

Toying around with organisms that can produce disease is a regular practice for the Pentagon. In 2005, U.S. scientists announced that they had even successfully recreated the avian influenza flu virus in a lab which killed at least 50 million people worldwide in 1918, widely known as the ‘Spanish flu.’ The name is actually a misnomer, as it was disproportionately attributed to Spain which was neutral in World War I and was not subject to the same wartime censorship of the press to upkeep morale like in Germany, the UK, France and the U.S. whose media initially underreported the pandemic’s effects in their respective countries. The geographic source of the Spanish flu is still the subject of much debate, but the first observation of the disease was at a U.S. military installation in Fort Riley, Kansas in 1918. Needless to say, the risks involved with resurrecting a disease that wiped out more than a quarter of the world’s population are not trivial, but this did not prevent the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology from extracting the genetic coding of the Spanish flu from the exhumed corpse of a Native Alaskan woman frozen in the ground who died of the disease in an Inuit town in 1918.

Soldiers ill with the Spanish flu at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1918
Soldiers ill with the Spanish flu at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1918

There is no direct evidence showing that the 2009 swine flu said to have originated in Mexico through zoonosis from pigs was any leak of the restored Spanish flu, but the previous swine flu outbreak of 1976 began at a U.S. army base in Fort Dix, New Jersey, just like the Spanish flu of 1918. After the Gerald R. Ford administration jumped the gun and announced a flu epidemic was pending following the death of a single soldier, a subsequent mass immunization program without proper testing for side effects was administered to a staggering 45 million people, exactly a quarter of the entire U.S. population at the time, which ended up killing more Americans than the disease itself. The scandal forever sowed the seeds of public distrust regarding inoculation after more than 450 people developed Guillain-Barré Syndrome and 25 died from the immunization before it was halted.

If such a mandatory vaccination program were to be implemented again in the U.S. for COVID-19, the government would have to reassure the public its previous negligence of such side effects would not be repeated, an unlikely scenario after the corporate breach of trust exposed on Wall Street in recent years involving large pharmaceutical firms. Regardless, Big Pharma is already partnering with the U.S. army to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus which would have to be tested and evaluated before licensing by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and recommended for use by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), both of which partner with the WHO whose largest financial contributor is the U.S. government.

One of the WHO’s other largest benefactors is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with whom it has a partnership on vaccinations. The billionaire Microsoft Corporation founder has used his enormous wealth to dodge paying taxes under the guise of philanthropy and his ‘charitable’ private ventures have mostly focused on producing vaccines for developing countries and purportedly tackling global poverty, especially in Africa. On the surface this may appear to be benevolent work, but like many so-called altruistic projects it is a scheme which allows ultra-wealthy plutocrats like Gates to influence global policy and obtain political power with no accountability by investing in “fixing” the social problems caused by the very system which made them rich, with the expansion of neoliberalism as their real agenda. The consequences of this can be seen with charitable projects involving Gates in the Congo which forced its local agribusiness into using GMO seeds which only benefited private companies like Monsanto.

More disturbing is that in regards to environmental concerns about man-made climate change, Gates has made public his views on curbing human population growth as a solution. At a 2010 TED Conference, Gates stated:

“First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

To put it another way, one of the world’s wealthiest men admitted in public he believes vaccines should be used for depopulation, just as he is financially investing in both developing and delivering them to countries in the global south. The misanthropic myth of ‘overpopulation’ pushed by Gates and the elite not only suggests that depopulation is a solution for slowing the warming of the climate but retains the logic of an essential component of eugenics with the implicit idea that the quality of life for the human species can be improved by discouraging human reproduction. Since developing countries have the highest child mortality rates, families are more likely to be larger because children are less likely to survive. Hence, the inherent racism and classism in such a misconception.

Given that the vast majority of carbon emissions are produced by a short list of fossil fuel companies and the world’s largest polluter is the U.S. military, promoting this dangerous fallacy is the perfect way for the ruling elite to shift the responsibility for climate change onto the world’s poor. Unfortunately, this dangerous falsehood has been popularized in the mainstream environmental movement and pseudo-left with examples such as BirthStrike, a group of mostly female activists protesting the lack of regulations on the ecological crisis by refusing to bear children that has been irresponsibly endorsed by popular “progressive” politicians such as U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). ‘AOC’ is also the face of the Democratic Party’s Green New Deal which has troubling ties to the United Nations Agenda 21 sustainable development program that calls for “achieving a more sustainable population.”

The false notion of “overpopulation” became a misguided cornerstone of the modern day environmental movement thanks to the publication of American scientist Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling book The Population Bomb in 1968 , an alarmist diatribe that has in the years since become famous for its inaccurate doomsday predictions as a result of the mistaken belief which never came to fruition. Today’s doom merchants regarding the climate, no doubt a serious issue, are in many respects channeling Ehrlich’s false prophecies which are considered a modern rehash of the influential 18th century British economist and philosopher, Thomas Malthus. No single scholar was more loathed by Karl Marx and and the working class movement than Malthus, whose pseudo-scientific theories about demography were thought to have been intellectually defeated until they found new life in Ehrlich’s eco-fascism. As much as today’s ‘population bombers’ like Bill Gates may shun the more explicitly racist Malthusian ideas that the global north should contain the population of developing countries, they still tacitly endorse them by arguing that the size of the population itself is a source a poverty and climate change.

Bill Gates has cited business tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in American history who had an even greater monopoly on the oil business as Gates had at one time on the computer industry, as an inspiration in using his wealth to invest in medical research as a focus of his philanthropy. However, Gates has something else in common with the Rockefeller family in his views on population, as the Rockefeller Foundation was the single largest donor to the American eugenics movement in the 1920s and 30s and helped establish its German branch, even subsidizing the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics that Nazi physician Josef Mengele worked in prior to his wartime experiments. Despite the fact that a line can be traced from the American eugenics movement to the Nazi regime’s programs, which Nuremberg defendants even tried to use as justification for their atrocities in court, Rockefeller’s grandson John Rockefeller III continued the family legacy of interest in demography with the founding of the Population Council NGO which conducts research in “reproductive health” (sterilization) in developing countries. The Nazi government was also the first to ever pass legislation safeguarding the environment which they equated with German national identity, another unexpected intersection between brown and green politics.

In an astonishing coincidence, the Gates Foundation hosted an event just last October with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the World Economic Forum called Event 201, a pandemic simulation which gathered elite figures in government, business and health expertise to plan for the possibility of a worldwide outbreak. Gates himself has warned of pandemics for years and ominously wrote that the world should “prepare for epidemics the way the military prepares for war.” The Event 201 fictional scenario just so happened to be a coronavirus called CAPS from Brazilian pigs which infected people globally and after a year and half in the exercise caused tens of millions of deaths and set off a worldwide financial crash. Since the outset of the real COVID-19 coronavirus, Gates himself has stepped down from Microsoft to focus on his philanthropy while his foundation is busy working on a vaccine.

Many have observed that some characteristics of COVID-19 bear a resemblance to HIV that could not have happened organically. The recent documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld, which won an award at last year’s Sundance film festival , puts forth a chilling theory that a South African white supremacist organization deliberately spread HIV/AIDS among black Africans through vaccines in previous decades. The film begins as an investigation of the mysterious plane crash in Northern Rhodesia which killed Swedish diplomat and United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961. In 1998, a document authored by a shadowy paramilitary organization called the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) was uncovered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission justice assembly in post-apartheid South Africa which indicated that Hammarskjöld was the victim of an assassination. Not only do the filmmakers discover in their inquiry the distinct likelihood that the plane was shot down by a Belgian mercenary employed by SAIMR which was operating under orders from MI6 and the CIA, but the more stunning revelation is a recorded confession from a former SAIMR soldier to having deliberately spread HIV/AIDS to black Africans through immunization. If what is claimed about SAIMR is true and that they were connected with Western intelligence, that the COVID-19 virus could be something deliberately spread is not outside the realm of possibility.

Maybe it will prove to be the case that the yellow press’s version of the coronavirus beginning with the zoonotic transfer of the disease after the consumption of a pangolin or wild bat by a ‘patient zero’ in Wuhan is accurate. Nevertheless, the pandemic should be a chilling reminder of the elite’s eco-fascist agenda and the continuous danger that the military-industrial complex puts the world’s population in by continuing to conduct dangerous research into deadly pathogens where the risk vastly outweighs the benefits. If the outbreak has led many to be suspicious of the official story, it is exactly because of the history of U.S. biological warfare and the elite’s potentially genocidal and pessimistic worldview that the only way to prevent the demise of humanity is by thinning the herd.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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VENEZUELA: The Govt. Is Using Warlords to Control the People

Posted by M. C. on March 17, 2020

Bernie can’t repeat socialism was never a chance.

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/venezuela-warlords-control/

by J. G. Martinez D.

Let´s make something clear about Venezuela. Although some violence spikes here and there, it is not like the place is an entire mess (not all of the time at least). It´s almost a million square kilometers. That´s a lot of space.

The country is not like the Middle East. First, our culture is much more American (meaning with this South American, but American nonetheless) and there is some degree of order, usually even these days. There are some “official” gangs and they roam from time to time (especially in the larger cities).

These “official” gangs funded by the ruling class.

These gangs are being provided with all kinds of resources and don´t lack anything the regular citizen has to make miracles to get. Their members are chosen with poor criteria regarding morals, integrity, and values. There is little other name for them than warlords.

The character trait the ruling class looks for, is loyalty and obedience, no matter what. Those who can provide this and provide a degree of consolidation to the entire gang is considered a valued member. The ruling class has been under the counseling of Cubans for years. They have installed an intelligence apparatus just like the KGB, only that in a Caribbean environment and culture.

Common criminals are in the streets but these groups chase them and terminate them. It´s a badly hidden secret their business is to keep middle and poor people “safe” by eliminating low-end criminals, but they have been linked to plenty of other illegal activities too.

This is not surprising. It happens a lot in failed states.

I have written before about criminals being released from prison and armed. They control the society, avoiding uprisings, and at the same time, they terrify it, exhibiting an image of power and control that they necessarily don´t have. But the ruling gangs need to show themselves as having an overwhelming power. New combat units have been created out of thin air, under obvious duplicity of functions. But this has been just to arm sort of a praetorian guard working just to preserve the integrity of the 183 people responsible for the mess and looting.

It´s great such armed organizations are going to be declared as terrorist groups, because that´s what they are. Covering faces in public is prohibited in Venezuela. Why should a LEO do it then in the first place? These guys brag and walk around as if they were the saviors of the world while driving unlicensed pickup trucks. The stories are there, all over the place. They shot an RPG projectile to kill some rebels (who were protected by our constitution in the Art. 350) even murdering a pregnant woman. So much bravery.

Think about what will happen after the Covid-19 outbreak is over.

Maybe this information is not relevant with all the priority that the COVID-2019 has arisen. You´re right. But what will happen after the outbreak has spread? What do you think is going to happen?

What will be the behavior of such gangs, when they behave already as if they rule the place? Once the major, and maybe the military forces, malnourished and weakened have succumbed to the contagion, that precious red line won´t be there anymore. And the citizens are unarmed to redraw it again.

Under the excuse of impeding the spreading of a possible outbreak, this will be used to try and increase the social control, even in an already crippled society as the remains of what is left in my country. This is so unfair, that is unbelievable the world has allowed it.

My worst fears now include the fact of the outbreak being so hard, that this will make the attention to be redirected, leaving us entirely vulnerable to that terrible gang.

Thank God, there are people already providing consultation and advice to the administrative wing capable of doing something. OK, enough with politics.

Covid-19 has arrived in Venezuela.

Let´s provide an update about some stuff that has been happening. As most of you already know, the virus is very likely to have arrived in Venezuela. An eastern citizen presented symptoms after coming from a trip. He´s a senior citizen, but no more details were given.

In an incredible demonstration of media manipulation, this weekend a hashtag erupted and it was positioned on Twitter. (Remember, Venezuela has an incredible amount of bots working from Cuba via the submarine cable installed in the Chavez era, that provides communication between countries.) Of course, this is already an attempt to build up the needed contra-pressure to prohibit public meetings…in the name of the “public safety”.

How many dissidents already would have already been “victim” of the virus? Especially if they were dragged from their homes and thrown in a truck with people who are really sick.

It´s highly suspicious how this virus presented itself after the tense situation with the Hong Kong protests. The economic effects? I don´t know. By eliminating dissidence now, the party thinks that maybe they can enjoy 30 or 35 more years of peace and silence. Remember, they think differently to us Westerns. They think heavily in the next 3 generations and plan according to that. And dang, they have become good at it. I can hardly plan for this year my next moves.

I fear not so much because of me. My health (with a few dents here and there) is not that bad. I never get sick, otherwise because of my odd food choices from time to time. But as I usually have infusions, drink coffee by the liters (therefore yes, have some sleeping disorders) and walk a lot, my health has improved. I´ve lost some weight, and ate a lot of fish (in Venezuela red meat is something that usually was in our main meals, far from the shore sea fish was scarce and expensive, and river fish usually less tasty). My main fear is for my parents, both over 70. They´re isolated since some time ago, though. (smile). They live in a small town, with a reduced local economy…that has been good, and sometimes bad. We´ve had our issues, but we love and support each other no matter what. It has been quite painful.

I posted on my Patreon website some advice an Italian doctor, a member of one of the research teams in China gave. It came from a trust-worthy source, so I decided it was worth sharing.

Another report of what has been happening is, the warlords order their minions to go to the hospital and loot for medicines. You can read about it at this link.

This, dear readers, is what you can expect to happen in a collapse/SHTF situation. And it can be even worse, given the amount of zones with drug dealing/cooking and tons of other organized crime activities. If authorities become overwhelmed, these thugs will be on the streets sooner than you think.

My advice? Organize NOW. Prepare contingency plans. A, B, and C, and whatever other letters you may need.  911 won´t be there, trust me.

Make sure you have your own medical supplies.

A good part of your prepping budget should be addressed to the acquisition of medicines. How to store it long term? I don´t know. I almost lost 300$ worth of medicines since I started to store antibiotics (available without prescription) and all kind of those most commonly used, but we decided to donate it to our local community infirmary, asking the nurse (which we know personally and is a good friend, and a dependable person) please to provide them only to those in need. Some others were offered to friends, as we didn´t have family nearby.

It´s amazing to read the only acknowledged and accepted case of COVID-19 in Venezuela is under armed custody by the intelligence teams. After the collapse that wiped out the economy of the country, any outbreak is very likely to generate a real SHTF situation. Even worse than a war, in my opinion. Non-human components in the equation makes things really hard to analyze and predict.

Our main problem is the lack of trustable information. The Italian government has been entirely transparent, resulting in an infection and death rate several times higher than the reported by China. Of course, you can´t expect reliable data being released by that kind of unelected, but self-proclaimed governments. They don´t respect even the intellectual property, why they would have to inform the rest of the world what happens inside their borders? They are a culture dating from thousands of years ago. Are we little Westerns going to teach them how to rule their citizens?

That´s how they think about the rest of the world.

On the other hand, we already have a lack of services, and if the virus happens to hit hard (something that is entirely random) I can´t predict what could happen. If a humanitarian intervention wasn’t allowed in 2019, it´s very likely the irregular groups impeding it will keep stubbornly their position, unless the pandemics wipe them out too. (Lord have mercy on their souls).

I am constantly asking about the preparedness level of some acquaintances and the few friends that are still enduring there, but…they´re barely surviving. Don´t even think about preparing, but surviving one day after another. And many of them want to leave, too. Especially those with European parents and double nationality. With the outbreak in Europe and the severity it has shown…well, I haven´t had too much time to question them before writing this article, but I will surely mention it in the next few articles.

For the time being, we don´t know if the disease has affected anyone else besides that old man who came from China.

We don´t have the means to know it. Anyone informing or reporting will be chased and imprisoned. That´s the way that mock of a State acts.

I can only ask, this outbreak doesn´t affect us. We´ve been hit too hard, and don´t deserve it.

Stay safe, people.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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