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“Opposing Interventionism In Nation X Means You Love Nation X’s Government!” – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on December 28, 2019

I’ll tell you why: Hollywood.

Obviously war isn’t actually about Good versus Evil; usually it’s nothing more noble than geostrategic agenda versus geostrategic agenda.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/12/27/opposing-interventionism-in-nation-x-means-you-love-nation-xs-government/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

Every time you speak out against western imperialism in a given nation or question western propaganda narratives about that nation’s government, you will inevitably be accused of loving that nation’s government by anyone who argues with you.

When I say “inevitably”, I am not exaggerating. If you speak in any public forum for any length of time expressing skepticism of what we’re told to believe about a nation whose government has been targeted by the US-centralized empire, you will with absolute certainty eventually run into someone who accuses you of thinking that that government is awesome and pure and good.

I have never, ever had this fail to occur, even once. If I write an article about the mountain of evidence suggesting we were lied to about a chemical attack in Syria, I get people telling me I think Bashar al-Assad is a girl scout who’s never ever done anything wrong. If I express skepticism of the flimsy narratives we’re being fed in the escalating propaganda war against China, I get “If you love Beijing so much and think Xi is so innocent you should go and move to China!” It’s one of the only completely predictable things about this job.

Which is of course idiotic. Understanding that the US government and its allies lie constantly with the full-throated support of western news media in no way suggests a belief that the targeted government in question is wonderful, and there’s absolutely no legitimate reason to infer such a thing. The indisputable fact that US-led military interventionism is universally disastrous and based on lies has nothing to do with anyone’s level of emotional support for the governments targeted for destruction by the US-centralized empire. Yet everyone reading this who’s ever tried to speak out against US foreign policy has encountered the behavior I’m describing here.

Why is that? Why do establishment loyalists engage in such a weird, nonsensical behavior with such reliable consistency? Why do they literally always accuse anyone who questions any narrative about any empire-targeted government of having positive emotions toward that government, even though there is no rational reason for them to do so?

I’ll tell you why: Hollywood.

Well, not just Hollywood. Really the dynamic we’re about to discuss has been going on for as long as there have been war stories. But the dominant storytellers of today are in Hollywood, and that’s where the dominant war stories are told.

For as long as war stories have been told, those stories have been framed as a battle between good and evil. The good side is the side you identify with, and the evil side is the one you want to lose. You see this in almost all depictions of war coming out of Hollywood today, from movies based on actual wars to sci-fi and fantasy films like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Over and over and over again from childhood we are trained to assume that mass military violence must have a Good side and an Evil side, so when we see a war being depicted anywhere we immediately start trying to sort out who are the Good Guys and who are the Bad Guys, usually without even thinking about it.

Obviously war isn’t actually about Good versus Evil; usually it’s nothing more noble than geostrategic agenda versus geostrategic agenda. But because people are conditioned from an early age to overlay any ideas about large-scale conflict with this false Good or Evil dichotomy, there’s an immediate assumption that if you’re suggesting that one side might not be Good, then the other side are the Good Guys. If you say the government pushing regime change in Iran is doing something immoral, then you’re saying they’re the Bad Guys, which means you think the Iranian government are the Good Guys.

Yes, the behavior in question really does boil down to something that stupid. This phenomenon where empire apologists will predictably accuse you of loving an empire-targeted nation just because you oppose imperialist agendas is primarily due to a combination of dumb binary thinking and watching too many Hollywood movies. In other words, it’s due to bad information meeting bad thinking.

All we can really do to address this dynamic is bring consciousness to it. When someone’s acting out the unexamined assumption that because you are critical of western imperialism you must necessarily believe that all of its targets are perfect and wonderful, you can point out the absurdity of this position and invite them to think a little harder about it. Or just link them to this article.

Beyond that, all you can really do is understand what you’re looking at, roll your eyes, and sigh.

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Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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Britain’s Security Services Granted License to Kill — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on December 28, 2019

The disturbing implication is that MI5 can act with impunity, including acts of murder, against British citizens in the name of national security. The powers granted to it are secret and beyond public scrutiny in the courts.

The attackers shot him in the head 12 times as he lay prone on the floor in front of his family. The British government has previously acknowledged “shocking collusion” by its agents in Finucane’s murder. But the British authorities have pointedly refused to hold a full public inquiry, thereby blocking any prosecution.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/12/27/britains-security-services-granted-license-to-kill/

Finian Cunningham

In a landmark ruling last week, a panel of five senior British judges ruled that a secret government policy of granting immunity to its state security service was “legal”. Below is an interview with one of the human rights groups which challenged the murky policy demanding that it be banned.

First though, some background to the issue. British government policy holds implicitly that agents or informants operating for the state’s security service, MI5, are permitted to commit crimes without fear of prosecution if those crimes are committed in the line of duty to protect national security.

This is tantamount to the British state granting its agents and proxies a “license to kill”. The judges in the panel of the so-called Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) have formally recognized this hitherto secret government policy as “legal”. The panel voted by 3 to 2 in favor. The two dissenting judges expressed deep concern that the ruling was “opening the door to future abuses” of power by British state agents.

MI5 is the branch of state intelligence that deals specifically with internal security. The other branch, MI6, deals with overseas activities. The disturbing implication is that MI5 can act with impunity, including acts of murder, against British citizens in the name of national security. The powers granted to it are secret and beyond public scrutiny in the courts. That means Britain’s secret services are now officially untouchable and above the law. This is a description fitting for a police state, not a supposed democracy which proclaims to be under the rule of law.

Four British-Irish human rights groups challenged the policy of immunity but they were over-ruled last week by the five-judge panel. These groups are to further appeal the decision in the courts. One of them, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), based in Belfast, has considerable expertise in investigating the abuse of state power during the armed conflict in Northern Ireland (1969-1998). CAJ has documented the extensive involvement of British military intelligence in waging a dirty war in Northern Ireland where its agents colluded with and directed paramilitary agents and informants to carry out assassinations. Hundreds of such extra-judicial killings remain “unsolved” and represent a painful legacy for citizens across Northern Ireland.

One of the most notorious killings was that of Belfast human rights lawyer Pat Finucane (39) in 1989. British agents smashed into his home while he was having dinner with his wife and three young children. The attackers shot him in the head 12 times as he lay prone on the floor in front of his family. The British government has previously acknowledged “shocking collusion” by its agents in Finucane’s murder. But the British authorities have pointedly refused to hold a full public inquiry, thereby blocking any prosecution.

Thirty years after the murder of Pat Finucane and hundreds of other Irish citizens by British counterinsurgency operations, Britain is now formally granting the same license to kill citizens anywhere in the United Kingdom – under the pretext of national security. The development has grave implications for human rights in Britain. It also casts a sinister cloud over what kind of Britain the new Conservative government under Boris Johnson is creating post-Brexit.

Strategic Culture Foundation conducted the following interview with Daniel Holder, the deputy director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), based in Belfast.

INTERVIEW

Question: Is CAJ concerned that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruling last week will lead to serious human rights abuses by British security services in the future?

Daniel Holder: We are very concerned that this ruling for now permits MI5 to continue to authorize informant or agent involvement in serious crime. This could include crimes that constitute human rights violations. There were such experiences during the Northern Ireland conflict of informant-based paramilitary collusion, with agents of the state involved in acts as serious as murder and torture. Far from the so-called “intelligence war” helping bring the conflict to an end we consider that such practices by covert units of the security forces as having prolonged and exacerbated the conflict.

Question: On Brexit impact, will leaving the EU and its human rights standards add to concerns of abuse of power by the British state?

Daniel Holder: Although the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is part of the Council of Europe system and not the EU, those advocating for Brexit often confuse the two and hostility to the EU also manifests itself in hostility to the ECHR and its court in Strasbourg. Being an EU member state, however, does mean ECHR membership is obligatory, and that will go with Brexit. Although the ECHR being incorporated into Northern Ireland law is also a key part of the 1998 peace deal known as the Good Friday Agreement it is deeply concerning that the new British government is already advocating breaching this commitment by stating it will change the domestic ECHR law (the Human Rights Act) so it does not apply to acts before the year 2000. They are quite open that the reason for doing this is to impede investigations into the security forces during the Northern Ireland conflict – and top of the list as to what the UK does not want a light shined on is precisely the issue of the crimes of agents of the state within paramilitary groups, practices often referred to as “collusion”.

Question: Are British government claims justified that undercover work by security services and their agents may require freedom for agents to participate in unlawful activities in order to protect national security?

Daniel Holder: All police and security services the world over use informants. They are a vital policing tool, but they have to be used lawfully, and the question always is: where do you draw the line as to what they are allowed to do? On occasions where absolutely necessary this may involve informants being involved in crimes like conspiracies with a view to thwarting them; but the bottom line is that informants can never lawfully be “authorized” to be involved in serious crimes that constitute human rights violations, such as kidnap, killings and false imprisonment, nor can they act as agent provocateurs. All of that is illegal.

Question: The narrow majority in the five-judge high court granting immunity to MI5 from prosecution for crimes suggests there is concern among state judges that the existing policy is dubious and treacherous. Do you perceive deep misgivings among the authorities?

Daniel Holder: Yes, but not just now, going back some of the archival documents and investigations that have taken place into the Northern Ireland conflict have revealed significant misgivings at that time, about just such a policy. Take the government-approved De Silva review published in 2012 into the murder of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane, where “shocking” levels of collusion were admitted. This report conceded that that officers were being asked to do things that could not be done lawfully, which is another way of saying the policy and practice was unlawful. We now have a secret policy, the limits of which are unknown, on the basis of a power that does not exist in law, that tries to continue to place agents of the state above the law. The concern is that the errors of our past could be repeated if the same circumstances arise again, here or elsewhere.

Question: The British judges’ ruling last week seems contradictory. On one hand the ruling claims MI5 agents are not immune from prosecution, but on the other hand it says they can act unlawfully if it is done in the public interest?

Daniel Holder: The system and policy are contradictory. The policy says that MI5 informants are in theory not immune from prosecution, but MI5 will know about their crimes – and indeed authorize them – but conceal this from police and prosecutors, despite legal duties that apply to everyone in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom to promptly inform the police when you are aware someone is committing a crime. Again, this is the security service placing itself above the law.

Question: Is this the kind of policy that leads to rampant lawlessness seen elsewhere, for example in Brazil and The Philippines where police officers and state agents are killing thousands of people extrajudicially with impunity? Northern Ireland’s past conflict of rampant British state collusion in killings is surely a warning too?

Daniel Holder: The practices by covert elements of the security forces of tolerating, facilitating and even directing informants in paramilitary groups involvement in serious crime, including killings, and assisting their evasion from justice, in our view was one of the most serious patterns of human rights violations that prolonged and exacerbated the Northern Ireland conflict and has left a deeply poisoned legacy that we are still struggling to deal with today. There have been significant reforms to the Police Service in Northern Ireland since the peace process to prevent recurrence, but the UK security and intelligence agencies also need to bring their practices within the law, otherwise somewhere, history could repeat itself.

 

Strategic Culture Foundation | Republishing is welcomed with reference to Strategic Culture online journal www.strategic-culture.org.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.
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Why Marx Was Against Individual Rights | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 28, 2019

Marx’s comments do contain one valuable idea. Today, we are inundated by propaganda from the left that justifies high taxes and redistribution of wealth on the ground that the well-off would have gotten nowhere without the help of “society”. Isn’t the government, acting in the name of “society,” entitled to take away some of this wealth?

https://mises.org/wire/why-marx-was-against-individual-rights

People are unequal in abilities and circumstances, and because of this, attempts to make them equal by force will inevitably violate their rights to live in freedom. If people have rights, unequal outcomes will result and trying to impose equality will violate their rights. It is as simple as that.

Murray Rothbard in Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature states the point in this way: “An egalitarian society can only hope to achieve its goals by totalitarian methods of coercion; and, even here, we all believe and hope the human spirit of individual man will rise up and thwart any such attempts to achieve an ant-heap world. In short, the portrayal of an egalitarian society is horror fiction because, when the implications of such a world are fully spelled out, we recognize that such a world and such attempts are profoundly antihuman; being antihuman in the deepest sense, the egalitarian goal is, therefore, evil and any attempts in the direction of such a goal must be considered evil as well.”

Karl Marx agreed with Rothbard that individual rights lead to inequality. For him, though, this was an argument against rights. Because he believed that capitalists exploit labor, you might have expected that, for a socialist society, he would support the equal right of all laborers to the product of labor. In fact, he did not. In comments written in 1875 sent to Wilhelm Bracke, who had asked his opinion on the draft program of the United Workers Party of Germany, meeting at a Congress in Gotha, Marx made clear his opposition to rights. His comments were not published at the time but only after his death.

The key to Marx’s argument against individual rights is in this passage from his “Critique of the Gotha Programme.” “The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor. But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only — for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.”

What does Marx mean in this rather dense passage? His fundamental thought is this. If each person has an equal right to what he produces by his labor, this will lead to unequal outcomes. My labor may not be worth as much as your labor. This fact sets people against each other. People look at society from the viewpoint of their own interest and the interests of their family. This is a bourgeois idea. In a true socialist society, people are devoted to each other’s welfare and do not view each other as rivals. Rights accordingly are “obsolete verbal rubbish.”

In a famous passage, Marx tells us what a society without such antagonisms between people would be like: “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” In other words, once the division of labor is abolished and production is planned, abundance will arise. Then, people will regard themselves as members of one happy family. It is more than a little strange that someone in the grip of this fantasy had the nerve to denounce many of his rivals as utopian socialists.

Marx’s comments do contain one valuable idea. Today, we are inundated by propaganda from the left that justifies high taxes and redistribution of wealth on the ground that the well-off would have gotten nowhere without the help of “society”. Isn’t the government, acting in the name of “society,” entitled to take away some of this wealth?

Marx of course supported high taxes on the wealthy, but he had no truck for this nonsense. He said “A fine conclusion! If useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong to society — and only so much therefrom accrues to the individual worker as is not required to maintain the ‘condition’ of labor, society. In fact, this proposition has at all times been made use of by the champions of the state of society prevailing at any given time. First comes the claims of the government and everything that sticks to it, since it is the social organ for the maintenance of the social order; then comes the claims of the various kinds of private property, for the various kinds of private property are the foundations of society, etc. One sees that such hollow phrases are the foundations of society, etc. One sees that such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned as desired.”

Marx had a keen eye for nonsense, except when he himself was writing it.

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Individual Rights!

 

 

 

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Ayn Rand’s Greatest Mistake – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 28, 2019

As I finally began to realize, business people, Rand’s heroic figures notwithstanding, generally aren’t the champions of laizze-faire and free market voluntary exchange many libertarians tend to assume. Often, quite the contrary. Assuming otherwise was Ayn Rand’s greatest mistake.

Merchants using government to stifle the competition etc. is nearly as old as government itself. Like this “seven or eight hundred years’” effort to stifle competition from rural textile production and early trading for example – – –

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/12/l-reichard-white/ayn-rands-greatest-mistake/

By

It was those heady early days of the Libertarian Movement. Icons like David Nolan, Murray Rothbard and James Libertarian Burns still walked the earth — and L. Neil Smith was just getting up a head of steam.

That’s when I got my first clue to Ayn Rand’s greatest mistake, though, as often happens, I failed to understand it at the time. It came as Larry Moser and I gave a talk to the Las Vegas Junior Chamber of Commerce (the “JCs“).

We presented two libertarian issues; heroin decriminalization to demonstrate civil liberties and voluntary exchange in free markets to demonstrate economic freedom. Since JCs are business folks, we figured we’d get static on decriminalization, but if we addressed the free-trade issues last, we would leave them happy.

Sure enough, immediately after the decriminalization presentation one JC stood up and in no uncertain terms told us we were crazy to propose such a thing. Before we could answer, another JC said, “Sit down Bob. They’re right.”

There was a murmur of assent from the rest of the thirty or so, presumably conservative, business folks in the audience.

Larry and I looked at each other amazed. We figured we were over the hump.

After our free market presentation, however, there was dead silence. We felt a chill. Someone murmured something like “You can’t have that sort of thing going on.” Another murmur of assent. What was going on here?

My second clue came a few years later at the Colorado LP Presedential Nominating Convention just outside Denver where Bill Huncher was squaring off against Ed Clark. It came in a story related to me by a libertarian, let’s call him “Jim,” running for office in Colorado.

Jim had managed to get an appointment with Adolph Coors Jr., purportedly a libertarian sympathizer himself. During small-talk, Coors expressed admiration and support for the Libertarian Party and its “bold pro-freedom platform” about which he proved himself well informed. However when Jim asked for a campaign contribution, Mr. Coors declined.

“If you were elected, you’d eliminate the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) wouldn’t you?” he asked. Jim responded that, in accordance with the LP Platform, indeed he would.

Mr. Coors explained that because of a regulatory technicality, Coors trucking subsidiaries didn’t have to “dead-head” and could bring their trucks back loaded, something ICC didn’t permit other trucking companies to do at the time.

ICC literally defined a truck returning full as “illegal competition” with the railroads. Coors Jr. forth-rightly told Jim that elimination of the ICC would thus weaken Coors’ competitive advantage and so he couldn’t justify supporting Libertarian candidates.

And another clue: In the late 1970s, developers in Lake Tahoe wanted to build a hotel/casino they were calling “The Park Tahoe,” but an environmental organization calling itself approximately “The Society to Preserve Lake Tahoe” (SPLT) blocked them every step of the way.

The main movers and shakers behind SPLT weren’t, however, environmentalists; they were Harrah’s, Harvey’s, Barney’s, Sahara Tahoe, and the other hotel/casino operators already established in the Stateline-South Shore area. Had all these casino organizations suddenly become environmentally conscious?

Shortly after the grand opening of Park Tahoe — which later became Caesar’s Tahoe — a local rancher applied for permits to build yet another hotel/casino across the street. Would you care to guess the identity of the newest environmentally conscious member of SPLT who zealously led the fight against this newest environmental hazard?

Park Tahoe of course!

As I finally began to realize, business people, Rand’s heroic figures notwithstanding, generally aren’t the champions of laizze-faire and free market voluntary exchange many libertarians tend to assume. Often, quite the contrary. Assuming otherwise was Ayn Rand’s greatest mistake.

Merchants using government to stifle the competition etc. is nearly as old as government itself. Like this “seven or eight hundred years’” effort to stifle competition from rural textile production and early trading for example – – –

“(h) The countryside was cut out of trade in the Middle Ages.
+
‘Up to and during the course of the fifteenth century the towns were the sole centers of commerce and industry to such an extent that none of it was allowed to escape into the open country’ (Pirenne, _Economic and Social History_, p.169). ‘The struggle against rural trading and against rural handicrafts lasted at least seven or eight hundred years’ (Heckscher, _Mercantilism_, 1935, Vol. I, p. 129). ‘The severity of these measures increased with the growth of ‘democratic government‘ . . . . ‘All through the fourteenth century regular armed expeditions were sent out against all the villages in the neighborhood and looms or fulling-vats [in which cloth was dyed] were broken or carried away.’ (Pirenne, op.cit., p. 211).” -Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation. (Boston: Beacon Press 1957), p. 277

You have to admit a century of loom-stealing and fulling-vat smashing shows persistence and dedication. And notice the connection to ‘democratic government.’

Seminal Austrian-school economist Ludwig von Mises completely understood the broader context of vested economic interests using government for their own ends, which of course, has been quite thoroughly perfected today – – –

The consumers do not care about the investments made with regard to past market conditions and do not bother about the vested interests of entrepreneurs, capitalists, land-owners, and workers… It is precisely the fact that the market does not respect vested interests that makes the people concerned ask for government interference. –Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

So, when vested interests ask for government interference — to protect themselves from markets and competition — they have to do it in cahoots with politicians.

To make this work, they regularly disguise the interference as “regulation.” They pretend “regulation” is to protect us “consumers” from businesses instead of the other way around.

You can catch a surprising glimpse of just how remarkably successful vested interests are at using politicians to get their disguised and bogus protective “regulation” here:

UNCOMMON SENSE: What government regulation is REALLY used for

HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.

AND, “Like,” “Tweet,” and otherwise, pass this along!

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Watch “Talking About Stoicism Part 51: Your Harmony is My Harmony” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on December 27, 2019

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Film shot in Michigan about World War 1 Christmas truce to premiere in Bay City – mlive.com

Posted by M. C. on December 27, 2019

I wish us all luck in being able to view this.

https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-bay-city/2019/12/film-shot-in-michigan-about-world-war-1-christmas-truce-to-premiere-in-bay-city.html

By Caitlyn French | cfrench@mlive.com

BAY CITY, MI – While movies with Santa Claus and snowmen are popular this time of year, a film shot in mid-Michigan is offering a different type of holiday movie experience.

A history based film titled “The Peace Pox” premieres Dec. 22 in Bay City. It chronicles the Christmas Truce of 1914, when World War 1 soldiers on both sides temporarily stopped fighting.

“It’s the story of how the common soldiers come together at Christmas Eve and have a moment of peace to bury the dead,” Director Danzell Calhoun said.

The film was spearheaded by a local crew and was shot locally. Calhoun and producer and writer Rodney Merten led the project.

The film premieres at 2 p.m. Dec. 22 at Bay City’s Westown Theater, 611 E. Midland St. Tickets are available in advance for $10 by contacting dc@resilientmediagroup.com or 989-372-2858 or at the door for $12.

The film takes a look at the lives of two sergeants, one German and one British. The characters reflect back on their lives and realize that they have a common connection.

“That aspect of going from enemies to friends, I took it from more of an everyday standpoint that the normal person can relate to,” said Calhoun.

“The Peace Pox” was filmed in Fairgrove, Bay City, and other Michigan locations. Filming sites included Hyatt Ewald Funeral Home in Bay City and First Presbyterian Church of Saginaw.

Calhoun and his crew had to do a lot of research and they received a lot of tips and pointers from the dedicated reenactors who joined them for the film. The weather also served as a realistic teacher about World War I and the conditions soldiers endured.

Calhoun and the crew were out in below zero temperatures for multiple 12-hour days filming. They were working in freezing cold actual trenches that filled with water, just like the trenches from World War I, requiring the crew to work through tough conditions.

Calhoun and Merten are no strangers to film production. The two started working together in 2007 when they began doing stage plays in local bars and gymnasiums. They then produced their first feature film called, “Torn Soul”.

The duo has also led their own film festivals, with Mertin directing the Tarpon Arts Film Festival and Calhoun the Great Lakes State Film Festival. Both are in the business of also acquiring and distributing films.

Producers for “The Peace Pox” include Rebecca Calhoun and John Peterson. Steve Norton was the assistant director.

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How “Dumbed Down” Has America Become? Here Are 30 People That Actually Believe Trump Is No Longer President – End Of The American Dream

Posted by M. C. on December 27, 2019

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/how-dumbed-down-has-america-become-here-are-30-people-that-actually-believe-trump-is-no-longer-president

by

I knew that Americans were dumb, but I didn’t think it was this bad.  In the hours after President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, thousands of people immediately began wildly celebrating on social media because “Trump is not the president anymore”.  But of course that is not true at all.  Two-thirds of the Senate will have to vote to convict Trump in order to remove him from office, and at this point that seems exceedingly unlikely.  Anyone that has received even the most basic education about the U.S. Constitution should know this, so how is it possible that there are vast hordes of people out there that actually believe that Donald Trump is no longer the president of the United States?

This is yet another example that demonstrates how spectacularly our system of public education has failed.  Not too long ago, I wrote an article about a recent study that found that 15-year-old students in China are nearly four full grade levels ahead of 15-year-old students in the United States in math.  The rest of the world is running circles around us, and our population is getting more “dumbed down” with each passing year.

But you have to be a very special kind of stupid to actually think that Donald Trump is no longer our president.

The following are 30 actual Twitter posts that were posted shortly after the impeachment votes were taken, and the level of idiocy displayed is absolutely chilling.  Since I am importing these tweets directly from Twitter, only the links may show up if you are getting this article in your email or reading it on another website.  If all of the tweets are not displaying properly and you want to see them, just visit the original article.  And now that I have gotten that out of the way, here are the tweets…

I could almost feel my eyeballs burning as I read those tweets because of the extreme level of stupidity displayed in them.

Are Americans really this ignorant? Read the rest of this entry »

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Upside Down Kingdom: Kanye West Is Preaching The Gospel, But Pope Francis Is Telling People Not To Evangelize – End Of The American Dream

Posted by M. C. on December 27, 2019

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/upside-down-kingdom-kanye-west-is-preaching-the-gospel-but-pope-francis-is-telling-people-not-to-evangelize

by

Pope Francis has certainly said a lot of controversial things over the years, but what he just told a group of Christian high school students is the most controversial of all.  I know that may be hard to believe, because some of the statements that Pope Francis has made in recent years have definitely been extremely bizarre.  For example, he has said that “Muslim terrorism does not exist”, he told a gay man that “God made you that way”, and he has referred to Christian fundamentalists as “a scourge”.  But what he has just said tops all of those previous statements.  According to Breitbart, Pope Francis told a group of high school students that he was visiting with that they should never try to convert others to Christianity…

Pope Francis told Christian high school students this weekend they should respect people of other faiths and not attempt to convert them to Christianity, insisting “we are not living in the times of the crusades.”

Asked by one of the students Friday how a Christian should treat people of other faiths or no faith, the pope said that “we are all the same, all children of God” and that true disciples of Jesus do not proselytize.

In fact, the Pope went on to say that if someone comes to you and is trying to share the gospel, that individual “is not a disciple of Jesus”…

“But listen, the gospel is never, ever advanced through proselytism,” he continued. “If someone says he is a disciple of Jesus and comes to you with proselytism, he is not a disciple of Jesus. Proselytism is not the way; the Church does not grow by proselytism.”

Seriously?

And in case there were some students that were confused about what he had just said, Pope Francis made the exact same point one more time…

Football teams proselytize, this can be done. Political parties, can be done there. But with faith there is no proselytism.

So there you have it.

According to Pope Francis, Christians are never supposed to try to convert anyone.

But this would seem to directly contradict the words of Jesus.  The following are just a few examples…

Matthew 28:18-20 Read the rest of this entry »

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Deplorables Versus the Ruling Class: A Global Struggle – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on December 27, 2019

The true American ideology cautions against granting power to any bureaucratic establishment.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/deplorables_versus_the_ruling_class_a_global_struggle.html

By Chet Richards

Consider the age of monarchs.  Squabbling barons select a supreme ruler – a king or an emperor — to suppress the squabbling.  Peace and prosperity return to the land.  The king makes policy but he can’t do everything.  His minions take care of the details.

Minions mean bureaucracy.   The bureaucracy grows.  The king grows old and dies.  The dynasty continues.  The bureaucracy continues – always continues, and always grows.  The bureaucracy becomes an establishment kingdom unto itself.  The bureaucracy grows in power and serves its own interests.  The king diminishes in power.  The land grows restless under the increasing regulatory tyranny and taxes.  Legitimacy –what the Chinese called the “mandate of heaven” —  is lost and so is the dynasty.

Change the names and we are at the end of a similar cycle – a cycle that began with the guillotine.  This time it is a world-wide cycle.  The modern king is a modern tyrant – Stalin, Hitler, Mao were the worst.

The socialist idea had been kicking around since the 18th century.  This seemingly plausible notion shaped the various Marxist evils of the 20th century.  The Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Nazism, Fascism, and today’s imperious European Union, are all socialist tyrannies of one degree or another.

Bureaucratic agencies become ideal tools for tyrants.

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In 2020, we need to fight the new thoughtpolice – spiked

Posted by M. C. on December 27, 2019

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/12/26/in-2020-we-need-to-fight-the-new-thoughtpolice/

Speech, thought and culture are being policed on a terrifying scale.

During the past decade, and especially this year, those in positions of influence have tried to change the narrative through which society understands itself.

There is an insidious crusade afoot aiming at controlling what the public sees, hears, thinks and believes. This project, which seeks hegemony in various Western cultures, is no less pervasive and thoroughgoing than previous attempts at thought control by totalitarian and theocratic regimes.

But since this campaign to control the narrative has no name, and does not promote an explicit ideology, its significance tends to be underestimated, even by those who oppose the many attempts to police language and thought.

A new identity-obsessed, anti-humanist and anti-civilisational narrative has taken hold. We are increasingly encouraged to change our language, adopt hitherto unknown words, and accept deeply questionable claims.

This campaign has been so successful because its opponents have failed to grasp its significance. Typically, the demands of extreme identitarians are dismissed as either of no significance or as a joke. Take one example that emerged last week.

A group of 16 scientists – from such prestigious universities as Cambridge and Oxford – wrote a letter to the journal Nature denouncing its use of the term ‘quantum supremacy’. This was on the grounds that it conveys racist and colonialist ideas.

They said that, in their view, ‘supremacy’ has ‘overtones of violence, neocolonialism and racism through its association with “white supremacy”’, and demanded that the term be replaced by ‘quantum advantage’.

It is of course tempting to dismiss this as a silly gesture by self-important scientists with too much time on their hands. And that is precisely how many people responded to this ludicrous letter. But its authors are not alone in thinking as they do.

In August, a team at the Human Interface Technology lab in New Zealand asserted that it was problematic that most robots were manufactured out of white plastic, since it smacked of imperialism and white supremacy.

 

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