To many, I’m sure FMCs sound incredibly cool. But don’t be fooled by the name. FMCs are actually “smart cities.” As I have noted elsewhere, the word “smart” is really just a synonym for surveillance. These ultra-modern, tech-saturated monstrosities use hundreds of thousands of sensors to vacuum up copious amounts of personal data.
Big Lies, Big Data, and the Rise of Bigger Brother
The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright recently discusseda new “international socialist conspiracy” that has taken the world by storm. “Fringe forces of the far left,” he noted, “are plotting to take away our freedom to be stuck in traffic jams, to crawl along clogged ring roads and trawl the streets in search of a parking spot.” The name of this “chilling global movement?” he asked, sarcastically and somewhat contemptuously: The “15-minute city.”
Wainwright believes these cities are simply part of a “mundane planning theory.”
He’s wrong.
A few days after Wainwright’s piece was published, three academics called 15-minute cities (FMCs) “the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023.” In a truly elitist manner, they poked fun at those who dared to question the motive behind FMCs.
One needn’t be a card-carrying QAnon member to have fears over these Trojan-like creations. Before going any further, it’s important to get our definitions in order. As the political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill has noted, not all conspiracy theories are wacky, and not all conspiracy theories are wrong. Take the Watergate conspiracy theory, for instance, or the fact that Edith Wilson made most of the executive decisions after her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, suffered a stroke. Quite often conspiracy theories turn out to be accurate.
One of the experts cited by the NYT suggests the Biden administration should set up a Truth Commission. No doubt anyone who questioned the biases of a Biden-led Truth Commission would be written off as a dangerous extremist peddling disinformation.
This all raises a very important question – who gets to decide what is real? The NYT is one candidate no doubt.
At first I couldn’t believe what I was reading. A writer for the New York Times was enthusiastically supporting a call made by ‘several experts’ around the Biden administration to create a Reality Czar. Apparently, a Reality Czar is needed to counter the campaign of disinformation being pushed by bitter conservatives.
The NYT commentator concedes that giving someone the authority to pronounce on what is and isn’t real ‘sounds a little dystopian’, but suggests it is warranted by the threat of ‘disinformation and domestic extremism’. The experts promoting the enthronement of a Reality Czar are unapologetic advocates of giving the government the power to decide what is true, what is real. They hope that the establishment of a reality task force ‘could become the tip of the spear for the federal government’s response to the reality crisis’.
The NYT is not alone in demanding that the government take an active role in determining what is true. Recently, New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights published an alarmist report about the allegedly distorted perceptions held by millions of conservatives. Apparently, huge numbers of conservatives wrongly believe that their views are suppressed by digital platforms on partisan grounds. To prevent this view from gaining greater influence, the authors of the report call on the government to set up a ‘new Digital Regulatory Agency’. No doubt this agency would become another tip of a spear to be hurled at anyone who accuses the giant social-media companies of showing bias against the political right.
The principal aim of the Stern Center’s report is to restore trust in the moral authority of the mainstream media in the US. It fears that millions of Americans no longer trust the media as a reliable source of information because they have bought into the belief that it is biased. It argues that people’s distrust of the media and their ‘wrong’ belief that social media are biased against conservatives will escalate in coming years, especially as social-media companies increase their ‘fact-checking’ operations.
‘Disinformation about bias contributes to the delegitimisation of the platforms at a time when they’re actually experimenting with more aggressive forms of fact-checking and content moderation – not just in the case of Donald Trump, but also in connection with falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines and conspiracy theories like QAnon.’
Since the invention of the modern media people have put forward critiques of its sometimes biased nature. That has been a fairly unexceptional feature of the cultural landscape. Yet now, would-be Reality Czars have rebranded such criticisms as a ‘false narrative’ and an example of ‘political disinformation’. When claims of media bias are denounced as a form of malevolent disinformation, it can only be a matter of time before such claims are criminalised.
One of the aims of the current campaign against disinformation is to legitimise and normalise the policing of media content. Campaigners uphold the absurd and long discredited idea of media neutrality in order to discredit alternative accounts about what the media are doing and what the social-media giants are up to. But they also want to go beyond protecting the reputation of Big Tech. Some now want nothing less than to establish a government agency that would act as the infallible source of truth and reality.
One of the experts cited by the NYT suggests the Biden administration should set up a Truth Commission. No doubt anyone who questioned the biases of a Biden-led Truth Commission would be written off as a dangerous extremist peddling disinformation.
This all raises a very important question – who gets to decide what is real?
Even at the best of times, one should approach media outlets and news sources with a critical mindset. In the current era – with the flourishing of fake news and conspiracy theories – it can be challenging to distinguish between fact and fiction. The real problem is not that the media peddle lies, although they do do that sometimes. No, the problem is that politically motivated opinion now masquerades as news. Moreover, in our intensely polarised political and cultural environment, the usual checks and balances that help to maintain a modicum of objectivity have become ever-more feeble.
Cultural polarisation has led to a situation in which there is an unprecedented lack of consensus about the realities facing society. As a reader of numerous newspapers and online publications, I am struck by how many contrasting truths and versions of reality I encounter on a daily basis.
When I want to engage with a narrative that calls into question my reality and lived experience as someone who lives in the UK, I turn to the New York Times. One of its recent headlines struck me as a classic example of disinformation. It said: ‘Britain’s Ethnic Minorities Are Being Left for Dead.’ Any reader of this fantasy story would strongly believe that Britain is an unusually malevolent society. This invented reality of Britain as an almost evil country is part of a broader pattern at the NYT. The paper always seems determined to present British society in the worst possible light. ‘Britain is undergoing a full-blown identity crisis’, gloated a reporter recently, before adding that it is a ‘hollowed-out country’, ‘ill at ease with itself’, ‘deeply provincial’, and engaged in a ‘controlled suicide’.
A truly objective Reality Czar would surely have to busy him or herself with challenging the NYT’s questionable depictions of 21st-century Britain. However, it would be just as wrong for a government-appointed Ministry of Truth to give its verdict on the NYT’s campaign of disinformation against the UK as it would be for it to make pronouncements on those who claim that social media are biased against conservatives.
For centuries, advocates of democracy, tolerance and freedom of speech have upheld the belief that government should not be in the business of dictating a doctrinal version of The Truth. Nor should government try to direct or suppress people’s beliefs and views. This conviction helps to protect freedom of speech in American society. As the legal scholar Steven Gey argued, under the liberal interpretation of the First Amendment ‘it is much easier to defend the protection of speech, because the government is robbed of its usual justifications for suppressing that speech’.
Freedom of speech is truly protected when it is recognised that ‘government has no authority to use its legal authority to identify and enforce any particular version of right and wrong, truth and untruth’, said Gey. And it is when the public accepts that the government ‘has no paternalistic role over matters of the intellect, just as it has no paternalistic role over matters of the soul’, that tolerance becomes a way of life rather than just a shallow gesture.
Whenever the state is given the power to identify or enforce a ‘particular version of right and wrong, truth and untruth’, the freedoms of belief, expression and speech are in serious trouble. The establishment of a Reality Czar and, in effect, a Ministry of Truth would deprive people of the right to determine what they hold to be true. One of the privileges of a citizen in a democracy is that they have both the right and the duty to participate in truth-seeking. Truth is not something handed down to us from on high; it is something we acquire through deliberation and debate.
Underpinning the idea that officialdom should have the authority to pronounce on what is true and what is real is a view of ordinary people as lacking the moral and intellectual capacity to behave as independent-minded citizens. A Reality Czar would not simply explain ‘the truth’ to people – he or she would also seek to alter how misguided people conceive of reality. One of the experts cited by the NYT in its call for a Reality Czar argues that helping the misguided to see the light is a ‘public-health issue’. In other words, those who believe that there is media bias against conservatives, or who believe other things that the NYT and Biden-supporting experts disapprove of, are not only wrong but also sick.
The NYT piece suggests that those who possess hardcore dissident views should be targeted with ‘messages about mental health and mindfulness’. So, the preferred method of these reality police is not to find the truth through argument and debate, but rather to use the paternalistic, soft-totalitarian measures of psychological manipulation to alter people’s view of reality.
Whatever the problems with fake news and disinformation today, the campaigns against these things are a far greater threat to freedom and democracy. These are not disinterested campaigns seeking to uphold the truth. Rather, they aim to defend the moral authority of media platforms from public suspicion and mistrust. And through portraying dissident opinion as a threat to society, they also create a fearful climate that will be more hospitable to media censorship.
The campaign against disinformation is really about policing and censoring the views of millions of people who rightly or wrongly believe they cannot trust the media. It is becoming more and more common for experts and others to say that dissident views are akin to Flat Earth theory and other conspiracy theories. This campaign of delegitimation is likely to continue and intensify.
Zealous campaigns for censorship used to be confined to university campuses. But more recently, especially following the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, calls for the policing of communication and speech have gone mainstream. The return of old-fashioned media censorship is as worrying as the campaign of Biden supporters for the state to become the arbiter of truth.
The fundamental premise of a free and democratic society is that the truth is arrived at through political struggle and debate. No one explained this view with more clarity than the liberal political theorist, John Stuart Mill. In his powerful essay On Liberty (1859), Mill said that censoring someone’s views is always wrong, even if those views are false. Why? Because society’s knowledge and understanding evolve through the ‘collision’ of truth with ‘error’.
In a world where falsehoods proliferate, free debate is more important than ever to help people learn for themselves what is real. Mill understood that placing limits on freedom of speech constitutes a far greater threat to democracy than the erroneous views promoted by conspiracy theorists and fake-news entrepreneurs. Because once the authority of free speech is undermined, then public life itself is threatened, as people come to be deprived of the opportunity to discuss, debate and clarify the issues that confront our society.
One thing you won’t see under “Woke” rule is an audit of the Federal Reserve and reform of our counterfeit fractional banking system. Or a new JFK assassination or 9/11 investigation. Or a decades overdue upgrade of our Third World infrastructure. Or an abolition of private prisons. Or a change in our misguided, Israeli-driven foreign policy. Or a demand that the intelligence agencies make their budgets public. Or spending cuts for the military industrial complex. Or demands to bring any of the troops home. And most obviously, not even a tepid debt jubilee for all those devastated by the senseless economic lockdown.
In this fantastically divided country, after the brief age of Trump, we remain locked down, wearing masks, socially distancing, listless and rudderless. Like Orwell’s Winston Smith, we have learned to love Big Brother.
I thought America 2.0- the authoritarian mess which evolved out of the 9/11 false flag- was bad. It made those of us old enough to have lived most of our lives in America 1.0 long for the days of a better looking, more competent corruption. 2020, with a deadly virus that had the beneficial effects of eliminating both the threat of terrorism and the common flu, and an unconstitutional lockdown accompanying it, was only the beginning.
2021 is off to a roaring start. First, a laughably fraudulent election in Georgia, which gave the Senate to the Democrats, and featured overt evidence like the Republican Perdue losing 30,000 votes live on air. And now, the January 6 incident at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., which featured a terrifying unarmed mob of White riff-raff, “storming” the representative body their taxes pay for, while politely keeping between the purple ropes, taking lots of selfies, and to untrained eyes appearing to be a pretty innocuous bunch. Well, except for that dangerous fellow who dared to prop up his working class boots on Lady Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
If you believe the mainstream media, there were only 45,000 people protesting the election results on January 6. If you believe the people there, and the photo evidence, there were at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million. Regardless of how many there were, they came there, from all across the country, because Donald Trump and his inner circle, intimated that something “big” was going to happen. The QAnon mindset was strong here; perhaps many in attendance thought they’d witness live perp walks of the Deep State criminals they’d been told repeatedly would be arrested and convicted by a military tribunal.
Instead, Trump issued a predictable pep talk, the kind he’s perfected at countless rallies. I don’t believe he should be held accountable for “inciting” people to do the wrong thing, but he did declare that he was going to be marching with them. Not sure how that would have worked, but instead he fled back to the White House. At the first inkling of criticism, Trump threw his supporters under the bus, and called their actions “heinous.” Then he told them to “go home in peace.” I thought of all the Catholic masses that end with almost those exact words. In effect, Trump was issuing a closing statement, on the MAGA movement he started and consistently disappointed.
In the wake of the event, every media outlet and politician in both parties condemned what they invariably called a “storming” of the Capitol, and referred to the protesters as “traitors,” “terrorists,” and the like. On social media, I raised comparisons like the six block takeover last summer of Seattle, by a self-proclaimed group of insurgents, and the 1967 entrance into the Sacramento state Capitol building by an openly armed group of Black Panthers, who were not punished at all. Sadly, many good people instinctively declared there was “no comparison.” I can’t illustrate the division that exists, and the problems we face, any clearer than that. The “Woke” Left sees everything now through their own emotional bias.
The two party system was very, very bad. But we are now living under imminent One Party rule. And it’s a party that is far too similar to Big Brother’s in Orwell’s 1984. Frightening prospects exist for the common American under “Woke” party leadership. Reparations? Perhaps a ban or at least an abridgment of the First Amendment? South African-style Truth and Reconciliation committees? Open and strictly enforced quotas in all walks of life? Banning of the words “man” and “woman?” A constitutional amendment to enshrine all 57 genders as ironclad law?
One thing you won’t see under “Woke” rule is an audit of the Federal Reserve and reform of our counterfeit fractional banking system. Or a new JFK assassination or 9/11 investigation. Or a decades overdue upgrade of our Third World infrastructure. Or an abolition of private prisons. Or a change in our misguided, Israeli-driven foreign policy. Or a demand that the intelligence agencies make their budgets public. Or spending cuts for the military industrial complex. Or demands to bring any of the troops home. And most obviously, not even a tepid debt jubilee for all those devastated by the senseless economic lockdown.
Donald Trump’s legacy will ultimately be that he forever destroyed any chances of a real Third Party ever arising in this country. There will never be another populist using his revolutionary rhetoric again. Instead, his cartoon personality assures that the disastrous two party duopoly is now set in stone. Except it’s even worse than that, since the Stupid Party has ceded all power to the Evil Party, we will be completely under the rule of “Woke” tyrants, but for token clowns like Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and Nikki Haley. The Stupid Party is dead, long live the Stupid Party!
Trump will not run in 2024. He many not legally be able to, because Lady Pelosi and company want to either invoke the 25th amendment, or ram through a warp speed impeachment, ironically mimicking Trump’s unwise push for a potentially deadly dose of something his loyal base strongly opposes. Trump has now been apparently banned for life from Twitter, at the initial behest of former First Lady Michelle Obama, who has an all too bright political future in our “Woke” Orwellian world. For someone who communicated exclusively through Twitter, this is a bitter pill for Trump to swallow. One pictures him tapping aimlessly away on his keyboard, while shoving down Big Macs and Diet Cokes.
Our only chance is that the AOC-types, the “Squad,” wind up embroiled in ugly disagreements with the old “Woke” guard like Pelosi, Schumer, and pseudo-President Biden. Maybe they can distract each other enough to prevent the worst measures from being implemented. Gridlock has always been our best friend on Capitol Hill. The odds of any of these glorified welfare recipients ever doing something good is so remote that their inactivity is the best we can hope for. Our new leaders may be diverse in appearance, but they certainly aren’t diverse in perspective. They will all support war, engage in corruption, and follow orders.
Rumors are that people who merely attended the rally on the Mall last Wednesday have been fired from their jobs. Well, no one protested when all those people were fired last year, for criticizing the violent riots on social media, on their own free time. AOC and others call Trump voters “complicit” in his election. That means an accessory to a crime. So Trump’s election, in their “Woke” eyes, was a crime. Maybe a “hate crime.” I would say that the logistics of attempting to punish or prosecute 70 million voters would be unfathomable, but I don’t think you can overestimate the “Wokeness” of our new leaders. They may very well make “White privilege” a crime. They may ban the word Trump from society, like one of Orwell’s unpersons.
I could not be more demoralized or disillusioned. Trump’s four years were almost entirely bereft of the “winning” he promised. “Trust the plan” seems like the most bitter joke imaginable now. The only arrests were of Trump’s associates, who were prosecuted by his Justice Department. The same Justice Department that declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Or look at Hunter Biden’s laptop. Or investigate vote fraud.
Trump was the commander-in-chief for four years. He could have brought all the troops home, as he often threatened to do. He could have closed the border, as he often threatened to do. He could have written those Executive Orders he promised, to ban DACA, ban birth-right citizenship, close sanctuary cities, and end the foreign VISA worker programs. Instead, while he undeniably was preoccupied with fending off attacks for his entire time in office, including a laughably partisan impeachment effort, he spent most of his time in office tweeting. And engaging in childish food fights with state-controlled journalists and clueless celebrities. The level of discourse is now less civil than it has ever been.
Trump’s rhetoric alone, however, puts him apart from all presidents since JFK. The things he alluded to, or casually mentioned, were outside the pale. No respectable politician would ever touch them. It was Trump’s rhetoric at his wildly enthusiastic rallies, and his attacks on the establishment via Twitter, that caused that establishment to hate him like no other public figure in our history. Trump Derangement Syndrome is far more real than any Soviet-style invented mental illness. So many of my former friends, good people all, have fallen victim to it. They hate him irrationally, and they will not listen to reason on the subject.
I don’t know where we go from here, or even where the scripted Punch and Judy show goes. If Trump isn’t impeached or taken out by the 25th amendment, he’ll be 78 years old in 2024. He has almost superhuman energy for someone his age, but sooner or later it will catch up with him. And I think his support has peaked. A certain number of those even at the rally have to be disappointed, in falling for the “big” event on the 6th, many traveling from far flung parts of the country (as did Ashli Babbitt, who was murdered by a cop at the Capitol), only to be unceremoniously rejected and told to go home by their leader.
Beyond Trump, the Stupid Party has no one else. Trump was only elected because he never really was a Republican. Stupid Party favorites like Nikki Haley and Paul Ryan are literally empty suits, standing for nothing except war and lowered corporate taxes. They would be lucky to win 20 percent of the vote in a presidential election. Because Trump didn’t deport the millions of illegals in this country, and Biden is about to grant them all amnesty, the voting demographic will shift into impossible territory for the Republicans. Trump will be the last Republican president.
The “Woke” rise to power is the culmination of decades of brain washing, on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, on ESPN, by Oprah and The View, and on every college campus in America. Only by diabolical, Pavlovian programming could you get perhaps a majority of the country to think that men can menstruate, and have babies. Or get young parents to hold parties celebrating their 3 or 4 year old child’s conversion to the opposite gender. That would be child abuse in any sane society. Here and now, it is being celebrated by every media outlet. You can’t fight city hall, when city hall completely controls the the airwaves.
And the internet, once the shining beacon for all of us, is standing on wobbly legs as well. Big tech is censoring virtually all opposition to the One Party. The people who support the horrific likes of Kamala Harris, and Beto O’Rourke, and Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg, do not remotely believe in free speech. It’s a wonder they don’t burst into flames as they swear allegiance to a Constitution they not only don’t support, but sneer at as a “racist” relic. Unless more people stand up, the internet will eventually look like your average cable or satellite package of channels. Blogs like this will be banned. The last thing the “Woke” elites want is for average people to analyze public issues without filtering it all through an overpaid talking head.
I wish I could find some glimmer of hope. Some of Trump’s most faithful supporters are still believing that he is going to activate an Executive Order, or invoke the Insurrection Act. The White Hats are still making plans. It is almost literally the last hour, but maybe they have a sense of the dramatic. The Q folks are still trumpeting arrests and sealed indictments that are invisible to the public. All the biggest swamp creatures still seem to be walking free, so I’m not sure just who is being arrested. The swamp seems fuller than ever.
Trump is surrounded by those he can’t trust, we’re told. This is unquestionably true, but he appointed every single one of them. He put Never Trumper Christopher Wray in charge of the FBI. Was that even an improvement over the odious Comey? He replaced the strangely listless Jeff Sessions with Deep State Hall of Famer William Barr. What other Attorney General in our history has refused to investigate those scheming against his boss, while eagerly targeting his boss’s campaign aides, who have done nothing criminally wrong? And Trump picked Mike Pence as his running mate; another Never Trumper whose failure to stand by the president should have surprised no one.
One young Senator seems promising- Josh Hawley of Missouri. However, Simon & Schuster cancelled Hawley’s contract for a book exposing big tech and big pharma, because he spoke out in the Senate, protesting the fraudulent election. Many are calling on him to resign. This is the “cancel culture” element of the One Party, and we all either need to fight it or get used to it. Offend somebody who is “Woke,” and get fired. Instantly. Without passing “Go” or collecting $200. And no one will speak out in your defense. You should have known better- watch what you say. The Constitution doesn’t protect “hate speech.”
We haven’t been a free country for a long time. But we weren’t this bad. And we’re going to get a lot worse. We all saw what happened when a president spouting populist rhetoric, with millions of followers, attempted to expose electoral fraud, for which massive evidence exists. However, those videotapes, and over a thousand sworn affidavits amount to “no evidence!” according to every disciple of the “Woke” party. The mere mention of vote fraud gets you kicked off Twitter and You Tube, and brings the “Fact Checkers” out on Facebook. We’re like a collective battered wife, hoping that our abusive spouse will give us a smile and bind the wounds he caused. Stockholm Syndrome is too mild a word to describe American malaise.
The “Woke” supporters are calling what happened at the Capitol an “insurrection.” This event, being compared to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, will undoubtedly be used to further crack down on what’s left of our civil liberties. They want all those involved to be locked up for ten years. The more vicious social justice warriors want them executed for treason. Law means nothing when emotion, and not reason, rule those enforcing it. Politicized prosecutions should never happen. Under “Woke” rule, every prosecution, and every punishment, will be at the whim of who’s enforcing it.
I’ll keep writing this blog, and publishing books, and doing my weekly radio show, and doing interviews, for as long as they let me. I’ve been calling this a crumbling country. Or a collapsing country. We are no longer in the process of something; we have crumbled, we have collapsed. The only thing that can save us from a tyranny the likes of which the world has never seen is an uprising of many millions, in concert with each other, fighting for the same goals.
In this fantastically divided country, after the brief age of Trump, we remain locked down, wearing masks, socially distancing, listless and rudderless. Like Orwell’s Winston Smith, we have learned to love Big Brother.
About donaldjeffries
Author of the critically acclaimed best sellers “Hidden History: An Expose of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover Ups in American Politics,””Survival of the Richest: How the Corruption of the Marketplace and the Disparity of Wealth Created the Greatest Conspiracy of All,” and the newly released “Crimes and Cover Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963.” Author of the 2007 sci-fi/fantasy novel “The Unreals,” which has been described as a cross between The Wizard of Oz and The Twilight Zone, and compared to A Confederacy of Dunces and classic Russian literature. A second edition of “The Unreals” was published in February 2015 by Pocol Press. Long time JFK assassination researcher. Seeker of truth, proponent of justice and fairness. Enemy of corruption. Sender of as many “tiny ripples of hope” as possible. View all posts by donaldjeffries »
The tourist destinations in the mountain states are thriving. Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks is reportedly doing twice its annual business. New York State is withering. Not since Saddam taunted the U.S. into invading Iraq has the world seen so self-destructive a case of narcissism.
In reading the New York State travel advisory, I am reminded of one of my favorite scenes from a Woody Allen movie, this one from Bananas. Having ascended to power, the dictatorial rebel leader Esposito announces his new rules for San Marcos:
From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. … In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now…16 years old!
Woody’s character Fielding Mellish cracks, “What’s the Spanish word for straitjacket?” The Spanish word is camisa de fuerza. The Swedish word is tvångströja. In any language, Gov. Andrew Cuomo surely needs one. It is bad enough that he is running the state by executive order. Worse is that the orders are nuts. If Woody Allen were to make a comic version of 1984, he could model “Big Brother” on Andrew Cuomo.
Last week, I flew into Buffalo. It was my first flight this year into New York, a state in which I have owned a summer cottage for the last 30 years. Coming from Missouri, a state on New York’s travel advisory, I had to fill out a two-sided form promising that I would quarantine in place for 14 days. As if.
Missouri has had about 25 COVID-19 deaths per 100,00 people. New York has had about 165. In the western part of Missouri where I live, the rate is considerably lower. No matter. By some perverse calculation, my return to New York threatened to put the state’s residents at some elevated risk.
To visit my own cottage, I had to promise not to be in public or otherwise leave the quarters that they have identified as “suitable.” These “quarters” — how quaint — had to have “separate bathroom facilities for each individual or family group.” More than that, I had to have “access to a sink with soap and water, and paper towels.”
Esposito would have been hard pressed to imagine rules this absurd and unenforceable: “Food must be delivered to the individual’s quarters”; “Garbage must be bagged and left outside by the door of each of the quarters”; “Individuals should self-monitor for fever and other symptoms of COVID-19 daily.”
Big Brother Andy promises that “enforcement teams” will be stationed to “greet disembarking passengers to request proof of completion of the State Department of Health traveler form.” He isn’t kidding. My flight had no more than 20 people on board, but two officials were waiting at 9:00 P.M. on a Sunday night to collect our letters of transit. The penalty for leaving the airport without completing the form is a $2,000 fine and a mandatory quarantine. Knowing this, I filled mine out. I wrote on it, “Under protest, self-destructive, wasteful, oppressive.”
My flight to Denver a week earlier was nearly full, but no one who did not have to come was coming to New York. The state is broke and broken. Yet it can still afford to create this Byzantine bureaucracy and impose it on those who are compelled to visit, even — hang on — those who drive to New York. Decrees Big Brother: “Travelers coming to New York from designated states through other means of transport, including trains and cars, must fill out the form online.”
I know a conscientious fellow who did just that. Health authorities contact him every day to check on his progress. My friend was given a choice of call or text. He chose text. At the beginning, he was asked if he needed any help with food or medicine. I asked my friend whether the State delivered pizza. He chose not to inquire. He was afraid they might.
The tourist destinations in the mountain states are thriving. Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks is reportedly doing twice its annual business. New York State is withering. Not since Saddam taunted the U.S. into invading Iraq has the world seen so self-destructive a case of narcissism.
Pay no attention to New York’s national dominance in COVID deaths. Nursing homes? What nursing homes? I am convinced that Cuomo imposed the travel advisory to creates the illusion that he has so heroically purged his state of COVID that red-state refugees can only screw things up. I suspect his forthcoming book — American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic — will assure at least the media that this is so. (And who writes a book during a crisis?)
Come what may, Cuomo has an assured place in history. He will be the first head of a state to enact a costly, self-defeating law that absolutely no one will follow and, quite likely, no one will be punished for not following. San Marcos can use a man like that.
Jack Cashill’s new book, Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, is now widely available. Also see http://www.Cashill.com.
Iran and China, too, are turning powerful intelligence-gathering networks on their own people. Is the U.S. next?
An Israeli soldier wearing a face mask enters a train on March 16, 2020 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced emergency measures to combat COVID-19 after more than 300 Israelis tested positive. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)
At 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, Israel joined Iran and China in focusing the powerful intelligence gathering tools of the state on its own citizens—all in the name of containing the coronavirus outbreak.
In the dead of the night, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized advanced digital surveillance and monitoring tools to be deployed on Israeli citizens, without court order, in an effort to track coronavirus carriers.
Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, will be allowed to use personal cell phone data and information such as which cell tower a device pings to, to retroactively track the movements of carriers of the “coronavirus in order to see with whom they interacted in the days and weeks before they were tested in order to place those people in quarantine,” reportsThe Times of Israel. This means that “any person in Israel could come under surveillance” of the Shin Bet, “an organization with no public transparency requirements” that reports directly to the Prime Minister.
The decision came after Netanyahu appeared ready to close down most of the court system and deploy the measure without Knesset approval Saturday night.
“The public outcry over these measures and accusations of an effective coup by the government over the other branches led Deputy Attorney-General Raz Nizri to assure a group of journalists on Sunday night that the Shin Bet would not start its surveillance without Knesset approval,” reports The Jerusalem Post.
The government ultimately authorized the surveillance in the middle of the night between Monday and Tuesday, without Knesset approval. The program removes a 30-day limit that Netanyahu had promised, and instead authorizes surveillance to continue an additional 60 days after the government’s state of emergency ends.
“Because the pandemic is spreading at an incredibly fast pace, postponing using these tools by even an hour could cause the deaths of a very large amount of Israelis,” Netanyahu said.
“I can assure you all unequivocally: There isn’t and won’t be a ‘Big Brother’ in the State of Israel, even in the framework of an extreme event like what we are dealing with now,” wrote Transportation Minister Betzalel Smotrich in a tweet on Sunday.
Blue and White leaders Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashenazi called the decision “surrendering transparency” and “political thievery.”
Israel’s new citizen surveillance program builds on a 2002 counterterrorism law that gave the Shin Bet direct access to cellular data, bypassing cell phone companies.
Netanyahu’s political rival Benny Gantz was tasked with forming a government Monday afternoon, and critics argue Netanyahu’s caretaker government does not have the authority to circumvent the relevant committees and single-handedly approve the sweeping measures.
“The government approved in the dead of night, in a move of underhanded opportunism the emergency regulations, despite the fact that the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee started discussing the matter yesterday, without given the option to seriously delve into the issue and complete deliberations,” tweeted Gabi Ashkenazi, former chair of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“It’s inappropriate to approve such a measure in this manner, without public and parliamentary supervision,” he continued. “I call to allow the establishment of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (which was dissolved on Monday as the new Knesset was sworn in) as soon as today in order to immediately discuss the issue, and activate the necessary supervision as stated by the law.”
Israel’s new regulations come as governments around the world adopt increasingly draconian measures. Iran rolled out an app ostensibly for the purpose of informing the public of coronavirus symptoms, but which actually spied on Iranians. The Communist government of China has brought the full weight of its mass public surveillance and social credit system to bear, using face recognition software, apps, drones and CCTV cameras to enforce quarantines.
Domestic police forces in Europe are adopting measures that would have been unthinkable in democratic societies a few months ago. The U.K. plans to give police new authority to detain people and place them in isolation. Police in Madrid, Spain are deploying drones with cameras and loudspeakers to order people in parks and on the streets to go home.
— Policía Municipal de Madrid (@policiademadrid) March 14, 2020
“We will not hesitate to use all the means at our disposal to ensure your security and that of everyone,” Madrid’s Police Force tweeted. “Although some still make it difficult for us.”
Amid talks that the Trump administration is seeking location data from tech giants like Google and Facebook, democratic governments around the world are balancing citizens’ civil liberties and public health.
“Israel is a democracy — we must uphold the balance between the rights of individuals and the public needs. And we are doing this,” said Netanyahu.
These people share Big Brother’s psychology and way of thinking. They want to use language to control the way people act and feel.
The degradation of language is very important. It’s not a question of just being able to express yourself. Language facilitates your ability to think. If the enemy – and these people are actually enemies of humanity – capture the language they almost automatically win the war.
Chris’ note: As longtime readers know, Doug Casey believes the politically correct (PC) movement is part of the accelerating collapse of Western civilization.
And this trend is getting worse by the day.
For example, San Francisco recently introduced a new “sanitized” language for criminals. You’re not supposed to say “convicted felon,” “delinquent,” or even “drug addict” now.
And that’s not the only example…
Below, Doug tells me why this is happening… who the true enemies are… and where he sees all this going from here…
It sounds crazy, but the city board recently “sanitized” a bunch of crime lingo. For instance, it’s getting rid of words such as “offender” and “addict.” Instead of “convicted felon,” you’re now supposed to say “justice-involved person.”
Are you surprised at all that this is happening?
Doug Casey, founder, Casey Research: No, I’m not surprised at all. It’s part of the accelerating collapse of civilization itself. And it’s not just a question of the language evolving, and people just saying things in different ways.
English has evolved, and the meanings of words have been changing since before Beowulf was composed in the 10th century. The language has become more precise as a result. This is different. It’s not an organic change. It’s an attempt by people who see themselves as the ruling class to not just influence the way the proletariat speaks, but the way they think. Or perhaps I should say the way they feel. Thinking is hard work, but even an imbecile can feel.
Political types – absolutely including the “woke” brigade and so-called Social Justice Warriors – specialize in appealing to the emotions, not the intellect. It makes sense when you’re trying to sway the mob. If people actually thought about the notions the wokesters promote, most would realize it was just claptrap to manipulate and swindle them. It’s smarter to sway their emotions. The mob acts on their feelings, which you can excite with a 30-second sound bite, and a picture. They don’t act on even simple intellectual arguments – forget about complex reasoning.
The degradation of language is very important. It’s not a question of just being able to express yourself. Language facilitates your ability to think. If the enemy – and these people are actually enemies of humanity – capture the language they almost automatically win the war.
Chris: One of the reasons San Francisco is doing this is because it wants to change people’s views about those who commit crimes.
Doug: Apparently none of these people have read George Orwell’s 1984. Or, more likely, they have, and took away exactly the wrong message. Orwell intended the book as a warning, not an instruction manual, where things often meant the opposite of what they said. Big Brother and the Party purposefully tried to change the language. If you can control what people say, or don’t say, you’re in effect controlling what people think and feel.
These people share Big Brother’s psychology and way of thinking. They want to use language to control the way people act and feel…
Chris: There’s nothing that can be done?
Doug: No, there’s not really much hope. The election of Donald Trump was actually the “last hurrah” for traditional America. As you know, I’m not a fan of Trump. His foreign policies are generally warlike and dangerous. His monetary policy of endorsing ZIRP, more debt, and money printing is idiotic. His fiscal policy of running trillion-dollar deficits is disastrous.
On the bright side, his traditionalism – wanting to see America the way it was at its peak in the days of “Father Knows Best,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” or “Mad Men” for the Millennials who otherwise wouldn’t know what I’m talking about – has a certain charm. Especially now that we’re on the ragged edge of a civil war.
The proverbial average American – someone with a steady job, a family, some savings, some belief in traditional American values – voted for him because he wasn’t a lifelong politician. He wasn’t one of these horrible Deep State creatures like McCain, or Romney, or those other phony non-entities on stage with him. And he wasn’t Hillary, America’s answer to Evita Peron.
Even so, in 2016 it was a very, very close election. This time around there will be a lot more young people voting. And a lot more migrants voting. They’ll all go for the kind of active socialists and sociopaths we’ve seen in the Democratic debates. It doesn’t matter that they’re all authoritarians, totally ignorant of economics and who actually despise personal freedom. It doesn’t matter that some of them appear to be clinically insane.
Fifty years ago was the last time we experienced something like this, a cultural revolution in the US. And coincidentally it happened at the same time in Europe and China. It flowed out of the universities into the streets then. Even though only a small number of people went to university from high school in those days. Now almost everybody goes from high school into at least junior college. Now the virus is not only much more virulent than it was during the ‘60s and ‘70s, but it’s much more widespread and much more ingrained in society. And it doesn’t just start in college. It starts in high school, and even grade school today.
So how do you turn this around at this point? How do you depoliticize a whole society? How do you convince hundreds of millions of people not to be busybodies? To think, not feel? To analyze the actual meaning of what teachers and demagogues say? The answer is: You can’t. The degradation has been going on a long time. You don’t reverse a trend overnight – assuming you can change its direction at all.
I expect that in the next few years, as the economy goes into full collapse, that we’ll see violence in the streets. It’s going to be really ugly.
But let’s end this on a happy note. George Carlin was a stickler for using words, and concepts accurately. Which is to say he was anti-PC, anti-woke and anti-SJW. Get a load of this.
THE MYSTERY “Q” – SOLVED OR NOT – ALL ROADS LEAD TO “In-Q-Tel”. BIGGER THAN BIG BROTHER!
Q Clearance Anon? Are people being suckered or just sucked in? What are the real clues that Q is providing? It appears to me that the real rabbit hole to go down is that of the data mining wonderland. I’ll start with Jim Breyer, head of Accel which is an American Venture Capital Firm with partnership to International Data Group named IDGAccel. CLICK here to find out more about IDG-Accel
Breyer invested 13 million dollars into Facebook, the same year Gilman Louie joined the Board of National Venture Capital Association of America (NVCA) who was also the first CEO of the CIAstartup “In-Q-Tel” which is an American Venture capital firm in partnership with IDG Accel. CIA owns Facebook?
In-Q-Tel is the strategic investor for the U.S. Intelligence and Defense Communities that identifies and adapts cutting edge technologies that (supposedly) make our nation safer. In-Q-Tel was founded in 1999 for the purpose of funding companies that could develop technologies that the CIAcould — USE TO GATHER DATA.
IQT Labs (short for In-Q-Tel) explore the art of possible emerging technology in areas of interest to national security. These areas include cyber security, biotechnology, commercial space, and advanced data analytics. Click her to read about IQT Labs
In a nutshell, The CIA Is and has been Investing in Firms That Mine Your Tweets and Instagram Photos from the onset. Why? To protect you? Think again.
While so much speculation has been placed on “Who is Q Anon?” Q has told the readers that he has the highest security clearance there is. Everyone runs to the President or someone in his top advisory capacity as the highest clearance so they think one of these must be “Q” . Meanwhile the agency that even the President can’t dig into is the CIA. The CIA has grown to be a monster of its’ own making. A secret deep state society of its’ own. Meaning although the President can use Military to control it – the CIA appears to have gone rogue and take orders from some place other and can withhold information, even from the West Wing. We are seeing that now. It is now proven that the CIA has such secrecy it can even plan the assassination of the Commander in Chief, i.e. the President of the United States as they did to President John F. Kennedy. And get away with it.
Therefore, President Trump, who already communicates with his people daily in Tweets, and can use the emergency broadcast system any time to speak to the people and the world, would not have to go on Reddit channel and seek a select group of people on line to give clues out hoping they will connect dots and be the next “we the people” CIA???? While there are indeed crumbs and many that only high clearance would know about…. the CIA’s In-Q-Tel is such a source, and a much more likely one.
REMEMBER when President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, King Salman showed him the mother of all “terrorist finding” cyber technology. Remember also CIA is Mossad. Mossad was the House of Saud. CIA is In-Q-Tel. King Salman arrested the House of Saud. What does this new cyber technology hold? What is President Trump holding? What can it do? What does President Trump think of this new artificial intelligence? What do you think of this? What is CERN?
I believe all dots connect and point to Q-Annon as being CIA’S In-Q-Tel. Why? To use a new form of data mining that I shall call – effective trolling. Approach alternative media truth seekers in their own (secret) forum – 4-Chan. Come in like one of them to do some real time data mining. Why? They could want to find what type of “I- Q’s” human critical thinkers have by playing real time data finding games with real live people? Is “Q” an artificial program? Or a real person?
What does “Q” (high level clearance person) have to gain by throwing out bread crumbs? What does “In-Q-Tel” have to gain by throwing out bread crumbs?
To see what people know?
Analyze how fast people can analyze clues?
Find out how truth researchers think things through – know their thought processes?
See how many people will research and how many will rely on others to find answers?
See how fast people lose interest if answers aren’t found fast?
See how many are discouraged and how long it takes to discourage certain groups?
See how long it takes the last one to get discouraged if nothing is forthcoming?
See how many remain if any, in the end?
See if anyone finds the real “Q” and how long it will take?
Lure other alternative news seekers into one hub?
Data mine the hub?
Find out who listens to them and who their followers are?
Size up strengths and weaknesses?
Infiltrate and classify researchers into groups?
Identify those who really know and those who don’t know?
Find who is capable of finding the real threats to their secrecy?
Allow people to bla, bla, bla and reveal the things their algorithms can’t detect?
Take the information and use it against them with their paid disinformation agents?
See who and how many will do what they are asked by “Q” without knowing who “Q” is?
Create disinformation wars among credible people?
I am sure there are more reasons, these are the ones just off the top of my head. Before you laugh, remember they (In-Q-Tel) are already data mining everything you say on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all social media sites…
Oddly, it’s only whites, males, and Christians that have to be careful using “hate speech” or non-PC speech today. Members of so-called “historically oppressed” minorities can say whatever they want. Which is pretty rich, since they’re actually majorities in many parts of the US today. And their native cultures allow for about zero freedom of speech – or any other kind of freedom, for that matter.
That’s what the Associated Press (AP), the world’s largest news agency, is telling reporters.
The AP puts out a stylebook every year that includes universal guidelines for stylistic matters like punctuation, capitalization, and even word choice. In a recent version, it encouraged writers to not use words such as “pro-life,” “migrant,” “refugee,” “Islamist,” and “terrorist.”
Our founder Doug Casey agrees. And today, he tells us what this disturbing trend really means…
Justin: Doug, what do you think of the AP censoring writers? Are you surprised at all?
Doug: There was once a time when journalists often had intelligence, integrity, and competence. Many did their jobs – reporting the news accurately, openly disclosing their bias (if any). H.L. Mencken was a model of what a journalist should be. He wasn’t just a reporter. He was a literary maven who had immense stores of knowledge and well-thought-out, fact-based opinions on nearly everything. In addition to a myriad of newspaper and magazine articles, he even wrote a definitive book on the English language and the correct way to use it.
Today, reporters have none of these qualifications. Their only qualification appears to be a BA degree in English, or Journalism.
Maybe it’s just that giants walked the earth in the days before Political Correctness. If Mencken was alive today, he would be shocked and appalled at the midgets who pass for reporters and editors today. He’d be rolling in laughter and disgust at how much the profession has been degraded.
It’s like Orwell’s worst nightmare is coming true. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the idea behind “doublethink” is to alter the nature of language. Big Brother wants to reduce the number of words that exist, eliminating those that describe non-PC thoughts and actions. They seem to want to institute Newspeak – complete with thoughtcrime, goodthink, bellyfeel, and prolefeed.
Justin: And why is that such a big deal?
Doug: Words enable thought. So if you corrupt words, you can alter and corrupt people’s thoughts. Words are the parents of thought. And thought is the father to action. There’s a reason the Bible speaks of “the word” with such respect.
If you don’t have a word for something, it makes it hard to think about it. And it’s worse if you have the wrong word. They’re trying to corrupt the language to limit what people think and do.
Justin: Why are they trying to alter how people think?
Doug: They say it’s to help make people “better.” Of course their idea of what’s good, and my idea of what’s good differ radically. The Nazis and Soviets tried to make people “better” by using propaganda – propaganda is actually fake news. They say they’re trying to reduce friction in society, or make the “underprivileged” feel good about themselves. But in fact they’re doing the opposite. They’re quite happy to use the violence of the State to enforce their views on society…
Boston City Mayor Martin J. Walsh will be pushing legislation on Beacon Hill this year which would require doctors to interrogate patients about the presence of firearms in their homes. The legislation is being promoted as a way for healthcare providers to “play a larger role in addressing gun violence” by spotting the early warning signs of suicide and domestic violence.
Of course, this type of interrogation would be a massive violation of patient privacy and has conservatives in an uproar. Furthermore, mandating doctors to reduce gun violence is ironic considering how many of the mass shootings and other forms of gun violence that Americans have been subjected to in recent years are the direct result of the mind-altering drugs prescribed by these very same healthcare providers.
Doctors become Big Brother
Boston officials insist that the proposed bill will not turn doctors into amateur sleuths and that gun ownership will not become part of official patient medical records…
Is this the same Boston government that forced its way into homes at gunpoint after the marathon Bombing? Be seeing you
Google doesn’t do this behind your back. On a desktop, Google Chrome allows sites to access your computer’s camera and microphone by default. On a smartphone, agreeing to an app’s terms of service allows the app to do nearly anything, from accessing your phone’s camera and location, to recording your calls and log your messages. The Facebook app, for example, requires 44 such permissions.
Click here to see everything you’ve ever searched on a Google device.
But amid all the furor, one monolithic entity has continued to harvest data from billions of people worldwide. The data gathered includes a precise log of your every move and every internet search you’ve ever made, every email you’ve ever sent, your workout routine, your favourite food, and every photo you’ve ever taken. And you have allowed it to happen to yourself, for the sake of better service and more relevant advertising.
Google is a ‘Big Brother’ with capabilities beyond George Orwell’s wildest nightmares. These capabilities are all the more chilling after Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., cut its famous “don’t be evil” line from its code of conduct in 2015. Read the rest of this entry »
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REMEMBER when President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, King Salman showed him the mother of all “terrorist finding” cyber technology. Remember also CIA is Mossad. Mossad was the House of Saud. CIA is In-Q-Tel. King Salman arrested the House of Saud. What does this new cyber technology hold? What is President Trump holding? What can it do? What does President Trump think of this new artificial intelligence? What do you think of this? What is CERN?
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