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What if the global financial system is being reset right under our noses, without our consent? Join us on the Arterburn Radio Transmission as we explore the dramatic rise in precious metals like gold and silver, and what this means for your financial security. We tackle the geopolitical tensions brewing between Lebanon and the United States, and how these are intricately tied to the global economy. Featuring insights from John W. Whitehead, we dive into the alarming prospects of central bank digital currencies that could redefine the way we understand money and privacy.Moving on, we shine a spotlight on the UN's newly adopted "Pact for the Future"—a 56-page document that has largely escaped public scrutiny. This pact includes a "global digital compact" and could be the blueprint for a new global order. We dissect this ambitious agenda, drawing historical comparisons to Orwell and Solzhenitsyn, to emphasize the lack of public debate and the potential dangers of such sweeping changes. We also critically examine the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and question the real impact of its lofty goals.In a world increasingly leaning towards digital currencies, we discuss the potential for increased government surveillance and control. Using China's digital yuan as a case study, we consider what a central bank digital currency could mean for American citizens. The conversation also touches upon the importance of stricter data privacy laws and the need for an electronic bill of rights to shield us from invasive government and corporate surveillance. Don't miss our final thoughts on safeguarding your wealth with precious metals and how you can join our Wolfpack membership to stay one step ahead.
With a 40 year career as a constitutional lawyer in the USA, John W. Whitehead has a unique, legitimate perspective on where and why the deep state secrets are kept, and why the public ought to be more in-tune with the warning signs. As Leighton Grey discusses this far-reaching topic with Whitehead, Canadians will grasp the depth and perniciousness of corruption, the state-ordered 'censorship industrial complex' and more importantly, how we can all protect ourselves.
In this segment, we share a podcast segment with John W. Whitehead, who is the president of The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, who is representing his client, Rich Penkoski, who was slapped with a five-year restraining order that prevents him from protesting online or in person the activities of an LGBT organization in Oklahoma. In this segment, we discuss how this trial could spell big trouble for preachers online in the near future.
John Whitehead discusses the Deep State (the 7th Floor Group) and how the future of America and the world will become everything the great science fiction writers have prophesied. The collapse of the United States is akin to the collapse of the Roman Empire where we could very well see people being taken away and put to death. The coming of Singularity in 2029 and takeover of AI is very likely. We are very similar to Nazi Germany, the police state is expanding, and people need to get up and get active in their governments. We only have a small window of time left. Watch On BitChute / Brighteon / Rokfin / Rumble / YouTube Geopolitics & Empire · John Whitehead: The Future Is Everything the Science Fiction Writers Have Prophesied #329 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.comDonate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donationsConsult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopoliticseasyDNS (use code GEOPOLITICS for 15% off!) https://easydns.comEscape The Technocracy course (15% discount using link) https://escapethetechnocracy.com/geopoliticsPassVult https://passvult.comSociatates Civis (CitizenHR, CitizenIT, CitizenPL) https://societates-civis.comWise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Rutherford Institute https://www.rutherford.org Books https://www.amazon.com/John-W-Whitehead/e/B001HO5SG4 TRANSCRIPT Geopolitics & Empire: Geopolitics & Empire is joined by John Whitehead, an attorney and author widely recognized as one of the nation's most vocal and involved civil liberties attorneys. He's won numerous accolades and accomplishments, and in 1982 he founded the Rutherford Institute, which has become one of the leading advocates of civil liberties. He's author of the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and the best selling Battlefield America: The War On The American People. Also, The End of Man, published in 1986, but sounds like it was written yesterday. Mr. Whitehead, welcome to Geopolitics & Empire, which the Ron Paul Institute describes as "the real underground, where the real intellectual revolution is taking place." John Whitehead: Anyway, thank you sir for having me on. I appreciate it. Geopolitics & Empire: I do urge people to support the Rutherford Institute. I've got my Rutherford coffee mug, which I don't think you sell this one anymore, and I've got the pamphlets as well that you sell. I love the work you're doing, but let's get right into it. You recently wrote that, "Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in, the constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is being loosed upon the nation. We're witnessing the unraveling of the American dream one injustice at a time," end quote. Myself as a former history teacher, professor, I saw all of this coming. In the 2000s, a nation and republic in a downward spiral. Economic decline, spiritual decline, cultural degeneration, devolution into authoritarianism and tyranny. And it seems we've arrived. What's sort of the big picture here and where are we on the timeline? John Whitehead: Well, the government that we have in this country, and I've warned people for years about, is not what you think it is. It's a different type of government. There was an expansive study that came out of Princeton University in 2014, which studied 20 years of laws and policies passed in Washington, DC. The professors came to the conclusion that we live in what they call an auto [inaudible 00:01:55] elite in Washington, DC where all the money congregates. Washington, DC's basically run by, at the time they estimated 585 billionaires. It later became known as the Deep State. The Deep State is a group called the 7th Floor Gr...
As founder of The Rutherford Institute, John W. Whitehead has been fighting for American freedom and constitutional rights for over 40 years. John reveals the underlying motivation of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. who work constantly to accumulate more wealth and power for themselves. “Fear is what gives the government amazing power,” John says. The government controls the masses by creating and then utilizing crises and disasters, and Americans have forgotten that “We the People” are the true governmental power. John explains the dangers when people stop thinking. He additionally exposes the corruption of the NSA, artificial intelligence, and the over 70 underground bunker systems that were built to protect the globalists. TAKEAWAYS Sleeping Americans who are oblivious to the attacks against freedom within our own country is the greatest threat we face The U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democracy, that is run by several hundred billionaires Battlefield America: The War on the American People is John's most comprehensive book about the destruction of U.S. freedom Getting involved with your local government is a great way to start working to help save the country
As founder of The Rutherford Institute, John W. Whitehead has been fighting for American freedom and constitutional rights for over 40 years. John reveals the underlying motivation of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. who work constantly to accumulate more wealth and power for themselves. “Fear is what gives the government amazing power,” John says. The government controls the masses by creating and then utilizing crises and disasters, and Americans have forgotten that “We the People” are the true governmental power. John explains the dangers when people stop thinking. He additionally exposes the corruption of the NSA, artificial intelligence, and the over 70 underground bunker systems that were built to protect the globalists. TAKEAWAYS Sleeping Americans who are oblivious to the attacks against freedom within our own country is the greatest threat we face The U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democracy, that is run by several hundred billionaires Battlefield America: The War on the American People is John's most comprehensive book about the destruction of U.S. freedom Getting involved with your local government is a great way to start working to help save the country
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Could reality television be impairing our ability to think critically? Dr Keith Suter breaks down an article by John W. Whitehead called Humilitainment: How to control the citizenry through reality tv distractions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We are proud to welcome Dr. John W. Whitehead to the podcast this week as we interview him about his books; "A Government of Wolves," "Battlefield America," and "The Erik Blair Diaries"! He is such an influential attorney and author who has been on the front lines fighting for freedom over the past several decades. Check out his resources below: https://www.rutherford.org https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freedom-under-fire-the-rutherford-institute/id1434321898 We, Scott, Gabe, and Gary, need to know if you guys like the content. Honestly though, every like, subscribe, and follow shows us that our conversations are helping you. We are on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Anchor, and any podcasting platform. Support us on every platform below! #hearthebookpod #johnwwhitehead #freedom #biggovernment #foundingfathers #liberty #billofrights Instagram: @hearthebookpod YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC8AAn7YxgYVoWa7RmeojyFQ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hearthebookpod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/hearthebookpod Anchor: https://anchor.fm/hearthebookpod Thank you to Brook Sprague and Michael Card for their music in our podcast! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvI-t0MK5kgMJw7REobBCbQ Song: The Book ID: 362574 Writers: Michael Card Publishers: Mole End Music --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hearthebookpod/message
Eric Peters from Eric Peters Autos drops in to talk about life in clown world and what's currently on his radar. Gotta hand it to the political class, no matter how destructive their policies, the blame is placed on someone else. Jordan Schachtel breaks down how Biden's winter of blaming the non-compliant has become a springtime of blaming Putin. Things seem to be coming to a head rapidly. James Howard Kunstler describes the gravity of our situation as well as what is to be done. The trans movement is being used as a bludgeon to force us to deny reality. Joanna Williams asks, why can't we tell the truth about swimmer Lia Thomas? The level of propaganda and distortion that we're facing today is stunning. Caroline Brashears has a handy reader's guide to Newspeak 2022. Now that political leaders are openly talking of global food shortages, people are becoming a bit more aware of their food supplies. Thomas L. Knapp asks, how does your garden (or pantry) grow? I'm mildly ashamed that I've given any attention to the "drama" at the Oscars the other night. Especially after reading John W. Whitehead's latest column on "humilitainment" and how we're being distracted. The official narrative regarding Ukraine doesn't really allow for serious questions about U.S. involvement. Pat Buchanan asks, is victory for Ukraine worth risking nuclear war? Are we once again standing at the edge of the abyss? Paul Rosenberg reminds us that war is nothing new and none of the leaders are the good guys. www.thebryanhydeshow.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/loving-liberty/support
We begin today's show with a review of John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead's article from The Rutherford Institute, “The Rise of Global Fascism” (https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_rise_of_global_fascism_and_the_end_of_the_world_as_we_know_it) which in part reads: “This new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations owes its existence in large part to the U.S. government's deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations. This powerful international cabal, let's call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.” The podcast closes with a plea to those involved in this movement to quickly understand the ramifications of their actions before the damage that is done to our society is irreversible. http://sovereignnations.com Support Sovereign Nations: paypal.me/sovnations patreon.com/sovnations Follow Sovereign Nations: sovereignnations.com/subscribe facebook.com/SovereignNations twitter.com/SovNations youtube.com/SovereignNations rumble.com/c/sovnations instagram.com/sovnations/ minds.com/sovnations?referrer=sovnations parler.com/profile/sovnations © 2022 Sovereign Nations. All rights reserved.
Empower yourself with additional Resources for Lucidity: https://snooze2awaken.com This episode is also available as a blog post: http://snooze2awaken.com/2022/02/09/totalitarian-paranoia-run-amok-pandemics-lockdowns-martial-law Learn more about John W. Whitehead: https://www.rutherford.org/about/about_john_whitehead
Grapes could help protect against cognitive decline University of California, Los Angeles - February 06 2022. The January issue of Experimental Gerontology published the finding of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles of a protective effect for powdered grape against a decline in brain metabolism in older adults. The results of the investigation suggest that eating grapes might contribute to the prevention of Alzheimer's disease. The study included ten men and women with mild cognitive decline. Participants were given freeze-dried grape powder or a placebo similar in flavor and appearance but lacking beneficial grape polyphenols. The grape powders, which provided the equivalent of three servings of grapes per day, were mixed with water and consumed in divided daily doses for six months. Cognitive performance and changes in brain metabolism as assessed by PET scans were evaluated before and after the treatment period. (NEXT) Loneliness associated with increased risk of dementia in older adults New York University, February 7, 2022 As social isolation in the United States has been increasing among older adults, a new study shows a notable link between loneliness and dementia risk, and one that is most striking for Americans who represent a large part of the population. In the study publishing February 7 in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology,researchers found a three-fold increase in risk of subsequent dementia among lonely Americans younger than 80 years old who would otherwise be expected to have a relatively low risk based on age and genetic risk factors. The study also found that loneliness was associated with poorer executive function (i.e., a group of cognitive processes including decision-making, planning, cognitive flexibility, and control of attention) and changes in the brain that indicate vulnerability to Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). (NEXT) Dietary total antioxidant capacity and mortality outcomes: the Singapore Chinese Health Study Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China), February 1, 2022 To evaluate the relations of dietary total antioxidant capacity (DTAC) with mortality outcomes in a Chinese population. The study included 62,063 participants from the Singapore Chinese Health Study. The participants were 45–74 years at baseline (1993–1998) when dietary data were collected with a validated 165-item food frequency questionnaire. During 1,212,318 person-years of follow-up, 23,397 deaths [cardiovascular diseases (CVD): 7523; respiratory diseases: 4696; and cancer: 7713] occurred. In multivariable models, the HR (95% CI) comparing participants in the highest vs. lowest quartile of CDAI was 0.85 for all-cause mortality, 0.82 for CVD mortality, 0.76 for respiratory disease mortality and 0.94 for cancer mortality Similar associations were found with the VCEAC index. Higher intakes of the DTAC components, i.e., vitamin C, vitamin E, carotenoids, and flavonoids, were all associated with lower mortality risk. (NEXT) Healthy lifestyle equals bigger brain Yale University School of Medicine, February 4 2022. Research findings scheduled to be reported at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2022 demonstrated that adherence to Life's Simple 7 lifestyle behaviors is associated with greater brain volume and fewer indicators of damage among middle-aged men and women. The study included 35,914 participants enrolled in the UK Biobank. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain measured brain volume and white matter hyperintensity volume. (NEXT) No time to exercise? What about three seconds a day? Edith Cowan University (Australia) and Niigata University (Japan), February 7, 2022 Lifting weights for as little as three seconds a day can have a positive impact on muscle strength, a new study from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has discovered. A collaboration with researchers from Niigata University of Health and Welfare (NUHW) in Japan had 39 healthy university students perform one muscle contraction at maximum effort for three seconds per day, for five days a week over four weeks. The participants performed either an isometric, concentric or eccentric bicep curl (see definitions below) at maximum effort, while researchers measured the muscles' maximum voluntary contraction strengthbefore and after the four-week period. Another 13 students performed no exercise over the same period and were also measured before and after the four weeks. Muscle strength increased more than 10 percent for the group who performed the eccentric bicep curl after the four weeks, but less increase in muscle strength was found for the other two exercise groups. The no exercise group saw no increase. The study shows all three lifting methods had some benefit to muscle strength, however eccentric contraction easily produced the best results. (OTHER NEWS) Dystopia Disguised as Democracy: All the Ways in Which Freedom Is an Illusion John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead, February 8, 2022 We are no longer free. We are living in a world carefully crafted to resemble a representative democracy, but it's an illusion. We think we have the freedom to elect our leaders, but we're only allowed to participate in the reassurance ritual of voting. There can be no true electoral choice or real representation when we're limited in our options to one of two candidates culled from two parties that both march in lockstep with the Deep State and answer to an oligarchic elite. We think we have freedom of speech, but we're only as free to speak as the government and its corporate partners allow. We think we have the right to freely exercise our religious beliefs, but those rights are quickly overruled if and when they conflict with the government's priorities, whether it's COVID-19 mandates or societal values about gender equality, sex and marriage. We think we have the freedom to go where we want and move about freely, but at every turn, we're hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. Punitive programs strip citizens of their passports and right to travel over unpaid taxes. We think we have property interests in our homes and our bodies, but there can be no such freedom when the government can seize your property, raid your home, and dictate what you do with your bodies. We think we have the freedom to defend ourselves against outside threats, but there is no right to self-defense against militarized police who are authorized to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, and granted immunity from accountability with the general blessing of the courts. Certainly, there can be no right to gun ownership in the face of red flag gun laws which allow the police to remove guns from people merely suspected of being threats. We think we have the right to an assumption of innocence until we are proven guilty, but that burden of proof has been turned on its head by a surveillance state that renders us all suspects and overcriminalization which renders us all lawbreakers. Police-run facial recognition software that mistakenly labels law-abiding citizens as criminals. A social credit system (similar to China's) that rewards behavior deemed “acceptable” and punishes behavior the government and its corporate allies find offensive, illegal or inappropriate. We think we have the right to due process, but that assurance of justice has been stripped of its power by a judicial system hardwired to act as judge, jury and jailer, leaving us with little recourse for appeal. A perfect example of this rush to judgment can be found in the proliferation of profit-driven speed and red light cameras that do little for safety while padding the pockets of government agencies. By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect the constitutional rights of the citizenry while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government. We've bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all: the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.” In exchange for the promise of safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, lower taxes, lower crime rates, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we've opened the door to militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization and government corruption. In the end, such bargains always turn sour. We can no longer maintain the illusion of freedom. (NEXT) Preventive Use of Ivermectin Reduced COVID Mortality by 90%, Study Found A peer-reviewed study published last month found the prophylactic use of ivermectin reduced COVID mortality by 90% among more than 223,000 study participants in a town in Southern Brazil. David Charbonneau, Ph.D., February 7, 2022 A peer-reviewed study published last month found the prophylactic use of ivermectin reduced COVID mortality by 90% among more than 223,000 study participants in a town in Southern Brazil. The study, published in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science, also found a 44% reduction in COVID cases among those who took the re-purposed drug. Between July 7, 2020, and Dec. 2, 2020, all residents of Itajaí were offered ivermectin. Approximately 3.7% of ivermectin users contracted COVID during the trial period, compared with 6.6% of residents who didn't take the drug. Based on the results, Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, one of the study's lead authors, said, “Ivermectin must be considered as an option, particularly during outbreaks.” Dr Pierre Kory said: “You would think this would lead to major headlines everywhere. And yet, nothing. And this is not new, this censorship of this highly effective science and evidence around repurposed drugs. The censoring of it, it's not new, it's just getting more and more absurd. And it has to stop.” Kory said it's not even about ivermectin, “it's about the pharmaceutical industry's capture of our agencies and how our policies are all directed at suppressing and avoiding use of re-purposed drugs” in favor of high-profit medicines.
Learn more about John W. Whitehead: https://www.rutherford.org Empower yourself with additional Resources for Lucidity: https://snooze2awaken.com This episode is also available as a blog post: http://snooze2awaken.com/2022/01/31/despotism-is-the-new-normal-looming-threats-to-freedom-in-2022
This is psychological warfare at its most sophisticated. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.
Large study links higher nutrient intake with lower risk of mortality during 9.3-year median period University of Connecticut, January 25, 2022 A study that utilized data from the National Health and Nutrition Education Survey (NHANES) found an association between having an adequate intake of vitamin E, iron, magnesium, potassium, EPA and DHA, essential amino acids and fiber and a lower risk of dying during a median follow-up period of 9.3 years. The study included 20,602 men and women enrolled in NHANES. During a median 9.3-year period, 3,539 participants died. The participants who survived were more likely to have reported a higher intake of specific nutrients. Notably, compared to participants whose magnesium intake was among the lowest one-third, those whose intake was among the top third had a 22% lower adjusted risk of dying from any cause, a 35% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and a 29% lower risk of cancer death during follow-up. Magnesium wasn't the only nutrient linked to a lower risk of mortality during follow-up; the top consumers of vitamin E, iron, potassium and fiber had 19%, 15%, 18% and 16% lower respective risks of premature all-cause mortality. (NEXT) Active ingredient in cannabis protects aging brain cells Salk researchers find cannabinol preserves mitochondrial function and prevents oxidative damage to cells Salk Institute, January 25, 2021 Decades of research on medical cannabis has focused on the compounds THC and CBD in clinical applications. But less is known about the therapeutic properties of cannabinol (CBN). Now, a new study by Salk scientists shows how CBN can protect nerve cells from oxidative damage, a major pathway to cell death. The findings, published online January 6, 2022, in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine, suggest CBN has the potential for treating age-related neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's. “We've found that cannabinol protects neurons from oxidative stress and cell death, two of the major contributors to Alzheimer's,” says senior author Pamela Maher, a research professor and head of Salk's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory. “This discovery could one day lead to the development of new therapeutics for treating this disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, like Parkinson's disease.” (NEXT) Apple polyphenols may slash inflammation marker levels, change gut microbiota University of Auckland (New Zealand) Polyphenols from apples may modify the bacterial populations in the gut, and reduce markers of inflammation, according a new study from New Zealand Data from a study indicated that adding extracts from genetically engineered apples with increased flavonoids led to 10-fold decrease in levels of pro-inflammatory prostaglandins than extracts from non-transformed apples. In addition, the total number of bacteria in the colons of animals fed a diet containing the transformed apple extracts was 6% higher than for mice fed the control diet, said the researchers in the Journal of Nutrition . “The findings here further demonstrate that apple consumption affects aspects of inflammatory pathways and the gut microbiota. (NEXT) Extra 10 minutes of daily activity could save 110,000 U.S. lives annually National Cancer Institute, January 25, 2022 If everyone between 40 and 85 years of age were active just 10 minutes more a day, it could save more than 110,000 U.S. lives a year, a large study reports. "Our projections are based on an additional 10 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity," said lead researcher Pedro Saint-Maurice at the U.S. National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. "If the walk is brisk, it counts." And added exercise benefits everyone—white, Black, Asian and Hispanic, men and women, the investigators found. (NEXT) Alzheimer's defense: omega-3s linked to larger brain volume University of South Dakota, January 24, 2022 Among the myriad changes that accompany aging, shrinking brain volume can be a worrying one. A normal part of growing older, it can also be a sign of Alzheimer's disease. But the good news is that a recent study suggests people with higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids have larger brain volumes in old age. The research, published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, suggests that the larger brain volumes associated with higher omega-3 levels are the equivalent to preserving up to 2 years of brain health. (VIDEO) Dr. Robert Malone | Senator Ron Johnson COVID-19: A Second Opinion (OTHER NEWS) Authoritarian Madness: The Slippery Slope from Lockdowns to Concentration Camps By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead, January 26, 2022 In the politically charged, polarizing tug-of-war that is the debate over COVID-19, we find ourselves buffeted by fear over a viral pandemic that continues to wreak havoc with lives and the economy, threats of vaccine mandates and financial penalties for noncompliance, and discord over how to legislate the public good without sacrificing individual liberty. The discord is getting more discordant by the day. Just recently, for instance, the Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board suggested that government officials should mandate mass vaccinations and deploy the National Guard “to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.” In other words, lock up the unvaccinated and use the military to determine who gets to be “free.” In Italy, the unvaccinated are banned from restaurants, bars and public transportation, and could face suspensions from work and monthly fines. Similarly, France will ban the unvaccinated from most public venues. In Austria, anyone who has not complied with the vaccine mandate could face fines up to $4100. Police will be authorized to carry out routine checks and demand proof of vaccination, with penalties of as much as $685 for failure to do so. In China, which has adopted a zero tolerance, “zero COVID” strategy, whole cities—some with populations in the tens of millions—are being forced into home lockdowns for weeks on end, resulting in mass shortages of food and household supplies. Reports have surfaced of residents “trading cigarettes for cabbage, dishwashing liquid for apples and sanitary pads for a small pile of vegetables. One resident traded a Nintendo Switch console for a packet of instant noodles and two steamed buns.” For those unfortunate enough to contract COVID-19, China has constructed “quarantine camps” throughout the country: massive complexes boasting thousands of small, metal boxes containing little more than a bed and a toilet. Detainees—including children, pregnant women and the elderly— were reportedly ordered to leave their homes in the middle of the night, transported to the quarantine camps in buses and held in isolation. If this last scenario sounds chillingly familiar, it should. Eighty years ago, another authoritarian regime established more than 44,000 quarantine camps for those perceived as “enemies of the state”: racially inferior, politically unacceptable or simply noncompliant. While the majority of those imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps, forced labor camps, incarceration sites and ghettos were Jews, there were also Polish nationals, gypsies, Russians, political dissidents, resistance fighters, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. You don't have to be unvaccinated or a conspiracy theorist or even anti-government to be worried about what lies ahead. You just have to recognize the truth in the warning: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is not about COVID-19. Nor is it about politics, populist movements, or any particular country. This is about what happens when good, generally decent people—distracted by manufactured crises, polarizing politics, and fighting that divides the populace into warring “us vs. them” camps—fail to take note of the looming danger that threatens to wipe freedom from the map and place us all in chains. It's about what happens when any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and a disregard for the rights of the individual. (NEXT) 95% Deceptive: COVID Vaccine Efficacy & Medical Betrayal How statistical sleights of hand betrayed the heart and soul of medicine. Dr. Benjamin Kaplan-Singer, MD. January 25, 2022 COVID Combat Zones We are in the midst of informational and narrative warfare. All things COVID are active combat zones. Within this, vaccines are the most polarizing, controversial, hot button issue. On one extreme are those who believe COVID vaccines should be mandatory whether that is accomplished by: applying censorship, public shaming, and cancel culture to stifle dissent; making employment, school enrollment, travel, and private/public event participation contingent on vaccination status; threatening to remove licenses from medical professionals; or even going door-to-door with armed enforcers. (Yes, I have heard this suggested on multiple occasions.) On the other extreme are those who believe COVID vaccines are a bioweapon being used for depopulation, soul-harvesting, and to socially engineer a technocratic, totalitarian, panopticon state. Most people are in the center, doing their best to make sense of the risks and benefits of vaccination and early treatment options in order to make informed choices for themselves and their families. On November 16, 2020 NIH announced “Promising Interim Results from Clinical Trial of NIH-Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine” reporting “the candidate was safe and well-tolerated and noted a vaccine efficacy rate of 94.5%.”1 The New England Journal of Medicine published the trial on February 4, 2021 where it reported “94.1% efficacy.”2 On December 10, 2020 Pfizer and BioNTech announced “Publication of Results from Landmark Phase 3 Trial of BNT162b2 COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate in The New England Journal of Medicine,” reporting “the vaccine candidate was well tolerated and demonstrated 95% efficacy in preventing COVID-19 in those without prior infection 7 days or more after the second dose.”3 The New England Journal of Medicine published the trial on December 31, 2020 reporting the vaccine was “95% effective in preventing Covid-19.”4 From “95% effective” it is a short cognitive leap to: When X% of the population vaccinates, COVID will (mostly) disappear When COVID (mostly) disappears life will return to normal(-ish) Vaccination protects the vulnerable People have a social responsibility to vaccinate The social contract means to participate in society you must vaccinate Trials showed the vaccines are safe, therefore the vaccines are safe The benefits of the vaccines clearly outweigh the risks The unvaccinated are overburdening hospitals If you do not vaccinate you are overburdening hospitals Overburdening hospitals kills innocent people The unvaccinated are the ones spreading COVID If you do not vaccinate you are killing someone's grandma or immunocompromised child Trust the science, trust the experts The unvaccinated are spreading misinformation The unvaccinated are anti-science, brainwashed, delusional conspiracy theorists, ignorant, selfish assh*les Anyone who questions vaccines should be shamed, censored, canceled, or penalized Relative Deception The “95% effective” frame comes from Pfizer-BioNTech's published trial and refers to a specific statistical measurement called relative risk reduction Of note, the trials did not look at: the effectiveness of the vaccine on hospitalizations, deaths, or transmission; on the effect of confirmed cases of COVID beyond 2 months post-vaccination; safety beyond 2 months; in addition, the control group did receive vaccination in what is called “crossover” which makes medium and longer term safety data very difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain. Furthermore, for trial results to translate to real world conditions we must make at least two assumptions: that the population being vaccinated is comparable to the population in the study and that the virus does not evolve in a way that reduces vaccine effectiveness. Keep in mind, the absolute risk reduction from these trials refers to the average decreased risk an individual has of getting a confirmed case of COVID (i.e. it does not confer information about hospitalization, death, transmission, nor “long COVID”) within a certain time window after vaccination. Absolute risk reduction is the best available measurement, but only conveys the average reduction in risk for the average individual in the trial. Pfizer-BioNTech's “95% effective” vaccine reduces risk on average by 0.84% Moderna-NIH's “94% effective” vaccine reduces risk on average by by 1.2% Gamaleya's “91% effective” vaccine reduces risk on average by 0.93% J&J's “67% effective” vaccine reduces risk on average by 1.2% AstraZeneca–Oxford's “67% effective” vaccine reduces risk on average by 1.3% As you can clearly see, there is no correlation between the espoused effectiveness of a vaccine based on its relative risk reduction, and how much the vaccine decreases your personal risk of a confirmed case of COVID based on absolute risk reduction. Given the COVID vaccines reduce an individual's risk of a confirmed case within a certain time window after vaccination by 0.84-1.3% – which some people will consider a marginal benefit – obvious questions ensue.
Grape seed extract found to extend lifespan of old mice Chinese Academy of Sciences and Mayo Clinic, December 7, 2021 A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in China and the U.S. has found that injecting procyanidin C1 (PCC1), a chemical found in grape seed extract, into older mice extended their lifespan. In their paper published in the journal Nature Metabolism, the group describes the link between PCC1 and extended lifespan in mice and the experiments they carried out with the material. The researchers screened 46 plant extracts looking for anti-aging capabilities. They came across PCC1. Initial tests during screening showed it reduced the number of senescent cells in the human prostate. Such cells are known to contribute to aging. Intrigued with their results, the researchers tested it further. They found that at low doses it prevented senescent cells from contributing to inflammation, and at higher doses killed them outright without harming other cells. (NEXT) Gratitude may improve your health University of Michigan and University of California, San Francisco, December 6, 2021 Be thankful for what you have—it might improve your physical and mental health, according to a new global study that uses cell phone data. People who were more grateful had lower blood pressure and heart rate, as well as greater feelings of appreciation toward others. The study found that optimism was also linked to health and mental benefits, such as better sleep quality and more positive expectations and reflections. The findings showed that gratitude and optimism are positive psychological dispositions associated with beneficial outcomes. Gratitude highlighted the positive aspects of the day, whereas optimism minimized the negative aspects of the day, the study indicated. In addition, optimism was a better predictor of sleep quality and stress frequency and intensity than gratitude. (NEXT) Higher physical activity is associated with a better metabolic health risk factor profile in menopausal women University of Jyvaskyla (Finland), November 29, 2021 A study conducted at the University of Jyväskylä shows that menopausal transition is associated with unfavourable changes in metabolic health that may be mitigated with a physically active lifestyle. Especially, physical activity alleviated the increase in systolic blood pressure. In the study, the women were divided into three groups based on the change in their menopausal status during the follow-up period and the groups were compared to each other. Body composition, waist circumference, blood pressure, blood lipids and glucose and physical activity were measured twice during the four-year follow-up time. In all groups, the levels of several metabolic health indicators deteriorated. (NEXT) Could glucosamine and chondroitin support a healthy colon? Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, December 6, 2021 Use of the supplements, which are used for joint health support, was associated with a 23% reduction in the risk of colorectal cancer, according to data from the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study published in the International Journal of Cancer . “Results of this study suggest a potential beneficial effect of glucosamine and chondroitin supplementation on risk of colorectal cancer, and further support the previously observed association between use of these supplements and risk of colorectal cancer in the VITAL study,” wrote the researchers. “Additional study is needed to better understand the association between use of glucosamine and chondroitin and risk of colorectal cancer, and the mechanisms by which these supplements may affect risk of colorectal cancer.” (NEXT) Cannabis impacts sperm counts, motility in two generations of mice Washington State University, December 2, 2021 An intense but short-term exposure to cannabis vapor lowered sperm counts and slowed sperm movement, or motility, not only in the directly exposed male mice but also in their sons. The Washington State University study, published in the journal Toxicological Sciences, builds on other human and animal studies, showing that cannabis can impede male reproductive function. The current study uses more controlled circumstances than human studies, which often have to rely on surveys, and is the first known reproductive study to use vaporized whole cannabis in mice, which is the more common form humans use. (NEXT) Study suggests giving kids too many toys stifles their creativity University of Toledo, December 6, 2021 A team of researchers at the University of Toledo has found that children are more creative when they have fewer toys to play with at one time. In their paper published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development, the group describes their observational study of toddlers at play, what they learned and offer some suggestions for parents. The researchers found that the toddlers playing with four toys engaged in more creative activities than did the toddlers who had 16 toys to choose from. They also found, unsurprisingly, that toddlers with fewer options tended to play with each of the toys available to them for a longer amount of time. Much of that additional time, the researchers noted, was taken up with finding news ways to play with them. (OTHER NEWS NEXT) TO WATCH THE VIDEO PART OF THE GARY NULL SHOW GO TO PROGRESSIVERADIONETWORK.COM (NEXT) Rap Sheets for Pfizer and J&J PFIZER Rejected the government for distributing the vaccine… will do it itself CEO Albert Bouria – before reining the closing bell at stock exchange.. stated that those who do not vaccinated will be the weak links in stopping the pandemic Pfizer – second largest drug/biotech co in world – 4th highest earner in vaccines Product safety – it is heart valves were defected and caused a hundred deaths – investigation found company intentionally misled regulators knowing about hazards Celebrex.. in wake of vioxx – painkiller.. admitted in its trials the drug increased heart problems. Settled 894 million – for Celebrex and Bextra (painkiller that causes cardio and GI risks) More recent – 1000 lawsuits or birth defects associated with its drug Zolof… Price fixing – as far back as 1950s with antibiotics. Such as tetracycline Price fixing over the years… AIDS drug, Lipitor (cholesterol drug) In 2016 the Justice Department announced that Pfizer would pay $784 million to settle allegations that it underpaid rebates to Medicaid on two of its drugs. 20 million paid to 4500 doctors for speaking on behalf of its drugs Busted for false Centrum claims for breast and colon health Racketeering fraud over Neurtonin – epilepsy drug Bribery – payments to foreign government officials.. and bribing overseas doctors to increase foreign sales Selling off label Kickbacks from medicare Tax avoidance – using paper work to “relocate” to Ireland , tax haven Repeatedly paid fines for environmental violations at its research and manufacturing plants. In 2009 - dubious distinction of paying the largest-ever criminal fine at the time — $2.3 billion — for fraudulent and illegal promotion of four drugs, including a painkiller marketed at “dangerously high” doses. In 2016, a British regulator levied a $106 million fine against Pfizer for a 2600% increase in the price of a widely prescribed anti-epilepsy drug that increased the National Health Services' expenditures from one year to the next — for a single drug—from $2.5 million to $63 million. Pfizer is the top drug company spender in state elections, even outspending the industry's own lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRM). In 2014 Pfizer launched an effort to take over AstraZeneca that was designed not only to swallow a competitor but also to cut its tax bill by locating the headquarters of the combined operation in Britain. When AstraZeneca resisted the controversial move, Pfizer abandoned the bid. Then in November 2015 Pfizer announced a similar deal, worth $160 billion, to merge with Allergan and move the headquarters of the combined company to Ireland. The plan was dropped when the Obama Administration introduced new tax rules. JOHNSON AND JOHNSON In 2004 J&J agreed to pay up to $90 million to settle lawsuits linking the prescription heartburn medication Propulsid to several hundred deaths and many more cases of cardiac irregularity. During 2009 and 2010 the company had to announce a string of recalls of medications, contact lenses and hip implants. The most serious of these was the massive recall of more than 136 million bottles of liquid Tylenol and Motrin for infants and children after batches of the medications were found to be contaminated with metal particles. The company's handling of the matter was so poor that J&J subsidiary McNeil-PPC became the subject of a criminal investigation and later entered a guilty plea and paid a criminal fine of $20 million and forfeited $5 million. It also came out during a Congressional investigation of the matter that in 2008 J&J had engaged in what was labeled a "phantom recall." When faced with Motrin IB caplets that were not dissolving property, McNeil hired contractors to buy up the products in stores while making no announcement to the public. In 2013 J&J reached a deal with plaintiffs lawyers under which it would pay nearly $2.5 billion in compensation to an estimated 8,000 people who had received flawed hip implants. In 2016 two juries awarded a total of $127 million damages to women who sued J&J claiming that their ovarian cancer was caused by the talc in J&J Baby Powder. An award of $417 million was made by a California jury in 2017 and a verdict of more than $4 billion was awarded in Missouri in 2018 (an appeal court later reduced that to $2.1 billion). The New York Times reported in December 2018 that internal company memos from the 1970s discussed the possibility that its talcum powder could contain asbestos. In 1996 J&J reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission under which the company agreed to stop making what the agency called false claims about the failure rates of condoms in the marketing of its K-Y spermicidal lubricant. In 2010 J&J subsidiaries Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical and Ortho-McNeil-Janssen had to pay $81 million to settle charges that they promoted the epilepsy drug Topamax for uses not approved as safe by the Food and Drug Administration The following year, J&J subsidiary Scios Inc. had to pay $85 million to settle similar charges relating to its heart failure drug Natrecor. In 2013 the Justice Department announced that J&J and several of its subsidiaries would pay more than $2.2 billion in criminal fines and civil settlements to resolve allegations that the company had marketed its anti-psychotic medication Risperdal and other drugs for unapproved uses as well as allegations that they had paid kickbacks to physicians and pharmacists to encourage off-label usage In a related Risperdal civil lawsuit, a jury later awarded $8 billion in damages but a Philadelphia judge reduced that by more than 99 percent to $6.8 million. In 2019 J&J and its subsidiary Ethicon, Inc. agreed to pay over $116 million to 41 states and the District of Columbia to settle litigation alleging deceptive marketing of transvaginal surgical mesh devices. In a separate suit brought by California, a state judge ordered the company to pay $344 million. In 2021 J&J reached an agreement with a group of states under which it would pay $5 billion to resolve litigation brought against its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals alleging improper sale of pain medications, contributing to the national opioid epidemic. In 2001 J&J agreed to pay up to $860 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company had misled consumers into prematurely throwing away disposable Acuvue contact lenses. The suits argued that the company drove up sales of its 1-Day Acuvue soft lenses by recommending that consumers use them only once, even though the product was identical to regular Acuvue lenses, which could be worn as long as two weeks. In 2011 J&J agreed to pay a $21.4 million criminal penalty as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department resolving allegations of improper payments by J&J subsidiaries to government officials in Greece, Poland and Romania in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. (NEXT) Weapons trade booms as profits hit record $531bn in 2020 Swedish think tank says world's 100 biggest arms firms were largely shielded from the effect of the pandemic. AL JAZEERA. 6 Dec 2021 Sales of weapons and military services by the world's 100 biggest arms companies reached a record $531bn in 2020, an increase of 1.3 per cent in real terms compared with the previous year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The Swedish think tank said 2020 marked the sixth consecutive year of sales growth by the top 100 firms, and came even as the global economy shrank. Overall sales were 17 percent higher than in 2015 when it first included data on Chinese firms. “The industry giants were largely shielded by sustained government demand for military goods and services,” Alexandra Marksteiner, researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme, said in a statement on Monday. “In much of the world, military spending grew and some governments even accelerated payments to the arms industry in order to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.” Firms in the United States continue to dominate the industry, with total sales of $285bn from 41 companies accounting for about 54 percent of all arms sales among the 100 biggest companies. The top five companies in the ranking since 2018 have all been based in the US, SIPRI said. Arms sales from the top Chinese firms amounted to an estimated $66.8bn in 2020, 1.5 percent more than in 2019. Chinese firms accounted for 13 percent of the Top 100 arms sales' total, ahead of the United Kingdom, which had the third-largest share. “In recent years, Chinese arms companies have benefited from the country's military modernization programmes and focus on military-civil fusion,” said Nan Tian, SIPRI senior researcher. “They have become some of the most advanced military technology producers in the world.” The seven UK companies recorded arms sales of $37.5bn in 2020, up by 6.2 percent compared with 2019. Arms sales by BAE Systems – the sole European firm in the top 10 – increased by 6.6 percent to $24bn. (NEXT) You'd Better Watch Out: The Surveillance State Has a Naughty List, and You're On It John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead, December 7, 2021 No longer does the all-knowing, all-seeing, jolly Old St. Nick need to rely on antiquated elves on shelves and other seasonal snitches in order to know when you're sleeping or awake, and if you've been naughty or nice. Thanks to the government's almost limitless powers made possible by a domestic army of techno-tyrants, fusion centers and Peeping Toms, Santa can get real-time reports on who's been good or bad this year. This creepy new era of government/corporate spying—in which we're being listened to, watched, tracked, followed, mapped, bought, sold and targeted—makes the NSA's rudimentary phone and metadata surveillance appear almost antiquated in comparison. Tracking you based on your health status. In the age of COVID-19, digital health passports are gaining traction as gatekeepers of a sort, restricting access to travel, entertainment, etc., based on one's vaccine status. Whether or not one has a vaccine passport, however, individuals may still have to prove themselves “healthy” enough to be part of society. For instance, in the wake of Supreme Court rulings that paved the way for police to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes,” government agencies are preparing to use virus-detecting canine squads to carry out mass screenings to detect individuals who may have COVID-19. Researchers claim the COVID-sniffing dogs have a 95% success rate of identifying individuals with the virus (except when they're hungry, tired or distracted). These dogs are also being to trained to ferret out individuals suffering from other health ailments such as cancer. Tracking you based on your face: Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. Coupled with surveillance cameras that blanket the country, facial recognition technology allows the government and its corporate partners to identify and track someone's movements in real-time. One particularly controversial software program created by Clearview AI has been used by police, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to collect photos on social media sitesfor inclusion in a massive facial recognition database. Similarly, biometric software, which relies on one's unique identifiers (fingerprints, irises, voice prints), is becoming the standard for navigating security lines, as well as bypassing digital locks and gaining access to phones, computers, office buildings, etc. In fact, greater numbers of travelers are opting into programs that rely on their biometrics in order to avoid long waits at airport security. Scientists are also developing lasers that can identify and surveil individuals based on their heartbeats, scent and microbiome. Tracking you based on your behavior: Rapid advances in behavioral surveillance are not only making it possible for individuals to be monitored and tracked based on their patterns of movement or behavior, including gait recognition (the way one walks), but have given rise to whole industries that revolve around predicting one's behavior based on data and surveillance patterns and are also shaping the behaviors of whole populations. One smart “anti-riot” surveillance system purports to predict mass riots and unauthorized public events by using artificial intelligence to analyze social media, news sources, surveillance video feeds and public transportation data. Tracking you based on your spending and consumer activities: With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer's, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store—and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we're helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time. Consumer surveillance, by which your activities and data in the physical and online realms are tracked and shared with advertisers, has become big business, a $300 billion industry that routinely harvests your data for profit. Corporations such as Target have not only been tracking and assessing the behavior of their customers, particularly their purchasing patterns, for years, but the retailer has also funded major surveillance in cities across the country and developed behavioral surveillance algorithms that can determine whether someone's mannerisms might fit the profile of a thief. Tracking you based on your public activities: Private corporations in conjunction with police agencies throughout the country have created a web of surveillance that encompasses all major cities in order to monitor large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies. They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of “large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals.” Defense contractors have been at the forefront of this lucrative market. Fusion centers, $330 million-a-year, information-sharing hubs for federal, state and law enforcement agencies, monitor and report such “suspicious” behavior as people buying pallets of bottled water, photographing government buildings, and applying for a pilot's license as “suspicious activity.” Tracking you based on your social media activities: Every move you make, especially on social media, is monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are increasingly investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior. This obsession with social media as a form of surveillance will have some frightening consequences in coming years. As Helen A.S. Popkin, writing for NBC News, observed, “We may very well face a future where algorithms bust people en masse for referencing illegal ‘Game of Thrones' downloads… the new software has the potential to roll, Terminator-style, targeting every social media user with a shameful confession or questionable sense of humor.” Tracking you based on your phone and online activities: Cell phones have become de facto snitches, offering up a steady stream of digital location data on users' movements and travels. Police have used cell-site simulators to carry out mass surveillance of protests without the need for a warrant. Moreover, federal agents can now employ a number of hacking methods in order to gain access to your computer activities and “see” whatever you're seeing on your monitor. Malicious hacking software can also be used to remotely activate cameras and microphones, offering another means of glimpsing into the personal business of a target. Tracking you based on your social network: Not content to merely spy on individuals through their online activity, government agencies are now using surveillance technology to track one's social network, the people you might connect with by phone, text message, email or through social message, in order to ferret out possible criminals. An FBI document obtained by Rolling Stone speaks to the ease with which agents are able to access address book data from Facebook's WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage services from the accounts of targeted individuals and individuals not under investigation who might have a targeted individual within their network. What this creates is a “guilt by association” society in which we are all as guilty as the most culpable person in our address book. Tracking you based on your car: License plate readers are mass surveillance tools that can photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database, then share the data with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies to track the movements of persons in their cars. With tens of thousands of these license plate readers now in operation throughout the country, affixed to overpasses, cop cars and throughout business sectors and residential neighborhoods, it allows police to track vehicles and run the plates through law enforcement databases for abducted children, stolen cars, missing people and wanted fugitives. Of course, the technology is not infallible: there have been numerous incidents in which police have mistakenly relied on license plate data to capture out suspects only to end up detaining innocent people at gunpoint. Tracking you based on your mail: Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans' texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service's law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.” Fusion centers. Smart devices. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps. What these add up to is a world in which, on any given day, the average person is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears. Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother. Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by a vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops. In an age of overcriminalization, mass surveillance, and an appalling lack of protections for our privacy rights, we can all be considered guilty of some transgression or other. So you'd better watch out—you'd better not pout—you'd better not cry—‘cos I'm telling you why: this Christmas, it's the Surveillance State that's coming to town, and you're already on its naughty list. (NEXT) Vitamin D: Government Should Have Promoted to Combat Pandemic Joel S. Hirschhorn, December 06, 2021 There seems to be an endless refusal by the public health establishment to fight the pandemic with the best science-based tools. Instead, they keep pushing vaccines. Great German research provides unequivocal medical evidence that the government should be strongly advocating two actions: 1. Take vitamin D supplements and 2. Have your blood tested for vitamin D. The title for this October 2021 journal article says it all: “COVID-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vitamin D3 Status, and a Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved at 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D3: Results of a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” [25(OH)D3 refers to metabolite of the vitamin in blood] In other words, there is clear evidence that the lower your vitamin D level the greater your risk of dying from COVID infection. Moreover, the data clearly show that you need a blood level of at least 50 ng/mL. Odds are, however, that very, very few people have been tested for their vitamin D level. This is a situation where waiting for testing is not the prudent approach. Vitamin D pills are pretty cheap and it is perfectly safe to take a healthy daily dose to maintain a good immune system. I take 4,000 IUs twice daily. Here are a number of highlights from this research and other sources; the discussion is aimed at informing people with information not provided by Big Media, Big Government and Big Pharma. Vitamin D is an accurate predictor of COVID infection. Its deficiency is just as significant, and perhaps more so, than more commonly discussed underlying medical conditions, including obesity. To be clear, there is a level of vitamin D for an effective strategy at the personal and population level to prevent or mitigate new surges and outbreaks of COVID that are related to reduced vaccine effectiveness and new variants. In the German study, fifteen other studies were cited that showed low vitamin D levels were related to cases of severe COVID infection, and seven studies that found positive results from treating ill patients with the vitamin. The German study noted: “The finding that most SARS-CoV-2 patients admitted to hospitals have vitamin D3 blood levels that are too low is unquestioned even by opponents of vitamin D supplementation.” The German study “followed 1,601 hospitalized patients, 784 who had their vitamin D levels measured within a day after admission and 817 whose vitamin D levels were known before infection. And the researchers also analyzed the long-term average vitamin D3 levels documented for 19 countries. The observed median vitamin D value over all collected study cohorts was 23.2 ng/mL, which is clearly too low to work effectively against COVID.” Why does this vitamin work so well? The German study explained: A main cause of a severe reaction from COVID results from a “cytokine storm.” This refers to the body's immune system releasing too many toxic cytokines as part of the inflammatory response to the virus. Vitamin D is a main regulator of those cells. A low level of the vitamin means a greater risk for a cytokine storm. This is especially pertinent for lung problems from COVID. Other studies On a par with the German study was an important US medical article from May 2021: Vitamin D and Its Potential Benefit for the COVID-19 Pandemic. It noted: “Experimental studies have shown that vitamin D exerts several actions that are thought to be protective against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infectivity and severity. … There are a growing number of data connecting COVID-19 infectivity and severity with vitamin D status, suggesting a potential benefit of vitamin D supplementation for primary prevention or as an adjunctive treatment of COVID-19. … there is no downside to increasing vitamin D intake and having sensible sunlight exposure to maintain serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D at a level of least 30 ng/mL and preferably 40 to 60 ng/mL to minimize the risk of COVID-19 infection and its severity.” This confirms the German study and its finding of a critical vitamin level of 50 ng/mL. Daniel Horowitz has made this correct observation about vitamin D supplementation: “An endless stream of academic research demonstrates that not only would such an approach have worked much better than the vaccines, but rather than coming with sundry known and unknown negative side effects.“ There are now 142 studies vouching for the near-perfect correlation between higher vitamin D levels and better outcomes in COVID patients. From Israel came work that showed 25% of hospitalized COVID patients with vitamin D deficiency died compared to just 3% among those without a deficiency. And those with a deficiency were 14 times more likely to end up with a severe or critical condition. Also from Israel, data on 1,176 patients with COVID infection admitted to the Galilee Medical Center, 253 had vitamin D levels on record and half were vitamin D-deficient. This was the conclusion: “Among hospitalized COVID-19 patients, pre-infection deficiency of vitamin D was associated with increased disease severity and mortality.” Several studies have come from the University of Chicago. One found that a vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/ml) may raise the risk of testing positive for COVID-19, actually a 7.2% chance of testing positive for the virus. And that more than 80% of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient. And Black individuals who had levels of 30 to 40 ng/ml had a 2.64 times higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than people with levels of 40 ng/ml or greater. On the good news side is a new study from Turkish researchers. They focused on getting people's levels over 30 ng/mL with supplements. At that level there was success compared to people without supplementation. This was true even if they had comorbidities. They were able to achieve that blood level within two weeks. Those with no comorbidities and no vitamin D treatment had 1.9-fold increased risk of having hospitalization longer than 8 days compared with cases with both comorbidities and vitamin D treatment. (NEXT) The explosion of Covid PTSD cases is a mental health crisis in the making The Guardian, 7 Dec 2021 When the Covid-19 pandemic began, people working in the trauma field knew the psychological toll would be colossal. In the spring of 2020, I began interviewing professionals about the mental health fallout of the pandemic, specifically its impact on frontline medical staff. During the first wave, two in every five intensive care staff in England reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. That work continued for almost a year, during which time a second wave hit and the initial traumas were exacerbated. But it wasn't only frontline workers who were experiencing trauma symptoms: Covid has posed perhaps the biggest threat to mental health in England since the second world war. Now, at the tail end of 2021, the pandemic is still not over. The NHS forecasts that nationally, there will be 230,000 new cases of PTSD as a result of Covid-19. It is not only social care and medical staff who will be affected. Those who lost loved ones, and those who have been very ill or hospitalised (35% of Covid-19 patients who were put on a ventilator go on to experience extensive symptoms of PTSD) may also suffer. Then there are those living with the effects of domestic and sexual abuse, which may have worsened due to lockdown, and children and young people whose lives changed immeasurably due to our shift to a state of emergency. I imagine that some women whose birthing experiences were marked by the pandemic will also be experiencing symptoms. The explosion of post-traumatic stress disorder is a medical emergency, and a further strain on our creaking services. Without proper action and investment, it is a national mental health crisis in the making.
The Metaverse Is Big Brother in Disguise: Freedom Meted Out by Technological Tyrants By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead November 9, 2021 “The term metaverse, like the term meritocracy, was coined in a sci fi dystopia novel written as cautionary tale. Then techies took metaverse, and technocrats took meritocracy, and enthusiastically adopted what was meant to inspire horror.”—Antonio García Martínez Welcome to the Matrix (i.e. the metaverse), where reality is virtual, freedom is only as free as one's technological overlords allow, and artificial intelligence is slowly rendering humanity unnecessary, inferior and obsolete. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, sees this digital universe—the metaverse—as the next step in our evolutionary transformation from a human-driven society to a technological one. Yet while Zuckerberg's vision for this digital frontier has been met with a certain degree of skepticism, the truth—as journalist Antonio García Martínez concludes—is that we're already living in the metaverse. The metaverse is, in turn, a dystopian meritocracy, where freedom is a conditional construct based on one's worthiness and compliance. In a meritocracy, rights are privileges, afforded to those who have earned them. There can be no tolerance for independence or individuality in a meritocracy, where political correctness is formalized, legalized and institutionalized. Likewise, there can be no true freedom when the ability to express oneself, move about, engage in commerce and function in society is predicated on the extent to which you're willing to “fit in.” We are almost at that stage now. Consider that in our present virtue-signaling world where fascism disguises itself as tolerance, the only way to enjoy even a semblance of freedom is by opting to voluntarily censor yourself, comply, conform and march in lockstep with whatever prevailing views dominate. Fail to do so—by daring to espouse “dangerous” ideas or support unpopular political movements—and you will find yourself shut out of commerce, employment, and society: Facebook will ban you, Twitter will shut you down, Instagram will de-platform you, and your employer will issue ultimatums that force you to choose between your so-called freedoms and economic survival. This is exactly how Corporate America plans to groom us for a world in which “we the people” are unthinking, unresistant, slavishly obedient automatons in bondage to a Deep State policed by computer algorithms. Science fiction has become fact. Twenty-some years after the Wachowskis' iconic film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a blue pill or a red pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making. We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing human beings and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives. In The Matrix, computer programmer Thomas Anderson a.k.a. hacker Neo is wakened from a virtual slumber by Morpheus, a freedom fighter seeking to liberate humanity from a lifelong hibernation state imposed by hyper-advanced artificial intelligence machines that rely on humans as an organic power source. With their minds plugged into a perfectly crafted virtual reality, few humans ever realize they are living in an artificial dream world. Neo is given a choice: to take the red pill, wake up and join the resistance, or take the blue pill, remain asleep and serve as fodder for the powers-that-be. Most people opt for the blue pill. In our case, the blue pill—a one-way ticket to a life sentence in an electronic concentration camp—has been honey-coated to hide the bitter aftertaste, sold to us in the name of expediency and delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets and cell phones. Yet we are not merely in thrall with these technologies that were intended to make our lives easier. We have become enslaved by them. Look around you. Everywhere you turn, people are so addicted to their internet-connected screen devices—smart phones, tablets, computers, televisions—that they can go for hours at a time submerged in a virtual world where human interaction is filtered through the medium of technology. This is not freedom. This is not even progress. This is technological tyranny and iron-fisted control delivered by way of the surveillance state, corporate giants such as Google and Facebook, and government spy agencies such as the National Security Agency. So consumed are we with availing ourselves of all the latest technologies that we have spared barely a thought for the ramifications of our heedless, headlong stumble towards a world in which our abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos is grooming us for a future in which freedom is an illusion. Yet it's not just freedom that hangs in the balance. Humanity itself is on the line. If ever Americans find themselves in bondage to technological tyrants, we will have only ourselves to blame for having forged the chains through our own lassitude, laziness and abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos that render us wholly irrelevant. Indeed, we're fast approaching Philip K. Dick's vision of the future as depicted in the film Minority Report. There, police agencies apprehend criminals before they can commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person's biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance. Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free. The key word here, however, is control. In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have—and even products like chairs, that you don't normally expect to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.” By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.” As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment. It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second. This “connected” industry has become the next big societal transformation, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a watershed moment in technology and culture. Between driverless cars that completely lacking a steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedal, and smart pills embedded with computer chips, sensors, cameras and robots, we are poised to outpace the imaginations of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. (By the way, there is no such thing as a driverless car. Someone or something will be driving, but it won't be you.) These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostatsthat regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch. Nest, Google's suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don't come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state. The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you're on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something's wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you've had a restless night. Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won't be long before these devices are operating entirely independent of their human creators, which poses a whole new set of worries. As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes, “As soon as you allow robots, or software programs, to act freely in the world, they're going to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices that can't be resolved through statistical models. That will be true of self-driving cars, self-flying drones, and battlefield robots, just as it's already true, on a lesser scale, with automated vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.” For instance, just as the robotic vacuum, Roomba, “makes no distinction between a dust bunny and an insect,” weaponized drones will be incapable of distinguishing between a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street. For that matter, how do you defend yourself against a robotic cop—such as the Atlas android being developed by the Pentagon—that has been programmed to respond to any perceived threat with violence? Moreover, it's not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it's our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control. It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains: Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens. In other words, the IoS will rely on technology being able to access and act on your thoughts. Fourtane outlines several trends related to the IoS that are expected to become a reality by 2030: 1: Thoughts become action: using the brain as the interface, for example, users will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination. 2: Sounds will become an extension of the devised virtual reality: users could mimic anyone's voice realistically enough to fool even family members. 3: Real food will become secondary to imagined tastes. A sensory device for your mouth could digitally enhance anything you eat, so that any food can taste like your favorite treat. 4: Smells will become a projection of this virtual reality so that virtual visits, to forests or the countryside for instance, would include experiencing all the natural smells of those places. 5: Total touch: Smartphones with screens will convey the shape and texture of the digital icons and buttons they are pressing. 6: Merged reality: VR game worlds will become indistinguishable from physical reality by 2030. This is the metaverse, wrapped up in the siren-song of convenience and sold to us as the secret to success, entertainment and happiness. It's a false promise, a wicked trap to snare us, with a single objective: total control. George Orwell understood this. Orwell's masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
While it is easy to be distracted by political theater, distressed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and divided over authoritarian lockdowns and mandates, there are still darker forces afoot that cannot—should not—must not be ignored. Here's a news flash from constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead: there are sexual predators on America's police forces. Indeed, when it comes to sex trafficking—the buying and selling of young girls, boys and women for sex—police have become both predators and pimps.
We are living in an age of mayhem, madness and monsters. Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.
Learn more about John W. Whitehead: https://www.rutherford.org This episode is also available as a blog post: http://snooze2awaken.com/2021/09/24/freedom-from-fear-stop-playing-the-governments-mind-games
20 Years of Government-Sponsored Tyranny: The Rise of the Security-Industrial Complex from 9/11 to COVID-19 By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead September 7, 2021 “I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”—Osama bin Laden (October 2001), as reported by CNN What a strange and harrowing road we've walked since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state. Our losses are mounting with every passing day. What began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse. The citizenry's unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has resulted in a society where the nation has been locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded. Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, police violence and the like—all of which have been sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—our constitutional freedoms have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded. The rights embodied in the Constitution, if not already eviscerated, are on life support. Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government's war on the American people, a war that has grown more pronounced since 9/11. Indeed, since the towers fell on 9/11, the U.S. government has posed a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist, extremist or foreign entity ever could. While nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government and its agents have easily killed at least ten times that number of civilians in the U.S. and abroad since 9/11 through its police shootings, SWAT team raids, drone strikes and profit-driven efforts to police the globe, sell weapons to foreign nations (which too often fall into the hands of terrorists), and foment civil unrest in order to keep the security industrial complex gainfully employed. The American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, denied due process, and killed. In allowing ourselves to be distracted by terror drills, foreign wars, color-coded warnings, pandemic lockdowns and other carefully constructed exercises in propaganda, sleight of hand, and obfuscation, we failed to recognize that the U.S. government—the government that was supposed to be a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—has become the enemy of the people. Consider that the government's answer to every problem has been moregovernment—at taxpayer expense—and less individual liberty. Every crisis—manufactured or otherwise—since the nation's early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government to expand its reach and its power at taxpayer expense while limiting our freedoms at every turn: The Great Depression. The World Wars. The 9/11 terror attacks. The COVID-19 pandemic. Viewed in this light, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. Or, to put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts. This is how the emergency state operates, after all, and we should know: after all, we have spent the past 20 years in a state of emergency. From 9/11 to COVID-19, “we the people” have acted the part of the helpless, gullible victims desperately in need of the government to save us from whatever danger threatens. In turn, the government has been all too accommodating and eager while also expanding its power and authority in the so-called name of national security. This is a government that has grown so corrupt, greedy, power-hungry and tyrannical over the course of the past 240-plus years that our constitutional republic has since given way to idiocracy, and representative government has given way to a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens). What this really amounts to is a war on the American people, fought on American soil, funded with taxpayer dollars, and waged with a single-minded determination to use national crises, manufactured or otherwise, in order to transform the American homeland into a battlefield. Indeed, the government's (mis)management of various states of emergency in the past 20 years has spawned a massive security-industrial complex the likes of which have never been seen before. According to the National Priorities Project at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, since 9/11, the United States has spent $21 trillion on “militarization, surveillance, and repression.” Clearly, this is not a government that is a friend to freedom. Rather, this is a government that, in conjunction with its corporate partners, views the citizenry as consumers and bits of data to be bought, sold and traded. This is a government that spies on and treats its people as if they have no right to privacy, especially in their own homes while the freedom to be human is being erased. This is a government that is laying the groundwork to weaponize the public's biomedical data as a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors. Incredibly, a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon's research and development arm DARPA) will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home. This is a government that routinely engages in taxation without representation, whose elected officials lobby for our votes only to ignore us once elected. This is a government comprised of petty bureaucrats, vigilantes masquerading as cops, and faceless technicians. This is a government that railroads taxpayers into financing government programs whose only purpose is to increase the power and wealth of the corporate elite. This is a government—a warring empire—that forces its taxpayers to pay for wars abroad that serve no other purpose except to expand the reach of the military industrial complex. This is a government that subjects its people to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA and VIPR raids on so-called “soft” targets like shopping malls and bus depots by black-clad, Darth Vader look-alikes. This is a government that uses fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, to track the citizenry's movements, record their conversations, and catalogue their transactions. This is a government whose wall-to-wall surveillance has given rise to a suspect society in which the burden of proof has been reversed such that Americans are now assumed guilty until or unless they can prove their innocence. This is a government that treats its people like second-class citizens who have no rights, and is working overtime to stigmatize and dehumanize any and all who do not fit with the government's plans for this country. This is a government that uses free speech zones, roving bubble zones and trespass laws to silence, censor and marginalize Americans and restrict their First Amendment right to speak truth to power. This is a government that persists in renewing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely based on the say-so of the government. This is a government that saddled us with the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy. This is a government that, in direct opposition to the dire warnings of those who founded our country, has allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a standing army by way of programs that transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police. This is a government that has militarized American's domestic police, equipping them with military weapons such as “tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; a million hollow-point bullets; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft,” in addition to armored vehicles, sound cannons and the like. This is a government that has provided cover to police when they shoot and kill unarmed individuals just for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer's mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety. This is a government that has created a Constitution-free zone within 100 miles inland of the border around the United States, paving the way for Border Patrol agents to search people's homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. Nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone. This is a government that treats public school students as if they were prison inmates, enforcing zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, and indoctrinating them with teaching that emphasizes rote memorization and test-taking over learning, synthesizing and critical thinking. This is a government that is operating in the negative on every front: it's spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad. Meanwhile, the nation's sorely neglected infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating. This is a government that has empowered police departments to make a profit at the expense of those they have sworn to protect through the use of asset forfeiture laws, speed traps, and red light cameras. This is a government whose gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—poses a greater threat to the safety and security of the nation than any mass shooter. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines. This is a government that has allowed the presidency to become a dictatorship operating above and beyond the law, regardless of which party is in power. This is a government that treats dissidents, whistleblowers and freedom fighters as enemies of the state. This is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good. This is a government that allows its agents to break laws with immunity while average Americans get the book thrown at them. This is a government that speaks in a language of force. What is this language of force? Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Contempt of cop charges. This is a government that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security, national crises and national emergencies. This is a government that exports violence worldwide, with one of this country's most profitable exports being weapons. Indeed, the United States, the world's largest exporter of arms, has been selling violence to the world in order to prop up the military industrial complex and maintain its endless wars abroad. This is a government that is consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process. This is a government that routinely undermines the Constitution and rides roughshod over the rights of the citizenry, eviscerating individual freedoms so that its own powers can be expanded. This is a government that believes it has the authority to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation, the Constitution be damned.
It's time to bring all our troops home. It's not enough to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, America's longest, bloodiest and most expensive war to date. It's time that we stop policing the globe, stop occupying other countries, and stop waging endless wars.
Learn more about John W. Whitehead: https://www.eurasiareview.com/14072021-the-right-to-be-let-alone-what-to-do-when-covid-strike-force-teams-come-knocking-oped This episode is also available as a blog post: http://snooze2awaken.com/2021/07/21/the-right-to-be-let-alone-what-to-do-when-covid-strike-force-teams-come-knocking
What started out a year ago as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including our own) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, it remains to be seen whether our freedoms will survive the tyranny of the government’s heavy-handed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Databit by databit, we are building our own electronic concentration camps. With every new smart piece of smart technology we acquire, every new app we download, every new photo or post we share online, we are making it that much easier for the government and its corporate partners to identify, track and eventually round us up. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is what it means to live in a suspect society.
Americans are not safe in their homes. Not anymore, at least. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting home invasions in order to pursue traffic violators, seize lawfully-owned weapons, carry out knock-and-talk “chats” with homeowners in the dead of night, “prevent” individuals from harming themselves, provide emergency aid, intervene in the face of imminent danger, serve as community caretakers, chase down individuals suspected of committing misdemeanor crimes, and anything else they can get away with.
The government should not be in the business of killing its citizens. Nevertheless, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, the U.S. government continues to act as judge, jury and executioner over a populace that have been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence.
It’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act. This week's podcast from constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead
Dave Forsyth and John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute discuss how the the government's war on domestic terrorism is a trap. It just an other power grab and increase the police state. Believing in the constitution, free speech and pro life can get you labeled as a domestic terrorists.
While the nation allows itself to be distracted by yet more bread-and-circus politics, the American kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians and corporate thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of the people) continues to suck the American people into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere. This week's podcast from constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead.
Child rape has become Big Business in America. Yet as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is not a problem found only in big cities. It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.
We are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts. In the wake of the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, “domestic terrorism” has become the new poster child for expanding the government’s powers at the expense of civil liberties. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, we are all about to become enemies of the state.
As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State’s tune.
This is what we have been reduced to: A violent mob. A nation on the brink of martial law. A populace under house arrest. A techno-corporate state wielding its power to immobilize huge swaths of the country. And a Constitution in tatters. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we are imploding on multiple fronts, all at once.
A Nation Imploding: Digital Tyranny, Insurrection and Martial Law By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead January 12, 2021 “In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. [Y]ou can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization…filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort … to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love… What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”—Robert F. Kennedy on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. This is what we have been reduced to: A violent mob. A nation on the brink of martial law. A populace under house arrest. A techno-corporate state wielding its power to immobilize huge swaths of the country. And a Constitution in tatters. We are imploding on multiple fronts, all at once. This is what happens when ego, greed and power are allowed to take precedence over liberty, equality and justice. Just to be clear, however: this is not a revolution. This is a ticking time bomb. There is absolutely no excuse for the violence that took place at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Yet no matter which way you look at it, the fallout from this attempted coup could make this worrisome state of affairs even worse. First, you’ve got the president, who has been accused of inciting a riot and now faces a second impeachment and a scandal that could permanently mar his legacy. While the impeachment process itself is a political beast, the question of whether President Trump incited his followers to riot is one that has even the best legal experts debating. Yet as First Amendment scholar David Hudson Jr. explains, for Trump’s rhetoric to be stripped of its free speech protections, “The speaker must intend to and actually use words that rally people to take illegal action. The danger must be imminent—not in the indefinite future. And the words must be uttered in a situation in which violence is likely to happen.” At a minimum, Trump’s actions and words—unstatesmanlike and reckless, by any standards—over the course of his presidency and on Jan. 6 helped cause a simmering pot to boil over. Second, there were the so-called “patriots” who took to the streets because the jailer of their choice didn’t get chosen to knock heads for another four years. Those “Stop the Steal” protesters may have deluded themselves (or been deluded) into believing they were standing for freedom when they stormed the Capitol. However, all they really did was give the Deep State and its corporate partners a chance to pull back the curtain and reveal how little freedom we really have. There is nothing that can be said to justify the actions of those who, armed with metal pipes, chemical irritants, stun guns, and other types of weapons, assaulted and stampeded those in their path. There are limits to what can be done in the so-called name of liberty, and this level of violence—no matter who wields it or what brand of politics or zealotry motivate them—crossed the line. Third, you’ve got the tech giants, who meted out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship. Yet there can be no freedom of speech if social media giants can muzzle whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. As Edward Snowden warned, whether it was warranted or not, the social media ban on President Trump signaled a turning point in the battle for control over digital speech. And that is exactly what is playing out as users, including those who have no ties to the Capitol riots, begin to experience lock outs, suspensions and even deletions of their social media accounts. Remember, the First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to peacefully air viewpoints, vent frustrations, debate and disagree, and generally work through the problems of self-governance. Without that safety mechanism in place, self-censorship increases, discontent festers, foment brews, and violence becomes the default response for resolving disputes, whether with the government or each other. At a minimum, we need more robust protections in place to protect digital expression and a formalized process for challenging digital censorship. Unfortunately, digital censorship is just the beginning. Once you start using social media scores coupled with surveillance capitalism to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society, anything goes. In China, which has been traveling this road for years now, millions of individuals and businesses, blacklisted as “unworthy” based on social media credit scores that grade them based on whether they are “good” citizens, have been banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train. Fourth, you’ve got the police, who normally exceed the constitutional limits restraining them from brutality, surveillance and other excesses. Only this time, despite intelligence indicating that some of the rioters were planning for mayhem, police were outnumbered and ill prepared to deal with the incursion. Investigations underway suggest that some police may even have colluded with the rioters. Certainly, the lack of protocols adopted by the Capitol Police bear an unnerving resemblance to the lack of protocols in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, when police who were supposed to uphold the law and prevent violence failed to do either. In fact, as the Washington Post reports, police “seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields… At one point, police appeared to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend to the injured.” Incredibly, when the first signs of open violence broke out, it was reported that the police chief allegedly instructed his staff to “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.” There’s a pattern emerging if you pay close enough attention: Instead of restoring order, local police stand down. Without fail, what should be an exercise in how to peacefully disagree turns ugly the moment looting, vandalism, violence, intimidation tactics and rioting are introduced into the equation. Tensions rise, violence escalates, and federal armies move in. All that was missing on Jan. 6 was a declaration of martial law. Which brings us to the fifth point, martial law. Given that the nation has been dancing around the fringes of martial law with each national crisis, it won’t take much more to push the country over the edge to a declaration and military lockdown. The rumblings of armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington, D.C., will only serve to heighten tensions, double down on the government’s military response, and light a match to a powder keg state of affairs. With tens of thousands of National Guard troops and federal law enforcement personnel mobilized to lock down Washington, DC, in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots and in advance of the Jan. 20 inauguration, this could be the largest military show-of-force in recent years. So where do we go from here? That all of these events are coming to a head around Martin Luther King Jr. Day is telling. More than 50 years after King was assassinated, America has become a ticking time bomb of racial unrest and injustice, police militarization, surveillance, government corruption and ineptitude, the blowback from a battlefield mindset and endless wars abroad, and a growing economic inequality between the haves and have nots. Making matters worse, modern America has compounded the evils of racism, materialism and militarism with ignorance, intolerance and fear. Callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance and injustice have become hallmarks of our modern age, magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality. “Despite efforts to curb hate speech, eradicate bullying and extend tolerance, a culture of nastiness has metastasized in which meanness is routinely rewarded, and common decency and civility are brushed aside,” observed Teddy Wayne in a New York Times piece on “The Culture of Nastiness.” Every time I read a news headline or flip on the television or open up an email or glance at social media, I run headlong into people consumed with back-biting, partisan politics, sniping, toxic hate, meanness and materialism. Donald Trump is, in many ways, the embodiment of this culture of meanness. Yet as Wayne points out, “Trump is less enabler in chief than a symptom of a free-for-all environment that prizes cutting smears… Social media has normalized casual cruelty.” Whether it’s unfriending or blocking someone on Facebook, tweeting taunts and barbs on Twitter, or merely using cyberspace to bully someone or peddle in gossip, we have become masters in the art of meanness. This culture of meanness has come to characterize many aspects of the nation’s governmental and social policies. “Meanness today is a state of mind,” writes professor Nicolaus Mills in his book The Triumph of Meanness, “the product of a culture of spite and cruelty that has had an enormous impact on us.” This casual cruelty is made possible by a growing polarization within the populace that emphasizes what divides us—race, religion, economic status, sexuality, ancestry, politics, etc.—rather than what unites us: we are all human. This is what writer Anna Quindlen refers to as “the politics of exclusion, what might be thought of as the cult of otherness… It divides the country as surely as the Mason-Dixon line once did. And it makes for mean-spirited and punitive politics and social policy.” This is more than meanness, however. This is the psychopathic mindset adopted by the architects of the Deep State, and it applies equally whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans. Beware, because this kind of psychopathology can spread like a virus among the populace. As an academic study into pathocracy concluded, “[T]yranny does not flourish because perpetuators are helpless and ignorant of their actions. It flourishes because they actively identify with those who promote vicious acts as virtuous.” People don’t simply line up and salute. It is through one’s own personal identification with a given leader, party or social order that they become agents of good or evil. To this end, “we the people” have become “we the police state.” By failing to actively take a stand for good, we become agents of evil. It’s not the person in charge who is solely to blame for the carnage. It’s the populace that looks away from the injustice, that empowers the totalitarian regime, that welcomes the building blocks of tyranny. This realization hit me full-force a few years ago. I had stopped into a bookstore and was struck by all of the books on Hitler, everywhere I turned. Yet had there been no Hitler, there still would have been a Nazi regime. There still would have been gas chambers and concentration camps and a Holocaust. Hitler wasn’t the architect of the Holocaust. He was merely the figurehead. Same goes for the American police state: had there been no Trump or Obama or Bush, there still would have been a police state. There still would have been police shootings and private prisons and endless wars and government pathocracy. Why? Because “we the people” have paved the way for this tyranny to prevail. By turning Hitler into a super-villain who singlehandedly terrorized the world—not so different from how Trump is often depicted—historians have given Hitler’s accomplices (the German government, the citizens that opted for security and order over liberty, the religious institutions that failed to speak out against evil, the individuals who followed orders even when it meant a death sentence for their fellow citizens) a free pass. This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls. None of us who remain silent and impassive in the face of evil, racism, extreme materialism, meanness, intolerance, cruelty, injustice and ignorance get a free pass. Those among us who follow figureheads without question, who turn a blind eye to injustice and turn their backs on need, who march in lockstep with tyrants and bigots, who allow politics to trump principle, who give in to meanness and greed, and who fail to be outraged by the many wrongs being perpetrated in our midst, it is these individuals who must shoulder the blame when the darkness wins. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that,” Martin Luther King Jr. sermonized. The darkness is winning. It’s not just on the world stage we must worry about the darkness winning. The darkness is winning in our communities. It’s winning in our homes, our neighborhoods, our churches and synagogues, and our government bodies. It’s winning in the hearts of men and women the world over who are embracing hatred over love. It’s winning in every new generation that is being raised to care only for themselves, without any sense of moral or civic duty to stand for freedom. John F. Kennedy, killed by an assassin’s bullet five years before King would be similarly executed, spoke of a torch that had been “passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.” Once again, a torch is being passed to a new generation, but this torch is setting the world on fire, burning down the foundations put in place by our ancestors, and igniting all of the ugliest sentiments in our hearts. This fire is not liberating; it is destroying. We are teaching our children all the wrong things: we are teaching them to hate, teaching them to worship false idols (materialism, celebrity, technology, politics), teaching them to prize vain pursuits and superficial ideals over kindness, goodness and depth. We are on the wrong side of the revolution. “If we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution,” advised King, “we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.“ Freedom demands responsibility. Freedom demands that we stop thinking as Democrats and Republicans and start thinking like human beings, or at the very least, Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. dared to dream of a world in which all Americans “would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” He didn’t live to see that dream become a reality. It’s still not a reality. We haven’t dared to dream that dream in such a long time. But imagine… Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to stand up—united—for freedom… Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to speak out—with one voice—against injustice… Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to push back—with the full force of our collective numbers—against the evils of government despotism. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.
Scott and Steve discuss the history and meaning of the term “Big Brother”, starting with its origin in George Orwell’s 1984 to the Big Tech landscape of today. Special guest John W. Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute provides his insight on threats to freedom in our modern age. On the lighter side, the debut of a new segment – Name That Lil’. Learn more about The Rutherford Institute at rutherford.org. Become a Speakcies Supporter at patreon.com/speakcies.
Whether red ants will really fight black ants to the death is a question for the biologists, but as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, it’s an apt analogy of what’s playing out before us on the political scene and a chilling lesson in social engineering.
The nation is being overtaken by an alien threat that invades bodies, alters minds, and transforms freedom-loving people into a mindless, compliant, conforming mob intolerant of anyone who dares to be different, let alone think for themselves. However, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead explains in this week's podcast, while Invasion of the Body Snatchers—the chilling 1956 film directed by Don Siegel—blames its woes on seed pods from outerspace, the seismic societal shift taking place in America owes less to biological warfare reliant on the COVID-19 virus than it does to psychological warfare disguised as a pandemic threat.
If nothing else, 2020 has been a year that has helped most of us clarify what matters most in our lives. John W. Whitehead has a timely column on how to celebrate Thanksgiving in the midst of toxic politics and Covid-19 lockdowns. Sometimes the best remedy for a bad situation is to simply maintain our ability to laugh. This is especially important when it comes to resisting totalitarianism. Annie Holmquist explains how a sense of humor can be an effective form of resistance to those-who-know-best. The pandemic we're currently experiencing is as much a social one as it is a medical one. Both will end eventually, but the social one only ends when the fear subsides. Ryan McMaken says this means that the pandemics are over when we say they are over. Eric Peters from Eric Peters Autos joins me for our weekly discussion of current events. We talk about the importance of hacking at the root when it comes to resisting being assimilated by the Covid-19 Borg. We also take a closer look at the current election melodrama and how to sort fact from fiction in a time of near universal deceit. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/loving-liberty/support
It’s time to end the government’s war on the American people, and that includes military veterans. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, more than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, even more than the perceived threat posed by any single politician, the U.S. government remains a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us. This threat is especially pronounced for America’s military veterans, especially that portion of the population that exercises their First Amendment right to speak out against government wrongdoing.
Nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people. Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, if there is to be any hope of restoring our freedoms and reclaiming control over our government, it will rest not with the politicians but with the people themselves.
It's Election Day and Eric Peters from EPAutos.com joins me to assess the lay of the land. Among other things, we talk about how the vote people cast today will reflect the kind of automobile they'll be able to purchase in 2025. Eric breaks down the regulatory rigamarole for us. We also discuss the concept of being "at war" with coronavirus and what that portends. If this is a "war" effort, then it's pretty clear that war crimes are being committed against the population. Thinking clearly and independently takes real effort. That's especially true when the mass media is actively working to keep us in the dark. Jeff Minnick explains how the deception is most often found in what the media will not report as opposed to what it is obsessing over at the moment. Not to dampen anyone's enthusiasm for today's election but there's a reality that many of us find particularly had to face: A lot of things will not change as a result of the election. John W. Whitehead explains the hard truth of what will continue regardless of who wins. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/loving-liberty/support
Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in a constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is being loosed upon the nation. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we are witnessing the unraveling of the American dream one injustice at a time.
John W. Whitehead The Election Has Already Been Hijacked and the Winner Decided: ‘We the People’ Lose Republicans and Democrats alike fear that the other party will attempt to hijack this election. President Trump is convinced that mail-in ballots are a scam except in Florida, where it’s safe to vote by mail because of its “great Republican governor.” The FBI is worried about foreign hackers continuing to target and exploit vulnerabilities in the nation’s electoral system, sowing distrust about the parties, the process and the outcome. I, on the other hand, am not overly worried: after all, the voting booths have already been hijacked by a political elite comprised of Republicans and Democrats who are determined to retain power at all costs. The outcome is a foregone conclusion: the Deep State will win and “we the people” will lose. The damage has already been done. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has been tasked with helping to “secure” the elections and protect the nation against cyberattacks, is not exactly an agency known for its adherence to freedom principles. (continue reading) John Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law, human rights and popular culture. Widely recognized as one of the nation’s most vocal and involved civil liberties attorneys, Whitehead’s approach to civil liberties issues has earned him numerous accolades and accomplishments, including the Hungarian Medal of Freedom and the Milner S. Ball Lifetime Achievement Award for “[his] decades of difficult and important work, as well as [his] impeccable integrity in defending civil liberties for all.” As nationally syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff observed about Whitehead: “John Whitehead is not only one of the nation’s most consistent and persistent civil libertarians. He is also a remarkably perceptive illustrator of our popular culture, its insights and dangers. I often believe that John Whitehead is channeling the principles of James Madison, who would be very proud of him.” Show highlights: No one is the savior of our liberties, not even Donald Trump The Deep State and the corruption in Washington, DC; we live in a money elite, they are running the show; the money always wins; since Covid-19 hit, the 12 richest people in the world have won big We ought to distrust all those who are in power How far back does this corruption go in the US Project Paper Clip The rampant censorship in America The power of your local government and the importance of getting involved Who pulled off the COVID-19 Scamdemic? and more! Visit website
(00:00-10:07): Chiefs are Superbowl champs for the first time in their history. Brian and Ian listen to their favorite commercial, and touch briefly on the power of sentimental ads. John W. Whitehead writes “The Super Bowl’s Biggest Losers: The Boys and Girls Being Sold for Sex 20 Times a Day.” (10:07-29:52): We are joined by Dr. Curtis J. Sartor, the Associate Vice President for Diversity & Spiritual Development, Interim Architecture Department Chair and tenured full Professor at Judson University. He previously was the Dean of the School of Art, Design & Architecture at Judson University. He talks about how to attract and cultivate a variety of demographics and culture at Judson. He then touches on how to advance that diverse mentality into the community as well as the college. His church, Come As You Are Church, aims to reach the homeless and elderly on a community level by sharing meals with the congregation. (29:52-39:49): ShaRhonda Knott-Dawson writes “White People: Here’s Why Moving to a “Good School” in a “Good Neighborhood” Is Racist” in Chicago Unheard. Brian and Ian discuss how subtle actions of racial motivation can create prejudicial tendencies. (40:53-50:51): Sticking with the Super Bowl theme, Mikaela Matthew writes “Demi Lovato Shares How God Gets Her Through Difficult Times” in Christian Headlines. Brian and Ian discuss how refreshing it is to hear pop stars credit God for being present during lamenting times. (50:51-1:01:01): There is a silent tragedy that is unfolding today in our homes and concerns our most precious jewels: our children. Our children are in a devastating emotional state! In the last 15 years, researchers have given us increasingly alarming statistics on a sharp and steady increase in childhood mental illness that is now reaching epidemic proportions. (1:01:01-1:11:25): “In an angry America, a new remedy emerges: Compassion” writes Michelle Boorstein in the Washington Post. Brian and Ian talk about the power of compassion, not just in the church, but in the community around us. How do we understand discourse and argumentative nature? (1:11:25-1:18:25): Brian and Ian’s “Weird Stuff We Found on the Internet”: Apparently, there is a high concentration of idiots on the road, plus police dogs are now subject to home invasion. Gym partners asked to be accomplices didn’t...work out, and don’t text and trot. Meanwhile, Disney now owns a fight club. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Tom and Kathryn are back, so of course the topic on everyone's mind is Tom's fashion sense. Unable to dwell on that for very long, we then moved onto what seems like an epidemic of child sex trafficking, because coming home from a vacation makes you seek out unhappiness apparently.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Mind Renewed : Thinking Christianly in a New World Order
"We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail… [J.] Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him." (US President Harry S. Truman) So begins a recent commentary by our guest for this Good Friday edition of TMR, the constitutional attorney and author John. W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organisation headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia. With his recent article—"America's Gestapo : The FBI's Reign of Terror"—as our focus, we discuss the significance of the FBI in the seemingly-inexorable transformation of the USA into a police state, and consider the example of Jesus as an activist in Roman-occupied Palestine. (For show notes please visit http://themindrenewed.com)