Since leaving America August 2006, I have traveled to sixteen countries. A great deal has happened. This site is to share my thoughts, photos, music, writings, travel experiences, and developing political/social commentary with you. I hope you find it interesting and informative.
Please watch as much of the above video as you can handle. Dancing around the room is not only permitted, it is highly recommended!
Here are the lyrics to this happy bit of pop music fluff . . .
A recent article in RT tells us about the song. “The track was recorded by 11-year-old Svetlana Chertischeva, known as Betsy, and 12-year-old Maria Yankovskaya, two rising stars of Russian music. Released in November, the track was initially popular among elementary and middle schoolers, but later gained popularity among adults, and has since been featured in a number of meme videos.”
Okay . . . now the juicy part.
A member of the European Parliament from Germany, former school teacher turned social psychologist/politician Nela Riehl, is claiming: “’Sigma Boy’ is a viral Russian trope used on social media, which communicates patriarchal and pro-Russian worldviews, only one example of Russian infiltration of popular discourse through social media.”
It appears to me that we have to read an awful lot into these vacuous lyrics, quite typical of pop music faire, to find the cultural abominations Riehl is referring to. It seems like a bit of a stretch, for example, that ‘Skittles’ and ‘Snickers’ are Trojan horses for embedding love of Russia and deification of Putin into the minds of young music fans. And ‘get into my Bentley, get into my Beauty Box’ are seeds to destroy the West’s embrace of neoliberalism and love of democracy? Are we to regard ‘And you’ll make me yours someday’ a forecast of some sort of demon possession, the demon being Russian culture?
Riehl is so off-the-rails, I have to wonder if the brain damage is permanent or not. Is there any way to “unhinge” such a whacko?
Evidence of this pandemic of lunacy is also everywhere here in the US. Hatred of Russia and Vladimir Putin has reached epic levels. For anything resembling normalcy and productivity to return to our national conversation — and hopefully our foreign policy — we as a nation must return to our senses. Those would be the five senses which allow us to view and embrace reality.
The challenge is formidable. I do regular postings related to my War Is Making Us Poor campaign on social media. Sometimes the responses from Americans is discouraging, if not shocking. I posted my video indictment of Vlodymyr Zelensky on over 110 allegedly progressive Facebook political groups and got comments like . . .
“This is russian propaganda”
“This is utter bullshit. Fuck Russia, Fuck Putin, Slava Ukraini”
“Hey..shit poster… so what part of Russia are you from ??”
“This is one of the more disgusting posts I’ve seen recently. How would you have played the hand Putin dealt him? Ukraine invaded Russia? Get real.”
“This reads as a translation from a Putin propaganda hit piece. It’s ridiculous.”
“This needs to be taken down! ASAP”
“You’re fucking insane.”
“This site seems to have been taken over by Meta trolls”
Obviously, animus toward Russia is running very high. Here are some stats from Pew Research Center . . .
“Roughly six-in-ten Americans (61%) label Russia an enemy of the U.S.”
“Americans overwhelmingly rate Putin negatively: 88% say they do not have confidence in the Russian president to do the right thing regarding world affairs.”
These negative sentiments are shared across party lines . . .
“Republicans and Democrats are about equally likely to say they view Russia unfavorably (88% vs. 87%), although Democrats are more likely to have very unfavorable opinions of Russia.”
No doubt about it. The Deep State campaign to smear Putin and create fear and hatred of Russia has been extremely effective.
And I worry . . .
There’s a threshold where brainwashing becomes more of a lobotomy and is irreversible. I fear many Americans have crossed that threshold and are permanent residents of Hate-Russia-La-La-Land. There may be no effective remedy.
We might be able to mitigate the impact of such colossal ignorance. I’m just not sure we can mass produce enough of these . . .
It’s like reverence for innocence. Well, yes, kids sure are sweet, unsullied, open, positive, vibrant, curious. They wear their innocence well and we all envy their abandon. But we’re protecting them. So we bear all the risks and potential for endangerment. They play. We watch the playground to make sure there are no perverts, rabid dogs, or kidnappers.
As adults, it’s a different story. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ and ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’ work for a while . . . until the axe falls. Or the bill comes due. Or the door is kicked down in the middle of the night. Being stupidly innocent as an adult can bring heartache and tragedy, in fact, typically does. While embracing wholesome open-mindedness and holistic trust, so as to not preclude learning and discovery, we are also well-advised to maintain a wary eye for the sham, the con, the manipulation, the lie, the entire range of possible mischief humans are capable of.
From what I now see reported on the news, such prudence is no longer at all possible. Evidence would suggest that a dam has been breached. A tsunami of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, deep fakes, propaganda, calculated deceptions, accompanied by a bottomless barrel of salacious scandals and mindless trivia, has flooded the once-habitable terrain of public discourse and understanding. We are drowning in bullshit.
It shows. People are becoming confused, erratic, and increasingly desperate. We’re being constantly bombarded with bad news, rendering us numb, dumb, wary and increasingly frightened. It seems that folks are stressed out to the max. We have the firing squad of 24/7 if-it-bleeds-it-leads news coming at us from every direction. We’re surrounded by crises, personal, political, national, international. It’s beyond overwhelming.
This makes us hunger for both relief and anything that will make sense out of the chaos.
Which renders many, if not most people, vulnerable to brainwashing.
I recently saw a compilation of talking heads relentlessly hammering home completely vaporous, frankly ridiculous but engaging, arresting, highly charged, and clearly effective memes. I presume that a majority of citizens, already reeling and punch drunk from years of propaganda, hearts and minds filled with hatred and fear, stumbling about in the house of mirrors that media has become, react to a frightening degree by buying into what these people are saying. Repetition is like kickboxing. Or like kneading dough. It’s just a matter of time before the target succumbs to persistence and becomes a subdued and unresisting lump, next to be carted off on a stretcher or put in the oven. Or in the case of the TV/smart phone-addicted public, put in a coma-like trance, a hypnotic stupor, an obedient oblivion. Cut to KFC commercial or ad for a miracle age spots remedy. Launch the cruise missiles.
Here’s the video (if you can handle epic levels of tedious repetition).
Seriously? We are fine with media messaging that’s like Chinese water torture? To have our brainwaves flat-lined by nonsensical, hyperventilating, Orwellian vapor. This is not news reporting. To think so is like mistaking a metronome for a symphony orchestra.
But that’s where we’re at.
To suggest for even a moment that somehow this state of mental paralysis came about organically, the result of societal entropy or personal devolution — as if random impulse, modernity, complexity, technology, solar flares, pollen, coronavirus, climate change, over-the-counter drugs, 5G, GMOs, aspartame, and ozone depletion, randomly interacted and the default became wholesale stupidity — is both foolhardy and extremely dangerous. It didn’t just happen. It is part of a plan. That plan is about control and oppression, gross manipulation and enslavement.
Let’s give credit where it’s due. Our manipulators, our oppressors, our autocratic puppet masters, are phenomenal at what they do. They’re organized; they’ve got the bucks; they’ve gained a total monopoly over the seats of power and the social/political levers of control; they are unencumbered by ambivalence, morals, common decency; they are merciless, ruthless, focused.
For just a single but highly representative example, read this article about how the lunatic power elite work to shape the entire narrative about the conflict in Ukraine.
Now, take that level of calculated deceit, cold manipulation, audacity, unscrupulousness, ruthlessness, arrogance, pernicious intent, disdain for we the people, and scornful sense of entitlement, then replicate it over the entire spectrum of social/political ills, crises, and dysfunction — the things we whine about and debate constantly: the economy, wealth inequality, corporate welfare, socialism for corporations and Wall Street, our deteriorating education system, our crumbling infrastructure, our fake democracy, the ruling elite-controlled two-party duopoly, Covid-19 “pandemic”, our entire shameful health care system, the destruction of labor unions, the criminalizing of dissent, the marginalization and disempowerment of minorities, the Fed, the CDC, the FDA, the FCC, censorship, citizen surveillance, our two-tier justice system, and perhaps the worst and most egregious of them all, the expanding militarization of our country and its foolhardy, suicidal pursuit of world conquest.
Yes, just imagine all of this contention as the product of sociopaths and power-drunk bullies, who have no sense of duty to country, or responsibility to you and I normal everyday citizens, smug self-anointed sociopathic despots who are incapable of conceiving of, inaugurating, and promoting anything which doesn’t serve the narrow agenda of an ultra-wealthy ruling aristocratic class — truly sinister malefactors who live and breathe to humiliate and subjugate others, abuse their power and privilege, gain advantage and mount incomprehensible piles of money and affluence, regardless of the harm and suffering it causes everyone else.
Yes, imagine that!
But wait! . . . you don’t have to imagine it after all. You just have to look around you.
Because that is exactly what is going on.
This is what we end up with when WE THE PEOPLE lose control of our country.
This is what we end up with when self-serving oligarchs control the narrative.
This is what we end up with when fed a 24/7 diet of lies and propaganda.
Now the question is: What can we do?
The answer couldn’t be simpler. Or more difficult.
This is where improbable teams up with impossible. Because the only way to stop this is through individual responsibility — everyday citizens taking charge, both of their own lives and our government. The existing private and public institutions which have engineered this juggernaut of blind ignorance and social control surely are not going to change. The puppets of the oligarchy we dutifully “elect” to represent we the people know who butters their bread. They and their ruling elite sponsors reap huge rewards from keeping us dumb and misinformed. So if anything is going to reverse this disastrous course, it will be us as individuals, hopefully working collectively to provide support and reinforcement, wielding the power of ‘NO’.
Obviously, this is a very tall order, as epic in scale as apocalyptic it is to be on the present course. We have to be honest. Perhaps it’s impossible. Old habits die hard. For most of our lives, we everyday folks, busy with their personal lives and trusting by nature, have relied on what we thought were worthy, reliable government spokespersons, TV news anchors, elected representatives, thought leaders, even celebrities, for the honest scoop on the specific events going on across our nation, more generally for our broad understanding of the world out there beyond our immediate reach. But slowly, imperceptibly, they turned on us. They increasingly recited from a intentionally faulty script, designed to hide the truth and substitute a fabricated reality. This was calculated — correctly so — to make us easily manipulable, often voting and behaving against our own interests. They fooled us so many times, we lost count and became completely detached from reality. Evidence? Look at what we put up with as citizens. We are treated abysmally, our government no longer works for us, and somehow we maintain pride in a nation which regards us as some necessary evil it needs to patronize with hollow promises and fairy tales about exceptionalism and greatness.
Most Americans now are totally brainwashed. We everyday citizens have no idea that those who we were certain we could trust are now lying to us with every breath they take. Any resemblance between what we are told and reality is a coincidence, or a convenience because it just happens to fit with the web of lies which surrounds it.
That’s hard for anyone to swallow. It’s depressing, demoralizing, unsettling, infuriating. Worse, “staying informed” has always been and still is so convenient. Just flip on the News at 6, read Time or Newsweek or USA Today. Scroll through Yahoo News on a smartphone. These wonderful trusted sources look and feel as they always have. But now they’re all streams of toxic misinformation and propaganda. And most people have no clue.
So quite honestly, I’m not very optimistic.
But of one thing I’m sure. We can stop this. We know what to do.
The only question is: Will we develop the presence of mind and resolve to . . . ?
Some of our greatest traditions come out of the Wild West, a rough-and-tumble time that forged America into the greatest country in the world. A formative time that gave Americans that hard no-nonsense edge that is universally respected far and wide.
Moreover, some would say that the cowboy ethic is still alive and well and drives not only our dealings with the pitiable nullities who aren’t fortunate enough to live here in the “land of the free, home of the brave” — you know, foreigners — but is the key to understanding ourselves, what makes us tick.
So here’s a little yarn for you all to enjoy and get educated with. There will be a question at the end — only one — but I know the kind of smart people who would read something like this here at my website. I have no doubt you’ll all get it right. Or set me straight if I’ve got it wrong.
Here goes.
It was late summer 1859. Billy Balalaika had just arrived in town and was sitting at the bar of its only tavern. The place was noisy, packed with a lot of grisly fellows wearing dusty chaps and smelling like they hadn’t had a bath in three months — because they hadn’t.
Billy was the only guy in the place wearing a black hat. Everyone else had a white hat. That was a weird story in itself. Billy had owned a beautiful stetson he had bought in Durango but a strong gust of wind had blown it into a ravine. So the first thing he tried to do when he got to town was buy a new hat.
The store had an excellent selection. All white. He chose one but the lass at the store said, “Sorry. Can’t sell you that.” She reached behind the counter and pulled out a black hat, the one he was wearing right now.
“But I want a white hat.”
“Can’t do it. I’ve been given instructions. We know who you are. It’s this black hat or no hat.”
Billy was baffled. But he needed a hat.
So here he sat, brand new black hat tipped back on his head, sitting at the bar, sipping a beer, chatting it up with the bartender, trying make conversation with the two smelly blokes on either side.
Making a dramatic entrance that commanded everyone’s attention, in walked Sam Unkel, the roughest, toughest, meanest badass west of Topeka.
Sam drew his gun, walked right up to the bar, roughly turned Billy around, and pointed his six-shooter right at Billy’s face.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Are you sure you have the right person? I’m Billy Balalaika.”
“I know who you are and what you’ve done. Everything that’s gone wrong in this town is your fault. Everything that’s wrong with this world is your fault. So you’re going to die. Right now.”
Billy knew he wasn’t kidding. This guy was obviously insane. His reputation had proceeded him. He had killed many others, most of them innocent people. Sam thrived on being the roughest, toughest, meanest badass around. He was a very sick man.
Billy managed to keep his composure.
“Listen. I’m just having a beer. Why don’t you just sit down and enjoy the evening. Look at this place. Full of fine people, just having a little fun after a hard day’s work.”
“Nope. I’m going to kill you. I hate you. And everyone in this town hates you. I’ve told them all how evil you are. In fact, the only reason I ain’t pulled this trigger yet, is I want to see you suffer. I want to see you squirm and cry and beg. When I’ve had enough of your groveling, then I’m going to splatter your f*cking brains all over that mirror behind the bar.”
It was now apparent there was no reasoning with this lunatic.
Billy then did something so amazing, some people these days would call it “playing three-dimensional chess.”
Billy smiled at Sam Unkel, then at full volume in a beautiful operatic baritone broke into the Russian national anthem — IN RUSSIAN!
Sam, of course, had no idea what he was hearing. But it completely gobsmacked him. For the briefest second, his mind wandered as he tried to process what was going on.
In that instant, Billy drew his own weapon, and fired a perfect shot which blew Sam’s hand clean off. The hand, still grasping the Sam Unkel’s weapon, flew across the room and landed in the middle of a table where a poker game was in progress.
Sam, the roughest, toughest, meanest badass around, went running out of the tavern, screaming in pain, blood shooting out of the stump, all over his beautiful white hat. He didn’t die. But he’s still trying to learn to shoot left-handed.
Billy finished his beer. The bartended comped his drinks. Billy tossed his black hat in the trash on the way out the door. He left town in the morning.
That’s my tale of the wild west, folks. Wasn’t that fun?
Okay, here’s the question. Ready?
We know who fired the only bullet. But who started the gunfight?
They say money makes the world go round. Actually the world makes money go round.
They say the truth will set you free. Ask Julian Assange about that.
Liberals are the messengers of a progressive vision for the future, which is why they embrace war, promote lies about Russia and China, and look to the CIA and other intelligence agencies for guidance and protection.
Conservatives believe in the rock-solid principles of individuality, less government interference and control, and fiscal responsibility, as they demand the government run up colossal deficits to subsidize them and protect their businesses from competition.
The U.S. is the beacon of democracy, respect for the rule of law, self-determination and citizen empowerment in the world, which is why it topples other governments, removes democratically-elected leaders and replaces them with despots.
We have policing by media watchdogs to stamp out fake news, and that effort has itself become fake news.
We must go to war to guarantee the peace. Do I even have to unpack that one to show how patently absurd it is?
I could go on. But the point is, any and all interaction or communication among individuals is predicated on the idea that everyone is acting in good faith, that to the best of their abilities, people are being forthright and honest. Absolutely nothing can be discussed or agreed upon if the parties to the discussion are lying.
Yet, the bar has sunk so low, we now ASSUME others are being deceptive. The idea of an honest politician is an oxymoron. We expect everyone to be bending the truth as far as they can get away with it. We are considered foolish and reckless if we’re not constantly on guard, incredulous, suspicious, always looking for the “angle”, trying to figure out what’s really being said, or what the hidden agenda is. In more innocent times, we could easily spot the exaggeration, the “white lie”, the “friendly persuasion” going down. White lies are now every shade of gray, and public announcements a blurry opaque fog, a smoke screen in a house of mirrors.
Yes, we’re buried in mountains of bullsh*t, propaganda, fake this, fake that, deep fakes, false flags, manufactured crises. Lies are flaunted openly with brash impudence and total impunity, even celebrated. Being a great liar, if not openly lauded, seems to be quietly admired. There are best-selling books on how to jockey, manipulate, deceive, con your way to the top. Success justifies anything it takes to get there. When our “The Art of the Deal” 45th POTUS was caught telling 504 lies in a single day, I frankly wasn’t sure how we were supposed to react. Frown? Get angry? Shake our heads in disbelief? Nod and chuckle? Shrug and check the sports page?
Which makes what I do truly a thankless task, an exercise in futility. I actually try to the best of my ability to be truthful, accurate, informative. As do a host of others whom I religiously follow and admire. Most of the criticism I get are attacks on my integrity, questions about my “real motives”, speculations about my hidden agenda, allegations questioning my affiliations and loyalties. No one bothers to talk about the ideas.
That’s the world we live in. It is what it isn’t. It’s probably not what it appears to be. Truth is relative. Facts belong to the highest bidder.
Tragically, I concede: it’s not harsh to criticize someone for not believing anything anymore. At one time, being so closed-minded, so obdurate, so impregnable, so pig-headed, would be judged cynical, negative, pessimistic. Now it’s considered practical, necessary for survival, the only way to deal with the reality of post-modern dystopia.
Truth is negotiable.
A man’s word is worthless.
Scientists and politicians are for sale.
And good luck trying to fix it.
Because you’re on your own.
Seriously, who can you trust?
So … is there a solution to this mess? Anything we can do to reverse this descent into cognitive chaos?
Killer bees will overwhelm us and end the human race!
Believe it?
There’s a perfect parallel here. This ridiculous scare headline is on a par with the coronavirus panic that’s been manufactured by a new set of bedfellows writhing in a clusterf*ck of hypocrisy and deception: power-hungry government autocrats, the pharmaceutical industry, compromised agencies of the United Nations, a mega-wealthy computer industry mediocrity claiming divine expertise in medical matters, technocratic futurists who hope to game a paradigm-shift — a reset — into global social control, and the usual court jesters and sycophants who inject their mercenary amorality into any opportunity to make a buck.
Protective wear should be worn 24 hoursa day, even while sleeping. Killer bees, like surveillance cameras, are everywhere.
Yes, people have died from being stung by killer bees. Many people have died due to hyper-sensitivity to stings by more ordinary bees. No one likes getting stung by bees. This does not equate to a massive invasion and humanity-ending assault by bees of any level of aggression. Though if there were money to be made, I have no doubt we’d be treated to a Killer Bee psy-ops and everyone would be looking like this guy to go shopping or to get bee repellant vaccine shots.
A state of emergency would be declared and to “protect us from ourselves”, anyone not wearing the appropriate netting would be fined and/or arrested. Someone taking the garbage out to the curb on collection day, not dressed head-to-toe like they were Netman, the latest Marvel Comics superhero, would be vilified and attacked by shovel-wielding neighbors.
Sound at all familiar? Is it really so much of a stretch?
So what’s going on with the “pandemic”? And please let’s not resort to labels and ideological frameworks. This is not right wing or left wing. It’s not Republican or Democrat. It’s authoritarianism making a beeline for tyranny, and whether it’s “fascism” or “Trumpism” or “communism” or “corporatism” isn’t really relevant. Let’s just call this what it is.
How do we know? How do we know a real virus has been blown up into a fake pandemic?
Because there are many success stories across the globe fighting this latest disease, the latest pathogenic mischief-maker off the assembly line of misery that’s been churning away the entire course of recorded history. You probably won’t hear about these success stories in the monotone narrative of Covid-19 coverage in the U.S. media. I source news from all over the world and trust me, what’s going on in many other countries is nothing like what is unfolding in the United States of Dysfunction.
I’ll mention two from personal experience. Verifiable because I can see them with my own eyes. I’ve cited the first in public comments and various articles before . . .
Total deaths in Japan 2019: 1.38 million.
Total deaths in Japan 2020: 1.36 million.
Yes, in the raging scourge of a life-threatening coronavirus PANDEMIC, fewer people died in Japan than the year before the world was shrouded in a cloud of Covid-19 “killer bees”.
Secondly, two days ago, my wife talked to a Chinese friend, WHO LIVES IN CHINA. You know, the Kung Flu country, the Wuhan Virus nation of super-spreaders. His report: There’s now not a single case of Covid-19 in Beijing. NOT A SINGLE CASE! The guy is not political. He has no agenda. He’s not a member of the Communist Party there. He’s just stating the facts. His life is COMPLETELY NORMAL.
Actually, my life is completely normal, if you consider eating rice and tofu everyday normal.
Looking now at the big picture, what are we dealing with?
First, recognize that the statistics we’re fed are very suspect. The WHO instructed every nation to attribute the death of anyone who tests positive for the dread virus, whose death can’t be definitively proven to some other cause, as a Covid-19 casualty. So unless you’ve been hit by a bus or fallen into an erupting volcano, if there are Covid-19 antibodies in your system when you die, then that’s a Covid-19 death. Mind you, the whole mechanism for determining if you’re a “case” — meaning you test positive — is totally flawed. The PCR test everyone is using, according to the man himself WHO DESIGNED THE TEST, is inappropriate for this type of diagnosis and unreliable for detection and confirmation of Covid-19 infection.
Then there’s the conflation of ‘cases’ and ‘positive tests’. New cases are reported everyday, with ominous graphics and somber tones by talking heads. But a person can test positive, be completely healthy and unaffected, not even be contagious, and never ever experience any negative consequences from the presence of the virus in their system. For example, we all normally have a number of cancer cells in our bodies and bloodstreams. Our immune system keeps them in check, so we never come down with cancer. The mere detectable presence of a pathogen doesn’t say anything definitive about the onset of a disease. To report anyone who tests positive from a test that isn’t reliable in the first place, as a “case” — letting it be assumed they’re sick, coughing, wheezing, in a hospital, fighting for their lives — is very misleading.
Having said all that, let’s take a look at the official numbers, even though they are at best inaccurate and thus give a very skewed picture of what’s actually going on, with the errors contributing significantly to a sense of crisis and public panic.
It is reported as of today that there are 176,784,418 CASES of Covid-19. The World Population Clock says there are 7.77 billion people in the world. This means, supposedly only 2.275% of the world has even tested positive for the new “plague”. Many, if not most of these folks, aren’t even sick. Now, again recognizing that the number of deaths from Covid-19 stands at 3,826,567. This means .0129% of the world’s people have allegedly DIED of Covid-19, over almost 1 1/2 years.
For some perspective: Do you know how many people died during the real Plague? Well, ONE-THIRD of the population of London died in ONE SUMMER! Between 25,000,000 and 50,000,000 people died in Europe! That come to 30% TO 60% of everyone in Europe at the time. Deaths worldwide are estimated between 75 and 100 million. This was when the total population of the world was only 450 million.
That’s a REAL pandemic! Calling what’s going on now a pandemic is a total distortion of reality. Unfortunately, it’s working.
It could be argued that what we’re doing now is using modern medicine to prevent what might be a potential pandemic. Fine. A potential for something is not the same as the thing itself. There’s a potential the Earth will be struck by a huge asteroid. That’s not the same as the Earth being struck by a huge asteroid. If they made a sudden BREAKING NEWS announcement that the Earth had been hit by an asteroid, because some scientist estimated there was a 3 in 10 billion chance it could happen, they’d be lying. LYING!
Is Covid-19 dangerous? Granted, there are reality-deniers out there who say Covid-19 doesn’t even exist. Well, it’s real. Again just taking the inflated official numbers, 3,826,567 died out of 176,784,418 “cases” of infection. That’s .216% of supposedly infected people actually dying from it. Not 2% . . . but .2%!
The WHO reports the typical death rate from a typical influenza at .1% There are strains of influenza — for example H3N2 classified as a Type A strain — which can be much more lethal. So it looks like Covid-19 is slightly more dangerous than an average case of the flu. Caution and prudence are advised. Every possible treatment should be ready and waiting for anyone who actually contracts the disease.
But Covid-19 is NOT Ebola, Black Death, Hepatitis C, or nuclear war.
The startling thing, for me anyway, is that according to “official statistics” dished out by the CDC, the Covid-19 case fatality rate in the U.S. is 3.1%. What? 15 times what it is internationally? Something is wrong. Either the reporting system is screwed up, resulting in completely out-of-whack stats, or health care there is so abysmal, many treatable cases are resulting in unnecessary death. Somebody is not doing their job!
The people who are doing their job and making a killing along the way, are the big wigs running the pharmaceutical companies. And enough is never enough when there’s a raging pandemic of greed. The head of Pfizer says people who have been fully vaccinated with their EXPERIMENTAL and partially tested vaccine, will need a “booster” in 12 months. You see where this is headed?
Things here in Japan are good. People are sane, considerate of others, the government is very careful and measured in everything they’re doing to deal with Covid-19. But the U.S. is a whole different story.
The simple truth — and I’m not going to defend this with charts and piles of statistics because if you don’t even suspect there’s a problem in America or believe that (damn him) it’s all Trump’s fault, there’s no getting through to you anyway — yes, the simple, insulting, appalling, sickening truth is that a completely manageable health crisis has been willfully mishandled, the chaos and calculated social and economic disruption has been created and exploited purely for two obvious sinister intents: 1) bleeding more money out of our economy and us, its citizens; 2) more control, tyranny, and oppression, in order to silence any opposition or resistance to future plunder, i.e. accelerating the transfer of wealth and power upwards to the ruling elite.
So what can we do?
Understand that this whole manufactured crisis is not some fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants affair. It’s brilliantly, if diabolically, engineered for maximum impact. It’s been planned for a long time and they’ve paid attention to the details. Those responsible are not stupid and they’re not messing around. In fact, so much has already unfolded, and so many people gone along with this nonsense, it may be too late.
But we can try.
We must take back our lives. We have to take back our communities, street-by-street, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, church-by-church, local-business-by-local-business.
There were huge protests in London April of this year against coerced vaccinations and Covid-19 “passports”.
We can’t let the establishment bullies get away with this. And as we see from the recent demonstration in London, people in other countries are waking up to the lockdown scam.
We must try to stop this manufactured crisis. People need to know and defend their rights. Most importantly, we must do everything possible to stand strong against tyranny in any form.
As the brilliant, if gloomy, Chris Hedges says: We do this not because we know we’ll be successful. We do this because it’s the right thing to do.
It takes enormous courage to write a book like this, which goes completely against the narrative promoted by America’s foreign policy and military establishments. Courage because now any defense of Putin and Russia as actors on the world stage will not be met with reasonable, polite rebuttal and rational well-supported refutation, but personal vilification, marginalization, attacks on character and integrity, aspersions about disloyalty and lack of patriotic commitment, allegations of treachery and even sedition. Lacking anything — e.g. facts — with which to rebut and refute the message, opponents of a balanced, objective, truthful analysis of Russian-American relations must resort to attacking the messenger.
Early in the book, Mr. Kovalik describes the process which radicalized him, what personal events opened his eyes to the barbarity and hypocrisy which has been centerpieces of America’s history from its earliest days. His transformation occurred during a visit to Nicaragua during his college years. He learned then to question and always be highly skeptical of the “official rationale” inflicted on the general public in the U.S., because it was often driven by the covert intent of obtaining — often manufacturing out of thin air — consent for America’s diplomatic bullying, manipulations, wanton aggressions, destructive interference, regime changes, and outright subjugation of countries across the planet.
History is the best teacher for understanding the present. Our history, as is thoroughly explored and documented in this short but incisive volume, is riddled with false flags, misrepresentations, distortions, propaganda and outright lies, all carefully calculated to serve the real agenda of our government. This is to provide unambiguous support for U.S. corporate interests; ruthlessly undermining any nation which dares to consider even the most diluted iteration of socialism; and punishing — all too frequently destroying — any country, often even murdering its leaders, for independently adopting policies which don’t disproportionately benefit the U.S. and honor the authority of the U.S. as world hegemon.
What has Russia under Putin done? It put Russia’s interests first, it openly criticized the U.S. for its wanton aggression and disregard for international law, called out the U.S. for its consistent meddling in the affairs of other nations, including all too often violently overthrowing governments it doesn’t approve of, and moreover had the audacity to deploy national defense mechanisms which frees it of being blackmailed by U.S. military might. For the U.S., which regards itself as the “exceptional” nation selected by destiny to control the world, these constitute an inexcusable affront which must be answered, a challenge which must be eradicated, even if this requires a world war which might go nuclear.
So it’s Russia bad, Putin badder. Every imaginable and imagined accusation, typically presented as fact, is spewed out and flung at Putin and Russia. And thus what we get as “news” these days is a childish white hats vs. black hats depiction of the momentous battle of Great Good America vs. Scary Evil Russia, a facile scenario now dubbed as the Second Cold War.
The extremes our government spokespersons and the obsequious media has gone to in order to strike fear in all of us about Russia and to incite a personal hatred for Vladimir Putin, should by themselves raise suspicions and reasonable doubts about what’s going on. But when the media is controlled by six major corporations with unshakeable deference to official government propaganda and those who fabricate it, and political leaders from both major parties who are owned by Wall Street, the big banks, the corporations, the ruling elite who obscenely profit from perpetual war, all everyday people get 24/7 is yarns about the Russian threat, Putin’s bloodthirsty desire to return to the glory days of Russia as a great power, Russian aggression, Russian invasions, Russian meddling in our otherwise perfect democracy, Russian targeted assassinations, Russian plots to subvert and destroy freedom-loving countries, Russian blame for everything from STDs to plugged toilets and family squabbles. It’s a premeditated program of brainwashing inflicted on a gullible and generally hapless American public.
The only possible pre-revolutionary antidote is thorough, unbiased investigative journalism, potent research, historical knowledge and perspective, personal insights shared with candor and clarity, all of the foregoing assembled by an author of the high caliber of Dan Kovalik, into an immensely readable and superbly informative book like The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin.
I just looked at my last five posts and they are all about the same topic.
Listen, folks. I truly get it. A lot of people think I'm becoming a tedious bore.
But they're wrong! I've always
been a tedious bore. Sometimes I'm able to disguise it better than
others, dress up my dull, monotonous discursives a bit with some clever
photo -- like the pandering photo to the right.
But I can hear the recent cries of anguish from my readers.
"Jesus H. Christ! Yet another article on candidate contracts? Is this guy a one-trick pony?"
Actually,
the last time I checked I had thousands of tricks. The thing is, two
in particular stand out spectacularly from the rest. So maybe I'm a
two-trick pony?
These
particular two stand out, because as far as I can see, both of them
offer necessary tactics and solutions to the existential threat ripping
our nation apart. It's one huge, ugly monster with two heads:
Autocratic rule by a rich and powerful elite and psychotic levels of
militarism and imperial aggression.
It's been a real interesting ride these last five years trying to promote candidate contracts and the Peace Dividend refund
concept, both targeting the oligarchy's sinister, iron-fisted
authoritarian grip on our politics -- and just about everything else --
and the creation of a military/security state to further tighten and
reinforce that grip on the American citizenry and any other country
which holds valuable resources ripe for plunder.
I've
made my case in three books, and literally hundreds of articles. With
this much time invested, and a firm belief that despite a lack of much
encouragement I'm onto something of value and positive potential, I'm
not giving up. Sometimes you go with your gut.
Both
the candidate contract strategy and Peace Dividend concept have had
more than their share of detractors. Yet I forge on like a punch-drunk
old boxer because no one -- NO ONE -- has come up with anything
resembling a coherent, decisive reason why either of these detailed
battle plans is not viable, why they're dead ends, why they're lost
causes, why I should pack it in and live in a Yurt with some nomadic tribe in Mongolia.
I'm serious! Any criticism dances around them like they're made of depleted uranium.
I get self-assured quips like: "It'll never happen." Wow! That crushed five years of hard work in a single blow.
Or: "I don't like contracts." Which is a semi-literate version of, "Your idea sucks, dude!"
One very famous activist -- I won't name him because everyone who would bother to read this knows this guy -- ripped my book,Candidate Contracts: Taking Back Our Democracyto
shreds. I'll give him credit for putting a lot of time into his
demolition project. He sent me a long email listing in great detail
seven flaws in my approach. The only problem was, not one of the seven
things he targeted were even in my book! I am dead serious. Not a single one of the seven gaping holes in my plan were in my plan. As I suspect happens a lot, he saw 'candidate contracts', then proceeded to dissect what he thought a candidate contractstrategy would be about. Talk about arrogant posturing. And this guy is veryfamous! Progressives from all over flock to his side for his sage advice. God help us!
I
beg people to give me constructive criticism, any kind of criticism, a
bombshell that takes my ideas out like they'd just been hit by aMOAB. Hey,
put me out of my misery! I've got four novels I'd much rather be
working on. PLEASE! Give me your best shot. Deliver me from all this
yelling in ananechoic chamberat ghosts who are hologram doppelgangers for activists in a coma.
I'm
still waiting. How many articles have I written here, at OpEdNews, The
Greanville Post? Hundreds! Now go through the comments. A lot of the
real critical stuff is self-aggrandizing bloviating, the rest
irrefutable evidence that either they didn't read the article, or they
must have put their brains in a fruit blender before they tried to read
it, because obviously they didn't understand anything of what I was
saying.
Often I've thought: Maybe it's you, John. Maybe you're not expressing yourself very clearly and that's why people don't get it. (I
spend a lot of time alone, so it's not that unusual for me to talk to
myself, though usually it's a little more upbeat than this.)
The
result has been the vast output of a variety of articles, each coming
from a slightly different place, offering a different pitch, trying to
find that magic winning formula for getting the ideas across. I've even
resorted to doingvideos, despite
the fact that if I had the money, the first thing I'd do is hire an
actor with a great voice and reality show-host good looks to deliver a
more seductive version of the message.
Mind
you, I have a phenomenal life here in Japan. Except for the gnawing
aggravation and frustration associated with my long-distance dedication
to activism, I live a fairy tale life in abeautiful, traditional, rural communitysituated
between Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto -- each one of those comes with its own
distinct personality and host of urban attractions. My beautiful,
talented Japanese wife and I travel extensively, with her showing me the splendors of this fascinating country which I now embrace as my home.
But
when I look back at the "homeland", I want to scream! What has
happened to the U.S. is a nightmare of a nightmare of a nervous
breakdown. In my worst moments, I see the whole world -- including my
charming town -- being plunged into a nuclear holocaust, a war driven by
pride, hubris, arrogance, ignorance, insensitivity, delusion,
demagoguery, pathological levels of disregard for decency and human
life. In my better moments -- fewer and farther between these days -- I
just see America being consigned to the septic tank of history, plunged
into the dank, degrading stink hole of a Dark Ages Redux.
But
there's three compelling reason why I'll continue pushing -- at least
for a while -- my two apparently incomprehensible strategies.
There's
a pivotal election coming up. Forget about 2020. We might not even
make it to 2020. A lot depends on whether the accelerating implosion of
our country and the decline of the fortunes of everyday people
continues, or finally meets its Waterloo. It's up to us and that's why I
keep fighting.
Very recently I've had some encouraging breakthroughs. One gentleman in Scranton, Pennsylvania bought 20 print copies of myPeace Dividendbook,
handed them out to all of his friends and fell0w-activists. Now they
regularly discuss the strategy in their peace planning sessions.
[Author stops, spots a frog stuck to the window next to his chair, prompting him to reflect: Is
this as tedious as I think it is? Maybe I should wrap this up. Ah!
I'll throw in the old non-sequitur. That always gets them where the
rubber meets the cerebellum!]
1st Rule of Fight Club: Don't talk about fight club.
1st Rule of Propaganda: Repeat lies so often people eventually believe them.
1st Rule of Activism: Repeat truth so often people start paying attention.
Alright, enough. My mind spilleth over . . . and it's a mess.
Having
said all of the foregoing -- are you still with me? . . . doubtful but
as a tedious bore, I'm used to rejection -- I'm going to take a short
break. The next two or three articles will not be hard-core political but family-friendly fluff.
Just because I can.
Or is it by popular demand?
[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]
