- Edward Snowden Implores Macron To Grant French Asylum
Edward Snowden Implores Macron To Grant French Asylum
US whistleblower Edward Snowden has called on French President and former Rothschild banker Emmanuel Macron to grant him political asylum from the United States.
Speaking with France’s Inter radio on Monday as part of a press junket to promote his new memoir, the former NSA contractor said “Protecting whistleblowers is not a hostile act,” adding “Welcoming someone like me is not an attack on the United States.”
“I would like to return to the United States. That is the ultimate goal. But if I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in prison, the one bottom line demand that we have to agree to is that at least I get a fair trial. And that is the one thing the government has refused to guarantee because they won’t provide access to what’s called a public interest defense,” Snowden told CBS This Morning.
“Again, I’m not asking for a parade. I’m not asking for a pardon. I’m not asking for a pass. What I’m asking for is a fair trial. And this is the bottom line that any American should require. We don’t want people thrown in prison without the jury being able to decide that what they did was right or wrong. The government wants to have a different kind of trial. They want to use special procedures they want to be able to close the courtroom, they want the public not to be able to go, know what’s going on. And, essentially, the most important fact to the government and this is the thing we have a point of contention on, is that they do not want the jury to be able to consider the motivations. Why I did what I did. Was it better for the United States? Did it benefit us or did it cause harm? They don’t want the jury to consider that at all. They want the jury strictly to consider whether these actions were lawful or unlawful, not whether they were right or wrong. And I’m sorry, but that defeats the purpose of a jury trial,” Snowden told CBS.
The NSA, meanwhile, told CBS: “Edward Snowden violated his lifetime obligation to protect classified information and betrayed the trust of his coworkers and the American people.”
In 2013 Snowden unsuccessfully applied for asylum in France under former President Francois Hollande, along with several other countries, after he released a trove of classified US information shedding light on America’s mass surveillance apparatus – including unprecedented court-approved access used by the government to collect data on over 120 million phone calls between ordinary Americans.
Snowden also leaked the NSA’s top-secret black budget to the Washington Post, while also revealing that the NSA had been paying private US tech companies for clandestine access to their networks.
Snowden shares his life story in his new memoir, “Permanent Record,” set to be released on Tuesday in around 20 countries – including France.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/17/2019 – 02:45 - A View Of The U.S. From Across The Atlantic
A View Of The U.S. From Across The Atlantic
Authored by Andrew Asjh via The Gatestone Institute,
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My friends assured me there were terrible, terrible things that would become apparent in the ensuing months.
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Even in the extended echo-chamber of social media, there appeared to be a seemingly pathological fear of anything even remotely resembling a balanced view.
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The only thing that has not changed is the Democrats’ make-believe view that President Trump and the Russians were somehow trying to rig the election, when it was, in fact, they themselves who were doing that.
Before the advent of online news, residents of the UK had to rely on the British press to report on the minutiae of the American political system — something that didn’t happen all that often. In politics what went on in the USA, stayed in the USA, most of it at least. Beyond a major political upheaval, or the swearing in of a new president, news reportage was more concerned with the cut and thrust of our own routine domestic politics.
Only the bickering between the Democrats and Republicans rang a familiar note, mirroring as it did, our British Punch and Judy stereotype, with the stuffy old Tories on one side, and the loony-left Labour on the other.
By 2008, along with the advent of social media, and a growing awareness of international affairs, it became increasingly impossible not to notice the apparently out of proportion intensity driving the Democrat-Republican voter divide. Heralded in by the arrival of the US’s first president “of colour”, Barack Obama, and coinciding with the rising usage of Twitter and Facebook, the “Left” seemed to jump at the chance of embracing the one-dimensional limitations of an “echo chamber“. The “echo-chamber” served not only to widen the chasm between left and right, but — even to the outsider — noticeably amplified the animosity between the two sides. Compared to the almost polite political rivalry between voters and parties in Britain, the political division in the US began looking distinctly engineered.
My American friends, in an effort to help me try and understand their conclusions, sent a raft of articles from the US mainstream media, which, in their bias, displayed the same lack of integrity as my friends’. Even in the extended echo-chamber of social media, there appeared to be a seemingly pathological fear of anything even remotely resembling a balanced view.
Then, along came the 2016 election and the arrival of presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. Whilst the UK was not looking, war seemed to have broken out. If I was not prepared forthrightly to dismiss Trump as the white supremacist he so obviously and professedly was, it was clear that if I was not careful, I would be tarred by the same brush.
My friends assured me there were terrible, terrible things that would become apparent in the ensuing months. The problem was, they never once articulated any of them. Their suspicions all appeared to be hysterical unfounded inferences.
The evident reluctance by left-wing media outlets to condemn a — by now — extremely guilty-looking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now seemed unfair. Much of the media seemed all too happy to turn a blind eye to the Benghazi affair, her “unusual” email practices and other seemingly incriminating pranks. The media also seemed to ignore the treasure-trove of information on the suspect machinations of the DNC and its incumbents and other dubious goings on, including truncated FBI investigations, the “controversial” resignation of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the sudden departure from CNN of Donna Brazile after having fed questions to Clinton prior to the televised presidential debates, and so on.
The potential skulduggery seemed never ending. How come my friends had never mentioned any of this? Surely, they knew? The echo chamber, it appeared, was hermetically sealed. Even then US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and her “secret” meeting with former President Bill Clinton aboard the Justice Department’s jet just before she was due to deliver her verdict on his wife, failed to raise an eyebrow. How was that possible?
One would never have known the depths of the corruption taking place right under everyone’s noses, or indeed, the lengths to which their top brass representatives were willing to go to manipulate an election. It was not just a couple of dodgy individuals, working overtime for their own self-enrichment; there was a whole bunch of them at it. Worse, it seemed they had been doing it for a very long time — and all of it under the auspices of their beloved president.
A hardened, contemptible cynic might even have thought that the 2016 presidential election result was meant to have been a foregone conclusion, with no suspicious activity ever exposed.
It was hard by now not to be intrigued by this murky, cloak and dagger world of deceit. The farther down the rabbit hole one looked in this saga, the harder it became not to surmise that, for all their faults, the Republican party, and in particular, Mr. Trump, were the “good guys.” One half of the country was deliberately being pitted, with fake information, against the other. This division seems to be one that the mainstream media have, ever since, been trying to blame on Donald Trump, despite it clearly being a war that they themselves had cooked up.
As the story grows, and more of the players become exposed — Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, John Brennan, James Clapper, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew Weissmann, Sally Yates, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and even President Obama — the list goes on and on — my interest in US politics has soared to levels I never thought possible, and for all the wrong reasons. The only thing that has not changed is the Democrats’ storybook view that President Trump and the Russians were somehow trying to rig the election, when it was, in fact, they themselves who were doing that.
When then President Obama was asked about the possibility of rigging the 2016 elections, he told then-candidate Trump to “stop whining”:
“There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they are so decentralized. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past, or that there are instances that that could happen this time.”
It then turned out that Secretary Clinton and the DNC had also been rigging the Democrats’ presidential primaries and nomination process against Senator Bernie Sanders, as well.
After all that has emerged over the past couple of years, during investigation after investigation, it seems impossible that these officials could honestly be sincere. For now, I am not holding my breath that my friends on the left might one day wake up and do some research of their own; but as an impartial observer with no dog in this fight, I know which side I would rather back.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/17/2019 – 02:00 -
- Escobar: We Are All Hostages Of 9/11
Escobar: We Are All Hostages Of 9/11
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,
After years of reporting on the Great War on Terror, many questions behind the US attacks remain unresolved…
Pakistanis raise their weapons in the border town of Bajour as they shout anti-US slogans before leaving for Afghanistan in October 2001. Thousands from this tribal area go to join the Taliban in its ‘holy war’ against the US. Photo: AFP /Tariq Mahmood
Afghanistan was bombed and invaded because of 9/11. I was there from the start, even before 9/11. On August 20, 2001, I interviewed commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the “Lion of the Panjshir,” who told me about an “unholy alliance” of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the ISI (Pakistani intel).
Back in Peshawar, I learned that something really big was coming: my article was published by Asia Times on August 30. Commander Massoud was killed on September 9: I received a terse email from a Panjshir source, only stating, “the commander has been shot.” Two days later, 9/11 happened.
And yet, the day before, none other than Osama bin Laden, in person, was in a Pakistani hospital in Rawalpindi, receiving treatment, as CBS reported. Bin Laden was proclaimed the perpetrator already at 11am on 9/11 – with no investigation whatsoever. It should have been not exactly hard to locate him in Pakistan and “bring him to justice.”
In December 2001 I was in Tora Bora tracking bin Laden – under B-52 bombers and side by side with Pashtun mujahideen. Later, in 2011, I would revisit the day bin Laden vanished forever.
One year after 9/11, I was back in Afghanistan for an in-depth investigation of the killing of Massoud. By then it was possible to establish a Saudi connection: the letter of introduction for Massoud’s killers, who posed as journalists, was facilitated by commander Sayyaf, a Saudi asset.
Saudi-born alleged terror mastermind Osama bin Laden is seen in a video taken at a secret site in Afghanistan. This was aired by Al-Jazeera on Oct. 7, 2001, the day the US launched bombing of terrorist camps, airbases and air defense installations in its campaign against the Taliban for sheltering bin Laden. Photo: AFP
For three years my life revolved around the Global War on Terror; most of the time I lived literally on the road, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Brussels. At the start of ‘Shock and Awe’ on Iraq, in March 2003, Asia Times published my in-depth investigation of which neo-cons concocted the war on Iraq.
In 2004, roving across the US, I re-traced the Taliban’s trip to Texas, and how a top priority, since the Clinton years all the way to the neo-cons, was about what I had baptized as “Pipelineistan” – in this case how to build the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, bypassing Iran and Russia, and extending US control of Central and South Asia.
Later on, I delved into the hard questions the 9/11 Commission never asked, and how Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign was totally conditioned by and dependent on 9/11.
Michael Ruppert, a CIA whistleblower, who may – or may not – have committed suicide in 2014, was a top 9/11 analyst. We exchanged a lot of information, and always emphasized the same points: Afghanistan was all about (existent) heroin and (non-existent) pipelines.
In 2011, the late, great Bob Parry would debunk more Afghanistan lies. And in 2017, I would detail a top reason why the US will never leave Afghanistan: the heroin rat line.
Now, President Trump may have identified a possible Afghan deal – which the Taliban, who control two-thirds of the country, are bound to refuse, as it allows withdrawal of only 5,000 out of 13,000 US troops. Moreover, the US ‘Deep State’ is absolutely against any deal, as well as India and the rickety government in Kabul.
But Pakistan and China are in favor, especially because Beijing plans to incorporate Kabul into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and have Afghanistan admitted as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, thus attaching the Hindu Kush and the Khyber Pass to the ongoing Eurasia integration process.
Praying for a Pearl
Eighteen years after the game-changing fact, we all remain hostages of 9/11. US neocons, gathered at the Project for the New American Century, had been praying for a “Pearl Harbor” to reorient US foreign policy since 1997. Their prayers were answered beyond their wildest dreams.
Already in The Grand Chessboard, also published in 1997, former National Security Adviser and Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, nominally not a neocon, had pointed out that the American public “supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.”
So, Brzezinski added, America “may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”
As an attack on the homeland, 9/11 generated the Global War on Terror, launched at 11pm on the same day, initially christened “The Long War” by the Pentagon, later sanitized as Overseas Contingency Operations by the Obama administration. This cost trillions of dollars, killed over half a million people and branched out into illegal wars against seven Muslim nations – all justified on “humanitarian grounds” and allegedly supported by the “international community.”
Year after year, 9/11 is essentially a You Have The Right to Accept Only The Official Version ritual ceremony, even as widespread evidence suggests the US government knew 9/11 would happen and did not stop it.
Three days after 9/11, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that in June 2001, German intelligence warned the CIA that Middle East terrorists were “planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture.”
In August 2001, President Putin ordered Russian intel to tell the US government “in the strongest possible terms” of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings, MSNBC revealed in an interview with Putin that was broadcast on September 15 that year.
No US government agency has released any information on who used foreknowledge of 9/11 in the financial markets. The US Congress did not even raise the issue. In Germany, investigative financial journalist Lars Schall has been working for years on a massive study detailing to a great extent insider trading before 9/11.
While NORAD sleeps
Discrediting the official, immutable 9/11 narrative remains the ultimate taboo. Hundreds of architects and engineers engaged in meticulous technical debunking of all aspects of 9/11’s official story are summarily dismissed as “conspiracy theorists.”
In contrast, skepticism rooted in Greek and Latin tradition came up with arguably the best documentary on 9/11: Zero, an Italian production. Just as arguably the most stimulating book on 9/11 is also Italian: The Myth of September 11, by Roberto Quaglia, which offers a delicately nuanced narrative of 9/11 as a myth structured as a movie. The book became a huge hit in Eastern Europe.
Serious questions suggest quite plausible suspects to be investigated regarding 9/11, far more than 19 Arabs with box cutters. Ten years ago, in Asia Times, I asked 50 questions, some of them extremely detailed, about 9/11. After reader demand and suggestions, I added 20 more. None of these questions were convincingly addressed – not to mention answered – by the official narrative.
World public opinion is directed to believe that on the morning of 9/11 four airliners, presumably hijacked by 19 Arabs with box cutters, traveled undisturbed – for two hours – across the most controlled airspace on the planet, which is supervised by the most devastating military apparatus ever.
American Airlines Flight 11 deviated from its path at 8.13am and crashed into the first World Trade Center tower at 8.57am. Only at 8.46am did NORAD – the North American Aerospace Defense Command – order that two intercepting F-15s take off from Otis military base.
A hijacked commercial plane crashes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 in New York. Photo: AFP / Set McAllister
By a curious coincidence a Pentagon war game was in effect on the morning of 9/11 – so air-controllers’ radars may have registered only ‘ghost signals’ of nonexistent aircraft simulating an air attack. Well, it was much more complicated than that, as demonstrated by professional pilots.
‘Angel was next’
World public opinion is also directed to believe that a Boeing 757 – with a wingspan of 38 meters – managed to penetrate the Pentagon through a six-meter-wide hole and at the height of the first floor. A Boeing 757 with landing gear is 13 meters high. Airliners electronically refuse to crash – so it’s quite a feat to convince one to fly five to 10 meters above the ground, landing gear on, at a lightning speed of 800 kilometers an hour.
According to the official narrative, the Boeing 757 literally pulverized itself. Yet even after pulverization, it managed to perforate six walls of three rings of the Pentagon, leaving a two-meter wide hole in the last wall but only slightly damaging the second and third rings. The official narrative is that the hole was caused by the plane’s nose – still quite hard even after pulverization. Yet the rest of the plane – a mass of 100 tons traveling at 800 kilometers an hour – miraculously stopped at the first ring.
All that happened under the stewardship of one Hani Hanjour, who three weeks before had been judged by his flight instructors to be incapable of piloting a Cessna. Hanjour, nonetheless, managed to accomplish an ultra-fast spiral descent at 270 degrees, aligning at a maximum 10 meters above ground, minutely calibrating the trajectory, and keeping a cruise speed of roughly 800 kilometers an hour.
Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, left, and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brief reporters at the Pentagon on Oct. 8, 2001 following the US bombing raids on Afghanistan in response to 9/11 attacks. Photo: AFP / Luke Frazza
At 9.37am, Hanjour hit precisely the Pentagon’s budget analysts’ office, where everyone was busy working on the mysterious disappearance of no less than $2.3 trillion that Defense Secretary Donald “Known Unknowns” Rumsfeld, in a press conference the day before, said could not be tracked. So, it’s not only Boeings that get pulverized inside the Pentagon.
World public opinion is also directed to believe that Newtonian physics was suspended as a special bonus for WTC 1 and 2 on 9/11 (not to mention WTC 7, which was not even hit by any plane). The slower WTC tower took 10 seconds to fall 411 meters, starting from immobility. So it fell at 148 kilometers an hour. Considering the initial acceleration time, it was a free fall, not the least impeded by 47 massive, vertical steel beams that composed the tower’s structural heart.
World public opinion is also directed to believe that United Airlines Flight 93 – 150 tons of aircraft with 45 people, 200 seats, luggage, a wingspan of 38 meters – crashed in a field in Pennsylvania and also literally pulverized itself, totally disappearing inside a hole six meters by three meters wide and only two meters deep.
Suddenly, Air Force One was “the only plane in the sky.” Colonel Mark Tillman, who was on board, recalled:
“We get this report that there’s a call saying ‘Angel’ was next. No one really knows now where the comment came from – it got mistranslated or garbled amid the White House, the Situation Room, the radio operators. ‘Angel’ was our code name. The fact that they knew about ‘Angel,’ well, you had to be in the inner circle.”
This means that 19 Arabs with box cutters, and most of all their handlers, surely must have been “in the inner circle.” Inevitably, this was never fully investigated.
Already in 1997, Brzezinski had warned, “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America.”
In the end, much to the despair of US neocons, all the combined sound and fury of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror/Overseas Contingency Operations, in less than two decades, ended up metastasized into not only a challenger but a Russia-China strategic partnership. This is the real “enemy” – not al-Qaeda, a flimsy figment of the CIA’s imagination, rehabilitated and sanitized as “moderate rebels” in Syria.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/16/2019 – 23:45 - Marshall Islands Creating New Cryptocurrency In Push To De-Dollarize
Marshall Islands Creating New Cryptocurrency In Push To De-Dollarize
The Republic of the Marshall Islands has been using the US dollar since 1979. But in a new Bloomberg report and a statement from a senior Marshall Islands official, that could all change as the country with a population of 75,000 could soon issue a sovereign currency in digital form – using blockchain technology.
David Paul, the environment minister and minister-in-assistance to the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, spoke last Wednesday at Invest: Asia 2019 conference in Singapore about a new blockchain-based national currency.
“With the blockchain technology in place, we thought this was an opportune time to establish our own legal tender” and lessen the nation’s dependence on the dollar, Paul said in an interview from the sidelines of the conference.
“As a small country it’s going to be easier and faster for us to make decisions and respond to the market” as a digital coin is introduced.
Last year the Marshall Islands passed the Sovereign Currency Act, with the intentions of launching a new currency, the Marshallese sovereign (SOV), which will be used alongside the dollar using blockchain technology.
Paul said no launch date had been established for SOV, as compliance and regulatory issues are still being figured out, along with supervision from the US Treasury and the International Monetary Fund.
The statement, published earlier this month, said the SOV has built-in compliance features and will expand “4% each year, following Milton Friedman’s k% rule. New SOV will be automatically distributed to the currency holders and the decentralized entities securing the network. This means that we in government cannot modify the money supply, and we cannot manipulate the value of our currency by printing more money.”
The SOV won’t precisely be a one-to-one ratio with the dollar; it’ll first establish its liquidity and be market-based, Paul said in the interview.
Several known blockchain-based currencies have received a lot of press this summer. One being Facebook’s digital coin Libra. The second is the People’s Bank of China, suggesting in recent headlines that they’re close to releasing a coin. And there was even talk from Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, who recently spoke about the idea of a global reserve currency using blockchain technology.
Marshall Islands’ effort to de-dollarize started after the terror attacks on Sept. 2001, Paul said, when the global money system endured new financial regulations that made transactions harder to perform.
“Right now we have only one relationship with one correspondent bank, and if that’s lost we would be cut off,” Paul said, identifying First Hawaiian Inc. as that bank. “A correspondent banking relationship is commercial, and a nation being held hostage by a commercial relationship shouldn’t be the case.”
Paul said the dollar couldn’t be removed entirely – but the SOV will give people an alternative.
“We’re committed to do it the right way,” he said. “As long as we do it in a responsible manner it’s going to withstand the test of time.”
And already, in a decentralized manner, citizens in countries where their fiat has crashed, like Venezuela and Argentina, have started using cryptocurrencies. The trend is clear, and the 2020s will be a transformative period of new blockchain-based national currencies across the world as a shift towards de-dollarization will move into hyperdrive.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/16/2019 – 23:25 - Johnstone: How To Defeat The Empire
Johnstone: How To Defeat The Empire
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via CaitlinJohnstone.com,
One of the biggest and most consistent challenges of my young career so far has been finding ways to talk about solutions to our predicament in a way that people will truly hear. I talk about these solutions constantly, and some readers definitely get it, but others will see me going on and on about a grassroots revolution against the establishment narrative control machine and then say “Okay, but what do we do?” or “You talk about problems but never offer any solutions!”
Part of the difficulty is that I don’t talk much about the old attempts at solutions we’ve already tried that people have been conditioned to listen for. I don’t endorse politicians, I don’t advocate starting a new political party, I don’t support violent revolution, I don’t say that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction and the proletariat will inevitably rise up against the bourgeoisie, and in general I don’t put much stock in the idea that our political systems are in and of themselves sufficient for addressing our biggest problems in any meaningful way.
What I do advocate, over and over and over again in as many different ways as I can come up with, is a decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions which enable the powerful to manipulate the way ordinary people think, act and vote.
I talk about narrative and propaganda all the time because they are the root of all our problems. As long as the plutocrat-controlled media are able to manufacture consent for the status quo upon which those plutocrats built their respective empires, there will never be the possibility of a successful revolution. People will never rebel against a system while they’re being successfully propagandized not to. It will never, ever happen.
Most people who want drastic systematic changes to the way power operates in our society utterly fail to take this into account. Most of them are aware to some extent that establishment propaganda is happening, but they fail to fully appreciate its effects, its power, and the fact that it’s continually getting more and more sophisticated. They continue to talk about the need for a particular political movement, for this or that new government policy, or even for a full-fledged revolution, without ever turning and squarely focusing on the elephant in the room that none of these things will ever happen as long as most people are successfully propagandized into being uninterested in making them happen.
It’s like trying to light a fire without first finding a solution to the problem that you’re standing under pouring rain. Certainly we can all agree that a fire is sorely needed because it’s cold and wet and miserable out here, but we’re never going to get one going while the kindling is getting soaked and we can’t even get a match lit. The first order of business must necessarily be to find a way to protect our fire-starting area from the downpour of establishment propaganda.
A decentralized guerrilla psywar against the propaganda machine is the best solution to this problem.
By psywar I mean a grassroots psychological war against the establishment propaganda machine with the goal of weakening public trust in pro-empire narratives. People only believe sources of information that they trust, and propaganda cannot operate without belief. Right now trust in the mass media is at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high. Our psywar is fought with the goal of using our unprecedented ability to circulate information to continue to kill public trust in the mass media, not with lies and propaganda, but with truth. If we can expose journalistic malpractice and the glaring plot holes in establishment narratives about things like war, Julian Assange, Russia etc, we will make the mass media look less trustworthy.
By decentralized I mean we should each take responsibility for weakening public trust in the propaganda machine in our own way, rather than depending on centralized groups and organizations. The more centralized an operation is, the easier it is for establishment manipulators to infiltrate and undermine it. This doesn’t mean that organizing is bad, it just means a successful grassroots psywar won’t depend on it. If we’re each watching for opportunities to weaken public trust in the official narrative makers on our own personal time and in our own unique way using videos, blogs, tweets, art, paper literature, conversations and demonstrations, we’ll be far more effective.
By guerrilla I mean constantly attacking different fronts in different ways, never staying with the same line of attack for long enough to allow the propagandists to develop a counter-narrative. If they build up particularly strong armor around one area, put it aside and expose their lies on an entirely different front. The propagandists are lying constantly, so there is never any shortage of soft targets. The only consistency should be in attacking the propaganda machine as visibly as possible.
How To Get Your Dissident Ideas Heard In The New Media Environment
People have been asking me for some advice on how to get started doing what I do and building an audience, so here are a few tips I’ve picked up on this weird and wonderful journey.https://t.co/UsgCGKiF6E
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) August 29, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
As far as how to go about that attack, my best answer is that I’m leading by example here. I’m only ever doing the thing that I advocate, so if you want to know what I think we should all do, just watch what I do. I’m only ever using my own unique set of skills, knowledge and assets to attack the narrative control engine at whatever points I perceive to be the most vulnerable on a given day.
So do what I do, but keep in mind that each individual must sort out the particulars for themselves. We’ve each got our own strengths and abilities that we bring to the psywar: some of us are funny, some are artistic, some are really good at putting together information and presenting it in a particular format, some are good at finding and boosting other people’s high-quality attacks. Everyone brings something to the table. The important thing is to do whatever will draw the most public interest and attention to what you’re doing. Don’t shy away from speaking loud and shining bright.
It isn’t necessary to come up with your own complete How It Is narrative of exactly what is happening in our world right now; with the current degree of disinformation and government opacity that’s too difficult to do with any degree of completion anyway. All you need to do is wake people up in as many ways as possible to the fact that they’re being manipulated and deceived. Every newly opened pair of eyes makes a difference, and anything you can do to help facilitate that is energy well spent.
Without an effective propaganda machine, the empire cannot rule. Once we’ve crippled public trust in that machine, we’ll exist in a very different world already, and the next step will present itself from there. Until then, the attack on establishment propaganda should be our foremost priority.
* * *
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/16/2019 – 23:05 - Desperate Developer Offers Free Tesla With Purchase Of New Vancouver House
Desperate Developer Offers Free Tesla With Purchase Of New Vancouver House
Vancouver real estate has been one of the world’s weakest luxury markets for the last 12 months. The city, once a mecca for foreign money and skyrocketing home prices, is now seeing real estate developers panic as homes go unsold, that is why one firm is now offering free Teslas to attract millennial homebuyers with the purchase of a new condominium and or townhouse in the Metro Vancouver area, reported CTV News Vancouver.
“For every home you purchase we’re going to include a free Tesla,” said Celia Chiu, sales manager for Viridian Homes.
Viridian is an upscale townhome community in South Surrey, British Columbia. It resides overlooking Nicomekl River, with over 57 townhomes in the neighborhood.
Developer Century Group has sold 47 out of the 57 homes, and the last remaining ten will be offered with a free Tesla Model 3.
Chiu said the unsold homes have been on the market for at least one year, but the community has “been around for two years and with a market having kind of a subtle stall, we wanted to take it to the next level” and attract millennials.
Each of the 57 homes has about 2,000 square feet of living space and a price tag of more than a million dollars.
The promotion kicked off last week and will continue through Oct. 21, or until the ten homes are sold.
“An incentive like this does have to have a wow factor,” Chiu added.
Each home with the Tesla promotion will include a charging station in the garage, something Century Group president Sean Hodgins said in a press release reflects the project’s “innovative design with energy-efficient capabilities.”
With Metro Vancouver area home prices plunging -13.6% YoY in 2Q19, developers have been offering innovative promotions to attract millennial homebuyers.
Earlier this year, Woodbridge Home offered millennials free avocado toast for a year if they bought a home in the Kira development in West Coquitlam.
Wesgroup Properties offered young homebuyers a glass of wine per day for a year if they purchased a home at MODE in South Vancouver.
Real estate agent Gurdial Badh told CTV News Vancouver that the promotions are unique. “Either there are promotions or a price reduction to come in line with what the market is today,” Badh said.
Since the market has been soft this year, prices have dropped, but sales have started to rise.
“We’re seeing a lot more activity on the lower range and once the low range starts moving then obviously it will have an impact on the higher price range properties,” said Badh.
To support the ailing real estate industry, Badh said the government needs to intervene and do more to assist first-time homebuyers.
“The main thing I think the government needs to do is help these first-time buyers,” he said, with the hope the market will turn back up.
And when real estate developers overbuild into a market that is shifting lower, they will do pretty desperate things to attract new homebuyers, such as offering Teslas, and or even avocados and free wine.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/16/2019 – 22:45 - Incentives (And Sociopaths) Rule The World
Incentives (And Sociopaths) Rule The World
Authored by Michael Krieger via The Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Ryan Murphy, an economist at Southern Methodist University, recently published a working paper in which he ranked each of the states by the predominance of—there’s no nice way to put it—psychopaths. The winner? Washington in a walk. In fact, the capital scored higher on Murphy’s scale than the next two runners-up combined.
“I had previously written on politicians and psychopathy, but I had no expectation D.C. would stand out as much as it does,” Murphy wrote in an email…
On a national level, it raises the troubling question as to what it means to live in a country whose institutions are set up to reward some very dubious human traits. Like it or not, we’re more likely than not to wind up with some alarming personalities in positions of power.
– From last year’s Politico article, Washington, D.C.: the Psychopath Capital of America
One of the most frustrating aspects of modern American politics – and the culture in general – is our all encompassing fixation on the superficial. It’s also one of the main reasons I have very little interest in presidential politics, which basically consists of a bunch of billionaire friendly puppets auditioning to become the next public face of imperial oligarchy. Though I understand the desire for quick fixes, our focus on highlighting and mitigating only the symptoms of societal decay as opposed to the root causes, ensures we’ll never achieve the sort of positive paradigm-level shift necessary to bring humankind forward.
The truth of the matter is incentives rule the world, and if we look at some of the most pernicious and predatory areas of our socio-economic reality, including (but not limited to) the financial sector, the defense industry, intelligence agencies and healthcare, we find a slew of incentives that handsomely reward sociopathic behavior, while penalizing ethical, conscious action beneficial to society at large. Notice it’s always the whistleblowers who end up imprisoned or hunted down.
In the economic realm, if we think about the idea of a competitive free market, the primary reason the profit incentive exists and is widely accepted is the implicit understanding that people should be incentivized to create a product or service that benefits the public at large. While we still have remnants of this at play within the modern U.S. economy, much of the “wealth” attained these days is a direct consequence of rent-seeking, parasitic behavior and corruption of one kind or another. The reason is pretty simple. It’s incentivized.
When you have a financial fraud crime spree like the one witnessed earlier this century and your response is to bail out the criminals and ensure no executives go to jail, it’s essentially a gigantic bell ringing in the ears of every scoundrel on the planet. It’s open season for sociopaths. The Obamas weren’t super wealthy when Barack became President, yet they’re now worth an estimated $40 million (likely more given the size of their real estate purchases). The same thing happened to the Clintons. They’ve reportedly earned $240 million since Lolita express frequent flier Bill left office.
The most surefire way to succeed in America today is to be a high-functioning sociopath who scratches the backs of other high-functioning sociopaths. As such, the most pressing problem at a root level is that our economy and society incentivizes sociopathic behavior by systematically funneling sociopaths into positions of unaccountable power. If this sounds insane it’s because it is. The very structure of how our society functions is in fact insane.
These are the people running the show. They infect every country, every industry, every government. All the halls of power. Until we figure out a way to marginalize humanity’s sociopaths rather than hand them the reins of power globally, we’ll continue to repeat the current pointless, destructive cycle.
Yes, the recurrent problem is a very small percentage of sociopaths in society always get into power.
For a better future, we need to create systems that are specifically built to be resistant to this sort of takeover. https://t.co/9VS3jVkJFo
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) September 11, 2019
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I’m certain the current mainstream political discussion in the U.S. isn’t serious because so few people are focused on the structure of society itself. There’s very little focus on incentives, on the fact that our entire economy functions as a promotion mechanism for sociopaths. No amount of tinkering around the edges is going to dramatically transform the human experience into something more positive until we figure out a way to make society itself resistant to sociopath takeover.
Significantly, one of the most in your face examples of sociopath dominance relates to imperial military policy, which has nothing to do with national defense and everything to do with national offense. It’s simply about utilizing state murder to advance power and profit for a few. The incentives are completely backwards, which is why it never gets better.
There are few things a human being can do more evil and depraved than lying a nation into war, yet that’s precisely what the proponents of the Iraq war did. More significantly, what consequences have befallen the proponents of that war? Increased fame and fortune in most cases. In fact, one of them is currently the leading contender for the Democratic Party nomination for President.
When you incentivize murderous behavior, you get more of it. Those who stand to benefit most from war should also have the most to lose, but our current system functions in the exact opposite way.
If every country in the world did this, large scale wars might disappear entirely. https://t.co/zdcJ8EEBIs
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) September 16, 2019
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All that said, perhaps the most concerning instance of perverse incentives in society today can be found in the relationship between the national security state and average citizens. The way it works, and it’s rapidly getting worse, is you the individual have zero right to privacy while the national security state can classify what the CIA director ate for lunch. Those with the most power are subject to the least transparency, while the powerless masses are subject to mass surveillance. This unaccountable, authoritarian structure will continue to ensure the worst people alive end up in the highest echelons of power. What self-respecting sociopath wouldn’t be attracted to a system where you get to exercise total dominance over hundreds of millions of people with zero accountability? It’s like bees to honey.
If you build a house with a bad foundation you’re going to have problems. The same thing can be said about civilizations. We need to admit we live a world that incentivizes the worst amongst us to attain all meaningful positions of power.
Begging a sociopath for scraps of food might help you survive another day, but it won’t result in sustainable long-term progress. We need to see sociopaths for the societal cancer they are and completely reorient our incentive structure in order to reward conscious, cooperative behavior as opposed to ruthless parasitism. Change the incentives and you’ll change the outcome.
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/16/2019 – 22:25 - "It Is Ours!" Indian Minister Says Islamabad About To "Lose Pakistani-occupied Kashmir"
“It Is Ours!” Indian Minister Says Islamabad About To “Lose Pakistani-occupied Kashmir”
A top Indian official has put Islamabad on notice, saying India’s nuclear-armed neighbor “should be ready to lose Pakistani-occupied Kashmir,” in perhaps the most provocative statement yet since New Delhi’s revoking its own administered Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) historic autonomy on August 5.
Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani was quoted by local media as making the inflammatory statement, saying—
“Now, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) too is ours … For fulfilling the dream of united India, we are ready to move forward for PoK.”
Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, file photo. “Article 370 has been revoked. Now, Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) too is ours. Pakistan should be ready to lose PoK. For fulfilling the dream of united India, we are ready to move forward for PoK… Pakistan should stop supporting terrorism… India will not tolerate this,” he asserted while speaking at a political rally, according to India Today.
And further referencing the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war in which Bangladesh was liberated, the Chief Minister responded to recent statements by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. “Pakistan was boasting of occupying Delhi in 1971 but they were about to lose Karachi. Bangladesh was partitioned. Their Army became our refugees,” he said.
This comes after Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi warned last week that the situation on the Line of Control (LoC) in the Jammu and Kashmir region continues to deteriorate and risks sparking an “accidental war,” as reported in the Hindustan Times.
Indian paramilitary soldiers in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Image source: AP Qureshi was speaking on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last Wednesday. He told journalists that Pakistan and India “understand the consequences of a conflict”. But he added that “an accidental war” cannot be ruled out. “… If the situation persists … then anything is possible,” he said.
Since the 1947 partition of British India, both countries — now bitter nuclear-armed rivals — have laid claim to Kashmir in full, though a tense status quo has left each with its side of the LoC.
After the Indian revocation of Article 370 to its constitution last month, tens of thousands of additional Indian troops have poured into J&K, putting the restive border region further on edge.
Pakistani officials previously claimed nothing less than an Indian-sponsored “genocide” is being carried out against Kashmiri Muslims on the Indian side of the LoC amid the sweeping security crackdown.
If indeed India is ready to “move forward” to “reclaim” the Pakistani side of the LoC, all-out war would no doubt be inevitable.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/16/2019 – 22:05 - "Withheld" – Access To Prison Documents About Jeffrey Epstein Formally Denied
“Withheld” – Access To Prison Documents About Jeffrey Epstein Formally Denied
There’s a bit of news in the case of Jeffrey Epstein. He’s the convicted sex offender who somehow managed to commit suicide in a New York jail last month while he was supposed to be under close watch.
My public information request about his death – has been formally denied.
Shortly after Epstein died in August, I filed a Freedom of Information request for public documents about his injuries and medical care for both the day he died and earlier, in July, when he reportedly attempted suicide.
Members of the public and press are entitled to review documents and communications generated and collected by federal agencies and officials because– we own them. However, federal agencies often delay, obstruct and resist the release of such documents.
Guidance from FOI court cases and the executive branch indicates that federal agencies are supposed to make every effort to release as much information as possible– and at least partial information if exemptions are at play.
In the case of the Epstein documents I requested, the federal Bureau of Prisons responded by stating that it is withholding all of the documents entirely.
The Bureau cites six exemptions, including that releasing the information “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of an(y) individual.”
One of the exceptions cited by the Bureau of Prisons in withholding all information related to Jeffrey Epstein.
The Bureau of Prisons invited me to keep refiling in the future to see if the status changes.
The FBI is said to be investigating how jail authorities missed Epstein committing the act of suicide in their custody while awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges.
The letter from the Bureau of Prisons is below:
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/16/2019 – 21:45
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