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In other words, we’ll be left with officially generated and sanctioned fake news and “approved” dissent.

We’ve all heard that the problem with the web is fake news, i.e. unsubstantiated or erroneous content that’s designed to mislead or sow confusion.

The problem isn’t just fake news–it’s the homogenization of the web, that is, the elimination or marginalization of independent voices of skepticism and dissent.

There are four drivers of this homogenization:

1. The suppression of dissent under the guise of ridding the web of propaganda and fake news–in other words, dissent is labeled fake news as a cover for silencing critics and skeptics.

2. The sharp decline of advertising revenues flowing to web publishers, both major outlets and small independent publishers like Of Two Minds.

3. The majority of advert revenues now flow into the coffers of the quasi-monopolies Facebook and Google.

4. Publishers are increasingly dependent on these quasi-monopolies for readers and visibility: any publisher who runs afoul of Facebook and Google and is sent to Digital Siberia effectively vanishes.

The reason why publishers’ advert incomes are plummeting are four-fold:

1. Most of the advert revenues in the digital market are being skimmed by Facebook and Google, as the chart below illustrates.

2. Ad blockers have become ubiquitous.

3. Few people click on the display ads that are the standard in desktop web publishing; in other words, these ads simply don’t work very well, and much of the revenue being generated is click-fraud, i.e. bots not real people clicking on adverts because they’re interested in the product/service. As a result, advertisers are pulling away from these type of ads as they search for advert models that aren’t so vulnerable to click-fraud.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Depravity, Frivolity, and Dissent: Are We Watching the End of an Empire?

October 23, 2017

Depravity, Frivolity, and Dissent: Are We Watching the End of an Empire?

(ADULT CONTENT WARNING)

A 40-year-old essay predicted the end of an empire and current events sure make it look like we’re watching it happen in real time.

I spend a fair bit of time scanning the news every day for my site, Preppers Daily News. And some days, I just have to shake my head as I realize that people are so desperate for…something…that they just keep going to further and further extremes to try and find that elusive thing their lives are missing.

The more I read, the more likeness I see to Sir John Glubb’s essay, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. (It’s only 24 pages and you should definitely read it – it’s brilliant.) Sir Glubb wrote this outstanding work when he was 79 years old, after a lifetime of being a soldier, traveling the world, and analyzing history. It’s well worth a read as he goes into detail about the fall of empires past.

The final stage of the end of an empire is the Age of Decadence. Some signs of this age are political dissensions (Antifa, anyone?), an influx of foreigners (Europe, anyone?), the welfare state (America, anyone?), despair (350 million people diagnosed), depravity (see below), and the rise of frivolity as people try to fill lives that have less and less meaning.

Sound familiar?

This video is a brief synopsis of the signs of an empire that is near its end.

A synopsis I read makes Glubb’s theory entirely applicable to modern society:

In the age of decadence many people choose to behave in ways that are unsustainable, apparently unaware of the consequences. They indulge in excessive, often conspicuous, consumption.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Silencing of Dissent

September 25, 2017

The Silencing of Dissent

The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics. The attacks within this campaign include blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of “fake news.”

No dominant class can long retain control when the credibility of the ideas that justify its existence evaporates. It is forced, at that point, to resort to crude forms of coercion, intimidation and censorship. This ideological collapse in the United States has transformed those of us who attack the corporate state into a potent threat, not because we reach large numbers of people, and certainly not because we spread Russian propaganda, but because the elites no longer have a plausible counterargument.

The elites face an unpleasant choice. They could impose harsh controls to protect the status quo or veer leftward toward socialism to ameliorate the mounting economic and political injustices endured by most of the population. But a move leftward, essentially reinstating and expanding the New Deal programs they have destroyed, would impede corporate power and corporate profits. So instead the elites, including the Democratic Party leadership, have decided to quash public debate. The tactic they are using is as old as the nation-state—smearing critics as traitors who are in the service of a hostile foreign power. Tens of thousands of people of conscience were blacklisted in this way during the Red Scares of the 1920s and 1950s. The current hyperbolic and relentless focus on Russia, embraced with gusto by “liberal” media outlets such as The New York Times and MSNBC, has unleashed what some have called a virulent “New McCarthyism.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Google Has Become a Major Threat to Democracy in America

August 31, 2017

Google Has Become a Major Threat to Democracy in America

About 10 years ago, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who coined the term network neutrality, made this prescient comment: “To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king.”

Wu was right. And now, Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power. It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.

When Google was founded in 1998, it famously committed itself to the motto: “Don’t be evil.” It appears that Google may have lost sight of what being evil means, in the way that most monarchs do: Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent. As Lord Acton famously said, “Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.” Those with too much power cannot help but be evil. Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony.

In recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google has recruited and cultivated law professors who support its views. And as the New York Times recently reported, it has become invested in building curriculum for our public schools, and has created political strategy to get schools to adopt its products.

It is time to call out Google for what it is: a monopolist in search, video, maps and browser, and a thin-skinned tyrant when it comes to ideas.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chilling Effect’ of Mass Surveillance Is Silencing Dissent Online, Study Says

March 17, 2016

Chilling Effect’ of Mass Surveillance Is Silencing Dissent Online, Study Says

Thanks largely to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, most Americans now realize that the intelligence community monitors and archives all sorts of online behaviors of both foreign nationals and US citizens.

But did you know that the very fact that you know this could have subliminally stopped you from speaking out online on issues you care about?

Now research suggests that widespread awareness of such mass surveillance could undermine democracy by making citizens fearful of voicing dissenting opinions in public.

A paper published last week in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), found that “the government’s online surveillance programs may threaten the disclosure of minority views and contribute to the reinforcement of majority opinion.”

“What this research shows is that in the presence of surveillance, our country’s most vulnerable voices are unwilling to express their beliefs online.”

The NSA’s “ability to surreptitiously monitor the online activities of US citizens may make online opinion climates especially chilly” and “can contribute to the silencing of minority views that provide the bedrock of democratic discourse,” the researcher found.

The paper is based on responses to an online questionnaire from a random sample of 255 people, selected to mimic basic demographic distributions across the US population.

Participants were asked to answer questions relating to media use, political attitudes, and personality traits. Different subsets of the sample were exposed to different messaging on US government surveillance to test their responses to the same fictional Facebook post about the US decision to continue airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This Is How Government Dealt With Dissent And Revolt In Collapsing Venezuela – “Soldiers Shooting Civilians In The Streets, Paramilitaries Roaming Neighborhoods”

February 27, 2016

This Is How Government Dealt With Dissent And Revolt In Collapsing Venezuela – “Soldiers Shooting Civilians In The Streets, Paramilitaries Roaming Neighborhoods”

Editor’ Note: The initial report about this incident was printed in error. While the videos and images below were believed to be recently recorded, several readers contacted us to report that these incidents occurred in February 2014 and not February 2016.

We have modified portions of this article but have left the majority of this report intact. In terms of possible responses and consequences of economic collapse in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, the events in Venezuela could happen anywhere when governments lose control of the populace.

Venezuela is in complete chaos as a result of their economic collapse.

And as a result, state-rationed food and groceries have run out, prices are hyper-inflated and millions of people are waiting in huge lines for any goods that are available. Black markets have gone boom, with neighbors making necessities available to other neighbors, but they must avoid crackdown from a jealous State that is desperate to hang onto power.

The free-fall of oil prices on the global stage has snapped the South American socialist nation into sudden and harsh disaster. Venezuela has slightly more oil than Saudi Arabia, and trades the second largest volume, after OPEC, and was even more vulnerable than Russia to the economic warfare that has taken place in the last few years.

Things are very bad now, and they were already falling apart. Nicolas Maduro took over after Hugo Chavez’ death in 2013, but without the force of Chavez’ cult of personality, he has been unable to hold an already unrealistic economy together any longer – and the people are on the verge of complete revolt.

*Editor’s Note: The following reports were taken in 2014 but are as relevant to the conversation today as they were then*

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As China’s Economy Craters, Economic Data Starts to “Disappear”

February 26, 2016

As China’s Economy Craters, Economic Data Starts to “Disappear”

For several years now, I’ve periodically observed that China’s increasingly aggressive crackdown on dissent serves as a harbinger of far more difficult times ahead. The thinking goes that if anyone is privy to the severe fragility of the country’s economic situation, it would be Chinese leadership. As such, desperate moves by Chinese leadership should foretell drastically worse economic and social conditions.

The scramble to crack down on dissent has become so intense, Chinese authorities seem to be now exerting illegal force against residents of Hong Kong. Of course, this story is long in the making, as the massive protest that broke out a little over a year ago known as the “umbrella revolution,” was in fact a protest against Beijing’s moves to ensure that Hong Kong leadership remain loyal puppets to the authorities on the mainland.

– From the post: Hong Kong Publishers Reportedly Being Kidnapped by Chinese Authorities and Taken to the Mainland

When it comes to the Chinese economy, you can always tell how bad the situation is based on the panicky actions of the authorities. If the latest moves are any indication, things are not getting any better.

The New York Times reports:

BEIJING — This month, Chinese banking officials omitted currency data from closely watched economic reports.

Just weeks earlier, Chinese regulators fined a journalist $23,000 for reposting a message that said a big securities firm had told elite clients to sell stock.

Before that, officials pressed two companies to stop releasing early results from a survey of Chinese factories that often moved markets.

Chinese leaders are taking increasingly bold steps to stop rising pessimism about turbulent markets and the slowing of the country’s growth. As financial and economic troubles threaten to undermine confidence in the Communist Party, Beijing is tightening the flow of economic information and even criminalizing commentary that officials believe could hurt stocks or the currency.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jailing an Anti-Drone Protester

January 21, 2016

Jailing an Anti-Drone Protester

As the U.S. government fights its endless wars around the globe, some Americans are moving beyond despair and confusion to challenge the military machine, people like Mary Anne Grady Flores, who was sentenced to six months in jail for photographing an anti-drone protest, writes Bill Moyers.

Mary Anne Grady Flores is in jail today and American citizens everywhere can surely breathe a sigh of relief that we are safe from her criminal behavior at least for the next six months.

That’s the length of the sentence this 59-year-old peace activist in upstate New York began on Tuesday — one day after the United States honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for his commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience. If he were here today, the martyred Dr. King would surely be shaking his head that America still has a problem with peaceful dissenters of conscience.

A Predator drone firing a missile.

And what exactly did Grady Flores do to warrant spending the next six months in jail? She photographed a peaceful protest outside Hancock Field Air National Guard Base near Syracuse, New York. The base is where the U.S. trains pilots to launch drone strikes in the Middle East, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

It wasn’t a crime for her to be taking pictures of the demonstration, but when she briefly and unintentionally — yes, unintentionally — stepped onto a road that belongs to the base, she violated what authorities called “an order of protection,” which had been issued in 2012 to forbid protesters from approaching the home or workplace of Col. Earl Evans, a commander of the 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard. She had never met Evans, never threatened him, never showed any intention of harming him.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

7 Examples of Demonising Dissention and Public Opinion

December 22, 2015

7 Examples of Demonising Dissention and Public Opinion

As the Western world powers that be tighten their tyrannical controlling noose on humanity dissention and public opinion has never been so important: -As consistent with the quote from Orwell‘s novel 1984

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

To countermeasure this much-needed dissention and public opinion to raise awareness and free humanity the powers that be have taken a severe stance on punishing those who oppose their views regardless of truth or untruth to advance an oppressive agenda.

So, in response, during these times of universal deceit and oppression, here are 7 examples of unjustly demonising dissention and public opinion.

Dissention, political correctness, suppression, new world order, medical dissention, climate change, mandatory vaccination, Paul A Philips, New Paradigm, raising awareness

1. Medical dissention and the AMA’s gagging orders

To get an even larger slice of the medical monopoly the highly influential AMA (American Medical Association) a wing of the medical/pharmaceutical establishment has announced plans to put in gag orders designed to control and prevent doctors from speaking out publically on ‘dubious alternative medical practices.’ Should doctors go outside of the AMA’s guidelines then they could face having their licenses revoked while being unjustly accused of quackery…

-This unfairly biased stance will even further hit integral doctors offering help and advice on track-record proven effective alternative medical practices.

What has the US come to? People, are you going to allow this suppression of free speech? History has shown us time after time that medical advancements resulting in humanitarian contribution has come from challenging medical orthodoxy.

2. Climate change

At a recent talk in Austin, Texas for the yearly South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) Al Gore, former vice-president, made a number of pseudo-scientific statements provably wrong about climate change with all its data manipulation in support of this monumental hoax.

Gore described climate change as ‘settled science’ but nothing could be further from the truth. Climate change is far from settled…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We’re All Terrorists Now

December 14, 2015

We’re All Terrorists Now

The concept of terrorism has been extended from carrying out physical acts in which innocent people are killed, to wrong opinions, sweaty palms and disagreement with government. If you want to find a terrorist, soon all you will have to do is look in the mirror.

Words are political. They change shape to suite agendas.

In the 1970s, ‘terrorist’ meant a paid-up member of the IRA, the Irgun, ETA and the like. These were bad people perpetrating evil and indiscriminate deeds upon a defenceless public. They used bombs, worked in cells, and killed people without warning before fading into the shadows.

Although the UK had legislation specifically geared to deal with what is called terrorism on the books, people deemed terrorists, when they were caught, were prosecuted under existing laws – i.e. for actual crimes they had committed.

Bobby Sands, for example, who fought and died for the IRA cause, was incarcerated for nothing more sinister than owning illegal firearms.

Since 9/11 and the implementation of the so-called Patriot Act (and equivalent legislation in other countries), the definition of terrorism is itself becoming a source of terror.

As part of this process, we are being taught to live with the new nomenclature of ‘terror suspect’; that is you haven’t done anything wrong, but you might.

The Independent reports that: “315 terror suspects were arrested between September 2014 and September 2015, according to new figures from the Home Office.”

The same article continues: “[…] it seems what we are seeing is an increase in terrorism-related fear rather than terrorism itself – totally understandable of course in itself, but not when it leads to the kind of heavy-handed policing that can actually radicalize more people.”

Read another way: the British Government is harassing increasing numbers of innocent people and generating both fear and the chance of more ‘radicalization’ thereby.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rebel City of the Commons, Part II

October 15, 2015

Rebel City of the Commons, Part II

This is the second installment of a two-part series on global rebel cities. Read the first part here.

Rebel City is a need: both as a narrative and as a practice of collective fixing in the urban space. Rebel City is desirable: as a form of disobedience that defies states, legal frameworks, supranations or markets. Rebel City dialogues with the global “outside,” that is, with social movements and citizen resistance.

But disobedient rebellion must also navigate a fine line. The combative tone for seducing the “outside” also needs to be friendly and welcoming for all citizens. To invoke the “inside” and governmental spheres, the storytelling of these Rebel Cities must be rounded: free cities, participatory cities, cities of the common good. Additionally, the new storytelling must be able to snatch the paradigm of collaborative economy from the large international companies that currently control it.

On September 4 in Barcelona, the disobedient rebellion was present in speeches given by the new grassroots mayors of Spain. Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau pointed out that “European states have disappointed citizens,” but “here we are the cities to [make] the alternative.” The meeting was the first step of a new inter-municipal network of Cities of the Common Good. But what would be a City of the Commons?

On the one hand, the Rebel City of the Commons must recognize and protect the citizen spaces that produce the commons: social centers, self-managed spaces, gardening networks, peer-to-peer exchange networks, etc. Public space, which citizenship transforms into a lively, democratic and open exchange, is both the metaphor and the tool for participation. On the other hand, the Rebel City of the Commons must go further, building tools, copyleft repositories and open participatory platforms, replicable by cities across the world. Digital structures must also shift to public space the open source spirit of open government.

– See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/rebel-city-commons-part-ii#sthash.NoBQqXz4.dpuf

Saudi Arabia Warns “Rumour-Mongers” on Facebook and Twitter Risk EXECUTION

October 11, 2015

Saudi Arabia Warns “Rumour-Mongers” on Facebook and Twitter Risk EXECUTION

A specific moment from the biopic film, The Doors – starring Val Kilmer – took up residence in my subconscious years ago. In actuality, it’s two lines of slurred dialogue that randomly and subtly float into my thoughts as if they are propelled by hot air into the atmosphere. The scene depicts an inebriated Jim Morrison taunting an audience of unsuspecting concert-goers from a stage in Miami, Florida in 1969. With the sincerity that only a vainglorious sot could conjure, Morrison towers and growls over the crowd of mostly teenagers and bellows out: “Adolf Hitler is alive and well and living in Miami! I f***ed her last night,” and with the following alcohol-fueled breath he concluded the thought: “You’d all eat sh*t, wouldn’t you?”

Because the plebeians choose to eternally dine at the media’s trough of propaganda, the ramblings of a bloated drunkard are all that make sense after the frustration takes hold. People will believe anything. One man’s lies are another man’s facts.

The overwhelming rush of bewilderment clouds any intellectual discourse I could bring to the topic of Saudi Arabia. I have exasperated myself on the subject to a manipulated mass of deafened sycophants. Just because the veil is lifted doesn’t mean anyone will look.

So I will leave you with strictly the facts.

According to state-run Makkah Newspaper in Saudi Arabia, the wealthy Gulf-nation is threatening its citizens with the death penalty for spreading rumors about the government on social media.

An anonymous source within the Ministry of Justice stated only the worst “rumour-mongers” will be sentenced to death, while lesser offenders of the new policy will be disciplined with flogging, imprisonment, travel bans, house arrest, fines and social media bans.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US War Theories Target Dissenters

September 13, 2015

US War Theories Target Dissenters

Exclusive: In the Orwellian world of Official Washington, the U.S. government is now wedded to the theory of “information warfare,” meaning that Americans who challenge national security policy may be treated as “unprivileged belligerents” under the new Law of War doctrine, retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce writes.

When the U.S. Department of Defense published a new Law of War Manual (LOW) this past summer, editorialists at the New York Times sat up and took notice. Their concern was that the manual stated that journalists could be deemed “unprivileged belligerents.” The editorial explained that as a legal term “that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war.” In fact, it is far more insidious than that innocuous description.

Here is the manual’s definition: “‘Unlawful combatants’ or ‘unprivileged belligerents’ are persons who, by engaging in hostilities, have incurred one or more of the corresponding liabilities of combatant status (e.g., being made the object of attack and subject to detention), but who are not entitled to any of the distinct privileges of combatant status (e.g., combatant immunity and POW status).”

The key phrase here is “being made the object of attack.” For slow-witted New York Times editorialists, that means journalists can be killed as can any enemy soldier in wartime. “Subject to detention” means a journalist deemed an unprivileged belligerent will be put into military detention if captured. As with any enemy belligerent, however, if “capture is not feasible,” they would be killed if possible, by drone perhaps if in a foreign country.

Currently, most U.S. captives deemed “unprivileged belligerents” are imprisoned in Guantanamo although some may be held in Afghanistan. It must be noted that the United States deems as an “unprivileged belligerent” anyone they target for capture or choose to kill.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Want to Change the Future? Pay Attention to the Past.

May 9, 2015

WANT TO CHANGE THE FUTURE? PAY ATTENTION TO THE PAST.

From Mandela to MLK to McKibben, history offers lessons aplenty for climate activists

We all know the plotline: Single-minded, passionate activists attempt to take on immense money and power, hidebound ideology and bureaucratic paralysis to turn the tide on the most important issue ever.

We could be talking about climate change. But we could also be talking about the abolition of slavery, marriage equality or countless other political struggles from history. Each of those other movements holds a bonanza of lessons for climate activists on how sweeping change succeeds or fails.

Abolition: Angels and Aloofness

No movement was ever more entitled to the moral high ground than abolitionism. What can climate activists learn from the anti-slavery movement?

First, being on the side of the angels may not matter. Abolitionists’ morality and common sense ran headlong into arguments of economic necessity and states’ rights in defense of slavery. Similarly, states’ rights and economic need are rhetorical refuges in climate debates today. So don’t wait for common sense to prevail. Abolitionists waited for decades, and it still took a catastrophic war to resolve things.

Second, smug aloofness doesn’t help. Abolitionists were viewed as effete and elite, eggheads and dilettantes. So much so that they even repelled one of their own. In his 1841 essay Self-Reliance, the existentialist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson called out abolitionist leaders for what he saw as their “incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off” while ignoring social ills in their own northern backyards.

If enviros made the rebirth of coal towns via renewable energy a priority, Appalachia’s coming Reconstruction Era could replace perpetual bitterness with prosperity.Today’s environmentalists are similarly perceived as being detached from the grim realities of coalfield towns, and that has opened up opportunities to blame green groups and regulators for the decades-long and inevitable market collapse of King Coal.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY HAS TOTALITARIAN SCIENCE

May 2, 2015

A TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY HAS TOTALITARIAN SCIENCE

The government, the press, the mega-corporations, the prestigious foundations, the academic institutions, the “humanitarian” organizations say:

“This is the disease. This is its name. This is what causes it. This is the drug that treats it. This is the vaccine that prevents it.

“This is how accurate diagnosis is done. These are the tests. These are the possible results and what they mean.

“Here are the genes. This is what they do. This is how they can be changed and substituted and manipulated. These are the outcomes.

“These are the data and the statistics. They are correct. There can be no argument about them.

“This is life. These are the components of life. All change and improvement result from our management of the components.

“This is the path. It is governed by truth which science reveals. Walk the path. We will inform you when you stray. We will report new improvements.

“This is the end. You can go no farther. You must give up the ghost. We will remember you.”

We are now witnessing the acceleration of Official Science. Of course, that term is an internal contradiction. But the State shrugs and moves forward.

The notion that the State can put its seal on favored science, enforce it, and punish its competitors, is anathema to a free society.

For example: declaring that psychiatrists can appear in court as expert witnesses, when none of the so-called mental disorders listed in the psychiatric literature are diagnosed by laboratory tests.

For example: stating that vaccination is mandatory, in order to protect the vaccinated (who are supposed to be immune) from the unvaccinated. An absurdity on its face.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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