The truth is always hated by its contemporaries

Here is a cartoon published last week in the international edition of the New York Times, which received sweeping denunciations from every hall of power, followed by a quick retraction on the part of the Times, and a cancelling of the contract with the cartoonist. But just look at it:

It’s a miracle it made it into a mainstream publication at all, considering it mocks the highest symbol on the totem pole, the US-Israel relationship. It depicts the US being led blindly by Israel, which, of course, accurately depicts the nature of the relationship. And if anyone criticizes that relationship, they hide, cravenly, behind the race card, slinging “anti-Semite!” rapid-fire. Why is this so? Growing up in the midst of Southern Baptist obsession with the End Times, I know that that obsession made it inevitable that they would nurture a similar obsession with the state of Israel. Southern Baptists elect Southern Baptists, and so many legislatures are inhabited by people who sincerely believe Armageddon will arrive at any moment, with the Anti-Christ materializing and ready to wreak havoc on the world. Jerusalem apparently must be Jewish-controlled in order for all of this to happen. Hence the obsession, and the complacent attitude toward Israeli crimes, including the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 37 US servicemen. Also something that doesn’t keep them up at night is the obvious control Israel exercises over our own government. They operate an open-air concentration camp of 1.8 million Palestinian civilians. They control the borders, prohibit many, many goods from entering, and conduct random night-time raids to keep the Palestinians on their toes.

But Israel is an ethnic Apartheid State, brought into this world through the modern methods of terrorism: a series of campaigns of unpredictable, indiscriminate mass murders and assassinations,  in order to clear space for their new nation. They’ve never attempted to get along with any neighboring country, instead building a fortress State, and becoming a permanent welfare recipient, and liability, of the United States.

It’s a shame that such a state was built by such a persecuted people in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The world’s goodwill was exploited, and Israel has bizarrely become almost a mirror of Nazi ethnic ideology: the treatment of Palestinians by Israel mirrors the treatment the Jews received at the hands of Hitler’s murderous regime.

Say any of that in public and you’ll be called an anti-Semite, or worse. Such is the power of ideology on the mind.

Links

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: The chemical torture of Julian Assange: He’s being treated, against his will, with 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate.

BONNIE KRISTIAN: Trump’s latest pardon is an implicit endorsement of war crimes

Truthdig: The Pentagon’s trillion-dollar boondoggle

Health Impact: FDA approves Dengvaxia vaccine that harmed over 100,000 Philippine children, allegedly killing 600

Reason: Oklahoma just passed a major licensing reform for individuals with criminal records

The Guardian: Is Chinese-style surveillance coming to the West?

ANDREW BACEVICH: How the Medal of Freedom became a fraud

Ron Paul endorses Tulsi!

Progenitor of the present-day Liberty Movement, Ron Paul, appeared for an interview on RT, throwing his support behind Tulsi Gabbard’s Presidential bid: “She is, by far, the very, very best…She’s the most intelligent, and would be the best, if we had to pick one of them to be our President.”

What a strange feeling it will be to register Democrat, but how thrilling it will be to again vote for someone calling out the “regime-change wars” and intransigently stating that they will end them, once and for all.

Ilhan Omar versus the barnacles of Empire: Venezuela Edition

Ilhan Omar has become a thorn in the side to the many benefactors of the seamless procession of regime-change wars of the past two decades. Those benefactors now have their sights set on Venezuela, and have unfurled the narrative they pray will set the Imperial War Machine full-force upon that civilian population. That narrative is composed of a variation on a theme of the evils of socialism, of which there are many, but Venezuela’s plight is far more complex than simply socialism wrecking the country. For one, Maduro is not a dictator. Socialism or not, Venezuelans elected him, and love him. Socialism has done damage to the country, but Trump’s effort to topple Maduro and install a puppet regime has led to the imposition of sanctions, a policy that has never forced a foreign leader from power, but has done plenty of horrific damage to the most vulnerable civilians. The economic sanctions, which have been ongoing for the past two years, have caused tens of thousands of deaths, according to a new report released from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. This U.S.-created humanitarian crisis was plainly recognized as such by Ilhan Omar, who, while appearing on Democracy Now!, said,

A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela, and we’ve sort of set the stage for where we’re arriving today…This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela, and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States.”

The architects of this foreign devastation came with knives drawn, with VP Mike Pence accusing Omar of choosing “socialism over freedom”. Omar shot back, saying that, “Just as in interventions past, those who oppose war are labeled supporters of dictators and haters of ‘freedom’. We saw this playbook in Iraq. The situation in Venezuela is dire and the Trump Admin is making it worse. We must support diplomacy, not war.

Much to the chagrin of Trump and his cabal of war pigs , Venezuelans love Maduro. What they don’t love is the world’s foremost superpower poking its nose where it doesn’t belong. That includes shopping around for useful idiots, political pawns they can use as warm bodies to inhabit the puppet government they so desperately wish to install. Juan Guaido has been D.C.’s puppet of choice, due to the fact that in him reside all the best qualities of a foreign puppet: opportunism, greed, gullibility, a conspicuous lack of integrity, a willingness to sell out his own country for a shot at power, and generalized idiocy.

Could you imagine if Russia, or some other foreign power openly conspired with a member of Congress to overthrow an elected leader here? That member would most likely be strung up. That Guaido walks around a free man, holding political rallies in the middle of the day in Caracas, is a testament to the very lack of authoritarianism that Washington D.C. so wishes existed in that South American country. Guaido is puppet whose usefulness is running low, and D.C. is beginning to realize that he may now be more valuable dead than alive, and would surely prefer a nice, clean assassination on the part of the Maduro regime. To their credit, they surely recognize this imbecile for what he is, a traitor to his country. Traitor, due to his open calls for his government’s overthrow at the behest of a foreign power, and actual, real-world collusion with U.S. officials to fast-track his status as President Puppet of Venezuela.

There are too few who criticize the U.S. foreign policy of making corpses of entire nations, of irreversibly ruining the existing social order, unleashing chaos, and sowing the seeds of future wars. Conversely, there are far too many that promote and advocate for never-ending, overseas wars. The political establishment in D.C. speaks with one voice on the topic. Their only concern is their ability to brand the war in such a way that it will be swallowed by enough people to get the war going. The pharmaceutical industry, in its pursuit of profits from the sick and gullible, engages in “disease branding”. Basically, after creating a drug, they look at the side-effects, and then conjure a disease out of thin air that comports with those very side-effects. And so it is with murderous and expensive U.S. military campaigns abroad, rebranded as “humanitarian” to better sell it to a gullible public.

Links

Activist Post: “Landmark” victory for First Amendment as court strikes down Texas anti-BDS law

BRITTANY HUNTER: No one is coming to rescue you, especially not a presidential candidate

Techdirt: Study: The ‘War on Cops’ is pure BS

FEE: Electric cars aren’t nearly as green as people think

JEFFREY SINGER: Scapegoating opioid manufacturers lets true offenders get away

The Outline: Thanks to Trump, psychedelic drugs have received more medical research and consumer market approval than ever

Forbes: The fossil that inspired ‘Alien’

Links

The Hill: Report: More Afghan civilians killed by U.S. and Afghan forces than killed by the Taliban

Detroit Free Press: Student slated to attend Western Michigan University beheaded in Saudi Arabia

“Saudi killing spree” of its own civilians

Activist Post: NBC and CNN caught faking measles pics

Reason: The New York Times built a functioning private facial recognition system

The Intercept: Coalition airstrikes in Raqqa killed 1,600 civilians, more than 10 times U.S. estimate, according to Amnesty International report

FEE: The ADHD overdiagnosis epidemic is a schooling problem, not a child one

Links

KOAM: Medical marijuana patients in Oklahoma to be allowed to own, purchase firearms

Reason: The government is treating Julian Assange like a hacker to punish his journalism

Activist Post: “It should be illegal”: Use of facial recognition software at airport draws anger

Techdirt: State investigator granted immunity for hours-long detention of doctor at gunpoint during search for medical records

Business Insider: Trump’s washing machine tariffs stung consumers while lifting corporate profits

New York Daily News: Hundreds of Pakistani children hospitalized with nausea and vomiting following polio vaccine

Going back to meat after eating vegan made Anne Hathaway feel “like a computer rebooting”

Yes, the FDA manipulates the media

This Scientific American article from 2016 is a fairly eye-opening report on the tactic that most government, scientific, and corporate agencies use to control coverage of them by the media. It describes the tactic of giving a select group of privileged reporters early access to breaking news, in exchange for relinquishing journalistic independence. That tactic is known as a close-hold embargo. Basically, the reporters would be instructed on how to report the story in order to have the scoop. As one might expect, the slimiest, most amoral, opportunistic reporters jump at this Faustian bargain, since they have no soul to sell anyway. But the effect on the profession of journalism at large is devastating: the most high-profile media outlets become nothing more than stenographers, willingly publishing whatever they are told. In exchange, they get the exclusive.

Think that garbage you watch on TV is “news”? It is a series of polished turds, propaganda in pure-heroin form, manufactured in scientific fashion by the very industry or government agency being covered, designed to elicit a particular response from the person ingesting it. And they are getting that response.

Links

Town Hall: The Assange exception to the First Amendment

RYAN MCMAKEN: Yes, Julian Assange is a journalist. But that shouldn’t matter.

Activist Post: More than 50,000 marijuana convictions to be wiped clean in Los Angeles

PCmag: Microsoft rejects police request for its facial recognition tech

Reason: The Feds make a killing by overcharging for electronic court records

Futurism: Denver is voting on whether to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms

CNBC: Investors are starting to bet big on psychedelic medicine