Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 558

Elon Musk Is Not a Renegade Outsider – He’s a Massive Pentagon Contractor

Alan McLeod

MPN News

AUSTIN, TEXAS – Elon Musk’s proposed takeover of Twitter has ruffled many feathers among professional commentators. “Musk is the wrong leader for Twitter’s vital mission,” read one Bloomberg headline. The network also insisted, “Nothing in the Tesla CEO’s track record suggests he will be a careful steward of an important media property.” “Elon Musk is the last person who should take over Twitter,” wrote Max Boot in The Washington Post, explaining that “[h]e seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.” The irony of outlets owned by Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos warning of the dangers of permitting a billionaire oligarch to control our media was barely commented upon.

Added to this, a host of celebrities publicly left the social media platform in protest against the proposed $44 billion purchase. This only seemed to confirm to many free speech-minded individuals that the South African billionaire was a renegade outsider on a mission to save the internet from authoritarian elite control (despite the fact that he is borrowing money from the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia in order to do so).

Musk has deliberately cultivated this image of himself: a real life Tony Stark figure who thinks for himself and is not part of the established order. But behind this carefully constructed façade, Musk is intimately connected to the U.S. national security state, serving as one of its most important business partners. Elon, in short, is no threat to the powerful, entrenched elite: he is one of them.

To Ukraine, with love

Musk, whose estimated $230 billion fortune is more than twice the gross domestic product of Ukraine, has garnered a great deal of positive publicity for donating thousands of Starlink terminals to the country, helping its people come back online after fighting downed the internet in much of the country. Starlink is an internet service allowing those with terminals to connect to one of over 2,400 small satellites in low Earth orbit. Many of these satellites were launched by Musk’s SpaceX technologies company.

However, it soon transpired that there is far more than meets the eye with Musk’s extraordinary “donation.” In fact, the U.S. government quietly paid SpaceX top dollar to send their inventory to the warzone. USAID – a government anti-insurgency agency that has regularly functioned as a regime-change organization – is known to have put up the cash to purchase and deliver at least 1,330 of the terminals.

Starlink is not a mass-market solution. Each terminal – which is, in effect, a tiny, portable satellite dish – has a markedly limited range, and is useful only in hyper-local situations. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, estimated that the 10,000 Starlink terminals were allowing around 150,000 people to stay online.

Such a small number of people using the devices raises eyebrows. Who is important enough to be given such a device? Surely only high-value individuals such as spies or military operatives. That the Starlinks are serving a military purpose is now beyond clear. Indeed, in a matter of weeks, Starlink has become a cornerstone of the Ukrainian military, allowing it to continue to target Russian forces via drones and other high-tech machinery dependent on an internet connection. One official told The Times of London that he “must” use Starlink to target enemy forces via thermal imaging.

“Starlink is what changed the war in Ukraine’s favor. Russia went out of its way to blow up all our comms. Now they can’t. Starlink works under Katyusha fire, under artillery fire. It even works in Mariupol,” one Ukrainian soldier told journalist David Patrikarakos.

"I want to say one thing: @elonmusk's Starlink is what changed the war in #Ukraine's favour. #Russia went out of its way to blow up all our comms. Now they can't. Starlink works under Katyusha fire, under artillery fire. It even works in Mariupol." pic.twitter.com/C2QnVTE3tc

— David Patrikarakos (@dpatrikarakos) April 27, 2022

Rocketman

Such a statement is bound to get the attention of SpaceX chiefs, who have long profited from their lucrative relationship with the U.S. military. SpaceX relies largely on government contracts, there being almost no civilian demand for many of its products, especially its rocket launches.

Musk’s company has been awarded billions of dollars in contracts to launch spy satellites for espionage, drone warfare and other military uses. For example, in 2018, SpaceX was chosen to blast a $500 million Lockheed Martin GPS system into orbit. While Air Force spokesmen played up the civilian benefits of the launch, such as increased accuracy for GPS devices, it is clear that these devices play a key role in global surveillance and ongoing drone wars. SpaceX has also won contracts with the Air Force to deliver its command satellite into orbit, with the Space Development Agency to send tracking devices into space, and with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to launch its spy satellites. These satellites are used by all of the “big five” surveillance agencies, including the CIA and the NSA.

Thus, in today’s world, where so much intelligence gathering and target acquisition is done via satellite technology, SpaceX has become every bit as important to the U.S. war machine as more well-known companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Without Musk’s company, the U.S. would not be able to carry out such an invasive program of spying and drone warfare around the world. Indeed, China is growing increasingly wary of this power, and is being advised to develop anti-satellite technologies to counter SpaceX’s all-seeing eye. Yet Musk himself continues to benefit from a general perception that he is not part of the system.

From its origins in 2002, SpaceX has always been extremely close to the national security state, particularly the CIA. Perhaps the most crucial link is Mike Griffin, who, at the time, was the president and COO of In-Q-Tel, a CIA-funded venture capital firm that seeks to nurture and sponsor new companies that will work with the CIA and other security services, equipping them with cutting edge technology. The “Q” in its name is a reference to “Q” from the James Bond series – a creative inventor who supplies the spy with the latest in futuristic tech.

[…]

Via https://www.mintpressnews.com/elon-musk-not-renegade-outsider-cia-pentagon-contractor/280972/

 

War Within the War: The Fight Over Land and Genetically Engineered Agriculture

[Source: orientalreview.org]

By Mitchel Cohen

Covert Action Magazine

Ten months before Russian troops poured into Ukraine, that country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill into law authorizing the private sale of farmland, reversing a moratorium that had been in place since 2001.

An earlier administration in Ukraine had instituted the moratorium in order to halt further privatization of The Commons and small farms, which were being bought up by oligarchs and concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. As documented in a series of critical reports over ten years by the Oakland Institute based in California, the moratorium on land sales in Ukraine aimed to prevent the acquisition and consolidation of farmland in the hands of the domestic oligarch class and foreign corporations.

The marketization of farmland is part of a series of policy “reforms” that the International Monetary Fund stipulated as a precondition enabling Ukraine to receive $8 billion in loans from the IMF.[2]

Even amid the pandemic there has been “wide-ranging opposition from the Ukrainian public to reversing that ban, with over 64 percent of the people opposed to the creation of a land market, according to an April 2021 poll.”[3]

Additionally, the IMF loan conditions required that Ukraine must also reverse its ban on genetically engineered crops, and enable private corporations like Monsanto to plant its GMO seeds and spray the fields with Monsanto’s Roundup. In that way, Monsanto hopes to break the boycott by a number of countries in Europe of its genetically engineered corn and soy.

It is the thesis of this essay that agricultural competition over land use between the U.S. and Russia—two gigantic capitalist countries with the most powerful nuclear arsenals in the world—is a neglected but important force driving the war in Ukraine.

[…]

Competing systems for growing crops

[…]

Six years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to seize economic opportunities around the growing of food by opposing genetically engineered agriculture and Monsanto’s Roundup, the world’s most widely used herbicide; he initiated a program to eliminate pesticides and genetically engineered crops from Russia’s fields. The goal was to out-compete the U.S. and Canada as the world’s number one and two grain exporters by going organic, which mattered especially in Europe with its stricter laws regarding the import and planting of GMOs.Farmers Weekly continues: “Russian agriculture minister Nikolai Fyodorov also believes Russia must remain a GM-free country. At a meeting of deputies representing rural areas organized by United Russia, he said the government will not ‘poison their citizens.’”[20] United Russia is Russia’s largest political party, holding 2/3 of the seats in the state Dumas.

This was a far different response than provided by the government of Ukraine. Despite large protests against GMOs and the foreign corporate land grab, and despite the fact that Ukrainian law had prohibited private sector farmland ownership, Ukraine’s government negotiated a multi-billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund that stipulated a removal of the blocks to GMO production that was “transforming millions of pristine acres into [a] poisoned wasteland. Eco-genocide for profit. Monsanto’s dirty hands are hugely involved.”[21]

 […]

In the last 30 years, the takeover of domestic agriculture by GMO crops has been part of U.S. war efforts. Following the U.S. “shock-and-awe” bombing of Iraq in 2003, L. Paul Bremer—the U.S.-appointed administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq—issued Order 81. Officially titled “Amendments to Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law,” the edict prohibited farmers from saving seeds from genetically engineered crops, and made it illegal for them to replant those seeds, thereby serving as enforcer of Monsanto’s patents.

[…]

And so, the United States systematically dumps cheap genetically engineered products saturated with pesticides on foreign markets, undermining local producers and forcing them to purchase the patented seeds from the company manufacturing them, along with the pesticides needed to kill off the plants’ weedy competitors.[29] Uprooted from their lands, local producers become dependent on the United States and its corporations, and many try to flee across the border to the United States.

[…]

“The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) is [sic] helping biotech run the latest war in Ukraine,” writes Christina Sarich in Natural Society. “Make no mistake that what is happening in the Ukraine now is deeply tied to the interests of Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and other big players in the poison food game.”[40]

Exposed by the California-based Oakland Institute in 2014, the World Bank and IMF provided a loan of $17 billion to Ukraine.[41]

Hidden from mainstream media exposure in the U.S., the World Bank and IMF loan “has opened up Ukraine to major corporate inroads,” writes Joyce Nelson in The Ecologist. “Loan conditions are forcing the deeply indebted country to open up to GMO crops, and lift the ban on private sector land ownership. U.S. corporations are jubilant at the ‘goldmine’ that awaits them.”[42]

It is worth reading more from this 2014 report in The Ecologist—years before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The information provided is shocking—and unreported here in the U.S. While some in the U.S. understand that the 2014 political battles in Ukraine were over the expansion of NATO and control over energy pipelines to Europe,[43] there was, and still is, an equally large but hidden global battle over GM grains, land ownership and usage, and “food pipelines.”

In late 2013, the then president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, rejected a European Union association agreement tied to the $17 billion IMF loan, whose terms are only now being revealed.

Writing in The Ecologist in September 2014, Joyce Nelson examines the IMF-Ukraine loan packages in great detail. The next few paragraphs below are taken directly from that report:

Instead, Yanukovych chose a Russian aid package worth $15 billion plus a discount on Russian natural gas. His decision was a major factor in the ensuing deadly protests that led to his ouster from office in February 2014 and the ongoing crisis.

According to the Oakland Institute, “Whereas Ukraine does not allow the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, Article 404 of the EU agreement, which relates to agriculture, includes a clause that has generally gone unnoticed: it indicates, among other things, that both parties will cooperate to extend the use of biotechnologies.

[…]

In June 2020, “the IMF approved an 18-month, $5 billion loan program with Ukraine,” writes the Bretton Woods Project. The Ukraine government lift[ed] the 19-year moratorium on the sale of state-owned agricultural lands, after sustained pressure from international finance institutions (see Observer Winter 2019)

[…]

A bill lifting the moratorium was passed in an emergency Parliamentary session in March. According to a May press release by U.S.-based think-tank the Oakland Institute, this coincided with mandatory Covid-19 stay-at-home orders in place across the country, “effectively quelling potential protests or demonstrations.”

[…]

As I had written earlier, it is complicated, with several different forces at play. We never hear about the Oakland Institute’s May 2020 analysis[63] in U.S. mainstream corporate media, nor even on some erstwhile “Left” media like Democracy Now. Who would know, in the U.S., that “on April 28, 2020, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill into law authorizing the sale of farmland in Ukraine, lifting a moratorium that has been in place since 2001. This bill is part of a series of policy reforms upon which the IMF conditioned its $8 billion loan package.

“Amidst an ongoing economic crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented street protests against the lifting of the moratorium by Ukrainians who are overwhelmingly opposed to the law.”[64]

The Oakland Institute concludes that “opening the sale of land will benefit Western agribusiness interests and oligarchs who will now further consolidate ownership of land and intensify large-scale, industrial agriculture in ‘Europe’s Breadbasket,’ at the expense of Ukrainian farmers. While conditionalities accompanying Western foreign assistance are common practice, the way Ukraine has been forced to put its land for sale has no precedent in modern history.”[65]

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/05/31/war-within-the-war-the-fight-over-land-and-genetically-engineered-agriculture/

How the Silk Road Propagated Buddhism, Other Major Religions and Written Language

Episode 9: Buddhism, Manichaeism and Christianity

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

According to Harl, Buddhism was the most successful region between the 4th and 6th century AD, largely due to its promotion by Kushan* rulers. Buddhism’s founder Siddartha Gautama lived during the 5th-6th century on the India-Nepal border. Harl believes his rejection of the Hindu caste system is an important reason for its popularity, especially as the Kushan elite derived from a subordinate caste.

Buddhism was also really popular with wealthy Silk Road merchants, who helped build Buddhist monasteries along the Silk Road. At the time, Buddhism interpreted wealth as a manifestation of positive karma and success in the world to come.

Buddhism would remain the predominant religion in regions adjacent to the Silk Road until the late Middle Ages, when it was replaced by Islam.

By the third century AD, two main versions of Buddhism had evolved. Mayahana Buddhism remained the larger sect. Theravada Buddhism, which became prevalent in Thailand and Sri Lanka, emphasized translation of Sanskrit Buddhist texts into vernacular languages spoken by ordinary people.

Manichaeism was also an important Silk Road religion. Mani (born 216 AD in Mesopotamia) was crucified by the Persian shah for heresy against Zoroastrianism. Manichaeism, which shares many of the same beliefs as Buddhism, was also well received by the steppes nomads.

Christianity, specifically Nestorian Christianity, was the third most successful religion along the Silk Road.

Nestorius, the archbishop of Constantinople between 429-431 AD, taught that Mary gave birth to a human baby, that the Christ logos only entered Jesus later in childhood. He also preached that plural marriages were acceptable to God. After Nestorian beliefs were banned by the the 431 AD Ecumenical Council, his followers left the Roman Empire and moved to Persian-controlled Mesopotamia to preserve their faith. Their monks became renowned for performing healings, and nomad mothers frequently tattooed their babies’ foreheads with a cross to protect them against plague.

Religious monks who traveled the Silk Road were also important for bringing written language to steppes nomads. This facilitated the creation of political confederacies, as well as establishing stronger links with settled areas.

*See How the Kushan Empire Spread Buddhism Along the Silk Road

Film can be viewed free with a library card at Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5695004

Prominent doctors urge calm over monkeypox, a treatable disease spread mainly through intimate homosexual contact

Dr Eddy Betterman

The media hysteria surrounding monkeypox is largely leaving out one very important part of the story: The disease poses very little risk to most people and is being spread largely through men having sex with men.

This is something that even the World Health Organization has quietly admitted. In confirming around 200 cases of the virus on Monday, WHO officials said that while anyone can technically contract it, the recent surge has been tied to homosexual men.

In fact, Dr. David Heymann, who served as the chair of a meeting of the WHO’s advisory group on infectious disease, said that the leading theory explaining the spread was sexual transmission at events recently held in Spain’s Canary Islands and Belgium. In the past, monkeypox has not triggered widespread outbreaks outside of Africa, where the disease is endemic in animals.

Heymann told The Associated Press: “We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission.

“It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions … and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact.”

Of course, if they drew attention to that fact, it would make it harder for them to convince the masses to line up for the monkeypox vaccine that will inevitably be pushed on the population much in the same way that people are being bullied into getting COVID-19 vaccines.

Belgian officials have already announced a mandatory 21-day quarantine for people who contract the disease, while Germany has confirmed four cases of monkeypox stemming from exposure at “party events … where sexual activity took place.”

Doctor labels hysteria over monkeypox a “gross overreaction”

Speaking on Real America’s Voice, former WHO Consultant and Senior Advisor to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the COVID-19 response, Dr. Paul Alexander called the hysteria a “gross overreaction” to a disease that is much milder than smallpox. He said that there is a small chance of droplet infection but the risk to the general population is low overall. While it’s prudent to keep an eye on it for public health reasons, there is no reason to overreact.

Epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough echoed this sentiment, calling for people to keep calm as the disease has a low risk of spreading and is relatively easy to treat with proper medical care.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2022/05/31/prominent-doctors-urge-calm-over-monkeypox-a-treatable-disease/

Are You Being OVER-MEDICATED by Your Doctor(s)?

The bottom line is that you may not need all the medications you’ve been prescribed to manage your health conditions. Overprescribing sets up older adults for a downward spiral of increasing side effects and worsening health. A holistic approach is needed to address the key tenets of good health and create real wellness instead of attempting to cover up symptoms with more pills.

National Addiction News

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

Polypharmacy is the term used for overprescribed medications. This is more common in older adults who have several risk factors and often have more than one chronic health condition that can lead to overprescriptionOverprescription is not limited to adults. Data from 2014 showed more than 274,000 children from birth to 1 year were prescribed psychiatric drugs, 249,669 antianxiety drugs, and 1,422 ADHD drugsOver-the-counter medications can also create drug interactions and side effects. When too many drugs are prescribed, you may be taking one to take care of the side effects of anotherYou may be overprescribed medications if you consistently visit multiple doctors, have a new health condition, have trouble keeping up with your medication or have new financial pressure from the expense of your medicationsTake control of your drug cabinet by creating and maintaining a list of the medications, supplements and OTC drugs you…

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Africa objects to US proposal on controversial IHR (WHO) amendments

By Shabnam Palesa Mohamed

Take Back Power

Meanwhile India discovers irregularities in WHO financial audit

In a rare show of African power and solidarity, several African member states objected to proposed International Health Regulations amendments, discussed at the World Health Assembly 75 this week – a move many believe might shake up the World Health Organization’s dominance.

A well placed source shared: “The resolution on IHR amendments was not passed at the WHA, as African countries were concerned that there was inadequate consultation amongst member states, and the process was being rushed. Botswana read the statement on behalf of the 47 AFRO members and I was personally present.”

According to Reuters, “if Africa continues to withhold support, it could block one of the only concrete reforms expected from the meeting, fraying hopes that members will unite on reforms to strengthen the U.N. health agency’s rules as it seeks a central role for itself in global health policy.”

The IHR seeks to define and detail WHO members’ obligations around public health emergencies and other health matters. The United States government proposed 13 controversial IHR amendments, which give the WHO DG Tedros unilateral power to declare actual or potential health emergencies and expect a response in 48 hours.

The draft proposal yet to be formally decided also aims to change article 59 of the IHR, and would accelerate the implementation of future amendments.

Bear in mind, a few countries at the WHA submitted draft resolutions to the IHR, which would need, at least according to the WHO process, four months to be considered. These countries are Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, European Union and its Member States, Japan, Monaco, Republic of Korea, United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the United States of America.

The African #WHA75 delegation expressed reservations about these IHR amendments, saying all reforms should be tackled together as part of a “holistic package” at a later stage.

“The African region shares the view that the process should not be fast tracked…,” Moses Keetile, deputy permanent secretary in Botswana’s health ministry, told the assembly on Tuesday on behalf of the Africa region.

“We find that they are going too quickly and these sorts of reforms can’t be rushed through,” said a concerned African delegate in Geneva. The U.S. mission in Geneva did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

BRIMI emerges: Brazil, Russia, Iran, Malaysia and India

Brazil and Russia form part of the BRICS initiative with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Iran and Malaysia are reported to have also expressed reservations to the proposed IHR amendments, while Russia and Brazil seem set to make big moves on international health policies, or possibly even exit the WHO. Meanwhile, India raised audit concerns on irregularities with WHO financials.

A civil society World Health Assembly monitor shared “Just for your interest, from the external audit done by India team, who yesterday during the financial comittee stated that they feel very disappointed that their audit has been ignored by WHO.”

[…]

Time line, duplication, and waste of funding resources

The IHR amendments discussions are parallel to talks on a potential new pandemic treaty (#PandemicAccord) , raising concerns over duplication and waste of funding handed to the WHO.

Given the trajectory, it appears that both the IHR amendments and the new pandemic accord, if successful, will converge on the world in 2024, unless countries decide to curtail the WHO’s power and take charge of their health.

This 2024 date was highlighted in the working group on IHR amendments: “Delegates welcomed the final report of the Working Group on strengthening WHO preparedness and response to health emergencies which, among other things, proposed a process for taking forward potential amendments to the IHR (2005). They agreed to continue the group, with a revised mandate and name (the “Working Group on IHR amendments” (WGIHR)) to work exclusively on consideration of proposed IHR amendments. Member States also requested the Director-General to convene an IHR Review Committee to make technical recommendations on the proposed amendments that may be submitted. The Working Group will propose a package of targeted amendments for consideration by the Seventy-seventh Health Assembly.”

“Several developing countries have said that the WHO has too many platforms for negotiation, and it is simply not manageable,” said Nithin Ramakrishnan, consultant for the Third World Network.

US senators start to push back on WHO overreach

According to the Daily Caller Republican senator Ron Johnson “introduced legislation Thursday that would push back against the World Health Organization’s (WHO) overreach and ensure the Senate has power over its pandemic treaty.

The Daily Caller first obtained the legislation, titled the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act, which was spearheaded by Johnson and has 15 cosponsors. The bill mentions the WHO creating an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) and, if passed, would require any agreement produced by the INB to be submitted to the Senate as a treaty in an effort to provide more transparency on the administration.

The lawmakers believe they need to start fighting to prevent the WHO from creating an INB.

“The World Health Organization, along with our federal health agencies, failed miserably in its response to COVID-19. Its failure should not be rewarded with a new international treaty that would increase its power at the expense of American sovereignty. What the WHO does need is greater accountability and transparency,” Johnson told the Daily Caller prior to officially introducing the legislation.

“This bill makes clear to the Biden administration that any new WHO pandemic agreement must be deemed a treaty and submitted to the Senate for ratification. The sovereignty of the United States is not negotiable,” Johnson continued.”

[…]

Via https://shabnampalesamohamed.substack.com/p/africa-objects-to-us-proposal-on?s=r

Ten Times Empire Managers Showed Us That They Want To Control Our Thoughts

 

By Caitlin Johnstone

The single most overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of our society is the fact that immensely powerful people are continuously working to manipulate the thoughts we think about the world. Whether you call it propaganda, psyops, perception management or public relations, it’s a real thing that happens constantly, and it happens to all of us.

And its consequences shape our entire world.

This should be at the forefront of our attention when examining news, trends and ideas, but it hardly ever gets mentioned. This is because the mass-scale psychological manipulation is succeeding. Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening.

To be clear, I am not talking about some kind of wacky unsubstantiated conspiracy theory here. I am talking about a conspiracy fact. That we are propagandized by people with authority over us is not seriously in dispute by any well-informed good faith actor and has been extensively described and documented for many years.

More than this, the managers of the US-centralized empire which dominates the west and so much of the rest of the world have straightforwardly shown us that they propagandize us and want to propagandize us more. They have shown us with their actions, and they have at times come right out and told us with their words.

Here are just a few of those times.

1. Operation Mockingbird

Let’s start with maybe the best-known example. In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird.

It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

But it only got worse from there.

2. Intelligence operatives now just openly working in the media

The CIA Used To Infiltrate The Media. Now The CIA Is The Media.

"This isn't Operation Mockingbird. It's so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something *to* the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting *as* the media."https://t.co/mFwHob0MFC

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 16, 2021

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The Washington Post has consistently refused to disclose the fact that its sole owner has been a CIA contractor when reporting on US intelligence agencies as per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price, Rick Francona, Michael Morell, John McLaughlin, John Sipher, Thomas Bossert, Clint Watts, James Baker, Mike Baker, Daniel Hoffman, David Preiss, Evelyn Farkas, Mike Rogers and Malcolm Nance, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any meaningful separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.

[…]

Via https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/29/ten-times-empire-managers-showed-us-that-they-want-to-control-our-thoughts/

 

MSM Offers Rare Glimpse How Bad Things Going For Ukrainian Forces

By Caitlin Johnstone

While everyone’s focused on the latest mass shooting in the US, The Washington Post published what may be the first major acknowledgement from the mainstream western media that Ukraine’s war against Russia has not been nearly the cakewalk they’ve been leading the public to believe.

In a new article titled “Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the east feel abandoned,” WaPo reports that contrary to the triumphant narratives the western world is being spoon fed, many troops in eastern Ukraine have been surviving on one potato per day and deserting their posts because they feel their leaders have turned their backs on them and they’re being sent to certain death.

“Stuck in their trenches, the Ukrainian volunteers lived off a potato per day as Russian forces pounded them with artillery and Grad rockets on a key eastern front line. Outnumbered, untrained and clutching only light weapons, the men prayed for the barrage to end,” The Washington Post reports, citing multiple named sources.

“Ukrainian leaders have projected and nurtured a public image of military invulnerability — of their volunteer and professional forces triumphantly standing up to the Russian onslaught,” the article reads. “But the experience of Lapko and his group of volunteers offers a rare and more realistic portrait of the conflict and Ukraine’s struggle to halt the Russian advance in parts of Donbas. Ukraine, like Russia, has provided scant information about deaths, injuries or losses of military equipment. But after three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions.”

Ukrainian leaders project an image of military invulnerability against #Russia. But commanders offer a more realistic portrait of the war, where outgunned volunteers describe being abandoned by their military brass and facing certain death at the front. https://t.co/YLu9M28Cx8

— Sudarsan Raghavan (@raghavanWaPo) May 26, 2022

WaPo reports that volunteer troops in that part of the country “quickly found themselves in the crosshairs of war, feeling abandoned by their military superiors and struggling to survive.”

“We are being sent to certain death,” said one volunteer. “We are not alone like this, we are many.”

“Hours after The Post interviewed Lapko and Khrus, members of Ukraine’s military security service arrived at their hotel and detained some of their men, accusing them of desertion,” WaPo reports. “The men contend that they were the ones who were deserted.”

Some commentators have remarked on the fact that at long last we’re seeing some realistic coverage of this war in the mainstream press.

“First major US media I’ve seen to report catastrophic condition of Ukrainian forces, collapsing Ukrainian morale on the front. Seems obvious we should know the truth about a war our government is so deeply invested in,” tweeted journalist Mark Ames, a frequent critic of the mass media blackout on conditions in the Ukrainian military.

“This might be the first article in a mainstream publication that punctures the PR spin and secrecy of the foreign military that the US is subsidizing. Two commanders were arrested after they spoke to the Washington Post, painting an extremely grim picture,” tweeted journalist Michael Tracey.

This is indeed a major break from standard mainstream reporting on this conflict, which is normally more in line with this recent Newsweek article titled “Putin’s Elite Soldiers Getting Wiped Out as Russia Makes Mistakes—U.K.,” sourced entirely in unevidenced claims by the British government and the military industrial complex-funded neocon think tank Institute for the Study of War.

First major US media I've seen to report catastrophic condition of Ukrainian forces, collapsing Ukrainian morale on the front. Seems obvious we should know the truth about a war our government is so deeply invested in.https://t.co/sYYwdm1p62

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) May 26, 2022

[…]

Via https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/msm-offers-rare-glimpse-into-how?s=r

The Role of the Silk Road in Creating the First Global Economy

Episode 8 Trade Across the Tarim Basin*

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

Between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD, the Silk Road enabled the development of the first “global economy.” The West’s desire for Chinese silk was the primary driver of the Silk Road trade.

Harl traces the five main routes Silk Road traders took from China:

The most northern route ran through the Ganzu Corridor directly north of the wall separating China from the steppes. The Chinese posted a garrison at the Jade Gate** to tax all imports entering the country.Traveling west, the Ganzu Corridor route split into a northern branch and a southern branch skirting the Taklamakan DesertAt Kashgar the route crossed the formidable Pamirs Mountains.From there, a northern branch led north of the Aral and Caspian seas through Fergana (which traded horses along the Silk Road) to the Black Sea and a southern branch traversed Transoxiana*** south of the Caspian Sea to various Black Sea ports and (via Bactria****) to the Mediterranean.

He also discussed the complementary sea routes established by Mediterranean civilizations following the discovery of the monsoon trade winds in 116 BC. Egypt (run by the Ptolemys, a Greek dynasty) controlled the shipping around the Arabian peninsula to import silk from India.

In 31 BC, Rome secured the Mediterranean under the emperor Augustus. The Romans had an enormous appetite for Chinese silks and spices and gems from India.

*A desert area between the east Asian steppes and China, the Tarim Basin first came under Chinese control in the 1st century AD.

**The Jade Gate was a strategic Great Wall fort adjacent at the entry to the Ganzu corridor.

***Tranoxiana is the Roman’s name for a lower Central Asian region d in lower Central Asia roughly corresponding to modern-day eastern Uzbekistan

****Bactria was also a jumping off point for routes to India.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5694984/5695002

CDC Quietly Fires Monkeypox Deniers

Michael Baxter

Real Raw News

The Centers for Disease Control has quietly begun firing employees who won’t toe the agency’s monkeypox narrative, a CDC whistleblower told Real Raw News.

The whistleblower, a tenured research scientist at the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID,) said that Dr. Christopher Braden, the Dept.’s head, has since May 16 terminated a tenured virologist and two lab assistants for questioning the veracity of current monkeypox cases in the United States. The firings, he added, occurred within days of the employees questioning whether the CDC was artificially amplifying the existence of active monkeypox cases for political gain.

“Look, throughout Covid some working at CDC became very suspicious, knew something was off. That Rochelle Walensky was putting out fictitious active cases and making up symptoms that just didn’t exist—like Covid toes. A lot of us don’t want this to happen again, and a few have spoken out, and gotten in trouble,” the whistleblower said.

RRN was asked to conceal the identities of the fired employees because the CDC had compelled them to sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements as a condition for receiving severance packages.

The first to be fired was a virologist who had worked at the CDC for 17 years. On 16 May he was shown pictures of an alleged monkeypox patient, a Massachusetts man with no international travel history and whose hands were covered with blisters, boils, and pustules—symptoms of monkeypox. The CDC had already declared the man monkeypox positive but wanted the virologist to sign off on the diagnosis. The virologist apparently felt something was amiss, for he compared the image against a CDC database of past monkeypox patients, and discovered it matched exactly the picture of an American missionary who had contracted monkeypox while in East Africa in 2012. That person had never lived in Massachusetts, and was, in fact, now dead.

“The virologist we’re talking about brought his findings to Dr. Braden, saying he couldn’t in good conscious sign any paperwork because the case was fraudulent. He said someone within the center was recycling old photos and presenting them as current active cases. Braden thanked him for uncovering ‘an inconsistency’ and said he’d bring the matter to Rochelle Walensky’s attention,” the whistleblower said.

Upon arriving at work the next morning, the virologist was promptly fired. The reasons given were “unethical behavior” and “misuse of company property.” According to the whistleblower, the CDC offered the virologist a healthy severance package in exchange for signing a confidentiality/non-disclosure agreement stating he would not speak to the press about monkeypox or reasons for his termination. CDC security, he said, watched the virologist pack his personal belongings, then ushered him out the door.

“He was told, directly, to avoid media, under threat of having payouts and health insurance cancelled. Also, the NDA stipulated he could be litigated against if he violated it. It’s risky giving you this information, but it’s a matter of public importance,” the whistleblower told RRN.

Two days later, Braden fired the virologist’s two laboratory assistants. They, too, were given severance packages after signing aggressive non-disclosure agreements.

“There’s an ongoing effort to push monkeypox into the limelight,” the whistleblower said, “even though there’s no evidence of an actual outbreak, or even a single active case in the U.S.”

Via https://realrawnews.com/2022/05/cdc-quietly-fires-monkeypox-deniers/