STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Israel, the Jewish lobby, and their bought-and-paid-for political lackeys are redoubling their efforts to suppress news, criticism, and dissent concerning Gaza. It won’t work. From Craig Murray at craigmurry.org.uk:

Incredibly the Israeli genocide in Gaza is now reaching new heights of violence. Casualty figures are not coming in, as the attacks are so bad that bodies cannot be recovered, medics cannot travel and there are almost no medical facilities operational now anyway.

We now see that the Western injunctions not to attack Rafah were a smokescreen of lies to mask complicity. The final pocket of Gaza is being ruthlessly ethnically cleansed and its infrastructure will be destroyed like all the rest.

It is striking that this is accompanied by an absolutely shameless doubling down of support for Israel by the Western political and media classes. Any thought that their isolation from the vast breadth of public opinion would give them pause, must be abandoned. Their Zionist lobby paymasters have jerked the chain, and rather than rowing back, we are seeing a redoubling of their efforts to suppress dissent and obscure the truth.

Continue reading

Mainstream news dissemination now is governed by all sorts of politically correct calculations. From Tim Harnett at lewrockwell.com:

People who don’t make sense are not always incompetent. Fuzzy ideas make good camouflage while sneaking up on the public with an ideological Louisville Slugger. Trying to squeeze out the point can be counterproductive. If you’re game for a lengthy splainin’ ask, ‘just what do you mean?’ It’ll learn you to say ‘uncle’ before delving further.

There is a lot of talk circulating about how to improve on the free flow of information enabled by the World Wide Web. It isn’t always authoritarian. Incredulous as it may seem, there are news industrialists who suggest altering their own behavior rather than restricting everyone else’s. What can any sound mind make out of the proposal below bloviating from Arizona State University? Will it improve news consumers’ understanding of what’s going on? Or, is it a plot to achieve escape velocity from reality’s gravitational pull?

ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, funded by the Stanton Foundation, generated a 54 page e-pamphlet titled: “Beyond Objectivity; Producing trustworthy news in today’s newsrooms.” The authors are former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie jr. and Andrew Heyward, a president emeritus of CBS News. The first sentence asks: “What does it mean today for a journalist or news coverage to be “objective?” As this question is never answered, what they are fighting against might as well be a Sasquatch. We are told:

“Objectivity” is defined by most leading dictionaries as expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice.” Journalistic objectivity has been generally understood to mean much the same thing, although accuracy, fairness and balance have been variously mentioned with it over the years.

In fact, the concept of journalistic objectivity has never been formally defined or codified in any enforceable professional standards, which do not exist for American journalism under the First Amendment.”

Continue reading

People have kids when they’re happy and optimistic about the future. From Michael Snyder at endoftheamericandream.com:

Fertility rates have fallen way below replacement level throughout the entire industrialized world, and this is starting to cause major problems all over the globe.  Aging populations are counting on younger generations to take care of them as they get older, but younger generations are not nearly large enough to accomplish that task.  Meanwhile, there aren’t enough qualified young workers in many fields to replace the expertise of older workers that are now retiring.  Sadly, this is just the beginning.  As I discuss in my new book entitled “Chaos”, if fertility rates continue to drop we could potentially be facing an unprecedented global population collapse in the decades ahead.  This has become so evident that even the mainstream media is starting to do stories about this.  In fact, an economist that was just interviewed by the Wall Street Journal is warning that “demographic winter is coming”…

Fertility is falling almost everywhere, for women across all levels of income, education and labor-force participation. The falling birthrates come with huge implications for the way people live, how economies grow and the standings of the world’s superpowers.

In high-income nations, fertility fell below replacement in the 1970s, and took a leg down during the pandemic. It’s dropping in developing countries, too. India surpassed China as the most populous country last year, yet its fertility is now below replacement.

“The demographic winter is coming,” said Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist specializing in demographics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Here in the United States, if we want to maintain a stable population we need the fertility rate to be at 2.1 or above.

Continue reading

Is NATO escalation in store? From Brandon Smith at alt-market.us:

There are two classic propaganda narratives used by governments when it comes to keeping the public invested in any war campaign that does nothing to advance their national interests:

First, there’s the “commitment” lie, which says that once you step in to support a war effort you then must stay exponentially committed, even if that war effort is exposed as pointless. Anytime the public pulls back from that war in a bid to reconsider what purpose it serves they are ridiculed for potentially “risking lives” and setting the stage for defeat. In other words, you must support the effort blindly. You’re not allowed to examine the conflict rationally, because who wants to be blamed for losing a war?

Second, there’s the “domino effect” lie, which says that if you allow a particular “enemy” to win in one conflict, they will automatically be emboldened to invade other countries until they own the entire planet. It’s the same claim used to trick the American populace into supporting the war in Vietnam and it rarely turns out to be true. In fact, nations that engage in regional wars tend to be so weakened by the fighting that they don’t have the means to move on to another country even if they wanted to.

In the US we heard both of these narratives heading into the recent congressional vote for billions more in monetary and logistical aid to Ukraine. Neocons and Democrats worked together to force the bill through with a percentage of true conservatives fighting to stop it. Those conservatives were attacked relentlessly by the media for “helping the Russians”, but the reality that no one in the mainstream wants to talk about is that Ukraine has already lost the war.

Continue reading

within.

“Epistemological violence” is any sort of study whose conclusions might hurt the feelings of certain favored groups, even if the conclusions are correct. From Ben Bartee at armageddonprose.com:

Of course, a lot, rather any one thing in particular, has gone off the rails within Western intelligentsia — which was once, a long time in the past now, the noble vanguard of the Renaissance and Enlightenment and the envy of the civilized world.

So this isn’t anything like a holistic autopsy of the institutionalized pursuit of knowledge, as that would fill volumes longer than the Bible. 

But “epistemological violence,” a concept I only recently became familiar with by name but have long seen as an implicitly understood north star of leftist academics, seems as good a place to start as any, as it strikes at the heart of the fundamental claim that the expression of disfavored truths is immoral or violent.

In the storied decline of the West, the advent of “epistemological violence” as a concept — and all the self-loathing and censorship that it implies — is a significant plot point.

Via Social and Personality Psychology Compass (emphasis added):

“The subject of violence is the researcher, the object is the Other, and the action is the interpretation of data that is presented as knowledge. Using a hypothetical example, the problem of interpretation in empirical research on the Other is discussed. Epistemological violence refers to the interpretation of social-scientific data on the Other and is produced when empirical data are interpreted as showing the inferiority of or problematizes the Other, even when data allow for equally viable alternative interpretations. Interpretations of inferiority or problematizations are understood as actions that have a negative impact on the Other. Because the interpretations of data emerge from an academic context and thus are presented as knowledge, they are defined as epistemologically violent actions.”
– Thomas Teo, York University psychology professor

So, for example, under this framework, not just pointing out but even documenting at all migrant crime statistics in Western Europe, which are wildly out of proportion to their share of the overall population, would be “epistemological violence” and therefore verboten.  

Continue reading

Alastair Crooke analyzes the diplomatic and political intricacies of negotiations in Cairo. From Crooke at strategic-culture.su:

The young American generation of today says: We will not identify with suspect genocidal tendencies against an indigenous people.

The core issues at the heart of release of hostages held in Gaza were two: A complete cessation to the war and full withdrawal of all Israeli forces.

Netanyahu’s position was that whatever the hostage outcome, the IDF would return to Gaza and that the war there might continue for ten years, he said.

These were the most sensitive words in Israeli politics – with Israeli politics electrically polarised around them. The continuation or fall of the Israeli government could hinge on them: The Right had warned that they would quit the government unless the invasion of Rafah were green-lighted; the Biden position, however, was communicated to Netanyahu by phone as not just ‘no Rafah light’, but rather, ‘Rafah zero’.

Then these explosive words – cessation of military operations and complete Israeli withdrawal – burst forth in the final text as agreed by the mediators in Cairo; and subsequently in Doha, on Monday, taking Israel by complete surprise. CIA Chief Bill Burns had represented the U.S. in both sessions, but Israel had chosen not to send a negotiations team.

Multiple Israeli sources confirm that the Americans gave no ‘heads up’ of what was coming: Hamas announced the bombshell agreement; Gaza erupted in victory celebrations, and huge protests besieged the government in Jerusalem, demanding acceptance of the Hamas terms. It was tense. There was a whiff of civil war to the huge protests.

The Israeli government alleges that it was ‘played’ by the Americans (i.e. by Bill Burns). It was. But to what end? Biden was adamant that a Rafah incursion must not proceed. Was this Burns’ means to achieving that objective? Using ‘sleight of hand’ in the negotiations (inserting the ‘red-line’ words) into the text without telling Tel Aviv in order to get to ‘yes’ from Hamas? Or was it to precipitate a change of government in Israel? Its policy on Gaza whas beenas imposing a very heavy election campaign toll on the Democratic Party.

Continue reading

The anti-immigrant types ruined it all. From Keith Woods at unz.com:

Last Monday, May 6th, Irish people gathered in Dublin for a protest against the government’s immigration policy. This was the second Bank Holiday Monday in a row where an event like this happened, but this crowd was the biggest yet, reaching many thousands of people.

There is much that is very impressive about the anti-immigration movement in Ireland. This event was organised with little central leadership and promoted mostly by nationalist social media influencers. The crowd was diverse in age, with plenty of families and older people, a sight not typically seen at anti-immigration protests in Europe.

Another major strength of Ireland’s budding populism is the broad consensus on what Irish nationalism is. Because of Ireland’s unique history, our nationalists aren’t getting bogged down in sentimental attachments to dying empires and their civic conceptions of identity borrowed from imperial administrators. The idea that we would have to win a historical argument to make our case, or should identify with historical nationalist movements in other countries, is obviously ridiculous. Everyone in that crowd knows what an Irish person is, embraces Ireland’s revolutionary nationalist tradition, and is willing to affirm “Ireland belongs to the Irish”.

Continue reading

This is one of the biggest attempted globalist power grabs. It must be stopped. From Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. at childrenshealthdefense.org:

Dr. Meryl Nass, the founder of Door to Freedom, joined comedian Jimmy Dore to discuss the WHO’s proposed “pandemic agreement” — widely known as the “pandemic treaty” — and amendments to the International Health Regulations, on “The Jimmy Dore Show.”

Internist Dr. Meryl Nass, the founder of Door to Freedom, joined comedian Jimmy Dore to discuss the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed “pandemic agreement” — widely known as the “pandemic treaty” — and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), on “The Jimmy Dore Show” May 8.

Nass warned that these proposals represent a power grab by the WHO, posing a threat to national sovereignty, personal autonomy and health freedom, while promoting controversial gain-of-function research on potentially deadly pathogens.

The two proposals also would intensify censorship of dissenting views.

Nass also warned that time is running out, as the WHO’s World Health Assembly will meet in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 27 to June 1 to vote on these proposals.

The WHO’s proposals are accompanied by an upcoming vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations (U.N.) that would give the U.N.’s secretary-general unprecedented emergency powers — not just for pandemics, but also for a host of other potential disasters, ranging from cyberattacks to climate change to a “black swan event.”

Nass told Dore that pushback against the proposals is intensifying. She cited letters to President Joe Biden, co-signed by 22 state attorneys general and 49 Republican Senators, opposing these proposals.

Nass told The Defender:

“I think we are doing way better than posturing. Twenty-two attorneys general told the Biden administration that they would not be obeying any WHO orders in their state. That protects the people in those states from being subject to orders from the WHO. It is a massive accomplishment.

“Furthermore, we are close to forcing the Biden administration to put any WHO treaties it wishes to join in front of the Senate for its advice and consent. This will almost certainly kill them for the United States. We simply need to pass S.444 and H.R.1425, which would require Senate ratification and prohibit the current administration from providing a simple signature and calling them ratified.

“We are focused on getting legislation passed to require Senate ratification of both treaties. If we succeed, they will be dead in the water. We are also working with people around the world, meeting with lawmakers, doctors and attorneys, to help them stop it in their nations.”

Continue reading