An Illusion And A Distraction

Nothing should go back to ‘normal’ – normal wasn’t working.
Normal was disease-ridden factory farms, torturous fur farms, animal testing laboratories, and the cold-blooded murder of wildlife animals – all unnecessary, hideous practises that are polluting our rivers, streams, lakes, the ocean, the air, and the soil itself – all ideal breeding grounds for more deadly infections and viruses.
( Rose Winfold ) 

Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either. 
( Gore Vidal )

America Is A Fantasy, A Disneyfied World Of Make-Believe.
If what happens in courtrooms across the country to poor people of colour is justice, what is happening in the Senate is a trial.
If the blood-drenched debacles and endless quagmires in the Middle East are victories in the war on terror, our military is the greatest on earth.
If the wholesale government surveillance of the public, the revoking of due process and having the world’s largest prison population are liberty, we are the land of the free.
If the president, an inept, vulgar and corrupt con artist, is the leader of the free world, we are a beacon for democracy and our enemies hate us for our values.
If Jesus came to make us rich, bless the annihilation of Muslims by our war machine and condemn homosexuality and abortion, we are a Christian nation.
If formalising an apartheid state in Israel is a peace plan, we are an honest international mediator.
If a meritocracy means that three American men have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the U.S. population, we are the land of opportunity.
If the torture of kidnapped victims in black sites and the ripping of children from their parents’ arms and their detention in fetid, overcrowded warehouses, along with the gunning down of unarmed citizens by militarised police in the streets of our urban communities, are the rule of law, we are an exemplar of human rights.
The rhetoric we use to describe ourselves is so disconnected from reality that it has induced collective schizophrenia.
America, as it is discussed in public forums by politicians, academics and the media, is a fantasy, a Disneyfied world of make-believe.
The worse it gets, the more we retreat into illusions. The longer we fail to name and confront our physical and moral decay, the more demagogues who peddle illusions and fantasies become empowered. Those who acknowledge the truth—beginning with the stark fact that we are no longer a democracy—wander like ghosts around the edges of society, reviled as enemies of hope.
( Chris Hedges, 03.02.2020 )  ..  truthdig.com

Just because you were fooled and conned doesn’t make you an idiot.
What makes you an idiot is when you can’t be bothered to check the truth and the facts and make the conscious decision to believe the lies and the propaganda.
( Fred O. Wilson )

Freedom is not defined by safety.
Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference.
Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place.
Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives.
Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.
( Ron Paul )

The Official Secrets Act And Whistle-Blowers Who Want To Expose Wrongdoing.
Secrecy remains at the root of many of Britain’s ills.
Whitehall – the permanent government in London – hides behind a wall of official secrecy bolstered by an arsenal of weapons ranging from the criminal law to a deeply ingrained, self-protecting, culture.
There are numerous reasons why it is time that the wall should be breached.
First, secrecy protects above all Britain’s intelligence and security agencies, preventing them from being held properly to account.
They are exempt from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
Whistle-blowers and journalists who want to expose wrongdoing by the agencies are intimidated by the Official Secrets Act.
Yet MI6, the external security service, and GCHQ, the surveillance agency, are increasingly involved in military operations, especially with Britain’s special forces which are playing an ever more significant role.
The distinction between war and peace is becoming increasingly blurred.
It is increasingly difficult to monitor operations by special forces and the use of drones, raising serious questions about ethics as well as undermining international laws, including those covering war crimes and the Geneva Conventions.
MI5, the domestic security service, along with MI6, GCHQ, and counter terrorism police, are being given extra powers by new laws and are gathering more and more data on individuals.
The definition of terrorism has been drawn wider and wider in a succession of statutes capturing more and more activities and beliefs giving the security and intelligence agencies and police increasing discretion over who they can target.
Terrorism is equated with “extremism” and has included even those protesting against fracking and climate change.
Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) made up of MPs and peers vetted by the prime minister, has been repeatedly misled by MI5 and MI6, notably over their role in rendition operations abducting individuals they regard as terror suspects and sending them to CIA prisons where they faced abuse and torture.
As prime minister, Theresa May prevented ministers and MI6 officers from giving evidence to an ISC inquiry in 2018 after the committee under the former attorney general Dominic Grieve in a damning report finally revealed the extent of MI5 and MI6 collusion in the torture of terror suspects by the CIA.
Current prime minister Boris Johnson was able to block publication before the December 2019 general election of the ISC’s report on Russian attempts to interfere in the EU referendum and recent general elections.
Secrecy extends even to the National Archives, guardian of the country’s history.
MI6 refuses to release its files to the National Archives even about operations of many years ago.
While the CIA opened its files on the MI6-inspired coup in 1953 that toppled Muhammad Mossadegh, Iran’s first elected prime minister – an event still deeply ensconced in Iran’s collective memory – MI6 refused to comment.
( Richard Norton-Taylor, 05.03.2020 )  ..  dailymaverick.co.za

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.
( David Suzuki )

Amnesty International has stripped the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny of his “prisoner of conscience” status after it says it was “bombarded” with complaints highlighting xenophobic comments that he has made in the past and not renounced.
Amnesty International concluded that comments made by Navalny some 15 years ago, including a video which appears to compare immigrants to cockroaches, amounted to “hate speech” which was incompatible with the label “prisoner of conscience”.
( Sarah Rainsford, 24.02.2021 )  ..  bbc.co.uk

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing.
When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours.
When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you.
When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.
( Ayn Rand, 1957 )

We Are Governed By Men We Have Never Heard Of.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organised.
Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.
It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
( Edward Bernays )

I don’t want free healthcare, I want my taxes to pay for it, not to pay for war.
I don’t want money for nothing, I want a job that pays enough for my basic needs.
I don’t want corporations to be unprofitable, I want them out of the political, electoral, regulatory and policy-making processes.
I don’t want the wealthy to pay for everything, I just want them to pay their fair share.
( Wilfred Soon )

Tory politicians pretend to care about our welfare just once every five years.
They will renege on most of their promises, and serve only themselves, their party, their donors, their friends, and never the people who voted for them.
People need to look at history and wake up.

Why has Boris Johnson never been questioned about his integrity, his scruples, his honesty, or his talents?
Because he doesn’t have any, that’s why.
( Fred O. Wilson )

Government Failing Of Social Care Sector.
Of the 48,213 Covid deaths registered between mid-March and mid-June 2020, 40% were care home residents.
Between mid-March and mid-July, the government supplied NHS Trusts with approximately 80% of their PPE need, and the adult social care sector with approximately 10% of its estimated need of PPE.

The concept that the people running the Brexit campaign would care for the NHS is a rather odd one.
I seem to remember Michael Gove wanting to privatise it.
Boris wanted to charge people for using it.
And Iain Duncan Smith wanted a social insurance system.
The NHS is about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python.
( Sir John Major )

If you don’t like or disagree with something or somebody.
Take away their power by not giving them your attention.

The Priority Of British Governments Has Long Been To Increase Arms Sales.
“National security” is often used to cover up embarrassment rather than genuine, serious threats to the country.
When ministers and officials recognise that deploying the phrase would be an obvious exaggeration, they use an alternative argument, saying that it would not be in the “public interest” to disclose the information.
When faced with specific evidence about information disclosed in other countries about the activities of Britain’s security and intelligence agencies, Whitehall often falls back on a well-worn formula – that is to say “neither confirm nor deny”.
Language is a formidable weapon in the arsenal of official secrecy.
Euphemisms are useful tools – as George Orwell observed, they are used in politics, war and business as instruments that “make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”.
The trick is never to make commitments and not “directly lie”.
Thus officials deploy such phrases as “I hear what you say” and “that is speculation”.
Matters are always “kept under review” or judged on a “case by case basis” – pet responses when officials are questioned about controversial arms sales, for example.
Successive British governments have insisted that promoting human rights around the world is among their priorities.
That is manifestly untrue.
A priority has long been to increase arms sales.
Britain’s most lucrative markets are the Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, ruled by some of the world’s most authoritarian individuals and where executions are among the most common in the world.
With the help of MI6, governments have embraced then helped to topple dictators (Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) leaving a legacy of violence that continues to this day.
( Richard Norton-Taylor, 05.03.2020 )  ..  dailymaverick.co.za

Nowhere in emerging Europe, where countries have adopted the Westernising approach, are oligarchs as dominant as in Ukraine.
Sure, you have a few, but they do not absolutely dominate the economy as in Ukraine.
( Timothy Ash, Strategist for Bluebay Asset Management, May 2021 )

We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyones arguing over where they’re going to sit. 
( David Suzuki )

The Sick People Who Spoil Our Lives.
The world is full of sick people.
I don’t mean people who are ill or have a medical problem.
I mean people who rape, murder, abuse children, who work in slaughterhouses, on fur farms, in animal-testing facilities, on farms where animals are reared and murdered for profit, the cowards who call themselves ‘hunters’, the cowards who roam our streets with knives and weapons, the greedy, selfish, corrupt politicians and government officials, the industries that destroy and trample over animals and nature for financial gain.
These are the sick people who spoil our lives.
The sick, nasty, evil people among us.
( Rose Winfold )

Nations who suck-up to a nation rooted in oppression, torture, exploitation and executions are no different than a slave who defends his master.
( Dion Felsrow )

The bankers will make sure that we remain in debt.
The pharmaceutical companies will make sure that we stay sick.
The arms manufacturers will ensure that we continue to go to war.
The media will make sure that we are prevented from learning the truth, and the government will ensure that all this can happen legally.
( Len Firswood )

No one owns the land, or the water or the sea.
These were all given to us by Mother Nature, for free.
It’s only the greedy, the corrupt and the callous that force us to pay a fee.
( Wilfred Soon )

People Cannot Be illegal, People Are Not Economic Commodities.
Even as the Windrush scandal was being exposed, there were signs that the bad headlines would change neither this government’s treatment of migrants nor the debate about immigration.
Certainly not the kind of change that would match the scale of the damage done.
Almost without skipping a beat, politicians talked about the necessity of deporting “illegal immigrants”.
Before long, they were discussing “highly skilled” and “high value” migrants.
People cannot be illegal, people are not economic commodities – they are human beings living in a world structured by class, gender and race.
Now we have moved on to “foreign national offenders”.
It’s necessary, it says, to deport black people from this country – regardless of whether the UK was the only home they’d ever really known or if they’d served their sentences in the criminal justice system.
Once again black people are being treated as second-class citizens.
We hear about black and brown people being deported but almost never white Americans or Australians – do they not breach their visa requirements or commit crimes?
This language of “criminality” has become a blanket term that the government uses to justify its actions.
The same politicians who see migrants as a threat to “British values” such as the “rule of law” tried to deport people who didn’t get proper access to legal advice, and then complained when the courts tried to prevent it.
The irony is bitter indeed.
( Maya Goodfellow, 11.02.2020 )  ..  theguardian.com

According to official government figures there were 10,373 foreign national offenders living in the UK at the end of 2020.
After being released from prison, instead of being deported, many are let back out on the streets.
This was up more than 160% on 2012, when it was less than 4,000.
( Flori Swedon )

There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions.
It is not generally realised to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.
( Edward Bernays )

An Israeli interrogator allegedly physically and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in Israeli custody during interrogation in a Jerusalem detention facility.
The 15-year-old boy was detained by Israeli paramilitary border police forces from his home around 5 a.m. on January 13, 2021, in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Issawiya.
Israeli forces transferred him to Al-Mascobiyya interrogation and detention centre in West Jerusalem where he was bound and blindfolded and detained in an interrogation room.
An individual accused him of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and then allegedly subjected the boy to physical and sexual violence amounting to torture, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine.
“Israeli forces routinely subject Palestinian child detainees to systematic ill-treatment and torture following arrest,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program Director at DCIP.
( DCI-Palestine, 10.02.2021 )  ..  dci-palestine.org

We live in a society where our Government MPs claim £25 a day food allowance, while tens of thousands are forced to rely on food banks to survive.
( Rose Winfold )

It’s a crazy country.
It’s like a junkie.
Every few years they go to war.
They need their fix.
They’re lunatics.
( Norman Finkelstein on Israel )

It’s All An Illusion And A Distraction.
Manufactured enemies of the people made to look bigger and more dangerous by the government who are deliberately stirring, scapegoating and distorting insignificant issues.
From statue protesters, gypsies and BLM activists to welfare cheats and benefit scroungers to threats from Russia and China to immigrants and the EU.
These groups have one common purpose: To divert and deflect attention from real problems and the failure of this incompetent, and mostly corrupt government to deal with them.
( Wilfred Soon )

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
( Gore Vidal )

The environment is so fundamental to our continued existence that it must transcend politics and become a central value of all members of society.
( David Suzuki )

The Conservative Party.
An elite circle of arrogance and wealth, obsessed with power, brought up believing they were born to rule, that the sun shines out of their arse, that only their happiness matters, that money is more important than the lives of ordinary people.
They are not in the least bit concerned about homelessness, hunger and poverty.
The truth is that they hold ordinary people in utter contempt.
( Len Firswood )

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads. 
( Ron Paul )

Wars Are Manufactured To Sell Weapons.
The government is corrupt.
The media keeps you distracted with mindless celebrity bull-shit.
The wars are about resources and financial control.
You have more in common with the people being bombed than the billionaires that are controlling you.
Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars.
Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons.
( Fred O. Wilson )

It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking. 
( Ron Paul )

The Democratic Doctrine.
Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment.
Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule.
So ran the democratic doctrine.
But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought.
Each man’s rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints.
It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion.
The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organised effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.
( Edward Bernays )

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.
( Ron Paul )

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too.
Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action.
You liberate a city by destroying it.
Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
( Gore Vidal )

As we distance ourselves further from the natural world, we are increasingly surrounded by and dependent on our own inventions.
We become enslaved by the constant demands of technology created to serve us. 
( David Suzuki )