Lessons In Liberty, Democracy, and Eternal Vigilance

Here are some important lessons in liberty, democracy and civil rights:

From the eloquence of Captain Jean-Luc Picard

(Too bad our politicians, pundits and intellectuals typically lack such uncommon common sense)

On the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the day we defeated fascism in Europe, 75 years ago, we should be aware, though few are, that we are facing fascism again.

The Western oligarchs of Davos, the billionaire class that effectively rule the world, are consolidating their power. Few realize yet what is going on. They had better realize it soon.

Solidarity must be balanced with freedom, or we will not have a loving, compassionate society, but a brutal and ruthless gulag, where all life has no value, but the state is the sole value.

Here are some eloquent, extremely important words, on what it means to be free, and what it takes to stay that way.

JTR,

May 8, 2020

 

“That’s how it starts. The road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think.”
– Captain Picard

“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” – Captain Jean-Luc Picard

“The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.” – Captain Jean-Luc Picard

“We think we’ve come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches – it’s all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly it threatens to start all over again.” – Captain Picard

“Villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.”
– Captain Picard

“She, or someone like her, will always be with us, waiting for the right climate in which to flourish, spreading fear, in the name of righteousness. Vigilance: that is the price we have to continually pay.”
– Captain Picard

 

(From, The Drum Head)

“Unprecedented” – Reality vs Delusion

Every day, 25,000 people die of hunger. Every day, more than 25,000 people die from degenerative diseases caused by toxins, pollution, obesity and poor diets. Nobody is sounding the alarm about these two killers, which dwarf all others. Madness has gripped the world.

Every 100 days, over 5,000,000 people die of poverty and hunger, junk food and obesity. Nobody notices. But a virus kills 200,000 in the same time span, with less than 1/20th of that death toll, and it’s a global panic and hysteria, with a fascist global lockdown, a police state invoked, and global house arrests, as everyone chants the cultish chorus, “unprecedented!”

Unprecedented madness, is what it is. What’s next, the Inquisition?

Watch for it.

Every year a tragic event happens. 300,000 to 600,000 people die globally of the flu. Most are very old, very ill, or immune compromised, but it is still tragic, of course. In 2020 fewer people have died of a novel coronavirus (a new form within the cold and flu family of viruses) than from previous years’ typical flu deaths.

Let me repeat that. Fewer people have died from this new flu, or flu-like respiratory infection, to be precise, called covid-19, than have died this year from the flu, and fewer than the number that die every year from the flu.

More people die in a typical year, year after year, from the flu – yet we did not invoke a global fascist police state, mass global house arrests, sweeping unconstitutional powers for governments, and suspension of constitutional rights and freedoms for the people, in response to the previous 300,000 years of human history, when we faced typically higher death rates from the annual flu.

Simple logic and common sense fails the people, and the intellectuals, alike. Nobody fact checks? Reason has fled them.

Clearly the numbers don’t add up. This is not about public health. It is a power grab, with an extremely exaggerated relatively minor health issue used as the propaganda narrative to justify and cover it up. It is staring us in the face, like the emperor with no clothes, but people can’t see it before their eyes. They are being severely brainwashed, virtually every second, by a truly unprecedented global propaganda campaign. And it is working with unprecedented success.

If the business and political elite were truly interested in human health, the US would already have a universal public health care system; Britain would not be trashing the NHS; Big Pharma would be strictly regulated and monitored, not put in the driver’s seat; poverty, hunger and malnutrition would be eliminated; war would be stopped; toxic pesticides and other pollutants would be banned; and the fast food and processed food industries would be heavily taxed, to drive up their prices, deter their food-like products from being consumed, and fund mass public education on what truly healthy food and lifestyles look like – to make just a partial and incomplete list.

None of that is happening. This is not about human health. It’s about elite power. The Davos set wants it all.

What is unprecedented is a billionaire, Bill Gates, Mr. Pharma, and his billionaire pals at Davos, using their financial control over the World Health Organization and world governments, along with their financial control – or in most cases direct ownership – of the media, to drive an agenda of mass global house arrest, shutting down the bulk of the global economy, knowing it would demolish the global economy, which would cause vast suffering for the 99% and a feeding frenzy and boon for the 1%, and would cause a Great Depression of unprecedented proportions, in what is an act of global economic warfare of the 0.1% against the great majority of the people.

(How are these things not obvious to everyone – not even to the intelligensia?!)

A virus did not do that. A virus did not demolish the global economy. The Davos plutocrats and their political minions took a wrecking ball to the global economy, in order to force a mass restructuring, knowing it would cause mass global death and suffering, but would be a further vast transfer of wealth and power to themselves.

Some concern for health that is.

Yet the bleating flock and intelligentsia alike, all blame a virus for the economic wreckage – which is about to make the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis look like a child’s picnic – when it was self-evidently a planned demolition of the global economic system. That is a stunning, unprecedented level of propaganda success.

Psyops success of unprecedented proportions, is what that is. No wonder Bill Gates looks like a grinning, gloating ghoul. It’s a feeding frenzy for the super-rich, and a self-coronation, as the 99% are gutted, and liberty and democracy are destroyed.

There is nothing unprecedented about this “pandemic” – other than the hysteria and fascist measures surrounding it. We must get clear on these basic facts.

Our minds have been high-jacked by a psyops campaign of social engineering designed quite simply to consolidate the power of the ruling corporate elite and their political and technocratic minions, and to destroy democracy, freedom and constitutional rule in order to accomplish that goal.

“Unprecedented”. If I hear one more blinkered unthinking idiot utter that word, I think I’m going to throw up on their shoes. What’s unprecedented is global fascism, sheep!

Check the numbers. Compare the death toll to the flu, which is still a higher death toll. The mindlessness and unquestioning blind obedience to authority are almost unfathomable. And yes, it is disgusting, and vastly more dangerous than any germ.

*

There are two great dangers in human society above all. They are: the truly grave dangers posed by power mongers, and by obedient sheep – and the sheep are by far the greater danger. It is the collusion of cowardice which endangers us above all else.

The power hungry few are only dangerous because the docile majority yield up their power to them. Otherwise, the power hungry never rise to anything more than petty tyrants, swindlers and thugs. 

All the truly great dangers are avoided if the people simply embrace their power. But they are taught to mistrust themselves, and that is the root of the problem.

What is unprecedented now, in 2020, is the extent to which the great majority have surrendered and abandoned, and disavowed, their own common sense and basic intelligence, and have blindly succumbed to a propaganda narrative designed to brazenly swindle them of all their remaining power, democracy, rights and freedom, in order to turn the oligarchs in Davos, Wall Street, Brussels, Basel and the City of London into God-kings. That is unprecedented, and that is extraordinarily dangerous.

We are now facing a second wave of fascism; but this time, the people are asleep. That is unprecedented, and that is gravely dangerous. That must change very soon, or freedom and democracy, all our rights and liberties, and the future of our species, will be effectively terminated. 

Think! Think for yourself, and question everything. Then unite the people, and embrace your power; and as Bob Marley said, stand up for your rights.

*

In 2020, the vast majority of people, politicians, governments, bureaucrats, health authorities, business and political leaders, media pundits, academics, activists and intellectuals, across the political spectrum and around the world, have swallowed an elite-manufactured propaganda narrative that has severely misled, deceived, deluded, manipulated, and virtually lobotomized them all, save for a handful of exceptions, dissidents and rebels.

I have never seen anything remotely like it, nor did I expect dissidents, intellectuals and activists to be so easily neutered, intellectually eviscerated, and rendered political eunuchs, serfs and slaves, all spouting the official party line.

The intellectuals of the centre, left and right would be highly prescient, alert and aware, forward-thinking and well-informed as to what is happening and what is unfolding – if this was 1970. But it’s not.

We’ve had 50 years of a slow-motion neoliberal global corporate fascist coup, and it is now coming to completion. But the intelligensia, the left, and the people in general, remain oblivious, as if this was 1970, 1980, or even 1990 or 2000. It is not. This is end game. And the people had better wake up very soon, including their popular “leaders”, or we are doomed to slavery under neofeudal global fascist corporate rule.

Rouse the people, and their leaders, now. The hour is late, and liberty, democracy, and the people, are under full frontal attack.

Know your enemy, and know yourself, and you will be victorious in a thousand battles, said Sun Tzu, the unrivaled master of strategy. Well, it would appear that the people do not understand themselves, for they do clearly do not trust themselves, and have no confidence, but bow down before the elite, and roll over like trained poodles. Nor do they or their popular leaders and intellectuals understand the enemy. That too, is undeniably clear.

The only enemies, in truth, are ignorance, greed and hate. But, that being said, there are opponents: individuals and groups who stand in the way of a better, freer, greener, more just, and yes, healthier world. The principle enemy in that sense, far and away, and with no comparisons, is the ruling oligarchy or cabal of corporate elites, and their servile political minions, dupes and hirelings. And the business elite, the plutocrats, are led by a cabal of their own, mainly bankers, Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tech, who are truly sociopathic, and who are quite simply fascist: they are in love with power. This is nothing new; nor is it particularly surprising. It is, however, extremely dangerous.

To under-estimate the global power elite now would be disastrous – in a tragically unprecedented, cataclysmic, and horrific way. But that is precisely what the people, and their leaders and intellectuals, are busy doing. Never before have they been in greater danger; and never before have they failed to recognize or understand the real danger, so thoroughly and completely.

Wake them now.

Echoing and accepting the elite narrative, that a virus caused a global lockdown, and a virus destroyed the economy, hands them victory in their fascist coup by propaganda war. Stop handing your slavers their power! You are imprisoning yourselves.

What would Jefferson, Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. say to us now? I am sure they would say, “What are you waiting for? Unite the people, and stand!”

JTR,
May 3, 2020

Post-Script:

The left better wake the fuck up, to put it starkly and most frankly. Here is a prime example. Ann Pettifor, along with Michael Hudson, Ellen Brown, Max Keiser and a few others, clearly understands finance, banking, money and economics, at least to a high degree. She clearly does not understand politics, and, like most intellectuals, and the great majority of the people, radically misunderstands what is going on with coronavirus 2020. This is what is truly dire – not a germ, not even elite power games. Good-hearted Ann needs to go back to square one and understand politics, sociology, class, and above all, the systems dynamics and machinations of the global power elite. Most intellectuals are failing utterly in terms of grossly and dangerously misunderstanding what is going on with the corona event, so she is not alone. She illustrates my point perfectly here:

Ann Pettifor on Coronavirus Capitalism – YouTube

See also:

Peter Hitchens: We’re destroying the nation’s wealth – and health

Piers Robinson – Geopolitics & Empire Podcast

Medical Martial Law – The Corbett Report

The Boiler Room with TruthStream Media

21st Century Wire

Global Research

Giants: The Global Power Elite – Peter Phillips

The New Rulers Of The World – John Pilger

The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein

Necessary Illusions – Noam Chomsky

Escape From Freedom – Erich Fromm

and

Gerald Celente – The Herd Mentality

along with some of my other essays:

Importing From China: A Virus? Or A Totalitarian Social Model?

Any Enemy Will Do

Sinking All Ships

Geopolitics 2020

The Death and Rebirth of Democracy

Flash-Drive Revolution

And more than a dozen others on my blog on this topic.

Never surrender. It ain’t over ’till it’s over.

And download, save and share all of these references. Censorship is rising fast.

The Real Resistance: Lessons From History

 

It does not require a majority to defeat tyranny and defend liberty, but only a small and dedicated minority – as we saw in the American and French Revolutions, and in the defeat of the first wave of fascism, which arose in the 1930’s (and was greatly loved and applauded by Western elites) and was defeated in WWII. We now face the second wave of fascism, though the sleep-walking great majority see it not.

Actually, this is the third wave of fascism. The second wave was installed by Washington and its allies around the world between 1944 and 2019 – the most obvious, or at least well-known example, being the CIA-backed coup in Chile, September 11, 1973, when democracy and freedom were destroyed, and the neoliberal corporate fascist police state of Augusto Pinochet was installed – which both brutalzed and effectively enslaved the people, and also destroyed the economy. (Sound familiar?)

Now, the Third World fascist model, having been perfected by Washington and its allies over the past 75 years, is being brought home. 

Don’t we all feel safer now? 

“We’re all in this together.”

Yes, lemmings, we all sing the joyous praises of our shackles and chains and mass house arrest, and sing the praises of the benign and all-saving aristocracy of the ruling oligarchy and crypto-fascist elite.

Orwell would shudder. Freedom and democracy are dying before our eyes, and as George Carlin and Jonathan Turley said, no one seems to care.

While it does not require a majority to defeat tyranny and to defend freedom, it does, however, require courage, and a spine – at least among a few. 

JTR,

April 29, 2020

See:

Piers Robinson – Geopolitics & Empire podcast

Robert Epstein – Geopolitics & Empire

America Has Created A Global Dystopia – Noam Chomsky, Scheer Intelligence

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control In Democratic Societies – Noam Chomsky

Escape From Freedom – Erich Fromm

The Herd Mentality – Gerald Celente

The French Resistance and Vichy France – The Smithsonian (subject only: not exact title)

On Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau

The Discourse On Voluntary Servitude – Etienne de La Boetie

Writings and speeches of Gandhi and MLK

Glenn Gould On Orwell

Yo, listen up, blokes!

(He says, in order to mash and mangle and generally have fun with various voices, inflections, accents and colloquilisms, as Gould was fond of doing himself, rather playfully, but with very serious thought and musings injected into his playfulness – very much like the dark humour of the Orwellian film, Brazil.)

Glenn Gould was an eccentric genius, but he was eminently sane; unlike his society, and ours, which is fundamentally insane, and becoming (in some ways)  steadily more so – especially in its drift towards authoritarianism, neofeudal globalist corporate oligarchy and a police state; which the prescient saw well in advance, while the lemmings still can’t see it when it slams them between the eyes, as it is doing right now.

Glenn Gould, one of my heroes (and my favourite musician), speaks ironically here in this short audio clip about Orwell and the love of freedom, versus the love of prison – and battleship grey. How utterly fitting now, in 2020, as the people beg for their chains.

(Read, or read again: Necessary Illusions, The Shock Doctrine, Escape From Freedom, 1984, Brave New World, and Brave New World Revisited – and, On Civil Disobedience, The Discourse On Voluntary Servitude, the writings and speeches of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the story of Jesus driving the money changers out with a whip, and, The Herd Mentality, by Gerald Celente.)

Liberty and constitutional democracy die now, unless the people refuse to be stripped of their freedom and their rights, and effectively shackled and chained. We cannot afford to underestimate the gravity of what is taking place before our eyes. It is a technocratic corporate fascist coup, and nothing less.

(We need a million Churchills now, despite his glaring faults; or at least, the humiliating defeat of the ubiquitous Chamberlains, Quislings and Vichys.)

What we are seeing is simply the fulfilment of what Adam Smith called, “the vile maxim of the masters”, which, as he  said, is, “all for us, nothing for anybody else.”

Or as George Carlin put it, speaking of the plutocratic oligarchs, the ruling 0.01%: “They want it all.”

Or as the world’s leading trend analyst, Gerald Celente put it:

“Let’s call it like it is. It’s fascism….This is as old as history.  The money changers have taken over. That’s all this is about.”

Well, what are we going to do about it? Pray for prison, and demand our cells be painted grey?

Or perhaps something more sanguine, and sane.

JTR,

April 29, 2020

Recommended listening:

Chomsky on global dystopia – Scheer Intelligence podcast

Piers Robinson and Robert Epstein on the Geopolitics & Empire podcast

The Boiler Room podcast – on destroying America for the sake of AI supremacy

Pink Floyd – Sheep

The speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.

On Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau

And Glenn Gould, on Orwell and the love of freedom, versus the love of prison, and grey:

Crisis Point: Leadership Needed From…Anywhere, Now

 

Imagine if real leadership from the grassroots comes now from the moderate, democratic/republican right, and not the centre or the left. Considering that the centre and left, almost without exception, have their heads up their asses, this mortifying development is entirely possible.

Let us hope that basic sanity, in terms of resisting authoritarianism, comes from a broad-spectrum coalition, however; because that is what we will need to defeat the oligarchs in their current bipartisan neoliberal/neoconservative joint effort at a slow motion fascist coup. 

For the record, I supported Ron Paul in 2008 & 2012, because he was the only anti-authoritarian (and anti-imperialist) in those corporate coronations erroneously called elections. I supported Sanders in 2016 and 2020 because he was the only conceivably winnable candidate who is a genuine constitutional (small d and r) democrat or republican, and was not on the oligarch’s payroll or lackey squad. Left and right mean nothing if we do not have basic rights and freedoms. That is something the high-handed and supremely pretentious, blinkered centre and left need to figure out, and now.

The people had better wake up fast. The global showdown between democracy and oligarchy has now reached endgame.

The Brave New World is here. But the vast majority are asleep; and worse, they are sleep-walking while cheering on their slavers, and begging for their shackles and chains.

Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, the grassroots right or left – it doesn’t matter now: we need leadership to resist corporate fascism, and it matters not where it comes from.

Unite the people. Wake the people. Defend democracy and freedom, before we lose them. And we are losing them now.

JTR,

April 25, 2020

Cognitive Dissonance, Mass Insanity & Covid Hysteria

Check the numbers. The disease is not ravaging us, is not unprecedented, but has killed 1/3rd the death toll of a typical year of the common flu. DOES ANYBODY FACT-CHECK ANYMORE?! 

If 300,000 to 700,000 deaths per year from the common annual flu, which is typical, and happens every year, is not considered a pandemic, then the covid-19 virus, which  has killed 170,000 world-wide, also does not merit the term pandemic – much less mass quarantine, mass house arrest, lockdown, and shut down of the economy and the society, sweeping government powers and suspension of fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms.

Are there any sane people left who can accomplish basic reasoning? Only a rare few it seems. Even the best of the best have temporarily lost their capacity for rational thought. My God, we are in great danger – for that reason above all. The people are being manipulated en mass by power mongers, and even the best are deceived by their propaganda. Terrifying.

See Trends Journal, The Herd Mentality, to set the facts straight. Virtually all the alternative media, and even the best analysts, have been suckered, duped, taken the kool aid, and been deceived. Chilling.

But, at least whispers of dissent, and questions about draconian, authoritarian measures, are finally being raised. They must grow far more powerful, and fast, or we are doomed to live in Orwell’s worst nightmare.

JTR,

April 25, 2020

By the way, I have great respect for these two men. That makes their error in not questioning the core narrative even more alarming, and all the more disturbing.

Scheer Intelligence on COVID as a justification for mass surveillance:

Social Psychology & Meditation On Death

“We are born for action…I want us to be doing things…I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor my unfinished gardening.”

   – Michel de Montaigne

How perfect is that sentiment and that view, expressed here by the great French philosopher of the Renaissance! And hilarious! Montaigne sounds like Thoreau, with his Earthy wisdom…or a Zen master…or Chuang Tzu! But that is not how most people live. And there’s the rub. That is the problem.

Montaigne said of fear, “There is no emotion which more readily ravishes our judgement.” That would seem to be the best explanation of our current mass social psychology: the great majority, including most of the otherwise thoughtful, intelligent, and emminently sane, are temporarily incapable of rational thought, due to panic and intense fear. That is to say, temporary insanity has descended upon them.

Montaigne echoes all the sages: when you meditate on death, you can face your mortality, and hence, conquer the fear of death; and when you conquer the fear of death, you thereby conquer all fear of life – and it is then only that we begin to truly live.

“To practise death is to practise freedom. The man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.” – Michel de Montaigne

Yet, the great majority hide from death, and thus hide from life – and their secret fear makes them easily misled, easily manipulated, easily ensnared and enslaved, easily irrational and confused, as well as perpetually filled with a secret, unconscious, perpetual anxiety and fear, no matter how cleverly masked or disguised.

“No wonder that they often get caught in a trap. You can frighten such people simply by mentioning death… And then, in the midst of pain and terror, God only knows what shape their good judgement kneeds into!”

– Michel de Montaigne

JTR,

April 12, 2020

Further Reading:

The Essays of Montaigne: Of Fear; and, To Philosophize Is To Learn How To Die

Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3: 1-2, 17-20, Chapter 4: 5-6, 13

Walden, and On Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau

The Divinity School Address – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying – Soygal Rinpoche

Introducing Buddha – Jane Hope

Chuang Tsu – Jane English translation

The Tao Te Ching – Jane English translation (no others compare)

Tao: The Watercourse Way – Alan Watts

The Way of Zen – Alan Watts

The Book – Alan Watts

World As Lover, World As Self – Joanna Macy

Dialogues With Scientists And Mystics – Renee Weber

Dreamtime and Inner Space – Holgar Kalweit

Choosing Reality – Alan Wallace

The Hero With A Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell

The Perennial Philosophy – Aldous Huxley

What Survives? – Gary Doore

Escape From Freedom – Erich Fromm

Brave New World, and, Brave New World Revisited – Aldous Huxley