Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"The Neocons have accomplished their objective. They dethroned Trump and installed the senile president who will go down in history as the President that began World War III. His name will be remembered in infamy because it is always the president who history remembers – not the dark figures behind the curtain prodding him on every action and dragging him around by his diapers. They know the risks that have now been unleashed upon the world and the clash with the Pentagon is the only this in their way. Biden’s trip to Warsaw to convince the Polish people to surrender their lives for the dreams of the American Neocons was interestingly marked by Biden flying on the 'Doomsday' jet. At the same time, Biden tells the American people there is no risk of nuclear war. Their actions say differently."
Martin Armstrong
"When we hear government officials or media pundits refer to something as 'illegal' or unlawful, all this should really do is cause us to ask if the defense of these laws is actually prudent, moral, or necessary. Some laws are well founded in basic protections of property rights and other human rights. But many laws are nothing more than the fruits of political schemes to help the regime maintain power or to reward its friends at the expense of others.
We can always expect the regime and its supporters to try to outlaw things they don't like. And once such things are illegal, we'll hear all about the evils of the 'lawbreakers' any time those lawbreakers threaten the prestige or power of the regime. (Lawbreaking in favor of the regime, of course, is always tolerated.) It's a highly successful trick they've been using for thousands of years."
Ryan McMaken
"America used to be totally unique, but now the US is just another nation-state like all the others. Of course, change is a constant in all areas of life. But I’ll miss the America of the before times because it was a refuge for things like free thought, free speech, free markets, and entrepreneurialism. Oh well, nothing lasts forever, and America had a pretty good run.
With that said, the main danger to you is your own government, particularly the US government headquartered in Washington DC, and to a lesser degree, state and local governments. Like other United Statesers, you’re not personally endangered by Iranians, the Chinese, or Russians—they’re on the other side of the world. You are, however, directly threatened by the US government and by other US citizens. They widely, indeed overwhelmingly, now accept socialist and welfare-state principles. Your fellow United Statesers don’t mind turning you into a serf. You’re largely on your own when it comes to trouble."
Doug Casey
"The 1960s-1970s Neil Youngs of the world wanted to replace the Man with a different Man.
The Neil Youngs of the world won. And now they want their Man to stay on top, and they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure He does.
If the history of secular humanism in the 20th century is any indication, I’m afraid viewpoint intolerance, cancelling, and deplatforming are modest measures for such people. They are, after all, defending their Man and their ideas.
They are defending their god."
Eric Scheske
"Our perception of America has always been that she is the mother country and ordained by God, good and just and a beacon of freedom. This is hammered into our psyches from our early days. From pre-school up, we are taught to worship the state.
As adults, sporting events, political rallies and other public venues we attend are often kicked off with the playing and/or singing of The Star Spangled Banner. Before the song begins, people are instructed to rise, men to remove their hats, and people place their hands over their hearts. They don't realize its value as a propaganda tool.
The phony form of patriotism instilled within the population is strong leverage against independent thinking, keeping people ignorant of the treason by our own government in the form of coercion and freedom-killing regulation."
Bob Livingston
"The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes—an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. Such measures of order and justice as it established were incidental and ancillary to this purpose; it was not interested in any that did not serve this purpose; and it resisted the establishment of any that were contrary to it. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another."
Albert Jay Nock
"The notions liberty and freedom had such prestige that no propaganda could shake their popularity. Since time immemorial in the realm of Western civilization, liberty has been considered as the most precious good. What gave to the West its eminence was precisely its concern about liberty, a social ideal foreign to the oriental peoples. The social philosophy of the Occident is essentially a philosophy of freedom. The main content of the history of Europe and the communities founded by European emigrants and their descendants in other parts of the world was the struggle for liberty. 'Rugged' individualism is the signature of our civilization. No open attack upon the freedom of the individual had any prospect of success."
Ludwig von Mises
"The presidency must be destroyed. It is the primary evil we face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture towards decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell schools kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat."
Lew Rockwell
"What proof would I accept? What sort of proof would convince me that SARS-CoV-2 exists?
Suppose, for example, a study described how researchers actually DID separate a virus from all the material surrounding it in their cell-soup in the lab?
Would that be enough?
And the answer is no.
Why?
Because I don’t trust studies based on research conducted in elite labs where no independent outsiders are allowed. And that’s the situation, when it comes to purported virus isolation.
These labs are like the famous bunkers where key government officials are taken, in the event of a massive attack against the country.
Try getting in off the street.
And who are these researchers in the super-secret labs? To put it another way, what sort of establishment do they represent?
Is it a clean establishment with a track record of honesty? Or is it a cartel with a criminal history?
If it’s a cartel, why should I accept the 'scientific methods' of these researchers or their honesty?"
Jon Rappoport
"To understand what we’re up against, look at television commercials. How many aren’t advertising pharmaceutical products? They are sickening; 'Tell your doctor.' 'Ask your doctor.' 'Check with your doctor.' And then they list every awful side effect one can envision. Of all the unworthy 'professionals' in this country that have been institutionally idolized, none deserve it less than doctors. They are largely a pompous, unfriendly, and unsympathetic group. And they kill people every day with their mistakes. Yet the public continues to shower them with unwarranted respect."
Donald Jeffries
"The empire’s greatest weapon is not its military but its propaganda machine. There’s simply never been anything like the global narrative control provided by the western news media, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood. The military fights wars, the propaganda machine wins them long before they start.
A lucid and well-informed examination of the world’s problems will keep bringing you back to this one fundamental issue: that Earth’s inhabitants are being psychologically manipulated at mass scale into organizing themselves in ways that serve the powerful instead of the people."
Caitlin Johnstone
"What most people living in the West still do not realize is that we have come precariously close to the edge of totalitarian takeover. Even though we have been forced to endure spades of tyrannical chicanery – such as home detention, forced masking, vaccine mandates, election fraud, censorship, business and church closures, travel restrictions among others – many people still cannot quite connect the dots and comprehend that this had nothing to do public weal, but it was an attempt at totalitarian imposition."
Vasko Kohlmayer
"Today the university campus is the nearest thing to North Korea in this world outside North Korea itself.
The merest deviation from orthodoxy equals blasphemy. Out comes the masking tape… and over the blasphemer's mouth it goes.
Thus yesterday’s dissenting liberals have become today’s conformist authority. They have become… the man.
And the man does not appreciate dissent — be he left, be he right."
Brian Maher