Covid, 9/11 & Forever War

Covid, 9/11 & Forever War
From the war on terror to the “pandemic”, the elite are constructing fake threats to start wars that never have to end. 

by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
originally published September 13, 2021

 

 

“The war was not meant to be won. It was meant to be continuous.”

George Orwell, 1984

 

Our 9/11 coverage this year, the 20th anniversary, has been focused on viewing the attacks of 2001 through the lens of the Covid “pandemic” rollout.

The point is not that both Covid19 and 9/11 are necessarily part of the same grand plan, were carried out by the same people, or were in any way directly connected. Rather, they are thematically connected, on the meta-level.

They spring from the same collective urge all rulers and governments harbour, and are employed to the same end.

They are different tools designed to achieve the same end. Different approaches to the same problem. Different evolutionary stages of the same animal: The decades-long change in the core aims of warfare and even the very meaning of “war” itself.

War has always been vital to the preservation of the state. Wars make rulers rich, and people scared. They unite nations behind leaders, and distract from domestic political issues.

But, as nations become more powerful, weapon technology more advanced, and global power centralises in giant corporations rather than nations, war – in the traditional sense – becomes more expensive, more dangerous, and largely meaningless.

Essentially the old-fashioned motivations for warfare no longer apply, but the ancillary domestic benefits of war-like policy remain. While the state, and their corporate backers, no longer need to take part in pitched battles over the best farmland, they do still need their subjects to believe they are under attack.

In short, by necessity, “war” has gradually shifted from genuine inter-state conflicts over control of resources, into a top-down tool of psychological manipulation.

And the first stage of that evolution was 9/11.

9/11 and the war on terror

9/11 was an inside job. Any objective examination of the evidence can only lead to that conclusion. (I’m not going to lay that out here, we have dozens of articles detailing that. That’s not what I’m writing about today.)

The US government blew up their own buildings, killed their own civilians, terrified their own people. The ruling class engaging in what Orwell called “war against their subjects”, in a very literal sense.

Much like the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany, this staged “attack” was done to create a war-like mentality. To make people believe they were under threat, and serve as the basis for new “temporary emergency powers” for the government.

But 9/11 went further, serving as the casus belli for a war: “The war on terror”.

The War on Terror was a new kind of war, yes it was used as a starting point for more traditional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then proxy wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, but its main target was actually domestic. A nationwide psy-op war designed to keep 350 million people in a semi-permanent state of fear.

It was the natural next step in the Orwellian redefinition of “war” as a concept.

If the primary aims of your war are a) To maintain domestic control of your population, and b) To funnel tax-payer money into bloated contracts with the private sector, then do you really need to declare war on a foreign country?

In fact, do you need an actual physical “war” at all? Isn’t the idea of a war just as good?

And if all you need is the idea of a war, what better way than to declare war on an idea. Why not make your enemy an abstract concept?

Because the great thing about going to war on an abstract concept is you can’t ever lose, and you never have to win. The war can go on forever.

This idea was first trialled with “the war on drugs”. But that didn’t work because a) people actually quite like drugs and b) Drugs are a vital income stream for the deep state. So it fizzled.

The war on terror is better. Since “terror” is an abstract noun with no solid reality, it can mean anything you want it to mean. “The war on terror” can be domestic or foreign, political or military, overt or covert or both. It can’t be won, it can’t be lost, and it only ends when you say it does.

It’s perfect.

Well, almost perfect.

There are still a few issues.

For example, it’s actually quite difficult to keep people afraid of an abstract concept. You need real-world reminders. Essentially, for the war on terror to continue, you need to keep reminding people terror is out there. Which means terrorism needs to happen. Which means either letting it happen or making it happen (the vast majority of the time it’s the latter).

If you’re staging terror attacks they either have to be real, resulting in real victims and real grieving families asking real questions…or they’re fake, meaning paying actors. Either way is logistically complicated, difficult to control and potentially embarrassing.

There’s also the problem of the terrorists themselves. You’ve publicly declared war on them…but they’re also very useful. There’s a reason you’ve funded them for decades. The inevitable result is you end up with “good terrorists” in country A, and “bad terrorists” in Country B. And when they are revealed to be essentially exactly the same, well that looks bad.

But the biggest problem, really, is that it caps your ambition.

You may have chosen an abstract concept as the target of your war, but that concept needs to take human form somehow. And any human enemy can only be so scary, and can only do so much damage. There’s no way you can frighten everyone at once that way.

Plus, picking a human enemy – along racial, national, ethnic or ideological lines – is inescapably divisive. You can’t ever unite everyone behind that flag.

In short, a war on terror and terrorists is fine if you want to rule a country, but what if you want to rule a planet?

Well, what you need then is a new enemy. An enemy that can be anywhere and everywhere, and that definitely isn’t human.

The war on Covid

The Covid19 “pandemic” has been pitched to the public as a war from the beginning.

As early as March 2020, the UN Secretary General was urging countries to “declare war on the virus” and already calling Covid “the greatest threat since World War II”. A sentiment UN spokespeople have repeated. A lot.

National leaders were just as eager to equate Covid as a new grand cause, in line with the fight against fascism.

Italy’s Prime Minister referred to the nation’s “darkest hour”. New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian told the press “this is literally a war” just last month.

In the UK, the government made numerous transparent attempts to instil a Churchillian “spirit of the Blitz” atmosphere. Unashamedly working World War II parallels into all their Covid messaging, the Queen’s cloying public speech of shamelessly using the line We’ll Meet Again.

In America, ever the hub of military metaphors, Trump called himself a “wartime President” fighting an “invisible enemy”. Former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo referred to healthcare professionals as “soldiers” in the battle against Covid.

Worldwide, pundits frequently compare Covid to the war on terror, and Covid to terrorists. The war metaphor has been ubiquitous in speeches, headlines and TV spots.

The message is clear and simple: The virus is our enemy. We are at war.

And this war really is perfect.

It has all the benefits of a real war, and none of the drawbacks. All the ephemeral malleability of the “war on terror”, and none of its potential complications.

Think about it…

In the name of Covid we have seen taxation, censorship, surveillance, state expenditure to the private sector and state powers all increase. These are all the cliche “emergency powers” the state seeks out in wartime.

And they’ve achieved it with a simple three-stage trick.

First, take a virus, give it a name and attribute to it the exact same symptoms of every other cold and flu virus. You just created a new disease.

Second, take a test that can “find anything in anybody”, run it on everyone who goes into hospital (especially the terminally ill) and change the legal definition of “cause of death”. You just created “deaths” from your new disease.

Third, start running that same test on everyone, multiple times a week. You just created millions upon millions of “asymptomatic cases”.

Combine these three, and you have created a “pandemic”.

They created an enemy out of thin air, through a wave of propaganda and statistical manipulation. “Covid” is nothing but a filter, a lens placed in front of the public eye that distorts reality without actually changing anything at all.

Just as with the “war on terror”, the real threat is almost entirely imaginary, but this time the optics are so much better. Instead of worshipping the troops, we now pay homage to “healthcare heroes”, the “soldiers on the frontline against the virus”. No bombs, no violence, just dancing nurses.

And what can’t happen with Covid? Simple, anything they don’t want to happen. Because of the very nature of the manufactured pandemic, they have total control of the narrative.

They can control the “cases” through the tests. They can control the “deaths” through the definition of “cause of death”. They can just tweak the meaning of a word here and there, and start and stop the “pandemic” on a whim. They can slow down the “spread”, or speed it up. Introduce a new test or treatment or “cure” it, then create a new variant to bring it back.

This war doesn’t even really exist, so it never has to end and they definitely can’t lose.

Meanwhile, every new law that passes expands the power of the state over the citizen, and every step of the way there new bloated private sector contracts up for grabs. Testing and tracing and PPE. Vaccines and ventilators and quarantine hotels. Public money is pouring into private hands.

And the best part? It’s all being done in the name of “helping people”.

Following 9/11, the Patriot Act empowered mass surveillance, detention without charge and huge infringement of civil rights, because people might be terrorists.

Now, allegedly anti-Covid “public health measures” are allowing the exact same things…because people might be sick.

The state has transformed. What was once considered paranoid and aggressive, is now simply beneficent and paternalistic.

That’s the genius of the War on Covid.

The real forever war

So…how are Covid and 9/11 linked?

One flows directly into the other. They form a continuum of control narratives designed to frighten people into accepting draconian limitations on their freedom, whilst justifying a permanent society-wide warlike mentality.

“The war on terror” and the “war on Covid” are twin psy-ops that show the transformation of “war” from a foreign policy into a purely domestic one.

Orwell described it perfectly in 1984:

War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.

In just the last two years we have all seen the truth of this. Covid has shown us supposedly enemy nations suddenly come to an accord and demonstrate almost total unity of purpose to spread one big lie.

The global capitalist hegemony doesn’t need to conquer land or steal resources anymore. They already own everything worth owning, all they need now is to control their workers and preserve the inequality they have created.

That’s the real war being waged here. Not the ridiculous war on terror. And not the laughable war on Covid. No, the real “forever war” is what Niels Harrit calls the vertical war, waged by the very top against everyone below them.

Covid is the most recent and most overt expression of this, but for years now the corporate media has been the spokesperson of the authoritarian heart of the state.

I have written before that we are entering the era of “progressive” statism. Where tyranny is sold as a regrettable inevitability and our leaders are portrayed as a new breed of reluctant dictators, sculpting dystopian political landscapes out of necessity, and with only the purest intentions.

We’re told that our caring masters aren’t controlling or dictatorial because they want to be, but because they need to be, for our sake.

The “great reset” is not a malign “conspiracy theory”, it’s just our kindly overlords child-proofing the world to protect us from ourselves. Tearing our society down so they can build back better into a neo-feudal utopia, where nobody owns anything and everyone is happy and everyone does what they’re told…or else.

This “pandemic” is the thin end of a rapidly widening wedge. Next comes the flu and obesity and global warming. No more meat. No more sugar. No more vacations. They’re bad for you, and bad for the planet, and bad for the polar bears.

Ban homeschools and protests and misinformation. Ban the wrong kind of books and the wrong kind of speech and the wrong kind of thoughts.

Wear the mask and take the jab and live in the pod and eat the bugs.

Global hegemony isn’t going to come about via traditional warfare or Imperial conquest, instead it is being shaped by a conglomeration of restrictions on individual freedom.

That’s the war that links 9/11 and Covid. The real war, and it’s not against drugs, or terrorism or even Covid…it’s against us.

 

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2024 & the Inevitable Rise of Biometrics

2024 & the Inevitable Rise of Biometrics

by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
May 21, 2024

 

Have you noticed a lot of two-factor authentication prompts lately? Are you getting emailed verification codes that take forever to arrive, so you have to request another?

Perhaps you are asked to do captchas to “prove you’re human” and they seem to be getting more complex all the time or simply not working at all?

Why do you think that might be?

We’ll come back to that.

Did you know we’re in a “breakthrough year” for biometric payment systems?

According to this story from CNBC, JPMorgan and Mastercard are on board with the technology and intend a wide rollout in the near future, following successful trials.

In March this year, JPMorgan signed a deal with PopID to begin a broad release of biometric payment systems in 2025.

A Mastercard spokesman told CNBC:

Our focus on biometrics as a secure way to verify identity, replacing the password with the person, is at the heart of our efforts in this area,”

Apple Pay already lets you pay with a face scan, while Amazon have introduced pay-by-palm in many of their real-world stores.

VISA showcased their latest palm biometric payment set-up at an event in Singapore earlier this year.

As we covered in a recent This Week, PayPal is pushing out its own biometric payment systems in the name of “preventing fraud”.

As always, this is not just an issue in “the West”.

Chinese companies have been leading this race for a while, with AliPay having biometric payment options since 2015.

Moscow’s Metro system has been using facial recognition cameras for biometric payments for over a year.

And it’s not just payments, “replacing the password with the person” has already spread to other areas.

Hoping to corral support for biometrics from the right, national governments are collecting biometrics to “curb illegal immigration”. You can expect that to spread.

The European Union will be implementing a new Biometric Entry-Exit System (EES) as soon as October of this year.

Biometric signing is on the rise too.

Laptops tablets and smartphones already come with face-reading and fingerprint scanning technology to confirm your identity.

Social media companies have been collecting biometric data “for security and identification purposes” for years.

Google Play launched a new biometric accessibility feature only a couple of weeks ago.

It’s all just so convenient, isn’t it? So much faster than e-mailing security codes and solving increasingly impossible captchas (both of which have unaccountably got harder and more complicated recently, and will doubtless continue to do so).

That’s how they get you: Convenience.

They won’t ever remove the “old-fashioned” ways of accessing your accounts, but it will get increasingly slow and difficult to use while biometrics get faster and easier.

Meanwhile, the propaganda will begin to flow.

Influencers will be paid to use “cool” “futuristic” biometric payment options that “feel like having superpowers” in contrived “viral” videos. Biometrics will save the day in a trendy movie or TV show. Some old fuddy-duddy will go on Question Time and rant about the new technology…just before saying something racist or denying climate change.

Maybe a major hack or cyber-attack will only affect those who haven’t switched to biometric authentication yet.

You get the idea.

And all the while supra-national corporate megaliths will be creating a massive database of voice recordings, finger and palm prints, facial and retinal scans.

It’s a good thing we’re ruled by a morally upright elite. Imagine the damage they could do with all of that.

 

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What NO ONE Is Saying About Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview

What NO ONE Is Saying About Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview

by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
February 10, 2024

 

Everyone is talking about Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The two-hour long conversation was live-streamed on twitter. Every major news outlet has had some form of coverage.

You can watch the whole thing here:

After eight years of covering the Ukraine coup/civil War, and more specifically Western propaganda on Russia, I could pretty much tell you everything Putin was going to say before he said it.

Anybody who has covered Russia or Ukraine could tell you that.

He was always going to detail, in cogent and historically literate terms, Russia’s position on Ukraine.

He was always going  to  cite  the (very real) broken promises Western diplomats made about NATO’s Eastward expansion.

He was almost certainly going remake his very worthy point about US foreign policy never seeming to change no matter who is President.

He’s an intelligent and persuasive speaker, and he was always going to  do well.

And, if this was 2014, that would be great.

But it’s not 2014 is it?

It’s 2024 & the world is being hurried fast toward the Brave New (“multipolar”) Normal. Russia is on board with Agenda 2030 &  very powerful  western establishment voices are now promoting Putin & his once-sidelined views.

In the face of these realities we should be asking questions about the relevance and purpose of this kind of geopolitical theatrics.

Let’s remind ourselves again that everyone is talking about the Putin interview.

EVERYONE.

From Hillary to Elon to Russell Brand.

Every major news outlet covered it, too. Maybe they “fact-checked” it, maybe they ranted about it or insisted it be banned, but they were all talking about it.

Let’s compare and contrast that coverage to the coverage of Oliver Stone’s 4-part interview with Putin in 2017.

Seriously. Look at the difference. It tells you a great deal about how the establishment agenda is changing. There were no big headlines then.

But I don’t want to talk about Putin.  Because everyone is talking about Putin.

I want to talk about Carlson.

The  Tucker Carlson who has been suddenly positioned as a supposed anti-establishment JFK-doubting, 9/11 truthing threat to the system.

The same Tucker Carlson whose father was director of the Voice of America. The same Tucker Carlson who censored and insulted 9/11 skeptics on his show.

The same Tucker Carlson who applied to (but was allegedly turned down by) the CIA.

How did this re-invention happen?

When did it happen?

Why did it happen?

And no, I’m not claiming everything he says is de facto wrong, a lot of it is in fact very right. His monologues on the state of the economy, the 2020 election, JFK and 9/11 have all been at least partially accurate.

…but that should make us ask more questions, shouldn’t it?

Did he have some great awakening?

Even if you believe he did, do you believe that his bosses at Fox did as well? Or that Elon Musk did? Or that either of these entities would be powerless to stop him dropping supposed truth bombs on their dime if they didn’t want him to?

Tucker Carlson was the most watched current events program on US television before he was apparently  fired by Fox News last year.

Since then, and with all the hero-kudos of being exiled by the establishment,  he has been live-streaming his shows on X/Twitter instead, and every single one of them gets more views than CNN or MSNBC or his old show on Fox…Combined.

Interesting, no.

The fact is, legacy media is dying. Which is a good thing. But do you think the establishment doesn’t see this? Do you think it hadn’t occurred to them to get out in front of it by seizing control of the new media platforms and planting “leaders” in supposedly independent media movements?

As we keep having to remind our readers  lately the people and institutions that run the world are not wed to any single platform, method, nation or flag.

Or media.

They bought up all the newspapers because they were useful, they “syndicated” all the television networks because that’s what people were watching…

so now as legacy media dies –  what do you think they’re gonna do?

Like a hermit crab swapping out shells – they will simply slide themselves from their old home to a nice shiny new  “indy” one.

Goodbye old fashioned corporate CNN, hello honestly completely organic guerilla news reporting livestreaming on X and getting totally accidentally promoted by the algorithm.

Goodbye long form editorials in newspapers, hello ten-second tiktoks from fake influencers in a government-run opinion factory.

Goodbye Tucker Carlson, paid disinfo promoter, hello Tucker Carlson voice of the new media who somehow still gets promoted by the very forces he’s supposed to be opposing .

We’ve seen other examples of this kind of thing already, for example AOC’s obviously fake “look at me live streaming my random off the cuff thoughts” videos. As if she hasn’t had a focus group decide exactly how little make up she should wear or how “unkempt” her hair should be be, or signed a sponsorship deal for the fried chicken she’s eating.

The selling point of new-media was that everyone had access to it instantly, with that came realness marked by rawness.  The establishment quickly seized on these markers of authenticity & tried to make them  their own. Now that rawness is being manufactured and realness is being faked on a production line.

And by seeding the rising new-media with establishment voices allegedly “gone rogue” , the establishment take control of it.

On top of that, the transition from old to new media can also be used to co-opt independent outlets and construct agenda-controlling fake binary narratives. With the old media selling one “side”, and new media the other.

That’s how you end up with crazy scenarios where billionaires like Elon Musk are cast as some kind of outsider, no matter how many Great Reset talking points he promotes, or podcasters like Joe Rogan apparently get $250 million from the system to attack the system, or the “intellectual dark web” shilling vaccines and Israel in equal measure.

The old establishment voices (Guardian, CNN, New York Times or whoever) noisily attack these new “anti-establishment” voices (who are always selling the same agenda in a slightly altered form), knowing that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mindset will give them cred  in genuine alternate media circles.

I mean it’s pretty cool to get a big old “ex”-mainstreamer on your side and agreeing to be on your podcast, right? Instant kudos, excitement. “See, even Big Name X admits we’re right about this”. It’s too easy to be seduced by the lure of  “celebrity rebel” narratives. We all want to believe them don’t we.

And thus, by putting “former” establishment insiders in leadership positions of “the alternative”, the ‘elite’ control the direction of their supposed opposition.

Tucker Carlson is the first really big voice to make the swap in a major way, but he won’t be the last. And his interview with Putin is yet another sign of the “approved alternative” messaging.

According to Twitter, the interview has been viewed 140 million times in 24 hours. Tucker and Putin have been trending ever since, promoted by the all powerful algorithm on a site owned by the richest man in the world, whilst simultaneously appearing on the front pages of every paper.

Wow, cool, right. The new media is just so right about this the establishment has no choice but to promote it!

Too easy to  fail to notice there’s nothing really  “new” about this media at all. It’s just a very old hermit crab in a very new shell.

 

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UN & Bill Gates Launch “50in5” Global Digital Infrastructure Plans

UN & Bill Gates Launch “50in5” Global Digital Infrastructure Plans

by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
November 16, 2023

 

Last week the United Nations Development Program officially launched their new initiative promoting “Digital Public Infrastructure” (DPI) around the world.

The “50in5” program – so-called because it aims to introduce DPI in fifty countries in the next five years – began with a live-streamed event on November 8th.

For those of you unsure what “Digital Public Infrastructure” is, the 50in5 website is quite clear:

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) – which refers to a secure and interoperable network of components that include digital payments, ID, and data exchange systems.

There’s nothing new there, for anyone who has been paying even the slightest bit of attention. Digital identity and digital payment systems are self-explanatory (and we’ve covered them before). “Data Exchange Systems” essentially means national governments will share identity and financial records of citizens across borders with other nations, or indeed with global government agencies.

The key word is “interoperable”.

As we have written before, the “global government” won’t be one single health care system, identity database, or digital currency – but dozens of notionally separate systems all carefully designed to be fully “interoperable”.

As well as being a project of the UNDP, UNICEF, and the Inter-American Development Bank, the 50in5 is funded by various globalist NGOs and non-profits including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and (indirectly through an NGO called “Co-Develop”) the Rockefeller Foundation.

The eleven counties taking part in the program so far are Bangladesh, Brazil, Estonia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Moldova, Norway, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Togo. A careful spread from every continent, including first, second, and third-world nations.

It is a list noteworthy for including NATO, EU, and BRICS members. Interesting implications on supposed “multipolarity” there.

In related news, on the exact same day the 50in5 program launched, the European Parliament and Council of Europe agreed on a new framework for a region-wide European Digital Identity (eID) system.

According to the official press release [emphasis added]:

The revised regulation constitutes a clear paradigm shift for digital identity in Europe aiming to ensure universal access for people and businesses to secure and trustworthy electronic identification and authentication. Under the new law, member states will offer citizens and businesses digital wallets that will be able to link their national digital identities with proof of other personal attributes (e.g., driving licence, diplomas, bank account). Citizens will be able to prove their identity and share electronic documents from their digital wallets with a click of a button on their mobile phone.

This comes on the back of announcements that the European Central Bank is moving on to the “next phase” of its Digital Euro plans this month. The digital euro will – according to former IMF (and apparent numerology nut) Christine Lagarde – afford some “limited control” over people’s spending.

India, another BRICS nation, has been at the forefront of DPI development for years, and now articles are appearing in publications like Forbes, claiming “India Has A Digital Infrastructure, America Needs One”.

At the same time, China is making strides toward ending online anonymity, while Western politicians like Nikki Haley say we should be doing the same.

As the world focuses on Hamas and Israel, the global re-organization phase of the Great Reset is just quietly going about its business. Building a net and waiting to tighten it.

 

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Who are ISIS? — ISIS Are Back and They Are Faker Than Ever

Who are ISIS? — ISIS Are Back and They Are Faker Than Ever

 

“It is entirely reasonable to conclude that ISIS was created as ‘the bastard army’ of the Anglo-American ‘military industrial intelligence complex’ and its vassal, allied states, notably Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Our elected leaders have not led a battle against them because ISIS, knowingly or not, works for same corporate power elite who control the politicians.

“All the evidence points to the West’s consistent use of ISIS as a destabilising force in an energy rich part of the world whose impact on the global economy shaped the 20th century and remains a key strategic region at the start of the 21st . ISIS’ murderous barbarity suits the known geopolitical agenda of the Western powers. Cui bono?”

Who are ISIS?

by Iain Davis
sourced from OffGuardian
August 19, 2023

 

Kit Knightly, from the OffGuardian, recently published ISIS are back and they are faker than ever.

ISIS are back…and they’re faker than ever.

He explored the apparent return of the ISIS bogeymen and the media narrative that preempted their re-emergent threat. He observes that ISIS, having taken a break during the alleged COVID-19 pandemic, is seemingly the “creation of marketers and PR firms rather than any geopolitical reality.”

This article—Who Are ISIS— was written in June 2018 and offers some of the historical background which strongly suggests Kit Knightly is absolutely right.

Who Are ISIS?

Despite ISIS’ apparent defeat in Syria and Iraq it seems likely that the ISIS hydra will raise another head elsewhere in the world. Indeed they seem to be able to cling on in U.S held territory, though not Syrian/Russian held territory.

The new ISIS is something the US administration are already warning the world to prepare for. With evidence of war crimes committed by the US led coalition in the Syrian City of Raqqa, Nathan Sales, the State Department’s Counter Terrorism Coordinator said on March 2nd 2018:

As we defeat ISIS on the battlefield, the group is adapting to our success. The fight is by no means over – it’s simply moving into a new phase: from military solutions to law enforcement solutions. Increasingly, we’re going to need to supplement our military efforts to defeat ISIS with civilian measures that can ensure the group’s enduring defeat……..We’re not just worried about ISIS core, which as we all know has been degraded quite severely in its territorial holdings in Syria and Iraq, but as that territorial core has eroded, we’ve seen an increase in activity by ISIS elements elsewhere in the world.

It is heartening to know that it was actually the US who defeated ISIS on the battlefield. Perhaps some may be surprised by the US government’s apparent reticence to make greater political capital out of their victory. The warnings from Washington were far from triumphant.

You have to wonder if even they believed in their ‘stunning victory.’ You also have to question what they meant by ‘civilian measures.’ Are we to be drafted? Do they want our young, or are they simply talking about censorship and a crack down on freedom of speech?

According to the US State Department, ISIS will re-emerge in Iraq and Syria, in a different form, and is looking to spread its operations to other countries. The US have decided that three new versions already exist in the form of ISIS-West Africa, ISIS-Philippines, and ISIS-Bangladesh.

If the State Department are right ISIS’ organisational, logistical and central planning capabilities are impressive. Following significant military defeats in the middle east, they can immediately reappear in different locations, thousands of miles apart, simultaneously. Amazing don’t you think? How did they do that?

It’s almost as if there’s an underlying support structure which is able to finance and tactically support ISIS (or whatever they may be called in the future) on an international scale. Given the West’s long standing support for Islamist extremist organisations perhaps we don’t need to look far to identify who is providing that support. Certainly if we look at the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria a distinct prime suspect emerges.

During the U.S led coalition’s occupation of Iraq tens of thousands of Islamist extremists were thrown into mass detention centres, along with tens of thousands of other, less extreme, Iraqi’s who had been swept up during coalition raids and protest policing operations. Among the detainees was the future Caliph of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. It was in Camp Bucca, under US and UK guard, where the Islamic State (and ISIS) initially took shape.

Details about Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s time in Camp Bucca are sketchy. Some reports stated he was interned for a relatively brief period in 2004 – 2005 while others said he was imprisoned for five years between 2004 -2009. What is undeniable is that Camp Bucca was effectively a radicalisation centre for the Islamists. According to Iraqi strategic analyst Hisham al-Hashim, 17 of ISIS’ top 25 commanders came through the Camp Bucca system.

The US led coalition’s explanation for this “oversight” was that their intelligence, regarding “who was who,” was often lacking and compounded by a lack of interpreters. This meant that relatively innocuous prisoners, snared in by US and Iraqi National Guard ‘policing’ operations, found themselves thrown in with the more hardcore Islamists and radical preachers. Angered by what many saw as their unjust incarceration by the US and its allies, the incarcerated moderates were open to the radical proselytising of the extremists.

When full, Camp Bucca could hold more than 24,000 inmates, split into groups of 1000 in large wire fenced compounds. Following widespread allegations of the abuse of prisoners, some leeway was granted allowing prisoners to attend prayer meetings with other prisoner groups. For the most extreme, this served as the ideal recruitment ground. Former enemies, such as al Qaeda members and Ba’athist Party, were able to meet and plot, in relative safety, against their common foe.

In 2007 U.S military strategy in Iraq was built around the so called ‘surge.’ From a starting point of 132,000 US troops in January 2007, peaking at 168,000 in September, the ‘surge’ saw an increase in US troop deployment and a shift towards mass imprisonment in the hope or reducing combatant numbers. The crack down that accompanied ‘the Surge’ meant it was difficult for the Islamist extremists to congregate in the cities and towns, but they faced no such problems inside the Camp Bucca, Cropper and Taji detentions centres.

In a 2014 briefing paper, the Intelligence Analysis company the Soufan Group stated:

The reshaping of what is now the Islamic State (IS) began among the detainee populations in military prisons such as Camp Bucca in Iraq, where violent extremists and former regime personalities forged mutual interests over years of confinement. IS is now a chimera of Ba’athist and takfiri ideologies, with the organizational skills of the former helping channel the motivational fervor of the latter. The former regime officers who are now senior leaders in IS appear fully committed to the ideals and goals of the group, a result of a thorough radicalization that has extended from imprisonment [. . . ].

Of course, this was all deemed to be a terrible mistake. The result of a combination of short sighted policy decisions and human error by coalition officials struggling to deal with difficult conditions within the camps.

By the time of their closure in 2009, at least 100,000 Islamists had been through the US controlled camp system. As soon as they were released they re-established the networks they had built in the camps, rejoined the jihad, and set about building their caliphate. To start constructing their army they required, experienced fighters, money and armaments. Luckily for them help was on its way.

There is no doubt at all that collaboration with Islamist groups, linked to al Qaeda, was a key strategy in Iraq and Syria. Speaking in 2015 Lieutenant. General Michael T. Flynn, formerly assigned as the Pentagon’s Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA,) stated the plan to arm the Islamists was a “wilful decision”. He claimed the DIA warned the Obama administration that the policy of working with al Qaeda affiliated groups risked the creation of an ISIS like entity across the entire region. Flynn’s career was ignominiously destroyed when he committed the heinous crime of talking to Russians, instead of calling them names.

However Flynn’s comments were entirely consistent with the available evidence. Following a law suit by Judicial Watch, the DIA released a previously ‘classified’ 2012 report that confirmed the accuracy of Flynn’s statement.

It revealed the Pentagon were fully aware their support (with the notable assistance of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) for AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) and ISI (Islamic State in Iraq) would be likely to lead to the rise of ISIS. The 2012 DIA Intelligence Information Report stated:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

It is important to fully understand what this meant. We can paraphrase this statement as follows:

  • The continued destabilisation of the region is likely to create the Islamic State. This is precisely what the West, NATO (including Turkey) and its allies in the Persian Gulf want. It will hopefully isolate Syria from its Shi’ah allies and break its strategic alliance with Iran and Iraq and ultimately Russia.

The predicted emergence of a “Salafist principality” was seen as a strategic opportunity to isolate the Syrian government. The document acknowledged, “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” and that, “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition [the insurgency in Syria].”

The creation of ISIS was no accident. It wasn’t the result of policy mistakes but, given the evidence, appeared to be the intended consequence of a deliberate strategy. Either that or the Obama administration were intent upon ignoring their own Defense Intelligence Agency report.

The subsequent level of support the U.S led coalition provided for ISIS renders any claim that this was all an ‘error’ untenable. Flynn was absolutely correct when he said the arming of the Islamists was a “wilful decision.” The Obama administration and other western governments were under no illusions. Their strategy would inevitably lead to the creation of ISIS.

Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in 2013 the former camp Bucca, Cropper and Taji detainees allied to AQI and ISI groups, announced a unifying name change to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS.) Fighters and arms started to pour in from the U.S led coalition allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and notably Libya.

Along with the arms coming from defeated militaries in Libya and Iraq, ISIS received shipments of weaponry manufactured in Eastern Europe. A study from the Conflict Armament Research group (CAR), commissioned by the EU, traced the route of these weapons [which is available to download].

The CAR stated that ‘large numbers’ of these weapons were bought in Europe by US, Saudi and Qatari dealers. The sellers were allegedly “deceived” about the destination, thereby violating the sale and export licenses. The arms were then shipped via the “rat line” through Turkey into Syria. Once in Syria they were distributed by ‘moderate’ terrorists, such as al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria), to their ISIS counterparts.

This was later confirmed when significant quantities of the traced weapons were found in ISIS controlled territory, such as Tikrit, Ramadi, Falluja and Mosul. However, these shipments were dwarfed by some very lucky coincidences which turned the ISIS terrorist group into a fully equipped army.

Following the withdrawal of the large scale US troop deployment from Iraq in 2011, the Iraqi army were supported by the US led coalition in their fight against the Islamist insurgency. Having destroyed Iraq’s army in 2003, the coalition then spent billions of US taxpayers’ money rebuilding it, with the profits naturally going to the global arms manufacturing corporations. The US left behind Military Transitions Teams (MiTT’s) to oversee the training and deployment of their proxy Iraqi army.

In 2014, a relatively small ISIS force, of no more than a 1000 fighters, took the Iraqi city of Mosul. At the time, the city was defended by two Iraqi Armoured divisions amounting to 30,000 soldiers. Following sporadic skirmishes on the outskirts, as ISIS approached Mosul, the entire Iraqi force simply abandoned their posts and left.

US supplied, state of the art, military hardware, stored at the al-Qayara base in Mosul, was seemingly just handed over to ISIS. Similar mysterious vanishing acts then followed in Ramadi, again with very little military pressure from ISIS, once more giving them access to heavy weapons and equipment.

In the space of a few months, ISIS not only seized hundreds of millions of dollars from various regional banks but had ‘captured’ six divisions of lethal, US supplied, military hardware. This included more than 2000 US Humvee armoured troop carriers, at least 30 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, 50 or so 155mm M198 howitzers (artillery guns,) helicopters, thousands of PKC machine guns, rocket launchers and tons of small arms and ammunition.

Recently ‘evidence’ offered by the British and French governments to ‘prove’ that Bashar al Assad gassed his own people in Douma stated that only his Arab Syrian Arab Army possessed the helicopters capable of dropping Chlorine barrel bombs. This was a lie. ISIS also had the required helicopters, ‘seized’ from Mosul and Ramadi.

The reason given for handing ISIS enough military hardware to form an army capable of fighting nation states was simply incompetence and crap training. However, even the worst army in the world knows enough not to simply abandon all its weapons to the enemy. If the Iraqi army were in such a terrified rush to run away, why didn’t they leave in the protection of their armoured vehicles?

Further questions arise in light of the statements made by the Mosul based head of Iraqi intelligence Ahmed al Zarkani. He said that he had repeatedly warned the US puppet government in Baghdad about the approach of ISIS.

According to Zarkani, he informed the government of Nouri al-Maliki on numerous occasions about ISIS training camps being prepared in the Nineveh region; he called for air strikes against their positions; he alerted the local military command and, following prisoner interrogations, he even discovered the time, date and code-name of the impending ISIS attack.

When he reported that the ‘Al-Eres’ (The Wedding Party) operation was imminent, he was shocked to discover, despite all the intelligence he had provided, the commander of the Mosul divisions had ‘gone on holiday.’ Nothing was done at any stage to stop ISIS from seizing their own armoured divisions.

With all its newly acquired American hardware, ISIS needed fighters trained to use it. In 2015, a report from the International Center for Counter Terrorism estimated that 30,000 foreign fighters had joined ISIS. This flow had increased with ISIS’ expansion into Syria in May 2013. Thousands of seasoned, battle hardened terrorists from the Balkans, including fighters from Kosovo, and the Caucasus, such as the Chechen Islamists, came into Syria via the NATO nation of Turkey. Many of these fighters were familiar with heavy weaponry and were capable of flying aircraft. By then, ISIS numbers were conservatively estimated at around 70,000.

The CIA operation to arm, train and equip Islamist terrorists in Syria was called Timber Sycamore. It supposedly began in 2012, it was allegedly phased out in 2017 by the Trump administration as a result of ISIS, and other terrorist groups, military losses to Syrian and Russian forces.

Western coalition special forces also started terrorists training camps in Jordan in 2011. This was basically a continuation of the training programs they had run for the KLA, NLA and al Qaeda in the Balkans.

With a budget of $1billion, thousands of fighters came through the program. Many of these fighters ended up fighting for Al Nusra, whose numbers grew to 20,000 by the alleged end of Timber Sycamore in 2017. In addition the Pentagon was funding the shipment of arms through European countries such as Denmark and Bulgaria on diplomatic flights to avoid inspection. This wasn’t just a US effort, a number of European states were also involved.

However, despite significant ground forces and plenty of armour and weapons, ISIS lacked air support and were vulnerable to air strikes. In 2014 Barrack Obama announced the US intended to launch air strikes against both Iraq and Syria to ‘degrade and destroy‘ ISIS. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

After more than 800 sorties, ISIS territory had more than doubled in Syria. Far from ‘degrading and destroying’ ISIS, US air strikes were apparently assisting ISIS in Syria. In fact, they had the effect of pushing ISIS towards Syria, where they seemed to benefit greatly from US bombing. Was this all another monumental mistake?

It is difficult to see how supplying weapons via airdrops to ISIS was degrading them. This happened on numerous occasions. For example, according to Iraqi intelligence, the US had dropped supplies to besieged ISIS fighters in the Yathrib and Balad districts of Iraq. Strangely this ‘accident’ provided ISIS fighters exactly what they most needed at the time, food and armour piercing rounds.

Then there are the numerous occasions when US air strikes appeared to have directly provided a strategic advantage to ISIS.

The isolated Syrian city of Deir Ezzor had been under siege by ISIS for more than a year. However, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) were holding it, mainly because they had control of the local airport. This enabled the city to be resupplied by Syrian and Russian airdrops. The airport was well protected by SAA artillery positions in the overlooking Tharda hills, giving the SAA a decisive tactical advantage.

ISIS had consistently failed to take these key strategic positions. However, on September 16th/17th 2016 the US launched air strikes against the SAA who were fighting ISIS. As soon as the SAA defences had been destroyed ISIS then launched a large scale attack and seized the positions. It appeared to be a coordinated offensive, timed precisely with the US air strikes. It was no spur of the moment assault by ISIS. Its scale and precision clearly indicated it had been planned well in advance.

Of course the US commanders said this was all an honest mistake. US Brig. Gen. Richard Coe said it was the result of human error. However, forces commanded by Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L Harrigan dispatched a reconnaissance drone to gather intelligence the day before the air strike. They claimed they ‘misinterpreted’ the intelligence, believing the positions were ISIS rather than SAA controlled, despite the fact the fixed SAA positions were no secret.

They US then ‘accidentally’ gave the Russian military the wrong targeting information, rendering them unable to warn the US that they were planning to attack the SAA not ISIS. This contravened a recent ceasefire agreement, which broke down as a result of the air strikes.

As ISIS moved in to take Deir Ezzor the MSM tried to cover up the US support for their assault. The British Daily Telegraph wrote:

The US-led coalition, as well as the Russians, have been bombing the jihadists in Deir Ezzor for the last 18 months but have been unable to dislodge them.

This was a false claim, you could call it disinformation or fake news. The US hadn’t launched any major air strikes against ISIS forces surrounding Deir Ezzor. The US attacks had been against the SAA and vital city infrastructure. For example, in January 2016 the US bombed Deir Ezzor’s electricity plant while the SAA were holding the city.

Again in May 2017 the US hit a convoy of Shi’ah Iraqi militiamen, loyal to Damascus, and a unit of armed Iranians. At the time the Syrian Arab Army, and their Iraqi and Iranian allies, were pushing ISIS back towards Iraq. The northern Syrian city of Raqqa, held by ISIS, was close to being cut off from ISIS supply lines. The convoy was taking heavy weaponry to forward positions in the battle against ISIS. Yet another example of US air strikes benefiting ISIS terrorists.

There is no doubt at all the US coalition were aware of the funding of ISIS by their Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. A State Department memo in 2014 stated:

We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region.

Are we to believe this was all just another string of ‘mistakes’ which caused unforeseen ‘blowback‘, accidentally creating, arming, equipping, supplying and tactically supporting ISIS? You can if you like, but if you do you need to account for the evidence which suggests otherwise.

Documentation revealed the US led coalition were anticipating the rise of a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” and it was central to their strategic thinking; ISIS very easily obtained billions of dollars of US military equipment; ISIS benefited from US bombing campaigns in Syria, and the US appeared to have provided them with tactical air support on a number of occasions; the US led coalition were actively training and arming Islamist extremists who went on to fight for ISIS and the West’s Gulf allies were known and accepted to be funding ISIS.

Similarly, the US’ European allies had their own justifications for military action with attacks in London, Paris and Munich to mention but a few. This led them to take offensive actions in Libya, based once more upon ‘flawed intelligence,’ producing the same destabilisation and a perfect environment for the Islamists to gather and spread their form of violent jihad. This, once again, particularly benefited ISIS, who were able to use Libya as staging point for their operations in Iraq and Syria.

Obama’s departure changed nothing. Following the alleged chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun Donald Trump, who had come into office promising to end foreign wars of intervention, authorised a missile strike on Al Shayrat airfield in a supposed attempt to damage the Syrian’s ability to launch further alleged chemical weapons attacks.

In yet another remarkable ISIS benefiting “coincidence,” it just so happened that the al Shayrat airbase was the centre of Syrian operations against ISIS forces around Homs and Palmyra. Syrian forces had used it to gain a growing military advantage over ISIS. The missile strike greatly reduced the number of air strikes against the terrorists. The missile strike on al Shayrat was another example of the US effectively providing tactical air cover for ISIS.

It is entirely reasonable to conclude that ISIS was created as ‘the bastard army’ of the Anglo-American ‘military industrial intelligence complex’ and its vassal, allied states, notably Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Our elected leaders have not led a battle against them because ISIS, knowingly or not, works for same corporate power elite who control the politicians.

All the evidence points to the West’s consistent use of ISIS as a destabilising force in an energy rich part of the world whose impact on the global economy shaped the 20th century and remains a key strategic region at the start of the 21st . ISIS’ murderous barbarity suits the known geopolitical agenda of the Western powers. Cui bono?

Just like the tale you were spun about weapons of mass destruction, prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, practically everything you have been told about ISIS and the conflict in Syria is part of a monstrous deception.

Despite their contrition, following the lies they told about Iraqi WMDs, and promises to the public that they would never let them down again, the entire Western mainstream media has cheered the war machine along every step of the way. The simplistic narratives we have been given about ISIS have never mentioned the clear evidence that links the rise of the Caliphate to U.S led coalition objectives.

Every single time people noticed the coalitions military actions seemed to benefit ISIS, the MSM either covered this up with another ‘unfortunate coincidence’ story, accused those who raised these issues of being ‘conspiracy theorists‘ or created entirely false story lines to obfuscate the reality.

Once again, it appears most of us fell for it.

 

You can read more of Iain’s work at his blog IainDavis.com (Formerly InThisTogether) or on UK Column or follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his SubStack. His new book Pseudopandemic, is now available, in both in kindle and paperback, from Amazon and other sellers. Or you can claim a free copy by subscribing to his newsletter.

 

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This Pro-Mask “Study” Is Why You Should NEVER “Trust the Science”

This Pro-Mask “Study” Is Why You Should NEVER “Trust the Science”

by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
July 27, 2023

 

Last week it was reported that the Australian state of Victoria may be considering “permanent” facemask mandates to achieve “zero-Covid”.

Now, we don’t need to get into the personal liberty implications of such a law, or  the near-infinite supply of evidence that masks don’t work to prevent the transmission of respiratory disease.

They don’t work, they never worked. Mandating them was a political move designed to make the fake Covid “pandemic” appear real, and their continued use is a symptom of brainwashing or a by-product of chronic virtue signaling.

The mask debate, such as it was, is over.

No, the only aspect of this development worth talking about is the “evidence” used to support the position – and trust me, the quotes are entirely justified.

The “study” which claims to demonstrate the benefits of permanent masking was published in the Medical Journal of Australia last week and titled “Consistent mask use and SARS‐CoV‐2 epidemiology: a simulation modelling study”.

“Simulation modelling study” is very much the key phrase there. For those who don’t know,  “simulation modelling studies” involve feeding data into a computer programme, then asking it to form conclusions.

Clearly, they are only as reliable and useful as the data you use. In fact, you can very easily make them produce any result you want by feeding in  the “right” (bad) data.

In this particular modelling study they started out by telling the computer that cloth masks reduce transmission by 53% and respirators reduced it by 80%:

Odds ratios for the relative risk of infection for people exposed to an infected person (wearing a mask v not wearing a mask) were set at 0.47 for cloth and surgical masks and 0.20 for respirators

Essentially, they told their computer that masks prevent disease…and then said “ok, computer, since you now know masks prevent disease  – what would happen if everybody wore them all the time?”

The computer then told them – obviously  – that nobody would get sick.

Because they made it logically impossible for it to say anything else.

But there’s a bit more to it.

The next layer of interest is where they got their input data from.

After all there have been dozens of studies done on masks over the years, 98% of which say masks don’t work.

So, did our guys they choose a peer-reviewed real-time control trial relying on lab-tested double-blind results?

Perhaps one of the dozen or so such trials listed in our 40 facts article?

Did they maybe average the results of multiple studies?

No, they used a phone survey.

One phone survey.

This phone survey, published last year and conducted in late 2021.

In this *ahem* “scientific study”, they had people randomly call up those who had recently been tested for “Covid”, ask them “did you wear a mask?” and then published the conclusion – “masks reduce transmission by 53%” – as if they meant something.

Interestingly, if you scroll down to the “affiliations” section you can see that one of the authors is a Pfizer grant recipient.

Rather more troublingly – and for some reason not mentioned as a conflict of interest – is that the whole study was produced by the California Board of Public Health.

California had already had a mask mandate in place for almost a year before this “study” was even started.

What we have here is not “science” it’s a computer model based on the results of a subjective phone survey conducted by a government agency with a vested interest. It is entirely meaningless, and yet is published in journals and cited by “experts”, perhaps even used as the basis of introducing new laws.

This is how “The ScienceTM” works. And, although Covid has maybe opened many people’s eyes to this issue, it is far from unique to “Covid”. You are just as likely to find this kind of “research” published on any topic – especially those that serve a political purpose – and have been for years if not decades.

Stanford Professor of evidence-based medicine,  John Ioannidis wrote a paper called “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”, and that was back in 2005.

This has nothing to do with the “pandemic”, and everything to do with the difference between science and “The Science”. So let’s examine that distinction.

“Science” is an approach to the world. A rational method for gathering information, testing new ideas and forming evidence-based conclusions.

“The Science” is a self-sustaining industry of academics who need jobs and owe favours.

An ongoing quid pro quo relationship between the researchers – who want honors and knighthoods and tenure and book deals and research grants and to be the popular talking head explaining complex ideas to the multitudes on television – and the corporationsgovernments and “charitable foundations” who have all of those things in their gift.

This system doesn’t produce research intended to be read, it creates headlines for celebrities to tweet, links for “journalists” to embed, sources for other researchers to cite.

An illusion of solid substantiation that comes apart the moment you actually read the words, examine the methodology or analyse the data.

Self-reporting surveys, manipulated data, “modelling studies” that spit-out pre-ordained results. Affiliated-authors paid by the state or corporate interests to provide “evidence” that supports highly profitable or politically convenient assumptions.

This mask study is the perfect example of that.

Interlacing layers of nothing designed to create the impression of something.

That’s why they want you to trust it, rather than read it.

 

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The Insidious Truth Behind Free School Meals

The Insidious Truth Behind Free School Meals
The UN is pushing for universal free school meals, but that level of control would be easily abused. 

by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
July 25, 2023

 

There is a growing international campaign to institute free school meals all around the globe. On face of it this might seem like a great idea…

but in the New Normal age nothing is ever really free.

So, let’s unpack…

The campaign is being spear-headed by the UN-backed School Meals Coalition (SMC), whose self-proclaimed goal is “free school meals for every child by 2030” (for some reason they are obsessed with that date).

The SMC already has over 80 national governments signed up to its pledge,  with over 90 “partners” (including the Rockefeller Foundation), and these numbers are only likely to grow after their presentation at the UN’s World Food Summit earlier today.

At the same time, the Coalition is getting glowing press write-ups, like this one from The Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliot:

For the scheme to work, rich countries would find around one-third of the $6bn annual cost, with the rest found by the governments of low-income countries through their budgets or though innovative financing ideas such as debt for school meals swaps, under which countries would channel the savings from debt relief into school meals programmes. At a time when aid budgets are being cut, $2bn a year is small change for donor governments and represents just one day’s worth of annual subsidies to food producers. It is a small price to pay for something that could do so much good.

This agenda has been lurking in the shadows of UK politics for a while now, with Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana first pushing FSM to all primary kids back in the winter of 2022.

It feels weird to write sceptically about this, because, as  a self-proclaimed leftist for most of my life, free school meals is exactly the kind of policy I likely would have supported without question just a few short years ago…

…but those few years were Covid years, and they’ve taught us all a lot.

Firstly, and most importantly, its become increasingly apparent that any policy is only as fair as the people implementing it, and only as decent as the intention behind it, and, however superficially humane  this plan might sound, the practical impact would be to hand yet more control over to the same murderous, eugenicist state that very recently killed thousands with a lie.

Secondly, a monopoly is a monopoly – whether private or state-backed – and the moment a monopoly exists the freedom to choose is dead. Freedom of choice is always the first liberty to go, but never the last.

Consider, for a moment, exactly what free school meals means in a post-covid world still reeling from a deliberately created financial crisis and in the midst of a “Great Reset” transformation.

1) The cost of living is soaring, and many parents – working parents as well as unemployed – are simply not able to afford to heat their homes or feed their children.

2) “Covid” caused a huge spike in homeschooling in countries all around the world.

3) there is an on-going campaign to “revolutionize global food systems” by promoting eating insects, GMOs and lab-grown “meat”.

Let’s trace the point where all these policies intersect.

What are we looking at?

Essentially, free school meals can be used to…

a) counter the rise in homeschooling by effectively bribing or coercing struggling parents to keep their kids in school so they can be fed

b) condition children (and their parents) into accepting eating whatever the state chooses to provide – be it ‘healthy’ GM veganism, bug-burgers or lab-grown food paste

c) this conditioning will help to normalise a more general acceptance of these “foods”

And that’s just the passive phase of control. We can assume it won’t stop there because it never does.

Maybe  free school meals will one day be tied to accepting universal basic income payments, or conditional on  your digital ID or your social credit score.

Maybe only vaccinated children will qualify for free school meals.

I’m sure you see my point.

The unfortunate truth is that we live in an era of ever-increasing  – and anti-human – corporate/state overreach.

The food might be free in the financial sense of the word,  but there will most definitely be a price to pay.

 

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Wait…Are They REALLY Going to Do a UFO Psy-Op?

Wait…Are They REALLY Going to Do a UFO Psy-Op?
Everyone from whistleblowers to the White House is suddenly talking about aliens…but why? 

by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
June 14, 2023

 

Late last week it was widely reported that the United States government had recovered an intact alien spacecraft from a crash site.

The supposed revelation comes from one David Grusch, a “former” military intelligence agent, who turned “whistleblower” and told the press that this supposed craft “distorted time and space”, was “bigger on the inside than the outside” and made some rescue workers ill.

Just today, he added more to the story, claiming the Vatican has known about this since WWII, and they helped Mussolini retrieve a downed UFO.

Now, assuming none of this is true, it’s not an especially noteworthy incident in and of itself. After all fringe figures coming forward claiming to be “whistleblowers” does happen, and they often tell ludicrous stories with no supporting evidence.

These can occur organically or be staged by agencies of the state, and either way the press is always happy to give them air because a) they are distracting and b) they discredit real “conspiracy theories” by association.

But that’s not what appears to be going on here.

For starters, Grusch wasn’t just given space in the media, he was given at least a small amount of credence by them. They allowed him to talk without mockery or even much questioning.

I mean let’s compare and contrast the coverage of a man claiming a literal TARDIS exists to the coverage of doctors claiming covid vaccines are dangerous or masks don’t work.

Corporate “fact-checkers” seemed to have missed a gimme here, don’t they?

More than that, the UFO psy-op didn’t even start with Grusch. The Biden administration was actively feeding the UFO story for months before he came forward.

In June 2021 the US intelligence community released a report claiming it knew about unknown flying objects in US airspace.

In January of this year the Pentagon released files claiming they knew about 247 “unidentified aerial phenomena” in US airspace in 2021 alone.

Then in February Biden announced a new taskforce to study these UFOs.

What’s noteworthy here is the way the press have picked up the UFO ball and really run with it. It’s everywhere and, again, not in the “ha, idiots believe in aliens” way. They are actually taking it seriously, or at least pretending to. And, again, this attitude pre-dates the “whistleblower”.

In February, the Guardian ran an opinion piece from the head of the British UFO Research Association, headlined “Most UFOs – like the Chinese spy balloon – can be explained away. But what about the other 2%?

Then, in April, Live Science asked simply, “Are Aliens Real?”.

Later that month it was revealed that six different “UFO whistlblowers” had already spoken to members of congress (presumably Grosch was one of these six, the other 5 remain unnamed).

In May, the journal Popular Mechanics – inveterate, if not shameless,  9/11 truth “debunkers” – published a piece headlined “6 Solid Reasons to Actually Believe in Aliens”. Later that month, NASA’s UFO taskforce released its findings publicly.

Then – would you believe it –  the day after Grusch first published his claims, there was a “UFO crash” in Las Vegas Nevada which made international headlines.

And the day after that The Hill reported that inside sources claimed “that UFO information was inappropriately withheld from Congress”

Today the Independent endeavors to answer the question that should be on everyone’s lips, “Why everyone is talking about UFO sightings, even though there is still no hard evidence”, while Fox News is hosting interviews with Navy pilots discussing “credible claims” of UFO sightings and calling them a “daily occurence.”

Even voices from the alternative right/conservative sphere, people who you would expect to be somewhat skeptical, have climbed on this bandwagon.

The refrain is that these headlines reflect the US “admitting” something they previously denied, or that this is leaking out against the wishes of the government (or the globalists who control said government).

This is nonsense. Governments don’t “admit” anything – even undeniable physical realities like buildings falling at terminal velocity. What governments do is use the language of “admission” to seed narratives.

Never has this been more obvious than right now.

Consider that Grusch has already been allowed to testify in front of the house of representatives. A privilege never afforded to any serious Covid skeptic or 9/11 truther.

Consider also that Mr Grusch’s former lawyer was Charles McCullough, the first ever Senate-appointed inspector general of the US intelligence services from 2010-2017.

He’s being given the biggest platform in the country, while represented by “former” intelligence officials.

Is that how you treat a whistleblower who is embarrassing you or endangering secret plans?

No, it’s how you treat an asset who is part of a story you want the public to hear.

Clearly, this is a narrative roll-out.

The real question is: Why?

And, honestly, I have absolutely no idea. A distraction maybe, but it’s a weird card to play when we already have “climate change” and a “special military operation” on-going, not to mention residual old pandemics and incipient new ones.

No, the distraction argument doesn’t really hold water, but neither do the standard explanations of money or power. What legislation can UFOs force through? Who could seriously try and levy an alien defense tax?

It’s  possible Grusch is a “suicide bomber” of the type we are all familiar with, who will ultimately self-destruct  and be shown to be a charlatan, along with “revelations” that he’s a covid skeptic, climate denier, 9/11 truther or other “conspiracy theorist” – thus making truth movements look foolish, and humiliating anyone who endorsed or believed him.

But even that’s a stretch right now, given the sheer amount of mainstream endorsement he’s got already.

There’s only one other angle I could possibly think of, but it’s pretty out there.

In the Alan Moore graphic novel Watchmen – spoiler warning, I guess – the villain’s master plan is to end the Cold War and save humanity by staging an attack on earth by a pan-dimensional alien life form. His theory is that proving aliens exist and mean us harm will unite the world against a common threat and prevent the US and USSR nuking us all into oblivion.

… given the current level of globalist insanity can we totally rule out that some WEF focus group has  wargamed that idea and decided it might work?

would it actually work?

Who knows, the world stopped making sense a long time ago.

Do alien life forms exist? Have they been coming here and crashing their spaceships for the past 70 years or more?

I don’t know, but I’m fairly doubtful.

But I do know that – true or not – it would never be in the news if it wasn’t serving a purpose. And I know that basing any of your opinions or beliefs around what the US government – or any government – tells you is both irrational and historically illiterate.

Governments all over the world might suddenly claim that aliens are real…but they all claimed the pandemic was real, too.

How far will they take this story?  I don’t know, but I will leave you with this:

Early this month SETI staged an exercise where they mimicked an alien transmission to Earth from Mars. Highly noteworthy, given the historical power of exercises to predict the future.

The supreme irony in all of this is that from now on we so-called “conspiracy theorists” are going to be trying to convince our normie friends that aliens don’t exist.

 

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Cover image credit: Dieterich01


See Related:

Dr. Joseph Farrell w/ Dark Journalist: Antarctica UFO Secrets & Alien Invasion Op

Dr. Joseph Farrell w/ Dark Journalist: Nazis in Space – Von Braun, JFK and the UFO Invasion Op

Who Benefits From U.S. Government Claims That the UFO Threat Is Increasing ‘Exponentially’?

How to Fake an Alien Invasion




WHO Launches New “Digital Health Initiative”

WHO Launches New “Digital Health Initiative”
Chalk up another “I told you so” for the Conspiracy Theorists. 

by Kit Knightly, OffGuardian
June 8, 2023

 

On Monday, the World Health Organization and European Union announced the launch of their new “partnership”, building on the EU’s “highly successful” digital certification network, which was introduced during the “pandemic”.

From the WHO’s website [emphasis added]:

WHO will take up the European Union (EU) system of digital COVID-19 certification to establish a global system that will help facilitate global mobility

This would be those digital health passports that “conspiracy theorists” warned about, but which we were all told weren’t ever going to be a thing.

This isn’t about “Covid” anymore, WHO Chairman Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as much in his statement on the launch, and it’s again made clear on the website, which repeatedly underlines the supposed purpose of the initiative:

  • [To] protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats, including pandemics
  • [To] enhance strategic cooperation on global health issues
  • [To] help strengthen global health preparedness in the face of growing health threats
  • [To] to deliver better health for citizens across the globe

What are these “health threats”? Well, they quite intentionally don’t say, but we can all make pretty good guesses. Climate change, obviously. Obesity seems pretty likely, poverty, overpopulation …and as many more as they choose.

– That’s the whole point of the open-ended wording, you can adapt it as you go.

Anyway, it won’t just be about about Covid passports, again as the conspiracy theorists predicted. But, more than that, it won’t even just be passports…

This is the first building block of the WHO Global Digital Health Certification Network (GDHCN) that will develop a wide range of digital products to deliver better health for all.

They are delightfully vague about what exactly these other “digital products” might be, how much they are going to cost global taxpayers, and just how many of our rights we’ll be required to forfeit in the name of a “healthy” planet (although ou can read the WHO’s “Global Strategy on Digital Health” to get some rough ideas).

However, while the details are brushed over, the overall aim is pretty openly stated:

enhance strategic cooperation on global health issues […] bolster a robust multilateral system with WHO at its core, powered by a strong EU.

It’s globalism – sorry, “multilateralism”.

Globalism has been the end game since the pandemic started. Hence the Pandemic Treaty, the new IHR regulations all that fun stuff. One world government (or maybe two world governments, if the New Cold War plays out as expected), installed in the name of public health.

Note that this launch lines up with a lot of “coincidental” domestic political movements from around the world.

For example, in the US they are set to vote on the “Improving Digital Identity Act”, which would require digital ID to do…pretty much everything.

In Canada major corporations are uniting to embrace digital ID as a key part of Agenda 2030 and “sustainable development goals”.

In the UK Sir Keir Starmer has promised a “totally digital NHS” under the next Labour government.

In essence, each country – for notionally different reasons, and supposedly independently of their own free will – are all going to develop a digital ID/health passport system at exactly the same time, and while working with the WHO to ensure “interoperability”.

Therein lies the plausible deniability. See, it won’t be one global health and surveillance system! No, it will be 100+ different “interoperable” systems…that just happened by chance to all be conceived and built at the same time along the same guidelines.

A distinction good enough to fuel the inevitable defenses from corporate fact-checkers even if it can’t fool anyone else.

However, all that aside, the most interesting part of this story is where you read about it.

Viz – the back pages.

At the height of the pandemic, this would be big news, maybe breaking news in big red letters. There’d be op-eds in all the major outlets celebrating the move, accompanied by “fact checks” with headlines like “No, global digital passports doesn’t mean one world government”.

Now, if you’re not following certain social media accounts or regularly checking the news cycles for quite specific terms, you’d never have heard about this. It’s not even mentioned in any mainstream news site I’ve read.

Resistance has pushed the New Normal narrative out of the limelight, to be replaced by war porn, Trump, illegal immigrants or Harry and Meghan.

You’re all being encouraged to think the Great Reset was a flash in the pan, the New Normal just an old joke. 2020 was just a bad dream & now everything is back to normal & Left versus Right, East versus West…

But no. This is the last reel of the scary movie. The demon seems to be exorcised, the danger looks like it’s over and the heroine has gone to take a bath, unaware of what’s creeping slowly toward her from the shadows.

The Great Reset is still very much alive, but your resistance temporarily shut it down, so it’s changed its tactic. It was overt. Now it’s covert. Now it’s hoping to sneak in while you’re not looking and snatch you up and swallow you down before you even know what’s happening.

It’s incredibly important you don’t let that happen.

So – wake up, and wake other people up. Shake them. Yell at them. Get them to look over their shoulder at the big rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem – so we can try to stop it being born.

 

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Cover image based on creative commons work of: CDD20