by Colin Todhunter at off-guardian.org on Dec 29, 2022 via thefreeonline

Of Economic Crises and Pandemics: Facebook as Fact, Government as Truth, Big Pharma as God

If events since March 2020 have shown us anything, it is that fear is a powerful weapon for securing hegemony. Any government can manipulate fear about certain things while conveniently ignoring real dangers that a population faces.

Author and researcher Robert J Burrowes says:

Californians queue up for a food bank, socially distanced and masked of course.

…if we were seriously concerned about our world, the gravest and longest-standing health crisis on the planet is the one that starves to death 100,000 people each day. No panic about that, of course.”

No panic because the controlling interests of the global food system have long profited from a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy that ensures people unnecessarily go hungry when corporate profit rather than need dictates policies.

US social commentator Walter Lippmann once said that ‘responsible men’ make decisions and must be protected from the ‘bewildered herd’ – the public. He added that the public should be subdued, obedient and distracted from what is really happening. Screaming patriotic slogans and fearing for their lives, they should be admiring with awe leaders who save them from destruction.

During COVID, Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern urged citizens to trust the government and its agencies for all information and stated:

Otherwise, dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.”

In the US, Fauci presented himself as ‘the science’. In New Zealand, Ardern was ‘the truth’. It was similar in countries across the world – different figures but the same approach.

Like other political leaders, Ardern clamped down on civil liberties with the full force of state violence on hand to ensure compliance with ‘the truth’. Those who questioned the COVID narrative – including world-renowned scientists – were smeared, shut down and censored.

It was an internationally orchestrated campaign involving governments, the big tech companies, media and the WHO, among others.

The EU Times reported on 17 December 2022 that the US Centers for Disease Control worked with social media to censor facts and information about COVID that ran afoul of official narratives.

The organisation America First Legal noted in a press release that the fourth set of documents it released – obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – revealed:

…further concrete evidence of collusion between the CDC and social media companies to censor free speech and silence the public square under the government’s label of ‘misinformation’.”

Twitter ran a ‘Partner Support Portal’ for government employees and other ‘stakeholders’ to submit posts that it would remove or flag as ‘misinformation’ on its platform.

Continue reading “2023: Facebook as Fact, Government as Truth, Big Pharma as God”

on Dec 31 2022 by Some anarchists from anarchistnews.org via thefreeonline

“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.”

Merry crisis from prison island!

On a wet boxing day, 26th Dec, we held a noise demo outside HMP Bristol in solidarity with all prisoners and to show recently kidnapped Gopal some love & rage!

Gopal was sentenced to 18 months for violent disorder following the Bristol kill the bill riot in March 2021.

You can find Gopal’s up to date details along with the other prisoners who welcome letters and solidarity here: https://bristolabc.org/prisoners/

the protest.

We made noise, left our greetings on the walls and a banner at the entrance.
Fuck christmas but fuck christmas in a cage even more.

ALL SCREWS ARE BASTARDS!
KILL THE BILL!
FOR GOPAL, RYAN, KTB PRISONERS, TOBY, ALFREDO….. !
FIRE TO THE PRISONS!

Some anarchists

_{Originally published: CovertAction Magazine on December 15, 2022}

by Jeremy Kuzmarov via thefreeonline

On October 27, 1962, Soviet naval officer Vasily Arkhipov helped prevent the outbreak of World War III and saved humanity from nuclear catastrophe.

A minesweeper during the Pacific War, Arkhipov was the commander of a diesel submarine that had been sent by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to escort merchant ships bound for Cuba, which were equipped with a torpedo boat armed with a nuclear warhead.

On October 14, 1962, a U.S. spy plane flying over Cuba had revealed that the Soviet Union was building ramps for the installation of missiles with nuclear warheads, in retaliation for the United States deploying missiles with nuclear warheads capable of striking the Soviet Union in Italy, at Gioia del Colle (Apulia in southern Italy), and in Turkey.

President Kennedy’s imposition of a naval blockade after the spy plane discovery triggered the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis, during which time the submarine that Arkhipov commanded was being pursued by U.S. destroyers which, using depth charges, were trying to force Arkhipov’s submarine to the surface.

President Kennedy with the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. [Source: freedomrockradio.co]

After the Soviet sub’s ventilation system broke down and communication was cut, the captain of the Soviet submarine group, Valentin Grigoryevich Savitsky, was convinced that war had broken out.

Not wanting to sink without a fight, he decided to launch a nuclear warhead at the aircraft carrier pursuing his sub.

The political officer, Ivan Semyonovich Maslennikov, agreed with the captain, but on the flagship B-59, Arkhipov’s consent was also needed, and he objected, convincing Savitsky ultimately to do the same.¹

Arkhipov’s persuasion averted a nuclear war, whose consequences would have been horrific. After surfacing, Arkhipov’s sub was fired on by Americans but was able to return to the Soviet Union safely.

Spooked about how the world had come so close to the nuclear brink, President Kennedy gave a speech at American University in June 1963, five months before his assassination, calling for a “reexamin[ation of the U.S.] attitude towards the Soviet Union” and “Cold War” and for the U.S. and Soviets to work together for a “just and genuine peace” and to “halt the arms race.”

“Confident and unafraid,” Kennedy concluded,

we must labor on—not towards a strategy of annihilation but towards a strategy of peace… 5 months later he was murdered.

Another Grave Moment of Danger

Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara was not mincing his words when he said years after the events that “We came very, very close [to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis,] closer than we knew at the time.”

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., characterized the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis as “not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War [but] the most dangerous moment in human history.”

That moment of danger unfortunately appears just as sharp today.

Continue reading “Armageddon Avoided: Thanks to this Naval Officer,Vasily Arkhipov, you and your loved ones are alive today”

28 diciembre, 2022 por boletintokata via thefreeonline

NI VIEJAS NI NUEVAS. FUEGO A LAS CÁRCELES

Hay pocos lugares donde la opresión y la injusticia se viven tan fuertemente como en la cárcel.

No es casualidad quien en esta vida acaba presx, básicamente son lxs pobres y lxs rebeldes; lxs que buscan vida fuera de las reglas de la ley, lxs que no quieren someterse a la convivencia impuesta por el Estado… o que simplemente no han tenido muchas oportunidades en la vida.

Obviamente no hay igualdad ni mucha salida ante las distintas realidades que se viven. Acaban presxs aquellxs que no tienen dinero ni privilegios y que viven el racismo y la estigmatización continuamente; a la vez que violencia policial y patriarcal.

Quien acaba presx ya sabe que aquí no es más que un simple número, escoria de una sociedad que pretende dar segundas o terceras oportunidades, pero que en verdad acaba marginalizando a lxs llamadxs delincuentes para siempre.

Hay familias y generaciones que pasan año tras año visitando a lxs suyxs aquí, que no conocen otra vida ni otra vista que la de los muros y barrotes, la de las cámaras de vigilancia, de policías y carceleros, los cuales te dicen por donde puedes ir y lo que está permitido o no.

Y suelen ser las mujeres, siendo presas o familiares, quienes asumen el deber del cuidado familiar, de los hijos, de seguir sacando la familia para adelante, mantenerla económicamente… de esta manera vemos la cárcel como el castigo máximo y el sometimiento a todo tipo de explotación y violencia total.

El discurso de la sociedad de lxs ricos y burguesxs, de los privilegidxs o inconscientes siempre es el mismo: las cárceles sirven para protegerles ante lxs malxs criminales. Pero la verdad es que sirven para mantener sus privilegios obtenidos a lo largo de la historia.

Quieren que se defienda su propiedad privada, sus bienes y su poder, y que se castigue a quienes se atreven a desafiarlo. Quieren hacernos creer que se reeduca y reinserta a la persona presa tras años de encierro, pero la cárcel no soluciona nada, simplemente agrava el problema después de tanta miseria e injusticias.

Luego está el tema de la miserable salud entre muros, de las pocas posibilidades médicas, de la dependencia a las drogas y todo tipo de formas de evadir esta miseria, de la necesidad ruinosa de hacer negocio con la miseria de otrxs, de beneficiarse ya sin código alguno con la pobreza de otrx compañerx.

Y por supuesto el negocio máximo: la explotación laboral de la cárcel. El Estado, con empresas y fundaciones estatales, se lucra de toda esta miseria. Como el CIRE que controla los economatos, los productos en prisión y los trabajos productivos, de los que se beneficia. Así funciona el capitalismo y por esta razón esta sociedad necesita las cárceles.

Pero no compramos su discurso mentiroso. Nosotrxs no queremos ni necesitamos las cárceles, ni su sistema de control y castigo. Queremos vivir en un mundo que no se base en la opresión y la explotación de unxs para que otrxs triunfen. Queremos un mundo donde los problemas se resuelvan de otra forma y el trabajo sea otro.

Tenemos que acabar con toda la manipulación y el discurso que sustenta la necesidad de la cárcel, juntamente con la represión y la violencia por parte del Estado, la policía, los juzgados, carceleros y quienes necesitan y se benefician de su existencia.

NO HAY PAZ NI TREGUA CON QUIENES CADA DÍA NOS ROBAN NUESTRA VIDA Y NUESTRA LIBERTAD.

ABAJO LOS MUROS DE LAS PRISIONES, AQUÍ Y EN CUALQUIER LUGAR.

PORQUE QUEREMOS ABRAZAR A NUESTRXS COMPAÑERXS.
ABAJO LOS CIES, FRONTERAS, CENTROS DE MENORES, PSIQUIÁTRICOS…

ABAJO TODO TIPO DE OPRESIÓN Y AUTORIDAD.
POR LA LIBERTAD, POR LA ANARQUÍA.