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Globalists Will Need Another Crisis In America As Their Reset Agenda Fails Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,It might sound like “US exceptionalism” to point this out (…and how very dare I), but even if the globalist Reset is successful in every other nation on Earth, the globalists are still failures if they can’t secure and subjugate the American people. As I’ve noted many times in the past, most of the world has been sufficiently disarmed, and even though we are seeing resistance in multiple European nations against forced vaccination legislation and medical tyranny, it is unlikely that they will have the ability to actually repel a full on march into totalitarianism. Most of Asia, India and Australia are already well under control. Africa is almost an afterthought , considering Africa is where many suspect vaccines are tested.America represents the only significant obstacle to the agenda.Conservative Americans in particular have been a thorn in the side of the globalists for generations, and it really comes down to a simple matter of mutual exclusion: You cannot have an openly globalist society and conservative ideals at the same time in the same place. It is impossible.Conservatives believe in limited government, true free markets, individual liberty, the value of life, freedom of speech, private property rights, the right to self defense, the right to self determination, freedom of religion, and the non-aggression principle (we won’t harm you unless you try to harm us). None of these ideals can exist in a globalist world because globalism is at it’s core is the pursuit of a fully centralized tyranny.There are people on this planet that are not satisfied to merely live their lives, take care of their families and make their mark peacefully. They crave power over all else. They desperately want control over you, over me, over everything, and they will use any means at their disposal to get it. I would compare it to a kind of drug addiction; globalists are like crack addicts, they can never get enough power, there is always something more to take.They tell themselves and others that they are “philanthropists”, that “they know what is best” for the rest of us. They believe themselves superior and therefore it is their “destiny” to dictate and micro-manage society for the “greater good” of us all. But really, when we witness their methods it becomes clear that they have no noble aspirations. They have no empathy or honor. They don’t care about the average human being, or the environment, or the economy or society in general. They only care about themselves and their delusions of grandeur. These people are a cancer on the rest of civilization.They seem to be particularly obsessed with deconstructing and sabotaging America in the pursuit of their global Reset. Real philanthropists would not have a problem if someone didn’t want to accept their “charity”, but psychopaths cannot abide a group of people rejecting them and their ideology. You are not allowed to walk away from them. You are not allowed to do things your own way. You must be forced to comply. The agenda only works if EVERYONE submits.Unfortunately for the globalists, the Reset is not working out for them everywhere. In the US, the agenda is failing miserably compared to Asia and parts of Europe.As the head of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, is so fond of reminding us, the Covid pandemic is the “perfect opportunity” to push forward the globalist plans for a total Reset of human economy and society. To the globalists, the crisis is a panacea, a doorway to their version of a better world. They love the pandemic, they are not distressed by it.The problem is, it’s not doing enough damage or terrifying enough people.Consider the Event 201 coronavirus pandemic simulation – It was held by the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation only two months before the real thing “coincidentally” happened in early 2020. The pandemic war game was less about saving lives and more about how the elites planned to keep the public under control. The suppression of alternative media and censorship in social media was discussed at great length. Dissenting voices need to be silenced if the Reset is going to prevail.One factor within the Event 201 simulation that never played out, though, was the WEF projections on deaths. The war game suggested at least 65 million initial deaths due to the pandemic. Early projections on the death rate suggested 2% to 3% of the population or more. The same projections were repeated by the UN’s World Health Organization when the real pandemic was first revealed to the public.Instead, Covid-19 has been a letdown for the globalists, with a tiny death rate of around 0.26% outside of nursing homes. Meaning, 99.7% of the population has nothing to worry about from covid. Millions of Americans are becoming savvy to the situation and are refusing to comply with mandates over a virus that is a non-threat.Instead of backing off of the Reset scheme, the globalists are continuing to double down. Why? Because they have no other choice. They let the cat out of the bag and bloviating big-mouths like Klaus Schwab told the world exactly what the plan is. If they retreat now, they might NEVER get another chance to implement a world centralization plan; a massive grift which requires medical tyranny in order to prevent rebellion.You see, if the death rate had been dramatically higher than 0.26% and covid represented a legitimate threat, then maybe a larger portion of the US population would have been on board with longer term restrictions and medical passports. Maybe not. The fact remains that 40% of deaths have been in nursing homes among patients with preexisting illnesses, the death rate outside of these facilities is minimal, the mask mandates have been proven completely ineffective and the states that have remained open and removed mask mandates have FALLING death and infection rates when compared to states that are enforcing lockdowns.The fear narrative is falling apart. States across the US are opening and are refusing to implement useless mandates. In my home state of Montana, legislators and the governor are passing laws that forbid the enforcement of medical passports. Even major corporations are not allowed to demand vaccine passports from customers or employees.On top of that, 40% to 50% of the US population in polls are refusing to comply with the vaccine rollout or medical passports. Why take a vaccine for a virus that 99.7% of the population is unaffected by anyway?The jig is up. The globalists are going to need another crisis if they hope to enforce further lockdowns in the US, along with medical passports and disarmament. Do not be surprised if there is more engineered chaos going into the summer months. But what will the next crisis look like? I think we are already seeing the signs…Covid MutationsThe mainstream media is pushing a non-stop narrative of covid mutation hype. We hear about UK and Brazilian variants on a weekly basis, and the assertion has been that surely, these variants will be more infectious and more deadly that the original virus. There is still no proof whatsoever to confirm this, but the globalists only care about planting the idea in people’s heads. They only care about reigniting the fear.My feeling is that this strategy is going to fail, at least in the US. Too many Americans are aware of the con game, and a new virus threat is not going to have the same effect as Covid-19 did in the early months of the pandemic. None of us really knew what we were facing back then, and caution was a practical response. Today, we know for a fact that covid is not a concern for the vast majority of the public. Media attempts to amp up the threat will be ineffective, but they will of course still try.BLM RiotsThis is the next obvious tactic on the part of the establishment. Numerous state officials are openly supporting renewed riots across the country due to a recent police shooting in Minnesota. The shooting itself was accidental, with the suspect violently resisting arrest and leaping into his car. A female officer grabbed her pistol in a panic instead of her taser and fired.This event had nothing to do with racism, and nothing to do with police brutality. But, that’s not stopping Marxist groups like BLM from taking advantage and making it all about “white supremacy”. The real danger of unrest, however, will arrive at the closing of the Derek Chauvin trail.With the trail coming to an end, evidence has been revealed that George Floyd was involved in heavy drug use and the medical examiner indicated that this along with heart disease were contributing factors to Floyd’s death. A “speed ball” containing Fentanyl was also discovered in the back of the police cruiser in which Floyd was originally restrained. So, even if Derek Chauvin’s knee to the neck tactic helped kill Floyd, it is unlikely that a jury will convict him of 1st or 2nd degree murder based on the evidence. Any lesser charges will undoubtedly trigger more BLM riots.Conveniently, these powderkeg events are taking place at the onset of the warm spring and summer months, which is prime time for riots.My concern is that civil unrest will be allowed to spread and fester in the US until regular citizens start taking matters into their own hands. And, of course, any community that tries to defend itself against looting and destruction will be accused of “racist aggression” – At which time the Biden Administration will then try to assert the authority to institute martial law measures in various regions. This combined with renewed attempts at covid lockdowns is a highly likely scenario.Cyber PolygonJust as the Event 201 simulation of a coronavirus pandemic preceded the real thing by only two months, there are concerns that the next World Economic Forum simulation event will also be a precursor to another crisis.Cyber Polygon is a war game being held by the WEF this July which is meant to simulate a major cyber attack on the global supply chain and the economic system. There has been endless discussion int the media the past year building up fears of cyber attacks by Russia, China, Iran and even North Korea.In terms of supply chain threats, I’m not sure exactly how a cyber attack could do much to disrupt global shipping, unless we are talking about another blockage in a major shipping route like the Suez Canal. But, a successful attack on stock exchanges in places like Wall Street could be devastating. I suggest watching this event carefully as it may be designed to precede a real cyber attack sometime this year.Global War TensionsThe media and the Biden Administration are very busy trying to create tensions with Russia over Ukraine. There are renewed tensions between Iran and Israel and continued destabilization by the West in Syria. And, a rising danger of confrontation with China over Taiwan.War could be the goal, or, the goal could merely be economic conflict. After all, China has already been dumping dollars and US treasuries the past year, and it would not take much to cause damage to the dollar’s world reserve status if China and Russia both diversified into a basket of currencies for global trade.Beyond that, there are many advantages for globalists in creating regional wars and drawing Americans into pointless conflicts. For example, the threat of war could be used to institute a new draft. What better way to keep American men in particular busy and stop them from rebellion against the Reset than to draft them so they can die in a meaningless war overseas?There is also a narrative advantage to global tensions; when presented with a foreign threat, are Americans more likely to reject notions of rebellion against government trespasses? I have no doubt that the establishment will try to claim the liberty movement is not a movement for freedom, but an “astro-turf” movement created by the Russians to destabilize America. This has been the leftist media propaganda strategy for years now; so why would they stop?The bottom line is this: America is the primary target of the globalists because we are one of the only countries with the means and the numbers to stop them and the Reset. Until they are removed from the equation they will continue to throw crisis after crisis at us in order to wear us down and force us to accept totalitarianism. Do not get too comfortable in the fact that the pandemic agenda is failing here; stay alert and continue to organize your communities.*  *  *If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.Tyler Durden Fri, 04/16/2021 – 23:40

“I Shoot a Bunch of 3D Printed Guns – Do My Hands Survive?” A decentralized network of 3D printed gun advocates is mobilizing online and quickly revolutionizing gun designs, sharing blueprints, advice, and building a community. There’s no easy way the federal government can halt this movement as President Biden, not too long ago, declared war on “ghost guns.” YouTuber Sean with “The 3D Print General” attended “Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin” on April 10-11 in Texas. The first day involved top experts and practitioners that gave the audience actionable steps on how to print 3D guns at home. The second day, readers should be excited for this, was when Sean attended “shooting rad guns” day. The event was held at Onion Creek Gun Club, located in Austin, Texas. Sean shot various 3D-printed weapons, such as the FGC-9, which stands for “f**k gun control 9 mm.” As we’ve noted, the FGC-9 can be printed entirely at home for the cost of $350, including the printer’s cost. In the video “I Shoot a Bunch of 3D Printed Guns – Do My Hands Survive?” Sean test-fired an array of 3D-printed guns. In the last decade, the printing technology behind these weapons without serial numbers has drastically improved that it’s rare a gun explodes in someone’s hand as the early models did. Sean proves it; not one of these guns he fired at the range exploded in his hand. In fact, some of the weapons appeared to be high-tech or even futuristic. Without further adieu, here’s Sean test firing 3D printed weapons. When it comes to the Biden administration waging war on ghost guns  – well – good luck, what are they going to do – ban printers?Tyler Durden Fri, 04/16/2021 – 23:20

Thirdworldization: The Slow Burning SHTF Of America Authored by Fabian Ommar via The Organic Prepper blog,The developed world, accustomed to safety, convenience, and comfort, is facing a slow-burning SHTF called Thirdworldization by some. Each time humankind faces some tribulation like the one we’re currently going through, it feels like the world is coming to an end. In many senses, the threat is present: a pandemic is a serious SHTF. It IS the end for many. But the real SHTF isn’t just the pandemic – it’s the effects on the system that Selco warned us about from the very beginning.The ramifications of such events as Covid-19 and government responses are real and long-lasting. Despite theories surrounding COVID-19 (conspiratorial or not), the fact is real damage has happened to the economy and our lifestyle. To those who say we’ve been through a lot since March 2020, I’d argue we haven’t yet seen the full range of consequences. Objectively, we’re not even out of the pandemic.The question remains: how and when will this Thirdworldization play out?I concede this doom-and-gloom talk is growing old and burning out even among preppers. But we’re not talking probabilities: it’s already happening.We must face reality and accept things are not going back to normal any time soon (if ever). It may indeed get worse before it starts getting better again. It’s past time to stop waiting for Black Swans and pay attention to subtle changes already underway.It’s been a different SHTF for each country, each business, each family, and each person. On a more broad scale, there’s no way to tell for sure whether it will be a storm, “the” perfect storm,” or something in between. These things unfold slowly – the proverbial frog in the pot (until they catch up). As always, multiple interests and powerful forces are acting simultaneously in different directions, which means lots of possible ramifications.Global crises affect countries in different intensities and mannersGlobal-scale SHTF hit some places faster and worse than others. Good and bad are never evenly distributed. The capacity of a nation and its population to withstand and overcome disaster depend on many factors. These include the size, strength, and resiliency of the economy. Also, how solid, functional, and credible the institutions are, the social fabric’s stability, etc. Those and others dictate whether a country will suffer more or less the effects of a global economic setback. But as it’s happening with the pandemic, no one will come out unscathed: some will feel the impact of migration, others (eventually) by war. At the same time, some will see internal conflicts, currency devaluation, martial law, coups, political instability, social eruptions, and more. Much of that is already taking place in various places around the globe.It’s impossible to get the timing right or know what will happen, but trends can be forecastThese and other events are hitting differently even inside the same country: some regions are “normal,” while others suffer badly. That’s one of the factors driving the migrational movements within the U.S. Many people are moving to different states. People go wherever they receive better treatment.You should already have a grip on your local zeitgeist. If you don’t, maybe it’s a good idea to start paying attention to the social, political, economic, and institutional moods in your piece of land. That will help tell which way things go when SHTF. You don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of the fence if it happens. And that’s how we get to ThirdworldizationThirdworldization is a slow-burning SHTF for those living in developed countries, used to comfort, convenience, and security.Thirdworldization is the gradual and inevitable impoverishment of a rich country. It is the visible effect of major crises hitting square on the population, institutions, corporations, and even the government. It spreads insidiously in every aspect of daily life and our small circles. Less growth means less wealth, less money circulating for everyone to take care of necessities and obligations. This shrinking economy brings all sorts of declines that affect services, infrastructure, the supply chain, institutions, and changing the population’s lives and routines.The economy has a direct impact on the structure and foundation of social order. As an engineer, I tend to analyze structures and foundations by force of my work before assessing other factors. If those are in bad shape, the rest can’t be good. That holds true for a family, a company, a city, or a country.The standard of living is dropping significantly everywhereEven though the rich are getting richer, they will be affected by the destruction of the middle class and the poor becoming miserable. The wealthy don’t build their own houses, grow their own food, nor collect their own trash. But like rich countries and corporations, they’re much less affected because wealth can soften the blow and pay for a lot during hard times – or should I say, especially during hard times. For the rest (the great majority of society), there’s SHTF as the unfolding of the economic decline is reflected in various aspects as described below. CriminalityCrime on the rise is shocking America. Many factors contribute to that: joblessness, homelessness, financial struggle, disillusionment, and anger. Dwindling resources mean a reduction in the capacity of governments and authorities to keep society safe. There’s an overall defunding of not only the police but the entire crime-fighting apparatus: ostensive, preventative, and investigative work, departments of justice, social support, prisons and corrections, everything.How it plays out: All kinds of crimes jump and tend to become more violent, too. Expect (and prepare for) rises in everything from minor scams to drug traffic (and consumption), bank robberies, kidnappings, arson, home invasions, homicides. Honest citizens may not engage in violent actions, but bribing, corruption, extortions, black market, misappropriations, tax evasion, and others become widespread. Sociopaths and psychopaths feel more emboldened: rapes, killings, vengeance acts, gang wars, fights, and similar also tend to increase. HomelessnessHomelessness exploded in the U.S. and other western countries in 2020. It’s still on the rise with no signs of getting better anytime soon. Some argue it’s not as bad as it would have been (and can become) without the aggressive forbearance and moratorium programs implemented by governments. But this has side effects. What will happen when these suspensions end? And if they extend, what will be the unintended consequences? It is hard to predict, but eviction waves could throw millions into the streets in months and years ahead if the crisis worsens. Homelessness can also get boosted by mass migration, as we’ll see below.How it plays out: During the 1930’s Great Depression, cities everywhere saw the growth of squatter areas and shantytowns. New York’s Central Park became Hooverville, a giant slum right in the middle of America’s biggest and wealthiest city at the time. Whole areas in L.A., San Francisco, and many other towns across the U.S. have already become tent cities. These are ripe for crime, exploitation, drug trafficking, violence, disease, and political manipulation. ImmigrationImmigration is serious and can turn into major geopolitical issues in some regions. Migration waves can be impossible to contain, as people desperately try to flee conflicted countries searching for better conditions elsewhere, even at great risks. Sudden, large internal movements can create imbalances internally and bring unforeseen consequences. People leave cities for the country or move to other states to avoid the rising taxes and crime, loss of freedom, or other threats.How it plays out: Countries in better shape could face massive migration waves. The entire network of support put in place to control, minimize impacts, and give immigrants support can weaken. Significant or sudden movements may overwhelm border control. Immigrants in large numbers can cripple social support systems. That makes things harder for the population, sparking crime and violent actions from both sides.Private Services and ProductsManufacturers and companies across the board are required to cut costs everywhere to stay afloat or keep profits. It reflects directly on the quality and variety of products and services provided to the population.How it plays out: There will be an overall drop in quality and more inferior ingredients used to manufacture items and produce food. We will experience crowded, inefficient, slow customer support by poorly trained and low-paid workers. Strikes may cause disruptions and delays. Public ServicesI have friends living in wealthy, developed countries. They complain a lot about the quality of public services, the bureaucracy, the inefficiency. Sure enough, it’s (almost always) subpar when compared to private counterparts. But they have no idea how good they have it compared to underdeveloped or even developing places. They don’t know how bad this can get. Is USPS’s announcement that First Class mail will have longer delivery times and will cost more a glimpse of things to come?How it plays out: Overwhelmed systems, (even more) disincentivized agents. Longer lines, longer waiting, slow or no response, more bureaucracy, squandering, etc. Many welfare programs will go extinct. There will be lower-quality education, transportation, childcare, healthcare, etc. Strikes and corruption are other effects of the Thirdworldization of public services InfrastructureWithout constant investment in maintenance, expansion, and rebuilding, the entire infrastructure becomes derelict. More than 50 bridges have collapsed worldwide since 2015. Roads will be in dire need of maintenance. Billions of gallons of treated water get lost daily in leakages (estimates talk about one water main break every two minutes in the U.S.). There may be issues in the energy sector. Airports and ports will postpone expansions and modernizations, and so on.How it plays out: Despite talks of megalomaniac infrastructure programs everywhere to “save the economy and promote growth” (governments love doing this when crises erupt), disruptions, rationing, supply rotations, closings, and more are much more frequent during prolonged recessions.SanitationTrash removal and disposal drains a large portion of city and state budgets. As it happens to other public services, once tax revenue drops, these impacts and effects can drag on for years. Sewage and water treatment systems cease expansion and quality and safety drops. Does anyone remember the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, just five years ago?“Nearly half a decade has passed since the water crisis in Flint captured the attention of America, during which toxic water was delivered to a city of nearly 100,000 people for 18 months before the state acknowledged the problem.”How it plays out: Those who watched the movie Joker may remember the streets full of trash, rats, and graffiti. Many 80’s movies have that decadent “look and feel.” Dim cities, with boarded-up storefronts and “for rent” or “sale” signs everywhere. That’s the portrait of slow-burning SHTF. What’s missing in films is the smell, the diseases, the flies, rats, and insects present in real life. Inflation, Deflation, Taxation, and ConfiscationsThe inflation vs. deflation debate is raging among the macroeconomic experts right now. It’s a hard bet as there are pressures for both to turn out. And indeed, both could take place at the same time (in different areas). It’s that crazy. Prices are already all over the place, with inflation running hot in some items/sectors and deflation in others. Whatever happens, rest assured the “non-essentials” (that’s you, me, and the 99%) will be called to foot the bill, so get prepared for that.How it plays out: Price fluctuations, insecurity, bank runs. Rises in fuel affect prices of everything else. Inflation can show in perversely subtle ways: dilutions and reductions in quantity/portions effectively raise products’ price. Shortages and a drastic reduction in product variety are other common effects of highly dysfunctional economies. Taxation will explode – this is already being talk-tested everywhere. Confiscations can happen, too. One day after taking office in 1990, the newly elected government in Brazil seized money from bank accounts “on grounds to reduce liquidity and fight rampant inflation.” The seizure left citizens without their savings and only 50k in currency. It was a stupid plan that didn’t work (it should’ve caused a revolution, but I digress). Such insanities have happened in other places in recent times. They could happen again because governments can become dictatorial and change laws and rules or do anything if conditions are in place (desperate times).Some other third-world things that first-world people might not know about (yet)Just like countries are affected differently, so do the various layers of society. High levels of inequality exacerbate some bizarre distortions people living in rich and developed countries might have only seen in dystopian movies. But the things listed below exist and could become a reality if things keep going south.Social contractLarge social inequalities are incredibly poisonous: they destroy the social fabric faster than you can say “who messed with my stimulus check?”.Two very adverse effects are radical divisiveness and a rise in crime and violence. It affects everybody, from top to bottom: trust in other people, institutions, and even in the collective disappears. It becomes impossible to lower the guard, and that is stressful. And even for those fortunate enough to get by okay, it sucks to live in a society where most of the population is struggling so hard (and failing) to live with a minimum of decency. How can someone be genuinely happy surrounded by misery? The answer is, no one can.High WallsIn unsafe societies, every house and building has high (as in 10ft. tall or higher) protection walls, either masonry or steel bars, lockers, cameras, electrical fences, and barbed wire (concertina). For citizens accustomed to open front yards and unprotected houses, it looks like a bunch of high-security prisons (only it’s in reverse: the ones “locked” are the rich trying to stay safe from the violent mobs).SlumsThe “favelas” (slums) of Rio de Janeiro are worldwide famous, shown as “communities” where everyone is friendly and loves to dance to the samba. It is a vibrant and unique scene in some places, but the reality is that many are unsafe, unhealthy places where drug traffic and militia rule with iron hands. The government and public power have almost no presence and oversight: there’s little to no sanitation and safety, health, education, and other precarious services. If the standard of living drops for long enough, slums may become a lot more common in countries and places where they previously didn’t exist. Private securityOff-duty cops do double-duty as security agents or consultants for companies, commerce, and individuals, either as private guards, security personnel, or security consultants. It’s not legalized but also not enforced, nonetheless a big thing, an organized multimillion-dollar business with huge companies competing with each other. Armored vehiclesIn 2014 Brazil already had the most extensive fleet of armored cars globally (not an enviable title). I’m not talking about expensive, luxury cars driven by (or for) the ultra-rich, high-profile personalities and figureheads: even the middle-class look for ballistic protection, especially for women and children. It’s a big industry here. Much bigger than in conflicted nations. Criminals are armed and violent, even against the police. When crime soars, the armoring industry booms. Preparing for the possibility of ThirdworldizationThere are no downsides to investing in awareness, creativity, mentality, and determination (and some preparations).These are not predictions. Perhaps a chronicle of what happens in poorer countries and has happened before in rich ones during crises. We can already see some signs and even developments, and if you believe this kind of SHTF is somehow coming your way, you may want to prepare. Here are few tips that might help:Mental strength: accept reality and learn to deal with all sides’ psychological pressures, including ourselves. Even though, at times, it may seem like there’s no option. As Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, just keep going.” Everyone is in this together, and no one is special.  One day and one problem at a time: It’s easier to deal with one issue, focus on what we can control, and live the present than it is to worry about the significant, long-term issues that are out of our control. We usually suffer more in imagination than in reality. Independence: Realistically, being independent and living off-grid is for a few. But everyone can benefit from growing more self-reliant wherever that is possible. Grow some food, learn new skills, recycle and reuse, invest in generating part of your power, build situational awareness, etc. Financially savvy: Seek economy and finance education as a way to mitigate or defend from inflation (or deflation), to invest and make money grow and last longer. Read about life in times of crises and inflation, like the ’70s and ’80s. Economically viable: Invest in alternative income sources. Today there are hundreds of ways to make money without even leaving home. Even a little can make a difference if the belts get tightened further. Help others: It will be hard for almost everyone but harder for some. If you are fortunate enough to be in a relatively good situation, look around and try to help others. It doesn’t have to be with money or goods: donate time, teach skills, even listening can bring support and relief. Helping others is a way to help ourselves, too.Have you noticed a reduced standard of living in your area?Have you seen a reduced standard of living in your area or a wider disparity between rich and poor? Are you noticing any of the Thirdworldization effects happening near you or are there some things you’ve seen on the news that surprised you when you realized they were happening here?Tyler Durden Fri, 04/16/2021 – 23:00

Democrats Brace For ‘Defund The Police’ Movement To Damage Party Into Midterms In the wake of George Floyd’s death and several other high-profile incidents between black Americans and police, calls rang out across the country to defund the police – a movement which Democratic lawmakers largely supported.Yet, after several cities did just that, crime rates soared, and demoralized cops quit or retired early after what seemed like half of the country vilified them – leaving police forces spread thin as BLM and Antifa riots led to widespread looting, arson, and property damage throughout the country.Both Minneapolis and Portland, for example, woefully regretted defunding their police departments.And while the Democrats won both the White House and retook the Senate in the 2020 election, the impact of defunding the police took its toll, contributing to their very narrow majorities in both chambers.Democrats lost seats in the House and lost Senate races in states where they thought they had a chance, including North Carolina and Montana. At least some officials blame those losses on the defund the police debate.Republicans believe the defund the police narrative is a political gift they can use again to win over swing voters and to energize their own political base. -The HillNow, with the George Floyd trial in full swing – and the very real possibility that former officer Derek Chauvin will be acquitted of his murder – as well as brewing protests over the recent Minneapolis shooting death of a 20-year-old black suspect by a white female officer who says she meant to grab her Taser, moderate Democrats are bracing for another round of calls to defund the police, and the violence which is sure to follow.And while the far-left contingent in Congress openly supports defunding the police – such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who says she’s “done with those who condone government funded murder,” moderate Dems realize this may come back to bite them during the 2022 midterm elections.It wasn’t an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist. Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed. — Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) April 12, 2021Via The Hill:But while most Democrats share the outrage over the deaths of Floyd, Daunte Wright, Breonna Taylor and a seemingly ever-growing list of Black Americans killed by police, they diverge sharply over whether defunding the police is the solution — or simply a phrase that will cost Democrats elections and leave them without the power to foment change.“I mean, this defund the police was just a terrible drag on the Democratic Party. It really was. Don’t kid yourself,” veteran Democratic strategist James Carville told Bill Kristol in an interview for the Weekly Standard earlier this month.“This is music to the Republican minority’s ears in Washington,” according to GOP strategist, Ford O’Connell. “That is more powerful for Republicans than any perfectly scripted message.”Meanwhile, GOP Senators homed in on an op-ed written by Biden’s Justice Department nominee for the civil rights division – in which she’d advocated for defunding the police.“You just said you don’t support cutting funds from police,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), adding “I find that astonishing and, Ms. [Kristen] Clarke, frankly not credible because I’m holding the article you wrote.”Clarke replied that she doesn’t support defunding police departments, and that the headline of the Op-Ed was poorly worded.Democrats recognize the threat that the ‘defund’ movement poses.“The one thing we cannot allow is for Republicans to use this as a weapon of mass distraction,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright in a statement to The Hill. “Or as a weapon of mass political destruction as they have done in the past,” whatever that means.“I think the ability — using terms like defund the police have led to Democratic losses in this last year,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) in November. Warner was joined by fellow Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who pointed to progressive proposals to reallocate police funds as the reason more than a half-dozen moderate lawmakers lost their seats in the last election.According to polls, defunding the police does not have widespread support. According to a recent USA Today-Ipsos poll, just 20% of Americans support the movement. That said, polling last year in the wake of George Floyd’s death revealed that over half the country, 58%, say that changes are needed to policing.“We can’t allow them, meaning the opposition, to try to paint this picture that we are anti-police. We’re just pro-good policing,” said Seawright. “We have to do something at the federal level, for certain.”The Biden administration, meanwhile, falls on the side of ‘reform’ but not ‘defund.’““The president’s view is that there are necessary, outdated reforms that should be put in place; that there is accountability that needs to happen; that the loss of life is far too high; that these families are suffering around the country; and that the Black community is exhausted from the ongoing threats they feel,” according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, adding: “But he also believes that there is a forum for putting in place legislation, the George Floyd Act, that can help put many of these necessary reforms in place, and that part of what needs to happen is rebuilding trust in communities in order to get to a better place.”Apparently some Democrats realize that virtue signaling has consequences.Tyler Durden Fri, 04/16/2021 – 22:40

The Military Origins Of Facebook, Part 1 Authored by Whitney Webb via UnlimitedHangout.com,Facebook’s growing role in the ever-expanding surveillance and “pre-crime” apparatus of the national security state demands new scrutiny of the company’s origins and its products as they relate to a former, controversial DARPA-run surveillance program that was essentially analogous to what is currently the world’s largest social network.In mid-February, Daniel Baker, a US veteran described by the media as “anti-Trump, anti-government, anti-white supremacists, and anti-police,” was charged by a Florida grand jury with two counts of “transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a threat to kidnap or injure.”The communication in question had been posted by Baker on Facebook, where he had created an event page to organize an armed counter-rally to one planned by Donald Trump supporters at the Florida capital of Tallahassee on January 6. “If you are afraid to die fighting the enemy, then stay in bed and live. Call all of your friends and Rise Up!,” Baker had written on his Facebook event page.Baker’s case is notable as it is one of the first “precrime” arrests based entirely on social media posts—the logical conclusion of the Trump administration’s, and now Biden administration’s, push to normalize arresting individuals for online posts to prevent violent acts before they can happen. From the increasing sophistication of US intelligence/military contractor Palantir’s predictive policing programs to the formal announcement of the Justice Department’s Disruption and Early Engagement Program in 2019 to Biden’s first budget, which contains $111 million for pursuing and managing “increasing domestic terrorism caseloads,” the steady advance toward a precrime-centered “war on domestic terror” has been notable under every post-9/11 presidential administration.This new so-called war on domestic terror has actually resulted in many of these types of posts on Facebook. And, while Facebook has long sought to portray itself as a “town square” that allows people from across the world to connect, a deeper look into its apparently military origins and continual military connections reveals that the world’s largest social network was always intended to act as a surveillance tool to identify and target domestic dissent.Part 1 of this two-part series on Facebook and the US national-security state explores the social media network’s origins and the timing and nature of its rise as it relates to a controversial military program that was shut down the same day that Facebook launched. The program, known as LifeLog, was one of several controversial post-9/11 surveillance programs pursued by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that threatened to destroy privacy and civil liberties in the United States while also seeking to harvest data for producing “humanized” artificial intelligence (AI). As this report will show, Facebook is not the only Silicon Valley giant whose origins coincide closely with this same series of DARPA initiatives and whose current activities are providing both the engine and the fuel for a hi-tech war on domestic dissent.DARPA’s Data Mining for “National Security” and to “Humanize” AIIn the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, DARPA, in close collaboration with the US intelligence community (specifically the CIA), began developing a “precrime” approach to combatting terrorism known as Total Information Awareness or TIA. The purpose of TIA was to develop an “all-seeing” military-surveillance apparatus. The official logic behind TIA was that invasive surveillance of the entire US population was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, bioterrorism events, and even naturally occurring disease outbreaks. The architect of TIA, and the man who led it during its relatively brief existence, was John Poindexter, best known for being Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor during the Iran-Contra affair and for being convicted of five felonies in relation to that scandal. A less well-known activity of Iran-Contra figures like Poindexter and Oliver North was their development of the Main Core database to be used in “continuity of government” protocols. Main Core was used to compile a list of US dissidents and “potential troublemakers” to be dealt with if the COG protocols were ever invoked. These protocols could be invoked for a variety of reasons, including widespread public opposition to a US military intervention abroad, widespread internal dissent, or a vaguely defined moment of “national crisis” or “time of panic.” Americans were not informed if their name was placed on the list, and a person could be added to the list for merely having attended a protest in the past, for failing to pay taxes, or for other, “often trivial,” behaviors deemed “unfriendly” by its architects in the Reagan administration. In light of this, it was no exaggeration when New York Times columnist William Safire remarked that, with TIA, “Poindexter is now realizing his twenty-year dream: getting the ‘data-mining’ power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.”The TIA program met with considerable citizen outrage after it was revealed to the public in early 2003. TIA’s critics included the American Civil Liberties Union, which claimed that the surveillance effort would “kill privacy in America” because “every aspect of our lives would be catalogued,” while several mainstream media outlets warned that TIA was “fighting terror by terrifying US citizens.” As a result of the pressure, DARPA changed the program’s name to Terrorist Information Awareness to make it sound less like a national-security panopticon and more like a program aiming specifically at terrorists in the post-9/11 era. The logo for DARPA’s Information Awareness Office, which oversaw Total Information Awareness during its brief existenceThe TIA projects were not actually closed down, however, with most moved to the classified portfolios of the Pentagon and US intelligence community. Some became intelligence funded and guided private-sector endeavors, such as Peter Thiel’s Palantir, while others resurfaced years later under the guise of combatting the COVID-19 crisis. Soon after TIA was initiated, a similar DARPA program was taking shape under the direction of a close friend of Poindexter’s, DARPA program manager Douglas Gage. Gage’s project, LifeLog, sought to “build a database tracking a person’s entire existence” that included an individual’s relationships and communications (phone calls, mail, etc.), their media-consumption habits, their purchases, and much more in order to build a digital record of “everything an individual says, sees, or does.” LifeLog would then take this unstructured data and organize it into “discreet episodes” or snapshots while also “mapping out relationships, memories, events and experiences.”LifeLog, per Gage and supporters of the program, would create a permanent and searchable electronic diary of a person’s entire life, which DARPA argued could be used to create next-generation “digital assistants” and offer users a “near-perfect digital memory.” Gage insisted, even after the program was shut down, that individuals would have had “complete control of their own data-collection efforts” as they could “decide when to turn the sensors on or off and decide who will share the data.” In the years since then, analogous promises of user control have been made by the tech giants of Silicon Valley, only to be broken repeatedly for profit and to feed the government’s domestic-surveillance apparatus.The information that LifeLog gleaned from an individual’s every interaction with technology would be combined with information obtained from a GPS transmitter that tracked and documented the person’s location, audio-visual sensors that recorded what the person saw and said, as well as biomedical monitors that gauged the person’s health. Like TIA, LifeLog was promoted by DARPA as potentially supporting “medical research and the early detection of an emerging epidemic.”Critics in mainstream media outlets and elsewhere were quick to point out that the program would inevitably be used to build profiles on dissidents as well as suspected terrorists. Combined with TIA’s surveillance of individuals at multiple levels, LifeLog went farther by “adding physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.” One critic, Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned at the time that the programs that DARPA was pursuing, including LifeLog, “have obvious, easy paths to Homeland Security deployments.” At the time, DARPA publicly insisted that LifeLog and TIA were not connected, despite their obvious parallels, and that LifeLog would not be used for “clandestine surveillance.” However, DARPA’s own documentation on LifeLog noted that the project “will be able . . . to infer the user’s routines, habits and relationships with other people, organizations, places and objects, and to exploit these patterns to ease its task,” which acknowledged its potential use as a tool of mass surveillance.In addition to the ability to profile potential enemies of the state, LifeLog had another goal that was arguably more important to the national-security state and its academic partners—the “humanization” and advancement of artificial intelligence. In late 2002, just months prior to announcing the existence of LifeLog, DARPA released a strategy document detailing development of artificial intelligence by feeding it with massive floods of data from various sources. The post-9/11 military-surveillance projects—LifeLog and TIA being only two of them—offered quantities of data that had previously been unthinkable to obtain and that could potentially hold the key to achieving the hypothesized “technological singularity.” The 2002 DARPA document even discusses DARPA’s effort to create a brain-machine interface that would feed human thoughts directly into machines to advance AI by keeping it constantly awash in freshly mined data. One of the projects outlined by DARPA, the Cognitive Computing Initiative, sought to develop sophisticated artificial intelligence through the creation of an “enduring personalized cognitive assistant,” later termed the Perceptive Assistant that Learns, or PAL. PAL, from the very beginning was tied to LifeLog, which was originally intended to result in granting an AI “assistant” human-like decision-making and comprehension abilities by spinning masses of unstructured data into narrative format. The would-be main researchers for the LifeLog project also reflect the program’s end goal of creating humanized AI. For instance, Howard Shrobe at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and his team at the time were set to be intimately involved in LifeLog. Shrobe had previously worked for DARPA on the “evolutionary design of complex software” before becoming associate director of the AI Lab at MIT and has devoted his lengthy career to building “cognitive-style AI.” In the years after LifeLog was cancelled, he again worked for DARPA as well as on intelligence community–related AI research projects. In addition, the AI Lab at MIT was intimately connected with the 1980s corporation and DARPA contractor called Thinking Machines, which was founded by and/or employed many of the lab’s luminaries—including Danny Hillis, Marvin Minsky, and Eric Lander—and sought to build AI supercomputers capable of human-like thought. All three of these individuals were later revealed to be close associates of and/or sponsored by the intelligence-linked pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who also generously donated to MIT as an institution and was a leading funder of and advocate for transhumanist-related scientific research.Soon after the LifeLog program was shuttered, critics worried that, like TIA, it would continue under a different name. For example, Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told VICE at the time of LifeLog’s cancellation, “It would not surprise me to learn that the government continued to fund research that pushed this area forward without calling it LifeLog.”Along with its critics, one of the would-be researchers working on LifeLog, MIT’s David Karger, was also certain that the DARPA project would continue in a repackaged form. He told Wired that “I am sure such research will continue to be funded under some other title . . . I can’t imagine DARPA ‘dropping out’ of a such a key research area.” The answer to these speculations appears to lie with the company that launched the exact same day that LifeLog was shuttered by the Pentagon: Facebook.Thiel Information AwarenessAfter considerable controversy and criticism, in late 2003, TIA was shut down and defunded by Congress, just months after it was launched. It was only later revealed that that TIA was never actually shut down, with its various programs having been covertly divided up among the web of military and intelligence agencies that make up the US national-security state. Some of it was privatized.The same month that TIA was pressured to change its name after growing backlash, Peter Thiel incorporated Palantir, which was, incidentally, developing the core panopticon software that TIA had hoped to wield. Soon after Palantir’s incorporation in 2003, Richard Perle, a notorious neoconservative from the Reagan and Bush administrations and an architect of the Iraq War, called TIA’s Poindexter and said he wanted to introduce him to Thiel and his associate Alex Karp, now Palantir’s CEO. According to a report in New York magazine, Poindexter “was precisely the person” whom Thiel and Karp wanted to meet, mainly because “their new company was similar in ambition to what Poindexter had tried to create at the Pentagon,” that is, TIA. During that meeting, Thiel and Karp sought “to pick the brain of the man now widely viewed as the godfather of modern surveillance.”Peter Thiel speaks at the World Economic Forum in 2013, Source: Mirko Ries Courtesy for the World Economic ForumSoon after Palantir’s incorporation, though the exact timing and details of the investment remain hidden from the public, the CIA’s In-Q-Tel became the company’s first backer, aside from Thiel himself, giving it an estimated $2 million. In-Q-Tel’s stake in Palantir would not be publicly reported until mid-2006. The money was certainly useful. In addition, Alex Karp told the New York Times in October 2020, “the real value of the In-Q-Tel investment was that it gave Palantir access to the CIA analysts who were its intended clients.” A key figure in the making of In-Q-Tel investments during this period, including the investment in Palantir, was the CIA’s chief information officer, Alan Wade, who had been the intelligence community’s point man for Total Information Awareness. Wade had previously cofounded the post-9/11 Homeland Security software contractor Chiliad alongside Christine Maxwell, sister of Ghislaine Maxwell and daughter of Iran-Contra figure, intelligence operative, and media baron Robert Maxwell. After the In-Q-Tel investment, the CIA would be Palantir’s only client until 2008. During that period, Palantir’s two top engineers—Aki Jain and Stephen Cohen—traveled to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, every two weeks. Jain recalls making at least two hundred trips to CIA headquarters between 2005 and 2009. During those regular visits, CIA analysts “would test [Palantir’s software] out and offer feedback, and then Cohen and Jain would fly back to California to tweak it.” As with In-Q-Tel’s decision to invest in Palantir, the CIA’s chief information officer during this time remained one of TIA’s architects. Alan Wade played a key role in many of these meetings and subsequently in the “tweaking” of Palantir’s products.Today, Palantir’s products are used for mass surveillance, predictive policing, and other disconcerting policies of the US national-security state. A telling example is Palantir’s sizable involvement in the new Health and Human Services–run wastewater surveillance program that is quietly spreading across the United States. As noted in a previous Unlimited Hangout report, that system is the resurrection of a TIA program called Biosurveillance. It is feeding all its data into the Palantir-managed and secretive HHS Protect data platform. The decision to turn controversial DARPA-led programs into a private ventures, however, was not limited to Thiel’s Palantir.The Rise of FacebookThe shuttering of TIA at DARPA had an impact on several related programs, which were also dismantled in the wake of public outrage over DARPA’s post-9/11 programs. One of these programs was LifeLog. As news of the program spread through the media, many of the same vocal critics who had attacked TIA went after LifeLog with similar zeal, with Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists telling Wired at the time that “LifeLog has the potential to become something like ‘TIA cubed.’” LifeLog being viewed as something that would prove even worse than the recently cancelled TIA had a clear effect on DARPA, which had just seen both TIA and another related program cancelled after considerable backlash from the public and the press. The firestorm of criticism of LifeLog took its program manager, Doug Gage, by surprise, and Gage has continued to assert that the program’s critics “completely mischaracterized” the goals and ambitions of the project. Despite Gage’s protests and those of LifeLog’s would-be researchers and other supporters, the project was publicly nixed on February 4, 2004. DARPA never provided an explanation for its quiet move to shutter LifeLog, with a spokesperson stating only that it was related to “a change in priorities” for the agency. On DARPA director Tony Tether’s decision to kill LifeLog, Gage later told VICE, “I think he had been burnt so badly with TIA that he didn’t want to deal with any further controversy with LifeLog. The death of LifeLog was collateral damage tied to the death of TIA.”Fortuitously for those supporting the goals and ambitions of LifeLog, a company that turned out to be its private-sector analogue was born on the same day that LifeLog’s cancellation was announced. On February 4, 2004, what is now the world’s largest social network, Facebook, launched its website and quickly rose to the top of the social media roost, leaving other social media companies of the era in the dust. Sean Parker of Founders Fund speaks during the LeWeb conference in 2011, Source: @Kmeron for LeWeb11 @ Les Docks de ParisA few months into Facebook’s launch, in June 2004, Facebook cofounders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz brought Sean Parker onto Facebook’s executive team. Parker, previously known for cofounding Napster, later connected Facebook with its first outside investor, Peter Thiel. As discussed, Thiel, at that time, in coordination with the CIA, was actively trying to resurrect controversial DARPA programs that had been dismantled the previous year. Notably, Sean Parker, who became Facebook’s first president, also had a history with the CIA, which recruited him at the age of sixteen soon after he had been busted by the FBI for hacking corporate and military databases. Thanks to Parker, in September 2004, Thiel formally acquired $500,000 worth of Facebook shares and was added its board. Parker maintained close ties to Facebook as well as to Thiel, with Parker being hired as a managing partner of Thiel’s Founders Fund in 2006.Thiel and Facebook cofounder Mosokvitz became involved outside of the social network long after Facebook’s rise to prominence, with Thiel’s Founder Fund becoming a significant investor in Moskovitz’s company Asana in 2012. Thiel’s longstanding symbiotic relationship with Facebook cofounders extends to his company Palantir, as the data that Facebook users make public invariably winds up in Palantir’s databases and helps drive the surveillance engine Palantir runs for a handful of US police departments, the military, and the intelligence community. In the case of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Palantir was also involved in utilizing Facebook data to benefit the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign. Today, as recent arrests such as that of Daniel Baker have indicated, Facebook data is slated to help power the coming “war on domestic terror,” given that information shared on the platform is being used in “precrime” capture of US citizens, domestically. In light of this, it is worth dwelling on the point that Thiel’s exertions to resurrect the main aspects of TIA as his own private company coincided with his becoming the first outside investor in what was essentially the analogue of another DARPA program deeply intertwined with TIA. Facebook, a FrontBecause of the coincidence that Facebook launched the same day that LifeLog was shut down, there has been recent speculation that Zuckerberg began and launched the project with Moskovitz, Saverin, and others through some sort of behind-the-scenes coordination with DARPA or another organ of the national-security state. While there is no direct evidence for this precise claim, the early involvement of Parker and Thiel in the project, particularly given the timing of Thiel’s other activities, reveals that the national-security state was involved in Facebook’s rise. It is debatable whether Facebook was intended from its inception to be a LifeLog analogue or if it happened to be the social media project that fit the bill after its launch. The latter seems more likely, especially considering that Thiel also invested in another early social media platform, Friendster. An important point linking Facebook and LifeLog is the subsequent identification of Facebook with LifeLog by the latter’s DARPA architect himself. In 2015, Gage told VICE that “Facebook is the real face of pseudo-LifeLog at this point.” He tellingly added, “We have ended up providing the same kind of detailed personal information to advertisers and data brokers and without arousing the kind of opposition that LifeLog provoked.” Users of Facebook and other large social media platforms have so far been content to allow these platforms to sell their private data so long as they publicly operate as private enterprises. Backlash only really emerged when such activities were publicly tied to the US government, and especially the US military, even though Facebook and other tech giants routinely share their users’ data with the national-security state. In practice, there is little difference between the public and private entities.Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, notably warned in 2019 that Facebook is just as untrustworthy as US intelligence, stating that “Facebook’s internal purpose, whether they state it publicly or not, is to compile perfect records of private lives to the maximum extent of their capability, and then exploit that for their own corporate enrichment. And damn the consequences.”Snowden also stated in the same interview that “the more Google knows about you, the more Facebook knows about you, the more they are able . . . to create permanent records of private lives, the more influence and power they have over us.” This underscores how both Facebook and intelligence-linked Google have accomplished much of what LifeLog had aimed to do, but on a much larger scale than what DARPA had originally envisioned.The reality is that most of the large Silicon Valley companies of today have been closely linked to the US national-security state establishment since their inception. Notable examples aside from Facebook and Palantir include Google and Oracle. Today these companies are more openly collaborating with the military-intelligence agencies that guided their development and/or provided early funding, as they are used to provide the data needed to fuel the newly announced war on domestic terror and its accompanying algorithms. It is hardly a coincidence that someone like Peter Thiel, who built Palantir with the CIA and helped ensure Facebook’s rise, is also heavily involved in Big Data AI-driven “predictive policing” approaches to surveillance and law enforcement, both through Palantir and through his other investments. TIA, LifeLog, and related government and private programs and institutions launched after 9/11, were always intended to be used against the American public in a war against dissent. This was noted by their critics in 2003-4 and by those who have examined the origins of the “homeland security” pivot in the US and its connection to past CIA “counterterror” programs in Vietnam and Latin America. Ultimately, the illusion of Facebook and related companies as being independent of the US national-security state has prevented a recognition of the reality of social media platforms and their long-intended, yet covert uses, which we are beginning to see move into the open following the events of January 6. Now, with billions of people conditioned to use Facebook and social media as part of their daily lives, the question becomes: If that illusion were to be irrevocably shattered today, would it make a difference to Facebook’s users? Or has the populace become so conditioned to surrendering their private data in exchange for dopamine-fueled social-validation loops that it no longer matters who ends up holding that data?Part 2 of this series on Facebook will explore how the social media platform has grown into a behemoth that is much more extensive than what LifeLog’s program managers had originally envisioned. In concert with military contractors and former heads of DARPA, Facebook has spent the last several years doing two key things: (1) preparing to play a much larger role in surveillance and data mining than it currently does; and (2) advancing the development of a “humanized” AI, a major objective of LifeLog.Tyler Durden Fri, 04/16/2021 – 22:20