This past weekend, I had the pleasure of going to the Laugh & Peace Art Gallery in Osaka, to see a selection of works by Enna Yamashiro.
She is a TV star, one of the regular travel guides appearing every Saturday morning at 9:00 am on Travel Salad, taking viewers to a host of other countries. What makes her contribution to the globe-trotting adventures is her paintings. Wherever she lands, she spontaneously renders her impression of the place, often on a computer tablet. A few we had seen on television were on display.
Yamashiro-san’s style is unique but at the same time eminently Japanese. I don’t mean in a traditional sense. Her approach is extremely modern. But her works reflect the aesthetics of both Japanese art and culture: simple, minimalistic, elegant, starkly beautiful. I especially love her sense of color.
Rather than an artist, she calls herself an illustrator. I’ll accept that. She still creates art. I’m sure she’d love for you to visit her website!
Killer bees will overwhelm us and end the human race!
Believe it?
There’s a perfect parallel here. This ridiculous scare headline is on a par with the coronavirus panic that’s been manufactured by a new set of bedfellows writhing in a clusterf*ck of hypocrisy and deception: power-hungry government autocrats, the pharmaceutical industry, compromised agencies of the United Nations, a mega-wealthy computer industry mediocrity claiming divine expertise in medical matters, technocratic futurists who hope to game a paradigm-shift — a reset — into global social control, and the usual court jesters and sycophants who inject their mercenary amorality into any opportunity to make a buck.
Protective wear should be worn 24 hoursa day, even while sleeping. Killer bees, like surveillance cameras, are everywhere.
Yes, people have died from being stung by killer bees. Many people have died due to hyper-sensitivity to stings by more ordinary bees. No one likes getting stung by bees. This does not equate to a massive invasion and humanity-ending assault by bees of any level of aggression. Though if there were money to be made, I have no doubt we’d be treated to a Killer Bee psy-ops and everyone would be looking like this guy to go shopping or to get bee repellant vaccine shots.
A state of emergency would be declared and to “protect us from ourselves”, anyone not wearing the appropriate netting would be fined and/or arrested. Someone taking the garbage out to the curb on collection day, not dressed head-to-toe like they were Netman, the latest Marvel Comics superhero, would be vilified and attacked by shovel-wielding neighbors.
Sound at all familiar? Is it really so much of a stretch?
So what’s going on with the “pandemic”? And please let’s not resort to labels and ideological frameworks. This is not right wing or left wing. It’s not Republican or Democrat. It’s authoritarianism making a beeline for tyranny, and whether it’s “fascism” or “Trumpism” or “communism” or “corporatism” isn’t really relevant. Let’s just call this what it is.
How do we know? How do we know a real virus has been blown up into a fake pandemic?
Because there are many success stories across the globe fighting this latest disease, the latest pathogenic mischief-maker off the assembly line of misery that’s been churning away the entire course of recorded history. You probably won’t hear about these success stories in the monotone narrative of Covid-19 coverage in the U.S. media. I source news from all over the world and trust me, what’s going on in many other countries is nothing like what is unfolding in the United States of Dysfunction.
I’ll mention two from personal experience. Verifiable because I can see them with my own eyes. I’ve cited the first in public comments and various articles before . . .
Total deaths in Japan 2019: 1.38 million.
Total deaths in Japan 2020: 1.36 million.
Yes, in the raging scourge of a life-threatening coronavirus PANDEMIC, fewer people died in Japan than the year before the world was shrouded in a cloud of Covid-19 “killer bees”.
Secondly, two days ago, my wife talked to a Chinese friend, WHO LIVES IN CHINA. You know, the Kung Flu country, the Wuhan Virus nation of super-spreaders. His report: There’s now not a single case of Covid-19 in Beijing. NOT A SINGLE CASE! The guy is not political. He has no agenda. He’s not a member of the Communist Party there. He’s just stating the facts. His life is COMPLETELY NORMAL.
Actually, my life is completely normal, if you consider eating rice and tofu everyday normal.
Looking now at the big picture, what are we dealing with?
First, recognize that the statistics we’re fed are very suspect. The WHO instructed every nation to attribute the death of anyone who tests positive for the dread virus, whose death can’t be definitively proven to some other cause, as a Covid-19 casualty. So unless you’ve been hit by a bus or fallen into an erupting volcano, if there are Covid-19 antibodies in your system when you die, then that’s a Covid-19 death. Mind you, the whole mechanism for determining if you’re a “case” — meaning you test positive — is totally flawed. The PCR test everyone is using, according to the man himself WHO DESIGNED THE TEST, is inappropriate for this type of diagnosis and unreliable for detection and confirmation of Covid-19 infection.
Then there’s the conflation of ‘cases’ and ‘positive tests’. New cases are reported everyday, with ominous graphics and somber tones by talking heads. But a person can test positive, be completely healthy and unaffected, not even be contagious, and never ever experience any negative consequences from the presence of the virus in their system. For example, we all normally have a number of cancer cells in our bodies and bloodstreams. Our immune system keeps them in check, so we never come down with cancer. The mere detectable presence of a pathogen doesn’t say anything definitive about the onset of a disease. To report anyone who tests positive from a test that isn’t reliable in the first place, as a “case” — letting it be assumed they’re sick, coughing, wheezing, in a hospital, fighting for their lives — is very misleading.
Having said all that, let’s take a look at the official numbers, even though they are at best inaccurate and thus give a very skewed picture of what’s actually going on, with the errors contributing significantly to a sense of crisis and public panic.
It is reported as of today that there are 176,784,418 CASES of Covid-19. The World Population Clock says there are 7.77 billion people in the world. This means, supposedly only 2.275% of the world has even tested positive for the new “plague”. Many, if not most of these folks, aren’t even sick. Now, again recognizing that the number of deaths from Covid-19 stands at 3,826,567. With some basic math, this means .0129% of the world’s people have allegedly DIED of Covid-19, over almost 1 1/2 years.
For some perspective: Do you know how many people died during the real Plague? Well, ONE-THIRD of the population of London died in ONE SUMMER! Between 25,000,000 and 50,000,000 people died in Europe! That come to 30% TO 60% of everyone in Europe at the time. Deaths worldwide are estimated between 75 and 100 million. This was when the total population of the world was only 450 million.
That’s a REAL pandemic! Calling what’s going on now a pandemic is a total distortion of reality. Unfortunately, it’s working and people are panicking.
It could be argued that what we’re doing now is using modern medicine to prevent what might be a potential pandemic. Fine. A potential for something is not the same as the thing itself. There’s a potential the Earth will be struck by a huge asteroid. That’s not the same as the Earth being struck by a huge asteroid. If they made a sudden BREAKING NEWS announcement that the Earth had been hit by an asteroid, because some scientist estimated there was a 3 in 10 billion chance it could happen, they’d be lying. LYING!
Is Covid-19 dangerous? Granted, there are reality-deniers out there who say Covid-19 doesn’t even exist. Well, it’s real. Again just taking the inflated official numbers, 3,826,567 died out of 176,784,418 “cases” of infection. That’s .216% of supposedly infected people actually dying from it. Not 2% . . . but .2%!
The WHO reports the typical death rate from a typical influenza at .1% There are strains of influenza — for example H3N2 classified as a Type A strain — which can be much more lethal. So it looks like Covid-19 is slightly more dangerous than an average case of the flu. Caution and prudence are advised. Every possible treatment should be ready and waiting for anyone who actually contracts the disease.
But Covid-19 is NOT Ebola, Black Death, Hepatitis C, nuclear war, or a giant asteroid.
The startling thing, for me anyway, is that according to “official statistics” dished out by the CDC, the Covid-19 case fatality rate in the U.S. is 3.1%. What? 15 times what it is internationally? Something is wrong. Either the reporting system is screwed up, resulting in completely out-of-whack stats, or health care there is so abysmal, many treatable cases are resulting in unnecessary death. Somebody is not doing their job!
The people who are doing their job and making a killing along the way, are the big wigs running the pharmaceutical companies. And enough is never enough when there’s a raging pandemic of greed. The head of Pfizer says people who have been fully vaccinated with their EXPERIMENTAL and partially tested vaccine, will need a “booster” in 12 months. You see where this is headed?
Things here in Japan are good. People are sane, considerate of others, the government is very careful and measured in everything they’re doing to deal with Covid-19. But the U.S. is a whole different story.
The simple truth — and I’m not going to defend this with charts and piles of statistics because if you don’t even suspect there’s a problem in America or believe that (damn him) it’s all Trump’s fault, there’s no getting through to you anyway — yes, the simple, insulting, appalling, sickening truth is that a completely manageable health crisis has been willfully mishandled, the chaos and calculated social and economic disruption has been created and exploited purely for two obvious sinister intents: 1) bleeding more money out of our economy and us, its citizens; 2) more control, tyranny, and oppression, in order to silence any opposition or resistance to future plunder, i.e. accelerating the transfer of wealth and power upwards to the ruling elite.
So what can we do?
Understand that this whole manufactured crisis is not some fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants affair. It’s brilliantly, if diabolically, engineered for maximum impact. It’s been planned for a long time and they’ve paid attention to the details. Those responsible are not stupid and they’re not messing around. In fact, so much has already unfolded, and so many people gone along with this nonsense, it may be too late.
But we can try.
We must take back our lives. We have to take back our communities, street-by-street, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, church-by-church, local-business-by-local-business.
There were huge protests in London April of this year against coerced vaccinations and Covid-19 “passports”.
We can’t let the establishment bullies get away with this. And as we see from the recent demonstration in London, people in other countries are waking up to the lockdown scam.
We must try to stop this manufactured crisis. People need to know and defend their rights. Most importantly, we must do everything possible to stand strong against tyranny in any form.
As the brilliant, if gloomy, Chris Hedges says: We do this not because we know we’ll be successful. We do this because it’s the right thing to do.
I’ve been asking myself a question. I’ve been asking it very quietly, because if I ask it out loud, I’ll be mobbed for being a racist pig. Here’s the question: Why is it racist to state this straightforward moral proposition?
All lives matter.
I get the obvious argument. Allegedly up until now, it’s only been us privileged white folks whose lives have mattered. Black lives didn’t matter before. Only white lives. So now black lives matter.
It’s symmetry. Get it?
The problem with this is obvious. Do the lives of 68,000 mine workers in West Virginia who have died from black lung disease since 1968 matter? Their lungs end up black but the victims are white. Did the lives of the 58,220 soldiers who died in the Vietnam War matter? 52,980 of them were white. That pile of white corpses resulting from a senseless, illegal war didn’t seem to matter. Did the lives of millions suffering through the Great Depression, some starving to death, matter? Granted, African-Americans got hit harder. But the white folks didn’t seem to matter enough to keep the predators from crashing the economy again in 2008, then putting everyone in debt up to their eyebrows.
You get the picture. Everyday Americans are endlessly subjected to indignities which degrade the quality of their lives, sometimes consigning them to death. There has been nothing race-specific about such abuse, and white folks have not been exempt.
Class warfare is color blind. To the ruling class — the .1% who have the wealth and power — race, ethnicity, religious beliefs pretty much don’t matter. As long as you have a body and a brain they can put to use in maximizing profit, you matter. When they’re done with you, well, now you don’t matter. Your problems are your problems. We might be deluded into believing that as a nation we’re all in this together. We’re not. You and I are in it together. The rich and powerful are in it for themselves.
Same with the imperial project, the ambitious design to rule the world. As long as you can hold a rifle and shoot straight, color of skin, gender, sexual preferences, etc are not an issue. Yes, gender and sexuality have mattered as a disciplinary and effectiveness concern within the ranks of the military. But the people who decide on the wars couldn’t care less about the details, as long as our military does the job, and makes the world safe for plunder and profit-seeking subjugation.
The point is, no lives matter to the ruling class, except their own.
So back to the question: Why can’t we say ‘all lives matter’?
You’re not going to like the answer.
It’s because ‘All lives matter’ is unifying … and ‘Black lives matter’ is divisive.
Can’t have everyone on the same team. A populous united under a single banner would be an unstoppable force for change, justice, fairness, equality. Slice and dice. BLM vs Proud Boys vs Antifa vs Boogaloo Bois vs NFAC vs Karens … keep everybody in a huge brawl!
Now let’s see where this strategy takes us. If we say ‘Palestinian lives matter’, we’re Jew haters. If we say ‘Russian lives matter’, we’re commie-loving Putin-apologists. If we say, ‘Asian lives matter’, we’re cheerleaders for the Wuhan Flu super-spreaders. If we say ‘All lives matter’, we’re nigger-hating white supremacists.
Divide and conquer. Divide and oppress. Works every time.
We can look to a couple telling examples of prominent spokespersons who powerfully advocated for ‘all lives’ not that long ago.
Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton was a much-admired, highly successful organizer for the Black Panther Party in Chicago. The corrupt white municipal leaders there tolerated him until the very end. But Fred got out of control. He started organizing white and Latino youth groups, normally considered black-hating racists, to fight a common enemy, the political and economic elite of the city. “Through a long and arduous process, he had succeeded in building a ‘Rainbow Coalition’ of working class blacks, latinos, and whites.”
That would get him killed. He was brutally assassinated by a hit squad from the Chicago Police Department in the middle of the night as he slept.
Another example is more familiar. He’s the author of this quote.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. called for unity, a struggle against “cruel manipulation of the poor.” The ruling elite knew a bad thing when they saw it. We all sorrowfully know what happened.
How convenient it is that now ONLY black lives matter, when it is only by standing shoulder to shoulder, black folks with their white, brown, yellow, and red brothers and sisters, emboldened and unified, working together to defeat our common enemy, that anything will matter at all. Separated from one another into isolated pockets, protecting our own territory and exclusive interests, only the lives and fortunes of the rich and powerful, the tiny elite aristocratic minority, who purposely and systematically work to keep us disunited and at one another’s throats, will matter.
I’m still trying to reconcile this and a second report to come up with a meaningful, hopeful picture for the future of our country. One that’s not built around bullets, bombs, stealth fighters, attack drones, nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, killer satellites, and the possible shrouding of the planet in a cloud of life-ending radioactive dust.
The problem is me, of course. It seems I’m allergic to chaos, destruction, death, maiming, carnage, genocide, ecocide, macho posturing, chest-beating. I don’t find war drums at all appealing, or even danceable.
Others — according to the report, it comes in at 62% of our fine citizens — find reason to implicitly celebrate all of the above, judging that the $715 billion official 2022 defense budget, proposed by President Biden, is right on the money, so to speak. In fact, 17% of those polled think we need to spend more.
By the way, I specifically chose ‘official defense budget’ because that has never really been the whole story. The second report was done in 2019. It’s by the Congressional Research Service and is titled Overseas Contingency Operations Funding: Background and Status. You can view it here.
“The Congressional Research Service has estimated that such supplemental spending from September 11, 2001, to fiscal year 2019 totaled an astonishing $2 trillion above and beyond the congressionally agreed upon Pentagon budget.”
Even this is not the entire picture. Because buried in the budgets of the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, secretive funding of the CIA, the 17 major agencies of the intelligence community, and other national security related organizations, is unreported black budgeting. We can only offer educated guesses on the sums allocated to these agencies. We do know they run in the tens of billions of dollars.
So as we’re struggling to find the money — we all know it’s there but the fiscal conservatives require us to put on a show of penurious virtue signaling to slap down the MMT folks — to repair our infrastructure, address climate change, convert the U.S. economy into the right stuff for the 21st Century challenges of stability and sustainability, scramble to either put together a viable health care system or find a place to bury the bodies, address massive unemployment and underemployment, achieve solvency for Social Security and other unfunded liabilities, yes, as we scour every square inch of our great country sea-to-shining-sea with metal detectors, looking for every buried nickel and dime for all of these noble and necessary endeavors, the vast majority of citizens have decided the $1+ trillion we spend ANNUALLY to police Planet Earth, spy on our own citizens, put bases and weaponry in any country that will have us, expand NATO and increase the probability of a major war, build “more usable” nuclear weapons, deploy our fighting machinery in outer space, intimidate Russia and China, and create hostility and enemies across the globe, is money well spent.
I will credit the Deep State and MIC with a true victory here. While “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known” (George W. Bush), “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known” (Barack Obama), has been humiliated and/or defeated in every military conflict since World War II, the massive psyops brainwashing of the American public has been a resounding success!
My lovely wife just told me that our village has “work days” coming up, the 13th and 27th of June. When the weather is accommodating, one member from each household reports at 8:00 am for a work day — it’s always a Sunday — and we do whatever needs to be done to keep our village clean, attractive, and functional.
I can’t begin to tell you how cool I think this is! Despite living in a variety of different cities and towns in four of the fifty states in America, I’ve never encountered anything quite like community work days. The attitude there tends to be “let someone else take care of it” or “the government should do it, since we’re paying out all this money in taxes.” Well, Japanese pay taxes too, but there are still things that need to get done. The local citizens take pride in helping out.
Mind you, the only other country I’ve been in that’s as clean as Japan, is Switzerland. Trust me, it’s very unusual to ever see litter anywhere here, but on the off-chance that a candy wrapper or soda can should get left on the ground, that’s one possible work day assignment, collecting the rare cigarette butt or plastic bag lying around. Since there’s practically nothing to pick up, we usually apply ourselves to other more fruitful tasks.
We each get to take home one of these flower planters, the rest will be distributed throughout the village, along the more frequently traversed lanes.
On the 13th, we’ll be cutting and clearing weeds and bamboo from Noma Village’s shared property — that not owned by individuals — then planting flowers around the community center (photo at top of this article) where we meet for various activities. For example, see Annual Neighborhood Barbecue and Annual Neighborhood Curry and Bingo Party). Finally, more flower planting in portable boxes which will decorate the area.
On the 27th, we’ll be cleaning up the grounds for our local shrine. This will mostly consist of hacking away at weeds, clearing overgrown brush, cutting vines from the trees. Here I am last year with my neighbor Yamamoto-san doing exactly this.
The other big set of duties for work day get-togethers is maintenance of water irrigation ditches and pathways, vital for keeping our crops growing. 95% of what we grow is rice and soybeans, the other 5% is vegetables of different sorts.
I guess there might be naysayers and cynics out there who because they haven’t grown up in Japan, don’t understand this type of community spirit. But from what I’ve personally seen, the locals love it! Not only are we doing something useful and beneficial for ourselves and our neighbors, but it’s a chance to spend three or four hours together. The social aspect is just as important as its functional contribution.
Hey! If you happen to come visit me and it’s a work day, I’ll bring you along. You can see for yourself what it’s all about, make yourself useful, and as a bonus, get a free bottle of tea and a pastry when we take a short break at the halfway mark. It’s a win-win!
I can’t believe Tom Cruise didn’t put me in his movie!
Have you seen the James Bond film You Only Live Twice? At one point 007 was being given ninja training and those particular scenes were filmed at one of the most famous castles in Japan, Himeji Castle. It’s also known as the ‘White Egret Castle’ because its intensely white walls and majestic architecture apparently makes many folks think of a huge bird taking flight.
More recently, Himeji is associated with the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai, but that was actually shot at the nearby Engyoji Temple and Daikodo, a mountain village once used for training of priests.
In any event, the castle is almost seven centuries old, dating back to 1333 CE. I won’t begin to attempt summarizing its long, glorious history. I will, however, offer a few interesting facts and highlights.
Himeji Castle is the largest castle in Japan, its architecture is prototypical of all such castles, it is made of stone and wood, has extensive fortifications dating to Japan’s feudal times. From Wikipedia: “The castle complex comprises a network of 83 buildings such as storehouses, gates, corridors, and turrets (櫓, yagara). Of these 83 buildings, 74 are designated as Important Cultural Assets: 11 corridors, 16 turrets, 15 gates, and 32 earthen walls.” Registered December 1993, Himeji Castle was one of the first locations designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Japan.
It has been remodeled and rebuilt a number of times. Significantly, however, it survived the massive firebombing campaign of WWII, which leveled the entire surrounding town. A firebomb actually landed on the top floor but failed to detonate. It also survived the Great Hanshin Earthquake — aka Kobe Earthquake — of 1995. Himeji is only 50 km (31 miles) west of Kobe.
Though it’s only about a 1 1/2 hour drive from my home here to Himeji, I’ve only visited the castle twice. It’s spectacular and deserves greater attention, for sure. Here are a few photos I took my first visit, then more recently when a friend from the Netherlands visited.
Dan Kovalik’s latest is a much-needed, laudable enterprise, courageously sounding the alarm about a tyranny being perpetrated in the name of moral and social renewal. Similar to genocide, it is cultural cleansing, a systematic destruction of what its proponents singularly deem uncomfortable, unsavory, perhaps threatening to them and their adherents. Cancel culture is militantly aggressive, unforgiving, ruthless, aimed at vilification and final extirpation of anyone who disagrees with or in any way resists its unbending, non-negotiable agenda. Its stormtroopers are the PC Police, what I prefer to call the Woke SS. They answer only to themselves, respecting no other authority. Outside opinion, body of law, history, revered traditions, honored social practices and norms are irrelevant. Attempts to introduce any of these into conversations with them results in brutal retaliation. Their chosen battlegrounds include mainstream and alternative media, social media, the boards and HR departments of both corporations and academic institutions, and more recently the production studios for both TV and cinema.
What authority the woke mob claims is based on an inversion of the mechanism which has underpinned moral imperatives in the rich philosophical traditions of both East and West. Traditionally, after rigorous and thorough dialectic, we did what we did because it was the right thing to do. By inverting this, all that is done in the name of woke activism is right because it’s what they do. The woke have dispensed with the cumbersome process of arriving at moral truths by free, open, and constructive conversations, then respectfully and judiciously soliciting consensus and compliance. By unilaterally deciding they are on the right side of history and all important issues, their actions are deemed a priori correct and unassailable. It’s remindful of the German nation being led to believe in the 1930s that they were a super race of ascendant humans, thus their actions could not be evaluated and judged by external standards. Super men and women were only capable of superior and unchallengeable action.
As Dan Kovalik illustrates eloquently and in great detail, providing excellent support and documentation throughout, the woke search-and-destroy cultural scourge has precedents and parallels in other areas of social and political life. Hypocrisy and self-sabotage are equally evident.
The U.S. has anointed itself as the exceptional, indispensable nation, chosen by history, consecrated by destiny to lead the world. Thus …
We wage war on nations to establish peace. We overthrow democratically-elected governments to promote democracy. We destroy functioning governments, kill innocent men, women and children, and create massive refugee crises, to promote and protect women’s rights, seed and nurture freedom. In our never-ending struggle against racism and ultra-nationalism, we malign China, fuel hatred of Russia, embargo and sanction Islamic countries like Syria, Iran, destroy Libya. In our embrace of multiculturalism, we suffocate the economies of Cuba and Venezuela, separate brown children from their parents and put them in cages. In our respect for and devotion to human rights, we arm and support Israeli apartheid of Palestine, the callous destruction of a whole people.
Now don’t get the wrong impression. It’s all good. You see, we’re America and everything we do is good.
This, of course, is the exact same mentality we see unfolding now in our own country. Woke is R2P on our own soil.
From its initial appearance on the American scene, the entire woke movement struck me personally as humorless, oppressive, facile, misguided, an anathema to creativity and free expression. Since those early days, it has become dangerous and frightening. Woke is turning the culture and politics of our nation into a huge snuff film.
I genuinely fear for the safety of this brilliant author. I’ve read and reviewed several of his other books. His scholarship is impeccable and his presentation highly inspiring. I especially loved the conversational tone which generously populates Cancel This Book. But all his works are powerful, accessible, readable. Author Kovalik has taken controversial positions in the past. But taking on the goon squads of cancel culture is his boldest and most admirable effort. Without free discourse from all possible sources, the dystopia of woke is exactly what you get. Maybe the members of the woke thug battalions get their thrills from turning America into a wasteland. I personally don’t see much of a future in it.
There are a lot of smug, self-righteous folks out there — I hope not but maybe some right here reading this — who like to look down their noses at what they call “sheeple”.
Tellingly, if we are really honest with ourselves, at one time or another and to a greater or lesser degree, we’ve all been sheeple. We’ve gone with the flow. Gone along to get along. Yes, I’m embarrassed to say, I have too.
What am I supposed to take from that?
The hardest thing for me, as a very smart person, with a smart mouth, and a smart aleck attitude, to learn and fully internalize has been this:
Don’t judge.
Of course, there are situations and people all of the time which require a “judgment call”. Should I trust this person? Is that guy over there yelling at the top of his lungs about UFOs dangerous? Is this politician focused on getting my vote telling the truth or blowing smoke?
What I mean by ‘don’t judge’ is simple. Don’t make final declarations which cut you off from any further understanding or appreciation, whether it’s about a person or a circumstance.
Sheeple, for example.
The idiom implies that such people are incapable of thinking for themselves, that they purely are followers. The herd sleeps, they sleep. The herd chews on grass, they chew on grass. The herd runs into the chute to their slaughter, they run into the chute to their slaughter.
There’s some truth to that. But the fact is, we all do this. Anybody out there wearing their pants backwards or answering the phone by reciting Shakespearean couplets? Any of you celebrate your last birthday by playing the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida naked at the bottom of an empty swimming pool?
We all do a lot of things in concert with others. We go to concerts and sing along with the chorus to our favorite songs. By the millions we watch the same TV shows, laugh at the same jokes, cry at the same tragedies, sit like hypnotized lumps taking in the daily news, then say the same things everyone else is saying about the same scandals.
And the undeniable truth is, sometimes it feels great being part of some “community” of people doing the same thing. Is anyone going to tell me that tens of thousands of people packing into a stadium or millions of people glued to the boob tube, watching grown men — very big grown men — battle to cart what looks like a leather melon to the end of a grassy rectangle, that’s asserting individuality and true independent thinking?
Rah rah rah. More beer! Yay!
Don’t judge.
Let me take this to another level.
‘Useful idiot’ is another phrase I’ve been giving serious thought to.
I watched a couple videos the other day, then shared them with a few trusted friends. They were appalled. They’re not speaking to me now.
Okay, what could be so offensive other than a porn movie featuring Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and a freshly disemboweled chimpanzee?
If you think you can handle it, here are two of a whole series of YouTube videos by a minor-genius video blogger by the name of Mark Dice.
Okay . . . if I don’t judge, what then? What exactly do I do?
First, some perspective.
Our heralded democratic system is a great leveler. Every person in those videos, the ones who didn’t know why we celebrate the 4th of July and those who don’t know what country Mount Rushmore is in, has the right to vote. And here’s a truly sobering fact . . . EACH OF THEIR VOTES counts exactly the same as EACH OF OUR VOTES.
Hey, it’s right there in the Constitution! One person, one vote. This is democracy in action, folks! Equality in the voting booth is the oxygen of our amazing political system! Ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between, this is SO INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL . . . I can’t stop crying!
[ 42 minutes later: It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally gotten a grip and will now continue with my touching essay. ]
Political activists are always asking: how can we get people involved, how can we get them engaged, how can we get them to vote, be a part of the solution instead of a part of the problem? That means everyone! Even the sheeple in the videos deserve to have a voice, right?
I’m simplifying but . . .
“Dude! I got some great reefer! If you vote for Bernie Sanders, man I’ll get you so high, you’ll meet Jim Morrison.”
“Hey, you are one fine-looking babe! Listen, do you mind me asking you something?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Did you get a tax refund last year? You know, money back from the government?”
“Not a dime. I should be so lucky.”
“Well, we just found out the government actually owes everyone over $18,000. It has to do with the wars and crazy spending on the military. Do you want hear about it?”
“If you buy me a beer.”
Ridiculous? Implausible?
Actually, here’s the deal. Either we get out there and talk to people or someone else will. And then it will look like . . .
“Let’s make America great again! F*ck the Mexicans. F*ck the Muslims. Kill the Chinese. Kill the Russians.”
Make no mistake about it: USEFUL IDIOTS ARE STILL USEFUL!
To really make you understand and appreciate how important this is, here’s my final thought. Someone in some elevated seat of power, someone with the money and resources to completely shape the future of your world, is thinking that very thing . . .
Pandas are not native to Japan. They’re from China. But Japanese people love them, my wife among their biggest fans. And as close as I can determine, there are eleven of these beautiful, fascinating creatures, living here in Japan right now: seven at Adventure World in Wakayama, one in Kobe, three in Tokyo.
A baby panda was just born in Wakayama this past November. At first they thought it was male, but panda experts arrived from Chengdu, China and on closer examination, little 楓浜 — Fuhin is the name given to the baby panda and you can even watch the naming ceremony on YouTube — turned out to be a female.
Why are panda births such newsworthy events?
Aside from all the usual complications and obstacles which impede successful fertilization and full-term pregnancies, then the newborns striving to survive their frailty the first month or so, giant pandas are only fertile in the spring of each calendar year for 12-25 days, and “in the mood” — receptive to mating — for 2-7 of those days.
Thus typically, a giant panda only gets pregnant every two years.
When baby pandas are born, relative to their mothers, they are very tiny, usually around 100 grams (3 1/2 ounces).
Fuhin is now 4 1/2 months old and it’s almost impossible to believe how much she has grown since the above photo, taken soon after she was born. Here is a very recent video.
Anyway, my lovely wife with her unique fascinations, and I, curious and always open to encounters with new species, set out in a joint pursuit of “panda love”, spending a couple days in Wakayama, a splendid area of Japan to the southeast of Osaka. We saw three giant pandas, but not baby Fuhin, who was still safe in her private quarters, not on public view.
Then ten days later, we went to Kobe to visit Tan Tan, who is a mature 25-year-old female — that’s the equivalent of 60-70 in human years — notable for her very short legs. She has been a favorite among panda watchers for over 20 years now!
Let’s see. That leaves three more to see in Tokyo. Then we’ll just have to go directly to Giant Panda headquarters in Chengdu, China. I’m embarrassed to say that I personally was in Chengdu back in 2009 but didn’t visit the panda breeding center there. What can I say? I only had seven days there and Chengdu is a huge city with a host of very interesting attractions and things to do. I did make it to the Great Wall!
Watch for updates. Our new found panda obsession will not be going away soon.
In the forums for our national conversation, there is no earnest discussion of peace and cooperation now … period! I’m not talking lip service or political posturing. I’m talking REAL DISCUSSION, widespread, inclusive, comprehensive discussion. In the media, by our leaders, among everyday people. NONE!
We have a war economy, a war on terror, troops fighting in seven countries (that we know of), over 800 military bases across the planet, countless secret missions and ops, soon weapons in space, and to add more gasoline to the fire are insulting and openly hostile to Russia and China — apparently to provoke them into a war. We the public are to believe the only available options are how much war and who to attack next.
There are no prominent media platforms, no high-visibility celebrities, no folk or pop songs being aired, no TV shows or movies, no major love-ins/teach-ins/sit-ins, no massive demonstrations, promoting peace.
If spectacle is out of the question because of Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing, an effective peace movement would at bare minimum establish a national conversation about peace with the powerful tools that are available. But the current appeals for peace are a total washout. That’s the reality. There are sparsely-attended Zoom sessions, enthusiastic but isolated and very small clusters of activists, occasional listless street protests, none of which create enough buzz to be news to the greater mass of American citizens. They hear as much about peace now as they hear about powdered wigs.
As for our spokespersons at a federal level, all they officially talk about is “defending our national interest” — whatever that means — and the need for bigger, more powerful, more exotic, more expensive weapons. This salivating for a bigger badder military is bipartisan. Apparently blowing things up, creating animosity, and making more refugees are the only items the Democrats and Republicans can agree on.
But here’s the wrench in the gears of this doomsday machine: The simple, obvious truth is, all of the current talk about the urgent need to extend and expand our military is predicated on completely flawed thinking and a deceptive premise, one that we’re hearing belched out with teeth-gritting hysteria more and more these days.
Here it is:
“We can’t win a war against China or Russia, much less both at the same time.”
Actually yes! This is completely accurate.
BUT THE REAL TRUTH IS, THIS SHOULD BE A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION. Because THEY can’t win a war against us either! It’s a perfect standoff. No one wins. No one loses. Why bother?
What a relief! There will be no war. Right?
Wrong.
Instead, it’s the basis of the further absurd claim that since we can’t beat Russia or China, we are militarily weak, vulnerable, lacking the necessary hardware and fire power. It’s used to promote expanding the military even more.
Where’s the deception? The deception is the wording. It should be: We currently can’t win a war of AGGRESSION against them, attacking them on THEIR soil. The need for the pivot to Asia. Putting NATO troops and missiles on Russia’s borders. Our never-ending wars in the Middle East. Expansion of our military footprint in Africa. Our secret ops everywhere. All of this projection of power “over there” to confront and defeat our “enemies” on their soil, in their waters, in their skies, requires bigger and better weapons, more ships and planes, trillions more dollars to float the bloat.
This sprawl of U.S. fighting forces is predicated false assumption is that WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEFEAT ANYONE, ANYWHERE, AT ANY TIME.
Who voted for this? Did you? I sure didn’t.
This mindset, this thinking comprises the essential core of exceptionalist madness. It’s the sort of delusion and arrogance that brings every empire down. And it obvious that it’s bankrupting our country . . . socially, morally, and economically. The self-sabotaging assumption that the U.S. should rule the planet is at the root of all of our geo-political machinations, misadventures, miscalculations. It’s making us the pariah of the world community and ultimately will destroy our unacknowledged empire from within. We will collapse from the weight of our hubris and recklessness. If we don’t push our adversaries too hard and too fast, ending up with a humiliating defeat on the battlefield, then eventually the waste of so much of our national resources on the pursuit of world empire will eviscerate America from within. We already see the shocking signs disintegration, the destruction of a functioning society every time we turn on the news. Some folks only need to look out their window.
THE BIG PICTURE, THE SOBERING REALITY.
Nothing will change, this self-destructive addiction to a failing world view and foreign policy will not go away, with the incentives now in place to perpetuate war, perpetuate empire, perpetuate the MISCM complex. NOTHING WILL STOP THE MADNESS! Yes, there will be minor adjustments, tinkering, fine-tuning. But it will always be tinkering and fine-tuning an out-of-control military, putting a pretty face on a thuggish foreign policy, and disguising our blood-drenched ham-fisted attempts at world conquest as a visit by the Democracy Fairy.
Most importantly, the policies that have resulted in endless wars, rivers of bloodshed, mountains of corpses, and nation-shattering chaos across the world are choices that the vast majority of everyday citizens NEVER APPROVED OF, NOR WOULD THEY EVER if they truly understood what was happening.
Without a genuine national conversation which at bare minimum focuses on reducing our military footprint and ending our wanton aggression, redefining the role of the military, promoting real peace, seeking genuine partnerships on a whole host of issues that require international cooperation, reaching out (as both China and Russia both do) to create win-win situations based on mutual respect and shared values, our current trajectory — a high-risk flirtation with nuclear war and other epic disasters — will continue unabated.
How do we begin a national conversation which seriously promotes peace?
How do we begin a national conversation which marginalizes or axes the warmongers?
How do we the people insert ourselves into making the decisions that impact our lives and future?
It starts with emptying the seats of those now in power. Then filling them with individuals who are not captured by the psychosis of American exceptionalism, not beholden to the military-industrial-congressional-media complex, committed to representing the interests and promoting the general welfare of all citizens, determined to restore the proper balance of the branches of government as required by the Constitution, and invested in promoting cooperation and peace among the nations of the world community.
For that, we need the full support of at least 150 million everyday citizens, who demand to be heard and treated with dignity and fairness. Enlisting and engaging these individuals is the central goal of the Peace Dividend Project.
Killer Bees!
Killer bees will overwhelm us and end the human race!
Believe it?
There’s a perfect parallel here. This ridiculous scare headline is on a par with the coronavirus panic that’s been manufactured by a new set of bedfellows writhing in a clusterf*ck of hypocrisy and deception: power-hungry government autocrats, the pharmaceutical industry, compromised agencies of the United Nations, a mega-wealthy computer industry mediocrity claiming divine expertise in medical matters, technocratic futurists who hope to game a paradigm-shift — a reset — into global social control, and the usual court jesters and sycophants who inject their mercenary amorality into any opportunity to make a buck.
Yes, people have died from being stung by killer bees. Many people have died due to hyper-sensitivity to stings by more ordinary bees. No one likes getting stung by bees. This does not equate to a massive invasion and humanity-ending assault by bees of any level of aggression. Though if there were money to be made, I have no doubt we’d be treated to a Killer Bee psy-ops and everyone would be looking like this guy to go shopping or to get bee repellant vaccine shots.
A state of emergency would be declared and to “protect us from ourselves”, anyone not wearing the appropriate netting would be fined and/or arrested. Someone taking the garbage out to the curb on collection day, not dressed head-to-toe like they were Netman, the latest Marvel Comics superhero, would be vilified and attacked by shovel-wielding neighbors.
Sound at all familiar? Is it really so much of a stretch?
So what’s going on with the “pandemic”? And please let’s not resort to labels and ideological frameworks. This is not right wing or left wing. It’s not Republican or Democrat. It’s authoritarianism making a beeline for tyranny, and whether it’s “fascism” or “Trumpism” or “communism” or “corporatism” isn’t really relevant. Let’s just call this what it is.
It’s a power grab.
And it’s a money grab.
How do we know? How do we know a real virus has been blown up into a fake pandemic?
Because there are many success stories across the globe fighting this latest disease, the latest pathogenic mischief-maker off the assembly line of misery that’s been churning away the entire course of recorded history. You probably won’t hear about these success stories in the monotone narrative of Covid-19 coverage in the U.S. media. I source news from all over the world and trust me, what’s going on in many other countries is nothing like what is unfolding in the United States of Dysfunction.
I’ll mention two from personal experience. Verifiable because I can see them with my own eyes. I’ve cited the first in public comments and various articles before . . .
Total deaths in Japan 2019: 1.38 million.
Total deaths in Japan 2020: 1.36 million.
Yes, in the raging scourge of a life-threatening coronavirus PANDEMIC, fewer people died in Japan than the year before the world was shrouded in a cloud of Covid-19 “killer bees”.
Secondly, two days ago, my wife talked to a Chinese friend, WHO LIVES IN CHINA. You know, the Kung Flu country, the Wuhan Virus nation of super-spreaders. His report: There’s now not a single case of Covid-19 in Beijing. NOT A SINGLE CASE! The guy is not political. He has no agenda. He’s not a member of the Communist Party there. He’s just stating the facts. His life is COMPLETELY NORMAL.
Actually, my life is completely normal, if you consider eating rice and tofu everyday normal.
Looking now at the big picture, what are we dealing with?
First, recognize that the statistics we’re fed are very suspect. The WHO instructed every nation to attribute the death of anyone who tests positive for the dread virus, whose death can’t be definitively proven to some other cause, as a Covid-19 casualty. So unless you’ve been hit by a bus or fallen into an erupting volcano, if there are Covid-19 antibodies in your system when you die, then that’s a Covid-19 death. Mind you, the whole mechanism for determining if you’re a “case” — meaning you test positive — is totally flawed. The PCR test everyone is using, according to the man himself WHO DESIGNED THE TEST, is inappropriate for this type of diagnosis and unreliable for detection and confirmation of Covid-19 infection.
Then there’s the conflation of ‘cases’ and ‘positive tests’. New cases are reported everyday, with ominous graphics and somber tones by talking heads. But a person can test positive, be completely healthy and unaffected, not even be contagious, and never ever experience any negative consequences from the presence of the virus in their system. For example, we all normally have a number of cancer cells in our bodies and bloodstreams. Our immune system keeps them in check, so we never come down with cancer. The mere detectable presence of a pathogen doesn’t say anything definitive about the onset of a disease. To report anyone who tests positive from a test that isn’t reliable in the first place, as a “case” — letting it be assumed they’re sick, coughing, wheezing, in a hospital, fighting for their lives — is very misleading.
Having said all that, let’s take a look at the official numbers, even though they are at best inaccurate and thus give a very skewed picture of what’s actually going on, with the errors contributing significantly to a sense of crisis and public panic.
It is reported as of today that there are 176,784,418 CASES of Covid-19. The World Population Clock says there are 7.77 billion people in the world. This means, supposedly only 2.275% of the world has even tested positive for the new “plague”. Many, if not most of these folks, aren’t even sick. Now, again recognizing that the number of deaths from Covid-19 stands at 3,826,567. With some basic math, this means .0129% of the world’s people have allegedly DIED of Covid-19, over almost 1 1/2 years.
For some perspective: Do you know how many people died during the real Plague? Well, ONE-THIRD of the population of London died in ONE SUMMER! Between 25,000,000 and 50,000,000 people died in Europe! That come to 30% TO 60% of everyone in Europe at the time. Deaths worldwide are estimated between 75 and 100 million. This was when the total population of the world was only 450 million.
That’s a REAL pandemic! Calling what’s going on now a pandemic is a total distortion of reality. Unfortunately, it’s working and people are panicking.
It could be argued that what we’re doing now is using modern medicine to prevent what might be a potential pandemic. Fine. A potential for something is not the same as the thing itself. There’s a potential the Earth will be struck by a huge asteroid. That’s not the same as the Earth being struck by a huge asteroid. If they made a sudden BREAKING NEWS announcement that the Earth had been hit by an asteroid, because some scientist estimated there was a 3 in 10 billion chance it could happen, they’d be lying. LYING!
Is Covid-19 dangerous? Granted, there are reality-deniers out there who say Covid-19 doesn’t even exist. Well, it’s real. Again just taking the inflated official numbers, 3,826,567 died out of 176,784,418 “cases” of infection. That’s .216% of supposedly infected people actually dying from it. Not 2% . . . but .2%!
The WHO reports the typical death rate from a typical influenza at .1% There are strains of influenza — for example H3N2 classified as a Type A strain — which can be much more lethal. So it looks like Covid-19 is slightly more dangerous than an average case of the flu. Caution and prudence are advised. Every possible treatment should be ready and waiting for anyone who actually contracts the disease.
But Covid-19 is NOT Ebola, Black Death, Hepatitis C, nuclear war, or a giant asteroid.
The startling thing, for me anyway, is that according to “official statistics” dished out by the CDC, the Covid-19 case fatality rate in the U.S. is 3.1%. What? 15 times what it is internationally? Something is wrong. Either the reporting system is screwed up, resulting in completely out-of-whack stats, or health care there is so abysmal, many treatable cases are resulting in unnecessary death. Somebody is not doing their job!
The people who are doing their job and making a killing along the way, are the big wigs running the pharmaceutical companies. And enough is never enough when there’s a raging pandemic of greed. The head of Pfizer says people who have been fully vaccinated with their EXPERIMENTAL and partially tested vaccine, will need a “booster” in 12 months. You see where this is headed?
Things here in Japan are good. People are sane, considerate of others, the government is very careful and measured in everything they’re doing to deal with Covid-19. But the U.S. is a whole different story.
The simple truth — and I’m not going to defend this with charts and piles of statistics because if you don’t even suspect there’s a problem in America or believe that (damn him) it’s all Trump’s fault, there’s no getting through to you anyway — yes, the simple, insulting, appalling, sickening truth is that a completely manageable health crisis has been willfully mishandled, the chaos and calculated social and economic disruption has been created and exploited purely for two obvious sinister intents: 1) bleeding more money out of our economy and us, its citizens; 2) more control, tyranny, and oppression, in order to silence any opposition or resistance to future plunder, i.e. accelerating the transfer of wealth and power upwards to the ruling elite.
So what can we do?
Understand that this whole manufactured crisis is not some fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants affair. It’s brilliantly, if diabolically, engineered for maximum impact. It’s been planned for a long time and they’ve paid attention to the details. Those responsible are not stupid and they’re not messing around. In fact, so much has already unfolded, and so many people gone along with this nonsense, it may be too late.
But we can try.
We must take back our lives. We have to take back our communities, street-by-street, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, church-by-church, local-business-by-local-business.
We are seeing isolated courageous examples of that.
Then we must fight this in the courts. There is even talk about a 2nd Nuremberg tribunal, “against a cadre of international elites responsible for the corona fraud scandal.”
coerced vaccinations and Covid-19 “passports”.
We can’t let the establishment bullies get away with this. And as we see from the recent demonstration in London, people in other countries are waking up to the lockdown scam.
We must try to stop this manufactured crisis. People need to know and defend their rights. Most importantly, we must do everything possible to stand strong against tyranny in any form.
As the brilliant, if gloomy, Chris Hedges says: We do this not because we know we’ll be successful. We do this because it’s the right thing to do.