54

2024 Is the New 1984: Big Brother and the Rise of the Security Industrial Complex

John & Nisha Whitehead

Big Brother is Watching You.”
George Orwell, 1984

2024 is the new 1984. Forty years past the time that George Orwell envisioned the stomping boot of Big Brother, the police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state.

Fueled by a melding of government and corporate power—the rise of the security industrial complex—this watershed moment sounds a death knell for our privacy rights.

An unofficial fourth branch of government, the Surveillance State came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military.

It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.

This is the new face of tyranny in America: all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful.

Tread cautiously.

Empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector, the Surveillance State is making the fictional world of 1984, Orwell’s dystopian nightmare, our looming reality.

1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”

Indeed, in our present age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives.

Everything is increasingly public.

What we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.

This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.

In this way, 1984, which depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism, has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.

There are roughly one billion surveillance cameras worldwide and that number continues to grow, thanks to their wholehearted adoption by governments (especially law enforcement and military agencies), businesses, and individual consumers.

Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices.

Stingray devices, facial recognition technology, body cameras, automated license plate readers, gunshot detection, predictive policing software, AI-enhanced video analytics, real-time crime centers, fusion centers: all of these technologies and surveillance programs rely on public-private partnerships that together create a sticky spiderweb from which there is no escape.

With every new surveillance device we welcome into our lives, the government gains yet another toehold into our private worlds.

As the cost of these technologies becomes more affordable for the average consumer, an effort underwritten by the tech industry and encouraged by law enforcement agencies and local governing boards, which in turn benefit from access to surveillance they don’t need to include in their budgets, big cities, small towns, urban, suburban and rural communities alike are adding themselves to the surveillance state’s interconnected grid.

What this adds up to for government agencies (that is, FBI, NSA, DHS agents, etc., as well as local police) is a surveillance map that allows them to track someone’s movements over time and space, hopscotching from doorbell camera feeds and business security cameras to public cameras on utility poles, license plate readers, traffic cameras, drones, etc.

It has all but eliminated the notion of privacy enshrined in the  Fourth Amendment and radically re-drawn the line of demarcation between our public and private selves.

The police state has become particularly adept at sidestepping the Fourth Amendment, empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector.

Over the past 50-plus years, surveillance has brought about a series of revolutions in how governments govern and populations are policed to the detriment of us all. Cybersecurity expert Adam Scott Wandt has identified three such revolutions.

The first surveillance revolution came about as a result of government video cameras being installed in public areas. There were a reported 51 million surveillance cameras blanketing the United States in 2022. It’s estimated that Americans are caught on camera an average of 238 times every week (160 times per week while driving; 40 times per week at work; 24 times per week while out running errands and shopping; and 14 times per week through various other channels and activities). That doesn’t even touch on the coverage by surveillance drones, which remain a relatively covert part of police spying operations.

The second revolution occurred when law enforcement agencies started forging public-private partnerships with commercial establishments like banks and drug stores and parking lots in order to gain access to their live surveillance feeds. The use of automatic license plate readers (manufactured and distributed by the likes of Flock Safety), once deployed exclusively by police and now spreading to home owners associations and gated communities, extends the reach of the surveillance state that much further afield. It’s a win-win for police budgets and local legislatures when they can persuade businesses and residential communities to shoulder the costs of the equipment and share the footage, and they can conscript the citizenry to spy on each other through crowdsourced surveillance.

The third revolution was ushered in with the growing popularity of doorbell cameras such as Ring, Amazon’s video surveillance doorbell, and Google’s Nest Cam.

Amazon has been particularly aggressive in its pursuit of a relationship with police, enlisting them in its marketing efforts, and going so far as to hosting parties for police, providing free Ring doorbells and deep discounts, sharing “active camera” maps of Ring owners, allowing access to the Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal, which enables police to directly contact owners for access to their footage, and coaching police on how to obtain footage without a warrant.

Ring currently partners with upwards of 2,161 law enforcement agencies and 455 fire departments, and that number grows exponentially every year. As Vice reports, “Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.”

In November 2022, San Francisco police gained access to the live footage of privately owned internet cameras as opposed to merely being able to access recorded footage. No longer do police even have to request permission of homeowners for such access: increasingly, corporations have given police access to footage as part of their so-called criminal investigations with or without court orders.

The fourth revolutionary shift may well be the use of facial recognition software and artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics, clothing, behavior and car, thereby synthesizing the many strands of surveillance video footage into one cohesive narrative, which privacy advocates refer to as 360 degree surveillance.

While the guarantee of safety afforded by these surveillance nerve centers remains dubious, at best, there is no disguising their contribution in effecting a sea change towards outright authoritarianism.

For instance, as an in-depth investigative report by the Associated Press concludes, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.

As the AP reports, federal officials have also been looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.

These cameras—and the public-private eyes peering at us through them—are re-engineering a society structured around the aesthetic of fear and, in the process, empowering “people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers,” creating not just digital neighborhood watches but digital gated communities.

Finally, there is a repressive, suppressive effect to surveillance that not only acts as a potentially small deterrent on crime but serves to monitor and chill lawful First Amendment activity.

As Matthew Feeney warns in the New York Times, “In the past, Communists, civil rights leaders, feminists, Quakers, folk singers, war protesters and others have been on the receiving end of law enforcement surveillance. No one knows who the next target will be.

No one knows, but it’s a pretty good bet that the surveillance state will be keeping a close watch on anyone seen as a threat to the government’s chokehold on power.

After all, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Surveillance State never sleeps.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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moneycircus
moneycircus
Feb 15, 2024 5:34 PM

The “Russians, Chinese and Americans are all in it together” narrative is straight out of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

It raises one unavoidable question: if the all the countries are “in this together” who is coordinating it?

Andy
Andy
Feb 16, 2024 4:45 AM
Reply to  moneycircus

My money is on that Family no one ever mentions, who can poke future kings in the chest, get their own country from servile politicians and make their own money. The richest family in the world that are too rich for ” the richest family in the world ” lists. That family.

Human values
Human values
Feb 15, 2024 11:59 AM

”This is the new face of tyranny in America: all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful.”

”In this way, 1984, which depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism, has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.”

You’re describing the tyranny of the state and money as ”all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful” and ”omnipresent”. But it’s nothing like that. Only God is ”all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful” and ”omnipresent”. When the Devil is being described as God, the Devil is being given way too much power.

The world of sin is coming to an end, and that’s the reality of these things. The world of sin will not be saved. Everything in the Devil belongs in Hell, and that’s where it’s going.  

Wiylu6
Wiylu6
Feb 15, 2024 2:07 AM

What’s unsurprisingly absent from this biased narrative (propaganda) of “Big Brother and the Rise of the Security Industrial Complex” is the real fact that the general public has made this “rise” possible and even nurtured it, largely through their apathetic willful behavior:

“In terms of the blanket global utilization of “intelligent” mobile phones, some individuals had pointed out that it’s the first time in human animal history where the slaves happily (i.e., in blissful opted ignorance) carry their own chains (i.e., their own invisibilized “smart” chains).

It is a giant standardizing habit that has been, and is, exhibited daily by the willful machine-like collective self-incarcerators on the road into a fully controlled global electronic concentration camp [246,282,317].” (from The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room –The Holocaustal Covid-19 Coronavirus Madness: A Sociological Perspective & Historical Assessment Of The Covid “Phenomenon”)

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Feb 14, 2024 10:43 PM

Try and be nice, try and help – can I help you here – you know like most people are in Oldham

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Feb 14, 2024 10:22 PM

Eventually you get bored with all this manic genocide on our tv screens and in our newspapers – and whilst slowly recovering from Sepsis (close to death)…she goes to see the New Bob Marley Film at The Cinema, whilst I was telling her about “Life After Life” – a bit like a Groundhog film..She said “Ursula” – Already read the book and seen it..

She’s lovely – Keep up.

Do you believe in that philosophy too???

Basically it is that Time is not a Straight Line. It does not start from zero and go to infinity.

It comes back again.

We both love live music from all over the World – sure if I come back again and from death, and time stops working from my point of I would love to become aware of sucking my own thumb in my mothers womb and hear children….

wtf is that – as they look at mum and dad…

Baby brother – Mum and Dad Still Make Love

I am still here 70 year later and my wife is really nice

“Bob Marley & The Wailers – Jammin'”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WlCdiU9IzA

Tony

NikkiBop
NikkiBop
Feb 14, 2024 3:02 PM

I absolutely despise Facebook and would never use it if organizations I belong to didn’t use it exclusively for announcements. What shocks me is that people expose every second of their lives on this platform. And I mean everything. And thousands of long winded comments. Personally I think the majority love and want the attention that surveillance provides. I honestly don’t think the majority care one hoot about the cameras.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 14, 2024 7:48 PM
Reply to  NikkiBop

Facebook is average Joe’s Celebrity News. Average Joe is no longer a nobody but a Media star.

Paul
Paul
Feb 14, 2024 9:26 PM
Reply to  NikkiBop

They are too stupid to comprehend evil.

Roger
Roger
Feb 14, 2024 7:31 AM

To solve the 1930’s style stagnation in our economies and our politics we must

Tackle the Shadow Bankers and the exorbitant privilege of currency creation for soley private corporate gain.
The Magic Money tree by Roger G Lewis
https://grubstreetinexile.substack.com/p/the-magic-money-tree-magicmoneytree?utm_campaign=post&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Elizabeth Lease
Wall Street Owns The Country
A Speech by Mary Elizabeth Lease (circa 1890)

This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country.

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM BY EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN.
Keep America in Germany down and russia out. The World island and Oligarchical collectivism.

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM BY EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN.
Orwell took inspiration from Trotsky’s book a revolution betrayed, written in exile before his unfortunate appointment with the ice pick.

The history of the war with east asia recounted by Emmanuel Goldstein in the

The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oligarchical_Collectivism

Is almost a potted and labelled compote of the current War drums narrative.

“A heavy black volume, amateurishly bound, with no name or title on the cover. The print also looked slightly irregular. The pages were worn at the edges, and fell apart easily, as though the book had passed through many hands. The inscription on the title-page ran:[1]THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM
by
Emmanuel Goldstein”

The term “oligarchical collectivism” refers not only to the ideology of the Party Ingsoc (English Socialism) but also to the ideologies of the other two states (Neo-Bolshevism in Eurasia; in Eastasia, “Death Worship” or “Obliteration of the Self”). Winston reads two long excerpts establishing[2] how the three totalitarian super-states – Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia – emerged from a global war, thus connecting the past and the present, and explains the basic political philosophy of the totalitarianism that derived from the authoritarian political tendencies manifested in the twentieth century. That the three “opposing” ideologies are functionally identical is central to the revelations of The Book.

“private capital (usurious, commercial and industrial). These functions of money, however, bound up as they are with exploitation, are not liquidated at the beginning of a proletarian revolution, but in a modified form are transferred to the state, the universal merchant, creditor and industrialist”. Trotsky

p.117-9.126

Chapter I
Ignorance is Strength
Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age,
there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, an

the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless
different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards
one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society
has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable
changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will
always return to equilibnum, however far it is pushed one way or the other

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the
High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places
with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim — for it is an
abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery
to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives —
is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.
Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs
over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power,
but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their
belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are
then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending
to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have
reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position
of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group
splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle
begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily
successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that
throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today,
in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he
was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners,
no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer.
From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much
more than a change in the name of their masters.
By the late nineteenth century the recurrence of this pattern had become
obvious to many observers. There then rose schools of thinkers who interpreted
history as a cyclical process and claimed to show that inequality was the unalter-
able law of human life. This doctrine, of course, had always had its adherents,
but in the manner in which it was now put forward there was a significant
change. In the past the need for a hierarchical form of society had been the
doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats
and by the priests, lawyers, and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it
had generally been softened by promises of compensation in an imaginary world
beyond the grave. The Middle, so long as it was struggling for power, had al-
ways made use of such terms as freedom, justice, and fraternity. Now, however,
the concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not
yet in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the
past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then
had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown. The
new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand. Socialism,
a theory which appeared in the early nineteenth century and was the last link
in a chain of thought stretching back to the slave rebellions of antiquity, was
118

still deeply infected by the Utopianism of past ages. But in each variant of So-
cialism that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty
and equality was more and more openly abandoned. The new movements which
appeared in the middle years of the century,

https://grubstreetinexile.substack.com/p/the-theory-and-practice-of-oligarchical

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 14, 2024 6:46 AM

Governments are certainly not too concerned about budgets or evading the need for warrants. Whether the party spending on a service or asset is the government, a “public-private partnership”, a business or citizens – or whether data collected is of any use – the cronies win.

Johnny
Johnny
Feb 14, 2024 3:29 AM

Dinner, at the Sheeple’s house:

comment image

mastershock
mastershock
Feb 14, 2024 10:31 AM
Reply to  Johnny

Disappointed!!! as they was not 2 meters apart! social distancing.

May Hem
May Hem
Feb 14, 2024 8:33 PM
Reply to  mastershock

How do they eat through the masks?

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 15, 2024 4:58 AM
Reply to  May Hem

The virus is smart and aware of government restrictions. It does not attack when you are seated to eat, especially if you just lowered your mask to swallow.

Ort
Ort
Feb 15, 2024 8:55 PM
Reply to  mgeo

This is gratifying. If I am compelled to believe in the existence of viruses, I prefer to believe in viruses that are civilized and respect the laws of warfare. 👍 🦠

hotrod31
hotrod31
Feb 15, 2024 3:36 AM
Reply to  Johnny

Like it! … I swear that I know some of these people 😉 might even be some of my rellies …

May Hem
May Hem
Feb 14, 2024 2:08 AM

Off topic but couldn’t resist posting this …. World Economic Fools have proposed a ban on home gardens.  They say, “The carbon footprint of homegrown foods is five times greater than produce from conventional agricultural practices,such as rural farms, data show.”

Fruit is apparently 8.6 times more eco-friendly when grown by government-controlled agencies, and vegetables are 5.8 times safer for the planet when grown under the same conditions. Tomatoes and asparagus were the only produce they identified as safe to grow at home. “We find that urban farmers and gardeners can reduce their net impact by focusing on foods that are high-carbon in conventional agriculture,” one of the study’s researchers claims.   

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/great-reset/wef-proposes-ban-on-gardening/

Johnny
Johnny
Feb 14, 2024 4:06 AM
Reply to  May Hem

Oops, better start concreting the backyard.

Elongated Muskrat
Elongated Muskrat
Feb 14, 2024 8:50 AM
Reply to  Johnny

They say if you eat cement straight out of the bag it’s 20.5 times more nutritious and packed with minerals and vitamins than fruits and vegetables. If the powder is a bit too fine and you need roughage a generous helping of aggregate goes a long way…

Johnny
Johnny
Feb 14, 2024 9:51 AM

Approved by all dental associations.

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 15, 2024 4:59 AM
Reply to  Johnny

Like mercury fillings and fluoride toothpaste.

Veri Tas
Veri Tas
Feb 14, 2024 10:03 PM
Reply to  May Hem

Better start a veg garden, then.

Junious Ricardo Stanton
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Feb 13, 2024 11:42 PM

In addition to the mass surveillance the writer mentions, don’t forget the Trojan Horses of the monopoly social media that people willingly but uncritically bring into their spaces that shows where they are, what they are doing, eating, who they are with and provide insight into their lifestyles, values and consciousness.

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 14, 2024 6:26 AM

If a group of people want to collectively provide constant surveillance, the government will scoop it up.

Junious Ricardo Stanton
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Feb 13, 2024 11:31 PM

In addition to US mass surveillance we are also living in an era where the social media Trojan Horses show the world where we are, what we are doing, eating and provide an indication of people’s priorities and a window into their lifestyle.

Johnny
Johnny
Feb 13, 2024 11:24 PM

Big ‘Mutha’ would be a more accurate description.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 13, 2024 10:53 PM

Fear porn. Solutions? None! Its up to you to do something.  😘 

Ort
Ort
Feb 13, 2024 8:33 PM

I don’t have books to flog, but here are two recycled comments related to public acceptance, even clamor, for surveillance-based technology for convenience, and pervasive, ubiquitous police surveillance for public safety and security:
_______________________________________

A while back, I was riding with someone who drives a lot, and seems to have the conventional optimistic belief in, and admiration for, technological progress. He is a career educator, with the obligatory advanced degrees and devotion to The New York Times that qualify him as a member of the US intelligentsia.

We were on a toll road, and he burst forth with the prediction that before too long, EZ-Passes [electronic cards that expedite passing through toll-collection stations] would become obsolete because all vehicles would be identified and tracked as soon as they were started– i.e., when the driver turned the key (or entered the keycode) and the vehicle’s onboard Internet-connected computer system powered up.

He thought that actual real-time tracking capability in this “innovation” might start selectively on major highways, but eventually would become universal.

He was looking forward to it; for instance, he crowed, there would be no need for traffic-snarling obstacles like toll booths, paying as you go, etc. All of the tolls would be automatically registered and charged to a driver account, and so forth; drivers and their vehicles would consequently freed up to zip along efficiently. It was manifestly a win-win scenario.

Yeah, I remonstrated, but wouldn’t this require a sort of Department of Transportation Panopticon? And wouldn’t it have to be a national panopticon, since vehicles cross state lines? That’s exactly what we were doing at the time; the driver has a seashore condo, and frequently drives back and forth from his home in the adjoining state and the condo.

He agreed. He still can’t wait. He doesn’t see a down side to imposing a centralized, benevolently totalitarian “solution”. Apparently he thinks it will be more fun than the status quo.
_______________________________________

Some time ago, an innocent bicyclist was randomly set upon and brutally assaulted by a group of thugs on one of Philadelphia’s riverside drives. It was indeed one of those ugly, pointless acts of wanton ultra-violence.

Afterwards there was much discussion about whether a system of surveillance cameras should be installed along these parkways, which include grassy areas bordering the Schuylkill River and have long been family-friendly recreational areas.

Eventually, the original public outrage and media coverage diminished and this proposal fizzled out because municipal, state, and federal authorities squabbled over the funding source; no one could propose an acceptable way to pay for it. But public opinion was solidly pro-surveillance. Everyone featured in local news “Man Person in the Street” interviews wanted those cameras, and many indignantly complained that they should’ve been put up long ago!
_______________________________________

Back to the present: I wish it were otherwise, but my sense is that much of the public remains oblivious or indifferent to the authoritarian nature and implications of the emergent Security Industrial Complex. The naïve and fearful Everypersons assume that total surveillance is desirable and necessary to control and deter the Bad Guys, and law-abiding and fiscally solvent Good Citizens should welcome the Surveillance State because they have nothing to, er, fear from it. 👁 🤨

niko
niko
Feb 13, 2024 8:10 PM

Oh, they’re really coming for us this time! So say our professional gatekeepers, on and on and on. I’ve been hearing this storyline my whole life, like mind numbing alarm over the inevitable of things getting worse and worse. It’s the ever revised same old same old ad nauseam, embellished boilerplate peddled by opinion makers and shakers serving as the loyal critics of the way things are, and ever shall be, whose cries of alarm generally correlate with whether their toes are finally getting stepped on in the chains of command.  

Those let off their leashes a little more than the rest of us proles love to carry on and on, au courant, about the latest current threats to freedom while the masses keep toiling under wage slavery, where even the slightest sigh of free speech on the job might cost you dearly, far beyond career concerns floating above hand-to-mouth earning-a-living, where we’re bought and sold as labor commodities under constant conditions of precarity. They’re in business (buyer beware) selling illusion of opinion making a difference in a social system where “power comes out of the barrel of a gun,” as Chairman of the Board Mao instructed.

The one if only difference made in history when it comes to ‘our rights’ is when labor power rises as subjects and agents of our own lives to resist the way things are as laid down by the powers that (shouldn’t) be, and catch a revolutionary wave to resist the tide determined by rule-of-law rackets legitimating organized crimes against humanity. Not as bourgeois anarchists imagine some libertarian alternative, but as the real movement of critical masses in deliberate motion like an army of the dispossessed striking at the roots of class war, ready to take back what’s been stolen from us all as the earth’s commons, our birthright. Without that, all we’re left with is commentary masking permanent suffering and struggle just to survive, with souls intact, “this filthy, rotten system” (Dorothy Day).

Capitalism (still) is the crisis: “The free market mythology argues that the most ruthless, selfish, opportunistic, greedy, calculating plunderers applying the most heartless measures in cold blooded pursuit of corporate interests…will produce the best results for all of us.” (Michael Parenti)

Roger
Roger
Feb 13, 2024 7:19 PM

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM BY EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN.
Keep America in Germany down and russia out. The World island and Oligarchical collectivism.

Orwell took inspiration from Trotsky’s book a revolution betrayed, written in exile before his unfortunate appointment with the ice pick.
The world island theory of geopolitics, parallels to both ww1 Ww2 and even the Crimean war including the London newspaper and media rhetoric show how tediously repetitive this inbred establishment great game behaviour is.
Mecouris was good on this Great Game point yesterday on the Duran.

See at 10.37
https://www.youtube.com/live/eJNg5OwM6VU?si=1Irq7oGZ7d3xZXQ-

Richard Pinder
Richard Pinder
Feb 13, 2024 6:30 PM

1984: The Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty are the four ministries

2024: The Ministry of Trust, the Ministry of Security, the Ministry of Hope, and the Ministry of Wealth are the four ministries

Paul
Paul
Feb 13, 2024 6:11 PM

Rinse and repeat fear porn we’ve already wanked over.

Johnny
Johnny
Feb 13, 2024 11:14 PM
Reply to  Paul

Speak for yourself Portnoy _ _ _ _ __ _ I mean Paul.

Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Feb 13, 2024 5:28 PM

The mistake everyone makes is assuming that ‘the government’ rules the country. It does, but its only one part of the entire state apparatus. We tend to forget that while governments change the policy makers don’t and they’re largely the eyes and ears of politicians. (This concept was the basis of the British comedy series “Yes, Minister”, widely regarded by many as more of a documentary than a sitcom.)

For those that think this can’t be true or something its worth listening to Hannity’s interview with Vladimir Putin. At least a couple of times situations were recounted where a general course of action was informally agreed on in meetings with US Presidents only to be completely reversed once they’d listened to their advisers. Since these actions were all along the lines of “lowering the temperature” and the reversals were just “business as usual” it led to the obvious question about who, exactly, is in charge. (Based on my own observations over many decades the same names keep cropping up decade after decade so in a way its not surprising that the same policies crop up — policy making has become institutionalized).

Ort
Ort
Feb 13, 2024 8:04 PM
Reply to  Martin Usher

Hannity’s interview with Vladimir Putin. 

NixonScraypes
NixonScraypes
Feb 13, 2024 4:47 PM

Old scrolls and testaments mention The Watchers…. we’ve been here before.

underground poet
underground poet
Feb 13, 2024 10:48 PM
Reply to  NixonScraypes

He is the eye in the sky, looking at you who who, he can read your mind.

He is the maker of rules, dealing with fools, he could cheat you blind.

NixonScraypes
NixonScraypes
Feb 14, 2024 10:47 AM

It,not he. Neither you nor me, nor any living soul. It is I.T. sexless artificiality on it’s grim patrol.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 13, 2024 11:00 PM
Reply to  NixonScraypes

What is new is the Snatchers………nobody have been there before. Strange people…coming.
Just saying https://youtu.be/MXYg18AS3pA

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 14, 2024 1:09 AM
Reply to  Erik Nielsen

……body Snatchers, first the Watchers eye, then the body Snatchers snatch your body.
This is the reality we are living in today.

NixonScraypes
NixonScraypes
Feb 14, 2024 10:36 AM
Reply to  Erik Nielsen

The organ harvesters. A tweet from Richard Werner alerted me to the fact that organs have to come from the living to be viable for transplant. This unsettling information ratified my refusal to sign away my organs, which I had deep suspicions about anyway.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 14, 2024 2:11 PM
Reply to  NixonScraypes

Happy to see you reflect on being presented for real life info.

My last trusted ngo was MSF – Médecins Sans Frontières.
Wauw some doctors and nurses doing voluntary work for the wounded and sick in the third world.
Until I found out it was all about organ trading and fat profit….again.
All Western ngo’s are trojan horses and false flags promising democracy and humanity.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 14, 2024 7:26 PM
Reply to  NixonScraypes

It reminds me of the legal responsibility of signing a contract. I met some of the excuses for taking the jabs.

The religious worshippers pointed at the Book of Romans chapter 13 where it says Believers should obey Authorities, others were of the opinion the Authorities/Employers had demanded them to take it.

But the truth is, even in China to my info, the jabs was in writing purely voluntary. Yes with some uncomfortable and unpleasant consequences.
Thus legally the person is legal responsible for his “by own free will” injections.

So, your reaction to sign off to transplants in writing, while you are still alive, is understandable.

But how revealing it is, that many people find the religious verse and excuse that fits into their illusion.

Human values
Human values
Feb 15, 2024 11:53 AM
Reply to  Erik Nielsen

Romans 13 is mistranslated in most Bibles. The original speaks of God being the authority, as God is all-powerful and has all the power to the soul. So the original text speaks of heavenly or spiritual things, and the mistranslated parts have twisted the whole idea into obedience to secular governments, men, money.

Evil men with money have made many alterations to the Bible. And as long as people are stupid enough to believe words in a book rather than God, it’s working. Hence, the world belongs to Satan.

Governments are groups of some people against everyone else. Governments work for the state, which is a violent, evil organization. They protect money, which is a creation of these evil men. They are all in darkness. They have no understanding of light.

As the Bible speaks of spirit and spiritual matters, the ungodly make it into physical, bodily matters. As the Bible speaks of God’s truth and goodness, the ungodly think God is not God but some man.

Christianity in its mainstream forms has made God (eternally immutable Spirit) into a man of history, the eternally blissful Spirit into a suffering male person.

As people worship these man-made things instead of God, the world is going to Hell.

But that’s actually a good thing. Hell is where the Devil belongs.

Here’s a literal translation of Romans 13 that doesn’t contain obedience to government or paying taxes. I’m not saying this translation is perfect, but just pointing out the obvious mistranslations in many other Bible versions.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+13&version=YLT

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 15, 2024 5:07 AM
Reply to  NixonScraypes

The ever-concerned medical industry would never remove your organs without first declaring you brain-dead.

If hospitalised for any “procedure”, check at least the title of each form they ask you to sign. If it looks suspicious, just write this above your signature: “No organ donation”.

Jean
Jean
Feb 13, 2024 12:58 PM

And most of my family members find it cool to have Alexa at home. 🙄

citizen
citizen
Feb 13, 2024 4:07 PM
Reply to  Jean

Probably one of the greatest con tricks, the front businesses masquerade as private businesses only to fuse with state entities. If the state marketed alexas at people then maybe some would be a bit concerned, but, amazon etc can do it and no one bats an eyelid even though its the same result.

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 14, 2024 6:41 AM
Reply to  citizen

That is the difference between the evil totalitarian governments and the Free World©.

Paul
Paul
Feb 13, 2024 6:15 PM
Reply to  Jean

Lol funny isn’t it. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to see what you would have to say or do to have the gestapo come round. I doubt it would take much. And yet these people have no idea that literally, big brother is watching / listening.

mgeo
mgeo
Feb 14, 2024 6:39 AM
Reply to  Jean

A smart fridge would purportedly order more supplies when they run low inside it. A smart home would purportedly switch on the HVAC and lights shortly before you get home. That these ideas are not ridiculed does not bode well.

k mc
k mc
Feb 13, 2024 12:07 PM

Of course the security if to protect them, not us..

underground poet
underground poet
Feb 13, 2024 12:01 PM

Don’t be fooled, its the security of the system its self they are privately referring to, publically its about the publics security though, democracy, don’t you love it?

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Feb 13, 2024 11:24 PM

Exactly. Its the security system they try to protect from invasive features causing malfunction of the security system.
A billion will be employed to correct security holes, Trojan horses, viruses, system errors, wrong language.
The info the public deliver through all these devices is just an excuse to constantly correct the Security system to keep it updated and secure.
https://youtu.be/s_spR-n8Els Why is Sisyphus happy?