Disrupting The Status Quo
[meme creator: unknown]
"Everything is a distraction from the digital prison they're building around us. And it's working. More people are concerned with dumb, divisive bullshit than they are with automation of jobs, digital borders, digital ID's stable coins, 15 minute cities, or social credit scores."
"You'll get hell." How Israeli officials justify using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
A photo essay by Humaira Ahad / PressTV
Israeli policy in Gaza is using starvation as a weapon of war, with regime officials openly advocating blockade tactics to displace, kill, and exterminate Palestinians.
The faces of starvation: Huda used to run barefoot across the courtyard. Now, she slumps against a wall, too weak to stand. She is one of over a million children enduring Israel's starvation campaign in Gaza.
Hunger as a weapon: This is not accidental. Israel has weaponized food, water, and medicine - turning hunger into a method of war. Over 100 Palestinians - 80 of them children - have already died from starvation and dehydration.
A policy with deep roots: "We'll deprive Gaza of water, and the Arabs will leave." - Levi Eshkol, Israeli Prime Minister, 1967. This policy didn't begin in 2023. It's decades old, and now more explicit than ever.
The 'Calorie Limit' strategy: In 2007 Israeli officials calculated the minimum calories Palestinians needed to avoid famine - then blocked food just above that line. "The idea is to put Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger," said Dov Weissglas, advisor to then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Starvation goes public: Today, Israeli officials no longer hide it.
"Starve the Gazans and impose a siege to the max." - MK Moshe Saada
"The food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure." - Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir
"Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza - no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell." -- Gen. Ghassan Alian
Systematic deprivation: Fuel, food, and water are blocked. UN-cleared trucks are turned back or attacked. Officials brag about cutting off Gaza's lifelines.
"We don't give them food - they will have to leave." - Daniella Weiss
Dehumanization: "They are human animals. No electricity. No water. No gas. We are fighting animals." - Top Israeli Generals and Ministers.
This language is used to justify mass starvation.
Gaza's grim choice: "Stay and starve, or leave." That's the ultimatum. Not for Palestinian resistance fighters, but for over 2 million civilians, half of them children.
This is not war. It is extermination by hunger.
[graphic by Dennis Presiloski]
We're bombarded by propaganda during every waking hour. Often it's hard to spot, and it frequently comes from sources we think we can trust. To help you spot when you're being manipulated, here's are nine principles of propaganda. Some of these may have been used on you today. Or if not, be on the lookout tomorrow. Propaganda never takes a day off.
You were born sovereign. Then they gave you a name, a number, a flag, and a master to serve. Freedom wasn't lost. It was taken before you could speak.
story by John Tamney / image by Alexandra Koch
The worst arguments against the lockdowns inspired by the coronavirus were medical and statistical. To see why, it’s worth remembering that as humans we’ve evolved to protect ourselves from death and disease. The taking of freedom to protect us is always and everywhere excess.
The above statement of the obvious requires mention as free thinkers and free-thinking organizations continue to either ignore how they sat out the lockdowns, or worse, excuse their inaction amid a massive bludgeoning of freedom back in 2020. Let’s start with those trying to excuse their inaction.
The not-infrequently offered excuse is that since most organizations and individuals in the libertarian space either weren’t staffed by medical doctors or weren’t medical doctors themselves, how could they have made credible cases against the lockdowns? Instead, and rather than take a stand, they adopted “wait and see” approaches so that medical verdicts could be rendered. About those verdicts, some libertarian types are now saying that those who were publicly against the lockdowns back in 2020 were correct, but they made their cases obnoxiously and blindly given their lack of medical knowledge. The only response to this kind of dissembling is nonsense, utter nonsense. See this write-up’s introductory paragraph to see why.
Just as the worst arguments against the lockdowns were medical and statistical, the medical and statistical arguments made in favor of lockdowns were, if possible, even worse. As stated above, no one requires force to avoid sickness or death. About this point, more on it in a bit.
For now, it should just be said that even if the medical consensus had been correct, that millions and millions of Americans would die absent being forced out of work and into their homes, then any lockdown orders foisted on us by nail-biting politicians would have read as tame relative to the precautions taken by free people. The more threatening anything is, the more superfluous is any kind of policy reaction to the threat.
The simple, overwhelming truth is that people should never have their individual freedom to protect themselves taken from them, period. End of story.
Applying the previous assertion to organizations like Cato, Students for Liberty, and others that seemingly took a “wait and see” approach to the lockdowns, their stances were wrongheaded. Lest they or readers forget, the organizations mentioned were founded on the notion of individual freedom as the foremost ideal. In which case a “wait and see what the science or medical establishment says” is dangerously wrong.
It is simply because, as Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey Tucker has pointed out, politicians at the local, state, and national levels did not take a “wait and see” approach. That they didn’t calls into serious question organizations and individuals sitting on their hands. How could they? Since we know government will never wait and see on anything, what an odd excuse or piece of internal reasoning to explain away a lack of action. It implies that freedom should always be the loser in times of uncertainty, or when politicians are feeling particularly hysterical.
At which point it should be said that freedom is easily the best way to turn the unknowns and uncertainty into true knowledge. So, while libertarian groups and individuals who sat out the lockdowns should reflexively defend freedom every time government is in the process of taking it, it’s useful to add that free people crucially produce information.
Which brings us back to the earlier assertion in this write-up that people don’t need to be forced to avoid sickness or death. Some no doubt responded as they read the latter that some people would in fact have lived, worked, and run their businesses without regard to a spreading virus. To which the answer here can only be precisely.
Precisely because free people will respond in all manner of ways (including disdain) to fears driven by unknowns, we need them to be free. Without millions of different responses, or realistically hundreds of millions of different responses in the US, people (including “experts”) will be blinded to the truth about whatever it is that threatens us, or not. Since free people once again produce information, the only answer to uncertainty about what we don’t know is freedom.
It’s just something to keep in mind in the here and now. Four years ago this month, over 40 million Americans lost their jobs, and hundreds of millions around the world found themselves hurtling toward starvation amid a global panic among politicians. Shamefully and tragically, some of the foremost organizations and individuals devoted to liberty sat out the tragedy and seemingly defend their inaction to this day by hiding behind medicine, science, and a lack of information. The excuses and internal justifications are wholly insufficient. Freedom is its own always and everywhere virtue, period.
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Source: The Brownstone Institute / RealClearMarkets.com
"We must not just talk about freedom. We must live it, and live it by ceasing to cooperate with that which is by the hour now destroying freedom. There are three types of people. Two of the groups are responsible for every tyranny in history. And the third group is responsible for ending every tyranny in history. Group number one: those who mindlessly accept anything authority tells them without question, and they will just do whatever they're told and think whatever they're told to think. Then there is group number two: those who don't want to do what authority tells them, but they're terrified of not doing so because they fear the consequences. Those two groups together have been responsible for every tyranny in history.
Fascism is not imposed by fascists; there's never enough of them. Fascism is imposed by the population acquiescing to fascism. See Nazi Germany. So if anyone says "well what can we do?". Well you can get off your bloody ass, stiffen your backbone, and stop being a bloody wimp - there's a start! Look your children and grandchildren in the eye and tell them what you were doing when fascism was introduced. "Oh I was keeping my mouth shut". And then there's group number three, that has ended every tyranny in history, the true renegades of this human family. Those who see they're being lied to, who see where this is going, and refuse to cooperate. The people who understand the most powerful word in the English language: no, no, no. English language or any other language: no, no, no. Not doing it. Not cooperating.
So, what can we do? There is everything we can do. Stop giving your power to authority, and then you'll see authority never had power in the first place because it was always yours."
--David Icke
[see more at DavidIcke.com]
