Remember the bumper sticker, "Question Authority"? I think that is a good idea. The notion of trust "the science" or the "experts" or "our leaders" is a mistake. All these authorities have been captured by the various corporations and industries whose goal is to generate profit from our resulting reactions to their advice. We must think for ourselves using the best evidence at hand...and that requires curating our sources of information.

Neil Oliver discusses the myriad of ways in which we are being conned (10 min)

Neil Oliver: 'It's hard to tell yourself you've been taken for a fool but open your eyes' (11 min)

Caity wrote this week:

Robert Heinlein said, “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.” And from all the facts in evidence currently available to us, that certainly does seem to be the case. We’re destroying our biosphere and moving beyond mere flirtation with nuclear war to full-blown courtship, all to facilitate a status quo that everyone hates and which benefits hardly anybody.
...
We’re on this path because we have systems in place which elevate viciousness. We’re on this path because of the profit motive, because of market forces, because of the kind of people that have been able to elevate themselves to positions of power at this point in spacetime. We’re on this path because media can be used to manipulate human psychology at mass scale using points of mental leverage like fear and tribalism that are evolutionary remnants from times when life was much different. We’re on this path because our species is in an awkward transition phase between the evolution of massive prefrontal cortices in our skulls and the adaptation of a conscious, wholesome relationship with our newfound capacity for abstract thought

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/17/the-human-species-is-acting-like...

What put me on this train of thought is a talk I heard this week from Nina Teicholz, investigative reporter and nutrition specialist. Perhaps no other branch of science is as full of misinformation as nutrition science where the combined interest of big ag/food (making us sick with processed foods) and big pharma (who profits from our illness) collude to misinform the public and mislead doctors. (53 min)

There's a mistaken notion that science is fact. I've even had a member of this community tell me so. If that was true, we would still have only four elements and the Earth would be the center of the universe. Science changes (albeit slowly) as new evidence emerges.

Aseem Malhotra also made a good presentation at the same conference.
Taking Action to Clean Up the Medical Misinformation Mess (1 hour)

However, Aseem's interview on GBNews this week was outstanding. (16 min)

'Everything we had to go on at the beginning was based upon that figure which was exaggerated in terms of its benefits... the information has evolved since then, considerably.' Dr Aseem Malhotra joins Mark Steyn to discuss why he's calling for greater vaccine data transparency.

Asseem is quite outspoken about the state of the medical field in the UK and around the world.
Evidence Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked - Dr Aseem Malhotra | PHC 2019 (40 min)
Too Much Medicine & The Great Statin Con - Dr Aseem Malhotra 2017 conference (46 min)
Eat Real Food, Protect The NHS & Save Lives by Dr Aseem Malhotra 2020 virtual conference (30 min)

Speaking of the UK's NHS, Russell interviewed a doctor about the privatization of this once excellent medical system. Private health care companies are scamming us. (10 min) "Today I'm joined by Dr Bob Gill who tells me all about the privatization of healthcare, how the pandemic response was about profit, big pharma's funding of the FDA and its biased medical research."

Aussie Politician Rages Against COVID Bureaucracy (8 min)

Australian Senator Alex Antic gave a speech recently that caught the Internet’s attention as he railed against the ongoing undermining of personal liberties in the form of COVID restrictions, the abandonment of the people by government and the growing bureaucracy that seeks to secure its own power and funding at the expense of the constituents its ostensibly supposed to serve.

Our small scale food producers are being attacked for not following corporate guidelines...
TPTB are attacking farmers providing healthy real food for their independence. (2 min)

http://www.LeaveThemAlone.com | Tell the feds to leave the Amish farmers alone!
Amos Miller, the farm's owner, contends that he’s preparing food the way God intended — but the United States government doesn’t see things that way. More here.

The Davos minions are floating the myth that cattle are bad for the environment. It isn't the cows, it is the feed lot factory model which is the problem. In fact grazing mammals are being used to restore ecosystems. How Bison Are Saving America's Lost Prairie (8 min)

American prairies were once home to as many as 60 million bison. But when ranching and agriculture displaced elk and bison from the prairies, America’s grasslands all but disappeared. Now, the Nature Conservancy manages the largest remaining protected tract of tallgrass prairie in the entire world, the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northeastern Oklahoma.

This 40,000-acre expanse is much more than grass. It is a biologically rich habitat that harbors a diverse collection of plant and animal species—more than 750 species of flora and 80 different mammals. This prairie is also a vital component in nature’s fight against climate change. The key to keeping the prairie healthy? Bison.

The Nature Conservancy reintroduced 300 bison to this prairie in 1993, and the herd has grown to more than 2,000 animals today. They graze on the majority of the preserve, playing an important part in enhancing the prairies. Combined with a method of land management known as patch burning—preserve managers torch about a third of the acreage every spring, summer, and fall, mimicking ancient seasons of fire—the tallgrass prairie is thriving.

There are many similar restoration stories.

"Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor, mob grazing, can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

To my mind it is US Foreign Policy which needs the most scrutiny. Our domestic problems are founded in part in the fact that we're using most of our resources for war and arms sales. It isn't just the economic cost, but the human suffering resulting on both sides of the many US global conflicts. (4.5 min)

Brandon Bryant is an ex-U.S. Air Force drone operator who enlisted in 2005. He flew thousands of drone strikes and surveillance missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa. After being honorably discharged in 2011, his experiences caused him to suffer from severe mental health issues. In this episode, Bryant shares his experiences in the U.S. military, how he is enlisted, how he was trained at Creech Air Force Base and what happened during his first strike action.

Retired US Army Colonel on Ukraine, Taiwan & the state of the US Empire (39 min)

Lawrence Wilkerson, retired Army Colonel and former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, about foreign policy with a focus on Taiwan and Ukraine. Lawrence Wilkerson served in the U.S. Army for 31 years and is now a distinguished professor of Government & Public Policy at William and Mary College.

A bit more from...
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief-of-staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell in the second Bush administration, gives his thoughts on Axios' recent reporting on Trump's plans (a biased report to my mind) to return to power and the threat to democracy he sees in the Republican Party. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on the threat of Republican Fascism

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

"If we look history in the eye now, what we see is a depletion of economic power in particular and the United States substituting military force for economic power, and that is an extraordinary dangerous situation for most of the world." - Vijay Prashad

The news about the war in Ukraine is getting so fake that even an amateur can debunk it no time.
"The Myrotvorets, says the Washington Post, used "data" [that] "was obtained by Ukraine’s security services". Details published by it were then "confirmed by Ukrainian security officials". This was "corroborated by officials in Western governments" and "reviewed by The Washington Post". That still means that the only source of that alleged 'data' are "Ukraine’s security services" which, as the Washington Post notes, "have an interest in discrediting Russia’s spy agencies". That makes the whole story about the alleged FSB failure a garbage in-garbage out product based on a sole source, the fantasies created by the Ukrainian secret services. Which altogether tells you something about the 'quality' of Ukraine war reporting by the Washington Post."

Tulsi Gabbard discusses the idea of ‘permanent Washington’ (3.5 min). The concept is that politicians have created a permanent bureaucracy within the civil service system.

No wonder...
https://www.justsecurity.org/73213/politicizing-the-civil-service-how-a-...

President Donald Trump unveiled an executive order on October 21, 2020 that threatens to undermine one of the most important aspects of American government: the professional civil service. The new directive instructs agencies to transfer “career employees in confidential policy-determining, policy‑making and policy-advocating” roles into at-will positions under a new Schedule F job classification. The shift will strip career workers of long-standing civil service protections and politicize the career workforce, allowing merit-based employees to be replaced with appointees selected for their political loyalties.

The deep state and dimwits were not happy.

https://truthout.org/articles/illicit-surveillance-and-the-deep-state-an...

“What is it that happened to the US in the last 30 to 40 years such that both parties seem to enact the same policies on big things like militarism, Wall Street, or trade?” While there are considerable differences between the parties on cultural and identity issues, there is very little difference in the big money issues, which is what a certain class of people who run the country are really interested in and that is what I try to explain.
...
Most congresspeople just vote according to what their party leadership tells them. Membership in the deep state in Congress boils down to the leadership and a handful of Defense and Intelligence Committee members. The private part of the deep state is the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about in 1961. There is also Wall Street and its symbiotic relationship with the Treasury and its regulatory agencies, like the SEC [Security and Exchange Commission]. People like Hank Paulson, who worked for [George W.] Bush, or Tim Geithner, who worked for Obama, are essentially interchangeable: Their worldview is much the same despite being of different political parties.
...
There is a symbiotic relationship between the deep state and surface democracy. And the type of person who holds office does matter on the margins. Individual decisions do make a difference. The incentive structures for all concerned tend to be shared in a certain fashion because of careerist best interests. I’m not pointing to some massive conspiracy. All of this is going on in the light of day. Everyone knows who the Koch brothers are, General Dynamics etc. It’s just that most people do not see how it all works as a system and how we’ve been conditioned to look at it.

Alex advice to Russia, kill the EU with kindness, and boost EU tourism in Russia as well as spread a positive view of heir country. (35 min)

Finland begins Russian travel ban. Elensky travel ban. Canceling Bulgakov. Cheney gone.

...reports that both Russia's Putin and China's Xi will attend the G20 Bali summit in person have set off a firestorm of anxiety and angry reaction among Western leaders.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/putin-will-attend-g20-summit-indonesia...

Needless to say, the presence of Xi and Putin at the meeting will set up a showdown with the deep state handlers who control Joe Biden's teleprompter and other, less senile "western" leaders, all of whom are set to meet in person for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The attack has left the G-20 divided over whether to place sanctions on Russia, because while a handful of G-20 countries are relatively self reliant, most are desperate for Russia's commodity exports, whose lack has sent European energy prices to... well, just look for yourselves.

Putin and Jokowi discussed preparations for the G-20 summit in Bali in a phone call Thursday, the Kremlin said in a statement that didn’t mention whether the Russian leader will attend. Putin’s attendance will also likely bring him face to face with Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the first time since Russia’s invasion because for some odd reason the Ukrainian president - who also doubles as a Vogue model - is also slated to be in Bali.

This meeting looks to be interesting. The US and its G7 bitches are out numbered by the other 13 members of the G20 so any action to call out Putin and/or Xi are doomed to fail.

Caity has a clever short play about how we're manipulated about the way we think of China.

John: I’m worried about China.
Jane: Oh yeah? What about it?
John: Well more I’m worried about the example they’re setting, and that western governments will start implementing their technocratic oppression style to turn us all into a bunch of brainwashed, homogeneous obedience machines.
Jane: What makes you think Chinese people are all brainwashed and homogeneous?
John: Oh my God, don’t you watch the news? Have you not heard of their social credit score system? The state censorship and propaganda those people are subjected to? The CCP literally doesn’t let them have access to western social media platforms because our free thought and democratic values might interfere with their conformity policing. How have you not heard about this? It’s in the news constantly.
Jane: Constantly?
John: Oh yeah, it’s like a major news story all the time. All across the political spectrum, too. Fox News, CNN, The Washington Post. Alternative media too like Infowars and The Epoch Times; even lefty YouTubers like Vaush talk all the time about how bad it is in China.
Jane: So because you’re being given the same message by all the western media you consume, you’re worried about the enforcement of thought conformity in… China?
John: Yeah. Of course.
Jane: And this is why you’re worried that, at some point in the future, that kind of brainwashing and homogeneity might someday be inflicted upon us by powerful people in the west?
John: I mean yeah, if the CCP doesn’t do it to us first. Did you know they’re trying to take over the world?
Jane: They are?
John: Oh yeah! The Chinese want to take over the world and give us all a social credit score so we’ll all think the same. How do you not know about this? Don’t you ever watch TV?
Jane: How do you know it’s true though?
John: That they want to conquer us and give us a social credit score? Come on! Open your eyes! Have you seen how they treat their own population? They’re genociding the Uyghurs as we speak! Millions and millions of them in Nazi-style extermination camps! Plus they deliberately released the Covid virus to hurt us after cooking it up in a lab, they’re taking over Hollywood and infiltrating our political and academic institutions, and they’ve colonized the entire continent of Africa! Of course the CCP wants to rule us! Don’t you ever watch Tucker Carlson? They’re truly, deeply evil, and we’ve got to do something to stop them.
Jane: Sounds like you’ve got this China thing all figured out. You’re right, that sounds really scary. I can’t imagine what it would be like, living in a thought-controlled dystopia where your rulers are brainwashing everyone into obedience and making sure everybody thinks the same way about stuff.
John: Yeah! Finally you get it! I’m glad you’ve come around. Honestly you’re the first person I know who didn’t already understand these things about China.
Jane: I’ll bet.
John: So do you think it will happen? Do you think our government will implement a social credit score system to make us all believe lies and propaganda, like the Chinese?
Jane: You know, I wouldn’t worry about it.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/20/im-worried-were-becoming-a-thoug...

It isn't just Trump that was invaded by the FBI...
FBI Raids African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement
FBI agents took aim at a Black liberation organization that has been a sharp critic of the U.S./NATO-backed war in Ukraine.
More here.

“On July 29th the FBI broke into the St. Louis home of African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela and his wife, Ona Zene Yeshitela, drug them into the street and forced them to sit for hours on the curb in handcuffs. They employed similar tactics at the St. Petersburg, Florida and St. Louis offices of the UHURU Movement. These illegal and fascistic attacks are not just an assault on the African People’s Socialist Party/UHURU Movement (APSP) but on the entire Black Liberation Movement.

“These attacks occur now because the U.S. is in the midst of a severe political economic crisis. Domestically, the living conditions, the quality of life of most people are deteriorating. Internationally, U.S. political and economic influence is waning,” stated spokesperson Roger Wareham.

This is typical government over reach.

"What's In The Documents Doesn't Matter" Officials Admit Real Reason They Raided Trump (17 min)

The hypothesis that the FBI was after spygate, Russiagate, Clinton/FBI collusion is floated.

Anti-Trump FBI Squad Put In Charge Of Mar-A-Lago Raid (16 min)

Theories abound regarding the real reason Donald Trump’s Florida home was raided by the FBI, who seized boxes and boxes of documents while searching Trump’s safe and even Melania’s quarters. But one indication might be that the same tactical unit that carried out the raid was also responsible for the Russiagate investigation that turned up bupkis on Trump, so now those same agents are back for another bite at the apple. Did they think they’d find the REAL Russiagate documents? Or maybe documents showing their malfeasance during Trump’s time in office?

Paul Sperry, the investigative journalist, recently reported that Federal agents, who have actively promoted the Russiagate investigation and hold a deep bias against Trump, are now members of the raid searching for classified documents that allegedly "compromised" national security.

Members of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, who ran the Russia "collusion" investigation against President Trump during 2016-2017, codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane," are being probed by Special Counsel John Durham and the bureau’s internal disciplinary arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility for "alleged abuses of power and political bias."

Besides, Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, whose alleged labeling of evidence against Hunter Biden as "disinformation" brought the investigation to a close, is considered a top expert on Russia and nuclear warfare. Republicans fear, and justifiably so, that Auten, a man so biased against Trump, may be allowed to participate in analyzing and determining if the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago have compromised national security. Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has written to FBI Director Christopher Wray to express his concerns.

Other noted members of the raid include Jay Bratt (DNC donor and top counterintelligence official in Justice's national security division) and Alan Kohler (FBI's counterintelligence division head). Bratt had visited Mar-a-Lago in June to inspect the storage facility personally and had taken documents then.

From this article.

Seems Trump was cooperating with an earlier subpoena...

On June 3, the FBI visited Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the requested documents in the subpoena, which Trump complied with, the source told Fox News.

Those investigators toured the area of the Florida resort where some documents were stored, then briefly viewed and took custody of a small amount of potentially sensitive material. Separate sources told Fox News that federal investigators had spoken with at least one person who relayed the possibility of more sensitive national security material in that storage room and other areas of the property.

FBI officials, that day, asked to see a storage facility where the records were located. The FBI asked that staff put a lock on the storage room, which they later did.

This source said Trump and his staff were, and are, committed to being in compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which requires presidential administrations to preserve certain documents.

There is much to question in these days of forever war, poor public health, attacks on farmers, climate chaos and environmental collapse... as media manipulation maintains the confusion and misunderstandings. None of us can get it right all the time. All we can do is use the best sources we can find to try to see our way through all the propaganda, omissions, and outright lies we are force fed in order to make us compliant to the desires of the elite.

The floor is open to any and all questions, comments, observations, and ideas...