Tag: fear mongering

The Politics Of Fear: Laying The Groundwork For Fascism, American-Style

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”

– Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions.

The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.

Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation—one that has been spreading like wildfire—is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live.

Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of conformists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government, fear of those on the Right, fear of those on the Left… The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

Fear makes people stupid.

Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.

Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail. 

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams.

America has already entered a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of their so-called “anti-government” views, and law-abiding Americans are having their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented, and their communications monitored.

These threats are not to be underestimated.

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Authors of a big new paper on Covid’s heart risks presented its results in a misleading way likely to scare people the paper itself shows are not in danger

On Wednesday, the Cleveland Clinic released frightening news:

“History of COVID-19 Doubles Long-term Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke and Death”

The renowned medical center was publicizing new research led by Dr. Stanley Hazen, one of its top physicians. He and other scientists examined the medical records of people infected with Covid in 2020 and found they had twice the risk of serious cardiovascular problems as uninfected people through 2024.

The National Institutes of Health, which funded the work, also put out a release warning Covid-19 “increased risk of heart attack [and] stroke up to three years later.” CNN and other media outlets also reported on the research with similar language.

In the Cleveland Clinic press release, Dr. Hazen did not sugarcoat the dangers. “The findings reported are not a small effect in a small subgroup,” he said. “[They] point to a finding of global healthcare importance that promises to translate into a rise in cardiovascular disease globally.”

Except they don’t. Hazen’s promise isn’t true.

The study’s real findings are very different than the frightening headlines.

For the vast majority of people who have had Covid, the research offered reassuring results. It showed essentially no increase in risk in heart attacks, strokes, or deaths for them.

Yet Hazen and his co-authors are not outright lying about what they found in their paper, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.

To run the study, they looked for Covid infections among British adults in 2020 a large database called UK Biobank. They came up with about 10,000 adults who had had Covid, and compared them to a group of about 220,000 adults who had not.

They found that over the next three years1, the 10,000 infected people were more likely than the uninfected control group to have heart attacks, strokes or die — an endpoint called MACE, or major adverse cardiovascular events.

As the paper reported, “the risk of MACE was elevated in COVID-19 cases at all levels of severity (HR, 2.09).” [emphasis added, keep that phrase in mind]

But. Hazen and the study’s other authors published and discussed the results in a way that hide a crucial fact.

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The climate fear-mongering enterprise behind the Planetary Boundaries to stabilise population growth

There is nothing new about fear-mongering propaganda being disseminated by politicians and corporate media, but they are now joined by “scientists.”

A fair amount of catastrophic climate change propaganda has made its way into the scientific method and perhaps in no venue more clearly than the Planetary Boundaries framework, Dr. Jessica Weinkle writes and explains where it comes from and what is driving the narrative.

Last month we published an article that brought attention to the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (“FAO’s”) roadmap to achieve its “global commitment to transform agrifood systems.”  The FAO is an agency of the United Nations.

To publicise this scheme, in January, FAO chief economist Maximo Torero Cullen said a roadmap is necessary because “we are violating six of the nine planetary boundaries.”

In September, 20 scientists funded by the European Research Council, the German government, the Carlsberg Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation published a paper “establishing” 9 planetary boundaries. They determined that 6 of their 9 boundaries had been “crossed.”

As we read Dr. Weinkle’s article below about what is behind the Planetary Boundaries narrative, we should bear in mind that she also writes for The Breakthrough Institute, whose funders include some of the usual suspects driving the false climate change crisis narrative, such as Profiteer Bill Gates (see ‘About the Author’). Why is this relevant? For one thing, while people may feel free to expose nefarious actors, there is the possibility that this freedom might be limited to those who do not fund them.

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How (and why) Bird Flu is About to Enter the “Mass Testing” Phase

The wall-to-wall coverage of Bird Flu is getting wallier-to-wallier with each passing week, to the point it’s almost hard to keep up with the waves of hot takes and chilling insights. But if you’re going to try, the best place to do it is right here, where I spend a good portion of my time reading very similar articles in very similar papers all about the danger of a pandemic they’re about to pretend is happening.

Not a dream of mine growing up, but life’s like that.

Anyway…bird flu.

In our last bird flu update, we pointed out that the “bird flu death” in Mexico was very likely no such thing, and that reporting it as such was right out of the Covid playbook.

Since then the head of Mexico’s Health Ministry has criticized the WHO for calling it a bird flu death at all.

But the big bird flu news is that former head of the US CDC Robert Redfield has gone hysterical, telling NewsNation:

I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time, it’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic.”

This story was naturally picked up and spread everywhere, but Redfield is hardly alone in this hysterical panic-fueling nonsense.

Last week, The Conversation headlined:

An ounce of prevention: Now is the time to take action on H5N1 avian flu, because the stakes are enormous

USA Today echoes the tone:

Concerns grow as ‘gigantic’ bird flu outbreak runs rampant in US dairy herds

Apparently a new study has found something scary – Americans “have little to no pre-existing immunity to the H5N1 avian flu”. Frightening stuff.

Just a few hours ago the Daily Mail reported on yet another doctor doling out yet another dire warning. This time Dr Rick Bright, who told PBS that:

We’re being blindfolded in this battle right now, and I’m really concerned that the virus is winning the game and getting ahead of us.’

We’re flying blind and the disease is getting ahead of us! It’s running rampant and the stakes are enormous!

Even some channels that supposedly know better are spreading the fear.

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Corporate media is ramping up the fear about bird flu ahead of the vote on WHO’s pandemic plans

Health officials are issuing very ominous warnings about the potential for an H5N1 (bird flu or avian influenza) pandemic among humans at the same time that the WHO is preparing for a vote on the global pandemic treaty at the 77th World Health Assembly at the end of this month. 

The global pandemic treaty will give the World Health Organisation far more authority than it had during the last pandemic, and a lot of people are deeply concerned about how that power will be used during the next major health crisis. 

As you will see below, two more human cases of the bird flu have just been confirmed.  If the bird flu mutates into a form that can spread easily from human to human, that will create an enormous amount of fear, and the death toll could potentially be catastrophic.  In such an environment, what sort of extreme measures would the World Health Organisation decide to institute?

In recent weeks, negotiators have been feverishly working to finalise the global pandemic treaty.  The following comes directly from the official WHO website:

Governments of the world today agreed to continue working on a proposed pandemic agreement, and to further refine the draft, ahead of the Seventy-seventh World Health Assembly that starts 27 May 2024.

Governments meeting at the World Health Organisation headquarters in Geneva agreed to resume hybrid and in-person discussions over coming weeks to advance work on critical issues, including around a proposed new global system for pathogen access and benefits sharing (i.e. life-saving vaccines, treatments and diagnostics); pandemic prevention and One Health; and the financial coordination needed to scale up countries’ capacities to prepare for and respond to pandemics.Governments agree to continue their steady progress on proposed pandemic agreement ahead of the World Health Assembly, WHO, 10 May 2024

Here in the United States, the corporate media has been strangely quiet about this treaty, but it is a really big deal.

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Covid Fearmongering Worked So Well, The Government Is Now Creating A Poultry Panic

In 2020, the supply chain experienced disruptions that no one in my generation had ever seen. It became even more apparent to those who believe in the power of self-reliance that it is up to us to take care of ourselves. Backyard farming began booming, along with an increased interest in raising chickens.

Since then, efforts to balance self-sustainable lifestyles have been threatened. Government interference in normal healthy practices continues to grow amid concerns over “public safety.”

During the pandemic, my family added fruit trees to our already-growing vegetable garden and discussed getting chickens. It offered a sense of peace in a time of unprecedented government overreach.

The years to come offered plenty of related concerns. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) unveiled its “People’s Garden Initiative.” This encouraged Americans to register their backyard, school, and community gardens and is still being presented as a beneficial collaboration.

But if you read the full breakdown, it advances “equity” and other “DEI” and Green New Deal initiatives that reek of a government takeover. I, like many other Americans who value their freedoms, have not registered my garden because my food belongs to me and is no one else’s business.

Now as avian flu is making headlines, fears that “they’re coming for your chickens” are being realized.

Although the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admits that “the current public health risk is low,” it also posted that more than 90 million detections have been found in wild birds and backyard and commercial flocks across 48 states.

Yet, in the fine print, they note that this number was compiled over a two-year period and offer no information on how the testing was administered, how deadly the virus is, or how many birds have recovered.

So once again, the numbers are being stacked to breed fear. Why?

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Bird Flu: Real Threat Or Profit-motivated Fearmongering?

Growing concerns about the potential for a devastating bird flu pandemic are driving increased media coverage, including claims that bird flu could be “100 times worse than Covid.”

But a closer examination suggests the level of alarm may be premature, and some argue that fearmongering is motivated by profit.

In recent weeks, cases of the H5N1 avian influenza virus — also known as “highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A” — have been detected in wild birds, poultry, a variety of mammals including cats and dolphins, and a small number of humans.

The reporting has sparked fears that the virus could mutate to enable efficient transmission between people, according to news outlets like The New York Times and Daily Mail.

Top U.S. health officials like Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), say they are taking the situation “very seriously” and monitoring for signs of the virus mutating as it spreads to new animal reservoirs like cattle.

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TIKTOK THREAT IS PURELY HYPOTHETICAL, U.S. INTELLIGENCE ADMITS

THE PURPORTED THREAT of TikTok to U.S. national security has inflated into a hysteria of Chinese spy balloon proportions, but the official record tells a different story: U.S. intelligence has produced no evidence that the popular social media site has ever coordinated with Beijing. That fact hasn’t stopped many in Congress and even President Joe Biden from touting legislation that would force the sale of the app, as the TikTok frenzy fills the news pages with empty conjecture and innuendo.

In interviews and testimony to Congress about TikTok, leaders of the FBI, CIA, and the director of national intelligence have in fact been careful to qualify the national security threat posed by TikTok as purely hypothetical. With access to much of the government’s most sensitive intelligence, they are well placed to know.

The basic charge is that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese company, could be compelled by the government in Beijing to use their app in targeted operations to manipulate public opinion, collect mass data on Americans, and even spy on individual users. (TikTok says it has never shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked. This week, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said that “there’s no CCP ownership” of ByteDance, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.)

Though top national security officials seem happy to echo these allegations of Chinese control of TikTok, they stop short of saying that China has ever actually coordinated with the company.

Typical is an interview CIA Director William Burns gave to CNN in 2022, where he said it was “troubling to see what the Chinese government could do to manipulate TikTok.” Not what the Chinese government has done, but what it could do.

What China could do turns out to be a recurring theme in the statements of the top national security officials.

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Minnesota Republicans Warn Of ‘Blackouts And Brownouts’ From Marijuana Cultivation’s Energy Use

Two Minnesota Republican state lawmakers are claiming that home cultivation of cannabis as the result of the legalization law enacted by the Democratic legislature and governor last year could lead to a power failure as grow lights put an overwhelming strain on the state’s electrical grid.

“Now, I hope most of you are not familiar with the marijuana grow operation,” Rep. Paul Novotny (R) said at an event last weekend, “but I will tell you that it takes a ton of electricity.”

“Get ready for blackouts and brownouts. That’s what’s going to happen,” added Sen. Eric Lucero (R), who called cultivation under the law “unsustainable.”

As noted by Heartland Signal, which reported on the event, some states that have legalized marijuana, such as Massachusetts and Illinois, have taken steps to regulate energy use. Many, however, have done little to curb power consumption, according to a New Frontier Data report in 2018 that found that cannabis cultivation in the U.S. consumed about as much energy as the country’s Starbucks stores.

In addition to grow lights, indoor cultivation can also require various temperature and humidity controls, which also consume electricity.

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The Media’s New Pastime: Spreading Alarm About Normal Winter Viruses

During the pandemic, journalists discovered a new occupation, one which was particularly appealing for the small effort it required. This occupation consisted of consulting any of the numerous Covid dashboards and weekly virus statistics supplied by health authorities, and pasting the numbers they found there into tiresome one-dimensional articles on which numbers happened to be going up and which numbers happened to be going down. Now that the dashboards have gone dark and nobody bothers to test anymore, our journalists have been deprived of their convenient pastime. One suspects they are not happy about this.

In Germany, all that remains to these uninspired, myopic journalists are the weekly reports compiled by the tireless influenza tabulators of the Robert Koch Institute. Before 2020, the flu sniffers laboured in obscurity, but now their weekly reports routinely generate headlines. Like the Covid headlines which preceded them, these are all about which numbers are going up and which numbers are going down. In this way, the reading public can continue to enjoy the virus anxiety to which they have grown accustomed. The Deutsche-Presse Agentur appears to drive the greater part of this reporting, and its dogged virus updates are recirculated reliably by most of the national and regional papers. It is cheap and easy content.

This week, it is RSV that is going up. ‘The RSV Wave Has Started in Germany,’ say Der Spiegel and tagesschau. ‘Respiratory tract infections: RS-Virus Wave Underway‘ declares ZDF. ‘Corona, flu, RSV: The infection situation in Bavaria,’ is the offering of Bayrischer Rundfunk; ‘Wave of infections continues to grip Saxony: Covid, influenza and RSV,’ is an equivalent piece from the Leipziger Volkszeitung. And because we are mostly asked to worry about those viruses for which there exist vaccines, the Süddeutsche Zeitung supplies its own write-up on ‘RSV Protection: These New Vaccination Options are Available‘.

Now, it is true that RSV infections are on the rise. This is because RSV is among the solstice viruses that become especially active in the darkest months of the year. So far, however, everything suggest that RSV infections are in line with long-standing historical trends. The latest RKI report shows that the “consultation incidence” for the critical age group of 0-4 year-olds – the number of kids seeing the doctor because of acute respiratory infections – is about 5,000 per 100,000, or 5%.

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