If we smell precisely the stench of the totality of steps taken in NATO countries in recent months, especially in the United States and the European Union, we can smell the stench of totalitarian rule or some would call it, fascism, being quietly imposed on our basic human freedoms. Some recent examples give pause for reflection as to where we are allowing our world to drift.
“Fake News”
The fakery is being orchestrated by the highest levels of the mainstream media in collusion with NATO circles and intelligence agencies such as the CIA, which has saturated the ranks of mainstream media with their disinformation agents according to former CIA head William Colby, who once allegedly said, ““The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” The campaign will continue, likely with some horrendous stories about some psychopath taking a gun and bursting into Comet Ping Pong pizza place shooting innocent customers, because it was said he read in alternative media fake news about the pedophile ring. That already took place, but the man fired no shots. The population is being manipulated to accept extreme censorship of internet and other alternative media, something unimaginable just months ago.
Like clockwork, the “fake news” campaign has spread to the European Union. After announcing she will run again in 2017 for Chancellor, Angela Merkel spoke ominous words suggesting government censorship of independent “populist” (sic) media might be necessary: “Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms and we have to learn to deal with them.” She declared, “we must confront this phenomenon and if necessary, regulate it…Populism and political extremes are growing in Western democracies..” Her remarks came after Google and Facebook cut off ad revenue to what they declared to be “fake” news sites.
In the EU, especially Germany, populist has an implicit negative or even fascist connotation as in “right-wing populist” parties who oppose Merkel’s open door to war refugees policies, or who these days oppose almost anything her heavy-handed government puts forward.
War on Cash
Now if we begin to see stealth propaganda preparing us to accept severe clampdown on the one remaining free media, the Internet and related social media, we can also see an equally ominous, indeed, totalitarian move to create acceptance for the idea we give up the right to hold paper money, giving private, often corrupt, banks total control over our money, and in turn giving government agencies total control over where we spend for what.
This is the so-called cashless society. Arguments put forward are that elimination of cash will be more convenient to consumers or that it will eliminate or greatly reduce organized crime and shadow economy that evades taxation. In the EU, Sweden has already virtually eliminated cash. Sweden cash purchases today are down to just three per cent of the national economy compared to nine per cent in the Eurozone and seven per cent in the US. Public buses don’t accept cash. Three of Sweden’s four largest banks are phasing out the manual handling of cash in bank branches. Norway is following the same path.
In France today, it’s now illegal to do cash transactions over €1,000 without documenting it properly. France’s finance minister Michel Sapin, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, blamed the attacks on the ability of the attackers to “buy dangerous things with cash.” Shortly after the Hebdo attacks he announced capital controls that included the €1,000 cap on cash payments, down from €3,000, to “fight against the use of cash and anonymity in the French economy.” In high-inflation Eurozone €1,000 is not a huge sum.
Even in conservative Germany, a leading member of the Merkel coalition proposed to eliminate the €500 note and capping all cash transactions at €5,000. Some weeks later the European Central Bank, where negative interest rates are the order of the day, announced it would end issue of €500 notes by December 2018 arguing it made it too easy for criminals and terrorists to act.
And in the United States, as the campaign to sell skeptical citizens on cashless digital bank payments increases, JP Morgan Chase, the largest and one of the most criminal banks in the US, has a policy restricting the use of cash in selected markets. The bank bans cash payments for credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans; and it prohibits storage of “any cash or coins” in safe deposit boxes. So if you have a rare cold coin collection, you better stuff it in the mattress…
Negative Rates and Cashless Citizens
As long as cash–bills and coins of a national currency–are the basis of the economy, the central banks of the USA and EU as well as Japan, are unable to impose a severe negative interest rate policy much beyond the flirtation today by the ECB and Bank of Japan. If central bank rates were to go very negative, banks would be charging customers the absurd charge to make them pay to keep their cash on deposit or in savings at those banks. Naturally, people would revolt and withdraw in cash to invest in gold or other hard, tangible valuables.
Harvard economist and member of the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve, Kenneth Rogoff, an advocate of the “war on cash,” noted that the existence of cash “creates the artifact of the zero bound on the nominal interest rate.” In his 2016 book, The Curse of Cash, Rogoff urged the Federal Reserve to phase out the 100-dollar bill, then the 50-dollar bill, then the 20-dollar bill, leaving only smaller denominations in circulation, much like what the mad Modi has just done in India
Any serious observer of the world economy, especially of NATO nations in Europe and North America since the financial crisis of September 2008, would have to realize the current status quo of zero or negative central bank interest rates to prop up banks and financial markets is not sustainable. Unless cash is eliminated that is.
As such bold, radical moves advance, they would of course be vociferously attacked not on CNN or The New York Times or Financial Times or other mainstream media tied to those criminal financial institutions, but in alternative media. Keep in mind it was the uncritical New York Times and Washington Post that uncritically retailed the fake news that led to declaration of war on Iraq in 2003, namely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction aimed at Washington. That war has spread death and destruction of a scale unimaginable. No one complained at the time about that fake news.
The protest over moves to confiscate citizens’ bank holdings would come through alternate, independent media such as Zero Hedge or countless others. Recently, US media uncritically republished a purported list of “fake news” blogs and websites prepared by Assistant Professor of Communications at Merrimack College, Melissa Zimdars. Zero Hedge was on it.
The US and its terrorist-sponsoring partners are seeing their criminal regime-change project in ruins, as the Syrian army and its allies win a spectacular victory to retake the strategically important city of Aleppo.
Western governments and their flunkies at the UN are cynically, perversely decrying a «meltdown of humanity».
Closer to the truth is their own «meltdown of sanity». This is because the official Western narrative about the Syrian war is finally being exposed on a glaring scale.
The exposure for the whole world to see is one of a systematic, fake propaganda cover that concealed a criminal enterprise – an enterprise involving terrorist proxies, or fake moderate rebels, whom the Western governments have sponsored for the past six years in a conspiracy to overthrow the government of Syria. The gravity of this systematic crime committed by Washington and its various partners is now unfolding.
Unable to cope with their own cognitive dissonance over the criminality, the Western governments and their complicit corporate news media are resorting to outright denial and to compounding lies with even more lies.
Instead of dealing with the reality that Syrian state forces have recaptured Aleppo from brutal, illegally armed groups, which the West and its regional clients have bankrolled and armed, the West distorts the dramatic victory as the «fall of Aleppo». One report on American channel CNN even referred to the victorious Syrian army and its allies as «persecutors».
With typical unhinged emotion, US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power cited unverified reports of civilians being executed in Aleppo, and slammed Syria and its allies Russia and Iran for having «no shame». It is Power and her Western partners-in-crime, including top UN officials, who should be hanging their heads in shame.
Among the hysterical soundbites about alleged atrocities and slaughter being lobbed around this week was this from UN «humanitarian» official Jens Laerke who said Aleppo was seeing a «meltdown of humanity». Catchy words, but divorced from reality.
Western news media outlets were screaming headlines alleging summary executions of women and children by the Syrian army and its Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies as they moved in to finally retake the whole of the northern city.
The problem is that all these sensational, reckless assertions are based on unverified claims by anonymous «activists» or persons involved with militants – militants who are integrated with terror groups like Jaysh al Fatah, Jabhat al Nusra, Ahrar al Sham and Nour al din al Zenki. All of them affiliated with the internationally proscribed Al Qaeda terrorist network – which the Western governments claim to be at war with.
The simple fact of the information coming from unverified sources did not stop the UN, Power, Rycroft and the raft of Western media outlets, including the Washington Post, CNN, Guardian, Independent, France 24 etc, presenting the claims as if they were fact.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Western governments and their dutiful, unquestioning news media of spreading «fake news» about the dramatic events in Syria this week. Lavrov pointed out that none of the alleged atrocities were acknowledged by independent humanitarian groups.
The more logical and truthful depiction is that Syrian civilians are at last able to flee from terror gangs that have held them under siege. But in reporting that the whole false Western narrative about what has been going on in Aleppo and Syria for the past six years would implode like a house of cards.
Why aren’t the Western news media interviewing the tens of thousands of civilians who have now managed to flee from the defeated terrorist groups? Why don’t the Western media ask questions about the nature of their captivity? Such as, why could they not escape from militant-held eastern Aleppo until now? What do these civilians think of the Syrian army and its allies who have crushed the militants?
The curious, gaping absence of any testimonies carried by the Western media from the thousands of liberated civilians in Aleppo is mirrored by the same curious, gaping absence of testimonies from thousands of civilians liberated elsewhere in Syria by the army over the past year.
They declare diversity and insist they are inclusive. They tout tolerance and yet, they often refuse to put up with anyone who thinks differently than them. They raise their collective hands to silence opposing views rather than listen or participate in respectful debate. You know exactly where they stand on ‘religion and politics.’
They cannot comprehend how some folks can actually have a biblical Christian worldview. Rather than dialogue, theirs is often a monologue, having already concluded they are right about everything, others are wrong, and there is no sense in allowing diverse ideas and opposing opinions about life and the world.
‘They’ are the liberal elites and their disciples. Though we cannot place all liberals in this category, many are furious about the recent election results in which the coronation of their progressive presidential candidate was thwarted. Millions of American citizens want a much different country because we believe and think differently than they do.
And herein lies the problem. We think differently.
Even the casual observer has most likely noticed the deep divide in our culture that has been exacerbated over the last eight years by the Obama administration. And if you ask liberals and progressives the cause of the divide they’ll probably point to [practicing] Christians, Fox News, Republicans, or Donald Trump.
It could not possibly be them or the policies on their side; it has to be those who oppose the godless liberal worldview. We’ve seen it play out in the mainstream media and cable news as well as on social media.
They actually believe that those of us who trust Christ and His Word are backwards and need therapy. My friend said in order to change, the first thing needed in therapy is to acknowledge there is a problem.
America, we have a problem – and it’s a big one.
Yes, they need the hope and salvation only Jesus provides, but here’s one key point: most of us believe they are wrong; they however, believe we are evil.
Big difference.
To them, we are looked down upon as uneducated, uninformed, narrow-minded, bigoted, intolerant fascists. And those are our good qualities!
It was inconceivable half the country could vote for someone other than their candidate. My friend admitted to being “surrounded by a bubble of intelligent people that are for social change,” and could not understand why so many Americans voted to reverse the [false] hope and [radical] “change.”
If you’re like me, you believe these last eight years have plunged us into even deeper darkness via the advancement of open immorality which has driven America down into the gutter. Following the 2016 election on the other hand, here’s how my friend now sees it:
“Sometimes we need to hit bottom and descend into darkness, before we can see the light.”
This is not entirely incorrect in terms of eternity. Oftentimes, before we can be saved, we must come to the end of ourselves, repent, and admit there is a higher authority to whom we must give account.
The only light that ultimately matters is the light of the world, Jesus Christ. Tired of doing things in your own strength? No sin is too great; turn to Him and surrender.
In dealing with those who cannot relate to us, always remember our (and their) struggle is first a spiritual one and those who are lost need the forgiveness Christ offers. Whatever sheltered environment they happen to be living in, the truth must be proclaimed to them regardless of how we, messengers of the gospel, are perceived.
It doesn’t matter what people think of us. Are you and I seeking the approval of God or man? Obedience to His Word, seeking eternal things first, and pleasing Him is what’s important. You never know who God is preparing for you to love them enough to tell them the truth.
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