Category: Social justice

Agri-Capture, Psy-Style

“Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change and the devastation of the planet… The only way to fix this, the necessary step, is knowing what food is.”

Converting Food Tradition Into Science With The Periodic Table Of Food

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daphneewingchow/2024/05/21/converting-food-tradition-into-science-with-the-periodic-table-of-food/

This was an infuriating propaganda piece on behalf of the Rockefeller Cartel by Forbes magazine, sent by a friend who likes it when I’m infuriated. Bless her heart!

The article is the perfect example of the methods of ideological subversion being used on the public by the corporatocracy through the institutions.

The single quote above I take from the article, rather than quoting it further, is in order to not subject the reader to further mind poison. But rather instead, to offer an antedote.

How does it work? Why are they doing this?

While the excellent article below is a good means of demonstration, it’s first important to notice the labels themselves are meant to be flexible while still garnering a knee-jerk reaction: Communism, Capitalism, two opposing worldviews, that’s the framing.

Except it’s fake, a false dichotomy. These are economic views posing as worldviews for political purposes.

Often political purposes and religious ones overlap, which is why I avoid religion as well as politics when I’m trying to think logically!

The above quote works a similar frame: Science must know what food IS so that agriculture will no longer destroy the planet.

Except the only reason argriculture is destroying the planet is because it was taken over by BigAg MANY decades ago. Before I was born, actually, and I’m getting up there.

They fail to mention this piece of the puzzle, no surprise there. Many societies have thrived and still thrive on non-industrial agriculture to survive. Industry has ruined agriculture in this country, and many others.

Our brainwashing that it is our job to feed and police the world is the actual problem causing the devastion. The industrial-military global order is the problem causing the devastion.

95% of average folks are just pawns in this game.

Leave the terms ‘communism’ and ‘capitalism’ to the side for a moment and consider this:

“What Marx and Engels pioneered wasn’t specifically a political revolution — it was the rewriting of the moral code itself. The Manifesto operates as a systematic inversion of the fundamental value and structures that underpin social organisation. Every principle that helped stabilise bourgeois society — property rights, family inheritance, religious authority, national sovereignty — was methodically reframed through inversion; consciousness programming designed to make the existing moral operating system feel not just wrong, but obsolete.

Programming Permissible Thought
Control the language and you control the range of permissible thought. The Communist Manifesto introduced this tactic with rhetorical inversions; ESG and global ethics continue it by redefining terms like ‘freedom’, ‘equity’, and ‘justice’ so that dissent itself becomes linguistically unspeakable. When ‘inclusive’ becomes the only acceptable alternative to ‘extractive’, when ‘sustainable’ becomes synonymous with ‘moral’, and when ‘science-based’ becomes code for ‘unchallengeable’, we’re witnessing linguistic capture similar to that Marx pioneered.

The genius lies not just in changing what words mean, but in making certain combinations of words feel impossible. Try arguing against ‘inclusive prosperity’, ‘women’s rights’, or ‘science-based sustainability targets’ without sounding backwards. The linguistic terrain has been so thoroughly mapped that opposition requires either accepting the loaded framework — or appearing to reject progress itself. It’s a steep uphill struggle, almost guaranteed to waste enormous amounts of time — even though these terms typically function to insert ideological blind spots ripe for later exploitation by full intent.”

Like the quote says–to solve the problem, we must know what food is. Imagine, we don’t even know what food is! We must have science explain food to us in order to not destroy the planet by eating.

esc continues . . .

“Inclusive Capitalism as Semantic Cover for Stakeholder Feudalism
‘Inclusive capitalism’ — promoted by coalitions involving the Vatican, the World Economic Forum, and major central banks — promises to ‘make capitalism work for everyone’. The manipulative techniques are identical to the Manifesto: binary framing where ‘inclusive capitalism’ opposes ‘neoliberal greed’ with no middle ground allowed; euphemistic coercion where investors are ‘guided’ to ESG portfolios and non-compliance means exclusion from financial markets; sacred authority through alignment with religious institutions that sanctifies technocratic control; and guilt transfer where individual consumers — not megacorporations, nor central banks — bear responsibility for systemic problems.
You get to keep the word ‘capitalism’… while losing actual market freedom. It’s semantic cover for stakeholder feudalism — the Financial Stability Board and the BIS become moral arbiters of capital allocation, yet you never voted for them.”

This ‘guy’ knows what he’s talking about, read him, not Forbes!

“Recognition and Resistance
What we witness is the emergence of something historically unprecedented: soft totalitarianism with global reach, implemented not through revolutionary violence but through institutional coordination and moral manipulation. The most disturbing aspect is how voluntary compliance is manufactured through psychological techniques that make resistance feel not just futile but morally reprehensible.
Unlike crude twentieth-century totalitarianism, this system preserves the language of freedom while altering its substance, claims scientific and moral authority rather than raw power, operates through persuasion and micro-incentives rather than force, and presents itself as evolution rather than revolution. Koestler⁶² warned that disembodied rational systems could turn pathological when disconnected from human meaning — today’s ESG frameworks automate that disconnection at global scale.”

https://substack.com/@escapekey/note/p-166520975?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=apljy
https://substack.com/@escapekey?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Between Intrepid and Genteel

From Kenya to Llano, Berit pictured with Kath, visiting from the UK

Hunters often get a bad rap and it’s not always for good reason. I had a chance to learn something about this on a recent trip to the Texas Hill Country where I was led to question the difference between a hunter and a poacher.

Before assuming this is a niche topic and of little interest to the vast majority of folks whom are neither hunters nor poachers, consider it’s a matter of philosophy as well, along with colonialism, globalism, human nature and modern life.

A wall of hunting ‘trophies’ not uncommon in Texas homes.

Mostly they have much in common, the hunter and the poacher. There is a similar skillset, clearly, but one I know nothing about, so I’ll leave that to the hobbyists and professionals. As strictly an occassional observer I imagine it to require more patience than I’ve ever mustered, more tenacity than most and more courage than the vast majority.

We might say the poacher is lawless and greedy and violent, and in some cases that may well be true. It may also be true that some hunters share such qualities as well.

But again, I’m coming to this as a complete outsider to their world, strictly an observer, and occasionally a beneficiary.

The differences between the hunter and the poacher must lie somewhere between intrepid and genteel, I figure. And so it is most apropos that I should think of it with a hunter who fits the bill for both adjectives.

Our hunter in question, Berit, at her home in Llano, Texas

I’d never have taken this fair, mild-mannered, small and slender woman as a big game hunter, that’s for sure, and I suspect that made her something of an attraction at her home in Kenya, kind of like a pretty little sparrow among bulls. Though looking at the full and adventurous life she’s led, we mustn’t think a sparrow at anyone’s mercy.

A beautiful display of African artefacts collected during their time there.

I met her with her second husband, an avid big game hunter, but her first husband was a professional one.  They had a business together leading safaris until the laws were changed in an instant, hunting banned by the government, their livelihood lost.

Neither were Americans, but he had a prospect in Texas. So, with young children in tow, they moved to the Hill Country, to Llano, and started anew.

That was in 1977. It is still illegal to hunt in Kenya.

What’s more interesting, Kenya has remained on the fast track ever since, to full-tilt modernization. They have been an international fore-runner for all the Global Village United Nations WEF grand schemes for their ideal Future: ESG scores, vaccines, digital IDs, carbon credits.

That’s the great gift of compliance. Or, as the old adage goes, “Give the devil a finger . . .”

https://open.substack.com/pub/escapekey/p/the-complete-architecture?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

“Esc’s analysis, backed by meticulous documentation, sets the stage for understanding a system already operational, where resistance is economically suicidal and socially ostracized. Esc details how development programs in nations like Kenya test governance technologies—digital IDs, carbon credits—later exported to the West, ensuring global compliance under the guise of progress. The Earth Charter, as esc notes, serves as a global constitution, subordinating individual rights to expert-defined collective responsibilities, a theme echoed in The Invisible Empire’s critique of sustainability metrics overriding democratic will. We need to recognize this system before the window for democratic resistance closes, as each institutional capture—from ESG compliance to AI-driven surveillance—tightens the web.”
The Complete Architecture – by esc

“For 130 years, a coordinated network of institutions has been systematically replicating the same control structure across every domain of human life – from healthcare to education, from banking to environmental policy. This structure, originally perfected in British banking, creates the appearance of local autonomy while concentrating ultimate decision-making power at higher levels run by credentialed experts.
The breakthrough came when science claimed moral authority over all aspects of human experience through the 1986 Venice Declaration, positioning scientific expertise not just as informing ethical decisions, but as the source of ethics itself. This created the intellectual foundation for what we now see operational: a system where questioning expert consensus isn’t just wrong – it’s scientifically illiterate, ethically irresponsible, and potentially pathological.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/the-ethics-trap-130-years-of-systematic?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

How close is your country’s hunting policy to Kenya’s?
Is hunting policy about creating the lines between hunter and poacher, or obscuring them? Because, if everything is forbidden except to a tiny few, aren’t we pretty much all destined to become poachers?

“And the pity is that it will do nothing for the wildlife, controlled licensed hunting has never been a threat to wildlife. When elephant hunting was closed a few years ago, I wrote to the East African Standard and pointed out that poaching was the problem, not licensed hunting, and that if poaching were not stopped, the elephants would disappear anyway, whether licensed hunting were allowed or not. Unfortunately I have been proved right, and since that time the elephants have been exterminated all over large areas of Kenya. For this licensed hunting can in no way be blames, as legal hunting of elephants was closed.” Finn, Berit’s husband

Should hunting be allowed in Kenya? | davidlansing.com

“When I was in Kenya a few years ago I stayed on the edge of the plateau overlooking the Mara. About a mile away one night, a leopard broke into a Maasai boma and killed a cow. The game officials came by two days later, photographed the pug marks on the ground and the carcasses, payed the elder a pittance for his loss, reminded them that they were forbidden to kill the leopard, and disappeared. A couple of nights later, it happened again. So they staked out a goat and speared the leopard to death and buried him. That same leopard could have brought in tens of thousands of dollars in fees to Kenya and the local economy – now it’s a skeleton. When the wild game is seen only as a nuisance and is not allowed to pay its own way in a crowded land, it will always end like that.”

To be continued . . .

Feel free to chime in below!

Llano, Texas May 2025

Art As Transformative?

What do you think? Have you had a personal experience of transformation through art?

I wrote my Master’s thesis on social engineering in 90s, before I had any idea what social engineering was. I didn’t know at the time that’s what I was writing about. The thesis was about women writers of francophone West Africa using their novels as a means to catalyze social change. Liberation through literature, I called it, where practices like polygamy, female genital mutilation, and lack of educational opportunities were voiced in fictional form by the otherwise voiceless.

Certainly it is not at all uncommon for writers to use their works toward such ends. And yet, something about the timing of my thesis, or perhaps the content, resonated less with others than I expected.

I found that instead ‘Art for art’s sake’ had become the more popular mode of the times and works that were considered to be ‘too pedantic’ (which seemed to mean any fictional work with a purpose other than sheer entertainment) were heavily criticized.

I tried for years to pitch similar ideas for publishing to various entities and could find no interest and quite a lot of criticism. Folks wanted to be entertained, not taught. If they had to learn something, they wanted it tightly obscured in a bubble of excitement, like a Dan Brown novel.

But times seem to have changed again and authors and artists with a serious message, with deep societal concerns, seem to be able to find, or are perhaps themselves creating, a growing audience hungry for their transformational content.

It reminds me of some of the criticisms I heard in the 90s—art is not meant to transform or educate, but rather has the sole purpose to simply express the subjective worldview of the creator. Any feelings of universality in a work of art is essentially meaningless coincidence. Art should not be held in the clutches of meaning-making. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Art cannot be personally or socially transformative, except to the artist himself, that is an establishment myth of conformity.

I even had an artist friend, with an art degree, who assisted at a gallery, try to insist to me that the glass flask full of the artist’s excrement (I’m not joking) was to be considered art just as much as any old famous painting.

So I’m very pleased to see this more recent ‘re-formation’ to art with purpose. But, I wonder, can it actually be transformative? Or were all those critical voices in the 90s correct?

What do y’all think?

Here’s a couple of amazing pieces which might have such power. Do you know of others to share? If so, please do link below!

In Shadow: A Modern Odyssey

Kingdom

These works are both by: Lubomir Arsov and you can find an excellent interview with him here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/interview-with-lubomir-arsov?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios

Creating the Global Citizen

“Alvin Toffler predicted ‘demassification’: a process ‘in which a relatively homogeneous social collectivity (or one conceptualized as such) is broken down into (or reconceptualized in terms of) smaller, more diverse elements’. This is the prize for big social networks: compartmentalize people into echo chambers and bombard them with confusing distractions and dead ends.”

Confuse the words, creating a smokescreen of misunderstanding: Like: community=network=market
Obviously these words used to mean very different things in the actual world, before the virtual environment muddied the waters. The market wants all kinds of personal details about you and so they pretend they are in a community with you. Your network of friends and acquaintances and business relations may indeed form a community at some basic level, but to expand this concept out in an attempt to create from this a sense of ‘global community’ is preposterous. It is a Benetton ad, not a community.

Yet it has infiltrated and infected the actual world as we’ve all experienced. The great Convid is example enough. But, there’s more. 

Even small local shops in rural Texas feel entitled to ask shoppers for their phone number, to use video surveillance indiscriminately, to appeal to shoppers for ‘community’ donations and to shove their mailing list and ‘loyalty card’ at you. I seriously doubt they will draw the line at the next big thing the big box markets teach them.

“Please take a sensor bracelet at the entrance, this will ensure you a positive shopping experience.”

That is no community for me!

Deb Filman does a fine job of ranting about this, and an even better job breaking it down for folks, especially parents, because it really is the kids they are after. They always start with the easiest targets.

Are We Educating Children or Training Bots? That is the question!

More concept confabulation: Training=programming=learning
Deb has some choice words to share about this, so I’ll be brief. These words and concepts are being deliberately confused in order to create cognitive dissonance in order to get us to comply. Social engineering has become an acceptable system for indoctrination of populations and is being normalized and implemented by the United Nations and cooperating global partners through our institutions, and directly into our LOCAL communities, all of them.

The U.N.: Creating child social activists all over the country on our dollar.

More muddying of words and concepts happens all the time. This is to be expected. This is not a new tactic at all. If they still teach Animal Farm in school, let’s hope the correct message is still being taken from it. The rules written on the barnyard wall keep shifting. (Therefore, it must be my job to keep shifting with the rules, right?)

More word meshing:
Individuals=collectives
Regulate=Control=Master=Suppress

“It is the responsibility of civil society to experiment with models of effective global citizenship.”

To experiment with models! It is our responsibility, as global citizens, to experiment with our populations through education, to create good global citizens.

That is, for one, to train children in ‘Emotional Regulation’ in order to make good ‘Global Citizens’. Soldiers are trained in emotional regulation. As much as you might get annoyed at the Hobby Lobby with the number of emotionally unregulated children, this is not something that we want as institutional directives aimed at children. Why? Because as the establishment experts know very well, it leads to neuroticism. One kind of behavior required at school, another one at home, another one in public, another one at church, another one here and there and everywhere, and what the kids end up with is not an education, but the essential life skill required of a psychotic society: Mask Juggling.

In other words, become better adjusted at nebulous, shifting, always uncertain unreality. Who does that serve?

From Wiki, the ‘experts’, right?!

“Psychodynamic therapy uses the idea of a Faustian bargain to explain defence mechanisms, usually rooted in childhood, that sacrifice elements of the self in favor of some form of psychological survival. For the neurotic, abandoning one’s genuine feeling self in favour of a false self more amenable to caretakers may offer a viable form of life, but at the expense of one’s true emotions and affects. For the psychotic, a Faustian bargain with an omnipotent self can offer the imaginary refuge of a psychic retreat at the price of living in unreality.”

I can’t help but wonder, as illogical as all this obviously is, could it actually be the setup for the next great fall?

“We had created a global civilization, and for what? So the whole thing could come crashing down into the ocean, bringing unimaginable misery upon the earth? What purpose could such suffering possibly serve? The answer—in truth, the loss, death, despair, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignity and, as Nietzsche wrote, ‘profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust and the wretchedness of the vanquished’ rarely change ordinary men and women. Extraordinary people change through the good thing, and through the self-mastery that yokes them to it; the joyous source of the world. But such types are few and far between. For the masses, there is no hope because all they have is hope, and habit, and expectation, and desire, and possession, and progress, and business, and money, and all the other illusions of the egoic system.
That man had to be disillusioned was not, quite obviously, a message which could find very much popular support in a world of illusions, but then no message worth hearing ever does. The individual knows that the evil and pain and suffering she has gone through has not been for naught. Being sensitive and kind—those rarest of qualities in the civilized system—the individual finds no pleasure in the idea that everyone has to go through hell to reach heaven.” 33 Myths of the System by Darren Allen

We SO Rock!

Times are tough, the mood around here is tight and demoralized. I won’t sugar coat it. Two months of 100+ degrees and no rain is bound to have emotional as well as physical consequences. We are victims and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

It’s one thing after another and because it’s so hot everything takes far greater effort. I’d go down the big list of all the things breaking down and all the things we can’t keep up with, but it’s way too long.

And no one likes a complainer, right? Don’t wallow in misery, right? Don’t bring others down?

If I had a dollar for every time I read or hear somewhere some version of—“Don’t play the victim”or “You’ve got to get out of the victim mentality” —I’d spit on it, wad it up in a tight ball, and shoot it out the barrel of a gun right between the eyes of every idiot who repeats such self-serving nonsense.

We ARE victims and there are a great many of us. Victims of medical experimentation, victims of weather warfare and disaster capitalism, victims of theft, victims of bullying and coercion, and that’s just those who are lucky enough not to be victims of far worse.

What is the ‘victim mentality’ exactly and who does it serve if we all bypass it? Who does it serve if we swallow our anger and resentment and bitterness?

Folks like to say it serves oneself, as in, then the dark emotions don’t haunt you and bring you down. They say we shouldn’t be vindictive, or hang on to past abuses and that hate will eat away at our souls and even cause cancer and other serious diseases.

In fact, it’s blind optimism and relentless positivity that keep folks stuck in denial and complacency, which can easily prove fatal, for the individual and the culture.

It is considered extremely ‘uncool’ to ‘play the victim’ even when you are a victim. Why is that? The media would have us believe everyone is playing the victim and that’s what’s wrong with our culture—so litigious, everyone looking for a handout, too many snowflakes.

While that may be partially true, and most certainly exploited, they leave out one very big piece of the social puzzle. Like, should we not be concerned that we have created a culture with so many victims, whether perceived or real?

I’ll leave y’all to ponder that question for a bit while I digress.

Because, we SO ROCK!

Sure, it really sucks at the moment. But at such times I take more notice of all the things we’ve done right. It’s not bypassing all that’s gone wrong, it’s holding both reality extremes in my mind at the same time.

We recently celebrated our 20th anniversary, and 15 of those years we’ve had this property, which we purchased, BASED ON BEING VICTIMS. After Hurricane Katrina, we saw first hand what the government response is to a crisis and we also saw how helpless most folks were. It was very eye-opening. We took action, to make sure we were not victims again.

We were victims again. And again. These are not ‘natural’ disasters, not one of them.

But for argument sake, even if the hurricanes and tornado were not manipulated by man (they were!) the consequences of those disasters were most definitely exacerbated by man.

These are disasters with perpetrators. Each time the (supposed) natural disasters were made far worse by people. We were robbed after the first one, as well as permanently losing my teaching contract at that time. The second time we were left paying 3 rents—one on the apartment we couldn’t live in, the mortgage on this property that had no finished home to live in yet, and the house to which we evacuated. The third time saw more grifters try to take advantage of our compromised and very stressful situation under the guise of helping.

Each time we’ve taken action based on that victim status to try to ameliorate it for the next time.

That’s why we rock. In the last 15 years we have carved out an awesome wee homestead. We cleared loads of land, just the two of us and a little old tractor. Built a cabin, 3 chicken coops, a corral, a large garden, a large orchard, remodeled our home, acquired many different kinds of livestock, have been learning beekeeping, foraging, cheesemaking, herbalism and LOADS of other life skills that were completely new to us, and have helped a few others on their journey to do the same.

As victims it is our duty to arm others (or at least try, especially for the next generations) with the tools they will need to bring down the perpetrators who currently evade us. It only serves the perpetrators to pretend there are no victims, or to micro-manage others’ victim status and behavior.

A victim mentality can be healthy, or it can be destructive. What most folks do is try to exploit it or minimize it.

They try to exploit it by using it as an excuse to do nothing—this is not a victim mentality—this is a grifter mentality. They try to minimize it because the folks around them are too lazy, indifferent, busy, selfish, adolescent, or cruel to listen to them and allow them to express their true feelings rather than those that are socially acceptable and make everyone else feel comfortable.

The guilt and shame should go squarely and solely on the shoulders of the abusers and those making excuses for the abuse. If victims of repeated abuses turn into individuals with a grifter mentality it could be because they’ve witnessed so often first-hand that this is the winning strategy in our culture. I seriously doubt telling such individuals to stop ‘playing the victim’ will do a damn bit of good. And, why should it?

So, all hail the victims! And more power to us. Not the corrupting brand of power that turns us into tyrants and perpetrators ourselves, but the inner-power it takes to hold that victimhood out for all to see, in order to enlighten, to righteously blame and accuse, and to give the next generation a better chance at identifying their abusers, holding them accountable, as well as in fortifying their own lives and livelihoods against further victimization.

What My Peace Corps Service Taught Me About Global Governance, Medical Coercion and Cancel Culture

This post is inspired by Alison McDowell’s series, Letters from the Labyrinth.

Attention all Dandelions!

I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Czech Republic from 1994-1996, returning there in 1998-9 to teach at the Natural Sciences Faculty at Charles University in Prague.

I’ve written often about my experience and consider those years to have been formative on many levels, including that which defines my worldview to the present day.

While I have written often about those years, I have shared almost no criticism about my time there or the Peace Corps as an institution. I wrote a blog with other Returned Peace Corps Volunteers for several years, from which I was unceremoniously deplatformed as soon as I ventured into (unbeknownst to me at the time) the forbidden territory of ‘conspiracy theory’.

The Peace Corps was established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

From Wiki:
“On March 1, 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10924 that officially started the Peace Corps. Concerned with the growing tide of revolutionary sentiment in the Third World, Kennedy saw the Peace Corps as a means of countering the stereotype of the “Ugly American” and “Yankee imperialism,” especially in the emerging nations of post-colonial Africa and Asia.[28][29] Kennedy appointed his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to be the program’s first director. Shriver fleshed out the organization and his think tank outlined the organization’s goals and set the initial number of volunteers. The Peace Corps began recruiting in July 1962; Bob Hope recorded radio and television announcements hailing the program.”

Globalism, before it was cool.

The organization was in the Czech Republic for only seven years.
From the Peace Corps’ ‘legacy booklet’:

“Through the work and contributions of Volunteers, the Peace Corps has emerged as a model of success for efforts to promote sustainable development at the grass-roots level. The Peace Corps, however, is much more than a development agency. Volunteers embody some of America’s most enduring values: optimism, freedom, and opportunity. Volunteers bring these values to communities around the world not to impose them on other people or cultures, but to build the bridges of friendship and understanding that are the foundation of peace among nations.”

A portion of Vaclav Havel’s parting statement to the Peace Corps:
“The results of the Peace Corps’ work can be seen throughout the Republic. The Peace Corps assisted in establishing many new libraries, completed more than 100 ecological projects, and gave more than one thousand Czech entrepreneurs the opportunity to gain new business experience.” Prague, 1997

Ambassador Shirley Temple Black attended the official opening of the Peace Corps office in Prague in 1991.

Shirley Temple Black’s Remarkable Second Act as a Diplomat | History| Smithsonian Magazine

Speaking of Temple-Black:
According to Kounalakis, “Her personal and informal style worked well with the new government, made up of formerly imprisoned, hard laboring and human rights Charter 77-signing artists, musicians, actors and a playwright president named Vaclav Havel. Many of those new Czechoslovak political leaders admired their American colleague, President Ronald Reagan, an actor-politician like themselves who expressed in the clearest terms – and to the whole world – their deepest desire for freedom.”

The dissident playwright turned politician, President Vaclav Havel’s wife was also a famous actress. Olga Havlová – Wikipedia

Also from Wiki:

“Havel was born in Prague on 5 October 1936[8] into a wealthy family celebrated in Czechoslovakia for its entrepreneurial and cultural accomplishments. His grandfather, Vácslav Havel, a real estate developer, built a landmark entertainment complex on Prague’s Wenceslas Square. His father, Václav Maria Havel, was the real estate developer behind the suburban Barrandov Terraces, located on the highest point of Prague—next door to which his uncle, Miloš Havel, built one of the largest film studios in Europe.[9] Havel’s mother, Božena Vavrečková,[10] also came from an influential family; her father was a Czechoslovak ambassador and a well-known journalist.

“He was known for his essays, most particularly The Power of the Powerless (1978), in which he described a societal paradigm in which citizens were forced to “live within a lie” under the Communist regime.[19] In describing his role as a dissident, Havel wrote in 1979: “we never decided to become dissidents. We have been transformed into them, without quite knowing how, sometimes we have ended up in prison without precisely knowing how. We simply went ahead and did certain things that we felt we ought to do, and that seemed to us decent to do, nothing more nor less.”[20]

Remembering Ambassador Shirley Temple Black – U.S. Embassy in   The Czech Republic

++++

Me, 1994, naive and idealistic

As far as Peace Corps assignments go, I was sometimes rightly chided as having ‘served’ in the “Paris of the Peace Corps.” I did not live in a village in a shack without running water, as is often the stereotype, and sometimes the reality.

I got lucky, very lucky in fact. I was assigned to a brand new school, with a private office, and lived in the vacated 2-bedroom flat of the school’s principal. It even had a private phone.

At the Ambassador’s Residence in Prague, feeling sophisticated.
Champagne socialism, free-market capitalism? Who knew, who cared?!

A short time after arriving I was summoned to the state-of-the-art, just being organized, computer room. I had requested an e-mail address. The teacher running the show was excited, thrilled even, to have someone even remotely interested in his very claustrophobic cyber-world.

The enormous room was full of donated equipment, mostly used, monitors and hard-drives and equipment I didn’t recognize were stacked up on every inch of the floor and only he and a handful of others knew how to use it all, or even cared to use any of it.

And new shipments were coming in at a regular clip. He couldn’t keep up with all the offerings.

At the same time, the old Soviet materials were stacked up on the street twice a week to be hauled away by the trash crew. Huge stacks of newspapers, magazines, books, busts, badges, portraits that seemed bottomless in those early days.

“We just traded one Big Brother for another,” one teacher quipped.

I was thrilled to be there. I fully expected to find, as per the slogan, “The toughest job you’ll ever love.” Bring it on, I thought.

But, I was young and naive and idealistic and I didn’t understand bureaucracy. I was dumb enough to think I was supposed to be honest on the seemingly endless ‘ratings forms’ we were required to complete. Instead of spend five minutes giving five stars and glowing reports to any and all activities and instructors like most of my fellows, I actually thought about it, wrote what I thought needed improvement, made suggestions I thought would be helpful.

That got me labeled as a complainer almost immediately, I later learned.

One thing we weren’t supposed to complain about was the vaccine schedule. Even though some volunteers were insisting they were getting sick from it.

However, the Volunteer Handbook was unequivocal. “Also during Staging, you will be given immunizations that are required for overseas travel and for re-entry into the United States. Please do not obtain any immunization before going to Staging. If you are sensitive to any immunizing agents or medications, or have religious reservations concerning the taking of immunizations or medications, you should notify the Office of Medical Services before accepting an invitation to training.”

Another touchy topic for the form-police was concerning which projects got funded. My grant request for the impoverished orphanage for ‘Romany’ (Gypsy) children was rejected, while seemingly less necessary funding was granted to other projects, especially those in cooperation with other agencies, like USAID (in our case, for English-language textbooks), in more recent cases, it’s known for such causes as: With USAID Support, Ukraine’s Tech Sector Thrives Despite Russia’s Full-Scale War | Ukraine | Press Release | U.S. Agency for International Development

Other project missions had impressive corporate sponsors, like the English-language essay contest about women’s role in Czech society, organized by Fran Aun, currently a Public Relations professional with such current successes as the trans campaign:

You can pee next to me!

Fran Aun’s efforts in Prague got me noticed. Hmmm, yikes?

Me, so proud, sitting at the table in the middle for our celebratory cruise on the Vltava, because my students dominated the essay contest winning multiple corporate-sponsored prizes, including a new computer for my 1st place winner and a super fancy new copy machine for my school.

The Peace Corps is now hiring for a new position: Climate Financing Support Specialist.

My Report Card for the Agency, according to their own stated goals:

  1. To help the people of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower, particularly in meeting the basic needs of those living in the poorest areas of such countries,
  2. And to help promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served
  3. And a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people.

As for goal number one, I give a C-. I do not consider an essay questioning women’s role in modern society to be more in line with basic needs of the poorest children in orphanages.

As for goal number two, I give a B+. That is, considering the people who were actually served were not those needing to meet basic needs, but those with an American-loving entrepreneurial spirit, that seems ‘fair’, I guess.

As for goal number three, I give an unequivocal F. The only stories that are allowed are those demonstrating our relentless positivity and the plate-spinning and mask juggling and illusions of a thousand other cultures who apparently dream of becoming just like U.S.

What I actually learned in my service from the Czech people, and tried to bring back home to fulfill the 3rd goal was categorical rejected by the current day Peace Corps: suspicion of government, especially volunteering; the critical importance of life skills; self-reliance over government reliance; local aid over foreign aid; and in fact, a good dose of paranoia, which was rampant among the Czechs, and would be wisely adopted by the majority of U.S. in the present times.

The line between entrepreneurs, civil servants, and philanthropists was breached ages ago, and it seems like Americans might be the last to know.

Fellow RPCV TEFL Volunteer, Antonio Lopez, “While I was serving my term as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was definitely aware that a large scale societal change was under way, and that I was taking part in it. I guess I felt that way because I was a teacher working with teenagers, people who are always in a process of change and seeing the world around them with fresh eyes.”

Random Notes: Understanding False Hierarchies

Digging through my files for content. Make of them what you will. Or won’t. Comments most welcome!

False hierarchies, that is all hierarchies not based in nature, are crippling our civilization. And maybe, that’s just natural.

They are invariably:

~Based on fluffing not rivaling, so that the leader is replaced by a Yes-man rather than an honorable man.

~Confusing true power with temporary status

~Leading a horse to water, noticing he does not drink, and blaming him for being stupid. Rather than questioning if the horse is intuiting more about the contents of the water than you are.

~I’m in charge, you’re responsible. That is not meant to mean you are to act as my scapegoat. It is meant to represent the bond between the care-givers.

~Helping people adjust to their servitude is not actually helping. It’s akin to helping addicts find their next fix, you are opting to make yourself feel better in the moment by helping someone else feel better in the moment, at the expense of long-term solutions. The proverbial thumb in the dike.

~Hardest lesson for an empath (or a yes-man) to learn—stop cleaning up other people’s messes—you are only making it worse for the next generation.

~America has roughly 35 million acres of lawn and 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. 

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.htm

~The tragic hero is brought down by his virtues, not his vices!

World War I: The Great War Was also the Great Enabler of Progressive Governance

“It was decided to make [the soldiers] help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill …and be killed. But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance—something the employer pays for in an enlightened state—and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all—he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.
We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back—when they came back from the war and couldn’t find work—at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!”

Click to access warisaracket.pdf

~As Carroll Quigley writes, its success was partly due to “its ability to present itself to the world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social and religious groups”. (2)

Empire of hypocrisy | winter oak

Special is the New Deranged

You’ve gotta love the myth-makers’ knack for crafting novel ‘non-judgmental’ lingo.

After all, who wants to say anything too closely resembling honesty about someone who caused loads of damage to their own lives and those of nearly everyone around them? That would be so mean.

Especially, obviously, on their deathbeds. This is when kind lies are most required, for the good of those gathered, who definitely do not want to be reminded that they rubbed elbows with such creeps and degenerates all their lives.

Especially, obviously, if there’s inheritance involved. Everyone wants to believe they inherited good, clean money and stuff, not funds garnered by drugs (unless they’re legal!), or theft, or blackmail, or you know, god forbid, blood money.

Who can help but to consider the grandchildren of the Great Fauci, as just one example?

Sure, they can go to his Wikipedia page and read how awesome he is once he’s dead. They can brush up on all his prestigious awards before hearing the sweet tinkling chimes of their personal portion of his vast estate which they have rightfully earned through his unfortunate passing. They can tell their own grandchildren how many lives he saved and how much of their own fortunes they owe to his generosity.

But, what if those poor future grandchildren get ahold of some of the fake news available today? Just imagine how this might affect their innocent psyches? And who would be responsible for this psychological torture?

Well, all the disinfo agents, clearly! Those evil-hearted, hate-spewing degenerates who are never grateful for their assigned heroes. Those same miserable wretches who believe Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab and the Bush & Clinton clans and even Trump are ALL deranged psychopaths.

All those crazies who are ruining our democracy!

If you can’t see it yet, put your rose-colored glasses back on!

Doctor’s orders: 3 puppy videos, 10 deep breathes during your time out, 33 rainbow drawings with your permanent markers, then you can re-join us nice, happy folk in civilized society.

Oh yes, that’s so much better! I can see clearly now!

It’s those people who believe the world reeks foul at every turn when in fact the stench is coming from within their own selves! Ahhhh, yes.

If they would just look in the mirror and smell themselves.

If they would just see the world as we do, so full of wonder and joy, then the world would magically shape-shift right before their very eyes and they would be filled as we are with the light of love and joy radiating outward at every angle of the sun, especially from their eyes and anus.

If those haters see a drug-pushing, lying, greedy turd in the mirrored face of the Great Fauci, then they just don’t realize the world is a kaleidoscope of marvels and all they have to do is change their black lenses for pink ones, which would undoubtedly turn their subjective hell into a fantastic earthly paradise!



Put your rose-colored glasses back on, Dude, before you bum everybody out!

Terminate, Abort, Kill

The political establishment and media outlets, including those in the so-called ‘alternative community’ are guilty of faulty narrative framing in order to create maximum conflict and division.

My goal with this post is to offer each side of the ‘abortion argument’ ways they might tweak their strategy in order to improve their position against their opponents. I don’t mean only the Right/Left positions, because a growing number of folks around the world have already left that reservation far behind and are entertaining other ‘spaces’—the new buzzword.

I will dare to conclude with a very easy solution that will never be accepted by any political or religious group, because it is the most individually empowering solution possible.

On the ‘Political, Religious Right-Conservative’—how might you improve your position?

Those who you deem to convince that abortion is wrong and should be heavily regulated, if not illegal, are not swayed by your terminology misuse. The science terms for the development of the fetus: from zygote to embryo to fetus to baby, are replaced in your arguments by the word ‘baby’ in all circumstances, and this is done even by those who consider themselves “alternative” and devoted to science, like Mike Adams, ‘The Health Ranger’, who rages on regularly about ‘baby killers.’

The popular ‘Let the states decide’ argument is not really an argument. It is a power-based position, one to choose in order to deflect taking a position personally based on individual circumstances, while allowing others (as in scientific authorities and politicians) to make the decisions for everyone. Local politics is hardly independent of federal influence. The Left’s concern is one of access. The notion that a teenage girl who wishes to terminate her pregnancy should hop on a bus (with her parent’s permission we assume) to travel across an entire state, or several, for this two-hour procedure does not address their primary issue. It’s not just about the money.

Slogans such as “on-demand abortions” and “using abortion as contraception” are misleading and ignoring the science. The ‘morning after’ pill (used to be called Plan B)* is considered here to be exactly equivalent to the surgical procedure in the first trimester, as it is in the last. In fact, these procedures are about as similar as an egg is to a chicken.

“Human life begins at conception.” Yes, but all life begins at conception, including synthetic life. This leads into the ‘murder is a slippery slope’, another faux-argument, because there is no evidence whatsoever that girls who have abortions go on to commit murders later in life.

If it is true that ending a pregnancy prematurely is the same as murder, and that it is making our society more cruel as a result, then war, all war, must also be included in that conversation. It appears that you wish to blame women for societal violence for ending the life of a zygote, while to fight in wars, sometimes to the death, is considered heroic. There is an inconsistency in your position that is seen by your opponents as weak, evasive and hypocritical.

On the ‘political-secular Left-Progressive’ —how might you improve your position? The abortion industry should be your main cause of concern, if you wish to influence your opponents.

Normalizing all forms of abortion and ignoring the crimes of the industry are two weaknesses making you appear callous and insensitive, which is not the image the Left is expected to be crafting.

Science is in your favor, but not as your periodic scapegoat. It is not logical to cling to science when it comes to terminology, but then to deny the religious mantra of “Human life begins at conception.”

What we used to call “Test-tube babies” prove human life begins at conception. As does all of life. In vitro fertilization is incredibly popular and reliable. If you’re going to use science to back up your arguments, then actually use the science.

Where is the science today? Our bodies, and our genetic make-up, are becoming technological tools in service to the ‘higher power’ of AI.

First came Petris, then came Wombs, then came Bubba in a baby carriage!

Demonstrate to “the Right” that their real enemy is not those who would choose to discard the zygote developing in their womb, but those who currently consider the womb, and in fact the entire body, as irrelevant to future life.

The social engineering component of this normalizing process is ‘equality’ for the “LGBTQ community”.

‘Assisted Reproductive Technology’ is the latest terminology for this ever-growing industry. ‘Abortion’ is rolled out for public consumption to obscure and obfuscate this fact. Abortion, as a moral issue, has been all but irrelevant for decades considering where the Science stands.

Unwanted pregnancies and ‘unwanted’ embryos.
Where once we had adoption, now we have surrogacy, and . . .
An emerging market!

“During the selection and transfer phases, many embryos may be discarded in favour of others. This selection may be based on criteria such as genetic disorders or the sex. One of the earliest cases of special gene selection through IVF was the case of the Collins family in the 1990s, who selected the sex of their child.[137] The ethic issues remain unresolved as no consensus exists in science, religion, and philosophy on when a human embryo should be recognised as a person. For those who believe that this is at the moment of conception, IVF becomes a moral question when multiple eggs are fertilised, begin development, and only a few are chosen for implantation.”
In vitro fertilisation – Wikipedia

That was then . …

This is now (actual already 5 years old, because, it’s proprietary). …

What do you think the new market(s) are going to be?
I bet you already know, that is, if you already know there are ‘Bio-bags’ used to grow lamb fetuses.

(Figure from a 2017 Nature Communications paper describing an extra-uterine life support system, or “biobag”, used to grow lamb fetuses.[1])

In 2017, fetal researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published a study showing they had grown premature lamb fetuses for four weeks in an extra-uterine life support system.[1][6][7]

Gender equality and LGBT[edit]
In the 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex, feminist Shulamith Firestone wrote that differences in biological reproductive roles are a source of gender inequality. Firestone singled out pregnancy and childbirth, making the argument that an artificial womb would free “women from the tyranny of their reproductive biology.”[25][26]
Arathi Prasad argues in her column on The Guardian in her article “How artificial wombs will change our ideas of gender, family and equality” that “It will […] give men an essential tool to have a child entirely without a woman, should they choose. It will ask us to question concepts of gender and parenthood.” She furthermore argues for the benefits for same-sex couples: “It might also mean that the divide between mother and father can be dispensed with: a womb outside a woman’s body would serve women, trans women and male same-sex couples equally without prejudice.”[27]

This is a global industry.

“None of this is surprising of course. Russia loves genetic stuff.
In August 2019, the State Duma commissioned a report on how to upgrade Russia’s outdated laws so that humans could be genetically enhanced in cool new ways. The study examined:
… the possibilities of conflict-free development of a new generation of technologies for using assisted reproductive technologies (genome editing, metabolic management during pregnancy, etc.) to create a new (contractual) type of society based on more advanced legislation.
The first step was obvious: we need to know everyone’s genome.
In July 2021, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko revealed plans to issue “genetic passports” to all Russians, with special attention given to the little ones.”
https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/genetic-russia?utm_medium=email

The most appropriate course of action for a concerned society is the same one that is most appropriate for the individual.

That is: Take Charge of Your Fertility!! — That’s the title of a book that’s been around since the ‘90s that should be taught in every school.

Why do schools teach more about sex education than reproductive education? I can think of many reasons, many of those centering on money, power and and the social engineering required to keep the proper channels well-greased.

I was taught the only choices for a girl are abstinence, or artificial birth control methods like: The Pill, IUD, sponge, condom, etc. Abstinence until marriage sounded as absurd to me then as it does to me now. Expecting a girl to ignore or erase her sexual maturity for a decade plus is simply cruel and is bound to create issues individually and for the society.

Yet each of these offered birth control methods require regular purchases from the drug store or doctor.

Imagine how empowering it would be for a pre-teen girl to understand her menstrual cycle, physically and emotionally. The process of Natural Birth Control is so easy and it trains a girl to listen to her body. Anyone who can remember to take a pill every day can learn how to read their basal body temperature every day.

Unfortunately I knew nothing of this method until I was nearly 40.

Of course, I understand it is not fool-proof, but then there is the ‘Plan-B’*. There are natural abortificants as well, if only the information were made available.

If a girl chooses against pregnancy, and she knows her body thanks to a proper education that tells her immediately when there is a fertilized egg just then attaching to her uterine wall thanks to her basal body temperature (as it is something she will most likely not feel) and long before that mass of cells should be called ‘a baby’, she can disrupt the development of the embryo, and not have to live her life with the label of ‘murderer’ thrown at her every time the socio-political engine decides to roll down those tracks, again.

Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health by Toni Weschler, MPH

*Notice again the inflammatory language in the renaming of this product, “Emergency Contraception”. To take contraception daily is far more profitable than to take one pill a month only when you need it.

It is my sincere hope that biologically-informed, naturally-gendered girls will someday prove that they do not need the government, or the corporations, or the priest-class—scientific or otherwise—to control their fertility.

We are perfectly capable of managing our fertility and reproduction all on our own with the proper information and resources.

A Stranger in a Strange Land

Just what are the Globalists and their minions taking from us, really?

They are stealing our wealth, that much is very clear. In that move they are accumulating enormous power, those two go hand in hand. They are creating a monoculture—their ideal “One World”—which on the surface to a great many around the world sounds like a nice thing.

These folks, mostly the young and those of ‘aspiring’ economies, expect to see more opportunities, a more equal distribution of resources, better access to education, a higher standard of living.

I want those things for them too.

This doesn’t sell as well in the U.S. and other Western countries. Our standard of living is already quite high, relatively speaking. So the promotion angle of their scheme is different with us. We get verbally spanked for being too successful.

We get optimal inflation and free training in resilience and a taste of tyranny and are expected to be grateful for it.

Whether you buy into the Globalist socio-economic vision or expect to benefit from it is the crux of most folks’ concern—either for or against—if they are concerned at all.

But what’s really being stolen, the root of the issue, as I see it, is much more serious than material gains or losses, or more convenient global commerce. Or mass immigration. Or even a totalitarian takeover.

Both Hubby and I were avid travelers when we met, and continued in that vein for many years afterwards. Most of this was before widespread use of the internet, when traveling alone was really traveling alone. If you got homesick you waited two weeks for a letter, or stood in line at the pay phone, or just suffered through it.

Mark Twain has supposedly said, “Traveling makes you humble.” I believe he meant the real kind of travel, not the group tours through Europe hitting ten capitals in ten days brand of modern tourism. No military base or corporate job or trust fund to cling to either. Those types are real traveling about as much as glamping resembles real camping.

To be a stranger in a strange land is a consciousness altering and life changing experience. When I saw McDonalds and signs in English and waves of expats, I got my fill of nostalgia quickly, and moved on. I experienced lots of loneliness. LOTS. I was scared sometimes. I put myself in some compromising positions, which I then had to navigate without the safety nets of language, cultural familiarity, kinship, or commraderie. “Travails” —that is the deepest purpose of travel and what separates a traveler from a tourist, or an occupier.

When I see signs in this country in Spanish or Chinese I feel sorry for those travelers, or immigrants. They are missing something essential through our obsession with making everyone feel safe and welcomed.

They are missing the life-changing opportunity to become ingratiated to another, in testing their own metal, in developing their own personal resilience and emotional fortitude. And ultimately, their ability to adapt to an environment, and to transform themselves.

We are not doing them any favors by denying them these opportunities and calling it welcoming and inclusive.

What we are actually doing is fostering weakness and projecting our own sheltered materialism onto all those who come here in order to experience cultural strength and conscious, courageous individuality—in us—and in themselves.