Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Vandana Shiva: Bill Gates’ Global Agenda and How We Can Resist His War on Life

This is an excellent article! Too many are unaware of the truth about the deep shadow side and the great harm caused by Bill Gates. We need to know these things! We need to stop worshiping at the altar of philanthropy and instead seek to dismantle the predatory capitalist system that enables individuals to accumulate billions of dollars while billions of people struggle to survive and die and the planet is destroyed. Deep, deep bow to Vandana Shiva who’s long been among my treasured teachers and whose work in the world needs to inform and inspire us all. — Molly
“Gates' 'funding' results in an erasure of democracy and biodiversity, of nature and culture. His 'philanthropy' is not just philanthrocapitalism. It is philanthroimperialism."

By Vandana Shiva

In March 2015, Bill Gates showed an image of the coronavirus during a TED Talk and told the audience that it was what the greatest catastrophe of our time would look like. The real threat to life, he said, is ‘not missiles, but microbes.’ When the coronavirus pandemic swept over the earth like a tsunami five years later, he revived the war language, describing the pandemic as ‘a world war’.

The coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus,’ he said.

In fact, the pandemic is not a war. The pandemic is a consequence of war. A war against life. The mechanical mind connected to the money machine of extraction has created the illusion of humans as separate from nature, and nature as dead, inert raw material to be exploited. But, in fact, we are part of the biome. And we are part of the virome. The biome and the virome are us. When we wage war on the biodiversity of our forests, our farms, and in our guts, we wage war on ourselves.

The health emergency of the coronavirus is inseparable from the health emergency of extinction, the health emergency of biodiversity loss, and the health emergency of the climate crisis. All of these emergencies are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic, anthropocentric worldview that considers humans separate from—and superior to—other beings. Beings we can own, manipulate, and control. All of these emergencies are rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed, which violate planetary boundaries, and destroy the integrity of ecosystems and individual species.

New diseases arise because a globalized, industrialized, inefficient agriculture invades habitats, destroys ecosystems, and manipulates animals, plants, and other organisms with no respect for their integrity or their health. We are linked worldwide through the spread of diseases like the coronavirus because we have invaded the homes of other species, manipulated plants and animals for commercial profits and greed, and cultivated monocultures. As we clear-cut forests, as we turn farms into industrial monocultures that produce toxic, nutritionally empty commodities, as our diets become degraded through industrial processing with synthetic chemicals and genetic engineering, and as we perpetuate the illusion that earth and life are raw materials to be exploited for profits, we are indeed connecting. But instead of connecting on a continuum of health by protecting biodiversity, integrity, and self-organization of all living beings, including humans, we are connected through disease.

According to the International Labour Organization, ‘1.6 billion informal economy workers (representing the most vulnerable in the labour market), out of a worldwide total of two billion and a global workforce of 3.3 billion, have suffered massive damage to their capacity to earn a living. This is due to lockdown measures and/or because they work in the hardest-hit sectors.’ According to the World Food Programme, a quarter of a billion additional people will be pushed to hunger and 300,000 could die every day. These, too, are pandemics that are killing people. Killing cannot be a prescription for saving lives.

Health is about life and living systems. There is no ‘life’ in the paradigm of health that Bill Gates and his ilk are promoting and imposing on the entire world. Gates has created global alliances to impose top-down analysis and prescriptions for health problems. He gives money to define the problems, and then he uses his influence and money to impose the solutions. And in the process, he gets richer. His ‘funding’ results in an erasure of democracy and biodiversity, of nature and culture. His ‘philanthropy’ is not just philanthrocapitalism. It is philanthroimperialism.

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown have revealed even more clearly how we are being reduced to objects to be controlled, with our bodies and minds as the new colonies to be invaded. Empires create colonies, colonies enclose the commons of the indigenous living communities and turn them into sources of raw material to be extracted for profits. This linear, extractive logic is unable to see the intimate relations that sustain life in the natural world. It is blind to diversity, cycles of renewal, values of giving and sharing, and the power and potential of self-organising and mutuality. It is blind to the waste it creates and to the violence it unleashes. The extended coronavirus lockdown has been a lab experiment for a future without humanity.

On March 26, 2020, at a peak of the coronavirus pandemic and in the midst of the lockdown, Microsoft was granted a patent by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Patent WO 060606 declares that ‘Human Body Activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system….’

The ‘body activity’ that Microsoft wants to mine includes radiation emitted from the human body, brain activities, body fluid flow, blood flow, organ activity, body movement such as eye movement, facial movement, and muscle movement, as well as any other activities that can be sensed and represented by images, waves, signals, texts, numbers, degrees, or any other information or data.

The patent is an intellectual property claim over our bodies and minds. In colonialism, colonisers assign themselves the right to take the land and resources of indigenous people, extinguish their cultures and sovereignty, and in extreme cases exterminate them. Patent WO 060606 is a declaration by Microsoft that our bodies and minds are its new colonies. We are mines of ‘raw material’—the data extracted from our bodies. Rather than sovereign, spiritual, conscious, intelligent beings making decisions and choices with wisdom and ethical values about the impacts of our actions on the natural and social world of which we are a part, and to which we are inextricably related, we are ‘users.’ A ‘user’ is a consumer without choice in the digital empire.

But that’s not the totality of Gates’ vision. In fact, it is even more sinister—to colonise the minds, bodies, and spirits of our children before they even have the opportunity to understand what freedom and sovereignty look and feel like, beginning with the most vulnerable.

In May 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced a partnership with the Gates Foundation to ‘reinvent education.’ Cuomo called Gates a visionary and argued that the pandemic has created ‘a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates’] ideas…all these buildings, all these physical classrooms—why with all the technology you have?’

In fact, Gates has been trying to dismantle the public education system of the United States for two decades. For him students are mines for data. That is why the indicators he promotes are attendance, college enrollment, and scores on a math and reading test, because these can be easily quantified and mined. In reimagining education, children will be monitored through surveillance systems to check if they are attentive while they are forced to take classes remotely, alone at home. The dystopia is one where children never return to schools, do not have a chance to play, do not have friends. It is a world without society, without relationships, without love and friendship.

As I look to the future in a world of Gates and Tech Barons, I see a humanity that is further polarized into large numbers of ‘throw away’ people who have no place in the new Empire. Those who are included in the new Empire will be little more than digital slaves.

Or, we can resist. We can seed another future, deepen our democracies, reclaim our commons, regenerate the earth as living members of a One Earth Family, rich in our diversity and freedom, one in our unity and interconnectedness. It is a healthier future. It is one we must fight for. It is one we must claim.

We stand at a precipice of extinction. Will we allow our humanity as living, conscious, intelligent, autonomous beings to be extinguished by a greed machine that does not know limits and is unable to put a break on its colonisation and destruction? Or will we stop the machine and defend our humanity, freedom, and autonomy to protect life on earth?

The above is excerpted from Vandana Shiva’s book Oneness vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom (Chelsea Green Publishing, August 2020) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/biotechnology/bill-gates-global-agenda-and-how-we-can-resist-his-war-on-life/

The Men Behind QAnon

An excellent, disturbing, and illuminating piece. It is my belief that it is important to learn as much as we can about the shadow side of our nation and how it impact us. This very much includes understanding QAnon and its widespread and dangerous implications. — Molly

Unfounded 'QAnon' conspiracy theory gains traction in politics: Part 1

 The Men Behind QAnon

For nearly three years, QAnon followers have been feverishly deciphering thousands of cryptic clues and predictions posted online by the shadowy persona of "Q" at the center of a metastasizing movement that experts say is the first far-right extremist conspiracy theory in the modern era to penetrate mainstream American culture and Washington politics.

Yet, a consensus of leading researchers and critics who study and debunk QAnon disinformation told ABC News that a key to identifying "Q" has been hiding in plain sight for years -- on a pig farm south of Manila in the Philippines -- at least until recently. 

The rapid online growth of QAnon since early spring -- and a series of trolling incidents that surged through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok before those platforms began banning QAnon groups and hashtags this summer -- has sharpened focus on the forces behind this alternative reality game-like phenomenon.

At least 24 candidates who have "endorsed or given credence to the conspiracy theory or promoted QAnon content" -- 22 Republicans and two independents -- have secured a spot on the ballot in the 2020 congressional elections, according to the media watchdog Media Matters, though it remains unclear how many could actually win their races. Last month, one candidate who pollsters say is almost certain to win her heavily GOP district in Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, appeared to rescind her previous support for QAnon, telling Fox News that "once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path."

People who believe in QAnon conspiracies have also been associated with a number of strange and disconcerting real-life incidents in recent years, including a man using an armored truck to block traffic on the Hoover Dam in 2018, and another man accused of fatally shooting alleged New York Gambino mob boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali last year because, according to court records, he believed Cali that was part of the "deep state." In June, a New York judge found the suspect mentally unfit for trial and transferred to a mental health facility for further evaluation, the Staten Island Advance reported.

Anthony Comello displays writing on his hand during his extradition hearing in Toms River, N.J., March 18, 2019.  

QAnon clothing and posters have turned up regularly at President Donald Trump's campaign rallies since at least 2018.   

Trump, his children and several White House staffers have repeatedly retweeted QAnon-linked content online, according to researchers who track the spread of QAnon. As of late August, Trump alone had amplified social media accounts promoting QAnon content at least 216 times, Media Matters reported.

Last month, Trump made his most extensive comments to date when asked about QAnon during a press briefing at the White House.

"Well I don't know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much -- which I appreciate," he said, adding, "I've heard these are people that love our country."  

A reporter pressed him about "this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals -- does that sound like something you are behind or a believer in?" 

"Well, I haven't ... heard that," Trump replied. "But is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? I mean, you know, if I can help save the world from problems, I'm willing to do it. I'm willing to put myself out there." 

Puzzles, prophesies and 'Q drops'

In its broadest outlines, the QAnon conspiracy theory rests on the baseless belief that Trump is secretly battling a global network of billionaire pedophiles, devil-worshipping Democrats and baby-eating Hollywood stars and their "deep state" counterparts embedded in the U.S. federal government's sprawling bureaucracy. 

Numerous top Democrats, party supporters, Hollywood stars and other Trump critics have been dragged into QAnon's web and slandered with false and heinous allegations. Last week, Trump fanned these flames when he retweeted a video clip of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that falsely suggested the former U.S. vice president is a pedophile.

Party affiliation is no shield. After Vice President Mike Pence told CBS News on Aug. 21 that he "doesn't know anything" about QAnon but "dismisses it out of hand," he was accused by many QAnon adherents of being a "deep state" agent. Earlier this month, Pence canceled a campaign fundraiser after an Associated Press (AP) report revealed that the couple hosting the event had publicly expressed support for QAnon.

QAnon's messaging is laced with religious allegory, prophesies, puzzle-solving and an emboldening sense of belonging to the right side of an epic battle of good versus evil.   

The user "Q Clearance Patriot," known to followers as "Q," purports to be a high-level military intelligence official who leaves clues about the secret battle behind the scenes with "Q drops" -- messages first posted in late 2017 on the anonymous imageboard 4chan, and later on 8chan and its successor, 8kun.

The "chans," as they are known -- where the messages are posted -- are low-trafficked anonymous imageboards populated largely with hate speech, pornography and rhetorical violence.

Instead of registering users, the sites issue users a tripcode -- a unique sequence of code that allows a user's identity to be recognized without storing personal data, a practice that researchers say protects free speech but fuels the spread of disinformation.   

It's "Q"'s unique tripcode that allows followers to verify the messages are coming from the same user account -- even as "Q" has migrated from one imageboard to the next. 

The "Q drops" are then swiftly interpreted by so-called "Q influencers," archived in searchable databases and disseminated to a much wider audience on aggregator websites like QMap -- which went offline earlier this month after the site's developer was identified as an IT expert living in New Jersey.

From there, the QAnon message spreads into the wider social media ecosystem. In August, the Guardian newspaper tracked 4.5 million aggregate QAnon followers worldwide on Facebook and Instagram alone, though the paper also acknowledged “likely significant overlap among these groups and accounts.”  

It remains unknown whether the “Q drops” are authored by one or several people or whether they live within or outside the U.S., burnishing the mystique at the heart of the phenomenon.

In 2018, NBC News disinformation beat reporters tracked the initial spread of the QAnon phenomenon to a handful of conspiracy theorists from YouTube and 4chan who banded together and used social media to amplify an obscure thread of political conspiracy to a far larger audience. 

 

Jenn Luizzi, a 27-year-old QAnon supporter from Deerfield Beach, holds a sign at Bayfront Park during a child sex trafficking rally in Miami, Aug. 22, 2020.

What began in 2017 as a political conspiracy theory has since morphed into a meta-conspiracy movement that in sum aims to account for much of the evil in the world, sweetened by the promise of evil's swift demise with "The Storm" -- the perpetually imminent arrest of tens of thousands of "enemy" Americans -- and "The Great Awakening" -- the subsequent, Rapture-like new beginning for the world where believers' faith is recognized and rewarded.

Who is Q?

The two Americans most clearly associated with the author of thousands of "Q drops" dating back to October 2017 are James Arthur Watkins, 56, who gained control in 2015 of the controversial anonymous message board 8chan, and his son, Ronald Watkins, former 8chan administrator and current administrator of its successor, the Watkins-owned 8kun.

Since 2001, Watkins has been living in the Philippines, according to Philippines immigration records obtained by ABC News.

"If he's not 'Q' himself, he can find out who 'Q' is at any time," said Fredrick Brennan, the creator of 8chan and Watkins' former business partner.

"And he's pretty much the only person in the world that can have private contact with 'Q.' He's the only person that -- through the board that 'Q' started on 8chan – can send 'Q' a direct message and get into private contact with basically the leader of this political cult that everybody wants to hear from right now."

Fredrick Brennan, creator of the website 8chan, speaks during an interview with AFP in Manila on Aug. 6, 2019. Fredrick Brennan told AFP in an interview in Manila that he sometimes regretted setting up the unmoderated message board in 2013 -- adding that turning it over to a new owner last year was a mistake.

Brennan created 8chan in 2013 when he was living in New York City, he said, after dreaming up the idea during a trip on psychedelic mushrooms.

He moved to Manila in 2014 to work with James and Ron Watkins and in 2015 he cut a deal that turned over ownership of the site to the elder Watkins. He continued to work on other Watkins projects until 2018 before splitting entirely and to date remains embroiled in a bitter personal dispute with the family.

Watkins and his son, Ron, who have previously denied being "Q," declined repeated ABC News interview requests and did not reply to a subsequent list of questions from ABC News submitted through his U.S. attorney and in letters delivered to his home and businesses in Manila.

A day after the letters were delivered in Manila and ABC News spoke briefly with Watkins' brother-in-law, an ABC News reporter was blocked from accessing Watkins' primary Twitter account.

'This is not a drill’

Brennan has been actively tracking Watkins-connected or owned businesses and -- when he finds them -- urging internet service providers to deny Watkins a platform.

Late last month, Brennan caused a stir among QAnon researchers when he posted an image of an IP address in a tweet that he said proved that Watkins’ 8kun was sharing the same IP address with QMap, one of the largest dissemination websites on the internet for "Q drops," with 10 million visitors a month in recent months, according to the web analytics site SimilarWeb Ltd.

"Oh my God," Brennan declared in an Aug. 23 tweet. "This is not a drill, people. Jim Watkins is the owner of QMap.pub."

Brennan told ABC News that the image suggested for the first time that Watkins is profiting from both "Q"'s original posts on 8kun, as well as from QMap.

"These were previously thought to be two separate entities," Brennan said.

Jim Watkins, the owner of 8chan, appears in an interview on One America News in Sept. 2019.

Earlier this month, the fact-checking website Logically identified QMap’s developer, or operator, as an IT expert living in New Jersey. The IT executive denied any association with Watkins to Daily Dot, a tech-centric website.

Until it went offline, QMap was hosted by the same content delivery network (CDN) service as 8kun. The CDN only hosts two other domains: Watkins' domains and The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.

The host service company “was started right … at the end of October, 2019,” Brennan said. 8kun launched weeks later.

Numerous QAnon researchers interviewed by ABC News said that Brennan's evidence is a compelling new twist and a further indication of long-suspected ties between Watkins and "Q."

They stressed that it was the access to "Q" -- not the authorship of the posts -- that most interests them about Watkins' role in the QAnon phenomenon.

"Regardless of whether he is doing any direct posting, or encouraging what the content is, the Watkins family and the 8kun crew have a remarkable amount of control over what's turning into an international movement," said Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Affairs, who studies the impact of political disinformation from alternative media and anonymous groups.

Friedberg said that in recent months he has devoted nearly all his time to the QAnon movement, because it has become a "major amplifier of both political and medical disinformation."

Researcher Mike Rains said he has long believed that Watkins is at least in direct contact with "Q" and said that Brennan's tweet appears to be yet another indication of the degree to which the Watkins family controls the QAnon posts dispatched on 8kun.

"It doesn't really matter who is writing the 'Q drops,'" said Rains, a Massachusetts-based researcher who posts frequent critiques of QAnon conspiracies and hosts the podcast "Poker and Politics." "Watkins is the publisher. He is the only source of information that is allowed to get out there."

 
To continue this article, and for additional links, please go here: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/men-qanon/story?id=73046374&cid=social_twitter_abcn