#dissent
The Criminalization of Dissent (Revisited)
https://cjhopkins.substack.com/p/the-criminalization-of-dissent-revisited
#criminalization #dissent #thought-crimes #newnormal #germany #corona #denialism #corporate #censorship #totalitarianism #zinn #quote
Breaking news: The refusers forced the Israeli government to delay the judicial coup! | Refuser Solidarity Network
We are writing this quickly, as events are unfolding on the ground.
Weeks-long wave of refusal and civil resistance forced the Israeli government yesterday (Monday) to postpone the #anti-democratic judicial coup! Due to the refusers' pressure, on Saturday, the minister of defense, Yoav Galant, had a press conference and announced his opposition to the judicial #coup, citing voices of #dissent in the army as the major reason for his break with his own party and the government. As a result, the prime minister, Netanyahu, fired him on Sunday. The firing led to a huge backlash: mass #protests, a general #strike by universities and trade unions, the blocking of roads across the country and the shutdown of the airport. All this forced the government to postpone the judicial coup. And it all started with the refusers.
Earlier this week the Israeli press overflowed with daily refusal statements and civil resistance announcements. Each day hundreds of reserve soldiers protested against the government and declared their refusal to continue to serve in the Israeli army. Among them are soldiers of the Intelligence Corps soldiers, doctors, combat pilots and more. In a letter sent to the Israeli defense minister, soldiers of the Intelligence Corps wrote:
“Our conscience does not allow us to cooperate with the attempts to change the regime In Israel. An undemocratic Israel is a weak Israel which is dangerous to minorities within it, an Israel with a failing economic system. Our love for the country and the many years we spent serving it compel us to resist.”
The act of refusal also worked its way to different sectors of the #army and the Israeli society. 700 Soldiers in the standing army sent out official letters to the minister of defense and the Commander-in-Chief of the Israeli army stating that they will resign from service. Parents of soldiers to be facing mandatory #conscription have reconsidered sending their children to serve in the army and a group of 40 soldiers currently serving their mandatory conscription filmed a video vowing not to serve an undemocratic government.
On Friday, the Israeli army Commander-in-Chief warned that the Israeli army is disintegrating and that military operations are at risk due to massive amounts of refusals caused by the judicial coup. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu addressed the unprecedented crisis the army is facing and mentioned that refusing to serve in the military is a great danger to Israel.
The refusal wave puts the government in an unparalleled #crisis, and this crisis is a huge #opportunity. This represents a massive crack in the Israeli mainstream’s conviction that the army is used purely for defense. It is a moment of deep change in the worldviews of the Israeli citizenry, that could allow the anti-occupation movement to show Israelis that a democracy only for some people, is not a democracy at all.
Although this could be a time to celebrate decades of hard work leading to a moment of success, the fight is far from over. The reforms have only been postponed and not canceled. Netanyahu called for the army to punish the #refusers, and to get the majority needed to approve a delay in the legislation, Netanyahu promised an ultra-nationalist party to create a new “national guard” under the control of Itamar Ben Gvir, the leader of an extreme #right-wing party. All this means that leveraging the protests to fight the occupation is a challenge, and there is no democracy without an end to the #occupation.
Refuser Solidarity Network continues to support local Israeli refusers. We support efforts to use this moment to expand the anti-occupation movement and continue the fight to bring an end to the occupation.
Source: https://mailchi.mp/refuser/refusers-solidarity-15085353
Covid contact-tracing tools have been co-opted by governments and intelligence agencies around the world to track dissent.
#dissent #dissenters #tracking #government #surveillance #covid #FacialRecognition
#crisis #cost_of_living #trussonomics #fossil_fuels #green_energy #queen_funeral #king_charles #monarchy #republicanism #dissent #protest #msm #fascism #westminster #constitution #politics #economics #uk #global #future
Toot Redux (first published 10th July 2022)
#FBI attacks #Uhuru #Movement on July 29, 2022 - Hands Off #Uhuru!
Click on picture or you'll find the #Video here: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=v2reuou9GXA
They use their law, merely the opinion of the ruling #class, to villainize us and justify their violence.
The period that our #Party has worked to usher in is one where the colonial world hegemon, the United States, is weakened politically, economically and ideologically. People around the world, who have been forced to live under the brutal domination of U.S. #imperialism, are rising up and fighting back, refusing to be bullied and beaten to continue the theft of our land and resources.
https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=v2reuou9GXAThere’s nothing that the white world has obtained for itself that has not been stolen from #African, Indigenous and all other #colonized nations throughout the #world.
The anti-colonial #struggle that’s heating up across the planet is driving the global system of #colonial #capitalism into great peril. Not only this, the U.S. is facing challengers to its economic and #military #power, primarily in the form of #Russia and increasingly, #China.
Source: https://apspuhuru.org/2022/08/01/hands-off-the-uhuru-movement/
#Africa #fascism #Westernworld #dissident #dissent #rights #USA #politics
A developing evil: the malignant historical force behind the #Great #Reset
The so-called Great Reset is nothing but the extension and violent #acceleration of a longstanding process.
It is the increase of centralising power, the tightening of control, the growth of “the #economy ”, the ever-closer convergence of #power and #money.
Continuous #industrial #development has been the background to all our lives, but it is not necessarily something of which we are always conscious.
The first thing I observed was that there was always local opposition to any proposed development on a greenfield area – the bigger the project, the greater the opposition.
Several methods were used to ensure that development triumphed over the wishes of the local people.
The first was for local politicians and officials to denigrate opponents of the scheme in question, in which ever way seemed most appropriate.
If the #opponents were local people living close to the proposed development, they were selfish individuals termed NIMBYs – Not In My Back Yard.
If people from further away were involved, who could not be accused of having a purely personal interest, they were dubbed “outside agitators” or “rent-a-mob troublemakers”.
In this way, no #dissent could ever be seen as legitimate.
I also came across a degree of #corruption, of course, of very close connections between local officials and the property development businesses whose projects they authorised.
But behind these levels of #propaganda and corruption was something else, something even more important: the “need” for development was written into the bureaucratic planning structures devised by central government, with which local authorities had to comply.
The overall process of development itself was sacrosanct and officially ensured.
All the language and arguments in favour of development therefore served not so much to convince people that it was necessary, as to cloak the reality that it would in any case be imposed on them against their will by central power.
A narrative is always needed to dress up development and sell it to the public.
This idea of “underdevelopment” is, he concludes, “a manipulative trick to involve people in struggles for getting what the powerful want to impose on them”
Those pushing this #agenda are happy to cynically exploit the naivety of those who fall for the lie and enthusiastically jump aboard the bandwagon of “helping” those who have not yet been turned into what Otto Ulrich calls “a mechanical cog in a great production apparatus dominated by the world market”.
In #Europe, a key #institution promoting development is The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, founded sixty years ago
The “First UN Development Decade” between 1960 and 1970, which claimed to identify a problem with “underdeveloped” people, again insisted that its aim was to improve the quality of their lives
In 1970 it launched an International Development Strategy and an associated UN resolution announced a unified approach to development and planning, “which would fully integrate the economic and social components in the formulation of policies and programmes”.
In 1986 the #UN went even further when it published its Declaration on the Right to Development.
Although this text clearly identified the aim of establishing what it called “a new international economic order”, it hid this agenda behind the absurd statement that “the right to development is an inalienable human right”.
“States have the duty to co-operate with each other in ensuring development and eliminating obstacles to development”.
In 1990 the United Nations Development Programme published its first Human Development Report, defending the inalienable right of all human beings to be developed.
then ten years later, in 2000, it launched its Millennium Development Goals, based on the International Development Goals drawn up at Chateau de la Muette by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee
Private-public partnerships were very much encouraged. Goal 8 was “to develop a global partnership for development”, which could mean “cooperation with #pharmaceutical #companies” or making available the “benefits of new technologies” by working with Big Tech
It has also long been interested in so-called “rural development”, aiming to “increase #production and raise #productivity” by means of what it calls a “transition from traditional isolation”. The #World #Bank would like to enable the “transfer of people out of low productivity #agriculture into more rewarding pursuits”.
It is not for nothing that the World Bank/IFC use the #slogan “Creating #Markets, Creating #> Opportunities” (21). For all the do-good language, the bottom line is that investment, like development, is really about making money and accumulating power.
The World Bank has been peddling the #greenwashing scam of so-called “sustainable development” for quite a while now.
In reality, the “sustainable” development they are promoting is every bit of an oxymoron as “equitable” development, being just another aspect of the camouflage with which its proponents hide the reality of their insidious agenda from public view.
*As Esteva writes, “Sustainable development has been explicitly conceived as a strategy for sustaining ‘development’, not for supporting the flourishing and enduring of an infinitely diverse natural and social life”. *
But because they don’t want this profoundly undemocratic situation to be visible, they also construct the propaganda layer which aims, like the propaganda about the need for local “development”, to conceal the true nature of the process.
Because the development mafia depicts itself as representing “good”, all those who go against its agenda must necessarily be “bad” – reactionary, right-wing, conspiracy theorists.
###The process which calls itself “development” in fact equates to nothing other than #destruction, in every context.
As Sachs writes: “Suspicion grows that development was a misconceived enterprise from the beginning. Indeed, it is not the failure of development which has to be feared, but its success. What would a completely developed world look like?” (28)
It would simply be a dead world.
read on: https://winteroak.org.uk/2022/08/02/a-developing-evil-the-malignant-historical-force-behind-the-great-reset/
#Brainwashing Ourselves: How Digital #Technology is Destroying #Democracy
Source: https://modernheretic.com/brainwashing-ourselves-how-digital-technology-is-destroying-democracy
Accordingly, #digital technology is upheaving our culture and displacing the traditions and norms we were accustomed to, leaving many of us feeling unmoored and undermining our political values.
#Online conversations quickly developed controls in the form of moderators—authoritarian figures who established the rules of engagement and who got to decide what speech was worthy and what was not.
There was a resultant demand for more controls. #Ignore buttons popped up and were quickly used for individuals who espoused ideas that the user disagreed with, limiting their exposure to different ideas and establishing the pattern for the silo-ization of the internet that is dominant today.
Unlike the offline world in which people were judged through personal knowledge, direct observation, and reputation, individuals online could only be judged by the content of their digital output, which reduced them to flat, dehumanized vectors of information to be categorized as #good or #bad
Thus, the new controls spawned by the digital realm to deal with #information overload involved the establishment of a binary, ideological filter to judge whether information—as well as the poster of that information—should be included or excluded in a particular #community.
Unfortunately, once the ideological binary is established as the moral paradigm, group discourse becomes a never-ending #witch hunt.
Group leaders and members are on constant lookout for potential immorality as represented by supposed outsiders to the #group. Anyone who disturbs the group harmony with deviant thoughts can find themselves the sudden target of paranoiac suspicion.
Every #conversation becomes a purity test of sorts, and the only way to prove that you are one of the “good” guys is to make your expressions a reflection of the group’s worldview
#Groupthink became the norm, and anyone who deviated from the group too much would be seen as a danger to the group who needed to be punished or eliminated.
Thus, thanks to the #internet, #intolerance for dissent and demands for #censorship arose as aspirational values of a new moral order.
Consequently, the controls that developed in response to digital technology were exactly those controls that are used in the formation of cults and #totalitarian #regimes, tools to ensure that every person falls in line with the orthodoxy as determined by the leadership of the group.
control of information within an environment (moderation, fact checks, content #warnings, removal of information, prioritizing certain viewpoints, etc.);
- demands for purity in thought to assure that everyone conforms to the group
- sacred truths that cannot be questioned without some form of reprisal, usually removal from the group or platform
- the reduction of complex ideas to trite slogans and memes
- control over who belongs to the group and who does not
- the subordination of the individual to the group
These totalitarian #controls are quotidian at this point, and anyone who participates in discourse on the internet is exposed on a daily basis to enormous pressure to conform their thoughts to the narratives that are perpetuated by those in control of the internet fora.
Without realizing it, we slowly brainwashed ourselves over time with our uncritical and pervasive use of digital technology.
It was therefore inevitable that once we accepted these digital values as normal, they would then infiltrate our offline interactions.
While we think of ourselves as using digital tools to change our world, in reality digital technology is changing us.
Most people in the Western world are never disconnected from the totalitarian culture of the internet. That is why digital cultural norms are now dominating our #society
In effect, the digital controls that developed in order to control the overabundance of information on the internet led to polarized, cultish thinking and conditioning people to believe that totalitarianism is a necessary form of regulation in today’s world.
#Dissent is now treated as a danger that needs to be eradicated. Worse still, this cultish conditioning is bleeding into the #offline world so that anti-democratic, authoritarian measures are increasingly seen as normal in the “free” world.
Many people are chilled from speaking, not just online where they may end up banned by a tech platform, but offline where they face the possible consequences of losing jobs, networking opportunities, and friendships.
The universe of ideas that is acceptable to be expressed is rapidly shrinking and people are exposed to fewer ideas that challenge their views, which further reinforces their #intolerance for differences of opinion in a cyclical manner.
Much like George #Orwell ’s #doublespeak, people in contemporary society are pressured to conceal their true thoughts and dilute their public messages to the point that they become anodyne and meaningless enough that the mob will tolerate them.
Thus, facts, #transparency, and rationality are inimical to digital culture. Conformity, not #truth, is the driving force of digital culture.
By programming individuals to become accustomed to totalitarian regulations on a personal level, it was inevitable that these digital norms would also pervade the political realm.
Anything that could allow a person or group to express an unorthodox idea is suspicious, and therefore in digital culture, the concept of free speech is inherently dangerous.
The paternalistic notion that individuals must be protected from corruption by bad ideas has taken hold of our culture. And this type of milieu control of information enables independent thought to be supplanted by majoritarian #propaganda just as it does in other totalitarian environments.
The assumption that the individual is neither competent to judge the quality of information nor strong enough to be exposed to information of allegedly dubious quality now reigns supreme, bolstering the new flourishing culture of censorship.
They are dismissive because they actually want a world with limited speech, where the window of permissible thought is narrow enough to exclude all the speech they disagree with.
Thus, while digital culture proponents often nominally claim to want to protect minority groups, their insistence on conformity to majoritarian standards ensures that genuine diversity cannot exist in the new moral order
#Speech is an outward expression of inner beliefs, and the loss of freedom of speech is dangerous because it is a threat to the ability to hold and practice a belief system that differs from the orthodoxy.
Consequently, digital morality is a direct attack on #minority rights.
Defending Freedom And Democracy Sure Requires An Awful Lot Of Censorship
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/defending-freedom-and-democracy-sure
#censorship #freedom #truth #democracy #media #rt #russia #ukraine #war #dissent
● NEWS ● #CommonDreams #ukraine #dissent #russia ☞ Over 2,100 Anti-War Protesters Arrested in Russia https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/27/over-2100-anti-war-protesters-arrested-russia I heard over 5,000 (from a Russian)
A quotation by Commager, Henry Steele
We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past — Jefferson and Paine, Emerson and Thoreau — while we silence the rebels of the present.
Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) American historian, writer, activist
“Who Is Loyal to America?” Harper’s Magazine #1168 (Sep 1947)
#quote #quotation #america #celebration #dissent #history #past #present #protest #rebel
More notes and sourcing on WIST: https://wist.info/commager-henry-steele/51437/
The Super Hero Film Era: How Political Dissent is Neutralised
https://www.bitchute.com/video/AECU058CcEE/
#davecullen #cullen #superhero #film #era #political #dissent #neutralized #dystopian #movies #bread-and-circuses #distractions
Militarism and the police: how our streets became battlefields
When faced with #conflict, human beings respond in various ways and often choose #solutions that avoid #violence. We are very good at #negotiating, #communicating, #cooperating, as well as, of course, submitting to those more #powerful than us. Violence in our societies is pervasive; it is experienced every day by victims of #crime, domestic and more. But the systemic way #armies and #militarized #police units plan and prepare for the use of overwhelming violence is specific and unique.
A key example of militarized #policing is the #suppression of #protest and #dissent. Social movements come into conflict with the #authorities via lobbying, #protests or direct actions. Authorities respond to these #conflicts in various ways, sometimes reaching for militarized options. This violence is planned, trained for, repeatedly rehearsed and often delivered in a calculated way that aims to disorientate, overwhelm or eliminate the perceived enemy or threat.
Through the lens of #militarism, conflict stops being something that drives #change and #transformation; it becomes a #threat to be neutralized and the individuals and groups driving conflict become enemies akin to a foreign invading #army. Violence of this nature relies on its perpetrators’ #obedience to orders, the #dehumanization of its victims, and a heightened perception of threat.
The experiences of the democracy movement in #HongKong serve as one particularly extreme example. While in Hong Kong these tactics have been deployed by an #authoritarian #government, we have seen similar examples of police violence leveled against #activists across the world — in Chile, France, Germany, Indonesia, Myanmar, South Africa, South Korea and the US, to name but a few.
What this ProPublica piece fails to reveal is that Chicago is keeping those 20 Libraries open because it’s cheaper than what it would cost to house Chicago's 16,451 registered homeless students, about 4.5 percent of its student body
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Homeless children have no internet access. That means they will be prevented from taking part in the Chicago Public School's online study program during the elongated school closings due to COVID-19.
As if those kids didn’t have it bad enough already. So Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is doing what she can to help those kids by keeping those 20 Libraries open. Everything is not always black and white.
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ProPublica should have delved a little deeper to understand that during last fall's Chicago Teachers Union Strike, one of the teacher’s main demands was for the Chicago to provide housing for these deeply disadvantaged students. Mayor Lightfoot refused. It was because she had to negotiate where she could within budget constraints. Again, everything is not always black and white. Shame on you, ProPublica.
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Here’s where having a Democrat in the Oval Office and a democrat-heavy Senate and House would make a world of difference. Instead of giving tax cuts to the 1% and multi billion dollar corporations, we could be helping cities like Chicago tackle this travesty of so many children being denied a chance at life.
No, we do not need a revolution to fix this. All we need is sane, humane people in key positions of government who do the right thing while keeping an eye on a balanced budget …. so we can keep doing the right thing.
Bernie helped ensure Hillary’s electoral defeat in 2016 and that is why things are as bad as they are today. Now, many of Bernie’s people are saying that they refuse to vote for Biden because they are furious, AGAIN, that Bernie isn’t going to be the nominee. If that happens, AGAIN, it will be on the shoulders of those immature, self-serving Bernie supporters that those homeless children in Chicago (and other cities) will remain homeless forever. Those who repeat 2016 had better not think for a minute that anyone is going to buy their lies about caring about people. Once was enough. Twice would be an insult to intelligence. If Sanders allows his followers to pull the same stunt, his name will be remembered in infamy. And he will deserve every trashing he gets from every historian who mentions his name. So will the generation who helped him. They will be remembered as the antithesis of "The Greatest Generation.”
#mywork #socialism #socialists #capitalism #dissent #Politics #Democrats #Election2020 #Warren #Sanders #FauxDisagreement #AmericaHatesProgressives #progressives #centrist #FollowTheMoney #DSA #Democrats #Liberals #gop #diaspora #friendica #USpolitics #Bernie2020 #FightThePower #election2020 ShelennAyres @Shelenn Ayres
https://www.propublica.org/article/chicago-public-libraries-are-staying-open-even-though-librarians-say-it-is-not-safe
A Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists
Some 733 pages covering about 100 economists. A number of familiar names, but many I'm not familiar with.
http://www.docdroid.net/file/view/7uog/a-biographical-dictionary-of-dissenting-economists.pdf
h/t: reddit's /r/NonAustrianEconomics