Water Is Life – They Are Stealing Our Livelihood and We Aren’t Even Noticing

Water Is Life – They Are Stealing Our Livelihood and We Aren’t Even Noticing

22 March 2018, marks World Water Day. It is also the week, when the 8^th World Water Forum (WWF-8) convenes, 18 to 23 March 2018, in Brasilia. It is no coincidence, for sure, that Brazil was chosen for this noble WWF – about the water equivalent to the political and corporate elites, represented at the WEF – World Economic Forum, in Davos. The two are intimately related, and interlinked, as we will see.

The WWF is organized by the World Water Council, just another layer to confuse who is who in the circus of water elitists attempting to control a vital source of life – freshwater. The WWF prides itself with an honorable mission statement:

“To promote awareness, build political commitment and trigger action on critical water issues at all levels, to facilitate the efficient conservation, protection, development, planning, management and use of water in all its dimensions on an environmentally sustainable basis for the benefit of all life”.

There you have it. Nestlé, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Dow Chemicals and other transnationals with strong water interests, Veolia, Suez (French), Thames (UK), Bechtel (US), Petrobras and a myriad of others, join together with the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), different UN bodies, and many multi- and bilateral donors, so-called development institutions – as well as dozens more ultra-liberal organizations, NGOs and corporations, pretending to work for the good of humanity; for the good of hundreds of millions of people who persistently are deprived of affordable potable water by an onslaught of water privatization (Organizers and supporters of the WWF).

And not to forget – also present at the WWF is the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC), part of UNESCO, based at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, whose mission is sharing information on worldwide groundwater resources, in view of protecting them, and focusing mainly on transboundary aquifer assessment and groundwater monitoring.Another layer of this prominent international water forum is the World Bank-created Water Resources Group (WRG). Its chief purpose is to pursue the Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG-6), “Clean Water and Sanitation”. The WRG’s leadership is composed of an interwoven group of individuals and institutions, such as the head of  the WEF, leadership of Nestlé, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Dow Chemicals, the UN (UNDP) … and the Global Water Partnership (GWP), yet another layer within the maze of the global water mafia, created by the usual ‘suspects’, World Bank, UN (UNDP), and a number of  multi- and bilateral development agencies, whose priority focus is on water, i.e. the Swiss, the Swedes, the Dutch…
By and large, the WWF is the sum of this tremendous non-transparent, complex colossus of institutions and technocrats that is gradually taking over control of the global freshwater resources. This is happening under our eyes and under a seemingly anodyne promotion logo – PPP = Public Private Partnership which means in reality, the Public puts at disposal of the Private sector its publicly funded and publicly-owned infrastructure and water resources, to be exploited for profit at the detriment of the very public, who paid for the infrastructure and whose life depends on this vital resource, water.
Privatization of freshwater resources is a crime, but it’s the name of the game. Just look who is prominently represented in the World Bank-created Water Resources Group – it’s IFC, the International Finance Corporation, the private sector development branch of the World Bank Group.
The result of these multiple and often repetitive meetings and gathering is largely zero – safe for a litany of recommendations and resolutions whose implementation hardly ever see the light of the day. Imagine the tremendous annual cost of running this multi-agency sham; mostly business class travel, food and lodging (five-star accommodations), of the high-level technocrats crisscrossing the globe from one conference to another! – Millions and millions of dollars per year. How many people could be served with drinking water and safe sanitation for this amount of money?
The WHO / UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) estimates (July 2017) that “some 3 in 10 people worldwide, or 2.1 billion, lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation.” – This, out of a world population of about 7.4 billion.

Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians and of World Water Watch, and author of “Blue Gold” (2002), “Blue Covenant” (2007), and of “Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever” (2013), refers in the latter to the WEF 2010 which under the aegis of the WRG was launching a platform of public-private partnership, to help engage mainly developing country governments in ‘reforming’ the water sector, i.e. putting it into the hands of private water corporations. Many of these countries have no choice, if they want to continue receiving “development” funds from the World Bank and Co. Barlow is also the founder of the Blue Planet Project, seeking to protect vital water resources, like the Guarani Aquifer for future generations.
Flashback to the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 2018). Brazilian President Temerattended this year’s WEF. Temer, a corrupt criminal, should be in prison rather than running a most wonderful country, Brazil, into the ground. Literally. His only purpose to be in Davos was to tell this elite forum about his intention to sell out and privatize his country, foremost water resources.
How did such a dishonest person become president of Brazil? – Washington, who else, put him there. Against all odds. The dark Zion-handlers representing the US financial sector removed an honest Dilma Rousseff and replaced her with Michel Temer, at that time an indicted crook. The indictment was lifted as he was supposed to be made President. It is still beyond me how this could happen, as Dilma had the entire military on her side and could have called a state of emergency to halt the parliamentary ‘regime change’ charade, instigated by the US. She didn’t. Somebody must have threatened her.
By now we know how Washington manipulates elections and other political processes around the world – by the shady methods of Cambridge Analytica (CA), a ‘marketing’ consultancy that steals personal data from internet, foremost from facebook, to target specific segments of a population with specific messages to influence their opinion. By their own account, CA methods have been applied in over 200 cases around the globe within the last 3 to 4 years, to influence elections and other political processes, including in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, the UK (Brexit), Germany, France and many more. This is true meddling in other countries’ sovereign affairs, by the one and only rogue state of this globe, the United States of America. And they are talking about Russian meddling in the 2016 US Presidential Elections!
Stealing by stealth is one of the neoliberal crimes we haven’t quite understood yet, let alone mastered. Hindsight is always 20/20. This article hopes to contribute to foresight.
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Brazil, with about 8,200 km3 annually renewable freshwater, ranks number one with about one eighth (1/8) of the world’s total renewable freshwater resources which are estimated at 45,000 km3. The Amazon Basin holds about 73% of all of Brazil’s freshwater. Renewable freshwater is the composite of annually sustainable surface and groundwater recharge combined (recharge by precipitation and inflow from outside). The second most water-abundant country is Russia with 4,500 km3 / year, followed by Canada, Indonesia, China, Colombia, US, Peru, India – all with renewable water resources of between 2,000 and 3,000 km3 / year.

Amazon River Basin (the southern Guianas, not marked on this map, are part of the basin) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

By Continent, the Americas have the largest share of the world’s total freshwater resources with 45 percent, followed by Asia with 28 percent, Europe with 15.5 percent and Africa with 9 percent. This scenario immediately points to Africa’s vulnerability. Africa is clearly the most vulnerable Continent from a water resources – survival – point of view. Africa is also home to about 60% of the world’s remaining and known available natural resources; resources the west covets and goes to war for.
Is it, therefore, a coincidence that the 8^th WWF is held in Brazil? – I don’t think so. Especially not with Temer going to Davos, where the cream of the crop of the world’s corporate, finance and institutional elite meets, to offer Brazil’s water resources for privatization.
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We are talking about privatizing the largest single underground renewable freshwater reservoir in the Americas, arguably in the world, the Guarani Aquifer which underlays 1.2 million square kilometers – km2 (about the size of Texas and California combined), of which 71% is under Brazil, 19% under Argentina, 6% under Paraguay, and 4% under Uruguay.
The Guaraní aquifer was discovered in the 1990s. It is named after the indigenous people who have inhabited the area for centuries. The Guarani holds an estimated 46,000 km3 of freshwater (not to confound with the annual renewable freshwater, of which Brazil has about 8,300 km3 – see above). The current Guarani’s extraction rate is a little over 1 km3 per year, while the potential recharge rate is between 45 km3 and 55 km3/year, meaning that there is so far no risk of over-abstraction. This could however, change quickly.It is said that the Guaraní could supply the world population for the next 200 years with 100 liters per capita per day.
About 30 million people inhabit the Guarani region. In the Brazilian section of the Guaraní, some 500 to 600 cities are currently supplied with Guaraní water – how many of these municipal supplies are already privatized?
In late February 2018, Blue Planet founder, Maude Barlow, tweeted,

“Terrifying! Coke and Nestle want to buy up the Guarani Aquifer! Must be stopped!!!”.

As Mint Press reports

“A concerted push is underway in South America that could see one of the world’s largest reserves of fresh water soon fall into the hands of transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola and Nestlé. According to reports, talks to privatize the Guarani Aquifer – a vast subterranean water reserve lying beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – have already reached an advanced stage. The deal would grant a consortium of U.S. and Europe-based conglomerates exclusive rights to the aquifer that would last over 100 years.”

Under such concession arrangements, quantities to be abstracted are usually unlimited, which would leave the entire aquifer in the hands of those private corporations which are part and parcel of the Temer negotiated deal.
The article adds,

“In Brazil, intense lobbying has been underway since at least 2016 to tap into the aquifer. These efforts fell under the spotlight late last month [in January 2018] at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where private talks were reported between Brazil’s President Michel Temer and a range of top executives with interests in the aquifer, including Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Carlos Brito, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, and Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris.”

The article further mentions,

“As leading Brazilian water-rights activist Franklin Frederick noted in Brasil de Fato, these companies belong to the 2030 Water Resources Group (2030WRG), a transnational consortium that includes AB Inbev, Coca-Cola, Dow, Nestle and PepsiCo. 2030WRG bills itself as ‘a unique public-private-civil society collaboration’ and hides its intention to privatize developing nations’ water supplies by claiming to ‘facilitate open, trust-based dialogue processes to drive action on water resources reform in water-stressed countries in developing economies’ and ‘close the gap between water demand and supply by the year 2030’.”

Already in September 2016, Reuter reported that Brazil – Temer – “launched a multibillion-dollar plan to auction off oil, power rights and infrastructure concessions.” And the Correio do Brasil retorted that this “privatizing wrath” could extend to the Guarani Aquifer. A senior official at the National Water Agency (ANA) has revealed that the Guarani aquifer will appear on the list of public goods to be privatized.
Barlow, in a Conference in Florianapolis, Brazil, already in November 2011, said, the biggest concern for humanity is the potential for the Guarani to become controlled by private interests. She added, corporations have already preferential access to these waters.

“You are sitting atop a vast reserve of water in a very thirsty world, a reserve that is not only vital to the health and future of this region but to all of humanity. It is a treasure that must be protected by governments on behalf of the people and the ecosystems of the region.”

Recent studies point to an even larger underground water reservoir system, the “underground ocean” of Amazonia. It is projected to hold 160 trillion m3 (160,000 km3) of freshwater, underlaying mainly Brazil, but also Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Studies are still ongoing and it might be too soon to draw definite conclusions. However, these gigantic water reserves under Latin America plus the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) which is the world’s largest known fossil aquifer of an estimated 150,000 km3 of non-renewable groundwater, must be protected for humanity.
The NSAS is located under the Eastern end of the Sahara Desert. It stretches over 2 million km2 and spans four countries in North and Central Africa, Libya, Sudan, Chad and Egypt.
Back to the WWF in Brasilia, where the “water mafia” is convening as this article goes to print, and while in São Lourenço, Minas Gerais, 600 “Women Without Land” occupy Nestlé’s Brazil headquarters, since 6 AM Tuesday morning, 20 March. Nestlé, the Swiss food and water giant, declared water number one in its field of business expansion. Nestlé controls already more than 10% of the world market of bottled water. The “Women without Land” denounce Temer’s policy of handing out their precious water resources to international corporations. Aware of the ongoing WFF, they warn of further concession contracts being negotiated on the sidelines of this forum.
One of the leaders said,

“Imagine you are obliged to buy your water in bottles to quench your thirst. This is what they want these transnational corporations, officially debating improved water management in Brasilia, when in reality they are negotiating concessions of our water at fire-sales prices.”

We, the People, the 99% of this globe, have the moral obligation to stand up against this globalized, neofascist clandestine onslaught to privatize and steal our vital water resources – humanity’s survival. Water is Life. If we don’t have the foresight to stand up now, to stop this criminal privatization of OUR, humanity’s water resources – humankind may be doomed.




Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog; and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

You Have the Right To Remain Innocent

You Have the Right To Remain Innocent

Never, ever talk to the cops.

Should Be Required Reading
ESPECIALLY for honest, law abiding citizens with nothing to fear from law enforcemen

Ever wonder why every cop that is accused of something and investigated is suddenly unavailable for comment and is immediately assigned an attorney who has the same, universal reply to the curious public, “We have no comment at this time”. And all while their co-workers are out there using all the power of education, training, and intimidation, along with every dirty trick in the book, to persuade everyone else to spill their guts immediately? to find out the entire, interesting truth.

Considering the near total destruction of our constitutional rights due to the exploitation of our fear of terrorists, coupled with the so-called War On Drugs, (War On Everyone’s Civil Rights is just as accurate), every American citizen should read this book. This is especially true if you believe you are a law abiding citizen who need not worry about such matters.

Make no mistake about it, American police officers today are armed to the teeth, and they do have the power to snatch you up for no reason – or at least a completely fabricated one – and haul you off to the pokey or worse. The era of the friendly neighborhood cop helping old ladies across the street and coaxing young girls’ cats out of trees is long gone. A new, more menacing generation of ‘warrior cops’ are now on patrol and they are trained to meet every situation with suspicion, unwavering authority and overwhelming force. According to one internet source who claims to have done their research, Americans are now 58 times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist! Let that sink in a minute. Even if the provable truth is 10% of that number we definitely have cause for concern.

They are also trained to try and “snoop out” a crime in even the most benign interactions with the public, even if it means “bending” the Constitution a little bit. Traffic stops, and early evening jogs are now grounds for a detainment and investigation, just to see what you are up to in the hopes of taking you to jail for something. And it does not matter that you might be completely innocent of anything. In today’s suspicious atmosphere, all it takes is for some cop or even a witness to single you out, even if they happen to be mistaken or just plain dishonest, and your life could be changed forever. When this happens to you, whether or not you have read this book could determine if you are incarcerated forever or go home innocent.

I speak from experience. As a young teenager I was taken from my street one block from my home by a cop who, against all of my guaranteed rights, ‘sweet-talked’ me into getting into his car, “to see if I could help him solve a crime”. Being taught to respect the law and to always trust policemen, and knowing I was completely innocent of anything ever, I was an easy mark. I had been naively walking from my home to a friend’s house 3 blocks away, and now I was being driven to another neighborhood where I was instantly identified by a desperate, irate and mistaken victim as the person who had violently snatched her purse minutes earlier, “absolutely positively!” I can tell you things got very bad for me before truth finally prevailed and I am extremely lucky to have escaped injustice. I can also tell you that the cop’s friendly demeanor instantly changed and he couldn’t have cared less when I told him she was mistaken. He was simply proud to have ‘solved the crime’ and just wanted to revel in the glory and receive his pats on the back. I can still feel those cuffs cutting into my wrists and see the smug look on his face as he denied my every request for comfort and mercy. Believe me when I tell you there no feeling of helplessness that compares to being falsely accused, arrested, locked up, ignored, and buried alive in the American Justice system, if only for a few months, days, or even hours. After reading this book I can also tell you that I am confident there would now be a much different preliminary outcome.

Since that time I have been acutely aware of the true, fragile state of my own liberty (and yours). I am also convinced that innocent citizens are jailed every day in this country. Some are prosecuted, found guilty and thrown into prison or worse. A large percentage of those couldn’t have been successfully prosecuted had they known and heeded the advice contained in this book. You had better believe I have now read it. I also forced all of my children to read it and then quizzed them on it. You should too. You can also rest assured that all cops, judges, attorneys and prosecutors are aware of the information contained in this book and have most likely shared it with their loved ones.

Our founding fathers, in their infinite wisdom, gave us our glorious constitution as protection against out of control authority, and ever since law enforcement has been searching for ways to circumvent it. Today, using modern tactics that feed off of an atmosphere of fear, they have almost completely achieved their goal. The advice laid out in is currently the best protection we citizens can have against overzealous, (if not unscrupulous), law enforcement, but only if we all take a couple of hours to read it. Please don’t think it couldn’t possibly happen to you and take the chance.

Thank you, Professor Duane, for doing your part to preserve our liberty in the face of this unprecedented assault on our Constitution by the modern American Police State.


Pro Deo et Constitutione –
Libertas aut Mors Semper Vigilans Fortis
Paratus et Fidelis

Joseph F Barber

Think You Live in a Free Society?

Think You Live in a Free Society?

Most Americans think they live in a free society. They think that because they can find fifty varieties of salad dressing at the grocery store, choose from among a hundred types of wine at the liquor store, select a television channel from over 1,000 choices, download any movie or song they want from the Internet, and sit at home for hours playing the latest video game that they live in a free society. They are oblivious to the extent of government encroachment on their freedoms. They are complacent when it comes to government edicts. And they are ignorant as to what a free society really means.

Oh sure, Americans are free compared with the people of North Korea, Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, but there are 190 other countries in the world. The truth is, Americans live in a relatively free society, not an absolutely free society. The American people are relatively free when compared with people in Thailand, Egypt, the Republic of the Congo, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Nepal, Vietnam, and Pakistan.

And on top of all that, Americans live in a nanny state. We have a government full of politicians, bureaucrats, and regulators, and a society full of statists, authoritarians, and busybodies, who all want to use the force of government to impose their values, hinder personal freedom, remake society in their own image, destroy personal and financial privacy, restrict economic activity, compel people to associate with people they may not want to associate with, define and enforce morality, tell you how to live your life, and limit the size of soft drinks you can purchase at a convenience store.

I much prefer a genuinely free society, as I make clear in the 127 essays in this book.

The essays were all written as articles or columns during the years 2005–2017. With just two exceptions, they were all originally written for either LewRockwell.com or the Future of Freedom Foundation. The essays are arranged in chronological order within the sections of each chapter (explained below), and each one can be read independently. They are reprinted verbatim, with the exception of the correction of any typographical errors. Because most of the essays initially appeared online, there will occasionally be found references to websites that originally contained links. There is some overlap between the essays in each chapter, between chapters 1 through 3, and between chapters 4 through 7. Although some of the figures given and events described in the essays are dated, the defense of a free society is timeless.

Chapter one, “Libertarianism: Theory,” begins with three essays that introduce libertarianism followed by eight essays that supplement and amplify the first three.

Chapter two, “Libertarianism: Practice,” begins with five general essays on the libertarian perspective on a broad range of issues, continues with six specific essays on the libertarian perspective on certain issues, and concludes with three essays on libertarianism and education and two on libertarianism and taxes.

Chapter three, “Libertarianism vs. Liberalism/Conservatism,” begins with two general essays on the relationship between libertarianism and liberalism/conservatism followed by six specific essays on the relationship between libertarianism and conservatism/Republicans.

Chapter four, “Discrimination and Free Association,” contains sixteen essays on the libertarian perspective on discrimination (some general and some specific) and concludes with two essays on the related topic of free association.

Chapter five, “Victimless Crimes,” begins with two essays on victimless crimes in general followed by specific essays regarding prostitution, pornography, gambling, adultery, ticket scalping, and drugs. Although I have written scores of essays on the evils of the government’s war on drugs, some of which are collected in my book , I have selected just one, “The Libertarian Sticking Point,” for inclusion in this collection of essays because of how it directly relates to libertarianism.

Chapter six, “The Free Market,” begins with nine essays relating to market prices (including the price of labor) and concludes with thirteen essays in defense of the free market and in opposition to government intervention and regulation. My essays on free trade that one would expect to find here are collected in my small book
Chapter seven, “The Free Society,” begins with four essays relating to alcohol, continues with three on tobacco, and concludes with a wide variety of essays on the nature of a free society.

The mention of any book in the essays and the inclusion of any book in the above list of books for further reading should not be taken as a blanket endorsement of everything contained in the book or anything else written by the author.

The US Government Just Destroyed Our Privacy While Nobody Was Paying Attention

The US Government Just Destroyed Our Privacy While Nobody Was Paying Attention

While the nation remained fixated on gun control and Facebook’s violative practices last week, the U.S. government quietly codified the CLOUD Act, its own intrusive policies on citizens’ data.

While the massive, $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill passed Friday received widespread media attention, the CLOUD Act — which lawmakers snuck into the end of the 2,300-page bill — was hardly addressed.

The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD) “updates the rules for criminal investigators who want to see emails, documents and other communications stored on the internet,” CNET reported. “Now law enforcement won’t be blocked from accessing someone’s Outlook account, for example, just because Microsoft happens to store the user’s email on servers in Ireland.”

The CLOUD Act will also allow the U.S. to enter into agreements that allow the transfer of private data from domestic servers to investigators in other countries on a case-by-case basis, further globalizing the ever-encroaching surveillance state. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has strongly opposed the legislation, listed several consequences of the bill, which it called “far-reaching” and “privacy-upending”:

Enable foreign police to collect and wiretap people’s communications from U.S. companies, without obtaining a U.S. warrant.
Allow foreign nations to demand personal data stored in the United States, without prior review by a judge.
Allow the U.S. president to enter “executive agreements” that empower police in foreign nations that have weaker privacy laws than the United States to seize data in the United States while ignoring U.S. privacy laws.
Allow foreign police to collect someone’s data without notifying them about it.
Empower U.S. police to grab any data, regardless if it’s a U.S. person’s or not, no matter where it is stored.
The bill is an update to the current MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty), the current framework for sharing internet user data between countries, which both legislators and tech companies have criticized as inefficient.

Some tech companies, like Microsoft, have endorsed the new CLOUD policy. Brad Smith, the company’s president and chief legal officer, called it  “a strong statute and a good compromise,” that “gives tech companies like Microsoft the ability to stand up for the privacy rights of our customers around the world.”

They echoed the sentiment of lawmakers like Orrin Hatch (R-UT). In February, he said of the bill:

“The CLOUD Act bridges the divide that sometimes exists between law enforcement and the tech sector by giving law enforcement the tools it needs to access data throughout the world while at the same time creating a commonsense framework to encourage international cooperation to resolve conflicts of law.”

One of the biggest complaints from privacy advocates, however, is that the new legislation places too much unmitigated power in the hands of governments with abysmal human rights records while also giving too much discretion to the U.S. government’s executive branch. Noting that the executive branch will decide which countries are human rights compliant and that those countries will then be able to engage in data collection and wiretaps without any further restrictions or oversight, the ACLU warned:

“Flip through Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch’s recent annual reports, and you can find a dizzying array of countries that have ratified major human rights treaties and reflect those obligations in their domestic laws but, in fact, have arrested, tortured and killed people in retaliation for their activism or due to their identity.”

The organization pointed out that no human rights organizations have endorsed the CLOUD Act, adding that “in the case of countries certified by the executive branch, the CLOUD Act would not require the U.S. government to scrutinize data requests by the foreign governments — indeed, the bill would not even require notifying the U.S. government or a user regarding a request.”

Further, the ACLU says, if a foreign government’s human rights record deteriorates, there is no mechanism to revoke its access to data. Considering the U.S.’ existing record on supporting regimes that severely restrict basic rights like freedom of expression, the expanded access the CLOUD Act provides is undoubtedly worrisome.

Also predictable is the government’s stale justification for expanding its power. As the CLOUD Act claims, it is purportedly to “protect public safety and combat serious crime, including terrorism” — even if it further empowers governments that support and commit said terrorism.

In an age where the government already engages in mass surveillance and is eager to disable the people’s efforts to protect their privacy through encryption technology, it is unsurprising, albeit dangerous, that Congress continues to encroach on what little is left of safeguards against unwarranted intrusions.


 Carey Wedler
The Anti-Media

Pro Deo et Constitutione –
Libertas aut Mors Semper Vigilans Fortis
Paratus et Fidelis

Joseph F Barber

Breaching the Public Trust – Facebook is the Beginning

Breaching the Public Trust – Facebook is the Beginning

Last night I was chatting with a friend while waiting for my daughter. She told me her phone now informs her when her bills are due.  Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but it is when you realize that she never told her phone to do that.

Her phone is scanning her emails and letting her know her when her electric bill is due.

I told her Google likely pushed down an update which she agreed to without realizing it (or getting the opportunity to opt-out of) which authorized them to not only scan her inbox but set up alerts for her.

She was angry about it, and rightfully so.

This is why I don’t use any of the Google apps on my Android phone.  Outlook for email, Opera for my browser.  Office for my productivity apps.  It was a conscious choice.  I moved to Android under protest because Microsoft willfully destroyed Windows Phone.

I know it’s not much better, but at least Microsoft appreciates my business, now, for the first time in their miserable existence.

And I wasn’t willing to shell out $600+ for a comparable iPhone.  Pennywise and pound-foolish, I know, but no one’s perfect.

As a hardware-savvy guy I know when software is over-burdening hardware and why.

And I can tell you the data harvesting on my phone was so out of control by Facebook and Google that it became nigh unusable on wake-up.  Upwards of a minute or two would go by before the phone was usable because so much data was being harvested off it before it would deign to allow me to use it.

I will switch to the iPhone when I can justify the money.

Once I deleted Facebook and all its crap from my phone, it miraculously became almost functional again.  I could answer calls as they came in.  I could reply to texts and approve blog comments/pingbacks.

I will never reinstall Facebook on any device I own.

Harvest This!
I am mostly post-Facebook anyway.  And once I get phone numbers for the few people I contact via Messenger, I’ll likely only log in to get the schedule at my local game shop.

I talked about this phenomenon back in October, presaging the backlash to their current brand-killing troubles.

So, watching people who have made the decision to simply end their relationship with Facebook is fascinating.  Some do so because they are rightfully fearful of Mr. Creepyberg’s weird need to vacuum up all the data about everyone...

The biggest problem with Facebook is it’s all fake intimacy; a pale simulacra of real life interactions with people you are supposed to care about…

The people I truly value mostly feel about Facebook the way I do.

That’s what makes them people I value.

They value the value of their closely-held opinions and don’t dilute it by publicly sharing their banality.  They realize that being friends is more than dropping political stink bombs in someone’s digital living room and saying, “I dare you to not breathe.”

So, here you are on a platform that is supposed to be all about you and the last thing anyone really wants to be on Facebook is … themselves.

Because who has time for that anymore?  Especially when this technology we’re all so addicted to is rendered unusable and the simplest of interactions takes ten times longer than it used to.

And this inconvenience was acceptable when it wasn’t obvious that your soul was being sucked up into the Facebook data vacuum and sold to any John with a fiver hanging out of his zipper.  But it is.

“Hey Mark, there’s an extra ten in it for you if you include their porn preferences.”

But now that that cat is out of the bag, Facebook’s advertisers and competitors can virtue signal and piggy-back on the #DeleteFacebook bandwagon.  Competition and all that.  As a free-marketeer I’m both horrified and vindicated by this.

So, take toxic interactions, politically-biased feed population to heighten anxiety and rapacious data harvesting, shake and stir and the resultant explosion of anger was predictable.

Post-Peak Facebook

Facebook will not recover from this.  In fact, we’ve likely reached peak ‘free’ social media in general.  The blockchain, like Steemit, is our way forward.  This has been brewing for months as the Left and the power-broker class go through the various stages of Post-Election Stress Disorder.

They have increasingly outed themselves as the insectoid monsters we’ve always known them to be.  But, again, we put up with it because we thought their being private companies would give us some control over their worst impulses.

Boy, were we wrong.

What started as a great thing to bring people together to communicate in an increasingly fragmented society has turned into an evil, Orwellian monstrosity feeding the power fantasies of the worst people on Wall St. and K Street.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are the epicenter for The Culture War being foisted on us by the psychotic and the powerful.  And their products have to be rejected for us to have any chance regaining control of the narratives that circumscribe our lives.

Use them for your own purposes, but not one inch further.  If Facebook is still good for your business, stay with it.  I’ll use YouTube for as long as they’ll let me.  But, I have no illusions about making money off the platform directly.

To me YouTube is nothing more than a repository of my screeds against it and everything the people who own and operate it stand for.

In this month’s issue of the Gold Goats n’ Guns Investment Newsletter I explained why we’ve reached this tipping point in a piece entitled, Slouching Towards Oceania:

In the open market of ideas, they have lost. As long as this didn’t have profound
political consequences they were okay with making money off of our discontent.

So, while they [social media companies] weren’t built with the intention of shutting out those who weren’t down with the plan of frogmarching us towards global oligarchic control, they have that power now.

And they are using it, revealing the ugly, authoritarian mindset that was always there, masked by a thin veneer of civility, safe in the knowledge that the power rested with them.

And then Trump won.

Faust-book
That’s the real reason for the outrage at Facebook’s casual attitude towards our data.  We knew this was being used against us.  But, it was a Faustian bargain.  We get ‘free’ communications, they get our data.

But, to then silence us because that data didn’t help elect Hillary and complete the circle of salt to trap us demons within, the gloves came off and we were to be punished for our sins against their ideas of decency.

Creepyberg’s mea culpa on CNN didn’t see him taking any true responsibility for this.  He never cared about his customers.

Facebook was always a propaganda platform and government intelligence agency masquerading as a social network.  So is Twitter.   So is Google.  Why do you think the Chinese and Russians banned them from their countries and fostered their own analogues?

It’s powerful stuff this big data in the global game of Control the Narrative.

They also represent the worst kind of real Fascism — the merging of corporate and state power — because it’s personal.  It uses your personal faults and kinks, your moments of weakness and short-comings as weapons to bind you down, keep you from making a living, marginalize you and, ultimately, un-person you.

And if Creepyberg and the vampires on Madison Avenue think they can recover their business after such a sincere violation of the public’s trust they are in for one hell of a rude awakening.

And that’s the real irony here.  For while Antifa and the left scream about how Trump is destroying the media and with it our democracy,  the truth is the legacy and social media companies are destroying themselves by thinking they are immune to the anger of their users.

The Clinton Ouroborous

But the big question is why this scandal?  And why this scandal now?  The outing of Cambridge Analytica may be payback for them helping elect Trump.  Creepyberg and Facebook are past their peak with those Democrats need to win elections — younger voters — so turning on them makes a certain kind of sense.

The Clintonistas/Obama-babies, under pressure from failing to destroy Trump, regain control of the narrative and preserve the status quo, are turning on each other now.

Like sharks in a feeding frenzy markers are being called in left and right, silences are breaking, confidences betrayed (Oh, the delicious irony of that!).

Nikolas Sarkozy was indicted for profiting off of destroying Libya?  Cambridge Analytica going down?  Now Facebook?  All in a span of a few days since Andrew McCabe was fired on Friday?

People like this don’t get outed unless there are major changes happening behind the scenes.  Hillary’s statements last week while she was stumbling around India may have finally been the last straw for those she failed so completely in November 2016.

And it’s time to cut her loose.  And in order to do that, the people complicit in her crimes are being thrown to the wolves to satisfy our anger and soothe the restless natives pre-mid terms.

I’ve been saying for months that Hillary’s popularity would have to drop below a certain critical threshold for her to be indicted.   That she would have to become a true liability to the cause of globalism for the sharks to finally feed in the grandest breakdown of the Prisoner’s Dilemma the world has ever seen.

Breaching the Public Trust – Facebook is the Beginning

Breaching the Public Trust – Facebook is the Beginning

Last night I was chatting with a friend while waiting for my daughter. She told me her phone now informs her when her bills are due.  Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but it is when you realize that she never told her phone to do that.

Her phone is scanning her emails and letting her know her when her electric bill is due.

I told her Google likely pushed down an update which she agreed to without realizing it (or getting the opportunity to opt-out of) which authorized them to not only scan her inbox but set up alerts for her.

She was angry about it, and rightfully so.

This is why I don’t use any of the Google apps on my Android phone.  Outlook for email, Opera for my browser.  Office for my productivity apps.  It was a conscious choice.  I moved to Android under protest because Microsoft willfully destroyed Windows Phone.

I know it’s not much better, but at least Microsoft appreciates my business, now, for the first time in their miserable existence.

And I wasn’t willing to shell out $600+ for a comparable iPhone.  Pennywise and pound-foolish, I know, but no one’s perfect.

As a hardware-savvy guy I know when software is over-burdening hardware and why.

And I can tell you the data harvesting on my phone was so out of control by Facebook and Google that it became nigh unusable on wake-up.  Upwards of a minute or two would go by before the phone was usable because so much data was being harvested off it before it would deign to allow me to use it.

I will switch to the iPhone when I can justify the money.

Once I deleted Facebook and all its crap from my phone, it miraculously became almost functional again.  I could answer calls as they came in.  I could reply to texts and approve blog comments/pingbacks.

I will never reinstall Facebook on any device I own.

Harvest This!

I am mostly post-Facebook anyway.  And once I get phone numbers for the few people I contact via Messenger, I’ll likely only log in to get the schedule at my local game shop.

I talked about this phenomenon back in October, presaging the backlash to their current brand-killing troubles.

So, watching people who have made the decision to simply end their relationship with Facebook is fascinating.  Some do so because they are rightfully fearful of Mr. Creepyberg’s weird need to vacuum up all the data about everyone...

The biggest problem with Facebook is it’s all fake intimacy; a pale simulacra of real life interactions with people you are supposed to care about…

The people I truly value mostly feel about Facebook the way I do.

That’s what makes them people I value.

They value the value of their closely-held opinions and don’t dilute it by publicly sharing their banality.  They realize that being friends is more than dropping political stink bombs in someone’s digital living room and saying, “I dare you to not breathe.”

So, here you are on a platform that is supposed to be all about you and the last thing anyone really wants to be on Facebook is … themselves.

Because who has time for that anymore?  Especially when this technology we’re all so addicted to is rendered unusable and the simplest of interactions takes ten times longer than it used to.

And this inconvenience was acceptable when it wasn’t obvious that your soul was being sucked up into the Facebook data vacuum and sold to any John with a fiver hanging out of his zipper.  But it is.

“Hey Mark, there’s an extra ten in it for you if you include their porn preferences.”

But now that that cat is out of the bag, Facebook’s advertisers and competitors can virtue signal and piggy-back on the #DeleteFacebook bandwagon.  Competition and all that.  As a free-marketeer I’m both horrified and vindicated by this.

So, take toxic interactions, politically-biased feed population to heighten anxiety and rapacious data harvesting, shake and stir and the resultant explosion of anger was predictable.

Post-Peak Facebook

Facebook will not recover from this.  In fact, we’ve likely reached peak ‘free’ social media in general.  The blockchain, like Steemit, is our way forward.  This has been brewing for months as the Left and the power-broker class go through the various stages of Post-Election Stress Disorder.

They have increasingly outed themselves as the insectoid monsters we’ve always known them to be.  But, again, we put up with it because we thought their being private companies would give us some control over their worst impulses.

Boy, were we wrong.

What started as a great thing to bring people together to communicate in an increasingly fragmented society has turned into an evil, Orwellian monstrosity feeding the power fantasies of the worst people on Wall St. and K Street.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are the epicenter for The Culture War being foisted on us by the psychotic and the powerful.  And their products have to be rejected for us to have any chance regaining control of the narratives that circumscribe our lives.

Use them for your own purposes, but not one inch further.  If Facebook is still good for your business, stay with it.  I’ll use YouTube for as long as they’ll let me.  But, I have no illusions about making money off the platform directly.

To me YouTube is nothing more than a repository of my screeds against it and everything the people who own and operate it stand for.

In this month’s issue of the Gold Goats n’ Guns Investment Newsletter I explained why we’ve reached this tipping point in a piece entitled, Slouching Towards Oceania:

In the open market of ideas, they have lost. As long as this didn’t have profound
political consequences they were okay with making money off of our discontent.

So, while they [social media companies] weren’t built with the intention of shutting out those who weren’t down with the plan of frogmarching us towards global oligarchic control, they have that power now.

And they are using it, revealing the ugly, authoritarian mindset that was always there, masked by a thin veneer of civility, safe in the knowledge that the power rested with them.

And then Trump won.

Faust-book

That’s the real reason for the outrage at Facebook’s casual attitude towards our data.  We knew this was being used against us.  But, it was a Faustian bargain.  We get ‘free’ communications, they get our data.

But, to then silence us because that data didn’t help elect Hillary and complete the circle of salt to trap us demons within, the gloves came off and we were to be punished for our sins against their ideas of decency.

Creepyberg’s mea culpa on CNN didn’t see him taking any true responsibility for this.  He never cared about his customers.

Facebook was always a propaganda platform and government intelligence agency masquerading as a social network.  So is Twitter.   So is Google.  Why do you think the Chinese and Russians banned them from their countries and fostered their own analogues?

It’s powerful stuff this big data in the global game of Control the Narrative.

They also represent the worst kind of real Fascism — the merging of corporate and state power — because it’s personal.  It uses your personal faults and kinks, your moments of weakness and short-comings as weapons to bind you down, keep you from making a living, marginalize you and, ultimately, un-person you.

And if Creepyberg and the vampires on Madison Avenue think they can recover their business after such a sincere violation of the public’s trust they are in for one hell of a rude awakening.

And that’s the real irony here.  For while Antifa and the left scream about how Trump is destroying the media and with it our democracy,  the truth is the legacy and social media companies are destroying themselves by thinking they are immune to the anger of their users.

The Clinton Ouroborous

But the big question is why this scandal?  And why this scandal now?  The outing of Cambridge Analytica may be payback for them helping elect Trump.  Creepyberg and Facebook are past their peak with those Democrats need to win elections — younger voters — so turning on them makes a certain kind of sense.

The Clintonistas/Obama-babies, under pressure from failing to destroy Trump, regain control of the narrative and preserve the status quo, are turning on each other now.

Like sharks in a feeding frenzy markers are being called in left and right, silences are breaking, confidences betrayed (Oh, the delicious irony of that!).

Nikolas Sarkozy was indicted for profiting off of destroying Libya?  Cambridge Analytica going down?  Now Facebook?  All in a span of a few days since Andrew McCabe was fired on Friday?

People like this don’t get outed unless there are major changes happening behind the scenes.  Hillary’s statements last week while she was stumbling around India may have finally been the last straw for those she failed so completely in November 2016.

And it’s time to cut her loose.  And in order to do that, the people complicit in her crimes are being thrown to the wolves to satisfy our anger and soothe the restless natives pre-mid terms.

I’ve been saying for months that Hillary’s popularity would have to drop below a certain critical threshold for her to be indicted.   That she would have to become a true liability to the cause of globalism for the sharks to finally feed in the grandest breakdown of the Prisoner’s Dilemma the world has ever seen.

Intersectionality, Tribalism and Farrakhan

Intersectionality, Tribalism and Farrakhan

A funny thing happened on the way to the intersectional future. The proverbial knapsack was unpacked in the Women’s March and inside wasn’t just racial tribalism, but racial and religious supremacism.

Why do Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour of the Women’s March like Farrakhan and his hate group? 

The Nation of Islam preaches that black people are the master race. It doesn’t just hate white people, Jews and a whole bunch of other folks. It hates them out of a conviction in its own superiority. According to its teachings, “the Blackman is the original man” and lighter skinned people were “devils” created by an evil mad scientist to rule over black people until they are destroyed by UFOs.

It even teaches that monkeys are descended from white people. 

Progressive media essays defending Obama, Rep. Keith Ellison, Rep. Danny Davis, Mallory and other black leaders for their Farrakhan links have urged concerned liberals to look at the positive aspects of the Nation of Islam, its love for black people, not the negative, its hatred for white people.

But it is the “positive” that is the problem. 

Intersectionality promises to package tribal identity politics into a utopia of social justice. But the essence of tribalism is the superiority of your people and the inferiority of all other groups. Tribalism doesn’t have to be violent, hostile or hateful. Most peoples are tribal after all. But when you combine the most radical identity politics elements, as the left does, then bigoted supremacism is certain.

The clown car of identity politics runs smoothest when it has a common enemy: white people. Coalitions like the Women’s March assemble an array of groups who are united by their hatred of Trump, white people, Israel and root beer. And it works as long as no one lifts up the hood and looks at the engine.

Black nationalism is racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic. The Nation of Islam isn’t an exception. From Jeremiah Wright, “Italians… looked down their garlic noses”, to Eldridge Cleaver, “rape was an insurrectionary act” to Amiri Baraka, the ugliest possible supremacist bigotry is its natural state.

"We are all beautiful (except white people, they are full of, and made of s___)," Amiri Baraka wrote. "The fag's death they gave us on a cross... they give us to worship a dead jew and not ourselves." 

“I got the extermination blues, jew-boys. I got the Hitler syndrome figured... So come for the rent, jewboys,” the Guggenheim fellowship, PEN and American Book Award winner, and former Poet Laureate of New Jersey ranted.

Baraka was one of the country’s most celebrated black nationalist poets and he was a former member of the Nation of Islam. Baraka’s Black Mass circulated the NOI’s racist creation myth. 

It was the NOI’s conviction of black superiority and white inferiority that attracted Baraka and so many other black nationalists. The NOI is one of a variety of black supremacist religious groups, from the similarly exotic Moorish and Black Hebrew churches, to NOI splinter groups such as Five-Percent Nation and black nationalist churches like the one attended by the Obamas and presided over by Jeremiah Wright. But religious black supremacism is only a component of a larger cultural movement that lies at the heart of black nationalism and mingles historical conspiracy theories with racial supremacism.

The comingling of black nationalism with intersectional politics has produced a new generation (often of second-generation radicals) that dresses up its racism not only in the lyricism of the old black nationalism of Wright and Baraka, but in the obtuse academic jargon of intersectionality.

That’s where Tamika Mallory and Ta-Nehisi Coates come from. But political word salads and poetry only conceal what you choose not to pay attention to. And that’s why we’re talking about Louis Farrakhan.

The mass of progressive media articles, essays and explainers deployed to protect the Women’s March can be summed up as, “Stop paying attention.” And what we’re not supposed to be paying attention to is the slow death of liberalism and its substitution by the intolerant tribal extremism of identity politics.

It’s why the echo chamber of progressive media has turned against the New York Times editorial page where too many articles questioning identity politics and political censorship have appeared. Bari Weiss and Quinn Norton, articulate young women, are the most immediate targets, but the larger target is James Bennet, the page’s gatekeeper, who is unwisely giving liberals a glimpse of where they’re headed.

The remaining liberals still wandering the open plains of a dying ecosystem don’t understand that they are becoming extinct. When they endorse vocal identity politics movements, it is because they believe that addressing the grievances of their extremists is a necessary step to a tolerant colorblind society.

They haven’t grasped that a tolerant multiracial society is the last thing supremacists of any race want. 

And the left tells them what they want to hear, that the strident tone of the activists is a momentary phenomenon triggered by their fury at injustice and oppression. Once we’re all intersectionalized and truthfully reconciled, the pain underlying the appeal of a Farrakhan or a Wright will dissipate.

It’s a lie. And they know it’s a lie. 

Intersectionality is a lie. Like the Nation of Islam, it’s not just a lie in its negative hateful aspects, but in its promise of a utopia once the “white devils” and their “white privilege” are out of the way.

Groups of identity politics extremists and their white cishet lefty allies can only be briefly united by the negative, not the positive. The “call-out culture” meant to spread social justice through the movement isn’t just a form of political terror; it fails to reach the innate bigotry of each identity politics group.

The meltdown of the Women’s March shows why intersectionality was always a Potemkin Village. 

Identity politics movements can’t fight bigotry, because they are naturally bigoted. Instead of actually rejecting bigotry, they project it on a convenient target like Trump, and then pretend that by destroying him, they can cleanse society. The more targets they destroy, the more they need to find to maintain an alliance whose only true unifying principle is a mutual denial of each other’s supremacist bigotries. And so the battle against racism becomes a war against microaggressions and structural white supremacy.

The whole thing is a ticking time bomb. And it keeps going off every few years. When it blows up, lefty activists rush out, as they are doing now, to plead, wheedle and warn that the real enemy is “white supremacy” and everyone needs to stop paying attention to the racist or sexist views of their own allies.

These “rainbow coalitions” of racist radicals don’t fight bigotry; they mobilize bigots for racial wars. 

Tamika Mallory praising Farrakhan isn’t shocking. It would be more shocking if she didn’t. It’s hard to find major black figures in politics and the entertainment industry who don’t hang out with him.

Both Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, the first two serious black presidential candidates, did. The Congressional Black Caucus hosted him. London Mayor Sadiq Khan acted as his lawyer. The list of black entertainers is all but endless. Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube (both members), Michael Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Spike Lee, Arsenio Hall, Common, Kanye West, Mos Def, Young Jeezy and Erykah Badu to name a few.

Not every individual who meets up with Farrakhan necessarily shares all his bigoted views, but many find his tribal affirmation of black superiority appealing and they value that more than they do any kind of tolerant society. That’s what Tamika Mallory, in her own awkward way, was trying to tell us.

Black nationalism is a tribal cause. It will always put its people first. The same is true of the rest of the hodgepodge of political identity groups that form up the intersectional chorus. No amount of calling out will change that. That’s why the calling out is mostly directed at safe targets, preferably white.

There is no larger unity at the end of the rainbow. Only smoother versions of Farrakhan. Barack instead of Baraka. Rants about “white devils” and “satanic Jews” filtered through academic jargon. 

A movement of bigotries can only divide us. And that’s all identity politics has to offer America. Instead of equal rights in a united nation, we will be members of quarreling tribes. And those tribes, like Farrakhan’s fans, will be incapable of seeing members of other tribes as having the same worth they do.

And people who don’t believe that the “other” has the same worth, won’t grant him the same rights. 

The left claims that it’s fighting for equality. What it’s actually fighting for is a tribal society where the notion of equal rights for all is as alien as it is in Iraq, Rwanda and Afghanistan, where democracy means tribal bloc votes and where the despotism of majority rule invariably ends in terror and death.



Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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Enough Is Enough: If You Really Want to Save Lives, Take Aim at Government Violence

Enough Is Enough: If You Really Want to Save Lives, Take Aim at Government Violence

“It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”—Journalist Celisa Calacal

Enough is enough.

That was the refrain chanted over and over by the thousands of demonstrators who gathered to protest gun violence in America.

Enough is enough.

We need to do something about the violence that is plaguing our nation and our world.

Enough is enough.

The world would be a better place if there were fewer weapons that could kill, maim, destroy and debilitate.

Enough is enough.

On March 24, 2018, more than 200,000 young people took the time to march on Washington DC and other cities across the country to demand that their concerns about gun violence be heard.

More power to them.

I’m all for activism, especially if it motivates people who have been sitting silently on the sidelines for too long to get up and try to reclaim control over a runaway government.

Curiously, however, although these young activists were vocal in calling for gun control legislation that requires stricter background checks and limits the kinds of weapons being bought and sold by members of the public, they were remarkably silent about the gun violence perpetrated by their own government.

Enough is enough.

Why is no one taking aim at the U.S. government as the greatest purveyor of violence in American society and around the world?

The systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and our liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.

Violence has become our government’s calling card, starting at the top and trickling down, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by heavily armed, black-garbed commandos and the increasingly rapid militarization of local police forces across the country to the drone killings used to target insurgents.

Enough is enough.

The government even exports violence worldwide, with weapons being America’s most profitable export.

Indeed, the day before thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington DC to protest mass shootings such as the one that took place at Stoneman Douglas High School, President Trump signed into law a colossal $1.3 trillion spending bill that gives the military the biggest boost in spending in more than a decade.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Here we have thousands of passionate protesters raging, crying and shouting about the need to restrict average Americans from being able to purchase and own military-style weapons, all the while the U.S. government—the same government under Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton and beyond that continues to act as a shill and a shield for the military industrial complex—embarks on a taxpayer-funded death march that will put even more guns into circulation, and no one says a thing about it.

Why is that?

Why does the government get a free pass?

With more than $700 billion earmarked for the military, including $144.3 billion for new military equipment, you can expect a whole lot more endless wars, drone strikes, bombing campaigns, civilian deaths, costly military installations, and fat paychecks for private military contractors who know exactly how to inflate invoices and take the American taxpayers for a ride.

Enough is enough.

You can be sure this financial windfall for America’s military empire will be used to expand the police state here at home, putting more militarized guns and weapons into the hands of local police and government bureaucrats who have been trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government civilians armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.

While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, the government is arming its own civilian employees to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorizing them to make arrests, and training them in military tactics.

Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, IRS, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.

Seriously, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?

Enough is enough.

Remember, it was just a few months ago that President Trump, aided and abetted by his trusty Department of Justice henchman Jeff Sessions, rolled back restrictions on the government’s military recycling program to the delight of the nation’s powerful police unions.

Under the auspices of this military “recycling” program, which was instituted decades ago and allows local police agencies to acquire military-grade weaponry and equipment, more than $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies since 1990.

Ironically, while gun critics continue to clamor for bans on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and armor-piercing bullets, expanded background checks, and tougher gun-trafficking laws, the U.S. military boasts all of these and more, including some weapons the rest of the world doesn’t have.

In the hands of government agents, whether they are members of the military, law enforcement or some other government agency, these weapons have become routine parts of America’s day-to-day life, a byproduct of the rapid militarization of law enforcement over the past several decades.

Over the course of 30 years, police officers in jack boots holding assault rifles have become fairly common in small town communities across the country. As investigative journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz reveal, “Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Although these federal programs that allow the military to “gift” battlefield-appropriate weapons, vehicles and equipment to domestic police departments at taxpayer expense are being sold to communities as a benefit, the real purpose is to keep the defense industry churning out profits, bring police departments in line with the military, and establish a standing army.

It’s a militarized approach to make-work programs, except in this case, instead of unnecessary busy work to keep people employed, communities across America are being inundated with unnecessary drones, tanks, grenade launchers and other military equipment better suited to the battlefield in order to fatten the bank accounts of the military industrial complex.

Thanks to Trump, this transformation of America into a battlefield is only going to get worse.

Get ready for more militarized police.

More police shootings.

More SWAT team raids.

More violence in a culture already drenched with violence.

Enough is enough.

You want to talk about gun violence?

According to the Washington Post, “1 in 13 people killed by guns are killed by police.”

While it still technically remains legal for the average citizen to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at and killed by police.

You don’t even have to have a gun or a look-alike gun, such as a BB gun, in your possession to be singled out and killed by police.

There are countless incidents that happen every day in which Americans are shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, or challenge an order.

Growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

Enough is enough.

With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, and all the government does is shrug and promise to do better.

Killed for standing in a “shooting stance.” In California, police opened fire on and killed a mentally challenged—unarmed—black man within minutes of arriving on the scene, allegedly because he removed a vape smoking device from his pocket and took a “shooting stance.”

Killed for holding a cell phone. Police in Arizona shot a man who was running away from U.S. Marshals after he refused to drop an object that turned out to be a cellphone. Similarly, police in Sacramento fired 20 shots at an unarmed, 22-year-old black man who was standing in his grandparents’ backyard after mistaking his cellphone for a gun.

Killed for carrying a baseball bat. Responding to a domestic disturbance call, Chicago police shot and killed 19-year-old college student Quintonio LeGrier who had reportedly been experiencing mental health problems and was carrying a baseball bat around the apartment where he and his father lived.

Killed for opening the front door. Bettie Jones, who lived on the floor below LeGrier, was also fatally shot—this time, accidentally—when she attempted to open the front door for police.

Killed for running towards police with a metal spoon. In Alabama, police shot and killed a 50-year-old man who reportedly charged a police officer while holding “a large metal spoon in a threatening manner.”

Killed for running while holding a tree branch. Georgia police shot and killed a 47-year-old man wearing only shorts and tennis shoes who, when first encountered, was sitting in the woods against a tree, only to start running towards police holding a stick in an “aggressive manner.”

Killed for crawling around naked. Atlanta police shot and killed an unarmed man who was reported to have been “acting deranged, knocking on doors, crawling around on the ground naked.” Police fired two shots at the man after he reportedly started running towards them.

Killed for wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey. Donnell Thompson, a mentally disabled 27-year-old described as gentle and shy, was shot and killed after police—searching for a carjacking suspect reportedly wearing similar clothing—encountered him lying motionless in a neighborhood yard. Police “only” opened fire with an M4 rifle after Thompson first failed to respond to their flash bang grenades and then started running after being hit by foam bullets.

Killed for driving while deaf. In North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed 29-year-old Daniel K. Harris—who was deaf—after Harris initially failed to pull over during a traffic stop.

Killed for being homeless. Los Angeles police shot an unarmed homeless man after he failed to stop riding his bicycleand then proceeded to run from police.

Killed for brandishing a shoehorn. John Wrana, a 95-year-old World War II veteran, lived in an assisted living center, used a walker to get around, and was shot and killed by police who mistook the shoehorn in his hand for a 2-foot-long machete and fired multiple beanbag rounds from a shotgun at close range.

Killed for having your car break down on the road. Terence Crutcher, unarmed and black, was shot and killed by Oklahoma police after his car broke down on the side of the road. Crutcher was shot in the back while walking towards his car with his hands up.

Killed for holding a garden hose. California police were ordered to pay $6.5 million after they opened fire on a man holding a garden hose, believing it to be a gun. Douglas Zerby was shot 12 times and pronounced dead on the scene.

Killed for calling 911. Justine Damond, a 40-year-old yoga instructor, was shot and killed by Minneapolis police, allegedly because they were startled by a loud noise in the vicinity just as she approached their patrol car. Damond, clad in pajamas, had called 911 to report a possible assault in her neighborhood.

Killed for looking for a parking spot. Richard Ferretti, a 52-year-old chef, was shot and killed by Philadelphia policewho had been alerted to investigate a purple Dodge Caravan that was driving “suspiciously” through the neighborhood.

Shot seven times for peeing outdoors. Eighteen-year- old Keivon Young was shot seven times by police from behind while urinating outdoors. Young was just zipping up his pants when he heard a commotion behind him and then found himself struck by a hail of bullets from two undercover cops. Allegedly officers mistook Young—5’4,” 135 lbs., and guilty of nothing more than taking a leak outdoors—for a 6’ tall, 200 lb. murder suspect whom they later apprehended. Young was charged with felony resisting arrest and two counts of assaulting a peace officer.

This is what passes for policing in America today, folks, and it’s only getting worse.

In every one of these scenarios, police could have resorted to less lethal tactics.

They could have acted with reason and calculation instead of reacting with a killer instinct.

They could have attempted to de-escalate and defuse whatever perceived “threat” caused them to fear for their lives enough to react with lethal force.

That police instead chose to fatally resolve these encounters by using their guns on fellow citizens speaks volumes about what is wrong with policing in America today, where police officers are being dressed in the trappings of war, drilled in the deadly art of combat, and trained to look upon “every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.”

Remember, to a hammer, all the world looks like a nail.

We’re not just getting hammered, however.

We’re getting killed, execution-style.

Enough is enough.

When you train police to shoot first and ask questions later—whether it’s a family pet, a child with a toy gun, or an old man with a cane—they’re going to shoot to kill.

This is the fallout from teaching police to assume the worst-case scenario and react with fear to anything that poses the slightest threat (imagined or real).

This is what comes from teaching police to view themselves as soldiers on a battlefield and those they’re supposed to serve as enemy combatants.

This is the end result of a lopsided criminal justice system that fails to hold the government and its agents accountable for misconduct.

You want to save lives?

Start by doing something to save the lives of your fellow citizens who are being gunned down every day by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

You want to cry about the lives lost during mass shootings?

Cry about the lives lost as a result of the violence being perpetrated by the U.S. government here at home and abroad.

If gun control activists really want the country to reconsider its relationship with guns and violence, then it needs to start with a serious discussion about the role our government has played and continues to play in contributing to the culture of violence.

If the American people are being called on to scale back on their weapons, then as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government and its cohorts—the police, the various government agencies that are now armed to the hilt, the military, the defense contractors, etc.—need to do the same.

It’s time to put an end to the government’s reign of terror.

Enough is enough.