Trump supporter jumped up and down, waved hands in frustration at motionless officers: “Call…help!”
By Joseph M. Hanneman at EPOCH TIMES. Read full article at link below.
January 18, 2022 Updated: January 19, 2022
Just moments before she was shot and killed, Ashli Babbitt confronted the police officers guarding the doors to the Speaker’s Lobby at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, blasting them for allowing rioters to smash the windows and not calling for backup, an analysis of a journalist’s video shows.
The analysis comes on the heels of recent disclosures that Babbitt tried at least four other times to stop the assault on the Speaker’s Lobby. It shows her desperation when the rioters were left unchecked, even smashing a window just inches from a police officer’s head.
In the video—shot by independent journalist Tayler Hansen—Babbitt, 35, is seen trailing rioter Zachary Alam, attempting to get between him and one of three police officers at the Speaker’s Lobby double doors.
Alam, who was arrested by the FBI on Jan. 30, 2021, bashes the window in the double doors twice.
The first time, he grabs one police officer’s shoulder with his left hand, then punches between him and another officer, striking the window, the video shows.
“These guys work for us!” someone in the crowd interjects.
“You gonna shoot him?” another person asks.
A bearded man in a red Trump cap complains that they are not being allowed into the Speaker’s Lobby. “Mother [expletive]! We don’t want to hurt nobody. We just want to go in the House.”
Tried to Dissuade Rioter
Babbitt tries to get in between Alam and one of the officers. She says something to Alam, but he brushes her off. Alam then cranks up his right arm and punches the window next to the officer. Within a few seconds, Babbitt blows up at the officers for allowing the violence and vandalism.
“Call [expletive] help!” Babbitt shouts, jumping up and down in front of the officers. “We’re allowed to be here!”
Babbitt takes a couple steps back. There was no visible reaction from the officers, sparking her anger. “You’re a fraud!” she shouts. “You’re a [expletive] fraud! You’re wrong!”
After walking away, Babbitt can be heard screaming just off camera: “Take it down!” Hansen said he believes she meant for the crowd to calm down.
“You could tell that she was definitely getting upset,” Hansen said while reviewing the video with The Epoch Times. “She was calm when she first got there. Then as the destruction continued and as more people started to fill in and it got more dangerous, that’s when you can tell she was getting really upset.”
Babbitt served as a police officer in the U.S. Air Force during her 14 years of military service. Her husband, Aaron, said her law enforcement experience likely told her something was wrong.
“I believe she saw their inaction as odd or off, and was ultimately confused as to what was happening,” Aaron Babbitt told The Epoch Times. “She was a take-charge kind of person. Her frustrations show that the cops who should’ve been taking charge—weren’t.”
“I’d only seen bits and pieces and never fully put together,” Aaron Babbitt said of the video. “I can hear the confused panic in her voice.”
He said the video makes him sad, since his role as a husband is to protect his wife. He stayed in San Diego to run the couple’s small business while Ashli attended the Trump rally in Washington. She was trapped in the hallway, and claustrophobic.
“She had no friends in that room,” Babbitt said. “I always go back to no one would’ve ever watched out for (her) like I always did. Very helpless.”
Babbitt said he hopes the video analysis gives the public a better understanding of the chaos in the hallway.
“I’ve known something was off with the whole situation from day one,” Babbitt said. “Hopefully this gives other people a different perspective—or at a minimum makes someone take a second look with a different mindset.”
“What I think it was from reviewing the footage and just from knowing what I know about Ashli from the family, is she probably got claustrophobic,” Hansen said, “because more people and more people kept pouring in and she realized she was in a bad situation. So then she pushed her way over to the window area.
“Once that window broke, I think she realized this was going to be bad for the people inside if they were actually able to breach these doors entirely,” Hansen said. “I think she wanted to be the first one through that window so she could kind of safeguard it, honestly. If she can get to the other side of the window where officers are, in her mind she would be safe.”
Hansen said he just discovered an Instagram live-stream video he shot on Jan. 6 that shows Babbitt as she first turned the corner into the Speaker’s Lobby hallway. He said it confirms what he told The Epoch Times on Jan. 17, that Babbitt was friendly with the police officers when she first approached the doors.
“Ashli just walks right up to them and just seems super happy; doesn’t know what she’s about to walk into. She was joking with the cops right before Byrd put a bullet into her.”
Hansen said he first encountered Ashli in the Capitol Rotunda as she entered the building by herself. He next saw her as he emerged from a room with George Washington’s portrait on the wall, then followed her to the Speaker’s Lobby hallway. They were the first two to reach the double doors.
Encounter Started with Calm
“It shows her and me just walking right up to the door with Officer Yetter and all the other cops and she starts talking to them.”
Hansen also captured the moment Lt. Michael Byrd shot Babbitt as she stepped up into the open window frame to the right of the double doors. The bedlam in the hallway quickly turned to panic—and anger.
“There’s an active shooter here! Get her down!” Hansen shouts.
“She needs help! She needs [expletive] help!” someone screams.
A man off camera reaches in at the 38-second mark of the video and check’s Babbitt’s neck for a pulse. “She’s gone, guys.”
“We can’t [inaudible] if you’re here!” a police officer shouts at the crowd. “We’ve got to get EMS here!”
“Back up guys, back up!”
An officer leaning over the stairway railing, shouts, “She’s going to [expletive] die! You want to be next?” he says
M. Hanneman is a reporter for The Epoch Times with a focus on the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol incursion and its aftermath; and general news in the State of Wisconsin. His work over a nearly 40-year career has appeared in Catholic World Report, the Racine Journal Times, the Wisconsin State Journal and the Chicago Tribune. Reach him at: joseph.hanneman@epochtimes.us
Described in the short video above, in some countries, for example China, people are already graded in a social credit system based on the government’s opinion of what is and what is not acceptable behavior. This has always been the end goal of political correctness. This is not science fiction or conspiracy theory. It already exists and soon it will be worldwide.
Here for example is a short article about how it is being implemented. This entire blog post is a global situation which is not and will not be unique to the United States. And this invasion of privacy and blocking of liberties like free speech will not be limited to cell phones. As Edward Snowden warned, it is all electronic communications, and soon all of our transactions will be electronic because non-electronic currencies are being eliminated. Whom we choose to do business with will also be graded and our ability to continue that business will be blocked if it does not suite big brother. In effect, this has been tested and implemented for years as your credit score, which controls our ability to borrow money. Although the history of our ability to pay back money we have borrowed is presumably objective and fair, this objectivity is missing in social credit systems which are subjective by definition.
Wouldn’t it be great if your internet browsing history was part of your credit score? That’s what a team of researchers at the International Monetary Fund have proposed. In the future, reading How-To Geek might help (or perhaps hurt) your credit score!
What’s Actually Being Proposed?
Typical credit score systems in the USA rely on hard data like the amount of credit you have, your usage of the credit, your number of accounts, and how many times you’ve been late on payments.
Researchers for the IMF are talking about going beyond that. After all, typical credit scoring methods make it hard for people with no credit history to get credit, and more people may become credit risks in a worse economy even if their histories look good.
The researchers describe their proposed solution on the IMF blog:
Fintech resolves the dilemma by tapping various nonfinancial data: the type of browser and hardware used to access the internet, the history of online searches and purchases. Recent research documents that, once powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, these alternative data sources are often superior than traditional credit assessment methods, and can advance financial inclusion, by, for example, enabling more credit to informal workers and households and firms in rural areas.
So, in the future, your online searches, purchase history, and even the browser and device you use to access the internet may be fed to a machine-learning algorithm (what we call “AI”) and used to determine your credit score.
Yes, if you’re using an inexpensive Android phone rather than an iPhone, or if you use Firefox rather than Google Chrome, that might negatively impact your credit score under this proposal.
It’s worth noting that, as of 2021, this is just a proposal. You can still go view your credit report and you won’t see any browsing history in there. However…
Credit Decisions Are More Than a Single Score
Credit scoring systems are more complicated than many people understand. In the USA, you have three big credit report companies: Experian, Equifax, and Transunion. These reports contain hard data on your credit usage.
There are different ways of “scoring” that data, including different generations of FICO scores. Depending on the type of credit you’re applying for, these models will give different credit score numbers based on the same data. For example, there are different models for mortgages and car loans. Someone might be considered more at risk of defaulting on a car loan than a mortgage, for example.
A bank or company extending credit may run its own credit-scoring model on the data and take into account various factors. Other factors may also be included. For example, LexisNexis offers “Alternative Data” to companies who might want to use that for credit decisions. This includes information like a person’s professional licenses, assets (like owning a home), and “public source data.” It’s pitched as a way for companies to identify credit-worthy people who have thin traditional credit files.
In the USA, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act defines a number of factors that cannot be used for credit decisions:
The [ECOA]… prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, because an applicant receives income from a public assistance program, or because an applicant has in good faith exercised any right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act.
Credit Scores Used to Include Personal Details, Too
It’s worth noting that credit scores historically included other types of personal information—not just the current “hard” financial details they’re supposed to include—until the system was reformed with laws like 1970’s Fair Credit Reporting Act and 1974’s Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
A Time Magazine article from 1936 describes how the credit reporting system of the day worked. The bolding is ours:
Every bank, every company that extends credit is constantly prying into the private affairs of its customers. They study balance sheets, earnings statements, profit & loss accounts, weigh character, reputation, personal habits.
It describes what might happen to a woman who moves across the country:
Thus if Mrs. John Jones moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, any good Los Angeles store could quickly learn how promptly she paid her bills in Chicago. It might learn that she was a widow of 40 with no children, enjoyed no visible means of support, lived in swank apartments, entertained unsavory characters, was late with her rent, lived in Chicago for only two years and left with $500 of unpaid bills. In that case, Mrs. Jones would have a hard time opening a charge account in Los Angeles.
As you can see, the system included various details about people’s personal lives, which were used in credit decisions.
Of course, the IMF researchers aren’t proposing anything quite like that! They’re just proposing taking into account your online search history and the web browser you use to access the internet. And it will be machine learning algorithms (“AI”) making the decisions.
However, while the system may not have a human banker judging your “personal habits,” AI can still be biased—and is it really right to reject someone’s credit application because they’re using the wrong web browser? (Hey, the researchers are the people who brought up using web browser choice as a metric, not us!)
The above article is one example, happening before our eyes. Here is another.
Did you notice that Joe Biden’s nominee to head the U.S. federal government bureaucracy known as Comptroller of the Currency advocated elimination of the currency? She is also a Marxist educated in Moscow, Russia during the Soviet Union, and today is a U.S. college professor. Biden Supports U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency, that is, elimination of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Imagine the convenience of rapidly purchasing goods and services with no bank fees. Imagine having all the benefits of a bank while not having to deal with the inconvenience of opening a bank account, let alone the nickel-and-dime charges that tend to go with it. The compromise, however, is the privacy of your funds. Your funds can technically be monitored or tracked at any time. If the government wants you to spend, they can apply negative interest rates to your deposit. When the government needs more money, they can print at will (a hidden tax on your money). Money will no longer be a tangible object but a virtual asset; one that’s also vulnerable to electronic glitches, downed servers, and cyberattacks. President Biden’s latest executive order aims to accelerate this state of financial and monetary condition. He is looking to usher in the first U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (aka CBDC). The cost of financial convenience will not only weigh heavily as a risk or burden but may end up a potential disaster for depositors. If there is any reason to own physical gold and silver, it’s this. Physical non-CUSIP gold and silver cannot be hacked, monitored, or inflated. They will be the last tangible monetary assets standing once cash is abolished. They will also be the only assets holding value once Americans finally realize the disadvantages that the government has duped them into accepting in exchange for convenience. Last Updated: March 14, 2022/John Galt
Mainstream media, governments and banks are working overtime to normalize in the worldwide public mindshare the concept that currencies are no longer needed and digital currency will be better.
Remember the Great Resetters promised that you and I will own nothing.
The followingwas originally published on NBC News, full url link below. NBC News is definitely not a right wing, conspiracy-minded organization.
The Biden administration is throwing its support behind further study and development of what would be known as a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency.
The Biden administration is putting its support behind the research and development of a “U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency,” or CBDC.
The move is part of a sweeping executive order President Joe Biden signed Wednesday instructing the federal government to explore possible uses of and regulations for digital assets like cryptocurrencies.
“My Administration places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC,” the executive order reads.
The order asks for a wide variety of agencies to begin research and submit reports on a variety of issues surrounding digital currencies, from design and security to financial and societal impacts.
“We know the implications of potentially issuing a digital dollar are profound. They’re extraordinarily wide-ranging,” a senior administration official told reporters on a call Tuesday.
Although a U.S. digital currency would not necessarily change much in terms of everyday experiences like buying goods and services, economists say it could transform central and commercial banking, as well as government sanctions, banking accessibility and taxes.
“The potential here is enormous, and it’s very interesting,” said David Yermack, a professor and the chair of the finance department at New York University.
The executive order will call on the government to investigate the technical needs for a digital currency and advocate for the Federal Reserve to continue its research and development, according to a fact sheet released by the White House.
The Fed published a white paper in January about potentially creating a CBDC that would complement existing payment systems. It found that a CBDC could make payments cheaper and easier for consumers but might also pose a risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system.
In its fact sheet, the administration said it also would take steps to “mitigate the illicit finance and national security risks posed by the illicit use of digital assets by directing an unprecedented focus of coordinated action across all relevant U.S. Government agencies to mitigate these risks.”
The U.S. would not be the first country with a digital currency. China has introduced its own CBDC, with more than 140 million people having opened digital “wallets,” and many other countries have either rolled out or are developing digital currencies. The Bahamas’ Sand Dollar is considered among the world’s most successful digital currencies.
Yermack said the move by the Biden administration pointed to what he believes is a certain inevitability of the broader move toward digital currencies.
“It’s not a question of if but when,” he said. “Once the central banks start co-opting the technology, it’s pretty much game over.”
While the administration fact sheet did not provide any details about how a U.S. digital currency might work, Yermack suggested that the functionality could be reasonably simple, with transactions flowing directly to and from the Fed, sidestepping banks and payment systems and creating near-seamless flows of cash.
It is a simple concept with the potential for widespread ramifications. Yermack said a broadly embraced digital currency would pose existential questions for banks and many other financial services focused on facilitating payments.
“Bill Gates famously said there will always be banking but there will not always be banks,” Yermack said.
Digital currencies also open up new possibilities for how the government exercises policy, said Michael Bordo, a professor of economics and the director of the Center for Monetary and Financial History at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
A digital currency could make the kind of stimulus payments of the coronavirus pandemic nearly instantaneous and far more efficient, he said, possibly even reaching people who have previously been shut out of banking services.
“They found that it really worked, and they came up with ways to make it real simple, because there’s a lot of very low-income people who don’t have bank accounts,” Bordo said.
In addition to the consumer benefits, a U.S. digital currency would offer the Fed a new tool that economists have previously only theorized about: negative interest rates.
Controlling interest rates is the Fed’s primary way to stimulate or cool the economy — but it comes with limits. Banks can drop interest rates on regular money only so low, known as the zero bound, leaving central banks with few options when interest rates are already low and the economy needs a boost.
With a digital currency, the zero bound does not exist, allowing for aggressive action when needed.
“If the cash is electronic, the government can just erase 2 percent of your money every year,” Yermack said. “I think this is going to become a necessity just because of the demographic changes in the world.”
Bordo also pointed to negative rates as an important feature of digital currencies.
“I think it’s something that could be a game changer for the Fed,” he said.
For all the theoretical possibilities, a U.S. digital currency faces plenty of real hurdles. Bordo noted that commercial banks have a vested interest in opposing the technology.
“Getting this thing through is going to be a big project,” he said.
Still, broader momentum for government-backed digital currencies is growing. Yermack said that he has advised major governments looking to start their own currencies and that as more countries adopt their own, “the others are probably going to fall into line pretty quickly.”
“Two years ago everyone was ridiculing this,” Yermack said. “Now it’s the hot thing to do.”
“Print, print, print. That was Lenin’s answer. Or at least what John Maynard Keynes thought was Lenin’s answer. In his post-Versailles treatise, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes famously quoted the Bolshevik leader saying, perhaps apocryphally, that “the best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” In other words, incompetent central bankers are a communist’s best friend. The idea is hyperinflation breaks down markets and breaks down classes. Business can’t plan beyond today if they don’t know what money will be worth tomorrow. And a collapsing currency turns the bourgeoisie into the proletariat overnight. That sound you hear is the revolution coming.”
“But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Michael White and Kurt Schuler unearthed the original Lenin quote — yes, he really did say it — in a 2009 paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. And let’s just say he wasn’t so sanguine about capitalism withering away. See, Lenin thought hyperinflation was the best way to destroy capitalism after the revolution, because the revolution wouldn’t be enough itself. The profit-motive would survive even if the bourgeois state did not — and even if the socialist state tried to outlaw it. The only way to kill the profit-motive was to kill profits. And that meant killing the very concept of money itself.” More here: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/unveiled-lenins-brilliant-plot-to-destroy-capitalism/280006/
The Great Reset is explained in the following video by Douglas Kruger:
In the following video, Catherine Austin Fitts explains “ending currency as we know it.” Catherine Austin Fitts (born December 24, 1950) is an American investment banker and former public official who served as managing director of Dillon, Read & Co. and, during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush, as United States Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing. Wikipedia
And finally, below is a short video that is my conclusion to the long post above.
Thanks for reading and watching. Please do leave comments and questions.
System Failure: Commodities markets, banks, currencies and contracts begin breaking down
The pillars of western civilization are breaking down right in front of our eyes. If “reserves” don’t mean reserves, and if “money” doesn’t mean money, and if home “ownership” doesn’t mean ownership, and if the “rule of law” doesn’t mean the rule of law, then we have lost the very principles upon which western civilization exists.
Combined with the fact that nearly everything has become FAKE now — fake news, fake money, fake history, fake education, fake science, fake medicine, fake elections, fake pandemics, fake shootings, fake hate crimes, etc. — we find ourselves living in a world with no civil compass.
Western civilization, simply put, has committed suicide. There is no longer any glue holding it together. The elections are rigged, the money is counterfeit, the news is deliberately fabricated and the propaganda is absurd. We are living in a nation where a candidate for the US Supreme Court (Jackson) just publicly stated that she has no idea what the definition of a woman might be.
Brighteon.com
If that is not enough to thoroughly disgust you, then add the facts that the touchy-feely man with a nose for the hair of girls, the occupant of the
U.S. White House, has nominated for Comptroller of the Currency a woman educated in Moscow, Russia during the Soviet Union who is a Marxist and has professed her desire to eliminate U.S currency. The same pretender to the U.S. Presidency nominated another woman to the U.S. Supreme Court who has been reducing penalties for pedophiles.
When President Biden says that the U.S. will become energy independent by way of programs like the Green New Deal, perhaps the first question to ask is, “Does that make sense?” For any thinking person cognizant of even the basic energy facts, the answer should come back, “No.”
The bulk of U.S. energy consumption in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), broke down as follows: 79 percent from petroleum, natural gas and coal and nine percent from nuclear-generated electricity. Solar and wind — the darlings of Green New Dealers — provided less than five percent.
So, are so-called green sources going to replace hydrocarbons anytime soon? Common sense suggests not. But if that isn’t good enough, there are plenty of data supporting a negative answer.
“Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh.”
Mr. Mills says there is a fundamental misunderstanding about technological development that contributes to fanciful notions — like the president’s — that solar, wind and batteries can become dominant sources with a mere declaration from the White House or lobbying Congress.
“This ‘new energy economy’ rests on the belief—a centerpiece of the Green New Deal and other similar proposals both here and in Europe—that the technologies of wind and solar power and battery storage are undergoing the kind of disruption experienced in computing and communications, dramatically lowering costs and increasing efficiency,” he says.
“But this core analogy glosses over profound differences, grounded in physics, between systems that produce energy and those that produce information. In the world of people, cars, planes, and factories, increases in consumption, speed, or carrying capacity cause hardware to expand, not shrink. The energy needed to move a ton of people, heat a ton of steel or silicon, or grow a ton of food is determined by properties of nature whose boundaries are set by laws of gravity, inertia, friction, mass, and thermodynamics—not clever software.”
In other words, there is a major difference between the possibilities for technological progress in the things that use energy — smart phones and computers, for example — and in the ways to make energy.
“(S)ometimes, the old or established technology is the optimal solution and nearly immune to disruption,” says Mr. Mills. “We still use stone, bricks, and concrete, all of which date to antiquity. We do so because they’re optimal, not ‘old.’ So are the wheel, water pipes, electric wires … the list is long. Hydrocarbons are, so far, optimal ways to power most of what society needs and wants.”
This is partly why 70 percent of likely U.S. voters recently told Rasmussen that they favor the government’s encouraging increased oil and gas production to reduce dependence on foreign sources. Most people want reliable, affordable energy, and hydrocarbons give it to them.
In addition to fossil fuels being exceptional sources of energy, some of the alternatives are turning out to be more of a public nuisance than an environmental benefit.
“Of the many whoppers that renewable-energy promoters use while advocating for huge increases in the use of wind and solar, the most absurd claim is that building massive amounts of new renewable energy capacity won’t require very much land,” says Robert Bryce in a Forbes article.
Concerns that include land use, noise and aesthetics have led to more than 300 U.S. wind projects being rejected or restricted since 2015 and 13 large solar projects being turned down in 2021 alone, according to Mr. Bryce’s count.
The backlash, he says, “is raging from the fishing docks in Montauk and Rhode Island, to … Vermont (where, by the way, you can’t build wind turbines), out west to Shasta County and Oahu, as well as in Canada, Germany, France, Australia and other countries around the world.”
In Britain, a political movement against Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Net Zero policy to “decarbonise” the economy by 2050 is being launched by Nigel Farage, the former Brexit Party leader.
“If we are not careful, the only zero will be the amount in people’s bank accounts as we send our jobs and money overseas,” says Mr. Farage.
So, whether it’s laws of physics or forces of economics and politics, there is plenty to keep the green energy dream just that — a fevered vision of a climate cult.
If the current power grid can’t handle a night of 20 degrees temperatures without rolling blackouts, how are we going to plug 100 million electric cars up at night?
Are there any countries that tax their citizens and send some of it to Americans?
Imagine, if you will, a world where every tweet and meme must be fact checked, with one exception…. a ballot.
How to stop drunk drivers from killing sober drivers? Ban sober drivers from driving. That’s exactly how gun control works.
Can we still order black coffee? Are brownies being taken off the shelf? Is White Castle changing its name? I’m sure Cracker Barrel is in trouble. Can we still play Chinese checkers? Is that season still called Indian summer? No more Italian sausages? How far do you want to go with this foolishness?
Hell of a job, Democrats! You’ve managed to re-create the 1918 pandemic, the 1929 depression, the 1968 race riots and the 1973 gas prices – all at the same time. WOW!
“Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice.’” —Thomas Sowell
One day a man named Truth and a man named Lie stood by a river just outside of town. They were twin brothers. Lie challenged Truth to a race, claiming he could swim across the river faster than Truth. Lie laid out the rules to the challenge stating that they both must remove all their clothes and at the count of 3, dive in to the freezing cold water swim to the other side and back. Lie counted to 3, but when Truth jumped in, Lie did not. As Truth swam across the river, Lie put on Truth’s clothes and walked back in to town dressed as Truth. He proudly paraded around town pretending to be Truth. Truth made it back to shore, but his clothes were gone and he was left naked with only Lie’s clothes to wear. Refusing to dress himself as Lie, Truth walked back to town naked. People stared and glared as naked Truth walked through town. He tried to explain what happened and that he was in fact Truth, but because he was naked and uncomfortable to look at, people mocked and shunned him; refusing to believe he was really Truth. The people in town chose to believe Lie because he was dressed appropriately and easier to look at. From that day until this, people have come to believe a well-dressed lie rather than believe a naked truth.
CO2 emissions from humans cannot change net global average CO2 concentration nor its rate of change. CO2 concentration and its partial pressure in air and ocean surface are controlled by Henry’s Law, Le Chatelier’s principle and the Law of Mass Action. Henry’s partition ratio of CO2 gas between ocean surface and in the air above that surface is an intensive property of matter which is independent of the source of the CO2 and the amount of CO2, like CO2’s molecular weight. Henry’s partition ratio is not a constant. Henry’s coefficient varies with temperature. The solubility of CO2 gas (and all other atmospheric gases) in ocean and all water is a function of temperature. The residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is an irrelevant statistic, having zero effect on net global average atmospheric CO2 concentration.
CO2 partial pressure in air and net global average concentration of CO2 in air and CO2 flux in both directions are dominantly functions of the surface area of ocean above and below 25.6 C. In local conditions, salinity, alkalinity and conditions above and below the surface also affect the ratio; for example winds, currents or storms above warm (>25.6C) surface deplete the surface water of aqueous CO2 gas, or biological activity in the water such as phytoplankton can cause local under-saturation (with respect to the Henry’s partition ratio for the local SST) of aqueous CO2 gas in the surface waters. Simultaneously, conditions in other locations, such as rotting biological material in an estuary, create over-saturation of aqueous CO2 gas in ocean surface with respect to the Henry’s Law partition ratio for the SST there, resulting in CO2 emission flux at the surface. Globally averaged, alkalinity, salinity, winds and currents cancel out. This leaves CO2 flux in both directions, emission from ocean surface and absorption into ocean surface, as a function the area of ocean surface above or below SST of 25.6 C as the determining value. Since around 1918, area of ocean surface SST above 25.6 C has been slowly increasing. This very fortunate circumstance for life on earth is the cause of the slowly increasing trend in net global average CO2 concentration such as measured at Mauna Loa. Perturbations to this trend such as human emissions, volcanic emissions, seasonal differences between ice cover and photosynthesis in northern and southern hemisphere, etc. are rapidly re-balanced and the trend returns to the average Henry’s Law equilibrium condition based on SST. There is 30 to 50 times more aqueous, non-ionized CO2 gas in ocean surface than in the air above the surface, depending primarily on surface temperature.
Over-saturation of aqueous CO2 gas in ocean surface in excess of the Henry’s partition ratio for a given SST results in increasing the hydration reaction of the CO2 into either carbonic acid or bicarbonate ions, which in turn removes the CO2 gas from the Henry’s Law phase state equilibrium reaction. Removal of aqueous CO2 gas from the Henry’s equation changes the ratio, which requires additional CO2 gas flux into ocean surface. When the aqueous CO2 over-saturation condition continues, then carbonates precipitate as solid in ocean or are incorporated into organisms as shell.
Net global average CO2 concentration today is the same as it would be if humans never existed. Higher atmospheric CO2 concentration would benefit all plants and life, but CO2 concentration is controlled by the various natural processes such as humidity, clouds, solar and planetary cycles, affecting insolation of ocean surface, as well as oceanic and atmospheric currents.
“The real question is whether the ‘brighter future’ is always so distant. What if it has been here for a long time already – and only our own blindness and weakness have prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it.” ~Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless
Across the globe a confluence of factors is destabilizing the fabric of society. Many government institutions are corrupt to the core. Many politicians are so detached from reality that they view those who want freedom as enemies. The legacy media has morphed into the propaganda arm of the government; instead of seeking the truth, the function of these institutions is to augment state power and demonize those who dissent. To make matters worse, global economies have been ravaged by destructive government policies and while rampant money printing has created a mirage of economic stability, this mirage is quickly giving way to an ugly reality.
Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless
Politicians tell us that if we are unhappy with the way we are ruled then we can express our displeasure at the polls, or even run for office. But this is to assume that the democratic ideal is the best way to return freedom to an unfree world. This is to overlook the corrupting influence of state power. This to forget that the massive bureaucratic class that operates many of the levers of government is not replaced through elections. And finally, this is to assume that state power is the solution to what ails society. Perhaps state power is the poison that is destroying it.
A more practical solution to what ails the modern world may be to allow the dead weight of the state to collapse in on itself, as it inevitably will, and to soften the blow of this collapse through the creation of a parallel society. In this video we are going to explore what a parallel society is, how it played a pivotal role in the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, and how the creation of a parallel society may be our best chance of returning freedom to an insane authoritarian world.
“If it proves impossible legally to compel the ruling power to change the ways it governs us, and if for various reasons those who reject this power cannot or do not wish to overthrow it by force, then the creation of an independent or alternative or parallel [society] is the only dignified solution…”
Ivan Jirous, Parallel Polis: An Inquiry
The basis for the parallel society was born in the mind of Ivan Jirous, a Czech poet and the artistic director of the rock band the Plastic People of the Universe. After members of this band were arrested in 19** for refusing to toe the government line, Jirous called on the community of Czech artists to create music labels, publishing houses, concert halls, art expositions, and other such infrastructure, that existed independently of mainstream society and outside the grasp of the communist State. Jirous hypothesized that if enough infrastructure were created an “independent society” would spontaneously form and function as a pocket of creative freedom in a highly oppressed society. Jirous defined the independent society as “a [society] not dependent on official channels of communications, or on the hierarchy of values of the establishment” and as he further explained.
“…the “independent society” does not compete for power. Its aim is not to replace the powers that be with power of another kind, but rather under this power – or beside it – to create structures that respect other laws and in which the voice of the ruling power is heard only as an insignificant echo from a world that is organized in an entirely different way.”
Ivan Jirous, Parallel Polis: An Inquiry
Jirous’ idea caught the attention of the Czech Catholic philosopher and mathematician Vaclav Benda. Benda saw in this idea the seeds of a non-violent solution to the destructiveness of Communism. However, for the independent society to have real-world social and political impact it needed to be extended beyond the realm of music and the arts. For the stifling bureaucracy and heavy-hand of the Communist government was suffocating all areas of life. And so Benda coined the phrase “parallel society” to refer to all social, cultural, and economic structures that existed unconstrained by the State. He called such structures “parallel structures”, and at the height of political oppression in the early 1970s, Benda urged Czech citizens to begin creating “parallel forms of education and science and scholarship”, “parallel political structures”, a “parallel information network”, and free parallel markets that form a “parallel economy”. And as H Gordon Skilling explains:
“Outlining the parallel structures which had come into existence or might do so in the future, Benda argued that…these might gradually supplant or at least humanise the existing official structures.”
H. Gordon Skilling, Civic Freedom in Central Europe
The rationale behind the creation of parallel structures and the parallel society was simple: as the Communist government had a monopoly on force and was too powerful to challenge head on, it was best to turn away from it and defy it by ignoring it as much as possible. Rather than trying to eliminate oppressive State structures, it was better to build up better ones that could function as alternatives or replacements to the establishment system that was in the process of dying. A well-known Communist dissident, Jacek Kuron, captured this rationale in 1980 when he responded to the torching of a communist headquarters by stating: “stop burning down committees, let us build our own.” Or as Ivan Jirous explained:
“[The parallel society] began in spontaneous acts of mutual self-defense in different parts of society. Those who take part are active people who can no longer stand to look passively at the general decay…rigidity, bureaucracy, and suffocation of every living idea or sign of movement in the official sphere. And because these people sooner or later recognized that efforts to bring about the slightest improvements in the official sphere were exercises in futility, it was only a matter of time before they said: Why not invest our talents, abilities, goodwill, and enthusiasm into something that no one will be able to corrupt, that we will be able to decide about ourselves in the end.”
Ivan Jirous, Parallel Polis: An Inquiry
The parallel society provided individuals the means to express themselves freely without fear of censorship and to fulfill their goals and aims without dealing with the suffocating bureaucracy of the state. Furthermore, individuals felt that by turning towards parallel structures and away from the structures that functioned as vehicles of the State, they were influencing society for the better. The parallel society thus served as a much-needed source of hope in a society which had succumbed to apathy due to decades of Communist rule. And in the latter half of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, this hope inspired countless people throughout Eastern Europe and the parallel society infiltrated many areas of culture and the economy.
“…even my most audacious expectations have been considerably surpassed…It is no longer necessary to show that the parallel society is possible.”
Vaclav Benda, Parallel Polis: An Inquiry
By the late 1980s, the parallel society in Eastern Europe had become so strong, decentralized, and decoupled from the State, that the Communist authorities lost their grip on power:
“The revolution which swept through…Eastern Europe in the closing months of 1989 was a spontaneous product of the massive discontent and the yearning for freedom of the peoples of those countries. It was also a culmination of the independent activities of many citizens as they sought to defend their rights against the party-state system and to create a parallel or independent society as a challenge and an alternative to it.”
H. Gordon Skilling, Civic Freedom in Central Europe
One of the more famous examples of a parallel structure was the underground film industry in Romania. The Communist dictator Nicholae Ceausescu outlawed the possession and distribution of Western films, however, the entrepreneur Teodor Zamfir created a vast underground market smuggling Western films into the country and then translating and dubbing them into Romanian. The demand for the films rapidly grew and as the Romanian people were exposed to Western culture their eyes were opened to the full extent of their own oppression. As one Romanian dissident put it: “The seeds of freedom that were planted by the video films, grew.” Zamfir made a fortune off the parallel market he created and he became one of the most powerful men in Romania. And in an interview for a 2015 documentary Zamfir explained:
“During the 1989 revolution everybody was in the streets because they all knew there was a better life out there. How? From films.”
Teodor Zamfir, Chuck Norris vs. Communism
Given advances in technology and the capacity to spread information, goods, and services across the world, the potential to create a wide variety of parallel structures on both a local and global level is significantly greater today than it was in Communist Eastern Europe. And so rather than passively waiting for a political saviour to bring us freedom and save us from societal collapse, a more realistic strategy is to actively participate in the construction of a parallel society.
“…[we must create] all kinds of independent parallel structures — that is, structures unmanipulated by totalitarian power…”
Martin Palous
Contributing to the creation of a parallel society could amount to, among many possibilities, consuming independent media instead of legacy media, using alternative mediums of exchange rather than government-backed fiat currencies, using social media platforms and decentralized digital infrastructures that promote freedom of expression, or supporting local businesses rather than global corporations that further the agenda of the political establishment. It could amount to creating self-sustainable communities, conducting scientific inquiry or scholarship free of institutional pressures, or consuming and creating educational resources, art, music, or literature that pays no heed to the establishment status quo. Any action or enterprise that expands the realm of freedom while creatively circumventing censorship and top-down authoritarian or totalitarian control is a boon to the parallel society. For as Egon Bundy, one of the leading figures of the Czech underground, explained:
“When the activity of those who oppose the establishment becomes articulated it will be in forms, methods and ideas that are totally unknown, incomprehensible and unacceptable to members of the establishment – and that is how it should be.”
Egon Bundy, Civic Freedom in Central Europe
Once a parallel society is sufficiently established, a society is no longer under the same grave danger as when it relies solely on the structures and institutions that are appendages of the tyrannical State. For if these establishment structures collapse, parallel structures will soften the blow of an economic or social breakdown. Furthermore, parallel structures cater to the authentic needs and wants of the people rather than the political class, and so they tend to be more life promoting than the establishment structures. As parallel structures develop and solidify more and more people will instinctively turn towards them and as the parallel society expands so too does the sphere of cultural, economic, and political freedom.
“…a genuine [parallel society] would, by a process of metastasis, penetrate all the important social structures.”
Milan Šimečka, Parallel Polis: An Inquiry
And as Vaclav Havel further explains:
“The ultimate phase of this process is the situation in which the official structures…simply begin withering away and dying off, to be replaced by new structures that have evolved from ‘below’ and are put together in a fundamentally different way.”
Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless
In 1988, a year before Communism in Eastern Europe collapsed, Ivan Jirous reflected on the growth of the parallel society and on the dramatic social changes that were following in the wake.
“[The parallel society] has proven its worth, and it is the only meaningful structure that people can create if they do not wish to remain mere appendices of the political and social structures created by the ruling power.”
Read it at the link above please so that they get the clicks and recognition. I am archiving the article since I expect it is or will be suppressed.
Shaping up as an even larger capitulation than the articles of appeasement struck with Iran in 2015, the Biden administration could sign in Vienna as early as Monday a new deal with the ayatollahs that would include a staggering hostage ransom sum totaling as much as 25 percent of Tehran’s entire annual budget.
Several sources in Washington say that the Vienna talks between six top world powers and Iran could conclude as early as Monday. Washington officials caution that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” but Iran watchers note that Nuwruz, the 13-day New Year holiday in Persia, starts March 20. Because adherents don’t work during Nuwruz, the window to conclude a deal is short.
Ironically, despite the tough anti-Kremlin talk in Washington, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, is a key player in the attempt to renew the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, out of which President Trump took America. The Biden administration is said to be as eager for a quick handshake as the Iranians, who are allied with Moscow. The administration also is said to be hoping any congressional pushback would weaken as the Ukraine crisis rages on.
Reuters reported recently that President Biden’s envoy to the talks, Robert Malley, offered to unfreeze $7 billion from Iranian funds held in South Korean banks in exchange for the release of four Americans held in Iran. Sources tell the Sun that similar frozen accounts in Japan, Iraq, and China would be added to the pot, raising the ante to as much as $11 billion. That works out to more than $2.5 billion a hostage.
Iran’s annual budget is estimated at $40 billion.
A former American hostage in Iran, Xiyue Wang, warns that such a deal would encourage more undue imprisonments in Iran. Washington has imposed “not a single sanction” in connection with Iran’s frequent hostage-taking, Mr. Wang told the Sun, “so they have no reason to stop it. Keeping people in prison costs them nothing.”
In summer 2016 Mr. Wang was arrested on unsubstantiated espionage charges while researching Persian history as he worked toward his Ph.D. from Princeton. A year later, while in Iran’s dungeons, he was sentenced for 10 years in prison. “When I was arrested I hoped President Obama would be able to release me,” Mr. Wang said. In 2018, when President Trump exited the Iran deal, Mr. Wang knew his release would take longer than he anticipated, which it did. In December 2019, he was finally freed in an exchange for one Iranian held in America. No money changed hands.
“I have a very clean conscience,” Mr. Wang says. “America did not pay ransom, and the Iranian that was released was due to get released anyway. It was the best deal possible.”
Last year Mr. Malley said release of the four Americans held in Iran was not part of the Vienna JCPOA renewal talks. Yet pressure from former hostages, including Barry Rosen, who went on a hunger strike in Vienna, apparently changed Mr. Malley’s mind.
Large ransom totals for hostages and other avenues of funding are far from the only concessions America reportedly plans to give the mullahs. A former Iran hand at the State Department, Gabriel Noronha, detailed some such giveaways today on Twitter.
“My former career @StateDept, NSC, and EU colleagues are so concerned with the concessions being made by @RobMalley in Vienna that they’ve allowed me to publish some details of the coming deal in the hopes that Congress will act to stop the capitulation,” Mr. Noronha’s Tweet said.
In his long Twitter thread, Mr. Noronha reports that Mr. Malley has agreed to drop sanctions against top mullahs, including Supreme Leader Khamenei, as well as remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Department’s list of terror organizations.
Altogether, sanctions on 112 Iranian persons and entities that were imposed by Mr. Trump in executive orders would be removed, according to Mr. Noronha. Other concessions are likely to be explained away by the administration as a reversal of Mr. Trump’s alleged bad Iran policy.
“The administration will carefully consider the facts and circumstances of any U.S. return to the JCPOA to determine the legal implications,” a State Department spokesman told NBC news, adding, “The president believes that a bipartisan approach to Iran is the strongest way to safeguard U.S. interests for the long-term.”
Iran, meanwhile, would pay little if anything in return for those concessions. A return to the original 2015 deal would allow it to wait for sunset clauses that gradually phase out limitations on Tehran’s nuclear program, and remove all restrictions by 2031 — i.e., less than a decade from now. Tehran even demands a lowering of inspections of its nuclear sites.
The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador at the United Nations, Lana Nusseibeh, who assumed the Security Council’s rotating presidency Monday, said it was unclear whether a new Iran deal would require an endorsement resolution by the Security Council. The original JCPOA wasn’t signed by either side, and its only legal backing is the Security Council’s Resolution 2231.
“What is clear,” Ms. Nusseibeh told the Sun, is that once again the deal “will not address a very turbulent regional security environment and a very stressed regional security architecture.”
Specifically, she added, it would fail to restrict Iranian production of ballistic missiles, like the ones that Iran’s Yemeni proxies, the Houthis, have been using to attack the UAE.
As the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Iran watcher, Behnam ben Taleblu, said, “Negotiating an agreement — midwifed by the Russians no less — that offers more sanctions relief than found in the JCPOA for shorter-lived nuclear restrictions is peak folly.”
budbromley 
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