Month: May 2022

Is Indivisible The Invisible Hand Of The Ukraine War Thought Police?

/ went2thebridge / 2 Comments

Much of the narrative control in my area around the Ukraine war has been taken up by liberal Democrats, many affiliated with the so-called grassroots group Indivisible.

When I blogged about being the turd in the punchbowl at an alleged peace demonstration that was actually a pro-NATO, anti-Russia event in California I had not yet figured this out. I was just surprised to find myself at a rally for Ukrainian nationalism where people couldn’t figure out why I was carrying this sign:

A former ally in the mascot retirement battle took great issue with my stating that George Soros was the money behind the color revolutions movement in Europe. She accused me of antisemitism (I had not at the time realized that Soros was Jewish but I do now) and of consuming and sharing antisemitic tropes from the dregs of the right-wing internet (something I never do because I try to practice mental hygiene while still following the news of the day). At the time I removed Soros’ name due to her objections and because it was an aside in a post about the pressure to abandon anti-imperialist analysis of the war in Ukraine.

She was wrong. 

Soros is deeply involved in Ukraine present and past. 

This is clear now that I’ve had more time to read up on this aspect of the current war.

Indivisible is an organization with deep ties to the Open Society Foundations founded by Soros. It sprang up as a sort of Tea Party wannabe during the heyday of the demagogue with bad hair who became our 45th president. Indivisible is currently infiltrating and pushing aside peace organizations in Maine. Narrative control is their trademark and is accomplished sometimes by online shouting matches and sometimes by overwhelming numbers of Ukraine flag wavers at well-established vigils for peace.

I began to notice that the talking points of Indivisible members here in New England were curiously alike.

Not just the perjoratives routinely assigned to the Russian Federation’s president, but the recurring theme that dissenting voices have no right to speak up. And if they dare to speak up anyway, they are routinely accused of being aligned with Putin, or 45, or white supremacists, etc.

Then a friend mentioned that ads for an Indivisible leader in Maine who is running for District Attorney ended with rapid fine print narration that included funding from…Soros. I reached out to Jackie Sartoris’ campaign to ask if I had misheard this and got a prompt response from the campaign manager explaining that those are PAC ads and not within the control or purview of the candidate. Also that Indivisible Brunswick was a “grassroots” group operating independently of the national organization.

So I shared with the campaign manager some of what I’d found:

“Of Indivisible’s 2017 revenue, 35 percent was raised through small dollar donations, and 65 percent was received through major gifts and foundation grants.”

source: https://www.indivisibleannualreport.org/financials/

“Angel Padilla, Indivisible Project’s policy director, previously worked as an analyst with the National Immigration Law Center (an organization funded by grants from Soros’ Open Society Foundations).. “

source: https://indivisible.org/staff.

Today I had already decided to peek behind the curtain that obscures the workings of narrative management around the U.S./NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine only to discover that, by coincidence, I was suspended yesterday from posting in the VFP Discussion Group on Facebook. The group is run by moderators that might as well work for the Pentagon and they like to note that it’s a private group not affiiliated with VFP (odd choice for a name in that case). They decide what are acceptable and unacceptable news sources — with guidance from the same government that is silencing and shadow banning dissenters on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google search.

I wonder, does that fact that Veterans for Peace (VFP) national has been in dire financial straits the last couple of years have anything to do with shifts in narrative to defend U.S. government warmongering policies under a Democrat? Or to silence dissenters? It’s impossible to say for sure but these are questions worth asking. The Russia Working Group of VFP recently reported having a heated discussion that included a fellow calling various people “communists.” Research on Ben Schrader turned up his claim of a visiting professorship at Central European University, sometimes called “George Soros University” because it was created with an endowment from Soros and because, as board chair, he would confer diplomas.

Also sad is observing the Democracy Now! media organization become more and more aligned with the Democratic Party, probably due to accepting support from the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the like. DN! touted the faux humanitarian White Helmets of Syria and has done some serious flag waving for Ukraine. Is it worth mentioning that DN! is strapped for cash, too?

Source: Caitlin Johnstone

A final note on the subject of narrative control: I see that the neo-Nazi Azov battalion that the U.S. taxpayer has been arming has revised its logo. Having the Buffalo mass shooter targeting Black grocery shoppers wear the same design as the background for the Azov logo was…inconvenient. So Azov removed it. 

I’ll bet they wish they could scrub the internet of evidence of past usage, but that would be difficult. Keep sharing!

Live By The AR-15, Die By The AR-15

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Unarmed Black victims of police violence (may their families know peace), L-R from the top: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown
Image source: trauma doc Dr. Andre Campbell on Twitter

Live By The AR-15, Die By The AR-15

For AR-15 in that sentence, you could substitute drone, missile, or nuclear bomb.

That the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings, especially at schools, is a fact no one disputes. Regular people see a clear connection between a Pentagon budget that gobbles up more than half of annual expenditures by Congress. Regular people also see the pretense of elected officials who take millions in campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers and pro-weapon lobbying groups like the NRA and then tweet “thoughts and prayers” when the inevitable next mass shooting occurs.

Why then is social media is full of people blaming one of the two corporate parties for the massacre?

With the Ukraine war party in power right now controlling the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives why is our federal government still failing to enact gun control? Fund universal mental health care? Rescue from poverty the 20%+ children without housing or food security?

Who is falling for using the deaths of children to further the false dichotomy our corporate rulers think will deliver civil war (we’re well on our way) rather than the revolution we need?

Though I do support stringent gun control I don’t think that alone will reduce mass shootings. Other countries that are overrun with guns do not see 18 year olds cutting their own faces, shooting their own grandma, and then massacring little kids while local cops let them proceed. 

Did you know that in other countries, people with schizophrenia have auditory hallucinations that may be benign or even loving? In the U.S., people with schizophrenia hear voices urging them to violence.

Of course other nations weren’t built on genocide of indigenous people (not all nations, anyway) and enslavement of kidnapped laborers.

We are a traumatized nation. And trauma begets trauma. 

The vast majority of mass shooters are men, around 98%. Men and boys have no more access to guns and ammunition than women and girls do, so what’s the explanation?

It could be something most analysts overlook: adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs.

Back in 2019, researchers studied every mass school shooting from 1966-2018.  “The vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and/or severe bullying,” wrote criminal justice professors Jillian Peterson and James Densley for the Los Angeles Times.

The ACEs questionnaire and scale were developed to quantify and name the cause that creates such devastating effects: high levels of stress are toxic for our nervous system as humans. If experienced in childhood, they can lead to actual changes in the structure and function of the brain. And researchers say the effects of stress on male brains is different.

Additionally, if high levels of stress lead to acting out behavior, this can often trigger additional stress as authority figures respond violently to the behavior. Ask any teacher if they’ve seen this in their school.

Forensic ACEs reveal that the vast majority of violent criminals have a high ACEs score. Poverty results in ACEs e.g. children experiencing eviction, hunger, or lack of medical care for themselves and their caregivers. Being targeted for one’s race or ethnic identity also raises the ACEs score.

Nearly 1 in 6 people in the U.S. reported four or more ACEs  as adults in a study by the CDC with Kaiser Permanente which found, “ACEs can have lasting, negative effects on health, well-being, as well as life opportunities such as education and job potential. These experiences can increase the risks of injury, sexually transmitted infections, maternal and child health problems (including teen pregnancy, pregnancy complications, and fetal death), involvement in sex trafficking, and a wide range of chronic diseases and leading causes of death such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide.”

One a national level, our ACEs are through the roof. Using nuclear bombs on Japan after letting the Holocaust proceed, producing a zillion big budget films glorifying this and other violence, police murdering Black, brown, and indigenous people with impunity, illegal invasions that killed millions and which the pepetrators later laugh about in public…

I could go on but it would fill volumes.

Live by the sword, die by the sword is an old idea found in the New Testament (an account of radical truth-telling in the face of the brutal occupation of Palestine by the Roman Empire). One translation reads “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”

The U.S. Empire has some very bad karma. And it’s breaking our hearts that children pay the price.

But as long as violent patriarchy is the organizing principle of our culture, nothing will change.