Patrick's Notebook

by John Pilger

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer.

She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public.

Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked. ‘Yes, especially them,’ she said.

I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Jack Phillips

The former director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who has long suspected the hypothesis that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory, said that he believes White House adviser Anthony Fauci misled Congress about controversial gain-of-function research.

Dr. Robert Redfield asserted in a new interview that “everyone had to agree to the narrative” pushed by Fauci and other health officials that the virus came from a “wet market” in Wuhan in 2019 and not the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In an interview in early 2021 with CNN, Redfield, a longtime virologist, said the virus emerged from the lab, later sparking death threats against him and his family from prominent scientists. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Kate Storey

Yesterday, close to 50 undocumented immigrants arrived on the tiny island of Martha’s Vineyard. When they landed at the airport, they had a brochure for the Martha’s Vineyard Community Center, so they walked the two miles to get there, having had nearly no food or water all day, according to The Cape Cod Times. The two planes left from Texas but many of the immigrants were originally from Venezuela.

It didn’t take long for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to take credit. » Read the rest of this entry «

by International Labour Organization

Fifty million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, according to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery. Of these people, 28 million were in forced labour and 22 million were trapped in forced marriage.

The number of people in modern slavery has risen significantly in the last five years. 10 million more people were in modern slavery in 2021 compared to 2016 global estimates. Women and children remain disproportionately vulnerable. » Read the rest of this entry «

By Jennifer Margulis and Joe Wang

A team of nine experts from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and other top universities has published paradigm-shifting research about the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines and why mandating vaccines for college students is unethical.

This 50-page study, which was published on The Social Science Research Network at the end of August, analyzed CDC and industry-sponsored data on vaccine adverse events, and concluded that mandates for COVID-19 boosters for young people may cause 18 to 98 actual serious adverse events for each COVID-19 infection-related hospitalization theoretically prevented. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Jeffrey D. Sachs

The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an attempt to manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and pressing diplomacy.

The essential narrative of the West is built into US national security strategy. The core US idea is that China and Russia are implacable foes that are “attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” These countries are, according to the US, “determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.” » Read the rest of this entry «

by Mercy Tukiya Mutanya

European Central Bank – Frankfurt, Germany

Citing the emergence of cryptocurrencies and large digital platforms, ECB states that CBDCs are “the only solution to guarantee a smooth continuation of the current monetary system”.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) could be the only way to ensure a “smooth continuation” of the current monetary system, says the European Central Bank (ECB) in a Working Paper Series published last month. The paper discusses monetary policy and financial stability in relation to central bank digital currencies and is based on research from 150 academic papers. » Read the rest of this entry «