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Authored by Paul Edwards via Counterpunch.org,

“Hubris” is defined as rash and foolish pride, a dangerous overconfidence, manifested with arrogance.  The Deep State vaunts our “exceptionalism”, and since Reagan’s “City on a HIll” trope Americans have been assured by all succeeding Presidents that ours is the “indispensible nation”. The word describes the way America sells itself to the world, and has for generations.

The yawning cognitive gap between our nomenklatura’s relentless self-promotion and its pathetic history of botched, humiliating failures in every single act of Imperial overreach, demands examination. 

Are we at Peak Hubris? 

When exactly should the hubris of a vicious, lying, sloganeering criminal state be identified as what it is, a cover for unhinged stupidity?

Viz. the deranged, hysterical Democratic Party, a subsidiary of the Deep State, led–if that term applies–by a geriatric clutch of morally squalid throwbacks and vacuous nonentities, which has its Depends in a knot in the effort to blame the entire debacle of recent U.S. historic crime on the repulsive Yahoo squatting in the White House.  As Einstein observed, all explanations should be as simple as possible…but no simpler.

Of all the villainies attributed to Trump by Democrats and the Deep State–the Power Elite, Establishment, Ruling Clique, Permanent Unelected Government–the most egregious and only unforgivable one, is that his gross and vulgar bathos in Holy Office has exposed and profoundly embarrassed them, punching holes in their diligently crafted image.  The Masters of Disaster can’t tolerate open revelation of their evil, witness the methodical crushing of a roster of whistleblowers, among whom the most damning and brutally handled are Manning, Assange, and Snowden.  Two are jailed on bogus “charges” in peril of their lives, and Snowden is in exile, only free because the vengeful engine of American “justice” can’t nail him.

The three have exposed the hubris of “Exceptional America” far more substantively and damagingly than any of Trump’s galumphing, butthead blundering has done, and produced damning indictments of its despicable nature that assured their dragooning.  Their work has done much more to trash and pulverize the mythology of The Empire but the operators of the propaganda machine have managed to hide the vast bulk of it from public awareness, a feat they couldn’t manage with Trump’s ranting, erratic, Pig-Town Jig diplomacy, and his imbecile, chunk-blowing Twitter yammer.

Moreover, the Deep State has been able to crush or stifle these heroes, but  can’t seem to find a way to give His Bloviance the hook short of terminating him with extreme prejudice, which they haven’t had the balls to do… yet. They’ve had to settle, so far, for anathematizing him as the sole source of the betrayal of America’s exalted values and principles.  As if we had any…

The reality is that America has made it ironclad policy to install, support and  enrich a gang of the vilest, most murderous dictators, tyrants, caudillos and royal brutes in history behind its sinister fairytale of principled benevolence.  Their names fill pages but let Pinochet, The Shah, Mobutu, Papa Doc, Marcos, Somoza, Kagame, and Mubarak stand as examples.  To be “our sonofabitch” was simple: crush your people’s aspirations, kill their leaders, drain their economic blood, sell off their resources to Rape Capitalism for pennies on the dollar, and borrow billions from our IMF, taking only a modest 10% or so for your trouble.  And keep the clamps on hard with torture, rape and murder so nothing queers the deal for you and Uncle.

The only “dictators” America despises are those who refuse, as Qaddafi, Saddam and Assad did, to knuckle and suck, or those with the muscle, wisdom and grit to balk and baffle our folly, as Putin and Xi do routinely.

This dirty hidden history that the three heroes’ work has revealed is the reason the Deep State knows it has to destroy Trump.  His loose cannon, ADD follies, and zany, autistic impulses draw attention to their documenting of American crimes while blocking The Empire from retaking control of the game so it can function as it goddam pleases, the way it always has.

The single paramount commandment in the Deep State’s tablet of laws is that nothing must threaten the profits of the War Machine, and certainly not anything that benefits only The People.  Very clear on this, the Democratic Party, richly suckled by the “defense industry”, excoriates Trump for his sophomoric efforts to end a small war or two, while whorishly advancing the Totenkopf Banner of the War Machine to the satisfaction of the Deep State.

Major problem, though.  Americans not braindead are sick of endless war, which puts them at serious odds with the War Machine and the party that glorifies it.  Virulent hatred of Putin and Russia, coupled with the raging lust to murder ignorant, guiltless peasants and destitute slum dwellers is no longer a foolproof formula for swelling the ranks of the liberal faithful. Which raises (but does not beg) the key question: are we indeed at Peak Hubris?

Judging by the loss of traction that pure American horseshit braggadocio from our organs of propaganda is having internationally, one would have to say we have.  After the long line–beginning at division of Europe, solidified by stalemate in Korea–of shameful military muggings, half-assed regime change pratfalls, and humiliating downright defeats, it is at last becoming clear to the wizards behind the curtain that hubris ain’t cuttin‘ it no more.

The powerful Exceptionalist Myth, the central tenet of our catechism, which is the basis of the whole crevassed, dissolving superstructure of The Empire, the supreme Big Lie upon which our entire culture of fraud, falsity and philistinism is predicated, has buckled at last under the strain of our malevolent history, and is spectacularly shattering and decomposing.

The fact that The Myth and the hubris that buttressed it so forcefully are disintegrating does not mean they will be abandoned by the powers and dominions that have used them so long and so fruitfully.  Absurdity in action is perhaps the most defining single quality of expiring empires.  Buffoons and Snake Oil men will continue to pitch The Myth, stinking and decayed, long after its sell-by date as long as it keeps them on the payroll but where the opinion of the great world is concerned, the party’s over.

What follows?  There is no reliable template for expiring empires.  The end can be anything from devastating physical destruction, to ungovernable social chaos and barbarism, to just collapsing quietly into poor and feeble senescence.

Kipling said it best of an expiring British Empire:

Far called, our navies melt away,
On dune and headland sinks the fire.
Lo! all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.

Following a surprise announcement in late October that the Pentagon had awarded a controversial cloud computing deal to Microsoft, Amazon on Thursday announced a formal appeal of the contract that was widely expected to go to them, according to CNBC.

“Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias — and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified,” Amazon told CNBC in an email.

The $10 billion contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, was thought to be a lock for Amazon – so much so that a group of competitors including Oracle and IBM sued, alleging they were unfairly excluded from the bidding process. They eventually lost, allowing the DoD to move forward with either Amazon or Microsoft.

In July, however, the WSJ publicized new evidence showing that senior Amazon executives met with senior DoD officials, including then-Defense Secretary James Mattis, to discuss the project before the bidding even began, while the decision over the program was expected in August. 

Emails showed that on March 31, 2017, Mattis attended a dinner in London with Teresa Carlson, the Amazon executive in charge of selling cloud-computing services to governments. An organizer of the dinner said cloud computing never came up, however the meeting helped lay the groundwork for an August 2017 between Mattis and Bezos. It was also revealed that other Pentagon officials helped connect Carlson with Mattis’s chief of staff and other senior Pentagon officials at around the same time.

A month after the WSJ report, the Pentagon’s Inspector General launched a probe into whether there was any malfeasance during the bid process, including conflicts of interest, according to Bloomberg. 

In August, the Pentagon announced that Esper would review the JEDI deal after President Donald Trump said that he had received complaints from companies about the process. Trump said in July that companies conveyed that the specifications of the contract favored Amazon, according to Bloomberg.

“I never had something where more people are complaining,” Trump said last month at the White House. “Some of the greatest companies in the world are complaining about it,” he added, naming Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. –CNBC

The contract was a big win for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who has prioritized cloud computing.

“We’ve got to get this right, so we are not going to rush to a decision. We are going to spend whatever time the evaluation team needs to spend to make sure we are picking the best technical solution at the right price with the right criteria,” said Pentagon chief information officer Dana Deasy during a closed-door media roundtable at the Pentagon.

“We don’t have an enterprise approach,” Deasy added. “We have a bunch of siloed solutions we built. We have lots of vendors we’re using for cloud solutions, but we’ve never stepped back and created a holistic solution, and that is causing challenges out in the field.”

Bored with just plain old protests and interrupting political events to force their climate change virtue signaling onto the world, environmentalists are now using the legal system to harass those who don’t agree with their world view or aren’t “green” enough for their liking.

That’s what Mark McVeigh, a 24 year old environmental scientist from Australia has done: he is suing the $57 pension fund he is invested in with his retirement savings for “not adequately disclosing or assessing the impact of climate change on its investments,” according to Bloomberg. 

The case will determine whether or not funds are in breach of fiduciary duties by failing to make investments that mitigate climate change.

Prior to filing the suit, McVeigh had asked Retail Employees Superannuation Trust, his pension fund, how it was “ensuring his savings were future proofed against rising world temperatures”. He didn’t like the answer he was given, so now he is suing. 

McVeigh said:

 “I see climate change as a huge risk that dwarfs a lot of other things — it’s such a big physical impact on the planet, and the economy.”

The fund says that climate change is one of the variety of factors it has to consider when investing on behalf of its 2 million members. Australia’s pension pool, which stands at about $2.9 trillion, is watching the case closely to see if the outcome will make it more difficult for funds to meet their already legislated minimum return targets.

Ian Patrick, chief investment officer at Sunsuper Pty, which manages A$70 billion, said: “Looking after the best financial interests of our members requires us to be conscious of the risks, but not exclude a whole segment of the economy that’s going to be very meaningful for a period of time. Right now, the interests of our members — the sole purpose of super — is what wins out.”

Other firms are also starting to act accordingly. One study by State Street Global Advisors showed that “fiduciary duty is one of the main ‘push factors’ for financial institutions to adopt environmental, social and governance principles.”

Other funds in Australia have employed “responsible investment teams” to try and mix environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) factors into their portfolios. They have joined global investor initiatives like United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment and have used their stakes in large companies to advocate for change.

Remember the days when you used to just choose your own investments, before the government told you what you had to invest in?

Mary Delahunty, head of impact at HESTA, said: “As soon as you remove capital, they don’t have to have a conversation with you anymore.”

Pension funds are also trying to mitigate climate risk using debt. Some funds have written loans to gas companies in the Permian Basin instead of taking equity stakes and bearing the risk of being junior on the capital structure.

Patrick continued: “Those loans deliver double-digit returns over periods of up to 10 years while the world shifts to a cleaner energy mix. It’s why we prefer debt and why we think about the tenor of that debt quite deeply. Relative to holding long-term equity in an energy asset, that addresses the risk quite substantially.”

Activism is still on the rise and banks are still shying away from investing in environmentally damaging projects, but the Australian government has moved in the other direction. Prime Minister Scott Morrison is instead “considering new laws to prevent activists like environmental lobby group Market Forces from stymieing commercial decisions and threatening economic growth.”

REST recently appointed a responsible investment manager and in June and took control of a wind farm in Western Australia. 

 “Specific climate-related issues which we engage with our investment managers on include carbon foot printing, stranded assets, climate-related scenario analysis and exposure to lower carbon assets,” a REST spokesperson said. 

Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental, climate change and energy law at Colombia University, said: “Success in litigation breeds imitation, so if McVeigh wins, people will take a close look. People are so desperate at the failure of governments to act adequately on climate change that they’re looking for litigation targets.”

The McVeigh case makes its way to court on November 22 for a preliminary hearing.

Authored by Huw van Steenis via Project Syndicate,

The rapid pace and sheer scale of innovation in digital currencies and mobile payments indicates that a monetary revolution is forthcoming. The choice for governments and central banks is whether to stand in front of a train that is gaining steam, or get on board and reap the benefits.

How radically will digital currencies change our methods of exchange and the way that we think about money? With innovation in digital payments barreling ahead, these questions are now commanding the attention of the World Economic Forum and other international institutions.

Regardless of how Facebook’s own digital-currency moonshot, Libra, fares, it has already provided a wake-up call for firms and policymakers around the world.

“If revolution there is to be, let us rather undertake it than undergo it,” Otto von Bismarck once said.

The question for policymakers is not whether to try to shape the digital-money revolution, but how.

Digital money is already a key battleground in finance, with technology firms, payment processing companies, and banks all vying to become the gateway into the burgeoning platform-based economy. The prizes that await the winners could be huge. In China, Alipay and WeChat Pay already control more than 90% of all mobile payments. And in the last three years, the four largest listed payment firms – Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and PayPal – have increased in value by more than the FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google). In a way, Libra is actually crashing the party late.

The opportunities offered by digital money are clear. Across Western countries, moving money is overly costly and inefficient, and those who end up paying the most are often the ones who can least afford to do so. As I argued in a report for the Bank of England (BOE) earlier this year, improving these processes could yield significant returns and social benefits.

Moreover, the needs – the potential returns – are even greater in many emerging markets, particularly when it comes to cross-border payments. According to the World Bank, the average cost of sending international peer-to-peer remittances averages around 7% of the sum. Efforts to improve the main payment channels are ongoing. TransferWise, for example, claims to have reduced the average cost of cross-border transfers for its clients to 0.74%. But less well-trodden routes remain a challenge, owing to the hurdles posed by anti-money-laundering rules and poor data quality.

Given the concerns that Libra has raised, some central banks have begun to explore the option of issuing their own digital tokens. Others are studying the thorny legal and regulatory challenges posed by digital money, so that they can safeguard monetary and financial stability. For her part, Lael Brainard, a governor on the US Federal Reserve Board, recently suggested that the risks of cryptocurrencies outweigh the benefits. By contrast, the People’s Bank of China is forging ahead – though not toward the decentralized or “permissionless” blockchain model envisioned by crypto enthusiasts. The PBOC wants to use cryptography to issue tokens to mainstream banks, which will then be passed on to customers within the existing two-tiered banking system.

Hence, if the European Central Bank (or others) wanted to be the first central bank to issue digital money, the opportunity is there for the taking. To policymakers considering the options presented by digital money, I would offer five recommendations from my BOE report.

First, monetary authorities should create the infrastructure to enable alternative payment methods to connect to one another. The private sector can flourish when central banks act as a platform for innovation, as BOE Governor Mark Carney has shown by granting non-bank payment firms access to the BOE payments system. But success will depend on how easily new providers can access the central-bank infrastructure, which will require well-designed application programming interfaces through which to receive and share information.

Second, policymakers should usher in the next generation of payments regulation. Rules need to be updated to reflect the increasing complexity and shifting risks of the current system. As the cost of payments falls, the value of data will grow. Yet existing rules pertaining to data sharing, security, and liability are mostly rudimentary. Given the flurry of new entrants, there is a case to be made for tiering regulation – as the Singaporeans have done – and stress-testing payment firms for their financial resilience and cyber-security protections.

Third, governments need to champion better digital identification, which is essential to improving financial inclusion, curbing cyber fraud, and reducing costs. Some countries have already made impressive progress on this front. India, for example, has largely cracked the identification problem with its Aadhaar program, which dramatically simplifies the process through which networks can know their customers. Countries that do not have a tradition of issuing national ID cards have more work to do, but their governments can cooperate with the private sector, or use existing high-quality national data sets such as passport and tax numbers.

Fourth, all countries need to support stronger messaging standards to improve cross-border payments, reduce costs, and prevent fraud. Just as postal codes help mail get to the right place, so too could better tagging of payment senders and recipients.

Fifth, and critically, policymakers need to create a roadmap for the decline of cash. In Sweden, cash payments have fallen by 80% over the past decade, and many other developed markets are just 5-10 years behind. Digital payments bring many benefits, but the Swedish experience shows that without a coordinated plan, the pace of change risks excluding some groups in society. As payment habits shift, each country will need a strategy to improve its payments infrastructure – including broadband and mobile-telephony networks – so that no one is left behind.

Payments innovation is moving at a dizzying pace. Some ideas may fail to get off the ground, while others may need to pivot to become commercially viable. Other issues, like market dominance or cyber-security risks, will undoubtedly become more prominent in policy debates. On balance, however, the economic and social benefits of a frictionless, fraud-free, and trusted global payments system will likely outweigh the risks.

The president of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations demanded that Fox News ban former federal prosecutor and Trump ally Joe diGenova for claiming that the Hungarian-American billionaire “controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department.”

In response to diGenova’s comments, Open Society president Eric Wemple said in a Friday letter to Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott that diGenova’s comments are “beyond fiction” and “beyond ludicrous.”

Last night, yet again, Fox gave air time to McCarthyism. This has to stop. My letter to @FoxNews:
cc ⁦@ErikWemple⁩ ⁦@brianstelter⁩ pic.twitter.com/qMdSfE94Xk

— Patrick Gaspard (@patrickgaspard) November 14, 2019

Others, such as ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt, suggested diGenova was using an ‘anti-Semitic trope’ against Soros, who is Jewish.

Invoking #Soros as controlling the State Dept, FBI, and Ukraine is trafficking in some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes. @FoxNews won’t have Chris Farrell on for making similar remarks, and they should hold the same standard for @JoeDiGenova. https://t.co/IbCQCdXZfL

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 14, 2019

As The Hill’s John Solomon reported in March, in 2016 Obama administration officials sought to suppress a Ukrainian corruption probe into an NGO bankrolled by both the US government and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros. 

When Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office tried to investigate an alleged misallocation of $4.4 million in US funds, which was supposed to go toward anti-corruption initiatives, US embassy officials came down hard to shut down the investigation altogether. “We ran right into a buzzsaw and we got bloodied,” a senior Ukrainian official told The Hill.

Notably, former State Department official George Kent (One of the Democrats’ star witnesses in Wednesday’s public impeachment hearings), recommended in April 2016 that Ukraine stop investigating a Soros-funded entity in Ukraine, AntAC.

“The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center (sic), based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced,” wrote Kent. 

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC).

The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.

The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group. –The Hill

DiGenova, an attorney for Solomon, may be included in a batch of communications that a federal judge ordered the State Department to hand over regarding Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s communications with top department officials.

The judge ruled that the department had 30 days to turn over the documents, but that both parties needed to meet to narrow the scope of American Oversight’s request. 

The State Department is agreeing to search for records related to external communications between Giuliani, his associates Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to the status report released Wednesday.

The report says that “to the extent responsive records exist” the State Department will “process and produce” the documents “with appropriate redactions” by Nov. 22. 

The department has also agreed to process communications between Giuliani and some of Pompeo’s advisers, including including State Department counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl and former senior adviser Michael McKinley. –The Hill

The State Department search for records will include a review of emails, text messages, calendar entries and messaging platforms – as well as any correspondence regarding Giuliani, Toensing or diGenova’s plans to travel to Ukraine or encourage the country’s government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who have been accused of corruption.

Authored by Richard Enos via Collective-Evolution.com,

• The Facts: Facebook has made deals with mainstream media outlets to pay for their news content, further turning Facebook from a neutral social media platform into a conglomerate that supports a political bias and the agenda of the global elite.

• Reflect On: What can conscious media outlets do to overcome growing censorship and mainstream bias from the big tech companies and ensure that you continue to get neutral, agenda-free news coverage and commentary on the issues of the day?

It’s not clear whether Facebook was truly conceived by an innocent genius with noble intent, but one fact has become abundantly clear: Facebook is now a mouthpiece and tool for the proliferation of mainstream perception. This is specifically designed to enrich the global elite and continue to disenfranchise ordinary citizens and any attempts to bring important truths to light that would threaten the elite. And, of course, Mark Zuckerberg is now a ‘junior partner’ in this global elite.

The episode of the Jimmy Dore show found in the video below, which is worth watching to get the full context of the discussion, introduces whistleblower Vikram Kumar, a former promoter of third-party videos on Facebook. Dore brings interesting insights into Facebook’s latest strategies in terms of controlling the news commentary. He explains how Facebook is proliferating the establishment’s narrative while limiting and blocking alternative voices which, of course, Facebook characterizes as ‘Fake News’. Here, Kumar discusses Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in Congress to this effect:

Back in 2017 there was that TechCrunch report that said that Facebook was taking measures to stop the spread of ‘Fake News’ by banning certain political accounts from promoting their videos on their newsfeed. So when I heard Mark Zuckerberg in 2018 telling Congress that he would be doing the same thing, I thought, what changed between 2017 and 2018? Are they taking new measures, are they re-taking the measures?  And it wasn’t until a week later that I realized that Variety Magazine reported that Facebook Watch, which is Facebook’s media platform, had reached a multi-million dollar deal with CNN, Fox News, ABC, and large media outlets.

The congressional testimony was the perfect opportunity for the political establishment, the media establishment, and the tech companies to form an alliance against small media outlets.

Returning Media To The Global Elite’s Control

The process of bringing fundamentally liberating technologies like social media under control has been a difficult process, but the global elite seems to feel they are getting a handle on it. Since the big media giants Google, Facebook, Youtube and others are now strictly following the global elite playbook, with special algorithms and thinly-veiled censorship strategies, the process of promoting the elite agenda while suppressing dissenting voices is in full swing.

One of the biggest issues to remedy was the lack of viewership that traditional mainstream media was getting from young people, which is really the target market not only for advertisers but the social engineering wing of the global elite as well. Here’s how Kumar describes it:

As you know, young people, they don’t watch cable… the viewership of Fox News, CNN, and ABC are dying off, they’re getting older and older, and so what Facebook is, is access to young people, right, and so they viewed small anti-establishment media outlets such as yourself as an existential threat to their next generation of revenue.

Tech companies view media companies extremely valuably, you could go back to 1996, there was that merger between Microsoft, General Electric and NBC to create MSNBC.com. A lot of people don’t know that the ‘MS’ in MSNBC stands for Microsoft, and the reason why media companies and tech companies are so intertwined with each other is ’cause you can influence young people so much when you have the distribution network of something like Facebook, and with Facebook Watch, and their media platform, and their deal with CNN, Fox News, and ABC, they’re able to indoctrinate the next generation of young people. And so they want to take viewership away from shows like yours, and put those young people that haven’t been paying attention with cable news back into the pockets of companies like Fox News, ABC, and CNN.

Every media company wants some of that Facebook Watch dough. And so the companies that have coverage that Facebook doesn’t like are out of there, and new companies that have coverage that Facebook likes are back into the deal. And so Facebook is already taking steps to craft the political landscape in the framing that they find positively. And so you get that whole thing where Facebook shuts down over 800 political pages and accounts, and even legitimate political pages that expose things like police brutality… you’re already seeing a coordinated effort from the establishment media and tech companies to kind of craft the narrative for young people.

This is how that Variety Magazine article Kumar talked about characterizes the deal between Facebook and Mainstream Media:

After going through the fake-news wringer, Facebook is shelling out money on original news content. The strategy is partly aimed at driving up viewing on its Facebook Watch platform — but it also is supposed to demonstrate the social-media giant’s commitment to funding trustworthy journalism.

A corporate conglomerate now giving itself the authority to judge what is and isn’t trustworthy journalism. What could possibly go wrong?

Is Facebook Still Just A Tech Company?

The slippery slope that Facebook is trying to anchor itself to is as clear as the nose on Mark Zuckerberg’s face. He continues to want us to think about Facebook as a social media platform whose objective is still ‘to make the world more open and connected,’ yet at the same time he wants Facebook to become the prime arbiter of the ‘news that is fit to print,’ or in this case, to decide which sources of news will benefit and not benefit from Facebook’s tremendous reach. The same Variety article reinforces the idea that Facebook is trying to have things both ways, gaining the advantages of defining itself as a tech company, and not taking on the liabilities inherent in being a media company:

In the past, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has remarked that Facebook is a technology company — not a media company. Asked whether Facebook is now in fact a media company, given that it’s paying for a growing slate of content, Brown responded, “Having worked for big media companies, I don’t think Facebook is a media company. But are we responsible for the media on Facebook? Yes.”

The fact is that we have entered into somewhat uncharted territory in terms of what defines a media company since the rise of the Internet. We can only hope that we will collectively awaken to the fact that Facebook has clearly gone beyond being a platform that provides equal access to all voices and commentaries, and has given in to the temptation to control the flow and proliferation of information. As this Wired article starts off,

FACEBOOK STEADFASTLY RESISTS categorization as a traditional media company. Instead, CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists on calling the social network a technology platform—even though nearly half of all American adults get their news on Facebook. These old arguments no longer work, especially as Facebook starts making its own video content.

It is incumbent upon the awakening community to clearly grasp what is happening here and to act accordingly in terms of our future engagement with social media sites like Facebook. It is important to see how Bill Clinton’s Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed media cross-ownership that led to mergers between tech companies and media companies, was a seed that has already started to bear the fruit of an Orwellian dystopia, where the global elite are permitted to continue to proliferate mainstream propaganda and limit exposure to alternative views that are a threat to their agenda.

The Takeaway

Conscious media outlets, like us here at Collective Evolution, are in the crosshairs of the recent efforts on the part of Facebook and other large media conglomerates to selectively control the proliferation of information. Our best hope in these times is that the awakening community makes deliberate choices in terms of which sources to tune in to. While the global elite may have the power, the wealth, and the technology, they are still pushing an agenda, which to discerning minds looks and sounds very different from the unbiased truth.

Our hope is that a growing number of people are seeing through the agenda of the global elite enough to be motivated to ensure that conscious media survives, and then thrives. One of the future goals of our Conscious Media Movement campaign is to strengthen an alliance between ourselves and other conscious media outlets and work together to find ways we can amplify the voice of truth and neutrality.

Greta Thunberg is a lot of things: teenager, climate activist, social media darling. And soon she might add ‘YouTube creator’ to her resume.

Thanks to Chile’s decision to cancel a United Nations climate gathering scheduled for December, Greta Thunberg, who has apparently been living in the US since arriving in September on a carbon-neutral vessel, unable to fly home because it would betray her principles.

Since simply flying coach apparently isn’t an option, Thunberg put the word out on social media that she was looking for somebody to sail with her to Madrid, where the December UN conference is now being held because of the riots in Chile. And who should answer her call but a couple of YouTube-famous Australians who live aboard their low-carbon catamaran, “La Vagabonde”.

Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu are their names. And during their four-week journey – a journey that will only barely get them there in time for Greta to catch the end of the conference – we suspect that the couple and Greta will extensively document their journey via social media and YouTube, as they’ve been doing.

So happy to say I’ll hopefully make it to COP25 in Madrid.
I’ve been offered a ride from Virginia on the 48ft catamaran La Vagabonde. Australians @Sailing_LaVaga ,Elayna Carausu & @_NikkiHenderson from England will take me across the Atlantic.
We sail for Europe tomorrow morning! pic.twitter.com/qJcgREe332

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) November 12, 2019

According to the Verge, the 40-foot catamaran in which they will be traveling is equipped with solar panels, a wind turbine, and hydro-generators, ensuring a “low carbon” journey.

Greta is clearly having a great time playing sailor.

Day 2. In the Gulf Stream. Yesterday was quite rough conditions in the shallow waters off the coast. Today much nicer. Slept really well. Great to be back on the ocean! @Sailing_LaVaga @elayna__c @_NikkiHenderson pic.twitter.com/zKTXbbUKl6

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) November 14, 2019

We sail for home! pic.twitter.com/Mc5IoGpKXA

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) November 13, 2019

Of course, by sailing across the Atlantic, one could argue that Greta is putting herself and others at risk. November isn’t the ideal month to sail across the North Atlantic. Hurricane season in the Atlantic runs from June to November.

Meanwhile, Thunberg is inviting her fans to follow her travels online.

Track us at https://t.co/hP3T0SbY5p

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) November 13, 2019

Thunberg first became a sensation last year when she became the figurehead of the global school climate strike movement, where she encouraged kids to leave school en masse and take to the streets to demand their leaders do more to address climate change. She’s now apparently dedicating herself to traveling to every official ‘climate summit’ in search of a microphone to warn about the planet’s impending doom, and how it’s all the boomers’ fault.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, ground zero for virtue signaling hypocrite libs, they are painting murals in her honor (using “100% eco friendly” materials, which we find suspect).

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

It is getting scary out there...

In order for society to function properly, we need to be able to assume that most people are going to behave rationally. And when I was growing up, it was generally safe to make that assumption. But now things have completely changed. No matter how hard one may try, there is simply no avoiding the hordes of crazy people that seem to be taking over our society. It is almost as if millions of us never learned the basic rules for how civilized people should treat one another. Sometimes this manifests in behavior that is simply rude, other times it manifests in behavior that is actually dangerous, and if you are really unlucky you will personally encounter someone that has fully embraced depravity on a level that most of us never even want to think about.

Let me give you an example of crazy behavior that is simply rude. Not too long ago, a Reddit user posted a photograph that really freaked a lot of people out…

A female plane passenger took to Reddit this week to share a horrifying photo of a stranger performing a rude act during her flight.

The woman, who goes by WoodySoprano on the social media platform, posted an image of a traveler resting their bare feet on her headrest. Though the Reddit user’s face is cropped, her terrified eyes tell all.

“Going to be a long flight,” she captioned the photo.

This woman was never in any physical danger, but this type of behavior is incredibly rude.

Who would do something like that?

Of course sometimes crazy behavior does cross the line and actually becomes dangerous. For example, just consider what recently happened to one woman in Los Angeles…

Heidi Van Tassel was parked in Hollywood after having a pleasant evening out with friends at an authentic Thai restaurant. Suddenly a man randomly pulled her out of the car, dragged her out to the middle of the street, and dumped a bucket of feces on her head, Van Tassel said and public records confirm.

“It was diarrhea. Hot liquid. I was soaked, and it was coming off my eyelashes and into my eyes,” Van Tassel said. “Paramedics who came to treat me said there was so much of it on me, that it looked like the man was saving it up for a month.”

Nobody in their right mind would dump a bucket of warm diarrhea on some random woman.

But if you visit the major cities on the west coast, something like this could actually happen to you. In San Francisco alone, there have been more than 132,000 official complaints about human feces in the streets since 2008.

We have literally become a nation where hordes of people use the streets as a toilet.

What in the world has happened to us?

And if you are brave enough to go get something to eat at a local fast food restaurant, there is a chance that you might be viciously attacked by a complete nutjob…

A woman has been sentenced to seven years in prison for slashing a man’s throat in front of his family at a Taco Bell after he asked her to stop ranting at employees for taking too long on her food.

The victim, 48-year-old Jason Luczkow, told The Oregonian Thursday that he and his wife went to a Taco Bell along Highway 26 in July to pick up some food for the family when the errand took a horrifying turn, which was miraculously caught on video.

Have you noticed that people seem to get “triggered” a whole lot more easily than they once did?

These days, saying the wrong thing to one of these crazy people at the wrong time can result in violence very quickly…

A Twitter user received over 126,000 ‘likes’ after she bragged about stealing a “homophobic” white woman’s purse and spending her money on tacos.

Yes, really.

“A white woman spawned out of nowhere today and started being homophobic to me so I stole her purse and now miss thing’s ID is resting in a target trashcan and her money is paying for my tacos and rent,” tweeted a user called @yourholygaymom, who describes herself as “the high priestess of gay twitter.”

The most frightening thing about that story is the fact that more than 126,000 people decided to hit the like button.

Like I said, the crazy people are literally taking over our society.

Those of us that try to behave rationally still depend on the police to protect us, but the crazies are going after them too…

Video posted by CBS shows people deliberately covering an NYPD vehicle in trash on Halloween night, while a small group of residents sit by, laugh, and taunt the two officers that were left to clean up the mess.

One resident is heard saying “trick or treat”, followed by a slur.

The officers calmly show restraint as they are left to clean up trash filled boxes, broken eggs and rotting food. The officers were in the midst of responding to a domestic dispute call and were upstairs at a residence long enough for their vehicle to be vandalized.

It certainly isn’t easy to be a police officer these days.

If those officers had lashed out against the residents that vandalized their vehicle, they would have probably been demonized by the mainstream media for committing “police brutality”.

And as I mentioned above, once in a while you run into a crazy person that has completely embraced depravity.

In New Jersey, authorities recently arrested a man that was ““harassing people who refused to let him have sex with their farm animals”, and Vice Media recently showcased a program about people that “incorporate insects into their sex lives”.

Yes, this is what our society is actually becoming.

So why is this happening?

There are certainly a lot of factors, but two of the biggest are the fact that we have completely turned away from the moral standards that this nation was founded upon and instead we are constantly filling our minds with complete and utter filth.

Today, the average American spends more than three and a half hours watching television each day, and the material on our televisions is becoming increasingly depraved…

A new study has a message for the many families who have said television content has grown coarser with each passing year: You’re right.

The study by the watchdog group Parents Television Council found a 28 percent increase in violence and a 44 percent increase in profanity over the past decade in shows rated TV-PG. It’s part of what the PTC calls “content creep” – that is, an increase in offensive content within a given rating compared to similarly rated programs a decade ago.

When we put garbage into our minds, that is eventually going to come out in our behavior. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “What You Think Is Controlled By What You Watch, And What You Watch Is Controlled By The Elite”.

Unfortunately, the trends that are causing all of this crazy behavior in our society are likely to continue to intensify in the years ahead.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all rely on every day is steadily disappearing, and that means that things are going to become increasingly difficult for those of us that are still trying to behave rationally.