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Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

– George Orwell, Animal Farm

What should we expect in 2021?

So far, it looks like this year is going to be plagued by more of the same brand of madness, mayhem, manipulation and tyranny that dominated 2020.

Frankly, I’m sick of it: the hypocrisy, the double standards, the delusional belief by Americans at every point along the political spectrum that politics and politicians are the answer to what ails the country, when for most of our nation’s history, politics and politicians have been the cause of our woes.

Consider: for years now, Americans, with sheeplike placidity, have tolerated all manner of injustices and abuses meted out upon them by the government (police shootings of unarmed individuals, brutality, corruption, graft, outright theft, occupations and invasions of their homes by militarized police, roadside strip searches, profit-driven incarcerations, profit-driven wars, egregious surveillance, taxation without any real representation, a nanny state that dictates every aspect of their lives, lockdowns, overcriminalization, etc.) without ever saying “enough is enough.”

Only now do Americans seem righteously indignant enough to mobilize and get active, and for what purpose? Politics. They’re ready to go to the mat over which corporate puppet will get the honor to serve as the smiling face on the pig for the next four years.

Talk about delusion.

It’s so ludicrous as to be Kafkaesque.

A perfect example of how farcical, topsy-turvy, and downright perverse life has become in the America: while President Trump doles out medals of commendation and presidential pardons to political cronies who have done little to nothing to advance the cause of freedom, Julian Assange rots in prison for daring to blow the whistle on the U.S. government’s war crimes

You’d think that Americans would be outraged over such abject pandering to the very swamp that Trump pledged to drain, but that’s not what has the Right and the Left so worked up. No, they’re still arguing over whether dead men voted in the last presidential election.

Either way, no matter which candidate lost to the other, it was always going to be the Deep State that won.

And so you have it: reduced to technicalities, distracted by magician’s con games, and caught up in the manufactured, highly scripted contest over which beauty contestant wears the crown, we have failed to do anything about the world falling apart around us.

Literally.

Our economy—at least as it impacts the vast majority of Americans as opposed to the economic elite—is in a shambles. Our infrastructure is falling apart. Our government has been overtaken by power-hungry predators and parasites. And our ability—and fundamental right—to govern our own lives is being usurped by greedy government operatives who care nothing for our lives or our freedoms.

Our ship of state is being transformed into a ship of fools.

We stand utterly defenseless in the face of a technological revolution brought about by artificial intelligence and wall-to-wall surveillance that is re-orienting the world as we know it. Despite the mounting high-tech encroachments on our rights, we have been afforded a paltry amount of legislative and judicial protections. Indeed, Corporate America has more rights than we do.

We stand utterly powerless in the face of government bureaucrats and elected officials who dance to the tune of corporate overlords and do what they want, when they want, with whomever they want at taxpayer expense, with no thought or concern for the plight of those they are supposed to represent. To this power elite, “we the people” are good for only two things: our tax dollars and our votes. In other words, they just want our money.

We stand utterly helpless in the face of government violence that is meted out, both at home and abroad. Indeed, the systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—has done more collective harm to the American people and their liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.

We stand utterly silenced in the face of government and corporate censors and a cancel culture that, in their quest to not offend certain viewpoints, are all too willing to eradicate views that do not conform. In this way, political correctness has given way to a more insidious form of group think and mob rule.

We stand utterly locked down in the face of COVID-19 mandates, restrictions, travel bans and penalties that are acclimating the populace to unquestioningly accede to the government’s dictates, whatever they might be (as long as they are issued in the name of national security), no matter how extreme or unreasonable.

We stand utterly intimidated in the face of red flag laws, terrorism watch lists, contact tracing programs, zero tolerance policies, and all other manner of police state tactics that aim to keep us fearful and compliant.

We stand utterly indoctrinated in the collective belief that the government—despite its longstanding pattern and practice of corruption, collusion, dysfunction, immorality and incompetence—somehow represents “we the people.”

Despite all of this, despite how evident it is that we are mere tools to be used and abused and manipulated for the power elite’s own diabolical purposes, we somehow fail to see their machinations for what they truly are: thinly veiled attempts to overthrow our republic and enslave the citizenry in order to expand their power and wealth.

It is a grim outlook for a new year, but it is not completely hopeless.

If hope is to be found, it will be found with those of us who do not rely on politicians that promise to fix what is wrong but instead do their part, at their local levels, to right the wrongs and fix what is broken. I am referring to the builders, the thinkers, the helpers, the healers, the educators, the creators, the artists, the activists, the technicians, the food gatherers and distributors, and every other person who does their part to build up rather than destroy.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, “we the people” are the hope for a better year. Not Trump. Not Biden. And not the architects and enablers of the American Police State.

Until we can own that truth, until we can forge our own path back to a world in which freedom means something again, we’re going to be stuck in this wormhole of populist anger, petty politics and destruction that is pitting us one against the other.

In that scenario, no one wins.

There’s a meme circulating on social media that goes like this:

If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar … and why?

Whether red ants will really fight black ants to the death is a question for the biologists, but it’s an apt analogy of what’s playing out before us on the political scene and a chilling lesson in social engineering. So before you get too caught up in the circus politics and conveniently timed spectacles that keep us distracted from focusing too closely on the government’s power grabs, first ask yourself: who’s really shaking the jar?

American Airlines is finally ending the literal circus that was becoming “emotional support animals” at airports and in airplanes nationwide. Hopefully, other airlines will follow suit.

Back in the day, there were seeing eye dogs, sheep herding dogs and cadaver dogs that were specially trained and that was it. Every good doggo was an “emotional support animal” for its owner, which is one of the best parts of having a pet: they can calm you down, they can bring joy into your life and they can be your best friend.

But if you don’t know someone that has wrapped their dog up in a military style pet-vest with the words “emotional support animal” written on it lately – as if their “specially trained” dog’s key goal is to somehow psychoanalyze you and offer you written notes on the “anxiety” you feel from capitalism or the patriarchy, versus simply eating, sleeping, farting and crapping – then you haven’t been paying attention. 

It has become an epidemic across the U.S. – people using the “emotional support” excuse to gain access for their pets on flights and in airports – where they would usually not be welcome. And once the floodgates for emotional support dogs opened up, Americans starting carting around emotional support squirrels, emotional support clowns, emotional support peacocks and entire emotional support zoos with them as they traveled. 

But American Airlines appears to have finally seen enough. The airline has made a policy change that “matches a new Department of Transportation regulation that says airlines aren’t required to treat emotional support animals as service animals,” according to CNN. The rules come into effect on January 11. 

At that point, American Airlines says it will “will no longer authorize new travel for animals that do not meet that definition, such as emotional support animals.”

Emotional support animals are supposed to be “prescribed by mental health professionals to provide comfort and support, but unlike service animals, they are not required to have training in specific tasks.”

Jessica Tyler, president of cargo and vice president of airport excellence for American said: “We’re confident this approach will enable us to better serve our customers, particularly those with disabilities who travel with service animals, and better protect our team members at the airport and on the aircraft.”

Among the airline’s concerns was that “passengers were fraudulently passing off their pets as the more loosely defined and fee-free category of emotional support animals”. 

What gave it away, guys? Was it the peacock?

Authored by Doug Dodge via AmericanThinker.com,

In 1999 Colonel Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui wrote a book called Unrestricted Warfare.  In this book, these officers, who were both active-duty officers in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) discussed the lessons learned from the Gulf War action in 1990.  The book was published by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in Beijing, which suggests official approval by the PLA Command. 

Liang and Xiangsui recall the CNN broadcast of the dead American soldier in Mogadishu and how that broadcast caused an American pullout of Somalia, changing the world’s strategic situation. 

This and other examples caused these officers to postulate another type of warfare they called unrestricted warfare, which crossed all of the spectrums of society and involved no rules.  The authors listed 15 types of new warfare to be used in order to avoid the standard military conflict.

One of these new types of warfare is called New Terror Warfare (Xiangsui, 1999), where modern technology is used to cause terror, with a lessor emphasis on violence and a greater emphasis on terror.  The book specifically mentions the Aum Shinrkiyo Cult’s attempt to use sarin in Tokyo as an example of causing terror without a lot of violence.  An example of this might be the Wuhan Virus, which came from China and has been used to cause terror throughout the world.  This virus has resulted in lockdowns of countries, people demanding others wear masks at all times, and huge violations of American citizens’ constitutional rights. 

Another new type of warfare is drug warfare, which is described as making huge profits by spreading health and social disasters in other countries. According to the New York Times, China is the largest producer of fentanyl coming into America.  The US Drug Enforcement Administration states that China and Mexico are the primary source countries for fentanyl.

A third type of new warfare is listed as smuggling warfare, which is described as throwing the markets into confusion and attacking economic order. This warfare is being conducted, along with the drug war, by the use of counterfeit articles from China being shipped to the United States.  For example, the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) seized 500,000 counterfeit masks being sent from Shenzhen, China to the United States for people to use to try and stop the spread of the Wuhan Virus.

A fourth type of new warfare is listed as economic aid warfare, described as bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is seen as an example of this warfare, where China aids other countries in return for those countries owing China, what exactly is owed is not known to the public. 

A fifth type of new warfare is cultural warfare, which is described as leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views.  This is encapsulated by China’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement.  The Black Lives Matters movement is a movement that is admittedly Marxist in its leanings and is attempting to force everyone to bow to it or face their wrath. 

Another type of new warfare is media warfare, which is described as manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along. American media outlets, which are owned, co-opted by or indebted to China, have been distorting the story about the Wuhan virus.  The American media has been refusing to acknowledge the origins of the virus.  Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted to lying to Americans in order to manipulate their behavior.  Dr. Fauci has connections to China, including the funding of the lab where the Wuhan virus was being studied.  The media is also involved in covering up other scandals, such as the Hunter Biden money scandal

In Unrestricted Warfare, the authors specifically state, “the goal should be to use all means whatsoever… to force the enemy to serve one’s own interests.”   Obviously, the Chinese are actively engaged in various types of warfare against the United States, as shown by the examples cited.  The United States needs to decide to fight back and force the Chinese government to cease its offensive actions against us or face the consequences.

A massive concrete sculpture that looks like a vagina in Brazil has fueled a cultural war between leftists and conservatives on social media. 

The handmade 108-foot concrete sculpture, called “Diva,” was unveiled last week by artist Juliana Notari on the hillside of a former sugar mill in Pernambuco, a state in northeast Brazil. 

Notari wrote in a Facebook post that the hillside vagina was intended to spark “dialogue with issues that refer to gender issues from a female perspective combined with a cosmopocentric and anthropocentric western society.” 

“Currently, these issues have become increasingly urgent. After all, it is by changing perspective of our relationship between humans and humans and nonhuman, that will allow us to live longer on that planet and in a less unequal and catastrophic society,” she said, referencing the intolerant climate that Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency has created in Brazil. 

Notari said it took “almost 11 months” of hard work by more than a dozen people to erect the “33 meters high, by 16 meters wide and 6 meters deep, covered by armed concrete and resin” hillside vagina. 

Before long, it appears she succeeded at stirring up social media attention as tens of thousands of comments flooded the post. By Wednesday morning, 27,000 comments and 15,000 shares were seen. 

“The sex organ wasn’t created to be admired, let alone be called art,” wrote one Facebook user. “It’s tasteless and unnecessary and there’s no meaning. You did this because you knew there would be criticism and that’s what you wanted, publicity.”

“With all due respect, I did not like it. Imagine me walking with my young daughters in this park and them asking … Daddy, what is this? What will I answer?” another commenter said. 

Someone asked: “Why did only men work to create your art ?” 

A commentator called the sculpture “Vagina Mountain.” 

Bolsonaro has long criticized liberal-designed art, and last year, he attempted to unsuccessfully freeze funding for movies with LGBTQ themes.

The Western world appears locked in a culture war. This is the most evident in the US (read: here). 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A South Korean warship sailed into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday after Iran seized a South Korean-flagged tanker in the waters.

South Korea’s defense ministry said the destroyer Choi Young was operating near the Strait of Hormuz. “It is carrying out missions to ensure the safety of our nationals,” South Korean Defense Ministry spokesperson Boo Seung Chan said of the destroyer.

South Korea has approximately 300 members of an anti-piracy unit that have been operating in the region since last year and are reportedly on board the Choi Young destroyer.

According to The Drive, among its weapons systems include the following: 

The primary armament on these ships are Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) arrays, with each of the destroyers having a total of 64 cells. These can be loaded with a mixture of U.S.-made Standard Missile 2 Block IIIA surface-to-air missiles or South Korean-designed Hyunmoo-3 land-attack cruise missiles, as well as the Korean Anti-Submarine Rocket (K-ASROC), also known as the Red Shark, an anti-submarine weapon that has a homing torpedo as its warhead. We don’t know what the Choi Young‘s exact loadout is on this deployment.

Officials in Seoul insist that the situation with Iran will be resolved diplomatically, despite the deployment of the warship.

South Korea is sending a delegation to Iran to negotiate the release of the tanker ahead of a planned visit to Tehran next week.

Iranian media first reported the seizure of the South Korean tanker Hankuk Chemi on Monday. The ship was carrying about 7,200 tons of chemicals and sailing from Saudi Arabia to the UAE.

Iranian officials said the ship was seized for violating environmental protocols and polluting the waters of the Gulf, but some suspect it is related to the $7 billion of Iranian funds South Korea has frozen due to US sanctions.