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originally posted by: DevotedResearcher
a reply to: v1rtu0s0
What I want to know is, how do we combat it?
originally posted by: DevotedResearcher
a reply to: Terpene
My main concern is mainstream televsion news.
Personally, I don't even have television anymore.
I use Alex Jones' Breaking News as a substitute for TV to get a glimpse of what's going on in the world on any given day.
originally posted by: DevotedResearcher
Main things for all of us to focus on:
1. Don't listen to mainstream media because they're part of 5th Generation Warfare on we the people.
2. Identify your own strengths and your neighbors' strengths. Form groups. Operate on love.
3. Have priorities of work.
What I want to know is, how do we combat it?
And what difference does it make to you?
originally posted by: DevotedResearcher
a reply to: Terpene
I don't hear inflammatory rhetoric when I listen to him.
I hear passionate concern about the complete destruction of liberty if the New World Order agenda succeeds.
Jones has provided a platform and support for white nationalists, giving Unite the Right rally attendee and white supremacist Nick Fuentes a platform on his website Banned.Video, as well as serving as a potential "entry point" to their ideology.
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Website, own-brand and endorsed products
According to court testimony Jones delivered in 2014, InfoWars then had revenues of over $20 million a year.
A 2017 piece for German magazine Der Spiegel by Veit Medick indicated that two-thirds of Jones's funds derive from sales of his own products. These products are marketed through the InfoWars website and through advertising spots on Jones's show. They include dietary supplements, toothpaste, bulletproof vests and "brain pills," which hold "an appeal for anyone who believes Armageddon is near", according to Medick.[77] From September 2015 to the end of 2018, the InfoWars store made $165 million in sales, according to court filings relating to the Sandy Hook lawsuits filed against Jones.[78]
In August 2017, Californian medical company Labdoor, Inc reported on tests applied to six of Jones's dietary supplement products. These included a product named Survival Shield, which was found by Labdoor to contain only iodine, and a product named Oxy-Powder, which comprised a compound of magnesium oxide and citric acid—common ingredients in dietary supplements. Labdoor indicated no evidence of prohibited or harmful substances, but cast doubt on the marketing claims for these products, and asserted that the quantity of the ingredients in certain products would be "too low to be appropriately effective".
On a 2017 segment of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver stated that Jones spends "nearly a quarter" of his on-air time promoting products sold on his website, many of which are purported solutions to medical and economic problems claimed to be caused by the conspiracy theories described on his show.
Jones continued this behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 12, 2020, Jones was issued a cease and desist from the Attorney General of New York, after he claimed, in the absence of any evidence, that products he sold, including colloidal silver toothpaste, were an effective treatment for COVID-19.[84][85][86] The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also sent him a letter on April 9, 2020, warning that the federal government might proceed to seize the products he was marketing for COVID-19 or fine him if he continued to sell them.[87] A disclaimer then appeared on Jones's website, stating his products were not intended for treating "the novel coronavirus". On a linked page, Jones was quoted: "They plan on, if they've fluoridated you and vaccinated you and stunned you and mesmerized you with the TV and put you in a trance, on killing you." Jones continued to sell the products.[84]
Research commissioned in 2017 by the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) determined that two products sold by Jones contained potentially dangerous levels of the heavy metal lead.[88]
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We are reminded of what Albert Einstein once said: “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” Nearly everybody gets it at one time or another, and it continues to spread. Back in 1946, British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote: “Patriotism . . . has very largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the Western World.”
Nationalism is well described by the psalmist’s expression, “the pestilence causing adversities.” (Psalm 91:3) It has been like a plague on humanity, leading to untold suffering. Nationalism with its resultant hatred of other peoples has existed for centuries. Today, nationalism continues to fan the flames of divisiveness, and human rulers have not been able to stop it.
In a letter to the editor of Bombay’s “Indian Express” newspaper, an Indian man stated: “I do not believe in patriotism. It is an opium innovated by the politicians to serve their ugly ends. It is for their prosperity. It is for their betterment. It is for their aggrandizement. It is never for the country. It is never for the nation. It is never never for common men and women like you and I. . . . This sinister politician-invented wall shall divide man from man—and brother from brother; till one day it shall bring about man’s doom by man. Patriotism or nationalism, to my mind, is an idiotic exercise in artificial loyalty. . . . I take no hypocritical pride in being petty this or that. I belong to mankind.”
Regarding nationalism, British historian Arnold Toynbee said: “It is a state of mind in which we give our paramount political loyalty to one fraction of the human race . . . whatever consequences this may entail for the foreign majority of the human race.” Author Ivo Duchacek observed: “Nationalism divides humanity into mutually intolerant units. As a result, people think as Americans, Russians, Chinese, Egyptians or Peruvians first, and human beings second—if at all.”—Conflict and Cooperation Among Nations. Former UN Secretary-General U Thant observed: “So many of the problems that we face today are due to, or the result of, false attitudes . . . Among these is the concept of narrow nationalism—‘my country, right or wrong.’”
... As Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt wrote: “Public opinion is formed by interest groups (politicians, arms manufacturers, the military) that deceive the electorate by giving them false or one-sided information.” In a similar vein, historian H. E. Barnes wrote: “Since the wars of the French Revolution . . . copious and compelling propaganda [has] been continued and greatly increased to protect warfare against popular dissent, opposition, and factual analysis of issues.”
As a consequence, “practically anybody can be persuaded and manipulated in such a way that he will more or less voluntarily enter a situation wherein he must kill and perhaps die.” (War, by Gwynne Dyer) Thus, by reason of their political and economic power, the “elite” can control the media in order to prepare the masses for the bloodbath.
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Thus it is clear that a motivation has to be generated to make a nation rise up against another. But what are the key elements in generating war fever?
Who Make the Decisions?
Austrian economist Schumpeter wrote: “The orientation toward war is mainly fostered by the domestic interests of ruling classes but also by the influence of all those who stand to gain individually from a war policy, whether economically or socially.” These ruling classes have been defined as “elites [that] are at all times involved in trying to manipulate other elements of the population, or the public mood itself, so as to perpetuate themselves in power.”—Why War? by Professors Nelson and Olin.
Every nation has its ruling class, even though that group may be divided into different political factions. However, many observe that the power of the military elite in every nation should not be underestimated. Former U.S. Ambassador John K. Galbraith describes the military establishment as “by far the most powerful of the autonomous processes of government.” He continues: “The power of the military embraces not only the significant sources of power but . . . all the instruments of its enforcement. . . . More than any other exercise of power in our time it is the subject of grave public unease.”
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How Does Religion Influence War?
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Nationalism—The “Sacred Egoism” That Divides
Sometimes the people are not in favor of a war. On what basis, then, can the rulers most easily persuade the population to support their aims? This was the problem that faced the United States in Vietnam. So, what did the ruling elite do? Galbraith answers: “The Vietnam War produced in the United States one of the most comprehensive efforts in social conditioning [adjusting of public opinion] in modern times. Nothing was spared in the attempt to make the war seem necessary and acceptable to the American public.” And that points to the handiest tool for softening up a nation for war. What is it?
Professor Galbraith again supplies the answer: “Schools in all countries inculcate the principles of patriotism. . . . The conditioning that requires all to rally around the flag is of particular importance in winning subordination to military and foreign policy.” This systematic conditioning prevails in communist countries as it does in Western nations.
Charles Yost, a veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service and State Department, expressed it thus: “The primary cause of the insecurity of nations persists, the very attribute on which nations pride themselves most—their sovereign independence, their ‘sacred egoism,’ their insubordination to any interest broader or higher than their own.” This “sacred egoism” is summed up in divisive nationalism, in the pernicious teaching that any one nation is superior to all others.
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