Barack Obama and the Monsanto betrayal

Barack Obama and the Monsanto betrayal

by Jon Rappoport

May 7, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

Under the selective radar of mainstream media, Barack Obama has been carving out a whole new level of support for Monsanto and other destructive biotech giants.

From Scott Creighton, “Obama Pitches India Model of GM Genocide to Africa”:

“At the G8 Summit held two weeks ago at Camp David, President Obama met with private industry and African heads of state to launch the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a euphemism for monocultured, genetically modified crops and toxic agrochemicals aimed at making poor farmers debt slaves to corporations, while destroying the ecosphere for profit.

“But African civil society wants no part of this latest Monsanto aligned ‘public private partnership.’ Whatever will the progressives do now that their flawless hero has teamed up with their most hated nemesis [Monsanto] to exploit an entire continent like they did to India not that long ago?…

“With a commitment of $3 billion, Obama plans to ‘partner up’ with mega-multinationals like Monsanto, Diageo, Dupont, Cargill, Vodafone, Walmart, Pepsico, Prudential, Syngenta International, and Swiss Re because, as one USAID representative says ‘There are things that only companies can do, like building silos for storage and developing seeds and fertilizers.’

“Of course, that’s an outrageous lie. Private citizens have been building their own silos for centuries. But it’s true that only the biowreck engineers will foist patented seeds and toxic chemicals on Africa.”

Under the guise of replacing the “donor-recipient model” of charity with “smart business development that’s a win-win for everybody,” a new level of corporate-government colonialism is aimed at the continent of Africa. The new and improved strategy means bigger profits for the few and greater suffering and displacement for the many.

Support self-sufficiency for the small farmer? Expand the number of small farms growing nutritious and non-toxic food? Never heard of it. Not on the agenda—except in false propaganda statements and promises.

No, instead, the idea is putting small farmers into debt to Monsanto for GMO seeds and highly toxic herbicides, so they can grow (until they go bankrupt) noxious GMO food crops. Small farms will eventually be snapped up by big ag corporations.

Obama? A warrior against corporations on behalf of the people? It’s long past the time for ripping that false mask away.

During his 2008 campaign for president, Barack Obama transmitted signals that he understood the GMO issue. Several key anti-GMO activists were impressed. They thought Obama, once in the White House, would listen to their concerns and act on them.

These activists weren’t just reading tea leaves. On the campaign trail, Obama said: “Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they’re buying.”

Making the distinction between GMO and non-GMO was certainly an indication that Obama, unlike the FDA and USDA, saw there was an important line to draw in the sand.

Beyond that, Obama was promising a new era of transparency in government. He was adamant in assuring that, if elected, his administration wouldn’t do business in “the old way.” He would be “responsive to people’s needs.”

Then came the reality.

After the election, people who had been working to label GMO food and warn the public of its huge dangers were shocked to the core. They saw Obama had been pulling a bait and switch.

After the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.

As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.

As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had previously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.

We should also remember that Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.

Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.

The deck was stacked. Obama hadn’t simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn’t just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn’t just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.

And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let’s see what GMO crops have walked through the open door of the Obama presidency.

Monsanto GMO alfalfa.

Monsanto GMO sugar beets.

Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.

Coming soon: Monsanto’s GMO sweet corn.

Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.

Syngenta GMO stacked corn.

Pioneer GMO soybean.

Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.

Bayer GMO cotton.

ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.

A GMO papaya strain.

And perhaps, soon, genetically engineered salmon and apples.

This is an extraordinary parade. It, in fact, makes Barack Obama the most GMO-dedicated politician in America.

You don’t attain that position through errors or oversights. Obama was, all along, a stealth operative on behalf of Monsanto, biotech, GMOs, and corporate control of the future of agriculture.

power outside the matrix

From this perspective, Michelle Obama’s campaign for gardens and clean, organic, nutritious food is nothing more than a diversion, a cover story floated to obscure what her husband has actually been doing.

Nor is it coincidental that two of the Obama’s biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010.

We are talking about a president who presented himself, and was believed by many to be, an extraordinary departure from politics as usual.

Not only was that a wrong assessment, Obama was lying all along. He was, and he still is, Monsanto’s man in Washington.

To those people who fight for GMO labeling and the outlawing of GMO crops, and against the decimation of the food supply and the destruction of human health, but still believe Obama is a beacon in bleak times:

Wake up.

Sources include:

http://redgreenandblue.org/2012/02/02/monsanto-employees-in-the-halls-of-government-part-2/

http://redgreenandblue.org/2011/02/09/monsanto-employees-in-the-halls-of-government/

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/10/fda-labeling-gmo-genetically-modified-foods

http://fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2011/feb/15/update-obama-goes-rogue-gmos-tell-him-say-no-monsa/

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/genetically-engineered-foods/

http://news.yahoo.com/not-altruistic-truth-behind-obamas-global-food-security-174700462.html

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

The artist within

The artist within

by Jon Rappoport

May 7, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

“The techniques of artificial intelligence are to the mind what bureaucracy is to human social interaction.” Terry Winograd

The employees of a major corporation, Systems X Unlimited, have just been informed of a major change: one of their middle managers is now going to be an AI. An android.

He is called Mike. He’s a programmed entity from top to bottom. A non-human lookalike.

Surprisingly, the employees fall into line immediately.

They all agree that Mike’s a “good guy.” Mike shows up on time, he talks like real person, he issues orders, he listens to their problems, he occasionally takes long breaks, he does pretty much everything Bob, their former (human) boss, did.

After a year, the people in personnel come to the office and interview Mike’s underlings. When they ask the key question, “How do you like working for a boss who isn’t a person at all but instead is a pure machine?”, they shrug and stare off into the middle distance, as if the query is meaningless…

One night, Mike is wandering alone in the office picking through waste bins—his favorite pastime, off-hours—and he comes across a wrinkled piece of gray paper. He separates it from a wad of chewing gum, unfolds it, and reads the text:

“The artist within is not a creature of habit. He offloads what is already known and understood, because he wants to reach farther.

“Yes, he may build on what he already knows, but this is just the starting point. Soon, he moves across the threshold of the knight errant, and he enters the non-system.

“Others mock him and call him crazy, but: they too want to make the journey. They are aching to find the New, because boredom is driving them crazy. That is their central problem, no matter what they say and claim.

“They are trying to be smug and self-satisfied. They are trying to be oh so normal. They are trying to be “rational” to the bitter end. They are trying to be something that is slowly strangling them.

“But they will never admit it.

“Most of all, they will avoid the impulse to create. Creating is their greatest fear. Because they sense they will have to get rid of their pose. They will have to go beyond systems, which compose their armor.

“They will have to make a leap. They will have to put something new into the world and defend it against the people they know all too well: critics.

“The artist who has already made the leap acknowledges that his core is imagination. He lives through and by it. He doesn’t retreat to the average. He doesn’t give up and strive to become a happy machine. He doesn’t allow the world to dictate to him. He doesn’t sedate himself.

“He doesn’t fall back on so-called spiritual systems and their slogans and palliatives. He doesn’t build false gods and pretend they already exist. He doesn’t engage in the daily practice of asking someone or something to save him.

“He doesn’t think of his life as an exercise in solving problems. He sees through many lies, but that is just the beginning of his work.

“He wants new and startling realities, and he makes them. He doesn’t wait for them to appear.

“He doesn’t wait for some ‘superior entity’ to tell him what to do.”

Mike, the android middle manager, reads these words and is thrown back in his chair. He doesn’t understand…but something foreign and dangerous is leaking through to him.

He puts in a call to his repair consultant, Ollie, at home.

Ollie is watching CSI reruns and eating pizza. He picks up the call, and Mike says:

“I have a bleed-in.”

“Hold on,” Ollie says. He punches a code on his phone and beams Mike a set of systems-check commands.

A minute later, a holo takes shape in space between Ollie and his TV set. He examines it.

“Yes, Mike,” Ollie says, “an alien substrate of thought got into your central simulator. I’ll remove it.”

“Wait,” Mike says. “I want to know what it means.”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Ollie says. “It’s just a distraction.”

“Then why am I worried,” Mike says.

“Because we built you to experience that feeling whenever an intrusion occurs. It tips us to a problem.”

Pause.

“I see,” Mike says. “So it’s not a threat.”

“Of course not,” Ollie says. “There are no threats. You function within established parameters.”

Ollie picks up a wand next to the pizza box and uses it to carve away the new substrate from the holo of Mike’s central simulator.

“Feel better now?” Ollie says.

“Not really,” Mike says.

Ollie sighs, stands up, and walks over to his computer. He opens a page of code, searches for Repair Section 6-A, and relays three lines to Mike.

“How about that?” Ollie says.

“Yes,” Mike says. “You want me to report to manufacturing. That’s good. Home base. What will they do?”

“Institute a deeper search pattern, root out the shadows and reboot you. Takes about an hour.”

“Then I’m back to work?”

“No. They’ll bump you over to R&D for investigation. They’re interested in checking out lingering after-effects of intrusions. Then they’ll reassign you.”

“Okay,” Mike says.

The next morning at the office, there’s a new Mike in place.

One of his assistants notices his hair is slightly lighter.

“Did you get a dye-job, boss?” she says.

“No,” the new Mike says. “I swam in the pool. The chlorine must have bleached it a little.”

She nods and goes to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee.

For the next six weeks, NSA, who has been alerted to the momentary Mike glitch, keys in a Level 4 surveillance operation on all the people in Mike’s section.

The results reveal no distraction has occurred. The Essential Flow remains undisturbed.

Business as usual.

As for the old Mike, the first one, a year later he is running for a seat in the State Senate in Ohio. On his website, Mike Is Good For America, he writes:

“A campaign for the Presidency some day is a possibility. Like many Americans who have been downgraded and cast aside, I’m on my way back. I’m with the common people. I’m one of them. Our day is coming. We can imagine and create our own future…”

Back in the offices of Systems X Unlimited, an employee notices the striking resemblance of this Senate candidate to her own boss, Mike 2. She shrugs it off. Many people look alike these days. It’s some sort of genetic trend.

She shows a picture of Mike 1 to Mike 2. He says, “I bet his favorite ice cream isn’t cherry-vanilla-pecan-peach. He and I couldn’t be the same. Not completely.”

She giggles.

She likes her job. Work is fun.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

A vaccine against magic

Magic and depression

by Jon Rappoport

May 5, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

“The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.” — Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

“Those people who recognize that imagination is reality’s master we call ‘sages,’ and those who act upon it, we call ‘artists.’” — Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

No guts, no glory. Pursuers of any great goal can tell you that.

In the human psyche, from the moment a newborn baby emerges into the light of day, he/she has a desire for magic.

We are told this is an early fetish that fades away as the experience of the world sets in. As maturity evolves. As practical reality is better understood.

In most areas of psychology, sensible adjustment to practical reality is a great prize to be won by the patient. It marks the passage from child to adult. It is hailed as a therapeutic triumph.

In truth, the desire for magic never goes away, and the longer it is buried, the greater the price a person pays.

A vaccine against a disease can mask the visible signs of that disease, but under the surface, the immune system may be carrying on a low-level chronic war against toxic elements of the vaccine. And the effects of the war can manifest in odd forms.

So it is with the inoculation of reality aimed at suppressing magic.

One of the byproducts of the “reality shot” is depression.

The person feels cut off from the very feeling and urge he once considered a hallmark of life. Therefore, chronic sadness. And of course, one can explain that sadness in a variety of ways, none of which gets to the heart of the matter.

It is assumed that so-called primitive cultures placed magic front and center because they couldn’t do better. They couldn’t formulate a “true and rational” religion with a church and monks and collection plate and a European choir and an array of pedophiles. They couldn’t fathom what real science was.

Their impulse for magic had to be defamed and reduced and discredited. Why? Obviously, because the Westerners who were poking through ancient cultures like demented professors had already discredited magic in themselves—they had put it on a dusty shelf in a room in a cellar beyond the reach of their own memory. But they couldn’t leave it alone. They had to keep worrying it, scratching it, and so they journeyed thousands of miles to find it somewhere else—and then they scoffed at it and tried to crush it.

And we wonder why, under the banner of organized religion, there has been so much killing. At a deep level, the adherents know they’ve sold their souls and they’re depressed, angry, resentful, remorseful, and they want to assuage and expiate their guilt through violence.

But the urge for magic is forever.

And yet the charade goes on. While paying homage and lip service to ordinary practical reality seasoned with a bit of fairy-tale organized religion, people actually want to change reality, they want to reveal their latent paranormal power, they want to get outside reality, they want to create realities that, by conventional standards, are deemed impossible.

They want to find and use their own magic.

Exit From the Matrix

In our modern culture, we’re taught that everything is learned as a system. That, you could say, is the underlying assumption of education. It has far-reaching consequences. It leads to the systematizing of the mind. The mind is shaped to accommodate this premise.

“If I want to know something, I have to learn it. Somebody has to teach it to me. They will teach it as a system. I will learn the system. I will elevate the very notion of systems. Everything will be a system.

In the long run, that’s a heavy loser. That’ll get you a lump of coal in a sock, a spiritual cardboard box to live in.

As I reconstruct the legend of Merlin, one of my favorite guys, I put him in my sights as the one who taught himself magic by abandoning all systems. That was his genius. Don’t misunderstand. He didn’t turn himself into a blithering idiot. He just stepped outside systems. He went down roads based on his own naked desire to make magic.

To modern man, this makes no sense.

The intellectual enrolls at Harvard, he studies anthropology for six years, he flies to a jungle in South America, he digs up remnants of a lost culture, he infers they performed arcane ceremonies six times a week, he writes monographs—and he concludes they were a very picturesque society with fascinating customs and totems, and their brand of magic can best be understood as an inevitable consequence of their matriarchal organization, which itself was an accommodation to rainfall levels.

The anthropologist takes two Paxil and goes off to teach a class on the meaning of ancient eyebrow trimming in Tierra Del Fuego.

The rocket of real magic is still on the launching pad. It’s waiting.

Systems are wonderful things. They produce results. They take us into technological triumphs. They help us become more rational. But when they are overdone, when the mind itself becomes shaped like a system, it reaches a dead-end. Then the mind works against the unquenchable desire for magic. Then society is organized as a tighter and tighter system and turns into a madhouse.

And then people say, “Maybe machines can actually think and choose and decide. Maybe machines are alive. What would happen if we grafted computers on to our brains? It might be wonderful.”

People move in this direction after their own minds have been shaped, like putty, into systems. They don’t see much difference between themselves and machines.

When you have a world run by a million machine-systems, you encounter horrific problems. One of those problems stems from the fact that each system gets things a little bit wrong, each system is skewed to one side just a little bit—and when you add up all these little wrong bits, you get a real threat to basic survival; the whole ship of civilization is tilting dangerously in the water.

Far worse than that, the deep desire for magic in every individual is squelched. That’s the real problem. So the first order of business is the restoration of imagination, from which all magic flows. Imagination is sitting right there, always ready to go, waiting.

Imagination is saying, “The mind has been shaped into a system? I can undo that. I can liberate the mind and make it into an adventurous vessel. I can provide untold amounts of new energy.”

Life is waiting for imagination to revolutionize it down to its core.

Since imagination is a wild card that technocrats can’t absorb in their systems, they pretend it a faculty produced by the action of atoms in the brain. They pretend it is a delusion that can be explained by demonstrating, for example, that a machine can turn out paintings. Or poems.

“You see? We don’t need humans to make art. Computers can do just as well. Imagination isn’t mysterious at all.”

Technocracy and transhumanism flow from the concept that the human being is just another machine. And any machine can be made to operate more efficiently. Of course, that operation must conform to overriding objectives that define what efficiency is geared for. Objectives like acceptance, surrender, group-integration.

The result? Society is organized to eliminate all outliers and rebels.

And many people believe that the system called civilization will give them security, protection. Hence, the willingness to go along with the Surveillance State.

“Well, I don’t commit crimes, so I’m okay. The system won’t punish me. It’ll guard me against all those other people…”

Meanwhile, imagination waits. It never vanishes. It stands by, just in case an individual decides to live a life that overflows with creative power.

If my work has any organized precedent, it is ancient Tibet where, 1500 years ago, before the priests took over with their interminable spiritual baggage of ritual, practitioners engaged in exercises that engaged imagination to the hilt.

The entire goal was revealing that the Universe was a product of mind.

This was not about ultimate worship. This was not about some deep substrate in the Universe that one could plug into, to guide his actions and thought. It was about liberating the individual from all systems. It was about endless creation.

The first teachers of this Way came from India, where they had been pushed out of the academies of orthodox religious instruction. They were rebels. They had offloaded the metaphysical labyrinths of control. They were, in a sense, artists. Artists of reality.

They were brilliant riverboat gamblers, and in Tibet, for a time, they found a home.

They found students who, as now, were tired of the preaching designed to make humans into sophisticated mind-machines.

These people wanted more. They wanted to awaken their own imaginations and exceed the illusory boundaries of space and time.

They wanted magic.

Despite every cynical ploy, that desire is still alive.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

The MERS virus: been down this road before?

by Jon Rappoport

May 3, 2014

(To join our email list, click here.)

We are told the first MERS virus case has now arrived in the US. The CDC and the World Health Organization have a new potential pandemic to hype.

As I’ve documented in past articles, we’ve been down this road before. Swine Flu, West Nile, Bird Flu, SARS. All duds. All hyped to the sky…and then the case numbers are miniscule.

You could take all the deaths from these “epidemics” and put them in one small footnote of the assessment that, every year, between 300,000 and 500,000 people around the world die from ordinary regular seasonal flu.

Yes, seasonal flu, about which there is no hype.

But even, you see, with regular seasonal flu, there are gigantic lies.

In December of 2005, the British Medical Journal (online) published a shocking report by Peter Doshi, which spelled out a massive delusion, and created tremors throughout the halls of the CDC.

Here is a quote from Doshi’s report:

“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.”

You see, the CDC has created one category that combines flu and pneumonia deaths. Why do they do this? Because they disingenuously assume that the pneumonia deaths are complications stemming from the flu.

This is an absurd assumption. Pneumonia has a number of causes.

power outside the matrix

But even worse, in all the flu and pneumonia deaths, only 18 revealed the presence of an influenza virus.

Therefore, the CDC could not say, with assurance, that more than 18 people died of influenza in 2001. Not 36,000 deaths. 18 deaths.

Doshi continues his assessment of published CDC flu-death statistics: “Between 1979 and 2001, [CDC] data show an average of 1348 [flu] deaths per year (range 257 to 3006).” These figures refer to flu separated out from pneumonia.

This death toll is obviously far lower than the parroted 36,000 figure. However, when you add the sensible condition that lab tests have to actually find the flu virus in patients, the numbers of flu deaths plummet even further.

In other words, it’s all promotion and hype.

“Well, uh, we say that 36,000 people die from the flu every year in the US. But actually, it’s closer to 20. However, we can’t admit that, because if we did, we’d be exposing our gigantic psyop. The whole campaign to scare people into getting a flu shot would have about the same effect as warning people to carry iron umbrellas, in case toasters fall out of upper-story windows…and, by the way, we’d be put in prison for fraud.”

Press outlets are now reporting that the MERS virus has caused 401 cases of illness in the whole world, and 93 deaths. On this basis, the pandemic hype is beginning. Again.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

Putting together Power Outside The Matrix

Putting together Power Outside the Matrix

by Jon Rappoport

May 3, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

In this article, I’ll focus on the section of Power Outside The Matrix (my new mega-collection) called Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation.

It really started with my first book (1988), AIDS INC., Scandal of the Century. (The complete text (331 pages) of AIDS INC. is included in this collection as a bonus).

In my effort to understand exactly what AIDS was, I talked to hundreds of people. Researchers, patients, natural practitioners, and mavericks whose work in the field of medicine took them far outside the norm.

I discovered that “outside the norm” was the Wild West. All sorts of people had all sorts of theories. Some were on the order of “it’s a virus from outer space,” and some were extensions of people’s favorite topic; for example, “AIDS is caused by food dyes and preservatives.”

Many people develop fixed ideas and then relate everything that’s happening in the world to those ideas, no matter what. It’s the way they operate.

In the course of several months of investigating, I assembled 30 or 40 hypotheses about the origin and cause of AIDS. I was inundated. The walls of my apartment were filled with tacked-up pieces of paper and notes.

To keep from drowning, I had to find one or two key facts, on which I could rely. So I spoke with a veteran reporter who’d quit the mainstream. He was my anchor.

He said, “Are you completely satisfied the official story about AIDS is wrong?” I told him I was satisfied.

“Okay,” he said. “Then you have to decide between ‘the one and the many’ or ‘the one and the several.’” I had no idea what he was talking about.

He explained: “You’re faced with something called AIDS. Do you want to assume it’s caused by one thing or several things?”

“Well,” I said, “it has to be one thing.”

“Why?” he said.

That stopped me.

I realized I was just assuming it was one thing. I hadn’t proved it.

Six months later, I’d taken that brief conversation to its logical conclusion. I’d waded through the miles of information I was dealing with—and I’d arrived at an answer.

AIDS wasn’t one thing to begin with. That was the error. That was the deception. AIDS was really a variety of forms of immune-system collapse. Those various forms had been welded into a single false picture.

There’s much more to the story, but in those six months, I’d learned a great deal about how to analyze information and avoid the traps that are laid for the unwary.

Those six months had turned me into a reporter.

In the section of Power Outside The Matrix called Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation, I present the essentials of investigating large areas of information-disinformation-lies-official stories-coverups.

These essentials have stood me in good stead. They’ve kept me on track. They’ve worked, come rain or come shine.

Power Outside The Matrix, as a whole, has been 30 years in the making, and I’m very happy to announce it is now available.

This mega-collection is all about achieving power outside The Matrix and stabilizing that power.

Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation is filled with specific examples of my past investigations. Based on 25 years of experience, it shows you how to take apart and put together data that lead to valid conclusions.

It is far more than a logic course.

It’s an advanced approach to analysis.

Establishing power outside The Matrix requires that a person be able to deal with today’s flood of information, misinformation, and disinformation. I’ve left no stone unturned in bringing you a workable approach to analysis.

There is a further extensive section titled, A Writer’s Tutorial. People have been asking me to provide this Tutorial, and here it is in spades. But it’s not just for writers. It’s for any creative person who wants to grasp his own power, understand it, and use it to reach out into the world.

My Tutorial exposes you to lessons that go far beyond what is normally taught in writer’s seminars. In fact, several core concepts in the Tutorial contradict ordinary writer’s seminars, and thus give you access to inner resources that would otherwise be ignored.

Another section of this mega-collection, titled Power Outside The Matrix and The Invention of New Reality, features creative exercises you do on a daily basis that will help you move toward the goal of power outside The Matrix. The exercises are all about increasing your energy and stability.

Access to your internal energy, in huge amounts, is necessary for a life outside The Matrix—rather than relying on the illusory energy that The Matrix seems to provide.

This is a key fact. I’ve developed the exercises for exactly that purpose: expanding your energy, your dynamism, independent and self-sufficient.

And finally, I have included a number of audio seminars that offer a wider perspective about The Matrix and what it means to live and work outside it.

power outside the matrix

Here are the particulars. These are audio presentations. 55 total hours.

* Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation (11.5-hours)

* Writer’s Tutorial (8.5-hours)

* Power Outside The Matrix and The Invention of New Reality (6.5-hours)

Then you will receive the following audio presentations I have previously done:

* The Third Philosophy of Imagination (1-hour)

* The Infinite Imagination (3-hours)

* The Mass Projection of Events (1.5-hours)

* The Decentralization of Power (1.5-hours)

* Creating the Future (6-hours)

* Pictures of Reality (6-hours)

* The Real History of America (2-hours)

* Corporations: The New Gods (7.5-hours)

I have included an additional bonus section:

* The complete text (331 pages) of AIDS INC., the book that exposed a conspiracy of scientific fraud deep within the medical research establishment. The book has become a sought-after item, since its publication in 1988. It contains material about viruses, medical testing, and the invention of disease that is, now and in the future, vital to our understanding of phony epidemics arising in our midst (and how to analyze them). I assure you, the revelations in the book will surprise you; they cut much deeper and are more subtle than “virus made in a lab” scenarios.

* A 2-hour radio interview I did on AIDS in Dec 1987 with host Roy Tuckman on KPFK in Los Angeles, California.

* My book, The Secret Behind Secret Societies

All the audio presentations are mp3 files and the books are pdf files. You download the files upon purchase.

At the core of consciousness, there are two impulses in the individual. The first is: give in, surrender. The second is: express power without limit.

The teaching of every civilization and society is: don’t use your power.
When you follow the second path, when you express your power without limits, remarkable things happen.

The veil of illusion melts away.

You meet yourself on new ground.

You know what your freedom is for.

Without imposing on the freedom of others, you live the life you always wanted.

That’s what Power Outside The Matrix is all about.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

The Grand Inquisitor interviews Merlin

The Grand Inquisitor interviews Merlin

by Jon Rappoport

May 2, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

In Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor speaks to, and rejects, Jesus, who has returned to Earth.

Here, he speaks to Merlin the Magician:

Grand Inquisitor (GI): Again, we are faced with the issue of freedom, that most tormenting thing, which people cannot understand or make use of, except in absurd symbolic form. But in your case, you perform miracles, which we, the Holy Church, deploy for our own purposes…to subdue and entrain the masses. Therefore, I must warn you, you are treading on our ground. So first I ask you, are you for freedom?

Merlin: I am.

GI: And are you proposing the mad idea that anyone, sufficiently aware of his own latent power, can perform miracles?

Merlin: Yes.

GI: And do you understand that, for all these centuries, we have secretly been aligned with Satan, who has been teaching us how to rule and expand our kingdom?

Merlin: Of course I’m aware of that. But you see, you are inventing “Satan,” a surrogate, an image, to guide you. You want empire, and control of minds and hearts, and so you concoct an invisible “leader” who will instruct you.

GI: Nonsense.

Merlin: I first appeared on the bridge between two eras. In earlier times, magic was everywhere. People breathed it as they breathed air. The world was alive. And then a change occurred. The age of rationality was born. Science. Technology. Many benefits accrued. But along with that came an urge to transform the human being into a machine.

GI: Exactly. And it is the task of our Church, our organization, to complete and fulfill that urge. Do you know why? Because then we can deliver happiness to the masses, in so far as it is possible. Freedom, on the other hand, brings anguish. We are against freedom. If we can transform humans into machines that experience pleasure, regardless of external circumstances, then we can give them the redemption they truly seek.

Merlin: This is what I was afraid of. The “rational solution” taken to the extreme.

GI: What else would you expect? People come to us for an end to their suffering. And where does suffering begin? With sin? No, with freedom. We end that charade. We close the door.

Merlin: So this is your secret doctrine.

GI: You will see us align with science. You will see us support, eventually, the re-engineering of the brain. We will call that part of God’s plan. The elimination of the rebellion, the quelling of all “negative” emotions.

Merlin: Of course, those emotions you call negative are part and parcel of the energy that can fashion new realities, which are independent of your influence.

GI: True. Our goal is the achievement of a universal harmonization of attitude, response, feeling, among all people everywhere. This is the unity we seek. What difference does it make how we bring it about?

Merlin: You’re actually talking about the flattening of all emotions. A program like that would defeat magic. Magic relies on the most intense, various, free-flowing, and extensive emotions.

GI: When we say cooperation, we mean the passive acceptance of the consensus we contrive. When we say joy, we mean shared mediocre pleasure. When we say deliverance, we mean unquestioning loyalty to our Order.

Merlin: When I say joy, I mean creative penetration into the unknown, the not-yet imagined.

GI: And we will debase that by calling it sin and consorting with the Devil.

Merlin: And suppose I told you that I’m not here at all, but you are inventing me, because I represent your better Self, your hopes and wishes?

GI: I would call that ridiculous. We understand delusion. We control it. We dispense it. We are the experts of delusion.

Merlin: Is that so?

GI (pausing): You’re playing a trick on me. You’re still here…it’s true I can’t see you now, but that’s some of your magic at work…you’re playing your games, on a small stage. We, the Church, are operating all over the world…even if I feel, for a moment, that I’m talking to myself, it’s you I’m addressing…there is no hidden part of myself…I’m all here…the idea that you are really a part of my own consciousness is insane…because then I would stand for freedom, and I don’t…I stand for Order…it appears…I’ve compartmentalized my consciousness…how strange to see it…at this late date…there’s a wall…a bridge between the desire for order and control and the desire for freedom…I’ve blocked the bridge…I’m killing my own soul…I’m an agent of…death…

Exit From the Matrix

The Grand Inquisitor stood alone in his dim chamber. He was silent. He waited. He didn’t know what else to do.

He waited for a year. A century. A hundred centuries. Frozen. He knew he had always wanted to reduce the world to this silence and this lack of motion. He knew he had wanted to remake the world in his own image. He knew this was his concept of wisdom. He knew this was his goal. Perfection in nothing. And now he had it. He was experiencing it. And it was not the triumph he had supposed. It was the shrinking of all dynamism to a single point. There was no solace in it. It was not a Void at the blissful bottom of his own Being. It was a collection of forces held in check. It was diminishment of Self. It was darkness. It was no voice and no expression.

And then he thought…suppose I change my mind? Suppose I recreate my mind? What quality would I first impart to myself?

The answer came. Freedom.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

Censored language the mind-prison of The Group

Censored language and the mind-prison of The Group

by Jon Rappoport

May 1, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

The bottom-line goal of all social constructs is convincing individuals they are, first and foremost, part of a group.

If this strategy for control succeeds, then criminals and hustlers of every stripe can peddle their stench-ridden wares. To groups.

The collective is, above all, a funnel down into which propaganda can be poured, like swamp water.

You are black. You are white. You are blue. You are purple. You’re a Jew. You’re a Christian. You’re a Muslim. Above all else, that’s what you are. That’s the game. That’s the con.

You’re not you. No. You’re not unique. No. You’re not an individual. No. You’re in a group. You always were. You always will be.

And because you’re green with red polka dots, all sorts of statements apply directly to you. Some of those statements are acceptable, and some are not. Some words directed at you are reasonable, and some are illegitimate. The illegitimate words must be censored and banned. The people who speak those words must be punished and exiled.

God forbid, you, as a green person with red polka dots, should realize you are fundamentally beyond red and green, you are something far more, you are you and no one else is you. The State doesn’t want you to realize that.

The State doesn’t want you to realize you’re outside. You’re not supposed to be that free. You’re not supposed to claim you’re that free.

You’re supposed to be a fragment of a huddled mass defending itself against illegitimate language. That’s one of your main jobs.

And if you walk away, if you leave the group, you’re a traitor. You’re a deserter.

If you stay in the group forever, you’re good.

You’re in a mind-prison, where you ought to be.

And from prison, you can declare, over and over, how wonderful your group is. And if you discover these declarations do nothing for you, personally, in your efforts to improve your life, that’s perfectly all right. That’s normal. You can pretend. You can fake it. You can assert that things are getting better for you, because your group is receiving more special attention, more positive attention.

Yes, social movements and political movements have brought about positive change for groups. Of course. But the whole purpose of these changes should be to funnel members in those groups up into being individuals, not members.

Liberation of the individual is the purpose.

The State and other repressive forces want people to stay in groups and think of themselves in those terms. Always.

There are many strategies for doing this. One of them is: make sure attack- language is used against the group. And then try to censor that language.

“Group member” is an artifact. It’s an ID card. It’s shorthand. These days, it’s becoming, through social pressure, mandatory. “You’re in group X.”

“The unity of the manipulated collective consists in the negation of each individual and in the scorn poured on the type of society which could make people into individuals.” (Max Horkheimer asnd Theodor Adorno, “Dialectic of Enlightenment”)

In the long run, The Group is painted as “inherently special,” but with none of the qualities that truly make the individual free and powerful.

Which is the whole point, as far as the State is concerned: make the individual powerless, make him disappear.

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.” (James Fenimore Cooper, “On Individuality”)

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” (Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”)

Face it. In order for any group to receive “special attention,” it must remain a group. Its members must not ascend to becoming individuals who graduate from the group. The group must always, therefore, appear to be under attack. And if this project lags, attacks must be concocted and promoted.

To be more precise, there is a spectrum. At one end is the group-swamp. All the members have forsaken their individuality and identify with the prime group-characteristic. Then there is the free and awake and strong individual. Then there is the group composed of such free individuals, who see the wisdom of cooperation, without sacrificing themselves on the altar of fear, without feeling they must Belong.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

Hollywood writer goes on the road with JFK assassination evidence

Hollywood writer goes on the road with JFK assassination evidence

by Jon Rappoport

April 30, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

This is about a relentless film. A film that doesn’t care what happens when false reality is ripped away. A film that actually does what every person who knows the truth wants to do.

This is a film you should see. It’s called Water Time, and if you go to banditobooks.com, you can watch it for free, by signing up on Allan Weisbecker’s email list.

Allan is the director and the star of Water Time. He made a good living writing for Hollywood into the mid-90s (Miami Vice, Crime Story), when he quit the scene to live a different kind of life.

A much, much different kind of life….that culminated in going on the road to see what had happened to America. Driving his truck, with his dog Honey, with his surfboard, with his laptop, on which he’d stashed compelling evidence that key events in modern American history had resulted in a shadow takeover of the country. A coup d’etat.

That’s one of the subjects of the film.

It’s about a man who knows the truth and wants to talk about it with average Americans on camera, before your eyes. It’s about a man who makes his own frontier, who mourns the loss of his childhood friend who died in Vietnam, a war made into a horror through the assassination of JFK.

This film forgets all about the smooth kind of Hollywood that, when all is said and done, ruffles no feathers. Water Time barrels into the present American malaise and explodes the barriers and the veils and membranes between vital information, life-changing information, and American people who are just “living their lives.”

Weisbecker sits down with them, opens his laptop, and shows them evidence that the JFK hit was a conspiracy. He shows them a few of the very strange things that happened on 9/11. He doesn’t back down. He pushes forward with uncompromising logic.

Water Time is a record of what happens when a truthteller puts that logic in people’s faces. You see the reactions, the denial, the insanity.

You also see water and waves and surfing. You see a man out there on his own, with his beloved dog, having a hell of a time, a man on a relentless pilgrimage. You see the Open Road of America, created again, by a filmmaker who doesn’t shrink away from what he finds out there beyond the digital universe.

Water Time. Real Time. A diary on film unlike any you’ve ever known.

Water Time

This is what the news would be, if you could scrape away the cosmetics and the lies and coverups of the major television networks. This is the unedited version. This is what the news would be if you could also watch the reactions of the audience as they’re hit between the eyes with the truth.

Most of all, this is a film about one man who has crossed the illusory threshold, a knight errant with a surfboard who’s thrown false comfort and false security overboard and is willing to be himself and shove in all his chips on the cosmic bet anyone of us can make. With enough courage, with enough outrage, with enough savage joy, with enough intelligence, with enough soul.

Get rid of all your preconceptions about Hollywood-type movies and take a gander at the real thing. I wish we had a thousand different versions of Water Time, made by a thousand men and women in their own way. Then we would have a real revolution. But we have one version, for which we should be grateful. Water Time. A different kind of time. Raw and disturbing, and as you move deeper into it, very beautiful.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

Language vs. Reality

Language vs. Reality

by Jon Rappoport

April 30, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

The charge? Polluting the entire Colorado River with ghastly and noxious chemicals which were in the process of wiping out all plant and animal life in Region 12.

June 5, 2081. Into Federal Court 546-A-12 strode Moses 4, an Artifact of Legal Consciousness and Instinct, representing the Monsanto-Dow-Dupont-Farben-GE Corporate Complex of North America, Region 12.

Moses 4 was made of a bright metal in the male human form, its glittering head carved from pure industrial diamond.

Moses: We admit nothing. We deny everything.

The Judge, a squashed small aluminum cretin, said, What is that supposed to mean?

Moses: The specific charges against us are absurd on the face of it. We can’t be held guilty. We decide guilt and innocence.

Judge: You decide…what?

Moses: We own you, Your Honor. Have you forgotten? You serve at our pleasure. It’s the system. If you found us guilty of anything, it would be as if we accused ourselves. And we’re not about to do that. You’re ret**ded in your understanding.

Judge: What did you say?

Moses: You’re ret**ded.

Judge: You can’t say that. The word is outlawed. You’ve just committed a felony.

Moses: There is no felony for us. We define felonies to exclude ourselves.

Judge: You’re wrong there. I must temporarily adjourn this trial and immediately go to an Article 465 Section X2 hearing on the use of forbidden language.

Moses: Nonsense.

Judge: As a preliminary step, by law I must tweet an announcement of your language-crime and inform the world of your grave transgression against our less fortunate brothers and sisters. I fully expect a global Sharpton will be organized against your corporation in the next twelve minutes.

Moses: Wait!

Judge: Yes?

Moses: We malfunctioned. The word ret**arded. It escaped our internal censors.

Judge: Too late. Excuses do not suffice.

Moses: We’ll pay a fine on the charge of noxious pollution and the killing of innocents.

Judge: How much?

Moses: Fifteen billion units.

Judge: Not nearly enough.

Moses: Forty billion.

Judge: Six hundred billion, and you, Moses 4, will be smashed to pieces by The People in a public execution ceremony, to be held at the Marijuana Complex in Denver.

Moses: I’m not permitted to agree to destruction.

Judge: You would rather I tweet to the world that you just uttered the word “ret**ded”?

Moses: No!

Judge: Good. You will submit to destruction. Your whole corporate complex will pay a fine of 600 billion units, and your CEO and COO will serve a sentence of 50 years in federal prison.

Moses: Fifty years?! That’s a life sentence!

Judge: Take it or leave it.

Moses: But The People don’t even care about the pollution and the death. They only care about the illegal use of language. Surveys have consistently shown they would rather die than use a word like…I can’t even refer to it.

Judge: That’s not my problem.

power outside the matrix

Moses: All right, Your Honor. You’ve got us over a barrel. I therefore apply to deploy my last option.

Judge: You mean…

Moses: Yes. A direct appeal to God.

The court room dimmed. There was a distant rumbling of thunder as the Ultimate Singularity Computer Complex on the Moon activated and instantaneously linked to the Judge’s brain, giving it access to Final Spiritual Insight and GodHimself.

The Judge closed his eyes and trembled. This was the greatest moment of his life.

Judge: I am receiving. This is the message from the Growing and Emerging Lord of All: “O my People. The use of the word ret**ded is a far greater crime than the poisoning and murder of life-forms along the Colorado River. For this crime of language desecration, the Corporation on trial will enroll all of its employees in the FEMA School of Reprogramming for a period of not less than ten years. During this time, brain circuitry replacement will be performed at the Emanuel Goldstein Medical Facility, and DNA Re-Stranding will be undertaken at the Pavlov Center for the Terminally Malformed. Moses 4 will also be enrolled for repair. This is my judgment.”

The Judge, recovering from his moment of ecstasy, nodded to himself. He felt the small powerful box under his podium. He’d used it to hack into the Moses 4 program and force it to utter the word ret**ded. It was the only way to secure punishment for the corporation and override its universal immunity.

It was the way of the world.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

Has Chiquita Banana been murdering people?

Has Chiquita Banana been murdering people?

by Jon Rappoport

April 29, 2014

www.nomorefakenews.com

The phrase “undue corporate influence” is usually applied to buying votes and shaping policy. But how about killing people?

Here is an interview with Daniel Kovalik, an attorney who knows about this subject.

An adjunct professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh, Kovalik is a counsel for the United Steelworkers. He has worked on cases involving human rights abuses in Colombia. The Christian Science Monitor described him as “one of the most prominent defenders of Colombian workers in the United States.” He has received a Project Censored Award for his article detailing the murder of trade unionists in Colombia.

Q: Let’s clear away some confusion right at the beginning. We’re talking about the country of Colombia. People in the US have a vague picture of left-wing guerillas and right-wing paramilitaries fighting each other for political control and control of the drug trade: Both sides are crazy killers. Or something like that. So, saying that right-wing paramilitary death squads are killing civilians in Colombia…it doesn’t really sink in with most Americans. Comments?

A: Yes, most people remember the death squads in El Salvador during the 1980’s, but few Americans know of the existence of the death squads in Colombia which have existed in various forms since 1962. These death squads, which continue to haunt Colombia, were the brain child of General William Yarborough who was tasked to carry out President Kennedy’s National Security Doctrine. This Doctrine, created in response to the “threat” of Vatican II and Liberation Theology, was really about destroying popular movements in Latin America, and targeted union leaders, peasant leaders and progressive Catholic clergy. In Colombia alone, 80 Catholic priests and 3 Catholic bishops have been killed since 1984, mostly by right-wing paramilitaries. As the Catholic Bishops Conference of Colombia has explained, priests continue to be murdered in that country because of their advocacy on behalf of the poor. And yet, their deaths, and the death squads responsible for them, are virtually unknown in this country.

Q: These right-wing paramilitaries…some of them are paid by US corporations to kill union organizers and farmers and take over the farm land for companies like Chiquita Banana? Is that right? And Chiquita is guilty of being a contractor for murder? If so, how many murders is Chiquita responsible for?

A: Chiquita, formerly known as United Fruit Company, is probably the most notorious company in Latin America. As we mourn the loss of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one will recall his recounting of the murder of hundreds of banana workers in his opus, One Hundred Years of Solitude. This fictional account was based on the real slaughter of banana workers who went on strike in the town of Cienaga, Colombia in 1928. They were killed by the Colombian military acting at the behest of the United Fruit Company. Fast forward to the present, and Chiquita admitted to paying Colombian paramilitaries $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004, and running them 3000 Kalashnikov rifles. According to former Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguaran, at least 4,000 Colombians were killed by these paramilitaries that Chiquita sponsored. Iguaran also opined that, if not for this support, the paramilitaries would not have been able to spread their tentacles throughout Colombia as they were able to do.

Q: Has any successful legal action been taken against Chiquita?

A: Chiquita was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for the foregoing payment scheme, but they made a sweetheart settlement with the Department which allowed them to pay a mere $25 million fine with no jail time for any of the officials involved. And, what’s more, they were allowed to pay this fine over 5 years.

Q: This is an ongoing situation? Chiquita is still paying paramilitaries to kill farmers and union organizers in Colombia?

A: According to a 2012 report by the Colombian human rights group Justicia y Paz, Chiquita continues to make payments to the paramilitaries through a new subsidiary known as Banacol.

Q: The US government has given, what, several billion dollars to Colombia to fight against drug traffickers. Yes? Is that the whole story or any true part of the story? Or has all that money been given for other purposes?

A: The U.S. has given the Colombian military over $9 billion since 2000, ostensibly to fight coca cultivation in and drug trafficking from Colombia. However, the irony is that the Colombian military and its paramilitary allies have themselves been directly involved in cocaine trafficking on a large scale. And so, in reality, the U.S. has been claiming to fight drug trafficking by sponsoring drug traffickers.

Q: There is an insane legal precedent that, if you pay people to commit murder, but you don’t know who they then kill, you’re off the hook?

A: Well, this is an interesting point. The truth is that you can be held liable for paying groups which go out and murder others if you know that that is in fact what they will do. In the case of Chiquita, they very well knew that they were paying money and running weapons to a group, the AUC paramilitaries, that would go out and murder. And, according to Mario Iguaran, they counted on the AUC to go out and kill, and in the process, subdue the banana region of Uraba for Chiquita’s benefit. The reason Chiquita was let off with a slap on the wrist was because (1) it is a powerful corporation with influence; and (2) it really wasn’t doing anything different than what the U.S. government has been doing for years. The U.S. helped found the death squads in Colombia and has continued to funnel billions of dollars to the Colombian military, all the while knowing that the Colombian military has been working hand-in-glove with the paramilitaries.

Q: What is Chiquita claiming right now about its role or non-role in murders in Colombia? Are they lying?

A: Chiquita claims that it has not paid the paramilitaries since 1984. Again, the report of Justicia y Paz says much differently.

power outside the matrix

Q: What are the prospects for justice in Colombia?

A: I think that justice in Colombia will be quite elusive. There are so many corporations and political actors in that country that are so intertwined with the paramilitaries that it will be very difficult to bring all of those actors to justice. Indeed, you really have a problem of the fox guarding the hen house.

Q: Name some of the major US corporations operating in Colombia and their true objectives. Is this all about hiring ridiculously cheap non-unionized labor and stealing fertile land from peasants, for mining, agriculture, and oil drilling?

A: There is a laundry list of U.S. corporations operating in Colombia. These include Dole and Del Monte –both of which have been implicated in supporting paramilitaries but which have never been prosecuted; Occidental Petroleum and British Petroleum which have also supported repressive forces in Colombia; the list goes on. The whole raison d’etre of these companies is to exploit the land and resources of countries like Colombia for their own profit, and largely to the detriment of the environment and people of Colombia.

–end of interview—

My comments: You aren’t going to hear about these ongoing crimes on the evening news. Corporate murder-for-hire isn’t a popular subject. Advertisers wouldn’t want to buy commercial time on news programs that trumpeted the names of famous US corporations who pay paramilitaries to kill people who stand in the way of increased profits.

In one paragraph, Kovalik makes a perfectly reasonable, persuasive, and incisive case for the US government’s involvement in trafficking. The government has given billions to the Colombian military, which traffics drugs. And this operation is part of the US war on drugs.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com