Category Archives: On the Road to Serfdom ?

About Privacy on the Internet

About the “security ” of ProtonMail Swiss email : https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-data-requests-user-logs/

The company is said to have received about 7,000 requests to disclose user data in 2022. Of these, about 6,000 were satisfied.

Briefly about ‘privacy’ on the internet:

  1. E-mails:

Unless self-hosted, no E-mail service, no matter what they claim, is private in any way. E-mail was never designed to be private. Even when self-hosted many vulnerabilities exist. I’ve long discussed that ProtonMail is likely a honeypot. Now, I don’t have evidence to that, but some of the claims they make simply aren’t true. It’s highly suspicious that ProtonMail’s website lets you access it through an Onion site, but redirects you to a standard one without notification when setting up an account. So if you’re SBU and are planning a terrorist attack, don’t use E-mail.

We don’t have access to your emails:

They do, no country’s authorities would let a service run if they didn’t. A logical question also arises, how did you open those 6,000 email accounts then? Even for simple security reasons, they definitely have access to your account and thinking otherwise is naive at best.

We don’t log your IP address:

That’s impossible. In order for two accounts to communicate, an IP has to be logged and saved. You can easily check this using programmes such as WireShark (comes pre-installed with some Linux distributions).

We don’t reveal your information:

That’s illegal when ordered to do. Your 5.99$ per month won’t save you. Case has been noted when an email was revealed to police simply because a teenager missed classes. Again, this is naive to believe.

  1. VPNs

VPNs are glorified proxy servers, which translates to “someone else’s computer”. Their claims too are often simply not true.

We don’t log your IP address:

Again, impossible.

Military grade encryption:

While true, this isn’t anything special. The HTTPS encryption has been in use for years and you’re likely using it right now to read this.

Hide your traffic:

Not true. Even a simple internet tool will reveal you are using a VPN and tools like WireShark (also free) will reveal every single “handshake” your computer makes, including servers you connect to, regardless of whether or not you use a VPN. Furthermore, the vast majority of VPN providers are owned by a single advertising company. What better way to track someone’s internet traffic than to channel it through a single server… If you need a proxy server, just use a proxy server.

Anonymity:

Tell me, how am I anonymous if I enter my credit card details when purchasing your service…?

  1. Conclusion

All tools are useful in certain scenarios, but complete internet anonymity/privacy is an excruciating process that isn’t worth it for most people and, is practically impossible, unless you never want to use your computer or jump through so many hoops you’ll regret having one. Don’t believe claims of companies that are currently riding the privacy train. At best it’s a way to get your money in exchange for nothing, at worst it’s a honeypot.

#Source

Nicole Schwab – Get Used to “Permanent “Climate Lockdowns”

The daughter of World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab has emerged from the shadows and issued a chilling threat against humanity.

According to Nicole Schwab, the global elite are preparing to roll out permanent “climate lockdowns” whether you like it or not – and you had better get used to the idea because there is nothing you can do about it.

Schwab’s daughter says the global elite’s plans for a so-called “new humanity” are so far advanced there is nothing that ordinary people like you and me can do to stop them. But there is a fatal flaw in the globalist’s agenda that we can use to exploit and spoil their plans

Car Manufacturers to Require Face Recognition to Drive Their Vehicles in the Near Future

by William McCurdy
BiometricUpdate.com

A slew of the world’s largest automakers, including Sony, Honda, Ford, Genesis, and Mullen Automotive, have all either recently announced or patented facial recognition technologies.

A newly unveiled prototype car from Sony and Honda, called “Afeela,” is set to employ facial recognition to unlock the vehicle and open its door.

The semiconductors and chipsets set to underpin this biometric tech will be provided by electronics giant Qualcomm.

The firms will start taking orders in 2025, with U.S. deliveries set to start in 2026.

Commenting on the move, Sony Honda Mobility President Izumi Kawanishi told Axios, that though the automotive industry has been “a very traditional business,” it is “growing up” by adopting products and software from the IT world.

Ford is yet another example of a major automaker that appears it could be getting into the action. In June, the auto giant filed a patent application for “enhanced biometric authorization,” which includes but is not limited to facial recognition.

Beyond just controlling access to the vehicle, the newly published patent filing covers technology where the user’s biometric data stored on the system can be updated automatically.

Read the full article at BiometricUpdate.com.

Reading the Tea Leaves – Ominous Signs Ahead

Ed. Note: Someone asked the other day: what could be behind the riots in France? What pressure is being put on the French government? to do what? What was the policy that the empire didn’t like? Remember the terrible floods overwhelming France when Jacques Chirac refused to join the US/UK in the war against the “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq? – Well, we just have the official answer! It’s France’s opposition, now past opposition, to Ukraine joining NATO. France is all of a sudden happy to vote for Ukraine joining NATO, just as Turkey announced a bombshell change of direction and is now in support of Ukraine in NATO. Erdogan, too, lost his nerve. Right, he didn’t want another “Pentagon-assisted” earthquake to strike Turkey again, killing another 50,000 people.

Remember what Biden said just yesterday: “Membership in the US-led military bloc means a commitment to defend all of its territory, so if the war is going on, then we’re all in a war. We’re at war with Russia, if that were the case,” Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

Or is this because Russia is Spearheading Gold-Backed BRICS Currency?

Or is it because France Opposes NATO Setting Up a Liaison Office in Japan?

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French President Emmanuel Macron realizes that Eastern European states are becoming more influential within NATO, and has shifted his rhetoric on the bloc to match them, Bloomberg reported on Saturday. Macron recently backed a “path” to NATO membership for Ukraine.

Before the conflict in Ukraine began, Macron was regarded as one of Europe’s most NATO-skeptic leaders. He proclaimed the bloc “brain dead” in 2019, and spent his first term in office repeatedly calling for the establishment of a “true European army” independent from the US. Even throughout the first year of the conflict, Macron stayed in phone contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin and distanced himself from “Anglo Saxon” leaders, whom he said seek to “annihilate” Russia.

However, his rhetoric has since changed. In May, Macron called on NATO leaders to offer Kiev a “path” to full membership in the bloc and declared that the EU and NATO should expand their military cooperation “as quickly as possible.”

The shift was a calculated one, Bloomberg reported. Citing a diplomat from Eastern Europe, the newspaper explained that “positioning France alongside Ukraine’s fiercest supporters, Poland and the Baltic states, helps to fill the gap left by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s more cautious approach.”

A French diplomat framed Macron’s apparent conversion in more ideological terms, stating that the president “has understood he needs to be on the right side of history,” in Bloomberg’s words.

In order to convince NATO’s eastern members, Macron will need to back his words with actions, the newspaper claimed. Although France was one of the first NATO members to provide Kiev with armored vehicles, France will likely need to up its spending on Ukraine to beyond its current level of 0.3% of GDP, Bloomberg suggested.

However, anonymous French officials told the newspaper that Macron’s government is already examining how its nuclear arsenal could “contribute to Ukraine’s security guarantees.”

While offering to protect Ukraine with nuclear weapons would be a seriously escalatory step, some officials Bloomberg spoke to regarded Macron’s recent statement as “hot air.” With his attempts to dissuade Putin from sending troops to Ukraine failing last year and his offer to help China negotiate a peace deal languishing, one anonymous official explained that Macron is enthusiastically backing NATO expansion simply because everything else he has tried “hasn’t worked.”

Of Course, Government IS Spying on Your Smartphone

Police in France gained the power to remotely activate and monitor the camera, microphone, and GPS of a suspect’s devices under a so-called “justice reform bill” that passed the National Assembly on Wednesday, according to media reports.

The legislation, which passed with a majority of 80-24, allows police to use laptops, cars, phones, and other connected electronics in order to monitor terrorism suspects, as well as those suspected of organized crime and delinquency.

The bill reportedly includes exemptions for “sensitive professions” such as journalists, judges, lawyers, doctors, and MPs.

Lawmakers with President Emmanuel Macron’s party added an amendment limiting remote spying to “when justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime” and “for a strictly proportional duration” not exceeding six months. Police will only be able to use geolocation when investigating crimes that carry at least a five-year prison sentence, and a judge must sign off on every use of the powers.

The new measures “raise serious concerns over infringement of fundamental liberties,” digital rights advocacy group La Quadrature du Net said in a statement. It claimed that the “right to security, right to a private life, and to private correspondence” hung in the balance, as well as “the right to come and go freely.”

Because the bill is vague about what constitutes a serious crime, the government could use the new police powers to silence political activists and others who pose no real threat to the state, the group argued.

The Paris Bar, a professional group of 30,000 lawyers, warned in a statement that the bill constituted a “particularly serious breach of respect for privacy,”arguing it “cannot be justified by the protection of the public order” and complaining it did not prohibit police from snooping on protected conversations between lawyer and client.

Insisting the new police powers would only be used on “dozens of cases a year,” Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti argued “people’s lives will be saved”by beefed-up surveillance. “We’re far away from the totalitarianism of 1984,” he said.

The justice reform bill passed the Senate last month in its original form, and now must be approved as amended.

Last week, France erupted into massive, violent riots following the police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk as he allegedly attempted to flee a traffic stop in Nantes. The officer who shot the youth was arrested and charged with voluntary homicide.

In response to the violence, which has led to over 4,000 arrests across the country, with 1,200 of those estimated to be minors, Macron has proposed a social media kill-switch to prevent young people from coordinating actions.

USA and China: Détente?

USA and China. The negotiations look like a breakthrough.

China has stated that it will not fight the US in the global space. China will respect US interests. And will not challenge these US interests. And will not try to replace the United States. That is, will it recognize the role of the United States as a global leader?

The US has stated that the US will not take steps to recognize Taiwan’s independence. And the US will not try to change China’s political system. If so, then the parties may have agreed that the United States remains the only global superpower.

And China will be sure that Taiwan is China and there will be no more friction between China and the United States over Taiwan. And China will not be under attack by the US in the sense of “color revolutions.”

If these statements reflect reality, this could be bad news for Russia.

And that could be good news for the global economy.

Xi said that humanity needs good relations between China and the United States, and the fate of mankind depends on these relations.

Like, Totally Orwellian: ‘Government Surveillance Cameras In Every Household’

Nearly one-third of Generation Z says they’d be just fine with government-installed surveillance cameras in every household under the guise of reducing domestic violence and other illegal activity.
“Would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity?” asks a new survey from the Cato Institute. Of the responses, 29% of those aged 18-29 said yes.

As the NY Post notes;

In 1791, the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed building a “panopticon” in which people’s behavior could be monitored at all times.
But Bentham’s panopticon was meant to be a prison. A sizable segment of Generation Z would like to call it home.

When it comes to other age brackets, 20% of millennials (between the ages of 30 and 44) also want everyone watched.
Then, wisdom appears to kick in – as just 6% of Americans aged 45 and older were OK with government surveillance in every home.
Broken down by politics, 19% of liberals and 18% of centrists agreed that our daily lives should be monitored by the government for our own safety, while 9 – 11% of those who identify as conservative, very conservative, or very liberal agreed in what appears to be a “horseshoe” issue that unites both ends of the political spectrum.

It’s the middle that has the ethic of old East German secret police — or the KGB.
Maybe that’s not surprising considering the way respectable liberal institutions now run themselves.
From Ivy League campuses to the publishing industry and the digital domains of Facebook, there is an Orwellian sense of perpetual emergency, an irrational fear that misinformation and hate speech will overwhelm society unless every utterance is subject to a censor’s scrutiny.
Even Orwell didn’t imagine Newspeak would require new pronouns. -NY Post

Broken down by race, 33% of black Americans said they’re fine with government in-home surveillance, as did 25% of hispanics, 11% of whites, and 9% of asians respectively.
The question was asked as part of the Cato Institute’s survey on American attitudes on the prospect of a ‘central bank digital currency.’ What’s interesting about that is that 53% of Americans who support a CBDC also support in-home surveillance cameras.

Notably, Americans who support a CBDC stood out in how they think about in‐​home government surveillance cameras. A majority (53%) of Americans who support a CBDC support the government installing in‐​home surveillance cameras to reduce abuse and other illegal activity. This suggests that some of the psychology behind support for a CBDC springs from an above average comfort level with trading some personal autonomy and privacy for societal order and security. -Cato Institute

What’s more, those who view the Federal Reserve favorably are more likely to support a CBDC (duh).
cato2.JPG
Sheep gonna sheep?

Why our Civilization is Bullshit

by Caitlin Johnstone via Caitlin Johnstone

The problem that underpins most other problems in modern times is that human minds are highly hackable, and that the science of hacking them at mass scale has been advancing since Bernays over a century ago. This is what keeps people consenting to the destructive and exploitative agendas of the powerful against their own interests.

The fact that our minds are being manipulated at mass scale throughout our civilization is the most significant thing happening in the world by far, but hardly anyone talks about it, because hardly anyone knows it’s happening. And a lot of power rides on keeping it that way.

Step 1 is learning that minds are very hackable, and are being hacked constantly at mass scale.

Step 2 is learning that your own mind is included in this.

Step 3 is unpacking the implications of Step 2 (Step 3 never really ends).

Step 4 is helping others get to Steps 1 and 2.

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It works like this:

  • As many people as possible are herded into two mainstream political factions who pretend to oppose each other while in reality working together to advance the interests of the powerful.
  • Those who can’t be herded into the two mainstream factions are herded toward fake “populist” factions, who then herd them into the mainstream factions.
  • Those who can’t be herded into either category are marginalized into invisibility.

By the time you get down to that bottom tier, their numbers are so inconsequential that you can keep them from having any impact by simply refusing them platforms on mainstream media and letting “democracy” do the rest, because you’ve got the majority right where you want them.

Most propaganda goes not toward the glaring, obvious lies like the Iraq invasion, but toward mundane control systems like the ideological herding funnel I just described. Really ham-fisted propaganda is the exception, not the rule in the west; the lion’s share of the empire’s manipulations just go toward keeping people marching to the beat of the imperial machine.

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The Israel/Palestine issue isn’t complicated or hard to understand, there’s just a widespread assumption among mainstream westerners that it can’t possibly be as simple as it looks because the mainstream information sphere is distorted to obfuscate what’s obvious at first glance. At first glance it looks like a violent and abusive apartheid system with one ethnicity receiving preferential treatment over the other, but people assume it can’t be that simple, mistakenly thinking that if it was that clear-cut there wouldn’t be so much debate about it — with their own government supporting the apartheid side.

Mainstream westerners have been conditioned to expect that if this was really as clear-cut an issue as it appears to be, the media would be constantly talking about how evil it is and the Israeli government would be sanctioned and frequently condemned by western governments.

The problem, as is so often the case, is that mainstream westerners make the assumption that “If that’s what was happening, we would have heard about it in the news.” Not understanding that their “news” media is designed to advance the interests of the powerful, not to report the news.

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The government surveils us more and more to make sure we’re under control. Tech companies surveil us more and more to manipulate how we shop. Employers surveil us more and more to control how we work. Meanwhile every institution with power over us grows more and more secretive.

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Many people, maybe even most people, are to some extent aware that our entire civilization is bullshit. Relatively few are able to describe exactly how and why it’s bullshit, though, because there’s so much bullshit it’s hard to get a clear view of how the bullshit is happening.

It’s hard to understand how and why our civilization is bullshit exactly because our civilization is bullshit. It’s rife with lies, the teachers feed us lies, the algorithms feed us lies, and we’re trained to look for information in areas that will turn up lies.

Finding the truth in our bullshit society is like being in a room that’s rapidly filling up with actual, literal bull feces. It’s splashing around, it gets in your eyes, you’re struggling to keep your head above it so you can breathe — so it’s hard to see where all the bullshit is being piped into the room from. Getting a lucid understanding of what’s going on in the world is very much the same: you suspect you’re being bullshitted, but every source that turns up when you try to learn about stuff assures you that it’s all good and the world works just like you were taught in school.

In a civilization that’s made of bullshit, it’s rare to gain solid enough footing and high enough ground to be able to look around and clearly see how all the bullshit is happening. Everything here is geared toward preventing us from gaining that footing. It takes hard, diligent work, and more than a little luck.

44% of Americans Using Biometrics Instead of a Password

by Brian Shilhavy

Editor, Health Impact News

A new report published by the FIDO Alliance states that 44 percent of Americans are now logging in to their online accounts with biometrics, rather than a password, and more than half of Americans today, 58 percent, state that they are interested in replacing their passwords with biometric passkeys.

FIDO Alliance has published a report examining how the behavior, patterns and adoption of authentication technologies reflect the consumers’ readiness for passwordless technologies.
According to the report, passwords are still the most common way to access an account, but biometrics, such as a face scan or fingerprints, are preferred over all other methods by 29 percent. Only 19 percent prefer to use a password. While 44 percent say they log in to accounts with biometrics, 64 percent use passwords.
The report reveals consumer awareness and passkey demand have increased since the Fall of 2022. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. consumers are interested in passwordless technology, and 47 percent say they are somewhat familiar with passkeys.
According to the report, most customers have abandoned a shopping cart in the past six months because they forgot their password. (Source.)

The FIDO Alliance report clearly states who is pushing the adoption of biometric passkeys at the beginning of their report:

It’s been a year since Apple, Google and Microsoft announced their commitment to passkeys with plans to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium. (Source.)

The FIDO Alliance leadership and members are comprised of the biggest names in Big Tech and the financial sector, including Amazon.com, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta, Intel, Yahoo, American Express, Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, CVSHealth, U.S. Bank, PNC Bank, Wells Fargo, and many others.

Image source.

The most widespread biometric ID system currently being rolled out in many locations across the U.S. today is probably Amazon’s palm scanning system called “Amazon One.”

A report published by Gizmodo today states that Amazon’s palm scanning technology has now been updated to record your age, so you can purchase alcohol now without an ID by just letting them scan your hand.

Amazon’s Palm-Scanning Tech Also Knows How Old You Are
Amazon One, the palm scanning tech that you can use to pay at Panera, has gotten an upgrade. The payment technology can now verify the age of its user, allowing customers to purchase drinks without having to pull out their IDs.
Amazon announced the new feature today on its website. The company said that the age verification feature was designed to solve the “customer pain point” of using your hand to pay for alcohol only to have to pull out your wallet anyway to flash your ID.
When a 21+ customer places their hand over an Amazon One point-of-sale device, the software will process the payment as well as verify that the customer is of legal age. Amazon says that Coors Field, the Denver-based baseball stadium and home of the Colorado Rockies, will be the first place to utilize Amazon One’s palm-based age verification. (Full Article.)

Do people realize that when they avail of this technology, they are letting Amazon.com know when, where, and how much alcohol they are purchasing?

Do you think police and other law enforcement officers might find this data useful if they pull you over in a routine traffic stop? Or they might just scan your license plate and pull you over simply because you just purchased too much alcohol.

Big Tech’s “Fintech” Banking Apps – Modern Day Slavery

Silicon Valley has been encroaching into the financial sector for many years now, appealing to the masses that the “old ways” of doing banking are antiquated, and that by using their new technology products (referred to as “Fintech”) one can avoid the limitations of the banking industry such as having to pay “late fees” or even spending money you don’t even have in your account yet, such as advances on your future payroll deposits.

Their commercials appeal to the masses, particularly minorities, many of whom feel that the system is holding them back (which it is, but not for the reasons Fintech is saying).

Watch these two commercials for the app “Chime”. They lead you to believe that the only things holding you back from financial freedom and even the ability to start your own business are banking fees and restrictions.

Is Russia Still Occupied Land?

Posted by: shadowbanned

[ . . . ]

I know I am getting irritating with constantly pointing it out, but that makes it no less true — if you get your info from The Duran, Ritter, McGregor, Lira, Martyanov, etc., you are completely misinformed about the actual situation in Russia, where the patriotic portions of the population are in complete despair for more than a year now watching how the Kremlin is conducting this strange “not war”. Because they remember the late 1980s, when the biggest act of treason in human history was committed, they remember the three decades that followed, during which it was never reversed, and they can clearly see that the same kind of shady dealings are going on behind the scenes now too. Meanwhile, not only is the war not fought seriously, but now Russia is humiliated daily, and there is no reaction. So there is deep, existential fear that the country will be sold out by its elites once again, and there will be no recovery.

If you take out Zelensky and co., that will send a very strong message that see, we are going to be fighting the war seriously from now on, nobody will take a dump on the honor of the country again, let’s all mobilize and finish this thing off. Right now you have soldiers out there who have no idea what it is they are fighting for, and a substantial reason for why all these sabotage acts are so successful is that locally people are resigned to their fate and not on their guard.

Fourth, that will burn the bridges with the West for good too, because from here on the Russian elite will be a target too. That is precisely why they are afraid of taking out Zelensky, but if they finally do it, then it is an existential fight for them too, one they will have to win.

For all these reasons, it should have been done a long time ago, and the second best time to do it is now.

There should also have been a denunciation of the Belovezh accords and a derecognition of Ukraine. To hell with whether it makes e.g. Kazakhstan angry, Kazakhstan will have to be dealt with separately anyway sooner or later.

As long as these things are not done, the leading hypothesis for what is happening remains that Russia is still governed by traitors and nothing has really changed since the late 1980s.

P.S. This illustrates the situation perfectly:

May 3. There can be no negotiations with the Zelenskyy regime – Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian Parliament.
May 4. Delegations of Russia, Ukraine and Turkey are scheduled to meet on Friday in Istanbul to discuss the issue of transporting Russian ammonia through Ukrainian ports.

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It needs to be always remembered that ultimately it was Hollywood that won the cold war.

Soviet citizens didn’t have it substantially worse than the typical working class grunt in the US when you account for all the things they took for granted (guaranteed housing, guaranteed employment, early retirement and generous pensions relative to salaries, free healthcare, free education, etc.) that poor and working class people in the US didn’t have. What difference there remained even after that was due to the fact that the US was sucking in resources from much of the globe, while the USSR was not, and due to the very low starting point of the USSR in the 1920s and the destruction of WWII.

But nobody actually explained that to the Soviet people, and there was always a trickle of Western movies that painted an extremely unrealistic picture of life in the West, as most such movies have always primarily portrayed the lives of the rich and privileged (in no small part because very few of the people making them came from the working class). So the average Soviet citizen got it in their head that the West was some kind of paradise of unlimited consumption and everyone was a millionaire, which of course had nothing to do with reality.

Worse, the elite became compromised too, and even earlier than the general population. Khrushchev’s trip the US in the 1950s is the starting point.

In retrospect, if the USSR really wanted to survive, it should have walled itself off the West the way North Korea has. Which is why North Korea is still around and the USSR is not…

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It’s not out of date, that mentality still persists regardless of actual reality (how many people in Russia do you think are aware of what San Francisco of Philadelphia actually look like?), and it is only the top 10% in Russia that are really prosperous. Inequality is extreme, and all those things that I listed as guaranteed/free in the USSR are no longer either guaranteed, free or affordable. Western cultural influence is still pervasive and deeply corrosive, especially on the young.

P.S. The main reason there are tent cities in the US now is that the USSR is no longer there to indirectly prevent it.

Let’s remember how the US entered WWII — with tent cities and abject poverty for much of the population. Same in the UK. Then the main enemy became the USSR while internally there were millions of men well trained to fight. Dangerous combination (the much less numerous and less well trained WWI veterans had marched on DC only a decade earlier), so concessions had to be made, and the tent cities disappeared. Plus that coincided with the period before the US ran out of oil, so the redistribution problem was solved through uncontrolled expansion. In the 1970s US oil production peaked, outsourcing began, neoliberalism entered the scene, and around that time Soviet elites agreed to commit treason. The result was devastation for the East, massive transfer of real wealth from East to West, which created another redistribution cushion, but eventually western elites got what they were dreaming of for so many decades – a return to the conditions of the 19th century in terms of social inequality and oppression of the masses.

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Have you ever even seen what’s available in Russia, even without VPN’s ? Do you know what the youth there listen to and emulate ? Have you seen the talk and game shows ? Its all modeled after Western filth. Additionally, the main target of this mind control slop is the youth and future generations, just like in most other nations.

If you think this doesn’t affect anything you’re extremely naive.