offguardian--2020-10-03--Together Apart: The Social Distance Backstory

In the midst of outrage at restrictions on our living arrangements , issued by a UK government that has lost its orientation to reality , two questions arise .
The first continues to receive fulsome treatment , at least in non-mainstream media .
It is : How can such restrictions be necessary ?
The second is less frequently addressed .
It is : How can such restrictions be possible ?
We have , for months , been mulling over , What makes them do it ?
Here , I consider , What makes us take it ?
From his isolation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid19 , ’ prime minister Boris Johnson assured the people of Britain that , after all , there is such a thing as society .
This was to reprise a theme of his predecessor , Margaret Thatcher , who famously said , ‘ There is no such thing as society.
’ In between Thatcher and Johnson , another Conservative prime minister , David Cameron , successfully ran an election campaign based on his vision of a ‘ Big Society.
’ Despite the wrangling over its extent , what all three recognize is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ Society , ’ which may be emphasized or , not or expanded or not , because it is a function of kinds of government and not , as we might imagine , a set of grass-roots relations between people living out their lives .
It is true , there have always been societies .
But when we refer to ‘ Society , ’ we refer to a quite particular mode of human relations oriented towards the management of populations .
This management has not trod heavily on those populations .
It has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their noses to the grindstone .
On the contrary , it has worked on and through their very hearts ’ desires , rendering those desires explicit and tethering them to strategies for their realization .
The result : an endlessly satisfied populace whose ways of living are available for infinite readjustment , even wholesale suspension .
Our lives are now social lives , and social lives are regulated vertically by abstract concepts and the strategies that apply them , not horizontally between beings in communities .
Our lives are now social lives , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meaningless , and more vulnerable to revision and cancellation , every day .
The latest target of the UK government ’ s ‘ Covid ’ restrictions are students at universities , now consigned to virtual life and learning , or , if they arrive at actual halls and campuses , to bubbles and quarantines and curfews .
There is disbelief , at such overbearing micro-management of student life .
But really , we ought to have seen it coming .
Three years ago , before ‘ Covid ’ was on the horizon , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ concerns that they were not being facilitated in efforts to compensate for missing class .
He sent them an email , detailing ways in which they might resolve the problem .
Among these ways was listed one ‘ strategy , ’ that of ‘ asking a friend , ’ for their notes from the class or a verbal summary of its content .
The strategy of asking a friend : the easy reciprocity of student relations , apparently not abroad , but compensated for by an institutionally approved strategy for producing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life – asking a friend for their lecture notes : separated out , made explicit , recast as a strategy , and returned with a newly-acquired susceptibility to institutional regulation .
Once this is achieved with a sufficient number of strands of student life , the side-to-side associations of student life are cut through by top-down abstractions and the strategies to make them work .
No unplanned afternoons drinking beer in the sun – debating ideas just encountered , maybe – only # beerinthesun afternoons , sponsored by a local brewery .
No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for your subject , only the Student-Buddy assigned to you by the Mentoring System .
Everything you desire , just as you desire it , only too explicit , too strategic , for life .
And as with student friendship , so with friendship generally , which has for some time now been remade as a social phenomenon and thereby brought under careful control .
The average Facebook user has three hundred and thirty-eight friends .
Three hundred and thirty-eight .
In the Victorian novels , of Dickens for example , characters are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ One friend .
Consider the complex arts of friendship : the sympathy and the judgment , the commonalities and the compromises .
How is it possible to negotiate these pleasures and pains with three hundred and thirty-eight ?
It is not possible , for even the most virtuosic of friends .
Which is why we have acquired this terrible habit – born so innocently of our hearts ’ desire for friends : the habit of relinquishing the arts of friendship in favour of ready-made protocols that allow us to negotiate what would otherwise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dropdown list – a click on the ‘ Like ’ button will do – and another so-called ‘ friend ’ is kept happy for now , albeit in fairly rigid style and with possibilities for meaning reduced to having , simply , responded something rather than nothing , and with the so-called ‘ friend ’ recast as a cypher for strategies of friendship rather than a living breathing being to have and to hold .
Little wonder that asking a friend for notes from a missed lecture has had to be recast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an institution .
For , friendship now just is a set of social strategies , its gestures selected from easy , ready-made options , less and less reliant upon our active participation but shivering through us as we mouth its script and push its buttons .
We speak now of finding friendship , even of finding love – not of finding a friend or a lover .
In our relations with one another , we are mediated through the abstract concept – friendship , love – which blocks horizontal interactions between beings with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When I find friendship now , when I find love , the person with whom I find it has also found friendship or found love .
It is to friendship , or to love , that we both appeal , which are generic possibilities , and not the friend or the lover , who are specific realities .
This allows us – compels us , rather – to conduct the relation according to strategies of friendship , strategies of love .
These strategies are ‘ oven-ready , ’ convenient .
But they do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ task , a task that has come to be synonymous with the social : that of making contact between my friendship and your friendship , my love and your love .
Our mania for contact is born of our rechannelling , as beings whose primary mode of relating is with Society , as social beings .
But contacts are anaemic and precarious , not at all like friends and lovers in flesh-and-blood .
The administrative satisfactions we may derive from making them and managing them are accompanied by a constant , low-level hum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our horizontal living , at the lack of meaningful interaction between us , at our sense that we have yet to find a friend .
We yearn , as a result , for real friendship , but our yearning only leads us through another cycle of social strategizing .
On Tinder , men are more likely to attract positive attention if they include in their profile a photo of themselves , taken outdoors with a dog .
Presumably , it makes them appear more ‘ real , ’ the descriptor which is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Such is the rigidity of our modes of interaction , they are effortlessly regulated by a limited stock of explicit and generic concepts and strategies , offered to us on a plate by the social media to which we appeal to solve the problems that it creates .
And the saddest thing : as our relations with one another have been turned strategic , they have begun to require strategies to be endured .
Without a strategy , they are overwhelming .
Without a strategy , they are an assault .
We log @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immense – three hundred and thirty-eight friends , like nestlings , beaks open , demanding to be fed .
Small wonder we cleave to the strategies ; small wonder that once again we move our cursor to the drop-down list and suppress our dwindling capacity for human sympathy with our ever-growing habit of survival .
If one lives horizontal relations , one aims only to survive with the top-down strategies that have replaced them .
And the value of surviving comes quietly to exceed the value of living , as we lose our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in our constantly refreshed relief at garish promises of salvation .
The social , for all that it names for us what is desirable in life , the play that compensates for work , that which brings us together , is that which first prised us and continues to prise us apart , that which mediates between us so that our interactions are rigid and predictable , rather than common and habitual , and requiring , therefore , of mediation .
And though we revel in the social skills that allow us to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always that underlying anxiety , that everything on which the meaning of our lives relies is something from which we might , at any moment , be locked out .
We consult the wealth of guides , which promise us the key – to friendship , to love – because we sense that we are abroad at the behest of Society and that Society can change the rules at any time , and that , if it does , we may find ourselves excluded , without any kind of friend , without even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many years ago , the language of ‘ reaching out ’ to one another began to enter our social interactions – I reached out to Jill the other day ; hadn ’ t seen her in a while .
Our language carries implicit acknowledgements , echoing sadly of our strangeness to one another .
Reaching out , to what is not easily available , to what is retreating , to what may or may not be within our grasp .
We ’ ve been doing it for ten years , perhaps .
Not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now beyond reach is not something new .
That we are now two metres apart .
That we are now distanced .
A jolt , it seems to us .
And yet , what else has been the social in our age than the contracting out of our interactions , their mediation , their micro-management , all of which has set us apart , at a social distance .
Now we are given strategies for hugging .
An associate professor in cellular microbiology recommends that we distil our hugging to the hugs that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is safe ‘ to go through with it , ’ that we point our faces in opposite directions , that we not touch the other person ’ s face or clothing with our face .
A professor of comparative virology warns that spontaneous hugging is out of the question .
Preparations must be made , hands washed before and after .
And the breath should be held .
Only strategic hugging , acceptable .
Only so-called ‘ hugs , ’ allowed .
It is the endgame of our social mediation , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the strands of our shared , heretofore real , lives Of recent years in the UK , there has been a great propensity for hugging , especially among young people – intense hugging , not just a cursory embrace .
Our hugs have seemed forced .
As if there was too much at stake .
As if not enough comfort could be had .
As if , somehow , these were the last hugs in the world .
Which now , of course , they were .
The social , despite its branding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And its natural spacing is the six feet in which we are now buried alive .
Across which two outstretched arms can not reach .
The depth of a grave .
We might have been more prepared for what Giorgio Agamben has recently observed ; we might not see it as contradictory , but as written into the destiny of Society : that the absolute cessation of social relations would ultimately be the maximum form of social participation .
Stronger Together is daubed across government sponsored placards in our shops and public places @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At the very beginning of its ‘ Covid ’ ‘ lockdown , ’ the UK government called for volunteers to offer help to those who might need it in the weeks ahead – those living alone , those with infirmities , the old , the vulnerable .
The call was immediately answered by seven-hundred-and-fifty thousand people , all with the urge to be a friend to their neighbour but with simply no idea of how to do it .
Devising strategies for it at short notice was not the priority , and so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the frustration and disillusionment of the volunteers , almost none of whom was employed in any way .
The impulse remains , then – if only as species memory : the urge to associate with one another , to help one another , to keep one another company .
But the urge lacks established horizontal pathways , familiar and embedded outlets to make it effective , to give it meaning .
Suspended in thin air , it grows weaker and gasps for breath , and travels more and more unresistingly along the channels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of those untasked volunteer helpers – how many of the expectant three-quarters of a million , waiting patiently for their friendship assignment – at last spent their drive to be a friend to their neighbour in the hastily cobbled strategy of Clapping for Carers , standing outside their prison-homes every Thursday evening at eight o ’ clock , squandering their hopes of living together in a meaningful way in another generic and entirely ineffective strategy .
Such reversals of fortune in our would-be horizontal relations , such headings-off of our vestiges of community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end , sucking the life from our urge to really live together and rendering us as passive applicants to social themes and the strategies that let them filter through our bodies : today we take the knee , tomorrow we take the test , the day after we take the vaccine , our hearts ’ desire for real friends callously repurposed as availability for social possibilities , of which we are only the conduits .
Meanwhile , in the first twelve weeks of ‘ lockdown , ’ seven hundred people in London @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their home , with no one for company as the curtain fell on their lonely life , with no one even to notice they were gone .
Only the stench of decomposition at last raised the alarm on these friendless souls , some of the vast fallout from the essential indifference , the chilling distance , of our so-called ‘ social lives.
’ Sinead Murphy teaches Philosophy at Newcastle University .
Her most recent publication is Zombie University : Thinking Under Control ( Repeater , 2017 ) .

Sinead Murphy
In the midst of outrage at restrictions on our living arrangements, issued by a UK government that has lost its orientation to reality, two questions arise.
The first continues to receive fulsome treatment, at least in non-mainstream media. It is: How can such restrictions be necessary?
The second is less frequently addressed. It is: How can such restrictions be possible?
We have, for months, been mulling over, What makes them do it?
Here, I consider, What makes us take it?
*
From his isolation bunker, during his quarantine with ‘Covid19,’ prime minister Boris Johnson assured the people of Britain that, after all, there is such a thing as society.
This was to reprise a theme of his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, who famously said, ‘There is no such thing as society.’
In between Thatcher and Johnson, another Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, successfully ran an election campaign based on his vision of a ‘Big Society.’
Despite the wrangling over its extent, what all three recognize is the adjustable character of this thing we call ‘Society,’ which may be emphasized or, not or expanded or not, because it is a function of kinds of government and not, as we might imagine, a set of grass-roots relations between people living out their lives.
It is true, there have always been societies. But when we refer to ‘Society,’ we refer to a quite particular mode of human relations oriented towards the management of populations.
This management has not trod heavily on those populations. It has not ridden roughshod over them or put their noses to the grindstone. On the contrary, it has worked on and through their very hearts’ desires, rendering those desires explicit and tethering them to strategies for their realization.
The result: an endlessly satisfied populace whose ways of living are available for infinite readjustment, even wholesale suspension.
Our lives are now social lives, and social lives are regulated vertically by abstract concepts and the strategies that apply them, not horizontally between beings in communities.
Our lives are now social lives, and they grow more rigid and more meaningless, and more vulnerable to revision and cancellation, every day.
*
The latest target of the UK government’s ‘Covid’ restrictions are students at universities, now consigned to virtual life and learning, or, if they arrive at actual halls and campuses, to bubbles and quarantines and curfews. There is disbelief, at such overbearing micro-management of student life. But really, we ought to have seen it coming.
Three years ago, before ‘Covid’ was on the horizon, a university lecturer responded to his students’ concerns that they were not being facilitated in efforts to compensate for missing class. He sent them an email, detailing ways in which they might resolve the problem. Among these ways was listed one ‘strategy,’ that of ‘asking a friend,’ for their notes from the class or a verbal summary of its content.
The strategy of asking a friend: the easy reciprocity of student relations, apparently not abroad, but compensated for by an institutionally approved strategy for producing a friendship-effect.
One thin strand of student life – asking a friend for their lecture notes: separated out, made explicit, recast as a strategy, and returned with a newly-acquired susceptibility to institutional regulation.
Once this is achieved with a sufficient number of strands of student life, the side-to-side associations of student life are cut through by top-down abstractions and the strategies to make them work. No unplanned afternoons drinking beer in the sun – debating ideas just encountered, maybe – only #beerinthesun afternoons, sponsored by a local brewery.
No first-day friend from the queue to register for your subject, only the Student-Buddy assigned to you by the Mentoring System.
Everything you desire, just as you desire it, only too explicit, too strategic, for life.
*
And as with student friendship, so with friendship generally, which has for some time now been remade as a social phenomenon and thereby brought under careful control.
The average Facebook user has three hundred and thirty-eight friends. Three hundred and thirty-eight. In the Victorian novels, of Dickens for example, characters are often described as having a friend. One friend.
Consider the complex arts of friendship: the sympathy and the judgment, the commonalities and the compromises. How is it possible to negotiate these pleasures and pains with three hundred and thirty-eight?
It is not possible, for even the most virtuosic of friends. Which is why we have acquired this terrible habit – born so innocently of our hearts’ desire for friends: the habit of relinquishing the arts of friendship in favour of ready-made protocols that allow us to negotiate what would otherwise overwhelm.
Just select a response from the dropdown list – a click on the ‘Like’ button will do – and another so-called ‘friend’ is kept happy for now, albeit in fairly rigid style and with possibilities for meaning reduced to having, simply, responded something rather than nothing, and with the so-called ‘friend’ recast as a cypher for strategies of friendship rather than a living breathing being to have and to hold.
Little wonder that asking a friend for notes from a missed lecture has had to be recast as a strategy framed and recommended by an institution. For, friendship now just is a set of social strategies, its gestures selected from easy, ready-made options, less and less reliant upon our active participation but shivering through us as we mouth its script and push its buttons.
*
We speak now of finding friendship, even of finding love – not of finding a friend or a lover. In our relations with one another, we are mediated through the abstract concept – friendship, love – which blocks horizontal interactions between beings with vertical strategies for realizing social possibilities.
When I find friendship now, when I find love, the person with whom I find it has also found friendship or found love. It is to friendship, or to love, that we both appeal, which are generic possibilities, and not the friend or the lover, who are specific realities. This allows us – compels us, rather – to conduct the relation according to strategies of friendship, strategies of love.
These strategies are ‘oven-ready,’ convenient. But they do bequeath to us a new and enervating task, a task that has come to be synonymous with the social: that of making contact between my friendship and your friendship, my love and your love.
Our mania for contact is born of our rechannelling, as beings whose primary mode of relating is with Society, as social beings.
But contacts are anaemic and precarious, not at all like friends and lovers in flesh-and-blood. The administrative satisfactions we may derive from making them and managing them are accompanied by a constant, low-level hum of dissatisfaction, at the poverty of our horizontal living, at the lack of meaningful interaction between us, at our sense that we have yet to find a friend.
We yearn, as a result, for real friendship, but our yearning only leads us through another cycle of social strategizing. On Tinder, men are more likely to attract positive attention if they include in their profile a photo of themselves, taken outdoors with a dog. Presumably, it makes them appear more ‘real,’ the descriptor which is the most commonly used in Tinder biographies.
Such is the rigidity of our modes of interaction, they are effortlessly regulated by a limited stock of explicit and generic concepts and strategies, offered to us on a plate by the social media to which we appeal to solve the problems that it creates.
And the saddest thing: as our relations with one another have been turned strategic, they have begun to require strategies to be endured. Without a strategy, they are overwhelming. Without a strategy, they are an assault. We log onto Facebook, and the assault is immense – three hundred and thirty-eight friends, like nestlings, beaks open, demanding to be fed.
Small wonder we cleave to the strategies; small wonder that once again we move our cursor to the drop-down list and suppress our dwindling capacity for human sympathy with our ever-growing habit of survival.
If one lives horizontal relations, one aims only to survive with the top-down strategies that have replaced them. And the value of surviving comes quietly to exceed the value of living, as we lose our appreciation for the complex nuances of life in our constantly refreshed relief at garish promises of salvation.
*
Social media is a tautology.
The social, for all that it names for us what is desirable in life, the play that compensates for work, that which brings us together, is that which first prised us and continues to prise us apart, that which mediates between us so that our interactions are rigid and predictable, rather than common and habitual, and requiring, therefore, of mediation.
And though we revel in the social skills that allow us to excel on social media, there is always that underlying anxiety, that everything on which the meaning of our lives relies is something from which we might, at any moment, be locked out.
We consult the wealth of guides, which promise us the key – to friendship, to love – because we sense that we are abroad at the behest of Society and that Society can change the rules at any time, and that, if it does, we may find ourselves excluded, without any kind of friend, without even a so-called ‘friend.’
Not so many years ago, the language of ‘reaching out’ to one another began to enter our social interactions – I reached out to Jill the other day; hadn’t seen her in a while. Our language carries implicit acknowledgements, echoing sadly of our strangeness to one another.
Reaching out, to what is not easily available, to what is retreating, to what may or may not be within our grasp. We’ve been doing it for ten years, perhaps. Not longer than that.
That we are now beyond reach is not something new. That we are now two metres apart. That we are now distanced. A jolt, it seems to us. And yet, what else has been the social in our age than the contracting out of our interactions, their mediation, their micro-management, all of which has set us apart, at a social distance.
*
Now we are given strategies for hugging. An associate professor in cellular microbiology recommends that we distil our hugging to the hugs that really matter, that we decide whether it is safe ‘to go through with it,’ that we point our faces in opposite directions, that we not touch the other person’s face or clothing with our face.
A professor of comparative virology warns that spontaneous hugging is out of the question. Preparations must be made, hands washed before and after. And the breath should be held.
Only strategic hugging, acceptable. Only so-called ‘hugs,’ allowed. It is the endgame of our social mediation, of the separating out and careful administering of the strands of our shared, heretofore real, lives
Of recent years in the UK, there has been a great propensity for hugging, especially among young people – intense hugging, not just a cursory embrace. Our hugs have seemed forced. As if there was too much at stake. As if not enough comfort could be had. As if, somehow, these were the last hugs in the world. Which now, of course, they were.
The social, despite its branding, is nothing other than distance. And its natural spacing is the six feet in which we are now buried alive. Across which two outstretched arms cannot reach. The depth of a grave.
We might have been more prepared for what Giorgio Agamben has recently observed; we might not see it as contradictory, but as written into the destiny of Society: that the absolute cessation of social relations would ultimately be the maximum form of social participation.
Stronger Together is daubed across government sponsored placards in our shops and public places. But so is Together Apart.
*
At the very beginning of its ‘Covid’ ‘lockdown,’ the UK government called for volunteers to offer help to those who might need it in the weeks ahead – those living alone, those with infirmities, the old, the vulnerable.
The call was immediately answered by seven-hundred-and-fifty thousand people, all with the urge to be a friend to their neighbour but with simply no idea of how to do it.
Devising strategies for it at short notice was not the priority, and so reports began to trickle out, of the frustration and disillusionment of the volunteers, almost none of whom was employed in any way.
The impulse remains, then – if only as species memory: the urge to associate with one another, to help one another, to keep one another company. But the urge lacks established horizontal pathways, familiar and embedded outlets to make it effective, to give it meaning. Suspended in thin air, it grows weaker and gasps for breath, and travels more and more unresistingly along the channels set up for it.
How many of those untasked volunteer helpers – how many of the expectant three-quarters of a million, waiting patiently for their friendship assignment – at last spent their drive to be a friend to their neighbour in the hastily cobbled strategy of Clapping for Carers, standing outside their prison-homes every Thursday evening at eight o’clock, squandering their hopes of living together in a meaningful way in another generic and entirely ineffective strategy.
Such reversals of fortune in our would-be horizontal relations, such headings-off of our vestiges of community spirit, do act upon us in the end, sucking the life from our urge to really live together and rendering us as passive applicants to social themes and the strategies that let them filter through our bodies: today we take the knee, tomorrow we take the test, the day after we take the vaccine, our hearts’ desire for real friends callously repurposed as availability for social possibilities, of which we are only the conduits.
Meanwhile, in the first twelve weeks of ‘lockdown,’ seven hundred people in London are reported as having died alone in their home, with no one for company as the curtain fell on their lonely life, with no one even to notice they were gone.
Only the stench of decomposition at last raised the alarm on these friendless souls, some of the vast fallout from the essential indifference, the chilling distance, of our so-called ‘social lives.’
Sinead Murphy teaches Philosophy at Newcastle University. Her most recent publication is Zombie University: Thinking Under Control (Repeater, 2017).


offguardian--2020-10-03--Twitter is Blocking Access to OffG’s Content

For weeks they have been flagging all our links with a fake “ warning ” , and suppressing us in search results Twitter is blocking all links to OffG with an incredibly vague and highly dishonest “ warning ” , they have been doing it for weeks and we have never received any notice or explanation .
It is a blatant attempt at censorship , and it needs to stop .
Any of you who follow us on social media have probably become more than familiar with this screen : …it appears every time you click on any of our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ language – “ potentially spammy ” , “ could fall into ” .
They don ’ t even definitely say there is anything wrong , let alone what it actually is .
Since we can obviously rule out malicious software , phishing , spam and “ violent content ” , the only thing we can concluded is that we supposedly “ violated ” one of twitter ’ s rules .
Since they don ’ t see fit to tells us which of their rules we ’ ve broken , let ’ s just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here in black and white and are fairly predictable : • No violence or promotion of violence It ’ s all very basic stuff , and anyone even passingly familiar with our site could tell you we have never come close to breaking any of those rules .
( We would be happy to argue this with anyone who comes forward to accuse us of anything specific ) .
Of course , none of this is accidental – the vagueness is entirely intentional .
They don ’ t accuse us of anything specific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a specific refutation ( youtube does the same thing all the time , they will say your video “ violated our community guidelines ” , but they will never say how . )
This is actually even more dishonest than youtube – which is a hell of a thing to say – because twitter is going further , implying we have engaged in borderline illegal behaviour .
The most revealing details here are actually buried deep with the rabbit-warren of “ help pages ” on twitter .
First , there ’ s the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meaning identify URLs which might be “ dangerous ” ) .
Their methods include [ our emphasis ] : They don ’ t say who their “ trusted NGO partners ” are , but we can probably guess…and we really don ’ t need to know the specifics to see how potentially corrupt that is .
Second , there ’ s this quote from the section headed “ about links that have warning notices ” [ again , our emphasis ] : “ Limited visibility ” means twitter is actively hiding our content @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on people ’ s timelines and suppressing in search results .
• Twitter is suppressing our content in searches and blocking links to our articles .
• This decision was informed by unnamed third party “ partners ” – perhaps including unknown NGOs – and based on unspecified criteria .
• They have been doing it for months , without ever notifying us , or giving us any option for appeal or review .
• We don ’ t know of what we are accused and we have been given no method or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authoritarian censorship , pure and simple .
But , as the saying goes , “ When you ’ re taking flak you know you ’ re over the target ”

For weeks they have been flagging all our links with a fake “warning”, and suppressing us in search results
Kit Knightly
Twitter is blocking all links to OffG with an incredibly vague and highly dishonest “warning”, they have been doing it for weeks and we have never received any notice or explanation. It is a blatant attempt at censorship, and it needs to stop.
Any of you who follow us on social media have probably become more than familiar with this screen:
…it appears every time you click on any of our articles on twitter.
Note the vague language – “potentially spammy”, “could fall into”. They don’t even definitely say there is anything wrong, let alone what it actually is.
Since we can obviously rule out malicious software, phishing, spam and “violent content”, the only thing we can conclude is that we supposedly “violated” one of twitter’s rules. Since they don’t see fit to tell us which of their rules we’ve broken, let’s just inspect them all. They are right here in black and white and are fairly predictable:
No child exploitation or child pornography No promotion of illegal practices No violence or promotion of violence No hate speech or threats No posting private information without consent No abuse or harassment No hacking, spam or fraud No plagiarism or copyright infringement
It’s all very basic stuff, and anyone even passingly familiar with our site could tell you we have never come close to breaking any of those rules. (We would be happy to argue this with anyone who comes forward to accuse us of anything specific).
Of course, none of this is accidental – the vagueness is entirely intentional. They don’t accuse us of anything specific, because then we cannot give a specific refutation (youtube does the same thing all the time, they will say your video “violated our community guidelines”, but they will never say how.)
This is actually even more dishonest than youtube – which is a hell of a thing to say – because twitter is going further, implying we have engaged in borderline illegal behaviour.
The most revealing details here are actually buried deep with the rabbit-warren of “help pages” on twitter.
First, there’s the way they “surface links” (meaning identify URLs which might be “dangerous”). Their methods include [our emphasis]:
Collaborative information sharing with industry peers and trusted NGO partners
They don’t say who their “trusted NGO partners” are, but we can probably guess…and we really don’t need to know the specifics to see how potentially corrupt that is.
Second, there’s this quote from the section headed “about links that have warning notices” [again, our emphasis]:
In some instances, Twitter will introduce a warning that the link may be unsafe. The warning notice can be clicked through if you wish to proceed to the third-party site. When a link has been categorized by Twitter as meeting the criteria for a warning notice, it will also have limited visibility on Twitter.
“Limited visibility” means twitter is actively hiding our content. Specifically – they are concealing it on people’s timelines and suppressing in search results.
To sum up:
Twitter is suppressing our content in searches and blocking links to our articles.
This decision was informed by unnamed third party “partners” – perhaps including unknown NGOs – and based on unspecified criteria.
They have been doing it for months, without ever notifying us, or giving us any option for appeal or review.
We don’t know of what we are accused and we have been given no method or avenue for defending ourselves.
This is authoritarian censorship, pure and simple.
But, as the saying goes, “When you’re taking flak you know you’re over the target”


offguardian--2020-10-04--The Powerful and Obnoxious Odor of Mendacity

A profusion of philosophical , psychological , and political ink has been spent on the subject of lying and liars .
The toll in loves lost and relationships destroyed from lying is incalculable .
All the war dead are victims of government lies ; what Marine Major General Smedley Butler called a “ racket.
” Lies are poison , slow or quick working , and they kill both body and soul .
We are living in a country of lies .
A country where propaganda is disseminated around the clock and lies are the air we breathe .
Is it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as to what to believe and whom to trust ?
But it goes much deeper .
I have recently read a number of perceptive , truthful articles that have gotten me thinking further about this subject , although I must add that I have been preoccupied with the issue since I was very young and my father took me to see Pinocchio in the movie theater and subsequently told me improvised Pinocchio stories before bedtime .
Whether he knew it or not – and I think he knew – he set me on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to distinguish truth from lies and embrace the former .
Then as a teenager , I appeared on a very popular television show , To Tell the Truth .
I was recruited to lie , to play the part of an impostor , which I did quite well .
I lied for the money and probably would have made a good lying politician if fate hadn ’ t interceded .
It was only later that my actions and the show ’ s title kept reverberating through my mind , echoing down my days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ truth , lies , and propaganda .
From my father came a love for the redeeming nature of stories .
“ More and more often there is embarrassment all around , ” wrote Walter Benjamin in The Storyteller , “ when the wish to hear a story is expressed .
It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us , the securest among our possessions , were taken from us : the ability to exchange experiences.
” It was getting dark on the street as the young man emerged from his high @ @ @ @ @ @ @ East Side after basketball practice .
He had lost track of time as he dreamed his basketball dreams and headed to the subway for the long ride home .
It was December , 1961 .
A man , dressed in a cashmere overcoat and carrying a silver bowl , was walking his dog on the street .
The boy asked him for the time .
The man told him , adding with a grin that his watch always ran fast .
The boy recognized the grin from what seemed like a dream .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the man asked him about the imposing school next to them .
He asked the boy his name and the boy said “ Eddie.
” While the dog did its business in the street , they chatted for a few minutes .
The man wished him luck with his basketball and said his name was Paul .
As the boy hustled toward the subway , Paul Newman shouted after him , “ See you later , Fast Eddie.
” The next week the boy went to see Paul Newman playing Fast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always remembered Paul ’ s words about mendacity and his words from The Hustler : Lies are a common way of playing it safe .
Except they kill the liar .
In an article by Mike Whitney , “ Betrayal , Infuriating Betrayal , ” in which he writes about the Democrats ’ ongoing efforts – Russia-gate , etc .
– to remove Trump from the presidency , efforts based on a string of lies they know to be lies [ my emphasis ] and have been proven to be so , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , that ’ s a very good question .
I read Jonathan ’ s Cook ’ s piece , “ The Guardian ’ s deceit-riddled new statement betrays both Julian Assange and journalism.
” Cook rightly excoriates The Guardian for lying about Assange and betraying him to the British and American governments , long-standing lies [ my emphasis ] that continue to today as Julian sits in a British kangaroo court where injustice is being served to extradite him to the USA .
Here is one point he makes ; Then I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by MK Bhadrakumar , “ Permafrost descends on US-Russia ties , ” about a bipartisan Senate bill aimed at demonizing Russia .
The bill is led by Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware .
Bhadrakumar writes [ my emphasis ] : I was struck by Lavrov ’ s word “ wittingly or unwittingly ” – diplomatic speech – since he knows the Senator ’ s bill is filled with lies but suggests otherwise – “ It is likely to be done unwittingly.
” Finally , I read an article by Philip Roddis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Law of Volitionality.
” As a lead-in to his announced topic , he tells a little tale about his step-mother that struck me .
It is worth quoting in full [ my emphasis ] : Indulge me a moment , will you ?
At fifteen I acquired a stepmother .
We never got on .
Her and dad ’ s insistence that she be called “ mum ” didn ’ t help .
For the two years we spent in the same house – I left home weeks before turning seventeen – @ @ @ @ @ @ @ title .
She had dad round her little finger .
One ploy was to badger him into making a ruling against me .
Once she ’ d done so , she ’ d beg him to relent .
“ Oh it ’ s alright , Frank .
Let him … ” [ do/have whatever it was she ’ d got him to forbid ] .
But no way was he going to u-turn at this point .
A matter of pride , you see .
I saw this little comedy for what it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time .
And here ’ s the thing .
Maybe she did too .
She got her way , but I don ’ t rule out her motives for that post victory appeal being hidden to – and by – her .
My flawed but brilliant teacher said that everybody knows what they ’ re doing .
Indeed , it was so fundamental a tenet he gave it a name : The Law of Volitionality .
Yes , he took it to absurd and at times cruel lengths but for all that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dissonance – to maintain a sense of being fundamentally good – we play games with ourselves .
Stepmother was likely fooling herself almost as much as dad with her tiresome shenanigans .
It ’ s not that she wasn ’ t being manipulative .
Just that an essential ingredient of the manipulation , vital to maintaining self-esteem , was a decision – volitionally squirrelled away , out of sight from everyday awareness – to hoodwink herself .
You can find such examples every day .
Articles about lies tossed about by all sides @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think it fair to say that everyone has lied at some point , but only the most manipulative are proud of it .
“ The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding , ” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre .
This cynical consciousness that knows the truth but denies it to others is a perfect description of politicians , propagandists , intelligence services , and their media mouthpieces .
They know they are lying and are proud of it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ admit it .
Most people are not that manipulative .
Sartre says there is another type of liar who suffers from bad faith .
While they lie to others , they also try to lie to themselves and hide the truth from themselves .
People often say that this person and that one really believe their own lies , that they are deluded , but this is not possible .
For “ the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capacity as a deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived.
” I have recently been thinking that many people who are adamantly insistent on the efficacy of mask-wearing against SARS-CoV-2 , the virus associated with COVID-19 , and those who are always quoting the official statistics , are of this sort .
They either know there is good evidence against mask-wearing and the official statistical game , but try to convince themselves this isn ’ t so , or they avoid reading about the possibility @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – both acts of bad faith .
Such people are like Philip Roddis ’ s step-mother .
But in this case , the bad faith is about a Big Lie , just as the fake fight between Trump and Biden has induced many people to take bad faith sides in a scene from Lewis Carroll ’ s Through the Looking Glass : Last year , I was at a large library book sale and came upon an odd box of typed manuscripts of stories that lacked the author ’ s name .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few .
There was one very short story , entitled “ Fear , ” that struck me for its haunting connection to the issue of lies .
“ Death is the sanction of everything the storyteller can tell , ” wrote Benjamin , which seems so true with this anonymous story .
Here it is : Listen , that ’ s what I want to say to them .
Listen , this is one of those stories hard to believe .
When I first heard it , I doubted it completely .
Of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might have been a factor .
It ’ s hard , once you hear your own voice , to believe it ’ s you .
After a while , however , I became convinced it had to be true .
I couldn ’ t make up anything so odd , so sick if you prefer .
At first the voice sounded strange , but once I realized it was really mine , I understood I was revealing this pathetic tale under great duress and it was understandable that my voice sounded foreign .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I am a very sick man .
I realize that now .
In the beginning , I thought I was surely dying , until , that is , I saw that I was already dead .
Dying was beside the point .
I was dead .
Naturally this came as a great surprise to me .
Now you might reasonably ask , how did this absurd situation come about , and how can a dead man write words ?
Let me tell you .
It began when I was born while the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slaughters .
No , periodic is not true .
Those slaughters are constant .
So you wonder what my astrological sign is ?
The mushroom cloud of course .
A cancer born under the sign of the mushroom .
Anyway , I have been living for decades now and you ’ d think I would have seen the obvious .
I didn ’ t , or that ’ s what I told myself .
Not for the life of me .
I kept going on as if I were alive when I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : the dead never know they ’ re dead until… But I didn ’ t know it , and you can imagine , I hope , how this caused me many problems .
That was the year I disappeared .
She asked me : “ But are you content ?
” So you ’ re not ?
It ’ s hard to tell ?
Tell me .
What would give you contentment ?
You mean to say you have no idea ?
No , not that .
I guess if I thought about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s what I ’ m asking you .
You must have thought about it before .
Why the but ?
You ’ re so hesitant about everything .
You don ’ t know , you doubt , maybe , but , perhaps .
Why are you so unsure ?
I had no satisfactory answer .
I could only stumble over my words .
I was afraid they would trip me up , especially if I spoke without premeditation .
I was used to hesitating so I could control things .
That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was dead , I also realized it was because I had always been a liar , to myself and others .
It was then I disappeared .
Since coming here , I have been resolved to change .
Yes , the outside world was making me sick with all its lies and deceptions .
Mendacity , mendacity , mendacity – I heard someone in a play scream that out once .
I never forgot it , and I felt I was going mad because of it .
But I too was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
No more bullshit .
That was my number one resolution .
It sounded crude but was true .
Next to it , I listed euphemisms for bullshit : exaggeration , manners , civility , tolerance , modesty , mental reservations , kindness , and of course lies .
Bullshit was lies and self-deception .
Simple as that .
I couldn ’ t admit that I was dead ; that was bullshit , and I was dead because I was a bullshit artist and just wanted to be an artist and write stories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lied so much because , like everyone else , I was afraid of the truth .
Saying it , hearing it , or seeing it .
I much preferred ideas of what should be true rather than what was true , or what I really thought was true .
I was afraid if I gave up lying I would feel lonelier than I did before .
Where did it get me anyway ?
Where does it get anyone ?
I have always hated myself for it .
This all seemed so weird to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , just as they nodded to each other , and then went on lying their ways through life .
And if you asked them if they were lying , they would invariably deny it .
Oh , it ’ s so twisted .
I am sick .
I don ’ t know where I ’ m going with this story .
It seems to have a life of its own , unlike me .
I didn ’ t really disappear .
They took me here .
I am so afraid .
That was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reminded me of Kafka , who wrote in his diary : “ The strange , mysterious , perhaps dangerous , perhaps redeeming comfort that there is in writing.
” “ And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
” That ’ s what the CIA has inscribed on the wall of its headquarters : The George Bush Center for Intelligence .
More appropriately , as a description of not only the CIA but American society as a whole , are Ken Kesey ’ s words from One Flew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ You seem to forget , Miss Flinn , that this is an institution for the insane.
” Yes , “ Mendacity is the system we live in.
” And the odor here is really loathsome .

Edward Curtin
“Mendacity is a system we live in.” Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
A profusion of philosophical, psychological, and political ink has been spent on the subject of lying and liars. The toll in loves lost and relationships destroyed from lying is incalculable. All the war dead are victims of government lies; what Marine Major General Smedley Butler called a “racket.” Lies are poison, slow or quick working, and they kill both body and soul.
We are living in a country of lies. A country where propaganda is disseminated around the clock and lies are the air we breathe. Is it any wonder that most people are confused as to what to believe and whom to trust? But it goes much deeper.
I have recently read a number of perceptive, truthful articles that have gotten me thinking further about this subject, although I must add that I have been preoccupied with the issue since I was very young and my father took me to see Pinocchio in the movie theater and subsequently told me improvised Pinocchio stories before bedtime. Whether he knew it or not – and I think he knew – he set me on a lifetime’s quest to try to distinguish truth from lies and embrace the former.
Then as a teenager, I appeared on a very popular television show, To Tell the Truth. I was recruited to lie, to play the part of an impostor, which I did quite well. I lied for the money and probably would have made a good lying politician if fate hadn’t interceded. It was only later that my actions and the show’s title kept reverberating through my mind, echoing down my days to the present and my interest in truth, lies, and propaganda. From my father came a love for the redeeming nature of stories.
*
“More and more often there is embarrassment all around,” wrote Walter Benjamin in The Storyteller, “when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences.”
*
It was getting dark on the street as the young man emerged from his high school on New York’s Upper East Side after basketball practice. He had lost track of time as he dreamed his basketball dreams and headed to the subway for the long ride home. It was December, 1961. A man, dressed in a cashmere overcoat and carrying a silver bowl, was walking his dog on the street.
The boy asked him for the time. The man told him, adding with a grin that his watch always ran fast.
The boy recognized the grin from what seemed like a dream. He pet the man’s dog, and the man asked him about the imposing school next to them. He asked the boy his name and the boy said “Eddie.” While the dog did its business in the street, they chatted for a few minutes. The man wished him luck with his basketball and said his name was Paul.
As the boy hustled toward the subway, Paul Newman shouted after him, “See you later, Fast Eddie.”
The next week the boy went to see Paul Newman playing Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler. He always remembered Paul’s words about mendacity and his words from The Hustler:
How should I play that one, Bert? Play it safe? That’s the way you always told me to play it: safe… play the percentage. Well, here we go: fast and loose. One ball, corner pocket. Yeah, percentage players die broke, too, don’t they, Bert?
Lies are a common way of playing it safe. Except they kill the liar.
*
In an article by Mike Whitney, “Betrayal, Infuriating Betrayal,” in which he writes about the Democrats’ ongoing efforts – Russia-gate, etc. – to remove Trump from the presidency, efforts based on a string of lies they know to be lies [ my emphasis] and have been proven to be so, he wonders thus toward the end:
It’s surprising that this doesn’t piss-off more Democrats, after all, it’s the ultimate expression of contempt and condescension. When someone lies to your face relentlessly, repeatedly and shamelessly, they are expressing their loathing for you. Can’t they see that?
Of course, that’s a very good question.
I read Jonathan’s Cook’s piece, “The Guardian’s deceit-riddled new statement betrays both Julian Assange and journalism.” Cook rightly excoriates The Guardian for lying about Assange and betraying him to the British and American governments, long-standing lies [my emphasis] that continue to today as Julian sits in a British kangaroo court where injustice is being served to extradite him to the USA. Here is one point he makes;
Nauseatingly, however, the Guardian not only seeks to blame Assange for its own mistake but tells a glaring lie about the circumstances. Its statement says: ‘No concerns were expressed by Assange or WikiLeaks about security being compromised when the book was published in February 2011. WikiLeaks published the unredacted files in September 2011.’
Then I read another fine article at Asia Times, by MK Bhadrakumar, “Permafrost descends on US-Russia ties,” about a bipartisan Senate bill aimed at demonizing Russia. The bill is led by Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. Bhadrakumar writes [my emphasis]:
The fallout of all this is going to be profound for the Sino-Russian alliance. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hit out last week: ‘It is time to stop applying Western metrics to our actions and stop trying to be liked by the West at any cost … the West is wittingly or unwittingly pushing us towards this analysis. ‘It is likely to be done unwittingly. However, it is a big mistake to think that Russia will play by Western rules in any case, just like thinking this in terms of China.’
I was struck by Lavrov’s word “wittingly or unwittingly” – diplomatic speech – since he knows the Senator’s bill is filled with lies but suggests otherwise – “It is likely to be done unwittingly.”
Finally, I read an article by Philip Roddis, “Julian, Guardian, and the Law of Volitionality.” As a lead-in to his announced topic, he tells a little tale about his step-mother that struck me. It is worth quoting in full [my emphasis]:
Indulge me a moment, will you? At fifteen I acquired a stepmother. We never got on. Her and dad’s insistence that she be called “mum” didn’t help. For the two years we spent in the same house – I left home weeks before turning seventeen – I never addressed her by name or title. She had dad round her little finger. One ploy was to badger him into making a ruling against me. Once she’d done so, she’d beg him to relent. “Oh it’s alright, Frank. Let him … ” [do/have whatever it was she’d got him to forbid]. But no way was he going to u-turn at this point. A matter of pride, you see. I saw this little comedy for what it was but dad fell for it every time. And here’s the thing. Maybe she did too. She got her way, but I don’t rule out her motives for that post victory appeal being hidden to – and by – her. My flawed but brilliant teacher said that everybody knows what they’re doing. Indeed, it was so fundamental a tenet he gave it a name: The Law of Volitionality. Yes, he took it to absurd and at times cruel lengths but for all that he was onto something. To manage cognitive dissonance – to maintain a sense of being fundamentally good – we play games with ourselves. Stepmother was likely fooling herself almost as much as dad with her tiresome shenanigans. It’s not that she wasn’t being manipulative. Just that an essential ingredient of the manipulation, vital to maintaining self-esteem, was a decision – volitionally squirrelled away, out of sight from everyday awareness – to hoodwink herself.
You can find such examples every day. Articles about lies tossed about by all sides of the political spectrum are commonplace.
I think it fair to say that everyone has lied at some point, but only the most manipulative are proud of it.
“The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. This cynical consciousness that knows the truth but denies it to others is a perfect description of politicians, propagandists, intelligence services, and their media mouthpieces.
They know they are lying and are proud of it, but of course they will never admit it.
Most people are not that manipulative. Sartre says there is another type of liar who suffers from bad faith. While they lie to others, they also try to lie to themselves and hide the truth from themselves. People often say that this person and that one really believe their own lies, that they are deluded, but this is not possible.
For “the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as a deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived.”
I have recently been thinking that many people who are adamantly insistent on the efficacy of mask-wearing against SARS-CoV-2, the virus associated with COVID-19, and those who are always quoting the official statistics, are of this sort.
They either know there is good evidence against mask-wearing and the official statistical game, but try to convince themselves this isn’t so, or they avoid reading about the possibility to save face and live with themselves – both acts of bad faith.
Such people are like Philip Roddis’s step-mother. But in this case, the bad faith is about a Big Lie, just as the fake fight between Trump and Biden has induced many people to take bad faith sides in a scene from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle” So Tweedledee and Tweedledum
Had their scrum
All about the rattle.
When it was done
Only the dumb
Gave a shit about their battle
*
Last year, I was at a large library book sale and came upon an odd box of typed manuscripts of stories that lacked the author’s name. They were free and so I took a few. There was one very short story, entitled “Fear,” that struck me for its haunting connection to the issue of lies. “Death is the sanction of everything the storyteller can tell,” wrote Benjamin, which seems so true with this anonymous story. Here it is:
Listen, that’s what I want to say to them. Listen, this is one of those stories hard to believe. When I first heard it, I doubted it completely. Of course I was telling it and that might have been a factor. It’s hard, once you hear your own voice, to believe it’s you. After a while, however, I became convinced it had to be true. I couldn’t make up anything so odd, so sick if you prefer. At first the voice sounded strange, but once I realized it was really mine, I understood I was revealing this pathetic tale under great duress and it was understandable that my voice sounded foreign. You should take that into account. I am a very sick man. I realize that now. In the beginning, I thought I was surely dying, until, that is, I saw that I was already dead. Dying was beside the point. I was dead. Naturally this came as a great surprise to me. Now you might reasonably ask, how did this absurd situation come about, and how can a dead man write words? Let me tell you. It began when I was born while the world was engaged in one of its periodic slaughters. No, periodic is not true. Those slaughters are constant. So you wonder what my astrological sign is? The mushroom cloud of course. A cancer born under the sign of the mushroom. Anyway, I have been living for decades now and you’d think I would have seen the obvious. I didn’t, or that’s what I told myself. Not for the life of me. I kept going on as if I were alive when I was dead. It’s obvious now: the dead never know they’re dead until… But I didn’t know it, and you can imagine, I hope, how this caused me many problems. Don’t laugh. That was the year I disappeared. She asked me: “But are you content?” No, I wouldn’t say that. So you’re not? It’s hard to tell? Tell me. No, not really. Not really what? Not really content. What would give you contentment? I’m not sure. You mean to say you have no idea? No, not that. I guess if I thought about it … Do that, that’s what I’m asking you. You must have thought about it before. Sure I have but… Why the but? You’re so hesitant about everything. You don’t know, you doubt, maybe, but, perhaps. Why are you so unsure? I had no satisfactory answer. I could only stumble over my words. I was afraid they would trip me up, especially if I spoke without premeditation. I was used to hesitating so I could control things. That’s not exactly true. When I realized I was dead, I also realized it was because I had always been a liar, to myself and others. It was then I disappeared. Since coming here, I have been resolved to change. Yes, the outside world was making me sick with all its lies and deceptions. Mendacity, mendacity, mendacity – I heard someone in a play scream that out once. I never forgot it, and I felt I was going mad because of it. But I too was a liar, so I resolved to change. No more bullshit. That was my number one resolution. It sounded crude but was true. Next to it, I listed euphemisms for bullshit: exaggeration, manners, civility, tolerance, modesty , mental reservations, kindness, and of course lies. Bullshit was lies and self-deception. Simple as that. I couldn’t admit that I was dead; that was bullshit, and I was dead because I was a bullshit artist and just wanted to be an artist and write stories that were true. I have always lied so much because, like everyone else, I was afraid of the truth. Saying it, hearing it, or seeing it. I much preferred ideas of what should be true rather than what was true, or what I really thought was true. I was afraid if I gave up lying I would feel lonelier than I did before. Where did it get me anyway? Where does it get anyone? I have always hated myself for it. This all seemed so weird to me; how everyone nodded at truth, just as they nodded to each other, and then went on lying their ways through life. And if you asked them if they were lying, they would invariably deny it. Oh, it’s so twisted. I am sick. I don’t know where I’m going with this story. It seems to have a life of its own, unlike me. I didn’t really disappear. They took me here. I am so afraid.
That was it. Short and eerie. It reminded me of Kafka, who wrote in his diary: “The strange, mysterious, perhaps dangerous, perhaps redeeming comfort that there is in writing.”
*
“And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
That’s what the CIA has inscribed on the wall of its headquarters: The George Bush Center for Intelligence.
More appropriately, as a description of not only the CIA but American society as a whole, are Ken Kesey’s words from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “You seem to forget, Miss Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane.”
That’s not a lie.
Yes, “Mendacity is the system we live in.”
And the odor here is really loathsome.
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/. He is the author of the new book Seeking Truth in A Country of Lies


offguardian--2020-10-04--Breaking Up With Fear and Conformity

Breaking Up With Fear and Conformity

Data ’ s rotten , Tests are toast .
News is sullen , Coast to coast .
Feudal darkness Here and now !
To the masters Peasants bow .
Facts are fiction , Love is screen .
Gossip ’ s trending , Trends are mean .
This is a breakup letter .
I am breaking up with fear .
Farewell , my clean and proper friends .
I ’ ve had enough .
I am not interested in your scarecrows and rules of good behavior .
I did my time inside the cage , and now I intend to breathe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and anxiety .
It ’ s suffocating .
It ’ s low on oxygen .
I can ’ t .
Your safe space is for crippled animals .
I feel bad for you but I don ’ t owe you self-abuse .
I really can ’ t do this anymore .
I tried and tried and tried—but my fear is no more , and it ’ s time to say good bye .
It ’ s not me , it ’ s you .
The heroes you pray to insist that I betray @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t do that .
I am not a slave .
You do it if you want but you have to let me be .
Perhaps I ’ ve never belonged in the cage of good behavior .
Perhaps , I ’ ve always been unshackled .
This world is full of love and beauty .
This world does not belong exclusively to you or whomever has hurt you and made you proudly , complacently obedient .
You are not the owner of everyone ’ s descriptions of things and ways to think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mystery of life and with the physical world around us is important to my heart , and you don ’ t have any say in that .
Thus , your influence over my language is over .
Your convictions and hangups have nothing to do with me .
So please do what ’ s best for you , and I ’ ll do the same , with love and hope for truth .
I wish you well , and I am not scared of your ghosts .
If I can be of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that doesn ’ t require my self-betrayal , I am around with all good vibes .
Just don ’ t hate me for not kneeling before your fears .
I feel like a kid again , free from adult confusions , curious about everything , attracted to freedom and aliveness , and drawn to my fellow travelers whose spirits are pure and whose minds are interesting .
Please spare me the shaming and the boring Pravda-like clichés , they won ’ t convince me , they will only prolong the agony of parting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this moment my entire life .
Farewell .
Tessa Lena is a Russian-born musician living in New York , you can read more of her work at her blog Tessa Fights Robots .

Tessa Lena
Data’s rotten,
Tests are toast.
News is sullen,
Coast to coast.
Feudal darkness
Here and now!
To the masters
Peasants bow.
Facts are fiction,
Love is screen.
Gossip’s trending,
Trends are mean.
Hear, hear,
Where’s the joy?
Ask Alexa.
She’ll annoy.
This is a breakup letter. I am breaking up with fear.
Farewell, my clean and proper friends. I’ve had enough. I am not interested in your scarecrows and rules of good behavior.
I did my time inside the cage, and now I intend to breathe.
Your air is stale with gossip and anxiety. It’s suffocating. It’s low on oxygen. I can’t.
Your safe space is for crippled animals.
I feel bad for you but I don’t owe you self-abuse.
I really can’t do this anymore. I tried and tried and tried—but my fear is no more, and it’s time to say good bye. It’s not me, it’s you. The heroes you pray to insist that I betray my heart and intellect. I can’t do that. I am not a slave. You do it if you want but you have to let me be.
Perhaps I’ve never belonged in the cage of good behavior. Perhaps, I’ve always been unshackled.
This world is full of love and beauty.
This world does not belong exclusively to you or whomever has hurt you and made you proudly, complacently obedient.
You are not the owner of everyone’s descriptions of things and ways to think. My relationship with language, with the mystery of life and with the physical world around us is important to my heart, and you don’t have any say in that.
Thus, your influence over my language is over. Your convictions and hangups have nothing to do with me.
So please do what’s best for you, and I’ll do the same, with love and hope for truth. I wish you well, and I am not scared of your ghosts.
If I can be of help to you in a dignifying way that doesn’t require my self-betrayal, I am around with all good vibes. Just don’t hate me for not kneeling before your fears.
I feel like a kid again, free from adult confusions, curious about everything, attracted to freedom and aliveness, and drawn to my fellow travelers whose spirits are pure and whose minds are interesting.
Please spare me the shaming and the boring Pravda-like clichés, they won’t convince me, they will only prolong the agony of parting.
I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life. Farewell.
We’ll meet again.
Tessa Lena is a Russian-born musician living in New York, you can read more of her work at her blog Tessa Fights Robots.


offguardian--2020-10-05--WATCH: Int’l Lawyers Bringing Class Action Over “Covid Scandal”

Hello I am Reiner Fuellmich , and I have been admitted to the bar in Germany and in California for 26 years .
I have been practicing law , primarily as a trial lawyer , against fraudulent corporations such as Deutsche Bank – formerly one of the world ’ s largest and most respected banks , today one of the most toxic criminal organizations in the world – VW one of the world ’ s largest and most respected car manufacturers , today notorious for its giant diesel fraud – and Kuehne + Nagel the world ’ s largest shipping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a multi-million dollar bribery case .
I ’ m also one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee .
Since July 10th 2020 this committee has been listening to a large number of international scientists and experts testimony to find answers to questions about the corona crisis , which more and more people worldwide are asking .
All the above-mentioned cases of corruption and fraud committed by the German corporations pale in comparison in view of the extent of the damage that the corona crisis has caused and continues to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to all we know today , must be renamed a corona scandal and those responsible for it must be criminally prosecuted and sued for civil damages on a political level .
Everything must be done to make sure that no one will ever again be in a position of such power as to be able to defraud humanity or to attempt to manipulate us with their corrupt agendas .

Hello I am Reiner Fuellmich, and I have been admitted to the bar in Germany and in California for 26 years. I have been practicing law, primarily as a trial lawyer, against fraudulent corporations such as Deutsche Bank – formerly one of the world’s largest and most respected banks, today one of the most toxic criminal organizations in the world – VW one of the world’s largest and most respected car manufacturers, today notorious for its giant diesel fraud – and Kuehne + Nagel the world’s largest shipping company, we’re suing them in a multi-million dollar bribery case.
I’m also one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee. Since July 10th 2020 this committee has been listening to a large number of international scientists and experts testimony to find answers to questions about the corona crisis, which more and more people worldwide are asking.
All the above-mentioned cases of corruption and fraud committed by the German corporations pale in comparison in view of the extent of the damage that the corona crisis has caused and continues to cause. This corona crisis, according to all we know today, must be renamed a corona scandal and those responsible for it must be criminally prosecuted and sued for civil damages on a political level.
Everything must be done to make sure that no one will ever again be in a position of such power as to be able to defraud humanity or to attempt to manipulate us with their corrupt agendas.


offguardian--2020-10-05--PCR Inventor: “It doesn’t tell you that you are sick”

The MSM have been going all out trying to pretend this never happened , turns out it did There has been a great deal of controversy over claims that Kary Mullis , the creator of the PCR technology that is being widely used to test for so-called ‘ cases ’ of COVID-19 , did not believe the technology was suitable for detecting a meaningful presence of a virus .
Those making these assertions were attacked and ‘ fact checked ’ ( deemed inappropriate by propagandists ) by news outlets claiming that Mullis ’ comments had been taken out of context @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mullis talking about the efficacy of the technology it is worth paying close attention to what he is saying .
He died last year , so it is the best ‘ fact check ’ available .
In the video , Mullis is discussing AIDS .
He first deals with a criticism from the audience that the PCR technology is being misused [ timestamp – 48:40 ] .
Mullis does not explicitly say that the PCR technology is unsuitable for detecting a meaningful presence of COVID-19 .
How could he , given that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But such a conclusion can safely be inferred : Mullis then addresses the question of what should be considered meaningful , which is the central issue with the use of the PCR tests .
Do the ‘ case ’ numbers being used around the world by governments to impose police states and egregious lockdowns of the population , especially in my home state of Victoria , actually mean anything ?
The answer seems to be ‘ no ’ : That could be thought of as a misuse : to claim that it [ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It tells you something about nature and what is there .
To test for that one thing and say it has a special meaning is , I think , the problem .
The measurement for it is not exact ; it is not as good as the measurement for apples .
The tests are based on things that are invisible and the results are inferred in a sense .
It allows you to take a miniscule amount of anything and make it measureable and then talk about it.
” Mullis also addresses , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incidence of ‘ cases ’ .
If you test positive – and Australia ’ s Therapeutic Goods Administration has admitted that they do not know if this means you are infected or not – are you actually sick ?
In the past that is what the word ‘ cases ’ has meant : someone unwell from a disease .
Mullis ’ position is clear [ emphasis added – timecode 51:49 ] : Mullis ’ comments are unsurprising for anyone who has been paying attention to the behaviour of the authorities during the COVID-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ results many times over .
If they are amplified less than about 35 times , no-one will test positive .
If they are amplified 60 times , everyone will test positive .
The flawed thinking is obvious enough .
Why is there is such a concerted effort to quell anyone exposing problems with the use of the technology ?
There is no doubt that these attacks are designed to deceive ( including predictable use of that shoddy ad hominem phrase ‘ conspiracy theory ’ , a rhetorical trick to insult people rather than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the ‘ fact checking ’ .
The Reuters article uses a mixture of a straw man argument and a red herring .
It asserts it was wrong to claim that Mullis said that : “ PCR tests can not detect free infectious viruses at all ” .
This is obviously a deliberate misrepresentation intended to wrongly characterise the opponents ’ argument and then ‘ expose ’ it as false .
Then we get the red herring .
The Reuters article claims that : “ The quote is actually from an article written @ @ @ @ @ @ @ HIV and AIDS , not COVID-19 ( here ) .
” Neat trick .
Assert that your opponents got their sources wrong , and then dismiss them because of their poor research .
It is transparently untruthful , but why are these news outlets pushing such propaganda ?
In one way , it could be said to be just business as usual .
For those of us who have worked in newsrooms , especially in the finance and business sections , being subjected to propaganda is as routine as the daily cups of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outright lying , misleading but true facts , half truths , quarter truths , lack of context , lack of corporate memory , deceptive jargon , false statistics , lobbying by astro-turf organisations , threats of legal action , threats to complain to the editor or proprietor , threats of removal of access to important sources , promises of getting first access to important stories , subtle requests from former colleagues for assistance , and , of course , my favourites – free lunches at expensive restaurants and travel junkets .
The situation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the destruction of the media ’ s business model by Facebook and Google , who have taken half the world ’ s advertising revenue .
It has forced the hollowed out newsrooms to rely more on outside news feeds .
And , as Matt Taibbi has noted , mainstream media organisations are , for commercial reasons , no longer interested in “ selling a vision of reality they perceive to be acceptable to a broad mean ” .
Instead , they deliberately sow division and only appeal to niches .
Forget facts ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of that explains why there is such intense propaganda about COVID-19 .
The endless spin inflicted on media organisations is transparently related to satisfying greed or enhancing power , but what is the motive here ?
True , the US health system is one of the biggest profiteering exercises in the world , corrupting health everywhere .
Health accounts for 16 per cent of US GDP , which is about twice the level of , say , Australia or the UK ( countries that have universal care ) .
That extra eight per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ profiteering , or about two per cent of the global economy – an eye-watering scam conducted by pharmaceutical companies , hospital conglomerates , insurance companies , lawyers , consultants and so on .
Those vultures will be trying to control the media to profit from a vaccine and who knows what else .
But they will only be one group of players and probably not the main ones .
The most important question is who is funding the ‘ fake news ’ that COVID-19 is an existential threat and what is their agenda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It has resulted in a medical dictatorship that has shut down Victoria ; health bureaucrats may , absurdly , be given police powers .
There is a very sinister international agenda here , but the outline of it is , so far , only blurry .
David James has been a business and finance journalist , editor , and satirical columnist for over 30 years .
He has PhD in English Literature and his web site is bardbitesback.com

The MSM have been going all out trying to pretend this never happened, turns out it did
David James
There has been a great deal of controversy over claims that Kary Mullis, the creator of the PCR technology that is being widely used to test for so-called ‘cases’ of COVID-19, did not believe the technology was suitable for detecting a meaningful presence of a virus.
Those making these assertions were attacked and ‘fact checked’ (deemed inappropriate by propagandists) by news outlets claiming that Mullis’ comments had been taken out of context.
So when a video surfaces with Mullis talking about the efficacy of the technology it is worth paying close attention to what he is saying. He died last year, so it is the best ‘fact check’ available. In the video, Mullis is discussing AIDS. He first deals with a criticism from the audience that the PCR technology is being misused [timestamp – 48:40].
I don’t think you can misuse PCR. [It is] the results; the interpretation of it. If they can find this virus in you at all – and with PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody.”
Mullis does not explicitly say that the PCR technology is unsuitable for detecting a meaningful presence of COVID-19. How could he, given that he died before it came to light? But such a conclusion can safely be inferred:
It starts making you believe in the sort of Buddhist notion that everything is contained in everything else. If you can amplify one single molecule up to something you can really measure, which PCR can do, then there is just very few molecules that you don’t have at least one single one of in your body.”
Mullis then addresses the question of what should be considered meaningful, which is the central issue with the use of the PCR tests. Do the ‘case’ numbers being used around the world by governments to impose police states and egregious lockdowns of the population, especially in my home state of Victoria, actually mean anything? The answer seems to be ‘no’:
That could be thought of as a misuse: to claim that it [a PCR test] is meaningful. It tells you something about nature and what is there. To test for that one thing and say it has a special meaning is, I think, the problem. The measurement for it is not exact; it is not as good as the measurement for apples. The tests are based on things that are invisible and the results are inferred in a sense. It allows you to take a miniscule amount of anything and make it measureable and then talk about it.”
Mullis also addresses, by implication, another question about the incidence of ‘cases’. If you test positive – and Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration has admitted that they do not know if this means you are infected or not – are you actually sick? In the past that is what the word ‘cases’ has meant: someone unwell from a disease. Mullis’ position is clear [emphasis added – timecode 51:49]:
PCR is just a process that allows you to make a whole lot of something out of something. It doesn’t tell you that you are sick, or that the thing that you ended up with was going to hurt you or anything like that.”
Mullis’ comments are unsurprising for anyone who has been paying attention to the behaviour of the authorities during the COVID-19 catastrophe. The technology relies on amplifying results many times over. If they are amplified less than about 35 times, no-one will test positive. If they are amplified 60 times, everyone will test positive. The flawed thinking is obvious enough.
Why is there is such a concerted effort to quell anyone exposing problems with the use of the technology? There is no doubt that these attacks are designed to deceive (including predictable use of that shoddy ad hominem phrase ‘conspiracy theory’, a rhetorical trick to insult people rather than address their arguments).
Look closely at the ‘fact checking’. The Reuters article uses a mixture of a straw man argument and a red herring. It asserts it was wrong to claim that Mullis said that: “PCR tests cannot detect free infectious viruses at all”. This is obviously a deliberate misrepresentation intended to wrongly characterise the opponents’ argument and then ‘expose’ it as false.
Then we get the red herring. The Reuters article claims that: “The quote is actually from an article written by John Lauritsen in December 1996 about HIV and AIDS, not COVID-19 (here).” Neat trick. Assert that your opponents got their sources wrong, and then dismiss them because of their poor research.
It is transparently untruthful, but why are these news outlets pushing such propaganda?
In one way, it could be said to be just business as usual. For those of us who have worked in newsrooms, especially in the finance and business sections, being subjected to propaganda is as routine as the daily cups of coffee.
The techniques are endless: outright lying, misleading but true facts, half truths, quarter truths, lack of context, lack of corporate memory, deceptive jargon, false statistics, lobbying by astro-turf organisations, threats of legal action, threats to complain to the editor or proprietor, threats of removal of access to important sources, promises of getting first access to important stories, subtle requests from former colleagues for assistance, and, of course, my favourites – free lunches at expensive restaurants and travel junkets.
The situation, always bad, has worsened with the destruction of the media’s business model by Facebook and Google, who have taken half the world’s advertising revenue. It has forced the hollowed out newsrooms to rely more on outside news feeds. And, as Matt Taibbi has noted, mainstream media organisations are, for commercial reasons, no longer interested in “selling a vision of reality they perceive to be acceptable to a broad mean”.
Instead, they deliberately sow division and only appeal to niches. Forget facts; inciting prejudice comes first.
But none of that explains why there is such intense propaganda about COVID-19.
The endless spin inflicted on media organisations is transparently related to satisfying greed or enhancing power, but what is the motive here? True, the US health system is one of the biggest profiteering exercises in the world, corrupting health everywhere. Health accounts for 16 per cent of US GDP, which is about twice the level of, say, Australia or the UK (countries that have universal care).
That extra eight per cent equates with $1.6 trillion in profiteering, or about two per cent of the global economy – an eye-watering scam conducted by pharmaceutical companies, hospital conglomerates, insurance companies, lawyers, consultants and so on. Those vultures will be trying to control the media to profit from a vaccine and who knows what else.
But they will only be one group of players and probably not the main ones. The most important question is who is funding the ‘fake news’ that COVID-19 is an existential threat and what is their agenda? Most countries have been greatly harmed. It has resulted in a medical dictatorship that has shut down Victoria; health bureaucrats may, absurdly, be given police powers.
There is a very sinister international agenda here, but the outline of it is, so far, only blurry.
David James has been a business and finance journalist, editor, and satirical columnist for over 30 years. He has PhD in English Literature and his web site is bardbitesback.com