Conversations with leaders who bring people from all sides together in purposeful dialogue so we can develop a shared vision of the world we want to live in.
Steve Bhaerman and Michael Maxsenti conduct interviews that will work to deepen and expand our understandings.
These conversations will get us off the political battlefields and onto cooperative playing fields. There we can create the new story that our hearts know is possible.
“It’s not vicious lies they are looking to censor.
It’s those vicious truths they’re worried about.”
– Swami Beyondananda
Last week I wrote a post suggesting that free speech censorship was the gravest existential threat to democracy. I was heartened by the positive response, although I found something very curious about the few pushback emails I got. Not one of them objected to any of my points about free speech, or even addressed them. All of the negative feedback boiled down to: “Donald Trump is worse!”
That’s the problem with “lesser evil-ism.” We accentuate and amplify the evil on the other side (in this week’s podcast you can view the contrast between what mainstream media said that Trump said and what he actually said), while refusing to acknowledge the lies and contradictions on our own side.
That’s how evil prevails.
So I want to try a thought experiment.
Imagine there’s no Donald Trump.
(Imagine there’s no Donald …
It’s easy if you try …
No red-hat wearing MAGA’s
The red team runs another guy …)
OK, OK. Enough of that. You get the idea.
Seriously, I want to take the topic of this post and elevate it out of “lesser evil land.”
So last week, I declared “free speech” an existential issue for democracy. I’ve spoken to people who’ve said, yes but it’s not a life-or-death survival issue like let’s say climate change or nuclear war.
Well, I say it is. And what really brought that home to me was a book released this week called The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity.
https://www.amazon.com/Pfizer-Papers-Pfizers-Against-Humanity/dp/1648210376
Like Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers (https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/1162158609/daniel-ellsberg-obituary-pentagon-papers) published more than 50 years ago that lifted the veils on the War in Vietnam, this new work – based on Pfizer’s own documents that were supposed to stay secret for 75 years – blows the whistle on what has to be one of the most toxic perpetrations in human history.
As soon as the Biden-Harris administration took office in 2021, just prior to the release of the COVID vaccines, they began a concerted campaign to de-platform any potential critics. They used a shadowy organization with the Orwellian name Center for Countering Digital Hate that identified the “Disinformation Dozen” (individuals that as I said in last week’s post were actually providing missing information intentionally left out of the official narrative).
What followed was a relentless propaganda campaign involving every show biz personality and media influencer they could find to promote the shot as “safe and effective.” We all remember the likes of Rachel Maddow assuring us that if we took the shot, we wouldn’t get the infection and couldn’t spread it to others.
It turns out they were wrong, and not only were they wrong, those running the campaign KNEW they were wrong before the shots were even available, based on the Pfizer trial documents the FDA was allowed to see, but the public wasn’t. As you will hear when you watch the Naomi Wolf interview with Del Bigtree (https://rumble.com/v5iclf9-dr.-naomi-wolf-reveals-shocking-details-in-the-pfizer-papers.html), when FDA director Rochelle Walensky saw the report, there was a panicky call with other health officials and the result was a 17-page script to spread the REAL disinformation, the “safe and effective” story.
No one would know because the actual report was not to be released for 75 years.
But then a funny thing happened. A group of scientists and medical researchers sued the FDA under FOIA to force release of hundreds of thousands of documents related to licensing of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
This document that was supposed to be “cryogenically frozen” until the end of the century, all of a sudden became available for all to see. And as Naomi Wolf will tell you in the interview (https://rumble.com/v5iclf9-dr.-naomi-wolf-reveals-shocking-details-in-the-pfizer-papers.html) not only were there 1,200 deaths during the trials, but the shots severely compromised women’s reproductive capabilities, and did in fact cause blood clots and cardiovascular issues.
Please remember that all these injury reports were being made prior to the documents being released, and they came up against a wall of denial and de-platforming. (By the way, we aren’t even going to attempt to post this episode on YouTube – our assistant wrote, “I checked the content guidelines on YouTube and for sure this would get a content strike. They specifically mention most of what Naomi and Del are talking about as not allowed.”)
So …what’s wrong with this picture? Are you grateful you are being “protected” from this information?
Just as surely as the public wouldn’t have actually gotten the story behind the Vietnam War had the Pentagon Papers been suppressed, it’s only because of the courageous persistence of Del Bigtree’s organization and those scientists that we have access to this information.
Please watch our podcast, and go here (https://rumble.com/v5iclf9-dr.-naomi-wolf-reveals-shocking-details-in-the-pfizer-papers.html) to go deeper into the details of how Naomi Wolf engaged thousands of credentialed scientists to vet the material and clarify what it means. The implications are dark indeed. Wolf emphasizes that even though COVID was a respiratory infection, there was very little about the shot’s efficacy in that regard – in fact, getting COVID was the third most common side-effect!
Instead there was great detail about damage to women’s reproductive systems, including disrupted menstrual cycles, calcification of the placenta, and pregnancies not coming to full term. She seems to conclude that the shots were designed intentionally to slow the birth rate. You’ll have to make up your own mind.
What’s most challenging about taking all this information in, is that most normal humans cannot fathom something this evil being done and would rather not believe it.
My wife Trudy was born in Germany and came to the US at the age of three. As a teenager, she returned to Germany to stay with relatives. She asked her aunts and uncles what they knew about the Holocaust. Everyone pretty much said the same thing. “We were told it was American propaganda, and frankly, it would have been too horrific to believe otherwise.”
William Shirer, author of the classic Rise And Fall of the Third Reich about Hitler’s Germany, wrote a previous book, Berlin Diaries, that he smuggled out of Germany on the eve of World War II. He reported that just as Hitler was about to invade Poland, every newspaper on every newsstand in Berlin bore the same headline: “Poland Prepares to Invade Germany.”
Now obviously there were people – plenty of people – who knew that was a lie.
But there was nowhere to speak that truth.
Nazi Germany … Not-See America …
Not exactly the same, but similar to the blaring headlines and messages 24/7 – “safe and effective” – and repressing anyone who said otherwise.
I take heart in two things.
First, 1965.
That was the year I was the first kid on my block to stand up against the Vietnam War, not a popular stance. My friend who joined army ROTC and was training to be a paratrooper was outraged. Yet, two years later he joined me marching against the war on Fifth Avenue.
What changed?
Teach-ins for one. More information giving a bigger picture emerged. Reports came back from returning soldiers. Public opinion shifted.
This one won’t be that easy, nor do we have two years. The Pentagon Papers were all over the news in 1971. The Pfizer Papers? You won’t see Naomi Wolf on CNN.
The other thing that heartens me is that we are indeed living in “apocalyptic” times, meaning the veils are being lifted from all kinds of toxic secrets. We humans – particularly those who see ourselves as “evolutionaries” and who truly seek a better world – must be able to gather enough love and coherence to metabolize those toxins.
Finally, at Front and Center, Michael Maxsenti and I have three guiding principles:
From political battlefields to cooperative playing fields.
Seeking the whole truth together.
Put the government on the side of the people.
We can’t count on any “leader” to do this for us. We – the people acting in coherent accord – are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.
“If a speech falls freely in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, is it still free speech?” – Swami Beyondananda
In 1974, the satirical troupe, Firesign Theatre, put out a comedy record, Everything You Know Is Wrong.
Now, 50 years later …looks like they were right.
When we think of censorship, we think of overt repression of views, like book banning, or even book-burning. But in these times, where so much of what we think we “know” comes from digital sources, the censorship is so silent and stealthy that we haven’t a clue how the information we receive has already been filtered and focused by someone unknown to us. And how we are convinced we are “thinking our own thoughts” but are in fact parroting planted narratives.
On this episode of Front and Center, Michael and I review and unpack an eye-opening interview with psychologist and journalist Dr. Robert Epstein, on what he calls the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). Epstein, a former editor of Psychology Today, has ...
“The best way to overgrow the ‘deep state’ is by cultivating a deeper state.”
-- Swami Beyondananda
Here is the oxymoronic political contradiction of our times. We seem more polarized than ever, and yet the vast majority of us long to work together for mutual benefit. Perhaps the resolution of this seemingly impossible “shituation” can be found in the “real” American dream of our founders: individual freedom AND collective wellbeing.
The accentuated polarization of our times has put these two universal aspirations in conflict with one another. But what if they need to co-evolve together? Is there a way to transform these dueling dualities into dynamic-duo dance partners?
Our guest this week on Front and Center, Foster Gamble (www.freetothrive.com), has spent his adult lifetime seeking what he calls a “universal morality” that is not imposed from the top down, but realized from the individual on up. Growing up in privilege – he’s a Gamble as in Proctor & Gamble – ...
Conversation with Author and Propaganda Expert Mark Crispin Miller
“Who needs conspiracy theories when we have con’s piracy facts?”
-- Swami Beyondananda
If you’re like most Americans I know, you are watching the train wreck that is American politics chugging down the track to oblivion, and wondering how it is that the likes of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln have devolved into the (dis)likes of Trump and Biden? How is it we have hunkered into angry rival political camps spending our fury on one another rather than coming together to face our multiple crises together? As the Swami has noted, we are no longer rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are now throwing them at each other.
If this toxic “shituation” has left you feeling baffled … disheartened … enraged, then you will find this week’s Front and Center conversation with author, NYU professor, and propaganda expert Mark Crispin Miller illuminating and elucidating, as he shines a light on how entire populations are ...
An Interview With Pioneering Black Journalist Glen Ford
“It’s time to move past identity issues and focus on the IDENTICAL issues we all face – clean air, clean water, clean food, and clean government.”
-- Swami Beyondananda
Bamboozlement. Isn’t that a great word?
According to Wiki Politiki guest Glen Ford, pioneering black journalist, that was a term Malcolm X used to describe how the power structure has used race politics – most recently the #BlackLivesMatter movement -- to keep folks from poking around the real issues.
The son of famed disc jockey Rudy “The Deuce” Rutherford, who was the first Black man to host a non-gospel television show in the Deep South – Columbus, Georgia, 1958 – Glen was reading newswire copy on-the-air at age eleven. Glen’s first full-time broadcast news job was at James Brown’s Augusta, Georgia radio station WRDW, in 1970 – where ‘The Godfather of Soul” shortened Glen’s surname to “Ford.”
Sadly, Mr. Ford passed away ...
An Interview With Pioneering Black Journalist Glen Ford
“It’s time to move past identity issues and focus on the IDENTICAL issues we all face – clean air, clean water, clean food, and clean government.”
-- Swami Beyondananda
Bamboozlement. Isn’t that a great word?
According to Wiki Politiki guest Glen Ford, pioneering black journalist, that was a term Malcolm X used to describe how the power structure has used race politics – most recently the #BlackLivesMatter movement -- to keep folks from poking around the real issues.
The son of famed disc jockey Rudy “The Deuce” Rutherford, who was the first Black man to host a non-gospel television show in the Deep South – Columbus, Georgia, 1958 – Glen was reading newswire copy on-the-air at age eleven. Glen’s first full-time broadcast news job was at James Brown’s Augusta, Georgia radio station WRDW, in 1970 – where ‘The Godfather of Soul” shortened Glen’s surname to “Ford.”
Sadly, Mr. Ford passed away this ...
“There are no sides, only angles. And when we see it from the right angle, we’re all on the same side.”
-- Swami Beyondananda
Part 1 of 2
Here is an “irony supplement” to munch on.
America is in the midst of the most politically polarizing times since the Civil War … and yet, a 2018 Pew Research Center poll found that nearly 80 percent of Americans in each party believe it’s important for Republicans and Democrats to work together on issues.
Huh? How could that be?
Are we that schizophrenic … or, is there a deep longing to find our sane and sacred center at the heart and soul of who we are?
On August 25, 2020 Wiki Politiki interviewed family therapist and author Bill Doherty, co-founder of Braver Angels, an organization dedicated to bringing the polarized sides together to find a new angle – where instead of dehumanizing the other side, we re-humanize the other.
In December 2016, Braver Angels co-founders David Blankenhorn, Bill Doherty, and David Lapp brought ...
“When you find yourself on a vicious cycle, for goodness sake, stop pedaling and get off.”
-- Swami Beyondananda
From Steve Bhaerman:
One of the biggest challenges for me in the wake of the election results has been speaking into the field of grief, anger, profound disappointment, hopelessness and despair so many of my progressive co-hearts have been experiencing.
And …I’ve been watching this slow-motion train wreck for nearly four years, so I was not surprised.
I began this election day by taking my own advice and following my conscience. I abstained from voting for President. My choice was neither of the above. My prayer was for the American people to make the wisest choice possible – and I let it be with that.
I went about my business peacefully, spent time in nature, watched inspiring, entertaining and educational programs Tuesday night and went to bed without following the “hearse-race.”
In sharp contrast to my rage and horror when it happened in 2016, I...
“They’ve taken the Bill of Rights and boiled it down to just one.
You have the right to remain silent.”
– Swami Beyondananda
In December 2008, Bruce Lipton and I were writing the final chapter of Spontaneous Evolution. Barack Obama had just been elected President, and I had just returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. – where people were literally dancing in the streets.
And why not?
We were done with Bush and Cheney, the Iraq War, and the neocon con. It was time for hope and change.
So in this last chapter, A Whole New Story, Bruce and I proclaimed that Obama’s election was a sign that “evolution” was at hand. Made sense to us. We were, however, completely surprised – shocked actually – when one of Bruce’s colleagues told us that it was a mistake, that we were limiting our audience by taking a political side.
We looked at each other incredulous. That woman – she must be … a REPUBLICAN!
Although we softened the ...
“To make things simpler, they have taken the Bill of Rights and boiled it down to just one – you have the right to remain silent.”
– Swami Beyondananda
Join Steve and Mike as they discuss Mike’s recent trip to Washington, D.C. to be part of the Rescue the Republic rally, an independent political gathering convened by Bret Weinstein, and including luminaries like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Taibbi, Jimmy Dore and many others. Says Mike, “I could never in good conscience ask anyone to vote for Donald Trump – but I can ask them to vote for the only chance we have to end egregious government censorship, put an end to forever wars … and make America healthy again.”
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who helped release the Twitter files on government-sponsored online censorship adds, “Trump is such a blinding figure for people, just not able to see past the trees of Donald Trump to see the forest that lays behind it. It’s a shame because we are on this continuum of ...
