The US Army probably expected an influx of patriotic replies when it asked for testimonies about people's service. Instead, Twitter offered disturbing stories of debilitating injuries, mental health problems and suicide.

It all began with a a video of a soldier who told the camera he joined to serve "something greater than myself." The army, the featured soldier said, had given him the opportunity to "give to others" and better himself "as a man and a lawyer."

The Army then made the mistake of asking Twitter at large for their thoughts.

That was where the patriotism ended. The account was quickly inundated with responses from former service members and their families - and they make for some seriously disturbing reading.

A group of self-identified 'fake news victims' recently published an open letter in Avaaz.org to social media giants and their CEOs: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jack Dorsey (Twitter) and Susan Wojcicki (Youtube). Their plea goes as follows:

"This week victims of disinformation from across the world have come to Silicon Valley to confront social media companies for the first time. The meetings were highly emotional, bringing social media employees to tears, as they came face-to-face with the human cost of the crisis fueled by their platforms. Following their meetings, these victims have issued an open letter calling for urgent action to stop the spread of disinformation and to recognize the deadly damage it can cause."

One of the 'victims' is Finnish mainstream media journalist, Jessikka Aro, who focuses almost exclusively on bashing Russia and Putin, and 'exposing the trolls in our midst'.

Aro became a visible 'Russia-expert' in Finland after writing an article in 2015 filled with wild speculations about the St. Petersburg 'Troll Factory', i.e the Internet Research Agency (IRA). In reality the IRA was revealed to be not much more than a low-level social media marketing (spamming) company with zero impact on the 2016 elections. Just as the whole Russia-collusion story has been proven to be false, the basis of Aro's journalistic career rests on similar outlandish conspiracy theories. Aro has won international awards for her work, and in March this year was set to travel to Washington and claim a $5,000 grant for winning the International Women of Courage Award issued by the US State Department, until it was rescinded because someone there came across her bashing of Trump as 'Russian agent' on Twitter.

In one hilarious episode, Aro's hysterical Russian troll-themed news reports provoked some level-headed ordinary Finns to create a satirical Facebook group called 'Russian Troll Army'. But Aro's fanatical belief that evil Russians are everywhere meant that she missed the point of the group and instead took it as further evidence that 'Russian trolls' are out to get her!

Later, when a Finnish mainstream newspaper published an article critical of her work, she used it as 'evidence' of how ideas made by 'trolls' and 'fake news propagandists' infiltrate into mainstream media (min 31:00 in this video). Aro seems to really enjoy indulging in self-fulfilling prophecies, and she sure loves to play the victim card. Then again, who knows, maybe 'someone' really did send those scary messages she says she keeps receiving, just to watch her descend into further fits of hysteria because she's such an easy mark.

The OPCW has opened the door to ridicule, when the simple truth would have been enough

We like to take the Big Boys on trust. No longer do we believe in our meretricious little leaders with their easy lies and twitters: the Trumps and Mays and now all the nationalists of Europe. We certainly don't put any credit in Arab dictators.

But when, despite all its bureaucracy and corruption, the UN tells us that the world faces climate change, we largely believe what it says. If the International Red Cross warns us of a humanitarian catastrophe in Africa, we tend to take their word for it. And when the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) - which represents 193 member states throughout the world - reports on chlorine attacks in Syria, we assume we are hearing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Until now. For in the last few days, there has emerged disturbing evidence that in its final report on the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime in the city of Douma last year, the OPCW deliberately concealed from both the public and the press the existence of a dissenting 15-page assessment of two cylinders which had supposedly contained molecular chlorine - perhaps the most damning evidence against the Assad regime in the entire report.

The OPCW officially maintains that these canisters were probably dropped by an aircraft - probably a helicopter, presumably Syrian - over Douma on 7 April 2018. But the dissenting assessment, which the OPCW made no reference to in its published conclusions, finds there is a "higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft".

A mental health assessment of the Democratic Party suggests that identity politics had lately turned into an identity crisis. Years of staying woke finally produced hallucinations and violent outbursts. It was time to medicate the patient. Enter, stage right, the Tranquilizer, smiling Uncle Joe Biden, the perfect agent to quell an acute case of adolescent rebellion.

Mostly, the rank-and-file don't seem to know what to make of Uncle Joe's arrival on the scene. It's as if they popped .5 milligrams of Xanax a half an hour ago and all the intersectional strife that seemed so urgent last month just up and flew out of the room, like so many leaf-nosed bats from a frightful cave of winds. The chemical rush Uncle Joe provides is reflected in his impressive polling numbers, lately cresting near 40 percent against his closest pursuer, Bernie Sanders - the reincarnation of my 10^th grade math teacher, and hence a figure of horror and loathing - at about 18 percent in the polls. The rest of the presidential pack just slogs down-low through the sucking muck of single digits. Many of these are women candidates in a party determined to produce the first president of the female persuasion. What's up with that?

The salient psychodramatic feature of the Democrats' relationship with Mr. Trump is that he represents Daddy's in da house, a situation so alarming as to provoke a nearly three-year-long fugue of patricidal fury among his detractors. In fact, he's an order of magnitude worse than Daddy... he's more like Ole Massa... living in that big White House... lumbering out the south portico in that terrible capitalist business suit... the very cutting edge of oppression and misogyny. Of the Democratic women running for president, so far only Elizabeth Warren has gone after Mr. Trump with any real passion - and then, like some stereotypical housewife trying to brain him with a frying pan. It just bounces off his thick skull, and he moves on.

The outlook of current Western leaders suggests that humanity will be hard pressed to survive the 21st century

Talk about a graphic display of soft power: Beijing this week hosted the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations.

New information released by the FBI has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the "Dancing Israelis," at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called "High Fivers," or the "Dancing Israelis." However, new information released by the FBI on May 7^th has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the "Dancing Israelis," at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, five men - later revealed to be Israeli nationals - had positioned themselves in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers and "high fiving" each other. At least one eyewitness interviewed by the FBI had seen the Israelis' van in the parking lot as early as 8:00 a.m. that day, more than 40 minutes prior to the attack. The story received coverage in U.S. mainstream media at the time but has since been largely forgotten.

The Guardian's editor has just issued this new guidance to all staff on language to use when writing about climate change and the environment...and it is full-on alarmism. No holding back punches now, because it's a crisis, so let's start writing like one! Josh helps us understand the real message.

On this episode of Objective: Health, Elliot Overton and Doug DiPasquale are joined by Scott Ogrin of Scottie's Tech.Info for a discussion of the health implications of 5G wireless technology.

While wireless technology is progressing at a break-neck pace, with newer, better, faster innovations seemingly appearing every year, little attention is paid in the mainstream as to the possible negative repercussions.

It seems that technological progress is treated as of ultimate importance, with almost no attention paid to the health consequences. While many scientists (backed up by over 28,000 scientific studies) are sounding the alarm on the negative health effects of wireless communication, its infrastructure and devices; they are ignored by the regulatory bodies, industry and governments who continue to push things forward - beholden to the almighty dollar.

With promises of a 5G digital utopia just around the corner, is anyone listening to these very real concerns? Are we on the verge of a health apocalypse? Is 5G really that bad? Can anything be done on an individual level to mitigate the damage?

Join us as we talk to Scott Ogrin of Scottie's Tech.Info, who has done a deep dive on the research and helps us answer some of these questions and more.


Running Time: 01:21:29

Download: MP3 - 74.2 MB

Everyone is by now well aware, whether through personal experience or vicariously via the news, of the toxic legacy of Christian fundamentalism. Whether it's authoritarian dogma or the many scandals that have plagued the Catholic church, many so-called 'Christians' have given plenty of ammo to their accusers. Meanwhile individuals are largely left to fend for themselves in a society that was founded on Christianity but that is overwhelmingly nihilistic and materialistic, denying its own history in the process.

So today, on MindMatters, we discuss those aspects of the Christian belief system that may well be worth keeping and that have definitively shaped our world. Using sociologist of religion Rodney Stark's book Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, we discuss how Christian beliefs formed the moral matrix of the Western mind from the collapse of Rome onwards. As Stark argues, centuries of belief in free will and individual responsibility in an intelligently designed universe provided the primary impetus for the West to abolish slavery, institutionalize science, use capitalism to improve the lot of the common man, and even pursue the freedom to repudiate Christianity itself.

If he's correct, then losing sight of what these Christian beliefs once stood for (and no they're not just 'fairy tales and dogmatic superstitions') we lose sight of the higher motivation that led ordinary people to found these great enterprises - arguably the few positive aspects of Western society left. So, while today it is fashionable to deny that consciousness exists, and that beliefs can have any impact on reality, today we will be entertaining a different hypothesis - that what we believe matters, and that, in order to understand our history, we should understand the good inherent within Christianity and not just the bad.


Running Time: 01:07:09

Download: MP3 - 61.5 MB

To say the US conducts "foreign policy" is patently a misnomer. US policy is nothing short of low-intensity warfare against the whole planet. Its "foreign policy" is nothing more than a continuous program of psychological operations.

An important element of this colossal corruption of politics is America's so-called news media which plays a crucial role in concealing and propagating the psy-ops.

Just look at US conduct over the past year with regard to geopolitical rivals, foes and even supposed allies. American behaviour is that of a hegemon and tyrant that brooks no dissent. Ultimatums, economic sanctions, threats of punishments, threats of annihilation, actual military intimidation. These are all forms of aggression or low-intensity warfare. In the case of Iran or Venezuela, the warfare is approaching the brink of all-out violence.

To think this is a development peculiar to the Trump presidency is a grave mistake. US foreign policy was always prone to aggression and warfare, certainly since the Second World War. Ever since the GW Bush administration in the early 2000s, the US has degenerated into a permanent state of aggression, often involving waging simultaneous wars. Now under Trump, US belligerence is manifest in every aspect of policy. It has become all-consuming.