News and social media platforms have been abuzz over Ivanka Trump's interview with Fox News on Tuesday where she commented on the 'Green New Deal' (GND) proposed by new congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). Here's what she said:

STEVE HILTON, FOX NEWS: You've got people who will see that offer from the Democrats, from the progressive Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'Here's the Green New Deal, here's the guarantee of a job,' and think, 'yeah, that's what I want, it's that simple.' What do you say to those people?

IVANKA TRUMP: I don't think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something.

I've spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get. So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job.

They want the ability to live in a country where there's the potential for upward mobility.

Ivanka Trump was largely blasted throughout the media as an out-of-touch privileged hypocrite who has had everything handed to her. This underscores a commonly held view by those on the Left that see the conservative 'work-for-what-you-get' sentiment as a fundamental manipulation that the elite use on the blue-collar worker to maintain their wealth.

The common worker is, on the one hand, compassionately regarded by the 'left' as a victim of capitalism, and on the other callously portrayed as a simple-minded redneck whose unlimited gullibility leads him to believe that one day he too might be 'one of them mighty fine rich folk'. Perhaps there might be something to this, but perhaps that is not all there is. There is something about this 'work for what you get' mentality that is deeply rooted within the American mindset, and exploring AOC's proposal within this context might help explain the strong response to it.

Religions provide a collection of values by which their adherents strive to live, a story in which they play an important role. These timeless values and stories are some of humanity's greatest achievements. But they can also go wrong - very wrong. Just as religions can offer the impetus towards the development of conscience, they can also be distorted to such a degree that they actively stifle conscience, elevating a group of believers to a chosen status denied to all others, and thus justifying the worst of attitudes and behaviors towards such outsiders, regardless of such individuals' individual character.

Today on the Truth Perspective we continue our discussion of Israel Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion and Shiraz Maher's Salafi-Jihadism, and the two religious ideologies they criticize. Both are founded on a distorted view of human nature, a demonization of outsiders, and rigid doctrines of political and social absolutism: religious pathocracy. Tune in to see how the operate, and how they justify the unjustifiable.

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Earlier this year, on Jan. 16, 2019 the World Health Organization issued a report ranking "vaccine hesitancy" as one of the top "Ten Threats to Global Health in 2019". This alongside air pollution and climate change; noncommunicable diseases; global influenza pandemic; antimicrobial resistance; and infectious diseases such as ebola, dengue fever and HIV. Far from being an accurate assessment of health threats, this statement was put out to cause hysteria, both from the pro and anti-vaxxers, no doubt.

So with vaccines once again dominating the news cycle, we decided it would be good to dive into the subject and counter the ridiculous propaganda the media is putting out about the ominous anti-vaxxer threat and establish an objective perspective on vaccines.


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So here it is, the announcement we've been waiting for ... all aboard for another cruise on the new and improved U.S.S. Magic Socialist with your captain Bernie Sanders at the helm! If you're not familiar with this extraordinary vessel, it's like the luxury liner in The Magic Christian, except catering to credulous American socialists instead of the British filthy rich. Tickets start at just $27 dollars ... so hurry, because they're going fast!

That's right, folks, Bernie is back, and this time it's not just a sadistic prank where he gets you all fired up about his fake "revolution" for fifteen months, gets cheated out of the nomination, then backs whichever corporate-bought candidate the Democratic Party orders you to vote for.

No, this time the Bernster really means it! This time, when the DNC rigs the primaries to hand the nomination to Harris, or Biden, or some billionaire android like Michael Bloomberg, Bernie is not going to break your heart by refusing to run as an independent candidate, unbeholden to the corporations and oligarchs that own both political parties, or otherwise make you feel like a sucker for buying his "revolution" schtick. He's not going to fold like a fifty dollar suit and start parroting whatever propaganda the corporate media will be prodigiously spewing to convince you the Russians and Nazis are coming unless you vote for the empire's pre-anointed puppet!

Bernie would never dream of doing that ... or at least he'd never dream of doing that twice.

This is the concluding part of our series exploring billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's broad sweep of influence over global media and surveillance enterprises. Part 1 examined Omidyar's use of investment to build a vast and tangled web of influence in NGOs and media outlets around the world; Part 2 illuminated his involvement with regime-change networks and the surveillance state.

Flinging accusations of cultism while funding the Dalai Lama

Since pumping $100 million into a network of news outlets, fact-checking sites, film projects and press-advocacy groups, Pierre Omidyar has emerged as one of the most quietly influential media funders in the country. All along, he has kept out of the spotlight, avoiding the scrutiny and attack campaigns that have followed other politically influential oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and George Soros.

Omidyar lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, far from the American mainland. From there, he courts famous gurus and wields his media empire against a Hawaiian lawmaker who has emerged as the most outspoken opponent of the national security state and its militaristic agenda.

"To [Omidyar] it's about... integrating things together to give technocrats, business executives and government officials a God's-eye view of the world - to manage and control society more efficiently."

¬ Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley: The Military History of the Internet

As we have seen in part one of this investigation, billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has partnered closely with many of the U.S.-funded outfits that fulfill the role the CIA used to play during the Cold War in backing opposition media and civil society in countries targeted for regime change. However, Omidyar has also sought state-of-the-art design solutions from a shady U.S. government national security consulting firm with a myriad of ties to the hawkish D.C. foreign policy establishment.

In February of last year, USAID's Global Development Lab published a series of reports furnished for it by a small, Arlington, Virginia-based company focused on design solutions for national security problems, with a mere 10 employees listed on its website and eight on its LinkedIn page. Those reports caught the attention of journalist Michael Igoe at Devex on Tuesday.

The company, Frontier Design Group, analyzed the feasibility of essentially militarizing USAID. The report proposals like "Rapid Expeditionary Development" (RED) teams. Those teams would be embedded with U.S. Special Forces, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration outside of typical USAID areas of operation.

The Venezuela 'regime change' bandwagon rolls on, with the Western media doing its best to create the 'reality' where millions of Venezuelans are starving or fleeing the country, no one supports the Maduro government because he is a 'brutal dictator', and everyone loves the new US-appointed leader Juan Guaido. This is 'Iraqi WMDs' redux, it's Qaddafi 'bombing his own people' rehashed, Assad 'using chemical weapons against his own people', all revisited and retooled for Venezuela.

The first physical salvos in this latest chapter of the globalists' war on normal human beings were fired yesterday when US stooges set fire to 3 trucks carrying 'humanitarian aid' at the Colombia-Venezuela border crossing. For good measure, a handful of 'defectors' from the Venezuelan Gendarmerie rammed border barriers with armored vehicles, seriously injuring several people. Western media outlets tried to claim that the trucks were set on fire by Venezuelan security forces firing tear gas canisters, but the culprits were undoubtedly US/Guaido agents tasked with creating the right 'optics' to support the bogus narrative that the Western media has been pushing for months. In the southeast of the country, near the border with Brazil, clashes broke out between opposing factions and 4 people were killed as 'unknown gunmen' fired on the crowds. In short, for anyone familiar with the details of the previous 68 coups carried out by US governments around the world, the situation in Venezuela is following the worn-out playbook, line for line.

Meanwhile in France, the 15th consecutive weekend of Yellow Vest protests took place with no sign of diminishing numbers. The much-hated Macron government has repeatedly tried and failed to tarnish the image of the protestors. First they were labeled 'far-right extremists', then they were denounced as 'Russian agents', but now the 'big guns' have been brought out and, according to much of the Western media, the Yellow Vest protestors are, to a man and woman, 'dirty anti-semites'. Someone should tell Macron that when you have to resort to such discredited canards, you really should cut your losses and admit defeat. There's little chance of the 'Princes of Paris' doing that, however; they (and most of the Western elite) have spent many years increasing and consolidating their power, and the very last thing they will do at this stage is relinquish even a small part of it.

On this week's NewsReal podcast, Joe & Niall discuss the 'revolutions' in Venezuela (1st hour) and France (last 20 minutes).


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Sen. Marco Rubio and coup leaders claim the Venezuelan National Guard burned US aid trucks on the bridge in Colombia. But all available evidence points in the opposite direction.

The Trump administration's coup against Venezuela culminated on February 23 with US-backed opposition attempting to ram several trucks loaded with boxes of USAID "humanitarian aid" across the previously unused Francisco de Paula Santander bridge (also know as the Puente Binacional Tienditas) connecting Colombia to Venezuela.

The trucks failed to reach the other side - but that was never really the point of the stunt. As Father Sergio Munoz, a right-wing Venezuelan activist posted on the Colombian side of the border, explained to journalist Dan Cohen, the humanitarian "aid" was a purely symbolic provocation aimed at discrediting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in international eyes and generating waves of destabilizing violence.

By the end of the day, the trucks lined up on the Francisca de Paula Santander bridge were flanked by gangs of guarimberos.

What is the only way to demonstrate one's faith in the God's complete power over the fate and destiny of humans? Under what conditions is it permitted to let a non-Jew die, or to kill unarmed civilians in warfare? These are the kinds of questions asked and answered by the theologians and ideologues of the more radical forms of Islam and Judaism. But the reasoning by which the answers are found, and the assumptions about human nature that determine the answers, say more about the individuals doing the reasoning than they do about the ideologies themselves.

Today on the Truth Perspective we continue our look at the work of Shiraz Maher on Salafi-Jihadism, the ideology behind groups like ISIS and al-Nusra, and introduce the work of Israel Shahak, author of Jewish History, Jewish Religion, on how the modern state of Israel has been shaped by the ideology of classical Judaism. While diametrically opposed in some ways, the two religious ideologies share much in common, specifically a peculiar view of human nature and a doctrinaire, legalistic mode of reasoning and enforcement of religious rules.

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In this analysis, John Pilger looks back over the Chavez years in Venezuela, including his own travels with Hugo Chavez, and the current US and European campaign to overthrow Nicolas Maduro in a 'coup by media' and to return Latin America to the 19th and 20th centuries.

Travelling with Hugo Chavez, I soon understood the threat of Venezuela. At a farming co-operative in Lara state, people waited patiently and with good humour in the heat. Jugs of water and melon juice were passed around. A guitar was played; a woman, Katarina, stood and sang with a husky contralto.

"What did her words say?" I asked.

"That we are proud," was the reply.

The applause for her merged with the arrival of Chavez. Under one arm he carried a satchel bursting with books. He wore his big red shirt and greeted people by name, stopping to listen. What struck me was his capacity to listen.