Wednesday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Bernie’s socialist revolution may be in smoking ruins after DNC makes its move on Super Tuesday.

Coronavirus vs. the Mass Surveillance State: Which Poses the Greater Threat?

By John W. Whitehead

Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expands its powers.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

Now we find ourselves on the brink of a possible coronavirus contagion.

I’ll leave the media and the medical community to speculate about the impact the coronavirus will have on the nation’s health, but how will the government’s War on the Coronavirus impact our freedoms?

For a hint of what’s in store, you can look to China—our role model for all things dystopian—where the contagion started.

In an attempt to fight the epidemic, the government has given its surveillance state apparatus—which boasts the most expansive and sophisticated surveillance system in the world—free rein. Thermal scanners using artificial intelligence (AI) have been installed at train stations in major cities to assess body temperatures and identify anyone with a fever. Facial recognition cameras and cell phone carriers track people’s movements constantly, reporting in real time to data centers that can be accessed by government agents and employers alike. And coded color alerts (red, yellow and green) sort people into health categories that correspond to the amount of freedom of movement they’re allowed: “Green code, travel freely. Red or yellow, report immediately.”

Mind you, prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese surveillance state had already been hard at work tracking its citizens through the use of some 200 million security cameras installed nationwide. Equipped with facial recognition technology, the cameras allow authorities to track so-called criminal acts, such as jaywalking, which factor into a person’s social credit score.

Social media credit scores assigned to Chinese individuals and businesses categorize them on whether or not they are “good” citizens. A real-name system—which requires people to use government-issued ID cards to buy mobile sims, obtain social media accounts, take a train, board a plane, or even buy groceries—coupled with social media credit scores ensures that those blacklisted as “unworthy” are banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train. Among the activities that can get you labeled unworthy are taking reserved seats on trains or causing trouble in hospitals.

That same social credit score technology used to identify, track and segregate citizens is now one of China’s chief weapons in its fight to contain the coronavirus from spreading. However, it is far from infallible and a prime example of the difficulties involved in navigating an autonomous system where disembodied AI systems call the shots. For instance, one woman, who has no symptoms of the virus but was assigned a red code based on a visit to her hometown, has been blocked from returning to her home and job until her color code changes. She has been stuck in this state of limbo for weeks with no means of challenging the color code or knowing exactly why she’s been assigned a red code.

Fighting the coronavirus epidemic has given China the perfect excuse for unleashing the full force of its surveillance and data collection powers. The problem, as Eamon Barrett acknowledges in Fortune magazine, is what happens after: “Once the outbreak is controlled, it’s unclear whether the government will retract its new powers.”

The lesson for the ages: once any government is allowed to expand its powers, it’s almost impossible to pull back.

Read the entire article HERE.

Loss In Key State Delivers Serious Blow To Bernie’s Socialist Revolution

Via Trending Politics

There is no way for socialist Bernie Sanders to spin Super Tuesday as anything other than a complete disaster.

The former front-runner was bushwhacked throughout the south with the devastating blow coming when the state of Texas was called in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Sanders had made significant inroads in the Lone Star State, especially with Latinos who were supportive of the candidate’s open borders policy proposals.

But the runaway express of Bernie’s presidential bid was derailed when he narrowly lost what was arguably the biggest prize of the night.

It was only last week when the Vermont socialist and his angry mob appeared to be an unstoppable force with some predicting a sweep of the states voting yesterday but then a curious thing happened.

The media and DNC resurrected the zombie campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden and with a coordinated effort, have stalled Bernie’s socialist revolution – at least for the time being.

The narrow loss in Texas capped a dismal night for Sanders as the youthful ignoramuses who he has crafted his appeal to didn’t turn out to vote and the DNC intervened early to put its thumb on the scale for Biden.

Bernie did win his home state of Vermont and the socialist republic of California as well as Colorado but he was wiped off the map in the south and suffered another blow with a loss in Massachusetts, a state that he appeared to have in the bag.

Sanders supporters would be justified if they had a queasy feeling of deja vu in watching it all go down after Hillary’s cronies at the DNC sabotaged him in 2016.

Read the entire article HERE.

New BBC TV Drama Portrays Blacks Enslaving Whites

Via Big League Politics

Summit News reported on a new BBC drama based in London which depicts a “dystopian” alternate reality where blacks are slave masters and whites are their slaves.

The show, Noughts & Crosses, stars a polemical “woke” rapper Stormzy and is based on a series of novels authored by Malorie Blackman.

The plot involves “an alternative history in which African people had gained a technological and organizational advantage over the European people, rather than the other way around.”

According to the story, slavery has been abolished but segregation stays in effect, with crosses (people of a darker complexion) being prohibited from having romantic relationships with noughts (people of a lighter complexion).

The white characters serve the black characters, while the former has their names mispronounced and the band aids are colored brown.

“At this point why don’t Netflix and the BBC and all the other leftist media outlets simply make a film or series called ”we hate white people”. It would be so much more honest,” one person commented on YouTube.

The show’s trailer portrays white people as angry mobs of violent young men.

“The things he [Callum] goes through particularly in school happened to me, like asking my teachers where the black scientists were on the curriculum and being told there weren’t any,” stated Blackman. “Or my first time in first class on a train and being accused of stealing the ticket.”

While operating under the banner of “diversity,” the show intends to foster resentment between whites and minorities.

Read the entire article HERE.

Don’t Be A Bigot! Let The Coronavirus In!

Via American Greatness

Globalists think that open borders make the world a better and safer place. Coronavirus shows the exact opposite. Western leaders need to learn this before it’s too late.

The Centers for Disease Control warned America Tuesday that coronavirus will likely hit our country hard. This news comes after weeks of the media telling us that the flu is worse than the virus.

Now that the virus is clearly a bigger threat than the flu, liberals have decided to worry about the spread of something far worse than a deadly disease. Racism.

Dozens of articles have appeared to denounce Westerners wanting to ban Chinese travel to their countries. To liberals (and Chinese officials), it’s unthinkable to keep out people who may carry the virus. In their opinion, the real tragedy would not be thousands of Westerners dying but rather giving up on globalism and mass immigration in response to a deadly global pandemic.

One easy response to the outbreak is to close the borders to Chinese nationals. Russia did this after the virus began to spread and it has only experienced two cases of the disease. Both of the coronavirus carriers were Chinese who now reportedly have recovered. Several other countries, including Australia and New Zealand, also have imposed travel bans on China. But Western journalists say the bans are a very bad idea.

The Guardian shrieks this response leads to “xenophobia and racism,” so we must avoid it.

The New Republic declares “racist, right-wing isolationism favored by the Trump administration is as bad an answer to the coronavirus as it is to the climate crisis.”

The Economist bemoaned how the coronavirus “spreads racism” and more should be done to combat these prejudices.

Leftists and Chinese activists in Australia and New Zealand have demanded those countries lift the ban. They say the ban is a “racial panic” and discriminates against the Chinese community. “While we recognize the need to prioritize public health and safety, this travel ban is an unreasonable and unempathetic response,” New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations president Isabella Lenihan-Ikin said in a press statement. “It fails to consider the impact on international students and staff traveling from or through China, in light of minimal public health risk.”

The experts say coronavirus is not a minimal public health risk and dramatic efforts must be deployed to stem it. But New Zealand leftists think it’s far worse to inconvenience international students.

Left-wing journalists seem more focused on how to stop the epidemic of racial stereotypes.

Read the entire article HERE.

Study: Children Suffering From Nightmares, Eating Issues Over Climate Change Fears

Via The Daily Wire

A new study on “climate anxiety” found that famed child activist Greta Thunberg is not the only young person who has suffered from severe stress as a result of taking dire predictions about the planet by climate alarmists to heart.

“Climate anxiety: Survey for BBC Newsround shows children losing sleep over climate change and the environment,” the BBC Newsround report on its survey of 2,000 eight to sixteen-year-olds declares.

“Do you feel optimistic, worried or uncertain?” the report begins. “We at Newsround know young people are passionate about the environment, so we wanted to find out more about how you feel about climate change and what’s being done to tackle it. We also wanted to know how you felt about the impact changes to the environment could have on your future.”

Following that rather anxiety-promoting intro, Newsround highlights its survey’s findings, and, unsurprisingly, they’re packed with worry, frustration, concern, and fear.

Young people, Newsround explains, “are frustrated and anxious about what’s happening.” A majority (58%) of the 2,000 children Newsround interviewed told them that they were worried about the impact of global warming on their futures, and about one out of every five of them (19%) have even had nightmares about it.

Read the entire article HERE.

Ilhan Omar Withdraws Support From Bill To Save The Earth After Learning That’s Where Israel Is

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal hit a snag when it lost the support of another freshman representative, Ilhan Omar. Omar had been an enthusiastic supporter of the Green New Deal and wanted to save the earth, but then she noticed something very disturbing when looking at a map of the earth: Earth is the planet on which Israel resides.

“You’ve been hypnotized by the Jews!” Omar accused a surprised Ocasio-Cortez. Omar then ripped up a copy of the Green New Deal. “This is just a plot to help Israel keep existing! Did AIPAC pay you off?”

Ocasio-Cortez was very apologetic, saying she hadn’t considered how her plan would affect Israel. She then vowed to change her plan so it might save the whole planet except where Israel resides.

“This is, like, a learning process,” Ocasio-Cortez later told reporters. “When I made the Green New Deal, I thought weather like storms and earthquakes were all caused by climate change, but now I’ve learned from Representative Omar that lots of that is actually from Jewish-controlled weather machines. So for the next version of the Green New Deal we will have to keep that in mind.”

Check out all of the Bee’s great takes on politics and culture HERE.

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