14 Dec 2020

91 posts

California as Ground Zero for Cultural Change — What the Heck Happened?

It was, at one time, established fact, or at least commonly held
opinion that “Everything starts in California.” That would
include hula hoops, freeways, the internet, hippies, and—for
those who remember this still—the Free Speech movement.

In 1964, Mario Savio stood on the steps of Sproul Hall at UC
Berkeley and made a short speech, which has resonated through the
decades:

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so
odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You
can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your
bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon
all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve
got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it,
that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from
working at all!

That speech, according to some pundits, marked the birth of the
counterculture. What followed then—the Free Speech Movement, the
protests against the Vietnam War, the LSD culture, Angela Davis and
the Black Panthers, even the Symbionese Liberation Party–all
began in California.

Berkeley today is quiet. Dead, almost. The soap boxers of the
’60s, the shirtless young men throwing frisbees in Sproul Plaza
on a Spring Day, the leafletters, all seem to have gone the way of
psychedelia and tie dye t-shirts.

The political climate in California has also done a 180. And
nothing portrays that more clearly than the general subservience to
the mainstream mandates about Covid.

California is a special case. It has a history as a trendsetter
and as a hotbed of innovation. However, the California of today
bears little resemblance to the maverick of yore. One might go as
far as to say that California has been brought into the fold.

Before I plunge into a dissection of “What the heck happened
to California,” I should say that I was born in California. I
attended UC Berkeley as well, years after Mario Savio but during
years of protest and civil disobedience. And the generalizations
made here that Californians have become unquestioning and compliant
certainly do not apply to everyone in California. However, the
general impression is that California is deeply committed to the
“official narrative.”

Growing up Californian

Back when I was growing up, the Democratic Party was considered
to be the party of the people. Growing up in a Democratic
household, we looked askance and with suspicion at the Republican
party, considering it to be the Money Party and the party of
warmongers, corporate CEOs and hawks. But as protest movements
become folded into established policies and parties, so the
Democrats became more and more mainstream and less and less like a
clear alternative to the monied guys across the aisle. Today, the
only stark difference between the two parties is that one proposes
totalitarian government rule and the other advances a
corporatocracy.

And California, wild and crazy California, a stronghold of the
Democratic Party, morphed into a bastion of values that are
actually more consonant with a government-run totalitarian system
than with the well being of those living under the system.

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California was one of the first states to pass an Assisted
Suicide law, which many view as a thin cover for a eugenics agenda.
The atrocities of California’s guardianship system produced one
of the first (faux) exposés of its probate courts, prompting the
California legislature to pass a package of new laws, which
parenthetically have made no difference whatsoever.

Sssh! Apparently the venerable LA Times hasn’t figured this
out yet. It was the Times’ series back in 2005
When a Family Matter Turns Into a Business which prompted the
legislative action. Specifically, the new laws called for the
creation of a “Professional Fiduciaries Bureau,” ostensibly to
oversee the actions of conservators (most states call them
“guardians”) for the elderly and disabled. As has been the case
in other states which have established similar bureaus, the PFB
serves the interests of the conservators and has actively covered
up their crimes.

One of the lead reporters on the Times’ series, Jack Leonard,
replied to information that the new laws were worthless by saying,
“We aren’t covering this any more.”

Has California Been Chemically Altered?

One explanation for the change in California — and
Californians — is that they may have been chemically
lobotomized.

California has extensively
fluoridated most of its water systems, from San Diego to
Sonoma. Fluoride is known to cause docility in those who imbibe
it.

Checking the statistics on which state consumes the most
antidepressant medications (which often contain fluoride) did not
yield much information pointing to a dedicated distribution of
these drugs specifically in California. According to Statista,

7.4% of Californians are on antidepressant medication.

Checking for the consumption of anti-anxiety drugs, we find that
California scores
somewhat higher on the list of states. We were unable to locate
statistics for the consumption of anti-psychotics per state.
Atypical anti-psychotics, also known as neuroleptics, have a long
history of inhibiting “unacceptable” behaviors.

Several years ago, a former DEA agent
confided to me that a behavior modification experiment was done
in Northern California, involving the release of an aerosol agent
designed to affect heterosexual bonding behavior. According to this
agent, the result was the mass “gayification” of San
Francisco.

Were other behavior modification experiments run on Californians?

Many of these aerosol projects have since been declassified, in
the wake of the largely useless Church and Pike hearings of the
’70s, which were intended to bring to light and to terminate
secret CIA experiments on populations. While many projects were
subsequently declassified, apparently not all were. It has become
apparent through the reports of targeted individuals and of
whistleblowers, such as Dr. Robert Duncan and Bill Binney, that
these experiments did not in fact end, but simply became more
swaddled in secrecy. This reporter stumbled upon an active human
experimentation program on a “secret” ward at UCLA
Neuropsychiatric Hospital up and running into the early 2000s, if
not later. The subjects of the brain electricity experiments on
A-South, in which patients were subjected to not only large numbers
of shock treatments but also were forced to take “medications”
which caused seizure activity, were mental patients who were on
state aid.

While UCLA continues to deny that ward A-South even existed,
this reporter has ascertained that a Dr. Barry Guze was the head of
the ward and that a Dr. Derek Ott did his residency on the ward at
the time the project was in full swing.

This interest in the scientific modification of citizens was
sparked by an announcements made recently by some scientists,
suggesting that what amounts to “chemical persuasion” be
considered to motivate people to
adhere to state mandates re coronavirus.

Given now that some polls show
half of the population is reluctant to take the Covid vaccine,
and given that Trump’s recent Executive Order mandates that the
vaccine
remain optional, it is important to note that the Pentagon
recently hinted that the jab may be made mandatory.

Signs of Life

A recent protest in front of the home of the head of the LA
County Department of Health, Barbara Ferrer, was reported by CNBC
to have drawn about fifty protesters.

In Long Beach, the numbers protesting at Long Beach City Hall
were reported as “over thirty” by the Long Beach Press
Telegram. Hundreds were reported as recently gathering in
Huntington Beach to protest, which was
downscaled by ABC news to “dozens.”

A protest in California’s capital, Sacramento, piggybacked on
election count concerns and was reported as being joined by a

“hate group.”

In response to the furor over the first wave of lockdowns,
California Governor Gavin Newsom
banned protests at the capitol building in April.

As of December 3, 2020, Governor Newsom has issued orders for

another lockdown, citing an uptick in Covid statistics.

Northern California, which includes Berkeley and San Francisco,
has largely been reported as acquiescing to lockdown protocols.
However, the recent lockdown mandate sparked
protests in Marin County.

It has been said that
“As Goes California, So Goes the Country.” The
manifestation of solid conformity to government mandates is not a
healthy sign for the state of the union. It is, however, a sign
that needs to be recognized, analyzed and understood.

Image caption and credit: Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley
Free Speech Movement, speaks to assembled students on the campus at
the University of California, Berkeley, on Dec. 7, 1964. Robert W.
Klein/AP –
NPR

Janet Phelan is an investigative journalist and author of the
groundbreaking exposé,
EXILE. Her articles previously appeared in such mainstream
venues as the Los Angeles Times, Orange Coast Magazine, Long Beach
Press Telegram, etc. In 2004, Janet “jumped ship” and now
exclusively writes for independent media. She is also the author of
two collections of poetry—The Hitler Poems and Held Captive. She
resides abroad. You are invited to support her work on Buy Me A
Coffee here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/JanetPhelan