patrick.net

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/does-the-cia-run-america-5639704

We’ve all surely had dark thoughts that the CIA is really running the United States, including many media venues. Maybe that’s been true for decades, and we just didn’t know it. If so, let’s just say that it would explain a tremendous amount of what has otherwise been clouded in secrecy.

How would this be possible? Knowledge is power, and secret knowledge is full control. Even fake knowledge means power and control, as we found out in the phony Russiagate investigation early in President Donald Trump’s term. They hounded the new administration for years under a completely fake scenario in which Russia somehow got President Trump elected.

Yes, that was an intelligence operation all along, one directly designed to overthrow an election, a “color revolution” on our own soil.

How dare an agency not elected by the people and evading oversight and public accountability put itself ahead of the Constitution and the rule of law? It has been going on for many decades as the agencies have gained ever more power, even to the point of forcing a full lockdown of the United States and even the world under a false pretense.

None of this is verifiable precisely because of the secrecy involved. It’s not as if the intelligence community is going to send out a press release: “Democracy in America is an illusion. We know because we control nearly everything, plus we aspire to control even more.”

The incredulous among us will shoot back: Look at what you are saying! Your conspiracy theory is non-falsifiable. The less evidence you have for it, the more you believe it. How in the world can we argue with you? Your position is not really plausible, but there is nothing we can do to convince you otherwise.

Let’s grant the point. Still, let’s not dismiss the theory completely. Based on a New York Times piece that appeared last week, it contains more than a grain of truth. The article is titled “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course.”
“Even as president, Donald J. Trump flaunted his animosity for intelligence officials, portraying them as part of a politicized ‘deep state’ out to get him,” the article reads. “And since he left office, that distrust has grown into outright hostility, with potentially serious implications for national security should he be elected again.”

Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is?

Further, it has been proven many times over that the deep state is in fact out to get him. This is not even controversial. Indeed, there is no reason for these journalists to write the above as if President Trump is somehow consumed by some kind of baseless paranoia.

Let’s keep going here.

“Trump is now on a possible collision course with the intelligence community. ... The result is a complicated and possibly destabilizing situation the United States has never seen before: deep-seated suspicion and disdain on the part of a former and perhaps future president toward the very people he would be relying on for the most sensitive information he would need to perform his role if elected again,” the article reads.

Wait just a moment. You are telling us that all previous presidents have had a happy relationship with the CIA? That’s rather interesting to know. And deeply troubling too, since the CIA has been managing regime change the world over for a very long time and is now directly involved in U.S. politics at the most intimate level.

Any president worth his salt should absolutely have a hostile relationship with such an agency, if only to establish clear civilian control over the government, without which it’s not possible to say that we live in a constitutional republic.

And now, according to the NY Times, we have one seeking the presidency who does not defer to the agency and this is destabilizing and deeply problematic. Who does that suggest really rules this country?

Is the NY Times itself guilty of the most extreme conspiracy theory imaginable, or is it just stating facts as we know them? I’m going to guess that it is the latter. In this case, every single American should be deeply alarmed.

Crazy huh? As for the phrase “never seen before,” we have to push back. What about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Calvin Coolidge? They were all previous presidents, according to the history books that people once read.

There was no CIA back then. If you doubt this, I’m pretty sure that your favorite AI engine will confirm it.

One must suppose that when the NY Times says “never seen before,” it means in the post-war period. And that very well might be true. John F. Kennedy defied them. We know that for certain. The mysteries surrounding his murder won’t be solved fully until we get the documents. But the consensus is growing that this murder was really a coup by the CIA, a message sent as a lesson to every successor in that office.

Think of that: We live in a country today where most people readily admit that the CIA probably killed the president. Amazing.

It’s intriguing to know at this late date that the Watergate “scandal” was not what it appeared to be, namely an intrepid media holding government to account. Even astute observers at the time believed the mainstream narrative. Now we have plenty of evidence that this too was nothing but a deep state attack on a president who had lost patience with it and provoked another coup.

All credit to my brilliant father who speculated along these lines at the time. I was very young with only the vaguest clue about what was happening. But I recall very well that he was convinced that Richard Nixon was set up in a trap and unfairly hounded out of office not for the bad things he was doing but for standing up to the deep state.

If my own father, not a particularly political person, knew this for certain at the time, this must have been a strong perception even then.

You hear the rap that these agencies—the CIA is one, but there are many adjacent others—are not allowed by law to intervene in domestic politics. At this point and after so much experience, this comes across to me like something of a joke. We know from vast evidence and personal testimony that the CIA has been manipulating political figures, narratives, and outcomes for a very long time.

How involved is the CIA in journalism today? Well, you might suppose that as a traditionally liberal paper, the NY Times itself would be highly skeptical of the CIA. But these days, they have published a long string of aggressively defensive articles with titles such as “It Turns Out that the Deep State Is Awesome” and “Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe.” We can add this last piece to the list.

So let’s just say it: The NY Times is CIA. So too are Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Slate, Salon, and many other mainstream publications, including major tech companies such as Google and Microsoft. The tentacles are everywhere and ever more obvious. Operation Mockingbird was just the beginning. The network is everywhere, and the practice of manipulating the news is wholly normalized.

Once you start developing the ability to see the markings, you simply cannot unsee them, which is why people who think and write about this can come across as crackpot crazy after a while.

Have you considered that maybe the crackpots are exactly right? If so, shouldn’t we, at bare minimum, seek to support a presidential candidate with a hostile relationship with the intelligence community?

Indeed, that ought to be a bare minimum standard of qualification. There is simply no way we can restore civilian control of government and constitutional government until this agency can be thoroughly reined in or abolished completely.

Patrick says

To set the table, allow me to show you just how far we’ve come: you can now rent protestors right on the Internet. Behold “Crowds on Demand:”

I've linked to Zionist groups doing exactly this. Certainly could be done for the other side as well, just saying we only have proof of one side doing it.

Missing central banks and Satanists, either can be the queen, not much difference...

Patrick says

Patrick says

We’ve all surely had dark thoughts that the CIA is really running the United States

Re-reading The Franklin Cover-Up, I didn't realize how clearly the CIA was linked to the SnL collapse. Ostensibly you have the Contras, but I think the cocaine and money laundering were equally about reducing America to 3rd world status, a long time objective of the deep state.

NuttBoxer says

I think the cocaine and money laundering were equally about reducing America to 3rd world status, a long time objective of the deep state.

EXACTLY! Uncorruptible government has no use for a CIA, NSA, or FBI. All these agencies are set up to manage corruption, not eliminate it. More specifically, they are levers to multiply honeypot/personal corruption for deep state advantage.

https://slaynews.com/news/intelligence-official-exposes-cia-coup-against-trump-undercover-video/

A U.S. intelligence official has been caught in an undercover sting operation, in which he’s filmed exposing a coup against President Donald Trump that’s being run by the upper echelons of the CIA.

The undercover video, from O’Keefe Media Group (OMG), features Amjad Anton Fseisi – a project manager for cyber operations at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA).

During the sting, Fseisi even waves his Green Badge ID in front of the camera to reveal he has high-level intelligence community security clearance credentials which are illegal to possess by anyone not officially employed by the CIA or NSA.

In the video, Fseisi details an illegal plot by the intelligence community to undermine and spy on Trump.

He says that, during Trump’s presidency, top intelligence officials, including then-CIA Directors Gina Haspel and Mike Pompeo, intentionally hid information from Trump.

According to Fseisi, intelligence officials claimed Trump would pass the information to Russia.

He also revealed that intelligence officials have been spying on Trump and continued to do so after he left office. ...

“The footage supports earlier reports by investigative journalists that the American intelligence community ran an illegal spy operation against Trump’s 2016 campaign, which led to the FBI’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ probe and Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion, which found no evidence.”

Patrick says

During the sting, Fseisi even waves his Green Badge ID in front of the camera to reveal he has high-level intelligence community security clearance credentials which are illegal to possess by anyone not officially employed by the CIA or NSA.

The funny part was the CIA saying he can't be a contractor because he doesn't have a green badge, while he is showing his in the video.

The_Deplorable says

And it was always the Old Yankees Reprobates from Calvinism, the same ones (Chase, Morgan) who gave us the Fed.

Check out Alan Dulles.

Never forget the real reason McCarthy was kneecapped politically - he went after a Boston Brahmin heir in a high position.

AmericanKulak says

it was always the Old Yankees

And I get the impression that now the Old Yankees have decided to exclude the Jews from their cabal.

https://palexander.substack.com/p/how-did-we-get-here-edward-bernays

Unless otherwise noted, page numbers refer to the 2004 Ig Publishing edition, ISBN 0970312598 (The text begins on p. 35, after an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller.)

On Propaganda:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

p. 37

In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons [...] who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

p. 37–38

In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered to him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed.

p. 39

Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

p. 48

Who are the men, who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities .. about immigration who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve at our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?

p.59

The new profession of public relations has grown up because of the increasing complexity of modern life and the consequent necessity for making the actions of one part of the public understandable to other sectors of the public. It is due, too, to the increasing dependence of organized power of all sorts upon public opinion. Governments, whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist, depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence. Industries, public utilities, educational movements, indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public opinion. Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts.
The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with modern media of communications and the group formations of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public.

p. 63

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?

Page 71 (1928 edition?)

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.

Page 73 (1928 edition)

But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences. Not many years ago, it was only necessary to tag a political candidate with the word interests to stampede millions of people into voting against him, because anything associated with "the interests" seemed necessary corrupt. Recently the word Bolshevik has performed a similar service for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of action.
By playing upon a old cliché, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass group emotions.

Page 74

It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself...This general principle, that men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual psychology...Human desires are the steam which makes the social machine work. Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that cast, loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society.

Page 75 as quoted in Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism edited by Mark P. Leone, Jocelyn E. Knauf, p.40

While, under the handicraft of small-unit system of production was that typical a century ago, demand created the supply, today supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand. A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable. This entails a vastly more complex system of distribution than formerly.

Page 84

No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.

Page 109

One reason, perhaps, why the politician today is slow to take up methods which are a commonplace in business life is that he has such ready entry to the media of communication on which his power depends.
The newspaperman looks to him for news. And by his power of giving or withholding information the politician can often effectively censor political news. But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.

Page 120

Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.

Page 123

On public opinion:

When Napoleon said, 'Circumstance? I make circumstance‚' he expressed very nearly the spirit of the public relations counsel's work.

p. 51

Domination to-day is not a product of armies or navies or wealth or policies. It is a domination based on the one hand upon accomplished unity, and on the other hand upon the fact that opposition is generally characterized by a high degree of disunity.

p. 133

Let us assume that our problem is the intensification in the public mind of the prestige of a hotel. The problem for the public relations counsel is to create in the public mind the close relationship between the hotel and a number of ideas that represent the things the hotel desires to stand for in the public mind.

p. 168

The public relations counsel, therefore, is a creator of news for whatever medium he chooses to transmit ideas. It is his duty to create news no matter what the medium which broadcasts this news.

p. 171

The only difference between "propaganda" and "education," really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don't believe in is propaganda.

p. 212

Patrick says

And I get the impression that now the Old Yankees have decided to exclude the Jews from their cabal.

Possibly. Is it Scapegoat time? "It wasn't I the King who started and lost the war/spent the money on a huge vanity project. Blame my Tax Farmers!"

Another point of connection: Dr. John Money was raised extremely strictly in a super dogmatic Church and rebelled (though he himself may have been molested... the old Pervert Pipeline, sadly)

Patrick says

https://palexander.substack.com/p/how-did-we-get-here-edward-bernays

If you haven't already, read Propaganda by Edward Bernays.

https://archive.org/details/propaganda-edward-l.-bernays/mode/2up

His argument is that the masses will be controlled regardless, so people may as well take up the mantle and control them - but ethically - in that book. Bernays though became entirely evil later. He's the bastard that setup the propaganda for the overthrow of Iran (Operation Ajax) and the overthrow of Guatemala (Operation PBSuccess).

We repeat this bullshit all the time, and nobody sees it, because nobody knows about those 2, very well documented, coups. Every fucking coup the US does, leads to a shitload of bloodshed, every one, and then years of animosity.

Bernays was certainly, unquestionably, the nephew of Sigmund Freud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

He worked for dozens of major American corporations, including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and nonprofit organizations. His uncle was psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

There's no question or "alleged" about it. He used his uncle's work to manipulate the public, much to Freud's dismay. Total psychopath.

We have a bit of fortune that only total morons will do propaganda, but we have the misfortune that complete total morons inhabit our nation. Idiots control our nation, the dumbest of the dumb. It's stupid people driving even stupider people, that drag the rest of us along, and there's no escaping the herd. Most of you can see this with the "covid pandemic", but before that - Assad gassed his own people, Qaddafi was about to cause a humanitarian crisis, Hussein was working on weapons of mass destruction, and we couldn't wait for the final proof to come in the form a mushroom cloud. Lately, Russia hacked our election, Putin attacked Ukraine for no reason at all.

These are propaganda slogans - marketing. Edward Bernays book is about marketing. He marketed products to start with, then he marketed wars. They realized they only need the stupidest of us to support a war to make a war so our propagandists suck - they hire sociopathic morons slightly smarter than the average American which is merely a moron, but not sociopathic. They can't fool me, and if they fool the rest of you... That's impressive to me.

But I have that nagging question - is everybody around me an uneducated idiot, or are they sociopaths? I can't tell. How can they not see this? Over and over again they are "tricked". Are they tricked?

richwicks says

His argument is that the masses will be controlled regardless, so people may as well take up the mantle and control them - but ethically - in that book.

Ethical control is an oxymoron. Only people with god complexes talk like that.

NuttBoxer says

richwicks says

His argument is that the masses will be controlled regardless, so people may as well take up the mantle and control them - but ethically - in that book.

Ethical control is an oxymoron. Only people with god complexes talk like that.

Bernays probably single handedly did more to damage this nation than any other person

If you understand what he did with Operation Ajax alone, it really was Bernays that created modern day Islamic terrorism which we deal with today.

Bernays is the one man I really do hope burns in hell.

Coneheads know best because they can read your mind. What about 'chronic Pharaonic' didn't you understand? They don't need your stinkin' votes.
Patrick says

https://notthebee.com/article/blm-lawsuit-group-funding-anti-israel-college-protests-fraud-33-million-withholding

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is suing the Tides Foundation, a progressive nonprofit, for $33 million.

Apparently, Tides - a Los Angeles-San Francisco-based nonprofit - has been dishing out cash to anti-Israel protest groups on campuses, but they're getting called out for some other shady business.

The lawsuit, which is a whopping 285 pages, alleges that Tides held onto over $33 million in donations meant for the radical BLM breakaway group run by anti-police activist Melina Abdullah and is accused of straight-up fraud.

Why is there always fraud wherever and whenever BLM is involved?

The lawsuit was filed on Monday at the California Superior Court, Los Angeles County. ...

Infamous billionaires George Soros and his son Alex have pumped almost $14 million from their Open Society Foundations into Tides. Tides then uses this money to back activist groups like the pro-Palestinian Adalah Justice Project and others that are stirring up protests on college campuses.

According to the lawsuit, Tides has over $1.4 billion in assets and supposedly operates like a bank, except it's not held to banking regulations.

Lol, it would be great if BLM would fight the pro-Hamas groups.

https://substack.com/@tobyrogers/note/c-56169322

Toby Rogers
uTobian

Imagine that you have $10,000 to invest. You put it into savings or the stock market and hope for the best.

But what if you have $100,000,000,000 to invest? You already own the banks and you already own the best companies listed on the stock exchange. You also already own the politicians. You’ve squeezed as much profit as you can from this system but you still want larger rates of return. So you go looking for insane grifts — pandemics, chronic disease, vaccines, wars/rebuilding, and climate.

That’s the essence of the problem right there.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1790271559329788372

https://winteroak.org.uk/2024/05/15/power-and-corruption-the-public-private-imperial-mafia/

Chatham House, the name commonly given to The Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an extremely influential “think tank” based in London.

It has enjoyed the patronage of the British monarchy for a century now, with Charles III recently joining the list of royal backers. ...

Readers of the “insider” US historian Professor Carroll Quigley will know that he identified Chatham House as the most important vehicle for the public-private Anglo-American Establishment that he saw dominating the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic.

It was formally established in 1920, gaining its Royal charter in 1926, and a sister organisation, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), was set up in the USA. ...

Quigley refers to the movers and shakers behind these organisations as the “Milner Group”, because of the key role of journalist turned civil servant Alfred Milner (pictured), which seems to have begun after a dinner with Lord Rothschild in 1891.

Quigley relates that Milner later found lucrative employment as “confidential adviser to certain international financiers in London’s financial district”.

He became a member of the board of the London Joint Stock Bank (later the Midland Bank), a director of the Mortgage Company of Egypt and of the Bank of British West Africa, and chairman of the Rothschilds’ Rio Tinto Co.

While Chatham House pretends to be “independent”, Quigley stresses that this is not at all so and warns of the sinister implications of its true function.

“The Milner Group controls the Institute. Once that is established, the picture changes. The influence of Chatham House appears in its true perspective, not as the influence of an autonomous body but as merely one of many instruments in the arsenal of another power.

“When the influence which the Institute wields is combined with that controlled by the Milner Group in other fields – in education, in administration, in newspapers and periodicals – a really terrifying picture begins to emerge…

“The picture is terrifying because such power, whatever the goals at which it may be directed, is too much to be entrusted safely to any group…

Manningham-Buller was also a member of the Board of Governors of the Wellcome Trust from 2008 to 2021 and chair of the Wellcome Trust’s Board of Governors from 2015 to 2021.

This British “charity” is closely linked to Big Pharma and its Covid “vaccines”.

Manningham-Buller was – needless to say! – an enthusiastic supporter of the full range of Covid-pretexted propaganda and restrictions.

She wrote the foreword to a 2022 report on the work of the Emergency, Preparedness and Response Health Protection Research Unit (EPR HPRU) at King’s College London, in partnership with the UK Health Security Agency, which focused on the use of “behavioural science” during the Covid period.

And she declared: “If anyone had any doubt about the critical importance of behavioural science, those doubts should have been roundly dispelled by the urgent and compelling need for it during the pandemic.

“When asked to chair the Advisory Board of the unit, I accepted at once, partly because of my own background in MI5 – where our in-house behavioural science unit had proved invaluable over many decades – and partly because of what I saw of the discipline during my dozen years at the Wellcome Trust”.

Manningham-Buller enthused: “In its work on Covid-19 the unit has demonstrated how important and necessary it is. ...

Add all those people to the list of those to be tried and hanged for crimes against humanity, in particular their campaign and psychological manipulation to get everyone injected withe very dangerous "vaccine".

NuttBoxer says

Here is the full quote in context originally published in the daily telegraph bulletin in New York City in 1962. His prediction is actually pretty prescient even if his dates are off a bit, and it is clear that he is in fact a new world order globalist.

“Gradual democratization of the Soviet Union and the abolition of wars by 1987 is predicted by Israel Premier David Ben-Gurion in a statement published in the current issue of Look magazine which carries a number of interviews on the world outlook 25 years from now. Mr. Ben-Gurion’s statement reads:

“The image of the world in 1987 as traced in my imagination: The Cold War will be a thing of the past. Internal pressure of the constantly growing intelligentsia in Russia for more freedom and the pressure of the masses for raising their living standards may lead to a gradual democratization of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the increasing influence of the workers and farmers, and the rising political importance of men of science, may transform the United States into a welfare state with a planned economy.

“Western and Eastern Europe will become a federation of autonomous states having a Socialist and democratic regime. With the exception of the USSR as a federated Eurasian state, ail other continents will become united in a world alliance, at whose disposal will be an international police force. All armies will be abolished, and there will be no more wars.

“In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly United Nations) will build a Shrine of the Prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah. Higher education will be the right of every person in the world. A pill to prevent pregnancy will slow down the explosive natural increase in China and India, And by 1987, the average life-span of man will reach 100 years.”

Sounds like a fairly pedestrian Utopian dream, with some nationalistic narcissistic tendencies with NATOesque overtones.

So, when exactly did the elimination of 95 percent of humanity, turning the non elites into AI controlled slave robots, enter the scene?

Seems like Albert Pike and the Masonic Illuminatis wanted the stimulation of the Great Armageddon of the three major Abrahamic religions destroying each other so horribly, the New World Order one world government would evolve from the threat of hostis humani generis. Of course, this would be the dynastic ruling elites at the top and the slave class everybody else. Also, he considered it was the job of the Illuminati to provoke and plan this Armageddon, which apparently they have.