What occurred at the United States Capitol last week was surely reprehensible, but to my mind the real enduring damage that was done to our form of government took place in a basement in Wilmington Delaware where president-designate Joe Biden was putting together some of the final pieces of his foreign policy and national security team.

Hopes that the Democrats would accommodate their progressive wing to some extent by backing off of the aggressive “American first” policies pursued by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo were extinguished with the elevation of Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland to the number two and three senior positions at the State Department, to back up Secretary of State designate Tony Blinken.

Nuland is perhaps the surprise appointment as she famously was the Obama Administration’s regime change monster when she served as Assistant Secretary of State. She was the prime mover of the blatantly interventionist policy in Ukraine, featuring herself and Senator John McCain sauntering around Kiev’s Maidan Square handing out cookies to rioters. Thousands died when political turmoil over a contested election turned into an out-and-out coup complete with mystery riflemen shooting into the mobs to energize them.

The regime change was funded by $5 billion courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer and it also riled Russia, which shares an extensive border and economic links with Ukraine. The coup was, by the way, intended to replaced a Russia-friendly head of state with someone who was not so inclined. Astonishingly, the Kremlin was able to figure that out and responded by resuming possession of the Crimea, which was largely populated by Russians.

Nuland became best known after the fact when she was foolish enough to speak on an unencrypted cell phone in a discussion relating to whom the United States would install to run post-coup Ukraine. When her interlocutor objected that the European Union might want to have some say, perhaps as a mediator, in how Ukrainian politics might play out, she responded “Fuck the E.U.,” which might be regarded as Diplomacy 101 neocon style.

Victoria Nuland has been active in the government to private sector revolving door since Obama departed the White House, giving interviews and writing op-eds critical of the Trump State Department and of the policies being promoted. She has been CEO of the neocon Center for a New American Security, held a revolving door sinecure at the Boston Consulting Group and another at the Albright Stonebridge Group. Apparently her record of being seriously wrong in foreign policy has only served to improve her resume in Washington’s hawkish foreign policy establishment. Her return to power might also be due to the profile of her husband Robert, who was one of the first neocons to get on the NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump.

Image on the right: Under Secretary Sherman meets with Yossi Cohen, National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel, at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on February 18, 2015. (Public Domain)

Wendy Sherman is less well known. She has been nominated to become the Deputy Secretary of State. She is currently a Senior Counselor also at the Albright Stonebridge Group and a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is regarded as a protégé of the Clintons and in particular of ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, she of 500,000 dead Iraqi children was “worth it” boast. Sherman knows Biden from having previously served in the Obama Administration as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the fourth-ranking official in State, from September 2011 to October 2015. During the Clinton Administration, she served as Counselor of the United States Department of State and Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State and North Korea Policy Coordinator. Under Obama she was the chief negotiator on the Iranian nuclear program. She was regarded as a hardliner, saying “We know that deception is part of the DNA” of Iranians and she was characteristically careful to brief the Israelis on everything that she was doing. The White House was intent on coming to an agreement nevertheless, which was signed in 2015 as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a pact which has since been rejected by Donald Trump and which Biden may or may not seek to resuscitate.

And then there is Tony Blinken, who apparently will be the boss of both Sherman and Nuland. Blinken is in some respects Israel’s lead man in Washington. He was a strong supporter of invading Iraq and even recommended partitioning the defeated nation into three parts. He was a supporter of destroying Libya and an architect of the anti-Syria policy pursued by Obama. In an interview in the Times of Israel Blinken confirmed Biden’s position on possibly reducing aid to Israel if the Jewish state were to do things that damaged U.S. interests. Blinken “…reiterated Biden’s position that he would not condition aid to Israel. He [Biden] is resolutely opposed to it. He would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions it makes, full stop.” Dennis Ross, often described as Israel’s lawyer, praises him for having “…an instinctive emotional attachment to Israel,” referring to Blinken’s frequently cited Jewish and refugee roots. It was an interesting unambiguous admission from Blinken that both he and Joe Biden put Israeli interests ahead of those of the United States.

Blinken’s personal view of unfettered support for Israel allegedly derives from his stepfather having claimed to be a survivor of the so-called holocaust, a tale that he invoked several times during his acceptance speech on November 24^th. The Timesinterview concluded with Blinken asserting that “One of the things that’s really shaped the vice president’s… career-long support for Israel and its security is the lesson of the Holocaust. He believes strongly that a secure Jewish homeland in Israel is the single best guarantee to ensure that never again will the Jewish people be threatened with destruction.”

The indefatigable Israel-firster Tony Blinken has also served as a “conduit” to those in government for Israel advocacy groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). And now that we have Tony Blinken as Secretary of State Designate the door will soon be even more wide open to the Israel Lobby than it was under Trump. And Nuland and Sherman, both of whom are also Jewish and ardent Zionists, will be along for the ride.

And outside of State, we have Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Haines is a former CIA and National Security Council (NSC) officer who was directly engaged in suppressing much of the classified report on the torture program run by the Agency out of secret prisons. She was instrumental in making sure that no CIA officers were punished for their war crimes and worked with Obama’s intelligence adviser John Brennan to enable the infamous drone program. When Haines was the NSC’s top lawyer, Brennan was the keeper of the so-called “kill list” of American citizens overseas that he and Obama would review every Tuesday morning. It was Haines who provided the legal authorizations to launch missile attacks from drones and she has never been held accountable for any of her decisions. There is little doubt that she will persist in her hardline views as DNI. Like Blinken, Nuland and Sherman she is also Jewish and it should be presumed her pro-Israel credentials are rock solid.

And then there is the boss himself, Joe Biden. He is a self-described Zionist who also is well on board the hate Russia express. In an interview published in the New Yorkerin July 2014 he is quoted as describing a 2011 meeting in Moscow with then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Biden claimed that “I had an interpreter, and when he was showing me his office I said, ‘It’s amazing what capitalism will do, won’t it? A magnificent office!’ And he laughed. As I turned, I was this close to him, I said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul’.” Pressed on whether the tale was true, Biden confirmed it, “absolutely, positively . . . And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said ‘We understand one another’.”

The story is, like so many others in the Biden Song Book an apparent fabrication, according to others who were on the same trip. The meeting never took place. Does Biden really believe it to be true? More important, does he frequently engage foreign leaders by first insulting them before looking into their eyes and discerning whether they have a soul or not?

The Trump Administration’s view of both Russia and China is unreservedly antagonistic, a stance that is likely to continue and even get worse with the Democrats in power. The two nations are currently regarded by policymakers in Washington as actual “enemies” and U.S. national defense strategy includes the government’s belligerent intention “To restore America’s competitive edge by blocking global rivals Russia and China from challenging the U.S. and our allies.” And on 25 October 2020, Biden made the point publicly, declaring that “the biggest threat to America right now in terms of breaking up security and our alliances is Russia.”

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

The Constitution is unclear on this issue.

Professor of Politics Keith Whittington argued as follows:

“Impeachments are to protect the republic from dangerous officeholders…” 

“(T)he ability to disqualify a former officer who has been demonstrated to have committed grave abuses of office in the past might be valuable.”

Not according to Law Professor Ross Garber arguing that constitutional language limits impeachment to current office holders, saying:

“Impeachment could only happen while Trump is in office, not after he leaves.”

Nothing in the Constitution permits impeachment of a former president. Yet nothing rules it out.

According to Findlaw.com:

If a former US president or other office holder was impeached and convicted by a Senate two-thirds super-majority, “it’s a near certainty that (his) person would take the case to the courts.”

“It’s also likely that the case would make its way to the Supreme Court, where justices would probably all be thinking about calling in sick for the next six months.”

The ostensible purpose of impeaching and convicting a former US president would be to prevent that person from holding office again — along with imposing maximum humiliation as a convicted felon, rightfully or wrongfully.

In 1876, House members impeached William Belknap, President Ulysses Grant’s war secretary — after he resigned from office.

A Senate trial months later failed to reach a required super-majority, Belknap thus acquitted.

Given an equally divided US Senate today with 50 Republicans and 50 Dems, if Trump is impeached as president or private citizen, conviction by Senate super-majority would seem highly unlikely.

Acquitting Trump would defeat the Pelosi/Schumer-led Dems from wanting him prevented from running again for president.

Humiliating him more than already would also be defeated, along with seeking to label him a convicted felon.

According to former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, Trump could be impeached based on the Belknap precedent.

Under the Constitution’s Article II, Section 4:

“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Law Professor Jonathan Turley argued that by “seeking (Trump’s) removal for incitement, (Dems) would gut not only the impeachment standard but also free speech, all in a mad rush to remove Trump just days before his term ends,” adding:

Dems want Trump removed for “his remarks to supporters” they falsely claim led to last Wednesday’s Capitol Hill violence.

“(His) address d(id) not meet the definition for incitement under the criminal code.”

“It would (or should) be viewed as protected speech by the Supreme Court.”

“Trump never…called for violence or riots” in his speech or tweets.

“(H)e urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to raise their opposition to the certification of electoral votes and to back the recent challenges made by a few members of Congress.”

He told the crowd of supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices be heard.”

His public remarks were willfully distorted by Dems and their media press agent.

Smelling blood in the water, they want Trump impeached as president or after his term expires.

Turley: “There was no call for lawless action by Trump.”

He “call(ed) for a legitimate protest at the Capitol.”

“(V)iolence was not imminent…”

“(T)he vast majority of (Capitol Hill) protesters were not violent before the march, and most did not riot inside the Capitol.”

“Like many violent protests in the last four years, criminal conduct was carried out by a smaller group of instigators.”

Undemocratic Dems want Trump impeached and removed from office “for remarks (permitted) by the First Amendment.”

“It would create precedent for the impeachment of any president (who rightfully or wrongfully is) blamed for violent acts of others…”

In 1918, Eugene Debs publicly opposed the WW I draft — his First Amendment right.

Yet he was wrongfully arrested, charged with sedition, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutional breach, what Turley called one of its most “infamous” rulings, adding:

Dems today “are now arguing something even more extreme as the basis for impeachment.”

“Under their theory, any president could be removed for rhetoric that is seen to have the (undefined) ‘natural tendency’ to encourage others to act in a riotous fashion.”

“Such a standard would allow for a type of vicarious impeachment that attributes conduct of third parties to any president for the purposes of removal.”

At the same time, Dems urged anti-Trump elements to publicly protest.

“(T)here needs to be unrest in the streets,” said Biden’s VP Kamala Harris, adding:

“(T)here needs to be unrest in the streets.”

“(P)rotesters should not let up” even when some marches turn violent.

The obvious double standard needs no elaboration.

According to Pelosi/Schumer-led Dems, Trump’s “guilt is not doubted and innocence is not deliberated,” said Turley.

“This would do to the Constitution what the violent rioters did to the Capitol and leave it in tatters.”

On Sunday, Pelosi said the following:

“If we do not receive unanimous consent” for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump, legislation (to do it will) be brought up (in the House on) the following day.”

“We are calling on (Mike Pence) to respond within 24 hours.”

“Next, we will proceed with bringing impeachment legislation to the floor” of the House.

With less than 10 days remaining in office, Pelosi defied reality, calling Trump “an imminent threat.”

Pence reportedly opposes invoking of the 25th Amendment.

Calls to his office by Pelosi and Schumer weren’t answered by staff, nor did Pence return them.

Removing Trump by invoking the 25th Amendment requires consent by the vice president and a majority of cabinet members.

According to Dem House Majority Whip James Clyburn:

“Let’s give…Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running, and maybe we’ll send the articles (of impeachment to the Senate) sometime after that.”

While in office or after his term expires, House impeachment and/or Senate conviction of Trump for constitutionally allowed speech would risk crossing a rubicon from what remains of the rule of law to tyranny.

Future presidents, other government elected and appointed officials — along with virtually Americans — could face a similar fate ahead by the unconstitutional standard called for by Pelosi and Schumer.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Trent’anni fa, nelle prime ore del 17 gennaio 1991, iniziava nel Golfo Persico l’operazione «Tempesta del deserto», la guerra contro l’Iraq che apriva la sequenza delle guerre del dopo guerra fredda. Essa viene lanciata dagli Usa e dai loro alleati nel momento in cui, dopo il crollo del Muro di Berlino, stanno per dissolversi il Patto di Varsavia e la stessa Unione Sovietica. Ciò crea una situazione geopolitica interamente nuova, e gli Usa tracciano una nuova strategia per trarne il massimo vantaggio. Negli anni Ottanta gli Usa hanno sostenuto l’Iraq di Saddam Hussein nella guerra contro l’Iran di Khomeini. Ma quando nel 1988 termina questa guerra, gli Usa temono che l’Iraq acquisti un ruolo preminente nella regione. Attuano quindi di nuovo la politica del «divide et impera».

Spingono il Kuwait a esigere l’immediato rimborso del credito concesso all’Iraq e a danneggiarlo sfruttando oltremisura il giacimento petrolifero che si estende sotto ambedue i territori. Washington fa credere a Baghdad di voler restare neutrale nel conflitto tra i due paesi ma, quando nel luglio 1990 truppe irachene invadono il Kuwait, forma una coalizione internazionale contro l’Iraq. Viene inviata nel Golfo una forza di 750 mila uomini, di cui il 70 per cento statunitensi, agli ordini del generale Usa Schwarzkopf. Per 43 giorni, dal 17 gennaio 1991, l’aviazione Usa e alleata effettua, con 2800 aerei, oltre 110 mila sortite, sganciando 250 mila bombe, comprese quelle a grappolo che rilasciano oltre 10 milioni di submunizioni. Partecipano ai bombardamenti, insieme a quelle statunitensi, forze aeree e navali britanniche, francesi, italiane, greche, spagnole, portoghesi, belghe, olandesi, danesi, norvegesi e canadesi. Il 23 febbraio le truppe della coalizione, comprendenti oltre mezzo milione di soldati, lanciano l’offensiva terrestre.

Essa termina il 28 febbraio con un «cessate-il-fuoco temporaneo» proclamato dal presidente Bush. Subito dopo la guerra del Golfo, Washington lancia ad avversari e alleati un inequivocabile messaggio: «Gli Stati uniti rimangono il solo Stato con una forza, una portata e un’influenza in ogni dimensione – politica, economica e militare – realmente globali. Non esiste alcun sostituto alla leadership americana» (Strategia della sicurezza nazionale degli Stati Uniti, agosto 1991). La guerra del Golfo è la prima guerra a cui partecipa sotto comando Usa la Repubblica italiana, violando l’articolo 11 della Costituzione. La Nato, pur non partecipandovi ufficialmente in quanto tale, mette a disposizione sue forze e basi. Pochi mesi dopo, nel novembre 1991, il Consiglio Atlantico vara, sulla scia della nuova strategia Usa, il «nuovo concetto strategico dell’Alleanza».

Nello stesso anno in Italia viene varato il «nuovo modello di difesa» che, stravolgendo la Costituzione, indica quale missione delle forze armate «la tutela degli interessi nazionali ovunque sia necessario». Nasce così con la guerra del Golfo la strategia che guida le successive guerre sotto comando Usa – Jugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Libia 2011, Siria 2011, e altre – presentate come «operazioni umanitarie per l’esportazione della democrazia». Quanto ciò corrisponda a verità lo testimoniano i milioni di morti, invalidi, orfani, rifugiati provocati dalla guerra del Golfo, quella che nell’agosto 1991 il presidente Bush definisce «il crogiolo del nuovo ordine mondiale». A questi si aggiungono un milione e mezzo di morti, tra cui mezzo milione di bambini, provocati in Iraq dai successivi 12 anni di embargo, più molti altri dovuti agli effetti a lungo termine dei proiettili a uranio impoverito usati massicciamente nella guerra. Dopo quella dell’embargo, la nuova strage provocata dalla seconda guerra all’Iraq lanciata nel 2003.

Nello stesso «crogiolo» vengono bruciati migliaia di miliardi di dollari spesi per la guerra: solo per la seconda all’Iraq, l’Ufficio congressuale del bilancio stima la spesa statunitense a lungo termine in circa 2000 miliardi di dollari. Tutto questo va tenuto presente quando, tra poco, qualcuno ci ricorderà sui grandi media il trentesimo anniversario della Guerra del Golfo, «il crogiolo del nuovo ordine mondiale».

Manlio Dinucci

Apresentados o período de formação e o panorama histórico em que viveu Mariátegui, vejamos agora alguns tópicos de sua interpretação histórica da questão nacional peruana e latino-americana, bem como os principais traços de sua filosofia política. 

Conforme já apontado, o pensamento mariateguiano tem o princípio da práxis como fundamento do materialismo-histórico: uma perspectiva “ativa” que o afasta tanto do “marxismo parlamentar” (passivo, pacifista) da Segunda Internacional (a Internacional Socialista); como também do “marxismo academicista”, marcadamente teórico, da corrente depois conhecida como marxismo ocidental (caso de certos representantes da dita Escola de Frankfurt, dentre outros) – intelectuais fechados no purismo dos debates acadêmicos, pouco comprometidos com a militância política concreta e trabalhos de base.

Por outro lado, o marxismo de Mariátegui tem na dialética outro princípio básico do pensamento começado por Marx e Engels, o que por sua vez o afasta de certas interpretações simplistas, afetadas pelo positivismo ou cientificismo moderno; por exemplo: o “evolucionismo social” (da Segunda Internacional), que “naturaliza” a evolução histórica humana; e as teorias “mecânicas”, que quiseram transplantar rigidamente modelos europeus para outras realidades completamente distintas, caso do “etapismo” e de outras proposições da Terceira Internacional (a Internacional Comunista, pela qual ele militou, mas sempre mantendo sua independência crítica). Para Mariátegui, na América – grandemente camponesa, indígena e mestiça –, o marxismo tem que promover um processo dialético entre os saberes da tradição e os da modernidade.

O marxismo de Mariátegui, em suma, se pauta pelos princípios dialético e de práxis, preservando deste modo o que se pode chamar realmente de “ortodoxia” no plano do materialismo-histórico:

– de práxis, pois não se basta em teorizações, mas tem por dever intervir no mundo, para a partir daí se repensar nesta nova realidade transformada;

– dialético, pois defende que a intervenção na realidade tem que se dar a partir da interpretação criteriosa de cada realidade, ação operada não segundo cópias de outras sociedades, mas sim mediante a orientação rigorosa da metodologia dialética (“bússola” que, ao observar as contradições universais e específicas do contexto histórico de cada povo, respalda-o na escolha de seus caminhos).

Retorno ao Peru: polêmicas com os reformistas

Em 1923, ao regressar do exílio, Mariátegui se encontra com Haya de la Torre, líder estudantil e político que o convida a participar das Universidades Populares González Prada, semente do que viria a ser a Aliança Popular Revolucionária Americana (APRA) – movimento político internacional de viés reformista. 

Ele faria ali duas dezenas de conferências de difusão do marxismo, nas quais apresenta sua visão de uma cena mundial polarizada, na qual as teses social-democratas (evolucionistas) já não têm sentido. Para ele, as entidades de trabalhadores não podem ser apenas “institutos de extensão universitária agnóstica e incolor” – mas têm de ser ativas “escolas de classe”. O centro destes debates foi a “questão do índio” – tema que viria a ser central em sua obra. 

É importante notar que a atração de Mariátegui pelo marxismo – apesar de suas distintas influências – nasce de sua busca por uma explicação de longa duração para os processos históricos de sua nação; e concomitantemente, de uma proposta revolucionária que vinculasse dialeticamente o passado, o presente e o futuro. 

Sua sedução por Marx não provém apenas da grandeza deste pensador – como crítico do conhecimento ou combatente pelo comunismo –, mas tem raízes na intenção prática de um entendimento integral da civilização indígena, atrofiada pela colonização; na necessidade de romper com esta estrutura depauperada. 

Neste sentido da busca “emancipatória”, o reformismo político, subjugado às classes dominantes, nada tem a contribuir. É necessário promover a união trabalhadores urbanos e camponeses – e organizar a revolução socialista.

Questão nacional: é preciso se fazer a nação

Lima, no início do século XX, já era uma capital cosmopolita, embora tivesse então mais relação com a Europa de que com o próprio interior indígena pauperizado. O Peru era um país fraturado em regiões bem separadas e com “ritmos históricos” peculiares: a costa, a serra e a selva Amazônica.

No contexto de sua reflexão sobre a questão nacional, Mariátegui depreende desse fato uma de suas principais teses: o Peru era ainda um “esboço”, uma nação incompleta. Conforme analisa em sua obra máxima, “Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana” [1], a formação peruana enquanto nação tinha sido interrompida. 

Em sua interpretação, descreve um processo revolucionário que se dá “pelo alto”, através de uma via não-clássica – tema que discuto no livro “Marx na América: a práxis de Caio Prado e Mariátegui” [2]. Trata-se de uma análise original, que se abstém de copiar modelos clássicos europeus – e se aproxima daquela elaborada por Gramsci (para a Itália), ou da de Caio Prado Júnior (para o Brasil). 

Segundo Mariátegui, é preciso se fazer o Peru – um país cuja elite se pautou quase sempre por modelos estrangeiros, até que o indigenismo, por volta dos anos 1920, interrompesse parcialmente esta tendência. Neste tempo, o que prevalecia, mesmo no âmbito socialista, era a ideia eurocêntrica de que a emancipação dos povos indígenas consistiria em torná-los “civilizados” (nos moldes ocidentais). Isto somente começa a mudar a partir da ação dos próprios índios que, na década de 1910, inauguram um novo ciclo de sua longa história de resistência contra a dominação do Estado colonial e dos latifundiários, e cujo marco é sua participação na Guerra do Pacífico. 

Este conflito com o Chile foi o estopim para a autocrítica do meio socialista peruano, o qual se dá conta que as populações indígenas não precisavam ser “despertadas”, mas sim era preciso que os próprios revolucionários relativizassem suas referências eurocêntricas, atentando à experiência prática das mobilizações nativas.

Por um comunismo latino-americano

Em seu debate acerca da questão do índio, Mariátegui tem o propósito de submeter as diversas tendências de então a uma crítica socialista radical. É o caso do “nacionalismo crioulo”, defendido pela elite mestiça, subalterna ao estrangeiro – e que almeja ser “branca”: uma parcela da classe dominante que, apesar de sua pretensão “nacionalista”, é solidária com o colonialismo. 

Contrário a isso, Mariátegui propõe um nacionalismo vanguardista, que reivindique o “passado incaico”, sociedade indígena que ele concebe como “comunista agrária”. 

Com a fundação em 1926 da revista Amauta (“sábio”, em quêchua) – nome pelo qual ele ficaria conhecido – fica enfraquecida sua aproximação com a APRA. Em polêmica com esta organização, critica seu “indigenismo paternalista”. Defende que na América Latina não se poderia ter apenas uma imagem ou cópia do comunismo europeu, mas sim que seria necessária uma “criação heroica”, em que a comunidade camponesa nativa, essencialmente “solidária” em suas relações sociais, se tornaria a base do estado contemporâneo: comunista. 

Rechaça também a teoria de certos indigenistas pautados por teorias “racistas” que, em oposição simétrica aos racistas eurocêntricos, afirmavam que os índios teriam algo inato em sua espécie que os levaria “naturalmente” a se libertarem. A “raça” por si só não é emancipadora – pondera Mariátegui –, os índios, assim como os operários das cidades, estão sujeitos às mesmas “leis” que governam todos os povos. O que assegurará a emancipação indígena é o “dinamismo” de uma economia e de uma cultura “comunista agrária” que porta “em suas entranhas o germe do socialismo”. 

É papel do revolucionário, conclama ele, convencer os índios, mestiços e negros de que somente um governo de trabalhadores e camponeses unidos, representativo de todas as etnias, pode libertá-los de sua opressão.

Questão indígena: a “esperança” revolucionária

Em 1927, Mariátegui assume a publicação de “Tempestad en los Andes”, obra indigenista radical do historiador e antropólogo Luís Valcárcel. No prólogo, o pensador peruano escreve a frase que se tornaria emblema de seu marxismo: “a esperança indígena é absolutamente revolucionária”. A partir daí, desenvolve a ideia de que a revolução socialista é o “novo mito” do índio, o princípio mobilizador do revolucionário – a “fé” transformadora segundo a qual o comunismo andino deveria construir seus pilares. 

Descartando os enfoques “filantrópicos” do problema indígena, compreende a questão como sendo de natureza econômica. O problema do índio é o problema da terra: é o latifúndio. 

Polemizando com a APRA, acusa seu “indigenismo” de ser paternalista, teoria criada “verticalmente” por mestiços das classes letradas; algo que, apesar de útil na condenação do latifundismo, exala uma filantropia que não é adequada e nem serve à revolução: o comunismo não pode ser confundido com paternalismo. 

No texto “El problema de la tierra” (1927), Mariátegui se declara um marxista “convicto e confesso” [3]. No ano seguinte, reunindo dezenas de ensaios elaborados desde 1924, publica seu clássico “Sete ensaios de interpretação da realidade peruana” – ponto alto de sua “investigação da realidade nacional de acordo com o método marxista”. 

Por este tempo, dá-se o rompimento com o nacionalismo aprista. Em carta a Haya, expõe seu desacordo, sobretudo quanto à política de aliança de classes. Haya responde, acusando-o de europeísmo. Em sua réplica, Mariátegui defende a mencionada síntese dialética de saberes: “Acredito que não há salvação para a Indo-América sem a ciência e o pensamento ocidentais”; “meus juízos se nutrem dos meus ideais, dos meus sentimentos, de minhas paixões”. 

Em defesa da Internacional Comunista

Ainda em 1928, Mariátegui coordena a fundação do Partido Socialista Peruano, colocando como prioridade sua vinculação à Internacional Comunista – organização da qual não mais se afastaria, embora mantendo sempre a independência de sua crítica. 

Para ele, seu partido (que não usou o nome “Comunista” por uma questão tática) deveria adaptar suas ações às condições sociais peruanas, mas sem deixar de observar critérios universais, pois as circunstâncias nacionais estavam submetidas à história mundial. O método de luta do Partido Socialista – declara –, é o marxismo-leninismo, e a forma de luta, a revolução. 

É um momento fervilhante de sua vida, época em que inicia grandes polêmicas político-filosóficas. Contesta não só o nacionalismo conservador, como também o dogma europositivista que previa certa “evolução natural” no socialismo (sempre nos moldes da história europeia).

No ensaio “Punto de vista anti-imperialista” (1929), aprofunda suas críticas à ideia de “burguesia nacional”: não existe na América Latina uma parcela da burguesia identificada ao povo. Entende que as elites latino-americanas não têm nenhum interesse em se confrontarem com o imperialismo, como “ingenuamente” creem os reformistas. Isto porque, diferentemente dos povos orientais, as elites não estão vinculadas ao povo por alguma história ou cultura comuns. Pelo contrário: “o aristocrata e o burguês” desprezam o “popular”, o “nacional”; antes de tudo “sentem-se brancos”, e o pequeno-burguês mestiço os imita. 

Somente a revolução socialista pode barrar o imperialismo de um modo radical – afirma em “El problema de las razas en América Latina” (capítulo de “Ideología y política”).

Pouco depois, em 1930, a saúde do pensador e ativista peruano volta a se complicar. À véspera de sua morte, o ainda jovem marxista conclama os revolucionários a estudarem o “leninismo”.

Dialética de saberes: entre a tradição comunitária e a modernidade 

Segundo Mariátegui, em meio ao processo de alienação política e existencial que é inerente ao capitalismo, a Revolução Soviética despertou o “homem matinal”, o ser cansado da noite artificialmente iluminada da decadência pós-bélica europeia-burguesa. E para a construção social deste novo homem, o socialismo deve absorver – dialeticamente – os bens de todas as fontes do conhecimento a que pôde ter acesso o mundo contemporâneo: não apenas as contribuições ocidentais, mas também as de outros povos, como os indígenas [“El alma matinal”].

Confrontando aspectos econômicos e culturais, o autor analisa qualidades de épocas históricas e de modelos socioeconômicos distintos, oferecendo importantes conceitos ao pensamento marxista: uma utopia revolucionária concreta que propõe síntese dialética entre os conhecimentos ocidental e oriental (no sentido de não-ocidental), entre o moderno e o antigo, entre objetividade e subjetividade – dentre outras contraposições potencialmente criadoras. 

A intenção de Mariátegui é a de revitalizar a práxis marxista – em seu tempo abafada pelo reformismo contaminado de ideias positivistas da Internacional Socialista. Entende que o homem contemporâneo tem necessidade de “fé combativa”. A Primeira Guerra mostrou à humanidade que existem “fatos superiores à previsão da Ciência” e, especialmente, “fatos contrários ao interesse da Civilização” – escreve em “El crepúsculo de la civilización” (capítulo de “Signos y obras”). 

Sua convicção é a de que o progresso irrefletido, promovido pelo capitalismo, redunda em aumento da barbárie. Do mero progresso técnico não se obtém “naturalmente” uma evolução humana, mas ao contrário, observando-se a totalidade do conjunto social, vê-se o agravamento da desorientação humana, em um processo civilizacional autodestrutivo. 

Trata-se de uma realidade nítida aos olhos e corpos da periferia do sistema, hoje cada vez mais evidente, mas sempre subestimada desde a perspectiva eurocêntrica

Um marxista “romântico-realista”: mito e ação revolucionários

A concepção marxista mariateguiana exalta o valor das tradições comunitárias da América, ressaltando fatores que permitiram ao índio desfrutar de uma melhor qualidade de vida, anteriormente à invasão europeia – como é o caso da “solidariedade” característica do povo inca (em contraste com a “competitividade” da sociedade capitalista). 

Porém, Mariátegui tem claro que, se antigamente o índio trabalhava com prazer e mais plenitude, hoje já não seria possível abdicar-se da ciência moderna. A tarefa está portanto em se relacionar os melhores frutos do pensamento contemporâneo “ocidental” (cujo ápice é o marxismo), ao melhor legado da sabedoria “oriental” (no caso peruano, refere-se aos saberes “não-ocidentais” dos povos andinos, materializados em seus hábitos de cooperação mútua e fé revolucionária). 

Nesse sentido, defende a ideia de um “romantismo socialista”: um renovado espírito romântico que, incorporando a postura epistêmica objetiva do “realismo proletário” (percepção antipositivista, que percebe o homem como ser imperfeito), cultiva a energia subjetiva presente na esperança por uma nova sociedade. 

Como reação à modernidade desumanizada – ao homem burguês acomodado, “cético”, “niilista” –, reelabora o conceito de mito revolucionário (a partir de ideia de Georges Sorel): uma “esperança sobre-humana”, utopia que traz um novo encantamento perante a vida. Seu esforço é por unir o impulso revigorante e idealista da subjetividade romântica, à concretude sempre conflitiva da objetividade realista. 

O romantismo e o realismo são para Mariátegui duas posturas intrínsecas ao marxismo, que concorrem para a transformação revolucionária – segundo uma dialética romântico-realista. 

 Obra mariateguiana: um legado de peso – e na rede

Os principais trabalhos filosóficos e histórico-políticos de Mariátegui – além de sua correspondência, crítica literária, etc. – foram publicadas em 1959, em versão popular, pela editora Amauta (Lima), em 16 volumes escritos pelo autor, com o título “Obras completas”. 

Em 1994, no marco comemorativo de seu centenário, a mesma editora publicaria “Mariátegui total”, edição mais completa, que inclui seus escritos de juventude e vasta correspondência.

Além do clássico “Siete ensayos…”, dentre seus livros, destacam-se “La escena contemporánea” (1925); e as obras póstumas que o autor deixou pré-organizadas:

– “Defensa del marxismo – polémica revolucionaria” (1928–1929/ publicada em 1934), cuja primeira edição em português (“Defesa do marxismo: polêmica revolucionária e outros escritos”) aparece somente em 2011, em edição da Boitempo que traz também outros textos  fundamentais do autor [4];

– “El alma matinal y otras estaciones del hombre de hoy” (1923–1929/ publicada em 1950);

– “La novela y la vida” (1955).

Fora estes livros, seleções de seus textos foram organizadas posteriormente por seus editores, como “Temas de Nuestra América”, “Peruanicemos al Perú”, “Cartas de Italia”, “Signos y obras”, e em especial “Ideología y política” (livro que trata do indigenismo, do socialismo no Peru, e da posição político-filosófica marxista de Mariátegui).

Sua obra foi só em parte traduzida ao português – e algumas destas traduções se encontram abertas na rede. Já em castelhano, a edição de “Obras Completas” pode ser baixada na íntegra.

Yuri Martins-Fontes

Notas (parte II)

[1] MARIÁTEGUI. José Carlos. Sete ensaios de interpretação da realidade peruana. São Paulo: Expressão Popular/ Clacso, 2008.

[2] MARTINS-FONTES, Yuri. Marx na América: a práxis de Caio Prado e Mariátegui. São Paulo: Alameda/ Fapesp, 2018.

[3] “El problema de la tierra” viria a ser um de seus “Sete ensaios”, compondo seu livro clássico juntamente aos seguintes escritos: “Esquema de la evolución económica”; “El problema del indio”; “El proceso de la instrucción pública”; “El factor religioso”; “Regionalismo y centralismo”; e “El proceso de la literatura”. 

[4] MARIÁTEGUI. J. C.; MARTINS-FONTES, Y. (org., trad. e introdução). Defesa do marxismo: polêmica revolucionária e outros escritos. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2011.

More video footage of Wednesday January 6, 2021

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Yesterday, the CBC wrote:

“We are in a desperate situation, and when you see the [COVID] modelling, you’ll fall off your chair,” [Ontario Premier] Ford said Friday during a news conference filled with dire warnings of what Ontario faces from COVID-19. 

Fall off our chair laughing…. As an Ontario nurse wrote me yesterday, his hospital’s ER is running at half-capacity (despite “surging cases” of this common cold virus). Seems people are healthier than ever. Maybe they are getting more sleep during lockdown, more home-cooked meals? Or maybe they’re just too darned scared to go to the hospital?

Yet Ford’s consistently hyperbolic COVID modelling oracle sees “the province’s intensive care units to be filled beyond capacity by early February.” Granted, that’s actually a fair (and easy) prediction, considering that ICUs are often beyond capacity at this time of the year, as the CBC reported back in pre-COVID January 2019.

And, yes, I would also agree with Premier-Dictator Ford’s statement:

“We are in a crisis, that’s how I can describe it. It is scary. This is the most serious situation we’ve ever been in, ever, ever, since the beginning of this pandemic.”

A “crisis” of government lies, inhumane control measures and economy-shattering lockdowns. This could indeed be the “most serious” situation we seen since the beginning of the pandemic. After all, a dark of winter of lockdowns is already producing the following symptoms: Suicides. Domestic violence. Drug overdoses. Alcohol abuse. Psychological depression. Missed surgeries. Poverty-related illnesses. Neglect of the elderly.

If you don’t have a No More Lockdown sign on your front lawn yet, please, ask yourself why not? If you haven’t written your officials, why not? If haven’t lost friends speaking up against this evil, why not?

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, naturopaths and chiropractors. Since March 2020, he has been publishing the daily COVID-19(84) Red Pill Briefs; while writing articles that question and expose the contradictions in the COVID-19 narrative and control measures. He is also completing a novel, Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story. You can visit his website at MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca.

Featured image is from by from Pixabay

In December 2019, the Democratic Party initiated an impeachment process against Trump on two politicized counts with no merit.

Voting was almost entirely along party lines.

There were and remain justifiable reasons to impeach Trump and most of his predecessors — notably for their high crimes of war and against humanity by hot and/or other means.

Dems won’t tough these charges, or Republicans, because practically the entire Congress — earlier and now — and much of the bureaucracy share guilt.

Bogus charges in December 2019 included:

1. Abuse of power, falsely claiming he sought foreign interference from Ukraine in the US 2020 presidential election.

No credible evidence was presented because none existed.

Ukrainian President Zelensky debunked the accusation, publicly saying there was no Trump blackmail threat, no quid pro quo, no conspiracy, nothing discussed about withholding US aid for political reasons.

2. Obstruction of Congress, falsely claiming Trump “directed the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of representatives pursuant to its sole power of impeachment,” adding:

“(W)ithout lawful cause or excuse, President Trump directed executive branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply with those subpoenas.”

“President Trump thus interposed the powers of the presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House…”

Trump’s unwillingness to participate in the sham process did not rise to the level of obstructing Congress.

It was his legal right to challenge Dems by withholding cooperation because politicized proceedings lacked legitimacy.

So does impeachment 2.0.

Defying reality, it falsely claims that Trump “engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting violence against the government of the United States (sic),” adding:

He “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government (sic).”

“He threatened the integrity of the democratic system (sic), interfered with the peaceful transition of power (sic), and imperiled a coequal branch of government (sic).”

“He thereby betrayed his trust as president, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States (sic).”

Cold, hard facts refute all of the above.

Dems Jamie Raskin, David Cicilline, and Ted Lieu — in cahoots with Nancy Pelosi and over 200 other House Dems — introduced one article of impeachment.

Falsely charging Trump with inciting insurrection, his public remarks and tweets to supporters were polar opposite what’s falsely claimed.

No legitimate tribunal would accept the politicized accusation with no legitimacy.

No credible evidence supports it — just the opposite.

Yet impeachment is virtually certain in the Dem controlled House this week. 

On Monday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer failed to cobble together a unanimously passed resolution that called for Pence to invoke 25th Amendment authority to remove Trump from office.

Adoption is expected on Tuesday by majority vote, politicized impeachment 2.0 to follow — despite transition of power occurring next week when Trump’s tenure ends.

Law Professor Jonathan Turley sharply criticized what’s going on, calling it Kafkaesque.

Wanting Trump removed from office for constitutionally protected speech has no legal standing.

Turley noted that similar remarks for which he’s falsely charged were made by Dems, saying:

“Take back the country.”

“Fight for the country.”

These remarks, similar ones, and those Trump publicly stated are protected speech under the First Amendment.

So are virtually all others — no matter how divergent from the official narrative, no matter how offensive to some people.

If Trump is removed from office for using protected speech in addressing supporters, all Americans are potentially threatened with recrimination.

The risk possible criminal prosecution for truth-telling exposure of government wrongdoing — the way Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and numerous whistleblowers were unacceptably mistreated.

If events unfold this way, tyranny will replace fundamental freedoms — the grim process well underway in the US already.

What’s going on should scare everyone. The issue isn’t Trump.

It’s whether policymaking conforms to the rule of law or operates extrajudicially against the American people, especially its truth-tellers on issues which matter most.

Without speech, media and academic freedoms, all other rights are threatened.

That’s the perilous state of today’s America — an open, free, and fair nation in name only, the real thing nowhere in sight.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

Anyone who believes locking President Donald Trump out of his social media accounts will serve as the first step on the path to healing the political divide in the United States is likely to be in for a bitter disappointment.

The flaws in this reasoning need to be peeled away, like the layers of an onion. 

Twitter’s decision to permanently ban Trump for, among other things, “incitement of violence” effectively cuts him off from 88 million followers. Facebook has said it will deny Trump access to his account till at least the end of his presidential term.

The act of barring an elected president, even an outgoing one, from the digital equivalent of the public square is bound to be every bit as polarising as allowing him to continue tweeting.

These moves threaten to widen the tribal divide between the Democratic and Republican parties into a chasm, and open up a damaging rift among liberals and the left on the limits of political speech.

Claims of ‘stolen’ election 

The proximate cause of Facebook and Twitter’s decision is his encouragement of a protest march on Washington DC last week by his supporters that rapidly turned violent as hundreds stormed the Capitol building, the seat of the US government.

Five people are reported to have died, including a police officer struck on the head with a fire extinguisher and a woman who was shot dead inside the building, apparently by a security guard.

The protesters – and much of the Republican party – believe that Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, “stole” November’s presidential election. The storming of the Capitol occurred on the day electoral college votes were being counted, marking the moment when Biden’s win became irreversible.

Since the November election, Trump has cultivated his supporters’ political grievances by implying in regular tweets that the election was “rigged”, that he supposedly won by a “landslide”, and that Biden is an illegitimate president.

The social networks’ immediate fear appears to be that, should he be allowed to continue, there could be a repetition of the turmoil at the Capitol when the inauguration – the formal transfer of power from Trump to Biden – takes place next week.

No simple solutions 

Whatever we – or the tech giants who now dominate our lives – might hope, there are no simple solutions to the problems caused by extreme political speech.

To many, banning Trump from Twitter – his main megaphone – sounds like a proportionate response to his incitement and his narcissistic behaviour. It appears to accord with a much-cited restriction on free speech: no one should be allowed to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.

But that comparison serves only to blur important distinctions between ordinary speech and political speech.

The prohibition on shouting “Fire!” reflects a broad social consensus that giving voice to a falsehood of this kind – a lie that can be easily verified as such and one that has indisputably harmful outcomes – is a bad thing.

There is a clear way to calculate the benefits and losses of allowing this type of speech. It is certain to cause a stampede that risks injury and death – and at no gain, apart from possibly to the instigator’s ego.

It is also easy to determine how we should respond to someone who shouts “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. They should be prosecuted according to the law.

Who gets to decide 

Banning political speech, by contrast, is a more complicated affair because there is rarely consensus on the legitimacy of such censorship, and – as we shall see – any gains are likely to be outweighed by the losses.

Trump’s ban is just the latest instance in a growing wave of exclusions by Twitter and Facebook of users who espouse political views outside the mainstream, whether on the right or the left. In addition, the tech giants have been tinkering with their algorithms to make it harder to find such content – in what amounts to a kind of pre-censorship.

But the critical issue in a democracy is: who gets to decide if political speech is unreasonable when it falls short of breaching hate and incitement laws?

Few of us want state institutions – the permanent bureaucracy, or the intelligence and security services – wielding that kind of power over our ability to comment and converse. These institutions, which lie at the heart of government and need to be scrutinised as fully as possible, have a vested interest in silencing critics.

There are equally good grounds to object to giving ruling parties the power to censor, precisely because government officials from one side of the political aisle have a strong incentive to gag their opponents. Incitement and protection of public order are perfect pretexts for authoritarianism.

And leaving the democratic majority with the power to arbitrate over political speech has major drawbacks too. In a liberal democracy, the right to criticise the majority and their representatives is an essential freedom, one designed to curb the majority’s tyrranical impulses and ensure minorities are protected.

‘Terms of service’ 

In this case, however, the ones deciding which users get to speak and which are banned are the globe-spanning tech corporations, the wealthiest companies in human history.

Facebook and Twitter have justified banning Trump, and anyone else, on the grounds that he violated vague business “terms of service” – the small print on agreement forms we all sign before being allowed access to their platforms.

But barring users from the chief means of communication in a modern, digitised world cannot be defended simply on commercial or business grounds, especially when those firms have been allowed to develop their respective monopolies by our governments.

Social media is now at the heart of many people’s political lives. It is how we share and clarify political views, organise political actions, and more generally shape the information universe.

The fact that western societies have agreed to let private hands control what should be essential public utilities – turning them into vastly profitable industries – is a political decision in itself.

Political pressures 

Unlike governments, which have to submit to intermittent elections, tech giants are accountable chiefly to their billionaire owners and shareholders – a tiny wealth elite whose interests are tied to greater wealth accumulation, not the public good.

But in addition to these economic imperatives, the tech companies are also increasingly subjected to direct and indirect political pressures.

Sometimes that occurs out in the open, when Facebook executives get hauled before congressional committees to explain their actions. And doubtless pressure is being exerted too out of sight, behind closed doors.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple all want their respective, highly profitable tech monopolies to continue, and currying favour with the party in power – or the one coming into power – is the best strategy for avoiding greater regulation.

Either way, it means that, in their role as gatekeepers to the global, digital public square, the tech giants exercise overtly political powers. They regulate an outsourced public utility, but are not subject to normal democratic oversight or accountability because their relationship with the state is veiled.

Censorship backfires 

Banning Trump from social media, whatever the intention, will inevitably look like an act of political suppression to his supporters, to potential supporters and even to some critics who worry about the precedent being set.

In fact, to many it will smack of vengeful retaliation by the “elites”.

Consider these two issues. They may not seem relevant to some opponents but we can be sure they will fuel his supporters’ mounting sense of righteous indignation and grievance.

First, both the department of justice and the federal trade commission under Trump have opened anti-trust investigations of the major tech corporations to break up their monopolies. Last month the Trump administration initiated two anti-trust lawsuits – the first of their kind – specifically against Facebook.

Second, these tech giants have chosen to act against Trump now, just as Biden prepares to replace him in the White House. Silicon Valley was a generous funder of Biden’s election campaign and quickly won for itself positions in the incoming administration. The new president will decide whether to continue the anti-trust actions or drop them.

Whether these matters are connected or not, whether they are “fake news” or not, is beside the point. The decision by Facebook and Twitter to bar Trump from its platforms can easily be spun in his supporters’ minds as an opportunistic reprisal against Trump for his efforts to limit the excesses of these overweening tech empires.

This is a perfect illustration of why curbs on political speech – even of the most irresponsible kind – invariably backfire. Censorship of major politicians will always be contested and are likely to generate opposition and stoke resentment.

Banning Trump won’t end conspiracy theories on the American right. It will intensify them, reinforce them, embolden them.

Obnoxious symptom 

So in the cost-beneft calculus, censoring Trump is almost certain to further polarise an already deeply divided American society, amplify genuine grievances and conspiracy theories alike, sow greater distrust towards political elites, further fracture an already broken political system and ultimately rationalise political violence.

The solution is not to crack down on political speech, even extreme and irresponsible speech, if it does not break the law. Trump is not the cause of US political woes, he is one obnoxious symptom.

The solution is to address the real causes, and tackle the only too justified resentments that fuelled Trump’s rise and will sustain him and the US right in defeat. Banning Trump – just like labelling his supporters “a basket of deplorables” – will prove entirely counter-productive.

Fixing a broken system 

Meaningful reform will be no simple task. The US political system looks fundamentally broken – and has been for a long time.

It will require a much more transparent electoral system. Big donor money will have to be removed from Congressional and presidential races. Powerful lobbies will need to be ousted from Washington, where they now act as the primary authors of Congressional legislation promoting their own narrow interests.

The old and new media monopolies – the latter our new public square – will have to be broken up. New, publicly funded and publicly accountable media models must be developed that reflect a greater pluralism of views.

In these ways, the public can be encouraged to become more democratically engaged, active participants in their national and local politics rather than alienated onlookers or simple-minded cheerleaders. Politicians can be held truly accountable for their decisions, with an expectation that they serve the public interest, not the interests of the most powerful corporations.

The outcome of such reforms, as surveys of the American public’s preferences regularly show, would be much greater social and economic equality. Joblessness, home evictions and loss of medical cover would not stalk so many millions of Americans as they do now, during a pandemic. In this environment, the wider appeal of a demagogue like Trump would evaporate.

If this all sounds like pie-in-the-sky idealism, that in itself should serve as a wake-up call, highlighting just how far the US political system is from the liberal democracy it claims to be.

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/ 

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In honor of MLK day on the 18th of January, we repost this article that first appeared on GR in April 2018.

Martin Luther King Jr. 4 April 1967 Speech at Riverside Church, Upper Manhattan, New York. The speech was delivered on the same day (April 4, 1967) one year before MLK was killed on April 4, 1968.

We should carefully reflect on MLK’s message to the World.

MLK understood the relationship between America’s war agenda and social justice and civil rights in America. “No one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.[Vietnam]”.

One cannot be a civil rights leader without taking a stance against U.S. led wars.

In the words of Martin Luther King: “Silence is Betrayal”.

Today with war hawks in the White House and the U.S. State department, America is leading a military adventure which in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity.

But this is not a talking point on network TV. Nor is it a concern of the “antiwar” movement. Meanwhile, the media is “killing the truth” either through distortion or omission.

Today we commemorate the passing of Martin Luther King who was assassinated in a high level conspiracy on the orders of key agencies of the US government (see text of Judgment).

Very few Americans are aware of the historical 1999 civil law suit of the King Family against the US Government. (Shelby County Court), Tennessee.

“After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. In a press statement held the following day in Atlanta, Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict, saying, “There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief.”

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 4, 2018

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Martin Luther King Jr. 4 April 1967 Speech at Riverside Church, Upper Manhattan, New York.

The speech was delivered on the same day (April 4, 1967) one year before MLK was killed on April 4, 1968.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the most distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it’s always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

I come to this great magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization that brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. “Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people?” they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church—the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate—leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years, especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, “What about Vietnam?” They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard from Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.” It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that “America will be” are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954.* And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances.

But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men—for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place, I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. Because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954—in 1945 rather—after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China—for whom the Vietnamese have no great love—but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed and Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all of this was presided over by United States influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call “fortified hamlets.” The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation front, that strangely anonymous group we call “VC” or “communists”? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the North” as if there was nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only real party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of a new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

The Vietnam War, writes Freeman, “must be remembered and condemned for the debacle it actually was.” (Image: vietnamfulldisclosure.org)

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western worlds, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led this nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a unified Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be considered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred, or rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Surely this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroy, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increased in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

Unquote.

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement. [sustained applause]

Part of our ongoing [applause continues], part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. Meanwhile [applause], meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. [sustained applause] I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. [applause] Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. [applause] These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality [applause], and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. [sustained applause] So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” [applause] Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see than an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [applause]

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [sustained applause]

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. [applause] War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy [applause], realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low [Audience:] (Yes); the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another (Yes), for love is God. (Yes) And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.” Unquote.

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message—of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment do decide,
In the strife of truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. [sustained applause]

*

Note

*. King says “1954,” but most likely means 1964, the year he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

First published by GR on August 5, 2020

Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests are used worldwide to “diagnose” Sars-Cov-2 infection. An in-depth investigation reveals clear scientific evidence proving that these tests are not accurate and create a statistically significant percentage of false positives. Positive results more likely indicate “ordinary respiratory diseases like the common cold.”

In fact, American biochemist Kary Mullis, now deceased, who won the Noble Prize in chemistry for creating PCR technology, repeatedly stated throughout his career that it should not be used to test for viruses. This technology is designed to replicate DNA sequences, not test for coronavirus infections.

Executive Action Required

President Trump must take immediate action to investigate and hold members of the FDA, CDC and WHO accountable for scientific fraud and Crimes Against the Humanity.

If he does not take immediate action, he is thereby complicit in what clearly amounts to Crimes Against Humanity, as this report will detail.

Multiple U.S. Intelligence Community contacts have verified the accuracy of the extensive investigative report, conducted by award-winning journalist Torsten Engelbrecht, featured below. While they do take issue with some of the reports verbiage, they corroborate the main findings: PCR tests should not be relied upon for accurate results and create a significant percentage of false positives.

We also feature a New York Times report from 2007, entitled, “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t,” which also clearly reveals how scientifically inaccurate PCR tests are, featuring many shocking statements from medical experts on the use of these tests, clearly laying out how they result in false positives and lead to dangerous exaggerations and false alarms.

Note: We are NOT reporting that the coronavirus is a hoax. You should take precautions and consult your doctor for best safety practices.

We are reporting, as the evidence reveals, that the number of COVID-positive results and the number of COVID-related deaths have been significantly exaggerated.

Based on our findings, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration should not be trusted or relied upon for accurate information, and needs to be immediately investigated and held accountable for Crimes Against Humanity.

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Before reading Engelbrecht’s investigation into the science that proves how fraudulent “COVID-19 testing” is, let’s recap the overall state of what can accurately be defined as an “attack” on us.

For your family’s sake, please do not instinctively dismiss any of these facts. Please read this entire post before it gets deleted by corrupt censors.

Fact 1) As thousands of Doctors worldwide have proven, there are several effective treatments for this coronavirus. (source one, two, three, four, five, six)

Fact 2) The effective treatments have been censored and suppressed for reasons including but not limited to:

a) They are inexpensive, i.e. Big Pharma can’t profit off of them;

b) They completely derail the wider-agenda of those interests who are exploiting this virus to implement the most oppressive economic, “health” and surveillance system ever;

c) There is an FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) law which only allows the mass “vaccination” program to continue if there are no other effective treatments. There is also a EUA “National Security” stipulation that requires a significant percentage of the population to be at risk of death, which is another reason why fraudulent false-positive testing is being used, as you will see below. (source)

For all of these reasons, the effective treatments have been suppressed; leading to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people.

Fact 3) The handling of this virus has resulted in an all-out economic disaster that has destroyed the livelihood and financial security of billions of people worldwide, leading to unprecedented rates of debt, depression, drug abuse, overdoses and suicides. Meanwhile, the CARES Act and global central banking operations in response to this “crisis” have resulted in an unprecedented consolidation of wealth by the world’s richest 0.01%. (source one, two, three, four)

Fact 4) The lockdown, quarantine and closer of schools, religious services, sports, recreational activities, social events, shopping, food and workplaces, along with social distancing measures and mandatory mask use, in combination with criminally negligent 24/7 mainstream media virus fear propaganda, amounts to psychological torture and abuse on an unprecedented scale, which has torn apart and separated many families, and has done significant damage to the psychological wellbeing of billions of people, particularly young children, worldwide. (source)

Fact 5) Underfunded and cash-strapped hospitals have been financially incentivized to record as many COVID-related deaths as possible, resulting in a statistically significant number of falsely reported COVID-related deaths. On top of that, hospitals have also been heavily incentivized to put people on ventilators, which has also contributed to thousands of additional unnecessary deaths. (source one, two)

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Now that we have a better understanding of the overall situation, of the Crimes Against Humanity that have been strategically implemented thus far, let’s look at the science that reveals the fraudulent testing process. Here’s is Torsten Engelbrecht’s report:

“COVID-19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless“

By Torsten Engelbrecht & Konstantin Demeter

Though the whole world relies on RT-PCR to “diagnose” Sars-Cov-2 infection, the science is clear: they are not fit for purpose.

Lockdowns and hygienic measures around the world are based on numbers of cases and mortality rates created by the SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests used to identify “positive” patients, whereby “positive” is usually equated with “infected.”

However, when looking closely at the facts, the conclusion is that these PCR tests are meaningless as a diagnostic tool to determine an alleged infection by SARS-CoV-2.

Unfounded “Test, test, test” Mantra

At the media briefing on COVID-19 on March 16, 2020, the WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:

“We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test.”

The message was spread through headlines around the world, for instance by Reuters and the BBC.

Still on May 3, the moderator of the Heute Journal — one of the most important news magazines on German television — was passing the mantra of the corona dogma on to his audience with the admonishing words:

“Test, test, test — that is the credo at the moment, and it is the only way to really understand how much the coronavirus is spreading.”

This indicates that the belief in the validity of the PCR tests is so strong that it equals a religion that tolerates virtually no contradiction.

As Walter Lippmann, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and perhaps the most influential journalist of the 20th century said: “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

So to start, it is very remarkable that Kary Mullis himself, the inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology, did not think alike. His invention got him the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1993.

Unfortunately, Mullis passed away last year at the age of 74, but there is no doubt that the biochemist regarded the PCR as inappropriate to detect a viral infection.

The reason is that the intended use of the PCR was, and still is, to apply it as a manufacturing technique, being able to replicate DNA sequences millions and billions of times, and not as a diagnostic tool to detect viruses.

How declaring virus pandemics based on PCR tests can end in disaster was described by Gina Kolata in her 2007 New York Times article, “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t.” (full article below)

Lack of a valid gold standard

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the PCR tests used to identify so-called COVID-19 patients presumably infected by what is called SARS-CoV-2 do not have a valid gold standard to compare them with.

This is a fundamental point. Tests need to be evaluated to determine their preciseness — strictly speaking their “sensitivity” [1] and “specificity” — by comparison with a “gold standard,” meaning the most accurate method available.

As an example, for a pregnancy test the gold standard would be the pregnancy itself. As Australian infectious diseases specialist Sanjaya Senanayake, for example, stated in an ABC TV interview in an answer to the question “How accurate is the [COVID-19] testing?”:

“If we had a new test for picking up [the bacterium] golden staph in blood, we’ve already got blood cultures, that’s our gold standard we’ve been using for decades, and we could match this new test against that. But for COVID-19 we don’t have a gold standard test.”

Jessica C. Watson from Bristol University confirms this. In her paper “Interpreting a COVID-19 test result,” published recently in The British Medical Journal, she writes that there is a “lack of such a clear-cut ‘gold-standard’ for COVID-19 testing.”

But instead of classifying the tests as unsuitable for SARS-CoV-2 detection and COVID-19 diagnosis, or instead of pointing out that only a virus, proven through isolation and purification, can be a solid gold standard, Watson claims in all seriousness that, “pragmatically” COVID-19 diagnosis itself, remarkably including PCR testing itself, “may be the best available ‘gold standard.'” But this is not scientifically sound.

Apart from the fact that it is downright absurd to take the PCR test itself as part of the gold standard to evaluate the PCR test, there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, as even people such as Thomas Löscher, former head of the Department of Infection and Tropical Medicine at the University of Munich and member of the Federal Association of German Internists, conceded to us. [2]

If there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, COVID-19 diagnosis — contrary to Watson’s statement — cannot be suitable for serving as a valid gold standard.

In addition, “experts” such as Watson overlook the fact that only virus isolation, i.e. an unequivocal virus proof, can be the gold standard.

That is why I asked Watson how COVID-19 diagnosis “may be the best available gold standard,” if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, and also whether the virus itself, that is virus isolation, wouldn’t be the best available/possible gold standard, but she hasn’t answered these questions yet – despite multiple requests. She has not yet responded to our rapid response post on her article in which we address exactly the same points, either, though she wrote us on June 2nd: “I will try to post a reply later this week when I have a chance.”

[She never replied.]

No proof for the RNA being of viral origin

Now the question is: What is required first for virus isolation/proof? We need to know where the RNA for which the PCR tests are calibrated comes from.

As textbooks (e.g., White/Fenner. Medical Virology, 1986, p. 9) as well as leading virus researchers such as Luc Montagnier or Dominic Dwyer state, particle purification — i.e. the separation of an object from everything else that is not that object, as for instance Nobel laureate Marie Curie purified 100 mg of radium chloride in 1898 by extracting it from tons of pitchblende — is an essential pre-requisite for proving the existence of a virus, and thus to prove that the RNA from the particle in question comes from a new virus.

The reason for this is that PCR is extremely sensitive, which means it can detect even the smallest pieces of DNA or RNA — but it cannot determine where these particles came from. That has to be determined beforehand.

Because the PCR tests are calibrated for gene sequences (in this case RNA sequences because SARS-CoV-2 is believed to be a RNA virus), we have to know that these gene snippets are part of the looked-for virus. And to know that, correct isolation and purification of the presumed virus has to be executed.

Hence, we have asked the science teams of the relevant papers which are referred to in the context of SARS-CoV-2 for proof whether the electron-microscopic shots depicted in their in vitro experiments show purified viruses.

But not a single team could answer that question with “yes” — and nobody said purification was not a necessary step. We only got answers like “No, we did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification.”

We asked several study authors “Do your electron micrographs show the purified virus?”, they gave the following responses:

Study 1: Leo L. M. Poon; Malik Peiris. “Emergence of a novel human coronavirus threatening human health,” Nature Medicine, March 2020

Replying Author: Malik Peiris

Date: May 12, 2020

Answer: “The image is the virus budding from an infected cell. It is not purified virus.”

Study 2: Myung-Guk Han et al. “Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19,” Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives, February 2020

Replying Author: Myung-Guk Han

Date: May 6, 2020

Answer: “We could not estimate the degree of purification because we do not purify and concentrate the virus cultured in cells.”

Study 3: Wan Beom Park et al. “Virus Isolation from the First Patient with SARS-CoV-2 in Korea,” Journal of Korean Medical Science, February 24, 2020

Replying Author: Wan Beom Park

Date: March 19, 2020

Answer: “We did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification.”

Study 4: Na Zhu et al., “A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China,” 2019, New England Journal of Medicine, February 20, 2020

Replying Author: Wenjie Tan

Date: March 18, 2020

Answer: “[We show] an image of sedimented virus particles, not purified ones.”

Regarding the mentioned papers it is clear that what is shown in the electron micrographs (EMs) is the end result of the experiment, meaning there is no other result that they could have made EMs from.

That is to say, if the authors of these studies concede that their published EMs do not show purified particles, then they definitely do not possess purified particles claimed to be viral.

[In this context, it has to be remarked that some researchers use the term “isolation” in their papers, but the procedures described therein do not represent a proper isolation (purification) process. Consequently, in this context the term “isolation” is misused.]

Thus, the authors of four of the principal, early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus concede they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris, pure or impure, or particles of any kind. In other words, the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith, not fact.

We have also contacted Dr Charles Calisher, who is a seasoned virologist. In 2001, Science published an “impassioned plea… to the younger generation” from several veteran virologists, among them Calisher, saying that:

[Modern virus detection methods like] “sleek polymerase chain reaction… tell little or nothing about how a virus multiplies, which animals carry it, [or] how it makes people sick. [It is] like trying to say whether somebody has bad breath by looking at his fingerprint..” [3]

And that’s why we asked Dr Calisher whether he knows one single paper in which SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and finally really purified. His answer:

“I know of no such a publication. I have kept an eye out for one.” [4]

This actually means that one cannot conclude that the RNA gene sequences, which the scientists took from the tissue samples prepared in the mentioned in vitro trials and for which the PCR tests are finally being “calibrated,” belong to a specific virus — in this case SARS-CoV-2.

In addition, there is no scientific proof that those RNA sequences are the causative agent of what is called COVID-19.

In order to establish a causal connection, one way or the other, i.e. beyond virus isolation and purification, it would have been absolutely necessary to carry out an experiment that satisfies the four Koch’s postulates. But there is no such experiment, as Amory Devereux and Rosemary Frei recently revealed for OffGuardian.

The necessity to fulfill these postulates regarding SARS-CoV-2 is demonstrated not least by the fact that attempts have been made to fulfill them. But even researchers claiming they have done it, in reality, did not succeed.

One example is a study published in Nature on May 7. This trial, besides other procedures which render the study invalid, did not meet any of the postulates.

For instance, the alleged “infected” laboratory mice did not show any relevant clinical symptoms clearly attributable to pneumonia, which according to the third postulate should actually occur if a dangerous and potentially deadly virus was really at work there. The slight bristles and weight loss, which were observed temporarily in the animals are negligible, not only because they could have been caused by the procedure itself, but also because the weight went back to normal again.

Also, no animal died except those they killed to perform the autopsies. And let’s not forget: These experiments should have been done before developing a test, which is not the case.

Revealingly, none of the leading German representatives of the official theory about SARS-Cov-2/COVID-19 — the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI), Alexander S. Kekulé (University of Halle), Hartmut Hengel and Ralf Bartenschlager (German Society for Virology), the aforementioned Thomas Löscher, Ulrich Dirnagl (Charité Berlin) or Georg Bornkamm (virologist and professor emeritus at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Munich) — could answer the following question:

If the particles that are claimed to be to be SARS-CoV-2 have not been purified, how do you want to be sure that the RNA gene sequences of these particles belong to a specific new virus?

Particularly, if there are studies showing that substances such as antibiotics that are added to the test tubes in the in vitro experiments carried out for virus detection can “stress” the cell culture in a way that new gene sequences are being formed that were not previously detectable — an aspect that Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock already drew attention to in her Nobel Lecture back in 1983.

It should not go unmentioned that we finally got the Charité – the employer of Christian Drosten, Germany’s most influential virologist in respect of COVID-19, advisor to the German government and co-developer of the PCR test, which was the first to be “accepted” (not validated!) by the WHO worldwide – to answer questions on the topic.

But we didn’t get answers until June 18, 2020, after months of non-response. In the end, we achieved it only with the help of Berlin lawyer Viviane Fischer.

Regarding our question: “Has the Charité convinced itself that appropriate particle purification was carried out?,” the Charité concedes that they didn’t use purified particles.

Although they claim “virologists at the Charité are sure that they are testing for the virus,” in their paper (Corman et al.) they state:

“RNA was extracted from clinical samples with the MagNA Pure 96 system (Roche, Penzberg, Germany) and from cell culture supernatants with the viral RNA mini kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany).”

That means they just assumed the RNA was viral.

Incidentally, the Corman et al. paper, published on January 23, 2020 didn’t even go through a proper peer review process, nor were the procedures outlined therein accompanied by controls — although it is only through these two things that scientific work becomes really solid.

Irrational test results

It is also certain that we cannot know the false positive rate of the PCR tests without widespread testing of people who certainly do not have the virus, proven by a method which is independent of the test (having a solid gold standard).

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that there are several papers illustrating irrational test results.

For example, already in February the health authority in China’s Guangdong province reported that people have fully recovered from illness blamed on COVID-19, started to test “negative,” and then tested “positive” again.

A month later, a paper published in the Journal of Medical Virology showed that 29 out of 610 patients at a hospital in Wuhan had 3 to 6 test results that flipped between “negative,” “positive” and “dubious.”

A third example is a study from Singapore in which tests were carried out almost daily on 18 patients. The majority went from “positive” to “negative” back to “positive” at least once, and up to five times in one patient.

Even Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, conceded in February that the PCR tests are “only 30 to 50 per cent accurate;” while Sin Hang Lee from the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory sent a letter to the WHO’s coronavirus response team and to Anthony Fauci on March 22, 2020, saying that:

“It has been widely reported that the RT-qPCR [Reverse Transcriptase quantitative PCR] test kits used to detect SARSCoV-2 RNA in human specimens are generating many false positive results and are not sensitive enough to detect some real positive cases.”

In other words, even if we theoretically assume that these PCR tests can really detect a viral infection, the tests would be practically worthless, and would only cause an unfounded scare among the “positive” people tested.

This becomes also evident considering the positive predictive value (PPV).

The PPV indicates the probability that a person with a positive test result is truly “positive” (ie. has the supposed virus), and it depends on two factors: the prevalence of the virus in the general population and the specificity of the test, that is the percentage of people without disease in whom the test is correctly “negative” (a test with a specificity of 95% incorrectly gives a positive result in 5 out of 100 non-infected people).

With the same specificity, the higher the prevalence, the higher the PPV.

In this context, on June 12 2020, the journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt published an article in which the PPV has been calculated with three different prevalence scenarios.

The results must, of course, be viewed very critically, first because it is not possible to calculate the specificity without a solid gold standard, as outlined, and second because the calculations in the article are based on the specificity determined in the study by Jessica Watson, which is potentially worthless, as also mentioned.

But if you abstract from it, assuming that the underlying specificity of 95% is correct and that we know the prevalence, even the mainstream medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt reports that the SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests may have “a shockingly low” PPV.

In one of the three scenarios, figuring with an assumed prevalence of 3%, the PPV was only 30 percent, which means that 70 percent of the people tested “positive” are not “positive” at all. Yet “they are prescribed quarantine,” as even the Ärzteblatt notes critically….

All this fits with the fact that the CDC and the FDA, for instance, concede in their files that the “SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests” are not suitable for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.

In the “CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel” file from March 30, 2020, for example, it says:

“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms.”

And:

“This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.”

And the FDA admits that: “positive results… do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease.”

Remarkably, in the instruction manuals of PCR tests we can also read that they are not intended as a diagnostic test, as for instance in those by Altona Diagnostics and Creative Diagnostics. [5]

To quote another one, in the product announcement of the LightMix Modular Assays produced by TIB Molbiol — which were developed using the Corman et al. protocol — and distributed by Roche, we read:

“These assays are not intended for use as an aid in the diagnosis of coronavirus infection.”

And:

“For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.”

Where is the evidence that the tests can measure the “viral load”?

There is also reason to conclude that the PCR test from Roche and others cannot even detect the targeted genes.

Moreover, in the product descriptions of the RT-qPCR tests for SARS-COV-2 it says they are “qualitative” tests, contrary to the fact that the “q” in “qPCR” stands for “quantitative.”

If these tests are not “quantitative” tests, they don’t show how many viral particles are in the body.

That is crucial because, in order to even begin talking about actual illness in the real world not only in a laboratory, the patient would need to have millions and millions of viral particles actively replicating in their body.

That is to say, the CDC, WHO, FDA or the RKI may assert that the tests can measure the so-called “viral load,” i.e. how many viral particles are in the body. “But this has never been proven. That is an enormous scandal,” as the journalist Jon Rappoport points out.

This is not only because the term “viral load” is deception. If you put the question, “What is viral load?”, at a dinner party, people take it to mean viruses circulating in the bloodstream. They’re surprised to learn it’s actually RNA molecules.

Also, to prove beyond any doubt that the PCR can measure how much a person is “burdened” with a disease-causing virus, the following experiment would have had to be carried out, which has not happened yet:

You take, let’s say, a few hundred or even thousand people and remove tissue samples from them. Make sure the people who take the samples do not perform the test. The testers will never know who the patients are and what condition they’re in.

The testers run their PCR on the tissue samples. In each case, they say which virus they found and how much of it they found.

Then, for example, in patients 29, 86, 199, 272, and 293 they found a great deal of what they claim is a virus. Now we un-blind those patients. They should all be sick, because they have so much virus replicating in their bodies. But are they really sick — or are they fit as a fiddle?

With the help of the aforementioned lawyer Viviane Fischer, I finally got the Charité to answer the question of whether the test developed by Corman et al. — the so-called “Drosten PCR test” — is a quantitative test.

But the Charité was not willing to answer this question “yes.” Instead, the Charité wrote:

“If real-time RT-PCR is involved, to the knowledge of the Charité in most cases these are… limited to qualitative detection.”

Furthermore, the “Drosten PCR test” uses the unspecific E-gene assay as preliminary assay, while the Institut Pasteur uses the same assay as confirmatory assay.

According to Corman et al., the E-gene assay is likely to detect all Asian viruses, while the other assays in both tests are supposed to be more specific for sequences labelled “SARS-CoV-2.”

Besides the questionable purpose of having either a preliminary or a confirmatory test that is likely to detect all Asian viruses, at the beginning of April the WHO changed the algorithm, recommending that from then on a test can be regarded as “positive” even if just the E-gene assay (which is likely to detect all Asian viruses!) gives a “positive” result.

This means that a confirmed unspecific test result is officially sold as specific.

That change of algorithm increased the “case” numbers. Tests using the E-gene assay are produced for example by Roche, TIB Molbiol and R-Biopharm.

High CQ values make the test results even more meaningless

Another essential problem is that many PCR tests have a “cycle quantification” (Cq) value of over 35, and some, including the “Drosten PCR test,” even have a Cq of 45.

The Cq value specifies how many cycles of DNA replication are required to detect a real signal from biological samples.

“Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported,” as it says in the MIQE guidelines.

MIQE stands for “Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments,” a set of guidelines that describe the minimum information necessary for evaluating publications on Real-Time PCR, also called quantitative PCR, or qPCR.

The inventor himself, Kary Mullis, agreed, when he stated:

“If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR.”

The MIQE guidelines have been developed under the aegis of Stephen A. Bustin, Professor of Molecular Medicine, a world-renowned expert on quantitative PCR and author of the book A-Z of Quantitative PCR, which has been called “the bible of qPCR.”

In a recent podcast interview Bustin points out that “the use of such arbitrary Cq cut-offs is not ideal, because they may be either too low (eliminating valid results) or too high (increasing false “positive” results).”

According to him, a Cq in the 20s to 30s should be aimed at, and there is concern regarding the reliability of the results for any Cq over 35.

If the Cq value gets too high, it becomes difficult to distinguish real signal from background, for example due to reactions of primers and fluorescent probes, and hence there is a higher probability of false positives.

Moreover, among other factors that can alter the result, before starting with the actual PCR, in case you are looking for presumed RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, the RNA must be converted to complementary DNA (cDNA) with the enzyme Reverse Transcriptase — hence the “RT” at the beginning of “PCR” or “qPCR.”

But this transformation process is “widely recognized as inefficient and variable,” as Jessica Schwaber from the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Toronto and two research colleagues pointed out in a 2019 paper.

Stephen A. Bustin acknowledges problems with PCR in a comparable way.

For example, he pointed to the problem that in the course of the conversion process (RNA to cDNA) the amount of DNA obtained with the same RNA base material can vary widely, even by a factor of 10 (see above interview).

Considering that the DNA sequences get doubled at every cycle, even a slight variation becomes magnified and can thus alter the result, annihilating the test’s reliable informative value.

So how can it be that those who claim the PCR tests are highly meaningful for so-called COVID-19 diagnosis blind out the fundamental inadequacies of these tests — even if they are confronted with questions regarding their validity?

Certainly, the apologists of the novel coronavirus hypothesis should have dealt with these questions before throwing the tests on the market and putting basically the whole world under lockdown, not least because these are questions that come to mind immediately for anyone with even a spark of scientific understanding.

Thus, the thought inevitably emerges that financial and political interests play a decisive role for this ignorance about scientific obligations. NB, the WHO, for example has financial ties with drug companies, as the British Medical Journal showed in 2010.

Experts criticize “that the notorious corruption and conflicts of interest at WHO have continued, even grown” since then. The CDC as well, to take another big player, is obviously no better off.

Finally, the reasons and possible motives remain speculative, and many involved surely act in good faith; but the science is clear: The numbers generated by these RT-PCR tests do not in the least justify frightening people who have been tested “positive” and imposing lockdown measures that plunge countless people into poverty and despair or even drive them to suicide.

A “positive” result may have serious consequences for the patients as well, because then all non-viral factors are excluded from the diagnosis and the patients are treated with highly toxic drugs and invasive intubations.

Especially for elderly people and patients with pre-existing conditions such a treatment can be fatal, as we have outlined in the article “Fatal Therapie.”

Without doubt excess mortality rates are caused by the therapy and by the lockdown measures, while the “COVID-19” death statistics comprise also patients who died of a variety of diseases, redefined as COVID-19 only because of a “positive” test result whose value could not be more doubtful.

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Notes

[1] Sensitivity is defined as the proportion of patients with disease in whom the test is positive; and specificity is defined as the proportion of patients without disease in whom the test is negative.

[2] E-mail from Prof. Thomas Löscher from March 6, 2020

[3] Martin Enserink. Virology. Old guard urges virologists to go back to basics, Science, July 6, 2001, p. 24

[4] E-mail from Charles Calisher from May 10, 2020

[5] Creative Diagnostics, SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus Multiplex RT-qPCR Kit

Featured image is from CDC

First published by GR on June 17, 2020

Imagine, you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy – and you may even believe it – but in fact your life and fate is in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable – it doesn’t matter. They are less than the 0.0001%.

For lack of a better expression, let’s call them for now “obscure individuals”. 

These obscure individuals who pretend running our world have never been elected. We don’t need to name them. You will figure out who they are, and why they are famous, and some of them totally invisible. They have created structures, or organisms without any legal format. They are fully out of international legality. They are a forefront for the Beast. Maybe there are several competing Beasts. But they have the same objective: A New or One World Order (NWO, or OWO).

These obscure individuals are running, for example, The World Economic Forum (WEF – representing Big Industry, Big Finance and Big Fame), the Group of 7 – G7, the Group of 20 – G20 (the leaders of the economically” strongest” nations). There are also some lesser entities, called the Bilderberg Society, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Chatham House and more.

The members of all of them are overlapping. Even this expanded forefront combined represents less than 0.001%. They all have superimposed themselves over sovereign national elected and constitutional governments, and over THE multinational world body, the United Nations, the UN.

In fact, they have coopted the UN to do their bidding. UN Director Generals, as well as the DGs of the multiple UN-suborganizations, are chosen  mostly by the US, with the consenting nod of their European vassals – according to the candidate’s political and psychological profile. If his or her ‘performance’ as head of the UN or head of one of the UN suborganizations fails, his or her days are counted. Coopted or created by the Beast(s) are also, the European Union, the Bretton Woods Organizations, World Bank and IMF, as well as the World Trade Organization (WTO) – and – make no mistake – the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. It has no teeth. Just to make sure the law is always on the side of the lawless.

In addition to the key international financial institutions, WB and IMF, there are the so-called regional development banks and similar financial institutions, keeping the countries of their respective regions in check.

In the end its financial or debt-economy that controls everything. Western neoliberal banditry has created a system, where political disobedience can be punished by economic oppression or outright theft of national assets in international territories. The system’s common denominator is the (still) omnipresent US-dollar.

“Unelected Individuals”

The supremacy of these obscure unelected individuals becomes ever more exposed. We, the People consider it “normal” that they call the shots, not what we call – or once were proud of calling, our sovereign nations and sovereignly elected governments. They have become a herd of obedient sheep. The Beast has gradually and quietly taken over. We haven’t noticed. It’s the salami tactic: You cut off slice by tiny slice and when the salami is gone, you realize that you have nothing left, that your freedom, your civil and human rights are gone. By then it’s too late. Case in point is the US Patriot Act. It was prepared way before 9/11. Once 9/11 “happened”, the Patriot Legislation was whizzed through Congress in no time – for the people’s future protection – people called for it for fear – and – bingo, the Patriot Act took about 90% of the American population’s freedom and civil rights away. For good.

We have become enslaved to the Beast. The Beast calls the shots on boom or bust of our economies, on who should be shackled by debt, when and where a pandemic should break out, and on the conditions of surviving the pandemic, for example, social confinement. And to top it all off – the instruments the Beast uses, very cleverly, are a tiny-tiny invisible enemy, called a virus, and a huge but also invisible monster, called FEAR. That keeps us off the street, off reunions with our friends, and off our social entertainment, theatre, sports, or a picnic in the park.

Soon the Beast will decide who will live and who will die, literally – if we let it. This may be not far away. Another wave of pandemic and people may beg, yell and scream for a vaccine, for their death knell, and for the super bonanza of Big Pharma – and towards the objectives of the eugenicists blatantly roaming the world – see this. There is still time to collectively say NO. Collectively and solidarily.

Take the latest case of blatant imposture. Conveniently, after the first wave of Covid-19 had passed, at least in the Global North, where the major world decisions are made, in early June 2020, the unelected WEF Chairman, Klaus Schwab, announced “The Great Reset”. Taking advantage of the economic collapse – the crisis shock, as in “The Shock Doctrine” – Mr. Schwab, one of the Beast’s frontrunners, announces openly what the WEF will discuss and decide for the world-to-come in their next Davos Forum in January 2021. For more details see this.

Will, We, The People, accept the agenda of the unelected WEF?

It will opportunely focus on the protection of what’s left of Mother Earth; obviously at the center will be man-made CO2-based “Global Warming”. The instrument for that protection of nature and humankind will be the UN Agenda 2030 – which equals the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It will focus on how to rebuild the willfully destroyed global economy, while respecting the (“green”) principles of the 17 SDGs.

Mind you, it’s all connected. There are no coincidences. The infamous Agenda 2021 which coincides with and complements the so-called (UN) Agenda 2030, will be duly inaugurated by the WEF’s official declaration of The Great Reset, in January 2021. Similarly, the implementation of the agenda of The Great Reset began in January 2020, by the launch of the corona pandemic – planned for decades with the latest visible events being the 2010 Rockefeller Report with its “Lockstep Scenario”, and Event 201, of 18 October in NYC which computer-simulated a corona pandemic, leaving within 18 months 65 million deaths and an economy in ruin, programmed just a few weeks before the launch of the actual corona pandemic. See COVID-19, We Are Now Living the “Lock Step Scenario” and this and this.

The Race Riots

The racial riots, initiated by the movement Black Lives Matter (funded by the Ford Foundation and Soros’ Open Society Foundation), following the brutal assassination of the Afro-American George Floyd by a gang of Minneapolis police, and spreading like brush-fire in no time to more than 160 cities, first in the US, then in Europe – are not only connected to the Beast’s agenda, but they were a convenient deviation from the human catastrophe left behind by Covid-19. See also this.

The Beast’s nefarious plan to implement what’s really behind the UN Agenda 2030 is the little heard-of Agenda ID2020. See The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”. It has been created and funded by the vaccination guru Bill Gates, and so has GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations), the association of Big Pharma – involved in creating the corona vaccines, and which funds along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) a major proportion of WHO’s budget.

The Great Reset, as announced by WEF’s Klaus Schwab, is supposedly implemented by Agenda ID2020. It is more than meets the eye. Agenda ID2020 is even anchored in the SDGs, as SDG 16.9 “by 2030 provide legal [digital] identity for all, including free birth registration”. This fits perfectly into the overall goal of SDG 16: ”Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”

Following the official path of the UN Agenda 2030 of achieving the SDGs, the ‘implementing’ Agenda ID2020 – which is currently being tested on school children in Bangladesh – will provide digitized IDs possibly in the form of nano-chips implanted along with compulsory vaccination programs, will promote digitization of money and the rolling out of 5G – which would be needed to upload and monitor personal data on the nano chips and to control the populace. Agenda ID2020 will most likely also include ‘programs’ – through vaccination? – of significantly reducing world population. Eugenics is an important component in the control of future world population under a NOW / OWO – see also Georgia Guidestones, mysteriously built in 1980.

The ruling elite used the lockdown as an instrument to carry out this agenda. Its implementation would naturally face massive protests, organized and funded along the same lines as were the BLM protests and demonstrations. They may not be peaceful – and may not be planned as being peaceful. Because to control the population in the US and in Europe, where most of the civil unrest would be expected, a total militarization of the people is required. This is well under preparation.

In his essay “The Big Plantation”, John Steppling reports from a NYT article that a

“minimum of  93,763 machine guns, 180,718 magazine cartridges, hundreds of silencers and an unknown number of grenade launchers have been provided to state and local police departments in the US since 2006. This is in addition to at least 533 planes and helicopters, and 432 MRAPs — 9-foot high, 30-ton Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles with gun turrets and more than 44,900 pieces of night vision equipment, regularly used in nighttime raids in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

He adds that this militarization is part of a broader trend. Since the late 1990s, about 89 percent of police departments in the United States serving populations of 50,000 people or more had a PPU (Police Paramilitary Unit), almost double of what existed in the mid-1980s. He refers to these militarized police as the new Gestapo.

Even before Covid, about 15% to 20% of the population was on or below the poverty line in the United States. The post-covid lockdown economic annihilation will at least double that percentage – and commensurately increase the risk for civil turbulence and clashes with authorities – further enhancing the reasoning for a militarized police force.

China’s Crypto RMB

None of these scenarios will, of course, be presented to the public by the WEF in January 2021. These are decisions taken behind closed doors by the key actors for the Beast. However, this grandiose plan of the Great Reset does not have to happen. There is at least half the world population and some of the most powerful countries, economically and militarily – like China and Russia – opposed to it. “Reset” maybe yes, but not in these western terms. In fact, a reset of kinds is already happening with China about to roll out a new People’s Bank of China backed blockchain-based cryptocurrency, the crypto RMB, or yuan. This is not only a hard currency based on a solid economy, it is also supported by gold.

While President Trump keeps trashing China for unfair trade, for improperly managing the covid pandemic, for stealing property rights – China bashing no end – that China depends on the US and that the US will cut trading ties with China – or cut ties altogether, China is calling Trump’s bluff. China is quietly reorienting herself towards the ASEAN countries plus Japan (yes, Japan!) and South Korea, where trade already today accounts for about 15% of all China’s trade and is expected to double in the next five years.

Despite the lockdown and the disruption of trade, China’s overall exports recovered with a 3.2% increase in April (in relation to April 2019). This overall performance in China exports was nonetheless accompanied by a dramatic decline in US-China trade. China exports to the US decreased by 7.9% in April (in relation to April 2019).

It is clear that the vast majority of US industries could not survive without Chinese supply chains. The western dependence on Chinese medical supplies is particularly strong. Let alone Chinese dependence by US consumers. In 2019, US total consumption, about 70% of GDP, amounted to $13.3 trillion, of which a fair amount is directly imported from China or dependent on ingredients from China.

The WEF-masters are confronted with a real dilemma. Their plan depends very much on the dollar supremacy which would continue to allow dishing out sanctions and confiscating assets from those countries opposing US rule; a dollar-hegemony which would allow imposing the components of The Great Reset scheme, as described above.

At present, the dollar is fiat money, debt-money created from thin air. It has no backing whatsoever. Therefore, its worth as a reserve currency is increasingly decaying, especially vis-à-vis the new crypto-yuan from China. In order to compete with the Chinese yuan, the US Government would have to move away from its monetary Ponzi-scheme, by separating itself from the 1913 Federal Reserve Act and print her own US-economy- and possibly gold-backed (crypto) money – not fiat FED-money, as is the case today. That would mean cutting the more than 100-year old ties to the Rothschild and Co. clan-owned FED, and creating a real peoples-owned central bank. Not impossible, but highly improbable. Here, two Beasts might clash, as world power is at stake.

Meanwhile, China, with her philosophy of endless creation would continue forging ahead unstoppably with her mammoth socioeconomic development plan of the 21^st Century, the Belt and Road Initiative, connecting and bridging the world with infrastructure for land and maritime transport, with joint research and industrial projects, cultural exchanges – and not least, multinational trade with “win-win” characteristics, equality for all partners – towards a multi-polar world, towards a world with a common future for mankind.

Today already more than 120 countries are associated with BRI – and the field is wide open for others to join – and to defy, unmask and unplug The Great Reset of the West.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

For Martin Luther King Day: Let Us End His “Second Assassination”

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, January 11 2021

While many people take the opportunity to treat Martin’s life as a pre-packaged hallmark card of cliché speeches, far too few take the time to fully appreciate not only the depth of his understanding of the multifaceted evils plaguing society but also his brilliant plans, methods and vision for creative problem solving.

End of the Saudi Blockade of Qatar: Will Syria Benefit from the “Renewed Gulf Unity”?

By Steven Sahiounie, January 11 2021

With an end to the Qatar blockade and a possible rapprochement with Turkey, Saudi Arabia may soon move towards reconciliation with Syria. The Persian Gulf states’ opposition to Iran’s role in the region, while limiting Turkey’s influence, may bring Saudi Arabia and the Gulf back to Damascus.

Patriot Act 2, Censorship, and Other Notes from the Edge of the Narrative Matrix

By Caitlin Johnstone, January 11 2021

Patriot Act 2.0 will be rolled out with a lot of mindless bleating about white supremacists and fighting fascism, and the actual policies and laws put into place will have virtually nothing to do with any of those things. They will be geared at preventing the revolutionary changes.

America Under Censorship: Twitter Shutting Out Certain Voices and Ideas. Biden Presidency Certified, Free Speech May be No Longer

By Catherine Shakdam, January 11 2021

Though many will argue that such measures to silence Mr Trump were wielded in the public’s best interest, in the context of the violence we all saw unravel at Capital Hill this Wednesday, I’d like you to consider for a moment the implications of such a unilateral move.

Video: Senator Jensen Under Investigation For Telling the Truth About COVID-19

By Sen. Scott Jensen, January 11 2021

In the following video, Senator Scott Jensen of Minnesota warns of a “danger that we need to talk about.” “The cancel culture is happening, … but the fact of the matter is COVID-19 has opened a door into a tremendously vicious political non-discussion.”

False Positives: Evidence Based Fact, What is the Reliability of the PCR Test?

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, Prof. Stefan Homburg, and A. Castellitto, January 11 2021

We bring to the attention of our readers a series of quotations by the CDC, FDA, scientists and medical doctors compiled by Dr. Gary Kohls.

Genetic Engineering, Agriculture and Brexit: Treachery in Our Midst

By Colin Todhunter, January 10 2021

The UK government has launched its public consultation on the deregulation of gene editing in England. To kick things off, somewhat predictably Environment Secretary George Eustice recently spun a staunch pro-industry line at the Oxford Farming Conference.

How the Media Distort Reality – Filtering Out the “Important Stuff”

By Rod Driver, January 10 2021

If our media were trying to cover world events each day honestly, then the headlines would repeatedly say things like: “US and Britain commit more war crimes in the Middle East”, “Thousands persecuted by tyrants supported by US and Britain”. This does not happen because our current media are not trying to give us an honest explanation of what is really happening in the world.

Joe Biden and the Post-Corona “Great Reset”. The Protest Movement

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 09 2021

In the wake of the Wednesday January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill Event, we must reflect on what a  Joe Biden Administration will look like. Joe Biden was not duly elected, he was selected. He is a groomed and “reliable” politician. He is a political instrument of the global capitalist establishment.

How the Left is being Manipulated into Colluding in its own Character Assassination

By Jonathan Cook, January 09 2021

Varoufakis describes here the way that leftwing dissidents who challenge or disrupt western establishment narratives – whether it be himself, Assange or Jeremy Corbyn – end up not only being subjected to character assassination, as was always the case, but nowadays find themselves being manipulated into colluding in their own character assassination.

Patriot Act 2.0 will be rolled out with a lot of mindless bleating about white supremacists and fighting fascism, and the actual policies and laws put into place will have virtually nothing to do with any of those things. They will be geared at preventing the revolutionary changes that need to be pushed for in the United States by the American people.

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Listening to US politicians and pundits the last few years you’d assume it’s been raining actual 9/11s and Pearl Harbors in America 24/7.

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“Our democracy has been attacked!” screamed the political establishment that just forced you to choose between Donald Trump and Democrat Donald Trump for president.

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Saying there’s been an attack on American democracy is like saying there’s been an attack on Kazakhstan’s fjords.

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Liberals learned the words “coup” and “insurrection” like five seconds ago and now they are academic experts on both of these things.

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The narrative managers’ ability to move liberals and progressives from “Defund the police” to “MOAR POLICING” in just a few months was even more impressive than their ability to move them from “Believe Women” and #MeToo to “Tara Reade is a lying grifter”.

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Here’s how politicians, media and government could eliminate conspiracy theories if they really want to:

• Stop lying all the time
• Stop killing people
• Stop promoting conspiracy theories (eg Russiagate)
• Stop doing evil things in secret
• End government opacity
• Stop conspiring

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To support the censorship of online speech is to support the authority of monopolistic tech oligarchs to exert more and more global control over human communication. Regardless of your attitude toward whoever happens to be getting deplatformed today, supporting this is self-destructive.

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I don’t share people’s magical fascination with the word “tolerance”. As far as I can tell it’s an empty and irrelevant concept. This isn’t about tolerance, it’s about trusting government-tied tech oligarchs to regulate speech around the world on monopolistic speech platforms.

The future of humanity depends on our ability to wake up a critical mass of people to how fucked things really are, and if speech which doesn’t conform to establishment orthodoxy is censored on the platforms the mainstream crowd use to share ideas, that will become impossible.

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“We need to stop fascism so let’s give massive sweeping powers to an elite alliance of unelected authoritarians.”

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“Well I’m a leftist and I haven’t been banned on social media.”

That’s because the left is politically impotent in our society. Unless this is just a hobby for you, at some point you should plan on the left becoming a threat to the oligarchs and warmongers. What do you think happens then?

Do you really think if the left actually becomes a threat to the status quo the Neera Tandens and Rachel Maddows aren’t going to suddenly discover a reason why you’re dangerous and need to be censored? The only way to be fine with censorship is to plan on never challenging power.

Tech billionaires are not on your side, and neither are the government agencies and plutocratic media leaning on them to implement censorship. Those institutions don’t give a shit about silencing the right, they want to implement measures to silence you. The left is being censored already, but it hasn’t seen anything yet.

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“As a leftist I’m fine with censorship because it’s not like the leftist revolution is going to be organized on social media.”

Social media isn’t for organizing the leftist revolution you bonehead, it’s for creating more leftists. It’s for reaching the mainstream.

A leftist’s first and foremost job is to create more leftists. If the left becomes a potent political force, all the censorship protocols they’ve been putting into place these last few years will be used to stop it from infecting the mainstream herd. You shouldn’t want this.

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Trying to stop fascism by making it invisible is like trying to avert a charging bull by putting your hands over your eyes.

If you want to stop the rise of fascism you need to change. Change your sick society. Profoundly. Not just cover up the manifestations of that sickness. Compartmentalizing and covering up the problem instead of pouring money and resources into creating a healthy society which addresses the underlying problems is the most shitlib thing ever.

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Saying you are free to leave these monopolistic platforms and go to some fringe website no one uses is the same as saying you are free to dig a hole and yell into it. There is no magical free market solution to this problem, because the problem is that imperial power structures are deliberately herding people onto monopolistic speech platforms that they can then censor under the guise of terms of service.

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All of the most critical factors determining what people’s lives are like are invisible now. Most people don’t even know they’re happening. Oligarchy. Neoliberalism. Imperialism. Used to be you knew who the king was, and he’d openly do anything he wanted. Now that’s all kept carefully hidden.

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Why is it kept hidden now? Well there are a lot of factors, but mostly it’s because the rank-and-file public discovered guillotines. Ever since then your rulers are out of necessity kept hidden from you, and so is their totalitarianism.

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The US government is the most evil and destructive force in the world. Not Trump. The US government. This will not change in any meaningful way when Trump leaves. Massive amounts of manipulation have been poured into keeping you from seeing this.

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Featured image is from CaitlinJohnstone.com

The parallel of the American economic landscape from COVID’s deathly sweep seems far more like Ireland’s in the great potato famine  of 1845-52 than the Great Depression of the 1930s. And the stinginess and indifference by the upper classes ruling both countries to the suffering of those considered far beneath them—who always take the brunt of most catastrophes—in both countries has not changed an iota.

In Ireland, a million died of starvation  or from famine’s complications, bodies rotting where they fell. Nearly two million  fled the country, most heading for the U.S. In America today, nearly 400,000 deaths  from the pandemic are projected by year’s end Hundreds of unclaimed bodies are in refrigerator trucks (maximum storage: 50 each ) awaiting mass burials.

Most destitute Americans in the 1930s did indeed have a champion in president Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) whose first priority the day after his inauguration on March 4, 1933  was their long and short-term recoveries. He issued 103 Executive Orders  (EO) between March and June, mostly for New Deal programs covering unemployment, healthcare, housing, and food supplies.

Unfortunately, neither the 99 percenters of today nor those in Ireland then (and now) have had such a practical, tough, and caring leader who did yeoman’s work to put them back on their feet. The disasters made the populace totally dependent on upper-class decisions in Parliament then and Congress now about their fate. And the decisions in both cases were to employ the “herd immunity” policy of doing almost nothing—especially spending tax monies the stricken themselves provide over the years—to avoid deaths and long-term ailments of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, the “commons.”

Ireland in the 1840s did have representation  in Parliament (105 in the House of Commons, 28 titled landowners in Lords). Congress today  has 100 members in the Senate, 435 in House. Serving in both bodies has required either wealth or influential donors and time away from businesses and professions—and travel expenses.

So in today’s Congress, half  its members are millionaires—as are those currently in the Irish Parliament. They move in elevated political and social circles. They also have enviable “perks” in transportation, dining, newsletter mailings, and the like.

With wealth, power, prestige, and perks, how could lawmakers possibly identify with victims of the famine or COVID or the urgency of relief measures? Besides, why would need for immediate help be considered if survivors could not (or would not) vote, and had yet to complain about their “taxation without representation?”

In both calamities, most affected have been either unaware of—or feel powerless about—legislative life-and-death decisions impacting them made in London or Washington, D.C. Judging from rulers’ inactions in both crises, most of those ruled have always believed they can do little to oppose leaders’ critical decisions supported by courts and armies—until millions form powerful movements and take appropriate actions. And today with the Internet—unlike radio and television requiring advertising money—it is the easiest way to connect millions of the commons than in any other time in history.

In practice, most people have been unaware of what is being designed in secret unless in modern times a trial balloon has been floated to test reactions. Both the Irish then and Americans up to recently usually have been presented with a fait accompli and must swallow it. But many refused. In Ireland it meant decades of guerrilla warfare against the British. Americans went for massive marches and placards on one hand and militant strike action on the other.

In this year’s five COVID relief bills, for example, no public hearings  were held, nor were wanted by Congress. Members’ cynical presumption was that constituents could always use emails, calls, and town halls to provide their representatives—and advisors and legislative aides—with feedback. They knew the most affected had neither the time nor inclination to provide input.

Hearings indeed would have slowed down dispatching emergency aid even for the two successful bills, but it has taken nine months for them to be signed into law. The last—Coronavirus Response Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020 —passed because it was bundled with a vital $1.4 trillion bill  to keep government operations running until September.

With typical upper-class disregard for the hardships of commoners impacted by economic disasters, Trump used a sadistic Sunday signing prank  that cost more than 14 million a week of unemployment checks out of the 11 weeks before the March 14 permanent cutoff. But, then, three years ago he’d tossed paper towels  as mop-up relief for Puerto Rico’s desperate survivors of Hurricane Maria. At least when an equally disdainful, yet frightened, Queen Victoria  was finally persuaded to make a state visit to Ireland in 1849 when famine was ebbing, she donated £2,000 for relief.

Sadly, only a sprinkling of highly vocal populist legislative members—Prime Minister Robert Peel  to an extent and Sen. Bernie Sanders —have fought for legislative measures to provide genuine long-term solutions to adversities suffered by the lower classes. But most members in both eras have treated them with the same indifference and particular cruelty by control of the public purse.

In Ireland, famine relief  of the mid-1840s and early 1850s entailed free soup kitchens, a few pence per day on public-work jobs, or the workhouse. In 1847, the head of Britain’s relief operations for Ireland was the penny-pinching Sir Randolph Routh . He regarded the Irish as lazy and full of “all kinds of vice,” and was delighted to report:

The soup [kitchen] system promises to be a great resource and I am endeavouring to turn the views of the Committees to it. It will have a double effect of feeding the people at a lower price and economising our meal.

His counterpart of today, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)  (2018 net worth: $39.2 million ),  just voted  to appropriate without question some $740 billion  to the Pentagon for FY2021. Yet two weeks later, he opposed giving any money for millions of COVID victims provided in the just-passed bipartisan economic stimulus bill (H.R. 133, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 ). His rationale was:

While I am glad a government shutdown was avoided and that financial relief will finally reach many who truly need it, the fact that this dysfunction has become routine is the reason we are currently $27.5 trillion in debt. This combined spending bill will drive our debt to over $29 trillion by the end of this fiscal year….We do not have an unlimited checking account. We must spend federal dollars, money we are borrowing from future generations, more carefully and place limits on how much we are mortgaging our children’s future.

Sen. Bernie Sanders  (I-VT) has repeatedly blasted their upper-class view:

When it comes to tax breaks for rich people or corporate welfare or bloated military budgets, that’s OK. But when you stand up and you say that working-class families need some help, ‘Oh my God, the world is gonna collapse.’ So I am a little bit tired of that hypocrisy.

In both Parliament then and Congress now, a few members might have felt a twinge of guilt about that hypocrisy of their parsimonious actions—but not many. Most have been extremely grateful not to be among the millions facing a bitterly cold winter of discontent and despair over joblessness, homelessness, starvation—and death by famine or COVID.

Trying to provide relief and recovery to the victims of sudden Acts of Nature or financial crashes in both countries is perhaps the greatest illustration of class warfare. Most decision makers in Parliament and Congress have always had low regard for bankrupts and beggars as the “undeserving poor,” “layabouts,” or “welfare queens” bent on stealing taxpayer money (before they do).

Parliament passed only two relief laws for the Irish during the famine, both in 1847—the Destitute Poor Act and the Poor Law Extension Act . Total expense was £8 million of which  £7 million came from Irish taxes and £1 from Ireland’s landlords.

The first set up those soup kitchens which were to feed three million . The second law limited borrowers to local lenders. Unlike today’s COVID relief laws, neither major businesses, institutions nor financial houses were included in those laws.

Not so for Congress in the two of five COVID relief bills it finally passed this year.

In the first place, the bipartisan, Scrooge-like leaders never would have produced, much less passed, a stand-alone rescue bill solely for COVID’s jobless to pay their rent, utilities, food, and doctor bills. This was just shown by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell  (R-KY) blocking passage of a stand-alone House-passed bill for a one-time $2,000 stimulus check for most households. It was to replace the $600 allotted in the $900 billion Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021  which Trump  signed into law December 22.

Nor were they about to produce a stand-alone bill devoted solely to bailing out businesses and institutions. The 2011 Occupy movement notoriously identified the class system as the 1 percent rich against the 99 percent of most Americans. Our street demonstrators’ famous chant was “Banks Got Bailed Out/We Got Sold Out.” Greed suddenly got a bad name and might cost incumbents in the upcoming elections.

The solution was to combine both people and business-rescue operations and tout relief measures and hide greed. In the first relief bill, the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security), more than half of the initial funds were bailouts  to corporations and tax-extension breaks for the wealthy and other sources dimly related to relief for people.

That some of these allocations—later omitted by adverse publicity—were even included reflects on lawmakers’ pandemic priorities. Among them: $696 billion for the Pentagon; $105 billion to support mostly higher education; $7 billion to expand broadband internet access; $6.3 billion in tax deductions for business meals; $2.5 billion for NASCAR race tracks; $1.86 billion for a new FBI building; $1.5 billion for NASA; $1.5 billion for substance abuse prevention/treatment; $1.45 billion for at least two hospital ships; $1.4 billion for Trump’s border wall; $200 million for timber harvesting; and a permanent excise tax cut for producers of beer, wine, distilled spirits.

One infamous provision—the Paycheck Protection Program  (PPP)—initially was allocated $349 billion  in the CARES Act; today, it’s $285 billion. It involved forgivable million-dollar loans supposedly to smallbusinesses by the SBA (Small Business Administration) to cover employee wages until reopenings. But major corporations and institutions—some unaffected by COVID—were first in line siphoned off a lion’s share of the loan funds until complaints by enough small businesses were addressed. Too, because SBA loans are made through approved lenders such JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, etc. they charged that agency with 1-5 percent “processing fees” (PC), depending on the loan’s size. And have made billions. For instance, a 5 percent PC on an average loan of, say, $104,760 borrowed by 280,185 small businesses, the profit would be $1.5 billion.

As the nine months passed, COVID’s hardest-hit, the working-class, got less and less while COVID continued to decimate the population.

The first bill, the nearly $4 trillion CARES Act  whipped through Congress to Trump’s signature in seven days  by March 27. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin withheld nearly $500 billion from the people’s portion to invest it into businesses.

Provisions included a one-time, Trump-autographed $1,200 check to 159 million  families to “stimulate” spending, and a weekly $600 supplement to unemployment checks ending the day after Christmas. “Forbearance” was offered for student-loan payments and moratoriums for rent and mortgage payments—but only until December 31.

So legislative aides slogged back to the drawing board once more after a group of bipartisan House members asked for a $908 billion relief bill  to avoid a howling outcry by recipients when all benefits ended. The final draft was whittled down to $900 billion .

Its 5,593  pages included a one-time stimulus check of $600 for each family member to those earning lessthan $75,000 a year, an extension for unemployment checks until March 14 with the $600 supplement cut to $300 per week, and another extension for paid sick and family leave  until March 31. Homeowners with federal mortgages requesting forbearance would have a 90-day extension on foreclosures. Renters in federally subsidized housing were given a 120-day moratorium without penalties. Eviction moratoriums would last only until January 31. As for student loans, none were offered  because lawmakers decided nine months of forbearance until January 31 was sufficient.

Even with these cutbacks and brief extensions, key Republicans like South Dakota’s Sen. John Thune  (net worth: $384,509.50 ) opposed including that stimulus check to the unemployed. Combined with their weekly unemployment check, that would be double-dipping, he believed.

Meantime in today’s Ireland, equally hard hit by COVID and meager relief measures, the February elections resulted in a three-party coalition government—two for the upper classes and the fast-growing working-class party, Sinn Fein. The country’s FY2021 budget of $133.8 billion  may have had a line-item of $1.5 billion  for the military, but, as in the U.S., its COVID relief got so few additional crumbs from 2020, that Sinn Fein’s finance spokesperson  snapped that for ordinary workers and families the allocation was: “crumbs off the table—there’s nothing for renters, people on social welfare or pensioners and nothing in terms of childcare.” By May, Ireland had at least a million jobless  receiving a weekly $390 unemployment check. In the U.S., it was 20.3 million Americans  by November whose benefits averaged $319 weekly .

As financial columnist Nick Beams summed up the reality of the class system’s centuries-old appallingly cruel treatment of the commons in this Armageddon:

 When governments and central banks launched their multi-trillion-dollar bailout operations, they claimed the extraordinary measures were necessary to save the economy. This fraud has been exposed. The sole concern of the ruling oligarchy was not the health and economic well-being of the mass of the population, but that of the financial markets.

Both our countries have similar histories and scrappy lower classes. We both fought Britain for Independence and experienced heavy immigration, millions to America mostly from Europe, 500,000  fleeing the Great Famine to the same destination. We’ve had civil wars—racial in the U.S., religious in Ireland—and were leveled economically by the Great Depression. And now we 99 percenters share COVID’s ongoing horrors, one of which is that  millions commoners  will be the last class even in the “rich countries” to receive the vaccine. After all, its producers can make only so many in a day.

But it’s a certainty that after the healthcare professionals are inoculated, the rich will be next in the distribution line.

New administrations  in both countries are facing monumental financial challenges to their COVID-affected populations. And their major challenge seems to be how to find the revenues to cover those domestic expenditures without heavy taxation on the wealthy or corporations or forcing austerity on those who can least afford it. From a historical perspective, the wealthy majority in the Irish Parliament and Congress are not about to tax the rich to give relief to the poor until they have first wrung the last penny from the commons.

Columnist Shane O’Brien  with the Irishcentral website speculated that raising revenue in Ireland might be done by taxing private pension savings. Or a progressive tax for bank accounts over £10,000. Or increasing property taxes and “asset tax structures” on the wealthy. But given the difficulty of even collecting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, both the Irish Parliament and Congress may begin to talk about “bail-ins” wherein the government seizes portions of bank accounts to avoid going bankrupt—with crisp documents vowing to return every penny—some day. Perhaps that’s what it will take to arouse the ruled in both countries against the rulers. As poet Edwin Markham  warned in 1899, America’s “gilded age”:

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?

…. After the silence of the centuries?

The January 6 invasion and desecration of our nation’s Capitol is but a sample of what’s ahead in every state capitol if nothing changes for ordinary Americans by Congress.

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Barbara G. Ellis, Ph.D., is the principal of a Portland (OR) writing firm. A veteran professional writer and editor (LIFE magazine, Washington, D.C. Evening Star, Beirut Daily Star, Mideast Magazine), she also was a journalism professor (Oregon State University/Louisiana’s McNeese State University). Author of dozens of articles for magazines and online websites, she was a nominee for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history (The Moving Appeal). Today, she contributes to Truthout and Counterpunch, RSN, DissidentVoice, Global Research, and OpEdNews, as well as being a political and environmental activist.

Featured image: Rioters in Dungarvan attempt to break into a bakery; the poor could not afford to buy what food was available. (The Pictorial Times, 1846). (CC0)

How strange it must have seemed for US lawmakers to be suddenly facing what was described as a “mob”, not so much storming as striding into the Capitol with angry purpose.  A terrified security force proved understaffed and overwhelmed.  Members of Congress hid.  Five people lost their lives.

With the US imperium responsible for fostering numerous revolutions and coups across the globe during its history, spikes of schadenfreude could be found.  China’s state paper Global Times found it irresistible to use the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as a point of comparison.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s remark that the Hong Kong protests were “a beautiful sight to behold” was rubbed in the face of US lawmakers.  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying, remarking on the gloating reaction of Chinese netizens, also referred to remarks by US lawmakers on the Hong Kong protests.

It did not take long for carelessly chosen words such as “coup” to find their way into the political stuttering, as if President Donald Trump had somehow been having beer hall meetings in an atmosphere thick with plotting.  Presidential historian Michael Beschloss was one.  “This is a coup d’état attempted by the president of the United States.”

Many members of Congress concurred.

“What happened at the US Capitol yesterday was an insurrection against the United States, incited by the president,” concluded Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer in a statement.  “This president should not hold office one day longer.”

Republican Senator Mitt Romney also stated that “an insurrection, incited by the president of the United States,” had taken place.  Republican Rep. John Curtis went further, calling the move on the Capitol “an act of domestic terrorism inspired and encouraged by our president.”

Meaty words for scenes more nastily absurd than politically planned or devised, despite assertions by Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming that “the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob.”

This summation is all too tidy.  It would have been far better to see the rioters much as the commander-and-chief himself: disposed to chaos, unrepentant in petulance.  There was the QAnon conspiracy theorist Jake Angeli, sans shirt but donning a fur hat with Viking horns and spear, treating the occasion like a Christmas panto.  There was Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who occupied, for a moment, the chair of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leaving a note reading: “Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch.”

There is no denying that such protestors had been offered rich encouragement by the president to protest the certification of the election results by Congress.  “You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” he said coaxingly.  Preoccupied with his own version of the stab-in-the-back theory involving a “stolen” election, Trump is crafting a version of history that, should it stick, will propel him for a future campaign to retake the White House.

The Capitol incident had tickled and teased out the prospects of a real coup, currently being hatched by a rerun of the impeachment narrative and suggestions that the 25^th Amendment of the US constitution be invoked.  Section 4 of the amendment establishes a process by which the president can be declared “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” provided the vice president and a majority of “the principal officers of the executive departments” think so.  The prospect of a hazardous use of that amendment is in the offing.

The wording of the amendment is broad and undefined, even though the original intent of it remains one of removing an executive who suffers true incapacity.  The idea of medical emergency lies at its core.  Even then, a letter has to be signed to the speakers of the House of Representatives and the Senate.  The president is also given a chance to offer a written response contesting the finding, leaving it to Congress to decide.  A supermajority of two-thirds in both congressional chambers would then be required.

Press outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and organisations such as the National Association of Manufacturers have not bothered themselves too much about the original nature of the provision and its purpose.  President and CEO of the latter, Jay Timmons, took the broadest interpretation for the sake of urgency.  “Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25^th amendment to preserve democracy.”

Various lawmakers have also adopted an expansive, if cursory interpretation.  In the view of Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott, “President Trump should resign or be removed from office by his Cabinet, or by the Congress.”

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, in their note to Pence, urge him along with a majority of Cabinet secretaries, to find Trump unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.  They even go for a layman’s diagnosis of his mental wellbeing.  “Even his video announcement this afternoon, President Trump revealed that he was not mentally sound and is still unable to process and accept the results of the 2020 election.”

When the Democrats refused to believe the results of the 2016 elections, showing a persistent inability to process and accept it, they could never be said to be mentally unwell.  Unhinged and delusional, maybe, but hardly a case of mental corrosion.

Law academic Brian Kalt, a keen student of the 25^th amendment, advances two scenarios where section 4 might be used.  The first involves “a president whose impairment is severe enough that the helm is, effectively, unmanned, even if he is still somehow able to claim that he is able to discharge his powers and duties.”  Examples might entail severe strokes, a psychotic break or moderate dementia.

The second instance, which still suggests psychotic behaviour, would involve impairment “to the point of teeing up a disaster,” much like General Jack D. Ripper’s flight of murderous fancy in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.  “Consider, for example, an unhinged president who orders a capricious nuclear strike against another county – the problem here is not that the president is ‘unable’ so much as all too able to wipe out millions of lives.”

While Kalt was writing this in 2019, his views convinced Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School and David Priess, chief operating officer at Lawfare, that Trump had met the standard of removal set by the 25^th Amendment.  He had shown an “inability or unwillingness for weeks to distinguish reality from fiction about the results of the election” and had shown a “detachment from exercising the basic responsibilities of the office”.

Andrew C. McCarthy in the National Review prefers, with much justification, that this is simply pushing things too far, confusing delusion and character flaws with incapacity and inability.  He has pointed out, with some accuracy, that the amendment was “not applicable to a situation in which the president is alleged to be unfit for reasons of character, or due to the commission of political offences that may arise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanours.”  Trump might be delusional and self-interested, but these were not “competent diagnoses of mental instability.”

Within the various disturbed readings of the 25th Amendment lie the same rages that caused Caliban to despair at seeing his own face.  Trump is the symptom, the agent of chaos, the disrupter making much of a bedridden Republic, a good deal of it the making of his opponents.  To use the language of constitutionalism masquerading as an insurrection is intended to finally entomb Trumpism.  What this risks doing is politically martyring a man who will leave office on January 20.

So far, Pence is resolutely opposed to using the measure and has the support of various Trump cabinet officials.  According to the New York Times, “Those officials, a senior Republican said, viewed the effort as likely to add to the current chaos in Washington rather than deter it.”  Utilising it would add the most combustible fuel to the argument Trump has been making all along: that establishment forces, always keen to box him during his administration, are now intent on removing him.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

The coverage of groups of people, described as mobs, rioters, or protestors depending on one’s prejudice or adherence to accurate reporting, who “stormed” the Capitol in Washington and the Legislative Council in Hong Kong is revealing for how media and politicians react.

The American media ran headlines such as:

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• “Trump supporters storm Capitol,” Washington Post
• “Inside the mob that swarmed the US Capitol,” CNN
• “A pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in Washington,” LA Times
• “In Photos: Mob Storms U.S. Capitol Building” New York Times
• “Pro-Trump mob sends US Capitol into chaos,” Chicago Tribune

State/corporate media headlines were similar in Canada and the UK.

The “mob” was encouraged by the words of president Donald Trump. Included in the mob were extreme right-wingers and white-supremacist groups. Of note were the participation of the Falun Gong and Trump-supporting Tibetan sovereignists. The raising of the Tibetan flag at the Capitol Hill imbroglio caused “outrage and alarm” among some in the Tibetan online community. Imagine what would be the reaction if sovereignist Hawai’i flags were raised in Beijing.

CCTV surveillance, for which China is often criticized in the West, has led to some Capitol hill rioters being identified and losing their jobs.

Wei Ling Chua, author of Democracy: What the West Can Learn from China, commented that “unlike US government trained Hong Kong terrorists, Trump supporters did not use arrows, fire bombs, throw stones, or attack the public who expressed different opinions.”

Political leaders were quick to condemn the violence that erupted on Capitol Hill Wednesday after protestors stormed buildings and at least one woman was injured in a shooting.

UK PM Boris Johnson said, “Disgraceful scenes in U.S. Congress. The United States stands for democracy around the world and it is now vital that there should be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power.”

Earlier when speaking of the Hong Kong protestors, Johnson said, “So yes I do support them and I will happily speak up for them and back them every inch of the way.”

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau told the News 1130 Vancouver radio station, “Obviously we’re concerned and we’re following the situation minute by minute. I think the American democratic institutions are strong, and hopefully everything will return to normal shortly.”

Speaking of the protests in Hong Kong, Trudeau directed his criticism at Beijing, “We have worked with some of our closest allies including the U.K., Australia and others to condemn the actions taken by China in Hong Kong.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the people who stormed the US legislature were “attackers and rioters” and that she felt “angry and also sad” after seeing pictures from the scene.

When it came to the Hong Kong protestors, Merkel focused on the rights of the protestors; she “pointed out that these rights and freedoms must of course be guaranteed.”

David Sassoli, president of European Parliament, tweeted, “Deeply concerning scenes from the US Capitol tonight. Democratic votes must be respected. We are certain the US will ensure that the rules of democracy are protected.”

Concerning the unruly situation in Hong Kong — where rioters disrupted the passengers and flights at the international airport, ruined the LegCo, vandalized the metro, trashed university campuses, etc. — the European Parliament put forth a resolution that reads in part: “whereas the people of Hong Kong have taken to the streets in unprecedented numbers, peacefully exercising their fundamental right to assemble and to protest; whereas on 12 June, tens of thousands of protesters assembled around the Legislative Council building and its nearby roads, calling on the government to drop its proposed amendments to Hong Kong’s extradition law…”

What triggered the protests in Hong Kong? Some citizens were opposed to extradition of alleged criminals? How has China responded to rioting, sabotage, terrorism, separatism, and even murders by the so-called protestors? Hong Kong is a territory that was under British colonial administration from 1841 to 1997. There was no democracy until 18 directly elected seats were introduced to LegCo in 1991, shortly before the handover to China. When Hong Kong reverted to mainland China as a special autonomous region; it must be noted that once the original demands for rescinding the extradition bill were met, the goal posts of the NED-supported protestors transformed into a purported democracy movement.

“Hong Kong democracy fighters face a dire choice: Go abroad or go to jail,” Washington Post
“Hong Kong police fire tear gas on pro-democracy protesters,” CNN
“China is desperate to stop Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement,” LA Times
“Hong Kong Police Arrest Dozens of Pro-Democracy Leaders …” New York Times
“Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement left reeling by China’s recent power grab,” Chicago Tribune

Did China respond with military force? No. With arrests of law-abiding journalists? No. With police brutality? Many observers will acknowledge that police have been incredibly restrained, some would say too restrained in the face of protestor violence.

The protestors, largely disaffected youth, as is apparent in all or most video footage, by and large employ random violence as a tactic, which some of them do not condemn.

I agree that individuals and the citizenry should have the right to protest against acts/measures/situations that are perceived to be unjust. However, when the goal of the protests has been achieved, for subsequent demands to be added by the protestors creates an appearance of disingenuousness.

Furthermore, whether one section of a citizenry have the right to inconvenience, disrupt, create conditions of insecurity, economic hardship for another section of the citizenry calls into question the legitimacy of protests. This is especially called into question when authorities have acceded to the initial demand(s) of the protestors.

A 2017 poll found that 78.4% of Hong Kongers responded affirmatively to the statement “Belief that activities demanding political reforms in Hong Kong should be peaceful and non-violent.”

Chinese media have tried to expose the western mass media disinformation about the Hong Kong protests. The Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper, notes, with a hint of Schadenfreude, the hypocrisy in the pronouncements of western politicians and mass media comparing rioters at the Capitol Hill and in Hong Kong.

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Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” ― George Washington

As of January 6, 2021 Twitter decided to suspend US President Donald Trump’s account, for all intents and purposes putting a sock into the man’s mouth for IT didn’t feel like entertaining his political rants. And though many will argue that such measures to silence Mr Trump were wielded in the public’s best interest, in the context of the violence we all saw unravel at Capital Hill this Wednesday, I’d like you to consider for a moment the implications of such a unilateral move.

And for those who missed it, Jo Biden’s presidency was certified by Congress late last night.

Twitter, however familiar the platform has become, remains forever a private entity, a corporate body that cannot claim to legislate or in this particular instance rule over our realities by shutting out certain voices and/or certain ideas. Such powers are far too great for any one individual or corporation to exercise without oversight and lawful recourses. One does not simply suspend a democratically elected president’s opinions on the basis that they clash with the CEO’s own personal views and interests.

Let us not pretend that Twitter was incensed by Wednesday violence … let’s not be so blind and egregiously naive as to believe that Twitter fancies itself the guardian of all things virtuous and fair: like freedom, democracy and civil liberties. Maybe more to the point let us remember that it is not Twitter’s job to moderate our views and shape our thoughts process. If free we are, and indeed free we want to stay, then we ought to defend our rights to free speech – however vile such speech may at times be.

To silence is to dictate and to any form of diktat sits contarian to democratic principles.

I will quote here another US President, President Harry S. Truman, who, in a speech before Congress, warned:

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

He was of course referring to calls by state agencies to ‘monitor’ and ‘contain’ certain dissident voices to preserve the integrity of the State, but the essence of his speech applies here perfectly still – only now it seems the power to silence, monitor, and repress lies now in the hands of corporations as opposed to state agencies. I find the idea slightly more unnerving …

Whatever anyone may think of Trump: hate him, loathe him, mock him, adore him, support him, idolise him, he ought not to be shut out so that others’ voices could rise above to better dominate the landscape. This is not how healthy democracies function, this is now how you defend a nation’s democratic future, and it is certainly not an example you want to set out to the world and still argue that America is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Back in 2018, University of Detroit Mercy law professor Kyle Langvardt wrote a pertinent commentary in the Georgetown Law Journal on the matter. She said, “It seems obvious to me that this is an unacceptable way for a liberal society to do business … What concerns me is that we entrust a few unaccountable and self-interested tech companies to govern online discourse.”

Twitter most definitely overstepped its bounds, thus setting a precedent few have even bothered to challenge for they are only too glad the target was Trump. I often marvel at people’s ability to rationalise their lack of intellectual consistency … call it cognitive dissonance if you will. To hold to the principles of free speech is to agree to bear the poison of opposite views and opinions.

There is another important point I’d like to make, one which too few have even bothered looking into so busy they were to blame Mr Trump for the chaos we all witnessed on our screens. To accuse is one thing, to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt is another. Those ‘agents provocateurs’ we saw commit acts of vandalism and violence may not have been Trump’s MAGA army … until we know for sure, we should not assume; especially since it so conveniently fits the very narrative which rationalises censorship.

But then again the whole point of this blame exercise was exactly that: to muddle half facts with fast-made conclusions to better manipulate public thinking and thus justify one’s decision to self-righteously silence the proverbial “Opposition”- in this case Trump and his supporters, so that the field would be cleared.

I will leave you here to ponder over the words of John Stuart Mill – undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers of our Western philosophical canon.

The basic thrust of his argument on Free Speech is set out in a remarkably succinct form in the following passage of his essay, On Liberty:

“…the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”

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Catherine Shakdam is a research fellow at the Al Bayan Centre for Planning & Studies and a political analyst specializing in radical movements. She is the author of A Tale of Grand Resistance: Yemen, the Wahhabi and the House of Saud. She writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

The Great Reset had to happen so the cashless society could be brought in and the one world government could be introduced…

With society now in a Police state and a Mandatory Vaccine now in place, Kain is finding refuge in the empty streets of London in search of a way out…

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VIDEO

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Martin Luther King Jr. day has been celebrated every January 18 since it was a made a national holiday through the tireless efforts of Martin’s widow Coretta in 1983.

While many people take the opportunity to treat Martin’s life as a pre-packaged hallmark card of cliché speeches, far too few take the time to fully appreciate not only the depth of his understanding of the multifaceted evils plaguing society but also his brilliant plans, methods and vision for creative problem solving which touched on far more than the single issue of “civil rights” for which he is celebrated. In fact, on deeper inspection, we should not be surprised to discover that Martin had come to bridge the gulf between racial justice, economic justice, imperial wars abroad and also global economic imperialism and worked hard to create a functional battle plan to solve all of those problems.

It should not be surprising that this great leader was killed (followed soon thereafter by his ally Robert Kennedy), and the world took a very dark and un-natural trajectory.  It should also not be surprising that many years after his death, efforts were put into motion by those unsatisfied with the death of his body- who wished nothing less than the assassination of his memory and legacy.

The 2^nd Assassination of MLK

A new assassination is being attempted half a century after the life of Martin Luther King was cut short by a bullet on the balcony of the Loraine Motel on April 4, 1968. A story has gone viral across the international media in recent months which promises to shed light on the dark perversity of Martin Luther King Jr.

The scandal was featured in the June 2019 edition of Standpoint magazine by internationally renowned Martin Luther King “authority” David Garrow and aimed at destroying the myth of King as a moral leader of America by showcasing the ugliness of King’s true self as a an orgy-loving abuser who had over 40 affairs and laughed as a friend raped a parishioner. Garrow states that his expose “poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible.”

The fact that so many news outlets are jumping on the bandwagon should cause one to wonder why is this happening at this moment in history? Could this strange hysteria over a mediocre slander piece have anything to do with the fact that the polarized cages of left and right are finally breaking down? Could it be that the light shed upon the injustices and reality of the Deep State’s infiltration of the US government over decades may awaken something within the collective psyche of Americans which many had thought was long dead?

The timing is especially strange since the supposed “ground breaking evidence” which the heroic Garrow is bringing to light was actually first made public in November 2017, and on closer inspection, it wouldn’t qualify by any lawyer’s standard as “evidence”.

The “Scandal” Being Exposed

In November 2017, a batch of 19,000 formerly classified government documents, and wiretap transcripts relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy were made public as per the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. Although nothing very dramatic was found among that otherwise highly redacted bundle, a strange 20 page FBI report on Martin Luther King Jr did cause some to take notice. In this report published weeks before his murder, an anonymous FBI agent records his assessment that MLK was a paid and loyal member of the Communist Party who had his speeches approved by Communist controllers. Not only that, but the report paints King as a sexual deviant of the highest order.

In the last two pages, the report explains how King engaged in a “two day drunken sex orgy in Washington D.C., Many of those present engaged in sexual acts, natural as well as un-natural, for the entertainment of onlookers. When one of the females shied away from engaging in an unnatural act, King and other males present discussed how she was to be taught and initiated in this respect”.

The conspicuous quality of this FBI report, is that it is so reminiscent of Christopher Steele’s 30 page “dodgy dossier” which justified FBI surveillance on President Trump in the lead up to the 2016 elections. Without ever taking a moment to prove any of its claims, the Steele dossier asserted dozens of instances of Trump’s sexual perversity and his adherence to the nefarious agenda of the Kremlin.

Similarly ignoring all actual evidence, the 1968 FBI report advances an image of King as a degenerate using only hearsay, conjecture, and third hand reports. For example, the FBI, not known for their honesty, are convinced that King fathered a child with a mistress in Los Angeles purely because they were informed by “a very responsible Los Angeles individual in a position to know”. The audio tapes, if they exist at all, have never actually been heard by anyone and we are told will supposedly be made public in 2027.

Garrow’s Sleight of Hand

Before going further, it is worth taking a moment to ask who is this David Garrow who has found the courage to reveal the “true Martin Luther King”?

Garrow is celebrated by the Mainstream Press as an international authority on Martin Luther King due largely to his Pulitzer Prize winning 1986 book “Bearing the Cross” which has somehow given him the authority to be the last word on the narrative of King’s life for the next 33 years. Since that book Garrow has worked as a professor of history at various universities has found himself writing for proven CIA-sponsored mainstream rags such as the Washington Post, NY Times, Financial Times, New Republic and has more recently been stationed in England as a senior research Fellow at Cambridge University from 2005-2011. Today Garrow has become the official biographer of Barack Obama, and also an authority on the fraud of Russia-Gate attracting hordes of Trump supporters to his analysis.

Garrow has also made himself an enemy of the King family by leading slander campaigns against Coretta Scott King and her children who have managed the King Family Estate by labelling them as corrupt conspiracy theorists due to the family’s crazy belief that the government had anything to do with King’s assassination.

The Forgotten 1999 Civil Court Case

Garrow was first deployed to attack the family in the wake of the Memphis Civil Court trial in December 1999 wherein a four week long hearing of 70 witnesses ended with a Jury unanimously concluding not only that James Earl Ray (who had died in prison the year earlier) was innocent of the murder of Dr. King, but that the FBI and highest echelons of government conspired in the assassination.

During a press conference Coretta Scott King said:

“There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations. This verdict is not only a great victory for my family, but also a great victory for America. It is a great victory for truth itself. It is important to know that this was a SWIFT verdict, delivered after about an hour of jury deliberation.”

Coretta’s son Dexter (who is now the president of the King Center) spoke after his mother saying:

“We can say that because of the evidence and information obtained in Memphis we believe that this case is over. This is a period in the chapter. We constantly hear reports, which trouble me, that this verdict creates more questions than answers. That is totally false. Anyone who sat in on almost four weeks of testimony, with over seventy witnesses, credible witnesses I might add, from several judges to other very credible witnesses, would know that the truth is here.”

While a fuller expose documenting the FBI/Anglo-Canadian intelligence behind the King assassination will be documented elsewhere, it is sufficient to note for now that during this period of constant O.J. Simpson trial coverage across all press agencies, hardly a word on these hearings was covered by the media.

David Garrow stepped into the mud early on to slander the family and the court case as a whole saying of the family

“The King youngsters are part of a larger population of American people who need to believe that the assassination of a King or a Kennedy must be the work of mightier forces… Individuals need to see something of a harmony amongst impact and cause. That if something has a large evil effect, it ought to be the result of a huge evil cause”.

By denying the existence of causality, or conspiracy in regards to historical processes, this “world renowned historian” essentially admitted that he is either extremely dumb or a part of the conspiracy himself.

Exhibiting the height of hypocrisy, Garrow said of King’s children in 2009

“I fear we are at the point where the behaviour of the children is doing lasting, indelible damage to King’s reputation”.

Philip Madison Jones, a Hollywood producer and best friend of Dexter King has stated that Garrow’s anti-King family malice is due to the fact that King’s late wife Coretta Scott King refused to put Garrow in charge of a project involving King’s papers. Apparently, Garrow wished to do to King what Edgar Poe’s “official” biography Rufus Griswold did in 1850[1].

Obama as a Superior Role Model

It was while working in Cambridge in 2008 that Garrow became obsessed with Barack Obama and with the idea of writing an untouchable biography that would render all other biographies obsolete for all time. This work was so magnificent and all-encompassing that it would require 9 years to write and would finally put an end to all speculation about Obama’s birth and shady life before politics. The effect of this work was a 1500 page fluff piece called “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama”.

Describing his motive for writing his book Garrow said:

“My very purposeful intent with this book has been to produce a book of record that folks will still be using and relying upon 25, 35 years from now. All throughout 2008, I was disappointed by the quality and depth of journalism about his earlier life. I thought the mainstream media was being insufficiently curious about him and on the other hand, we simultaneously had all of these whacky oppositional actions out there regarding where was he born was he really a Muslim? And so I came to this really with a professional belief that someone with my background and experience should really tackle this.”

When asked in an interview how he managed to have so many long meetings with Obama in the White House (who apparently took the time out of his busy schedule to read the entire opus), Garrow stated that it was arranged by his personal friend Bob Bauer who just so happened to be Obama’s personal attorney. Amongst other crimes, Bauer had been known for providing the “legal justification” for Obama’s unconstitutional bombing of Libya in 2011. Both Bauer and Garrow are currently playing two sides of the anti-Trump operation with Bauer acting as a loud voice for impeachment and advocate of the Russia-Gate narrative and Garrow playing an anti-Russia-Gate liberal socialist who now appears on Fox News regularly as he is a rare case of a liberal intellectual attacking Russia-Gate. While promoting the neo-liberal order embodied by Barack Obama on the one hand, Garrow has somehow managed to walk the fine line of convincing both left and right ideologues that he is trustworthy because his lofty intellect transcends partisanship.

Garrow has gained the respect of weak minded liberals and conservatives alike by criticising the abuses of the FBI while actually hiding the larger historical truths which Garrow’s masters wish to bury. In the case of the King story, Garrow appears critical of the FBI’s surveillance of King but then explains at length why their reasoning was completely logical and evidence based. In a lengthy article, Garrow attempts to make the case that King’s close advisor Stanley Levison was a former financier for the Communist Party of America (CPUSA). How did the FBI know that? They merely asked two former CPUSA members/FBI informant siblings Jack and Morris Childs who said so. Garrow wrote of this irrefutable evidence in a 2002 article in the Atlantic: “The Childs brothers’ direct, personal contact with Levison from the mid-1940s to 1956 was sufficient to leave no doubt whatsovever that their reports about his role was accurate and truthful”. Levison’s connection to King provided Hoover with the “legal grounds” to begin wiretapping King in 1955.

While the evidence used by Hoover to justify wiretaps were nearly always untrue, what has come to light in recent years is that much of the CPUSA as well as the black nationalist movements were under total control of the FBI with vast numbers of the membership of both organizations on the roster as paid informants. After King’s assassination, the Childs brothers, still under FBI direction, rose to the highest echelons of the communist party and were selected to arrange for money transfers from the Kremlin to the CPUSA.

In 1956, Hoover created COINTELPRO with the explicit purpose of infiltrating and subverting civil rights movements; utilizing informants, false narratives and low intensity psychological warfare. Hoover himself said of the operation “The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters.” Fearing the rise of moral leadership as a destruction of the “rules of the game” which the FBI wished to control from above Hoover said that they must “prevent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement”.

Bobby and John Fight Back

While Garrow writes extensively that Bobby Kennedy acting as Attorney General was to blame for King’s illegal surveillance, the reality is quite the reverse. Both Kennedy brothers detested the FBI’s dictatorship in America and both understood the international power structures of British Intelligence shaping the CIA/FBI behaviour from above. When JFK fired Allan Dulles, he made many manoeuvers to bring the FBI under control to little avail. The night that John was killed, Bobby Kennedy was with his close friend Congressman Cornelius Gallagher who later reported that Bobby stated that “the old man (Hoover)” was behind it. Gallagher went on record in a 2013 interview saying “if there was a conspiracy then only Hoover and his special group could have killed the President”. In that same interview Gallagher discussed his belief in the Permindex assassination bureau which Attorney General Jim Garrison had uncovered during his investigation of JFK’s assassination[2].

While Bobby is painted as an anti-MLK enforcer for the FBI by Garrow, the reality is that Bobby personally intervened to get King out of a six month sentence in a maximum security penitentiary, for having an invalid driver’s license, in 1960. As he was deciding to run for President in 1968, MLK was simultaneously contemplating running as a candidate which would have brought these two collaborators into a potentially powerful political alliance. Ironically, FBI Director James Comey (who was later fired for attempting his “Hoover moment” with incoming President Trump), slandered Bobby in a London Guardian 2015 interview saying “I keep Bobby’s authorization of King’s FBI surveillance on my desk to remind me of the agency’s past misdeeds”.

Unfortunately, the beautiful possibility of a 1968 Bobby Kennedy/Martin Luther King alliance was not permitted to come into being and an era of insanity was unleashed. While such operations as MK Ultra and COINTELPRO came to formal ends in the 1970s, their operations continued on as the Deep State embedded itself ever more deeply into the heart of America’s soul.

Where do We go from Here?

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the FBI became recognized as just one branch of the Deep State/5 Eyes international intelligence apparatus which had been making every effort to undermine America and bring the republic back under firm control of the British Empire as outlined by Cecil Rhodes in his 1877 will.

Just as the FBI often controlled the most reactionary and violent elements of anti-establishment movements during COINTELPRO, recent reports have proven that the vast majority of those “prevented” terrorist attempts which have occurred in America since 1993 have actually first been instigated by the FBI demonstrating conclusively that the bureau never reformed.

We stand at a moment which is shaped by a great hope for a new set of relationships based on the potential alliance between western cultures increasingly purged of the Deep State and Eastern nations led by Russia, China and the Belt and Road Initiative, let us remember the words of Martin Luther King Jr in his August 1967 speech titled “Where do We go from Here?”

“I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “where do we go from here?” that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society…

Now, don’t think you have me in a bind today. I’m not talking about communism. What I’m talking about is far beyond communism. …Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated…

And I must confess, my friends, that the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. And there will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again, with tear-drenched eyes, have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. But difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future….

When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

In his closing remarks to the 1999 jury trial that found King to be a victim of a vast conspiracy, Martin’s son Dexter King left a challenge to all who would come into contact with this news:

The question now is, “What will you do with that?” We as a family have done our part. We have carried this mantle for as long as we can carry it. We know what happened. It is on public record. The transcripts will be available; we will make them available on the Web at some point. Any serious researcher who wants to know what happened can find out.”

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Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow, BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and has authored 3 volumes of ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. This article was recently adapted into a short video found here.

Notes

[1] The idea that Poe was a deviant, alcoholic and opium addict was entirely generated by the pen of Poe’s enemy Rufus Griswold who managed to purchase the entire body of Poe’s personal writings from the poet’s financially strained aunt and then proceeded to “lose everything” while publishing a biography that became the authoritative book on Poe for the next 170 years.

[2] Much of Garrison’s work was used in the crafting of Oliver Stone’s JFK whose buzz on Capitol Hill created the momentum for the passage of the JFK Records Declassification Act of 1992.

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Below:

Video footage from the Capitol Hill protests on January 6, 2021.

Click right corner to enlarge screen

Capitol police open doors for the protestors. They stand aside and invite them inside. pic.twitter.com/OnSd3KGzz5

— Christina Bobb (@christina_bobb) January 8, 2021

Original Video by @marcusdipaola
Police Officer opening barrier for protestors.
Over the last few days there were efforts to tag this clip as inconclusive. However, slow-down and zoom-in show clearly that policeman DID open the barrier without being attacked. pic.twitter.com/xhhFJu7QVP

— Barbara Zuber (@ZuberBa) January 9, 2021

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In the following video, Senator Scott Jensen of Minnesota warns of a “danger that we need to talk about.”

“The cancel culture is happening, … but the fact of the matter is COVID-19 has opened a door into a tremendously vicious political non-discussion.”

Watch his full statement below.

VIDEO

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With an end to the Qatar blockade and a possible rapprochement with Turkey, Saudi Arabia may soon move towards reconciliation with Syria.

The Persian Gulf states’ opposition to Iran’s role in the region, while limiting Turkey’s influence, may bring Saudi Arabia and the Gulf back to Damascus.

The Gulf monarchies did not support the Muslim Brotherhood ideology of the terrorists in Syria, such as the Free Syrian Army and other Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists. However, the oil-rich Gulf states did the bidding of their main western ally, the US administration of Barak Obama, who was the architect of the US-NATO attack on Syria beginning in 2011 for ‘regime change’. Given the fact, which President Trump publically stated, the kings and princes of the Persian Gulf are only in power at the behest and allowance of the US, the Arabs were not afforded the luxury of refusing the US when asked to fund the US-backed terrorists.

Some critics had claimed Obama was himself a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood, as evidenced by the many members he had closely associated with in the US; however, others have assessed that while he may have been sympathetic to the group, in reality, he was only using the Radical Islamic ideology to instigate an insurrection in Syria for ‘regime change’.

Iran and their Persian Gulf neighbors share not only geography but also an aversion to Radical Islam. However, one is seen as the enemy of the US, and the others are close allies who host some of the largest US military bases on earth.

Russia

Dr. Saad Al-Jabri revealed that the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene in Syria two months before the Russian armed forces entered the battlefield in October 2015, which effectively ended any chance of a military victory for the armed Syrian opposition, although the Kingdom had previously supported them.

At the same time, Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani, later assassinated by Trump, was also asking the Russians to enter Syria militarily to fight the terrorists who were fighting to create an Islamic State in Damascus, in another example of commonalities between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are opposed to any democratic movement within the region. In Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, or Libya, the Persian Gulf monarchies prefer secular autocrats, such as President Assad of Syria.  They specifically do not want a leader following Radical Islam, such as the Muslim Brotherhood leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In 2017 Trump cut the CIA program to the terrorists, and Trump washed his hands of the Obama nightmare in Syria. Eventually, Saudi Arabia stopped funding terrorist groups in Syria.

Saudi Arabia has been funding the US troops in north-east Syria, where they protect the Kurdish SDF and YPG, and steal Syria’s oil, at a cost of $500 million and counting.

The Saudi goal is to curb Iranian influence in Syria while undermining the terrorists.  The Turkish backed terrorists, following the Radical Islamic platform of the Muslim Brotherhood, are unacceptable to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ strategy managed to limit further Iranian expansion in his four years in office, but it could not hold it or even reverse Iranian progress on the ground in the Middle East. By trusting Trump’s plan, Saudi Arabia lost its influence and failed to counter Iran, which is stronger than before, and the incoming Biden administration has promised to make a deal with them.

Gulf unity 

Gulf leaders signed a “solidarity and stability” agreement towards ending the diplomatic rift with Qatar at a summit in Saudi Arabia on January 5.

The announcement was made at the Gulf Arab leaders’ meeting in Saudi Arabia, with the annual summit taking place amid a breakthrough in the dispute between a Saudi Arabia-led bloc and Qatar that started in June 2017.

The five-points made concerning Syria were: affirming the goals of UN resolution 2254; support of the Syrian Constitutional Committee; support for bringing refugees and displaced Syrians back to their homes; support to preserve the territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic; condemnation of the Iranian presence in Syria, and Iran’s interference in the Syrian affairs, and demanded the removal of all Iranian forces, Hezbollah and all sectarian militias that Iran had recruited to operate in Syria.

Qatar

Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, former prime minister of Qatar, said in 2017, that there had been a relationship with Jibhat al-Nusra, which was the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. However, he said that any resources sent to terrorists in Syria had US approval.

“Anything that went to Turkey and was coordinated with US forces,” he explained, while adding, “All distribution was done through the US and the Turks and us and everyone else that was involved, the military people.”

He also said that he had been sent by the emir of Qatar to meet with then Saudi king Abdullah and received his backing for the support for the terrorists in Syria.

Qatar has been a major supporter of the terrorists since 2011. A report by the Financial Times in 2013 said the country had spent as much as $3bn bankrolling armed groups in the country.

Saudi Arabia had coordinated closely with Qatar on delivering resources to terrorists in Syria; but in 2017 Saudi Arabia, along with others, had blockaded Qatar based on accusations of supporting terrorist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Trump had cut off support to the terrorists in Syria in 2017, and the US expected all Arab allies to follow their directive; however, Qatar did not, instead teaming-up with the Muslim Brotherhood leader, President Erdogan of Turkey, who invaded Syria and developed a large terrorist army who he calls the Syrian National Army.

Qatar pulled its ambassador from Syria in 2011 and remains staunchly against the Syrian government, while in support of the terrorists who are killing unarmed Syrian civilians. Qatar has provided substantial funding to terrorists, and by 2011 Qatar’s foreign minister confirmed the country’s support for the Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army.   Qatar is supportive of the Turkish invasion of Syria and continues to support ‘regime change’ in Syria, regardless of the fact both Syria and Qatar have close ties with Iran.

UAE

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) reopened its embassy in 2018 after 7 years of closure, marking a diplomatic boost for President Assad. The UAE said the move aimed to normalize ties and to curb Iran in the region and had been training Syrian intelligence officers and pilots for two years.

“The UAE decision … came after a conviction that the next stage requires the Arab presence and communication in the Syrian file,” tweeted Anwar Gargash, the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs.

The reopening of the embassy is a step towards Syria’s normalization among the Arab world, as its membership in the Arab League was suspended seven years ago, though most Arabs states now want Syria to be readmitted.

The UAE was one of several regional states to back the terrorists, though its role was less prominent than those of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Turkey; however, it sees a huge opportunity to participate in the massive reconstruction of Syria estimated between $250 billion and $1 trillion.

Gulf Arab states have been in the news in recent months as they normalize relations with Israel. At the same time, some are reestablishing ties with the Syrian government in Damascus.

The Gulf Arab states pulled their ambassadors from Damascus, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) recognized the National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people at the directive of the US and EU.

Beginning in 2015, the Russians helped the Syrian government control the main political and economic centers, such as Damascus, the coastal region, and Aleppo. By now, the idea of bringing down Assad ceased to be a practical policy for most Gulf Arab countries, as well as the US and EU.

Following the footsteps of the UAE, Bahrain reopened its embassy in Damascus in 2018 while emphasizing opposition to Iran’s role in the region and limiting Turkey’s influence

Oman was clear about its humanitarian and diplomatic approach toward the Syrian war and did not finance rebel groups, and the sultanate has reinstated its ambassador to Syria.

Much of the funding for terrorists in Syria had come from Gulf private citizens, particularly Kuwaitis, according to US officials in 2013.

Saudi Arabia’s response to the Syrian uprising was strategic in that it focused on a proactive foreign policy through Gulf alliances that aimed at suppressing Iranian influence.

Turkey

Since the battle for Aleppo in late 2016, it became clear to GCC states that the Syrian government was going to maintain its hold on power. This prompted many Gulf states to shift their policies, making their priority curbing Iranian and Turkish influence in Syria.

Turkey’s relations with Saudi Arabia have suffered as a result of Erdogan’s aggressive foreign policy to exert its influence in the Mediterranean and Africa.

Ankara and Riyadh’s competition for regional dominance could be easing as countries’ leaders pledge to improve ties amid the COVID 19 pandemic.

Turkey hopes by approaching Saudi Arabia, it would help the economy in the wake of a Gulf boycott of Turkish goods and products.

Turkish-Saudi relations could also lead to a regional diplomatic reset which could directly affect Syria.

The National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, are the big losers. Their militia, the Free Syrian Army, lost the backing of the US-EU, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Qatar and Turkey are now singled out as the last state sponsors of Radical Islam in the Syrian conflict.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Credits to the owner of the featured image/taken via Mideast Discourse

GR Editor’s Note

With regard to the coverage of the Wednesday Capitol Event, Global Research will be publishing opposing and contradictory points of view by several of our authors.

We are dealing with a complex and far-reaching political process. We are at the crossroads of a major political, economic and social crisis which has bearing on the future of the United States. This crisis must be the object of debate and analysis rather than confrontation of opposing political narratives.

The following is the testimony of a person who was in the Rally on Wednesday, January 6 2020. It presents a personal perspective.

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Contrary to Big Media’s Big Fat Lies, the Save America rally on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, was in my opinion an exhilarating, momentous, peaceful protest.

Spoiler alert: I did not make it inside the Capitol, but I was in the first 25% wave of people that arrived, and like 99.9% of those around me, I jubilantly participated in a peaceful “storming” of the Capitol.

A friend I’ll call “Bill” invited me to go to Washington for what was shaping up to be an historic event. We took the train down from New York the night before and stayed at the apartment of his brother “Jim.” Bill is a former lefty type who quips that the left had to work awfully hard to get him to be the Trump supporter he now is. Jim got totally fed up with the Democrats and is now an avid Trump supporter.

On arrival to the Ellipse where Trump would speak, I can say based on many Washington marches under my belt that the Save America rally’s turn-out was spectacular.  I heard reports of a million plus present.  We will likely never get an official crowd estimate from the National Park Service.

I’ve been to marches large and small, but I don’t recall encountering such a polite, well-mannered crowd. Bill had been to a prior Trump rally and Jim had been to three (Johnstown, Trump’s hospital vigil, November 3).

They said every rally is the same: uncommonly good, nice people. I figured their love of Trump colored their characterization of the President’s base.  But I discovered at the rally that it’s an actual thing: Trump supporters are by and large decent, down-to-earth, genuine people.

I saw many women at the rally, and tons of young people.  Contrary to the drumbeat that Trump supporters are racist white supremacists, Bill and Jim told me that the rallies they attended were very diverse:  Sikhs, African Americans, Cubans, Mexican, Vietnamese.  The election numbers prove this out, with Trump gaining incredible traction with Black and Hispanic voters.  From what I saw, this Save America rally was almost all White. I never did get a good answer why Trump’s diverse base did not get to D.C. for this rally.

I have to say I was truly surprised how incredibly informed almost everyone I met was.  The conversations I had revealed big-picture thinkers as well as familiarity with granular details. Those I spoke with certainly defied the stereotypical depictions of dumb deplorables.

As expected, there were a lot of Christians in the crowd, some of whom I had great talks with. I’m not a Christian, but I respected their deep faith and the fact that Christians I’ve been meeting of late (not Zionist Christians) are intensely engaged with the pressing political issues of our age. I was expecting to see Orthodox Jews, but didn’t, although I saw the Israeli flag a couple times.

Trump finally came on at 12:00pm and in my opinion he spoke with gravitas.  I appreciated that he came right out and told the crowd to remember all the Republicans who have ended up being turncoats, and the audience appropriately booed on cue. (Check out how Mitt Romney was heckled—uncued—on his flight to D.C.)

We left the Ellipse a little early to make it to the Capitol by 1:00pm when the certification proceedings were scheduled to commence. I assumed everyone would rally outside the Capitol. Some people were saying we should go in and demand the Senate do the right thing, but I didn’t hear anyone echo that idea.

People were angry and disgusted, saying they’ve had enough and they’re not taking it anymore. The stench of the Georgia election the day before was in the air. While the demonstrably stolen national elections were the coup de grace, the Biden Crime Family, China, the lockdowns, the riots and looting, and the totalitarian threat of a Democratic win all figured prominently in people’s minds and emotions, and I saw many protest signs that expressed those concerns.

Walking to the Capitol, we learned that Pence was going to throw Trump under the bus. The feelings of injustice were palpable.  Appropriately, the crowd made a pit stop at the Department of Justice en route to the Capitol. The crowd was really wound up, roaring chants like “Do your work!,” “Shame on you!,” and “Crime scene!”

There were two officials standing in front of the DoJ, and they weren’t the slightest bit worried that this keyed-up crowd might start pelting them with rotten eggs or something. While I saw one protester employ an actual pitchfork to carry his protest sign, I did not see a single visible weapon the entire time.  So much for White men and their guns. Yes, people were angry. Yes, people were venting. But I felt very safe with this crowd.

As we were walking down Constitution Avenue, it dawned on me that there were virtually no police anywhere. They were surely around, but on the thirty-minute walk to the Capitol, we didn’t see a single police officer. I did spy an undercover man with an ear wire and then a few police cars diagonally parked at intersections, but that’s it.

I was really taken aback by the conspicuous absence of a police presence. Every major march I’ve been to, the streets are fully lined with police, sometimes on horses.  I remember being terrified once at a New York City protest when a cop on an enormous steed charged into us demonstrators.

Bill, Jim, and I got to the Capitol about 1:30pm before much of the crowd had arrived and saw protesters running up the steps. We were surprised to see so many going up the steps because we assumed there was a police barrier.

We smelled tear gas and heard flash-bang grenades going off in the distance, but very soon the disturbance fizzled and the unruffled crowd paid no more attention to the possibility of violence—especially since no reinforcements came at all until we left the event at 4:00pm. It was at that time—finally—that police cars began converging on the site as we were walking away.

For some, entering the Capitol was very easy.  I talked to a young Asian man who couldn’t believe how easy it was to enter the building. A White guy told me he went in and out several times. Apparently, there were various entrances.

Dozens of people were rushing up the stairway and congregating on the balconies.  Where we were, though, there was gridlock on the steps.  The long line prompted many to climb the walls, the scaffolding, and construction trailer roofs, which is what we did, and it gave us a panoramic bird’s eye view.

There was a tremendous sense of excitement.  Dozens of people, even hundreds, could have easily “stormed” the Capitol, but chose not to. In fact, a relatively extremely small number entered the building. In my opinion, most did not go in because there was so much camaraderie and patriotic zeal taking place outside. Crowds were singing the Star Spangled Banner, and of course chanting “USA! USA!” The energy was electric, 100% positive, and we were determined to make sure our presence was known to the lawmakers inside who we assumed were deliberating on the certification.

For a crowd this size and in light of the crimes that had been done against our country, the heightened energy flowing amongst us could have been combustible.  But we protesters had about as much malevolence as an energized Superbowl crowd.

Because the vast majority of the crowd was not engaging in violence, I suggest that there was a Charlottesville-type situation in which Antifa types violently breached the Capitol despite filmed instances of Trump supporters trying to stop them.

And just as with Charlottesville that likewise brimmed with agents provocateur, the media are now demonizing the Trump protesters with the calumny of White supremacism—and implicitly treating them as proxies for the 70 to 80 million Trump voters.

I spoke with a middle-aged White guy who was 20 feet behind the late Ashli Babbit. He told me he heard a shot, saw her fall down, and that she was hit in the neck. He said there were people on the scene who told everyone to leave so they could attend to her. He did not tarry, and had to leave through a broken glass door. He struck me as someone who was in a state of semi-shock.  His parting words to me were how fortunate he felt because he “could have been that person.”

Let’s be clear, the so-called Capitol riot was trifling compared to the violent rioting and looting in U.S. cities by Black Lives Matter and Antifa mobs. These events were shamelessly excused by the media, and many celebrities as well as Kamala Harris paid for the bail of those arrested.

Of the 24 photos USA Today posted of “Damage inside the US Capitol,” the most damning consisted of debris, litter, and dust. Compare the property damage of January 6th to last summer when “mostly peaceful protesters” reduced vast swaths of Washington, D.C. to flames.

Biden and Black Lives Matter are now calling the Capitol police racist for treating the violent “Capitol breachers” (Antifa) with kid gloves. If the powers that be actually thought Trump supporters were dangerous extreme-right radicals with guns looking for trouble, wouldn’t the State have been armed to the teeth to protect the Capitol?  I didn’t see any National Guard. I didn’t see any D.C. police.

About 3:00pm, with most everyone from the Ellipse now at the Capitol, we were on the lawn right next to a line of about 25 police officers who walked through the dense crowd in riot gear. They didn’t treat us as if we were “domestic terrorists,” and in turn we treated them respectfully.

Around 4:00pm, everyone began to get an emergency text message from D.C. Mayor Bowser saying a curfew would be in effect from 6:00pm that night until 6:00am the next day.  Everyone dutifully began to leave.

Later when I was able to read the media’s reporting, I was dumbfounded to see something I had experienced as so peaceful, positive, and inspiring be described as violent, negative, and destructive. Black is white. War is peace. The stolen narrative of the Save America rally is my personal 1984 moment.

Part II: How a Life-Long Leftist Ended Up at a Trump “Save America” Rally

I am not a fan of Donald Trump, nor am I a “Q” devotee.  I inherited a liberal Democrat tradition from my mother who is of Italian immigrant descent.  Since 1992, I’ve always voted Green. In the 80s and 90s, I was active in anti-racist and ecofeminist movements.  Around 2010, I emerged from a hiatus of political activity to discover a shocking fact: the 9/11 Official Narrative was riddled with inaccuracies, if not outright lies.

I discovered my liberal-left community offered little information of value on 9/11, largely because leftist thought leaders dismissed unorthodox views as “conspiracy theories.”  Thankfully, I went where the evidence took me, not where orthodox ideology dictated.  I found myself surfing right-wing (!) websites and dialoguing with lions, and tigers, and libertarians, oh my!

By 2016, I had begun to cull the best of liberal-left and conservative-libertarian positions.  My leftist colleagues made the binary assumption that if I wasn’t all-in for Hillary, I must be “for Trump.”  Au contraire.  By 2020, dismayed by the mind-muddle of Trump Derangement Syndrome, coupled with the weaponization of political identity, I now believe the liberal-left has completely devolved into unprincipled putrefying pus.  Their most pernicious mission is hijacking our nation onto an express train to Totalitarianville.

Today I’m neither left nor right.  Like so many other former lefty-liberals, I seek to align on common issues, not tribal loyalties. We embrace core values of a free society:

a) Common sense – the ability to think independently and rationally
b) Truth – a commitment to evidentiary facts and justice without censorship
c) Patriotism – love and respect for one’s country and its peoples
d) Faith – a belief that a higher spiritual force guides us all 

I lived the first 18 years of my life in a small Indiana town, population 900, where my father’s people came from Ireland in the early 1800s and farmed the land.  They were conservative Republicans—proto deplorables, if you will.  Having now lived more than half my life in cosmopolitan New York City, I admit that culturally there remains a significant gap between me and my new We-the-People allies.  Nonetheless, these days I feel a very strong, authentic connection to my roots, rural America, where locals deeply value liberty and our Constitutional freedoms.

So many lefty-liberals did not vote Democratic in 2020 in large part because they recognize that what are notionally called Democrats is now armored with the full array of Deep State Establishment Power, including Big Tech, Big Media-Entertainment, Big Pharma, Corporate Wall Street, the ABC agencies, the Academy, and the Nonprofit Industrial Complex. In cahoots with opportunistic Republicans, this Power intends to usher in a tyrannical Great Reset agenda and assassinate the Constitution—oh, except for the 25^th Amendment.

I spoke with so many people at the January 6^th Washington D.C. rally and learned that these folks incontrovertibly understand what Deep State Establishment Power is about. They know there is overwhelming evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.  They know that seasoned coup makers created chaotic conditions with the mail-in ballot scam, and they gaslight constituents to believe the election was fair.  More alarming, they accuse Trump of fomenting a coup that they themselves are in the midst of orchestrating as we speak.

Under the guise of audacious cunning lies and manipulative propaganda, a very criminal element cheated its way to power. That’s why the rally was called Save America.  And that is what all common sense, truth-loving, patriotic, faithful Americans must do—rise to the occasion to Save America.

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Cat McGuire is an activist and writer who lives New York City. She works with Break The Spell, a public outreach group raising awareness about the Covid plandemic and the Great Reset.

All images in this article are from Occidental Observer

“It is easier to deceive people than to convince them that they have been deceived.” — Mark Twain

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We bring to the attention of our readers a series of quotations by the CDC, FDA, scientists and medical doctors (emphasis added) compiled by Dr. Gary Kohls.

Media reports as well as government officials have failed to outline the nature of the PCR Test. The public has been been deliberately misinformed. 

We suggest that you bring these quotations to the attention of the government officials who are enforcing the Lockdown.

Covid-19 Quotations: Questioning PCR Reliability

“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.” — The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention

“PCR-based testing produces enough false positive results to make positive results highly unreliable over a broad range of real-world scenarios.” — Andrew N. Cohen, Ph.D.1*, Bruce Kessel, M.D.2, Michael G. Milgroom, Ph.D.

“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.” — The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention

“…all or a substantial part of these positives could be due to what’s called false positives tests.” — Michael Yeadon: former Vice President and Chief Science Officer for Pfizer

“…false positive results will occur regularly, despite high specificity, causing unnecessary community isolation and contact tracing, and nosocomial infection if inpatients with false positive tests are cohorted with infectious patients.” — The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases

“…you can find almost anything in anybody…it doesn’t tell you that you’re sick and it doesn’t tell you the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you…” — Dr. Kary Mullis, PhD (Nobel Peace Prize Winner inventor of the PCR test)

“I’m skeptical that a PCR test is ever true. It’s a great scientific research tool. It’s a horrible tool for clinical medicine.” — Dr. David Rasnick, biochemist and protease developer

“…up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus.” — The New York Times

“…detection of viral RNA by qRT-PCR does not necessarily equate to infectiousness, and viral culture from PCR positive upper respiratory tract samples has been rarely positive beyond nine days of illness.” — Muge Cevik, clinical lecturer1 2, Krutika Kuppalli, assistant professor3, Jason Kindrachuk, assistant professor of virology4, Malik Peiris, professor of virology5Francis Drobniewsk – Professor of Global Health and TB, Imperial

“A positive RT-qPCR result may not necessarily mean the person is still infectious or that he or she still has any meaningful disease.” —  Michael R Tom, Michael J Mina

“PCR does not distinguish between infectious virus and non-infectious nucleic acid” — Barry Atkinson: National Collection of Pathogenic Viruses (NCPV) Eskild Petersen: infectious disease specialist 

“Detection of viral RNA does not necessarily mean that a person is infectious and able to transmit the virus to another person” — The World Health Organization

“Caution needs to be applied to the results as it often does not detect infectious virus. PCR results may lead to restrictions for large groups of people who do not present an infection risk.” — The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

“The challenge is the false positive rate is very high, so only seven percent of tests will be successful in identifying those that actually have the the virus. So the truth is, we can’t just rely on that…” — Dominic Raab – First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs

“positive results […] do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite.” — FDA

“A positive RT-qPCR result may not necessarily mean the person is still infectious or that he or she still has any meaningful disease.” —  Michael R Tom, Michael J Mina

“…no single gold standard assay exists. The current rate of operational false-positive swab tests in the UK is unknown; preliminary estimates show it could be somewhere between 0·8% and 4·0%.” — Dr. Elena Surkova; Vladyslav Nikolayevskyy – Public Health Englamd; Francis Drobniewsk – Professor of Global Health and TB, Imperial College

“…detection of viral RNA by qRT-PCR does not necessarily equate to infectiousness, and viral culture from PCR positive upper respiratory tract samples has been rarely positive beyond nine days of illness.” — Muge Cevik, clinical lecturer1 2, Krutika Kuppalli, assistant professor3, Jason Kindrachuk, assistant professor of virology4, Malik Peiris, professor of virology5Francis Drobniewsk – Professor of Global Health and TB, Imperial College

*

Of What Use is the PCR Test for SARS-Cov-2?

By Prof. Dr. Stefan Homburg – October 7, 2020

1. What is the use of the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2? This is obviously a trick question, because there is no such thing as “the test”, and that is a problem.

2. A PCR test works if gene sequences are found in the smear that indicate the presence of a virus. Tests can search for multiple gene sequences or for one; this decision influences the sensitivity and the error rate.

3. In order for a gene sequence to be recognized optically, it must first be duplicated (amplified) in several cycles. The number of cycles at which the test takes effect is called “cycle threshold” or ct for short. A ct value of 25 means that the gene sequence was recognized after 25 cycles, with a value of 40 it was only recognized after 40 cycles. At high ct values, the test is so sensitive that it reacts to the smallest quantities of particles.

4. While everything is standardized in the modern world, organizations like the WHO or the RKI refuse to standardize the PCR test. Since no one knows which laboratories are looking for which gene sequences and from which ct values ​​they report positive results, all speculations about sensitivity and specificity are irrelevant.

5. The only thing that is clear is that handling or manufacturing errors can lead to grossly wrong measures. 77 NFL players tested positive in one fell swoop, and all results were false-positive, as post-testing showed. Similarly, the tests on 12 crew members of “Mein Schiff 6” were false-positive. You can find these and other examples in my retweet of October 5, 2020.

6. A positive test result does not mean that the person concerned is infectious, ie that it can infect other people. Nonetheless, positive test results are followed by serious encroachments on fundamental rights such as quarantine, company or school closings.

7. PCR tests were designed to determine the cause of the disease in symptomatically ill patients in order to ensure appropriate treatment. They were not intended for mass screening of healthy people.

8. Due to the WHO guidelines, PCR mass tests are misused, a) deceased persons are counted as “corona deaths” regardless of the real cause of death, provided they had previously had a positive test result and b) all people who tested positive are classified as “infectious” . While travel and sports companies can enforce repetitions of tests with positive results, ordinary people and students are often denied this counter-evidence.

9. Especially when viewed globally, the number of positive test results exceeds the imagination. Similar shocking numbers could also be obtained through indiscriminate mass tests for influenza or other viruses, which in individual cases are similarly dangerous or even fatal as SARS-CoV-2.

10. From all this there is the demand for an immediate end of the PCR mass tests and for a return to the previous routine, according to which only sick people are tested and the general situation is monitored by sentinels. Once the “numbers” have disappeared from the media, the general hysteria can gradually subside.

*

COVID-19 PCR Testing: We’ve been Duped!

By A. Castellitto – November 4, 2020

Lost in this whole pandemic hysteria are some key considerations that when carefully analyzed place the whole COVID-19 narrative in a highly questionable light.  The gatekeepers of information dissemination are manufacturing consent at an alarming rate, but their fatigue is setting in, and their masks are falling off.  What better, albeit unlikely, source to go for some much needed illumination than the New York Times?

During a considerably quieter time, back in 2007, the New York Times featured a very interesting exposé on molecular diagnostic testing — specifically, the inadequacy of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test in achieving reliable results.  The most significant concern highlighted in the Times report is how molecular tests, most notably the PCR, are highly sensitive and prone to false positives.  At the center of the controversy was a potential outbreak in a hospital in New Hampshire that proved to be nothing more than “ordinary respiratory diseases like the common cold.”  Unfortunately, the results wrought by the PCR told a different story.

Thankfully, a faux epidemic was avoided but not before thousands of workers were furloughed and given antibiotics and ultimately a vaccine, and hospital beds (including some in intensive care) were taken out of commission.  Eight months later, what was thought to be an epidemic was deemed a non-malicious hoax.  The culprit?  According to “epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists … too much faith in a quick and highly sensitive molecular test….led them astray.”  At the time, such tests were “coming into increasing use” as maybe “the only way to get a quick answer in diagnosing diseases like … SARS and deciding whether an epidemic is under way.”

Nevertheless, today, the PCR test is considered the gold standard of molecular diagnostics, most notably in the diagnosis of COVID-19.  However, a closer analysis reveals that the PCR has actually been pretty spotty and that false positives abound.  Thankfully, the New York Times is once again on the case.

“Your Coronavirus Test is Positive; Maybe it Shouldn’t Be,” according to NYT reporter Apoorva Mandavilli. Essentially, positive results are getting tossed around way too frequently.  Rather, they should probably be reserved for individuals with “greater viral load.”  So how have they’ve been doing it all this time you ask?

“The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample… the more likely the patient is to be contagious.”

Unfortunately, the “cycle threshold” has been ramped up.

What happens when it’s ramped up?  Basically, “huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus” are deemed infected.

However, the severity of the infection is never quantified, which essentially amounts to a false positive.  Their level of contagion is essentially nil.

How are they determining the cycle threshold?  If I didn’t suspect that it was based on maximizing the amount of “cases,” I would find the determination pretty arbitrary.  More than a few of the professionals on record for Times report appear pretty perplexed on this vital detail which is essentially driving “clinical diagnostics for public health and policy decision-making.”

Considering all that’s at stake and everything that hinges on positive vs negative case tallies, it’s outrageous that these tests would be tweaked in a way that would inflate the positive rate totals and percentages.  According to one virologist, “any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive.”  She went on to to say, “I’m shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive.”

Personally, I think the science is just about settled on COVID-19.

The conclusion?  We’ve been duped!

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” Let’s make sure we are clear… This is not a vaccine. They are using the term “vaccine” to sneak this thing under public health exemptions. This is not a vaccine.”  Dr David Martin 

This means that all those ‘pushing this non vaccine … this untested, experimental toxin‘ are now complicit.

Scroll down for complete transcript of Dr. Martin’s statement

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Video Program

Clarion Call with host Sacha Stone

and guests Dr Judy Mikovits, Dr. David Martin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Constitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati.

…

TRANSCRIPT

The bombshell revelation:

” Let’s make sure we are clear… This is not a vaccine. They are using the term “vaccine” to sneak this thing under public health exemptions. This is not a vaccine.”  Dr David Martin 

This means that all those ‘pushing this non vaccine … this untested, experimental toxin‘ are now complicit.

Our leadership who are actively participating in this malfeasance must be made aware that this participation will have consequence. This kind of complicity is no different than what the German doctors and scientists were accused of and went to trial for, at Nuremburg.

Dr David Martin gave to the world yesterday, the smoking gun that we can now claim Public Health in Canada (and around the world) has become weaponized.

Dr David Martin also gave us the understanding to help ‘we the people” reclaim the narrative.

“This is mRNA packaged in a fat envelope that is delivered to a cell. It is a medical device designed to stimulate the human cell into becoming a pathogen creator. It is not a vaccine. Vaccines actually are a legally defined term under public health law; they are a legally defined term under CDC and FDA standards.[1] And the vaccine specifically has to stimulate both the immunity within the person receiving it and it also has to disrupt transmission.

And that is not what this is. They (Moderna and Pfizer) have been abundantly clear in saying that the mRNA strand that is going into the cell is not to stop the transmission, it is a treatment. But if it was discussed as a treatment, it would not get the sympathetic ear of public health authorities because then people would say, “What other treatments are there?”

The use of the term vaccine is unconscionable for both the legal definition and also it is actually the sucker punch to open and free discourse… Moderna was started as a chemotherapy company for cancer, not a vaccine manufacturer for SARSCOV2. If we said we are going to give people prophylactic chemotherapy for the cancer they don’t yet have, we’d be laughed out of the room because it’s a stupid idea. That’s exactly what this is. This is a mechanical device in the form of a very small package of technology that is being inserted into the human system to activate the cell to become a pathogen manufacturing site.

And I refuse to stipulate in any conversations that this is in fact a vaccine issue. The only reason why the term is being used is to abuse the 1905 Jacobson case that has been misrepresented since it was written. And if we were honest with this, we would actually call it what it is: it is a chemical pathogen device that is actually meant to unleash a chemical pathogen production action within a cell. It is a medical device, not a drug because it meets the CDRH definition of a device. It is not a living system, it is not a biologic system, it is a physical technology – it happens to just come in the size of a molecular package.

So, we need to be really clear on making sure we don’t fall for their game. Because their game is if we talk about it as a vaccine then we are going to get into a vaccine conversation but this is not, by their own admission, a vaccine. As a result it must be clear to everyone listening that we will not fall for this failed definition just like we will not fall for their industrial chemical definition of health. Both of them are functionally flawed and are an implicit violation of the legal construct that is being exploited. I get frustrated when I hear activists and lawyers say, “we are going to fight the vaccine”. If you stipulate it’s a vaccine you’ve already lost the battle. It’s not a vaccine. It is made to make you sick.

80% of the people exposed to SARSCOV2 are asymptomatic carriers. 80% of people who get this injected into them experience a clinical adverse event. You are getting injected with a chemical substance to induce illness, not to induce an immuno-transmissive response. In other words, nothing about this is going to stop you from transmitting anything. This is about getting you sick and having your own cells be the thing that get you sick.

When the paymaster for the distribution of information happens to be the industry that’s doing the distributing, we lose. Because the only narrative is the one that will be compensated by the people writing the check. That goes for our politicians… and our media – it has been paid for – if you follow the money you realize there is no non-conflicted voice on any network.”

– Dr. David Martin, Jan 5th 2021,

[1] The word “vaccine” originates from the Latin Variolae vaccinae (cowpox), which Edward Jenner demonstrated in 1798 could prevent smallpox in humans. Today the term ‘vaccine’ applies to all biological preparations, produced from living organisms, that enhance immunity against disease and either prevent (prophylactic vaccines) or, in some cases, treat disease (therapeutic vaccines).

See 

http://www.phrma-jp.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/old/library/vaccine-factbook_e/1_Basic_Concept_of_Vaccination.pdf

***

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Thirty years ago this month I was preparing for what would be a three-month tour of the Republic of South Africa. The original research objective—conceived in 1990—had been to visit mission stations and other properties and operations of Christian churches in South Africa and to collect data on their role and function in the system of statutory segregation known as apartheid. By the time I had made my travel arrangements, I was forced to modify an initial assumption of the doctoral dissertation for which this trip was to form the empirical basis—namely the end of apartheid rather than its continuance.

In February 1991, I arrived in Johannesburg. Nelson Mandela had been released from Robbin Island/ Polsmoor and the recently legalised African National Congress had joined the ruling National Party to negotiate the terms of transition to majority rule and an end to the racial segregation regime that had defined South Africa from 1948, reinforced by Hendrik Verwoerd when he declared independence from the British Empire in 1961. That research was published in 1997 as Church Clothes. [1]

During the year past, I have tried repeatedly to find the appropriate context in which to review the two most recent books published by historian Gerald Horne, White Supremacy Confronted and the Dawning of the Apocalypse. Professor Horne’s White Supremacy Confronted describes the origins of opposition to the Anglo-Dutch race regime in the African sub-continent and continues until the final end of NP rule in 1994. Horne’s prolific historical research, more than 30 books published, established him as a historian. However his South Africa book is not only scholarship but also first hand reporting, even autobiographical in quality. Before becoming a professor of history, Gerald Horne was a lawyer and political activist personally involved in the US side of the struggles for African independence and against racialist regimes installed under colonialism and, as in the case of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, maintained in post-colonial regimes.

This particular experience gives White Supremacy Confronted a personal quality, almost like a memoir. Horne does not have to confine his examination to documentary evidence. He is in a position to have witnessed many of the events and activities he studies personally. Professor Horne also says so repeatedly in the text. Sometimes tongue-in-cheek, these confessions also make clear that the confrontation about which he writes was always personally relevant and not academic. At the same time his observations permit him to add an assessment of the personalities involved in the struggles and how those persons shaped the history he describes.

As the struggle focuses on ending apartheid, the crescendo comes with the collapse of the German Democratic Republic and its annexation by the Federal Republic, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its emasculation under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was accompanied by the infamous “shock therapy” squad under Jeffrey Sachs. While not deprecating the years of struggle in South Africa itself and among the African diaspora, Horne is quite clear that South Africa’s future was cast by the end of the “bipolar” world and the triumph of the USA as the sole superpower and its resilient regime of white supremacy.

At this moment my experience and Horne’s overlapped since I witnessed in Berlin the first manifestations of the collapse on that fateful weekend in November 1989. During the first half of 1991 I would discuss the future of South Africa with members of the ANC who until that time had debated the socialist options for a new dispensation. Although the constitution of post-apartheid South Africa was only adopted in 1994, I was able to listen to those whose views would be marginalised or modified as the African National Congress under Mandela and Mbeki steered the country away from the principles of land reform upon which it had been founded and into the great parasite-infested swamp of neo-liberalism where it would be bled of all the resources needed to raise its majority to decent living standards. The last of the explicitly race-based regimes was dismantled with hardly a trace of change to the society it had created. In that sense South Africa had reached the stage of ideological development achieved by the United States in 1954. Horne’s book is a unique history of all the interlocking confrontations. It links personalities and movements and shows the complex relationships between the US and Africa throughout the 20^th century, both for Africans and African-Americans

The Dawn of the Apocalypse is a step back from his The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism (2018). Whereas in the latter Horne asserts, following an argument he made in the previous study The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (2014), that the essential qualities that made the United States “exceptional” were a product of the demographic and political developments in Europe in the “long Sixteenth Century”. In the Counter-Revolution Horne says that the war of independence that led to the creation of the US was driven primarily by the fear among the colonial elite that the British government would sacrifice the slave trade and chattel slave regime upon which the North American elite had built its wealth for opportunistic reasons—the effective pacification of its Caribbean island colonies. To avoid what was seen then as potential expropriation of colonial assets, the landowners in the South and merchants in the North agreed to expel the British and preserve the settler regime they had built on the trade in and exploitation of bonded labour.

In The Apocalypse he goes on to argue that the regime of white supremacy, beyond merely the concept of “whiteness”, developed first in the Caribbean as a means of overcoming the fratricidal relationships that predominated among the tribes of the Western peninsula (aka as Europe). These comprised violent religious bigotry, ethnic antagonisms, imperial competition, and rival banditry. The inability to recruit or impress sufficient numbers of labourers from Europe to exploit the “New World” plantations induced their owners to import African slaves. However these slave populations invariably multiplied beyond the capacity of plantation management to control them. In the course of imperial competition, African populations soon realised that they could use their numerical superiority to advantage by selective alliance with competitors, e.g. siding with the Spanish against the English or the English against the French, etc.

In order to discourage this labour resistance, a system of privilege evolved in the colonies calculated to reduce antagonisms between ordinary Europeans. For example disabilities and discrimination against Jews, Catholics, or Protestants were reduced or eliminated. Thus the antagonists in the Thirty Years War were at least partially reconciled in the New World in favour of pan-Europeanism, otherwise known as whiteness. This religious freedom, largely unavailable in the Old World until the 20^th century, formed the core of what would become the exceptional “freedom” in the exceptional nation born in 1776.

In The Dawning, the milestones of social transformation are the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the ascendancy of the Christian monarchies, the shift in control over the slave trade to Britain and its emergent naval and commercial superiority. This is by no means an uninterrupted success story. Nor does Horne ignore domestic events beyond obvious human control. By the time Britain becomes the premier maritime power, converting its state-sponsored piracy into that majestic force that would “rule the waves” and the trade in slaves, two more centuries would pass. However it was the marginal position that Britain occupied in the Sixteenth Century that would allow it to exploit the conflicts between Catholic Europe and the Ottoman Empire as well as the great rivalry between Spain and France. Thus opportunism yielded tolerance and Albion’s perfidy enabled it to capture the assets and wealth of dissolving realms. The gradual accumulation of these resources gave Britain the capacity to overwhelm its European rivals. The British crown avoided most of the land wars that would deplete Spain’s population, treasury and military strength. Its splendid isolation and the seas surrounding proved insurmountable obstacles to its principal rivals. Religious intolerance and severe persecution forced much of the talented and wealthy commercial class to flee Catholic bigotry to the Protestant states, e.g. the Netherlands and England further weakening Spain’s competitive position. In essence, settler colonialism—the principal characteristic of the British Empire and the cornerstone of the United States—was catalysed by the decline of Catholic Spain. As Horne asks provocatively, was the US born in 1588 with the defeat of the Spanish Armada off the shores of Great Britain?

Both The Apocalypse and The Dawning bracket the term of the 45^th POTUS, Donald J. Trump. In fact, Professor Horne makes explicit reference to the real estate magnate and one-term US President.

“Still, Republicans could boast about their retreat from the poison of St. Bartholomew 1572. In 2018, the US president, Donald J. Trump, was perplexed to find that there were no Protestants on the highest court of the land: all were either Catholic or Jewish. ‘You had all Protestants’, he remarked in a burst of bafflement, ‘and then in a few years none. Doesn’t that seem strange… you should be able to have the main religion in this country represented on the Supreme Court.’ Apparently, he did not fully comprehend the construction of “whiteness” and the gigantic step toward building the Republic over which he presided. Yet the continuing persistence of racism continued to bear the seeds of a pernicious bigotry that in the longer term—like a loose thread on a well-sewn suit—could unravel the finely wrought ‘whiteness’ leading to a recrudescence of, for example, anti-Jewish fervor, suggested by a number of troubling incidents, including murderous attacks on synagogues and pro-Nazi marches.”[2]

While Gerald Horne makes a strong case for the origins of white supremacy in the settler colonial strategy of the British Empire, particularly in its sister the US American Empire, the interpretation of contemporary America suggested in his conclusion does not do justice to his otherwise convincing arguments.

The unprecedented attacks on a reigning POTUS over the past four years beg for explanation. Even at the height of the Watergate hearings, Richard Nixon, with an unpopular war raging, was never visited with the vitriol rained upon Mr Trump even before he had served a day in office. William J. Clinton was never attacked so viciously during his impeachment trial and his acquittal was accepted with equanimity. As I have written elsewhere, Donald Trump has been accused of threatening the very existence of the capitalist economic order, all manner of corruption, collaboration with foreign powers, failure to support the foreign policy of his predecessors (or more exactly the foreign policy establishment), all manner of sedition and yes, racism. For four years he has been called the worst US president ever, not only in the US media but also in media and by governments in foreign countries. [3]

Aside from the fact that racism is endemic in the US ruling class, Donald Trump’s behaviour has certainly been no worse than that of any other POTUS of “European descent”. Where this is grudgingly admitted the legions of his opponents have claimed that he animates the racist and white supremacist elements in the population and lends them moral support—because he does not follow the official language of his predecessor. These claims, like those which assert that the POTUS is bound to follow the foreign policy dictated by senior civil servants or external consultants of the Establishment, have been formulated uniquely to justify the rejection of Donald Trump because he is the first POTUS chosen since 1980 who is not the personal choice of the Bush dynasty and the first POTUS in at least a century who was neither a civil servant, military officer, or professional politician prior to his nomination and election. In other words, Donald J. Trump was the first genuine outsider to be elected US president in anyone’s living memory and possibly in the recorded history of the United States. Those are the principal and true reasons for the constant attacks on him and his administration—regardless of substantive failures or disagreements one could have over policies associated with Mr Trump.

That said, Gerald Horne’s analysis offers an analysis of the Trump phenomenon, which can be derived from his theory—although he refrains from any such derivation.

The ideology of settler colonialism, “whiteness” or “pan-Europeanism” developed and was anchored in US legislation and jurisprudence in two phases. The first phase, its inception, not only creates the “white man” from all those religious antagonists, it gives birth to the British form of the Enlightenment and its ideas of liberty—only added to US Constitution as an afterthought, but fundamental for securing the support of the yeomanry which would still need to slaughter indigenous for the next century in the name of Manifest Destiny. These particularly British Enlightenment liberties were, with the exception of religion, tied to property qualifications. Freedom was the freedom to own things (including people) and owners were endowed with inalienable rights (to property). All liberty was essentially derived from property and with an expanding continental empire the chance to acquire property become somewhat more democratic. As in England, liberty and property were understood as a unit. Settler colonialism permitted liberty to be expanded as long as the supply of property was unlimited. The contradictions between liberty as property and property in bonded labour led to civil war in 1860.

With the passage of the 13^th amendment bonded labour as a class was abolished. Instead it was converted into a judicial condition. The destruction of the Civil War gave rise to the first generation of the military-industrial complex in the US. The heavy industry engendered by the federal war machine needed labour and that labour came from Europe. However for the new waves of settlers there was very little in the way of property to offer. By the end of the 19^th century these immigrants were beginning to pose a threat to the nation’s owners, its ruling class. The liberty demanded was freedom in the cities, in the workplaces—factories and mines. Free labour demanded those rights (in fact privileges) that had been inscribed in the Constitution as citizens and workers, not as property owners. The legal construction of whiteness again served to integrate the European labourers. Their “whiteness” made the Americans and their numbers majorities, especially in urban concentrations and the rural towns of the South. By the time the US entered World War I, pan-Europeans constituted a majority throughout most of the United States. The political and labour movements of the late 19^th century had succeeded in extending the franchise to all male adult citizens, while effectively depriving African-Americans of the vote or effective representation.

This was the “white” majority that would become synonymous with American for most of the 20^th century.  It was the majority to which the ruling class appealed in two world wars. It was the majority that was disciplined by the anti-communist purges. It was the “silent majority” that Nixon rightly believed supported his Vietnam War policy. This was the majority, which was led to believe that the ruling oligarchy governed in its interest too.

The war against Korea, in fact a continuation of the US war to dominate China, was the first real crisis for the regime of white supremacy and its dogma of whiteness. The US sent a segregated military force to the Korean peninsula where it was being badly beaten by armies of “yellow” people. Segregationist POTUS Harry Truman was forced to order the integration of the US military not only to improve the fighting morale in a war the US is still fighting (albeit with a fragile ceasefire on the battlefront) but to stabilise domestic conditions where Black American opposition to segregation was escalating. No sooner had the Korean ceasefire stopped overt military action, then the covert military action that would explode in Vietnam began. Although US military forces were integrated, it was mainly poor whites and blacks who were deployed to the rice patties and jungle to kill “gooks”. This not only added political tension, with recurring mutinies in the field, but to the number of potential dissidents in the military. The Black Panther Party expressed the consciousness that Black Americans were an “occupied” population. Malcolm X and Mohammed Ali both attacked the use of Blacks as soldiers to fight wars abroad ostensibly for rights they did not even enjoy at home.[4]

The Establishment waged a vicious covert war against Black Americans who demanded that they too were endowed with inalienable rights, the same ones supposedly pronounced in 1776. By 1975, when the great independence struggles in those countries that had been European colonies had ended, the most radical leaders of Black America were dead. Their organisations decimated by FBI and CIA “counter-intelligence programs” (COINTELPRO).  Although not prohibited, members were assassinated, jailed, or driven into exile. Since the US regime has historically applied both carrots and sticks with great success, many of the junior or potential leadership were offered and accepted positions in compatible career tracks allowing them to advocate change “within the system”.

Financial support poured in from foundations and government to promote “cultural” approaches. Culture focussed on history and identity. Imitating the theodicy of the American Dream, Black History became a story of the inevitable progress of the African slave, regrettably kidnapped and worked to death building the US, through his or her equally inevitable survivors (unlike indigenous peoples, slaves were too valuable to kill at will) to participation in the divine mission of the United States of America to save the world. In this story, most prosaically told in the 1970 TV mini-series Roots, the mission of every Black American is to find his or her identity. That identity may include the recreation of some African genealogy or the consolation of being a descendant of Thomas Jefferson. Just as every “ethnic” European was to revel in Italian, German, Bulgarian, or other national heritage, Black American was elevated to its own ethnic pedigree.

“Whiteness” did not disappear. Instead a parallel universe was created called “Blackness”. However while “Whiteness” was protected by centuries of law and institutional power, “Blackness” had none. As Malcolm X for one had argued, if someone abuses an Italian or a German in America, that person can claim a national government as protection. A Black American only has America and it does not protect its black citizens. In a dishonest attempt to manipulate public opinion and retain control of the political terrain, the policy of “affirmative action” was instituted. Since rights in the American system are still based essentially on property or wealth, the argument was made that Black Americans had been deprived of their opportunity to accumulate wealth and property by virtue of discriminatory laws and practices as well as vulgar racism. Therefore laws and practices had to be adopted to compensate for that lack of opportunity by creating opportunities for Black Americans (later for other groups so designated, e.g. women). This was rightly perceived as institutional favouritism. On its own there are good reasons for remedying a wrong by compensating the wronged person(s) with advantages they did not enjoy because of the wrong. However the compensation was demanded from people who could not see themselves as the tortfeasor. The remedy for discrimination against Black Americans was not to be paid by those who had profited en masse from the wrong but for those whose participation in the wrong was incidental or collateral to that done by the State or the commanding heights of society and economy.

The response of those who had been promoted through this and other policies intended to recruit compatible careerists was at first confused. While there was still something resembling a social justice movement in the US there were still some beneficiaries who argued that more resources had to be committed to levelling the playing field. However this was far too much like “socialism” or a class approach—both heresies in the US.

By 1980 however the last remnants of socialist-light, New Deal-type activism had been overwhelmed by the so-called Reagan Revolution that promised to “get government off your back”. Radical expansion of war expenditures coincided with cuts in every kind of budget that had been dedicated to modest equal opportunity policies. From 1980 until 2008 the Bush dynasty with its Clinton cadet branch would strip the meagre social welfare and social development operations of the federal government and with an unending succession of wars induce the greatest transfers of wealth to the super-rich in the 20^th century. At the same time the US Empire was faced with the need, both at home and abroad, to pacify competitors and opposition. From 1989-1991, the Bush regime profited from the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it the only competitive example for social and economic policy. Only Yugoslavia appeared resistant to the “market forces”. Expanded Germany joined its legacy fascists in Croatia together with the US to destroy the country and blame its failure on the government in Belgrade, assassinating the country’s leader in the process. The war against governments that pursued state policies of social and economic equity has continued unabated to this day. It was called the Global War on Terror.

While class struggle was effectively outlawed in the US in 1908 with the formation of what became the American Gestapo—the FBI—it was the Bush dynasty that destroyed its last remnants. The conditions of permanent global war rendered class models of social justice struggle permanently obsolete. However ideological innovation did not stop. In the US system, ideas are products to be marketed and sold like soap powder. Ivory Snow or rap, it makes no difference. The Clintons had restored the judicial slavery system through the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, with its notorious discrimination between misdemeanour “powder cocaine” and felonious “crack cocaine” as well as numerous provisions to assure that felony convictions would disenfranchise or otherwise deprive people of their civil (and human) rights. At the same time however the careerist generation that had benefitted from affirmative action and collaboration with the still mainly pan-European ruling class were competing in the second generation with the “middle class” members of that “white majority” that had been cultivated since the Republic’s founding. The children of the recruited generation with no ideology of their own except that inherited from the Reagan Revolution needed a new myth. That myth was drawn from the cultural identity movement and the theoretical analysis that became known as “post-modernism”. Cultural identity had already been harnessed to sell commodities in the 1970s. Now it was to be harnessed as a political ideology. History having been ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possessive individual became the sole subject of human action and that action was to be fulfilled by the creation of identity or identities. The roles that previously were understood as contextualised in social action and organised human behaviour were converted into essences. Whereas until the 1970s feminism was based on the argument that women were equal to men and that their subjugation was based on the roles they were forced to play or the status those roles had in society, identity politics asserted that there is no woman or man, no gender since these are arbitrary. Instead one chooses gender and the roles are a natural consequence of the gender choice. Classical feminism was based on universal humanism.[5] Gender identity denies that there is any universal human species with two sexes based on reproduction. The logical extension of this argument is that “whiteness” or “blackness” is an individual choice and the consequences of choosing to be “white” or to be “black” are natural once that choice has been made.

Ironically identity politics exposes the legal fiction of “whiteness” that was used to create a fictive pan-European majority, even including the “deplorables” and “ugly” (the terms Clinton and Biden use to denote the poor and working class in the US). However the legal fiction is not exposed as the foundation of white supremacy and capitalism. It is formulated as initial choice, along with sex or sexuality, from which all other life results follow. Hence the very social conditions and historical development which led to what has been called “the New Jim Crow” and which have elevated a small percentage of the population to membership in the ruling class or at least as servants to the servants of Capital are denied.[6]

Since there are very few visible persons and audible voices from ordinary Black America in the corporate media, the challenges to this negation of historical and contemporary reality are seldom heard. After all Blackness never was allowed to constitute itself as a political movement protected by the State. However, the plundering of the United States by its ruling class has not gone unnoticed by that mass of people, mainly working class and poor, who have been told for a whole century that they are the “majority” and that in a democracy the majority has claims that cannot be ignored. This majority of “deplorables” and “ugly” were always a constructive majority maintained in the illusion of their status in order to suppress class conflict. That was after all the entire function of the second wave of “whiteness”—to keep the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in their place but on the side of the Anglo elite that has ruled the country since its inception. The New Deal was devised to keep them on the side of the ruling class. That was why Franklin Roosevelt traded his social programs for continued Jim Crow in the South.

This “white majority” watched their standard of living stagnate in the 1970s and decline steadily while their Hollywood heroes told them that America was great. They watched their taxes go up, their wages go down and wars without end for which they had sacrificed sons and daughters. They watched the US government give trillions away and surrendered their homes to credit card usury. Because they were “white” they expected to be heard. Because they were “white” the regime promoted their prejudices but ignored their complaints. When Barack Obama was elected he made the biggest present to banks on record his first act of office. He was then reviled for introducing what reactionaries call some form of “socialised medicine” but what was in fact a huge grant to the insurance cartel with almost no gain in health care or coverage for ordinary citizens. It essentially raised taxes on an already overtaxed working class. In the US context—meanwhile the only context available in the West—it had become impossible to assert the claims that had justified the New Deal. It had become impossible to attack the economic system, never well understood. The only expression available to this “majority” without any class or other distinguishing characteristic was the traditional outlet—populism. Populism derives its legitimacy foremost from the claim to majority support. There is no theory of history or other doctrine to drive it. Populism is the raised voice of the masses screaming their grievances and demanding whatever remedies they can imagine under such mass conditions.

Populism is by definition without ideology and usually leaderless. That explains why the people who have become leaders of populist movements rarely have anything in common besides their ability to put themselves at the head of a majority. Donald J. Trump was not the first person in US history to exploit a populist opportunity. However he is the first one to be elected POTUS on a populist wave. This is the essence of the attack on Trump by the Establishment—that he emboldened the deplorable and ugly. The Establishment, represented by the Bush-Clinton gang, could never imagine a New York real estate mogul unafraid to stand in front of a huge crowd in Alabama and shout that the Bible was his favourite reading. They could never imagine that Donald Trump could win a “white majority”. The possibility that he had won a majority beyond merely those deplorable and ugly working class folks was a thought too horrible to contemplate.

Now it was time for the ruling class to call in its chits. When Mr Trump won the electoral college vote in 2017, despite all efforts by Hillary Rodham in the states with the most delegates, there were vindictive reasons for attacking him. However the far greater danger posed by Mr Trump was that he had been elected by the very “white majority” upon whom the ruling class had relied for legitimacy. The Democratic Party, the oldest and most clientelistic of the two private companies that operate the US regime, had relied for over a century on the docility of the “white majority” and now they were clearly in revolt. It was necessary therefore to breakup that “white majority”, to deprive it of its democratic claims to representation. This was the most important objective of the campaign to discredit, impeach and defeat Trump utterly.[7]

While there is no indication that either Trump or those loyal to him had any analysis of the political terrain in which they were fighting or the stakes involved, it is clear that such tactics as accusing him of fascism, dictatorship or racism were in fact aimed at his electoral base. These accusations were amplified by the identity cadres in the media and academia. In addition the “Mockingbird” tactic was used by having all these accusations echoed in Europe for rebroadcast within the US.[8] Although state violence against Black Americans has been a mainstay of US regime power, suddenly every incident was attributed to Donald Trump personally. His supporters were all denounced as racists or white supremacists. The point here is not whether Mr Trump or any of his followers are racist or not. Rather the objective was to stigmatise the traditional “majority” and force them to defend themselves or distance themselves from the person they had elected or be declared anathema. Identity cadres, especially the company known as Black Lives Matter, vastly funded by corporate tax dodges, together with other identity groups began a campaign to label all of this “white majority”—but conspicuously not the sources of their funds—as racists and white supremacists. Spectacles were created and staged the templates for which can be found in the works of Gene Sharp and virtually identical to actions sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy in Kiev and elsewhere.[9]

This campaign aimed to turn the discovery of “whiteness” into an argument for dissolving the pan-European majority. By asserting—correctly—that “whiteness” is a fiction and that the US was founded also to preserve chattel slavery (and annihilation of the indigenous, although that got almost no attention), not only was the claim of whiteness rejected but the constitution of a majority with majority claims on the political system and its allocation of resources. However this move to delegitimise the majority constituted by a fictive whiteness did not propose any other majority. Instead it promoted diversity and inclusion. Diversity can be satisfied in many ways without addressing majority needs. Inclusion is not the same as participation or self-determination. There was no proposal that would constitute majorities not based on “whiteness” for one simple reason. To do so would require asking what common qualities such a majority would have? If the attack on “whiteness” were really an attack on white supremacy it would have to go to the root of white supremacy as a dogmatic system for maintaining Capitalism and the oligarchy that rules the Anglo-American Empire.

In fact the strategic purpose of BLM and all of the other corporate armed propaganda elements is to destroy the concept of majority and with it the basis of any democratic system, whether electorally based or not. The central reason for the unprecedented attack on the Trump presidency lies in nothing Mr Trump or his administration have said or done. The Establishment wants to crush the only element of the US society that still had a claim based on numerical strength for a share of the country’s wealth and participation in its governance. No one would be so foolish as to believe that Black Americans could constitute a majority or even a plurality in the United States.

With at least 20 per cent of Black Americans subject to some kind of penal surveillance, they constitute no threat. The only other demographic group that could be constituted in serious numerical strength is women. Not only is their no historical precedence for a female electoral or political majority, the identity ideology of trans-genderism nullifies the claims of the pre-1980s feminism.

The process Gerald Horne describes as beginning in the Sixteenth Century, leading to the creation of “whiteness”, has also led to its disintegration. Having served its purpose, it is no longer a necessary part of white supremacy and capitalism, both of which flourish independent of skin pigmentation.

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Notes

[1] Church Clothes: Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa, Maisonneuve Press (2004)

[2] Gerald Horne, The Dawning of the Apocalypse, p. 213.

[3] “To the Halls of Montezuma from the Shores of Tripoli: Trump as Anti-Wilson”, Lobster 74 (2017)

[4] “Moderate Extremism and Extremist Moderation”, Dissident Voice (17 October 2015)

[5] Although objections can be made that any classification of feminism is arbitrary, the canonical—if not definitive—expression of mid-20th century feminism may be found in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949). Naturally there has been a wide range of theories proposed since, especially critical of de Beauvoir. However there is no disputing the book’s significance for feminism at least until the emergence of what became known as the “New Left” after 1968.

[6] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness (2010)

[7] The same strategy was followed successfully in the French presidential elections that promoted Rothschild banker Emmanuel Macron to the Elysée Palace in May 2017. Francois Hollande had torpedoed his own PSF. “If they could change something they would be prohibited…” Dissident Voice (9 May 2017).

Thus the only alternative was Marie Le Pen from the Rassemblement National. The French establishment media promoted a campaign like the one used unsuccessfully to defeat Donald Trump by claiming that Le Pen was just a copy of her far-right father, Jean-Marie. The populist issues would emerge again with the so-called “Yellow Vests” (Mouvement des Gilets jaune) whose protests were then effectively muted by the constructive pandemic declared at the beginning of 2020. In Germany, the amorphous but clearly populist Allianz für Deutschland (AfD) has also been the target of the German establishment and the mass media, which claims that it is just a stalking horse for the far right. Ironically the German far right, esp. so-called neo-Nazis, have all been tied to covert operations by the secret police and intelligence agencies—wholly establishment in other words. Conspicuous among all these populist groups is their suspicion of neo-liberal monetary and economic policies as well as the states of emergency and other authoritarian measures adopted by their governments in conjunction with the constructive pandemic in 2020.

[8] Operation “Mockingbird” is the name given to a CIA program whereby material the agency generated would be planted through friendly journalists or editors in media abroad so that it could be cited in the US from an ostensibly independent, foreign source.

[9] A complete selection of the works of Gene Sharp and his collaborators can be found at the website of the Albert Einstein Institution, www.aeinstein.org.

Featured image is from PopularResistance.Org

At this late stage, days before Trump’s tenure ends, what’s going on aims to discredit and humiliate him more than already — for unjustifiable reasons, not the other way around.

On Friday,  Dem House Speaker Pelosi said the following:

“It is the hope of members that (Trump) will immediately resign,” adding:

“But if he does not, I have instructed the rules committee to be prepared to move forward with Congressman Jamie Raskin’s 25th Amendment legislation and a motion for impeachment.”

Days ahead of his tenure’s end, Trump remains in office.

Pence reportedly opposes invoking the 25th Amendment.

While legal to take this step, using it to try removing Trump would defy why it became the law of the land.

It was done for succession in cases when a president dies in office or becomes unable to serve because of illness or incapacity.

It would corrupt the amendment’s purpose by seeking Trump’s removal from office for fabricated reasons — notably when his time in office is nearly over.

According to NBC News, at least two Dem House members intend to introduce one or more articles of impeachment on Monday.

Its draft obtained by NBC is titled “Incitement of Insurrection (sic).”

It falsely claims Trump “engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors by willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States (sic),” adding:

Trump “threatened the integrity of the democratic system (sic), interfered with the peaceful transition of power (sic), and imperiled a coordinate branch of government (sic).”

He betrayed “his trust as president, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States (sic).”

“(D)oing nothing is not an option (sic).”

NBC reported that the measure has over 150 co-sponsors.

It’s unclear how many Republicans will go along with what no one should support.

A two-thirds Senate super-majority is needed to convict and remove Trump from office.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy opposes impeachment.

As of Friday, only one Republican called for Trump’s removal — longtime DJT critic Mitt Romney.

GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski called on Trump to resign, saying nothing about impeachment.

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham issued a statement saying:

“Removing Trump from office would not only be unsuccessful in the Senate but would be a dangerous precedent for the future of the presidency.”

Impeachment of Trump by House Dems in December 2019 on phony charges had nothing to do with removing him from office.

It was all about wanting him ahead of November 2020 presidential and congressional elections.

Undemocratic Dems for what they wished for, gaining control of the White House by brazen fraud as well as the House and Senate in days.

In response to the first impeachment attempt, Law Professor Jonathan Turley said the following:

Pelosi “destroyed (the House) case for impeachment.”

Calling her handling of proceedings a “blunder of the first order,” Turley said her delaying strategy “jeopardize(d) not just (Trump’s) trial but the rules governing impeachment.”

On January 7, Turley argued against invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, saying:

It was “primarily designed for physical disabilities (or death) of a president.”

“As shown by the Goldwater controversy, there are always psychiatrists willing and eager to declare a president insane even from a distance.”

“Politicians often portray their opponents as mentally unbalanced since only an insane person would hold an opposing view some issues.”

“If we were to remove a president on such a basis, it could open the floodgates for such removals in the future.”

“Being obnoxious and narcissistic is not grounds for removal.”

“Indeed, such a standard would leave much of Washington vacant.”

“(W)hat would be achieved? Trump has already pledged an orderly transfer of power…”

“In order to impose this ignoble moment on Trump, the Congress would create precedent for future such removals on ill-defined mental disabilities.”

The Washington Post reported that by “memo” it obtained, Senate Majority Leader McConnell “will not reconvene (the body) for substantive business until Jan. 19” — two days before Trump’s tenure ends.

Pro forma Senate sessions will be held on January 12 and 15 during which conducting official business is prohibited without unanimous consent of its members.

WaPo: “(T)hat (virtually) makes… an impeachment trial” unlikely to begin until a new Congress convenes after inauguration day.

With official business to discuss, impeaching Trump after leaving office would not only be unprecedented, it would distract from confirming cabinet appointees and other important issues.

Citing unnamed McConnell and Schumer aides, WaPo said they haven’t spoken about impeachment proceedings.

According to McConnell’s memo, without a unanimous agreement among Senate members to act on House articles of impeachment:

“Senate trial would…begin after…Trump’s term has expired — either one hour after its expiration on January 20, or twenty-five hours after its expiration on January 21.”

When an impeachment trial of a president occurs, it’s presided over by the Supreme Court chief justice.

It’s unclear if Justice Roberts would agree to be part of trying a former US president?

As things now stand, removing Trump by invoking the 25th Amendment or by impeachment and trial appears highly unlikely.

Justifying either method would be based on falsely accusing him of inciting violence on Capitol Hill last Wednesday — what he had nothing to do with.

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

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“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

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“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

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Among Global Research’s most popular 2020 articles

This article was first published in May 2020.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose “expert” advice to President Trump has resulted in the complete shutdown of the greatest economic engine in world history, has known since 2005 that chloroquine is an effective inhibitor of coronaviruses.

How did he know this? Because of research done by the National Institutes of Health, of which he is the director. In connection with the SARS outbreak – caused by a coronavirus dubbed SARS- CoV – the NIH researched chloroquine and concluded that it was effective at stopping the SARS coronavirus in its tracks. The COVID-19 bug is likewise a coronavirus, labeled SARS-CoV-2. While not exactly the same virus as SARS-CoV-1, it is genetically related to it, and shares 79% of its genome, as the name SARS-CoV-2 implies. They both use the same host cell receptor, which is what viruses use to gain entry to the cell and infect the victim.

The Virology Journal – the official publication of Dr. Fauci’s National Institutes of Health – published what is now a blockbuster article on August 22, 2005, under the heading – get ready for this – “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread.” (Emphasis mine throughout.) Write the researchers, “We report…that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage.”

This means, of course, that Dr. Fauci (pictured at right) has known for 15 years that chloroquine and it’s even milder derivative hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) will not only treat a current case of coronavirus (“therapeutic”) but prevent future cases (“prophylactic”). So HCQ functions as both a cure and a vaccine. In other words, it’s a wonder drug for coronavirus. Said Dr. Fauci’s NIH in 2005, “concentrations of 10 μM completely abolished SARS-CoV infection.” Fauci’s researchers add, “chloroquine can effectively reduce the establishment of infection and spread of SARS-CoV.”

Dr. Didier Raoult, the Anthony Fauci of France, had such spectacular success using HCQ to treat victims of SARS-CoV-2 that he said way back on February 25 that “it’s game over” for coronavirus.

He and a team of researchers reported that the use of HCQ administered with both azithromycin and zinc cured 79 of 80 patients with only “rare and minor” adverse events.

“In conclusion,” these researchers write, “we confirm the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine associated with azithromycin in the treatment of COVID-19 and its potential effectiveness in the early impairment of contagiousness.”

The highly-publicized VA study that purported to show HCQ was ineffective showed nothing of the sort. HCQ wasn’t administered until the patients were virtually on their deathbeds when research indicates it should be prescribed as soon as symptoms are apparent. Plus, HCQ was administered without azithromycin and zinc, which form the cocktail that makes it supremely effective. At-risk individuals need to receive the HCQ cocktail at the first sign of symptoms.

But Governor Andrew Cuomo banned the use of HCQ in the entire state of New York on March 6, the Democrat governors of Nevada and Michigan soon followed suit, and by March 28 the whole country was under incarceration-in-place fatwas.

Nothing happened with regard to the use of HCQ in the U.S. until March 20, when President Trump put his foot down and insisted that the FDA consider authorizing HCQ for off-label use to treat SARS-CoV-2.

On March 23, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko reported that he had treated around 500 coronavirus patients with HCQ and had seen an astonishing 100% success rate. That’s not the “anecdotal” evidence Dr. Fauci sneers at, but actual results with real patients in clinical settings.

“Since last Thursday, my team has treated approximately 350 patients in Kiryas Joel and another 150 patients in other areas of New York with the above regimen. Of this group and the information provided to me by affiliated medical teams, we have had ZERO deaths, ZERO hospitalizations, and ZERO intubations. In addition, I have not heard of any negative side effects other than approximately 10% of patients with temporary nausea and diarrhea.”

Said Dr. Zelenko:

“If you scale this nationally, the economy will rebound much quicker. The country will open again. And let me tell you a very important point. This treatment costs about $20. That’s very important because you can scale that nationally. If every treatment costs $20,000, that’s not so good.

All I’m doing is repurposing old, available drugs which we know their safety profiles, and using them in a unique combination in an outpatient setting.”

The questions are disturbing to a spectacular degree. If Dr. Fauci has known since 2005 of the effectiveness of HCQ, why hasn’t it been administered immediately after people show symptoms, as Dr. Zelenko has done? Maybe then nobody would have died and nobody would have been incarcerated in place except the sick, which is who a quarantine is for in the first place. To paraphrase Jesus, it’s not the symptom-free who need HCQ but the sick. And they need it at the first sign of symptoms.

While the regressive health care establishment wants the HCQ cocktail to only be administered late in the course of the infection, from a medical standpoint, this is stupid. Said one doctor, “As a physician, this baffles me. I can’t think of a single infectious condition — bacterial, fungal, or viral — where the best medical treatment is to delay the use of an anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, or anti-viral until the infection is far advanced.”

So why has Dr. Fauci minimized and dismissed HCQ at every turn instead of pushing this thing from jump street? He didn’t even launch clinical trials of HCQ until April 9, by which time 33,000 people had died.

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First posted on Global Research in October 2020

His Excellency, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, has written yet another open letter to President Donald J. Trump. Read it in its entirety below. It is available in PDF by clicking here. Read it in Italian here.

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DONALD J. TRUMP

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Solemnity of Christ the King

Mr. President,

Allow me to address you at this hour in which the fate of the whole world is being threatened by a global conspiracy against God and humanity. I write to you as an Archbishop, as a Successor of the Apostles, as the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America. I am writing to you in the midst of the silence of both civil and religious authorities. May you accept these words of mine as the “voice of one crying out in the desert” (Jn 1:23).

As I said when I wrote my letter to you in June, this historical moment sees the forces of Evil aligned in a battle without quarter against the forces of Good; forces of Evil that appear powerful and organized as they oppose the children of Light, who are disoriented and disorganized, abandoned by their temporal and spiritual leaders.

Daily we sense the attacks multiplying of those who want to destroy the very basis of society: the natural family, respect for human life, love of country, freedom of education and business. We see heads of nations and religious leaders pandering to this suicide of Western culture and its Christian soul, while the fundamental rights of citizens and believers are denied in the name of a health emergency that is revealing itself more and more fully as instrumental to the establishment of an inhuman faceless tyranny.

A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.

Mr. President, I imagine that you are already aware that in some countries the Great Reset will be activated between the end of this year and the first trimester of 2021. For this purpose, further lockdowns are planned, which will be officially justified by a supposed second and third wave of the pandemic. You are well aware of the means that have been deployed to sow panic and legitimize draconian limitations on individual liberties, artfully provoking a world-wide economic crisis. In the intentions of its architects, this crisis will serve to make the recourse of nations to the Great Reset irreversible, thereby giving the final blow to a world whose existence and very memory they want to completely cancel. But this world, Mr. President, includes people, affections, institutions, faith, culture, traditions, and ideals: people and values that do not act like automatons, who do not obey like machines, because they are endowed with a soul and a heart, because they are tied together by a spiritual bond that draws its strength from above, from that God that our adversaries want to challenge, just as Lucifer did at the beginning of time with his “non serviam.”

Many people – as we well know – are annoyed by this reference to the clash between Good and Evil and the use of “apocalyptic” overtones, which according to them exasperates spirits and sharpens divisions. It is not surprising that the enemy is angered at being discovered just when he believes he has reached the citadel he seeks to conquer undisturbed. What is surprising, however, is that there is no one to sound the alarm. The reaction of the deep state to those who denounce its plan is broken and incoherent, but understandable. Just when the complicity of the mainstream media had succeeded in making the transition to the New World Order almost painless and unnoticed, all sorts of deceptions, scandals and crimes are coming to light.

Until a few months ago, it was easy to smear as “conspiracy theorists” those who denounced these terrible plans, which we now see being carried out down to the smallest detail. No one, up until last February, would ever have thought that, in all of our cities, citizens would be arrested simply for wanting to walk down the street, to breathe, to want to keep their business open, to want to go to church on Sunday. Yet now it is happening all over the world, even in picture-postcard Italy that many Americans consider to be a small enchanted country, with its ancient monuments, its churches, its charming cities, its characteristic villages. And while the politicians are barricaded inside their palaces promulgating decrees like Persian satraps, businesses are failing, shops are closing, and people are prevented from living, traveling, working, and praying. The disastrous psychological consequences of this operation are already being seen, beginning with the suicides of desperate entrepreneurs and of our children, segregated from friends and classmates, told to follow their classes while sitting at home alone in front of a computer.

In Sacred Scripture, Saint Paul speaks to us of “the one who opposes” the manifestation of the mystery of iniquity, the kathèkon (2 Thess 2:6-7). In the religious sphere, this obstacle to evil is the Church, and in particular the papacy; in the political sphere, it is those who impede the establishment of the New World Order.

As is now clear, the one who occupies the Chair of Peter has betrayed his role from the very beginning in order to defend and promote the globalist ideology, supporting the agenda of the deep church, who chose him from its ranks.

Mr. President, you have clearly stated that you want to defend the nation – One Nation under God, fundamental liberties, and non-negotiable values that are denied and fought against today. It is you, dear President, who are “the one who opposes” the deep state, the final assault of the children of darkness.

For this reason, it is necessary that all people of good will be persuaded of the epochal importance of the imminent election: not so much for the sake of this or that political program, but because of the general inspiration of your action that best embodies – in this particular historical context – that world, our world, which they want to cancel by means of the lockdown. Your adversary is also our adversary: it is the Enemy of the human race, He who is “a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44).

Around you are gathered with faith and courage those who consider you the final garrison against the world dictatorship. The alternative is to vote for a person who is manipulated by the deep state, gravely compromised by scandals and corruption, who will do to the United States what Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing to the Church, Prime Minister Conte to Italy, President Macron to France, Prime Minster Sanchez to Spain, and so on. The blackmailable nature of Joe Biden – just like that of the prelates of the Vatican’s “magic circle” – will expose him to be used unscrupulously, allowing illegitimate powers to interfere in both domestic politics as well as international balances. It is obvious that those who manipulate him already have someone worse than him ready, with whom they will replace him as soon as the opportunity arises.

And yet, in the midst of this bleak picture, this apparently unstoppable advance of the “Invisible Enemy,” an element of hope emerges. The adversary does not know how to love, and it does not understand that it is not enough to assure a universal income or to cancel mortgages in order to subjugate the masses and convince them to be branded like cattle. This people, which for too long has endured the abuses of a hateful and tyrannical power, is rediscovering that it has a soul; it is understanding that it is not willing to exchange its freedom for the homogenization and cancellation of its identity; it is beginning to understand the value of familial and social ties, of the bonds of faith and culture that unite honest people. This Great Reset is destined to fail because those who planned it do not understand that there are still people ready to take to the streets to defend their rights, to protect their loved ones, to give a future to their children and grandchildren. The leveling inhumanity of the globalist project will shatter miserably in the face of the firm and courageous opposition of the children of Light. The enemy has Satan on its side, He who only knows how to hate. But on our side, we have the Lord Almighty, the God of armies arrayed for battle, and the Most Holy Virgin, who will crush the head of the ancient Serpent. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31).

Mr. President, you are well aware that, in this crucial hour, the United States of America is considered the defending wall against which the war declared by the advocates of globalism has been unleashed. Place your trust in the Lord, strengthened by the words of the Apostle Paul: “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). To be an instrument of Divine Providence is a great responsibility, for which you will certainly receive all the graces of state that you need, since they are being fervently implored for you by the many people who support you with their prayers.

With this heavenly hope and the assurance of my prayer for you, for the First Lady, and for your collaborators, with all my heart I send you my blessing.

God bless the United States of America!

+ Carlo Maria Viganò

Tit. Archbishop of Ulpiana

Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America

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Big Tech’s moves to muscle President Donald Trump off social media have been heralded by some as victory. But a corporate-run state with politicians serving as mere figureheads amounts to the very fascism they claim to oppose.

The UK government has launched its public consultation on the deregulation of gene editing in England. To kick things off, somewhat predictably Environment Secretary George Eustice recently spun a staunch pro-industry line at the Oxford Farming Conference by stating:

“Gene editing has the ability to harness the genetic resources that Mother Nature has provided in order to tackle the challenges of our age. This includes breeding crops that perform better, reducing costs to farmers and impacts on the environment and helping us all adapt to the challenges of climate change.”

In the wake of Brexit, he attacked the EU’s stance on genetic engineering in agriculture by saying:

“Its potential was blocked by a European Court of Justice ruling in 2018, which is flawed and stifling to scientific progress. Now that we have left the EU, we are free to make coherent policy decisions based on science and evidence. That begins with this consultation.”

Eustice’s statements form part of a long-term pro-genetic engineering-deregulation propaganda campaign. It follows on from Boris Johnson’s first speech to parliament as prime minister in 2019 in which he proclaimed:

“Let’s start now to liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules and let’s develop the blight-resistant crops that will feed the world.”

The type of ‘liberation’ Johnson advocates forms part of the usual neoliberal evangelism which this time revolves around the adoption of unassessed genetically engineered crops and food, while overseeing the gutting of food safety and environmental standards, especially in light of a potential post-Brexit trade deal with the US.

It is no secret that various Conservative-led administrations have wanted to break free from the EU regulatory framework on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for some time. In 2014, Genewatch exposed collusion between the government and global agribusiness giants to force GMOs into Britain above the heads of a highly sceptical public.

In response to Eustice’s comments, GMWatch stated on its website that deregulation would result in no or few safety checks and probably no labelling for gene-edited products. This is despite dozens of top scientists having warned that they could be dangerous for human health and the environment in a 2017 Statement on New Genetic Modification Techniques.

Commenting on the government’s recent press release sent out to journalists to publicise the consultation process, the Beyond GM campaign group said:

“… the mendacious propaganda material on the benefits of genome editing… which was sent to journalists throughout the country… will be widely taken up as fact, preventing any intelligent public debate during the consultation period.”

The press release is in GMWatch’s view “a pack of lies from beginning to end” based on unsubstantiated ‘jam tomorrow’ claims that gene editing has the potential to protect the nation’s environment, pollinators and wildlife. These claims ignore the reality that the first gene-edited crop to be commercialised (Cibus’s SU canola) is gene edited to survive being sprayed with toxic herbicides. GMWatch argues that there is no gene-edited crop available anywhere in the world that offers environmental benefits.

It is telling that all the claimed advantages of gene-edited crops of the future are already available in the form of agroecological farming methods and high-performing conventionally bred crops. Agroecology offers system-wide solutions that tackle the now well-documented system-wide health, nutrition, social and environmental problems inherent in the model of industrial agriculture supported by corporations behind the genetic engineering project.

However, the UK government shows no interest in these solutions.

GMWatch notes that the government press release claims that gene editing is not genetic modification. The industry has put much effort into spinning this next generation of genetically engineered crops in this way. It wants at all costs to avoid the bad press and negative public perception that has surrounded the first generation of transgenic GMOs by avoiding the GMO tag.

However, gene editing most certainly falls within the definitions of GMOs from technical, scientific and legal (in the EU) standpoints. In fact, the EU and existing UK definition of a GMO does not depend on whether it contains foreign DNA. EU law defines a GMO as an organism in which “the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination”. Regardless of what the government says, gene-edited organisms fall under this definition.

Moreover, the government is wrong to claim that gene-edited organisms do not contain foreign DNA. This can happen intentionally (in the case of certain types of gene-edited organism) and unintentionally, as a result of the inherent inaccuracy and imprecision of gene-editing procedures. To support this claim, a compilation of peer reviewed evidence has been posted on the GMWatch website in the article ‘Science supports need to subject gene-edited plants to strict safety assessments’.

As for the government’s claim that gene-edited organisms only contain “changes that could be made more slowly using traditional breeding methods”, GMWatch says:

“We look forward to their proof that the unintended outcomes of gene editing could happen in traditional breeding. They include large deletions, insertions and rearrangements of DNA, as well as unintended incorporation of foreign DNA and entire genes.”

Long-time campaigner Jim McNulty of the Genetic Engineering Network is scathing in his assessment of how the UK government is currently acting. He says:

“When we look at this administration, filled to the roof with fraud, corruption and cronyism, we now have Boris Johnson trying to make or break the rules on new gene-editing techniques.”

He adds that the Brexiteers in government wasted no time in setting their pro-GMO agenda:

“Within a week of leaving the EU, the UK moved quickly to challenge and compete with our former European partners. The US is refusing to regulate the new genetic engineering techniques, just like they did with the first wave of transgenic GMOs. We in Europe, in the mid-90s, were faced with untested, unstable and unregulated GMOs in soy and maize going into two thirds of EU food products.”

It was a mammoth task to bring politicians, supermarkets and all government bodies on board to regulate the original wave of GMOs.

McNulty explains:

“We succeeded because in the UK, Germany and France campaigners and activists demanded action. The media, retailers and politicians buckled under the massive pressure of public opinion that we created to bring that about.”

The US also felt the pressure:

“Because the EU and its markets were the prize and there was so much anti-GM sentiment, GMOs were driven out and EU lawmakers have never changed their position. Science and public opinion won.”

McNulty argues that we now see treachery in our midst: a former member state has seen fit to bury 25 years of evolving laws and regulations founded on a science-based approach and the precautionary principle.

The consultation will close on Wednesday, 17 March at 23:59 and can be accessed via this link.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

“The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban” (George Orwell(1))

If our media were trying to cover world events each day honestly, then the headlines would repeatedly say things like:

• “US and Britain commit more war crimes in the Middle East”
• “Thousands persecuted by tyrants supported by US and Britain”

This does not happen because our current media are not trying to give us an honest explanation of what is really happening in the world. This does not mean that the media is necessarily telling lies (although it frequently does). It is mostly presenting distorted versions of events. This is usually known as the Propaganda Model of the media, which is analysed at length in a famous book called Manufacturing Consent, by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, first published in 1988.

The book explains that the beliefs of journalists, the ownership of the media by governments or big corporations, advertising, and the sources of information for news stories, all create a system which filters out topics and opinions that are considered ‘undesirable’.(2) That is, topics or opinions that challenge powerful interests, such as governments or big corporations. In particular, the media are uncritical of British and US war crimes, and they are not sufficiently critical of the profit-driven economic system. The main reasons for this are discussed below. These are sometimes called the five filters.

1) Conflicts of Interest: Ownership by Corporations and Governments 

The media in the US and Britain is mostly controlled by a small number of big corporations,(3) with the exception of the BBC, which is controlled by the government. As with all corporations, the power rests with a few people at the top. Journalists are just employees who can be hired and fired. Putting forward radical or controversial views is likely to annoy people in power. Corporations do not want journalists who are troublemakers or whistleblowers. Presenters and journalists quickly realise that media owners will not tolerate certain types of critical stories. Insiders in the US media have admitted that they back away from controversial stories that might offend their audience. Those who are very critical of big business and government foreign policy will not make it to the anchor position on mainstream news programs and will find it difficult to get a job with the major newspapers.(4) They may even be fired. A famous example of this was when the US MSNBC presenter Phil Donahue was critical of the Iraq war in 2003 and was quickly fired. MSNBC is owned by General Electric, who are one of the US’s biggest weapons companies. They did not want anti-war voices on the channel.(5)

2) Advertising – Do Not Bite The Hand That Feeds You 

The bulk of the funding for most newspapers and television channels comes from advertising by major corporations. A number of these, such as BP and Morgan Stanley, have stated that they will not advertise with publications that they consider ‘objectionable’,(6) which really means any that question their right to make unlimited profits, or that question the way they do business. Companies that sell weapons do not want stories that show the horror of war; tobacco companies do not want stories about children getting addicted to cigarettes in Malawi. They want the media to focus on stories that make their readers and viewers receptive to advertising. Favorable news stories, known in the industry as puff pieces, can be bought by advertisers. In many local papers, the editorial mostly fills the space between advertisements. When discussing the qualities required of journalists, one senior newspaper executive stated:

“what you want are people who can execute your strategy…to create editorial to support maximizing revenues from display advertising”.(7)

There is a conflict of interest if the primary goal of the media, as with other businesses, is to make profits, and the main source of revenue is the advertising. Under these circumstances, the media will not present the most critical stories. Ultimately, ratings and corporate profit are more important than honest news. 

3) Sourcing – Do Not Bite The Hand That Feeds You (again) 

Journalism has always relied on official sources of information, such as government spokespeople, and corporate press releases. In fact, this is what makes up the majority of news today. The media cannot risk being ‘shut out’ by either the government or corporations, so they rarely do anything to seriously upset them. Many journalists now just write what those with power want them to write. One British journalist even said that politics and journalism are no longer separate. Most mainstream journalists just want to be spoon-fed information by their sources.(8) Stories often turn out to be word-for-word copies of press releases from governments or corporations. Some video footage is actually just another PR tool, provided by corporations so TV stations can fill their news programs cheaply.(9) It is estimated that as much as 80% of mainstream US news comes from government, corporate or public relations sources.(10) Many ‘experts’ who appear on news programs are supplied by big business or the government, so they will tend to present the establishment view of their subject.

4) Flak 

There is a related issue that powerful people or organisations can give a newspaper a hard time if they do not like what is written. This is known as ‘flak’. It can be phone calls or letters, or, particularly in Britain, the threat of legal action, which can be enough to deter the media from pursuing a story. When the BBC ran a story that was critical of the reasons given for the Iraq war (this was known as the ‘dodgy dossier’), the government gave them flak and senior BBC people lost their jobs.(11) The CBS presenter Dan Rather has admitted that they dropped a story about George Bush’s national service being in a ‘safe’ unit, due to flak from the government.(12) Media criticism can therefore be kept within certain boundaries.

5) Ideology 

The final filter is ideology – what do journalists believe. For many years between 1945 and 1989, the dominant ideology was anti-communism. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, this has been replaced by two dominant ideologies – anti-terrorism and capitalism.(13) This means that journalists are reluctant to criticise anything that the government claims is about anti-terrorism, whether it be repressive laws at home, or wars abroad. Journalists have also come to believe that there is no alternative to the existing economic or financial system, despite the evidence showing clearly since the 2008 financial crisis that the existing system is highly unstable and creates poor outcomes for many people.

The Five Filters Lead to Censorship and Self-Censorship 

The former commissioner of the US regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Nicholas Johnson, said that there are four stages that journalists typically go through in their career:

“In the early stage, you’re a young crusader and you write an exposé story about the powers that be, and you bring it to your editor and the editor says: “No, kill it. We can’t touch that. Too hot.”

Stage two: You get an idea for the story, but you don’t write it and you check with the editor first and he says: “No, won’t fly. No, I think the old man won’t like it. Don’t do that, he has a lot of friends in there and that might get messy.

Stage three: You get an idea for the story and you yourself dismiss it as silly.

Stage four: You no longer get the idea for that kind of an exposé story.”(14)

The writer, Michael Parenti, suggested that there is also a stage five:

“You then appear on panels, with media critics like me, and you get very angry and indignant when we say that there are biases in the media and you’re not as free and independent as you think.”(15)

The filtering system does not completely eliminate all critical views on all subjects. There are a handful of mainstream journalists who sometimes manage some limited criticism of the economic system, but their presence actually leads readers and viewers to incorrectly assume that the media is better than it really is. Occasionally, an insider will criticise the media itself, but they tend to suggest that the mainstream media is reasonable, by focussing on the following narrow argument:

As the sales figures for most newspapers decline, the budget for serious journalism decreases. Fewer journalists racing to meet tight deadlines, without the time or resources to investigate properly, means that it is simply easier for journalists to regurgitate information that has been supplied to them in the form of press releases from governments, corporations and PR companies.(16)

This argument is true, but the mainstream media has always presented a highly distorted version of events, even when they were well-funded and well-staffed. There is a small number of former mainstream media journalists who are more critical and now write independently. In Britain this includes John Pilger,(17) Matt Kennard,(18) Nafeez Ahmed(19) and Jonathan Cook.(20) They have all described various forms of censorship during their mainstream careers. 

Ideology is extremely powerful 

One of the authors of Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky, once pointed out in a famous interview(21) with BBC presenter Andrew Marr that this filtering system does not require official censorship, or even deliberate self-censorship by journalists. The recruitment and promotion policies of media organisations guarantee that only people with the ‘correct’ opinions make it to the highest levels. This even applies on some university journalism courses. The investigative journalist, Matt Kennard, has explained how he had a bad reputation at Columbia Journalism School because he dared to ask critical questions of one of America’s worst war criminals, Henry Kissinger.(22)

The idea that journalists and politicians share similar views is clear from the revolving door, where senior people in government go to work at newspapers, and vice versa. There is a long history of this in both Britain and the US.(23) In Britain, recent examples would be the former Chancellor, George Osbourne, becoming the editor of the Evening Standard, and the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, having previously edited The Spectator. (24)

Chomsky has also pointed out that, on the whole, academics do not have the first four filters limiting their work, yet the output of mainstream academics is almost as poor as that of the media on topics such as economics, finance, politics, international relations, and terrorism studies, with critical academics being a small minority. Academic bias is mostly caused by ideology. For this reason, Chomsky has suggested that the most important of the media filters is ideology.(25)

Groupthink and The Memory Hole 

In later posts we will look at psychological traits that contribute to the issues discussed throughout these posts. One of those traits is worth mentioning here. It is groupthink. Most people in the media are surrounded by other people repeating the mainstream view, and they rarely get to hear alternative views. This tends to make their views even more extreme. It was recognised long ago that “a lie repeated often enough becomes the accepted truth”.(26) Journalists hear the distortions most often and therefore end up believing many of them. Once journalists have written these things then they have a vested interest in defending their previous points of view. It becomes more and more difficult for them to say ‘much of what I have written has been wrong’. In order to justify their support for wars, they repeat the statements of politicians about humanitarian intentions, or weapons of mass destruction, or the threat of terrorism, believing that this constitutes evidence of ‘good intentions’ by those politicians, when in fact it is mostly propaganda. There is no honest way to justify ‘bombing whole countries back to the stone age,’(27) as the assaults on Iraq and Libya have been described, yet that is what they try to do.

The media also have what is described as ‘the memory hole.’ This is a reference to the George Orwell novel ‘1984’. The Memory Hole was “a slot into which government officials deposit politically inconvenient documents for destruction”.(28) These days it is used to refer to situations where journalists seem to forget many of the criminal or unethical acts that their government has carried out. There have been plenty of government investigations detailing the criminal activities of US agencies like the CIA,(29) but you would not get that impression from reading current analysis of government activities. Documentation regarding Britain’s past atrocities is also readily available but conveniently forgotten.

It’s Even Worse Than You Think 

It was revealed by the Telegraph newspaper that the British Security Agency, MI5, had vetted BBC appointments for many years.(30) The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and media insiders(31) have admitted that the CIA employed many agents in senior positions in most important US news organisations. The media claim that these links no longer exist, but journalists continue to come forward occasionally to explain that they do exist, and that intelligence agencies still plant stories in the press.(32) A combination of bribes, such as access to important sources, the threat of being fired, and the five filters discussed above, is enough to keep most journalists in line.

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This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda. This is the eleventh in a series entitled Elephants In The Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what’s really going on in relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.

Notes 

1) George Orwell, The Freedom Of The Press, 1945

2) Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, 1988

Video at ‘Noam Chomsky: The Five Filters of the Mass Media’, Public Reading Rooms, at https://prruk.org/noam-chomsky-the-five-filters-of-the-mass-media-machine/

3) ‘Concentration of media ownership’, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership

4) Edwards and Cromwell, Guardians Of Power, 2006, p.89

5) Democracy Now, ‘Phil Donahue on His 2003 Firing From MSNBC, When Liberal Network Couldn’t Tolerate Antiwar Voices’, 21 Mar 2013, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozxzNjRqCiE

Democracy Now, ‘Phil Donahue: We Have An Emergency In The Media And We Have To Fix It’, 24 March 2005, at https://www.democracynow.org/2005/3/24/phil_donahue_we_have_an_emergency

6) Janine Jackson, ‘Fear & Favor 2005 – The Sixth Annual Report’, 1 April 2006, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, at http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/fear-amp-favor-2005-the-sixth-annual-report/ 

7) Mark Scott, Fairfax Executive, cited in John Pilger, ‘Murdoch may be a convenient demon, but the media is a junta’, 30 June 2012, at http://johnpilger.com/articles/murdoch-may-be-a-convenient-demon-but-the-media-is-a-junta

8) Peter Oborne, cited in Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell, A quiet word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain, 2014, p.59

9) Nicolas Jones, ‘World Press Freedom Day – UK Media Under Threat’, 4 May 2007, at http://spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/more/item/5237-world-press-freedom-day-uk-media-under-threat 

10) Peter Phillips, ‘The Diabolical Business of Global Public Relations Firms’, Project Censored, 15 March 2017, at https://www.projectcensored.org/propaganda-fake-news-media-lies/ 

11) Bob Franklin et al, Key Concepts in Journalism Studies, 2005, p.171 at https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=01VmsLerG1QC&pg=PT191&lpg=PT191&dq=government+flak+over+bbc+dodgy+dossier&source=bl&ots=kLp2Mi6Sxe&sig=ACfU3U3LxN58HJEqZld5CsyAYfdXMZzTrA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwil2ObZj8_pAhWPN8AKHQWlB74Q6AEwB3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=government%20flak%20over%20bbc%20dodgy%20dossier&f=false

12) ‘Dan Rather Speaks Out’, 19 July 2012, at  http://www.litopia.com/radio/debriefer-special-with-dan-rather/

13) Alison Edgley (Ed.) Noam Chomsky, 2016

14) Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality, 17 Oct 1993, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g3kRHo_vpQ

15) Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality, 17 Oct 1993, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g3kRHo_vpQ

16)Nick Davies, Flat Earth News, 2009

17) James Walker, ‘John Pilger says Guardian column was axed in ‘purge’ of journalists saying ‘what paper no longer says’, Press Gazette, 24 Jan 2018, at https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/john-pilger-says-guardian-column-was-axed-in-purge-of-journalists-saying-what-the-paper-no-longer-says/

John Pilger’s work can be found at http://johnpilger.com/

18) Matt Kennard’s work can be found at Dailymaverick.co.za/Declassified-UK

19) Nafeez Ahmed, ‘’Palestine is not an environment story’: How I was censored by the Guardian for writing about Israel’s war for Gaza’s gas’, Insurge Intelligence, 3 Dec 2014, at https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/palestine-is-not-an-environment-story-921d9167ddef

20) Jonathan Cook, ‘The propaganda machine’, 20 Aug 2007, at https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2007-08-20/the-propaganda-machine/ 

21) David Edwards, ‘Where Egos Dare: Andrew Marr Meets Noam Chomsky’, 12 Jun 2002, at https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2002/06/33629.html

22) Matt Kennard, The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs the Masters of the Universe, 2015

23) The Conversation, ‘The revolving door between media and government spins again with CNN’s hiring of Sarah Isgur Flores’, 20 Feb 2019, at https://theconversation.com/the-revolving-door-between-media-and-government-spins-again-with-cnns-hiring-of-sarah-isgur-flores-112159

24) The Conversation, ‘George Osbourne at the Evening Standard: the latest through a long-revolving door’, 17 March 2017, at

https://theconversation.com/george-osborne-at-the-evening-standard-the-latest-through-a-long-revolving-door-74783 

25) Noam Chomsky interviewed by V.K.Ramachandran, ‘Chomsky in First Person’, Frontline, 11 Nov 2001, at https://chomsky.info/20011115/

26) Garrison and Shivpuri, The Russian Threat, 1983, p.246

27) Rocky M. Mirza, How the West was Won and Lost, 2016

28) David Cromwell and David Edwards, ‘As Good As It Gets – The Independent On Sunday And Orwell’s Memory Hole’, 21 May 2003, at https://www.medialens.org/2003/as-good-as-it-gets-the-independent-on-sunday-and-orwells-memory-hole/

29) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

30) BBC, ‘Observer reveals MI5 vetting of BBC staff’, 18 Aug 1985

31) Carl Bernstein, ‘The CIA and the Media’, 20 Oct 1977, Rolling Stone, at http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

32) Udo Ulfkotte, Presstitutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA: A Confession from the Profession, 2019, translated from the original German edition. 

Udo Ulfkotte, ‘Bought Journalists’, presentation about the book, 6 Oct 2019, at https://off-guardian.org/2019/10/06/watch-udo-ulfkotte-bought-journalists/

Author’s Note

In the wake of the Wednesday January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill Event, we must reflect on what a  Joe Biden Administration will look like.

Joe Biden was not duly elected, he was selected. He is a groomed and “reliable” politician. He is a political instrument of the global capitalist establishment. 

Biden is a firm supporter of the Corona lockdown. His statements concerning a “Dark Winter” in 2021 confirm that he not only endorses the adoption of staunch Covid-19 lockdown policies, his administration will pursue and adopt the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” as an integral part of US foreign policy, to be implemented or more correctly “imposed” Worldwide.

In turn, the Biden-Harris administration will attempt to override all forms of popular resistance to the corona virus lockdown.  

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in World history. We are living history, yet our understanding of the sequence of events since January 2020 has been blurred.

What is unfolding is a new and destructive phase of US imperialism. It’s a totalitarian project of economic and social engineering, which ultimately destroys people’s lives Worldwide.

This “novel” neoliberal agenda using the corona lockdown as an instrument of social oppression has been endorsed by the leadership of the Democratic Party. 

The Biden White House will be used to instate what David Rockefeller called “Global Governance”, which is tantamount to a Worldwide “democratic dictatorship”. 

It should be noted that the protest movement in the US, against the lockdown is weak. In fact there is no coherent grassroots national protest movement. Why? Because “progressive forces” including leftist intellectuals, NGO leaders, trade union and labor leaders, most of which are aligned with the Democratic Party have from the outset been supportive of the lockdown. And they are also supportive of Joe Biden.  

In a bitter irony, antiwar activists as well as the critics of neoliberalism have endorsed Joe Biden, who is now being accused by Trump supporters of being a “socialist”.

The following text is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of my E-Book: entitled.

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”  first published in mid-December 2020.

To access the full text of nine chapters click here 

Michel Chossudovsky, January 9, 2021

***

“Elected President” Joe Biden is a groomed politician, a trusted proxy, serving the interests of the financial establishment.

Let’s not forget that Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”. “The American People were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.

.

.

Evolving acronyms. 9/11, GWOT, WMD and now COVID: Biden was rewarded for having supported the invasion of Iraq.

Fox News describes him as a “socialist”  who threatens capitalism:  “Joe Biden’s disturbing connection to the socialist ‘Great Reset’ movement”. While this is absolute nonsense, many “progressives” and anti-war activists have endorsed Joe Biden without analyzing the broader consequences of a Biden presidency.

The Great Reset is socially divisive, it’s racist. It is a diabolical project of Global Capitalism. It constitutes a threat to the large majority of Americans workers as well as to small and medium sized enterprises. A Biden-Harris administration actively involved in carrying out the “Great Reset” is a threat to humanity.

With regard to Covid, Biden is firmly committed to the “Second Wave”, i.e. maintaining the partial closing down of both the US economy and the global economy as a means to “combating the killer virus”.

Joe Biden will push for the adoption of  the WEF’s “Great Reset” both nationally and internationally, with devastating economic and social consequences. The 2021 World Economic Forum (WEF) scheduled for Summer 2021 will focus on the implementation of  the “Great Reset”. 

A Joe Biden administration would actively pursue Big Money’s totalitarian blueprint: The Great Reset. 

Unless there is significant protest and organized resistance, nationally and internationally, the Great Reset will be embedded in both domestic and US foreign policy agendas of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration.

It’s what you call Imperialism with a “Human Face”.

Moreover, many so-called “progressive voices” have endorsed Joe Biden.

Where is the Protest Movement against this Unelected Corona “public-private partnership”?

The same philanthropic foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Soros, et al) which are the unspoken architects of the “Great Reset” and “Global Governance” are also involved in (generously) financing Climate Change activism, the Extinction Rebellion, the World Social Forum, Black Lives Matters, LGBT, et al.

It’s what you call “manufactured dissent” (far more insidious than Herman-Chomsky’s “manufactured consent”).

The objective of the financial elites “has been to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement.”  (Michel Chossudovsky, Manufacturing Dissent, Global Research, 2010)

In the words, McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation (1966-1979):

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government

The Protest movement against this “Global Coup d’état” requires a process of Worldwide mobilization:

.”There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those same corporate interests [WEF, Gates, Ford, et al] which are the target of the protest movement”.

The Road Ahead

More than 7 billion people Worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the corona crisis.

What is required is the development of a broad based grassroots network which confronts both the architects of this crisis as well as the national and regional governments (States, provinces) involved in carrying out the lockdown and closure of economic activity as a means to combating “V the Virus”. The legitimacy of politicians and their powerful corporate sponsors must be questioned, including the police state measures adopted to enforce the various policies. (Face masks, social distancing, public gatherings, etc. )

This network would be established (nationally and internationally) at all levels of society, in towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate this movement.

The first task would be to disable the fear campaign and media disinformation as well put an end to Big Pharma’s Covid vaccination programme.

The corporate media would be directly challenged, without specifically targeting mainstream journalists, many of whom have been instructed to abide by the official narrative. This endeavour would require a parallel process at the grassroots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of  virus, the PCR test, the impacts of the lockdown, the face mask and social distancing.

“Spreading the word” through social media and independent online media outlets will be undertaken bearing in mind that Google as well as Facebook are instruments of censorship.

The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the financial elites as well as the structures of political authority at the national level, is no easy task. It will require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history.

It will also require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society (i.e. between political parties) and acting with a single voice. We must also understand that the “corona project” is an integral part of the U.S. imperial agenda. It has geopolitical and strategic implications. It will also require eventually unseating the architects of this diabolical “pandemic” and indicting them for crimes against humanity.

(Excerpts from Chapter IX).

The link to Michel Chossudovsky’s recently published E-Book consisting of nine chapters:

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”  

Michel Chossudovsky’s Biographical Note

Em 1930, antes de completar 36 anos, faleceu José Carlos Mariátegui. Sua tão breve vida não o impediu de legar à história uma obra ampla, que quase um século depois mantém sua atualidade.

Considerado um dos mais influentes marxistas da América, esse intelectual-militante –  tipógrafo, jornalista, editor, historiador, filósofo – foi um pioneiro em interpretar a questão nacional latino-americana segundo os princípios do marxismo.

Comunista dialético e de práxis

Autodidata erudito, o pensador peruano ainda bem jovem se declara um comunista “convicto e confesso”. Em seus escritos teóricos, pode-se apreciar o exame minucioso dos conflitos e contradições socioculturais do período entreguerras – tanto relativos a sua realidade periférica andina e latino-americana, como acerca de questões do centro do mundo capitalista, que ele conheceu de perto.

Em sua polêmica filosófica “Defesa do marxismo” [1], afirma que suas investigações histórico-científicas e filosóficas se guiam pela metodologia dialética: o marxismo “não é um itinerário, mas uma bússola”; “pensar corretamente é, em grande medida, uma questão de direção”.

Por outro ângulo, enquanto homem político revolucionário, Mariátegui valorizou o princípio ético da práxis como sendo o núcleo do pensamento começado por Marx e Engels. Entende que a teoria só se verifica na prática, e nela se corrige; que ao existir na realidade, a teoria transforma o mundo real, sendo por sua vez transformada por este novo real.

Segundo manifesta em suas reflexões críticas à “passividade” da Segunda Internacional (parlamentarista, pacifista), Mariátegui não escreve porque meramente aprecia ou deseja escrever, mas porque precisa dizer: porque se sentia eticamente compelido a comunicar o que analisara, o que descobrira. Para ele, as “certezas positivistas” (a pretensão cientificista por uma verdade exata e única) do socialismo da Segunda Internacional são uma “fossilização” acadêmica do marxismo [2].

Trata-se de uma postura existencial combativa (ativa, de luta), tão oposta ao conformismo de certo marxismo academicista, regular, “profissional” – com sua crítica acomodada pelo hábito da boa posição intermuros, com sua moral de pena limpa que, ao meramente escrever sobre realidades que não vivencia, limita sua própria crítica, e mais: isenta-se da autocrítica com que poderia vislumbrar seu próprio elitismo (na prática social concreta do cotidiano).

Eis a contraditória corrupção do marxismo asséptico a que Mariátegui tanto criticou: um “marxismo” sujeitado aos moldes capitalistas da competição (intelectual, midiática). Um “marxismo” autorizado pelo sistema que continua “validando” os discursos acerca do que “é” ou “não é” verdade. E isto, sobretudo em certos meios vira-latas periféricos (editoriais, acadêmicos), que continuam copiando e idolatrando o que vem de fora. Veja-se por exemplo a sintomática proliferação – até no campo das “esquerdas” (!) – de publicações filiais de meios estrangeiros (revistas e portais que sequer ousam modificar o nome de sua matriz estrangeira).

Mariátegui na história

Desbravador de um marxismo atento às peculiaridades da realidade americana colonizada, Mariátegui exerce até hoje grande influência sobre variados movimentos sociais: de agrupamentos de resistência camponesa e indígena, a grupos de distintas tendências socialistas.

Aliás, por incrível que pareça, ele é aclamado inclusive por “liberais”: como instituições oficiais, políticas e culturais peruanas, que se vangloriam de seu “grande nome das letras nacionais” em arrastados textos “históricos” que sequer mencionam sua posição político-filosófica marxista.

A quase um século de seu decesso, a herança mariateguiana pode ser observada hoje pelo mundo, e se expande – como se vê na crescente pesquisa sobre sua obra que tem se desenvolvido no Brasil, América Latina e até mesmo no centro capitalista – em espaços normalmente dominados pela anglofonia.

Seu pensamento se faz presente nos debates políticos e táticas de ocupação comunitária (de latifúndios) do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Terra do Brasil (MST); ou na ideologia guerrilheira autóctone do Exército Zapatista de Libertação Nacional (EZLN); ou mesmo na tática ofensiva de grupos armados, como os marxistas-leninistas das Forças Armadas Revolucionárias da Colômbia–Exército do Povo (FARC) – guerrilha de meio século hoje rachada entre um movimento político legal e uma parcela que dá continuidade à “crítica das armas”.

Além desses exemplos, como bem observou a professora Zilda Iokoi, é simbólico o caso do “Partido Comunista de Perú por el Sendero Luminoso de José Carlos Mariátegui” (PCP – Sendero Luminoso), histórica guerrilha camponesa de tendência maoista que, apesar de só parcialmente se apoiar no pensamento do autor (a quem homenageia), procurou articular a “estrutura do processo da Revolução Cultural” chinesa com os “princípios da mística andina” [3].

Formação política e contexto histórico

Nascido em Moquegua (Peru), em 1894, Mariátegui se muda cedo para a capital. Sua mocidade se dá em um momento histórico conturbado. Por um lado, com a Primeira Guerra Mundial, as potências capitalistas tinha levado a humanidade a conhecer uma de suas maiores carnificinas. De outro, na Eurásia, a Revolução Bolchevique propunha na prática uma alternativa às misérias gritantes do capitalismo.

Ele inicia a carreira profissional como tipógrafo aprendiz, no diário “La Prensa”, ainda adolescente. No prelúdio da Primeira Guerra, se lança na escrita, elaborando críticas literárias e  versos. Pouco depois já publicaria seus primeiros artigos políticos.

Com a atividade jornalística, se aproxima do movimento operário, que se gestava desde o fim do século XIX – de linha anarquista bakuninista, migrado à América por militantes europeus.

Destacando-se como jornalista, Mariátegui em 1916 se torna cronista regular do jornal “El Tiempo”, dedicando-se ao embate político, denunciando a “democracia mestiça” de fachada – a demagógica fonte de “divertimento” que tinha a função de desviar a atenção do povo quanto ao fato de que a burguesia da costa peruana aliada aos grandes proprietários rurais tornavam o país cada vez mais um “setor colonial” do imperialismo estadunidense.

Esta foi uma época de grande alta nos preços dos alimentos. Em consequência do mal-estar popular, a movimentação operária se fortalece. Os escritos de Mariátegui – já de tendência socialista, embora ainda não “marxista” –, apoiam as greves, criticando a classe dirigente limenha.

Em 1918, em Córdoba (Argentina) começa um intenso movimento pela Reforma Universitária, manifestações que abrangeriam todo o continente. Entusiasmado, o pensador andino afirma ser este o “nascimento da nova geração latino-americana” [4].

Outro marco mariateguiano na política peruana foi a fundação revista “Nuestra Época” (1918), publicação que não traçava um “programa socialista”, mas aparecia como um esforço ideológico nesta direção. Mariátegui dava então início a suas atividades como editor, o que perfaria importante parcela de sua atuação política de orientação socialista.

O fim da Primeira Guerra assinala na América Latina e no mundo, um período de agitação da classe trabalhadora. Mariátegui, em 1919, funda o jornal “La Razón”. Neste mesmo ano, uma greve geral é reprimida com violência e prisões de líderes operários. Inicia-se no Peru uma década de populismo direitista – economicamente pró-ianque, mas que flerta também com parte do movimento indigenista.

A defesa de líderes operários presos, promovida por Mariátegui através de seu jornal, faria com que ele fosse aclamado em Lima por uma multidão. Um mês depois, seu periódico é fechado, e Mariátegui é discretamente deportado à Europa, sob o discurso oficial de “propagandista do Peru no estrangeiro” – um exílio “conciliador”, já que coincidentemente ele (de origem trabalhadora) era parente da mulher do presidente.

A Europa: uma mulher e algumas ideias

Mariátegui segue viagem, rompendo com suas primeiras experiências de literato “contaminado de decadentismo” (como depois expressaria em autocrítica). A partir de então, volta-se “resolutamente ao socialismo”. Passará três anos em viagem pela Europa, conhecendo alguns países do Leste e do Oeste, em especial a Itália – onde passa a residir.

Em meio à influência da conjuntura ali vivida – na qual ecoava alto a Revolução Russa – a Europa o aproxima das obras de Marx, Engels e Lênin, além do movimento comunista italiano e do surrealismo.

No Partido Bolchevique, Mariátegui enxerga a convergência entre teoria e prática, entre filosofia e ciência. Afirma ser Lênin “incontestavelmente” o revigorador “mais enérgico e fecundo do pensamento marxista” [5].

Durante esse período italiano, Mariátegui afirma ter se casado com “uma mulher e algumas ideias”. Sua companheira, Ana Chiappe, lhe transmite um “novo entusiasmo político” que o ajuda a superar seu juvenil decadentismo de fim de século [6].

A família de Ana é próxima à do filósofo Benedetto Croce, por meio de quem conhece a obra de Georges Sorel: sindicalista revolucionário de quem aprecia a ideia do “mito da greve geral”, bem como sua defesa ética da “violência revolucionária” contra a “violência instituída” [7].

Na convulsiva Itália, presencia ocupações de fábricas e congressos de trabalhadores, além de se aproximar do grupo da revista “Ordine Nuovo”, dentre o qual figurava Antonio Gramsci. Por este tempo, vivencia a criação do Partido Comunista da Itália, estreitando contato com o pensamento gramsciano e de outros marxistas italianos (como Terracini).

Fascismo: consequência da decrepitude social

A estadia europeia de Mariátegui foi também um mirante donde pôde observar o Oriente: desde a Revolução Chinesa e o despertar da Índia, aos movimentos árabes e diversos grupos resistentes do pós-Guerra. Nestes acontecimentos, percebe o declínio da envelhecida sociedade ocidental moderna.

Sua análise sobre a decrepitude moderno-ocidental ganha força quando observa de perto a ascensão fascista italiana. No fenômeno, logo identificaria uma resposta do grande capital a uma crise social e política profunda: a “crise da democracia”.

Note-se que, se no início de sua estada europeia, Mariátegui traz a humildade de um discípulo aberto ao centro do pensamento moderno, progressivamente ele passa a se decepcionar com os infortúnios que presencia na Europa, passando a assumir uma “perspectiva antropológica invertida” (de sujeito periférico que analisa criticamente a cultura eurocêntrica dominante).

Com tal olhar reverso, o marxista latino-americano logra captar detalhes da crise ocidental que eram, até então, negligenciados pelos próprios europeus. É o caso da decadência da dita “democracia burguesa”, que ele logo concebe como sendo uma nova farsa a se redesenhar com os traços autoritários do fascismo.

Para Mariátegui, o fascismo foi a solução encontrada pela ordem burguesa como reação à “crise da democracia”; ou de outro modo, uma adaptação estrutural diante dos novos tempos de imperialismo monopolista, em que a democracia-liberal com suas instituições parlamentares, já não servia aos interesses da burguesia [8].

Marxismo intuitivo: por uma crítica da impotência burguesa

Em paralelo a toda esta efervescência sociopolítica, Mariátegui tem na Europa acesso às obras de pensadores como Freud, Nietzsche, Unamuno. Interessa-se muito pela recém-criada psicanálise, bem como pela filosofia intuitiva do filósofo alemão – sobretudo no que tais análises ajudam a compreender a evidente irracionalidade humana. Nestes pensamentos ele encontra ferramentas críticas para a denúncia da alienação, da impotência e artificialidade do homem moderno: um ser castrado, inserido em uma repressiva estrutura sociocultural burguesa e cristã.

Entretanto, antes que os puristas do academicismo marxista o acusem: o marxismo de Mariátegui se manteve fiel aos princípios do materialismo-histórico; jamais flertou com nenhuma proposta de síntese eclética – mas se utilizou de alguns específicos conceitos psicológicos e filosófico-vitalistas como instrumental auxiliar em sua empreitada contra o reformismo e o determinismo mecanicista (ou seja, contra a mencionada fossilização acadêmica do marxismo).

É a partir da enorme tragédia da Europa que Mariátegui viria a compreender com nitidez o alcance histórico da tragédia da América. Quando retorna a Lima, em 1923, o ainda moço pensador já defende abertamente a causa comunista.

Yuri Martins-Fontes

[Continua…]

***

Notas (parte I)

[1] MARIÁTEGUI. J. C.; MARTINS-FONTES, Y. (org., trad. e introdução). Defesa do marxismo: polêmica revolucionária e outros escritos. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2011.

[2] Sobre o tema: MARTINS-FONTES, Y. Marx na América: a práxis de Caio Prado e Mariátegui. São Paulo: Alameda/Fapesp, 2018.

[3] IOKOI, Z., “A atualidade das proposições de Mariátegui, um revolucionário latino-americano”, em Projeto História (PUC-SP, 2005).

[4] MARIÁTEGUI. J. C. Sete ensaios de interpretação da realidade peruana. São Paulo: Expressão Popular/Clacso, 2008.

[5] Defesa do marxismo [idem].

[6] MARIÁTEGUI. “Apuntes autobiográficos”. Em La Vida Literaria, 1930, Buenos Aires.

[7] Marx na América [idem].

[8] “Crisis de la democracia”. Em La escena contemporánea y otros escritos (Obras completas/ tomo I). Lima: Editora Amauta, 1925.

There was a fascinating online panel discussion on Wednesday night on the Julian Assange case that I recommend everyone watch. The video is at the bottom of the page.  

But from all the outstanding contributions, I want to highlight a very important point made by Yanis Varoufakis that has significance for understanding current events well beyond the Assange case. 

Varoufakis is an academic who was savaged by the western political and media establishments when he served as Greece’s finance minister. Back in 2015 a popular leftwing Greek government was trying to oppose the imposition of severe loan conditions on Greece by European and international financial institutions that risked tipping the Greek economy into deeper bankruptcy and seemed chiefly intended to upend its socialist programme. The government Varoufakis served was effectively crushed into obedience through a campaign of economic intimidation by these institutions.

 Varoufakis describes here the way that leftwing dissidents who challenge or disrupt western establishment narratives – whether it be himself, Assange or Jeremy Corbyn – end up not only being subjected to character assassination, as was always the case, but nowadays find themselves being manipulated into colluding in their own character assassination.

 Here is a short transcript of Varoufakis’ much fuller comments – about 48 minutes in – highlighting his point about co-option:

 “The establishment, the Deep State, call it whatever you want, the oligarchy, they’ve become much, much better at it [character assassination] than they used to be. Because back in the 1960s and 1970s, you know, they would accuse you of being a Communist. They would accuse me of being a Marxist. Well, I am a Marxist. I’m really not going to suffer that much if you accuse me of being a left-winger. I am a left-winger!

 “Now what they do is something far worse. They accuse you of something that really hurts you. Calling somebody like us a racist, a bigot, an antisemite, a rapist. This is what really hurts because if anybody calls me a rapist today, right, even if it’s complete baloney, I feel as a feminist I have the need to give the woman, implied or involved somehow in this accusation, the opportunity to speak against me. Because that is what we left-wingers do.”

Varoufakis’ point is that when Assange was accused of being a rapist, as he was before the US made clear the real case against him – by trying to extradite him from the UK for exposing its war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – he could not defend himself without alienating a significant constituency of his natural supporters, those on the left who identify as feminists. Which is exactly what happened.

 Similarly, as Varoufakis notes from earlier conversations he had with Assange, the Wikileaks founder was in no position to properly defend himself against accusations that he colluded with Russia and Donald Trump to help Trump win the 2016 US presidential election against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

 At the time, Assange’s supporters were able to point out that the leaked emails were true and that they were in the public interest because they showed deep corruption in the Democratic party establishment. But those arguments were drowned out by a narrative confected by the US media and security establishments that Wikileaks’ publication of the emails was political interference because the emails had supposedly been hacked by Russia to sway the election result.

 Because Assange was absolutely committed to the principle of non-disclosure of sources, he refused to defend himself in public by confirming that the emails had been leaked to him by a Democratic party insider, not the “Russians”. His silence allowed his vilification to go largely unchallenged. Having already been stripped of support from much of the feminist left, particularly in Europe, Assange now lost the support of a sizeable chunk of the left in the US too.

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1347111574662770689

In these cases, the one who stands accused has to defend themselves with one hand tied behind their back. They cannot hit back without further antagonising a substantial section of their supporters, deepening divisions within the left’s ranks. The victim of this kind of character assassination is caught in the equivalent of reputational quicksand. The more they fight, the deeper they sink.

Which is, of course, exactly what happened to the UK’s former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn when he was accused of being a racist. If he or his supporters tried to challenge the claim that the party had become antisemitic overnight under his leadership – even if only by citing statistics that showed the party hadn’t – they were immediately denounced for supposed “antisemitism denial”, posited as the modern equivalent of Holocaust denial.

Notice Ken Loach, who was also on the panel, nodding in agreement as Varoufakis speaks. Because Loach, the noted leftwing, anti-racist film-maker who came to Corbyn’s defence against the confected media campaign smearing him as an antisemite, soon found himself similarly accused.

Jonathan Freedland, a senior columnist at the liberal Guardian, was among those using precisely the tactic described by Varoufakis. He tried to discredit Loach by accusing him of denying Jews the right to define their own experience of antisemitism.   

Freedland sought to manipulate Loach’s anti-racist credentials against him. Either agree with us that Corbyn is an antisemite, and that most of his supporters are too, or you are a hypocrite, disowning your own anti-racist principles – and solely in the case of antisemitism. And that, QED, would prove you too are motivated by antisemitism.

Loach found himself with a terrible binary choice: either he must collude with Freedland and the corporate media in smearing Corbyn, a long-standing political ally, or else he would be forced to collude in his own smearing as an antisemite.

It’s a deeply ugly, deeply illiberal, deeply manipulative, deeply dishonest tactic. But it is also brilliantly effective. Which is why nowadays rightists and centrists use it at every opportunity. The left, given its principles, rarely resorts to this kind of deceit. Which means it can only bring a peashooter to a gun fight.

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/131348440736224870 

This is the left’s dilemma. It’s why we struggle to win the argument in a corporate media environment that not only denies us a hearing but also promotes the voices of those like Freedland trying to destroy us from the centre and those supposedly on the left like George Monbiot and Owen Jones who are too often destroying us from within.

As Varoufakis also says, the left needs urgently to go on the offensive.

We need to find ways to turn the tables on the war criminals who have been gaslighting us in demanding that Assange, who exposed their crimes, is the one who needs to be locked up.

We need to make clear that it is those who are so ready to smear anti-racists as antisemites – as Corbyn’s successor, Sir Keir Starmer, has done to swaths of Labour party members – who are the real racists.

And we need to unmask as war hawks those who accuse the anti-war left of serving as apologists for dictators when we try to stop western states conducting more illegal, resource-grab wars with such devastating results for local populations.

We must get much more sophisticated in our thinking and our strategies. There is no time to lose.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuaohhDxIG4&feature=emb_title

This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/ 

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research

De um processo injusto – o de Londres referente a Julian Assange, fundador do WikiLeaks – resultou numa sentença que, à primeira vista, parece justa: a não extradição do jornalista para os Estados Unidos, onde o aguarda uma sentença de 175 anos de prisão, ao abrigo da Lei de Espionagem de 1917. Resta saber, no momento em que escrevemos, se e de que modo Assange será libertado, após sete anos de confinamento na Embaixada do Equador e quase dois anos de prisão desumana, em Londres.

Fala-se da sua libertação sob fiança, mas se Washington recorrer da sentença (como parece certo), o processo de extradição pode ser reaberto e Assange deve permanecer à disposição da magistratura na Grã-Bretanha. Há também o facto de que, no veredicto, a Juíza Vanessa Baraister ter dito estar convencida da “boa fé” das autoridades americanas e da regularidade de um possível julgamento nos Estados Unidos, motivando o veredicto apenas por “razões de saúde mental” que poderiam levar Assange ao suicídio.

O que é que, na realidade, determinou a não extradição de Julian Assange para os EUA, neste momento?

Por um lado, a campanha internacional pela sua libertação, que levou o caso Assange ao conhecimento da opinião pública. Por outro lado, o facto de que um julgamento público de Julian Assange nos EUA seria extremamente embaraçoso para o ‘establishment’ político-militar.

Como prova dos “crimes” de Assange, a acusação teria de mostrar os crimes de guerra dos EUA trazidos à luz pelo WikiLeaks. Por exemplo, quando em 2010 publicou mais de 250.000 documentos americanos, muitos deles rotulados como “confidenciais” ou “secretos”, sobre as guerras no Iraque e no Afeganistão.

Ou quando, em 2016, Assange já estava retido na Embaixada do Equador, em Londres, o WikiLeaks publicou mais de 30.000 emails e documentos enviados e recebidos entre 2010 e 2014 por Hillary Clinton, Secretária de Estado da Administração Obama. Entre eles encontra-se um email de 2011, que revela o verdadeiro objectivo da guerra da NATO contra a Líbia, concretizado em particular pelos EUA e pela França: impedir Gaddafi de utilizar as reservas de ouro da Líbia para criar uma moeda pan-africana alternativa ao dólar e ao franco CFA, a moeda imposta pela França a 14 antigas colónias.

Juntamente com dezenas de milhares de documentos, que trouxeram à luz os verdadeiros objectivos desta e de outras operações de guerra, o WikiLeaks publicou imagens em vídeo de massacres de civis no Iraque e noutros locais, mostrando a verdadeira face da guerra. Aquele que hoje em dia é escondido pelos grandes meios de comunicação social. Enquanto na Guerra do Vietname dos anos 60, relatos jornalísticos e imagens dos massacres desencadearam um vasto movimento contra a “guerra suja”, contribuindo para a derrota dos Estados Unidos, o jornalismo de guerra está hoje, cada vez mais regimentado: aos correspondentes embedded, seguindo as tropas, é mostrado apenas o que os comandos querem, os únicos autorizados a fornecer “informações” nos seus briefing.

Os raros jornalistas íntegros trabalham em condições cada vez mais difíceis e arriscadas, e as suas reportagens são frequentemente censuradas pelos principais meios de comunicação social, na qual domina a narrativa oficial dos acontecimentos. O jornalismo de investigação do WikiLeaks abriu fendas no muro do silêncio mediático que cobre os verdadeiros interesses das elites poderosas que, operando no “Estado Profundo”, continuam a jogar a carta da guerra, com a diferença de que hoje, com armas as nucleares, pode levar o mundo à catástrofe final.

Violar as salas secretas destes grupos de poder, trazendo à luz as suas estratégias e tramas, é uma acção extremamente arriscada tanto para os jornalistas como para aqueles que, rebelando-se contra o silêncio, os ajudam a descobrir a verdade.

É o caso emblemático de Chelsea Manning, a activista americana acusada de fornecer ao WikiLeaks documentos de que tomou conhecimento enquanto trabalhava como analista dos serviços secretos do exército americano durante a guerra do Iraque. Foi condenada a 37 anos de detenção numa prisão de segurança máxima e, libertada após 7 anos de prisão penosa, foi novamente presa por se recusar a testemunhar contra Assange e, após uma tentativa de suicídio, foi posta em liberdade condicional.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Dietro il verdetto di Londra su Julian Assange

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Donald Trump’s Legacy: Four Chaotic Years in the White House and a Tumultuous Departure

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, January 08 2021

During his four-year mandate, President Donald Trump did not rise to the challenge of being the competent head of a democratic state. He has instead attempted to install an autocratic rule in American politics.

Evidence Mounts of a Capitol Hill False Flag

By Stephen Lendman, January 08 2021

America’s road to hell is paved with diabolical intentions. 9/11 changed everything — followed last year by unleashing The Great Reset war on humanity (sponsored by the World Economic Forum) and Wednesday, January 6 orchestrated Capitol Hill violence.

Georgia Twin Runoff Election Results Fuel Right-wing Unrest

By Abayomi Azikiwe, January 08 2021

A highly contested presidential election on November 3 coupled with the outcome of the runoff poll in Georgia which is determining the power relations within the United States Senate, has undoubtedly prompted further desperate acts by the supporters of outgoing President Donald J. Trump.

“Forbidden Weapons” Used Against Gaza Strip Palestinians. Israel Deliberately Targets Palestinian Civilians

By Dr. Zuhair Sabbagh, January 08 2021

The following research article will explore three forbidden weapons that were and are still being used against the Palestinian civilians of the besieged Gaza Strip.

The US and UK May Not Will Assange’s Death, but Everything They Are Doing Makes It More Likely

By Jonathan Cook, January 08 2021

But the perversity of Baraitser’s decision runs deeper still. Her refusal to free him, or put him in house arrest with a GPS monitoring tag, flagrantly contradicts the expert assessments she concurred with during Monday’s extradition decision: that Assange is at high risk of suicide.

The Assange Saga: Practicing Real Journalism Is Criminally Insane

By Pepe Escobar, January 08 2021

Julian Assange was – at the last minute – discharged on theoretically humanitarian grounds. So the case had, in effect, ended. Not really. Two days later, he was sent back to Belmarsh, a squalid maximum security prison rife with Covid-19. So the case is ongoing.

Immunization with SARS [1] Coronavirus Vaccines Leads to Pulmonary Immunopathology on Challenge with the SARS Virus

By Chien-Te Tseng, Elena Sbrana, and et al., January 08 2021

This article was originally published in April 2012. It pertains to Severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS-CoV (2002) which has, according to the WHO and the CDC similar features to SARS-CoV-2. This article is of relevance to the current debate and analysis pertaining to the Covid-19 vaccine.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) Intrusion in Albania, Threatens Regional Stability in Middle East and Balkans

By Robert Fantina, January 08 2021

One can only imagine the risk when some citizens of a small country conceal hundreds of thousands of weapons and explosives. The nation becomes a powder keg, awaiting one small mistake to spark a deadly explosion. This is the situation currently in Albania.

What is the China Threat? America’s Ruling Ideology

By Dr. Richard Hanania, January 08 2021

If there was a major intellectual thread running through Trump’s foreign policy, or at least that of the people he appointed, it was that confronting China was the national security issue of our time. America during the Trump era was single-minded in its focus on turning up the pressure on Beijing.

More War by Other Means: Sanctioning the Wife of Syria’s President Makes No Sense to Anyone

By Philip Giraldi, January 08 2021

It is largely accepted that the most powerful advocate of the sanctions regime is Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who has been the driving force behind recent sanctions directed against both China and Iran. If that is so he might well be challenged on one of the most bizarre and basically pointless applications of sanctions in recent years.

GR Editor’s Note

With regard to the coverage of the Wednesday Capitol Event, Global Research will be publishing opposing and contradictory points of view by several of our authors.

We are dealing with a complex and far-reaching political process. We are at the crossroads of a major political, economic and social crisis which has bearing on the future of the United States. This crisis must be the object of debate and analysis rather than confrontation of opposing political narratives.

***

America’s road to hell is paved with diabolical intentions.

9/11 changed everything — followed last year by unleashing The Great Reset war on humanity (sponsored by the World Economic Forum) and Wednesday, January orchestrated Capitol Hill violence that climactically ended Trump’s challenge to stolen US Election 2020.

The above comprise America’s holy trinity of actions on a path toward full-blown tyranny.

Last year may have been a test to see how far US “dark forces” could push Americans to sacrifice fundamental freedoms voluntarily.

A year ago, whoever could have imagined what was about to unfold — based on Big Lies and mass deception.

Who would have thought we’d sacrifice our fundamental right of free movement and assembly, the right to work unobstructed, to travel, enjoy eating out, attend sporting events, the theater, movie theaters, and be involved in other public activities?

Imagine how much worse things may get in the new year.

Will its climax be voluntary acceptance of full-blown tyranny — masquerading as protecting and preserving health, well-being and safety to be lost if dark forces achieve their aims.

We’re lied to with headlines like the following on January 7:

“US counts record of almost 4,000 COVID-19 deaths in a day as virus continues to wreak havoc (sic).”

These deaths, if accurate in number, were from seasonal flu/influenza, perhaps pneumonia, and/or related illnesses — not covid.

Individuals succumbing are largely elderly, infirm, likely with other health issues, and weakened immune systems.

Headlines like the about are part of a diabolical, state-sponsored fear-mongering campaign.

They’re all about wanting us to voluntarily sacrifice vital freedoms to a higher power — hostile to our health and well-being at the same time.

Wednesday night Capitol Hill violence was likely orchestrated to elevate Biden/Harris to power by ending the Trump-led GOP challenge.

It had earmarks of a well-planned false flag by US dark forces.

It appears that hostile-to-Trump elements infiltrated largely nonviolent Trump protesters.

They got access to Capitol Hill after police and federal law enforcers opened barricades surrounding it, letting them storm the building to commit violence.

Wrongfully blaming Trump for what happened got him to pledge a smooth transition to Biden/Harris on January 20 — ending his hope for a second term.

It also intimidated most Republicans to go along with what came off with military precision by a superior force against an easily overwhelmed weak one.

Inside Capitol Hill, guards led hostile-to-Trump elements to designated areas.

Instead of preventing violence, Capitol Hill security facilitated it in what appears to have been the climax to a homeland color revolution to end Trump’s election challenge by violently quashing it.

It worked as planned when Congress began debating the GOP electoral fraud challenge, ending it violently.

There’s a made-in-the USA war ongoing that aims for transformational change to a ruler-serf society, what’s untenable if achieved.

It’s what the diabolical Great Reset is all about.

We can swim with the tide and lose all rights or resist all-out nonviolently to save them.

At stake is retaining governance as it once was, warts and all, or replacing it with what’s intolerable for anyone to accept.

I’m old school in my 9th decade to pass from the scene when my end time comes ahead, my future largely in the past.

Younger generations have most to lose, a land of opportunity I enjoyed growing up — eliminating in plain sight what’s fast slipping away.

The nation I grew up in no longer exists.

The one diabolical dark forces plan is a lower level of hell that Dante forgot.

Resist or lose everything, including hope.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Ted Eytan / Creative Commons

Across the political spectrum, there is widespread agreement that America must get serious about the threat posed by China. As the Trump administration comes to a close, the State Department has just released a document called ‘The Elements of the China Challenge’. A distillation of conventional wisdom among national security experts and government officials, it argues that the U.S. needs a concerted effort to push back against Beijing.

On its first page, the document tells us that “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition.” If there was a major intellectual thread running through Trump’s foreign policy, or at least that of the people he appointed, it was that confronting China was the national security issue of our time. America during the Trump era was single-minded in its focus on turning up the pressure on Beijing, including unprecedented support for Taiwan, sending ships more often through the South China Sea, and attempting to stop the spread of the telecom giant Huawei.

The idea of the China threat will not end with the Trump administration. Michèle Flournoy, once thought to be the frontrunner to become Biden’s Secretary of Defense, argued in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. has not been steadfast enough in its military commitments in East Asia. Sometimes, great power competition is presented as an imperative of history; in the formulation of Graham Allison, a former Pentagon official and the current professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the two powers are involved in a “Thucydides Trap.” Looking at the last 500 years of world history, Allison believes that when the ambitions of a rising power conflict with those of an established power, war becomes likely.

But what are we afraid of China actually doing? Reading foreign policy analysis can often be frustrating to those who believe arguments should proceed in a straight line, with clearly defined terms, and logical connections between ends being sought and the means being recommended. One can read op-eds and government reports on “great power competition” or the “China challenge” and never understand clearly what the U.S. and China are actually competing for. ‘The Elements of the China Challenge’ from the State Department adopts a strategy of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, accusing China of everythingfrom being too successful in trade, to trying to dominate the world, and being racist against African migrants.

This kind of ambiguity about what a conflict is actually about has not existed throughout most of history. The two world wars nominally centered around rivalries between Germany and its neighbors over specific territories one could locate on a map, such as Alsace-Lorraine. The Cold War was a struggle between the capitalist and communist systems. But why, exactly, are the U.S. and China rivals? Beneath the comparisons to any number of classical or modern conflicts, the reality is very different. China is not a threat in the way traditionally understood. There is nothing vital to American security or prosperity that China threatens. While the U.S. will be less powerful in the coming decades in relative global terms, that is inevitable with the rise of the developing world more generally, a trend Washington has encouraged.

China’s true menace is neither military nor geopolitical, but rather ideological. Its continuing success, even if it in no way harms the prosperity or security of most Americans, poses a major threat to the American political establishment, how it justifies its own power, and its understanding of the U.S. role in the world.

What is the China Threat?

In the last three decades, China has experienced a rate of economic growth unprecedented in modern history. Between 1990 and 2019, GDP per capita increased 32 times. In terms of total GDP, China may become wealthier than the U.S. in the next two decades—and by some measures, already is. For the sake of comparison, in 1980 the Soviet Union had a GDP that was about 40% that of the U.S., with the trendlines actually favoring the West. Recently, when the economist Branko Milanovic suggested that the Nobel Prize in his field should go to scholars who study the most important questions out there, he pointed to Chinese growth as an example, calling it “40 years of the most extraordinary increase in income for the largest number of people ever.”

This would be frightening if the U.S. and China coveted territory from one another. Azerbaijan’s recent military victory over Armenia in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh can be attributed to the former growing economically, and therefore militarily, stronger than the latter over the last two decades. Yet the two modern superpowers are on opposite sides of the world and have no similar dispute between them. It is true that the U.S. seeks to preserve the territorial integrity of allies and partners, such as Taiwan and Japan, that may be threatened by Beijing. The incoming Biden administration will likely have a policy of willingness to defend the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited five rocks and three reefs that the U.S. considers part of Japan. But why America should risk nuclear war over this issue is rarely explained. To the extent such objections are addressed, they are buried under appeals to morality that forgo any kind of cost-benefit analysis, and buzzwords such as preserving an undefined sense of American credibility or the broad goal of reinforcing deterrence.

Another idea, popular among pundits and the general public, is that Chinese growth is necessarily bad for the U.S. But in reality, Chinese growth has so far directly benefited U.S. consumers: it is undisputed among economists that trade with China made America better off by lowering the price of goods. Despite the temptation to political amnesia, the fact is that U.S. policy privileged these economic gains for many years, and its relationship with China was explicitly informed by these political decisions.

While this has undermined U.S. economic capacity in important ways, the cause wasn’t cheating, trickery, or even growth on the part of China. Instead, the cause was the success of American policy priorities. If there is a problem, it is most immediately that those priorities were misguided. The U.S. has the right to conduct trade on its own terms. It can choose what kind of strategy it wants in trade negotiations, and is free to deal with the downsides of neglecting domestic industry and increased competition for jobs through whatever means it considers appropriate. To see China as a civilizational enemy over such issues, however, is bizarre.

The same is true regarding IP theft. While the practice has been estimated to cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars a year, it is nonetheless normal for developing economies, with South Korea and Taiwan having had similarly bad records as their economies began to grow. No other state was considered a fundamental threat to the U.S. over the issue, with a mix of external pressure and internal incentives leading them to ultimately develop more rigorous patent laws and enforcement. Many corporations, the parties most directly affected, treat the problem as the price of doing business.

Perhaps, then, the threat is that China seeks to remake the world in its own image? This is a popular trope among the national security establishment. H.R. McMaster, perhaps the quintessential representative of this class, says China is “leading the development of new rules and a new international order that would make the world less free and less safe.” When one scratches the surface of these arguments, it is clear that most of the indictment against China involves things that every country does, but only looks frightening if you completely ignore American behavior. Chinese loans to poor countries are said to trap them in debt, but the evidence doesn’t bear this out. The same criticisms don’t often extend to the sorts of loan programs offered by the International Monetary Fund, even though these have often been as controversial as, and much more comprehensive than, any Chinese financial aid.

But despite the growth of this position among the American establishment, still others accuse it of strategically respecting the sovereignty of other states. In March, Daniel Tobin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies testified to Congress that China continues to promote the normative principles of “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual nonaggression, mutual noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and cooperation for mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Ted Piccione of the Brookings Institution writes of China under Xi putting forth “orthodox interpretations of national sovereignty and noninterference in internal affairs…”

While China is not blameless, one could reasonably make the argument that, from an international perspective, it has had easily the most peaceful rise to great power status of any nation of the last several hundred years. While China has carried out the re-annexation of Tibet, blockaded Taiwan diplomatically, and launched internal colonization of territories like Xinjiang, such actions always occur under the ideologically important claim that they are internal to China. The U.S., conversely, undertook external colonial ventures during its rise and still regularly sanctions unquestionably sovereign nations. China’s territorial claims are naturally controversial internationally, but are modest compared to those sought by other powers—not least the U.S. itself, which early in its history declared the entire Western Hemisphere as off limits to the nations of Europe. Its interventionist policies since then have led to the overthrow of governments, the killing of leaders, and the economic sanctioning of entire nations.

Perhaps, as the McMasters of the world claim, this is all because Beijing is biding its time in hopes of world domination. Alternatively, China may be an inwardly focused civilization that, while it may have disputes with its neighbors, is not on a mission to fundamentally remake the world. While it would naturally prefer rules that favor it and resists any principles that would legitimize regime change supported from abroad, Beijing does not seek to fundamentally replace the U.N. or rewrite international law. Its strategy has mostly sought stability and growth within the rules of the system developed by Western democracies in the aftermath of the Second World War. While its current position of strength is recent, it has not yet broken from this precedent.

This interpretation is most consistent with past behavior and, given the costs of American militarism abroad, with common sense about how a rational actor should be expected to act. It is also consistent with the arguments of the most honest kind of “China hawk,” who argues that the real problem with Beijing is not that it wants to dominate the world, but that it might stop the U.S. from doing so in a unipolar manner.

The Threat to the National Security Elite

Given the incoherence of these arguments, one must look below the surface to see what motivates political hysteria towards China. To understand the motivations of analysts, think tank fellows, and generals, one must comprehend how they see themselves and the American role in the world. For decades, the ideology of the American government in its dealings abroad has been based on the necessity of creating a liberal democratic world—a necessity which, as the Soviet model proved an ineffective threat and the Cold War ultimately ended, became seen as ever more natural. The assumptions supporting this view have, in various ways, driven American leaders since the post-WWII era.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall increased this confidence. While the possibility of nuclear war had to be managed, and it was assumed that communists might hold on to their captive populations indefinitely, the spread had been contained. During the entire Cold War, the trend was towards more democratic governance and the opening of markets.

The 1990s saw the U.S. engage in what can be described as mop-up operations against the few holdouts against the trend towards democratic capitalism like Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Academics even before Francis Fukuyama saw democratization as a natural consequence of people demanding more of a voice in their governments, as incomes rose, and as they became more educated. Countries like Chile, South Korea, and Taiwan seemed to validate this view.

None of this meant that the U.S. was to stand back and let history unfold. An expansive military presence abroad was necessary for all these projects, and even after the Cold War to address WMD proliferation and protect civilians abroad from human rights violations, and to stop Islamic terrorism after 9/11. The assumption was that, while the move towards democratic capitalism was natural and maybe even inevitable, it could be delayed by communists, terrorists, or Baathists if the U.S. did not lead.

The result was a paradox. The greater the inevitability of this grand historical arc, the more urgently it had to be backed up by force, and the more unreasonable and deviant all resistance seemed. Even the language of a “clash of civilizations” as the War on Terror commenced did not radically depart from the larger story. This justified a large military establishment with costs that dwarfed those of every other potential rival combined. American global leadership was pushing on an open door.

China Versus Western Political Science

China is something completely new. The Soviet Union had military power and appealed to Western intellectuals, but was clearly an economic basket case that could not deliver on its promise of rising standards of living. Islamic terrorists could kill Westerners and destabilize countries, but had little overall effect on American security, and did not threaten either U.S. hegemony or its justifications. Modern day Russia can seek to have an influence on our culture and politics, but nobody looks to it as a model, and it nominally accepts the legitimacy of competitive elections.

China, however, rejects liberal democracy—the idea that leaders should be chosen on a one-person, one-vote basis—even as an ideal or ultimate destination. As Daniel Bell explains in The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, Chinese leaders have implemented a system in which government officials are selected and promoted based on examinations, performance reviews, and the meeting of objective criteria at lower levels. Its political qualification is not electoral support, but party membership and loyalty. This system is not justified on the grounds simply that the Chinese people or their institutions are “not ready for democracy,” a line sometimes taken even by Middle Eastern dictators like Bashar al-Assad. Critiques of democracy certainly are not foreign to the West; Plato is possibly the most famous anti-democratic thinker in history, and today modern skeptics use the language of economics when they talk about concepts like the influence of interest groups and the “rational irrationality” of voters. Yet opposition to the principle of democracy as such is unthinkable for an American leader, and even for most prominent intellectuals.

What went wrong with political science models that generalized from a moderately large number of cases in which economic growth led to democratization? To see how they erred, one could imagine a social scientist at the end of the first millennium arguing that the whole globe would become Christian because princes across Europe had all adopted that religion. If statistical models existed then, one could have done a regression and “proved” this hypothesis. The most common statistical models used today rely on the assumed independence of observations. The logic of regression analysis and hypothesis testing as applied to political development says that if we see the same patterns across time and space, then we may be able to infer a causal chain of events.

But the spread of economic and social systems operates in the realm of path dependence and network dynamics. Under this view, the move towards democratization after the Second World War depended on the power and missionary zeal of the U.S. more than the laws of history. If American power declines, its focus on world affairs wanes, or democracy loses its luster due its perceived shortcomings, the connection between economic growth and democratization can break down.

China is not simply passing the U.S. in overall GDP. Other measures one might use to measure the health of society also indicate that leaders in Beijing have been doing a better job than those in Washington in recent years. Are dictatorships more conflict prone at home? China’s murder rate is a fraction of that of the U.S., and the country has practically none of the rioting and political violence Americans have gotten used to. Are dictatorships more likely to menace countries abroad? China has not been to war since 1979, while the U.S. has been at war almost every year since that date. Are dictatorships less innovative? In 2020, China passed the U.S. in publications in the natural sciences, and its children score higher than American students on IQ tests and international standardized exams. While in 2008, the U.S. recorded over 16 times as many international patents as China, already by 2018 the gap had shrunk to 2.4 times as many, with trend lines indicating that China could surpass the U.S. before long.

With the American post-war liberal consensus having staked much of its legitimacy on providing better results, China’s development is an ideological threat regardless of how benevolent its rulers might theoretically be. American elites can tolerate a more successful system on a smaller scale. Lee Kuan Yew, the founder and long-time leader of Singapore, was explicitly anti-democratic, and horrified American elites with stances like his belief in eugenics. Yet his nation’s population has never even approached that of the largest American cities, and Lee was happy to geopolitically align his country with the U.S.

China’s ideology, and the success it is achieving, is ultimately threatening because of its size. Of course, as a country moves from Third World status to the most powerful nation in the world, it should be expected to become more geopolitically confident. Recently, China has begun asserting its will in a century-old border dispute with Bhutan, a country of 800,000 people, after 24 rounds of previous talks. Such results in this dispute and others like it are inevitable.

So, what question should American leaders be asking? It is not whether China will become more powerful, which it certainly will, or whether it will democratize, which is out of American hands and not relevant to its security anyway. Rather, it’s whether China has ambitions beyond what the U.S. can live with. All else equal, a few rocks in the South China Sea are not worth the possibility of war, or even worth forgoing the benefits of trade and potential collaboration on issues of global importance like climate change and containing pandemics.

In that case, what about Chinese financing? What about IP theft? What about Taiwan? Rather than invoking concerns about ethereal leadership or precedent, it would behoove American leaders well to explicitly set out their red lines, and tie their arguments for action to why crossing them threatens America’s fundamental interests. This also requires honesty about why certain actions are provoking concern. If the real worry is ideological, it should not be cloaked in rumors about predatory debt.

The answer to the China question would therefore be easier if American leaders were simply looking after the economic or security interests of the nation, or even the concrete concerns of a formalized alliance. Unfortunately, they also have financial, bureaucratic, and ideological reasons for being opposed to China’s rise. If universal democratization is not the ultimate endpoint of history—or even an imperative for development, peace, and prosperity—how can the American role in the world be justified? What will it say about the American system if the U.S. is no longer the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, having been surpassed by a country that became the dominant power in East Asia without even paying lip service to democratic ideals?

Ultimately, Americans themselves might begin asking themselves difficult questions about how well they have been served by their own system, including the sacrifices in blood and treasure they are regularly asked to make abroad.

How Will the U.S. Manage Its Decline?

The rise of China is based on long-term economic trends. Washington can no more stop or contain it than European powers in the mid-twentieth century could hope to hold on to their colonies in the midst of population growth in Asia and Africa, the rise of mass media, and their national declines relative to the U.S. and the Soviet Union. American leaders debate questions such as whether to reduce trade with China, call Beijing out on human rights violations, ban apps like TikTok, or undertake more naval missions through the South China Sea. Even if the hawks get their way on each of these issues—like they did under Trump and are unlikely to under Biden—none of these policies are going to significantly impede the rise of China.

At present, Beijing has demonstrated no desire for territory far from its borders; nor does it seem to want veto power over what governments do in distant lands, as the U.S. has exercised over large swaths of the world. Chinese leaders have always reasonably acted as if such entanglements are not worth the cost. While we cannot predict what future opportunists may attempt, it would be a mistake to craft our approach to the Chinese relationship as if this was not the case.

Understanding this, perhaps the most important question becomes the extent to which the U.S. is to play a game of chicken in the South China Sea. This is the real Thucydides Trap, though the concept only applies if both sides consider hegemony in an area important. China has built an impressive collection of fortified artificial islands in the South China Sea that will be useful in any dispute in Taiwan. Nonetheless, an all-out invasion is unlikely. Rather, Chinese economic strength should be enough to make most countries of the region take its side in any disputes and isolate Taiwan. At that point, various scenarios are imaginable, from an indefinite continuation of the status quo, to overwhelming economic pressure and attempts to force the island nation into submission, to a blockade or invasion. Only the very last of these risks war with the U.S. Assuming we avoid such a scenario, American leaders can be expected to easily forget about Taiwanese independence and democracy and move on.

Recent events in Hong Kong and Belarus demonstrate the limited nature of U.S. commitments to faraway nations most Americans know little about. Over the last two years, both of these places have seen pro-democracy protests that were given rhetorical support by the United States. In both situations, authoritarian governments were able to reassert authority and hold on to power. In the aftermath, the U.S. puts sanctions on the guilty parties, but the issue recedes from the headlines, and things go back to normal. Just as America lost interest in Tibet, it will eventually lose interest in Hong Kong and the Uighurs.

This quiet decline in the Asia-Pacific influence is the most likely scenario, even if the same military commitments remain. The U.S. can keep troops in Japan and South Korea as long as those two countries agree to host them, especially since China is unlikely to force this issue in the near future. Despite relying on the U.S. for defense, South Korea already aligns with China over the U.S. on a host of important geopolitical issues, from welcoming Huawei as a 5G provider to accepting the view of Hong Kong as an internal manner. Should political winds change direction in Japan, U.S. bases will not do anything to prevent better relations between Tokyo and Beijing. Just last month, China and Japan joined 13 other nations to sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free trade agreement that will expand trade and cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific. Nothing about the American military presence prevents the region from resisting any attempts to isolate China.

Ultimately, the danger for American elites is not that the U.S. may become less able to accomplish geopolitical objectives. Rather, it is that more Americans might begin to question the logic of U.S. global hegemony. Perhaps not every state is destined to become a liberal democracy, and nations with very different political systems can coexist peacefully, as many countries in East Asia do. Maybe the U.S. will not always be at the frontier of military and economic power, and the country that overtakes it may have completely different attitudes about the nature of the relationship between government and its citizens.

While most Americans will never experience a ride on a Chinese bullet train and remain oblivious in differences in areas like infrastructure quality, major accomplishments in highly visible frontiers like space travel or cancer treatment could drive home the extent to which the U.S. has fallen behind. Under such conditions, the best case scenario for most Americans would be a nightmare for many national security and bureaucratic elites: for the U.S. to give up on policing the world and instead turn inward and focus on finding out where exactly our institutions have gone wrong.

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Speech, media and academic freedoms are too precious to lose.

Without them, all other rights are threatened — totalitarian rule replacing them, enforced by police state harshness.

What happened on Capitol Hill Wednesday has clear earmarks of an orchestrated false flag — a coup to assure unelected Biden/Harris replace Trump on January 20.

Or sooner if removed from office by impeachment or invoking and distorting the 25th Amendment.

Worse still, what happened may be prelude to restricting free expression — blatant censorship to silence views not conforming to the official narrative.

Twitter silenced Trump’s speech for 12 hours, deleting several tweets.

Facebook and Instagram banned his posts indefinitely.

So did Snapchat, Shopify and Twitch.

Will these and other platforms silence him permanently?

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — in cahoots with US dark forces — unjustifiably justified his constitutional breach, saying:

“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great (sic),” adding:

“Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on (Trump’s) Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete (sic).”

Breaching the US Constitution is a criminal offense — accountability never following when in pursuit of Washington’s diabolical agenda.

You Tube announced that it will temporarily restrict video postings that contain alleged “misinformation” — aka views contesting the official narrative.

Thousands of posted videos were removed. Temporary restrictions will be permanent in cases of continued content a higher authority wants suppressed.

If social media deny a US president his First Amendment rights, will state approved censorship on everyone diverging from the official narrative become the new abnormal?

Will truth-telling on vital issues be criminalized? Will independent voices be mistreated like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and other heroic whistleblowers?

Will full-blown tyranny become the new abnormal ahead to permit no challenges to the diabolical agenda of US dark forces ahead?

Surrender by most Republicans to acceptance of unlawful transition of power from Trump to Biden/Harris is an ominous sign for what may lie ahead.

So is undemocratic Dem Senator Mark Warner’s support to unacceptable social media actions against Trump.

He welcomed “long-belated steps to address (DJT’s) sustained misuse of their platforms to sow discord and violence (sic),” adding:

These “actions are both too late and not nearly enough.”

“Disinformation and extremism researchers (sic) have for years pointed to broader network-based exploitation of these platforms (sic).”

In less than so many words, he supports censorship as the new abnormal, and he’s not alone.

Many others in Washington and corporate boardrooms support the same thing.

Trump has over 100 million Twitter and Facebook followers.

His postings ahead, if permitted, will be monitored and censored if dark forces find them unacceptable.

How he’s treated may be followed by similar actions against everyone.

It this lies ahead, it’ll be a diabolical deep state plot to abolish an open, free and fair society, according to the rule of law.

Big Media sticks to the official narrative with disturbing regularity, operating as press agents for wealth, power and privileged interests.

Remarks below by the NYT show support for social media censorship, saying:

“(S)ocial media sites (promote) a false rumor that Antifa…was responsible for committing violence at the protests (sic).”

These cites “have been lackadaisical” by not blocking what the Times and other Big Media consider unacceptable content.

“Freedom of expression is not the freedom to incite violence. That is not protected speech.”

The above claim followed criticism of tweets by Trump for nonviolence on Capitol Hill, not the other way around as the Times and other Big Media falsely reported.

In its latest edition, the Times — to its disgrace — called for shutting down Trump’s social media sites.

“(C)anel him,” said the Times — falsely blaming him again for inciting Capitol Hill violence he had nothing to do with.

Establishment media, Google, Facebook, and other social media are guardians of power, operating as gatekeepers to censor and eliminate truth-telling content that diverges from the official narrative — falsely calling it “extremist.”

You Tube CEO Susan Wojcicki earlier said the following:

“(B)ad actors are exploiting” the Internet to “mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm” — referring to truth-telling views dark forces want banned.

Google, You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media are technologically able to identify and remove unwanted content.

They’re powerful tools for what power brokers want disseminated, restricted, blocked or censored.

The Internet is the last frontier of digital democracy, the only reliable independent space for real news, information and analysis.

It lets everyone freely express views on any topics – unless corporate gatekeepers undermine the public interest by blocking them.

That’s where things are heading, greatly boosted by false flag events on Capitol Hill Wednesday night.

If dark forces triumph of constitutionally guaranteed rights — including unrestricted free and open expression — digital democracy in America no longer will exist.

Content in this and other articles I write may be criminalized. The same goes for others like me.

Tyranny in America will become the new abnormal — the law of the land.

That’s what lies ahead if not challenged and stopped before all fundamental rights are lost.

A Final Comment

Among others and yours truly, Edward Snowden sounded the alarm tweeting what may be deleted:

“Facebook officially silences the President of the United States.”

This unacceptable action “will be remembered as a turning point in the battle for control over digital speech.”

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

All artworks in this article are from Massoud Nayeri

I am a recipient of regular, usual weekly, emails from the Department of the Treasury providing an “Update to OFAC’s list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) and Blocked Persons.” OFAC is the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is tasked with both identifying and managing the financial punishments meted out to those individuals and groups that have been sanctioned by the United States government.

A recent update, on November 10^th, included “Non-Proliferation Designations; Iran-related Designations.” There were ten items on the list, names of Chinese and Iranian individuals and companies. Those who are “Specially Designated” on the list are subject to having their assets blocked if located in the United States and are also not allowed to engage in any financial transactions that go through U.S. banking channels. As many international banks respect U.S. Treasury “designations” lest they themselves be subjected to secondary sanctions that often means in effect that the individual or group cannot move money in a large part of the global financial marketplace.

The complete SDN list is hundreds of pages long. The Treasury Department defines and justifies OFAC’s mission “As part of its enforcement efforts, OFAC publishes a list of individuals and companies owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of, targeted countries. It also lists individuals, groups, and entities, such as terrorists and narcotics traffickers designated under programs that are not country-specific. Collectively, such individuals and companies are called ‘Specially Designated Nationals’ or ‘SDNs.’ Their assets are blocked and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.”

In reality, of course, OFAC’s sanctions are highly political. They are clearly a form of economic warfare, particularly when entire sectors of a nation’s economy are blocked or a part of a government itself is listed as has been the case with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force. Wave after wave of “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran have made it difficult for the country to sell its only major marketable resource, oil, and it has been locked out of most normal financial networks, making it difficult or even impossible to buy food and medicines.

In many cases sanctions have no practical effect but are rather intended to send a message. There have been new sanctions directed against Moscow and Russian government officials have been sanctioned due to their alleged involvement in activities that the United States does not approve of. The sanctions are imposed even though those “specially designated” have no assets in the U.S. and do not engage in any international financial transactions that could be blocked or disrupted. In those cases, the federal government is sending a message to whomever has been sanctioned to warn them that they are being watched and their behavior has become a matter of record. It is basically a form of intimidation.

Whether sanctions actually work is debatable. The example of Cuba, which was sanctioned by the U.S. for nearly sixty years, would suggest not. Some would argue that on the contrary countries with totalitarian regimes would actually improve their behavior if their citizens could travel freely and welcome visitors, providing evidence that foreigners do not pose a threat justifying a police state.

Within the United States government, it is largely accepted that the most powerful advocate of the sanctions regime is Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who has been the driving force behind recent sanctions directed against both China and Iran. If that is so he might well be challenged on one of the most bizarre and basically pointless applications of sanctions in recent years, targeting Asma the wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as well as her family that lives in London and are British citizens. Per Pompeo’s statement on the new sanctions “The Department of State today is imposing sanctions on Asma al-Assad, the wife of Bashar al-Assad, for impeding efforts to promote a political resolution of the Syrian conflict pursuant to Section 2(a)(i)(D) of Executive Order 13894… Asma al-Assad has spearheaded efforts on behalf of the regime to consolidate economic and political power, including by using her so-called charities and civil society organizations.”

But the real kicker is Pompeo’s condemnation of Asma, of Syrian origin but English born and raised, is how he involves her family. Her father-in-law Fawaz is a renowned cardiologist at Cromwell Hospital in South Kensington who was educated in England and has lived there for decades. “In addition, we are sanctioning several members of Asma al-Assad’s immediate family, including Fawaz Akhras, Sahar Otri Akhras, Firas al Akhras, and Eyad Akhras as per Section 2(a)(ii) of EO 13894. The Assad and Akhras families have accumulated their ill-gotten riches at the expense of the Syrian people through their control over an extensive, illicit network with links in Europe, the Gulf, and elsewhere.”

Inevitably, no evidence is provided to support any of the allegations about Asma al-Assad and her English family. Asma’s charities are for real in her war-torn country and she is highly respected and admired by those who know her and are not influenced by U.S. and Israeli propaganda.

In reality, the United States has been trying hard to overthrow the Syrian government since 2004 when the Syria Accountability Act was passed. Much of the heat in Congress behind the passage of the act was generated by the Israel Lobby, which wanted to weaken the regime and reduce its ability to represent a viable military force possibly capable of regaining the occupied Golan Heights. Be that as it may, the United States has been hostile to the country’s government and has frequently called for regime change. To bring that about, the U.S. supported al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups operating against Damascus and American soldiers continue to occupy Syrian oil fields in the southeast portion of the country. The Syrians have also been subjected to waves of sanctions that have done grave damage to their economy. American and Israeli concerns have sometimes been linked to the presence of Damascus’ allies Hezbollah and Iran, both of whom have military units based inside Syria, but the simple fact is that neither Iranians nor Lebanese in any way threaten the vastly superior American and Israeli forces present in the region.

One has to ask why, given the realpolitik playing out in the Middle East, Washington and Pompeo feel compelled to go after Asma al-Assad and her family, apparently to include absurdly blaming relatives living for many years outside of Syria for fueling the war. More sanctions, by all means. More grief and suffering and more people around the world wondering what exactly the United States is doing.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Synchronicity is definitely fond of mirror wonderwalls. The Julian Assange saga seemed to have entered a new chapter as he was, in thesis, on his way to – conditional – freedom this past Monday, only one day after the first anniversary of the start of the Raging Twenties: the assassination of Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani.

The fate of the journalist the Empire seeks to terminate was just juxtaposed to the fate of the warrior/diplomat the empire already terminated.

Two days later, Julian Assange was de facto re-incarcerated exactly as the Empire was hit by an “insurrection” which, whenever instigated in that distant “Third World”, is celebrated in Exceptionalistan as “people power”.

The invaluable Craig Murray, from inside Westminster Magistrates Court No. 1 in London, meticulously presented the full contours  of the insanity this Wednesday.

Read it in conjunction with the positively terrifying judgment delivered on Monday in the United States government case against Julian Assange.

The defining issue, for all those who practice real journalism all across the world, is that the judgment affirms, conclusively, that any journalist can be prosecuted under the US Espionage Act. Since a 1961 amendment, the Espionage Act carries universal jurisdiction.

The great John Pilger memorably describes “judge” Vanessa Baraitser as “that Gothic woman”. She is in fact an obscure public servant, not a jurist. Her judgment walks and talks like it was written by a mediocre rookie hack. Or, better yet, entirely lifted from the US Department of Justice indictment.

Julian Assange was – at the last minute – discharged on theoretically humanitarian grounds. So the case had, in effect, ended. Not really. Two days later, he was sent back to Belmarsh, a squalid maximum security prison rife with Covid-19. So the case is ongoing.

WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnnson correctly noted,

“It is unjust and unfair and illogical when you consider her ruling of two days ago about Julian’s health in large part because he is in Belmarsh prison (…) To send him back there doesn’t make any sense.”

It does when one considers the real role of Baraitser – at a loss to juggle between the imperatives of the imperial agenda and the necessity of saving the face of British justice.

Baraitser is a mere, lowly foot soldier punching way above her weight. The real power in the Assange case is Lady Emma Arbuthnot, forced out of a visible role because of very compromising, direct ties she and her husband Lord Arbuthnot maintain with British intelligence and military, first revealed by – who else – WikiLeaks.

It was Arbuthnot who picked up obscure Baraitser – who dutifully follows her road map. In court, as Murray has detailed in a series of searing reports, Baraitser essentially covers her incompetence with glaring vindictiveness Baraitser discharged Julian Assange, according to her own reasoning, because she was not convinced the appalling American gulag would prevent him from committing suicide.

But the key issue is that before reaching this conclusion, she agreed and reinforced virtually every point of the US indictment.

So at this point, on Monday, the “Gothic woman” was performing a contortion to save the US from the profound global embarrassment of prosecuting a de facto journalist and publisher for revealing imperial war crimes, not United States government secrets.

Two days later, the full picture became crystal clear. There was nothing “humanitarian” about that judgment. Political dissent was equaled with mental illness. Julian Assange was branded as criminally insane. Once again, practicing journalism was criminalized.

There are reasons to believe though, that a United States government appeal may fail. A British High Court would be reluctant to overturn a judgment where Baraitser actually established findings of fact: a direct correlation between the state of the American gulag, and the extreme danger to Assange’s health if he’s thrown inside this system.

As it stands, it didn’t even matter that Assange’s defense offered a full package to obtain bail, from home arrest to the use of an ankle bracelet. Baraitser’s notion that the British security state would not be able to prevent his “escape” wearing an ankle bracelet in the middle of a total, police state-style lockdown does not even qualify as a joke.

So Julian Assange is back to suffering a perverse, interminable rewrite of Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum.

The US government’s legal strategy before the High Court convenes in April is basically to try to prove its American gulag is competent enough to prevent a suicide – even though the ultimate aim of this post-truth Inquisition seems to be the termination of Julian Assange inside the penal system. That goal doesn’t even require a supermax prison in Colorado. Belmarsh will do.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Elekhh – CC BY-SA 3.0

One can only imagine the risk when some citizens of a small country conceal hundreds of thousands of weapons and explosives. The nation becomes a powder keg, awaiting one small mistake to spark a deadly explosion.

This is the situation currently in Albania. During the civil war of 1997, military depots were looted, and more than 650,000 guns, 1.5 billion bullets, 3.5 million grenades and 1 million landmines were stolen from military warehouses by various criminal groups and the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The government has attempted to resolve, or at least reduce, this serious problem. Since 1997, it has announced three amnesty orders for the delivery of looted weapons (a fourth is currently proposed). Yet, only about 40% of the weapons have been returned (exact numbers are impossible to determine), and it is estimated that between 300,000 and 325,000 weapons are still in private possession, many of them possessed by criminals. Albanian media previously reported that some of the illegal weapons imported into Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Greece and Italy may have been from this stockpile, and they believe that even after more than two decades, these weapons are still being found and used in Albania’s neighboring countries such as Greece and Italy.

The Albanian people experienced war and violence in their country 20 years ago, which led to the deaths of over 2,000 people and left thousands more homeless. Citizens of that country, have no inclination to, once again, become a centre for crisis in the region and bear the political and security consequences which would result. This, of course, would negatively impact their goal of joining the European Union.

And now an Albanian journalist, Ebi Spahiu, an independent analyst on Central Asian and Western Balkan Affairs has sounded the alarm about weapons being in possession of anti-Iranian terrorists. This journalist expressed her concern about the possibility of Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization’s (MKO; sometimes referred to as MEK) having access to these weapons and the danger of rearming themselves.

The MKO is a terrorist organization that seeks to overthrow the government of Iran and replace it with one that would certainly bow to any and all U.S. demands. The MKO is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranians over the years. Now based in Albania, it was formerly headquartered in Iraq.

Members of the Mujahedin, believed to be in possession of some of the weapons looted from Albania in 1997, also stole arms from Iran. After the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, they carried out numerous attacks on barracks, police stations and military bases and stole a large number of weapons, which they used to increase their assassinations of Iranian citizens and officials.

It took at least three years, from 2013 – 2016, for the Iraqi government and political-social activists to oust the Mujahedin from Iraq. Few countries were willing to shelter the Mujahedin. However, with the support of the United States, they relocated to Albania. This was an interesting development, because the MKO is a semi-militant organization which was forcibly disarmed by the United States in 2003 after the occupation of Iraq. In addition, 16 military bases and heavy weapons such as tanks which were previously provided to the MKO by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein were all recaptured and handed over to the Iraqi military. The U.S. only began supporting the group as its hostility to Iran increased.

In addition, the MKO was housed in a military camp called Ashraf after 2003, in the Diyala province of Iraq, which was one of the main strongholds of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization. The Mujahedin were able to establish close contact with foreign extremist terrorists who had entered Iraq and provided them with a great deal of intelligence. They also used part of Camp Ashraf as a site for military and combat training for terrorists.

With so many weapons in the hands of Albanians, there is a high risks that the MKO, with its long history of conducting military operations, could gain access to illegal weapons in that country and use them in pursuit of their goals. While their ability to achieve those goals is slim, they could still cause tremendous suffering as they attempt to reach them.

Adding to the risk is the fact that Albania is a center of arms smuggling in the Balkans; thus, buying large quantities of weapons is not difficult for the MKO since the organization is now headquartered in that country.

The MKO’s interference in Iraq during the period of Saddam Hussein, and then intervening in post-Saddam Iraqi political tensions, indicates the threat that it can be, and therefore it must be carefully controlled by any country where MKO members have a presence. Any violent actions by the group could have a negative impact on the security of this region of the world.

Indications of future violence are in clear evidence; even Twitter briefly restricted the group’s activities, and suspended the leader.

Beyond the MKO, the presence of jihadist extremists, especially in southeastern Albania, bring widespread activities of arms and drug trafficking. Adding the presence of the Mujahedin-e Khalq into this already-deadly mix further jeopardizes the safety of the citizens in this country and further destabilizes the entire region.

The support that the United States currently offers to the MKO must end. Without that support, the MKO would be unable to continue its operations in Albania, and the risk of further terrorist activities by its members would decrease significantly.

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This study was originally published in April 2012.

It pertains to the Severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS-CoV (2002) which has, according to the WHO and the CDC similar features to SARS-CoV-2.

A vaccine was envisaged in relation to SARS-1. The authors document the impacts of the SARS-1 vaccine, focussing on the results of  the mice and ferret lab tests.

“An early concern for application of a SARS-CoV vaccine was the experience with other coronavirus infections which induced enhanced disease and immunopathology in animals when challenged with infectious virus”.

The conclusion of the study is as follows:

“These SARS-CoV vaccines all induced antibody and protection against infection with SARS-CoV. However, challenge of mice given any of the vaccines led to occurrence of Th2-type immunopathology suggesting hypersensitivity to SARS-CoV components was induced.  Caution in proceeding to application of a SARS-CoV vaccine in humans is indicated.”

This study is of relevance to the current debate and analysis pertaining to the Covid-19 vaccine (SARs-CoV-2)

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Abstract

Background

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in China in 2002 and spread to other countries before brought under control. Because of a concern for reemergence or a deliberate release of the SARS coronavirus, vaccine development was initiated. Evaluations of an inactivated whole virus vaccine in ferrets and nonhuman primates and a virus-like-particle vaccine in mice induced protection against infection but challenged animals exhibited an immunopathologic-type lung disease.

Design

Four candidate vaccines for humans with or without alum adjuvant were evaluated in a mouse model of SARS, a VLP vaccine, the vaccine given to ferrets and NHP, another whole virus vaccine and an rDNA-produced S protein. Balb/c or C57BL/6 mice were vaccinated IM on day 0 and 28 and sacrificed for serum antibody measurements or challenged with live virus on day 56. On day 58, challenged mice were sacrificed and lungs obtained for virus and histopathology.

Results

All vaccines induced serum neutralizing antibody with increasing dosages and/or alum significantly increasing responses. Significant reductions of SARS-CoV two days after challenge was seen for all vaccines and prior live SARS-CoV. All mice exhibited histopathologic changes in lungs two days after challenge including all animals vaccinated (Balb/C and C57BL/6) or given live virus, influenza vaccine, or PBS suggesting infection occurred in all. Histopathology seen in animals given one of the SARS-CoV vaccines was uniformly a Th2-type immunopathology with prominent eosinophil infiltration, confirmed with special eosinophil stains. The pathologic changes seen in all control groups lacked the eosinophil prominence.

Conclusions

These SARS-CoV vaccines all induced antibody and protection against infection with SARS-CoV. However, challenge of mice given any of the vaccines led to occurrence of Th2-type immunopathology suggesting hypersensitivity to SARS-CoV components was induced. Caution in proceeding to application of a SARS-CoV vaccine in humans is indicated.

Introduction

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in Guangdong, People’s Republic of China, in late 2002, and spread to other countries in Asia and to Canada in the ensuing months [1]–[3]. Infection control efforts brought the infection under control by mid-2003 [4]. More than 8000 cases, including almost 800 deaths, were reported during the outbreak period [4]. Increasing age and comorbidity were risk factors for severe disease and death [5], [6], [7]. Since 2003, only sporadic cases have been reported; however, the possibility that SARS outbreaks could reemerge naturally or be deliberately released is a public health concern.

SARS is caused by a Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) [8], [9]. Limited data are available about the ecology of SARS-CoV, but bats are thought to be the animal reservoir for the virus which may be transmitted to small mammals with exposure to these small animals as the source of human infections [10]. The clinical disease is similar to other severe acute respiratory infections, including influenza; the SARS case definition includes clinical, epidemiologic, and laboratory criteria [11], [12]. A number of therapeutic efforts were employed for the disease in Asia and in Canada; however, no treatment of clear value was identified. Animal models were developed using mice, hamsters, ferrets and nonhuman primates, and efforts to identify useful treatments and effective vaccines are ongoing.

Vaccine candidates for preventing SARS have been developed by various groups and include inactivated whole virus, spike (S) protein preparations, virus-like particles (VLPs), plasmid DNA and a number of vectors containing genes for SARS-CoV proteins [13]–[28]. Phase I studies in humans have been conducted with a whole virus vaccine and a DNA vaccine [29]–[30].

An early concern for application of a SARS-CoV vaccine was the experience with other coronavirus infections which induced enhanced disease and immunopathology in animals when challenged with infectious virus [31], a concern reinforced by the report that animals given an alum adjuvanted SARS vaccine and subsequently challenged with SARS-CoV exhibited an immunopathologic lung reaction reminiscent of that described for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants and in animal models given RSV vaccine and challenged naturally (infants) or artificially (animals) with RSV [32], [33]. We and others described a similar immunopathologic reaction in mice vaccinated with a SARS-CoV vaccine and subsequently challenged with SARS-CoV [18], [20], [21], [28]. It has been proposed that the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV is the antigen to which the immunopathologic reaction is directed [18], [21]. Thus, concern for proceeding to humans with candidate SARS-CoV vaccines emerged from these various observations.

The studies reported here were conducted to evaluate the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of different SARS-CoV vaccines in a murine model of SARS.

Read full article here.

also available here

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There was a hope in some quarters after Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled on Monday against an application to extradite Julian Assange to the US, where he faced being locked away for the rest of his life, that she might finally be changing tack.

Washington has wanted Assange permanently silenced and made an example of – by demonstrating to other journalists its terrifying reach and powers of retaliation – ever since the Wikileaks founder exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago.

There were reasons, however, to be suspicious of what Baraitser was really up to even as she made her ruling in Assange’s favour. This district judge has a record of nodding through extradition cases, including several that have recently been overturned on appeal by a higher court.

Tomorrow, District Judge Vanessa Baraister will rule on Assange's US extradition.

The Ministry of Justice blocked our FOI request for a list of cases on which she's ruled since being appointed a DJ in 2011.

So we used Westlaw + Factiva to construct her extradition case list👇 pic.twitter.com/ViCuMHhe6i

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) January 3, 2021

During the hearings back in September, Baraitser had endlessly indulged lawyers representing the US while showing absolute disdain for Assange’s legal team, obstructing them at every turn. Her contempt for Assange and his political and moral worldview was on show throughout the proceedings. She often arrived in court with a prepared script she read from, barely feigning a pretence that she had listened to the legal arguments presented in court.

Her script always favoured Washington’s line, apart from on those occasions when she took an even more hostile position towards Assange than requested by the US. That included sealing him off from the rest of the court in an impregnable perspex box, treating him more like Hannibal Lecter than a publisher and journalist fighting for press freedom.

Much of the time, Baraitser sounded unnervingly like a prosecution barrister rather than the judge.

First, a dangerous ruling 

My latest: The last decade has been about discrediting, disgracing and demonising Julian Assange. Today's court ruling denying his extradition to the US – though hugely welcome – should be seen as a continuation of that process https://t.co/FtrDGyHwF2

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 4, 2021

So it was barely surprising, as I explained in my last post, that, while denying the extradition claim, she supported all the arguments advanced by the US accruing to itself the right to prosecute Assange – and any other journalist – for the crime of doing journalism. She ignored the facts, the expert testimony presented in court and the legal arguments – all of which favoured Assange – and backed instead what amounted to a purely political case made by the US.

She disregarded warnings from Assange’s legal team that acceptance of the political rationale for extradition amounted to an all-out attack on fundamental journalistic freedoms. She established a terrifying legal precedent for the US to seize foreign journalists and prosecute them for “espionage” if they expose Washington’s crimes. Her ruling will inevitably have a profoundly chilling effect on any publication trying to dig out the truth about the US national-security state, with terrifying consequences for us all.

But while she enthusiastically backed the political case for Assange’s extradition and trial, Baraitser at the same time got the Wikileaks founder off the hook by accepting the humanitarian concerns raised by medical and prison experts. They had counselled that extradition to the US could be expected to lead to Assange spending the rest of his life in a barbaric US super-max prison, exacerbating mental health problems and the risk of suicide.

Then, a perverse ruling 

Her ruling, while deeply disturbing in its political and legal implications, did at least suggest that Baraitser was ready to take a compassionate approach in regard to Assange’s health, even if not his journalistic exposure of western war crimes. He should have walked free there and then, had the US not immediately said it would appeal her decision.

Given Assange’s discharge by Baraitser, his team hoped that bail – his release from a high-security prison while the lengthy appeals process unfolds – would prove a formality. They hurried to make such an application after the extradition ruling on Monday, assuming that the legal logic of her decision dictated his release. Baraitser demurred, suggesting that they prepare their case and make it to her more fully on Wednesday.

It now seems clear the judge manipulated Assange’s defence team. Apparently like Assange’s lawyers, former British ambassador Craig Murray, who has attended and reported on the hearings in detail, was lulled by Baraitser into assuming that she wanted a cast-iron case from the defence to justify a decision to release Assange on bail.

There were good reasons for their confidence. Any move to prevent his release would look perverse given that she had decided Assange should not be extradited or stand trial in the US.

Suicide danger 

They were deceived. Baraitser denied bail, effectively signalling that she thinks her ruling might be wrong and overturned in a higher court. That is extraordinary. It suggests that she has no confidence in her own judgment of the facts of the case. As Murray has noted: “There was little or no precedent for the High Court overturning any ruling against extradition on Section 91 health grounds.”

Any appeal by the US against Baraitser’s ruling to discharge Assange will be hard to win. Its lawyers will have to prove that she was wrong not on her interpretation of the law, but in assessing verifiable facts. They will have to show that she was deceived by prison experts who warned – based on submissions made by the US itself – that Assange would be subjected to permanent, inhuman solitary confinement in a US super-max jail or that she was misled by medical experts who warned that in these conditions Assange would be at significant risk of suicide.

Julian Assange is one of just two inmates at Belmarsh maximum security prison—which houses 797 prisoners—being held for violating bail conditions, according to figures released to me last year.

Over 20% of the Belmarsh prison population is held for murderhttps://t.co/W1RT5s48oJ

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) January 6, 2021

But the perversity of Baraitser’s decision runs deeper still. Her ruling keeps him locked up in Belmarsh, a high-security prison in London that is Britain’s version of a super-max jail. Her refusal to free him, or put him in house arrest with a GPS monitoring tag, flagrantly contradicts the expert assessments she concurred with during Monday’s extradition decision: that Assange is at high risk of suicide. Those expert evaluations are based on his current state – caused by his incarceration in Belmarsh.

Unlike Assange, most of Belmarsh’s inmates have been convicted or charged with major crimes. But while Assange long ago served out his only offence, a minor violation of the UK’s bail regulations, he has been routinely held in even worse conditions than the other prisoners.

If Assange’s mental health is in such poor shape and he is so likely to commit suicide, it is because of the horrifying regime of abuse he has already faced in Belmarsh over the past nearly two years – a regime classified as torture by the UN’s expert on the subject, Nils Melzer. Raising Assange’s hopes of release and then shutting him back in his cell, denying him the chance to see his partner and two young children for the first time since March, risks tipping him over the edge – an edge Baraitser herself is only too aware of and on which she based her decision to deny extradition.

Nils Melzer, the UN expert on torture: 'Julian Assange has been brought to breaking point by 10 years of joint persecution for political reasons by Sweden, by the UK, by the US, by Ecuador.. He should not have been brought to the point where he is suicidal' https://t.co/GFArFyhrRt

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 4, 2021

No ‘flight risk’

In fact, the judge was up to something else entirely in delaying the bail hearing till Wednesday, two days later. She wanted – as presumably did those who have been supervising her behind the scenes – to refashion the image of her court, which for months has given every appearance of being entirely beholden to the US administration. 

As the corporate media briefly raised its head from its slumber to meaningfully acknowledge for the first time the Assange hearings, she wanted to ensure those reports noted how independent her court was. For two days, commentators could crow about British legal sovereignty and humanitarian values, even as most tacitly accepted her dangerous premise that the US has a justified claim to extradite Assange.

When Baraitser slammed the cell door shut once again on Assange, leaving him exactly where he was before she discharged him, her decision was presented as little more than a technical ruling based on a reasonable assessment of Assange’s “flight risk”.

In fact, Assange is no flight risk, and never was. He didn’t “jump bail” in 2012 by heading into the Ecuadorean embassy. He sought political asylum there to escape the very real threat of being extradited to the US for his journalism. He was accepted by the Ecuadorean authorities because they believed his fears were genuine.

Back then, a Swedish prosecutor had revived demands Assange return to Sweden for questioning over flimsy sexual assault allegations – allegations that had been dismissed by a previous prosecutor. That investigation, we now know, was kept alive at British insistence. Nonetheless, Sweden refused to give assurances that they would not extradite Assange on to the US, where a grand jury was drawing up charges against him.

Illicit collusion 

Assange’s decision to seek asylum in the embassy has, of course, been entirely vindicated by the fact that the US did indeed seek his extradition – as soon as they could get their hands on him.

Baraitser even let the cat out of the bag herself at the bail hearing, disrupting her own narrative that he had “absconded” in 2012, when she stated – as evidence against Assange! – that he entered the embassy to evade the threat of extradition to the US.

In doing so, she undermined the narrative promoted for years by every corporate media outlet in the UK that Assange had “holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy to flee the Swedish investigation”. (In fact, that statement was typically corrupted even further by the media, including notably the Guardian, which repeatedly referred not to an investigation, one going nowhere, but to entirely imaginary “rape charges”.)

Baraitser exploited and accentuated Assange’s suffering to make her court look good, to add a veneer of credibility to her deeply flawed political ruling, and to create the impression that she was making her judgment based on the facts rather than illicit collusion with US authorities denying Assange his rights.

Where next? 

Where does the case head now?

Assange’s only immediate hope is that his legal team can appeal the bail decision and win, or that the US throws in the towel and decides not to submit its own appeal on the extradition ruling within the next couple of weeks.

If Washington does press for an appeal, as still seems likely, Assange faces many more months in Belmarsh high-security jail, in declining health in Covid-infested conditions he may not survive if he catches the disease. As experts have warned, the toll taken by nearly two years of almost no contact with other humans, no mental stimulation, no prospect of release – his case ignored by most of his peers and the public – will intensify his sense of despair, his deep depression, and the danger that he tries to take his own life.

His death looks increasingly like an outcome Britain and the US desire, and possibly one that they have been striving towards. That is certainly the conclusion of Yanis Varoufakis, a public intellectual and former Greek finance minister who has seen up close himself how ready European and US elites are to ruthlessly crush dissent.

"They are not trying to extradite him. They are trying to kill him."@yanisvaroufakis explains why he thinks the US State Department wants Julian Assange dead.#Downstream pic.twitter.com/wPDeMyd9EW

— Novara Media (@novaramedia) January 6, 2021

But even if Assange’s death is not the goal of the US and UK authorities, they have recklessly ensured that possibility grows ever more likely, and will continue to do so until they swiftly bring his incarceration and torture to an end.

*

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/ 

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Lawyers for Assange

The following research article will explore three forbidden weapons that were and are still being used against the Palestinian civilians of the besieged Gaza Strip. These weapons are the DIME, the Flechette Shells and the Vacuum Bomb. Furthermore, this research article will attempt to answer an important question: Why does Israel deliberately target Palestinian civilians?

The DIME Components

DIME shell stands for Dense Inert Metal Explosives, is supposedly a “low collateral damage” weapon that was developed by the US Air Force.[1] Already in 2006, the DIME weapon has been used by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. It has been dropped by Israeli drone aircraft.[2]

It should be pointed out that the chemical components of the DIME shell could not have become known to Palestinian physicians because Israel had destroyed Gaza’s only criminal laboratory on June 27, 2006, the first day of the siege.[3] This is indicative of the Zionist sinister future plans to use forbidden weapons against the Palestinian civilians and to keep the world in the dark including the Palestinians. However, after acquiring help from a group of Italian scientists and investigators, Palestinian physicians became aware of the chemical structure of the DIME shell whose extreme dangerous toxicity Israel was trying to conceal.

On October 19, 2006, a group of

“… Italian investigators had tissue samples from the victims in Gaza analyzed by Dr. Carmela Vaccaio at University Parma. Dr. Vaccaio reportedly found “a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials, such as copper, aluminum and tungsten.” The doctor concluded that her “findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question is DIME.”[4]

According to the spectrometry analyses of biopsies taken from amputation injuries of Palestinian patients from the Gaza Strip, and carried out by a group of Italian scientists affiliated with the New Weapons Research Committee (NWRC), the DIME shell included a combination of the following seventeen metals: “…aluminum, titanium, copper, strontium, barium, cobalt, mercury, vanadium, caesium, tin, arsenic, manganese, rubidium, cadmium, chromium, zinc and nickel…”[5] The combination of that many metals, including heavy metals, makes the DIME shell an extremely toxic chemical weapon and a highly dangerous one.

It should be pointed out that the “DIME weapons consist of a carbon fiber casing filled with a mixture of explosives and very dense microshrapnel, consisting of very small particles (1–2 mm) or powder of a heavy metal…”[6] When it explodes, DIME bombs blast a superheated “micro-shrapnel” of powdered heavy metal tungsten alloy.[7]

The DIME Health Hazards

The initial reports on the health hazards of the DIME bomb came out few months after Israel began to use it in the summer of 2006.  Dr. Jom’a Al-Saqqa, chief of the emergency unit at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, observed that the DIME was “a new ‘chemical’ weapon” and Israeli siege was “a live exercise on a new ammunition that, so far, has resulted in killing 50 Palestinians and injuring 200.” He added that, “despite the damage in internal soft tissue in the bodies of injured people, the fragments were not detected by X-ray. In other words, they had disappeared or dissolved inside the body.”[8]

Dr. Al-Saqqa, a surgeon by profession, continued his observation by adding that “There were usually entry and exit wounds. When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There was tissue death, the extent of which was difficult to determine. … A higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of amputation there was a higher mortality.”[9]

Moreover, Dr. Al-Saqqa, added the following observation on the death-causing health impact of the DIME weapon.

“When the shrapnel hit[s] the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues around the bones…it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, and the spleen and other organs and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon.”[10]

Dr Joma Al-Saqqa, chief of the emergency unit at Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa added that, “despite the damage in internal soft tissue in the bodies of injured people, the fragments were not detected by X-ray. In other words, they had disappeared or dissolved inside the body.”[11]

Another witnessing surgeon is Dr. Habas al-Wahid, the Palestinian head of the Emergency Unit at Gaza’s Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital. He made the following shocking observation. “Israel’s new weapon “slices” off its victims’ legs, leaving “signs of heat and burns near the point of the amputation”. It’s “as if a saw was used to cut through the bone…”[12]

Due to the penetration of the body by a number of heavy metals, this situation produces “[m]ultiple syndromes of heavy metal poisoning …” in addition it produces “…polycythemia, which can be induced by cobalt overdose.”[13] Polycythemia is “… a type of blood cancer that causes the bone marrow to make too many red blood cells, a health case that thickens the blood, slowing its flow, and a development which may cause serious problems, such as blood clots. Furthermore, Polycythemia produces cancer of the blood and bone marrow, namely acute leukemia.[14]

It should be pointed out that “[t]he whole Gaza population and their environment, including generations yet to be conceived, have been put at risk of serious long-term injury from heavy metal pollution of the air, soil and groundwater (and possibly the seawater too), while the causal pollution is likely to cross state borders into Egypt and even into Israel…”[15]

As a direct result of use by Israel of forbidden chemical weapons, all sorts of cancer cases have increased in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has revealed that in the beginning of 2019, there were 8,515 cancer patients inside the Gaza Strip, including 4,705 women and 608 children. Cancer “Patients’ in the Gaza Strip suffer from the permanent shortage of equipment, drugs and medical supplies as a result of Israel’s stifling 12-year siege of  the enclave.”[16] They also suffer from denial of exit permits to children cancer patients and their companions for treatment abroad.[17] Other cancer patients are denied any medical treatment. According to the World Health Organization “Getting a permit to access the health care needed outside can be a stressful and unpredictable process, and many apply multiple times before being able to exit. Even then, some patients are never able to secure the permits they need to access care”[18]

These health hazards caused by the use of DIME shells by Israel constitute war crimes. The Israeli generals who were responsible for them are among others, Beni Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi, the leaders of the Blue White Israeli party. Ex-prime minister Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, his defense minister are also war criminals. Due to the fact that these war crimes have continued to take place also under the present Israeli government, Benyamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Beni Gantz are also war criminals.

The Flechette Shell Components

The Flechette shell is “…made out of steel and had a very sharp pointy end… For increased aerodynamics, they featured fins on their other end – most likely to increase the speed of descent.”[19] It explodes in the air and releasesapproximately 2,200 flechettes.[20] The metal darts disperse in a conical arch three hundred meters long and about ninety meters wide. It is considered an anti-personnel weapon that is generally fired from a tank.[21] On impact, the Flechette darts are “… capable of penetrating a combatant from head to foot and creating an instantly incapacitating wound…”[22]

One of the hazardous developments that take place is that the “… head of the dart is designed to break away. Having penetrated inside a person, this breakage inflicts a second wound per single dart entry, multiplying the amount of internal damage done by the razor-like darts…”[23]

The Health Hazards of the Flechette Shell

Israel has, numerously, used the Flechette shells in the Gaza Strip. During the war of 2008-2009, Israeli tanks assaulted Palestinian civilians with Flechette shells. There were a number of Palestinian victims of the Flechette shells. The following is the story of two Palestinian medics who were victims of the Flechette shell.

… In the initial shelling that day, Hammad lost his foot when Israeli tanks fired at, according to Hammad, a region filled with terrified civilians fleeing Israeli bombing. His friend Ali was shot in the head while trying to evacuate Hammad. The medics then arrived. Abd al-Dayem and Sarhan had loaded Hammad into the ambulance and were going to retrieve Ali’s body when the flechette shell was fired at the medics and fleeing civilians. Ali was decapitated…[24]

According to Palestinian traditions, parents and relatives of a deceased person usually hold two mourning houses, one for men and another for women. These mourning ceremonies are held outside the house so they can accommodate the largest possible gathering of mourners.

The Palestinian medic Jamal Abd al-Dayem explained what happened at the mourning ceremonies that were held for his late cousin Arafa Abd al-Dayem, the 35-year-old paramedic who died as a result “… of slashes to his lungs, limbs and internal organs.”[25]

After my cousin Arafa was martyred on 4 January, we immediately opened mourning houses, with separate areas for men and women. The next day, at 9:30am the Israelis struck the mourning area where the men were. It was clearly a mourning house, on the road, open and visible. Immediately after the first strike, the Israelis hit the women’s mourning area.” Two strikes within 1.5 minutes, he reported.[26]

The former four Flechette shelling incidents clearly show that the Israeli army is systematically and deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians. They cannot be dismissed as misguided targeting or mistakes. These are repetitive similar shellings of Flechettes that targeted civilians. We should pose the following question. If the Israeli army have on numerous occasions, deliberately targeted civilians, there should be reasons for that.

According to Dr. Bassam al-Masari, a surgeon at Beit Lahiya’s Kamal Adwan hospital, Flechette darts have caused “… more injuries than other bombs precisely because they spread in a larger area. And while the darts appear innocuously small, their velocity and design enable them to bore through cement and bones and “cut everything internal…”[27] Al-Masri added that “… their velocity and design enable them to bore through cement and bones and “cut everything internal…” Accordingly, the prime cause of death is severe internal bleeding from slashed organs, particularly the heart, liver and brain. Brain injuries are the most fatal…[28]

They Target Schools, don’t they?

It is noticeable that, during the past twelve years, Israeli air raids and shelling have targeted a number of civilian facilities inside the Gaza Strip. These facilities included schools, universities, hospitals, medical clinics, mosques, markets, shopping centers, factories, farms, banks, mourning cites, warehouses, a power station, and other essential civilian infrastructure. The following is a partial review of actual incidents.

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians who were forced out from their apartments and houses by the Zionist army, sought refuge inside UNRWA schools thinking that they would be in a safe haven. Nevertheless, Zionist criminal generals thought otherwise.

Author Mike Head reported that, “At least 20 Palestinians were killed and about 90 injured early on Wednesday, including UN workers, when Jabalia Elementary Girls School in Gaza City, which was sheltering 3,300 families, was hit by three artillery shells.”[29] Was it a mistake?

What happened to one UNRWA school was revealed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who reported that “… the exact location of this elementary school has been communicated to the Israeli military authorities 17 times…”[30] yet the Israeli army attacked the school and a number of Palestinians were killed and wounded.

Despite this evidence and during the 2014 war, US President Barak Obama claimed to be “extremely concerned” about the killing of people in UN designated shelters. At the same time Obama accused Hamas of hiding weapons in UN facilities.[31] By accusing Hamas of “hiding weapons in UN facilities” he reiterated Zionist lies and provided a justification for Zionist criminal bombing of UNRWA schools.

Author Vincent Di Stefano reported that until Dec 2010, “Seven schools in Gaza were totally destroyed, and 135 were substantially damaged. The Al-Azhar University of Gaza was reduced to rubble. Hospitals, medical clinics and Red Crescent warehouses were all targeted…”[32]

The author added that

“It was the second attack, and the sixth strike, on a UN school since Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began on July 8. Last week, 15 people died and about 200 were wounded when another UN school, in Beit Hanoun, was hit as the playground was filled with families awaiting evacuation.”[33]

Author Vincent Di Stefano concluded that “…By deliberately targeting UN schools, [Israel] is sending a chilling message: no one in Gaza is safe from ‘Operation Protective Edge.’…”[34]

In another criminal incident, “… three air strikes killed 15 people and injured 150 in a market area on the outskirts of Shujaiyah. As smoke billowed from the initial air strike, witnesses said emergency services and civilians rushed to help the victims, only to be hit by a further two air strikes minutes later.[35] Was this incident a mistake?

In another criminal assault that was reported by the British Guardian, we quote the following.

During the 2009 war, Mounir a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip reported the following story. While he was sitting around with his family drinking tea in their small courtyard, he heard the loud buzzing of an Israeli drone, clearly visible in the sky above. “He went inside for a moment and, as he returned, he saw a ball of light hurtling down toward him. There was a loud explosion and he was thrown backward. He gathered himself and stumbled out into the courtyard, where he saw the scene he says will never leave him.”[36] In his own words, Mounir described what happened to members of his family by saying: “We found Mohammed lying there, cut in half. Ahmed was in three pieces; Wahid was totally burnt – his eyes were gone. Wahid’s father was dead. Nour had been decapitated. We couldn’t see her head anywhere.”[37] Mounir continued by relating. “You cannot imagine the scene: a family all sitting around together and then, in a matter of seconds, they were cut to pieces. Even the next day we found limbs and body parts on the roof, feet and hands,” Mounir says.[38] Was this incident a mistake?

Despite these deliberate criminal incidents, the Israeli colonial army, as well as, Israeli colonial politicians claim that “… the IDF … intensively trained its personnel on the requirements of the Law of Armed Conflict. It delayed, diverted, or refrained from attacks to spare civilian life. It provided numerous and varied types of concrete warnings before launching attacks.”[39] As reported earlier, concrete evidence points to the contrary.

In addition to schools, Israeli military strikes targeted residential and public structures thus producing utter destruction. Author, Patrick O’Conner reported that “…At least 5,000 homes have been destroyed and more than 20,000 damaged, with many urban centers reduced to nothing more than rubble…”[40]

Moreover, Israeli military assaults targeted public structures. “… The parliament and cabinet buildings in Gaza City were destroyed, as was the city’s police headquarters, the Bank of Palestine building, the main university, several mosques…”[41], and six major water wells were damaged or destroyed.[42] In addition, Gaza’s water and electricity networks were destroyed by the Israeli army.[43]

Israeli war crimes that took place in the Gaza Strip during the last three wars was an election issue adopted by former Israeli army chief, Benny Gantz. He produced an election video for his party in which he bragged about killing 1,364 Palestinians and returning parts of the Gaza Strip to the stone ages.[44] Gantz admits responsibility for these war crimes but is ready to use his crimes as means to win the votes of racist Israelis.

Moreover, on Thursday, August 9, 2018 the Said al-Mishal Centre, a cultural center in Gaza housing the region’s second-largest theater, was bombed by Israeli military forces. The five-floor edifice housed a library, an Egyptian community center, offices for cultural associations, and a theater for arts and dabkeh.[45]

As usual, the Zionist army claimed that the center “… was being used by “the Hamas terror organization for military purposes”[46], an evidence that has never been proved.

Moreover, during the war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Zionist President Shimon Peres met with a delegation from AIPAC, the American Zionist lobby. In his speech to the delegation, Peres admitted that “… Israel’s aim, … was to provide a strong blow to the people of Gaza so that they would lose their appetite for shooting at Israel…”[47] That was a clear admission that the Zionist army deliberately and systematically targets Palestinian civilians.

One here should pause and ask the following question: Why the Israeli military, target Palestinian civilians in its aggressive wars? This is an attempted answer.

In the last three Israeli wars against the Gaza Strip, Israeli shelling deliberately targeted schools including UNRWA schools, market places, mourning houses and packed houses. This policy has been also implemented in Lebanon, and in Egypt during the Israeli bombardments in the seventies. The Israeli sinister logic behind this criminal policy is this: if you maximize civilian losses, civilians will stop backing Hamas or Hizballah. This faulty logic produced a systematic and deliberate policy of “mini” Zionist massacres. The shelling of civilian structures that are fully packed with people cannot be dismissed as mistakes nor as acted out in self-defense. So, the final aim of the Zionist aggressive colonial policy of choosing these targets, is to maximize civilian killings and terrorize the civilian population in order to force civilians to submit to Zionist colonial policies.

Components of the Vacuum Bomb

The Vacuum Bomb, named also the fuel–air explosive (FAE) is a type of explosive that depends on the use of two highly toxic fuels ethylene oxide and propylene oxide.[48] Once they detonate, they use the oxygen from the “… surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. In practice, the blast wave typically produced by such a weapon is of a significantly longer duration than that produced by a conventional condensed explosive…”[49]

Once the Vacuum Bomb explodes,

“… the area around the explosion becomes overpressurized, resulting in highly compressed air particles that travel faster than the speed of sound. This wave will dissipate over time and distance and will exist only for a matter of milliseconds. This initial blast wave inflicts the most damage…”[50]

After explosion,

“… the bomb casing, as well as any additional shrapnel (nails, screws or other items included in the bomb), will be violently thrown outward and away from the explosion. When these fragments strike buildings, concrete, masonry, glass and even people, they may fragment even further — and cause even more damage…”[51]

The developments that immediately take place after the explosion are extremely dangerous because of the intensity in the creation of the vacuum and its immediate refill by the surrounding atmosphere. They were described by the author Tom Scheve in the following manner:

At the explosion site, a vacuum is created by the rapid outward movement of the blast. This vacuum will almost immediately refill itself with the surrounding atmosphere. This creates a very strong pull on any nearby person or structural surface after the initial push effect of the blast has been delivered. As this void is refilled, it creates a high-intensity wind that causes fragmented objects, glass and debris to be drawn back in toward the source of the explosion.[52]

It should be pointed out that chemical structure, the explosions, the consumption of the surrounding oxygen, and the vacuum creation, all lead to a number of health hazards.

Health Hazards of Vacuum Bombs

When it explodes, the Vacuum Bomb, “… predominantly affects the pulmonary, cardiovascular, auditory, gastrointestinal, and central nervous systems…”[53]

Moreover, there are a number of internal injuries that are caused by the health hazards of the vacuum bomb explosion. They could be showed as follows:

…”the effect of an FAE explosion within confined spaces is immense. Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness.”[54]

In short, Vacuum Bombs are highly dangerous weapons that should be treated as forbidden weapons that should not be dropped on highly populated localities like the Gaza Strip. Despite this, the consecutive Israeli governments have been using these dangerous weapons against the Palestinian civilians since 2006.

Could It Be Genocide?

Al-Dameer, a Palestinian human rights organization, had published on 20 December 2009  “… another paper in Arabic on the increase in the number of babies born in Gaza with birth defects, thought to be the result of radioactive and toxic materials from Operation Cast Lead. The birth defects included incomplete hearts and malformations of the brain…”[55]

The conglomeration of Zionist war crimes caused by the use of forbidden weapons, the colonial siege of the Gaza Strip, the deliberate undernourishment of the Gazan Palestinians to the point of severe hunger, the criminal colonial Israeli policy of denying medical permits and restricting the importation of medicines to Gaza, the policy of shoot to kill at Gaza’s borders with the Zionist entity – all these policies and war crimes might very likely lead to genocide. But what is genocide according to International Law?

Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements[56]:

1. • 1. A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and
     2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
2. Killing members of the group;
3. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
4. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
5. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
6. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Throughout this research article, we have clearly encountered evidence of war crimes in the first four categories. However, the fifth category has not been so far committed by Israel. So, based on this evidence, the Palestinian civilian authorities can submit a demand to the United Nations relevant bodies to force Israel to become accountable for committing these war crimes.

Israel has violated a number of international laws and has violated a number of UN conventions, and resolutions. Due to American hegemony on the Security Council and the use of the veto power Israel was not held accountable for its violations. The Israelis actually admit these violations but they have a criminal way of looking at them. According to the Israeli violators:

If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries. … International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy.[57]

This is the sick logic of settler colonialists that are armed and supported by Western imperialism. The American imperialists not only do that but they obstruct the work of the Security Council to prevent it from holding Israel accountable for its war crimes. However, this misconduct does not make Israel innocent because its war crimes cannot be hidden, forgotten, permitted or deleted. Israeli war crimes are strongly imprinted in the black annals of human history.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr. Zuhair Sabbagh teaches sociology at Birzeit University in the colonized West Bank. He is a resident of Nazareth, Palestine. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Manchester and is author of a number of books and research articles.

Notes

[1] As quoted by Brooks, James “Starve Them; Shoot Them; then Give Them Cancer: An Inquiry into Israel’s use of DIME weaponry in of the Gaza Strip”, Vermonters for a Just Peace, https://vtjp.org, 22-1-2009

[2] Ma’an News, “Palestinian injuries suggest Israel is using chemical weapons in Gaza”, http://www.maannews.net 7-10-2006 and Shaoul, Jean, “Israel used chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza”, Centre for Research on Globalization, http://wsws.org, 24-110-2006. As quoted by Brooks, James, “US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon”, Media Monitors Network, http://cosmos.ucc.ie, 4-12-2006

[3] Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, “Israel ’is using chemical ammunition’ in Gaza”, http://www.globalresearch.ca, 13-6-2006. As quoted by Brooks, James “US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon”, Media Monitors Network, http://cosmos.ucc.ie, 4-12-2006

[4] Brooks, James, “US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon”, Media Monitors Network, http://cosmos.ucc.ie, 4-12-2006

[5] Halpin, David, “Are New weapons Being Used in Gaza and Lebanon”, Electronic Intifada, http://electronicintifada.net, 14-8-2006. As quoted by Lightbown, Richard,  “Israel’s Weapons: A Crime on Humanity”, https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com, 1-5-2011.

[6] Wikipedia,” Dense Inert Metal Explosive”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Accessed 5-12-2020

[7] Brooks, James, op. cit.

[8] Al Baik, Duraid, “Israel ’is using chemical ammunition’ in Gaza”, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, http://www.globalresearch.ca, 13-6-2006. As quoted by Brooks, James, “US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon”, Media Monitors Network, http://cosmos.ucc.ie, 4-12-2006

[9] Halpin, David, Are New Weapons Being Used In Gaza and Lebanon, Electronic Intifada, http://electronicintifada.net, 14-8-2006 and Palestine News Network, Ministry of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, http://www.pnn.ps, 13-7-2006. As quoted by Brooks, James, “US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon”, Media Monitors Network, http://cosmos.ucc.ie, 4-12-2006

[10] “Doctors Report Unusual Weapon Used in Gaza”, Pacifica/Free Speech Radio News,  http://www.pacifica.org, 11-7-2006. As quoted by Brooks, James, “US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon”, Media Monitors Network, http://cosmos.ucc.ie, 4-12-2006

[11] Ibid.

[12] “Italian TV: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip”, Israeli daily Ha’aretz, 10/19/2006 http://www.haaretz.com, 19-10-2006. As quoted by Brooks, James, “US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon”, Media Monitors Network, http://cosmos.ucc.ie, 4-12-2006

[13] Kalinich et al, “Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats”, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005, http://www.ehponline.org. As quoted by Brooks, James, “US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon”, Media Monitors Network, http://cosmos.ucc.ie, 4-12-2006

[14] Mayo Clinic Staff, “Polycythemia vera”, https://www.mayoclinic.org. Accessed on: 1-1-2021

[15] Lightbown, Richard,  “Israel’s Weapons: A Crime on Humanity”, https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com, 1-5-2011

[16] Middle East Monitor, “8,515 cancer patients in Gaza “https://www.middleeastmonitor.com, 5-2-2019

[17] Nedaa Alabadla, King-Hadduck, and Kevin, Edward, TEAM FUNDRAISER, “Cancer Patients in the Gaza”, https://www.gofundme.com. ACCESSED 12-12-2020

[18] WHO, “Palestinian cancer patients in Gaza wait months for Israel permits”,  https://www.middleeastmonitor.com, 6-2-2019

[19] Chambers, Jay, “Meet the Flechette – the Deadliest Weapon of World War I?”, https://www.historyandheadlines.com, 22-1-2020

[20] Centaurs in Vietnam, “Rockets”, http://centaursinvietnam.org. Accessed 8-12-2020

[21] Btselem, “Firing of Flechette shell that killed Reuters cameraman violates laws of war”, https://www.btselem.org, 17-4-2008

[22] Sabot Designs LLC, “Flechette Shotgun Amunition”, http://www.sabotdesigns.com. Accessed 8-12-2020

[23] Bartlett, Eva, “Ensuring maximum casualties in Gaza”, The Electronic Intifada, http://electronicintifada.net, 16-3-2009

[24] Bartlett, Eva, “Ensuring maximum casualties in Gaza”, The Electronic Intifada, http://electronicintifada.net, 16-3-2009

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Head, Mike, “US rearms Israel as its war crimes mount in Gaza”, https://www.wsws.org, 31-7-2014

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Di Stefano, Vincent, “And What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Gaza”, https://www.commondreams.org, 25-12-2010

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Chassay, Clancy, “Cut to pieces: the Palestinian family drinking tea in their courtyard”, https://www.theguardian.com, 23-3-2009

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Cook, William A., Now Israel Is Free to Declare Its Innocence before the International Court of Justice”, http://salem-news.com, 15-4-2011

[40] O’Connor, Patrick , “Reports reveal devastation wreaked by Israeli military in Gaza”, https://www.wsws.org, 20-1-2009

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Abunimah, Ali, “Israeli election ad boasts Gaza bombed back to stone ages”, https://electronicintifada.net, 21-1-2019

[45] Weber, Jasmine,  “Palestinian Cultural Center Destroyed by Israeli Military in Recent Attacks”, https://hyperallergic.com, 10-8-2018.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Fay Cashman, Greer, “’Solidarity during war is Israel’s finest hour’”, https://www.jpost.com, 14-1-2009

[48] Wikipedia, “Thermobaric weapon”,  https://en.wikipedia.org. Accessed 9-12-2020

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Andr, David, “MUNITIONS – Thermobaric Munitions and their Medical Effects”, https://jmvh.org. Accessed 4-1-2021

[54] Wikipedia, “Thermobaric weapon”,  https://en.wikipedia.org. Accessed 9-12-2020

[55] Salam, Kawther, “Abortions, Cancer, Diseases and…in Gaza”,  http://www.intifada-palestine.com, 29 December 2009. As quoted by Lightbown, Richard,  “Israel’s Weapons: A Crime on Humanity”, https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com, 1-5-2011

[56] United Nations, “Genocide”, https://www.un.org, 2-1-2021

[57] “Israel: Transforming International Law by Violating It”, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/4/09. As quoted by Di Stefano, Vincent, “And What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Gaza”, https://www.commondreams.org, 25-12-2010

“Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”

– Neil Gaiman [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

So what was the biggest story of 2020?

I don’t think a lot of our listener audience will disagree with the view that a little coronavirus which goes by the name SARS-CoV-2 could be the star performer in the world’s ‘plaque of the year’ drama!

As it turns out, the germ which is responsible for COVID-19 is replacing all other contenders for the role of Humanity’s number one threat. Not only does this tiny menace get a daily mention in city newspaper’s death toll, we mark the number of people who tested positive.

In fact, for the first time in history, many, many cities and countries are shutting right down, masking themselves, social distancing and eagerly waiting for the magic elixir, the COVID vaccine, to come to their rescue.

Who or what can possibly top that?

The story is about more than citizens of every country getting sick. It has altered how children are educated. It deflated early on the popularity of Donald Trump. It forced nations into debt as they coped with the situation. And in a recent report, according to Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), America’s 651 billionaires combined saw their wealth collectively grow from $1 Trillion from the beginning of the outbreak to roughly $4 Trillion as of December 7, 2020!

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, we are going to take a look, not only at COVID, but how it impacts our lives in so many new ways.

Our first guest, Patrick Henningsen, takes a look at how COVID altered journalism, internet research and shut down our society, while looking ahead to where this will lead us in 2021. A little later, the Global Research News Hour reads a section of Dmitry Orlov’s latest article which assesses where the US has a chance of waging a war.

For our second half hour, Andy Lee Roth joins us for his annual review of Project Censored’s latest publication and a list of the most censored stories of 2020. Following that, the Global Research News Hour mentions a brief assessment of the horrific events on Capitol Hill on Wednesday January 6 in the context of the previous discussions.

Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, occasional co-host of UK Column and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting in the Middle East including work in Syria and Iraq.

Dmitry Orlov is a Russian-American writer, blogger and geopolitical analyst based in Moscow. He has degrees in Computer Engineering and Linguistics and has worked in the fields of high energy physics, internet commerce, advertising and network security. He is the author of Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects and Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a Grip on the Technologies that Limit our Autonomy, Self-sufficiency and Freedom. His blog site is cluborlov.com.

Andy Lee Roth, is the Associate Director of Project Censored, a media research program which fosters student development of media literacy and critical thinking skills as applied to news media censorship in the United States.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 301)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Notes:

1. Neil Gaiman’s Journal: My New Year Wish; journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/12/my-new-year-wish.html

GR Editor’s Note

With regard to the coverage of the Wednesday Capitol Event, Global Research will be publishing opposing and contradictory points of view by several of our authors.

We are dealing with a complex and far-reaching political process. We are at the crossroads of a major political, economic and social crisis which has bearing on the future of the United States. This crisis much be the object of debate and analysis rather than confrontation of opposing political narratives.

***

A highly contested presidential election on November 3 coupled with the outcome of the runoff poll in Georgia which is determining the power relations within the United States Senate, has undoubtedly prompted further desperate acts by the supporters of outgoing President Donald J. Trump.

In Georgia, both Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, won the elections against Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, sending the firsts African American and Jewish American to the Senate from the southern state.

Official results indicate that the elections were extremely close leaving less than one percent differences between the contending candidates. Such a narrow margin of victory was predictable considering the significance of the race to the overall political character of the administrative and legislative branches of the U.S.

The Georgia senatorial race was a focus of attention both nationally and internationally. When the two elected officials are sworn in the composition of the body will be 50-50, divided evenly between Republicans, Democrats and at least one Independent, Bernie Sanders, who typically votes with the Democratic bloc, while running for president twice on the Democratic ticket.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would serve as president of the Senate and would be in a position to break any numerical ties over legislation within the structure. With this set of circumstances, many people believe that measures needed to provide relief to millions impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and working families in general, could be adopted. For example, The Heroes’ Act, passed last year by the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives, would allocate much larger stimulus packages for the working class and small business interests.

Legal challenges aimed at defeating voter suppression efforts in Georgia were key to the victories of Ossoff and Warnock. The turnout among African Americans was critical to the defeat of both Republican candidates as they refused to denounce the Trump administration and its attacks on the electoral process in the state, which is administered by officials belonging to the same party as the president.

Two organizations behind the record turnout among African American and other members of the electorate in Georgia were Black Voters Matter (BVM) and the New Georgia Project (NGP). Black Voters Matter was formed in 2016 by Latosha Brown and Cliff Albright who waged a struggle to ensure that African Americans previously stripped from electoral rolls got an opportunity to cast their ballots. (See this and this)

The organization says that it is not an electoral group. They say that BVM is a power-building organization which views the electoral process as one of many mechanisms utilized to build political strength within the African American communities long ignored and disenfranchised.

In addition, BVM notes that the pursuit of political offices is inadequate absent of economic power. The group targets existing organizational structures within the community to promote voter registration and long-term political participation. BVM goes directly into urban, suburban and rural areas to advance its program of political education and empowerment.

2020 was a conjunctural period for African Americans and other oppressed peoples in the U.S. The failure to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House of Representatives emboldened the president and his supporters. The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted the African American and Latin American communities while many were left jobless, without health insurance and facing foreclosure and eviction. During subsequent months, the country erupted in protests and civil unrest against racism and police brutality.

In a recent interview with Latosha Brown, she noted that:

“I think it’s quite simple. I mean, I think the name of my organization says it all. It’s three words: Black Voters Matter. And I think that after we saw a state like Georgia, that had been solid Republican, flip in November, I think it opened up an avenue for people to see what was possible, that it was no longer a question or a debate whether Black voters, in fact, matter. People felt a sense of momentum, that part of that win opened up this space around what would be possible. … We wanted people, we wanted Black voters in particular, to feel a sense of their power and their agency, and in spite of all odds, what we could do in pushing this country forward.” (See this)

Right-wing Zealots Storm Capitol in Washington Attempting to Overturn Presidential Election Results

On the same day that it was announced that Ossoff and Warnock were winners in the Georgia senate races, thousands of supporters of Trump were already in Washington, D.C. in a failed attempt to force the House and Senate to nullify the votes of millions of people across several key states in the U.S. From its inception the rally and march were designed to stifle the democratic process and to literally deny the legitimacy of African American and other members of the electorate.

A rally at the White House addressed by Trump, members of his family and his chief legal representative Rudolph Giuliani, incited the crowd to march on the Capitol. Trump then returned to the White House while his supporters headed to the Capitol breaking through police barricades and storming the building.

The Senate was undergoing what is considered a ceremonial process of certifying the votes of the Electoral College. Soon enough the chambers of the House and Senate were ordered evacuated while neo-fascists agitators broke down doors, assaulted security and law-enforcement personnel, ripped down entrances to Congressional offices and stole federal property.

Four people were reported killed in the melee which lasted for hours. One woman was shot to death reportedly in an attempt to break into the House of Representative chambers. The circumstances involving the other three deaths were not immediately clear and attributed to medical issues.

Many people within progressive communities throughout the country, corporate media anchors and commentators, members of law-enforcement agencies outside the Capitol, former U.S. military officials, among others, asked important questions about events on January 6 in Washington. Where were the Capitol police, federal law-enforcement agencies, the National Guard and intelligence officers who were warned weeks in advance that Trump supporters, many of whom have a propensity for racist and neo-fascist violence, while stating emphatically that they were committed to descending on the nation’s capital to stage a coup against the electorate and members of Congress, when these same groupings attempted to carry out such a putsch?

It has been the reality of U.S. political culture that right-wing racists and neo-fascist groups overlap with law-enforcement. Trump has empowered police agencies across the country to ruthlessly suppress anti-racist demonstrations which swept the U.S. during the last few months in the aftermath of the brutal police and vigilante killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many others. Over two dozen people were killed during the mass demonstrations and rebellions during the spring, summer and fall. Thousands of others were injured and arrested while federal forces were ordered into municipalities throughout the U.S.

Numerous state and federal courts dismissed the false claims of the outgoing Trump administration that the elections were rigged in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket. Nonetheless, the baseless claims of systematic voter fraud are still being perpetuated by Trump and an assortment of right-wing news agencies and social media outlets.

Implications for a Post-Trump U.S. Society

At present it appears as if the attempted coup by the right-wing elements has failed leading up to the inauguration of the incoming administration on January 20. However, the threat of the organized racists and neo-fascists remains while the U.S. is facing the worst public health crisis in more than a century.

The public health crisis has spawned a precipitous economic downturn for millions of working class and oppressed peoples within the U.S. Notwithstanding the performance of the stock markets on Wall Street which are yielding huge profits for the top echelons of the ruling class, many people are left without funds for housing, food, healthcare, and other essentials required in a modern capitalist society.

Of course, the masses of working people and the nationally oppressed will have to organize independently to ensure their future amid the existing calamitous situation. The majority of people in the U.S. cannot rely on the Democratic Party leadership to carry out the necessary reforms needed to stabilize their lives.

Questions related to the pressing basic economic and social needs of the people within a capitalist system are without definitive answers under the status quo. The role of the police, military and intelligence forces in the perpetuation of class exploitation and national oppression cannot be effectively addressed by the incoming administration since the Biden-Harris ticket rejected the demands of the Black Lives Matter Movement in regard to the defunding, dismantling and restructuring of law-enforcement in the U.S.

The only real solution lies within the capacity of the masses to organize in their own interests. There is no future for the majority of people in the U.S. under capitalism. The transformation to a socialist system provides the only possibility for an end to economic exploitation, national oppression, institutional racism, political repression and for the realization of economic justice and social emancipation.

*

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

Even though I thought I had answered these questions, smart people whom I respect keep asking if the virus is real.  So here is another stab at answering this.

Yes, the virus is real.  A misleading CDC/FDA document originally written in February but reposted months later stated there was no quantifiable sample of SARS-CoV-2 available.  That is not true.  Here, CDC tells you how they cultured it and how you can get some–as long as your institution satisfies stringent criteria. CDC’s discussion of its culture technique was published in its own journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases.  The artice concludes:

We have deposited information on the SARS-CoV-2 USA-WA1/2020 viral strain described here into the Biodefense and Emerging Infections Research Resources Repository, ATCC and the World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses, University of Texas Medical Branch, to serve as the SARS-CoV-2 reference strain for the United States. The SARS-CoV-2 fourth passage virus has been sequenced and maintains a nucleotide sequence identical to that of the original clinical strain from the United States. These deposits make this virus strain available to the domestic and international public health, academic, and pharmaceutical sectors for basic research, diagnostic development, antiviral testing, and vaccine development. We hope broad access will expedite countermeasure development and testing and enable a better understanding of the transmissibility and pathogenesis of this novel emerging virus.

This virus has been isolated and fully sequenced 125,000 times in countries around the world, both by poor countries such as Nepal, as well as by richer countries such as South Korea and Australia.

A large number of people who don’t know a lot about viruses, but were cognizant of the nonsense the public is being fed about most other aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, understandably concluded there was no virus. Perhaps the government agencies that supplied the information from which they drew this conclusion did so cunningly, with the hope to entrap the unwary.

Thankfully, a New Zealand microbiology professor explains what took place as a result of poor wording in requests for information.

Some people still clamour that Koch’s Postulates have not been met wrt SARS-CoV-2–but they were met, as closely as possible, in animal models like the Golden Syrian hamster.  [Why are the Syrians always getting slammed?] You can’t infect a human to test Koch’s postulates, and then publish it, and not be arrested.

What about photomicrographs of SARS-CoV-2?  It turns out that some of the early photographs were misinterpretations by their authors and did NOT, in fact, provide reliable pictures of the virus. See this Correspondence in the Lancet about published photomicrographs that mistook endoplasmic reticulum for virus, for instance.  (Strangely enough, two of the coauthors of the fabricated Lancet paper damning chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were coauthors of a Lancet article and response that got photos of the virus wrong:  Mandeep Mehra and Frank Ruschitzka. They admitted no mistakes either time.)

But it seems that good pictures of the virus have been taken.  For instance, see figure 2 in this paper.

Please look at the links before dismissing the virus.  We have been given misinformation about masks, lockdowns, tests, case numbers, deaths, asymptomatic spread, proper treatment, etc.  But there truly is a mean new virus out there.  It looks like some nasty features were engineered in.

We have vitamins, minerals, and drugs that can effectively manage the infection, particularly when treated early.  I don’t doubt that environmental toxins and electromagnetic fields may increase our susceptibility to infection.  But there truly is a new coronavirus out there.  Our governments and health officials have simply done every single thing wrong to manage it, greatly prolonging and worsening the situation.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Anthrax Vaccine.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

GR Editor’s Note

With regard to the coverage of the Wednesday Capitol Event, Global Research will be publishing opposing and contradictory points of view by several of our authors.

We are dealing with a complex and far-reaching political process. We are at the crossroads of a major political, economic and social crisis which has bearing on the future of the United States. This crisis must be the object of debate and analysis rather than confrontation of opposing political narratives.

***

“Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.” H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and essayist, (in ‘Minority Report’, 1956, p. 207).

“Fascism: a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism, which is characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy.” Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, 2005 p. 32)

[Democracy] “…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth”. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th President of the United States, 1861-1865, in the Gettysburg Address, Nov. 19, 1863.

On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, the ugly face of fascism in action was seen in Washington D.C., when an unruly pro-Trump mob, incited and inflamed by an angry speech by outgoing President Donald Trump, stormed and rampaged through the U.S. Capitol, in an obvious attempted coup. This marked the lowest point in Mr. Trump’s chaotic presidency, a presidency ending with an attempt to stoke the fires of insurrection in the vain hope of remaining in power.

Let us get some perspective.

Just a few weeks after his inauguration, here is what I wrote about Mr. Donald Trump and about what to expect from his presidency, in an article titled ‘The Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump: A Threat to American Democracy and an Agent of Chaos in the World?:

“When 46.1% of Americans voted for Trump in November (2016) they did not know precisely ‘what they were buying’. They did not expect that the promised ‘change’ the Republican presidential candidate envisioned and promised was going to be, in fact, chaos’ and ‘turmoil’ in the U.S. government.”

President Donald Trump and his administration did turn out to be a threat to American democracy and a source of chaos in the world.

In 2019-20, the U.S. Republican-controlled Senate could have convicted Donald Trump, after the House had impeached him. The numerous examples of abuse of power and of obstruction of justice, which were outlined in the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report were undisputable. But, for obvious partisan expediency, the GOP-controlled Senate chose instead to acquit him in February 2020. In so doing, they shamed themselves in placing their party’s interests above their nation’s interests. It was left to the American electorate to complete the impeachment process of the sitting president, the third time an American president has been impeached, and they did just that on November 3rd 2020.

And presently, in his disgraceful way of leaving office, megalomaniac Donald Trump is as obnoxious and destabilizing as he was when he unexpectedly got into the White House. For weeks now, he has been focusing on trying to overturn Vice President Joe Biden’s election with false voter fraud claims, even though Biden won the popular vote by more than seven million ballots and the Electoral College with a margin of 306-232—a 56,9% majority. This incredible show is now over, and President-elect Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.

During his four-year mandate, President Donald Trump did not rise to the challenge of being the competent head of a democratic state. He has instead attempted to install an autocratic rule in American politics. If he had been reelected for a second term, it’s a sure bet that it would have been impossible to constrain him, and American institutions would have been seriously threatened. That he has not succeeded in his quest for autocratic power is something to be appreciated by anyone who values democracy.

What will Donald Trump the politician be remembered for?

In his last days in office, President Donald Trump has left the U.S. government in a state of semi-paralysis

Just before Christmas 2020, lame duck President Trump decided to play the Grinch. Senate Republicans had reached a compromise with Democratic senators on a $900 billion Relief bill for 14 million American families whose jobless benefits were running out. Seemingly out of pure spite against his fellow Republicans, Trump refused to sign the measure, thus creating a major humanitarian crisis. Then abruptly, after Christmas, he signed the bill, ending the damaging situation he had just created.

All the while, Donald Trump was playing swamp politics in dishing out close to 100 presidential pardons, (94 as of Dec. 25, 2020), to well-connected convicted friends, political allies and relatives, and even to some convicted murderers.

Donald Trump has done more to divide the American people than anyone else in a century and a half

Under Donald Trump, the United States has been weakened and is more polarized than it has been for decades. Such a deep division is fostered by new technologies, which allow people to isolate themselves in their own information universes. But Mr. Trump’s rhetoric of setting one group against another has also intensified such polarization and disintegration.

Donald Trump pushed the American justice system to the extreme by appointing hundreds of far right judges

It has been observed that Donald Trump’s appointees to the bench stand out from other judges for their ultra-conservative views, even compared to those named by other Republican presidents. This could have a lasting effect on the judiciary for generations.

Far from reducing corruption, Donald Trump has intensified it

In 2016, candidate Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp’ of corruption in American politics. Not only did he not fulfill that promise, he made things worse. Some analysts even conclude that he has been the “most corrupt” president in U.S. history.

Faced with the worst pandemic in a century, Donald Trump stumbled

As far as the Trump administration’s management of the Covid-19 crisis is concerned, the most that can be said is that it was not the work of a competent government. The President himself began by denying that there even was a crisis. In his words, it was only a ‘normal flu’. Then, when it became impossible to negate reality, Mr. Trump claimed that the pandemic crises was a ‘hoax’ engineered by the Democrats. Even when a vaccine became available, the vaccination program fell short and was widely criticized.

Donald Trump pushed income and wealth inequalities in the United States to record levels

The Trump administration, through deregulation and huge tax cuts for the rich, has done much to exacerbate income and wealth inequalities in the United States. Official data indicate that income inequality is the highest on record. It’s also higher than in any other advanced economy.

Similarly, the United States has wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed country. Today, wealth ownership in the United States is as heavily concentrated in the hands of a small minority of the population as it has ever been.

The record of the Trump administration’s policies on the environment is dismal

On June 1, 2017, when Donald Trump officially pulled the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, he placed the U.S. government squarely on the wrong side of history. This could be the most irresponsible decision that Mr. Trump made during his term in office. However, President-elect Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement on the first day of his presidency.

Mr. Trump adopted a host of other measures detrimental to the environment. As of mid-2020, the Trump administration had rolled back 64 environmental rules and regulations.

Trump’s foreign policies have been isolationist, militaristic, destructive and divisive

In international relations, Donald Trump succeeded in antagonizing allies and foes alike. According to Pew Research, the image of the United States under the Trump administration has been tarnished around the world, reaching a record low in 2020.

President Trump unilaterally pulled the United States from major treaties negotiated by previous administrations, most often without consulting Congress or allies: besides the Paris climate change treaty, the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement. It also pulled out of the Inter-Nuclear Forces (INF) arms control treaty with Russia. Mr. Trump often bypassed the United Nations, thus weakening the role of that institution in maintaining peace around the world.

It’s true that a major war against Iran, Venezuela or China has so far been avoided; but through provocations and increased animosity between nations, Donald Trump has sown the seeds for such a major war in the future, especially a war with China over Taiwan.

Donald Trump’s chaotic and scandalous departure from the White House is an attempt to sabotage the incoming Biden presidency

For many weeks, in a display of deranged behavior worthy of a banana republic, and in open violation of his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, President Donald Trump has refused to publicly concede the 2020 election to former Vice President Joe Biden. This undignified and petty attitude has shown how much the man can be mean-spirited and a sore loser.

This was amply demonstrated on January 2, when unbelievably, President Trump openly begged, pressured and threatened Georgia’s secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, into ‘finding him 11,780 votes’ in order to overturn the official electoral result in that state. (N.B.: Mr. Trump initially lost the presidential race in Georgia to President-elect Joe Biden by 11,779 votes; however, the result, after a final recounting, is that he lost by 12,670 votes.)

Such a quixotic request to an official in exercise to cheat and to invent votes was made during an hour-long recorded phone call made by the President, in a mob-style tone, and published by the Washington Post. It was a desperate last-ditch attempt, and possibly also an illegal one, to subvert the electoral process and to strong-arm a change in the outcome of the Nov. 3 election in his favor. Luckily, Mr. Raffensperger didn’t buckle.

U.S. courts have roundly dismissed Trump’s legal challenges to the November election results. His last attempt in the state of Georgia was even seen by most as absurd and a manufactured crisis.

If Donald Trump had intentionally wanted to sabotage and undermine the Biden presidency by not accepting the official results of the November election, he would not have acted differently. In so doing, however, Mr. Trump has created a dangerous precedent. His temper tantrums and his numerous court challenges of the election results have demeaned and done a lot to delegitimize the American electoral process. It has damaged the reputation of the United States around the world, and it has cast a long shadow on the future of American democracy.

On Monday Dec. 28, 2020, even as staunch a supporter of Donald Trump as the New York Post headlined an editorial with a clear message to Donald Trump: “Mr. President… STOP THE INSANITY.

That says it all!

Conclusion

The conclusion is inescapable. President Donald Trump’s legacy is a pile of rubble.

The American people were more than justified in voting Mr. Trump out in November 2020. In 2016, he didn’t really deserve to be elected in the first place, since he received 3 million fewer votes than his democratic rival, Ms. Hillary Clinton.

The pathetic display that Donald Trump demonstrated after his electoral defeat by openly clinging to power indicates that he went into politics not to serve but merely to please his ego. That’s not the type of politician a democracy needs. Probably Donald Trump’s worst political crime has been to promote violence in American politics for his own narrow personal advantage.

If Mr. Trump had known any history, he might have imitated outgoing President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908). Indeed, in the 1888 election, after winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College to Republican Sen. Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901), Cleveland wrote a personal letter to president-elect Harrison “to assure you of my readiness to do all in my power to make your accession to office easy and agreeable.”

Now the damage is done. Donald Trump’s name will forever be associated with demagoguery, violence and anarchy.

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International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles” of the book “The New American Empire“, and the recent book , in French, “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“. He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University.

GR Editor’s Note

With regard to the coverage of the Wednesday Capitol Event, Global Research will be publishing opposing and contradictory points of view by several of our authors.

We are dealing with a complex and far-reaching political process. We are at the crossroads of a major political, economic and social crisis which has bearing on the future of the United States. This crisis must be the object of debate and analysis rather than confrontation of opposing political narratives.

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A week before 1933 German general elections, a strategically timed Reichstag fire was falsely blamed on communists. 

In response to what happened, President Paul von Hindenburg signed an emergency decree. 

Civil liberties were suspended. Weimar Republic democracy died, and Hitler assumed power after enough Nazis were elected to assure it.

As the saying goes, the rest is history.

The fullness of time will tell what’s unclear now about Wednesday’s Capitol Hill violence while Congress was debating whether or not to certify November’s stolen election for Biden/Harris over Trump.

Make no mistake. The evidence showed that he won. Dem challengers lost, but things didn’t turn out that way.

Was Wednesday’s Capitol Hill riot an orchestrated scheme  to undermine congressional debate to elevate Biden/Harris to power, case closed?

Was what happened Wednesday an American Reichstag fire — a false flag — or an incident staged by over-the-top Trump supporters?

Note the unacceptable aftermath so far.

Twitter locked Trump’s account for 12 hours, threatening permanent blockage if his “offending” tweets aren’t removed.

Its unprecedented action against a head of state — perhaps urged by hostile-to-Trump dark forces — is a flagrant First Amendment right to free expression breach, without which all other rights are threatened.

Voltaire understood, saying: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Will the aftermath of what happened on Capitol Hill Wednesday one day be remembered as the beginning of the end of speech, media and academic freedom in the US?

What Trump tweets did Twitter consider offensive and remove? Here they are, saying:

“I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace. I know you’re in pain. I know you’re hurt.”

“We had an election that was stolen from us.”

“It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side.”

“But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order.”

“We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.”

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.”

“Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Facebook acted in unison with Twitter, removing Trump’s video and blocking him from posting for 24 hours — based on a Big Lie, claiming:

It was for “inciting violence” — polar opposite what Trump said in a videotaped message and tweets.

Instagram — owned by Facebook — responded the same way, instituting a 24-hour ban on postings by Trump.

Three of America’s most popular social media acted in cahoots to unconstitutionally silence Trump short-term, perhaps with longer-term aims in mind for others.

The anti-Trump NYT falsely accused him of “publish(ing) a string of inaccurate and inflammatory messages on a day of violence in the nation’s capital.”

Calls are growing to ban Trump from tweeting permanently. Notably he has 88.7 million followers.

With two weeks remaining in his tenure, over two dozen undemocratic Dems on Wednesday called for impeaching him again for reasons as unjustifiable as a year ago December.

Rep. Illhan Omar tweeted:

“Donald J. Trump should be impeached by the House of Representatives & removed from office by the United States Senate.”

“I am drawing up articles of impeachment.”

“Donald J. Trump should be impeached by the House of Representatives & removed from office by the United States Senate.”

“We can’t allow him to remain in office. It’s a matter of preserving our republic and we need to fulfill our oath (sic).”

Did she unwittingly call for destroying the republic to save it?

Along with Omar, the following House Dems also support impeachment:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Kai Kahele, David Cicilline, Seth Moulton, Jamaal Bowman, Mark Takano, Mondaire Jones, Bonnie Coleman, Earl Blumenauer, Steve Cohen, Pramila Jayapal, and Jennifer Wexton.

Dem Reps. Ted Lieu, Mark Pocan, and others called for invoking the 25th Amendment that states:

“In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.”

The Constitution’s Article II, Section 4 states that “(t)he President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Were Trump’s Wednesday tweets and video message against Capitol Hill violence an impeachable offense?

Clearly not! Will he be impeached again with days remaining in his term and become the first sitting US president to be removed from office this way?

John Adams once said that impeaching and removing a US president from office would cause a national convulsion.

Trump impeachment 2.0, if occurs, is highly likely to fail like the year-ago attempt for invented reasons.

What’s most important is the threat of where things may be heading.

Already an increasingly totalitarian police state, will full-blown tyranny follow?

Challenging a US president’s constitutionally guaranteed right of free expression threatens it for all Americans.

Will speech, media, and academic free expression that US ruling authorities find offensive henceforth be declared unlawful?

According to the Constitution, publicly stated views on all issues aren’t impeachable offenses — no matter how extreme, offensive or different from most others in government.

Will that standard be abolished ahead?

Were pro-Trump supporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday infiltrated by disruptive rioters to blame Trump for what happened, smoothing the was for Biden/Harris to assume power unobstructed by a legitimate GOP congressional challenge?

In response to what happened, establishment media blamed Trump and his supporters for attempting to destroy American values.

Unverified reports suggested that anti-Trump elements infiltrated Capitol Hill to incite violence for this purpose.

According to Real Clear Investigations reporter Paul Sperry, an unnamed former FBI special agent texted him to say that at least one “bus load” of anti-Trump elements were sent to Capitol Hill Wednesday as part of a planned false flag that unfolded.

One America News correspondent Jack Posobiec reported what he called eyewitness accounts of anti-government chants by elements, inciting the crowd of at least largely nonviolent Trump supporters.

False flags are a US tradition since the mid-19th century.

9/11 was the mother of them all until events of last year — what I call 9/11 2.0.

Seasonal flu/influenza renamed covid last year and what followed was responsible for economic collapse — the Greatest US Main Street Depression.

It caused unprecedented unemployment, under-employment, food insecurity, hunger, and overall deprivation with no end of it in prospect.

It’s part of a new millennium New World Order Great Reset, aiming to create ruler-serf societies in the US and worldwide if successful.

Trump apparantly was considered an obstacle to what dark forces have in mind so he had to go.

What may have been orchestrated Capitol Hill violence appears to have been the coup de grace to his tenure.

Anti-Trump NYT editors blamed him for Wednesday’s violence.

They falsely accused him of “incit(ing) his followers (sic),” adding:

“There must be consequences (sic)…(He) needs to be held accountable (sic) — through impeachment proceedings or criminal prosecution (sic).”

The Times and other hostile-to-Trump media — along with Dems — ignored the message his tweets and video urging nonviolence, reinventing his remarks.

After Dems Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were declared winners of Georgia’s US Senate run-off elections — giving the party White House, Senate and House control later this month, Biden said the following:

Wednesday’s Capitol Hill violence “borders on sedition (sic)…It’s not protest (sic). It’s insurrection (sic)” — demand(ing) (Trump) end” what he didn’t incite.

What may have been orchestrated violence on Wednesday perhaps indeed was a coup de grace to make Trump a one-term president.

As of now, it’s virtually certain — even though he legitimately won. Biden/Harris lost.

Yet on January 20, he’ll return to private life after they’re illegitimately inaugurated to replace him.

It’s further evidence of fantasy US democracy, never the real thing from inception.

A Final Comment

Overnight, Election 2020 officially ended after Congress “certified” Biden/Harris’ win (sic).

Over half of Republicans joined with Dems.

Events on Capitol Hill Wednesday shifted uncertainty to there never was any doubt.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

Howard Lichtman joins us today to introduce ThickRedLine.org, an effort to restore respect for law enforcement by abolishing victimless crime.

ThickRedLine seeks to upend the narrative that keeps the public afraid of breaking the unlawful orders of the politicians and prevents officers from following their own conscience.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video above

Mike Pence’s Letter on the Issue of Certification

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