When people become desperate enough, those in power can get most of them to do just about anything. The first wave of lockdowns knocked us into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it sent suicide rates soaring all over the globe, and it plunged millions upon millions of ordinary citizens into a deep state of despair. Now another wave of lockdowns is being instituted all over the planet, and this is going to perfectly set the stage for the “solutions” that the elite plan to offer all of us in 2021.
It has been said that if you want people to be willing to accept a solution, first you have to make them realize that they have a problem.
And once this “dark winter” finally ends, almost everybody will be absolutely desperate to return to their “normal” lives.
With each passing day, more extremely harsh restrictions are being imposed. For example, a brand new “stay at home order” was just issued in Los Angeles County…
All public and private gatherings with anyone outside a single household are now banned in Los Angeles County, as most of the country grapples with an unprecedented surge of Covid-19.
The ban will last three weeks, starting Monday and ending December 20.
It would be nice if the lockdown actually does get lifted before the end of the year, but for at least the next three weeks all 10 million people living in L.A. County will be forced “to stay home as much as possible”…
All 10 million residents are asked to stay home as much as possible and wear face masks when outside — even when exercising at the beach and parks, said the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which issued the order last week.
On top of that, California Governor Gavin Newsom is warning that he may soon impose “much more dramatic, arguably drastic” restrictions for the entire state…
California Gov Gavin Newsom just warned that more drastic steps could be taken to contain the virus after the state reported another 15k+ new cases yesterday. The Golden State could be facing “much more dramatic, arguably drastic” measures to contain the spread of the virus. The state also broke its record for hospitalized patients yesterday: The state reported 7,415 coronavirus hospitalizations, with more than 1,700 of those patients in ICUs. The number of hospitalizations broke the state’s previous record of 7,170 in July.
Unfortunately, we are witnessing similar craziness all over the nation. In New Mexico, the new restrictions that were just instituted created so much panic that people were soon waiting for hours just to get into a supermarket to shop for food…
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has put immense pressure on businesses with her “abrupt” lockdown order – forcing “nonessential” businesses to close and creating what has been dubbed “modern breadlines” — with people waiting 2-4 hours to enter essential retailers, former GOP Senate candidate Elisa Martinez explained during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
After seeing what the first round of lockdowns did to our nation, why would these politicians want to do it again?
More than 70 million Americans have filed unemployment claims so far in 2020, more than 40 million could be facing eviction in 2021, and there has been a dramatic spike in suicides during this pandemic.
When a 90-year-old woman named Nancy Russell found out that another lockdown was happening in her area, she decided to opt for assisted suicide…
According to CTV News, a 90-year-old woman living in Toronto took her own life via medically assisted suicide, the choice made in large part due to the second surge of coronavirus cases and a looming period of increased restrictions.
As I keep reminding my readers, there is always hope if you look at the bigger picture and suicide is never the answer to anything.
Unfortunately, most people are not getting a message of hope from the mainstream media, and Russell decided that the months ahead were going to be too bleak in her nursing home for her to be able to handle…
Residents eat meals in their rooms, have activities and social gatherings cancelled, family visits curtailed or eliminated. Sometimes they are in isolation in their small rooms for days. These measures, aimed at saving lives, can sometimes be detrimental enough to the overall health of residents that they find themselves looking into other options.
Just as we are hitting a low point with this pandemic, authorities all over the globe are announcing that vaccines will soon be available.
In fact, it is being reported that as many as ten different vaccines could be available by the middle of 2021…
Ten COVID-19 vaccines could be available by the middle of next year if they win regulatory approval, but their inventors need patent protection, the head of the global pharmaceutical industry group said on Friday.
As soon as the public can get them, it is inevitable that millions upon millions of people will rush out to get their shots so that they can return to their “normal” lives.
But what they aren’t telling you is that these new vaccines are entirely different from vaccines that you may have gotten previously.
When Moderna was just finishing its Phase I trial, The Independent wrote about the vaccine and described it this way: “It uses a sequence of genetic RNA material produced in a lab that, when injected into your body, must invade your cells and hijack your cells’ protein-making machinery called ribosomes to produce the viral components that subsequently train your immune system to fight the virus.”
“In this case, Moderna’s mRNA-1273 is programmed to make your cells produce the coronavirus’ infamous coronavirus spike protein that gives the virus its crown-like appearance (corona is crown in Latin) for which it is named,” wrote The Independent.
Under normal circumstances, very few people would sign up to have their cells “hijacked”, but at this point millions upon millions of people will be so desperate for a “solution” that they will take a vaccine no matter what the long-term consequences might be.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced this week it is in the final phase of development for what it hopes will be universally accepted documentation that in turn could boost confidence among wary travelers.
The digital health pass would include a passenger’s testing and vaccine information and would manage and verify information among governments, airlines, laboratories and travelers.
If these new “digital vaccine passports” are implemented for international travel, it is probably just a matter of time before they are required for domestic travel as well.
Of course there are lots of people out there that are trying to sound the alarm about all of this, but UN communications director Melissa Fleming says that her organization has already recruited an army of “110,000 information volunteers” to combat the spread of “misinformation”…
Fleming told the World Economic Forum that #PledgetoPause and Verified have “recruited 110,000 information volunteers” thus far. She said “we equip these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first-responders’.” Fleming has stated elsewhere that the UN has “reached out to Member States, UN media partners, celebrity supporters” and “businesses” “to help us disseminate to the millions we will need to reach” with the campaign.
They want to control what you think as they lead you into a dystopian future that will ultimately turn into a complete and utter nightmare.
The truth is that none of us will be going back to our “normal lives” ever again.
But the elite will continue to hold that carrot out there in order to get you to do what they want, and millions upon millions of people will fall for it.
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We bring to the attention of our readers, the Video as well as the complete transcript of Donald Trump’s Speech.
This is for the purpose of information only, discussion and debate.
The US corporate media has sofar provided a slanted and biased analysis of the 2020 elections.
Global Research does not endorse either candidate in the 2020 presidential election.
Full transcript below.
President Donald Trump: (00:00) Thank you. This may be the most important speech I’ve ever made. I want to provide an update on our ongoing efforts to expose the tremendous voter fraud and irregularities which took place during the ridiculously long November 3rd elections. We used to have what was called, election day. Now we have election days, weeks, and months, and lots of bad things happened during this ridiculous period of time, especially when you have to prove almost nothing to exercise our greatest privilege, the right to vote. As President, I have no higher duty than to defend the laws and the Constitution of the United States. That is why I am determined to protect our election system, which is now under coordinated assault and siege.
President Donald Trump: (00:54)
For months, leading up to the Presidential election, we were warned that we should not declare a premature victory. We were told repeatedly that it would take weeks if not, months, to determine the winner, to count the absentee ballots and to verify the results. My opponent was told to stay away from the election, don’t campaign. “We don’t need you. We’ve got it. This election is done.” In fact, they were acting like they already knew what the outcome was going to be. They had it covered and perhaps they did, very sadly for our country. It was all very, very strange. Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner even while many key states were still being counted.President Donald Trump: (01:44)
The constitutional process must be allowed to continue. We’re going to defend the honesty of the vote by ensuring that every legal ballot is counted and that no illegal ballot is counted. This is not just about honoring the votes of 74 million Americans who voted for me, it’s about ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election and in all future elections.
President Donald Trump: (02:12)
Today I will detail some of the shocking irregularities, abuses and fraud that had been revealed in recent weeks but before laying out just a small portion of the evidence we have uncovered, and we have so much evidence, I want to explain the corrupt mail-in balloting scheme that Democrats systematically put into place that allowed voting to be altered, especially in swing states, which they had to win. They just didn’t know that it was going to be that tough, because we were leading in every swing state by so much, far greater than they ever thought possible. While it has long been understood that the Democrat political machine engages in voter fraud from Detroit to Philadelphia, to Milwaukee, Atlanta, so many other places. What changed this year was the Democrat party’s relentless push to print and mail out tens of millions of ballots sent to unknown recipients with virtually no safeguards of any kind. This allowed fraud and abuse to occur in a scale never seen before. Using the pandemic as a pretext, Democrat politicians and judges drastically changed election procedures just months, and in some cases, weeks before the election on the 3rd of November.
President Donald Trump: (03:45)
Very rarely were legislatures involved and constitutionally, they had to be involved, but very, very rarely, and you’ll see that as we continue to file our suits, it’s constitutionally, absolutely incorrect what took place, even from a legal standpoint. Many states, such as Nevada and California sent millions of live ballots to every person on their voter rolls whether those individuals had requested ballots or not, whether they were dead or alive, they got ballots. Other states such as Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin, instituted universal absentee balloting right in the middle of an election year, sending absentee ballot requests forms to all voters on all rolls. It didn’t matter who they were. This colossal expansion of mail-in voting opened the flood gates to massive fraud. It’s a widely known fact that the voting rolls are packed with people who are not lawfully eligible to vote, including those who are deceased, have moved out of their state, and even our non-citizens of our country.
President Donald Trump: (05:05)
Beyond this, the records are riddled with errors, wrong addresses, duplicate entries, and many other issues. This is not disputed. It has never been disputed. Dozens of counties in the key swing states have more registered voters on the rolls than they have voting age citizens, including 67 counties in Michigan. All of this is evidence. In Wisconsin, the state’s Board of Elections could not confirm the residency of more than 100,000 people, but repeatedly refused to remove those names from its voter rolls before the election. They knew why, nobody else did. I knew why. They were illegal voters. It is a travesty that in the year 2020, we do not have any means of verifying the eligibility of those who cast ballots in an election and such an important election it is, or determining who they are, whether they live in the state or whether they’re even American citizens. We have no idea.
President Donald Trump: (06:21)
We have an in all swing states major infractions or outright fraud, which is far more in numbers or votes then we need to overturn the results of a state. In other words, in Wisconsin, as an example, where we were way up on election night, they ultimately had us miraculously losing by 20,000 votes. I can show you right here, that Wisconsin, we’re leading by a lot and then at 3:42 in the morning, there was this, it was a massive dump of votes, mostly Biden, almost all Biden. To this day, everyone’s trying to figure out, “Where did it come from?” But I went from leading by a lot, to losing by a little and that’s right here. That’s at 3:42 in the morning, that’s Wisconsin, a terrible thing, terrible, terrible thing.
President Donald Trump: (07:33)
But we will have far more, many times more than the 20,000 votes needed to overturn the state. If we are right about the fraud, Joe Biden can’t be president. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of votes. We’re talking about numbers like nobody has ever seen before. Just as an example, in certain states, we’ll be down by, let’s say, 7,000 votes, but we’ll find later on 20,000, 50,000, 100,00, 200,000 discrepancies or fraudulent votes, and that includes votes that went through when they were not allowed to be seen by Republican poll watchers, because the poll watchers were locked out of the building. Or people that innocently came to vote on November 3rd, who were all excited about their vote, they were happy. They were proud to be citizens of the United States of America, and they went up and they said, “I’d like to vote.” They were told that they can’t vote. “I’m sorry,” they were told, “I’m sorry. You’ve already voted by mail-in ballot. Congratulations. We received a ballot, so you can no longer vote.”
President Donald Trump: (09:03)
They didn’t know what to do. They had no one to complain to, most just left and said, “That’s strange.” But many people complained and complained vehemently, and in a lot of cases, they filled out a provisional ballot, which was almost never used, but in virtually every case was a vote for Trump. In other words, they went in to vote and they were told that they voted and they didn’t vote. They left and they felt horror and they lost respect for our system. This happened tens of thousands of times all over the country. That’s how desperate the Democrats were. They would fill out ballots of people not even knowing if these people were going to show up. When they did show up, they said, “Sorry, you’ve already voted.”
President Donald Trump: (10:07)
On top of everything else, we have a company that’s very suspect. It’s name is Dominion, with the turn of a dial or the change of a chip, you could press a button for Trump and the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this? We have to go to paper, maybe it takes longer. But the only secure system is paper. Not these systems that nobody understands, including in many cases, the people that run them. Although, unfortunately, I think they understand them far too well.
President Donald Trump: (10:46)
In one Michigan County, as an example, that used Dominion systems, they found that nearly 6,000 votes had been wrongly switched from Trump to Biden, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what we caught. How many didn’t we catch? Are there 100s of other examples throughout the country? Are there 1000s? We just got lucky and they called it a glitch, but we found numerous glitches that evening. 96% of the company’s political donations went to Democrats, not surprisingly. Frankly, when you look at who’s running the company, who’s in charge, who owns it, which we don’t know, where are the votes counted? Which we think are counted in foreign countries, not in the United States, Dominion is a disaster. Election authorities in Texas have repeatedly blocked the deployment of Dominion systems due to concerns about security vulnerabilities and the potential for errors and outright fraud. Every district that uses Dominion systems must be carefully monitored and carefully investigated-
President Donald Trump: (12:01)
[inaudible 00:12:00] monitored and carefully investigated, but not only for the future. Right now, we’re worried about the present, and what went on with an election that we won without question. Under my lead, the Republicans won almost every state house in the United States, which they weren’t expected to do. We went up to 16 seats in the house. The numbers are still being tabulated, because there are nine seats that nobody really knows. They don’t know. Two weeks later, it’s still under consideration, because it’s a mess. Republicans were supposed to lose many seats, and instead they won those seats in the house, and a very important election that’s coming up will determine whether, or not we hold the Senate.
President Donald Trump: (12:59)
David Perdue and Kelly Leffler are two tremendous people. Unfortunately, in Georgia, they’re using the same horrible dominion system, and it’s already been out that, think of it, hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots have been requested. You check it out who’s requesting those ballots. The difference is, it’s one state, and we will have our eyes on it like nobody’s ever watched anything before, because we have to win those two Senate seats. The tremendous success we had in the House of Representatives, and the tremendous success we’ve had so far in the Senate, unexpected success all over the country, and right here in Washington.
President Donald Trump: (13:55)
It is statistically impossible that the person, me, that led the charge lost. The greatest pollsters, the real pollsters, not the ones that had us down 17 points in Wisconsin when we actually won, or the ones that had us down four or five points in Florida, and we won by many points, or had us even, and down in Texas, and we won by a lot, not those pollsters, but real pollsters. Pollsters that are fair, and honest said, “We can’t understand a thing like this. It’s never happened before. You led the country to victory, and you were the only one that was lost. It’s not possible.”
President Donald Trump: (14:43)
The speaker of the house of a certain state said, “Sir, I expected to lose my seat, and instead, because of you, and because of that incredible charge, and all of those rallies, we had a tremendous victory, and everybody knows it. You are much more popular than me, sir, except I got many more votes than you did, and it’s impossible that that happened. There is something wrong.” I’ll tell you what’s wrong, voter fraud. Here’s an example. This is Michigan. At 6:31 in the morning, a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly. We were winning by a lot. That batch was received in horror.
President Donald Trump: (15:44)
Nobody knows anything about it. By the way, there’s your line. This is one of many. Here’s what is normal, and all of a sudden, look at that. This is normal, normal. Look even here, normal, and then boom, all of a sudden, I go from winning by a lot to losing a tight race. It’s corrupt. Detroit is corrupt. I have a lot of friends in Detroit. They know it, but Detroit is totally corrupt. Look at this, look at this. That’s at 6:31 in the morning, unexpectedly came in. In the recent recount in Georgia, which means nothing because they don’t want to check signatures, and if you’re not going to check signatures in Georgia, it doesn’t work, but we have a secretary of state, and a governor who made it very difficult to check signatures.
President Donald Trump: (16:41)
Why? You’ll have to ask them, but without a signature match, or a check, it doesn’t matter. They found thousands and thousands of votes that were out of whack, all against me. This was during a recount that I didn’t even think mattered. They found many thousands of votes, and that recount didn’t matter. The one that matters is the one that’s going on now, that because of the fact it’s so close, they had to by law give another recount, but the recount has to be a recount where they check the signatures. Otherwise, they’re just checking the same dishonest thing. It won’t matter.
President Donald Trump: (17:22)
In this case, the signatures on envelopes are the only thing that is relevant. We will compare the signature on the envelope to the signatures from past elections, and we will find that many thousands of people signed these ballots illegally. The Democrats had this election rigged right from the beginning. They used the pandemic, sometimes referred to as the China virus, where it originated as an excuse to mail out tens of millions of ballots, which ultimately led to a big part of the fraud, a fraud that the whole world is watching, and there is no one happier right now than China.
President Donald Trump: (18:10)
Many people received two, three and four ballots. They were sent to dead people by the thousands. In fact, dead people, and we have many examples filled out ballots, made applications, and then, voted, which is even worse. In other words, dead people went through a process. Some have been dead for 25 years. Millions of votes were cast illegally in the swing states alone, and if that’s the case, the results of the individual swing states must be overturned, and overturned immediately. Some people say that’s too far out, that’s too harsh. Well, does that mean we take a precedent, and we’ve just elected a president where the votes were fraudulent?
President Donald Trump: (19:01)
No, it means you have to turn over the election, and everybody knows without going much further, and they’ve seen the evidence, but they don’t want to talk about it what a disaster this election was, a total catastrophe, but we’re going to show it, and hopefully, the courts in particular, the Supreme Court of the United States will see it, and respectfully, hopefully, they will do what’s right for our country, because our country can not live with this kind of an election. We could say, let’s go on to the next one, but no, we have to look also at our past. We can’t let this happen.
President Donald Trump: (19:43)
Maybe you’ll have a revote, but I don’t think that’s appropriate. When those votes are corrupt, when they’re irregular, when they get caught, they’re terminated, and I very easily win. In all states, I very easily win, the swing states, just like I won them at 10 o’clock in the evening, the evening of the election. We’re not looking to show you 25 faulty or fraudulent votes, which don’t mean anything, because it doesn’t overturn the state, or a fifty, or a hundred. We’re showing you hundreds of thousands far more than we need, far more than the margin, far more than the law requires. We can show many times what is necessary to win the state.
President Donald Trump: (20:34)
The media knows this, but they don’t want to report it. In fact, they outright refuse to even cover it, because they know the result if they do. Even what I’m saying now will be demeaned and disparaged, but that’s okay. I just keep on going forward, because I’m representing 74 million people, and in fact, I’m also representing all of the people that didn’t vote for me. The mail-in voting scam is the latest part of their four year effort to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and it’s been like living in hell. Our opponents have proven many times again and again, that they will say, and do anything to get back into power.
President Donald Trump: (21:28)
The corrupt forces who are registering dead voters and stuffing ballot boxes are the same people who have perpetrated one phony and fraudulent hoax after another. You’ve been watching it now for four years. These entrenched interests oppose our movement, because we put America first. They don’t put America first, and we’re returning power to you the American people. They don’t want America first, they only want power for themselves. They want to make money, that’s why they don’t want me as your president. I’ve been investigated from soon after I announced I was running for president. When I immediately went to number one in the Republican primary polls, the investigations never stopped. They went on for four years, and I won them all, I beat them all. Russia, Russia, Russia, the impeachment hoax, and so much more. Robert Mueller spent $48 million of taxpayer money investigating me for two and a half years, issued over 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, issued 230 orders for communications records, and conducted 500 witness interviews, all looking to take me down. There was no collusion in the end, none whatsoever. Senator Marco Rubio, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee stated, “The committee found no evidence that then candidate Donald Trump, or his campaign colluded with the Russian government.” And, I thank Senator Rubio for that statement.
President Donald Trump: (23:22)
Now, I hear that these same people that failed to get me in Washington have sent every piece of information to New York, so that they can try to get me there. It’s all been gone over, over and over again. For $48 million you go through tax returns, you go through everything. The New York attorney general, who recently ran for office campaigned without knowing me stating, “We will join with law enforcement and other attorneys general across this nation in removing this president from office.” I never met her. It’s important that everybody understand she’s…
President Donald Trump: (24:03)
… better. “It’s important that everybody understands”, she said, “that the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end.” And all it’s been is a big investigation in Washington and New York and any place else that can investigate because that’s what they want to do. They want to take not me, but us down. Then we can never let them do that. Everything has been looked at. A friend of mine, who’s very smart, said, “You’ve probably seen more than anybody else. You’ve probably been investigated more than anybody else. And for you to come out with a clean bill of health makes you probably the cleanest person in this country.”
President Donald Trump: (24:48)
Some people in this administration, but fortunately not all have been beaten down and disparaged. They just disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to them. Why aren’t they active? Why aren’t they involved? There’s so much to be involved in. The corruption is so rampant. They just couldn’t take it anymore. They were threatened by Democrats with impeachment and horrible things were said about them. And they’re good people. Even recently, the head of the GSA was hounded and harassed as she reported, like she has never been before. What can I say? We caught Comey cold, we caught McCabe cold. We caught them all. We’re still waiting for a report from a man named Durham, who I have never spoken to, and I have never met. They can go after me before the election as much as they want, but unfortunately Mr. Durham didn’t want to go after these people, or have anything to do with going after them before the election. So who knows if he is ever going to even do a report.
President Donald Trump: (26:11)
Ut if you look at the lies, and the leaks, and the illegal acts of behavior done by so many people, and their desire to hurt the president of the United States, something should happen. The hardest thing I have to do is explain why nothing is happening with all of these people that got caught spying on my campaign. It’s never happened before and it should never happen again to a president of the United States. All you have to do is watch the hearings and see for yourself. The evidence is overwhelming. The fraud that we’ve collected in recent weeks is overwhelming, having to do with our election. Everyone is saying, ” Wow, the evidence is overwhelming”, when they get to see it. But really it’s too late to change the course of an election. It’s too late to change the outcome.
President Donald Trump: (27:11)
In fact, there is still plenty of time to certify the correct winner of the election and that’s what we’re fighting to do. But no matter when it happens, when they see fraud, when they see false votes and when those votes number far more than is necessary, you can’t let another person steal that election from you. All over the country, people are together in holding up signs, “Stop the steal.” To understand how we will challenge this fraud, it is important to know the problems with mail-in balloting. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and most other states allowed anyone to get an absentee ballot and cast their vote without showing any ID. The voting took place entirely on the honor system, no identification of any kind was required.
President Donald Trump: (28:11)
Most Americans would also be shocked to learn that no state in the country verifies United States citizenship as a condition for voting in federal elections. This is a national disgrace. No other advanced country conducts elections this way. Many European countries have instituted major restrictions on mail-in voting, specifically, because they recognize the nearly unlimited potential for fraud. Out of 42 European nations, all but two prohibit absentee ballots entirely for people who reside inside the country, or else they require those who need absentee ballots to show a very, very powerful ID.
President Donald Trump: (28:54)
Throughout the Democrat effort to dramatically expand mail-in voting, the Democrat party leaders were also, feverishly working to block measures, designed to protect against fraud, such as signature verification, residency verification, or voter ID. And citizenship confirmation was almost unthought of that we should ask for it. Can you believe this? These are not the actions of people who want fair elections. These are the actions of people who want to steal elections, who are willing to create fraud. The only conceivable reason why you would block common sense measures to verify legal eligibility for voting, is you are trying to encourage, enable, solicit, or carry out fraud.
President Donald Trump: (29:47)
It is important for Americans to understand that these destructive changes to our election laws were not a necessary response to the pandemic. The pandemic simply gave the Democrats an excuse to do what they have been trying to do for many, many years. In fact, the very first bill that house Democrats introduced when Nancy Pelosi became speaker, was it attempt to mandate universal mail-in voting and eliminate measures such as voter ID, which is so necessary. Dramatically eroding the integrity of our elections was the Democrats number one priority for a simple reason, they wanted to steal the 2020 presidential election. All of the Democrat efforts to expand mail-in balloting laid the groundwork for the systematic and pervasive fraud that occurred in this election.
President Donald Trump: (30:41)
In Pennsylvania, large amounts of mail-in and absentee ballots were processed illegally. And in secret, in Philadelphia, in Allegheny counties, without our observers present. They were not allowed to be present. In fact, they weren’t even allowed in the same room. They were thrown out of the building and they looked from outside in, but they had no way of even seeing, because there were no windows. And the windows that were there were boarded up. Democrats even went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to block observers from receiving access. There is only one possible reason that the corrupt Democrat political machine would oppose transparency during the vote counting. It’s because they know they are hiding illegal activity. It’s very simple.
President Donald Trump: (31:32)
This is an egregious, inexcusable. And irreversible harm that stains the entire election, yet this unprecedented practice of excluding our observers, our vote watchers, as some people call them, occurred in Democrat run cities and key states all across the nation. Here are just some of the additional facts that we’ve uncovered. Many voters all across Pennsylvania received two ballots in the mail, and many others received mail-in ballots for which they never applied. So many get ballots, they didn’t even know what they were for. And again, so many received more than one ballot. In some cases, more than two ballots. And they happened to be, for the most part, Democrats.
President Donald Trump: (32:22)
In Fayette County, Pennsylvania, multiple voters received ballots that were already filled out. They didn’t know what happened. In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a poll watcher, overheard unregistered voters being told to return later to try to vote under a different name. Tens of thousands of voters across Pennsylvania were treated differently based on whether they were Republicans, or Democrats. Voters who submitted floored ballots in some Democrat precincts were notified and asked to fix their ballots, while Republican precincts, and in particular Republican voters, were not so notified which plainly violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.”If you are a Democrat, we’re going to fix up your ballot. make sure it’s perfect. If you are Republican, don’t even talk about it.”
President Donald Trump: (33:16)
In Michigan, a career employee of the city of Detroit, with the city workers, coaching voters to vote straight Democrat, while accompanying them to watch who they were voting for, violating the law and the sanctity of the secret ballot. You can’t do that. The same workers say she was instructed not to ask for any ID and not to attempt to validate any signatures. She was also told to illegally backdate ballots, many, many ballots, received after the deadline. This is something that is so unconstitutional and she estimates that thousands and thousands of ballots were improperly backdated by her and many others.
President Donald Trump: (34:05)
Other witnesses in Detroit also saw our election officials counting batches of the same ballots many times, as well as illegally duplicating ballots. One observer testified to seeing boxes and boxes of ballots, all bearing the same signature. Another observer in Detroit gave sworn testimony that he saw countless and valid ballots that did not belong to properly registered voters and then witnessed election workers in Wayne County entering fake birth dates into the system, in order to illegally count them. Witnesses of science wore an affidavit, so in other words, you go to jail if you lie, testifying that after election officials announced the last absentee votes had been received, a batch of tens of thousands of ballots arrived, many without envelopes, all voting for Democrats.
President Donald Trump: (35:02)
In Wisconsin, a record number of voters were categorized as indefinitely confined. A status reserved for severely disabled individuals, also for the elderly that allow them to vote without showing ID. Last year, approximately 70,000 people claimed this status statewide. This year, the number miraculously was nearly 250,000 voters, after election officials in Milwaukee and Dane County, a couple of the most corrupt political places in our country, urged citizens to improperly register under this status. And register they did in levels that don’t exist. In Wisconsin, there are approximately 70,000 absentee ballots that do not have matching ballot applications as required by law in Georgia, nine observers have testified to seeing countless irregular ballots without…
President Donald Trump: (36:03)
Testified to seeing countless irregular ballots without the creases or typical markings indicating that the ballots did not arrive in envelopes as required. A poll watcher in Fulton County estimated that approximately 98% of the large number of unusually pristine ballots that she witnessed were for Biden. Highly unusual number. In addition, thousands of uncounted ballots were discovered in Floyd, Fayette, and Walton counties weeks after the election, and these ballots were mostly from Trump voters. They weren’t counted. They were from Trump voters.
President Donald Trump: (36:43)
In Detroit, everybody saw the tremendous conflict and the horrible way that the two Republican canvassers were treated so horribly because they wouldn’t vote when they saw that 71% of the precincts didn’t balance. Also, there were more votes than there were voters. Think of that. You had more votes than you had voters. That’s an easy one to figure, and it’s by the thousands. In Arizona, in-person voters whose balanced produced error messages from tabulation machines were told to press a button that resulted in their votes not being counted. Also in Arizona, the attorney general announced that mail-in ballots had been stolen from mailboxes and hidden under a rock.
President Donald Trump: (37:37)
In Clark County, Nevada, where most of the state’s voters reside, the standards for matching a signature using the signature verification machine were intentionally lowered to allow large numbers of ballots to be counted that otherwise would never have passed muster. This machine was set at the lowest level. According to one report, in order to test the process, nine voters in Clark County cast ballots with intentionally incorrect signatures, and eight of the nine ballots were accepted and counted. They said you could sign your name as Santa Claus, and it would be accepted. Last week, the Clark County Commission threw out the results of a local election after the registrar reported finding, quote, “discrepancies that we can’t explain.” Also in Nevada, some voters were entered into a raffle for more than a dozen gift cards worth as much as $250 if they could prove they had voted.
President Donald Trump: (38:42)
This took place on Indian reservations. One of the most significant indications of widespread fraud is the extraordinarily low rejection rates for mail-in ballots in many key states. These are the states that I had to win. In swing state after swing state, the number of ballots rejected has been dramatically lower than what would have been expected based on prior experience. That means years and years of voting. In Georgia, just 0.2%, that’s substantially less than 1%, of mail-in ballots have been rejected. In other words, almost none have been rejected. They took everything. Nothing was rejected, practically, compared to 6.4% in 2016. There are those that think that 6.4 was a low number.
President Donald Trump: (39:36)
Think of it. Almost none were rejected. The previous election, 6.4% were rejected. We have seen similar declines in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan. Ballots weren’t rejected, especially if they happen to be in Democrat areas. These irregularities are inexplicable unless there is a deliberate effort to accept ineligible ballots or fraudulent ballots.
President Donald Trump: (40:06)
In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state and the state supreme court in essence abolished signature verification requirements just weeks prior to the election, in violation of state law. You’re not allowed to do that. It has to be approved by the legislature. A judge can’t do it. A state can’t do it. An official can’t do it. The only one that can do it is the legislature.
President Donald Trump: (40:33)
The reason for this is clear. They were not verifying signatures because they know the ballots have not been filled out by the voters in whose names they were cast. In other words, people filled them out that had nothing to do with the names on the ballot. A simple recount of the ballots under these circumstances only compounds the fraud. The only way to determine whether there was an honest vote is to conduct a full review of the envelopes in the relevant states. You will find that many of them, tens of thousands, have fraudulent signatures. A full forensic audit is required to ensure that only legal ballots from lawfully registered voters that were properly cast are included in the final count.
President Donald Trump: (41:25)
This election is about great voter fraud, fraud that has never been seen like this before. It’s about poll watchers who were not allowed to watch. So illegal. It’s about ballots that poured in, and nobody but a few knew where they came from. They were counted, and they weren’t for me. It’s about big leads on election night, tremendous leads, leads where I was being congratulated for a decisive easy victory. All of a sudden, by morning or a couple of days later, those leads rapidly evaporated. It’s about numbers of ballots that were sent that nobody know where they came from. It’s about machinery that was defective, machinery that was stopped during certain parts of the evening, miraculously to open with more votes.
President Donald Trump: (42:24)
It was about many other things, but above all, it was about fraud. This election was rigged. Everybody knows it. I don’t mind if I lose an election, but I want to lose an election fair and square. What I don’t want to do is have it stolen from the American people. That’s what we’re fighting for. We have no choice to be doing that. We already have the proof. We already have the evidence, and it’s very clear. Many people in the media and even judges so far have refused to accept it. They know it’s true. They know it’s there. They know who won the election, but they refuse to say, “You’re right.” Our country needs somebody to say, “You’re right.”
President Donald Trump: (43:12)
Ultimately, I am prepared to accept any accurate election result, and I hope that Joe Biden is as well. We already have the proof. We already have tens of thousands of ballots more than we need to overturn all of these states that we’re talking about. This is an election for the highest office in the greatest country in the history of the world. Every reasonable American should be able to agree, based on what we have already documented, that we need a systematic analysis of the mail-in ballots to review the envelopes. It’s about the signature. If they’re on the envelopes, we can only review the envelopes, and that will tell us everything.
President Donald Trump: (44:01)
This is the absolute minimum we should expect. This is not just about my campaign, although it has a lot to do with who’s going to be your next president. This is about restoring faith and confidence in American elections. This is about our democracy and the sacred rights that generations of Americans have fought, bled, and died to secure. Nothing is more urgent or more important. The only ballots that should count in this election are those cast by eligible voters who are citizens of our country, residents of the states in which they voted, and who cast their ballots in a lawful manner before the legal deadline.
President Donald Trump: (44:43)
Moreover, we must never again have an election in which there is not a reliable and transparent system to verify the eligibility, identity, and residency of every single person who casts a ballot, a very, very cherished ballot. Many very smart people have congratulated me on all we’ve done: the biggest tax cuts in history, regulation cuts, the biggest in history. We rebuilt our military. We took care of our vets like never before, Space Force, and so much more. Then they went on to say, as big and as important as these events were, the single greatest achievement in your presidency will be exactly what you’re doing right now: voter integrity for our nation. It’s more important than any of the things that we discussed.
President Donald Trump: (45:40)
If we don’t root out the fraud, the tremendous and horrible fraud that’s taken place in our 2020 election, we don’t have a country anymore. With the resolve and support of the American people, we will restore honesty and integrity to our elections. We will restore trust in our system of government. Thank you. God bless you. God bless America.
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“The problem with the COVID vaccine is that they recognize that it’s gonna be really hard to get a vaccine so they have been reducing our standards so they can pass the vaccine no matter what.” – Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Watch the interview of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with Theo Von below.
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President Donald Trump may only have seven weeks left in office, but he’s given his top advisers the green light to batter the Iranian regime—anything that doesn’t hazard a full-on war beforeJoe Biden is inaugurated.
According to multiple U.S. officials familiar with the matter, in recent weeks Trump has taken a more passive role in personally overseeing Iran policy for the critical final months until Inauguration Day. One White House official last week described Trump as mostly “checked out” on this major foreign policy issue, having become consumed by his bumbling legal effort to steal the 2020 election amid the coronavirus pandemic, as well as by other his pet grievances of the moment.
But Trump has given some of his most hawkish administration officials, particularly his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, carte blanche to squeeze and punish the Islamic Republic as aggressively as they wish in the coming weeks. All Trump asks is that they don’t risk “start[ing] World War III,” as the president has specifically put it in several private conversations with Pompeo and others, according to two senior administration officials.
That has left a host of options at the outgoing administration’s disposal—among them, a suffocating sanctions regime and a studied silence in the face of the assassination of Iranian nationals. Two officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said the administration is set to announce new sanctions on regime-linked companies and individuals in the coming weeks to solidify a years-long effort to paralyze Tehran’s economy.
Knowledgeable sources say those actions are designed to help fulfill various Trump officials’ long-brewing desire to make it more difficult for the Democratic president-elect to rekindle negotiations with Tehran and re-enter a nuclear deal. And it’s a scenario for which Biden lieutenants and allies have long prepared, having already factored into their Iran strategy that current U.S. officials would do nearly everything they could to undermine a revival of Obama-era relations between the adversarial nations.
Trump administration officials who spoke to The Daily Beast frequently point to Pompeo and Elliott Abrams, special representative for Iran, as the leaders of the administration’s last-ditch attempt at pummeling the regime.
Secretary Pompeo has been particularly forward leaning in the administration’s efforts to inflict damage on the Iranian government. In a recent trip to the Middle East, Pompeo met with leaders from Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain on ways all three countries could work together on countering the Islamic Republic. The trip followed on the heels of an announcement by the State Department that it had recently approved a massive sale of F-35 jets to the UAE. The deal has been widely viewed as a way to get Dubai to cooperate with Jerusalem on deterring Iran. And on Friday, Pompeo announced additional Iran-related sanctions, this time targeting Chinese and Russian entities for transferring sensitive technology and items to Iran’s missile program.
Both Pompeo and Abrams, officials say, are supportive of harsh measures, including the quiet backing of covert actions carried out by other actors. One other senior administration official pointed to Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel as being intimately involved in the administration’s clandestine strategy as it relates to Iran.
The president has repeatedly told his advisers that one of his priorities is to avoid a confrontation with Iran in which American military personnel would die. But Trump is comfortable letting Israel take the lead in targeting, or even slaying, Iranian regime figures in the closing weeks of his presidency, officials said. That includes Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the country’s top nuclear weapons scientist, who was killed Nov. 27 while traveling in a convoy in the northern part of the country.
Two senior Trump administration officials said Israel was behind the attack, confirming global suspicions. One of those same officials, while they did not detail the level of involvement from the U.S., noted that America’s intelligence agencies often share information with Israel on Iran-related matters.
“There’s obviously a close working relationship between Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and Haspel,” said Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a right leaning think tank that’s advised the Trump administration on Iran.
Some of the president’s confidants have urged him not to draw too much attention to the killing. The administration has chosen to remain mostly tight-lipped regarding the scientist’s death. A source close to Trump said they had counseled the president in the past few days to avoid gratuitously tweeting about the assassination. Not only would it be a “bad look,” according to this source, it would likely undermine the administration’s public position of keeping the operation at arm’s length, if not farther away.
The two senior administration officials said discussions about taking more active measures to limit Biden’s administration on negotiating a new deal with Iran ramped up this summer and coincided with several of Israel’s covert operations, including the killing of al Qaeda deputy leader Abu Muhammed in Iran, and Israel’s planting of a bomb in one of Iran’s centrifuge facilities.
“The Israelis understand that between now and Jan. 20 they will need to inflict maximum damage on the regime,” Dubowitz said.
The Trump strategy over the next few weeks is clear, one of the senior administration officials said: Continue to use sanctions as a deterrence tool while providing intelligence to regional allies such as Israel that have a mutual goal of damaging the Iranian regime.
That plan isn’t so different from the one the Trump administration has put into action over the past four years. Since Trump took office in 2017, a cohort of top officials, advisers, and external advocacy groups have helped craft and implement a “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that has relied primarily on the implementation of more than 1,000 sanctions on regime-linked officials and companies while also covertly targeting Tehran’s assets overseas.
The only difference now, officials say, is that the administration not only wants to punish Iran, it also wants to pen in President-elect Biden.
Individuals involved in the crafting of the Trump administration’s Iran policy believe the maximum pressure campaign will limit Biden’s ability to get back on track with Tehran, namely because some of the sanctions may be difficult to lift, especially those focused on human-rights and terrorism. Dubowitz and Trump administration officials familiar with Iranian sanctions said multinational corporations may be so risk averse to doing business with Iran now, following thousands of financial designations, that even if Biden lifts sanctions they will not engage in normal trade relations with Tehran.
Individuals familiar with Team Biden’s thinking say the president-elect has a clear strategy for dealing with Iran and sanctions come January. That plan rests heavily on Biden’s desire to return back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the nuclear deal negotiated during the Obama administration—if Iran comes back into compliance.
“If Iran takes the bait, which is clearly the intention behind [the Farikhzadeh assassination], then it probably makes it impossible to return to the JCPOA and diplomacy,” said Jarrett Blanc, the former coordinator for Iran nuclear implementation in the Obama State Department. “If Iran doesn’t take the bait… I don’t know that it really changes the choices that confront the Biden team or Iran in January.”
Any negotiations between a Biden administration and Iran would include conversations about the lifting of some sanctions, two individuals familiar with the Biden team’s thinking on Iran said. But those sanctions would likely only be lifted if and when Tehran complies with a deal.
“Iran says it is prepared to come back in compliance and reverse some of the decisions it’s made. And the U.S. says it would lift some of the sanctions. [There’s] no legal bar to reverse them. Many of them were imposed for political reasons,” said one former senior Obama administration official. “It’s likely going to be a two-step approach for Biden—getting back in and then perhaps renegotiating a different, better deal.”
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Alex Salmond is back. Scotland’s former First Minister, under whom the SNP went from strength to strength, has unveiled his own 5-point plan together with MSP Alex Neil, to address the economic aftershocks of the pandemic in Scotland.
There have been rumours for some time of Salmond’s return to the Scottish political scene and this was the first indication that he may do so. Having now left his court case behind him – what some of his supporters believe was a conspiracy to prevent his return – Salmond will have work to do to improve his tarnished public image. It cannot be denied that there was at some point a breakdown in relations between Nicola Sturgeon and her mentor, Alex Salmond, which has led to a divide in the party. Sturgeon, herself, when recently interviewed on Sky News, admitted that Salmond may be ‘angry’ with her because she was not prepared to lie on his behalf concerning allegations of sexual assault. Salmond’s supporters say Sturgeon herself has led a campaign to prevent Alex Salmond from returning to Scottish politics.
Therefore Salmond’s publication of a document outlining a different approach to tackling the fallout from Covid, involving ‘learning lessons from Asia’, is a highly significant move. It is essentially a direct challenge to Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership, in the midst of the pandemic. At the same time, SNP grassroots members staged a rebellion during the party conference over the weekend, by electing a group of figures who disagree with Sturgeon’s independence plan. The group, which includes Joanna Cherry MP, believes the Scottish government should have a plan B should Boris Johnson continue to refuse giving Scotland a Section 30 order to allow another independence referendum. There is a growing swell of support amongst SNP grassroots members and independence activists for a second referendum as a matter of urgency. They believe that the time for such a vote is now, given the momentum the movement has received as a result of Brexit and unpopular Westminster leadership. This faction is (unofficially) led by Salmond and Cherry. There even exists a belief amongst some in this group that Nicola Sturgeon herself secretly doesn’t want independence. This, I consider to be a fallacy. Sturgeon is simply treading carefully, and trying to avoid the turmoil and political arrests we saw in the aftermath of the referendum in Catalonia.
Such divisions in the SNP, do, of course, harm the independence movement. But can Alex Salmond really provide a challenge to Nicola Sturgeon? Unlikely. Salmond may have the support of Joanna Cherry and others in the SNP for his more bullish approach to the independence movement, but Sturgeon’s more cautious style has proved highly popular with the Scottish electorate. Never before has there been so much support for the First Minister, with her approval ratings regularly soaring high above those of Boris Johnson. And only this week it was revealed that support for Scottish independence is at an all-time high of 56%. While Salmond was something of a divisive figure, Sturgeon has been far more popular. It’s almost impossible to see how he could pose any real threat to her position. Although Salmond did a huge deal to make the necessary gains the SNP needed during his 20 years as leader, his time is over. Sturgeon has broader, more mainstream appeal, and her more careful approach was just what was required during the pandemic.
Indeed the SNP is on a high right now after its conference over the weekend. Several new welfare policies were announced which will score the party points with the electorate prior to the Holyrood elections in May next year. Firstly, Scotland becomes the first nation in the world to provide sanitary products free for all women, tackling ‘period poverty’. Secondly, more money is to be given to low income families – an extra £10 a week per child from February – and before Christmas a separate ‘gift’ of £100 will be paid to every family in receipt of school meals. Another announcement at the conference was the creation of the ‘Young Person’s guarantee’, which will give all young people between 16 and 24 the guarantee of work, education or training. The Pathway to Apprenticeships scheme will provide work-based training and a grant of £100 given to school leavers up to the age of 18.
These measures are all ones which the average working person will ‘feel’ and which will have a genuine impact on their lives. It is likely these initiatives will translate into more votes for the SNP at the ballot box next year, and even more support for independence. Such focus on welfare by the Scottish government creates even more distance between it and the Westminster government. Earlier this year, top economists warned the UK government not to impose new austerity measures in response to the vast spending plans actioned during the pandemic, but there is no doubt that at some point people are going to be asked to tighten their belts. And given the Conservative government’s record on austerity, it is working people on lower incomes who will end up paying the price for future economic recovery.
All in all, it’s a fantastic time for Scottish independence. The mood has never been more buoyant, despite internal divisions. To ensure the independence goal is reached however, the party must unite. If Alex Salmond and his supporters really care about independence then they will give Nicola Sturgeon their full backing and support her strategy to secure #indyref2.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow the author on Twitter.
During the most severe Main Street economic collapse in US history — with over one-fourth of working-age Americans jobless — additional calamity looms in the coming weeks. According to Census Bureau estimates, 30 to 40 million Americans face possible eviction in 2021 for lack of income to pay rent or service mortgages.
The Australian Defense Force’s recent inquiry into Australian special forces conduct in Afghanistan, between 2005 and 2016, reveals that 39 Afghan prisoners and civilians were killed outside of battle, as part of a culture of “competition killings,” where commanders required junior soldiers to shoot prisoners to achieve their first kill.
Speaking during the Bayer Future of Farming online conference, Liam Condon, president of crop science at Bayer, said the company is lobbying “very strongly” to change the EU’s GMO regulations to exempt gene editing.
The documents revealed the vast scope and global reach of US imperialism’s criminal conspiracies against the international working class, and the brutality and corruption of capitalist governments the world over.
We have long been told that science is an ‘evidence-based approach’ to understanding particular phenomena and thus providing accurate guidance on how to proceed to achieve productive outcomes. Unfortunately, this claim is just propaganda for the unwary.
President-elect Joe Biden has maintained silence for years on the controversial and continued use of so-called targeted killings — lethal strikes by drones, cruise missiles, and occasionally military special operations raids. Biden has never publicly disavowed or criticized former President Barack Obama’s legacy of expanding the use of drones.
As members of the UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, Drone Wars and a number of other UK civil society groups have written to Secretary of State Ben Wallace on the UK’s position on the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems partly in response to recent comments by the Chief of the Defence Staff.
State efforts to control mosquito-borne illnesses may be creating a new health problem. The insecticide Massachusetts and numerous other states use for mosquito control, both applied aerially and sprayed from trucks along roads, contains per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), according to lab test results.
America regards itself as the “global policeman”, hence its arrogant actions, but it was never deputized by the international community to fulfill such a role. Some of China’s maritime neighbors object to its territorial claims, but these are all bilateral disputes that should be handled between Beijing and each of the relevant parties.
The Spanish economic situation worsens day after day. The national manufacturing sector dropped significantly in November, according to data from IHS Markit, which attributes the decline to the drop in production demand due to the pandemic.
Inizia su Davvero TV, il 1° dicembre alle 22:30, Pangea, programma di politica internazionale a cura del CNGNN (Comitato No Guerra No Nato, Italia) in collaborazione con Global Research (Centro di Ricerca sulla Globalizzazione, Canada).
Il programma sarà trasmesso ogni martedì e venerdì alle 22:30 e replicato nei fine settimana.
Pangea contribuirà a colmare il vuoto di informazione e a contrastare la disinformazione dei grandi media sulle questioni nodali da cui dipende il nostro futuro.
Gli eventi che ci coinvolgono – dall’attuale crisi economica messa in moto dal Covid-19 al crescente confronto militare anche nucleare – vanno visti in un’ottica globale.
A tal fine, insieme a esperti italiani, collaborano a questo programma esperti da altre parti del mondo.
Nella prima trasmissione, il 1° dicembre, il Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, economista, direttore del Centro di ricerca sulla globalizzazione (Canada), parlerà della crisi economica senza precedenti che, innescata dalla pandemia di Covid, sta portando a un colossale trasferimento di ricchezza da una maggioranza sempre più impoverita a una ristretta minoranza sempre più ricca.
Manlio Dinucci, giornalista e geografo, parlerà del coinvolgimento dell’Italia nella sempre più pericolosa strategia della Nato e del conseguente aumento della nostra spesa militare nel momento in cui mancano le risorse per fronteggiare l’attuale crisi economica.
Davvero Tv è la Tv dei cittadini, che ogni giorno vi racconta un mondo diverso e più ricco di sfumature, personaggi, temi e opinioni. Notizie, politica, attualità, cultura, convegni, economia e approfondimenti. La Tv dei cittadini è la sola Tv che lavora per i cittadini, pagata direttamente da loro, e che fa esclusivamente i loro interessi.
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Ti restituiamo i contenuti, oscurati dai social network, che promuovono la libertà di parola e pensiero critico
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Vi Invitiamo A Dare La Massima Diffusione All’iniziativa Attraverso La Vostra Rete Di Contatti
Ci Sentiremo Presto Cercando Di Costruire Reti Se Non Comunali Almeno Regionali Di Nostri Amici Che Si Facciano Protagonisti In Prima Persona Della Necessaria Diffusione Delle Notizie E Delle Proposte Che Facciamo.
Vi Ricontatterò Anche Per Sollecitare Un Progetto Di Finanziamento Per L’anno 2021 Che Sta Già’ Iniziando A Funzionare Ma Che Deve Estendersi Per Mantenere La Qualità’ Del Servizio Che Forniamo Ma Soprattutto Che Funzioni Da Opera Organizzatrice Di Resistenza *(O Di Resilienza Come Si Dice Oggi).
Le Interviste Che Abbiamo In Programma Vi Confermeranno Il Valore Di Questo Proposito.A Presto!
America regards itself as the “global policeman”, hence its arrogant actions, but it was never deputized by the international community to fulfill such a role. Rather, it’s more like a dangerously delusional role player than a legitimate law enforcement officer.
The Philippine National Defense Secretary warned last week that his country “will be involved whether[it] likes it or not” in the event that “a shooting war happens” between China and the US in the South China Sea. Instead of speculating which side of the conflict the Philippines would be on in that scenario, it’s much more relevant to wonder why the US is even in the South China Sea in the first place. After all, it’s America’s military involvement in this region which is raising the risk of war, not China’s.
The South China Sea isn’t just an historical region of China, but most of it is also a legitimate part of its territory too. The US’ military presence therefore isn’t just on the country’s doorstep, but literally inside its foyer so to speak despite not being invited by Beijing. Washington claims that it’s protecting so-called “freedom of navigation”, but to continue the metaphor, it actually barged into China’s house because of a dispute with some of its neighbors.
America regards itself as the “global policeman”, hence its arrogant actions, but it was never deputized by the international community to fulfill such a role. Rather, it’s more like a dangerously delusional role player than a legitimate law enforcement officer. Some of China’s maritime neighbors object to its territorial claims, but these are all bilateral disputes that should be handled between Beijing and each of the relevant parties. The US has no business to involving itself in such issues, but it does so anyhow in order to divide and rule the region.
Much has made in the American media about China’s activities on various islands, reefs, and shoals, but the fact of the matter is that China has the right to develop its territory however it sees fit. It poses no risk to others, let alone to legitimate freedom of navigation, but it does intend to defend its interests like every country has the right to do. China’s military positioning and maneuvers on and around those pieces of land and their waters actually secure the South China Sea, not destabilize it, unlike the US’ similar actions.
Not once has China ever threatened to impede the free flow of commercial vessels through its maritime territory, but American officials have publicly spoken about attacking China’s vessels and even cutting them off from the Indian Ocean for example via the Straits of Malacca. The US’ military moves in the South China Sea are an extension of that strategy, intended to bully and intimidate the People’s Republic into submitting to Washington’s foreign policy demands. They’re meant to obstruct China’s freedom of navigation, not facilitate it.
The issue has been discussed so much over the past decade that many folks would be forgiven for falling under the false impression that this has always been a cause of concern. It hasn’t, though, but is only a relatively recent development that first seriously started during the Obama Administration’s so-called “Pivot to Asia”, which was aggressively intensified under current US President Trump. The US even started pressuring its allies to follow in its footsteps and join it in violating China’s maritime territorial sovereignty.
Democrat presidential candidate Biden, who the mass media projected will become the next president-elect despite Trump refusing to concede the race and stop his legal challenges to it, should take the opportunity to reverse this destabilizing policy upon taking office. His nomination of Obama-era and -influenced officials to his administration is worrying, however, since they might simply tweak Trump’s variation of his predecessor’s “Pivot to Asia” instead of reconsidering the wisdom behind it entirely like they arguably should.
In any case, self-regulating and then moderating this policy with respect to the South China Sea — ideally with a view towards eventually reversing it in the interests of regional peace — would nevertheless be an improvement from the status quo if they have the political will to do so. All efforts must be sincerely undertaken by Biden and his team to avoid the dire scenario that the Philippine National Defense Secretary recently warned about. There’s no reason for a war to break out over the South China Sea, but if it does, then it’s entirely the US’ fault.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
I have read enough of the fraud reports, affidavits, and statements from election security and forensic experts to be comfortable in my conclusion that the election was stolen.But I am not confident that anything will be done about the fradulent election. The American elite no longer believe in democracy. Consider, for example, the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.It is anti-democratic, as is globalism. Democracy is in the way of elite agendas.
Indeed, the reason the elite despise Trump is that he bases himself in the people. Judges will not even preserve the vote record so that it can be investigated. In Georgia a federal judge has refused to stop the Dominion voting machines from being wiped clean and reset—See this. UPDATE: Judge overturns his previous order and reinstates ban on wiping and reseting Dominion machines used in Atlanta.
For those of you who find it too technical and volumnious to read through the massive evidence of election fraud, here is a brief summary:
Electoral fraud was organized in all of the states.The purpose was not to try to steal the red states, but to make the vote look closer than the expected pattern in order to provide cover for extensive fraud in the critical swing states.
The voting machines were programmed to allocate votes with a bias toward Biden.
The result was to cut back Trump’s margin of victory in red states.
In swing states more extensive measures were used. The Biden bias programmed in the voting machines was raised.
As a backup, large numbers of fraudulent mail-in ballots were accumulated in the Democrat-controlled cities in the swing states—Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia.Although Georgia is a red state, the same occured in Democrat-controlled Atlanta.
The reason voting was stopped in the middle of the night in these cities was to prepare the mail-in ballots necessary to overtake Trump’s sizeable lead and enter them into the count.This is a time when poll watchers were told to go home, and it is a period when both Democrat and Republican watchers observed numerous acts of fraud of every description.You can review the types of fraud in the references at the end ot this article.
There are proven votes from the grave, from unregistered people, from out-of-state people. There are back-dated mail-in ballots. There are mail-in ballots without a crease, that is, ballots never folded and placed in an envelop, and so on and on.There are places where the vote exceeds the number of registered voters.
A number of independent unbiased experts have reported that the Biden vote spikes in the early hours of the morning are either impossible or so improbable as to have a very low probability of occurring.For them to occur simultaneously in different states falls outside the range of believability.
It is clear that the voting procedures imposed by Democrats in Pennsylvania are in violation of the Pennsylvania state constitution. A Pennsylvania state judge has permitted that suit to go forward and gave her opinion that it would succeed. I am confident that the corrupt Pennsylvania state Supreme Court will overturn her ruling.
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Despite significant evidence of Election 2020 fraud, Attorney General Barr proved he’s a fifth column Trump regime member.
Telling AP News that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election (sic)” showed his support for Biden/Harris over DJT — by foul, not fair means — when the latter’s term expires.
Barr also dubiously said “we haven’t seen anything to substantiate… the claim that (Dominion voting) machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results.”
According to a hollow follow-up DOJ spokesperson statement:
“The department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible (sic).”
What hasn’t been done so far virtually assures DOJ inaction on this vital issue ahead — other than pretending that scrutiny continues.
Significant evidence of election fraud has been clear for weeks. Saying the DOJ hasn’t yet found it doesn’t square with the facts.
According to Trump’s legal team, witnesses to fraud they met with were not contacted by the FBI — what the DOJ probe should have prioritized.
What’s clear from events leading up to Election 2020 and its aftermath is that deep state dark forces want Trump denied a second term — election-rigging their chosen strategy.
While it ain’t over ’til it’s over, their scheme most likely will work.
If it appears that SCOTUS may support the Trump campaign’s legal challenge — a long shot but possible — a JFK fate could await DJT to assure he’s out — pre-or-post January 20 inauguration day.
The US ruling class tolerates no sovereign independent nations free from its control.
It’s increasing intolerant of homeland dissent — notably in the streets and online.
It seeks total control over the state of the nation, planet earth, its resources and populations.
Open, free and fair elections threaten its hegemonic aims.
It’s why duopoly power runs things, two right wings shutting out independents.
It’s also why ordinary Americans have no say over who serves as president, in key congressional posts, and on the nation’s courts.
Corporate-controlled conventional and social media operate as gatekeepers for powerful interests — controlling the message their mandate, suppressing what diverges from the official narrative.
After Barr met with Trump on Tuesday, AP News reported the following:
DJT’s “personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his political campaign issued the following scathing statement:
“With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation.”
“We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined.”
“We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud.”
“As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ.”
“The Justice Department also hasn’t audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth.”
While directing US attorneys nationwide to investigate “substantial allegations” of election fraud last month, whatever was done, if anything, fell woefully short.
Paul Craig Roberts minced no word about Barr, accusing him of being on “the (Dem) side.”
Instead of opposing and acting to reverse brazen election fraud — depriving Trump of a second term he won — Barr went “nowhere” on this cutting-edge issue.
Election 2020 fraud is the elephant in the room that Barr pretends not to see — nor FBI agents assigned to probe this issue for evidence.
Yet Dominion voting machines were programmed to favor challenger Biden over incumbent Trump.
Along with evidence of significant vote-flipping for Biden/Harris, along with other discovered shenanigans, it’s clear that the process was rigged to assure Trump’s tenure ends on January 20.
Based on what’s known, can anyone ever trust the results of a US federal election ever again?
When votes for candidate A are counted for candidate B, an open, free and fair process no longer exists.
That’s the disturbing reality about US fantasy democracy — the real thing prohibited.
Election 2020 is Exhibit A.
A Final Comment
Biden/Harris won a record low number of US counties.
In stark contrast to Trump carrying 2,497 of the nation’s counties (83.3% of them), Biden/Harris only managed to win the other 16.7%.
Trump also got more votes than any previous GOP presidential candidate in US history.
He drew huge crowds for campaign rallies compared to sparse ones for Biden.
If official Election 2020 results stand, the process will henceforth be remembered as the selection of losers Biden/Harris over winner Trump.
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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.”
Since Biden/Harris were dubiously chosen as Dem standard bearers, establishment media across the board bombarded the US public with puff-piece reporting about them — ignoring their dark side.
A former US envoy once described Pompeo as the most “sycophantic and obsequious (figure) around Trump,” adding:
“He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.”
The same characterization applies to fawning/truth-defying media coverage of Biden/Harris.
While inventing reasons to slam Trump, largely ignoring legitimate ones, mass media reinvented Biden/Harris, disturbing hard truths about them suppressed.
The NYT is the leading print media culprit — fake news over the real thing featured.
Addressing the likely incoming Biden/Harris regime’s economic team, the self-styled newspaper of record falsely claimed its focus is on “workers and income equality (sic),” adding:
The “team…is stocked with champions of organized labor and marginalized workers (sic), signaling an early focus on efforts to speed and spread the gains of the recovery from the pandemic recession (sic).”
“(L)abor unions (will) have increased power (sic).”
“Biden’s team will be focused initially on increased federal spending to reduce unemployment (sic) and an expanded safety net to cushion households that have continued to suffer as the coronavirus persists and the recovery slows (sic).”
It’ll pursue “an economy that gives every single person across America a fair shot and an equal chance to get ahead (sic).”
Reality is worlds apart different from the above rubbish.
In 1963, racist Alabama Governor George Wallace was once quoted saying: “Segregation now, segregation forever.”
Today, both right wings of US duopoly rule are allied in enforcing neoliberalism now, neoliberalism forever — a new millennium form of segregation, with attribution to Wallace’s quote.
Serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary Americans is hard-wired US policy.
An earlier land of opportunity for most people is long gone.
Washington’s agenda is heading toward transforming the nation into a ruler/serf society, wrapped in the American flag.
It’s led by whoever chairs the Wall Street owned and controlled Fed under Biden/Harris ahead, their choice for key regime positions, including treasury secretary — neoliberalism now/neoliberalism forever Janet Yellen nominated.
As Obama/Biden Fed chairman from 2014 through the end of their tenure, she handed Wall Street trillions of dollars of near-free money for speculation.
At the same time, she kept interest rates at near-zero, harming millions of low and middle-income savers —while the nation’s privileged class benefitted hugely.
The Fed on her watch and her predecessor Bernanke did nothing for Main Street, nothing for jobs creation, nothing for anything socially related — nothing for ordinary people, focusing solely on benefitting privileged ones.
She at Treasury and current Fed chairman Powell will operate the same way going forward.
Like other Biden/Harris economic team members, Yellen is a Wall Street tool.
According to MaketWatch, “Wall Street is thrilled” by her choice, and no wonder.
She’ll fulfill the Street’s wish list as always before.
Her Treasury deputy Adewale Adeyemo is a former Obama/Biden regime official, followed by serving as a senior BlackRock hedge fund adviser.
She now heads the Chicago-based Obama Foundation.
Investment banker Brian Deeson was named Biden/Harris regime National Economic Council chairman.
Anti-progressive Neera Tanden was named incoming regime budget director.
She’s notable for supporting cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs, including opposition to a living wage, while supporting imperial aggression, and demeaning Julian Assange.
She was quoted calling him an “agent of a pro-fascist state, Russia (sic)” — its (nonexistent actions) “a key reason of why Trump got elected (sic).”
The above-named figures are subject to Senate confirmation.
They and others named as part of the Biden/Harris economic team are super-rich defenders of corporate predation at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.
Most figures selected by Biden/Harris ill-served ordinary Americans as part of the Obama/Biden regime.
Dirty business as usual continuity defines how US government operates at the federal, state and local levels.
Wall Street, the military, industrial, security media complex, other corporate favorites, and super-wealth will be well served in Washington no matter which wing of duopoly rule runs things.
They’ll benefit while ordinary Americans are exploited by continuing the greatest wealth transfer scheme in world history from them to the US privileged class.
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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.”
Of relevance to the current debate on vaccines, originally published in 2017
Abstract
In 1993, WHO announced a “birth-control vaccine” for “family planning”. Published research shows that by 1976 WHO researchers had conjugated tetanus toxoid (TT) with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) producing a “birth-control” vaccine. Conjugating TT with hCG causes pregnancy hormones to be attacked by the immune system. Expected results are abortions in females already pregnant and/or infertility in recipients not yet impregnated. Repeated inoculations prolong infertility. Currently WHO researchers are working on more potent anti-fertility vaccines using recombinant DNA. WHO publications show a long-range purpose to reduce population growth in unstable “less developed countries”.
By November 1993 Catholic publications appeared saying an abortifacient vaccine was being used as a tetanus prophylactic. In November 2014, the Catholic Church asserted that such a program was underway in Kenya. Three independent Nairobi accredited biochemistry laboratories tested samples from vials of the WHO tetanus vaccine being used in March 2014 and found hCG where none should be present. In October 2014, 6 additional vials were obtained by Catholic doctors and were tested in 6 accredited laboratories. Again, hCG was found in half the samples. Subsequently, Nairobi’s AgriQ Quest laboratory, in two sets of analyses, again found hCG in the same vaccine vials that tested positive earlier but found no hCG in 52 samples alleged by the WHO to be vials of the vaccine used in the Kenya campaign 40 with the same identifying batch numbers as the vials that tested positive for hCG. Given that hCG was found in at least half the WHO vaccine samples known by the doctors involved in administering the vaccines to have been used in Kenya, our opinion is that the Kenya “anti-tetanus” campaign was reasonably called into question by the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association as a front for population growth reduction.
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State efforts to control mosquito-borne illnesses may be creating a new health problem. The insecticide Massachusetts and numerous other states use for mosquito control, both applied aerially and sprayed from trucks along roads, contains per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), according to lab test results posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
Tests commissioned by PEER of a jug of Anvil 10+10, the pesticide used in the aerial spraying programs of Massachusetts, parts of Florida, New York, and many other states, reveals that it contains roughly 250 parts per trillion (ppt) of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid, a C8 PFAS, manufacture of which has been largely but not completely phased out in the U.S.), and 260 – 500 ppt of HFPO-DA (hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, a “GenX” replacement for PFOA). When PEER alerted Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MADEP) of its findings, MADEP independently tested nine samples of Anvil 10+10 from five different containers, and found eight different PFAS, including PFOA and PFOS. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a 70 ppt Lifetime Health Advisory for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water; some states, including Massachusetts, have much stricter regulatory limits than the EPA Advisory.
PFAS are called “forever chemicals” since they do not break down in the environment and build up in our blood stream. They are associated with a variety of ailments, including suppressed immune function, thyroid disease, testicular and kidney disease, cancers, and liver damage. While PFAS may be added to pesticides as surfactants, dispersants, anti-foaming agents, and/or other uses, it is unclear whether the PFAS found in Anvil 10+10 is an ingredient added by the manufacturer, contained in one of the ingredients supplied to Anvil’s manufacturer by other companies, or whether it is a contaminant from the manufacturing/storage process.
“In Massachusetts, communities are struggling to remove PFAS from their drinking water supplies, while at the same time, we may be showering them with PFAS from the skies and roads,” stated PEER Science Policy Director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with EPA, who arranged for the testing. “The frightening thing is that we do not know how many insecticides, herbicides, or even disinfectants contain PFAS.” PEER found patents showing chemical companies using PFAS in these products, and recent articles discuss the variety of pesticides that contain PFAS as either an active or an inert ingredient.
In 2019, Massachusetts aerially sprayed 2.2 million acres of the state with this pesticide and, in 2020, sprayed more than 200,000 acres. PFAS are not listed as active ingredients in Anvil 10+10. PEER found PFAS listed as approved inert ingredients on EPA’s “Inert Finder” database. EPA is not required to disclose many inert ingredients in pesticides, and manufacturers usually withhold information about inert ingredients as “trade secrets” or “proprietary” information.
“This PFAS fiasco shows that public trust in EPA having a full accounting of these materials and their safety is utterly misplaced,” added Bennett, whose organization has also been highly critical of EPA’s response to the unfolding PFAS contamination scandals. “Until EPA acts, states need to adopt their own safeguards and chemical disclosure requirements because they certainly cannot depend upon the diligence of EPA.”
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The Nagorno-Karabakh region has been nearing the end of the first phase of the implementation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani ceasefire deal that started on November 10.
Late on November 30, Azerbaijani troops started entering the Lachin district in the Nagorno-Karabkah region. This district is being transferred to Azerbaijani forces as a part of the ceasefire agreement reached between Armenia and Azerbaijan earlier in November. Nonetheless, the Lachin corridor, the road linking Armenia with the remaining territory of the Nagorno-Karabah Republic (Republic of Artsakh) will remain under the control of the Russian peacekeeping forces.
Under the aforementioned ceasefire deal, Azerbaijan already established control over the districts of Agdam and Kalbajar. The next step is the restoration of the transport link between the Azerbaijani mainland and Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic as well as the creation of an alternative road between Lachin and Stepanakert that would not pass through the Azerbaijani-controlled area.
Another important factor is the status of Karabkah. The Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement signed by the sides did not address this question, and, therefore, it still has to be settled. Baku insists that Karabakh is an integral part of Azerbaijan and all on what the Armenians leaving there can count on is some cultural autonomy. At the same time, the Armenian leadership, led by Nikol ‘The Basement’ Pashinyan continues its international campaign asking for at least somebody to recognize Nagorno-Karabkah as an independent state because Yerevan itself does not want to do this by itself.
Recently, the French Senate adopted a resolution asking the government to recognize the Republic of Artsakh as an independent state. This move was presented by Armenia as a large-scale diplomatic victory, while in fact the adopted resolution is non-binding and on an official level France does not recognize the state of Artsakh. And even if it does so, it is unclear how Paris would be able to influence the situation in Karabakh. Even in the hottest days of the Second Nagorno-Karabkah War, France limited its support to the Pashinyan government to diplomatic concerns. Some large-scale French-led sanction campaign against Azerbaijan and Turkey over these questions seems like a scenario mostly existing in the dimension of Armenian fairy tales. In the current conditions, the regional stability in Karabakh is guaranteed by the Russian peacekeepers and the commitment of the sides to the ceasefire regime.
Nonetheless, the question of Karabakh’s status remains the important factor in that, in the event of the inability of the sides to come to a comprehensive diplomatic solution making mutual concessions, could once again fuel instability in the South Caucasus.
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President-elect Joe Biden has maintained silence for years on the controversial and continued use of so-called targeted killings — lethal strikes by drones, cruise missiles, and occasionally military special operations raids. Biden has never publicly disavowed or criticized former President Barack Obama’s legacy of expanding the use of drones, nor made clear his own policy on the continuation of targeted killing conducted by the Department of Defense and, clandestinely, the CIA.
His campaign and transition websites similarly make no mention of policy addressing drone strikes, a defining feature of Obama-era foreign policy. And no questions were asked during presidential primary and general election debates about assassination policies.
While on the campaign trail, Biden pledged to end “endless wars” without detailing how his administration would differ from those of President Donald Trump and Obama, even as lethal strikes, including against American citizens, have remained an often-noted blemish on Obama’s legacy.
“There’s a pretty clear divide on our understanding of what it means to end endless war, and between what the Left actually wants to do and what they are likely to do,” Kate Kizer, policy director for Win Without War, told The Intercept by email. “I think Biden and his team have yet to fundamentally reckon with whether or not counterterrorism even works to actually address the security challenge and whether there are other tools that are more suited than military force to undermine the influence of violent groups.”
What we know of Biden’s opinion of lethal strikes is limited. In 2009, while serving as vice president, Biden pushed back against a strategy set forward by Gen. David Petraeus. Instead of sending 40,000 troops to Afghanistan along with civilian-assistance workers to rebuild the country, Biden advocated for what he called “counterterrorism plus,” a combination of special forces and aggressive drone bombing to target suspected Al Qaeda militants. Biden stuck by that advocacy on the campaign trail, vowing to keep a “counterterrorism” force in Afghanistan.
Obama sent about half as many troops as the generals wanted — but also embraced the plan Biden advocated for. The president heavily expanded the use of militarized drones as a central tenet of his counterterrorism strategy, assassinating classified targets on a secretive “kill list” within a 60-day window. The American public overwhelmingly supported drone strikes. By the end of the Obama administration, strikes had been carried out across an impressive expanse of regions: Hellfire missiles rained down over Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Syria. While Obama officially recognized the targeting killing program conducted by the U.S. military in 2013, the classified CIA-run counterpart program has never been confirmed or denied by the agency.
“It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that Biden would not have made a lot of statements about drone strikes over the years, particularly because the Obama administration was so aggressive in using drones as a method of warfare,” Alka Pradhan, human rights counsel at the Guantánamo Bay Military Commissions, told The Intercept. During Obama’s second term, Pradhan represented victims of drone strikes while working as counterterrorism counsel with Reprieve. Americans have always been very comfortable with drone strikes, she said. “You don’t have to see who you’re killing. You don’t usually see their faces plastered across the newspapers because the government has a companion policy of not acknowledging civilian deaths for the most part.”
Biden’s Team
As Biden prepares to assume office, his possible Cabinet selections have already begun to knock the credibility of any pledge to end the forever wars. Former Obama officials Michael Morell and Avril Haines have been reported as possible picks for director of national intelligence or CIA director.
Haines has already faced intense criticism from progressives. Tasked in June by the Biden administration to help execute his foreign policy pledges, Haines was directly involved with the Obama targeted killing program, even playing a legal role in shaping it — yet was considered a voice of constraint on lethal strikes in the latter half of Obama’s administration, the Daily Beast reported. Morell, a former deputy CIA director, embraced and defended the use of drone strikes, even calling reports of civilian deaths “highly exaggerated.” His defended targeting killings by claiming that they saved lives.
Last week, Biden was briefed on national security matters by a team that included Haines, as well as Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Adm. William McRaven, both former commanders of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command. McChrystal and McRaven were directly involved in the Obama-era chain of command that led to the approval and execution of lethal strikes.
McChrystal, whose own record is marked by allegations of coverups and commanding forces that killed civilians with impunity, has at times warned about blowback from civilian deaths by drone strike, though ending the practice of assassination strikes is not an option. “Drones are here to stay. We’re going to use them, we need to use them, and they’re an important part of what we do,” McChrystal told the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2014. “We’re actually going use them even more.”
There have been indications that Biden intends to keep military counterterrorism strikes on the table. Earlier this year, during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Biden suggested that he wanted to replace, not revoke, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the legal justification used by successive presidential administrations for using military forces to carry out counterterrorism operations across the globe. For Kizer, the comment hinted that Biden does not understand what ending endless wars actually means. “Basically, what he’s saying is he wants renewed congressional authority to conduct drone operations, special forces raids, and relying on foreign ‘partner’ forces to fight these wars,” she said. “That’s not ending endless war; that’s a recipe for perpetual global war.”
Biden has been even more circumspect in addressing the CIA strikes. Early this year, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a questionnaire to candidates on a range of human rights issues. One question posed to the candidates asked if they would pledge to end lethal strikes conducted by the CIA. Biden never responded to the survey.
“It is disappointing not to get a response,” Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, told The Intercept. “The use of lethal force, whether through drones or other weapons platforms outside of recognized armed conflict, is a defining characteristic of post-9/11 policy,” she said. “This approach has violated fundamental human rights, the rule of law, it has fueled conflicts, it has contributed to human displacement, and above all, in terms of consequences, has tremendously harmed hundreds of thousands of lives that are primarily civilian, Muslim, brown, and Black people.”
The issue of ending the alleged strikes conducted by the CIA is critical, said Pradhan. “It has to be ended and it is sad that that would even be a controversy,” she told The Intercept. “If you’re going to have this program, it has to be operated through DOD” — the Department of Defense.
What appear to be CIA drone strikes have been frequent, said Chris Woods, founder and director of Airwars, a watchdog that tracks various targeted killing operations.
“You can’t have transparency when a clandestine agency is conducting strikes,” said Woods, who spoke in a personal capacity. While Woods credits the Department of Defense for making improvements in recent years by systematizing civilian harm assessments and the admission of casualties, he said there was concern over a return to Obama-era secrecy: “A Biden national security team can’t come in as if it’s 2016. Time has moved on.”
“The really important thing that Joe Biden could do is end [the] CIA’s role in targeted killings, get them out of the drone strike business, and make it a U.S. military function,” Woods said.
For Shamsi, though, ending only the CIA’s ability to conduct lethal strikes doesn’t go nearly far enough. “The underlying problem is the program itself, and it would be a mistake to end the CIA’s role only to transfer it to another government agency,” she said. “It’s key to also remember that what we’re talking about is a program of lethal strikes against people who are suspected of wrongdoing, and that is the definition of extrajudicial killing.”
The Trump administration inherited Obama’s drone program and escalated lethal strikes in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, while aerial bombings continued across Yemen and Libya. Trump’s open embrace of airstrikes and special force missions led to shocking rates of civilian deaths in the early days of his reign. Now, in the sundown of the Trump presidency, civilian harm has become his legacy. That harm has created a stark motivation for raising questions about big-picture U.S. foreign policy over the past two decades.
“I think we need a pretty comprehensive review of all these policies relating to the global war on terror, particularly with regard to the CIA’s use of drone strikes,” said Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. “We shouldn’t see the use of drones as separate from the broader use of military violence, because ultimately that’s the issue here: In what scenarios and under what authorities does the government of the United States, acting in the name of the American people, use violence to advance the security of the American people?”
The violence of the Trump era, coupled with Trump’s Janus-faced pledge to end the wars, did provoke bipartisan support for reasserting Congress’s role in approving acts of war, even as those efforts fell short. A historic attempt to end military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen was vetoed by Trump. And another attempt by Congress this year to invoke the War Powers Resolution, seeking to block military action by Trump against Iran, was vetoed again. (Trump used a drone strike to assassinate Iran’s Gen. Qassim Suleimani while the military commander was in the neighboring state of Iraq. In the view of some in the legal community, the strike was a war crime that violated federal and international law.)
“I think there is a genuine bipartisan consensus to be built around this idea of Congress reasserting its Article I authority over war,” Duss said, referring to the constitutional provisions that give Congress sole power to declare war. “In following through on the commitment to end the forever war, that’s something that could be very useful for the Biden administration to focus on.”
Ending the wars is a broadly popular idea, but different actors see different ways of accomplishing the goal. Critics of the U.S.’s assassination programs, though, warn of approaches that would bring troops home while leaving the shadowy targeted killing programs in place. Pradhan said, “There is no credibility to ending a war if you continue these strikes without accountability.”
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Like it or not, the COVID-19 pandemic with its veiled threat of forced vaccinations, contact tracing, and genetically encoded vaccines is propelling humanity at warp speed into a whole new frontier—a surveillance matrix—the likes of which we’ve only previously encountered in science fiction.
Those who eye these developments with lingering mistrust have good reason to be leery: the government has long had a tendency to unleash untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.
Indeed, “we the people” have been treated like lab rats by government agencies for decades now: caged, branded, experimented upon without our knowledge or consent, and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.
You don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace, making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.
Now this same government—which has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests (GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.) and used it against us, to track, control and trap us—wants us to fall in line as it prepares to roll out COVID-19 vaccines that owe a great debt to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for its past work on how to weaponize and defend against infectious diseases.
This is all part of Operation Warp Speed, which President Trump has likened to the Manhattan Project, a covert government effort spearheaded by the military to engineer and build the world’s first atomic bomb.
There is every reason to tread cautiously.
There is a sinister world beyond that which we perceive, one in which power players jockey for control over the one commodity that is a necessary ingredient for total domination: you.
By you, I mean you the individual in all your singular humanness.
Remaining singularly human and retaining your individuality and dominion over yourself—mind, body and soul—in the face of corporate and government technologies that aim to invade, intrude, monitor, manipulate and control us may be one of the greatest challenges before us.
The groundwork being laid with these vaccines is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.
The term “matrix” was introduced into our cultural lexicon by the 1999 film The Matrix in which Neo, a computer programmer/hacker, awakens to the reality that humans have been enslaved by artificial intelligence and are being harvested for their bio-electrical energy.
Hardwired to a neuro-interactive simulation of reality called the “Matrix,” humans are kept inactive and docile while robotic androids gather the electricity their bodies generate. In order for the machines who run the Matrix to maintain control, they impose what appears to be a perfect world for humans to keep them distracted, content, and submissive.
Here’s the thing: Neo’s Matrix is not so far removed from our own technologically-hardwired worlds in which we’re increasingly beholden to corporate giants such as Google for powering so much of our lives. As journalist Ben Thompson explains:
Google+ is about unifying all of Google’s services under a single log-in which can be tracked across the Internet on every site that serves Google ads, uses Google sign-in, or utilizes Google analytics. Every feature of Google+—or of YouTube, or Maps, or Gmail, or any other service—is a flytrap meant to ensure you are logged in and being logged by Google at all times.
Everything we do is increasingly dependent on and, ultimately, controlled by our internet-connected, electronic devices. For example, in 2007, there were an estimated 10 million sensor devices connecting human utilized electronic devices (cell phones, laptops, etc.) to the Internet. By 2013, it had increased to 3.5 billion. By 2030, it is estimated to reach 100 trillion.
Much, if not all, of our electronic devices will be connected to Google, a neural network that approximates a massive global brain.
Google’s resources, beyond anything the world has ever seen, includes the huge data sets that result from one billion people using Google every single day and the Google knowledge graph “which consists of 800 million concepts and billions of relationships between them.”
The end goal? The creation of a new “human” species, so to speak, and the NSA, the Pentagon and the “Matrix” of surveillance agencies are part of the plan. As William Binney, one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA, said, “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”
Mind you, this isn’t population control in the classic sense. It’s more about controlling the population through singularity, a marriage of sorts between machine and human beings in which artificial intelligence and the human brain will merge to form a superhuman mind.
The term “singularity”—that is, computers simulating human life itself—was coined years ago by mathematical geniuses Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann. “The ever accelerating progress of technology,” warned von Neumann, “gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”
Advances in neuroscience indicate that future behavior can be predicted based upon activity in certain portions of the brain, potentially creating a nightmare scenario in which government officials select certain segments of the population for more invasive surveillance or quarantine based solely upon their brain chemistry.
Case in point: researchers at the Mind Research Center scanned the brains of thousands of prison inmates in order to track their brain chemistry and their behavior after release. In one experiment, researchers determined that inmates with lower levels of activity in the area of the brain associated with error processing allegedly had a higher likelihood of committing a crime within four years of being released from prison. While researchers have cautioned against using the results of their research as a method of predicting future crime, it will undoubtedly become a focus of study for government officials.
There’s no limit to what can be accomplished—for good or ill—using brain-computer interfaces.
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have created a brain-to-brain interface between lab rats, which allows them to transfer information directly between brains. In one particular experiment, researchers trained a rat to perform a task where it would hit a lever when lit. The trained rat then had its brain connected to an untrained rat’s brain via electrodes. The untrained rat was then able to learn the trained rat’s behavior via electrical stimulation. This even worked over great distances using the Internet, with a lab rat in North Carolina guiding the actions of a lab rat in Brazil.
Clearly, we are rapidly moving into the “posthuman era,” one in which humans will become a new type of being. “Technological devices,” writes journalist Marcelo Gleiser, “will be implanted in our heads and bodies, or used peripherally, like Google Glass, extending our senses and cognitive abilities.”
Transhumanism—the fusing of machines and people—is here to stay and will continue to grow.
In fact, as science and technology continue to advance, the ability to control humans will only increase. In 2014, for example, it was revealed that scientists have discovered how to deactivate that part of our brains that controls whether we are conscious or not. When researchers at George Washington University sent high frequency electrical signals to the claustrum—that thin sheet of neurons running between the left and right sides of the brain—their patients lost consciousness. Indeed, one patient started speaking more slowly until she became silent and still. When she regained consciousness, she had no memory of the event.
Add to this the fact that increasingly humans will be implanted with microchips for such benign purposes as tracking children or as medical devices to assist with our health. Such devices “point to an uber-surveillance society that is Big Brother on the inside looking out,” warns Dr. Katina Michael. “Governments or large corporations would have the ability to track people’s actions and movements, categorize them into different socio-economic, political, racial, or consumer groups and ultimately even control them.”
All of this indicates a new path forward for large corporations and government entities that want to achieve absolute social control. Instead of relying solely on marauding SWAT teams and full-fledged surveillance apparatuses, they will work to manipulate our emotions to keep us in lock step with the American police state.
Now add this warp speed-deployed vaccine to that mix, with all of the associated unknown and fearsome possibilities for altering or controlling human epigenetics, and you start to see the perils inherent in blindly adopting emerging technologies without any restrictions in place to guard against technological tyranny and abuse.
It’s one thing for the starship Enterprise to boldly go where no man has gone before, but even Mr. Spock recognized the dangers of a world dominated by AI. “Computers make excellent and efficient servants,” he observed in “The Ultimate Computer” episode of Star Trek, “but I have no wish to serve under them.”
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As members of the UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, Drone Wars and a number of other UK civil society groups have written to Secretary of State Ben Wallace on the UK’s position on the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems partly in response to recent comments by the Chief of the Defence Staff.
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Dear Secretary of State,
We are writing on behalf of the UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, in advance of the next meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on ‘Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems’ (LAWS) at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), as well as the CCW’s meeting of High Contracting Parties. We welcome the UK government’s recognition in the CCW that discussing human control is central to successful international work to address increasing ‘autonomy’ in weapons systems, and that this is an area in which meaningful progress can be made.[1]
In this regard, we encourage the UK government to work on building recognition and stimulating engagement around the valuable content it has already contributed to the CCW on aspects of human control.[2] Such efforts could help promote convergence among states on useful points of substance and common understanding in this area, both at the normative and operational level.
We also welcome the UK’s working paper exploring ‘the human role in autonomous warfare’ and would appreciate the opportunity to discuss its contents further with you and your ministry.[3] We share the paper’s view that ‘assigning responsibility and preserving dignity’ are key reasons for retaining human control over the use of force. However, the UK’s perspective on human control raises concerns that such control may disproportionally focus on the early stages of weapon systems’ research and development. Although we acknowledge the importance of ensuring human-machine interaction throughout a weapon system lifecycle, we believe that further attention should be placed on how to operationally maintain human control over the use of force on actual, specific battlefield decisions, so as to ensure compliance with International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law. As such, we believe that to preserve legal and ethical compliance, meaningful human control requires positive obligations, including to control location and duration of system use, as well as the specification of targets.
In addition, we would appreciate clarification on what ‘humanitarian benefits’ the UK believes could arise from ‘automating some tasks within the targeting process’.[4] We are particularly interested in better understanding what examples or experiences substantiate the UK government’s argument that autonomy could decrease risks for civilians and advance humanitarian goals. We note that the UN Secretary General’s 2020 report on the Protection of Civilians expresses concerns over LAWS. We share the UN Secretary General’s view that developments in weapons technologies could, in fact, present a major challenge to the protection of civilians in armed conflict.[5]
We agree with the UK’s view that substantial contributions towards delineating the principles and components of meaningful human control over weapons systems will be key to building an effective international framework to construct regulation for human control. However, we are not persuaded by the UK’s position that the existing framework is ‘more than sufficient’ to address the novel moral, ethical, human rights and legal issues that developments in this area pose. We also believe that a ‘compendium of good practice’ should be a tool for the discussion of necessary additional rules—rather than an end point. In this regard, we would like to ask what specific examples of ‘good practice’—for instance practical descriptions and case studies regarding the use and parameters of control of current sensor-based weapons systems—the UK might present at the next GGE meeting and beyond, to concretely allow further discussion across the LAWS community of interest.
In light of the above issues, we noted with interest the comments made by the UK Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, in an interview with Sky News on 8th November, where he stated that the UK ‘will absolutely avail ourselves of autonomous platforms and robotics wherever we can’ and that in the near future ‘I suspect we could have an army of 120,000, of which 30,000 might be robots, who knows’.[6] These remarks appear to be in conflict with the UK’s official stated policy in respect of LAWS, that being that the MoD ‘has no intention to develop systems that operate without human intervention in the weapon command and control chain.’[7] Given this apparent conflict, we would be grateful to learn the extent to which General Sir Nick Carter’s comments reflect a change in UK official policy.
Finally, we are interested to see the UK’s proposal for the greater involvement of industry in international discussions regarding LAWS.[8] Our experience of engaging with the tech and finance industries has impressed on us the fact that many key stakeholders would welcome clearer international legal regulation to protect their work, ensuring it will not be used for dangerous or unethical purposes and/or safeguarding it against reverse engineering for such unintended applications. We believe the contribution of these industries to international discussions would be welcome, and would be interested to know which sectors and stakeholders the UK expects to invite to help form policy in this area.
We look forward to hearing your response and more detail about the approach the UK government will be taking as the conversation continues in the lead-up to the critical moment of the next CCW Review Conference (currently scheduled for 2021). Ultimately, we believe that the UK can contribute to the success of the overall process by demonstrating leadership in working with other states to both develop a strong shared consensus of the practicalities of meaningful human control over weapons systems and the use of force, as well as building understanding on how to preserve responsibility and human dignity. From the campaign’s perspective, we will continue to work with states to prepare for formal negotiations on a legal framework that prohibits and restricts lethal autonomous weapon systems.
Yours sincerely,
Ann Feltham Parliamentary Co-ordinator, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)
Ben Donaldson Head of Campaigns, United Nations Association UK (UNA-UK)
Chris Cole Director, Drone Wars UK
Dave Webb Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
Oliver Feeley-Sprague Programme Director, Military, Security and Police, Amnesty International UK
Maiara Folly, Coordinator, UK Campaign to Stop Killer Robots
Dr Rebecca E. Johnson Director, Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy
Richard Moyes Managing Director, Article 36
Robert Parker Director of Policy and Communications, Saferworld
Dr Stuart Parkinson Executive Director, Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR)
Taniel Yusef International Representative, The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom UK (WILPF UK)
Amnesty International student representatives at the universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Oxford and Warwick.
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I want the American public to know right now, we will not be intimidated. American patriots are fed up with the corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government. We are going to take this country back. We will not be intimidated. We are going to clean this mess up right now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it. And we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who voted for freedom. — Sidney Powell, Washington D.C., 19 November, 2020
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Sidney Powell is emerging as a pivotal figure among those sounding the alarm that the United States is forfeiting its claim to be anything like a democratic country subject to the rule of law. Like Rudolf Giuliani, Powell has been a federal prosecutor. Unlike Giuliani, Powell has made one thing abundantly clear. She will not distinguish between members of the Republic Party and Democratic Party in her prosecutorial approach to solving the still-unresolved outcome of the 2020 US election. “My intent,” Powell asserts, “has always been to expose all the fraud I could find and let the chips fall where they may—whether it be upon Republicans or Democrats.”
Powell’s non-partisan approach to getting at the truth of what actually happened in election 2020 is proving to be infectious. Increasingly individuals are turning up at public demonstrations calling attention to the fraud of this election in ways that promote the need for genuine investigations of a bi-partisan nature. Those seeking investigation more than victory want to see a genuine archaeological dig by forensic experts into the evidentiary morphology of this electoral debacle irrespective of adversarial spins fovouring Republicans or Democrats.
Powell’s commitment to pursuing the high road of non-partisanship in litigating the rigged 2020 election may well have played a role in opening up a split within the personal legal team of President Donald Trump. Giuliani’s strategy points one way and Powell’s strategy points another another. As I see it, Powell will probably continue her case no matter who is residing in the White House after Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021.
As any conscientious and aware observer can easily discern, the main elements of this year’s presidential contest expose the clear outlines of a rigged election displaying a wide variety of cheating techniques. The obvious irregularities began in the early hours of November 4 after President Trump made a speech at the White House emphasizing the large extent of his reported lead especially in important swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The outcome of voting in Nevada and Arizona would subsequently move into the category of contested jurisdictions.
When rigged elections come to light, evidence of fraud inflicted on voters is evidence of gross abuse pointed at people and principles. The real crime of facilitating or allowing election fraud goes back to the government’s betrayal of many sacred trusts. The act of voting by enfranchised citizens is meant to be the ultimate embodiment of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The effort to rig elections assaults the dignity, interests and constitutional rights of faithful citizens who are cheated of their chance to perform their democratic duty.
People will remember waking up after election night to news reports stating that the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate had somehow zoomed ahead during the dead of night when the vote counting was supposed to have stopped. Starting at around 4:30 am strange occurrences began in many vote tabulation centers. The anomalous developments threw the electoral process into a condition of chaos and disarray that continues yet. In Michigan and Wisconsin, for instance, huge bundles of votes miraculously showed up, all for Joe Biden. As Sean Davis tweeted,
So while everyone was asleep and after everyone went home, Democrats in Michigan magically found a trove of 138,339 votes, and all 138,339 of those “votes” magically went to Biden. That doesn’t look suspicious at all.
What are the odds of flipping a coin 138, 339 times and having it come up tails 138,339 times in a row? A similar all-Biden “vote” dump took place around 6 am in Wisconsin. The resulting graph of the Biden vote in these and other states goes perpendicularly straight up to form so-called vote spikes. The legitimacy of these spikes especially in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin has become the subject of much scrutiny and sceptical interpretation.
The overall pattern of what transpired is beginning to be pieced together. It seems that the rigged computer voting machines were not sufficiently well rigged to negate the enormous surge of votes for Donald Trump that arose from normal voting on election day. When the voting system shut down it seems to have been to break the trajectory of a big win for Trump. When the process was mysterious set back in motion during the wee hours of the morning of Nov. 4, new techniques of cheating were introduced and deployed to “backfill” the Biden electoral deficit.
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Anthony James Hall has been Editor In Chief of the American Herald Tribune since its inception. Between 1990 and 2018 Dr. Hall was Professor of Globalization Studies and Liberal Education at the University of Lethbridge where he is now Professor Emeritus. The focus of Dr. Hall’s teaching, research, and community service came to highlight the conditions of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in imperial globalization since 1492.
The US has added to research from Italyand France that indicates the coronavirus might have been circulating among people in a number of countries before it was identified in China and erupted into a pandemic.
Scientists from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that tests of blood samples taken in the United States from December 13 last year revealed evidence of antibodies for the Covid-19 virus, known as Sars-Cov-2.
The samples were taken more than two weeks before the December 31 official confirmation of the outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and as much as a month earlier than the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the US on January 19, according to the CDC report.
Antibodies are generated by the human immune system to identify and attack pathogens in the body and are specific to each type of virus, bacteria or parasite.
“The presence of these serum antibodies indicate that isolated Sars-CoV-2 infections may have occurred in the western portion of the United States earlier than previously recognised,” CDC scientists wrote in the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The finding follows an analysis published in Italy last monthof blood samples taken since September 2019, which also indicated the presence of antibodies against the new coronavirus. In France, a swab taken from a hospital patient on December 27 later tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a report published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents in June.
Both sets of samples were taken before the virus was identified in Wuhan and add to the politicised debate about the origins of the coronavirus.
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Featured image: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Graphic. (U.S. Air Force Graphic by Rosario “Charo” Gutierrez)
This article was originally published on Salon in June 2016.
“Unless we take the oil from Libya, I have no interest in Libya,” said Donald Trump in an April 2011 interview on CNN’s “Newsroom.”
The U.S. government was considering military intervention in the oil-rich North African nation at the time. Trump said he would only participate if the U.S. exploited Libya’s natural resources in return.
“Libya is only good as far I’m concerned for one thing — this country takes the oil. If we’re not taking the oil, no interest,” he added.
NATO claimed its U.S.-backed bombing campaign was meant to protect Libyans who were protesting the regime of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi. Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, used NATO’s own materials to show that this was false.
“In truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start,” Zenko wrote in an exposé in Foreign Policy in March.
Trump was not the only figure to propose taking Libya’s oil in return for bombing it, however. Neera Tanden, the president of the pro-Clinton think tank the Center for American Progress, proposed this same policy a few months after Trump.
“We have a giant deficit. They have a lot of oil,” Tanden wrote in an October 2011 email titled “Should Libya pay us back?”
“Most Americans would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit. If we want to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil rich countries partially pay us back doesn’t seem crazy to me,” she added in the message, which was obtained by The Intercept.
Liberal hawkishness
Tanden is a close ally of Hillary Clinton, and is frequently named as a likely chief-of-staff in a Hillary Clinton White House. The Center for American Progress, which Tanden leads, was founded by John Podesta, a key figure in the Clinton machine.
Podesta is the chairman of Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign, and he previously served as chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. With his brother Tony, John also co-founded the Podesta Group, a public affairs firm that has lobbied for the draconian Saudi Arabian regime, among others.
Tanden has expressed hawkish views, although in a statement to Salon she strongly opposed being described as hawkish. The New York Times has described Hillary Clinton as more hawkish than her Republican rivals, although it still endorsed her for president.
The Center for American Progress president invited hard-line right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in Washington, D.C. in November, after he had spent months aggressively trying to jeopardize the Iran nuclear deal.
Tanden does not comment on international affairs much, but her tweets provide some insight into her hawkish views, which do not reflect the official policy of the Center for American Progress.
In September 2013, when the Obama administration was preparing to bomb Syria, she tweeted support, writing, “On Syria, while I don’t want to be the world’s policeman, an unpoliced world is dangerous. The US may be the only adult in the room left.” Just over a week later, the administration backed off of its plans, in response to enormous backlash — and in fear that it would end up with another Libya on its hands.
During the lead-up to the war in Libya, Tanden expressed support for military intervention. She suggested that Americans should be “chanting” for Qadhafi’s ouster.
Days after the NATO operation was launched, she wrote, “To liberal friends worried re Libya, is there better reason 4 use of US power than 2 protect innocent civilians from slaughter by a madman?”
Less than a month later, Tanden conceded, “This whole Libya thing doesn’t seem to be working out so well.”
Like many liberal figures who supported the NATO bombing of Libya, she stoppedtalking about the country between 2011 and 2014, while it was roiled by violent chaos and extremism.
These tweets came before the October email in which Tanden suggested taking Libya’s oil in return for bombing it. Trump made the same proposal several months before, in April.
After this article was published, Tanden stressed in a statement to Salon that her views do not reflect those of the Center for American Progress, which did not take a position on Libya.
She claimed being labeled “a hawk is a ridiculous caricature,” adding, “I opposed the Iraq war from the beginning.” Tanden noted that the Center for American Progress “was among the first think tanks to lay out concrete plans for ending the war in Iraq.” She also said that she does not support putting U.S. troops in Syria.
“CAP is a think tank,” Tanden stressed, referring to the organization by its acronym. “We have internal discussions and dialogues all the time on a variety of issues. We encourage the deliberation of ideas to spur conversation, push thinking and spark debate. We do this in meetings, on phone calls and yes, over e-mail. One internal e-mail exchange among colleagues — which was leaked to another organization — or a few tweets does not constitute a published, official policy position.”
Salon never once stated that Tanden’s views reflect the Center for American Progress’ official policy, but Tanden accused Salon of implying this.
Leftist critics have long lambasted the Democratic Party’s militaristic foreign policy, arguing it is not much different than the GOP’s. This exploitative idea proposed by both Trump and Tanden lends further credence to the argument that, when it comes to the U.S. empire, the Democratic and Republican parties are much more similar than their adherents make them out to be.
A strange mix
At the time of his April 2011 CNN interview, Trump was considering running as a Republican in the 2012 election. His nationalistic rhetoric then was very consistent to that of today.
Trump lamented that the U.S. was “just not respected” and had become “a laughing stock throughout the world.” He hoped that he could reverse this supposed trend, just as he now promises to “make America great again.”
Trump’s proposal on Libya was consistent with his views on Iraq. He declared at the American Conservative Union’s 40th Conservative Political Action Conference, in 2013, that the U.S. should “take” $1.5 trillion worth of Iraq’s oil to pay for the illegal war.
In his presidential campaign today, Trump has made similar proposals. His foreign policy is a strange mix of skeptical non-interventionism and hawkishness.
In the 2011 CNN interview, Trump expressed skepticism about the rebels in Libya. “They make the rebels sound like they’re from ‘Gone With the Wind,’ very glamorous,” Trump said. “I hear they’re controlled by Iran. I hear they’re controlled by al-Qaeda.”
The rebels had very little to do with Iran. Iran did express support for the opposition to Qadhafi’s dictatorship, but it staunchly opposed Western military intervention, which it warned was hypocritical, neocolonial in nature and motivated by Libya’s large oil reserves.
By no means were all of the rebels extremists, but there were al-Qaeda-linked elements in the opposition to Qadhafi. Human rights groups documented atrocities committed by extremist rebels, including ethnic cleansing of black Libyans.
After the NATO war toppled Qadhafi, the country was thrown into chaos. Rivaled forces, including extremist groups such as Ansar al-Sharia and eventually ISIS, seized control of swaths of the country, and weapons from Qadhafi’s enormous cache ended up in the hands of extremist groups throughout the region. To this day, large parts of Libya are not under the control of the internationally recognized government.
Disastrous Libya war
Hillary Clinton played the leading role in rallying up U.S. support for the NATO war. Reports have since shown that the Pentagon was skeptical of U.S. involvement at the time, but, under the leadership of Secretary of State Clinton, the Obama administration portrayed it as a humanitarian mission.
President Obama insisted at the beginning of the intervention, “Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” The State Department likewise said “President Obama has been equally firm that our military operation has a narrowly defined mission that does not include regime change.”
Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates later told The New York Times,
“I can’t recall any specific decision that said, ‘Well, let’s just take him out,’” referring to Qadhafi.
Micah Zenko, the Council on Foreign Relations scholar, showed this to be false.
“This is scarcely believable,” Zenko rejoined in his detailed report. “Given that decapitation strikes against Qaddafi were employed early and often, there almost certainly was a decision by the civilian heads of government of the NATO coalition to ‘take him out’ from the very beginning of the intervention.”
“The threat posed by the Libyan regime’s military and paramilitary forces to civilian-populated areas was diminished by NATO airstrikes and rebel ground movements within the first 10 days,” he explained. “Afterward, NATO began providing direct close-air support for advancing rebel forces by attacking government troops that were actually in retreat and had abandoned their vehicles.” The military intervention continued for more than seven months.
Rebel forces went on to brutally murder Qadhafi, sodomizing him with a bayonet. When then-Sec. Clinton heard that he had been killed, she rejoiced in front of TV cameras, joking, “We came, we saw, he died!”
In April, Obama singled out U.S. support for the NATO war in Libya as the worst decision of his presidency.
Zenko warned that the “intervention in Libya shows that the slippery slope of allegedly limited interventions is most steep when there’s a significant gap between what policymakers say their objectives are and the orders they issue for the battlefield.”
“Unfortunately, duplicity of this sort is a common practice in the U.S. military,” he added.
Interestingly, Trump himself cautioned in an interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” in March 2011 that U.S. intervention in Syria would be a “slippery slope.”
“It is a slippery slope and more and more, you realize that we’re over there fighting wars to open up these governments and they would have opened up themselves,” Trump said, expressing skepticism about U.S. military involvement very early on in the war.
Clinton called for the exact opposite in Syria. She would go on to oppose diplomacy and insist the U.S. should support the “hard men with the guns.”
DNC hack
Trump’s unusual mix of anti-interventionist and exploitative foreign policy views are highlighted in the Democratic National Committee’s alleged opposition research.
A hacker broke into the computer network of the DNC and leaked its opposition research on Trump. A 210-page document that appears to be this report highlights Trump’s past remarks on Libya, Syria, Iraq and more.
Also revealed in the report is that Trump bragged that he “screwed” Muammar Qadhafi with an unfair business deal.
U.S. media outlets immediately blamed the DNC hack on the Russian government. Soon after, however, they quietly backed away from the hasty conclusions they made based on what progressive media watchdog Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting pointed out was incredibly flimsy evidence.
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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Today is the tenth anniversary of “Cablegate” when WikiLeaks, leading a group of partner media organisations, began reporting on the contents of hundreds of thousands of leaked United States government diplomatic cables.
The documents revealed the vast scope and global reach of US imperialism’s criminal conspiracies against the international working class, and the brutality and corruption of capitalist governments the world over.
Of historic significance in their own right, the publications followed WikiLeaks’s extraordinary releases earlier that year of the “Collateral Murder” video—showing the killing of Iraqi civilians, including journalists and first responders, by US soldiers—the Afghan War Logs and the Iraq War Logs.
These publications earned WikiLeaks, and in particular its founder, the journalist and publisher Julian Assange, the undying enmity of the ruling class. A vicious campaign of slander and pseudo-legal persecution was launched against Assange that continues to this day. He is currently locked up in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison awaiting a verdict on his extradition to the US, where he faces a likely sentence of 175 years in the darkest corner of the American prison system, on charges under the Espionage Act.
Just a small sample of the diplomatic cables exposures gives a sense of their significance.
They revealed that the US had knowledge of and approved the military coup that toppled Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. American officials discussed the possibility of a similar overthrow of the Pakistani government in 2009 with the country’s top general. In 2009, Washington privately supported the military coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and worked to cover up the repression which followed.
US intelligence assets helped to engineer Kevin Rudd’s replacement as Australian prime minister by Julia Gillard in 2010, to ensure a continued Australian presence in the criminal US-led occupation of Afghanistan. Rudd was also targeted for suggesting America make minor accommodations to China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
The cables demonstrated that the US government was fully aware of the torture, random arrests, and extra-judicial killings carried out by its ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. They proved Washington’s detailed knowledge of state corruption in Tunisia and exposed the government’s collaboration in abrogating the rights of Tunisian citizens detained in Guantanamo Bay. Governments in Pakistan and Yemen were shown to have collaborated with US drone operations in their own countries, responsible for the repeated massacres of civilians.
American officials were aware of an explosion at a BP gas rig in the Caspian Sea in 2008 but took no action to investigate the safety of the company’s other sites. Two years later, an explosion at a rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed eleven people and created the largest marine oil spill in history. During the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, the US successfully bribed and blackmailed poor countries over development aid to gain support for a watering down of climate commitments.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered US embassies and UN representatives to gather personal information, including credit card and frequent flyer account numbers, internet passwords, work schedules and even DNA samples, from UN and foreign government officials. The only realistic purpose being to facilitate similar blackmail operations.
Yet more cables detailed the domination of the Nigerian state by Shell Oil.
Contrary to the claims of the US government that WikiLeaks recklessly endangered vulnerable sources named in the cables, a painstaking and collaborative process was established to review and redact the documents before publication. At Assange’s extradition hearing this September, journalists from all over the world testified to WikiLeaks’ “pioneering” use of encryption to protect sources and documents. The cables were scheduled to be released over the course of a year, on a country-by-country basis, making use of the expertise of local partner media organisations to ensure the appropriate redactions took place. In some cases, the US government itself provided suggestions for redactions.
Evidence heard at the hearing also established that it was Guardianjournalist David Leigh who was responsible for allowing the release of tens of thousands of unredacted cables, which had been securely stored by WikiLeaks, in September 2011. In a hatchet-job on WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, Leigh published the password to a secure online archive containing the cables, making them freely accessible.
Assange called the US State Department to warn them of an impending release but was ignored. He and the other WikiLeaks editors then took the decision to publish the unredacted cables themselves, since the documents were already in the public domain. WikiLeaks’s main media partners, the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais, and Le Monde, used this event as a pretext to break off relations with the organisation and denounce its work.
The American government responded to the initial “Cablegate” publications with an embargo on WikiLeaks. Amazon removed the site from its web servers, PayPal cut off the WikiLeaks account and Mastercard and Visa prevented payments being made to the organisation. Bank of America stopped handling WikiLeaks payments and Swiss bank PostFinance froze Assange’s assets.
WikiLeaks also came under a massive “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS) attack, effectively preventing users from accessing its site.
Obama’s Democratic Party administration launched a furious salvo of denunciations, with then Vice President Joe Biden calling Assange a “high-tech terrorist” and Hilary Clinton reportedly asking, “Can’t we just drone this guy?” This opened the floodgates to a torrent of demands from Republicans and the right-wing media for his assassination.
Assange was subjected to a sprawling conspiracy, as Sweden launched a manufactured sexual assault investigation to secure his arrest. Swedish prosecutors were encouraged by the UK authorities who used a Swedish extradition request to arbitrarily detain Assange in the Ecuadorian Assembly in London, where he had claimed political asylum. Pseudo-left political organisations abandoned Assange entirely over this smear campaign, or openly attacked him as a “rapist”, despite no charges ever being laid.
In April 2019, the US, UK and a new Ecuadorian government led by Lenin Moreno reached a deal to see Assange illegally seized from the embassy by British police.
The ferocity of the US government and the betrayal of Assange and WikiLeaks by the liberal media and the pseudo-left were driven by a fear of the profoundly radicalising effect of their revelations. The reporting of the diplomatic cables tore the veil off the daily crimes and intrigues of the ruling class and exposed them to millions of people. It threw light on the world which had been created by an unending series of US-led wars of aggression, the “war on terror” and the assault on democratic rights, and the voracious expansion of corporate and financial interests into every corner of the globe. For the embedded liberal media and their affluent pseudo-left allies, WikiLeaks’ exposure of imperialism’s systemic savagery and hostility to democracy broke an unspoken law.
Commenting on the significance of the release, the World Socialist Web Sitewrote on November 30, 2010:
“Underlying the outraged denunciations of the Obama administration and the Republicans over WikiLeaks’ undermining of US ‘national security’ is the anger of a ruling financial aristocracy that must pursue its own predatory and reactionary interests in secret because they are opposed to the needs and aspirations of working people in the US and around the world.”
There was, we explained, one precedent for the exposure—the publishing of the secret treaties and diplomatic documents of the imperialist powers involved in the First World War by the new Bolshevik government, following the Russian Revolution. Leon Trotsky, then People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, wrote at the time:
“Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests. Imperialism, with its dark plans of conquest and its robber alliances and deals, developed the system of secret diplomacy to the highest level. The struggle against imperialism, which is exhausting and destroying the peoples of Europe, is at the same time a struggle against capitalist diplomacy, which has cause enough to fear the light of day.”
Barely more than a month later, the huge political impact of the WikiLeaks releases was reflected in the mass uprising in Tunisia which overthrew long time President Zine El Abadine Ben Ali. The uprising is credited as the spark of the Arab Spring, which saw a wave of protest across much of the Arab world. Events in Tunisia were widely described as “the first WikiLeaks revolution”, having been encouraged by the organisation’s exposure of Tunisian state crimes and corruption.
This surge in the class struggle and the threat of new “WikiLeaks revolutions”—combined with the spur given to anti-imperialist sentiment by the Iraq and Afghan War Logs—are the “crimes” for which Assange will never be forgiven by the ruling class. They are his greatest service to the international working class. WikiLeaks contributed to a growing recognition among workers and young people that state criminality and ruling class conspiracies are not accidents or the work of a few bad individuals, but the product of a whole social system based on the rule of competing oligarchies which must be overthrown.
The scale of these conspiracies grows by the year. This September, journalist Bob Woodward revealed that US President Donald Trump, and Woodward himself, had been aware of the dangers posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in January. The Senate Health Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a private briefing on COVID later that month, with no records kept of the discussion.
No warnings were made to the population. As several senators began shifting stocks to make a killing when the pandemic hit, the US government prepared the CARES Act—a multi-trillion dollar looting of social wealth to line the pockets of the super-rich. Imperialist governments across the world followed suit. Corruption, profiteering and financial speculation have since become endemic in the global response to the virus.
Assange is having his life destroyed as a warning—to prevent new crimes being met with new exposures which could ignite the massive anger developing in the working class. The fight against imperialism and for the basic democratic and social rights of the population is inseparable from the fight to defend WikiLeaks and secure the freedom of Julian Assange.
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Speaking during the Bayer Future of Farming online conference, Liam Condon, president of crop science at Bayer, said the company is lobbying “very strongly” to change the EU’s GMO regulations to exempt gene editing, according to an article in the Farmers Guardian.
Mr Condon said,
“[We are] promoting very strongly that regulations should catch up with technology and allow this technology to be used, [not only] for the benefit of Europeans, but also for the benefit of others all over the world who look to Europe for regulations.”
According to the Farmers Guardian, Mr Condon described gene editing and CRISPR technology as an “amazing breakthrough” that would allow agriculture to be more sustainable. But he said the main issue was Europe’s regulatory process, which approaches newer GM technology in the same way as “old” transgenic GMOs. This meant it would not be possible to develop crops suited to Europe because it would be too expensive to carry out all the trials that are required here.
In reality, however, neither old nor new GM has the potential to make agriculture more sustainable, as a new scientific review has found.
And the EU’s GMO regulations don’t stop countries carrying out GMO research trials – the UK has up to recently been part of the EU and continues to host such trials – with nothing of value to show for them.
Mr Condon plays the guilt card by invoking droughts and floods in Africa and Asia, claiming, “If Europe continues to make life very difficult for GE, that means that technology will probably also not evolve in Africa where they really need it.”
But GM has failed to produce useful crops for drought and flood conditions, where conventional breeding has succeeded. And the history of GM crops in Africa is one of unmitigated failure that has left livelihoods in ruins – see the book GMO Myths and Truths for detailed accounts of several examples.
Bayer’s Mr Condon needs to form a healthy relationship with the truth and stop misleading Europe’s public and regulators.
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The Australian Defense Force’s (ADF) recent inquiry into Australian special forces conduct in Afghanistan, between 2005 and 2016, reveals that 39 Afghan prisoners and civilians were killed outside of battle, as part of a culture of “competition killings,” where commanders required junior soldiers to shoot prisoners to achieve their first kill.
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has apologized, by phone, to Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani. ADF chief, General Campbell, also apologized and directed the blame to a few low-level individual non-commissioned officers and their proteges “who sought to fuse military excellence with ego, elitism, and entitlement.”
However, if Australia wants to atone for the depraved actions, by apparently 19 individuals, it must see these war crimes within the larger political context within Western elites that make wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, still at war 19 years on, possible.
Of course, others need to engage in self-introspection too, it’s not just Australian troops that have committed war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. For example, Wikileaks released a classified U.S. military video of its military indiscriminately slaying over a dozen people, including two Reuters staff, in the Iraq suburb of New Baghdad. The British army has also been accused of covering up numerous killings of children in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The censoring of war crimes is, no doubt, seen as a necessary evil by governments who need a veil of morality to cover the immoral abhorrence that is war. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan though are particularly repugnant as neither were inevitable.
For instance, the conspiracy theory, surrounding the Iraq war, turned out to be a conspiracy fact. It is now widely known that the destruction of Iraq was based on fake weapons of mass destruction claims.
In contrast, Afghanistan is seen as the more “just” war which was sparked by the 911 terrorist attacks. However, outside of the mainstream press, the events of 911 are fiercely disputed. The Journal of 911 Studies and the organization Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth brings together thousands of academics, scientists, engineers, and architects who dispute the official narrative. In addition, 911Truth.org highlights numerous discrepancies of the 911 event.
Even the evidence presented in the mainstream media doesn’t provide a clear justification for the invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Jazeera, among others, reported that Osama Bin Laden, blamed by the Bush administration for the 911 attacks, while praising the attacks, denied his involvement.
According to CNN, the Taliban, which governed Afghanistan in 2001, denounced the 911 attacks as un-Islamic. It offered to hand over Bin Laden on the condition that the U.S. provided evidence of Bin Laden’s involvement. Indeed, the Taliban had offered to give up Bin Laden on numerous occasions before 911.
Within the first week of the U.S. bombing, the Taliban once again made overtures to negotiate the surrendering of Bin Laden but it was rejected by the U.S.
In lieu of both sufficient evidence and diplomacy, Afghanistan, 19 years later, is still in a state of chaos and, depending on one’s viewpoint, Western forces still occupy or are being hosted in Afghanistan.
As we can see, 911 has sparked a never-ending War on Terror, which, according to a Brown University study, has displaced 37 million people, cost $6.4 trillion, and has taken 801,000 lives.
As such, the villainy of the 19 Australian troops is merely a microcosm of macroscopic geopolitical villainy. While individual war crimes must be condemned never-ending hegemonic wars, based on lies and misinformation, represent a greater crime to humanity.
Indeed, Western soldiers are also victims of imperial policies. They are commanded by lunacy to commit lunacy and yet somehow, they are, expected to maintain their sanity and morality. Speaking to friends and acquaintances who have fought on the front line, in these wars, it is clear that for many a part of their humanity will always remain on the battlefields of these far-away lands.
In essence then, General Campbell’s explanation that the maddening actions of the few individuals “who sought to fuse military excellence with ego, elitism and entitlement” apply more to the actions of Western elites who sent them to war in the first place.
For example, the West (namely its elites) has gained and retained its dominance in the world primarily through “military excellence” rather than moral persuasion. The Western ego, full of its own “right,” at the expense of others, is blind to the value and the equality of other civilizations. This mindset backed by the military might lead to elitism where the dictates of the minority feel entitled to enforce their “right” on the world through any means necessary including the madness of a never-ending war.
Thus, while inquiries into individual war crimes are commendable, Western democracies, more than ever, need an inquiry into their deeper systemic problems that make them predisposed to using undemocratic and immoral wars to achieve their strategic ends.
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Keith Lamb is a graduate from the University of Glasgow, Staffordshire University and the University of Oxford. His primary research interests are the international relations of China, neoliberalism and China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
The Spanish economic situation worsens day after day. The national manufacturing sector dropped significantly in November, according to data from IHS Markit, which attributes the decline to the drop in production demand due to the pandemic. The decrease in production compared to October was about three percentage points, with Spanish industry reaching alarming levels of threat.
The main problem is a drop in the entire production chain. With the return of the increase in cases of COVID-19, all sectors of the economy retracted. And the biggest drop was precisely in the sectors most marked by the need for social contact. The new recommendations to resume social isolation and preventive measures have profoundly affected the commercial center specialized in serving the public directly. Strengths of the Spanish economy, such as tourism and hotel market, for example, have again declined. However, the Spanish producers chose to keep production at the levels of the previous months when Europe had improved its health situation in relation to the coronavirus. And this was a big mistake. In general terms, there was an overproduction, which, even if moderate, caused the loss of many jobs and the drop of many manufacturers. However, it was not only the consumer-oriented industries that had problems, but also the producers of capital goods, which makes everything even more worrying, as this represents a drop not only in consumption, but in the productive potential of the Spanish national industry.
A recent report by the Bank of Spain has further reduced investor hope in this European country. According to a study carried out by the Bank, between 6 and 10% of Spanish companies will disappear due to liquidity problems as a result of the COVID pandemic. According to data from the same report, 40.6% of Spanish companies are in financial trouble in 2020, compared to 13.9% in 2019. This means that almost half of the Spanish private sector is not making enough profit from its activities to continue producing in long-term. The number is a structural threat to the economy of this European country and represents an evident risk of financial collapse.
When we analyze the economic sectors separately, we have even more worrying data. In the hotel business, 72% of companies have financial problems; in the automotive sector, 65% of companies have such problems; in the transport, storage and commerce sectors, the index is about 42% of the companies. About 2% to 4% of Spanish companies are already in a state of impossible recovery. Big companies have managed to maintain themselves, although they have also noticed difficulties. One of the great fears of experts and investors is that the crisis will hit the small and medium manufacturers heavily, annihilating the competition structure and further increasing the monopolies of large corporations, which have enough power to manage and overcome the crisis.
In fact, the absolute uncertainty about the short-term evolution of the pandemic continues to have a major impact on spending decisions, but it is also necessary to highlight that the development in vaccine research provides companies with a horizon of hope. With positive news regarding vaccines, the confidence of manufacturers and investors in increasing their operations also tends to grow, although it is currently difficult to establish any medium-term project without taking great risks.
Until vaccines arrive, Spain have to deal not only with financial problems but also with growing social tensions due to popular resistance to meet isolation standards. With the end of the year, notably celebrated in Spain – a country with a strong Catholic tradition – the streets of the main metropolises in the country are increasingly crowded. People move around the city, mainly shopping for the parties. The authorities are beginning to worry about the case and are considering further tightening restrictions on circulation and trade. It is possible that a lockdown will be decreed again. This past weekend, the Madrid Municipal Police blocked the main access routes to the city to reduce crowds, but it was not possible to prevent thousands of people from failing to comply with safe distance recommendations.
So, what is the road to Spain? Holiday parties can heat the economy and move the entire production chain, but for that it will be necessary to allow people on the streets, which will increase contagions. This week the country reached the number of 45,000 deaths due to COVID-19, which generates concern and commotion. In fact, isolation standards must be met, despite the economic consequences. Further tightening of health measures will accelerate normalization as it mitigates the effects of the second wave. Only by tightening isolation can the country recover its economy in the short or medium term. As for the current moment, it is up to the Spanish government to inject enough capital to save the small and medium businessmen from bankruptcy.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
New Bolivian President Luis Arce is investigating several former officials who served his predecessor Jeanine Áñez. They are accused of corruption or being responsible for massacres. Dozens fled Bolivia for the U.S. and Brazil to avoid prosecution, while others have already been arrested. Those who fled Bolivia mainly went to the U.S., according to National Police.
Although Áñez’s tenure was short, just one year in fact, many in her administration are being investigated for corruption, as well as massacres and repressive acts committed at the beginning of her mandate after the coup against Evo Morales on November 10, 2019. As a result, 37 Evo supporters were killed in street protests, allegedly by the police and military. Their families still demand justice and for this reason the Plurinational Legislative Assembly is carrying out a trial against Áñez’s cabinet for crimes against humanity. When her government signed Decree 4078, they gave free rein for security forces to repress the population, and even kill, without being held accountable.
Currently, the biggest escapees are former Minister of Government Arturo Murillo and former Defense Minister Luis Fernando López. They were behind many of the violent acts committed against the people and did not anticipate being replaced by Arce of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Evo’s party, following the October 18 election. Murillo was in charge of liaising with police and López with the Armed Forces. They fled Bolivia on November 5, three days before the Áñez government ended, and are accused of having purchased chemical agents for police forces at a premium of $2 million. They took flight FAB-046 to Puerto Quijarro on the border with Brazil, in which they crossed on foot, according to Bolivian police.
For this reason, three immigration officials were detained. Marcel Rivas, former Director of Migration, is accused of having facilitated Murillo’s and López’s escape. Once arrested, Rivas had more charges filed against him because according to Eduardo del Castillo, Minister of Government, the former director illegally issued 495 migration alerts against politicians, journalists, businesspeople and other opponents of Áñez.
Former Vice Minister of Government Javier Issa is in the U.S., according to the National Police. He is accused of participating in the theft and burning of Evo’s military service book. In February, Patricia Hermosa, Evo’s attorney, was arrested when she was carrying several personal documents of the ex-president who wanted to register as a candidate for the senate. However, Murillo ordered for the former president’s military record, that was taken from Hermosa, to be burned to disqualify Evo from running.
In recent days, lawyer Rolando Cruz denounced former Minister of Communication Roxana Lizárraga for crimes of “sedition, conspiracy, terrorism, criminal organization and others.” As evidence, Cruz presented seven videos filmed before and after the coup. The lawyer commented that he had information that Lizárraga was already in the U.S.
As soon as he took office, Arce changed the leadership of the police and the Armed Forces that supported Áñez and appointed Colonel Jhonny Aguilera as the new commander of the Bolivian Police.
“We know that former officials are in the United States. We do not know their status and we do not know the activities they are developing,” the police chief said.
By the Áñez government criminalizing the MAS, attacking the popular national bloc, and restricting progressive forces in Bolivia, they thought they would restrict support for the socialist political party. They were wrong as the biggest issue for Bolivians is reorganizing the economy that was ruined by the Áñez government. For their mistaken belief that the people wanted neoliberalism and would tolerate corruption, the Áñez government are now scrambling to escape Bolivia for Brazil or the U.S. to avoid prosecution.
Áñez herself was arrested trying to escape her native Beni province on the fringes of the Amazon to enter Brazil.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro attempts to model himself on the likes of U.S. President Donald Trump and steers his country into becoming an American bulwark in Latin America. Although Trump has rebuffed Bolsonaro’s attempts to become a close friend, the Brazilian president insists on turning his country towards ultraconservative with the backing of U.S.-linked Evangelical churches and to implement a hyper neoliberal economy – this naturally puts him at odds with progressive forces in the region.
Because of this world view, strengthening cooperation between pro-U.S. neoliberal governments in South America has been a major priority for Bolsonaro. However, this faced a major hurdle after the restoration of democracy in Bolivia as Áñez’s administration relied on the support of the U.S. and neighboring pro-U.S. states for legitimacy. There is little surprise they are now fleeing or attempting to flee Bolivia for the U.S. and Brazil to avoid charges of corruption and crimes against humanity.
Although the U.S. and Brazil are accepting former officials of the Áñez’s administration and suffered a geopolitical loss with the restoration of the MAS government, it is unlikely they will engage in further subversive actions to undermine and destabilize Bolivia, at least in the short term. With Joe Biden potentially ascending to the presidency on January 20, most states are biding their time to see how a new U.S. presidency will position its Latin America policy. Although Trump was heavily involved in the coup attempts in Venezuela and had a hand to play in the successful coup in Bolivia, there is no suggestion yet that a Biden administration will continue such policies.
There is also no suggestion that Biden will oppose regime change operations in South America, which is likely the reason why former Bolivian officials feel comfortable enough to flee to the U.S. So long as Bolsonaro continues to rule Brazil, the Bolivian political opposition will continue to have a neighboring safe haven, meaning that although there might not be U.S. blessing, neoliberal and conservative forces in South America can continue their destabilization campaign across the continent with Brazilian backing.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Featured image: Jeanine Anez receiving the presidential sash from a representative of the Bolivian military (photo: EFE).
On June 3, 2020, as a consequence of the “global health crisis”, the World Economic Forum WEF in Geneva announced a “unique twin summit” for January 2021 in Davos, Switzerland.(1) The theme should be “The Great Reset”. The WEF defines the “Great Reset” as “a commitment to jointly and urgently create the foundations of our economic and social system for a fairer, more sustainable and resilient future”.
World leaders from government, business and civil society will be invited. In a dialogue conducted by the younger generation, they are to be virtually linked with “stakeholders” worldwide. These are individuals and interest groups with a network in 400 cities around the world who have a legitimate interest in the course and outcome of the summit. All announcements sound “promising and promise a bright future”.
The WEF press release continues:
“The announcement of the ‘Great New Start’ was made by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and Professor Schwab during a virtual meeting, followed by statements by UN Secretary General António Guterres and IMF Executive Director Kristalina Georgieva.“
In addition to the great promises, there are also euphonious names.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva already wrote a statement to the World Economic Forum on the day of the summit announcement.
“My thanks to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and to Professor Schwab for bringing us together.” She goes on to write: “From the perspective of the IMF, we have seen a massive injection of fiscal stimulus to help countries deal with this crisis, and to shift gears for growth to return. It is of paramount importance that this growth should lead to a greener, smarter, fairer world in the future.”(2)
Even the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum himself felt called upon to make his own statement on the very day of the announcement. Under the headline “Now is the time for a ‘big reset'” and the subtitle “In every crisis there is a chance” Klaus Schwab writes:
“We can bring a better world out of this crisis, (…). To achieve a better outcome (than the 1930s Depression, R.H.), the world must act collectively and quickly to renew all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to technology, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‚great reset’ of capitalism.“ (3)
The creator of the words and ideas for the “Great Reset” is probably the bestselling author and economic development expert Richard Florida with his book “The Great Reset. How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity”.
If one delves into the WEF’s press release and the statements published on it – which is urgently recommended to everyone interested – then some urgent questions arise for the critical contemporary.
For example, the question into which state our economic and social system should be “reset” and restarted after the unprecedented economic and social total crash. Then there is the question of what can be expected from a “return agenda” that will be formulated and implemented by the same global government and economic leaders who deliberately caused the current crash. But the cardinal question is: will the announced “Great New Start” be a blessing for humanity or rather a curse?
The answer to this question should be found out by proven experts – even before the participants of the twin summit in January 2021 get down to work and draft an agenda whose implementation will not be good for humanity. We should be able to prepare ourselves to prevent the worst.
If we think of the current crime against humanity, which has been unleashed worldwide by the “Big Money”, the globalists, foundations, Big Pharma and the WHO on the occasion of the “global corona false alarm”, together with the hypocritical promises of salvation of the kabbalistic World Economic Forum and the predatory International Monetary Fund, then we cannot assume a de-globalization and a turning away from inhuman neoliberalism. The ruling “elite” will use the meeting in Davos to further advance the global control of us citizens by destroying nation states. And this will be a great danger for humanity, which we can only fend off together.
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.
Notes
(1) http://www.weforum, „The Great Reset: A Unique Twin Summit to Begin 2021“
Brazen Election 2020 fraud in Pennsylvania and other key swing states rigged things for Biden/Harris over Trump.
If he’s out and they’re inaugurated on January 20, the events of that day will be an epitaph for open, free, and fair federal elections in the US — never again.
A coup d’etat process will have replaced it henceforth — results of future federal elections to be untrustworthy.
In Pennsylvania, the near-impossible happened.
On election night after polls closed, Trump led Biden/Harris by nearly 700,000 votes.
The next day he led by a 56% – 43% margin — a near-statistically impossible advantage to overcome.
Pennsylvania election returns showed Trump winning by landslide margins in all counties — except Dem-controlled Philadelphia.
Late-arriving mail-in ballots were added to the vote count for three days — despite state law prohibiting procedures followed.
Rules were changed for Election 2020 to benefit Biden/Harris.
The vote distribution pattern in all counties was almost the same — except for Philadelphia, a near-statistical impossibility.
It never happened before in state history nor ever in other states before 2020.
Judicial Watch reported that more people cast ballots in the state than individuals registered to vote, adding:
The same pattern occurred in other states.
For Election 2020, “vote totals (changed after polls closed) because of unprecedented, extraordinary, illicitly secretive, and inherently suspect counting…”
Like other key swing states, Biden/Harris didn’t win Pennsylvania. Results were stolen for them.
Republicans control both houses of the Pennsylvania’s General Assembly by sizable margins — 113-90 in the House, 28-21 in the Senate.
Governor Tom Wolf is a Dem, in office since January 2015.
On Monday, 26 Pennsylvania House GOP lawmakers contested November 3 results — a formal resolution introduced at the 11th hour.
Its text states that “(o)fficials in the Executive and Judicial Branches of the Commonwealth infringed upon the General Assembly’s authority under the Constitution of the United States by unlawfully changing the rules governing the November 3, 2020, election…”
It calls for Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to withdraw certification of disputed results.
It also urges the US House and Senate to declare Pennsylvania Election 2020 results in dispute — pending a “forensic investigation” of election law compromises, irregularities and improprieties in tabulating mail-in ballots, as well as canvassing procedures.
In a late Friday news release, the 26 state lawmakers expressed concern about issues raised that “undermined our elector process, and as a result, we cannot accept certification of the results in statewide races.”
“It is absolutely imperative that we take these steps if we are to ensure public trust in our electoral system. Faith in government begins with faith in the elections which select that government.”
“Just as Pennsylvania led the founding of our nation, Pennsylvania should also lead the way by making sure our commonwealth continues to stand as a keystone in our nation where free and fair elections are of paramount concern, no matter the final outcome of those elections.”
A spokesman for House GOP Speaker Brian Cutler said he was uninvolved in drafting the 11th hour resolution.
The 11th hour attempt to challenge and reverse fraud may likely fall short as the state’s session ended Monday.
GOP House leaders declined to extend the session for consideration of the proposed resolution.
A joint statement by House Majority leader Kerry Benninghoff and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman said the following:
The Pennsylvania General Assembly “does not and will not have a hand in choosing the state’s presidential electors, or in deciding the outcome of the presidential election.”
Adjourning the legislative session effectively rejects a “forensic investigation” of state election results unless judicially ordered.
State courts to the highest level are highly unlikely to approve it.
A majority US Supreme Court ruling appears to be the only option at this time, a long shot one at best.
However things turn out in the state, PA Hempfield Republican Eric Nelson said he and 25 other House Republicans will release a report that shows “sizable irregularities with mail-in ballots between Nov. 3 and Nov. 4.”
Noting significant irregularities in Allegheny (that includes Pittsburgh), Philadelphia and Delaware counties, he added:
“We have some major problems which need to be addressed before the election results ultimately are certified. My goal is fair, honest and accurate elections.”
In a dubious move last week, Pennsylvania’s Budget and Finance Committee rejected a House resolution request for a statistical review of election results.
On Saturday, the state’s Supreme Court unanimously rejected a lower court ruling that halted certification of election results.
The ruling came a day after the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Trump campaign accusation of election fraud in the state — despite hard evidence proving otherwise.
On Monday, Epoch Times contributor Ivan Petchoukov reported the following:
“Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, said Friday that the GOP-controlled state legislature will make a bid to reclaim its power to appoint the state’s electors to the Electoral College, saying they could start the process on Nov. 30.
According to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 2 of the US Constitution:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”
Even if Pennsylvania’s General Assembly members choose their own electors, they cannot constitutionally override the popular vote in the state.
The 14th Amendment prohibits states from denying the constitutional rights of its citizens without due process, including the right to vote.
Yet when election fraud occurs — Election 2020 Exhibit A — the popular will have been denied by a higher authority.
That’s the apparent result of the November 3 process for US president.
At this time, the Supreme Court alone will have final say on this issue if it chooses to hear Trump’s complaint.
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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.”
‘E a primeira coisa que a estrutura de poder dos EUA não quer é que os negros comecem a pensar internacionalmente.’ Malcolm X – Autobiografia
‘A cor não é uma realidade humana ou pessoal; é uma realidade política’. James Baldwin, ‘The Fire Next Time’
Os EUA, com a cumplicidade das oligarquias locais, usou de ‘lawfare’ para derrubar os governos de Manuel Zelaya em Honduras em 2009; de Fernando Lugo no Paraguai em 2012 e de Dima Rousseff no Brasil em 2016. O ‘lawfare’ também foiutilizado pela perseguição política contra Christina Kirchner na Argentina, contra Rafael Correa no Equador e contra o Ex-Presidente Lula no Brasil. O ‘lawfare’ tornou-se assimo principal instrumento do Império para impedir o avanço das forças progressistas na América Latina. Antes de sua aplicação internacional, porém, o ‘lawfare’ foi amplamente utilizado pelos EUA na opressão e perseguição política de sua própria população negra emluta por igualdade racial e direitos civis. Deste modo, a origem do ‘lawfare’ está intrínsecamente ligada ao racismo e à manutenção das hierarquias impostas pelo capitalismo.
O escritor afro-americano Charles Chessnutt, no artigo ‘ Os Tribunais e o Negro’, publicado em 1908, já denunciava:
‘A função dos tribunais na organização da sociedade moderna é a de proteger os direitos- de mediar as disputas entre o homem e o homem ou entre o indivíduo e o Estado; e depois, pelo seu mandato, de pôr em marcha o braço do executivo para impedir ou punir um erro ou para fazer valer um direito. Obviamente, se este grande poder não for exercido corretamente, se for influenciado por preconceitos ou interesses de classe, não será feita justiça. (…) Em nenhuma parte da história da nossa jurisprudência, este poder dos tribunais foi exercido com mais força do que na questão dos direitos dos negros, e em nenhuma parte foi mais influenciado por preconceitos e interesses de classe’.
Com a libertação dos escravos ao fim da Guerra Civil nos EUA , a oligarquia derrotada dos estados do sul – a Confederação – rapidamente se organizou para impedir que através do voto os afro-americanos pudessem desafiar as hierarquias de poder, utilizando, por um lado, os diversos trinunais e a Suprema Corte – como denunciou Chessnutt na citação acima – em um ‘lawfare’ que impedisse qualquer avanço na conquista de direitos e igualdade pelos afro-americanos. Por outro lado, as oligarquias também utilizaram amplamente o terror para manter os afro-americanos em permanente opressão e longe das urnas. O paralelo coma atuação dos EUA na América Latina não poderia ser mais exato: aos linchamentos e à Ku Klux Klan correspondem os diversos esquadrões da morte dos regimes apoiados pelo Império: Somoza na Nicarágua, Pinochet no Chile, Stroessner no Paraguai e as ditaduras militares assassinas na Argentina e no Brasil, entre outros. Nos sul dos EUA ou na América Latina o objetivo é o mesmo: impedir os avanços sociais e qualquer mudança na hierarquia de poder que desafie o sistema capitalista. A estreita ligação entre o racismo e a exploração capitalista era um fato reconhecido nos EUA já no século XIX. Frederick Douglass, nascido escravopor volta de 1818, autor autodidata que fugiu da escravidão e tornou-se talvez omais conhecido norte-americano de seu tempo, era um profundo analista da sociedade do seu tempo e, sem ter conhecido Marx,escreveu:
‘Os donos de escravos, com uma astúcia própria, ao encorajar a inimizade entre os pobres, colocando o homem branco contra os negros, conseguem tornar o referido homem branco quase tão escravo quanto o próprio escravo negro. A diferença entre o escravo branco e o escravo negro é a seguinte: o último pertence a UM escravocrata e o primeiro pertence a TODOS os escravocratas, coletivamente. Tiram do escravo branco indiretamente aquilo que tiram diretamente e sem cerimonia do escravo negro. Ambos são saqueados e pelos mesmos saqueadores. O escravo negro é roubado, pelo seu senhor, de todos os seus ganhos além do que é necessário para a sua sobrevivência física; e o homem branco é roubado pelo sistema escravocrata dos justos resultados do seu trabalho, porque é lançado em competição com uma classe de trabalhadores que trabalham sem salário.’
Dando prosseguimento, no século XX, a esta análise de Frederick Douglass,o intelectual afro-americano W.E.B. Du Bois escreveu em ‘Black Reconstruction’:
‘O trabalho negro tornou-se a pedra angular não só da estrutura social do Sul (dos EUA), mas também da manufactura e comércio do Norte (dos EUA), do sistema de fábricas inglês, do comércio europeu, da compra e venda em escala mundial; novas cidades foram construídas com base nos resultados do trabalho negro e um novo problema, envolvendo todo o trabalho, branco e negro, apareceu tanto na Europa como na América.(…)De facto, a situação da classe trabalhadora branca em todo o mundo é hoje diretamente ligada à escravatura negra na América, na qual se fundou o comércio e a indústria modernos, que persistiram em ameaçar a mão-de-obra livre até ser parcialmente derrubada em 1863. A casta de cor resultante, fundada e retida pelo capitalismo, foi adotada (…)pelos trabalhadoresbrancos, e resultou na subordinação do trabalho dos negros aos lucros dos brancos em todo o mundo.’
O capitalismo não teria se desenvolvido sem a escravidão e por isso a luta contra o racismo é fundamentalmente também a luta contra o capitalismo. Não é surpreendente portanto que o ‘lawfare’ estejainstrinsicamente ligado ao racismo.
Foi nos anos 60 do século XX nos EUA que as lutas das forças progressistas encarnadas nos movimentos afro-americanos pela igualdade racial e direitos civis atingiram o seu clímax. Somente nesse período caíram finalmenteas principais barreiras impostas pelo ‘lawfare’ ao avanço dos direitos civis dos afro-americanos, não sem muita luta e muito sangue derramados. Talvez nenhum outro grupo tenha sido mais atacado pela dupla vertente do poder hierárquico da ordem capitalista – ‘lawfare’e terror violento – do que o partido ‘Pantera Negra’ – Black Panther Party. E através da história do Pantera Negra pode-se compreender muito melhor a história recente da América Latina e sua relação com o Império.
A mais completa história do Pantera Negra é possivelmente o livro ‘Black Against Empire – The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party’ (‘Negros Contra o Império – A História e a Política do Partido Pantera Negra’ numa tradução literal.) dos autores Joshua Bloom e Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Neste estudo os autores escreveram:
“Os Panteras viam as comunidades negras nos Estados Unidos como uma colônia e a polícia como um exército de ocupação. Num ensaio fundador de 1967, Newton ( um dos fundadores do Black Panther) escreveu,'(…) ‘Há uma grande semelhança entre o exército de ocupação no Sudeste Asiático e a ocupação das nossas comunidades pela polícia racista’.”
“(…) em 1970, o Partido tinha aberto escritórios em sessenta e oito cidades, de Wisconsin-Salem a Omaha e Seattle. O Partido Pantera Negra tinha-se tornado o centro de um movimento revolucionário nos Estados Unidos.(…)O diretor do FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, declarou, ‘O partido Pantera Negra representa a maior ameaça à segurança interna do país’.(…) O governo federal e as forças policiais locais de toda a nação responderam aos Panteras com uma campanha sem paralelo de repressão e vilipêndio. Eles alimentaram a imprensa com histórias difamatórias. Colocaram escutas telefónicas nos escritórios dos Panteras em todo o país. Contrataram dezenas de informantes para se infiltrarem nos capítulos dos Panteras.(…)Ao atacar os Panteras Negras como inimigos do estado, os agentes federais procuraram reprimir não só o Partido como organização, mas a possibilidade política que este representava’.
Sabe-se hoje muito mais sobre o papel do FBI na campanha contra o Pantera Negra e contra o movimento pelos direitos civis em geral. O livro de Nelson Blackstock ‘ COINTELPRO – The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom’ – (COINTELPRO é a sigla em inglês para Programa de Contra – Inteligência – e o título deste livro em traduçáo livre seria :
Cointelpro – A luta secreta do FBI contra as liberdades políticas) – é uma excelente fonte de informações sobre este tema. Nesta obra o autor afirma:
‘Uma das coisas que transparecem claramente nos documentos doCointelpro é que o FBI reservou um ódio especial ao movimento de direitos civis dos negros.’
Noam Chomsky, que escreveu a introdução ao livro, explica que a função do FBI era de:
‘Bloquear a atividade política legal que se afaste da ortodoxia, confundir a oposição à política estatal, minar o movimento de direitos civis.’
Desta forma, ainda nas palavras de Chomsky, era previsível que ‘os programas de ruptura mais sérios do FBI foram os dirigidos contra os Nacionalistas Negros.(…) Talvez a história mais chocante diga respeito ao assassinato de Fred Hampton e Mark Clark pela polícia de Chicago, dirigido pelo escritório do procurador do estado em dezembro de 1969, em uma batida policial antes do amanhecer em um apartamento de Chicago. Hampton, um dos líderes mais promissores do partido Pantera Negra – particularmente perigoso por causa de sua oposição a atosou a retórica violentos e seu sucesso na organização comunitária – foi morto na cama.(…)há agora provas substanciais do envolvimento direto do FBI neste assassinato político ao estilo da gestapo.’
Não é uma coincidência que a operação Lava Jato e o Promotor Deltan Dallagnol no Brasil tenha se aliado justamente ao FBIem seus esforços para criminalizar o ex-Presidente Lula e o PT. As campanha de difamação e criminalização contra o partido Pantera Negra e contra o PT têm muito em comum.
Um dos principais programas do Pantera Negra era a distribuição de alimentos às comunidades pobres afro-americanas, principalmente às crianças. O partido também distribuiaroupas e organizava cuidados médicos. Alguns dos centros onde o Partido distribuia café da manhã para as crianças sofreram ataques com bombas, tamanha a violência da reação da hierarquia de poder branca e capitalista ao desafio colocado pelos Panteras. Alguns líderes do partido foram assassinados, outros colocados na prisão. Como mencionado, a repressão ao Pantera Negra na dupla vertente ‘lawfare’ e terror violento foi sem precedentes mas não sem paralelos: a repressão do Império aos movimentos sociais e partidos políticos de esquerda na América Latina é semelhante e motivada pelas mesmas razões. A frase fundamental na citação acima expõe com toda a clareza o principal objetivo do Império e de seus cúmplices na América Latina:‘ Ao atacar os Panteras Negras – ouLula, o PT, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Christina Kirchner, Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro – os agentes federais (dos EUA) procuraram reprimir não só o Partido como organização, mas a possibilidade política que este representava.’
Ronald Reagan levou adiante a guerra da hierarquia do poder capitalista contra as forças sociais progressistas. Em um outro estudo importante sobre o racismo estrutural nos EUA e sua relação com as políticas de segurança e repressão – Incarcerating the Crisis ( ‘Aprisionando a crise’ em uma traduçâo literal) – o autor Jordan T. Camp escreveu:
“O triunfo do Reaganismo marcou a consolidação de um regime racial e de segurança, um regime neoliberal que tomou forma com as operações durante a Guerra Fria contra o movimento de direitos civis. (Reagan) enviou uma mensagem aos brancos de que seus problemas econômicos tinham sido causados por pessoas de cor que ganharam acesso ao salário social durante o movimento de direitos civis. (…) Estas narrativas neoliberais definiram o comportamento dos desempregados e osprogramas sociais como as principais fontes de insegurança econômica. (…) A estratégia de Reagan foi de redirecionar os recursos para longe dos investimentos no setor público e para um orçamento ampliado para o Estado neoliberal de segurança carcerária. (…) Com a eleição de Reagan, osneoliberais conseguiram capturar o poder do Estado e legitimar seu governo de classe através de apelos à segurança. Em seus dois primeiros anos na Casa Branca, Reagan dobrou o orçamento do FBI e aumentou o orçamento do Departamento Federal de Prisões – Federal Bureau of Prisons – em 30%. O discurso de segurança foi empregado como a principal justificativa para a reestruturação da forma do Estado. Muito semelhante à legitimação pelo Estado Americano do aumento de despesas para medidas agressivas de contrainsurgência na América Central e no apartheid da África do Sul nos anos 80. (…) No início dos anos 80, os Estados Unidos prenderam 420.000 pessoas em prisões federais e estaduais. Durante a próxima década, o número de prisioneiros aumentaria mais de 64% em todo o país.(…) A população carcerária cresceu de duzentas mil pessoas no final dos anos 60 para mais de 2,4 milhões de pessoas nos anos 2000. Atualmente (2016), um em cada trinta e cinco, ou 6,9 milhões de adultos nos Estados Unidos, está na cadeia ou em liberdade condicional. O aumento dos gastos com encarceramento ocorreu juntamente com a redução dos gastos com educação pública, transporte, assistência médica e emprego no setor público. A expansão das prisões coincidiu com uma mudança na composição racial dos presos, passando da maioria branca para quase 70% de pessoas de cor. Os desempregados, os subempregados e os pobres negros e latinostêm sido desproporcionalmente encarcerados. Com a maior taxa de encarceramento do planeta, os Estados Unidos atualmente encarceram os negros em proporções mais altas do que a África do Sul antes do fim do Apartheid. Todos estes números apontam para uma colisão de raça, classe e poder de Estado carceral sem precedentes históricos, mas certamente não sem explicação histórica.”.
Este redirecionamento do Estado realizado pelo Governo Reagan ainda é o principal objetivo político das oligarquias da América Latina, com forte resistência dos movimentos sociais e partidos de esquerda. As eleições de Hugo Chavez, Lula, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa eChristina Kirchner foram respostas à tentativa do Império de promover o ‘encarceramento’ da América Latina.
O neoliberalismo, que nasceu como uma reação política às ‘concessões’ do capitalismo ao ‘welfare state’, acabou tornando-se tambémuma reação contra as conquistas civilizatórias dos anos 60 do século XX. Daí o retorno do racismo mais virulento, dos ataques aos direitos obtidos pelas mulheres e pelos homossexuais. A manutenção da hierarquia capitalista em seu estágio neoliberal depende fundalmentalmente da parcela mais reacionária da população. E o neoliberalismo, por outro lado, tenta reproduzir e manter essas forças sociais.
A citação de Malcolm X que utilizei no início deste texto define o programa político fundamental de nosso tempo: a internacionalização da luta contra o racismo é também a construçãó da luta internacional contra o capitalismo e suas hierarquias de poder.
I for one am getting really excited by the staff that Honest Joe Biden is pulling together for the White House. When I first heard the name Tony Blinken during the Obama kleptocracy I assumed that he was one of those Ivy League lawyer types that proliferate in Washington, likely affiliated with the firm of Winken, Blinken and Nod, which we all know to be in partnership with Dewey, Cheatem and Howe. But I was wrong. He actually was affiliated to a much bigger fraternity, which one might call Zionists in government. You know, those nice well educated, always polite Jewish boys and sometimes girls who have self-designated as foreign policy experts and who work their way up through the various levels of power that might lead to the most coveted positions at the top in the state department and national security apparatus. Blinken was one such striver, and I began to feel the pricking in my thumbs that was telling me that something evil this way was coming when he was mentioned now and again as a former close adviser to the already beatified Barack Obama. And some in the media had observed with approval that he had more recently been briefing Joe Biden, particularly about Israel and the Middle East.
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.”
The question of withholding aid is itself moot as Israel does nothing but “do things” that damage U.S. interests, knowing that no president or the Congress would dare to turn off the money tap, but it is 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 24th. The Times interview concludes 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 wide open to the Israel Lobby.
If you need to know more about what Tony Blinken is all about you only have to look at his friends and his track record. Israel was inevitably quick off the mark in saluting the appointment, both in its media and through its mouthpieces in the United States. Stalwart Canadian Zionist Mark Dubowitz, who heads the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), tweeted that Blinken would be part of a “…superb national security team. The country will be very fortunate to have them in public service.”
The signal from FDD is particularly important as the organization is directed by the Israeli Embassy in Washington. FDD is the leading neoconservative bastion seeking a war with Iran, Israel’s bête noir. Its Leadership Council has featured former CIA Director James Woolsey, Senator Joe Lieberman, and Bill Kristol. Its advisors and experts are mostly Jewish and most of its funding comes from Jewish oligarchs.
A recent expose by al-Jazeera exposed how FDD and other Lobby groups work directly with the Israeli government, collecting information on U.S. citizens, spying on legal organizations, and both planning and executing disinformation at Israeli direction, making it an Israeli agent by the definition of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). Unfortunately, the Department of Justice has never sought to compel FDD to register under FARA. In fact, the U.S. government has never compelled any part of the vast and powerful Israel Lobby to register.
Tony, inevitably a Harvard graduate plus a JD from Columbia who has never served in the U.S. military, is inevitably a chicken-hawk because that is what America’s Zionists and their political neocon wing are made of. It is a phenomenon that has often been noted. In 2017, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Tzipi Hotovely called out American Jews as “people that never send their children to fight for their country, most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan, or to Iraq. Most of them are having quite convenient lives…” Of 1,300,000 active duty personnel in the U.S. armed forces, only 4,515 are Jewish.
This is how it works: instead of actually fighting in the wars you are promoting, you have your tax-exempt “educational foundations” pour tons of money into a project to go to war and corrupt the politicians to issue the necessary orders so unemployed kids from Arkansas and North Dakota can go off and die for Israel. You yourself remain safe at home, free to deliver bellicose speeches about how Iran threatens the world through its “meddling” in the Middle East. And, of course, about how the dumbass Palestinians have failed to accept the hand of Israel offered in peace.
That is what Tony’s record demonstrates. Blinken has come a long way with Biden, all the way back to the Clinton Administration. And he he has always been there for the Jewish state. During the Obama Administration when relations with Israel were often strained, Blinken was the contact point for “Jewish leaders [differentiating] him from others in the White House at the time who weren’t as sympathetic to Israel’s position.” 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.
Other media reporting indicates that “Blinken was a top aide to Biden when the then-Senator voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Blinken helped Biden develop a proposal to partition Iraq into three separate regions based on ethnic and sectarian identity. As deputy national security adviser, Blinken supported the disastrous military intervention in Libya in 2011, and in 2018 he helped launch WestExec Advisors, a ‘strategic advisory firm’ that is secretive about its clients, along with other Obama administration alumni like Michèle Flournoy. Jonathan Guyer writes in The American Prospect, ‘I learned that Blinken and Flournoy used their networks to build a large client base at the intersection of tech and defense. An Israeli surveillance startup turned to them. So did a major U.S. defense company.”
Beyond the intersection of government policy and personal profit exhibited by Blinken, the Washington Post in 2013 described Blinken as “[o]ne of the government’s key players in drafting Syria policy” and he recalled that “This is a little bit personal to me, and any of us — and I start with myself — who had any responsibility for our Syria policy in the last administration has to acknowledge that we failed. Not for want of trying, but we failed.” What Tony failed at was overthrowing Syria’s legitimate government and turning the country over to the terrorist linked groups that he and Hillary and Obama were supporting.
The Democrats are particularly good at coming up with secretaries of state that one would like to forget, and that is saying quite a lot given the recent appointees by the Republicans. One recalls immediately the big-hearted Madeleine Albright, who found the killing of 500,000 Iraqi children by sanctions “worth it,” or Hillary Clinton, who laughed out loud as she recalled the death of Libya ruler Muammar Ghaddafi by having a bayonet inserted up his anus. Clinton, who more than anyone launched the war against Africa’s most developed nation, paraphrased Julius Caesar, who, upon returning from a rapid victory in Asia during the Rome’s Second Civil war, described the event as “Veni, vidi, vici,” in English “I came, I saw, I conquered.” For the laughing Hillary it was “I came, I saw, he died!” The anarchy in Libya persists to this day and it included the payback killing of four U.S. Embassy employees in Benghazi in 2012, with Hillary and Susan Rice at the helm. It is generally believed that both Clinton and Rice might well have senior positions in the incoming Biden Administration.
But back to Blinken. Israel loved the way the Trump Administration showered favors upon it, nearly always without any quid pro quo. But for all his Dispensationalist fervor, salesmen like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were little more than goys who had been seduced by the myth of Israel. They were, as Lenin would have described it, little more than “useful idiots,” which is allegedly an expression that certain Israeli politicians have used to describe their passionate Christian Zionist supporters in the U.S. Now, with Blinken, the Israeli hard liners will have the “real thing,” a convincing Jewish boy who fatuously describes an apartheid Israel as “the anchor and foundation for democracy in the region.” Tony believes in the Zionist cause and will do the Jewish state’s bidding with a malleable Joe Biden. And if Joe should go, there is always Kamala Harris, who is married to a Jewish lawyer lobbyist. Win-win either way.
Even though it’s early days, Blinken joins a number of other American Jews already tagged for senior positions, including Alejandro Mayorkas, the nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security who is a Latino Jew. Ron Klain, Biden’s Chief of Staff and Janet Yellen, his pick for Treasury Secretary, are also Jewish. The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretzreports how “Having Jewish men and women in prominent government positions is so standard that it’s barely even a talking point…” before observing that “The fact that some of President-elect Joe Biden’s top cabinet picks are Jewish should be a source of pride for the community…‘These people are being chosen because they’re incredibly competent, because they’re incredibly talented, because they’re incredibly experienced,’ Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told Haaretz in a phone interview.” Indeed, if one believes Greenblatt pressure from the Israel Lobby, the media and billionaire donors as well as networking by the Jewish mafia inside the government itself have nothing to do with it.
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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.
During the most severe Main Street economic collapse in US history — with over one-fourth of working-age Americans jobless — additional calamity looms in the coming weeks.
According to Census Bureau estimates, 30 to 40 million Americans face possible eviction in 2021 for lack of income to pay rent or service mortgages.
Without federal aid or an extended rent moratorium, a calamity of biblical proportions may unfold in the coming months.
CARES Act legislation that protected vulnerable households from eviction expired at end of July.
In September, a CDC order extended the moratorium through yearend.
The ruling protected millions of Americans from being dispossessed of a roof over their heads.
It applies to individuals earning $99,000 annually or less, and couples earning up to double this amount.
Eligible households had to demonstrate an inability to pay rent or service mortgages during the current hard times.
Landlords can argue against tenants in a housing court to have final say on the issue if things go that far, a process that can take weeks or months.
The CARES Act and CDC order were stopgap measures, leaving the issue of likely protracted economic collapse unresolved for millions of hard-pressed Americans.
In January, payment for deferred rent and mortgage obligations will come due.
It’ll be up to landlords and tenants to work out debt payments — that may include late fees, other penalties, or interest on mortgages.
Public health officials and housing advocates warned of an approaching eviction crisis without federal intervention to prevent it.
According to National Low Income Housing Coalition president Dianne Yental and other housing advocates, it’s vital for congressional legislation to provide at least $100 billion in emergency rental assistance in the coming weeks.
Tenants and landlords both have rights. The former need a residence to live in.
The latter need rent payments to service mortgages, pay property taxes, and cover other expenses.
If Republicans control the Senate and Dems the House for the next two years, it’s unclear if agreement can be reached on providing emergency rental assistance that most likely will be needed throughout 2021 and beyond.
According to a National Council of State Housing Agencies report titled, “Analysis of Current and Expected Rental Shortfall and Potential Evictions in the US:” a
An Apartment List monthly survey begun in June found that about “33% of American rental households did not make on- time rent payments.”
Because of accumulated indebtedness, about “66% of renters expressed concern about eviction within the next six months.”
As of mid-September, from “9.7 million (to) 14.2 million renter households in the (US) may be unable to pay rent and at risk of eviction.”
“That translates to (from) 23.3 million (to) 34 million individual renters.”
By January 2021, arrears on rent payments may be up to $34 billion. At yearend 2021 without federal aid, it could be up to double this amount.
At the same time, up to 30 million renters could face eviction.
Millions of landlords will be vulnerable to foreclosure if unable to service their mortgages.
Nothing remotely like what’s going on ever happened in the US before — with no relief in prospect so far.
Without jobs, there’s no income. Without income, no ability exists to pay rent, buy food, pay medical expenses, and cover other costs of day-to-day living.
For millions of vulnerable Americans, if evicted they’ll have no place to go if unable to live with other family members.
Mass unemployment, growing poverty and deprivation, food insecurity and widespread evictions next year reflect the dire state of things in the US.
What’s happening is likely to be protracted because covid and economic collapse were planned, not accidental.
What’s going on is part of a diabolical plot to transform the US and other Western nations into ruler/serf societies.
The only possible antidote is mass activism in the streets for equity and justice — staying the course, paying the price for positive change, or abandon all hope henceforth.
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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.”
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon topped 11,000 square kilometers for the first time since 2008 reports the Brazilian government.
According to data released today by Brazil’s national space research institute INPE, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the year ending July 31, 2020 amounted to 11,088 square kilometers, an area the size of Jamaica. The loss, which represents a 9.5 percent increase over the same period last year, is nearly triple the 3,925 square kilometer target established in the 2009 National Policy on Climate Change.
The state of Pará accounted for nearly half of forest clearing in 2020 according to the data. Mata Grosso (16 percent of deforestation), Amapá (14 percent), and Rondônia (11 percent) followed. Pará, Mata Grosso, and Rondônia — states where cattle ranching and soy farming have rapidly expanded in recent decades — perennially lead the country in deforestation.
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Um vídeo, divulgado, em 23 de Novembro, pelos Sandia National Laboratories, mostra um caça F-35A dos EUA que,voando a velocidade supersónica, a uma altitude de 3.000 metros, lança uma bomba nuclear B61-12 (equipada para o ensaio, com uma ogiva não nuclear). A bomba não cai verticalmente, mas está a planar, até que na cauda se acendam os projecteis que lhe imprimem um movimento de rotação e a B61-12 (guiada por um sistema de satélite) dirige-se para o alvo, que atinge 42 segundos após o lançamento.
O teste foi realizado em 25 de Agosto,do corrente, no polígono de Tonopah, no deserto do Nevada. Um comunicado oficial confirma o seu êxito completo: trata-se do ensaio de um verdadeiro ataque nuclear que o caça efectua a velocidade supersónica e em atitude furtiva (com as bombas nucleares colocadas no porão interno) para penetrar nas defesas inimigas.
A B61-12 tem uma ogiva nuclear com quatro opções de potência seleccionáveis no momento do lançamento, dependendo do alvo a atingir. Tem a capacidade de penetrar no subsolo, explodindo em profundidade para destruir os bunkers do centro de comando e outras estruturas subterrâneas.
O programa do Pentágono prevê a construção de cerca de 500 bombas B61-12, com um custo estimado de cerca de 10 biliões de dólares (portanto, cada bomba custará o dobro do que custaria se fosse construída inteiramente de ouro). Foi anunciado oficialmente que a produção em série da nova bomba nuclear começará no ano fiscal de 2022, que começa em 1 de Outubro de 2021 (ou seja, dentro de onze meses).
Não se sabe quantas bombas B61-12 serão instaladas pelos EUA em Itália, na Alemanha, na Bélgica e na Holanda para substituir as B61 cujo número efectivo é secreto. Fotos de satélite mostram que foram efectuados trabalhos de reestruturação nas bases de Aviano e Ghedi, em preparação para a chegada das novas bombas nucleares, com as quais serão armados os F-35A da US Air Force e, sob comando USA, os da Força Aérea Italiana.
É facilmente previsível, quando os F-35A prontos para um ataque nuclear com a bomba B61-12 forem instalados no seu território, em que situação se encontrará a Itália. Como base avançada da instalação nuclear USA na Europa, dirigida principalmente contra a Rússia, a Itália encontrar-se-á numa situação ainda mais perigosa. Dependerá ainda mais do que antes, das decisões estratégicas tomadas em Washington, que comportam escolhas políticas e económicas que prejudicam a nossa soberania e os nossos verdadeiros interesses nacionais.
Terá de aumentar a despesa militar da quantia actual de 26 para 36 biliões de euros por ano, aos quais se adicionarão, de acordo com os planos, mais 60 biliões atribuídos para fins militares pelo Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico e retirados (mais juros) do Fundo de Recuperação. A Itália violará ainda mais do que antes, o Tratado de Não Proliferação, ao qual aderiu em 1975, comprometendo-se a “não receber armas nucleares de quem quer que seja, nem controlar essas armas, directa ou indirectamente”.
Rejeitará ainda mais o recente Tratado da ONU sobre a abolição de armas nucleares, que estabelece: “Qualquer Estado Parte que tenha armas nucleares no seu território, pertencentes ou controladas por outro Estado, deve assegurar a rápida remoção dessas armas”.
Para lançar uma pedra nas águas estagnadas de um parlamento que nada diz sobre todo este assunto, a Distinta Deputada Sara Cunial (Grupo Misto) apresentou uma pergunta com resposta escrita ao Primeiro Ministro e aos Ministérios da Defesa e dos Negócios Estrangeiros. Depois de explicados os factos acima supracitados, a questão passa a ser
Ø “Se o governo pretende respeitar o Tratado de Não Proliferação de Armas Nucleares, ratificado pela Itália em 1975;
Ø se pretende assinar e ratificar ONU sobre a Abolição das Armas Nucleares, que entra em vigor em 2021;
Ø se pretende assegurar, com base no que estabelecem esses tratados, que os Estados Unidos retirem imediatamente qualquer arma nuclear do território italiano e se abstenham de instalar nele as novas bombas B61-12 e outras armas nucleares ”.
Enquanto esperamos ler a resposta do Governo, os Estados Unidos fazem os últimos testes da Bomba, que virão colocar sob os nossos pés.
Despite whatever charges Julian Assange may be accused of, it is well known that the WikiLeaks publisher was targeted for exposing the war crimes of the US government. In an upside-down Bizarro World, the screws are being ever so gradually tightened on Assange by the war criminals and their criminal accomplices.
Ask anyone and they will say things will be back to ‘normal’ as soon as we all have the vaccine. Furthermore, if your only source of news is sponsored by Big Pharma, then you better watch out. Despite what the papers say, a vaccine is an inherently complicated affair, needing various trials to perfect and make absolutely safe for human use.
On Nov. 11, 2020, Billboard magazine reported that Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket agency, revealed it wants to require proof that ticket purchasers have tested negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus within 24-72 hours before attending an event or have received a COVID-19 vaccine with a year of the event.
This paper will show numerous serious flaws in the Corman-Drosten paper, the significance of which has led to worldwide misdiagnosis of infections attributed to SARS-CoV-2 and associated with the disease COVID-19.
Could it be possible that the phrase “dark winter” has some sort of deeper meaning that most of us are not meant to understand? We have heard that phrase over and over again in recent weeks, and usually it has been used in discussions regarding the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the United States, a liberal or a self-identified radical can rationalize supporting a candidate who throws Palestinians under the bus in order to get elected to the U.S. Senate. These same people can remain silent on murderous U.S. economic sanctions. They also can avoid any comment on U.S. imperialist aggression. They can do all of these things and their “progressive” or “radical” credentials would not be questioned.
The centenary of this horrendous series of events slated to be commemorated in another six months, has prompted a reexamination of the Tulsa massacre, falsely described in years past as a “riot.” The only “riot” which took place was the invasion of the African American community by armed racist mobs which looted and burned homes, churches and businesses, while murdering hundreds of people.
The country is going through a moment of great crisis, from which it hoped to mitigate the effects by receiving emergency financial aid from the International Monetary Fund. However, the IMF now refuses to provide a large part of such emergency aid and launches Kiev into a danger of financial collapse.
The history of dance shows that it has always been with us, and, like with other art forms, dance has a mixed history of social and radical roles. It has also, like other art forms, been highly influenced by Enlightenment and Romanticist ideas in more recent centuries, changing how we see and understand the role of dance in society today.
The Museum of Modern Art is currently presenting Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde – From Signac to Matisse and Beyond, examining the immense influence of this art critic, editor, publisher, collector and anarchist.
O engenheiro de petróleo Paulo Henrique Tavares vive atualmente entre a Bielorrússia e a Rússia. Doutorando na capital regional russa de Ufá, na encosta europeia dos Montes Urais, o brasileiro, natural de Santos (SP), nesta pandemia tem se dividido entre sua tese na Universidade Técnica de Petróleo do Estado de Ufá, e alguns projetos na cidade bielorrussa de Gomel, 300 km a sudeste da capital Minsque, próxima à tríplice fronteira com Rússia e Ucrânia.
Hoje funcionário especializado da Petrobrás, na década neoliberal dos anos 1990, o pesquisador foi membro ativo do movimento estudantil uspiano, destacando-se a partir dos 2000 por seu ativismo junto ao movimento de educação política e democratização da universidade pública, em que militou por projetos que se tornariam referências no ensino popular pré-universitário (Cursinhos do Crusp e da Acepusp). Era o começo da série de governos nacionais do Partido dos Trabalhadores – uma época de implementação de políticas socialdesenvolvimentistas que ele considera o início de um processo de “real democratização do país”.
Geólogo formado pela USP e mestre em Engenharia de Petróleo pela Unicamp, Paulo fala bem o russo. Em seu doutorado, desenvolve um estudo comparativo que aborda os reservatórios russos de pré-sal do norte do Mar Cáspio, relacionando-os com o pré-sal brasileiro, tema que envolve questões energéticas e geopolíticas.
Desde Gomel, onde está morando há alguns meses, Paulo atende esta reportagem, inicialmente em uma chamada telefônica – depois detalhada por correio eletrônico – enquanto caminha por um “limpo e arborizado” parque da “agradável” cidade que é a segunda maior metrópole (meio milhão de habitantes) deste país “muito organizado”. Segundo ele, esta nação eslava, que vem estando em evidência na mídia desde as últimas eleições (vencidas por Lukashenko, em agosto), “só está conflagrada mesmo é nas manchetes da grande imprensa corporativa, tendenciosa como a gente sabe”.
YMF: Paulo, primeiramente quero agradecer a atenção de sua entrevista, e pedir para que você nos conte um pouco sobre suas pesquisas e trabalho.
PHT: Minha tese parte de uma ideia construída junto com meu orientador, Yuri Katiniov, cuja proposta é cotejar o pré-sal das bacias sedimentares do sudeste do Brasil (Santos e Campos) e o pré-sal da bacia estratégica do Norte do Mar Cáspio. O intuito é compreender semelhanças e possíveis estratégias comuns energéticas, através da comparação dos reservatórios pré-sal russos, que existem aqui com a mesma configuração do pré-sal brasileiro, com a diferença de que, na Bacia do Norte do Cáspio (Rússia), tratam-se de reservatórios em terra ou em águas muito rasas, em contraste aos das águas profundas do Sudeste do Brasil. Um tema que ganha cada vez mais conotações estratégicas na geopolítica contemporânea, como temos visto, infelizmente, desde o pior ângulo, no entreguismo que caracteriza o governo brasileiro.
YMF: Como você tem entendido as manifestações de rua que vêm ocorrendo desde as últimas eleições? Qual o estado das manifestações opositoras em Gomel e Minsque? Você acredita que os confrontos podem crescer?
PHT: Aqui em Gomel, a população continua levando uma vida perfeitamente normal, e em Minsque não é diferente, apesar de no início ter havido uma ou outra manifestação mais movimentada. Toda essa versão, que se lê diariamente na grande imprensa aí do Brasil e do Ocidente, fala de uma crise que existe “apenas nos jornais” (como dizia a Marilena Chauí). Na realidade, por aqui, quase não se fala disso, especialmente nos meios mais populares.
Na prática, é como se nada tivesse ocorrendo para além das manchetes da mídia corporativa. É certo que uma semana após as últimas eleições, em agosto, houve de fato uma manifestação de maior peso, ao menos na capital; era um domingo, dia “leve”, em que têm ocorrido as manifestações mais concorridas, à semelhança daquelas recentes promovidas pelos golpistas brasileiros. Acredito que nessa data estiveram presentes um pouco menos do que as 100 mil pessoas de que a imprensa ocidental falou. Porém, nas semanas seguintes estes protestos, capitaneados por uma classe média liberal, minguaram.
Nesta manifestação de alguns dias atrás (25 de outubro), que foi o ultimato (bem equivocado, aliás) da oposição, novamente se falou em mais de 100 mil pessoas nas ruas de Minsque, mas este número não tem cabimento: avaliando e comparando as imagens das manifestações, eu diria que as de agora não passaram nem de 10 mil pessoas na capital. A polícia não divulgou estimativas, até porque por aqui não há essa tradição de manifestações; e não encontrei em russo ou bielorrusso (língua próxima, que compreendo um pouco) nenhuma fonte que compare o número de pessoas nas ruas. Mas tentei fazer essa estimativa de maneira comparativa, usando várias fotos divulgadas. Vejas que curiosas estas fotos do portal Khoroshie News [1], que vem acompanhando e apoiando este golpe colorido: na sequência de imagens deles, nota-se claramente que em agosto (início das marchas pró-Ocidente), as fotografias eram mais distantes e na praça central; porém, com o passar do tempo, elas foram se aproximando das pessoas – como que para dar aquela impressão de “mais gente”. Percebe-se também que as tomadas atuais preferiram registrar os manifestantes nas avenidas, bem mais estreitas de que a grande praça, o que naturalmente amplifica esta impressão de “multidão”.
Em Gomel, por exemplo, essas manifestações não atraem mais do que uma centena de pessoas. Enfim: a Bielorrússia só está conflagrada mesmo é nas manchetes da grande imprensa, tendenciosa como a gente sabe. Mas infelizmente, as classes médias e altas sabem fazer barulho, têm acesso a bons meios; e acaba que prevalece a versão da oposição pró-ocidental, ecoada pela mídia hegemônica – que tem muitos interesses geoestratégicos nesse processo, e que não tem nada de democrática.
YMF: E quanto às greves com que a oposição ameaça “parar o país”: as paralisações têm ganhado força? Você acredita que os trabalhadores podem se contaminar por esse desejo das elites de “ocidentalização”?
PHT: Estas greves são uma fantasia da oposição liberal. “Curioso” que no mundo inteiro greve é tratada como “coisa de vagabundo, comunista, gente que não gosta de trabalhar”, e sempre como se seus objetivos fossem somente “políticos”. Mas no caso daqui, os neoliberais convocam as greves por motivações exclusivamente politicas, e são tratados como vítimas pelo discurso “democrático” do capital.
Ainda assim, no último domingo, os opositores fizeram um amplo chamamento pela greve, mas foram ignorados pela população. Houve pequenas movimentações em algumas pequenas fábricas economicamente periféricas, mas nas grandes tudo segue em perfeito funcionamento. E a oposição murcha, como até mesmo a Folha de S. Paulo, jornal historicamente apoiador de golpes [2], admitiu estes dias.
YMF: O Índice de Desenvolvimento Humano da Bielorrússia é alto, o Índice Gini mostra que a desigualdade no país é uma das menores do mundo. Quais então as alegações para estes protestos? Quem são os grupos ou classes sociais que estão tentando desestabilizar o governo reeleito, quais suas principais reivindicações? Quanto aos apoiadores que votaram no presidente, eles também têm saído às ruas?
PHT: Voltei à Bielorussia pouco após a eleição que confirmou Aleksander Lukashenko como presidente eleito com 80%. Os protestos estão cada vez menores e restritos à capital, e acho que tendem a desaparecer. O que tenho visto em Minsque, são janelas de alguns apartamentos, em bairros de classe média, com a bandeira vermelha e branca [antiga bandeira, que foi usada por nacionalistas e cristãos, hoje símbolo da oposição]; mas no bairro onde moro, um conjunto residencial com mais de mil apartamentos, vi apenas uma única bandeira destas.
A líder da oposição, Svetlana Tsikhanouskaia que recebeu 10% dos votos, hoje está na Lituânia. Ela é esposa de um blogueiro famoso, assumidamente de direita, que foi impedido de participar das eleições por processos jurídicos; e aí, as forças de oposição lançaram o nome da esposa em seu lugar. Svetlana porém não caiu por acaso na política, mas fez diversos cursos na Irlanda [3], patrocinados por ONGs de cunho nitidamente político e antirrusso. Hoje, ela hoje vive de maneira abastada em Vilnius (capital da Lituânia), e em seus “grandes atos” nem cita o nome do marido.
O que vejo de maneira simples, é: a oposição, apesar de minoritária, foi extremamente barulhenta pelo apoio massivo que recebeu do Ocidente, especialmente dos países vizinhos, em que a direita tem estado forte nos últimos tempos: como Polônia, Lituânia e Letônia. Entretanto, conforme a mídia corporativa – voz do Ocidente – começou a dar visibilidade demais à oposição, ela (a oposição) se atrapalhou e acabou criando uma maior aceitação ao Lukashenko. Pois na prática, os opositores querem apenas seguir a cartilha neoliberal, e isso passa pela tática geopolítica da OTAN (que são as forças armadas da aliança ocidental), ou seja: tentar afastar os países próximos da poderosa Rússia, de sua esfera de influência. E isto a qualquer custo, como fizeram na Ucrânia, país hoje arrasado.
A Ucrânia, onde a aliança ocidental (EUA-UE) bancou e orquestrou um golpe contra o Viktor Yanukovicht, é hoje um país em guerra e que perdeu parte do território (a Crimeia, que antes já tinha sido russa). Vive agora da esmola ocidental para pagar os juros da dívida externa que contraiu. As tarifas básicas – luz, água, impostos e especialmente aquecimento, sem o que não dá para passar o rigoroso inverno de metros de neve – aumentaram quase dez vezes por lá. E há casos de gente que perdeu imóveis hipotecados por conta da carestia.
Dá para fazer um paralelo entre esses “golpes coloridos” e o nosso golpe jurídico e midiático da Lava-Jato: no começo as esquerdas demoraram para compreender o que estava acontecendo; muitos de nós tardamos a perceber a farsa. Na Ucrânia foi assim, mas agora na Bielorrússia, o povo demonstra estar mais atento. E além disso, por aqui o golpe tem sido muito escancarado, com participação inclusive de grupos violentos fascistas, como no caso ucraniano.
Sobre a votação massiva do atual presidente, veja que em 2015 houve eleições com números percentualmente muito próximos aos de agora. Por que a oposição não saiu às ruas? Por que o Ocidente aceitou como “limpo” aquele pleito, e não esse? Talvez porque naquele momento pós-golpe ucraniano, não coubessem dois golpes na sequência, um ao lado do outro. E talvez porque, agora, com os enfrentamentos e até provocações do Lukashenko a Moscou, o Ocidente percebeu, com este cenário, um presidente enfraquecido. Mas o Putin logo promoveu as pazes com o Lukashenko, reaproximando-se deste seu aliado estratégico.
Por seu lado, ocorreu também que a Svetlana Tsikhanouskaia foi cometendo uma série de erros políticos e aumentando a resistência entre os próprios liberais. Ela esperava que a UE e os EUA fizessem como no caso do Juan Guaidó [na Venezuela], reconhecendo ela como a presidenta “de direito”. Mas o Ocidente não ousou fazer isso; apenas impôs algumas sanções. Só que agora, a Bielorrússia não usará mais os portos da Lituânia e da Letônia, vai usar um porto russo; isso vai ter um impacto brutal na economia destes dois pequenos países, cujos portos representam boa parte do orçamento.
Recentemente, começaram a surgir protestos em defesa do Lukashenko (levantando a bandeira atual do país), um movimento que na prática é para tentar barrar os protestos que querem “ucranizar” o país. Porém, tenho achado essa movimentação ainda tímida, dada a oportunidade ímpar de se firmar. Por outro lado, os protestos da direita não assustam mais o governo, e nem o povo. Os trabalhadores ainda preferem, apesar de certo cansaço, o Lukashenko, que pode ter algumas práticas autoritárias, mas mantém importantes políticas sociais. E o povo viu de perto o que aconteceu na vizinha Ucrânia.
Na verdade, ninguém mais acredita nestes “golpes coloridos”, com exceção, a meu ver, de uma esquerda um tanto europeizada, de costumes elitizados, crente que os níveis de vida do centro capitalista – colonialista e neocolonialista – podem ser exportados, mediante apenas “boas intenções”, ao mundo periférico por ela pisado. Não percebem que o nível de vida do “centro do sistema” não poderá nunca existir na “periferia”, onde a miséria é sempre mais miserável – como bem nos lembra Florestan Fernandes.
Ask anyone and they will say things will be back to ‘normal’ as soon as we all have the vaccine. Furthermore, if your only source of news is sponsored by Big Pharma, then you better watch out. Despite what the papers say, a vaccine is an inherently complicated affair, needing various trials to perfect and make absolutely safe for human use. Case in point, the Mumps Vaccine alone, took four years and that was considered unprecedented. Just look at our success rate for other vaccines in the past: Malaria has been with us for centuries and there was still talk of having a vaccine for it by 1960. Sixty years later and still nothing has changed, apart from the stemming of its spread by cleaner water supplies and improved sanitation methods. In our ultra sanitised environment, we now think of Malaria as a third world problem and yet, despite all our technologies and wisdom, we still cant seem to beat the common cold which is a family of Rhino, Coxsackie, Adeno and Corona viruses, yet we suddenly have a whole new range of vaccines coming out for Covid-19.
The Pharms Race Is On…
It could be argued that: that was then and this is now but even with our super computers and technologies, all this is superseded by the fact that for time forever, we have fallen prey to corporate con-artists, peddling drugs to a naive and unsuspecting public. So lets just be clear on this. Even today, a vaccine still takes at least eighteen months to test and around five to ten years of perfecting before it can be used for general consumption. Thus the sudden announcement that Russia and America suddenly have a workable vaccine should be treated with scepticism. Such as US drug company Pfizer, which announced their vaccine only this week, despite a track record of flogging dodgy drugs. Just look at Russia’s bid with Sputnik V, a rather dubious vaccine that has many scientists nervous. It seems to be more about who can come out top dog, in what is clearly becoming a new Pharms Race.
With that in mind, lets put the Covid-19 virus in terms of East vs West. Just look at the way the Arms Race brought us to our knees in the last century, hijacking our greatest science and military output, into essentially reducing our nations to a nuclear standoff that lasted decades. Today things haven’t changed, we’ve merely swapped nukes for vaccines, as the Big Pharma superpowers battle it out, using vaccines as ammunition, in which we the people, are caught in the crossfire. China for one, is emerging in this Pharms Race as a formidable contender.
Christmas Vaccine
However, this is the type of blindly naïve ignorance which could spell disaster on a scale beyond imagination. Perhaps this writer has a flare for the dramatic but it should not be understated, that we have no way of knowing what side effects will ensue by taking untested vaccines, such as the ones proposed to combat Covid-19.
Yet the daily tabloids have us believing that a Vaccine will be here by September? But wait a minute: Septembers already come and gone and still no vaccine! Then they said it would be ready for Christmas before finally admitting it was more like sometime next year. Yet, in the sudden and dubious elections, Trump is out and Biden is in, who’s first job in office will be to reconnect funding to the WHO, (that Trump had previously cut, under allegations of corruption). Biden’s next plan of attack will be the relentless roll out vaccines, regardless of whether they work or not.
In the wake of Biden, the papers are quickly backtracking (yet again) and now saying the vaccines will be back with us by Christmas, while trials at Oxford offer little to back this claim. But whatever. Its Christmas! So why not purchase a Yule Tide Vaccine Gift Set for all your family, who cares if it works? Unicef is already stockpiling syringes. By the way, bidding for the Bill Gates Vaccine starts at £477. That’s right. Lots of companies are currently buying up stocks of untested vaccines but are reluctant to try them out on themselves. But that’s ok, because the first to be given the vaccine will be the elderly and GPs are already getting ready to jab the aged and infirm as the Yule tide looms. What the hell is in this stuff? Nothing good.
Thalmidomide Vaccines
The repurposing of Thalidomide in Covid vaccines should ring alarm bells. How many times have we been duped into something like this before, only to regret it? Big Pharma are much like the street vender variety. Peddling off drugs that in some cases can cost as much as $750 for just for one pill.
Don’t be fooled that just because the world is united under the fight against Covid-19, that big business has suddenly become holier than thou.
More than ever, there are numerous scams already in play, to take your money and put you and your family at risk with experimental vaccines with unforeseen risks, that will not only affect you but affect your offspring. But once it has become common place, it could make the Thalidomide scandal of the last century look quaint by comparison. From 1957 to 1961, over 10,000 children were born with adverse limb deformities, internal organ failure and subsequent brain damage. Since this well documented tragedy, protocols were put in place in order to avoid a repeat.
Yet it seems that public pressure (and hysteria) and Big Pharma have reached a bottleneck of compromises, in order to roll out untested vaccines asap, with zero thought about the potential ramifications. Worst still these drug companies have lobbied for total deniability, should their vaccines fail. Yep that’s right, if Pfizers vaccine ends up giving your kids birth deformities and autism, it’s not their problem, always read the label.
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Dear friends, sisters, brothers, and comrades in the struggle for peace and justice:
We hope this finds all of you well and safe.
The Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC)-Pakistan is deeply distressed at the way in which the US and the Gulf countries are putting immense pressure, threatening deportation of Pakistan laborers, etc., if Pakistan does not follow their lead and normalize relations with Israel. This is unacceptable for us, as we are relentlessly campaigning with human rights groups here to condemn the harsh Israeli military occupation of the Palestinians.
In this time of the urgent and immediate possible capitulation to DC and the Saudis and the Emiratis, we have created this emergency global petition to present to Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan. He is very much cornered right now (having stated numerous times that he will refuse to bow down to the pressure to normalize ties with Israel), and we hope this petition will tip the favor in his position of rejecting any normalization process with Israel until the military occupation ends, and there is justice for Palestinians — no matter what the traditional military-political establishment in Pakistan says or desires.
As trusted comrades of ours in this struggle for the dignity of Palestinians, we hope you can sign this petition immediately so that we can halt this dangerous and suicidal path our country may be forced to undertake.
Here is the petition:
We, the undersigned, strongly call upon the Government of Pakistan to not take any action in normalizing relations with the Apartheid State of Israel. As Pakistan has been keenly aware, and its current Prime Minister has laudably articulated numerous times, there should be no question about normalizing ties with a state that militarily occupies, brutalizes, and prevents justice to an occupied people, in this case, the longstanding suffering Palestinians. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and many global analysts see what India has been doing in Kashmir now as something straight out of the playbook of their Israeli friends. If Prime Minister Khan has so consistently been vocal about one brutal military occupation in Kashmir, then his statements on an equally vicious one in Palestine have given him the moral high ground of a consistent principled position against brutalized populations living under military occupation everywhere.
Nevertheless, we hear of a barrage of commentary from Pakistan, the Gulf, and Israel that Islamabad is just waiting in line to follow some of the other regimes in the Gulf in normalizing Israeli military occupation and its violation of numerous UN resolutions as well as dozens of human rights conventions, humanitarian law, etc. We appreciate Prime Minister Imran Khan’s dozens of recent statements that Pakistan WILL NOT normalize relations with the State of Israel, and we want to affirm our support to this principled position of Prime Minister Khan’s government on this question. We also want to remind the world that we are at a point where Israel has effectively destroyed any iota of a ‘peace process,’ has created bantustans and ghettoes, expanded settler-colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, and has relegated the Gaza Strip to what the world’s leading human rights experts call an ‘open air prison,’ subject to routine Israeli bombardment and massacres.
We are in a period where the US is holding together an alliance of pliant states – crucially, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt – to maintain a long-held US-Israeli hegemony over the region. But it is now barely holding on, and many of these regimes are like a house of cards waiting to fall –acting recklessly and mercilessly, to their own long-term detriment.
The only way that these few Arab countries have been able to normalize their relations with Israel is because they are police states, where the overwhelming opposition and disgust to such normalization by the population can be ignored with impunity. The Government of Pakistan, and especially Prime Minister Imran Khan, seems to genuinely care about the pulse of its people, of what they want and don’t want. A prominent Arab-American academic from the University of California at Berkeley recently gave a lecture tour throughout Pakistan, and his feeling was that over the lifespan of his academic career of traveling from country-to-country, he had never seen a population more pro-Palestinian, i.e. in favor of justice and dignity for Palestinians, than he did in Pakistan. That statement of his, covered widely in the media, made many Pakistanis feel proud that their message of solidarity with the Palestinians could be heard loudly.
Finally, we are right now at a point where the global Palestine solidarity campaign is at its peak. Tactics such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel have been incredibly successful, forcing many Western governments, universities, banks, etc. to divest from Israel and to begin to treat Israel exactly the same way Apartheid South Africa was treated – a country to be boycotted until the country was transformed to delivering justice and dignity to its black majority.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has praised Nelson Mandela and the South African freedom struggle on many occasions. By now, we have heard virtually all South Africans, especially leading veteran leaders and activists in the liberation struggle, who have seen the Apartheid conditions in Israel – state the same thing repeated over and over again: to paraphrase the iconic Archbishop Desmond Tutu, what Israel is doing in Palestine today is far worse than anything we (oppressed South Africans) experienced under white minority rule of Apartheid South Africa. That is a very powerful indictment of the crimes of Israel from a people that suffered immensely under Apartheid in South Africa.
Palestine today is a global symbol of the ongoing struggle for justice and dignity in a world where some states and forces are hellbent on denying these elementary rights. Indeed, there is no way that Pakistan and Prime Minister Imran Khan will have a shred of moral authority to speak on Kashmir or any form of oppression if they succumb to the pressures to normalize relations with Israel at a time when much of the world, including a very large number of powerful Jewish voices, are flatly opposed to the criminality and barbarism that Israel routinely unleashes as part of its military occupation of Palestine.
So we urge the Government of Pakistan, and Prime Minister Imran Khan whom Palestinians, Kashmiris, and other oppressed peoples throughout the world, have deeply respected for his principled position against all of these instances of oppression – to not succumb to the pressures of either the US or a few of the Gulf States. Pakistan should not bow down to these pressures regardless of how many goodies (or threats) these forces offer Pakistan in exchange for permitting Israel to carry on with its ‘bloodbath’ in Palestine, the word ‘bloodbath’ being chosen here specifically because Prime Minister Khan has correctly been telling the world that this is what is going to ensue by the behavior of Israel’s new best friend, India, in occupied Kashmir.
We know that the Government of Pakistan and Prime Minister Imran Khan will respect the wishes of not only the global solidarity movement for justice for Palestinians, including occupied Palestinians themselves (just like the majority of the suffering South Africans under Apartheid Rule), to, under no circumstances whatsoever, recognize the illegitimate and criminal regime of Israel as long as it does not, as Apartheid South Africa was eventually forced to do when completely isolated and boycotted internationally, entirely transform itself and give equal citizenship, justice, and dignity to the Palestinian people.
The global community has come to immensely respect Prime Minister Imran Khan because he is perceived as a leader with integrity and one who uncompromisingly safeguards the sovereignty of his country and his people, and will not be bullied by outside forces, by the carrot or the stick, to be used to effectively do the devil’s work.
Indeed, it will be incredibly saddening for all of us from North and South America, to Africa, to Europe, to Asia, and to Palestine and Pakistan to see a leader with integrity such as Prime Minister Imran Khan lead his country to the same type of slavish and morally bankrupt paths prior leaders of Pakistan have taken the country towards.
We have been watching closely to see if Prime Minister Imran Khan can keep his word on the matter of being uncompromising in regard to the constant statements he has made in his absolute refusal to normalize relations with Israel. We hope a leader of his integrity and global standing, who has promised his own people accountability and justice, will keep his word and fight for justice for Palestinians as he does for the Kashmiris.
And if for some reason Prime Minister Imran Khan is coerced by either internal and/or external forces to have the Government of Pakistan tragically accept the nation’s normalization with Israel, then he must have the moral courage, indeed the moral accountability, owed toward Pakistanis, Palestinians, and to all of those who have been struggling for decades to end Israeli military occupation of Palestine – TO PUBLICLY ANNOUNCE THAT HE COULD DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO STOP THE FORCES – THAT HE MUST CLEARLY IDENTIFY – THAT HAVE LEGITIMIZED ONGOING ISRAELI BRUTALITY TOWARDS THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE.
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During World War I (1914-1918) and the immediately following years (1919-1921), racial tensions escalated inside the United States resulting in numerous efforts by white racists to contain and in many cases remove the presence of African Americans.
One of the most violent disturbances occurred in late May and early June of 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma where it is estimated that approximately 300 people were massacred when white mobs, which included law-enforcement agents and National Guard, assaulted the socially burgeoning and self-reliant Black community.
In recent months, forensic specialists and archaeologists have been engaged in attempts to locate unmarked mass graves where some of the victims were buried. Since July, scientists believe that some of the remains have been located and are seeking the legal requirements necessary to conduct further exhumations and testing.
Phoebe Stubblefield, a forensic anthropologist, has been involved in revealing the truth surrounding the massacre for over two decades. She was present at the Oaklawn cemetery, where the victims are said to have been buried, when the first indications of the remains were found in coffins.
The business district along Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa had become known as “Black Wall Street” due to its thriving independent small businesses which largely served an African American community forced by segregation laws to remain insulated. Despite its adherence to the strict edicts of Jim Crow, the white ruling class interests apparently felt threatened by the initiatives of African Americans who had built their own small enterprises, independent religious institutions, and other organizations.
The centenary of this horrendous series of events slated to be commemorated in another six months, has prompted a reexamination of the Tulsa massacre, falsely described in years past as a “riot.” The only “riot” which took place was the invasion of the African American community by armed racist mobs which looted and burned homes, churches and businesses, while murdering hundreds of people. Thousands of Black people were placed in an open-air detention facility in the aftermath of the events where many remained for several days.
Official accounts of the incident narrated by the white establishment in Oklahoma, denied the scale of the violence including the sheer destruction of property and the number of killings. Nonetheless, oral and documented histories by African Americans have always acknowledged the depth of the concerted attacks and the large number of deaths at the hands of the racists.
A series of documentaries and research studies have revealed the level of carnage carried out during the Tulsa unrest. During the late 1990s, the State of Oklahoma appointed a commission to reconstruct the events of May-June 1921. (See this)
A commission report issued in 2001 provided riveting accounts of the developments which sparked the murderous mobs and the efforts to suppress the actual horrors committed against the African American community. The racist vigilantes and police agents were acting in response to allegations that a young African American had assaulted a white woman on an elevator in the downtown area.
Flames across the Greenwood section of Tulsa (Source: Public Domain)
Corporate newspaper accounts at the time evoked the racist myths surrounding the propensity for Black males to assault innocent white women and called upon the authorities to take immediate action. After the youth who was accused of the assault was arrested, armed African Americans descended on the local jail to prevent a lynching of the man held in detention. Soon there were clashes resulting in shots being fired by African Americans and whites. During the subsequent hours and days, the racist militias invaded the African American community where they engaged in a reign of terror. Later there were reports of airplanes flying overhead in the Greenwood neighborhood where incendiary devices were dropped on homes and businesses.
Tulsa Was Not an Isolated Case
The years between WWI and 1921 were marked by racist attacks on African American communities throughout the U.S. where many were displaced, injured and killed. During the same year that the U.S. entered the first imperialist war, 1917, white racist mobs attacked African American communities in East St. Louis (Illinois), Chester (Pennsylvania), Lexington (Kentucky), Philadelphia, among other cities and rural areas.
After the conclusion of WWI, a renewed round of racial violence occurred across the country. In Elaine, Arkansas, where dozens and perhaps hundreds of African American tenant farmers were massacred after attempting to form a union of sharecroppers and domestic workers, it would take the intervention of anti-lynching fighter Ida B. Wells-Barnett along with the NAACP to prevent the execution of several Black men accused of insurrection. Chicago and Washington, D.C. were some of the worst cities affected when African Americans fought pitched battles with white vigilantes, police officers and National Guard soldiers in the summer of 1919.
These racially motivated conflicts coincided with both an upsurge in industrial labor actions and the continuation of state repression which intensified during the War. Thousands of opponents of U.S. involvement in WWI were imprisoned and deported by the government in 1917-1918. The-then Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer gained a horrendous reputation for anti-Black and anti-Labor political investigations and prosecutions. The Palmer Raids of 1919 were specifically designed to thwart the organization of the working class along with the struggle for equality and self-determination among African Americans.
Consequently, the situation in Tulsa in 1921 was reflective of the generally repressive atmosphere prevailing in the U.S. Therefore, it is not surprising that the authorities in Oklahoma went to great lengths to conceal the crimes committed against the African American people in Tulsa.
Live Science magazine published an article on the research being done in the Sexton section of Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa. The report notes that: “The Tulsa race massacre wasn’t officially recognized by the state until 2001, and historians have claimed accounts of the violence were suppressed. But in recent decades, Oklahoma and the city of Tulsa have tried to better come to terms with this brutal part of their history. It’s thought that most people who were alive at the time have now passed away; one of the last known survivors, the psychologist and professor Olivia Juliette Hooker, died in 2018 at the age of 103.” (See this)
Reparations Recommended and Denied
After the first commission report in 2001, it was recommended that reparations be paid to the survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre. Yet there is no record of any reparations given to African Americans living in Tulsa at the time or their descendants.
Leading up to the 100th anniversary of the disturbances, a civil lawsuit has been filed with the lead plaintiff being a 105-year-old survivor of the unrest. Ms. Lessie Benningfield Randle, was a young child in 1921 when thousands of members of the white mob destroyed a 35-block area where more than 10,000 African Americans lived. She is thought to be one of only two survivors of the attacks.
The Guardian newspaper reported on the civil litigation saying: “Randle still experiences flashbacks of bodies stacked up on the street as the neighborhood burned, her attorneys said. Other plaintiffs include the great-granddaughter of J.B. Stradford, who owned the Stradford hotel in Greenwood, the largest black-owned hotel in the United States at the time of the massacre, and grandchildren of people killed. The lawsuit accuses the city of Tulsa, Tulsa county, the then serving sheriff of Tulsa county, the Oklahoma national guard and Tulsa regional chamber of being directly involved in the massacre. The defendants, lawyers allege, have ‘unjustly enriched themselves at the expense of the black citizens of Tulsa and the survivors and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre’.” (See this)
Advocates for African American Liberation and the fight for reparations will be following this most recent case very closely since its outcome will portend much for future claims. The movement for reparations to African people has grown in the last few years with demonstrations, conferences and lawsuits that span from the U.S. to the Caribbean and the African continent.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Smoldering ruins of African-American homes following massacre. (Source: Public Domain)
On Nov. 11, 2020, Billboard magazine reported that Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket agency, revealed it wants to require proof that ticket purchasers have tested negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus within 24-72 hours before attending an event or have received a COVID-19 vaccine with a year of the event.1 This would mean that gone are the days when the biggest concern for teens attending concerts was scraping together the money for overpriced tickets and pleading with their parents for permission to stay out late. Adults planning to attend a play in a theater or families going to football games together would have a lot more to worry about than what to wear or where to park.
However, the swift reaction from outraged consumers put pressure on Ticketmaster to walk back the earlier comments made by president Mark Yonich to Billboard that ticket purchasers to events would have their medical history accessed and screened by the U.S.-based ticket agency.
Yonich had told Billboard,
“We’re already seeing many third-party health care providers prepare to handle the vetting—whether that is getting a vaccine, taking a test, or other methods of review and approval—which could then be linked via a digital ticket so everyone entering the event is verified.” He added, “Ticketmaster’s goal is to provide enough flexibility and options that venues and fans have multiple paths to return to events, and is working to create integrations to our API and leading digital ticketing technology as we will look to tap into the top solutions based on what’s green-lit by officials and desired by clients.”
By Nov. 16, TicketNews reported that a statement was issued by Ticketmaster clarifying that the company was “just exploring the ability to enhance our existing digital ticket capabilities” and that event organizers, not Ticketmaster, would have the power to require testing or vaccination as a condition of attending an event:2
We are not forcing anyone to do anything. Just exploring the ability to enhance our existing digital ticket capabilities to offer solutions for event organizers that could include testing and vaccine information with 3rd party health providers. Just a tool in the box for those that may want to use. There is absolutely no requirement from Ticketmaster mandating vaccines/testing for future events… Ticketmaster does not have the power to set policies around safety/entry requirements, which would include vaccines and/or testing protocols. That would always be up to the discretion of the event organizer, based on their preferences and local health guidelines.
Ticketmaster Evaluating Partnerships with Health Companies
Regardless of the weak non-denial denial, it is a fact that Ticketmaster is evaluating options for partnering with health companies to offer concert halls, theaters, stadiums and other large public event organizers the option of requiring people purchasing tickets to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination. Ticket purchasers using Ticketmaster could be required to submit personal medical information and have a lab provide the COVID-19 test results or vaccination history to a third-party health company via a digital app.
The third-party health company would then relay the health information to Ticketmaster, which would issue digital tickets to purchasers who were vaccinated or tested negative for COVID-19. Tickets and entry to an event would be denied for those who tested positive or did not submit to testing or vaccination.3
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved the third-party health care companies that Ticketmaster would employ to collect data about ticket purchaser’s vaccine status or test results. The specific regulations, such as how far in advance testing must be done, would vary according to state laws. State health officials and event organizers would determine the new rules that would be in place at events, such as regulations regarding social distancing, staggered entrance times, contact tracing, mask requirements and sanitization.4
Event tickets would need to be purchased prior to submitting vaccination status or testing results to the third-party health care provider. Ticketmaster has not indicated how they would process payments or if they would refund ticket purchasers who tested positive or were unable to get tested or vaccinated prior to the event.5
Ticketmaster Denies Requiring COVID-19 Testing or Vaccination
After media outlets broke the story about Ticketmaster’s COVID-19 testing and vaccination plan, the news quickly generated pushback from consumers that it was an assault on medical privacy with substantial potential for abuse. The company then took steps to publicly deny it will require mandatory testing or vaccination of those purchasing tickets to attend events, claiming that providing health information to establish COVID-19 test results or vaccination status will be left up to the event organizer.
“Ticketmaster does not have the power to set policies around safety/entry requirements, which would include vaccines and/or testing protocols,” it said. “That is up to the discretion of the event organizer. Ticketmaster continues to work with event organizers on all COVID safety measures and it will be up to each event organizer to set future requirements, based on their preferences and local health guidelines.”6
Ticketmaster management further explained that they are looking into a digital medical status entrance requirement as one of several, “potential ideas” that would allow resumption of public events.7
Ticketmaster’s Use of SmartEvent Indicates Desire to Monitor Health Status of Ticket Holders
Despite denying that it plans to implement a digital health tracking system, it seems inevitable that Ticketmaster will use advanced digital technology to run events and monitor attendees. According to a recent press release by Ticketmaster:
Ticketmaster’s robust API capabilities combined with its foundation of digital ticketing allow for the roll out of new features at record speed. Operating in over 30 countries, Ticketmaster has a front-row seat to new tech, health and logistical developments around the world that may be ripe to integrate into its platform.8
In fact, Ticketmaster has already implemented SmartEvent, a digital platform that monitors events by determining seating capacity limits, staggering entry times and conducting contact tracing.9 Smart Event is essentially a remote box office that has a number of tools that can be used to optimize safety at events. Utilizing algorithms to determine the distance between seats, the Social Distance Seating Tool will set out safe seating arrangements at events.
The Timed Entry Tool will stagger attendees arrival times; the Entry Rate Monitoring Tools will prevent lines from being too crowded; and the Contactless Scanners will check guests in via their cell phone. SafeTix’s Secure Ticket Transfer, “gives organizers the capability to know every fan in the building” and easily conduct contact tracing.10 As many as 250 organizations including the NFL, MLS and universities have already started using SmartEvent.11
As the world’s largest ticketing agency implements digital technology to monitor the health status of event attendees, NVIC co-founder and president Barbara Loe Fisher’s prophetic warning comes to mind…
Tomorrow, the “new normal” in America may well include the order to “Show me your vaccine papers before you can enter a store or restaurant, go to school, attend a football game, get on a plane, train or subway, obtain a driver’s license, be admitted to a hospital or nursing home, get a room at a hotel or walk on a public beach, if health policy and lawmakers do not use common sense to adopt a more balanced approach to dealing with a virus that, so far, has changed everything.12
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Notes
1 Brooks D. How Ticketmaster Plans to Check Your Vaccine Status for Concerts: Exclusive. Billboard Nov. 11, 2020.
Herewith I am submitting my petition in defense of academic freedom and free speech, prompted by my unfortunate experience at NYU since Sept. 20, when, as you are well aware, a student in my undergraduate propaganda course, “Mass Persuasion and Propaganda” (MCC-UE 1014), took to Twitter to demand that NYU fire me, for suggesting that the class look into the scientific studies of the effectiveness of masks against transmission of respiratory viruses. It was not the student’s tweets that decided me to publish the petition, but NYU’s response to them: a tweet of thanks from my department chair, with assurances that my department had made her grievance “a priority”; an email from Dean Jack Knott, and Dr. Carlo Ciotoli, to my other students (without myself on copy), hinting that I had dangerously misinformed them, and including links to studies that they should accept without question (studies that I also had encouraged them to read, albeit with an open mind); and pressure from my chair to cancel next semester’s propaganda course (which I’ve been teaching for over twenty years, usually twice a year at least) in favor of two sections of “Film: History and Form” (MCC-UE 1007).
Before giving you some sense of the diversity and eminence of many of the petition’s signatories, I feel it is appropriate to note what’s happened since I published it (although FIRE made you aware of it, in their comprehensive letter of Nov. 13). Evidently angered by its affirmation of my academic freedom, and my request that NYU respect that freedom, a majority of my department colleagues sent Dean Knott a letter on Oct. 21, urging him to order a “review” of my “conduct,” which they deem reprehensible not just because I had suggested that my students read those scientific studies, but, as they assert at length, because I am a menace in the classroom and beyond, engaging in “explicit hate speech,” “intimidation of students, staff and colleagues,” advocating for “an unsafe learning environment,” and otherwise behaving in a manner that bears no relation whatsoever to the way I teach, treat others generally, and always have done. They made that case in hopes that it will obviate my academic freedom, enabling whatever “disciplinary measures” NYU may deem “appropriate.” Although I explained to Dean Knott that my colleagues’ accusations are sheer fantasy, at the urging of NYU’s lawyers he complied with their demand, and ordered that review, which is ongoing.
To say that I am disappointed by my colleagues’ letter, and by Dean Knott’s response to it, is an understatement, as it appears to demonstrate that academic freedom is on thin ice at this university, where I’ve served on the faculty since 1997, and never have encountered anything like this, with my courses always heavily enrolled, with very positive responses from the students. My disappointment is compounded by my colleagues’ readiness to make up, or imagine, that I ever have committed any such transgressions as those which they impute to me, as well as by their eagerness to nullify my academic freedom, even as they claim to hold such freedom dear. (They are now up in arms over Zoom’s recent censorship of Palestinian activist Leila Khaled—censorship that I too have protested.) Their charges have been thoroughly refuted by many of my students, former and current, as well as many visitors to my classes through the years, in statements of support sent to Dean Knott. While that impressive chorus of defense is surely gratifying, I’d rather not have found myself in need of it.
Those many individual pleas that NYU respect my academic freedom are in accord with the view of the petition’s over (as of today) 17,700 signatories, who include professors, scientists, doctors, journalists and whistleblowers from all over the US and the world. The academics include economist James K. Galbraith, at the University of Texas and Bard College; Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia; Mark Edmundson, University Professor at the University of Virginia; Roberto Strongman, Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Ross Posnock, Anna S. Garbedian Professor of the Humanities at Columbia; Lynn Comerford, Professor of Human Development, and director of Women’s Studies, at California State University, East Bay; Benjamin Ginsberg, David Ginsberg Professor of Political Science, and Chair of the Hopkins Center for Advanced Governmental Studies in Washington, D.C., at Johns Hopkins; and faculty at schools as various as Trinity, Brown, Pace, University of Zurich, Ohio State, University of Bath, Wheaton College, Morgan State, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), East Carolina University, Virginia Commonwealth University and Okinawa Christian University.
The journalists who have signed the petition include Seymour Hersh, Sharyl Attkisson, Lewis Lapham (editor of Lapham’s Quarterly), Andrew Sullivan, Naomi Wolf, Stephen Jimenez, Kristina Borjesson, Celia Farber, Margaret Kimberly and Anne Garrison (editors at Black Agenda Report), Mnar Muhawesh (editor of Mint Press News), Max Parry, Max Blumenthal and Patrick Henningsen, among others. The scientists and physicians include Dr. David L. Katz, founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at Griffin Hospital in Derby, CT (and formerly on the faculty at Yale); Dr. James C. Meehan, specialist in public health and ophthalmology, and former Associate Editor of the Journal of Ocular Immunology and Inflammation; Dr. Meryl Nass, biowarfare epidemiologist; and researchers and clinicians from Lynchburg, Santa Barbara, Green Bay and Lexington, Mass. to La Paz (Mexico), Madrid, Heilbronn, Trier, Changuinoa (Panama) and Rosebery in Australia.
Other noted signatories include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Oliver Stone, Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, and prominent whistleblowers from the US government, including Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst; Coleen Rowley, former FBI Special Agent; Clement J. Laniewski, former Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army; Marshall Carter-Tripp, former senior State Department official; Elizabeth Murray, former CIA Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East; US Marine and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter; and Robert Wing, former State Department Foreign Service Officer (and NYU alumnus, who calls what has happened here a “travesty”).
Finally, Ralph Nader, although unable to sign the petition, has issued this statement of support, with his permission for me to use it publicly:
Academic freedom means the freedom to contest received opinion and official truths, on subjects of all kinds. Universities that seek to curb that freedom impede the education of their students and deprive society of invaluable research.
New York University and all universities must stand up to unfounded attacks on academic integrity and encourage professors to teach without interference or threats of punishment.
It is my hope that this petition will persuade you to act quickly to address its urgent plea that NYU respect my academic freedom, which you may do by halting the review demanded by my colleagues, with a public statement reaffirming NYU’s commitment to academic freedom, not only in my case but overall, whether certain students and/or faculty believe in it or not.
The petition is here. There are 17,700 signatories and counting.
Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Mark Crispin Miller
Department of Media, Culture and Communication
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Un video, pubblicato il 23 novembre dai Sandia National Laboratories, mostra un caccia Usa F-35A che, volando a velocità supersonica a 3000 metri di quota, lancia una bomba nucleare B61-12 (dotata per il test di testata non-nucleare).
La bomba non cade verticalmente ma plana, finché nella sezione di coda si accendono dei razzi che le imprimono un moto rotatorio e la B61-12 (guidata da un sistema satellitare) si dirige sull’obiettivo che colpisce 42 secondi dopo il lancio.
Il test è stato effettuato il 25 agosto nel poligono di Tonopah nel deserto del Nevada.
Un comunicato ufficiale conferma il suo pieno successo: si tratta della prova di un vero e proprio attacco nucleare che il caccia effettua a velocità supersonica e in assetto stealth (con le bombe nucleari collocate nella stiva interna) per penetrare attraverso le difese nemiche.
La B61-12 ha una testata nucleare con quattro opzioni di potenza selezionabili al momento del lancio a seconda dell’obiettivo da colpire. Ha la capacità di penetrare nel sottosuolo, esplodendo in profondità per distruggere i bunker dei centri di comando e altre strutture sotterranee.
Il programma del Pentagono prevede la costruzione di circa 500 B61-12, con un costo stimato di circa 10 miliardi di dollari (per cui ogni bomba viene a costare il doppio di quanto costerebbe se fosse costruita interamente in oro). È stato ufficialmente annunciato che la produzione in serie della nuova bomba nucleare comincerà nell’anno fiscale 2022, che inizia il 1° ottobre 2021 (ossia tra undici mesi).
Non si sa quante B61-12 verranno schierate dagli Usa in Italia, Germania, Belgio e Olanda per sostituire le B61 il cui numero effettivo è segreto.
Foto satellitari mostrano che sono stati effettuati lavori di ristrutturazione nelle basi di Aviano e Ghedi in preparazione dell’arrivo delle nuove bombe nucleari, di cui saranno armati gli F-35A della US Air Force e, sotto comando Usa, quelli dell’Aeronautica italiana.
In quale situazione si troverà l’Italia, una volta che saranno schierati sul proprio territorio gli F-35A pronti all’attacco nucleare con le B61-12, è facilmente prevedibile. Quale base avanzata dello schieramento nucleare Usa in Europa diretto principalmente contro la Russia, l’Italia si troverà in una situazione ancora più pericolosa.
Dipenderà ancor più di prima dalle decisioni strategiche prese a Washington, che comportano scelte politiche ed economiche lesive della nostra sovranità e dei nostri reali interessi nazionali.
Dovrà accrescere la spesa militare dagli attuali 26 a 36 miliardi di euro annui, cui si aggiungeranno secondo i piani oltre 60 miliardi stanziati a fini militari dal Ministero dello sviluppo economico e tratti (più gli interessi) dal Recovery Fund.
L’Italia violerà ancor più di prima il Trattato di non-proliferazione, al quale ha aderito nel 1975 impegnandosi a «non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari né il controllo su tali armi, direttamente o indirettamente».
Rifiuterà ancora di più il recente Trattato Onu sulla abolizione delle armi nucleari, che stabilisce: «Ciascuno Stato parte che abbia sul proprio territorio armi nucleari, possedute o controllate da un altro Stato, deve assicurare la rapida rimozione di tali armi».
Per gettare un sasso nell’acqua stagnante di un parlamento che tace su tutto questo, l’on. Sara Cunial (Gruppo Misto) ha presentato una interrogazione a risposta scritta alla Presidenza del Consiglio e ai Ministeri della Difesa e degli Esteri.
Dopo aver esposto i fatti sopracitati, l’interrogazione chiede «se il Governo intende rispettare il Trattato di non-proliferazione delle armi nucleari, ratificato dall’Italia nel 1975; se intende firmare e ratificare il Trattato ONU sulla abolizione delle armi nucleari, che entra in vigore nel 2021; se intende far sì, in base a quanto stabiliscono tali trattati, che gli Stati uniti rimuovano immediatamente qualsiasi arma nucleare dal territorio italiano e rinuncino a installarvi le nuove bombe B61-12 e altre armi nucleari».
Mentre aspettiamo di leggere la risposta del Governo, negli Usa fanno gli ultimi test della Bomba, che ci verranno a mettere sotto i piedi.
The German Defense Minister’s undiplomatic threat that her country must negotiate “from a position of strength” with Russia, especially regarding military issues, triggered some harsh rebukes from Moscow which aimed to remind her of how unacceptable it is for Berlin to speak in such a way to the Eurasian Great Power.
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer undiplomatically threatened Russia last week when she said that her country must negotiate “from a position of strength” with it, especially regarding military issues, and pledged to “strengthen our position” in pursuit of this goal. The Russian Defense Ministry issued a sharp rebuke by comparing her to a “primary school student” who “compensate[s] for the lack of knowledge of the subject by the loudness of the uttered absurdity.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova chimed in over the weekend by saying what every objective observer already knows, namely that “The strength is there, but it isn’t yours and you can’t control it…[Germany is] completely and utterly within the US military sphere…it might look like power, but it isn’t their own.” The point of these ripostes is to remind Germany that it’s unacceptable to speak in such a way to Russia.
It’s unclear whether Kramp-Karrenbauer’s comment was intended to provoke Russia or was simply a faux pas, but either way, the rhetorical consequences are more than justified. The memory of the Second World War still looms large in Russian society where millions of people march in the streets every year during Victory Day’s Immortal Regiment holding pictures of their family members who served and/or perished in that genocidal conflict which claimed the lives of an estimated 26 million Soviet citizens. That was the last time that Germany ever tried to impose its will upon Russia “from a position of strength”, and Moscow won’t ever allow there to be another one. Kramp-Karrenbauer probably didn’t mean to imply another genocide, but there was no way that Russia couldn’t respond given how historically insensitive her comment was. As an experienced politician, she certainly should have known better.
Russian-German relations are currently worse than they’ve ever been in recent memory. Although Berlin officially remains committed to completing the Nord Stream II gas pipeline despite intense pressure from Washington for it to suspend the project, it also hosts infamous Russian anti-corruption blogger Navalny who accused his homeland of trying to poison him earlier this summer. The German government, which is the most influential one in the EU, paid credence to these groundless claims. It should also be noted that the country leads the anti-Russian sanctions campaign on the continent, which wouldn’t have been possible without its participation. It can’t be known for sure whether Germany has done all of this on its own prerogative or at the orders of its American patron, but either way, they’re extremely unfriendly moves that worsened Russian-German relations.
Moscow never did anything to provoke any of these actions from Berlin. Its reunification with Crimea was carried out in accordance with democratic standards, the country played a key role in attempting to resolve the Ukrainian Civil War via the Minsk Agreements, and President Putin even personally approved Navalny’s transfer to Germany for treatment upon his wife’s request. All that Russia wants is to have equal partner relations with Germany for the betterment of European security, but the US is standing in the way and doing all that it can to divide and rule the continent through its Hybrid War schemes. It was former Polish-American US National Security Advisor Brzezinski who wrote in “The Grand Chessboard” about how his adopted homeland’s interests are best served by keeping the supercontinent divided, to which end the US continues to meddle in its affairs, especially as regards Russian-German relations.
Russia’s harsh rebukes to Kramp-Karrenbauer’s historically insensitive comment were done for reasons of self-respect since the country is a confident Great Power that won’t be talked down to, let alone in such a way, by the political heir of the most infamous Axis power. They might admittedly have the inadvertent effect of heightening the “security dilemma” that the US hopes to provoke between the two, but it should also be said that the Russian representatives nevertheless exercised restraint and didn’t stoop down to her level by replying in kind with symmetrical threats. All that they did was rightly humiliate her for speaking so recklessly, which is exactly what she deserved. Hopefully her head doesn’t get filled with any ridiculous ideas pumped into it by others that could influence her to double down on her rhetoric, but instead does the right thing by trying to move on from her faux pas and hopefully focus on repairing relations with Russia for the benefit of all.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Kramp-Karrenbauer with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019 (Public Domain)
US President Donald Trump is apparently set to slam the door and go to great lengths to show love to his friends in Tel Aviv before withdrawing from the White House.
On November 27, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent Iranian professor of physics and quantum field theorist, was assassinated near the Iranian capital of Tehran. Formally, Fakhrizadeh was the head of its Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, while Israel and the U.S. insist that he headed the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Israeli media even called Fakhrizadeh “the Nuclear Soleimani” referring to the commander of the Iranian Qods Force, who was assassinated by a US drone strike in Iraq on January 3, 2020. That assassination almost led to a US-Iranian war and the White House even swallowed a ballistic missile strike on its bases in Iraq, while Iranian air defense forces accidentally shot down an airliner near Tehran. Fortunately, a larger war was avoided, but the region entered into a new spiral of tensions between the Israeli-US bloc and Iranian-led forces. The November assassination did not trigger an immediate military response from Tehran, but there are little doubts that it will also have negative consequences for regional stability.
According to US and Israeli media, the development of the Iranian nuclear program requires the following factors: time, money and specialists. Iran has already had a lot of time. Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” was intended to target the ‘money’ factor, but Iran’s so-called resistance economy survived despite the pressure. Now, the US and Israel once again turned to the ‘specialists’ factor of this formula and they have capabilities to conduct politically-motivated assassinations as a part of what they call the ‘deterrence campaign’ against Iran.
Initial reports say that the car of Fakhrizadeh was targeted by a car bomb explosion and then was subjected to gunmen fire at Absard city. According to the Iranian Defense Ministry, Fakhrizadeh “was severely wounded in the course of the clashes between his security team and terrorists and was transferred to a hospital,” where he later succumbed to his wounds. Later it appeared in the unofficial version of events, claims that the attackers used a remotely-controlled machine gun that was installed in the trunk of a Nisan pickup. Then, the pickup and the gun were detonated. The Iranian Fars News report insists that the entire attack lasted for only 3 minutes and that no gunmen were involved.
The assassination demonstrates the particular gaps in the security of such prominent and high-ranking persons. It is no secret that the life of Fakhrizadeh was under threat for years, but he still moved around the country with a small security team with only two cars, and his car was not even armored. This posture may be partly explained by the cult of martyrdom on the all levels of Iranian society and the fact that Iranian officials are pretty close to ordinary people, especially in comparison with other Middle Eastern states. These factors allow the current political regime in Iran to resist unprecedented sanctions, political and even military pressure from its opponents, but at the same time creates additional security difficulties.
Immediately after the assassination, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Army were put on high alert and top Iranian officials vowed to take revenge for the attack. Also, on November 29, the Iranian Parliament decided to speed up the consideration of the bill that supposes to increase the level of uranium enrichment. As a “double urgency”, it was ratified with 232 votes from a total of 246 MPs attending the session. The final vote on the adoption of the law may take place on December 2. The bill states that Iran would now produce at least 120kg of uranium enriched to 20% per year.
In comparison, the Iranian nuclear deal, from which the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew, allowed Iran to enrich uranium to a maximum of 3.67%. In addition, under the bill in consideration, the government will have to put in operation one thousand additional centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordo nuclear facilities within a year. The bill also supposes an immediate return to the project for the reconstruction of the Arak nuclear reactor, which existed before the signing of the nuclear deal. Therefore, instead of slowing down the Iranian nuclear program, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh led to a public increase of the Iranian activity in the field. The United States and Israel will likely call these actions a great threat to global security and state that they are obliged to respond to the growing Iranian threat.
The only question is what do the Israeli and US leadership expect? Did they really believe that after the years of resistance and regional standoffs, that the Iranians would surrender after an assassination of one of their scientists?
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The ringleaders of the global conspiracy against us citizens have already pushed the realisation of their diabolical plans for a New World Order NWO and a One World Government based on the Chinese model as well as a “Great New Start” and a “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, the fusion of physical and digital identity (transhumanism), further than we suspect. WEF founder Klaus Schwab confirms this. (1)
Many of our fellow citizens wonder how evil came into the world and why a small clique of sinister figures can plunge the whole world into chaos when man is good by nature.
Since the exhortations of the human sense of community can be suppressed but never completely eradicated, social human nature will regain the upper hand in the long term. The gift of evolution is the moral awareness of the individual, the recognition of the responsibility of all to all. If we continue to nurture and strengthen community feelings and to place the human being more firmly in the social fabric, then the will to power and dominate over others will be limited by social bonds – and evil will not triumph.
How can the father of two children shoot babies?
In the blurb of Bernd Greiner’s book “Krieg ohne Fronten. The USA in Vietnam. I have died in Vietnam. But I have walked the face of the moon” is written:
“The images of destroyed villages, children burned by napalm, of a country that received more bombs than all the scenes of the Second World War put together, shape the memory of the Vietnam War and the years between 1965 and 1975. In an interview broadcast by CBS in 1969, the US soldier Paul Meadlo described the massacre of ‘My Lai’ as follows:”
“I had set my gun to automatic. So you can’t tell how many you shot. I shot maybe 10 or 15 of them.” –
“Men, women and children?” – “Men, women and children.” –
“And babies?” – “And babies.” –
“Are you married?” – “Yes.” –
“Children?” – “Two.” –
“How old?” – “The boy is two and a half, the girl one and a half.” –
“Then the question arises how the father of two small children can shoot babies.” – “I don’t know. It just happens.” –
“How many people were shot that day?” – “I estimate around 370.” (2)
The renowned American social psychologist Philip Zimbardo comment in his book “The Lucifer Effect. The power of circumstances and the psychology of evil” (2008) how we are all vulnerable to the temptations of “the dark side”. He explains that situational forces and group dynamic processes can work together to turn decent men and women into monsters. (3) Karl Marx – based on Ludwig Feuerbach – had long before him the view that the consciousness of man is shaped by social conditions (Being determines consciousness).
Alfred Adler: “Man is good by nature”
“Man is not evil by nature. Whatever mistakes a man may have made, he may be seduced by his erroneous view of life, it need not depress him; he can change. He is free to be happy and to please others.” (4)
This statement by the founder of individual psychology is an incontrovertible insight of scientific psychology: Man is a naturally social being, oriented towards the community of his fellow human beings and endowed with a rational faculty, with a natural inclination towards the good, the knowledge of truth and community life. This characteristic helps him to better recognise the laws of nature or what is right in nature. We need not be afraid of this person either. He wants to live in freedom and peace, without violence and war – just like we all do.
“Natural law”, a “right given by nature” says that there is something that is right by nature. It differs from the so-called “positive right” established by man in that it is due to man simply because he is human. Since it is not created by any ruler or majority decision of any kind, it is pre-state law. This means that the laws of a state must be measured critically against natural law. Knowing what is right by nature makes it possible to confront totalitarian ideologies and dictatorships from a firm human standpoint and to feel a sense of outrage against injustice and inhumanity. (5)
How did evil come into the world?
The religious myth of the West has traced the origin of violence and evil back to the fall of the first human beings. Expelled from paradise through their own fault, they knew what was good and what was evil. In another version of religious thinking, it is described how God created the world in all its perfection. But then one of his angels rebelled against him; it was Satan who was condemned to be the prince of the underworld. Since then, the power of light and the power of darkness have worked against each other, and their struggle has dominated the course of world history. But this religious myth does not help explain the evil.
In the 19th century, Charles Darwin recognised the breeding and selecting power of the “struggle for existence” in the animal world, which ensures the “survival of the fittest”. Some of his students also transferred this insight to the human world. They proclaimed the law of the struggle for existence and believed they had found the driving force of progress. The struggle of all against all would purify and elevate the human race. This ideology was adopted by the economic life of Manchester liberalism. But it is as false as it is inhuman. Research has now shown that in the animal kingdom not only the “struggle for life” but also the principle of mutual aid is effective.
The Russian anarchist, geographer and writer Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) observed both nature and natural creatures and applied his findings to human beings. In his book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution”, Kropotkin wrote that in nature and society there was by no means just a battle of all against all, but that the principle of “Mutual Aid” was also prevalent. Those living beings who implement this principle would survive more successfully. (6) The more highly organised living beings would live in associations, groups and herds. An instinct for herding has developed in them, which occasionally places species survival above self-preservation.
In the human world, social feelings and community ties certainly play as important a role as the will to power and self-interest. Since man is free to shape his own life, he has the possibility of choice; it is the possibility of good and evil. Man is not a priori destined to be a wolf or a lamb. If man does evil, he has chosen it beforehand; he has wanted it beforehand. Brutality on a human level is not fate, but the choice for evil. But why in the history of mankind has man repeatedly chosen evil?
The origin of evil is not in human nature, but in the conditions of existence that man found on earth at the beginning of time. Since he was helpless and abandoned to the overpowering forces of nature, he must have felt great fear of the world. This fear created the illusion of the gods, who were supposed to be helpful to mankind. It also unleashed a strong aggression, with the hostile environment constantly keeping the willingness to fight in check.
It was obvious to perceive other people as potential enemies. Added to this were the difficulties in obtaining food, which in some circumstances made the fight for the feeding ground necessary. So violence seemed to be a way out, a means to protect and preserve one’s own life. The temptation to violence was all the greater because the social bonds did not yet produce a firm cohesion. (7)
The human sense of community and the spirit of responsibility must put an end to violence
“The striving for domination”, writes Alfred Adler, the founder of individual psychology, “is a fatal illusion and poisons the coexistence of people. Whoever wants community must renounce the striving for power!” The “deepest idea of all culture” is the final elevation of the sense of community to a guiding idea. The development of culture consists essentially in making the voice of human conscience more and more audible and in replacing violence with the spirit of responsibility. From this awareness of the unity of all those who have the human face of the human race came the teachings of the moral leaders of humanity, the wisdom of Lao Tse, the commandment to love one’s neighbour and the innumerable forms of social life and behaviour in which the sense of community is expressed.
Among us human beings, social feelings and community solidarity certainly play just as important a role as the will to power and self-interest, for man is capable of devotion and self-sacrifice. All our endeavours in the world and in science should be guided by the principle that in future we should create a type of human being for whom – as Alfred Adler put it – a sense of community and human solidarity are as natural as breathing. (8)
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is an educational scientist and graduate psychologist.
(2) Greiner, B. (2017). War without fronts. The USA in Vietnam. Hamburg. Blurb text
(3) Zimbardo, Ph. (2008). The Lucifer Effect. The power of circumstances and the psychology of evil
(4) Alfred Adler quotes from Rattner, J. (1980). The individual psychology of Alfred Adler. Munich, p. 17; source: https://beruhmte-zitate.de/zitate/123126-alfred-adler-der-mensch-ist-von-natur-aus-nicht-bose-was-auch/
Iranian parliamentarians responded swiftly to last Friday’s assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — more from the country’s ruling authorities highly likely.
According to Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, Fakhrizadeh was martyred by at least one explosion and gunfire from a number of assailants.
Condemnation followed by senior Iranian political and military officials, vowing retaliation.
Over the weekend, Iranian parliamentarians responded by overwhelmingly adopting legislation that includes the following provisions:
1. Voluntary implementation of the IAEA’s Additional Protocol (pertaining to verification of nuclear safeguards) to cease.
2. Producing and storing at least 120 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20% purity. More on this below.
3. Enriching amounts above 20% for legitimate industrial uses.
4. Requiring the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to increase legitimate uranium enrichment of varying purity levels to at least 500 kilograms monthly.
5. At least 1,000 IR-2M centrifuge machines to be operating at the Natanz nuclear facility within three months.
6. Requiring at least 164 IR-6 centrifuges for R & D to be operating at the Fordow nuclear facility — increasing the number to 1,000 by March 2021.
7. Monitoring of Iranian nuclear sites will be allowed only according to Additional Protocol provisions.
8. Restoring the 40-megawatt Arak heavy water reactor to its pre-JCPOA condition.
9. If Iran’s earlier banking relations with Europe and EU oil purchases aren’t restored within three months of the new law’s adoption, voluntary adherence to the Additional Protocol will cease.
If P5+1 countries don’t don’t fully implement JCPOA provisions, further Iranian steps may be adopted.
Iranian parliamentarians called the new law a “strategic measure for the removal of (illegally imposed US and Western) sanctions.”
On Sunday, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said the following:
“The enemies of the Iranian people, once again by resorting to terror, proved that they are scared of the increase of Iran’s power and chose to remove our scientists to confront the nation.”
US-led Western countries won’t likely take positive steps toward Iran without its firm response to Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, he stressed.
Iranians have been harmed by the West “for more than four decades, and experience has proven that they have continued the path of their martyrs stronger than before,” Qalibaf added.
A “strong response that both deters them from possible future mistakes and takes revenge from them for these crimes” is necessary.
“(I)n addition to revenge from the perpetrators and commanders of the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh, all relevant forces and organizations are duty-bound to turn the threat of this tragic loss into an opportunity to strengthen various economic, security, defense and nuclear fields.”
In response to unlawful Trump regime “maximum pressure” and breach of JCPOA provisions by Brussels, Iran exercised it legal rights under agreement.
JCPOA Article 36 states that if actions by its signatories “constitute significant non- performance, then (Iran) could treat the unresolved issue as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part and/or notify the UN Security Council that it believes the issue constitutes significant non-performance.”
Article 26 states that if the US imposes new nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, it will constitute “grounds (for its authorities) to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part.”
Because the JCPOA is binding international law, all world community nations are required to observe it.
In May 2018, the Trump regime illegally abandoned the landmark agreement.
EU JCPOA signatories Britain, France and Germany failed to fulfill their legally required obligations.
Increased uranium enrichment beyond the amount and level stipulated by the JCPOA is Iran’s legal right under Articles 26 and 36, as well as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
According to World Nuclear.org, “uranium used for nuclear weapons would have to be enriched in plants specially designed to produce at least 90% (purity) U-235.”
“Although 13 countries have enrichment production capability or near-capability, about 90% of world enrichment capacity is in” the US, Britain, France, Russia, and China.
Uranium enriched to 20% purity and other amounts above this level for industrial applications cannot be used for nuclear weapons development and production.
According to the Tehran Times on Sunday, “(s)everal Iranian officials called for an end to Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” adding:
Parliament Energy Committee head/former AEOI chief Fereydoun Abbasidavani tweeted that Fakhrizadeh’s martyrdom will change Tehran’s policies on the nuclear issue.
Separately, he said parliamentarians will focus on four issues:
“1. (S)tarting 20% (uranium) enrichment.
2. (E)xpelling all (IAEA) inspectors.
3. (E)nding cooperation with the Agency.
4. (W)ithdrawing from the JCPOA” — if the US, Britain and France continue breaching their obligations under its provisions.
The ball is in their court. Survival of the landmark agreement may depend on what actions they take — or don’t take — going forward.
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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.”
Another Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed by an elaborately planned and executed ambush. The complexity of the attack and the resources required to carry it out strongly indicate a state actor. Fingers of blame quickly pointed at a likely assassin: Israel. The United States was probably in some form of collaboration since it is widely considered that before Israel carries out such killings it informs the US.
Assassinations are nothing new to Israel or the US. The US admitted to the assassination of Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani earlier in 2020.
At the time of this writing, no one has admitted to the extra-judicial killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Usually targeted killings are carried out in the dark.
Currently, there is an attempt using the machinery of the state to try and beat down a man in the darkness of Belmarsh prison and a British kangaroo court in London. Big media, however, has marginalized coverage of the Assange case even though the outcome is bound to have an enormous impact on journalism.
Despite whatever charges Julian Assange may be accused of, it is well known that the WikiLeaks publisher was targeted for exposing the war crimes of the US government. In an upside-down Bizarro World, the screws are being ever so gradually tightened on Assange by the war criminals and their criminal accomplices. It is, in fact, a slow-motion assassination being played out before the open and closed eyes of the world.
Following the geopolitically coordinated undertaking to abrogate Assange’s asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange was arrested and imprisoned in Belmarsh maximum security prison for the relatively minor charge of skipping bail. [1] He continues to be held pending an extradition request from the US for violating its 1917 Espionage Act for “unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defense.”
Incarceration has been woeful for Assange in Belmarsh. The UN special rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Nils Melzer, has been highly critical of the treatment of Assange, describing it as “psychological torture.”
Since 2010, when Wikileaks started publishing evidence of war crimes and torture committed by US forces, we have seen a sustained and concerted effort by several States towards getting Mr. Assange extradited to the United States for prosecution, raising serious concern over the criminalisation of investigative journalism in violation of both the US Constitution and international human rights law.
Since then, there has been a relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing, intimidation and defamation against Mr. Assange, not only in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, Sweden and, more recently, Ecuador.
Melzer has called for the “collective persecution” to end.
The medical profession has also spoken out against the mistreatment of Assange. A top medical journal, The Lancet, carried the message of 117 physicians in its headline: “End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange.”
The US extradition case against Assange was pursued during the Trump administration, but one should not expect clemency for Assange from president-elect Joe Biden. Biden has argued that Assange is “closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.”
One brave Democrat, though, has bucked her party’s mainstream. The Hawaiian congresswoman Tulsi Gabbardintroduced H.R. 8452, the Protect Brave Whistleblowers Act. Gabbard also called for the immediate dismissal of charges against Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
Recently, circumstances have become bleaker for Assange because of a reported COVID-19 outbreak where “at least 56 people in his house block in Belmarsh prison, including staff and inmates, were found to have been infected.”
Wikileaks earlier reported that Assange, along with almost 200 other inmates of his house block, have been under lockdown since November 18.
Australia has done nothing for its citizen Assange. Australia is said to function at the behest of the US. This is so much so that Australia has put itself in a precarious economic situation with its largest trade partner, China. Furthermore, Australia has a long history of its own war criminalitythat it ignores.
What should people of conscience do? People opposed to war crimes; warring in general; persecution of publishers, journalists, and whistleblowers; and people who support freedom of the media and the right of the public to be informed should be doing what they can to bring about pardons for Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and other politically targeted prisoners of conscience.
Assange’s greatest “crime” was to reveal the US military establishment’s insouciance for innocent human life by releasing the video Collateral Murder.
What about those of us who claim to stand for social justice and peace? Do we not have a responsibility to do what we can to stymie the stealthy assassination of a man by the military-industrial-governmental complex for exposing its murderous nature? Bystanding is immoral and cowardly. Do something; there are simple things that anyone can do. Write letters. Sign petitions. Speak out. Saving Assange, Manning, Snowden, and others persecuted by governments is saving our humanity; it is saving ourselves.
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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.
Note
1. For events preceding Assange’s stay in the Ecuadorian embassy see the timeline.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.” – Aristotle
“Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.” — Francis Bacon
” If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?” – William Shakespeare
“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“It is essential that justice be done, it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge for the two are wholly different.” – Oscar Arias
“Justice is revenge.” — Saad Hariri
“Revenge is simply justice with teeth.” — Simon Green
The Ethics and Logic of Justice Versus the Persistence of Hatred and Revenge: An Idealistic Platform
The issue of justice is one of ethics and is basically founded on the human sense of fairness. It is something desired in every act or circumstance that respects the value of meaningful life both human and non-human. Justice is the very principle that sustains the condition of existence in its spontaneous flow towards higher and greater levels of refinement. It is a fundamental standard that bestows dignity to humanity. As such, human dignity is inalienable, inviolable, and thus, non-negotiable on the basis of the moral principle of justice.
Justice promotes human flourishing which, in a more comprehensive sense ties up and connects with ecological flourishing without which human flourishing doesn’t make sense at all. If ever there is a summum bonum or the highest good of morality, justice should stand as the uncontested beacon that gives direction to a more reasonable and proper understanding of the virtues of compassion, courage, freedom, honesty, humility, and responsibility, among others. In the light of justice, these virtues transcend their theoretical configurations and hence take their respective concrete forms of pragmatic expression in actual Sitz-im-Lebens. Justice, therefore, gives credence to and protects the essence of these virtues. From such a condition, justice itself draws its legitimacy as a supreme virtue that in turn should likewise be protected by the human agents who uphold and value it over and above the others.
Justice – as it is represented by the blindfolded woman holding up a weighing scale at the façades of halls of justice and supreme courts – is impartial and does not subjectively look at the superficial aspects of persons, things, and events. The weighing scale definitely represents the analytical character of justice with the “syllogistic” potency of a cold logic that takes its ethical signification as the major premise:
“If x then y. And x. Therefore, y.” Or, “If x then y. And not y. Therefore, not x.”
In other words, the “logic of justice” takes the same rational path trodden by a logical argument where something meaningful has to be proven (technically, the conclusion of a formal logical argument) through an orderly presentation of reliable pieces of evidence (technically, premises in a formal logical argument). As in the application of the formal logical procedure in true-to-life circumstances, the full satisfaction of the “logic of justice” is not simply hitched on an argument’s validity but more on its soundness.
All these matters henceforth considered, justice is by and large a virtue that transcends subjective perception. In this connection, there is supposed to be nothing emotional in the process of rendering justice to whom justice is due. Justice, as we have seen its objective configuration, follows a logical trajectory whose premises exactly lead to their inevitable conclusion. The true essence of absolute justice is devoid of subjective feelings and emotions. With this in mind, not a single matter of feeling or emotion may ever be construed to trigger an act of justice. Having the character of cold logic, the procedural path that leads to justice cannot emanate from a sensation of anger or elation, hatred or affection, sadness, or pleasure.
Can Revenge be Justice or Vice Versa?
Turning now our attention to the question, “Can revenge be justice or vice versa?”, one important issue to focus on is the basic idea that highlights an understanding of revenge. We may start off with the question: Does it emanate from rationality or is it basically a feeling fired up with hatred? In practically all instances, revenge is loaded with a highly aggressive feeling of resentment and loathing. It is characterized by a strong drive to retaliate –and to retaliate viciously – towards a specifically defined adversary. But can revenge draw a supportive push from reason? In certain instances, people would justify the reasonableness of revenge (or vengeance). In the process, a flurry of opinions could be developed as considerable factors that make revenge seemingly reasonable and hence could be construed as an act of justice. But this manner of looking at the issue at hand distorts the logic of justice. The confusion created by putting revenge within the range of justice and vice versa desecrates justice and elevates revenge at the level of the virtuous. This is a case of making a mess out of the ethical landscape where justice is held supreme. Having true rationality at the core of justice, revenge cannot truly emanate from it for the conceptual components of revenge rest on one’s feeling of hatred and abomination.
A god acting on the basis of revenge is not a just god. The logic of justice cannot operate in such a statement as “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” However, knowing the theological background that triggers contradictory statements which put the god of believers on the spot does not cast any negative notion about such a god if he really exists for such statements of conviction are only mental formulations of people who have never really known the mind of the god they say they believe in but merely imagined ideas such a god they have conceived would say according to their wishes and desires.
Justice takes a logical trajectory sans any feeling of hatred or loathing. At the end of the day after justice has been rendered to whom it is due, victims of previous injustice would certainly have a feeling of exhilaration and triumph for in the most superficial sense, their cause has been avenged. But one thing is very clear: they finally achieved the justice they long sought for not on the basis of hatred and revenge but through the “logic of justice” whose major premise is drawn from the “ethics of justice”.
Social Justice and Human Rights Amidst the Challenge of Social Injustice: Revenge Deconstructed
Nowadays, justice is a seriously sought-after ideal in a lot of places where dominant forces of oppression and tyranny operate and trample on people’s rights as human beings. In this sense, the issue of justice connects with that of human rights.
Being just is basically being fair. If justice reigns in a society, it is commonplace to see people doing things fairly with and for others. There’s no deception, manipulation, and exploitation. A society of this nature we call a just society.
A just society is a humanizing society. This is a situation where people experience the dignity of their humanity. Everybody has the opportunity to exercise her/his rights in such a way that doesn’t infringe on the rights of others.
A just society is a moral society where what is good and what is right are measured in terms of how people respect each other. A respected human being feels that her/his life is worth living. And having such a mental frame under normal circumstances, a respected person develops in her/himself a sense of responsibility to likewise give the same respect to others. This is fundamental justice.
In light of the above descriptions, we can examine the kind of human societies we have in practically all parts of the world. Lamentably, we don’t have a single perfect model of a society where honest-to-goodness justice is prevalent. What we actually have are societies where people experience injustice in all forms and patterns, shades, and textures at different levels of intensity and harshness. On planet Earth, we have manifold unjust societies. Through ages, injustice has always been a horrible root cause of serious problems, both personal and social.
In many instances, injustice is caused by countries of immense power. They look at others who are, of course, not as powerful as they are, like insignificant entities that may be exploited and manipulated, controlled, and dominated. We have witnessed how US imperialism has undermined the governments of countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Syria. Until the present time, the US-imposed economic embargo over Cuba has been going on for more than half a century. Another extremely debilitating embargo has likewise been more recently imposed by the US on Venezuela as a punitive reaction against the unrelenting defiance of the latter to the aggressive posturing of the US to impose control over Venezuela’s petroleum industry. In the case of Syria, US-sponsored terrorism has tremendously devastated this once flourishing nation which has never capitulated to the continued aggression of US imperialism supported not only by Zionist Israel but also by Wahabbist Saudi Arabia and their western European alllies.
There are however cases where the justice system is simply a semblance of the real. In other words, we cannot really expect true justice from such a system because the people behind it are the very agents themselves of injustice at its most distorted form who have caused irreparable damages to society. In fact, many people who have experienced injustice in such a society have resigned themselves in the corner of hopelessness believing that they will never avail of the justice they seek, for such justice is nowhere found. We can cite at this point Zionist Israel which has long been oppressing and dehumanizing the original Palestinian inhabitants of the land they have colonized and occupied for many decades. The injustice committed against the Palestinians is commonplace and has been condemned in the strongest possible ways by the international community with the exception of the United States of America and its western European allies which are all solid supporters of Israeli Zionism both in terms of logistics and finances.
In certain societies, their very own governments could be the purveyors themselves of the worst kind of injustice. People experience tremendous difficulties in life because of unjust policies and practices that their government imposes on them. In this particular situation, the government becomes the people’s enemy. And on many occasions, corrupt and unscrupulous government officials who are closely associated with their equally corrupt and exploitative counterparts in the business realm intensify the degree of injustice experienced by the people in general and the poor sector of the population in particular. The Philippines is a clear case where the present government under the leadership of a gangland warlord is a pain in the necks of the people particularly those in the impoverished locales. In partnership with big-time business tycoons and their billionaire Chinese counterparts, the present Philippine government has not really improved the economic situation of the people on the social fringes but further pushed them into the quagmire of seemingly insurmountable sufferings. A situation of disempowerment is one of injustice. In an unjust condition, justice is muffled. In other words, we don’t expect justice served in a situation where justice is desecrated and at worst, where there is no rationally functional justice system at all.
In such circumstances, we see ordinary people being robbed of their dignity, and at worst, even murdered when they have crossed paths with the powers-that-be. How and where do their families seek justice afterward while their voices are muted by further threats of aggressive violence and outrageous brutality? When the dominant system itself precludes the call for justice, where do we go to redress the wrong that has been done to us? Can we not resort to putting justice in our hands when there’s no legal agency to turn to? Having this in mind, isn’t it logical to construe justice with revenge?
Synthesizing Justice and Revenge
We do not want to mangle justice; its superior worth remains to be our incontrovertible ideal. We will always promote the virtue of justice as one of the most important – if not the most important – of the human values in us. However, there could be a distortion of its very essence if we necessarily bind it with the concept of legality. Of course, it is one more ideal point to realize such an association but the risk is when legality itself gets distorted and unabashedly identified with the powers that be. What then becomes legal is anything that favors the interests of the powerful and if justice is defined in such a context, it is absolutely stripped off of its moral essence.
Justice devoid of its morality is the corruption of justice. Justice corrupted is justice falsified. When such a tragic transformation happens, an individual who puts justice in his hands is simply fulfilling an act of reclaiming its moral essence. In this connection, revenge becomes a just act – an act of justice. In the final analysis, we arrive at the synthesis of justice as revenge and revenge as justice and who will have the guts to question it? Only those who have redefined justice according to their own demented conception that accommodates, gratifies, and satisfies their criminal interests.
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Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences for more than fifteen years at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines.
“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that Civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captives to the judgement of law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever paid to reason.” -Justice Robert Jackson, Nov. 21, 1945
It is often forgotten what sort of a battle occurred after WWII to establish the Nuremberg Trials which gave the world a revolutionary code of law which even today offers many of the remedies to the Gordian Knots blocking our way to a peaceful future. By the end of the war, many European leaders of the allied nations wished to simply put leading Nazis against a wall to face a firing squad and return to “business as usual”.
As I’ve outlined in many recent writings, it was only through the intensive efforts of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and his leading allies in both the USA and Russia that a different course of action was decided upon and an official international tribunal was sanctioned that generated a total legal paradigm shift in international law that has been too easily taken for granted (due largely to the lack of effect these laws have had on post-WWII practice).
Among those revolutionary reforms included the unprecedented mandate that wars of aggression would henceforth be illegal in the eyes of the law. The tendency for those higher officials carrying out inhuman orders to escape responsibility for their actions or omissions of correct action were deemed insufficient defenses under the higher moral principle of “known or should have known”.
The underlying assumption of these Nuremberg laws are: 1) “might does not make right” despite what generations of Hobbesians and Niescheans have chosen to believe and 2) that every individual is responsible for their decisions based not on the arbitrary standards of whatever degenerate society they live in but rather upon the belief in the intrinsic powers of reason and conscience which all humans have access to and are obliged to guide our actions in life.
Nazi philosophers and crown jurists like Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmidt whose thoughts have penetrated the western zeitgeist over the past 70 years would obviously find such concepts repugnant and deplorable.
The fact that the “free world” has ignored these foundations of international law has not changed the fact that they are still true.
Today, many of those powerful unipolar ideologues who managed the disastrous Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitical environment have attempted to erase the precedents of Nuremburg with such atrocities as Soros’ International Criminal Court, and the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine (R2P) in defense of “humanitarian wars” as seen in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria in recent years. The disturbing rise of unipolar R2P advocacy rampant among the British ruling class like Lord Mark Malloch Brown, Tony Blair and all of the Obama-era globalists surrounding Biden make Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov’s recent remarks at the 75 Anniversary Moscow conference celebrating the commencement of the Nuremberg Trials that much more important.
Putin and Lavrov Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Nuremberg Trials
At this event, Putin reminded the attendees of the importance of the historic tribunals which ran from November 21, 1945 to October – 1946, saying:
“We constantly refer to the lessons of the Nuremberg Trials; we understand their importance for defending the truths of historical memory, for making a well-founded and solid case against deliberate distortions and falsifications of World War II events, especially the shameless and deceitful attempts to rehabilitate and even glorify Nazi criminals and their accessories… It is the duty of the entire international community to safeguard the Nuremberg Trials’ decisions, because they concern the principles that underlie the values of the post-war world order and the norms of international law.”
Putin’s remarks were amplified by Sergey Lavrov who elaborated on the new legal paradigm created at Nuremberg which provides an obvious cure for the rise of WWII revisionism, sanitation of Nazism in Ukraine and beyond as well as the revival of many of the practices that made Nazism a viral threat to mankind.
“The Nuremberg Trials—an example of international criminal justice—proved that justice can be achieved with a professional approach based on broad interstate cooperation, consent and mutual respect. Clearly, the Nuremberg Tribunal’s legacy is not limited to law, but has enormous political, moral and educational value. A strong vaccination against the revival of Nazism in all its forms and manifestations was made 75 years ago. Unfortunately, the immunity to the brown plague that was developed in Nuremberg has seriously worn off in some European countries. Russia will continue to vigorously and consistently oppose any attempts to falsify history, to glorify Nazi criminals and their henchmen, and to oppose the revision of the internationally recognized outcomes of World War II, including the Nuremberg rulings.”
So What Happened at Nuremberg?
Amidst the ashes of WWII, a major battle was waged between those deep state forces that had funded fascism as a “solution to the woes of the great depression” vs those genuine patriots who understood that the very fabric of empire and its associated financial, cultural and legal paradigm had to be destroyed and replaced with a paradigm more befitting human civilization.
Among the leading representative of the patriotic forces loyal to FDR’s anti-colonial vision was a man who has been nearly lost to history named Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954). Jackson would serve as Franklin Roosevelt’s most trusted legal advisor who first made a name for himself working closely with Ferdinand Pecora in prosecuting dozens of high level Wall Street financiers and pro-fascist industrialists who orchestrated the depression of 1929 and the later coup and assassination attempts against FDR in 1933-1934. After proving himself in combat, Jackson arose to become U.S. Solicitor General (1938-1940), Attorney General (1940-41) and leading member of the Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954.
Knowing that the deep state coup that ousted Vice-President Henry Wallace and imposed Anglophile tool Harry Truman onto the USA might destroy the hopes for a post-WWII order of peaceful cooperation as outlined by the United Nations Charter, Judge Jackson took the lead and organized the Nuremberg Tribunals delivering the opening speech on November 21, 1945:
One of the prime motives behind the hearings was the intention to give legal meaning and action to the universal ideals conveyed in the United Nations’ Charter. This charter encapsulated the principles that FDR and Henry Wallace outlined repeatedly in the Four Freedoms. These freedoms asserted that all humankind regardless of race, sex, creed, or nationality would: 1) have the freedom from want, 2) freedom to worship as one’s conscience dictated, 3) freedom from fear, and 4) freedom of speech. If international law could tolerate wars of aggression, or if abdication of responsibility for ones’ criminal deeds could be tolerated on the basis of “I was just following orders”, then the UN Charter could carry little weight indeed.
As Jackson wrote in his Summer 1945 report to the President justifying the creation of the Nuremberg Tribunal:
“We therefore propose to charge that a war of aggression is a crime, and that modern international law has abolished the defense that those who incite or wage it are engaged in legitimate business. Thus, may the forces of law be mobilized on the side of peace.”
During the course of the 11 month proceedings, not only were leading cabinet members, generals, lawyers and other high officials put on trial, but the deepest facets of natural law vs Nietschean “law of the strongest” was investigated with Platonic rigor as laid out in the brilliant award-winning film Judgement at Nuremberg (1960).
Due to the leadership of Justice Jackson, the treatment of INTENTION and conspiracy was made the primary focus in the pursuit of justice and cause of criminal guilt. This was not a popular approach then or today for the simple fact that our world is shaped by many top down forces that want their victims’ minds to be forever trapped in the material bottom up world of deductive/inductive logic where immaterial causal intentions and ideas can never be found. For anyone wishing to pursue this fruitful line of thinking further, I suggest reading Edgar Allan Poe’s Eureka.
When one adopts the view that intentions and conspiracies (i.e.: the effect of intentions + ideas when put into action) ARE NOT a driving force of politics and life, then we forever loose our ability to judge truthfulness in any serious manner. This was the philosophical premise of leading Nazi financier Hjalmar Schacht, whose moral relativism and cold calculating principles of economics directly justified the cheap labor camps that worked millions to death in the German war production effort. This same philosophy again found fertile soil in the post-1971 consumer society that revived the logic of cheap labor production under the age of “cheapest price is the law” globalization.
Quoting Schacht who said “Truth is any story that succeeds”, Justice Jackson quipped “I think you can score many more successes, when you want to lead someone, if you don’t tell them the truth- than if you do tell them the truth”.
“The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched….
“The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority in back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders….
“It is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal with the individual crimes. I am dealing with the common plan or design for crime and will not dwell upon individual offenses. My task is only to show the scale on which these crimes occurred, and to show that these are the men who were in the responsible positions and who conceived the plan and design which renders them answerable, regardless of the fact that the plan was actually executed by others….
“The Charter recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of state….
“The real complaining party at your bar is Civilization…. The refuge of the defendants can only be their hope that International Law will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocent in law. Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance.”
Today, the world sits once more on the brink of a new world order, and the emergence of a governing system that is shaped entirely on the same social Darwinistic/Nietschean operating system that gave rise to fascism in WWII. The same denial of universal truth that animated the minds of a Schacht, Goebbels, Heidegger or Schmidt has become hegemonic among western academia as well.
Very few statesmen have had the courage and insight to resist this unipolar anti-nation state system, but among those who have we are fortunate to have found the current leader of Russia and his allies who in many ways are playing the same historic role as the one played 75 years earlier by Justice Robert Jackson, Henry Wallace and President Roosevelt. Whether the rest of the world wakes up in time to recognize the superiority of the multipolar alliance over the regressive order of the unipolarists carrying us ominously towards World War 3 remains to be seen.
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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.
The World that Klaus Schwab, executive director of the World Economic Forum, wants us to rubber stamp is a 100% dystopian nightmare. In fact, if one was to write a film script about the worst of all outcomes for the human race and planet, Schwab’s ‘Great Reset’ dream would perfectly fill the bill.
Everything that moves and breathes is to be sanitised, anaesthetized and digitalised proclaims the WEF White Paper of October 2020. This is the way to turn the world ‘Green’ according to Schwab and his team of technocratic trolls. Well, most of us will turn green just by reading this WEF master-plan for humanity “Resetting the Future of Work Agenda in a post Covid World” so there’s really no need to bother with its implementation, is there?
The inventory of fake green huey to be found within the pages of this paper goes back to the Club of Rome (founded 1968) coming up with the idea that for the elite to maintain their grip on world affairs, some scary story threatening the end of life on Earth was needed.
So the idea of Global Warming was hatched to fit this need. It also had the advantage of being a money spinner via the invention of ‘carbon taxes’ and deployment of a whole new fake green infrastructure under the title ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’. Yes, a truly inspiring control package was put together – just waiting for a suitable moment to be rolled-out across the world.
Well, it just happened that something called Covid came along (sheer coincidence) to kick the whole show off at the beginning of 2020. Aside from Global Warming, launched some twenty years earlier, the new show is proving to be quite a spectacle! There’s something for everybody in the tragi-comedy drama called ‘Covid-19’.
Fake news, fake views and fake truths – all conjoining to make a quite breathtaking virtual reality saga starring some previously little known bit part actors, who leapt at the chance to take leading roles in bringing to life the technocratic Great Reset dynasty promised by the World Economic Forum. A dynasty requiring the implementation of highly tuned Al-Gore-rythms so as to edit out the communications of all who don’t do Al’s Global Warming thing. Not just that, but EMF’ing all and sundry as a covert way of vastly reducing the global population, is also a vital part of the mix.
The only thing is, those doctors, scientists and engineers still able to think, saw immediately that they were being asked to believe that the world had gone flat again – like it was pre Copernicus and Galileo. And that 2+1=4. And that cell phone microwave radiation, now running at tens of thousands of times that of natural background radiation – doesn’t change anything and won’t do anyone any harm. No, of course not, why should it – we must have had a delusional moment ever entertaining such an idea.
As we peer at the newspaper headlines each morning, we become aware of a very well coordinated story-line being monotonously repeated day after day, with almost no variation wherever you happen to be in the world – but especially so in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. No surprise when just six corporations own 90% of the world media.
These headlines are continuously telling us to to believe in a surreal agenda that – of course – stars ‘Covid’ and comprises a whole series of absolute contradictions, invented, no doubt, for the purpose of causing mass distraction and confusion of the readership – while relentlessly pressing the fear button to ensure obeisance from a semi paralysed public.
But what is this we see emerging out of the gloom at this eleventh hour? Could it be a new hero is rising up out of the chaos to put our minds at rest? Could it possibly be one Klaus Schwab – ‘visionary extraordinaire’ and inspired saviour of humanity?
Her Schwab has now been joined by no lesser being than Prince Charles, to convince us Reset laggards to “use all the levers at our disposal” to ensure eco-corporate fascism dispossesses small to medium sized businesses of their hard won trading grounds while simultaneously walloping us with a wall of 5G microwaves.
Apparently The Green New Deal sees 5G as the solution to getting a global centralised ‘smart grid’ up and running so as to enable us to be ‘watched’ 24/7. This, one assumes, is to help us get that warm feeling of “you are never alone.” That warm feeling will be accentuated by the fact that 5G, like its 3/4G predecessors, is a microwave weapon that cooks us from the inside out and serves us up rare, medium or well done, according to its output.
“Well done!” is the response that Schwab and his royal team are no doubt expecting us to proclaim while loudly applauding the roll-out of the Agenda 2030 – Zero Carbon – Smart City – Fourth Industrial Revolution – Transhumanist Singularity – Green New Deal – New World Order – ‘Great Reset’ blue print for a full-on fascist future.
Well sorry, Mein Herr, but I’ve got a strange feeling that you might have got this all a bit wrong. Your megalomania has been recognised for what it is. Most of us have accordingly decided to show you two fingers and the way to the door.
Your departure should not be delayed a day longer than necessary. Don’t worry, we have made it easier for you to take your leave by ensuring the exit door has these words writ large upon it: ‘THE GREAT REJECT’.
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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info
“… Somebody must say to America, America if you have contempt for life, if you exploit human beings by seeing them as less than human, if you will treat human beings as a means to an end, you thingafy those human beings. And if you will thingafy persons, you will exploit them economically. And if you will exploit persons economically, you will abuse your military power to protect your economic investments and your economic exploitations.” —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” (1967)
In the United States, a liberal or a self-identified radical can rationalize supporting a candidate who throws Palestinians under the bus in order to get elected to the U.S. Senate. These same people can remain silent on murderous U.S. economic sanctions. They also can avoid any comment on U.S. imperialist aggression. They can do all of these things and their “progressive” or “radical” credentials would not be questioned.
That is why Joe Biden can 1) fill his cabinet with neoliberal war hawks, 2) signal obscene spending on the U.S. military will continue, and 3) tell the rulers they can rest assured knowing he is committed to the imperialist agenda of “Full Spectrum Dominance” that has been the U.S. state’s bipartisan-supported national security policy for the last two decades—and what amounts to “the left” shrugs its shoulders.
But the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) will not be silent and we will not collaborate. When Biden and the right-wing neoliberal Democrats say they will re-assert U.S. leadership of the white, Western imperialist alliance to wage war against the global South in the name of protecting human rights, we say no to imperialist subterfuge. We will continue to expose both parties’ real agenda of advancing the interests of U.S. and European capital by slinging back into their collective faces the reality of their capitalist crimes and the systematic violations of the human rights of people in the United States.
We will not let go unchallenged any U.S. official, including the newly appointed mouthpiece of U.S. anti-people policies (the “U.S. ambassador to the United Nations”), standing in any international forum to twist up their mouths to talk about human rights and democracy.
The cruel joke of the United States being concerned for human rights is reflected in its policies on the African continent, which we will be exposing in webinars taking place over the next few days. Today, the International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers have joined BAP’s work on AFRICOM by hosting a webinar on the subject. And on December 4, BAP is co-sponsoring an international webinar on AFRICOM with the Women’s International League on Peace and Freedom (WILPF). We hope you support both events and join and/or support BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network and our campaign to shut down AFRICOM.
Samora Machel (1933-1986), leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) and the first president of Mozambique, said, “International solidarity is not an act of charity: It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible.”
That is the task BAP has taken on. We hope, in your own way, you assume this awesome historical obligation.
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The Museum of Modern Art is currently presenting Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde – From Signac to Matisse and Beyond, examining the immense influence of this art critic, editor, publisher, collector and anarchist. Fénéon (1861-1944) saw the critic as a channel between the artist and the public – a role which had particular significance because art could further the cause of social justice and harmony. As Paul Signac would proclaim: “Justice in sociology, harmony in art: same thing.”
The exhibition includes several of Georges Seurat’s paintings, and begins with a study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (1884), his famed masterpiece, which was featured in its ultimate, monumental (10-foot wide) iteration at the 1886 exhibition of the Impressionists. That same year Fénéon would coin the term Neo-Impressionism to identify the revolutionary innovations that Seurat and Paul Signac were pioneering – which included the pointillist technique that Fénéon would contrast with the ‘blink-of-an-eye’ effects of the Impressionists. For Seurat and Signac, pointillism was a science-based approach to color, based on the application of tiny, juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint, which were blended in the viewers eye, rather than physically blended on the canvas.
The show includes paintings by Maximilien Luce, such as “Man Washing” (1887) which depicts a man standing over a wash basin, as he cleans the back of his neck. The scene underscores the simple, daily routines of the working-class and their humble, domestic interiors: a small mirror hangs on the wall behind him; his jacket lies draped over a chair, which casts its shadow over his black boots and the hexagonal terracotta tiles of the floor. There is a tough, primitive ruddiness to Luce’ representations of the working-class, a quiet dignity in the subject’s thin but taut, muscular frame.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Luce was a fellow anarchist with whom Fénéon would form a close friendship. A spate of political bombings in 1894 would lead to the so-called Trial of the Thirty; and while Fénéon was ultimately (and narrowly) acquitted, both men would find themselves at Mazas prison – a notorious, twelve-hundred cell panopticon. A lithograph by Luce depicts Fénéon at Mazas, standing within a long, narrow outdoor corridor, flanked by a looming guard tower which could see into every cell.
One of the exhibition’s standout paintings is Signac’s “Demolition Worker” (1897-99) – a monumental allegory about delivering the “forceful blow of a pickaxe to the antiquated social structure.” One is reminded of Mikhail Bakunin’s famous dictum “the passion for destruction is a creative passion too.” But the painting is more than a plea for bringing down the present social order: it is an anarchist’s call to take up the struggle for a modern, egalitarian society in which manual laborers are treated with fairness and respect – a testimony to the inherent nobility of man and of the human form.
“In the Time of Harmony: The Golden Age Has Not Passed, It Is Still to Come” (1896), is meant to offer a glimpse of Signac’s utopian vision, his dream of what the future society might look like. Anarchism was not about the fury of political violence for its own sake, nor was it about dismantling social structures so that lawlessness and chaos might prevail. In Kropotkin’s words anarchism was about “well-being for all” – and “well-being for all is not a dream. It is possible, realizable, owing to all that our ancestors have done to increase our powers of production.” The Neo-Impressionists recognized that well-being also meant the liberation of our aesthetic sensibilities, and the realization of our true self through the freedom to create and recreate. As Signac would observe: “When the society we dream of exists, the workers freed from the exploiters who brutalize them, we will have time to think and to learn.” Signac’s figures dance, paint, exercise and read; they bathe and recline, they sing and play. Men, women, and children are all a part of Signac’s paean to a world in which social disparities are overcome, and positive freedom – the freedom to, as opposed to mere freedom from – is finally our guide.
The social theory of the Neo-Impressionists was a combination of anarchism and communism; and was chiefly inspired by the writings of Russian exile Pierre Kropotkin, as well as the work of Jean Grave and the Belgian geographer Elisée Reclus. They agreed with socialists in their vision of economic communism and equality of social conditions – including collective ownership of the means of production, the abolition of private property, and the dissolution of class hierarchies. A crucial feature of anarchism is the emphasis on the individual as the fundamental building block, the essential point of departure for any human association whatever. The individual was characterized by Grave in 1899 as a social creature who should be “left free to attach himself according to his tendencies, his affinities, free to seek out those with him whom his liberty and aptitudes can agree.” What the anarchists yearned for was a harmonious relationship between the individual and society as a whole – and this social ideal found its aesthetic representation in Neo-Impressionism. As D.D. Egbert observed in Social Radicalism and the Arts (1970): “… The very technique that the Neo-Impressionists employed, with its strongly accentuated individual brush strokes, which nonetheless are brought together in harmony to form the picture as a whole, paralleled the individualistic yet communal spirit of communist-anarchism.”
It is notable that in general, the Neo-Impressionists rejected overtly political subject matter – “stylistically innovative art, by its very freedom from convention, was necessarily revolutionizing.” They saw no need to embrace proletarian subject matter or anything like the ‘social realism’ which would characterize visual art during the Soviet era. As Pissarro observed in 1895: “Every production which is truly a work of art is socialist (whether or not the creator wishes it) … This work of pure beauty will enlarge the people’s aesthetic conceptions.” The fundamental idea here is that aesthetic form itself is the bearer of art’s radical potentialities, and beauty is inherently a kind of protest against an unfree world.
The show includes a number of works by the still underappreciated Félix Vallotton, including “Félix Fénéon at La Revue blanche” (1896) – a painting of Fénéon hunched over his desk, working assiduously late into the night, illumined by the glow of an electric lamp. It is a portrait of dedication – the image is reduced to its essentials, and intentionally slight on details to avoid distracting us from the portrait’s central theme. In other words, the concentrated focus of Vallotton’s subject is reproduced in the formal qualities of the painting, by eliminating everything extraneous to the image of a man wholly committed to his work.
In 1906, Fénéon joined the prominent art gallery Bernheim-Jeune, owned by Gaston and Josse Bernheim, two brothers who inherited their father’s business in the early years of the twentieth century. They are depicted in a 1920 painting by Pierre Bonnard, one of the Post-Impressionist, avant-garde artists to whom Fénéon gave his unflagging support. Fénéon also signed contracts with Kees van Dongen and Henri Matisse. Struck to see a well-known anarchist installed at an established and fairly conservative gallery, one contemporary observed that “A good anarchist, [Fénéon] planted Matisses among the bourgeoisie from the back room of Bernheim-Jeune as he might have planted bombs.” The comparison is a telling one because it underscores that, for Fénéon, all genuine art was necessarily subversive, an “indictment of the established reality” (as the philosopher and critical theorist Herbert Marcuse would later put it) – and by championing modern art he was, in his way, serving the cause of social revolution.
One of the most notable exhibitions that Fénéon organized was that of the Italian Futurists in February 1912 – which included paintings by Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Luigi Russolo, and Carla Carrà, among others. Emphasizing speed, technology, political radicalism and violence, Fénéon’s exhibition served to propel the Futurists to the front ranks of the European avant-garde. Boccioni was the first artist to be associated with the movement – and the show includes his painting “La risata” (1911, The Laugh), regarded as his first indisputably Futurist work, and an expression of the artist in his full maturity. From the gaudy, theatrical woman smiling in the upper left-hand corner, to the conspicuous men on the far left and right sides of the painting, to the many other faces and objects that have been worked in, Boccioni presents us with what is at once a simple dinner party, and at the same time a multi-dimensional conjunction of people and things, a fragmented reality, quasi-cubist, semi-abstract and inexhaustible in the relationships it conjures.
The sampling of Futurists includes Carrà’s painting memorializing the “Funeral of the Anarchist Galli” (1910-11), who was killed by police during a strike in Milan in 1904. The funeral itself became violent when the police refused to let mourners enter the cemetery, and Carrà’s painting captures the chaotic scene with sharp, slashing lines, aggressive brushwork and intense shades of red.
Félix Fénéon was not an artist, but an art critic; a bridge as it were between the artist and the public – and yet he was also so much more, because he recognized his significant social responsibility to find and champion those artists that were worthy of the public’s attention. That is perhaps the most important duty of the critic, and also the most difficult of the critic’s tasks; as it is in the very nature of genius to elude us, to transgress our settled categories of comprehension; and this is most true of the avant-garde artist who defies convention, who creates in effect a new vocabulary of seeing, and in the process reshapes and redefines our aesthetic sensibilities, our understanding of what is beautiful, and what the very aim of art is or should be. Fénéon’s influence was immense and due, in no small part, to his eye for genius; and because he recognized that while a painting may not, in itself, start a revolution, it can transform the way we see the world – and that is the beginning of all meaningful change.
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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.
Mark: [00:00:00We’re in] Hamilton, Ontario, across from the City Hall, this is Cailin, and we’re at anti lock down rally and everyone that I’ve interviewed has their own different story and they’ve all been impacted by this legislation. And Cailin you have a couple of kids? [00:00:16][16.1]
[00:00:17] I have two kids in the Hamilton district, Wentworth School Board. [00:00:20][3.1]
[00:00:20] And how is the lockdown impacted you and your family? [00:00:23][2.9]
[00:00:23] Hmm, I’m quite majorly. I’m a single mom, so I completely rely on myself for money. I completely rely on myself for everything. [00:00:32][8.2]
Mark: [00:00:32] Yeah. [00:00:32][0.0]
[30.2]
Mark: [00:00:32] Yeah. [00:00:32][0.0]
Cailin: [00:00:33] So in the beginning of the lockdown, I had my own home care agency that was shut down because the government wanted only to sell P.P.E to government funded home care agencies. And so that impacted us greatly, as well as my children being out of school. [00:00:52][18.9]
Mark: [00:00:53] And I asked once, so you had to provide all this P.P.E. equipment yourself free for all the kids and yourself, and it just was too expensive is that it?[00:01:01][8.6]
Cailin: [00:01:02] Yeah, I OK, so Home Care Agency I work with older adults who have dementia and things like that do home care so they don’t have to go to long term care. But it seems as the government, when the lockdown happened, did not give the P.P.E. to private home care agencies, it was only government funded. [00:01:21][19.6]
Mark: [00:01:22] And isn’t that ironic? Ironic because I’ve heard all these horror stories with a lot of these long term care that has impacted me as well as everyone. OK, continue, please. [00:01:32][10.3]
[57.4]
Cailin: [00:01:35] So with them being out of school, their goals are socialism. They’re five and seven and greatly great need that. Being stuck inside we couldn’t go out and do fun things during the summer. The both of their birthdays are during the summer. School was a big thing. It really was, still is. [00:01:51][16.6]
Mark: [00:01:51] How is it still a big thing? [00:01:51][0.0]
Cailin: [00:01:56] So they do go to school full time here in Hamiltion because of the mask mandate, though, it’s made things extremely difficult. My five year old got hurt at school very bad. His tooth was knocked out here.It was bleeding everywhere. And from all the stories that I’ve gathered, they put his mask right back on while it was bleeding. So it bled through three layers until I picked [00:02:24][27.2]
[43.8]
Cailin: [00:02:23] him up two hours later. I also did not receive a phone call. [00:02:26][2.7]
Mark: [00:02:27] So we’re talking a lot of issues there, including bacteria buildup. That doesn’t sound very sanitary to me. [00:02:33][5.6]
Cailin: [00:02:33] None at all. For them to breathe in whatever he is trying to come out of their bodies. Breathing that in is not good for them. [00:02:39][6.1]
Mark: [00:02:39] And were you able to have an impact? You were talking to me about Rebel news story. [00:02:44][4.5]
Cailin: [00:02:44] And a shout out Rebel news they’re amazing. They brought light to this story. The interview is up on YouTube. And because of that, I have heard from the school board. Finally, I have heard from the principal and I haven’t told the group here yet but I will today that they are promising tCailin: [00:03:06] o take a day to educate all staff and all teachers on the proper use of masks, the dangers during exercise, the dangers of them just wearing it all the time and when to change a mask and when not to wear one because they weren’t educated. And I blame that solely on the school board, not the teachers. [00:03:26][20.8]
Mark: [00:03:28] OK, and is there anything else? For example, I mean, kids express themselves visually through facial expressions and what are masks doing to that? [00:03:36][8.6]
Cailin: [00:03:37] So my older son, he’s seven years old. I mean, he he’s a very sensitive child and he does a lot more talking through his facial expressions than speaking. He doesn’t like talking about his feelings. So at school, obviously, it’s extremely hard for him to express himself. So they’re saying this year that he’s a lot more quiet and all these things, but he is a quiet talker. Its just nobody can hear him talk now because of the mask as well. So all around, it’s just I don’t see any benefits. [00:04:11][33.9]
Mark: [00:04:12] No, neither do I. I haven’t seen any at all. And I’ve looked up the science of it. [00:04:16][3.8]
[67.1]
[00:03:07][23.1]
[42.0]
Cailin: [00:04:16] Oh, there’s no science to back up to,. [00:04:18][1.8]
Mark: [00:04:18] No science to back it up. And it’s impacting them emotionally. I mean, I see them as muzzles myself. And the world has a long history of making people hide their faces. [00:04:28][10.5]
Cailin: [00:04:29] And that’s really sad. [00:04:30][1.3]
Mark: [00:04:31] Attack on our freedoms. Well, thank you very much. [00:04:33][2.5]
Cailin: [00:04:34] Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. [00:04:34][0.0]
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
The drum is always there. In life and death. In between is dance. Always the drum is everywhere. -Peniel Guerrier
I don’t think this world was made for a small minority to dance on the faces of everyone else. -H.G. Wells
Nothing happens until something moves. -Albert Einstein
Introduction
The dance group Diversity’s ‘I Can’t Breathe’ routine evoked around 24,500 complaints from members of the public when it aired on ITV on 5 September, 2020. The performance was inspired by the killing of George Floyd in the USA. Its choreography references progress from stock market bubbles, the growth of digital shopping, the effect of mobile phones on family life, the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, to the killing of George Floyd, and then ending with street protests and the riot police. The show was a spectacular mix of spoken word, song, visual and stage effects, as well as Diversity’s trademark mix of complex routines, breakdancing, backflips and theatricality.
Diversity’s ‘I Can’t Breathe’ routine:
While the troup garnered much international praise for the 4 1/2 minute anti-racist performance, the many complaints focused on its political content. According to Ashley Banjo, troupe member and choreographer, “We got bombarded with messages and articles … horrible stuff about all of us, our families … it’s sad.”
This level of negative public reaction to a dance routine on TV in the UK was unprecedented.
Dance has been an important part of of TV entertainment, especially in the UK and the USA, since the 1960s with shows such as American Bandstand and Soul Train, dance groups on Top of the Pops and in more recent decades, shows such as Dancing on Ice, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance and Strictly Come Dancing.
However, maybe the innocuousness of such TV history has lulled people into seeing dance as pure entertainment, safe from the radical social commentary that other artforms put on display now and then in theatres, galleries and cinemas.
The history of dance shows that it has always been with us, and, like with other art forms, dance has a mixed history of social and radical roles. It has also, like other art forms, been highly influenced by Enlightenment and Romanticist ideas in more recent centuries, changing how we see and understand the role of dance in society today.
In this article I will examine how dance has changed since the Enlightenment and why it has had an increasing popularity in the last century. I will also look at the potential for a radical dance culture to become a vehicle for increasing social and political awareness on a global scale.
Early and medieval dance history
Dance has been a part of human culture from prehistoric times to Egyptian tomb paintings depicting dancing figures from c. 3300 BC. Folk dance, in particular, has been an important part of festivals, seasonal celebrations and community celebrations such as weddings and births.
In Europe during the Middle Ages there are references to circular dances called ‘carole’ from the 12th and 13th centuries. People also danced around trees holding hands in a leader and refrain style. These dances and songs became the carols we know today.
From a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, c. 1430.
Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose) is a medieval poem in Old French, styled as an allegorical dream vision.
However, the literary history of dance in terms of detailed descriptions goes back to Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century after the start of the Renaissance. During this time there also developed a divergence between court dances and country dances, between performance and participation. Court dancers trained for dances for entertainment, while anyone could learn country dances. At court formal display dancing would be followed by informal country dances for all to participate in.
Dance at Herod’s Court, ca. 1490, Israhel van Meckenem, engraving. Couples circling in a basse danse.
Ballet also began at this time developing out of court pageantry in Italy at aristocratic weddings. Its choreography was based on court dance steps and performers dressed in the formal gowns of the time rather than the later tutus and ballet slippers.
It was then brought to France by Catherine de’ Medici in the 16th century where it developed into a performance-focused art form during the reign of Louis XIV where: “His interest in ballet dancing was politically motivated. He established strict social etiquettes through dancing and turned it into one of the most crucial elements in court social life, effectively holding authority over the nobles and reigning over the state.”
By the 17th century ballet became professionalised and its challenging acrobatic movements could “only be performed by highly skilled street entertainers.”
The Enlightenment and ballet in the 18th century
It was ballet that also became a focal point for criticism by the Enlightenment philosophes during the 18th century. Philosophes (French for ‘philosophers’) “were public intellectuals who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics, and social issues.”
The philosophes “argued that ancient superstitions and outmoded customs should be eliminated, and that reason should play a major role in reforming society.” They desired to see “the development of art forms that gave meaningful expression to human thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and they disregarded merely decorative or ornamental forms of art.”
Image on the right: Jean-Georges Noverre (1727–1810) was a French dancer and balletmaster, and is generally considered the creator of ballet d’action, a precursor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century. His birthday is now observed as International Dance Day.
Denis Diderot, for example, (one of the editors of the quintessential enlightenment project: the Encylopédie) wrote in his essay ‘Entretiens sur ‘Le Fils Naturel”:
“I would like someone to tell me what all these dances performed today represent — the minuet, the passe-pied, the rigaudon, the allemande, the sarabande — where one follows a traced path. This dancer performs with an infinite grace; I see in each movement his facility, his grace, and his nobility, but what does he imitate? This is not the art of song, but the art of jumping. A dance is a poem. This poem must have its own way of representing itself. It is an imitation presented in movements, that depends upon the cooperation of the poet, the painter, the composer, and the art of pantomime. The dance has its own subject which can be divided into acts and scenes. Each scene has a recitative improvised or obligatory, and its ariette.”
To achieve this the philosophes argued for more naturalism in style and less of the “contrived sophistication and majesty” of earlier Baroque aesthetics. This criticism eventually led to new forms of ballet “that attempted to convey meaning, drama, and the human emotions” in particular the ballet d’action: “a dance containing an entire integrated story line”.
Ballet in the 19th century: Romanticism
Enlightenment ideas which led to the ‘Age of Reason’ and classical ideas of order, harmony and balance gave way to Romanticist emphasis on emotion, individualism and anti-rationalist medievalism. The “vogue for exotic, escapist fantasy which dominated Romanticism in all the other arts” soon affected ballet in two major aspects: a new preoccupation with the supernatural, and the exotic. The plots in Romantic ballet:
“were dominated by spirit women—sylphs [imaginary spirits of the air], wilis [a type of supernatural being in Slavic folklore], and ghosts—who enslaved the hearts and senses of mortal men and made it impossible for them to live happily in the real world. Women dancers were dressed in diaphanous white frocks with little wings at their waist, and were bathed in the mysterious poetic light created by newly developed gas lighting in theatres. They danced in a style more fluid and ethereal than 18th-century dancers and were especially prized for their ballon [the ability to appear effortlessly suspended while performing movements during a jump] as they tried to create the illusion of flight.”
The second important Romantic influence in ballet was:
“a fascination with the exotic, which was figured through gypsy or oriental heroines and the use of folk or national dances from ‘foreign’ cultures (such as Spain, the Middle East, and Scotland). Such dances were considered highly expressive both of character and of exotic local colour, though in some countries, such as Italy, indigenous dances were featured in ballets whose plots reflected that region’s surge of nationalist feeling.”
An early example of the Romantic ballet is La Sylphide which was first performed at the Paris Opera in 1823 starring Marie Taglioni:
“La Sylphide is a story ballet about a supernatural female creature, half-woman, half-bird, who is doomed to an eternity of dancing. The Sylphide falls in love with a peasant man, James, who is soon to be married. However, James falls in love with the sylphide and leaves his wedding to spend his life with her. The ballet takes a turn when James consults a witch on how to keep the Sylphide from flying off. The witch tells him to tie a scarf around the Sylphide’s waist, and James obeys. The scarf ends up killing the Sylphide, and James is ultimately killed by the witch in an attempt to avenge her death. The Sylphide is symbolic of an unattainable dream, and James is the naive hero who pursues her. This ballet was the first romantic ballet and typifies the romantic themes of fantasy, supernaturalism and man vs. nature.”
However , it was also the 19th century which saw the creation of what is considered by many to be the finest achievement of the Classical period, Sleeping Beauty. As Victoria Rose Niblett writes:
“Sleeping Beauty is opulent, returning to the intermingling of traditional French court dances in the choreography and the refinement of the Apollonian [relating to the rational, ordered, and self-disciplined aspects of human nature as opposed to Dionysian characteristics of excess, irrationality, lack of discipline, and unbridled passion] expression. This was a shift away from the emotional exploration of the Romantic period and back to reason and rational philosophy. […] In the Romantic period, dance was designed by the external power of the music, but in the Classical period choreographers had a more influential role with the construction of the symphony. This involvement allowed choreography to follow an academic, pattern-oriented structure that insured the association between dance and music. […] While Romantic ballet focused on fragile and emotional femininity, Classical ballet focused more on the type of femininity that could be expressed in the refinement, strength, and charm of the female character.”
A publicity photo for the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty (1890).
While this era saw the rise of ballet as a truly international art form, Romanticism in ballet declined rapidly “as ballets were so weighted towards the feminine and the febrile”, while “male dancers were frequently relegated to the role of porteur [supporting the ballerina]”.
Folk dance and Herder
The rise of nationalist feeling in the 19th century was also associated with the new emphasis on local culture and traditions. Folk dances attained a new significance as the spread of nationalist and socialist ideas gave a new emphasis and importance to the culture of the peasants and the working classes. In Ireland, for example, Ceili dances were popularised by Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League) in its goal to promote Irish cultural independence and de-anglicisation.
It was the 18th century Enlightenment philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) who recognised the importance of traditional culture. Herder established fundamental ideas concerning the intimate dependence of thought on language which “appears in its greatest purity and power in the uncivilized periods of every nation.” Hence Herder’s interest in collecting ancient German folk songs. His focus upon language and cultural traditions as the ties that create a ‘nation’ “were extended to include folklore, dance, music and art.”
Herder developed his folk theory to the point of believing that “there is only one class in the state, the Volk, (not the rabble), and the king belongs to this class as well as the peasant”. His idea that the Volk was not the rabble was a new idea at this time, and thus Herder laid the basis for the idea of “the people” as the basis for later democratic ideologies.
Therefore, as Vicki Spencer writes:
“Herder’s intention, then, was not to urge moderm intellectuals and artists to reject the philosophical and intellectual features of their own culture in favor of the simple naivety of earlier folk literature. Instead, he argued that their relationship to their own culture needed to change, in order to capture the complexities and spontaneity in the way of life, language, and character of their own unique culture.” [1]
Moreover, Herder believed it was important to look back through history for the nation to ‘grow organically’ into the future. According to David Denby:
“Herder believes in a human drive towards perfection and self-improvement, but this is a process which operates always in given contexts and within given constraints, which must be understood and respected historically. It is when societies are denied the opportunity to grow organically that they fail to progress. Tradition and progress are not opposites: progress must emerge out of a social and historical tradition if it is to take root, and, conversely, ‘a living tradition was inconceivable without the progressive emergence of new goals’.” [2]
Later, Herder’s ideas on folk culture became strongly associated with Romanticism and national chauvinism. However, Herder “understood and feared the extremes to which his folk-theory could tend” and he “refused to adhere to a rigid racial theory, writing that ‘notwithstanding the varieties of the human form, there is but one and the same species of man throughout the whole earth’.”
Thus Herder saw the importance of understanding one’s own culture as a foundation stone for future national projects to be built upon, and not about seeing the past as a Golden Age to be nostalgic about as in Romanticist theory.
The twentieth century and Modernism
By the beginning of the twentieth century folk dance was firmly established and formed an important part of national culture. Many countries around the world had state folk dance ensembles by the middle of the century. In particular this could be seen in the Soviet Union after the Russian revolution of 1917 where the state supported and promoted folk dance as part of the culture of the people. The Red Army Choir, an official army choir of the Russian armed forces, was set up in the 1920s, and by the 1930s was touring with an ensemble of dancers.
The Alexandrov Choir with Dance Ensemble, Warsaw 2009 (Also known as the Red Army Choir and the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army)
Ballet continued life after the revolution too but with new revolutionary content. As Georg Predota writes:
“Ballet companies had to cope with a mass exodus of leading figures of the stage, but also defend against grassroots Communist voices that decried ballet as an artificial, frivolous art form, a decadent playground for grand dukes hopelessly out of touch with reality. Yet gradually, government policy opened the former bastions of imperial high culture to the masses, making ballet performances available to a wider audience by distributing free or subsidized tickets.”
For example, the Russian ballet, The Red Poppy, with a score written by Reinhold Glière, was created in 1927 and was a huge success. It had a modern revolutionary theme, as Predota notes:
“Set in a port in Kuomintang China in the 1920’s, The Red Poppy eventually became the first truly Soviet ballet. The story tells of the love between a Soviet sailor and a Chinese girl, who is eventually killed by the sailor’s capitalist rival. The tyrannical British imperialist commander of the port sanctions her murder, as Tao-Hoa tries to escape her homeland on board a Soviet ship. As she falls dying, she gives her compatriots a red poppy as an emblem in their fight for freedom.”
In Europe the ballet company Ballet Russes, was formed in 1909 and toured Europe as well as North and South America. Although set up by the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev (and even used Russian dancers), the company never performed in Russia. It became part of the Modernist movement with music commissioned from Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky and the designs of Picasso, Rouault, Matisse, and Derain.
Modernism – an extension of Romanticist thinking – emphasised individualism, art for art’s sake, suspicion of reason, subjectivism and rejected Enlightenment ideas. In the arts, Modernism tended to emphasise constantly changing form over sociopolitical content and this became particularly notable in the twentieth century.
Dance in general also developed in many different directions in the twentieth century but the Modernist movement set the stage for dance trends and styles in the United States and Europe which tended to emphasise individualism and diversion, and then later developed into freestyle. This could be seen in western concert or theatrical dance where modern dance continued as an art form:
“Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of Germany and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern dance is often considered to have emerged as a rejection of or rebellion against, classical ballet. Socioeconomic and cultural factors also contributed to its development. In the late 19th century, dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan and Loie Fuller were pioneering new forms and practices in what is now called aesthetic or free dance for performance. These dancers disregarded ballet’s strict movement vocabulary, the particular, limited set of movements that were considered proper to ballet and stopped wearing corsets and pointe shoes in the search for greater freedom of movement.”
Image on the right: Josephine Baker dancing the Charleston at the Folies Bergère, Paris, in 1926
Later in the twentieth century, as in the other arts, dance was affected by Postmodernism from the 1960s to the 1980s. While Postmodernism rejected the grand narratives [e.g. Christian ideology, Freudian psychology, political democracy etc.] and ideologies of Modernism, it was similar to Modernism in that it also rejected Enlightenment ideas and was thus another form of Romanticism. With Postmodernism, the politicisation of dance or the use of dance as a form of collective resistance to capitalism and imperialism, became a more remote prospect as “the postmodern dance movement rapidly developed to embrace the ideas of postmodernism, which rely on chance, self-referentiality, irony, and fragmentation.” For example, Postmodern dance incorporated “improvisation, spontaneous determination, and chance”, cast non-trained dancers, and changed the relationship of dance to the tempo of accompanying music. Later it became more conceptual and abstract while distancing “itself from expressive elements such as music, lighting, costumes, and props.”
As Postmodern dance distanced itself from the masses, popular dances in the form of novelty and fad dances went to the other extreme, regularly spreading among the people like wildfires that soon burnt themselves out. They took different forms: solo dances, partner dances, group dances and freestyle dances. From 1909 to the mid 1940s there was: The Grizzly Bear, Charleston, Duckwalk, Carioca, Suzie Q, The Lambeth Walk, Thunder Clap, Conga, and the Hokey cokey. During the 1950s there was Bomba, The Chicken, Bunny Hop, The Hop, The Meatstick, Madison, The Stroll, and Hully Gully. The 1960s had Shimmy, Twist, The Chicken Walk, The Gravy (“On My Mashed Potato”), The Loco-Motion, Martian Hop, Mashed Potato, The Monster Mash, The Swim, Watusi, Chicken Dance, Hitch hike, Monkey, The Frug, Jerk, The Freddie, Limbo, Batusi, and The Shake.
In the 1970s it was Sprinkler, Penguin, Hustle, Time Warp, Bump, Tragedy, Grinding, Car Wash, Electric Slide, Robot, The Running Man, Y.M.C.A., and Little Apple. The 1980s saw Moonwalk, Cotton-Eyed Joe, Harlem Shake, Agadoo (aka Agadou), Superman (aka Gioca Jouer), The Safety, Lambada, Thriller, The Hunch, Wig Wam Bam, Cabbage Patch, Da Butt. In the 1990s there was The Carlton, Locomía, Boot Scootin’ Boogie, Do the Bartman, Hammer, The Humpty, Vogue, The Urkel, Achy Breaky Heart (Line dance), Macarena, Saturday Night, Tic, Tic Tac, Thizzle, La Bomba (not to be confused with Bomba), The Roger Rabbit, and Tootsee Roll.
As can be seen from the quantity cited and the regularity of change there is no end to Modernism’s ability to move with the markets or keep up with the constantly changing mass consumer pop music scene. A few styles of dance had periods of mass popularity and are still going today as social dances encouraged by regular classes in, for example, jive, salsa, and ballroom dancing.
Cinema also aided the popularity of dance in the twentieth century as can be seen in films featuring ballet in the 1940s (The Red Shoes), tap dancing in the 1950s (Singin’ in the Rain), modern dance in the 1960s (West Side Story), disco in the 1970s (Saturday Night Fever), club/performance partner dancing in the 1980s (Dirty Dancing), tango in the 2000s (Chicago) and modern dance theatre in the 2010s (Pina). The global popularity of Hollywood musicals and Bollywood song-and-dance sequences have made dance an important element to be considered in any new film musical.
Rehearsals for West Side Story, 1960 | American dancer, choreographer, and director Jerome Robbins (1918 – 1998) (in white) demonstrates a dance move to American actor George Chakiris (left, foreground) during the filming of ‘West Side Story,’ directed by Robbins and Robert Wise, New York, New York, 1961.
In terms of live performance the Irish stage show, Riverdance, featuring Irish step-dancing, opened in Dublin in 1995. It went on to perform in over 450 venues worldwide and has “been seen by over 25 million people, making it one of the most successful dance productions in the world.” The show also incorporated international dance elements of flamenco and tap dancing.
Thus the twentieth century has seen an explosion in interest in dance in general, and in the quantity of styles and techniques. It also has seen the overt politicisation of dance in nationalist and socialist struggles, and as an art form as affected by Romanticist and Enlightenment ideas as every other major art form.
The 21st century and new debates
Dance has become even more prevalent in the 21st century with the internet and global satellite media, for example, through apps like TikTok and dance shows on TV. Riverdance is still touring and ballet is as popular as ever. Novelty and fad dances still come and go. Social dancing and traditional dance are still in demand due to classes, competitions and people’s natural love of dance as a form of socialising.
Riverdancecast at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, 2019.
However, it could be asked if popular dance has simply become a form of social catharsis, and performance dance as escapism and diversion? Is there a role for dance in progressive culture? The negative reaction to Diversity’s ‘I Can’t Breathe’ radical narrative may have been simply an overreaction in a society unused to seeing dance used in a critical setting. The connection between dance and story has become relevant again as Modernist and Postmodernist aesthetic strategies have waned in popularity. 21st century ballet has seen discussion revolving around narrative or story ballet (has plot and characters), as Alastair Macaulay writes: “Nowhere more than in narrative has ballet become the land of low expectations. Audiences regularly sit through a poverty of dance-narrative expression that they would never tolerate in a movie, a novel, an opera, a play or even a musical.”
Hanna Rubin discusses issues relating to choreography:
“Choreographing story ballets that will appeal to contemporary audiences presents unique challenges even for experienced dancemakers. A too-literal approach or too-traditional staging can seem quaint or flat. And what makes a suitable narrative for those coming of age in a digital era, where there are no strictures on what can be searched, seen and shared? How can a story ballet hold audiences’ attention? If mere distraction becomes the goal, how can a ballet achieve the resonance that will give it continued life?”
However, choreographer Helen Pickett notes that “[n]ew stories are being created from other people’s histories”. She points out that traditional ballerina roles haven’t always been empowering ones. “Putting the female on the pedestal was a way to say she is untouchable, but not in an elevated way — in a way that she is perhaps suffering […] There was a lot of that in the Romantic era: Giselle goes nuts for her love.”
In her own work, Pickett has featured strong female characters, and has worked on an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible for the Scottish Ballet. This is certainly an interesting direction as The Crucible was a “dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists.”
Scottish Ballet’s The Crucible – Theatre Royal, Glasgow . Image: Jane Hobson. Based on the play by Arthur Miller. Choreographer: Helen Pickett. “The real trick of telling the story of The Crucible through dance is not to overexplain everything.” Helen Pickett inThe Scotsman
Yet, although laudable, progressive narratives of resistance can also be cheapened. According to Macaulay: ““Spartacus,” the Bolshoi Ballet’s biggest hit of the last half-century, reduces its freedom-fighting story to the dimensions of trash (irresistible and sensational trash in the right performance), as enjoyable as “Flash Gordon” and scarcely more serious.”
Finding the right balance between form and progressive content in ballet may be one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century for many reasons: conservative owners/backers/critics, the negative effects of Modernism and Postmodernism on form and ideology, and the lingering effects of Romanticist over-emphasis on emotion and the individual rather than on context and sociopolitical struggles.
Similarly with other forms of dance. The synthesis of the new with the old can make for exciting and engaging art (like ‘I Can’t Breathe’) when it is based on the stories of people’s actual lived lives.
Dance has truly taken its place as a significant global cultural movement. While there are still social divisions in dance today, as in the past, the difference is that the performance dances of the elites have the potential to be radical and progressive, just as the group dances of the masses today can be self-absorbed and escapist.
The future of participative dance will also depend on the level of engagement of people in sociopolitical struggle. In the past, in Ireland, for example, people flocked to traditional dance as it tied in with their nationalist and socialist beliefs. It was a way of connecting their past to a perceived or hoped for future. Similarly, in sport the Irish people flocked to Gaelic games while the previous mass support for cricket dropped dramatically as cricket was perceived to be a ‘British’ sport. People seek what gives their life meaning as they become more politicised, and this leads to pride in their own radical culture and radical history as a form of resistance. Participative dance will no doubt change again on this more conscious basis because it is an important part of people’s social and cultural lives.
Conclusion
Dance has had a long journey through human history. It has always been associated with people’s celebrations and festivities as a collective expression of human emotions. However, over time particular dances became more and more associated with different classes and groups as societies grew ever more complex. During the time of the Enlightenment, dance became a focus of research and criticism. Performance dance became imbued with Classical ideals and participative dance was seen in a new way as an important part of the heritage of all the people, and not backward or even inferior as in the past. Later, such dances took on even more powerful roles with revolutionary content and state folk ensembles. However, Romanticist ideas turned dance in on itself, shearing it of sociopolitical ideals and progressive content. That is, until Diversity hit the stage with a performance which may yet prove to be the beginning of a new chapter in the history of dance.
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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Notes
[1] Vicki Spencer, In Defense of Herder on Cultural Diversity and Interaction, The Review of Politics , Winter, 2007, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Winter, 2007), pp. 79-105 Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics
US President Donald Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided that Iran was their worst enemy and that its nuclear and missile programs should be disrupted or destroyed by all means. Perhaps Trump considers Iran to be one of the reasons for his failure to be re-elected- or is it a “non-mission accomplished” to see Iran increasing its nuclear enrichment and developing its ballistic missile programs? There is little doubt that Trump wanted to add these two “achievements” to the list of gifts he offered to Israel: the Syrian-occupied Golan Heights, the Palestinian Capital of Jerusalem, the illegal reconstruction of settlements and the normalisation of relations of Arab and Muslim countries with Israel. Hence Trump’s motive for dragging Iran into a war or at least making sure he burns the ground under the JCPOA were the President-elect to attempt to reinstall it after the 20th of January 2021. The assassination of the Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhri Zadeh was not explicitly, but only implicitly, announced by Netanyahu. What are Iran’s options? Who supported Israel in this assassination? How did Netanyahu drag Saudi Arabia onto Iran’s target list? On which platform is the next battlefield expected to be?
Prime Minister Netanyahu faces the Court of Justice at home, accused of bribery and corruption. He is trying everything to remain in power and to gather more allies around him. He has not hesitated to drag his new ally, Saudi Arabia, with him in the play against Iran. One result of this is that Iran now has a wider choice of objectives to target in response to the assassination of Fakhri Zadeh.
In fact, the Israeli Prime Minister has few valid options for engaging in a wider war, alone, and for many reasons. In Lebanon, the deterrence imposed by Hezbollah forces on the Israeli army to stay away from the borders. Hezbollah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah vowed to hit and kill any Israeli soldier at the first opportunity. The Israeli government ordered all Israeli troops to stand down and take their distance, leaving the borders unattended for several months now. Moreover, Hezbollah is transporting weapons from Syria to Lebanon under the impotent eyes of the Israelis, who fear hitting a Hezbollah operative and suffering the consequences. Hezbollah has imposed its rules of engagement on Israel on a front where Netanyahu feels weak and vulnerable.
In Israel, the army is not ready for war and its internal front is also far from ready. Israel’s harbours and airports are within easy reach of Iran and its allies’ precision missiles if fired from Syria or Lebanon or even Iraq. The Israeli economy has suffered acutely from the Corona Virus. Therefore, Netanyahu needs other states to fight on his side or on his behalf. His revelation of the secretive visit he took to Saudi Arabia to meet crown prince Mohamad Bin Salman makes more sense following the assassination of Fakhri Zadeh. Netanyahu wanted to show Iran that he was not alone in the assassination and that Saudi Arabia is also involved. This means that the Iranian choice of “revenge objectives” will not be limited to Israel. Netanyahu’s hit is clearly below the belt, but is not unusual in terms of his character and strategies.
There was no real need to reveal the date of his visit, nor to keep civilians monitoring his flight from Israel to the city of Neom on the Red Sea. Nothing new really is happening in the Saudi-Israel relationship. Saudi Arabia has already been financing wars carried out by Israel, mainly against Lebanon (in 2006). Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo visited Riyadh in 2014. Retired Saudi General Anwar Eshki met with Israeli official at King David Hotel in 2016 and a year later Saudi spy chief Khalid Bin Ali al-Humaidan made a secret visit to Israel.
For the first time since the assassination of four Iranian nuclear scientists, in recent years, the international community has openly condemned the target-killing of a civilian in Iran, defining it as “state -sponsored terrorism”. Israel is once more accused of violating international law by carrying out an assassination : and one that is barely useful to its objective to halt the Iranian nuclear program.
In fact, Israel routinely carries out dozens of assassinations against non-combatant militants and civilians without any global accountability, under the rule that “what is not permitted to any other state is permitted to Israel” .
The Israeli Foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, is not so competent as its reputation in the media might suggest. Its mediocrity has already been publicly exposed. Its “long arm” is actually dependent on outside international support. Mossad agents were rarely executed, unlike in Syria, when Damascus refused any negotiation. Not only does it have a huge budget and a liberal supply of fake passports, but it enjoys the support of the international community and US military facilities everywhere in the world, depending on the particular clandestine operation and its objectives. The Israeli intelligence service can also rely on US and European support in most countries to release or smuggle out Mossad agents. These resources are the source of strength of Israel, in addition to the unlimited US support it receives when a president like Donald Trump is in office. Following the Israeli normalisation with the Gulf countries, Israel can now count on Arab support, more than before, to coordinate its clandestine activities in countries where the mutual enemies of these Arab states and Israel reside: Iran and the “Axis of the Resistance” (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen).
“The assassination of the Iranian scientist was carried out by a highly trained team of executors who did not prepare for the attack in just a few days. The team had explosives, weapons, financial means and safe houses to meet in and train as a team for the operation. That scale of activity requires a state-sponsored operation,” according to Iranian security sources in Tehran.
Israel, unlike President Trump when he assassinated Brigadier general Qassem Soleimani, did not officially announce its responsibility for the assassination of Fakhri Zadeh, even if Netanyahu hinted to this effect in his own style. However, US B-52s were ordered back to the Middle East a few days before the attack and the Pentagon ordered USS Nimitz back to the Persian Gulf and the US administration vowed to hit hard if any US soldier was attacked in Iraq. All these indications are taken by Iran as clear signals of the US-Israel complicity and responsibility for this unlawful assassination.
What are Iran’s choices?
The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Major General Hossein Salameh, said “Iran will respond.” He has committed himself, and is not expected to risk his credibility by not responding. The leader of the revolution Sayed Ali Khamenei instructed his military commanders to “take the necessary revenge for the martyr Mohsen Fakhri Zadeh.” The IRGC–Quds Brigade commander, General Ismail Qaani, who represents the arm of Iranian strikes abroad, indicated: “there are targets that have been identified regionally and Iran’s allies will participate in the response.”
According to the sources, Iran has begun to work on several levels: 1) Uncovering the assassination team responsible for the assassination. 2) Asking all embassies abroad to solicit the international community’s condemnation of this unlawful target-killing of a civilian. 3) Identifying the absolute supporters of any Israeli action: deterrence is done in response by striking targets set by Iran in the Middle East. 3) Searching for any team (s) ready to carry out any other potential attack that Israel could execute during the remaining fifty days of Trump’s term. 4) Identifying the most urgent targets to hit in the Middle East. 5) Increasing the level of uranium enrichments, with little regard to the JCPOA, and increasing the level of stockpile beyond 2,442.9 kg.
The sources understand that there is nothing to stop Israel from carrying out further attacks against Iranian targets if deterrence is not imposed, as Hezbollah has effectively done in Lebanon. Moreover, any possible hit to Israel and US allies in the Middle East (in Afghanistan or Yemen, for example) would send signals to Israel to stop, when the US interests in the region are put in jeopardy.
As long as Trump (whom our source describes as “a bull in a China shop”) is in power, Iran has decided not to go to war and in the meantime won’t be dragged into situations and arguments imposed by its enemies. Therefore, all-out-war is not yet on the table even if further cyber, sabotage or assassination attacks are likely in the weeks to come. “The account is open with Netanyahu, no need to rush, there will be other opportunities,” concluded the source.
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Ukraine’s economic situation is getting more and more complicated. The country is going through a moment of great crisis, from which it hoped to mitigate the effects by receiving emergency financial aid from the International Monetary Fund. However, the IMF now refuses to provide a large part of such emergency aid and launches Kiev into a danger of financial collapse. Now, the country must look for other ways to end this fiscal year after facing a large debt in its budget.
The new support program for Ukraine, approved by the IMF Board of Governors in early June, provides for the sending of 5 billion dollars over a period of one and a half years. Kiev has already received the first payment, valued at 2.1 billion. The remaining amount was expected to be sent in four installments of around 700 million dollars each one, in late June and late September, with two revisions next year. However, there will be no further installment until the end of 2020. Therefore, Ukraine must work within the current amount and meet its targets, which is truly complicated, if not impossible.
According to Yaroslav Zhelezniak, the first vice-chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Financial and Fiscal Policy Committee, more than a billion dollars are missing – adding to the amount already collected – for the state to be able to pay the so-called “protected expenses”, which are those that according to Ukrainian national law cannot be cut, such as salaries, pensions, defense industry, among others. In any event, spending considered “secondary” would be canceled, but now, with the IMF’s delay, Kiev will not even be able to afford its protected expenses.
The accumulation of debts with protected expenses is precisely the greatest current threat to the Ukrainian state, as it represents a structural danger not only for finances but also for all strategic sectors affected by the lack of resources. For reasons of confidentiality, current Treasury information does not show which specific items of protected expanses have stopped receiving funding, but currently protected sectors account for 80% of all budgetary expenses.
As for unprotected items, everything is clear: simply, nothing is paid. In November, nothing outside the strategic sectors was financed from the Ukrainian state budget. That is, the authorities simply decided not to pay service providers and public-private partnerships in November. Obviously, this was a forced choice: without money available, there is no way to pay. However, it is undeniable that the social consequences of such default will be severe and will only further weaken Ukraine.
Given this scenario, the draft budget for 2021 has already been rewritten by the Council of Ministers. The new version was approved at an extraordinary meeting on 26 November and sent to Parliament for evaluation. In particular, the first budget plan for 2021 was one of the reasons for the refusal by the IMF of the aid to Ukraine, considering that the project had a deficit forecast of 6%, instead of the 5.3% agreed with the IMF. In the revised version, the deficit was reduced to 5.5%. This required increasing revenues and cutting expenses. Still, Ukraine remains hopeful of receiving aid with such a reduction.
In the draft of the second version of the 2021 budget, GDP growth remains estimated at 4.6%. However, it is important to note that this forecast appeared in the middle of the year, when nothing was known about the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Ukraine and the current crisis, which means that the calculations must be updated. Currently, the World Bank expects Ukrainian GDP growth of less than 1.5%, contrary to the optimism of Kiev’s experts.
It is interesting to note how Ukraine has struggled over the past six years to establish a political and economic orientation totally focused on the interests of Western powers, having been completely abandoned by such powers during its most fragile moment. In recent years, Kiev has entered a crisis that is already considered by many experts to be the worst since World War II. And the positioning of its western allies in the face of this scenario of imminent national collapse has been an absolute omission. Washington, for example, constantly announces military cooperation projects with Ukraine valued at millions of dollars, providing equipment and human resources, but at least in the past five years no effective financial aid project to the Ukrainian state has been established, having been limited to one small participation in European aid announced in 2014.
Amid the pandemic and the rise of economic isolationism, Ukraine will only be more and more alone. Perhaps the best path to follow is a general review of state priorities. For example, why include the defense industry in protected expenses when the country is experiencing a deep social crisis? It would be more strategic – and in line with the humanitarian values that Kiev claims to defend – to retreat in military spending and invest capital in partnerships with the private sector that can improve the lives of the Ukrainian people. This is currently the only possible way to Kiev.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The data and concepts have been manipulated with a view to sustaining the fear campaign.
The estimates are meaningless. The figures have been hyped to justify the lockdown and the closure of the national economy, with devastating economic and social consequences. The Virus is held responsible for poverty and mass unemployment.
Confirmed by prominent scientists as well as by official public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Covid-19 is a public health concern but it is NOT a dangerous virus.
The COVID-19 crisis is marked by a public health “emergency” under WHO auspices which is being used as a pretext and a justification to trigger a Worldwide process of economic, social and political restructuring. Social engineering is being applied. Governments are pressured into extending the lockdown, despite its devastating economic and social consequences.
There is no scientific basis for implementing the closing down of the global economy as a means to resolving a public health crisis.
Both the media and the governments are involved in spreading disinformation.
The fear campaign has no scientific basis.
Our objective is to reassure people Worldwide. Your governments are LYING. In fact they are lying to themselves.
We start by defining the virus and the tests which are being used to “identify the virus”.
1 What is Covid-19, SARS-COV-2.
Below is the official WHO definition of Covid-19:
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses which may cause illness in animals or humans. In humans, several coronaviruses are known to cause respiratory infections ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The most recently discovered coronavirus causes coronavirus disease COVID-19.
The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, dry cough, and tiredness. … These symptoms are usually mild and begin gradually. Some people become infected but only have very mild symptoms. Most people (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing hospital treatment. Around 1 out of every 5 people who gets COVID-19 becomes seriously ill and develops difficulty breathing.
“COVID-19 is similar to SARS-1″: According to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, pneumonia is “regularly caused or accompanied by corona viruses”. Immunologists broadly confirm the CDC definition. COVID-19 has similar features to a seasonal influenza coupled with pneumonia.
…the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is lying to himself. In his public statements he says that Covid is “Ten Times Worse than Seasonal Flu”.
He refutes his peer reviewed report quoted above. From the outset, Fauci has been instrumental in waging the fear and panic campaign across America:
“Influenza (Flu) and COVID-19 are both contagious respiratory illnesses, but they are caused by different viruses. COVID-19 is caused by infection with a new coronavirus (called SARS-CoV-2) and flu is caused by infection with influenza viruses. Because some of the symptoms of flu and COVID-19 are similar, it may be hard to tell the difference between them based on symptoms alone, and testing may be needed to help confirm a diagnosis. Flu and COVID-19 share many characteristics, but there are some key differences between the two.”
If the public had been informed and reassured that Covid is “similar to Influenza”, the fear campaign would have fallen flat.
The lockdown and closure of the national economy would have been rejected outright.
2. The Test for Covid-19 “Confirmed Cases”
The standard Covid test is the Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR):
“The COVID-19 RT-PCR test is a real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) test for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2 in upper and lower respiratory specimens … collected from individuals suspected of COVID 19 … [as well as] from individuals without symptoms or other reasons to suspect COVID-19 infection. …
This test is also for use with individual nasal swab specimens that are self-collected using the Pixel by LabCorp COVID-19 test home collection kit … The COVID-19 RT-PCR test is also for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from the SARS-CoV-2 in pooled samples, using a matrix pooling strategy (FDA, LabCorp Laboratory Test Number: 139900)
This test is based on upper and lower respiratory specimens.
Results are for the identification of 2019-nCoV RNA. The 2019-nCoV RNA is generally detectable in upper and lower respiratory specimens during infection. Positive results are indicative of active infection with 2019-nCoV but do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease. Laboratories within the United States and its territories are required to report all positive results to the appropriate public health authorities.
Negative results do not preclude 2019-nCoV infection and should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or other patient management decisions. Negative results must be combined with clinical observations, patient history, and epidemiological information.
What this suggests is that a positive infection could be the result of co-infection with other viruses. According to the CDC it “does not rule out “bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease.” (CDC)
The following diagram summarizes the process of identifying positive and negative cases: All that is required is the presence of “viral genetic material” for it to be categorized as “positive”. The procedure does not identity or isolate Covid-19. What appears in the tests are fragments of the virus
A positive test does not mean that you have the virus and/or that you could transmit the virus.
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A negative test does not mean that you do not have it.
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What the governments want is to inflate the number of positive cases.
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While SARS-CoV-2 –namely the the virus which is said to cause COVID-19 (erroneously categorized as a disease rather than a virus), was isolated in a laboratory test in January 2020, the RT-PCR test does not identify/detect the Covid-19 virus. What it detects are fragments of several viruses. According to renowned Swiss immunologist Dr B. Stadler
So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Even if the infectious viri are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].
The Question is Positive for What?? The PCR does not detect the identity of the virus, According to Dr. Pascal Sacré,
these tests detect viral particles, genetic sequences, not the whole virus.
In an attempt to quantify the viral load, these sequences are then amplified several times through numerous complex steps that are subject to errors, sterility errors and contamination
Positive RT-PCR is not synonymous with COVID-19 disease! PCR specialists make it clear that a test must always be compared with the clinical record of the patient being tested, with the patient’s state of health to confirm its value [reliability]
The media frighten everyone with new positive PCR tests, without any nuance or context, wrongly assimilating this information with a second wave of COVID-19.
Presumptive vs. Confirmed Cases
In the US, the CDC data include both “confirmed” and “presumptive” positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020″.
The presumptive positive data does not confirm coronavirus infection: Presumptive testing involves “chemical analysis of a sample that establishes the possibility that a substance is present“ (emphasis added). The presumptive test must then be sent for confirmation to an accredited government health lab. (For further details see: Michel Chossudovsky, Spinning Fear and Panic Across America. Analysis of COVID-19 Data, March 20, 2020)
Similarly in Canada, “A point-of-care test” is a “rapid test done at the time and place of care, such as a hospital or doctor’s office”. It consists in collecting “samples from the nose or throat using swabs”, which are then tested on site, with almost immediate results (in 30 to 60 minutes). But it does not confirm the presence of COVID-19.
Serological testing or Antibody Tests for COVID-19
According to the CDC, Serological tests do not detect the virus itself, “they detect the antibodies produced in response to an infection.” Serological tests are not used for “early diagnosis of COVID-19.”
How is the COVID-19 Data Tabulated?
Below is a screen shot of the CDC form entitled Human Infection with 2019 Novel Coronavirus Case Report Form to be filled in by authorized medical/ health personnel
Note the categorization of probable cases, bearing in mind that the lab confirmed case is misleading. No way to identify the covi-19 virus in a PCR lab test
In the US, the probable (PC) and the lab confirmed cases (CC) are lumped together. And the total number (PC + CC ) constitutes the basis for establishing the data for COVID-19 infection. It’s like adding apples and oranges.
The total figure (PC+CC) categorized as “Total cases” is meaningless. It does not measure positive COVID-19 Infection.
Most of the presumptive tests are undertaken by private clinics or commercial clinics.
In the UK, according to a Daily Telegraph May 21 report: “samples taken from the same patient are being recorded as two separate tests in the Government’s official figures”.
This is only one example of data manipulation. In the US, clinics are paid ($$$) to hike up the number of Covid-19 admissions. A probable case does not require a lab exam: “Meets vital records criteria with no confirmatory lab testing” (see form above)
COVID-19 Recovery Rates
The CDC Data tabulates both “confirmed” and “presumptive” positive cases since January 21, 2020. Yet what it fails to make public is that among the confirmed and presumptive cases, a large number of Americans have recovered. But nobody talks about recovery. It does not make the headlines.
Falsification of Death Certificates
At the outset of the pandemic, the CDC had been instructed to change the methodology regarding Death Certificates with a view to artificially inflating the numbers of “Covid deaths”. According to H. Ealy, M. McEvoy et al
For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.
Will COVID-19 be the underlying cause of death?This concept is fundamental. The underlying cause of death is defined by the WHO as “the disease or injury that initiated the train of events leading directly to death”.
What the CDC is recommending with regards to statistical coding and categorization is that COVID-19 is expected to be the underlying cause of death “more often than not.”
“What Happens if Certifiers Report Terms other than the Suggested Term?”(see below)
The Certifier is not allowed to report coronavirus without identifying a specific strain. And the guideline recommends that COVID-19 be indicated, when in fact the nature of the PCR test does not isolate the Covid-19 virus. (2019 coronavirus strain).
“The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate. However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID- 19 being the underlying cause more often than not.
What happens if certifiers report terms other than the suggested terms?
If a death certificate reports coronavirus without identifying a specific strain or explicitly specifying that it is not COVID-19, NCHS will ask the states to follow up to verify whether or not the coronavirus was COVID-19.
As long as the phrase used indicates the 2019 coronavirus strain, NCHS expects to assign the new code. However, it is preferable and more straightforward for certifiers to use the standard terminology (COVID-19).
What happens if the terms reported on the death certificate indicate uncertainty?
If the death certificate reports terms such as “probable COVID-19” or “likely COVID-19,” these terms would be assigned the new ICD code. It Is not likely that NCHS will follow up on these cases.
If “pending COVID-19 testing” is reported on the death certificate, this would be considered a pending record. In this scenario, NCHS would expect to receive an updated record, since the code will likely result in R99. In this case, NCHS will ask the states to follow up to verify if test results confirmed that the decedent had COVID- 19.
… COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. Certifiers should include as much detail as possible based on their knowledge of the case, medical records, laboratory testing, etc.”
These specific guidelines have indelibly contributed to increasing Covid-19 as the recorded “cause of death”
And this despite the fact that the relevant lab texts (i.e. RT PCR) provide misleading results. Bear in mind that a Covid-19 cause of death does not require a lab exam.
Video
Summary
Covid-19 is Similar to Influenza
The whole exercise of PCR testing and establishing data of Covid-19 infection is subject error.
The figures are unreliable and so are the death certificates.
“Confirmed Cases” are not always confirmed.
The RT-PCR Test Does not isolate the Covid-19 virus.
These inflated Covid positive “estimates” (from the PCR test) are then used to sustain the fear campaign. The hype in Covid-19 deaths is based on flawed and biased criteria.
Governments are currently involved in increasing the number of PCR tests with a view to inflating the number of so-called Covid-19 positive cases.
“Today, as authorities test more people, there are bound to be more positive RT-PCR tests. This does not mean that COVID-19 is coming back, or that the epidemic is moving in waves. There are more people being tested, that’s all.”
This procedure of massive data collection is there to provide supportive (faulty) “estimates” to justify the so-called Second Wave.
The Endgame is to maintain the economic lockdown, enforce the compulsory wearing of the face mask, social distancing including the closure of schools, colleges and universities.
The tendency is towards a police state. It is all based on a Big Lie.
We need a mass movement, nationally and internationally to reverse the tide.
Mass demonstrations barely reported by the corporate media have taken place in major European capitals including London, Dublin and Berlin.
Corrupt politicians in high office must be (peacefully) removed.
Revealing the lies and deceptions is the first priority. Dismantling the fear campaign. Reveal the media disinformation campaign.
Israel’s Mossad operates like a global Mafia hit squad.
On the phony pretext of protecting national security, it has a long history of assassinating Palestinians and others it wants eliminated.
Former IDF chief of staff General Dan Haluts once said “(t)argeted killing is the most important method in the fight against ‘terrorism (sic).’ ”
Like the US, Israel’s alleged threats are invented, not real.
Murder is a capital offense most everywhere. It’s a flagrant breach of international law.
Article 23b of the 1907 Hague Regulations prohibits “assassination, proscription, or outlawry of an enemy, or putting a price upon an enemy’s head, as well as offering a reward for any enemy ‘dead or alive.’ ”
UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions (1989) states the following:
“Governments shall prohibit by law all extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions and shall ensure that any such executions are recognized as offenses under their criminal laws, and are punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account the seriousness of such offenses.”
The US, NATO, and Israel operate by their own rules exclusively — the rule of law long ago abandoned.
According to Iranian media, Islamic Republic nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — head of its Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND) — was assassinated on Friday in his car by multiple assailants 40 km northeast of Tehran.
Explosives and gunfire took his life in what was a carefully orchestrated incident.
Security guards with him were also killed, along with three or four hitmen.
Destabilizing Iran is longstanding US/Israeli policy. Tactics include sanctions, sabotage, cyberwar, assassinations, and other dirty tricks.
In January 2012, prominent Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated by a powerful sticky bomb attached to his car.
From 2010 to that time, he was the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated.
Former Atomic Energy Organization of Iran head — current member of parliament — Fereydoun Abbasi narrowly escaped an attempt on his life.
In November 2011, Iranian missile expert/General Hassan Moghaddam was killed in a blast at the Bid Baneh base outside Tehran.
In July 2011, gunmen on motorcyles killed Dariush Rezaeinejad, a member of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
In November 2010, a bomb attached to his car killed Iranian nuclear engineer Majid Shahriyari.
In January 2010, a bomb outside his home killed Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi.
Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif commented sharply on Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, tweeting the following:
“Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today.”
“This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.”
“Iran calls on int’l community—and especially EU—to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.”
Iran’s Defense Ministry issued the following statement:
“This Friday afternoon, armed terrorist elements attacked a vehicle carrying Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.”
“During the clashes between his security team and the terrorists, Mr. Fakhrizadeh was severely injured and then transferred to hospital.”
Efforts to save his life failed. Iran’s Armed Forces Chief of Staff General General Mohammad Bagheri said the following:
“The terrorist groups and the perpetrators of this blind act should also know that severe revenge awaits them.”
By letter on Friday to UN secretary-general Guterres and the Security Council, Iran’s world body envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi said the following:
“The cowardly assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh — with serious indications of Israeli responsibility in it – is another desperate attempt to wreak havoc on our region, as well as to disrupt Iran’s scientific and technological development.”
“Warning against any adventuristic measures by the United States and Israel against my country, particularly during the..current (US regime’s time) in office, the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its rights to take all necessary measures to defend its people and secure its interests.”
With less than two months of Trump’s tenure remaining, was Fakhrizadeh’s assassination a Netanyahu regime attempt to provoke Iranian retaliation in hopes of getting the US involved in war on the country?
Consider the following:
Mossad has a long history of targeted assassinations.
Its dirty hands were likely all over earlier killings of Iranian scientists.
Most likely, it was responsible for Fakhrizadeh’s assassination.
The Netanyahu regime wants no return of the US to the JCPOA, hoping to kill it altogether.
Trump did more to fulfill Israel’s wish list than any of his predecessors.
His actions included unlawful recognition of Syrian Golan as Israeli territory, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, drafting a one-sided no-peace/Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, and arranging normalization of Israeli relations with the UAE, Bahrain and the Saudis.
While the Biden/Harris regime will one-sidedly support Israel like all its predecessors, it may not be as accommodative of its wishes as Trump.
Most likely, it would want war with Iran avoided, while continuing hostile US actions against the country, short of attacking it militarily.
Despite continuing wars he inherited and waging them by other means on numerous countries — including “maximum pressure” on Iran — Netanyahu’s aim to get Trump involved in hot war on the Islamic Republic is highly likely to fail.
Based on the above responses by Iranian officials to Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, retaliation in some form(s) seems likely — short of what could explode the region in hot war.
The Netanyahu regime may have more anti-Iran provocations in mind while Trump remains in office.
Iran will respond in its own way at times of its choosing.
Since establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 — ending a generation of US-installed fascist tyranny — Washington never attacked Iranian territory militarily except for covert actions.
Whatever Netanyahu regime hardliners may try to involve the US in war on Iran ahead is highly likely to fail.
The Jewish state won’t take military action against Iran on its own without US permission and involvement.
What never happened before most likely isn’t in the cards ahead.
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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.”
On November 23, Russian Senators, Academicians, Researchers and Experts gathered to discuss the export of non-commodities to Africa at the interactive webinar, organized by Federation Council of Russia, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Russia, and Business Russia Association.
According to the organizers, the meeting was to identify funding for exports, to concretize proposals for increasing exports to Africa and to facilitate amendments to the Russian legislation if required to promote exports to African market.
Senator Igor Morozov, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, also the Chairman of the Coordinating Committee on Economic Cooperation with Africa, held the videoconference meeting on “Improving State Support for Export in African Countries.”
During the videoconference, many questions including the issues of developing a system of state support for Russian enterprises exporting products to the African market, as well as the participation of Russian regions in the development of exports to African countries were thoroughly discussed.
The meeting was attended by Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, Konstantin Dolgov; member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Construction, Alexey Pushkov; representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation; the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs; scientific organizations and expert community.
Senator Igor Morozov noted that in conditions of sanctions pressure, new markets, new partners and allies are important for Russia.
“This predetermines the return of Russia to Africa, makes this direction a priority both from the point of view of geopolitical influence, and in the trade and economic context.”
“It is important for us to expand and improve competitive government support instruments for business. It is obvious that over the thirty years when Russia left Africa, China, India, the USA, and the European Union have significantly increased their investment opportunities,” Morozov stressed.
He, however, suggested creating a new structure within the Russian Export Center – an investment fund, explained further that
“Such a fund could evaluate and accumulate concessions as a tangible asset for the Russian raw materials and innovation business.”
Konstantin Dolgov touched upon the topic of using political ties with African countries to build up economic and investment cooperation. He also pointed out the need to connect Russian regions, to maximize their export potential.
Alexey Pushkov noted that with the right strategy, such a large state as Russia has a chance to take strong positions in interaction, in particular, economic, with other continents, including Africa. “The competition will certainly grow,” the Senator said, noting that the situation is constantly changing.
Representative from the Russian Export Center (REC), Veronika Nikishina, informed the gathering about Russian projects that are being implemented or planned in the African market, including the supply of passenger cars to Egypt, wheat supplies, as well as REC business missions, participation in exporters’ exhibitions.
REC offers a wide range of financial and non-financial support tools to benefit the Russian exporters explore the foreign markets and build capacity in the global trade. Generally, the African market is of particular interest to potential Russian exporters, and negotiations with government, trade agencies and business community to allow establishing effective ways of entry to the huge continental market. With an estimated population of 1.3 billion, Africa constitutes a huge market for all kinds of products and a wide range of services.
According to her, since July 2020, the REC began to practice online business missions, which in the absence of physical contacts, allows continuing communications, maintaining current exports and looking for new niches.
According to Professor Irina Abramova, Director of the Institute for African Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences, financial instruments are the main issue of Russian interaction with the continent. She touched upon such topics as Russian investments in African countries, the prospects for establishing direct contacts on the supply of agricultural products with African countries.
Quite recently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs created the Secretariat for Russia-Africa Partnership Forum. The Secretariat further established an Association for Economic Cooperation with African States. The Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has also restructured its Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States that was established as far back in 2009.
According to historical documents, the Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States was created on the initiative of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation and Vnesheconombank with the support of the Federation Council and the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. It has had support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economy and Trade, the Ministry of Natural Resources, as well as the Ministry of Higher Education and Science.
After the first Russia-Africa Summit in the Black Sea city Sochi on October 23-24 in 2019, Russia and Africa have resolved to move from mere intentions to concrete actions in raising the current bilateral trade and investment to appreciably higher levels in the coming years. Indeed, all the structures are fixed for the necessary take-off.
“There is a lot of interesting and demanding work ahead, and perhaps, there is a need to pay attention to the experience of China, which provides its enterprises with state guarantees and subsidies, thus ensuring the ability of companies to work on a systematic and long-term basis,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explicitly said.
According to Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Ministry would continue to provide all-round support for initiatives aimed at strengthening relations between Russia and Africa.
“Our African friends have spoken up for closer interaction with Russia and would welcome our companies on their markets. But much depends on the reciprocity of Russian businesses and their readiness to show initiative and ingenuity, as well as to offer quality goods and services,” he stressed.
Amid a stagnating economy and after years of Western sanctions, Moscow is looking for both allies and an opportunity to boost growth in trade and investment. Currently, Russia’s trade with Africa is less than half that of France with the continent, and 10 times less than that of China. Asian countries are doing brisk business with Africa.
In terms of arms sales, Russia leads the pack in Africa, and Moscow still has a long way to catch-up with many other foreign players there. In 2018, Russia’s trade with African countries grew more than 17 percent and exceeded US$20 billion. At the Sochi summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would like to bring the figure US$20 billion, over the next few years at least, to US$40 billion.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research.
